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Greco-Roman Period
Ancient Greece

Three periods:
1. Archaic: Before the Archaic period, it was the Greek Dark Ages,
characterized by ignorance, injustices, and various kinds of misery
2. Classical
3. Hellenistic
Archaic Period

About 9th cent BC to 5th cent BC

City-states formed

Constantly at war with one another

Ruled by tyrants

Persians were their common enemy

Poets: Homer, Hesiod and Sappho

Homer (8th century BC)

The Iliad

Epic

One of the oldest extant (existing) works in Western literature

Set against the Trojan War

Deals mainly with the fighting between Agamemnon and Achilles

The Odyssey

Sequel of The Iliad

Depicts the journey of Odysseus or Ulysses back home to Ithaca, after the fall of
Troy
The Iliad on digital media
Good audio-books are available on You Tube for those interested in the book
Search You Tube for Homers Iliad uploaded by johnnmb76 for a History Channel
video
The 1956 movie Helen of Troy is also available on You Tube
Brad Pitts 2004 epic war film Troy is also must-watch. Get a DVD.
Classical Period
5th-4th century
Athens

Athens emerged as the most powerful of the Greek city-states

Ruled by the famous ruler, Pericles

Tremendous flowering of the arts and letters

Disciplines such as political thought, aesthetics, physics, ethics, linguistics, biology,

logic and mathematics developed
Rise of Philosophy

Pre-Socratic philosophers (6th century BC)

Thales of Miletus, Anaximander, Xenophanes of Colophon, Pythagoras, Heraclitus,

Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Sophists
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
Classical Drama

Tragedy

Emerged in Athens in the late 6th century BC

As a part of religious festival Dionysia

Dionysus is the god of wine and ecstasy

Known as Bacchus among the Romans

Comedy
Developed later in association with the satyr play
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 Usually based on mythological subjects

Tragedy
Three great tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides
At the beginning, only one actor in a tragedy who interacted with the Chorus
Aeschylus
Introduced the second actor and thus brought variety into drama (says Aristotle in
Poetics)
Chorus has less importance
Made costumes more elaborate

Sophocles introduced the third actor

No more than three actors were there in Greek tragedy
Aeschylus
Father of tragedy
In the competitions held at the festival of Dionysia, Aeschylus always won the first prize
Believed to have written 70 to 90 plays; only a few have survived
His plays had a strong moral and religious basis
Most famous work is the trilogy The Oresteia
Another important play Medea
Prometheus Bound attributed to him
The Oresteia

A trilogy

Agamemnon

The Libation Bearers

The Eumenides
The Oresteia
Story of the Greek hero Agamemnon, who is killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover
Aegisthus
Clytemnestra is the twin sister of Helen of Troy
Helen and Clytemnestra were born of the double egg laid by Leda, the swan, who was
raped by Zeus
Agamemnons children Orestes and Electra take revenge upon her
Orestes kills Clytemnestra, his mother
Orestes is haunted by the Eumenides, as a punishment for committing matricide
Sophocles
Also won prizes in dramatic competitions
Believed to have written over a hundred plays; most of them lost.
Initially imitated Aeschylus, but later developed a style of his own.
Characters are more developed and individualistic than those of Aeschylus
Theban Trilogy: Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King), Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone
Oedipus Rex
When Oedipus is born to Laius and Jocasta, the King and Queen of Thebes, the Delphic
Oracle prophesizes that he will kill his father and marry his mother
Oedipuss parents sent the child to be killed, but he is brought up by a childless couple
Oedipus eventually comes to know of the prophecy
One day, he quarrels with a man and kills him, without knowing that he is his father, Laius
By solving the riddle of the sphinx, Oedipus becomes the King of Thebes, marries the
widowed queen, Jocasta, and has children by her
When the truth is revealed by another prophecy, Jocasta kills herself and Oedipus blinds
himself
Oedipus Rex on You Tube
Search for Sophocles Oedipus Rex 1957 for a dramatic performance of the play filmed by
the famed British actor/director Sir Tyrone Guthrie
Find a complete movie at COMPLETE RARE FILM of Oedipus the King
And Oedipus Rex - The Short Version! (Animated) is an interesting introduction.
Antigone
Antigone is the story of Oedipus and Jocastas daughter
2

 She has a tough decision to make to let her brothers body to remain unburied outside the
city walls, exposed to the wild animals, or to bury him and face death
She chooses to bury him and then commits suicide
Euripides
Author of over ninety plays
Took the major step of depicting mythical heroes as ordinary people with inner lives and
motives
In his intellectual daring, Euripides is often compared to Socrates. (Neither of them cared
much for accepted conventions and advocated unconventional and new ideas)
Comic poets like Aristophanes lampooned Euripides as well as Socrates in their plays.
Euripidess most famous play is Medea
Medea
The story of Medeas revenge on her husband Jason who has left her for another woman
Medea kills her husbands bride as well as her father,
To torment Jason further she kills her own sons
Aristophanes

5th century BC

Stalwart of comedy, which came to be known as Old Comedy, in contrast with the New
Comedy of Menander

The Clouds

Cruelly caricatured Socrates, which led to the philosophers trial and death
according to Plato

The Frogs

Here, Dionysus himself, dressed in an absurd fashion, goes to Hades to bring back
Euripides from death

There is a famous scene in the play between Aeschylus and Euripides, regarding
who is the better poet.
Menander

4th century BC

Associated with New Comedy

more generalized situations and stock characters

In contrast to Old Comedy of Aristophanes, which satirized real individuals and

local issues

Menanders New Comedy eventually led to the development of Comedy of Manners

Pindar

5th cent BC poet, at the beginning of the Classical Period

Odes

Encomiastic

Accompanied by music and dance

Bold and formal language

Three types of stanzas in each ode, based on choral dance positions: strophe, antistrophe and epode

A major group of Pindars odes are the Victory Odes

Celebrate the achievements of participants in competitions such as the Olympic

Games

A variation of the Pindaric Ode, called Irregular Ode, was developed by Abraham Cowley
Plato (c. 428 BC-c. 348 BC)
Born of an aristocratic family in the island of Aegina near Athens in 428 BC
Real name was Aristocles, which means broad-shouldered
Received excellent education, which aroused in him a respect for tradition and a keen
political sensibility
By the age of 20, like all young men of Athens, Plato came under the influence of Socrates
Initiation to Philosophy
The Peloponnesian War ended and the oligarchic rule of the Thirty Tyrants began
Socrates was critical of Athenian politics; refused to be involved in the corrupt politics
Young Platos political ambitions were thwarted

by the influence of Socrates and

3


by the bitter experience of the Thirty Tyrants rule
Plato now turned completely to philosophy
Time of moral and political degeneracy
Poetry was misused by lesser poets and painters
Decline in national character and standards of public life
Plato spoke in a highly rational tone, like a social reformer
The Academy
After the death of Socrates in 399 BC, Plato left Athens and travelled to Italy, Sicily and
Egypt
Later, he returned to Athens
In 387 B.C. Plato, along with the mathematician Thaetetus, founded the philosophical school,
the Academy
The Academy became very famous due to the Neoplatonists, and functioned until A.D. 526,
when it was closed down by emperor Justinian for its pagan orientations
At Platos Academy, subjects like mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, biology and political
theory were taught
At the gate of the academy was written: Let no one without mathematics (geometry)
enter.
Aristotle was a student at the Academy, and later teacher
The Dialogues
Much of Platos philosophy is in the form of dialogues, usually between Socrates and
someone else

Called Socratic Dialogues

Deal with some moral or philosophical problem

36 Dialogues, including

Republic, Protagoras, Apology, Gorgias, Ion, Phaedrus

Republic is a vindication of the idea that good life is possible only in an ideal state. And the
aim of a good life is justice.
Never wrote a single work on poetry. His ideas on poetry have to be extracted from various
Dialogues
Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)
Aristotle was born of a well-to-do family in the Macedonian town of Stagira in 384 BC
His father, Nicomachus, was a physician
In 367, when Aristotle was seventeen, his uncle sent him to Athens to study at Platos
Academy

Spent 20 years there, as a pupil and as teacher

After Platos death in 347, the Academy was headed by his nephew Speusippus, who often
diverged from Platos teachings
This was also the time when the Athenians looked upon the Macedonians with resentment,
as foreign invaders
Due to all these reasons, Aristotle left the Academy
Life away from Athens
Joined the philosophical circle of Hermeias in Assos, in Asia Minor, where Hermeias was the
tyrant
Aristotle married Hermeiass niece, Pythias, with whom he had a daughter, also named
Pythias
When Hermeias was killed by the Persians, Aristotle moved to the island of Lesbos in the
eastern Aegean
Joined another former Academic, Theophrastus in biological studies
Theophrastus remained associated with him until Aristotles death
Philip of Macedon invited Aristotle to serve as tutor to his thirteen-year-old son Alexander.
Lyceum and After
Back in Athens, founded his own school, Lyceum
Spent 12-13 prodigious years at Lyceum
Most of his great works written during this period
Under his direction, his students and associates carried out research on philosophical and
scientific topics
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 After the death of Pythias, Aristotle developed an attachment to Herpyllis, with whom he had
a son, Nichomachus
In 323 BC, Alexander died
Aristotle once again left Athens and took refuge in his mothers birthplace, Chalcis
He died in 322 at the age of sixty-two
Aristotles Works
Almost all of Aristotles work was lost to the West after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5 th
century AD
What the Westerners know of Aristotle today was left to them by Arab philosophers such as
Averroes in the 12th century
The works known in Aristotles own lifetime were some 27 dialogues modelled on those of
Plato, but these are now lost
Surviving works include Poetics,Rhetoric and Nichomachean Ethics
Poetics

Written for serious students in the manner of notes for lectures

First edited by Andronicus in the first century BC

Hellenistic Period
The period is from the time of Alexander the Great
Alexander died in 323 BC
Alexanders successors established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa
Upto the Roman annexation of Greece in 146 BC (2 nd cent.)

After this, Roman period in Greece

Conquests of Alexander the Great during this period spanned the Persian Empire and
reached as far as India
Greek culture and thought spread outside the nation into the other regions of the
Mediterranean
Rise of Roman Empire during this period
Rise of Roman Classicism
Early Roman History
In Rome, monarchy was overthrown and replaced by the republic in the 6 th century BC

Republic is the rule by elected representatives

1st cent. BC: Transitional period, Republic was transforming into an Empire
Caesar, Pompey and Crassus formed First Triumvirate
Julius Caesar rose to being dictator (equivalent of emperor)
On the Ides of March, that means the 15th of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated by
the republicans (people who supported the republic against the empire)
Civil War broke out between republicans and Caesars supporters
The Roman Empire
In the Civil War, republicans were defeated
Antony, Octavian and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate
Another Civil War broke out between Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and
his beloved, Cleopatra of Egypt
This was the Battle of Actium of 31 BC, the final war of the Roman Republic
Antony and Cleopatra died
Octavius Caesar won and became the first emperor of Rome. And he took the title Augustus
Caesar
Augustus Caesar (63 BC-AD 14)
The first Emperor of Rome
Defeated Mark Antony and boasted on his deathbed that he turned Rome from clay to
marble
Height of Roman empires wealth & political security
His greatest achievement was PaxRomana, or Roman Peace
Patron of arts and letters
Classical poets Virgil, Horace, Ovid lived during his reign
Roman Classicism
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 In the classical period, Romans were profoundly influenced by Greek philosophy, culture and
literature
Stoic philosophy
o Stoicism reached Rome in the Hellenistic period
o Duty, discipline, political involvement
o Roman advocates: Virgil, Horace, Seneca
Epicureanism
o Pleasures of everyday life
o As in the expression Carpe Diem
o Roman Epicureans: Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace
Skepticism
o Loss of belief in higher values
o Beauty is fleeting
Roman Classicism influenced European Renaissance
Virgil (70 BC-19 BC)
Pastoral poetry: Eclogues (or Bucolics) &Georgics
The Aeneid
o Epic modelled after Homers Iliad and Odyssey
o Follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to fulfill his destiny and arrive on
the shores of Italy, thus founding the city of Rome
o Makes use of the symbolism of the Augustan regime
o Strong associations between Augustus and Aeneas, the one as founder and the other
as re-founder of Rome
Virgil's work had profound influence on Western literature
o In Dantes Divine Comedy, Virgil appears as Dantes guide through hell and purgatory
Horace (65-08 BC)
Roman classicist who lived in the first century BC
Odes
o Homostrophic (same stanza throughout the ode)
o Calm, meditative, colloquial
Satires
o Speaker is an urbane, witty, tolerant man of the world
o Moved to wry amusement than moral indignation
o Aimed to laugh people out of their follies
o Uses a relaxed, informal language
Epistles (Letters)
o ArsPoetica (Epistle to Piso)
Ovid (43 BC-c. AD 17)
Witty, sophisticated love poems
ArsAmatoria(The Art of Love)
o Scientific, didactic work on how to find and keep a lover
o Humorous satirical style
Metamorphoses
o Narrative poem beginning with the creation of the world and ending in Ovids time
o Adventures and love affairs of deities, heroes
o Over 200 tales taken from Greek and Roman mythology
o The greatest source of mythology for Renaissance writers
Augustus Caesar banished Ovid to an isolated island and he died in exile
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC-AD 65)
Roman statesman, dramatist, poet and Stoic philosopher
Emperor Neros teacher and confidant
o It is legendary that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burnt
Seneca committed forced suicide at Neros orders
Upheld the principles of Stoicism, Cynicism & Epicureanism
Tragedies of Blood
o Intense, violent melodramas in rhetorical language
o Famous: Thyestes
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 Also wrote philosophical essays, letters, a satire

Senecan revenge tragedies rediscovered by Italian humanists in the mid-16th century;
became the models for tragedy on the Renaissance stage
Plautus (c. 254 BC-184 BC)
Wrote comedies that are versions of Greek New Comedy
Stock characters: young men in love with slave girls, mistaken identities, cunning servants,
deceived masters
Amphitryon
o Mythological story of Jupiter fathering Hercules
Menaechmi
o Two long separated brothers find each other after great confusion
Rediscovered in the Renaissance, Plautine plots furnished the basis for hundreds of comedies
in every European language
o English Restoration Comedy is Plautine in form and spirit
Terence (c. 195 BC-159 BC)
Younger contemporary of Plautus, who wrote comedies that are the earliest intact works of
Roman literature
Slave who was later freed
More refined style of expression
Plays are Latin versions of Greek plots
All his 6 comedies have survived
Most famous play: The Eunuchs

Chapter 2
Early History of Britain
The Celts (Britons)
Original inhabitants of Britain from Iron Age
Iron Age roughly from 800 BC to 100 AD, when Romanization was complete
Spoke Celtic languages, called Britain or Brythonic
Society had class structure (Druids were the priestly learned class, like Brahmins)
Many striking connections have been found between the cultures of ancient Vedic India and the
Celtic people, pointing to the fact that these seemingly different cultures split from each other.
Celtic languages and cultures survive today in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany (Breton,
Cornish, Scottish, Gaelic, Irish, Welsh)
The Celts (Britons)
Celtic Knots: a variety of (mostly endless) knots and stylized graphical representations of
knots used for decoration, adopted by the ancient Celts.
Celtic religions
The Celts were originally pagans and followed polytheism, or Druidism.
Christianity reached Britain by the third century of the Christian era.
In the Early Middle Ages, many Celts converted to Christianity, and distinctive practices of
Celtic Christianity (as different from Roman Catholicism) emerged.
Romans in Britain
The Roman conquest of Britain was a gradual process.
Julius Caesars expeditions to Britain55 and 54 BC
Britain had diplomatic and trade links with Rome since then
Romans under Emperor Claudius invaded Britain in AD 43; invasion ended in the AD 80s
Britain became Britannia, a province of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire became very powerful in the subsequent centuries
Empire divided into Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire
Economic decline and barbarian invasions in Western Roman Empire at the end of 4 th century
AD
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Book by Edward Gibbon published in 6 volumes in 1776-89

Covers the history of the Roman Empire, Europe and the Catholic Church

Discusses the decline of the Western Roman Empire (in 4 th century AD) and Eastern
Roman Empire (in 1453, Fall of Constantinople)
End of Roman rule in about 410 AD
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 Christian historian Augustine of Hippo says Rome brought the downfall upon itself by its own
corruption
Britannia
Britain was looked upon as a goddess (like Bharat Mata)
A classical female figure who personifies the British Isles
Wears a trident, a shield and a Corinthian helmet
Anglo-Saxons

We get this story from

Gildass On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain (Latin, 6th c.)

Venerable Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English Race (Latin, 8th c.)

After the Romans left Britain, Picts, Scots and Irish invaded the island

The Celtic war-lord Vortigern invited the Germanic mercenary tribes, the Angles,
Saxons and Jutes, to assist in fighting the warring tribes; their leaders were Hengist and Horsa

Anglo-Saxons settled in the south and east of Britain in the 5 th century AD

The Anglo-Saxon period is called Old English period

The Anglo-Saxon Invasion
Anglo-Saxons

King Arthur

Believed to have lived in the 5th or early 6th century

Celtic king, probably of Roman descent

Fought against the Saxon invasions of Britain

Religious aspect: Arthur is a Christian king who fought 12 battles against the
pagan Saxons
Arthurian Literature

In the Middle Ages, Arthur became an international figure; Arthurian legends appeared
in English and French

Important elements of these legends:

Knights of Arthurs Round table

His sword Excalibur

Arthurs wife Guinevere and her lover Launcelot

Perceval and the quest for the Holy Grail

The love of Tristan and Iseult

Arthurs final battle against Mordred at Camlann

His final rest in Avalon

Anglo-Saxons

Heptarchy 600-800 AD

Seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons

The idea that there was a Heptarchy in the Anglo-Saxon period was first
proposed in the 12th century AD by the historian Henry of Huntingdon

Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex, Wessex, Kent

In 8th and 9th centuries AD, persistent Danish (Vikings from Scandinavia) attacks on Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms
Anglo-Saxon Period
Society: kinship groups led by strong warrior chief
English emerged as a written language
Their pagan religions offered no hope of an afterlife
People valued earthly virtues of bravery, loyalty, generosity, and friendship
Bards (scops) strummed the harp and sang of heroic deeds of warriors who thus gained
immortality
The Spread of Christianity

Christian monks first reached Britain during the Roman period.

Around AD 400
Christian monks settle in Britain
Christianity and Anglo-Saxon culture co-exist
By 550, the native Britons were converted to Christianity and the religion became firmly
established within their culture.
St. Augustine of Canterburys Gregorian mission in AD 597; converted King Aethelbert of
Kent & his wife
By A.D. 699
British pagan religions replaced by Christianity
7th century AD is also the time of Prophet Muhammad.
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Beowulf
Written probably in 7th century
the first great work of English national literature.
the epic story of the hero Beowulf, who fights the demonic monster Grendel.
Beowulf takes place in Scandinavia.
Alfred & the Vikings
King Alfred of Wessex (849-899)
Fought the Vikings (Danes)
Viking Age in Britain (800-1066)
Great but sporadic violence by Viking raiders
Danish Rule in many parts of Britain

Danelaw: Common law developed during Alfreds time; Basis of all law in the UK
Popular legends about King Alfred: Alfred and the Peasant Woman

During the Danish War, Alfred begged shelter of a peasant woman. The
woman did not recognize the king, and bid him to mind cakes cooking on the fire. Alfred, his
thoughts occupied with the war, let his attention wander and the cakes were burned. The
peasant woman, returning to find her cakes burned, scolded the king.
Norman Conquest 1066
The last Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor promised William, Duke of Normandy, the
English throne
Edward went back on the promise and designated Harold his successor
William of Normandy defeated Harold and Anglo-Saxon army
French replaced English as the language of the ruling class
Appendix: Arthurian Literature
Early Middle Ages

Latin accounts

On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain (St. Gildas, 6th c.)

History of the Britons (Nennius, 9th c.)

Annales cambriae (mid-10th c.)

Welsh poetry: Arthur represented as a national hero

12th century

Flowering of historical literature on Arthur

Gesta regum anglorum (William of Malmesbury)

Historia regum Brittaniae (Geoffrey of Monmouth)

Gives accounts of other early kings also, starting from Brutus

Focus is on Arthur himself, not his world of romance

Five Arthurian romances by Chrtien de Troyes

Part of Matter of Britain

Inaugurated Arthurian romance tradition

Depicts Arthurian world as a lost golden age

Focus is on chivalry, quest, and exploits of the knights

Roman de Brut (by Wace, written in Norman language)

Expands Geoffreys account

Inspired Layamons Brut

Focus is on the king and his battles, and his knight Gawain
Later Arthurian Literature

French Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian romances (13th c.)

Arthurs world as epitome of chivalry

The Alliterative Morte Arthure (c. 1400)

Le Morte DArthur (Thomas Malory, 1469-70)

Based on French prose romances

Caxton printed this work

Other Writers of Arthurian Legends

John Leland

Michael Drayton

Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queene)

George Gascoigne (The Masque at Kenilworth)

John Dryden (with Henry Purcell, opera King Arthur, or The British Worthy)

Walter Scott (Marmion, The Bridal of Triermain)

Other Writers of Arthurian Legends
9

Victorian Revivers of Arthurian legends

Lady Charlotte Guest

Alfred Tennyson (Idylls of the King: 12 poems which include The Lady of Shalott,
Morte dArthur, Sir Galahad)

William Morris (Defence of Guenevere)

Swinburne (The Day before the Trial, Lancelot, Tristram of Lyonesse)

Matthew Arnold (Tristram and Iseult)

Aubrey Beardsley (Art Nouveau painter who illustrated Malorys Morte DArthur)
20th c. Writers of Arthurian Legends

TS Eliot (The Waste Land)

Charles Williams (two cycles of Arthurian poetry)

CS Lewis (science fiction that draws on Grail mythology)

David Lodge (Small Worlddraws on Arthurian motifs)

Arthurian motifs abound in contemporary childrens fiction

Major Arthurian Films

The Sword in the Stone (1963); Camelot (1967)

King Arthur: The Young Warlord (1975)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975 comedy)

Excalibur (1981); First Knight (1995); King Arthur (2004)

Chapter 3
Old English Literature
Literature of the Anglo-Saxons
Old English Language
English developed from the dialects (closely related but not uniform) of the Germanic tribes, Angles, Saxons and Jutes
English belongs to the Germanic family, a sub-group of the Indo-European family
Old English has four major dialects:
Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon and Kentish
Northumbrian & Mercian were found in the region north of the Thames, and are collectively called Anglian
Kentish was the dialect of the Jutes in the southeast
In the late OE period, West Saxon dialect (of Wessex) became the most important, and the standard for written prose
Nearly all the surviving Old English texts are in West Saxon
Characteristics of Old English
Pronunciation and Spelling
Pronunciation, especially of long vowels, was different
Had letters and consonant clusters we no longer employ
Vocabulary
Purely Germanic words
Absence of French and Latin derivatives
Grammar
Old English is a synthetic inflectional language
Words themselves change to indicate person, number, tense, etc
Modern English is an analytical language
More than changes within the word, changes of word order and use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs are employed
Old English Consonant Clusters
/hr/
Examples
/hl/
hlaford (lord)
/hn/
hlaefdige (lady)
/hw/
hraefn, (raven)
/kn/
hlud (loud)
/gn/
FOR A VIBRANT INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

You could watch the podcasts The History of English in 10 Minutes available in the Open Learn university website
The same has been uploaded by someone in You Tube J
Old English Literature: An Overview
Period from the 7th century to the Battle of Hastings (Norman Conquest) of 1066
Poetry chanted by a scop (bard) to the accompaniment of a harp
The period was characterized by the imposing scholarship of the Christian monasteries
Major genres
Epic poetry, Hagiography, Sermons, Bible translations, Chronicles
Greatest work: Beowulf
Major authors: Caedmon, Cynewulf, Venerable Bede
Old English Manuscripts

10

Four major Manuscript collections

Junius Manuscript
Exeter Book
Vericelli Book
Nowell Codex (or Beowulf Manuscript)
Old English Poetry: General Features
Bold and strong
Mournful and elegiac
Sings of sorrows and the ultimate futility of human life
Two types: (i) Heroic Germanic and (ii) Christian
Portrays the helplessness of man before the power of fate
Alliteration and kenning (elaborate descriptive phrases)
Internal rhyme
Poems are mostly anonymous

11

Beowulf
Englands oldest extant national epic
Written probably in the 7th century AD
Survives in a 10th century manuscript called Cotton Vitellius A.xv (or Nowell Codex)
The manuscript was badly damaged in a fire in 1731
Contains 3,182 lines
Scandinavian story of the Geatish hero Beowulf
The Plot of Beowulf
First Part
The Geatish warrior Beowulf kills Grendel, a monster who attacks Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar
Grendels mother, who seeks revenge, is also killed
Second Part
Set 50 years later
Beowulf is now King of the Geats
Beowulf kills a dragon who attacks his people, and is himself mortally wounded
Ends with Beowulfs sorrowful burial
Features of Beowulf
Sustained grandeur
Brilliant style
Baroque diction
Set the standards for heroism
Offers lessons in moderation and humility
Warns about the transitory nature of worldly glories
Fascinating representation of court culture
Use of communal memory and shared tribal history
Digressions, moving back and forth in time
Pagan philosophical poem rather than a Christian work
However, Biblical narrative is woven into the poem through references to Cain
Some characters in Beowulf
The encounters between the young Beowulf and the aged Hrothgar beautifully portrayed
Grendels mother a powerful figure of blood revenge
Hrothgars queen Wealtheow warns her husband about granting Beowulf a role in the future of the kingdom.
Beowulfs patron Hygelac
Hygelacs queen Hygd compared with the evil queen Modthryth in a striking contrast of behavioural types
One evening, a scop, or court poet, recounts the disaster of a woman who is married by one tribe to an enemy tribe in order to make
peace.
A Geatish woman sings the lament for Beowulf
Beowulf Today
Influenced 20th c. writers like W. H. Auden, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney
JRR Tolkien, in the lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936) held that the monsters are central rather than marginal to
the poems meaning
Kevin Kiernan produced The Electronic Beowulf (1982)
The manuscript and text of Beowulf is riven with gaps and mysteries.
Kiernans edition is a digital reproduction that offers new historical insights into the manuscript
Seamus Heaney translated Beowulf (1999)
Employs deliberately archaic diction
Recasts the poem into a commentary on the history of the relation between Ireland and England
Aligns the poem with a culture oppressed by the British rather than with one that contributes to English identity
Beowulf Today
Wikipedia offers a List of artistic depictions of Beowulf
In the 2007 film directed by Robert Zemeckis, Ray Winstone plays Beowulf
Caedmon
7th century Northumbrian poet; Father of Old English poetry
Was a brother at the monastery of Whitby
Details of his life are known from Venerable Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English Race (year 731)
Was an illiterate cow-herd
A miracle happened in his life: At a feast that Cdmon attended, everyone was asked to sing a song on a harp. Cdmon left
the hall, ashamed that he could not contribute a song. Later a man appeared to him in a dream and said, Sing to me the
beginning of all things. Cdmon was then able to sing verses and words that he had not heard of before.
According to Bede, Caedmon founded the school of Christian poetry called Caedmonian School

12

Caedmons Hymn
Alliterative vernacular praise poem in nine lines
Cynewulf
Lived in the 9th century
Nothing known for certain about his life
Was probably very religious
Believed to have lived to an old age, which he felt to be a burden
At some point of his life, seems to have enjoyed the favour of princes
Was certainly a Latin scholar
In his poetry, the personal note is emphasized, and even lyrical
Cynewulf
With him, Anglo-Saxon religious poetry moved beyond Biblical themes into the didactic, the devotional and the mystical
Poems
The Fates of the Apostles
Juliana
Elene
Christ II (or The Ascension)
School of Cynewulf
The Dream of the Rood
Andreas
The Phoenix
Judith
Elegies
Exeter contains a collection of seven Old English elegies
Themes of loss and consolation
The seven elegies are
Deor
Wulf and Eadwacer
The Wifes Lament
The Husbands Message
The Ruin
The Wanderer
The Seafarer
Old English Prose
Sermons and translations from Latin
Two types
Christian
Alfred the Great
Aelfric
Wulfstan
Secular
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Aelfric
Works on medicine, law, mathematics, rhetoric, geography, astronomy, etc
Riddles
Venerable Bede
Lived in the 7th-8th century
40 books to his credit, dealing with theology and history
Varied themes, including commentaries on the Bible, observations of nature, music and poetry
Ecclesiastical History of the English Race (731)
Originally in Latin: Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum
Written in 5 books
Authentic historical document

13

King Alfred the Great (c. 848-899)

King of Wessex from 871 until his death in 899
Successfully resisted Danish attacks
Translated theological and philosophical prose from Latin
Pastoral Rule (or Pastoral Care) by Pope Gregory
History of the World by Orosius
Ecclesiastical History of the English Race by Venerable Bede
Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (written in prison while awaiting execution)
Initiated work on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Collection of annals; a major historical document
Compiled in AD 890; continued till 12th century
Aelfric of Eynsham
Late 10th century clergyman and prose stylist
Well-known for his sermons, homilies, saints lives
Catholic Homilies
Lives of the Saints
Used plain English, and sustained the interest of readers / listeners
Aimed to bring Christians to a better understanding of their faith
Wrote textbooks to teach Latin
Wrote letters to teach Christians their duties
Made translations from the Old and New Testaments
His works were
Copied throughout the Middle Ages
The first old English books to be printed
Other writers / works
Wulfstan
Contemporary of Aelfric
Wrote sermons, of which Sermon of the Wulf is important
Blames the sins of the English for the Viking invasion
Martyology
Prose work about saints and martyrs
Believed to have been by a Mercian author
Prose on astronomy, geography, medicine, law, etc has survived

Chapter 4
The Middle English Period
The Medieval Period
Extends from the Norman Conquest (11th c.) to the Renaissance (16th c.)
Three phases in Europe
Early Middle Ages (5th c to 10th c; in England, this is Old English Period)
High Middle Ages (11th to 13th c)
Late Middle Ages (14th to 16th c)
French influence in culture and society
Feudalism; strict social hierarchy

Three social classes (called Estates): Aristocracy (king, barons and knights);
Episcopacy (clergy); Peasantry (serfs)
The Aristocracy
The kings ruled by Divine Right theory
The right to rule
is granted by God
is passed on by heredity
Barons were the kings direct subordinates
were given large portions of the kings land, known as manors / fiefs
paid homage or fealty to the king
support to the king at all times
governed the kings land
provide troops and fight for the king
paid shield money with which the king maintained his army
Aristocracy spoke French and read French poetry
Associated with the ideals of chivalry
Chivalry
14

Knights constituted the lower nobility; became identified with the ideals of chivalry during
the Late Middle Ages.
A boy under training as a knight was called a squire.
Chivalry was a knights code of behaviour
Faith in, and deep love of, the Christian religion; ready to die for the Church
Generosity
Strength to protect women and the weak
Fight against injustice and evil
Courage in the face of the enemy
Wore special armour and clothing
Songs about knights were sung by troubadours.
The Episcopacy
The clergy were divided into
High clergy (who were like the Barons)
Low clergy (who were like the serfs)
The church leaders
held great power over the peasants / serfs
were active in politics and government
A diocese was like a spiritual manor headed by a bishop; many bishops also governed real
manors
Spoke and wrote in Latin (prose)
The Peasantry
The serfs / peasants
lived in bondage and were treated mercilessly by the nobility and high clergy
were treated like animals, and were sold along with land
The peasants believed that their after-life would be in heaven if
they gave more money to the church
served the clergy unquestioningly
The peasants lived a life of squalor, superstition and ignorance
Christianity & Islam
In Early Middle Ages, much of the Eastern Roman Empire became Islamic due to religious
and political conquests
The Early Middle Ages coincided with Islamic Golden Age (inventions, innovations,
preservation of Greco-Roman classical knowledge)
The Crusades (between 11th and 13th cent.)
Aided by technological advances in Europe: Invention of cannon, introduction of gunpowder,
the compass, the astrolabe, improvements in ships and clocks
The Crusades
A series of religion-driven military campaigns waged by much of Christian Europe against
external and internal opponents, mainly Muslims who were very powerful in the Middle Ages
The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from
Muslim rule
9 major Crusades from 11th to 13th centuries
Early Middle English Period (11th to 13th c)
Transformation of the English language
Simplified in spelling, grammar
Influence of Norman French
London became the administrative centre
This later determined the spoken and written forms of standard English
Aristocratic society and taste for French Literature
This affected the nature and scope of English literature
Militaristic culture
England became aggressive, confident, militaristic, which later determined the
boundaries of its empire
England entered the full current of European life; enriched by cosmopolitan cultures and
literatures
England in the 14th century
Population increased, leading to calamities like the Black Death in the Late Middle Ages
Economy prospered
Intellectual, spiritual and artistic flowering in the Christian monasteries
Late Middle English Period

15

14th to 16th century, following High Middle Ages

Beset with famines, plague and revolts
Great Famine (1315-17)
Black Death (1348 onwards)
Hundred Years War (1337-1453)
Peasants Revolt (1381)
Fall of Constantinople (1453)
Invention of printing by movable types (1456)
Wars of the Roses (1455-1485)
Awakenings of Renaissance and Reformation
The Famine (1315-1317)
By 1300, Europeans were farming almost all the land they could cultivate.
A population crisis developed.
Climate changes in Europe produced three years of crop failures between 1315-17 because
of excessive rain.
As many as 15% of the peasants in some English villages died.
One consequence of starvation & poverty was susceptibility to disease.
The Black Death
Attack of bubonic plague that ravaged the Middle East and Europe
Reached England in 1348; reappeared several times
Death of one third of English population
Led to social chaos, labour shortages, Peasants Revolt and the introduction of the wage
system
Attempts to Stop the Plague: Blood-Letting
Doctors believed that the way to cure a patient was to let out the bad blood by cutting one
of the veins
Many people bled to death.
Later, doctors began to use leeches, which would suck out smaller amounts of blood over
longer periods of time
Attempts to Stop the Plague: Doctors Robe
The doctors wore a costume consisting of an ankle length overcoat and a bird-like beak mask
often filled with sweet or strong smelling substances, along with gloves, boots, a brim hat
and an outer over-clothing garment.
The purpose of the mask was to keep away bad smells, which were thought to be the
principal cause of the disease.
Attempts to Stop the Plague: Flagellantism
Flagellantism peaked in Europe during the Black Death
This was an extreme Catholic movement of self-inflicted violence (whipping) as penance
for sins
Participation in Flagellant processions was believed to clear people of all sins.
The Pope finally banned it.
Attempts to Stop the Plague: Pogroms against the Jews
Though the Jews died of the plague, rumours spread that they were spreading the disease
They were tortured until they confessed to crimes that they could not possibly have
committed
Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by violence
Pope Clement VI condemned the violence.
Hundred Years War
War between France and England
Broke out in 1337 and ended in 1453
First European War
Covered the reigns of five English kings from Edward III
French gained ultimate victory following the appearance of Joan of Arc (1429)
Since then, the English resented French supremacy, leading to the decline of feudalism and
the nationalistic interest in English as a literary language.
The Peasants Revolt (1381)
Uprising of peasants across England
Aftermath of Black Death and resultant economic and political insecurities
Immediate cause: King Richard II (aged 14 then!) attempted to collect a poll tax
Violence in all parts of the country
Peasants sought the end of unpaid serfdom

16

 Led by Wat Tyler & clergyman John Ball

Tyler beheaded
Revolt described in Gowers Vox Clamantis, which was completed sometime after the Revolt
Fall of Constantinople
Constantinople
The capital of Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, founded by Emperor Constantine I
in the 4th c. AD
A second Rome, the centre of culture, trade and learning
In 1453, Emperor Constantine XI was defeated by the Ottoman Turkish Sultan
Mahomet II
The Christians subsequently lost all their territories to the Ottoman Turks
Effects of the Fall of Constantinople
Defeat of the Byzantine Empire (after 1100 years) and rise of the Ottoman Empire
Constantinople was renamed Istanbul
Christian monks fled to the east, and spread learning
This led to Humanism and Renaissance
Increased European trade with the East
Invention of Printing
Woodblock printing was invented in China in the 3 rd c. AD
This method was tedious and difficult
The Koreans were the first to print books with movable metal types, in late 14 th c.
Movable type printing was introduced into Europe by German artisan Johannes Gutenberg
The first printed book in Europe (produced by Gutenberg) was the Vulgate Bible
(1456), now called Gutenberg Bible
For the first time, texts (including the Bible) were made available in vernacular languages,
which led to the Reformation.
William Caxton (d. 1492)
William Caxton, English merchant, diplomat and translator, introduced the printing press at
Westminster in England in 1476.
He printed the 1st English book in Belgium in 1473
His own translation of the French courtly romance Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
The 1st book to be printed at the Westminster press
Probably an edition of Chaucers The Canterbury Tales
The 1st book to be printed with a date
The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers (18 Nov 1477)
Wars of the Roses (1455-1485)
Civil War between the two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty
Lancaster (Red Rose), and
York (White Rose)
Resulted in the establishment of the Tudor dynasty
King Henry VI held the throne in 1455
His grandfather Henry IV had seized power in 1399
Richard, Duke of York laid claim on the throne
Richard was killed in battle in 1460
But his son Edward IV crushed the Lancastrians and ruled till 1470
In 1470, Lancastrians under Queen Margaret of Anjou brought back Henry VI
Seven months later, Edward returned and regained power; after him, his brother
Richard III ruled
Richard III was killed by Henry Tudor (Henry VII) who put an end to the Wars of the
Roses and established the Tudor rule.
Historical Overview: MAJOR KINGS OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Edward the Confessor r. 1042-1066
Last Anglo-Saxon king
Lived in exile in Normandy, during Danish rule of England (1013-1066), until 1041
Promised to make William, Duke of Normandy, his successor
On his deathbed, designated son Harold as his successor
William, the Conqueror r. 1066-1087
William, duke of Normandy, invaded England at the battle of Hastings in 1066
Unified England
Produced the Domesday Book, a survey of the land in England and Wales (1086)
17

The Normans (North-man) were descendants of Danish Vikings who settled in northern
France
Normans spoke French and imposed their language and culture on England
Henry II r. 1154-1189
Established the House of Plantagenet
Prominent royal dynasty of medieval England
Time of revolts and political tensions
Becket Controversy
Henry II appointed Thomas Becket, his Chancellor and old friend, as Archbishop of
Canterbury in an attempt to assert his rights over the Church
But Becket turned out to be a fervent supporter of Church rights
The conflict between the two came to a head
A remark made by Henry is said to have been misinterpreted by four knights who hacked
the Archbishop to death in front of the altar on 29 December 1170
The incident horrified Christian Europe, and Becket was hailed a martyr. Henry had to make
a settlement with the papacy.
Watch a magnificent BBC documentary on the Murder at Canterbury on YouTube
Richard, the Lion-Heart r. 1189-1199
King Richard I
Called Lion-Heart because of his reputation as a great warrior, especially in the Crusades
Robin Hood supposed to have been his contemporary and supporter
King John r. 1199-1216
First Barons war against King John
King demanded more military service from the barons
Barons had to pay more money to the king
Courts were corrupt
Kings dispute with the Pope
In 1213, Barons, along with church leaders, drew up a list of rights; twice the king
refused
The barons Army of God marched on London
John met the rebels at Runnymede on 15 June 1215
Forced to sign Magna Carta (or great Charter), which pledged the king to uphold
feudal law
Shakespeare has written the play King John
Edward II r. 1307-1327
Son of Edward I, who conquered Wales, expelled Jews from England, and established the
Parliament as a permanent institution
Rumoured to have been bisexual; infatuated with Piers Gaveston
Disastrous rule
The first king to establish colleges at Oxford and Cambridge
Deposed by queen Isabella, aided by Mortimer
(Probably) murdered at Berkeley Castle
Marlowe has written the play Edward II
Edward III r. 1327-1377
Son of Edward II
Laid claim on the French throne which led to Hundred Years War (1337-1453); secured
victories at Crcy and Poitiers
To mark his claim on the French crown, Edward III quartered the three lions of the
Plantagenet emblem with the fleurs de lys (lily) of France in his royal arms
Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) born during his reign
Richard II r.1377-1399
Richard II came to power at the age of 10
Grandson of Edward III, son of Edward the Black Prince, and nephew of John of Gaunt
John of Gaunt was Duke of Lancaster, an influential nobleman, patron of Chaucer
Richard disinherited Gaunts son Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV), and was later deposed
by him
Peasants Revolt suppressed by Richard II
Ruled in a tyrannical manner
Richard II r.1377-1399
Chaucer served Richard as a diplomat , customs official and clerk of the Kings Works
Chaucer served Richards arch-enemy John of Gaunt also!

18

 John Gower wrote Confessio Amantis on the direct orders of Richard.

Shakespeare has written the play Richard II
Henry IV r.1399-1413
Earlier called Henry Bolingbroke, Henry was the son of John of Gaunt and Blanche
First Lancastrian king
Many plots, rebellions and assassination attempts against him, especially by the Percy family
under Henry Hotspur Percy
Had a disfiguring skin disease
There was a prophesy that he would die in Jerusalem, and died in the Jerusalem chamber of
Westminster Abbey
Shakespeare has written the play Henry IV 2 Parts
Henry V r. 1413-1421
Rebelled against his father Henry IV
Played active role in Hundred Years War, esp. at the Battle of Agincourt in which he nearly
conquered France
Early, unexpected death in France
Appears in three Shakespearean plays Henry IV 2 Parts and Henry V
In Henry V, Shakespeare depicts him as an ideal king
Henry VI r. 1422-61; 1470-71
Only son and infant heir of Henry V
Weak, peaceful and pious ruler; his queen Margaret of Anjou ruled
Jack Cades rebellion
Wars of the Roses started in his time
Englands defeat in the Hundred Years War
Later reign: breakdown of law and order in the country; kings insanity, leading to
ascendancy of York and the interim rule of Edward IV
Died in the Tower of London
Shakespeare has written the play Henry VI 3 Parts
Edward IV r. 1461-70; 1471-83
Son of Richard, Duke of York, and brother of Richard III
Destroyed the House of Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses, and the only rival, Henry
Tudor, went into exile
Printing brought to England (1476) during his reign
Richard III r. 1483-85
Last Plantagenet king
Killed by Lancastrian Henry VII in Battle of Bosworth, the final battle of the War of the Roses,
with which the Middle Ages is said to have ended
Shakespeare has written the play Richard III, depicting the king as the most villainous of all
the kings in the history plays; murderous and deformed
Shakespeares characterization does not have much historical evidence
His skeleton was found in 2013!
Middle English Language
Language of the poor peasants; not a literary language
Simplified in spelling and grammar
Transformed by loan words and adaptations of French styles
Middle English Literature: An Overview
Extensive influence of French literature
Major genres
Allegory (Piers the Plowman)
Tales of Chivalry and Adventure (Gawain and the Green Knight)
Arthurian Legends (Morte dArthur)
Allegory
Concrete representation of an abstract idea
In prose or verse
At least two levels of meaning
Personification common device
Characters represent qualities or ideas
Similar to extended metaphor
Two types
Political and historical (Absalom and Achitophel)
Allegory of ideas (Pilgrims Progress)
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Popular in the Middle Ages

in the form of dream vision
Dream Allegory
Narrator falls asleep; dreams
Relates contents of the dream
Spring landscape
Led by a guide (human or animal)
Dream Allegory: Famous Examples

Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose, French): Guillaume de Lorris (c. 1230),
Jean de Meung (c. 1270)

Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy, Latin, 1321): Dante Alighieri

The Pearl (English): 14th century elegy; anonymous

Piers Plowman (English, c. 1394): William Langland

The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls (English):
Geoffrey Chaucer (14th c)
Later works with elements of Dream Allegories
Pilgrims Progress (John Bunyan, 1678)
The Triumph of Life (P.B. Shelley, 1824)
The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (John Keats, 1819)
Alices Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
News from Nowhere (William Morris, 1890)
Finnegans Wake (James Joyce, 1939)
Famous Movies that employ elements of Dream Allegory
The Wizard of Oz (Frank Baum, 1900)
Jacobs Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990)
Slasher movies like The Nightmare on Elm Street
Chivalric Romances
Knighthood and chivalry were favourite themes in medieval literature
Originated in France.
Chivalric romances were written in prose or verse and concerned adventure, romance and
courtly love
Courtly Love
Suggests an ideal, spiritual love
Courtly love prescribes codes of behaviour between aristocrats in love
Man falls instantly in love with a beautiful lady
Exhibits symptoms of ill health and anxiety
Becomes the ladys servant
The lady is usually a married woman, so the relationship is secret and does not end in
marriage.
Elements of chivalric romance
Idealization of the hero
Heros identity is mysterious
Heros willingness to comply with the ladys caprices
Use of the supernatural to generate suspense
Emphasis on dangerous and dramatic events
Encounters with dragons
Jousting tournaments
Magical enchantments
Famous Chivalric Romances
Lancelot and Perceval (2 romances); Chrtien de Troye; 12th century; French
King Horn; Anonymous; 13th century; English
Parzifal; Wolfram von Eschenbach; 13th century
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Anonymous; 14th century; English
Le Morte DArthur; Sir Thomas Malory; 15th century; English
Alliterative Revival (c. 1350-c.1500)
Resurgence of alliterative verse which was popular in the Old English period
Probably due to the nationalistic spirit of the post-Black Death years, and a reaction against
French poetic styles
Examples
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (by the Pearl poet)
The Alliterative Morte Arthure (anonymous)

20

 Piers Plowman (by William Langland)

The Destruction of Troy (John Clerk from Lancashire)
Poetry by William Dunbar
Three Fountains of Medieval Literature
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Born in Florence, in Italy
Belonged to the Florentine political group called White Guelphs
Works helped establish the Tuscan dialect of Latin, upon which standard Italian is based.
Fell in love with Beatrice Portinari at age nine
Wrote the first sonnets in world litt addressed to her
She died in 1290
Dante turned to writing
Dantes Works
Convivio (The Banquet) long philosophical poems
Monarchia political philosophy
On Eloquence in the vernacular Latin essay supported the use of vernacular language in
poetry
Eclogues
Le Rime (The Rhymes, a collection of lyric poems)
Vita Nouva (The New Life) collection of courtly verse on his love for Beatrice
The Divine Comedy
Long epic poem
Writing begun in about 1308; finished just before Dantes death in 1321
Main theme: life after death
Dante himself is the chief character
Dante called it Commedia because it ended happily
The word Divine was added later
Three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
Written in three-lined terza rima stanzas, rhyming aba bcb cdc etc.
100 cantos: 34 in Inferno, 33 each in Purgatorio & Paradiso
The number three is part of the numerical symbolism of the Divine Comedy
Three is the number of the Holy Trinity
There are nine circles of Hell (3 times 3); nine levels of Paradise (with the Garden of
Eden at the summit as a 10th level)
Dantes Satan is a three-headed monster.
Inferno (Hell)
Inferno begins on the day before Good Friday in 1300
The narrator, Dante, is 35 years old, and thus halfway along our lifes path
He is lost in a dark wood (symbolizing his unworthy life)
On Good Friday he is rescued by Virgil, sent by Beatrice.
Both of them embark on a journey to Hell which comprises nine circles of suffering located
within the Earth.
Upon entering the gates of Hell, they see the sufferings of the Uncommitted sinners, who did
neither good nor evil in life.
They enter Charons boat to be ferried across the Acheron River into Hell proper.
Dante faints and does not wake up until he is on the other side.
The first circle is Limbo and the poets Homer, Horace and Ovid are there. Limbo includes the
unbaptized who did not accept Christ.
The second circle is Lust.
The third circle is Gluttony.
The fourth circle is Greed.
The fifth circle is Anger. In this circle are the fallen angels and the Three Furies.
The sixth circle is Heresy. Epicurus is here because of his philosophy of pleasure being the
most important thing.
The seventh circle is violence and contains three rings. This circle includes murder, suicide,
blasphemy, sodomy, and usury.
The eighth circle is fraud and it is made up of ten ditches pimping and seducing, flattery,
simony (the abuse of power within the church), sorcery, political corruption, and hypocrisy.
The ninth circle is treachery and it is divided into four regions Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea,
and Judecca (Judas). Caina is named after Cain. Judecca, named for Judas Iscariot, is the
21

innermost region and the last circle of Hell. The people here have betrayed their masters or
benefactors.
Inferno on You Tube
A video-review of the book through excerpts and sketches is available on You Tube:
Search for The Divine Comedy Inferno uploaded by emmthreejonny
Purgatorio (Purgatory)
Describes the Purgatory
A mountain rising in circular ledges on which are various groups of repentant sinners
At the top of this mountain is earthly paradise, where Dante meets Beatrice
In Inferno and Purgatorio, Dante is guided by Virgil and there he meets his former friends
and foes.
Paradiso (Paradise)
Vision of a world of beauty, light and sound
Virgil entrusts Dante to a new guide, Beatrice
Beatrices beauty and power to guide Dante to a vision of supreme goodness are praised.
She guides Dante through 10 spheres of Heaven where he meets the souls of the blessed.
They finally arrive at the throne of God set among hosts of angels.
Dante stands in rapture and perceives the final truth of life and meaning of the universe.
A simply wonderful audio-introduction, Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy is available in
You Tube
[Some of the other uploads of the same Eric Masters are also worth listening to.]
Also take a look at the useful list of adaptations and allusions to The Divine Comedy in
literature, film, and other media, available in Wikipedia: Dante Alighieri and the Divine
Comedy in popular culture
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75)
First great writer of prose in any modern language
Initiated several literary forms
Filocolo is the first Italian prose romance
Filostrato is the first Italian verse romance other than those written by minstrels
He also wrote the first Italian idyll
Teseida a poem on the story of Theseus, Palamon and Arcite (retold by Chaucer,
Shakespeare, etc)
Wrote a life (biography) of Dante
Wrote a number of encyclopedic works in Latin which were widely read in England
(Probably) invented ottava rima
Decameron (1349-53)
100 stories told over a period of 10 days
7 young women and 3 young men flee Florence during the Black Death and take refuge for
two weeks in the countryside
They spend hot afternoons by telling stories
Each day the group selects a king or queen who determines the general theme of stories of
that day
Decameron: Themes
The themes are designed to:
Show the complexity of human beings
Show their helplessness before the forces of nature
Give a total view of the Italian society
Characters are from many walks of life, esp. from merchant classes and the clergy
The book celebrates quick-wittedness (ingegno) as necessary for success in life
The Decameron, the film
The Decameron (1971) is a film made by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini
This film is the first in his Trilogy of Life, along with The Canterbury Tales (1972) and Arabian
Nights (1974)
All the three films offer a striking contrast to their originals by being full of nudity, sex,
slapstick and scatological humour, in a violent expression of disgust for modern life
In a sad irony, Pasolini himself was hacked to death by a killer!
Francisco Petrarch (1304-74)
Influential scholar who was crowned the poet laureate in Rome
Travelled widely to discover manuscripts of works by classical writers
Father of Humanism
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Established that there is no essential conflict between classical and Christian thought
Fell in love with Laura, whose beauty he describes throughout his poetry. This later takes on
a Christian dimension
Works by Petrarch
Wrote more than 400 poems, mostly sonnets, in Italian
366 of these are in the sonnet sequence Canzoniere
Themes
Beauty of Laura
Haunting sense of the passage of time
The vanity of earthly endeavours
Conflict between spiritual and earthly values
Familiar Letters is one of the many volumes of letters (epistles) written by Petrarch in Latin
Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet
The sonnet originated in Italy in the 13th c.
Petrarch perfected the sonnet
14 lines of iambic pentameter divided into an octave (two quatrains) and a sestet
Caesura in between
Rhyme scheme: abba abba cdc cdc / cde cde
Employed artificial love-theme and Petrarchan conceits:
Far-fetched images
Idealized and exaggerated comparisons applied to the disdainful mistress (cold, cruel
and beautiful) and to the distresses of her worshipful lover
Blason convention: detailed description of the body
Petrarch on You Tube
For a couple of interesting analyses of the Petrarchan sonnets, search You Tube for petrarch
sonnets providence elearning
Other English works of this period
Layamons Brut (c. 1190)
Long poem about the history of Britain
Named after Britains mythical founder Brutus of Troy
Based on Waces Roman de Brut
Last alliterative poem before the Alliterative Revival
The Owl and the Nightingale
Poet overhears an owl and a nightingale debating on which is better, happiness or
sorrow
One of the earliest examples of debate poetry
Ancrene Riwle (or Ancrene Wisse)
Guide for anchoresses (a monastic profession)
Anchorite life was popular in Europe, esp. England, at this time

Chapter 5
Chaucer and His Contemporaries
The 14th century: a dark epoch
The corruptions, injustices and ignorance of the Middle Ages were piling themselves ever higher
Black Death, having devoured half the population, was still hovering visibly like a terrible vulture over the country
Noble-men and gentry heard in indignant bewilderment the sullen murmur of peasants awakening into outright rebellion
Intellectual life was dead or dying, not only in the universities, but throughout the land
Transition from the Medieval to the Modern
Literature changed from the oral to the written
In written literature, the focus shifted from the text to the reader.
In oral literature, the text has a life of its own; it changes as it is transmitted from listener to listener.
In oral cultures, the author and listener are not distinctly separated (listeners become authors when bring changes
to the poem that they transmit orally)
In the age of written literature, scribes copied down texts, which was an expensive affair since very few people
could read and write, let alone copy books!
Who will read a manuscript was more important than who wrote it, and books were dedicated to great noblemen.
Transition from Middle Ages to Modern
With printing, anonymity gave way to authorship
The author becomes important
23

 The values of self-expression and originality are upheld

English established as a literary language
Translations, adaptations, and imitations appeared from Greek and Latin
Chivalry and feudalism were on their decline
Constitutional liberty asserted
After the signing of Magna Carta (1215)
The king is no longer absolute authority
Period of Chaucer
In Chaucers youth, England at the height of glory
Victories in the Hundred Years War
Patriotic poetry
TROUBLES
Black Death: attacks of bubonic plague 1348-76
Economic troubles
Serfdom changed to wage system
Disastrous turn in Hundred Years War with France
Peasants Revolt1381
Chaucer and Contemporaries
Chaucerdetached from storms of the world
Langlandvoice of the poor, voice of revolution, chastiser of vices
Gowerdenounced contemporary follies, though less sharply than Langland
Wycliffspiritual protest, attacked corrupt clergy
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400)
Father of English poetry
First poet of national importance
Genius recognized in all ages including his own
His career is divided into three phases:
French period , Middle period, Italian period, or French period, Italian period, English period
PatronJohn of Gaunt
Wrote in East Midland dialect
Chaucers Life (c. 1340-1400)
Son of a wealthy London vinter (wine merchant)
Educated at St Pauls Cathedral School, and later at Inner Temple, where he studied law
In 1357, he became a noblewomans page, and moved on to become a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant
Chaucer was captured by the French during the Brittany expedition of 1359, but was ransomed by the king.
From 1360 to 1366 nothing is known about his life.
Family
Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting in the queens household. They are thought to have had
two children, Thomas and Lewis, and probably a daughter, Elizabeth.
A Treatise on the Astrolabe is dedicated to Lewis.
Philippas sister, Katherine Swynford, later became the third wife of John of Gaunt, the kings fourth son and Chaucers
patron.
In 1367, King Edward III granted Chaucer a life pension for his services.
Official Life
Edward III sent him on diplomatic missions to France, Genoa and Florence (c. 1368-1378)
His travels exposed him to the work of authors such as Dante, Boccaccio and Froissart.
In 1374, Chaucer was appointed comptroller of the London customs.
In 1386, he was elected member of parliament for Kent, and he also served as a justice of the peace.
In 1389, he was made clerk of the kings works, overseeing royal building projects. He held a number of other royal posts,
serving both Edward III and his successor Richard II.
Death
Chaucer died in 1400 of unknown causes.
There is a speculation that he might have been murdered.
He was buried at what is called Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey.
He was the first poet to be buried in the Abbey. This was because he had been Clerk of Works to the Palace of
Westminster.
Geoffrey Chaucer: Works
Early period (up to c. 1370)
Translation of Roman de la Rose
The Book of the Duchess
Middle period (up to c. 1387)
The House of Fame
The Parliament of Fowls
Translation of Consolation of Philosophy
Troilus and Criseyde

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 The Legend of Good Women

Last period (after 1387)
The Canterbury Tales
The Book of the Duchess (c. 1368-72)
First of Chaucers dream visions
Octosyllabic couplets
Long prologue
Depicts the sorrow of a bereaved knight (who represents John of Gaunt)
An allegorical lament on the death of Blanche, the wife of John of Gaunt, who died in 1368
Lydgates A Complaynt of a Loveres Lyfe is based on it
Poet unable to sleep because of love-sickness or depression
Falls asleep while reading Ovid
In his dream, he first follows, then wanders away from, a hunting party
Meets a knight in black who laments the loss of his lady
Knight describes her beauty and virtue
Tells the dreamer about her death, first metaphorically, then explicitly.
Hunters re-appear, a bell strikes twelve, and the dreamer wakes
The House of Fame (after 1374)
Unfinished dream allegory in octosyllabic couplets
Allegorical meanings of this poem not very clear
Echoes of Ovid, Virgil, Dante
Langlands The Temple of Glass and Alexander Popes The Temple of Fame are based on it
The poet dreams and finds himself in a glass temple adorned with images of the famous warriors and lovers
He emerges into a desert and is carried off by a talking eagle (a common guide in dream allegories)
He is dropped next to a tower of ice on which the names of the famous are melting and unreadable.
He enters a castle and sees Fame, a woman of varying heights, with numerous eyes, ears and tongues
He watches people being indiscriminately awarded or refused fame and notoriety and learns of the arbitrary nature of fame
The eagle then guides him into the house of Rumour built of sticks
The dreamer is approached by an imposing figure when the poem ends abruptly
The book has been described as a parody of Dante's Divine Comedy
The Parliament of Fowls (c. late 1370s-early 1380s)
Dream allegory in the seven-lined Chaucerian stanza
Rhyme scheme ababbcc
Believed to be an allegory on the betrothal of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia
The poet falls asleep while reading Ciceros The Dream of Scipio in which Africanus appears to Scipio in a dream and
shows him heaven and the future.
Similarly, the Chaucerian dreamer is led by Africanus to a garden where he visits the temple of Venus
In Venuss palace, the goddess of Nature oversees the birds choosing their mates on St. Valentines Day.
Three male eagles want to choose the same female eagle. Nature asks the female herself to choose a suitor and the female
asks leave to wait a year.
Troilus and Criseyde (completed by 1388)
Finished poem in Chaucerian stanza
Chaucers longest single poem
Modelled on Boccaccios Filostrato
Less cynical and misogynistic than Boccaccios version
Resembles courtly romance
The Legend of Good Women
Written in decasyllabic couplets (heroic couplet)
A Prologue and nine tales
Theme: betrayal of good women by wicked men
Stories of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle & Medea, Lucrece, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis, Hypermnestra
Incomplete
Believed to be a palinode, retracting Chaucers earlier depiction of woman as bad in Troilus and Criseyde
Other Works
Legend of St. Cecilia (famous virgin martyr legend later revised as The Second Nuns Tale)
Palamon and Arcite (later revised as the Knights Tale; based on Boccaccios Teseida)
Treatise on the Astrolabe (Prose essay on an astronomical device written for his son Little Lewis)
The Canterbury Tales (c. 1487)
Based on Boccaccios Decameron
General ProloguePortrait gallery of 14th c. England
29 pilgrims meet at Tabard Inn, Southwark (31 incl. poet & Harry Bailey)
Pen-pictures of 21 pilgrims
23 pilgrims tell stories
24 stories
Chaucer tells two
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 Tale of Sir Thopas and Tale of Melibeus (prose)

Begins with Knights Tale, ends with Parsons (prose treatise)
The Canterbury Tales ends with a Retraction, Chaucers apology for the vulgar and unworthy parts of this book, as well
as previous works
The General Prologue: The Beginning
When the sweet showers of April have pierced the dry soil of March down to the roots, and bathed every vein in moisture
so that from its vital power the flowers are born,
When the West wind has also breathed upon the tender shoots in every glade and field with its sweet breath or the spring
sun has completed half of its course through the sign of the Rain and little birds that sleep all night with eyes open (for the
dawn) make their music because their hearts are so thrilled by nature, then
People become anxious to go on pilgrimage, and palmers to seek strange shores (visiting the shrines) of distant saints
famous in many lands and above all from the ends of every county in England, they proceed to Canterbury to seek the holy
blessed martyr (St. Thomas) who has helped them when they were sick.
One day in that season, as I stayed at the Tabard Inn in Southwark ready to go with devout heart on my pilgrimage to
Canterbury, there happened to come to the inn in the evening as many as twenty nine in a party, a mixed company whom
chance had brought together and they were all pilgrims who planned to ride to Canterbury.
Rooms and stable were ample and we were entertained comfortably in the best manner. And to be brief, by sunset I had
spoken with everyone of them so that from thereon I became one of their party and we agreed to rise early to start our journey
to Canterbury, as I describe it to you.
But nevertheless, while I still have the time and space (and) before I continue this tale, I think it is reasonable to tell you
all of the condition of each of them as it appeared to me and who they were and of what station and also the manner in which
they were dressed; and I will begin with a Knight.
The following pictures of the characters in The Canterbury Tales are some of the reproductions of the woodcuts of the
Ellesmere portraits made by W.D. Hooper and published in the Sixth Edition of The Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall for the
Chaucer Society (1868)
The Knight
Member of the Household Group
Along with his son Squire and Yeoman; the first to arrive Tabard Inn, after Chaucer
Epitome of chivalry
He was a verray parfit gentil knight
Represents ideals of truth, honour, generosity, courtesy, modesty and gentleness; prudent
Hero of over 15 religious battles (Crusades)
Has come on the pilgrimage in his armour, the rust and oil of which has stained his clothes
Widely travelled and prudent
Knights Tale
The first tale in The Canterbury Tales
The Knight tells the first tale because he drew the shortest straw, and because he is the most important character
The story of two Greek noblemen, Palamon and Arcite, who are cousins and duel with each other for the love of Emelye
Arcite wins, but is thrown off a horse and dies; Palamon wins Emelye.
Story taken from Boccaccios Teseida
Story retold by Shakespeare in Two Noble Kinsmen
The Squire
Son of the Knight
Medium height, curly hair
Was as fresh as the month of May
a lover. . . and lusty bachelor
slept no more than doth a nightingale
Healthy and powerful indication of lustfulness
Fashionably dressed in a short gown with long sleeves
Has fought battles like his father, but were for winning his ladyloves
Humble and modest (chivalric)
Spends leisure in singing, dancing and playing flute
Loves jousting
Tells an Oriental Tale of a falcon talking to Canace about her husbands adultery
The Prioress
Name was Eglantyne (meaning sweet briar)
Beautiful, lady-like and romantic, pleasant and amiable
Her French was after the fashionable school of Stratford
Had fine table manners
Never let a morsel fall from her lips
Never dipped her finger too deep in the sauce
Wiped her mouth clean and there was no grease on her cup
Secretly amorous
Revealed her fine forehead

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 Wore a coral rosary with green beads and a brooch on which was the letter A (Amor vincit omnia or Love
conquers all
Had with her a few small dogs, whom she loved more than human beings
Fed her dogs roast meat or milk white bread which was a rarity at that time
Pretentiously tender-hearted
Would weep at the sight of a dead mouse
If any one beat her dogs or one of them dies, she cries bitterly, but didnt care much for the suffering of human
beings
Sang her service divine in a fashionable nasal tone
Swore fashionably by the oath of St. Loy
Accompanied by three priests and a nun
The Monk
A manly man, to be an abbot able
Shiny bald head and face, as if anointed with oil
Compared to the Prioress in religious affectation
His sleeves were fringed with expensive fur and his cloak was pinned with a gold brooch
His eyes were bright and rolled in his head, which shone like a furnace
Scorner of books
Did not follow the dull routine of prayer, study and fasting
Did not believe the saying that a monk out of his cloister is like a fish out of water
Disregarded the strict rules of St Maurice and St Benedict
Said, Let Austin (Augustine) have his labour to him reserved
Loved hunting, full-blooded horses, good food (especially roasted swan) and fine clothes
His grey hounds were as swift as birds
His complexion was not pale but ruddy
The Friar
Wanton and merry
Belonged to the mendicant order
Supposed to live a poor life by begging
But is more interested in love affairs of young people: married many a woman at his own cost
His bag is full of pins and knives which he gave to young wives to win their favour
Knew barmaids and tavern owners more than beggars and lepers
Good singer; plays the fiddle
Good at soliciting donations; takes bribes
His neck was as white as a lily although he had an athletic body
This might indicate his immorality or cowardliness
Lisps in an affected manner so that his English might sound sweet
Hubert was his name
The Pardoner
Chaucers masterpiece in character drawing
Implies a whole world of moral hypocrisy
Good story-teller; sing hymns beautifully
Has long, greasy, yellow hair and is beardless; probably homosexual
Wallet full of fake pardons come from Rome all hot
In the medieval times, pardons or indulgences were issued from the Catholic Church, which sinners bought from
the corrupt clergy
Collection of relics
He admits to the pilgrims that they are fake; that he will claim a sheep bone to have miraculous healing powers
Had a pillow-case which he asserts is Our Ladys Veil
The Summoner
Pardoners companion
Lecherous, dishonest and hot and wanton as a sparrow
Children are afraid of his fiery-red face full of pimples
Had scaly eyebrows
Loves garlic, onion, leeks & blood-red wine; drinks to excess
Spouts the few Latin phrases he knows
Took bribes; was disdainful of the teachings of the church
Had control over the young people of his diocese
The Parson
Ideal parish priest
Thought only holy thoughts and did only good deeds
Pious and devoted to his duty
Was very gentle, diligent, and always patient in the face of adversity
Did not look down on the parishioners for not donating money; gave them the little he had
Preached only what he practised

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 Never left the parish to make money in London

Was a simple shepherd who wanted to save the souls of his sheep
Always asked himself if gold rusts, what would iron do?
The Clerk of Oxford
A neutral portrayal
Devoted to the study of philosophy (logic)
He, as well as his horse, is lean as a pole
Was poor and wore threadbare clothes
Rather than have a job and own worldly possessions, he would own 20 books
Whatever money his friends gave him is spent on books
The Clerk of Oxford
Was eager to learn and to teach
Prayed for the souls of those who helped him study
Was polite, and spoke only when necessary
His speeches were short and often about morality
The Clerks Tale was a reply to the wife of Baths Tale, and is about the patient wife Griselda
The Merchant
Wealthy business man
Had a forked beard
Wore rich and multicolored clothes, and hat from Holland
Made sure everyone knew how wealthy and successful he is
Carried himself so well that no one realized he was heavily in debt
Newly and unhappily married
The narrator regrets that he doesnt know his name
The Man of Law (The Sergeant of Law)
Wise and slightly suspicious of everything
Spoke well
Had vast knowledge of law
Knows every statute of law by heart
Can cite cases as far back as William the Conquerors time
Often appointed by the king as a judge in the court of assizes
Wealthy land-buyer; social climber
Seemed busier than he really is
Wore a multicolored coat that was tied together with a silk belt and some small pins
The Franklin
Man of Laws companion
Wealthy gentleman farmer of sanguine temperament (sociable and pleasure seeking)
His beard was as white as a daisy
Liked to have wine, with pieces of bread or cake dipped into it, in the morning
Because he loves pleasure, he is called the son of Epicurus
Was a good householder and is compared to St. Julian in his hospitality
Meat and wine are so plenteous in his house that they are said to snow
The Franklin
He kept fat partridges (bird) and many fish
If his sauce was not pungent and sharp, his cook would be in trouble
Varied his food or supper according to the seasons of the year
At county meetings, he was representative and Chairman, and on many occasions, he had been Knight of the Shire
He has also been sheriff and legal auditor
A dagger and a hawking pouch hung at his girdle, which was as white as morning milk.
The Franklins Tale is a Breton Lay (story set in Brittany)
The Five Guildsmen
The Five Guildsmen are artisans, and are newly rich, representing the urban middle class
They are a Haberdasher, a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer and a Tapestry Maker
They are dressed in the livery, or uniform, of their guild (workers union), which was fresh and newly trimmed
Their sword-sheaths were tipped with silver, and not brass, and their belts and purses were beautifully wrought after the
same manner
Their wives undoubtedly pushed them to such a high position for they liked to be called madams
The guildsmen are accompanied by the Cook
The Wife of Bath
Gap-toothed : sign of boldness, gluttony and lasciviousness
Deaf in one ear (because of a slap from her previous husband)
Expensive clothes
A hat that was as wide as a shield, sharp spurs, and a pleated cloak over her legs to keep the mud off her dress
Scarlet stockings (sign of wealth) and comfortable new shoes

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 Kerchiefs were made of high-quality fabric, a veil that must have weighed ten pounds.
Bath is famous for cloth-making and she was herself an expert in weaving / embroidery (even better than the famous
weavers from Europe.
Lived an honourable life
Had five husbands at church door, and many lovers in her youth (the narrator says there is no need to talk about
that now!)
Now on the lookout for a sixth husband
She was pretentious
Always wanted to be the first wife at church to make a donation to the poor but if any woman made a donation
before she did, the Wife would get angry and keep her money.
Widely travelled in Italy, Spain; been to Jerusalem thrice
Rode her horse well
Loved to tell romantic tales and to gossip
Worldly in three ways
Experienced in love
Wealthy
Travelled the world
The Physician (The Doctor of Physique)
Extremely good at his profession
Learned man well-instructed in medicine and astronomy]
Knew of every disease and where it came from, and gave cure immediately
He has made a deal with the apothecary about giving which medicines would benefit them most
Eats a simple, moderate diet that is healthy
But his spiritual health is not so good: he has little knowledge of the Bible
He saved gold, because of his love of gold
The narrator says this is because gold in phisik is a cordial
Two meanings:
(i) medieval doctors used gold powder in potions
(ii) Greed for money
Dressed in bright red and blue gown made of the finest silk
The Reeve
Slender and choleric (irritable) man named Oswald
Came from Norfolk and lived near a town called Baldewelle
Head was tonsured (shaven) like that of a priest
Legs were lean and long like a walking stick
For twenty years, he has managed estates
Was fully in charge of his masters sheep, cattle, dairy, swine, horses, stock and poultry
He was good at keeping a granary and a bin and no auditor could detect mistakes in his accounts
He could observe the seasons and foretell the harvest
There was no agent, shepherd or labourer whose deceits he did not know, and they hated him like the plague
His home was set amongst shady trees
He could make purchases better than his master, and he had secretly enriched his own barns, while being careful to please
his master
Good carpenter, a trade which he had learnt in youth
His low-bred, undersized horse was called Scot
He wore an overcoat of bluish grey tucked into his girdle like a friar, and carried a rusty sword
Always rode at the rear of the company
The Shipman (The Sailor)
Lived in the west country, and comes from Dartmouth
Wore a coarse gown and hung a dagger on a cord about his neck which passed down under his arm
The hot summer sun had made his complexion brown
Bold and prudent; beard shaken by many a tempest
Widely travelled
Undoubtedly he was a rascal
He had stolen much wine while the merchant slept
Not troubled by a scrupulous conscience, for he has thrown his prisoners into the sea
Expert in matters regarding the position of the moon, the tides, the currents and the perils of the seas
His ship was called The Magdalen
The Yeoman
Wore a coat and hood of green and carried a bow and a sheaf of shiny sharp arrows fitted with peacock feathers under his
pouch
Head was closely shaven and his face was brown
Knew all the techniques of carpentry and carried a fine guard on his arm, a sword and shield on one side, and a finely
decorated spear-shaped dagger on the other side
Wore a shining silver picture of St. Christopher on his breast.

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 Also carried a horn which had a green baldric (belt)

He is a Woodsman, compared to Robin Hood
The Manciple
Worked at a college for lawyers
Whether he bought for cash or on credit he always came out well and ahead of everyone else
He had more than 30 masters who were expert and skilled lawyers
His masters would help him in any legal case that rose against him
Yet, in spite of all this, the Manciple made fools of them all
The Miller
Short, stout fellow with big muscles and bones; can out-wrestle even a ram; there was no door that he could not heave off
its hinge, or break open with his head by running at it
Had a broad beard red as a sow or fox
Nostrils were of black and wide and his mouth was as big as a furnace
There was a wart on the tip of his thick nose, with a tuft of red hair on it, like the bristles in a sows ear
Robyn was his name
Fond of telling indecent tales
Expert in grinding corn
Stole corn by pushing the scales with his thumb, for which the narrator swears he had a gold thumb (This is against the
saying that An honest miller has a golden thumb)
Wore a white coat and blue hood
A sword and a small round shield hung at his side
Played the bagpipe as the pilgrims left the town
Disrupts the Hosts story-telling order and insists on telling the second tale
Tells a bawdy fabliau
The Ploughman
Parsons brother
Wore a simple shirt
Wore a lowly labourer who worked with his hands
Sincere, humble and good at his work
Thought only about God and the needs of other people
He donated a good portion of his income in paying tithes (taxes) to the church
The Cook
The Cook was employed by the Guildsmen
For them, he would boil chicken with marrow-bones, sharp flavoured powder and spice.
He could recognize the flavour of London ale, and could roast, steam, boil and fry, make stew and bake a pie well.
The narrator pities him for the running sore on his shin.
His masterpiece was minced chicken in white sauce.
His name is Roger
The Host
Acts as a guide to the pilgrims, like the director of a play
Built-in audience of the tales
Impressive man; bold ,wise and well-instructed
Takes the tales seriously, becomes involved emotionally
Creates conflicts as much as he solves them
Quarrels with pardoner when he tries to sell fake pardons
Makes fun of the Cooks drunken state
His name was Harry Bailey
The Narrator
Chaucer himself
The narrators accounts of the other pilgrims show the narrators own prejudices and interests
Depicted as fat, sociable and nave, eager to think well of others (this, however, amounts to irony)
For example, he says the Wife led an honourable life and goes on to describe her lasciviousness, says the
Summoner is gentle and kind and goes on to talk about his taking bribes and seducing girls
Characterization
Representatives of every class in the England of that time
Except the very highest and the very lowest
Each pilgrim is
Highly individualized
Representative of his class or profession
Theory of physiognomy
Appearance determines character
Character is revealed through clothing and physical features
Because the characters are on holiday, they are more relaxed and self-revealing than they would otherwise be
The heterogeneous characters move between the inn and the shrine, two places where different classes are likely to mingle

30

 Their thoughts, prejudices, professional bias and personal idiosyncrasies are expressed through their conversation and
behaviour
Their character affects, and is affected by, the telling of the tales
Only the Knight, Parson and Plowman are characterized without any touch of irony
Through nostalgic portraits of bygone types, such as the Parson and the Plowman, Chaucer obliquely comments on the
troubles of the time, though he never directly discusses them
These portraits are nostalgic because
The genuinely Christian behaviour of the Parson is a rarity in the era of the corrupt clergy
Such a hardworking, goodhearted plowman was hard to find in the age of the Peasants Revolt
Some Genres used in the Tales

courtly romance: Knights Tale

fabliau (plural: fabliaux): Millers Tale, Reeves Tale, Shipmans Tale

Breton lay: Franklins Tale

saints legends: Second Nuns Tale and Prioresss Tale

preachers exemplum: Pardoners Tale

beast-fable: Nuns Priests Tale

Sermon: Parsons Tale

Oriental tale: Squires Tale

Major Concerns
Springtime
Pilgrimage
Chivalry and courtly love
Marriage and position of women
Corruption in church
Clothing
Features of Chaucers works
Gift of story-telling, descriptive power
Music, Lyricism (wrote no lyrics, but there is lyricism in the tales)
Personal touches; charming, humorous
Rarely philosophized
Abridgement and swiftness in narration
Minute details
Perennial interest in humanity
Happy world (there is pain & perplexity, but no agony or rebellion)
William Langland (c. 1332-c. 1386)
Reformer yet a pious Catholic
The Vision of Piers the Plowman
vivid and trustworthy source for the social and economic history of the time
50 manuscripts, 3 versions (A, B, C texts)
Some critics think the text could have been written by several authors
Part of the Alliterative Revival
Noble and lofty style
Great imaginative power
Piers Plowman
Two sectionsVisio and Vita
Begins with a vision of the world seen from Malvern Hills
Series of dream visions dealing with socio-spiritual predicament held together by unity and directness of structure and
lack of digressions
Combination of realism and allegory, theological reasoning and satire, sublime religious feeling & political comment
An Outline
The dreamer goes to sleep among the Malvern hills
Sees a vision of the world as a field full of folk (people)
The people are in a valley bounded on one side by a cliff, on which stands the tower of Truth, and, on the other lies the
dungeon of Wrong.
Here begin the incidents of his first vision
The visions are diverse, but there is no discontinuity
At the end of the vision the dreamer wakes for only a moment, and, immediately falling asleep, dreams again
Thus progresses The Vision of Piers the Plowman.
Early in the poem, Piers the Plowman appears as the narrators guide to truth.
The latter part of the poem is about the narrators search for three allegorical characters, Dowel (Do-well), Dobet (Dobetter) and Dobest (Do-best), who illustrate three ways of virtue: virtue of conscience, virtue of grace and virtue of charity.
Pierss action become indistinguishable with that of Christ and the Passion of Christ is described as the culmination of
doing well.
John Gower (1330-1408)
Best known contemporary of Chaucer

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Aristocrat in sympathies, hostile to peasantry and rebels

Scorn for everything simply English (dying attitude)
Didacticism, moral intent
Chaucers Troilus dedicated to Gower
Speculum Meditantis (French, 1376-79)
Meaning the mirror of one meditating
Manner of a French allegory
Ambitious scale, attempting to cover the whole field of mans religious and moral nature
Sets forth the purposes of God in dealing with man, and describes the various classes of society and their vices
Remedy for sin in devotion to Christ and Virgin
Throws light on 14th century English society
Vox Clamantis (Latin, completed after 1381)
Meaning the voice of one crying in the wilderness
On the Peasants Revolt: Gower decries the peasants claims as unreasonable and even blasphemous
Political than social
Satire of clergy
Confessio Amantis (English, 1390)
Meaning the confession of a lover
Subtitle Or Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins
Plan borrowed from Roman de la Rose
In the form of a dialogue between the poet-lover and Venus, followed by a confession made by the penitent lover and
Genius (who is assigned as the confessor by Venus)
Seven Deadly Sins illustrated with a story each.
Not didactic
Theme love
Manner narrative
Seven Deadly Sins illustrated with a story each.
1st appearance of mythical allusions in English
Genre: Consolation (like Pearl; inspired by Boethius Consolation of Philosophy)
Written on the direct orders of King Richard II, as Gower states in the Prologue
Other Writers
John Wycliff (d. 1384)
Leader of the Lollards
Called Morning star of the Reformation
Translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into the vernacular
Other Protestant works including Summa Theologica, and his 18 theses opposing the governing methods of the
Church

Pearl poet: author of Pearl, Patience, Cleanness and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
15th century
Most volcanic period of English history
Spirit of nationalism
Slackening of French influence
Revival of English language
Wars of the Roses
Hundred Years War ended
English expelled from France
Jack Cades rebellion against Henry VI (1450)
End of feudalism
Farmers began to own land (Growth of the yeoman class)
Development of trade, commerce and industry
Rise of wealthy middle class who paved the way for democracy
Printing: Effects
Led to literacy and education of the common man
Rise of vernacular literature
Translations, imitations and adaptations
Paved way for literary Renaissance
Progress in the intellectual realm
New Learning as a result of the Fall of Constantinople
Flood of classics, opening of schools, development of broad learning (as discussed in Roger Achams The
School Master)
Birth of the modern mind (critical, passionate and inquisitive)
Age of Exploration
Discovery (spiritual and literary) of the ancient world
Discovery of the New World
Columbus reached Barbados island in the Caribbean in 1492
32

 John Cabot reached Newfoundland and the mainland of North America in 1497
Desire for profit motivated discovery of new lands, trade routes and sea routes
Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India in 1498
Amerigo Vespucci explored the American continent in 1499
Oxford (London) Reformers
First great products of the English Renaissance
John Colet travelled in Italy and lectured on the Bible and the Scriptures
Desiderius Erasmus classical scholar from Holland, first visited England in 1499, met other thinkers at Oxford who
wanted to reform the church, translated the Bible with alternate interpretations, influenced Martin Luther
Sir Thomas More, Grocyn and Linacre
Spread New Learning and Humanism
Led to the Reformation of medieval church
Chaucerians
All the major poets of the 15th century were imitators or disciples of Chaucer
They follow the styles of Chaucer to produce novelty in their works
Both English and Scottish writers
The Chaucerian Apocrypha
Texts that were not only mistaken for Chaucer's or falsely attributed to Chaucer in both manuscript and print, but
also works that were inspired by or associated with Chaucer's poetryoften, contributions of the Chaucerians)
English Chaucerians
John Lydgate; Thomas Occleve (Regiment of Princes); Henry Bradshaw; George Ripley; Thomas Norton
John Lydgate (1370-1449)
Acknowledged disciple of Chaucer
Versatile like his master, but never matched his rhythm, melody and artistic proportion
The Story of Thebes (1420-22, a new Canterbury tale)
The Book of Troy (1412-20, 30,000 lines, amplifies Troilus)
Fall of Princes (c. 1438, 36,000 lines, elaborates on Monks Tale)
The Temple of Glas (modelled on The House of Fame)
The Complaint of the Black Knight (modelled on The Book of the Duchess)
Scottish Chaucerians (from northern Scotland, called Makars)
15th centurythe golden age of Scottish poetry
Deliberate and artificial medievalism
James I (began the 1st phase of Scottish Chaucerianism)
The Kingis Quair (Kings Book)
Dream-allegory in rime royal
Series of courtly love poems, like Romance of the Rose
Inspired by the Knights Tale
Highly subjective narration the kings experiences in English captivity
Robert Henryson (began the 2nd phase of Scottish Chaucerianism)
Transcends literary imitation; brings Scottish nationalism into his works
The first to write in the idiom that later came to be called Scots
The Morall Fabillis of Esope
The Testament of Cresseid (A critical rewriting of Chaucers Troilus and Criseyde)
William Dunbar (1456-1513)
Most famous; nearly 100 poems
Popularly known as the Burns of the 15th century
Famous allegories
The Goldyn Targe (1507)
The Thrissil and the Rois (1503)
Written to celebrate the marriage of James IV and Margaret, daughter of Henry IV
Two Married Women and the Widow
The Tretis (recalls Wife of Bath)
Many writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance in the mid-20th century, like Hugh MacDiarmid, tried to
imitate Dunbars style and high brow subject matter.
Gavin Douglas (1475-1522)
Combines Chaucers use of allegory with cultural nationalism
The Palice of Honour (c. 1501, pub. c. 1535)
Loosely modelled on Chaucers The House of Fame
Like Chaucer, Douglas also recounts in this work the progress of the poets education which ends in a
journey to a celestial palace
King Hart
The Aeneid (1513, printed 1553; First translation of a complete version)
Prose in the 15th century

33

 Prose became the medium of the urban commercial book market in the 15th century. Monasteries sold collections of
saints and virgins lives composed in prose.
Prose was developed by translators.
Developments such as the Great vowel shift changed almost all the European languages during the 14th and 15th
centuries. But prose survived language changes.
Great Vowel Shift
Changes in pronunciation of vowels that marked the transition from Middle English to Modern English
dart became date
(i.e., the medieval people used to ask, Whats todays dart?)
fate became feet
weep became wipe
boat became boot
whose became house
Great Vowel Shift: Reasons
The sudden social mobility after the Black Death may have caused the shift.
Also because aristocrats began to use English and a prestige accent became more fashionable.
The Great Vowel Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling.
Prose Writers of the 15th century
John Capgrave (Chronicle of England)
Reginald Pecock (religious controversialist)
The Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of Clergy
Sir John Fortescue (On the Governance of England)
Walter Hylton (Christian mystic)
Scale of Perfection
Julian of Norwich (priestess, mystic)
The Paston Letters
Valuable source of information about the 15th c.
A collection of letters written by three generations of the well-to-do Paston family of Norfolk
The letters reveal
The political anarchy, corruption and violence of the time
The domestic conditions of the upper middle class families
Other Writers of the 15th century
John Skelton (c. 1460-1529)
The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, inspired by Catullus
Skeltonic verse, breathless, fast-moving metre which tends to become doggerel
The First Book printed in English: The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, translation of a French courtly romance
The First Dated Book issued in England: The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
Caxton and translators like Alexander Barclay
The Ballad
Absence of major genres
The 15th century described by W.H. Auden as the barren period
No literary work of substantial value
Popularity of folk or popular ballads (the most prominent literary genre of the age)
Ballads
Narrrative, lyrical, objective pieces of folk songs which originate, and are communicated orally, among
unsophisticated and partly literate rural folk
Border revolts, love, witchcraft, superstitions are the recurring themes
The Folk or Popular Ballad
Anonymous
Short, simple dramatic poem composed to be sung
Not the product of a single author, but a collective contribution of several generations
Underwent changes in themes and tune as it was transmitted
Reflects the creative genius of a whole community
Based on the older genre of romance
15th century ballads
Sir Patrick Spens
Based on a 13th century historical event that had taken place when Alexander III ruled over Scotland
Chevy Chase
Border clashes between England and Scotland (inspired by the Battle of Otterburn)
The fight continues for thirty days and the heroes, Percy and Douglas, are killed

The Wife of Ushers Well

Describes the plight of a bereaved mother whose three sons die in a Scottish border fight
The ghosts of the sons appear before her in a dream, she orders a feast, but the apparitions disappear at the
cockcrow

34

 All these ballads played a significant role in later English poetry, especially in shaping the literary ballad of the Romantic
period
Most of these ballads were preserved, collected and published by Bishop Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
(1765).
Francis Childs collection, English and Scottish Popular Ballads (5 vol., 188298), marked the high point of 19th century
ballad scholarship
Thomas Malory (c. 1415-1471)
Uncertain identity
Morte DArthur written while imprisoned in Newgate prison
Knight, landlord and Member of the Parliament
Wrote a cycle of Arthurian legends
Le Morte DArthur (1469-70)
Mostly translations from French prose romances
Title taken from the epilogue of Caxtons edition (1485)
8 tales in 21 books
Deliberately cultivated simplicity
Concrete, sensuous words
Racy, vernacular idiom, features of the spoken language
Chivalric nostalgia and tragic feeling
Caxton printed this work in 1485, the year in which Henry VII ascended the throne
Origins Of Drama
Began as religious ritual
First plays performed in church by clergymen during Easter
From church to churchyard to noblemens houses to public places
Suspicion of clergy
Revival of Corpus Christi festival (1311)public holiday dedicated to drama
Miracle Plays
Date back to 12th century
Deal with lives of saints
ExamplesHarrowing of Hell; St. Nicholas; Raising of Lazarus (last two by Hilarius)
In these plays, Mary and Nicholas are always presented as coming to the aid of those who invoke them, as healing the
sick, and protecting Christian values
Mystery Plays or the Corpus Christi cycle
From late 14th c., Mystery Plays and Morality Plays were in vogue
Long cyclical dramas acted in relation to religious festivals
Themes: major events in the Christian Scriptures: Creation, Fall, Redemption and other parts of the Bible
Old Testament included but main focus on Christ
Always ended with Last Judgement
The cycles of Mystery Plays
York, Chester, Wakefield, E. Anglia (Coventrie) are main cycles
The Wakefield or Towneley cycle is the most renowned for being freer and less religious in spirit, thus being more
dramatic
One play in the Wakefield cycle is The Second Shepherds Play by Wakefield Master
A later group of Mysteries is the Digby cycle (4 plays; c. 1500)
Morality Plays
Allegorical
Progress of a single universal character from the cradle to the grave and sometimes beyond
Personified virtues and vices, God, Devil, etc.
The character of Vice
Most important character
Took many roles
Acted by the most talented actor in the troupe
Examples:
Everyman (Best known Morality)
Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide, / In thy most need to go by thy side.
Macro Playsan interesting collection of Moralities
The Castle of Perseverance (oldest extant Morality); Wisdom; Mankind
Estates Satires
Satire of the Three Estates, by Scottish writer David Lindsay, a morality play first performed in 1552, attacked corruption
in all the three estates of the society
Estates Satire developed after this and became a dominant theatrical mode of late 16th c.
Interludes
Morality grew into the Interlude
Born out of the social need to amuse rather than instruct
Patronage of Henry VIII
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 Short, allegorical, farcical pieces fillings intervals

Forerunner of regular drama
Example: The Four Ps (by John Heywood) Palmer, Pedlar, Pardoner, Pothecary
Transition from Medieval to Modern
Printing and growth of literacy, education (Remember Aschams The Schoolmaster)
Benevolent Tudor government(1st kingHenry VII) (Remember Elyots The Book of the Governor)
Humanism
Lyricism and music
Chapter 6
Early Tudor Period
Introduction
Intellectual background: Renaissance
Associated movements: Humanism & Reformation
The new geographic discoveries broadened imagination
Influence of Italians like Dante, Ariosto & Petrarch
Literary experimentation
Fall of Constantinople
Immediate cause of the spread of learning Fall of Constantinople (1453)
Constantinoplecapital of the Byzantine empire
Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages
(Romania)
Established in the 4th c. AD by 1st Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine I
The Byzantine Empire lasted a millennium
Most powerful economic, cultural and military centre in Europe
Byzantine-Ottoman wars since 12th century
Fall of Constantinople1453 (Mahomet II defeats Constantine XI) and subsequent loss of all
territories
Video time!
Watch a national geographic video uploaded by AllWorldArmyCombat on the Fall of
Constantinople.
Its not in English, but there are subtitles.
Byzantium
The Byzantine Empire
protected Western Europe from Muslim expansion
provided a stable currency for the Mediterranean region
influenced the laws, political systems and culture of Europe and the Middle East
preserved the literary works and scientific knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome
After the Fall of Constantinople, Early Renaissance
Greek texts were brought from Constantinople and copyists multiplied them.
Libraries were founded, and schools for the study of Greek and Latin opened
A number of Greek humanists moved from Byzantium to Italy.
In 1462 the Platonic Academy was opened in Florence.
Second Wave of Renaissance
Continued zeal for classical study
Development of a broad learning and Humanism
The movement spread to Germany, Poland, France, and to other northern countries, where it
developed into the wide scholarship and sound learning of men like Thomas More, Erasmus,
and Copernicus.
The movement went far beyond the mere revival of classical studies and was felt in every
aspect of life.
In philosophy it replaced the purely formal methods of thought of scholasticism, in favour of
intellectual freedom.
In science it led to the great discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
In architecture it brought about the revival of the classical style.
In the fine arts it inspired new schools of painting in Italy, such as of Raphael, Leonardo,
Bellini, Michelangelo.
In religion its influence can be seen in the revolt of Martin Luther.
It also indirectly inspired the passion for exploration that led to the discovery of the New
World.
The Creation of Adam
The most famous section of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, located next to the Creation of Eve,
epitome of Renaissance art

36

Differs from typical Creation scenes painted up until that time

Two figures dominate the scene: God on the right, and Adam on the left
Gods image is unconventional
Depicted as an elderly, muscular, with grey hair and a long beard
Wears only a light tunic which leaves his arms and legs exposed
intimate portrait, not as remote from Man, but as accessible
The Humanistic Portrayal of Adam
Adam is depicted as a lounging figure who rather reluctantly responds to Gods imminent
touch. This touch will not only give life to Adam, but will give life to all mankind.
Adams body forms a concave shape which echoes the form of Gods body, which is in a
convex posture. This seems to reflect the idea that Man has been created in the image and
likeness of God
All these are features of Renaissance Humanism
Renaissance Humanism
Founder of Renaissance humanism was Petrarch
Humanism originally meant Studying / teaching a curriculum including grammar, rhetoric,
moral philosophy, poetry and history through classical literature
Two concerns
Centrality and dignity of man
Study of classical texts
Coincided with the flourishing of printing
Religious and political ideas were debated in multitudes of pamphlets
Ushered in new ideas
Associated with the new idea of the gentleman
Reflected in Italian courtesy books, such as Baldassare Castigliones Il Cortegiano (The
Courtier), translated by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561
Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529)
Italian nobleman and courtier
Il Cortegiano (written in 1513-18, published 1528)
A discussion of the qualities of the ideal courtier
In the form of conversation
Main themes: the nature of graceful behaviour, especially the impression of
effortlessness (sprezzatura); the essence of humour; the best form of Italian to speak
and write; the relation between the courtier and his prince (stressing the need to
avoid flattery); the qualities of the ideal court lady (notably a discreet modesty); and
the definition of honourable love
Ideal of education
Study of Greek, Latin, classics, use of the vernacular promoted
The complete education of the gentleman promoted
Important figures: Roger Ascham, Sir Thomas Elyot
Roger Ascham (c. 1514-68)
Princess Elizabeths tutor in Greek & Latin
The Schoolmaster (1570)
Simple, lucid, English prose
Offers a complete program of humanistic education
Is also an evocation of the ideals of education
Themes: psychology of learning, education of the whole person, & ideal moral &
intellectual personality
Toxophilus (Lover of the Bow, 1545)
Written in the form of a dialogue
The first book on archery in English
Thomas Elyot (c. 1490-1546)
Championed English prose
Member of Thomas Mores circle
Best-known work: The Book Named The Governor (1531)
A plan for the upbringing of gentlemens sons who were to bear authority in the future
This book contributed to the ideal of the Renaissance gentleman
Castel of Helth (Offers a regimen of health)
Produced the first English dictionary of classical Latin
Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1467-1536)
Also called Erasmus of Rotterdam

37

Dutch humanist and scholar

Thomas More was his good friend
First editor of the New Testament
Moriae Encomium (The Praise of Folly, 1511)
Title is a pun on the name of Thomas More
Folly ironically praises herself
Satire on corruption and ignorance of the clergy
Other works: Adagia, Apophthegmata, Colloquia
Concerns of Humanism
God created the universe, but it was humans who developed it.
Beauty, a popular topic, was held to represent a deep inner virtue; an essential element in
the path towards God
Opposed to the contemporary philosophers, the Scholastics (Thomas Aquinas etc)
Emphasized study of primary texts rather than interpretations (ab fontesto the sources)
Studied classical Latin, not medieval
Concerns of Humanism
Held that the ancient Greco-Roman world was the pinnacle of human intellectual
achievement
Return to the classics to re-establish past glory of Europe that has now crumbled under
invasions
Attempts to join the classical values with Christian values (Christian Humanism)
Crisis in humanism was the trial of Galileo
Galileo supported Copernicuss heliocentric universe; for his free thinking was put
under house arrest!
Concerns of Humanism
Humanism favoured
Philosophy (against Science)
The Moral & the Practical (against the Aesthetic)
Reason (against Instinct)
All round learning (against Specialized learning)
da Vincis Vitruvian Man
The Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci around the
year 1487.
It shows clearly the effect writers of Antiquity had on Renaissance thinkers.
The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry
described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius.
Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the
Classical orders of architecture.
Renaissance Music
The style of choral polyphony
Rich texture of two or more lines of melody coming together
Richness and harmony
As different from medieval homophony
Where separate strands of music came separately, in contrast to one another
Music on You Tube
To understand homophony and polyphony, watch these videos on You Tube:
Medieval Music Ultimate Grand Collection uploaded by Gramila888
Italian Renaissance Music. uploaded by TheGravicembalo
Renaissance Architecture
An overview of Renaissance architecture is available in the video Renaissance Architecture
from britannica
Renaissance in England (About 1550-1660)
Rediscovery of Greek-Roman classics
Philosophers curious about nature of human knowledge
New literary forms
Growth of vernacular literatures
Under the influence of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio
16th Century England
Gallery of authors
Rising population
Prosperity of farmers and merchants at the expense of aristocrats and labourers

38

 Race for cultural development, education

Clash of the old and the new
Henry VII (r. 1485-1509)
Seized the English throne by defeating the Yorkist king Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth
Then he married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, thereby uniting the Houses of
Lancaster and York
Thus he ended the Wars of the Roses and established the Tudor dynasty
The heraldic emblem of the Tudor dynasty, the Tudor rose, is a combination of the
Lancastrian red rose and the Yorkist white rose
Restored political stability in England
Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547)
Son of Henry VII
His court was the centre of fashion and culture
Married his brothers widow, Catherine of Aragon
Catherine was from a politically influential Spanish dynasty
In the 1520s, Henry wanted to divorce Catherine and marry her lady-in-waiting Anne Boleyn
He hoped she would give him a son
Pope refused to grant divorce
Divorce was not permitted by Catholicism
The Holy Roman Emperor was Catherine's nephew
Henry made Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, grant him divorce; then married
Anne
Pope excommunicated King and Archbishop
In 1534, the British Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy
King was established the Supreme Head of English church
Anglican Church replaced Catholic Church
Dissolution of Catholic monasteries
Two Suppression Acts were passed to dissolve the monasteries
Wealth obtained from the monasteries was used to fortify the navy, and patronize arts
Henry was succeeded by his child-heir Edward VI who ruled for 6 years
During this period, Thomas Cranmer prepared the First Book of Common Prayer to be
used in the Anglican Church
Anne Boleyn (c. 1501-1536)
The second of the six wives of Henry VIII
One of her children was Elizabeth I
Tried and beheaded for high treason
She is one of the protagonists in Hilary Mantels Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540)
Chief Minister to Henry VIII
Engineered the kings divorce
One of the strongest advocates of English Reformation
Fell from the kings favour after arranging the kings disastrous marriage to a German
princess
Executed for treason in 1540
Oliver Cromwell was his great-great-grandnephew
Thomas Cromwell is the subject of Hilary Mantels Booker Prize winning novels, Wolf Hall
(2009) & Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Mary I
In 1553, Edward VI fell ill and died; he was succeeded by his cousin Lady Jane Grey
Within a few days, Lady Jane was imprisoned, and Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and
Catherine of Aragon, became Queen Mary I
Mary restored Catholicism as the state religion
Married Philip II, Catholic King of Spain
This marriage was unpopular in England and provoked Wyatts Rebellion, led by
Thomas Wyatt, the younger
Ordered around 300 Protestants to be tried and executed, for which she came to be called
Bloody Mary
Died childless in 1558
Succeeded by Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn
Early Renaissance Literature
Classical and romantic tendencies strengthened towards the end of the century
39

Classical Influences
Study of classical literature
Greek and Latin influences on language
Romantic tendencies
Quest for remote, wonderful, beautiful
Spirit of adventure
Revolt against past
Freshness of spirit
Major Literary Conventions
Petrarchanism
A tradition of authentic lyrical expression modelled on the sonnets of the Italian poet,
Petrarch
Petrarchan Sonnet
Octave and sestet, with a caesura (pause) in between
Rhyme scheme: abba abba cdc cdc or cde cde
English Sonnet
Three quatrains and couplet
Rhyme scheme: abab cd cd efef gg
Spenserian Sonnet a variation (rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee)
Major Literary Conventions
The Pastoral
Set in the countryside, which is ideal, unspoilt, beautiful
Characters are shepherds / shepherdesses who are also poets
Associated with
The classical Golden Age in Greece, and the Latin Eclogues of Virgil
Christian representations of Garden of Eden
A tone of deliberate artificiality at odds with the simplicity of nature which is
described
The Epic
Seen as the master-genre that contains elements of all the others
Virgils Aeneid highly influential during this period
Epics in English appeared in the later Tudor period and 17 th century
Spensers The Faerie Queene
Miltons The Paradise Lost
Epyllions (or little epics)
Shakespeares Venus and Adonis
Marlowes Hero and Leander
Nashes The Choice of Valentine
John Skelton (c. 1460-1529)
Informal poet laureate and academic
Was tutor to Henry VIII
Skeltonic verse
irregular, energetic and satirical poetry
linguistic and metrical innovations
Resembles the poetry of John Donne
Poem The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe (1505)
a schoolgirl compares her love for her dead sparrow with other kinds of love
Inspired by the Roman classical poet, Catullus
John Skelton: Works
Many poems lost
Poem The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe (1505)
Jane Scroop, a schoolgirl, compares her love for her dead sparrow with other kinds of
love
Inspired by the Roman classical poet, Catullus
Colyn Cloute
Represents the average country man who gives his opinions on the state of the church
The name Colin Clout later used Spenser
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
Humanist
Courtier and Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII
Beheaded in 1535 for refusing to give up the authority of the Pope

40

 Utopia (Latin, 1516); trans. Ralph Robinson in 1551

Utopia
The principal literary work of Sir Thomas More
An essay in two books
Originally written in Latin in 1516
Influenced by travelogues such as that by Amerigo Vespucci printed in 1507
Opens with a historical event, a delegation to Bruges in 1515 in which Thomas More had
taken part
Utopia
First book describes the oppressive injustices of England
Second book contrasts England with Utopia, or Nowhere Land, described by the
protagonist Raphael Hythloday, whom More claims to have met at Antwerp. In Utopia, there
is complete individual freedom in social and religious spheres
Sir Thomas Wyatt (c. 1503-42)
Wyatt & Surrey founded English Renaissance poetry
Diplomatic missions abroad; visited Italy
Influence of Petrarch, the 14th c. Italian master of the sonnet of idealized love
Introduced terza rima of Dante and ottava rima
Wyatt also introduced the Horatian satire
Wrote 3 satires; 2 inspired by Horace, 1 by Alamanni
Written in terza rima
Also wrote 7 penitential Psalms
None of his poems published in his lifetime
96/97 poems posthumously published in Tottels Miscellany
Imprisoned in the Tower of London for allegedly committing adultery with Anne Boleyn
She was executed while Wyatt was in prison, and he wrote a poem expressing grief
and shock
Died of illness at the age of 39
Wyatt and the Petrarchan Sonnet
Translated and imitated Petrarchs sonnets in English
One of the earliest movements towards metrical discipline
His handling of the sonnet was not entirely smooth
Introduced the personal note in English literature
Artificial love-theme, lamenting the unkindness of ladies who very probably never existed
Introduced the Petrarchan conceit
Petrarchan conventions in English
A narrative or story was developed over a series of sonnets, thus forming sonnet
sequences
Idealized portraits of womanhood as chaste and unattainable
The convention of depicting women as unfaithful also existed
Love and loss of love as the central themes.
Sexual love treated as a form of religion (as in Donne)
Petrarchan conceit
became the most artificial of Elizabethan poetic conventions
Shakespeare lampooned in Sonnet 130, My mistresss eyes are nothing like the sun
Blason or praising the womans body part by part
ultimately praising her mind, as in Amoretti
There was also the contre-blason or describing the mistresss beautiful body in a
rather insulting manner, as in Shakespeares My mistresss eyes
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-47)
14 years younger than Wyatt; Wyatts poetic disciple
Executed on charge of treason when barely 30
Educated in English and French courts
Like Wyatt, sensitive to changing literary fashions
Introduced blank verse from the Italian into English poetry in his translation of books II and
IV of Aeneid
Experimented with the Poulters Measure: Alternating lines of 12 and 14 syllables
Surrey and the Sonnet
Developed the English sonnet
Sonnets addressed to Geraldine
Has less strength and more polish than Wyatt
41

Wyatt is the greater poet; Surrey is the greater craftsman

Though Surreys sonnets are less in number, they have a broader range of themes, including
appreciation of external nature.
The only name to appear on the cover page of Tottels Miscellany
Surreys Translation of Aeneid
Translated books II and IV of Virgils Aeneid
Influenced by Gavin Douglass translation in rhymed couplets
Published by Richard Tottel in 1557 as a separate book
Tottels Miscellany
Original title: Songs and Sonnets (5 June 1557, 1st edition 271 poems)
First anthology to be published in English
Established the Petrarchan sonnet-form
Bears the cultural impact of English Reformation. Poems have references to both Catholicism
and Protestantism
Only one poet mentioned in title page
The Right Honourable Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Contents (Total no of poems in 1557 edition 271)
36 poems by Surrey
91 poems by Wyatt (Contents page, however, says 90)
40 poems by Nicholas Grimald
4 more poems by Surrey (Total no by Surrey 40)
6 more poems by Wyatt (Total no by Wyatt (96 / 97)
The remaining are Poems by Uncertain Authors
Other possible poets included
Thomas Norton, etc.
One poem, To leade a vertuous and honest life, is believed to have been written by
Chaucer.
Another later anthology was The Phoenixs Nest (1593)
Other Sonneteers in English
Samuel Daniel Delia (1592)
Henry Constable Diana (1592)
Thomas Watson The Tears of Fancie (1593)
Giles Fletcher Licia (1593)
Michael Drayton Ideas Mirrour (1594)

Chapter 7
William Shakespeare
Shakespeares Age

Lived during a great period in English history

Reign of the Tudor queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

England emerged as the leading naval and commercial power of Europe

Defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588

Spirit of nationalism

Protestant Church firmly established

Sir Francis Drake, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh pioneered the eastern
navigations and colonial trade
Queen Elizabeth

Last Tudor monarch; reigned 44 years

Became a cult figure, represented the glory of England

o Successfully defeated all plots against her
o Great military victory over the Spaniards (1588)
o Led England to be one of the most powerful countries in the world
o Famed for being a virgin
o Epitome of beauty and greatness
o Moderate, tolerant, diplomatic
video et taceo (I see, and am silent)

Popularity waned towards the end of her rule

42

London in the Elizabethan Age

London centre of culture and commerce beside the Thames

Growing population; dominant merchant class

Immigrants from other towns

A large number of poets and dramatists

Drama most popular entertainment

Noisy, dirty, narrow streets

Socio-Political Scenario

Despite Renaissance & Humanism, Elizabethan society was still primitive in science
and technology

Printing was a luxury

Even local travel was arduous and limited

Scientists and witches were often mistaken as in the same trade

o A number of women were executed for witchcraft in England during the Renaissance
o Many literary works of the period bear testimony to the public interest in the subject.
The Concept of the Human Being

Renaissance scientists held that each individual is a microcosm that reflects and is in
tune with the macrocosm of the universe

Everybody possessed a soul, for which the body was only an imperfect and temporary
container.
o Given the plague, political killings and incomprehensible diseases, death of the body
was an everyday reality

The human body was believed to be composed of the four elementsearth, water, air
and firethat manifested as the four humoursblood, phlegm, choler and melancholy.
Gender as Unstable

The Renaissance people held that man and woman ultimately had the same bodies,
arranged differently
o This involved the idea of gender as not biologically stable
o This gives fresh insight into the practice of cross-dressing and gender transgression in
Renaissance plays
Humours and the Great Chain

The notion of the four humours

o A manifestation of the four elements
o Related to astronomical processes

Indicative of the 16th century conception of society as part of the Great Chain of
Being
o Everything in the universe is interconnected, with God at the pinnacle
o This ordered and hierarchical society is headed by the monarch, who enjoys the Divine
Right to govern the country and its people.
The Feudal Monarch

The monarch exerted his/her power through the court, a privileged group of the
richest and most powerful aristocrats in the country

Below the aristocrats came the gentry and the citizens

The gentry, usually denoted by the title Sir, held their wealth as landed property
outside London, inherited by birth or acquired by marriage.

The gentry exercised feudal authority over those who worked in their country estates;
served the king at his court and raised an army for him as well, in times of need.
The Common Citizens

Unlike the gentry, the citizens

o
generally lived in London
o
derived their wealth from trade
o
never attended the court
o
sponsored entertainments
o
ran the apprentice system by which young men learned a trade as an
employee of a master

From the citizens perspective, the courtier was an immoral, extravagant spendthrift,
while the citizens themselves were associated with the virtues of hard work, thrift and
honesty
43


The courtiers in turn derided the citizens as unfashionable and vulgar.

Strong ale common drink

Family

A family included not only the husband, wife and children, but even the servants, for
they were actively involved in all affairs of the family

The Renaissance nobility married early, while the common folks married in their midtwenties.

The average life expectancy was 40 and many women died in childbirth

Due to the high rate of child mortality, adults were probably more attached their
siblings than to their own children
Family

The husband was held as superior to the wife, physically, morally, intellectually and
spiritually.

Children were regarded as miniature adults with unquestioning obedience expected of

them.

Male anxiety about female infidelity was prevalent

o
The greatest insult for a man was to sprout horns and turn into a cuckold.
o
The female counterpart of this phenomenoncuckqueanwas rarely used.

However in England, more than in the rest of Europe, there was more insistence on
mutual affection and companionship in marriage.
Elizabethan Theatre: Beginnings

Early 16th c. travelling actors

o
Considered vagabonds and thieves
o
Later, a licenses were given to nobles for maintaining actors
o
Thus, acting troupes came into being

Acting Troupes
o
Played in the courtyards of taverns (called Inn-yards)
o
Temporary stage erected

Permanent Theatres
o
The 1st permanent theatre was James Burbages The Theatre
Theatre Timeline
1564:
On April 23 William Shakespeare was born
1576:
James Burbage obtains lease and permission to build an amphitheatre, The Theatre, in
Shoreditch, London. The Lord Chamberlain's Men played here from 1594 to 1596.
1577:
Another open air amphitheatre called The Curtain opens in Finsbury Fields, Shoreditch,
London
1587:
Open air amphitheatre The Rose, Bankside, Surrey is opened
1593:
Theatres close due to the Bubonic Plague (The Black Death)
1594:
The Lord Chamberlain's Company (formally known as 'Lord StrangesMen') was
formed.
1595:
March 15, First document mentioning Shakespeare connected with the Theatre
1596:
From 1596 to 1597 London's authorities banned the public presentation of plays within
the city limits of London
1596:
James Burbage purchases Blackfriars and converts it to a theatre. Unable to get
permission to open as a theatre and it stands empty
1597:
Dispute over the lease of 'the Theatre'. The Puritan owner, Giles Allen disapproved of
the Theatre and the acting troupe.
1597:
Shakespeare's troupe moved to the Curtain Theatre
1598:
Timber from the 'Theatre' taken to use for the building of a new theatre to be called
the Globe
1599:
The Globe Theatre is opened on Bankside
1600:
Richard Burbage is forced to lease out Blackfriars.
1603:
The Bubonic Plague (The Black Death) again ravages London killing 33,000 people - all
theatres close
1613:
On June 29, Fire at the Globe Theatre
1614:
Globe Theatre was rebuilt on original foundations, this time the roof is tiled, not
thatched
44

1616:
April 25, Burial of William Shakespeare in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in
Stratford
1642:
The English Civil War breaks out between the Parliamentarians (Puritans) and the
Royalists
1642:
On September 2, Parliament issues an ordinance suppressing all stage plays
1644:
On 15 April, Puritan landowner Sir Matthew Brend demolishes the Globe & builds
houses on the site
1647:
Even stricter rules passed by the Puritans restricting the staging of plays
1648:
The Puritans ordered all playhouses to be pulled down, all players to be seized and
whipped, and anyone caught attending a play to be fined five shillings
1649:
The Civil War finally leads to the terrible execution of King Charles I by the
Parliamentarians (Puritans)
1653:
Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England
1658:
Cromwell dies and the power of the Puritan starts to decline
1660:
The Restoration, and the end of the Puritan rule, sees the opening of the theatres
again
Elizabethan Theatre

Round, wooden, roofless building

Three galleries of seats

Pit (no seats) cost a penny groundlings

Main stage: 40 feet wide with a 27 feet projection into the pit

Recessed inner stage (curtains and balcony)

Music Room

Provisions for Heaven and Hell

Drama in the Elizabethan Age

After defeating the Spanish Armada, England became intensely patriotic, and this
spirit reflected in the plays

Elizabeth was directly involved with the stage; and even decided which plays were to
be acted

Audience included many uneducated people, who wanted to escape the pressures of
daily life
Drama in the Elizabethan Age

Playwrights were practical men, bent on making a living

Plays were written to be acted, not read

Once a playwright sold his manuscript, he had no right to it

There was increasing commercialization of the stage; the artists were pressurized to
excel

By the Jacobean period, only members of the royal family were allowed to patronize
artists
Stage Influences on Shakespeare

Huge, open, free stage which necessitated

o Quick changes and rapid action required
o Long speeches and passionate soliloquies
o Closeness of different classes in a scene

No women actors; use of disguises

Only day time lightspeeches about time, season and weather

o
In Macbeth alone, there are 40 such speeches
Shakespeare in His Lifetime

Shakespeare must have seen himself as a theatre professional who moved from play
acting to play writing (rather than a literary genius of all time!)

Preoccupied with the performance of his plays rather than publication

His contemporaries saw him as one of the many popular dramatists of the time
Publication of Shakespeares Plays

The texts of 16 of his plays were printed individually in quarto editions in

Shakespeares lifetime, with inevitable errors
o
Some of these were corrupted / pirated editions; so we have good and bad
quartos
45


For 18 of his plays, we have only texts published after his death
The First Folio (1623)

Titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies

Compiled by John Heminges and Henry Condell

Dedicated to the incomparable pair of brethren William Herbert, 3rd Earl of

Pembroke, and his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery.

This was the first collected edition of his plays

Only 36 included in the First Folio (Pericles not included)

A note on quarto and folio

Quarto (meaning a fourth part) is the size obtained when a sheet of paper is folded
twice to make 4 sheets, or 8 pages

Still smaller is the octavo size, obtained by folding a sheet thrice, making 8 sheets, or
16 pages

Folios are double the size of quartos, and are obtained by folding a sheet twice, to
make 2 sheets, or 4 pages.
Shakespeare in the 18th century

Shakespeares pre-eminence was recognized in the 18 th century, since Nicholas

Rowes edition of 1709
o
Rowe was the first editor of Shakespeares plays as well as his first biographer

After the Licensing Act of 1737

o
Restoration Comedies were curbed
o
Shakespearean plays dominated the London stage

Many editions of Shakespeare appeared

David Garrick was a major Shakespearean actor

Shakespeare in the Romantic Era

The Romantics exalted Shakespeare

o
Shakespeare himself was romantic in tendencies
Rejected classical rules of drama
Represented common man
Depicted folk culture
Non-aristocratic origins
Coleridge was the earliest of the modern Shakespearean critics
Shakespeare in Germany

Shakespeare deeply influenced

o
18th c. efflorescence of German literature, and
o
19th century German romanticism

Gotthold Lessing
o
18th c. German playwright, philosopher and critic
o
Pioneered the interest in Shakespeare

Friedrich von Schiller

o
Schiller and Goethe: Sturm und Drang writer (1760s-80s)
o
Schiller wrote a play reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet and translated Macbeth

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

o
Goethes play Gtz of the Iron Hand inspired by Shakespeare
o
Goethe organized a Shakespeare jubilee in Frankfurt in 1771
Shakespeare in Germany

August Wilhelm Schlegel

o
Early 19th c German Romantic
o
Translated over 16 Shakespearean plays
o
Inaugurated the Romantic criticism of Shakespeares plays

Felix Mendelssohn
o
German composer
o
Composed music for A Midsummer Nights Dream

46

Elizabethan Tragedy

Did not follow classical rules strictly (despite the insistence of classical critics like Ben
Jonson)

Has been called romantic tragedy

Disregarded the unities: use of elaborate subplots

Mixed tragedy and comedy to form tragicomedy

Gave much importance to action, spectacle, and sensation

Acted violence on stage (classical drama insisted on reporting violence)

Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex (1561)

First tragedy in English

First play to be written in blank verse

Theme of political rivalry

Thomas Norton wrote the first three acts of Gorboduc, and Thomas Sackville, the last
two.
Revenge Tragedy

Popular in Elizabethan & Jacobean times

Influence of the Roman playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca, esp. his Thyestes.

Senecan model never followed slavishly

Senecas stoicism and political career (he was an advisor to Nero) influence
Renaissance
plays.
o Avenger is either stoic or struggling to be so; the main theme of the English revenge
plays is the problem of pain.
o Politically, the themes of absolute power, corruption in court, and of faction are
explored
Features of Senecan Revenge Tragedy
A secret murder, usually of a ruler
A ghostly visitation of the victim to a younger kinsman, generally a son
A period of disguise, intrigue, or plotting, in which the murderer and the avenger scheme
against each other, with a slowly rising body count
A descent into either real or feigned madness by the avenger
An eruption of general violence at the end, which (in the Renaissance) is often accomplished
by means of a feigned masque or festivity
A catastrophe that generally destroys the characters, including the avenger
Elizabethan Comedy
Ralph Roister Doister (written in c.1553) written by the schoolmaster Nicholas Udall, to be
enacted primarily by his pupils
The second comedy considered to be Gammer Gurtons Needle written either by William
Stevenson or John Still
Plautus and Terence
Plautus
3rd century BC Rome
Important Works: Miles Gloriosus, Pseudolus, Menaechmi
Terence
2nd century BC Rome
6 short plays
Most popular playwright of his day
Influenced by New Comedy of Greek Menander (4 th c. BC)
Plautus also was influenced, to a lesser extent
Developed Comedy of Manners
Influence of Plautus & Terence
University students studied and enacted their plays
Nicholas Udall
Wrote Flowers for Latin Speaking, Selected and Gathered Out of Terence and the
Same Translated into English (1533)
This is a book of Latin recitations meant to popularize Latin comedy in English
His Ralph Roister Doister, the first native comedy, modelled on Plautuss Miles
Gloriosus and on plays of Terence
47

Matthew Merrygreeke in this play is a representation of both Plautine Parasite and

Plautine slave (stereotypical stock characters)
Second English comedy, Gammer Gurtons Needle by William Stevenson or John Still also
influenced by their plays
Plautus, Terence & Shakespeare
Shakespeare incorporated elements from Plautine plays and those of Terence into his
comedies
Technique of parallel plots, incidents and character (doubling)
Relationship between master and clever servant
Stock character
The Comedy of errors is a reworking of Plautuss Menaechmi
Shakespeares Falstaff is a representation of the Plautine stock character parasite
Commedia dellarte
In contrast to the learned Elizabethan plays, much of European drama of this period was
influenced by Commedia dellarte, a bawdy street theatre of 15th century Italy.
It is characterized by improvised dialogue and a cast of colorful stock characters
Rapidly gained popularity throughout Europe.
Traces of the form are visible in much Renaissance drama, including Shakespeares Twelfth
Night, Taming of the Shrew, Loves Labours Lost, As You Like It, The Tempest, and A
Midsummer Nights Dream
Shakespeare: Life
William Shakespeare was born the son of John and Mary Arden Shakespeare in a small town,
Stratford-upon Avon, 100 miles northwest of London
His father John belonged to a farming family near Stratford
Like his son, John had also left his family and moved to a larger commercial centre
(Stratford)
Here, he worked as a leather worker, a glover, and soon became a leading merchant.
Shakespeares Household
By 1552, he bought the western portion of the double-house in Henley Street, now known as
Shakespeares Birthplace
In 1557, John married Mary Arden, the daughter of his fathers wealthy landlord
Though John had initially struggled with financial difficulties, he was gradually rising in social
stature, and would soon be a burgess in the borough, an alderman, and by 1568, bailiff (a
position equal to the mayor).
William, the third child of their eight children, was thus born into a respectable business
household.
Shakespeares Birth
William Shakespeares birth is celebrated on 23 April 1564, 3 days before his baptism was
entered in the parish register of the Holy Trinity Church on 26 April
However, England followed the Julian Calendar at this time, and Shakespeares
birthday would fall on 5 May according to the Gregorian Calendar
Shakespeare might have been born a day or two earlier, but the date 23 April appeals
to sentiments because
o This is the feast of St. George, Englands patron saint
o It is on 23 April that Shakespeare died
23 April is also the birth as well as death day of Miguel de Cervantes, according to the
Gregorian Calendar
Shakespeares Education
At the age of 4 or 5, Shakespeare would have learned to read and write in English
At the age of 7, he started learning a heavily classical curriculum at the local grammar
school, which involved
Memorizing Latin and Latin composition
Mythology, ancient history, rhetoric, grammar
Translations from texts including those of Terence & Plautus
Learning some Greek from the New Testament
Did not go to university because his father seems to have fallen on hard times by then, due
to unknown reasons
Shakespeares Family
48

In 1582 at age 18, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior and three
months pregnant with their first child.
Pregnant brides were not uncommon at that time, nor particularly censured
Their daughter, Susanna, was born in 1583, and twins, Hamnet and Judith, came in 1585.
The twins were possibly named after Shakespeares friends, Hamnet Sadler, a baker,
and his wife Judith.
Hamnet died in 1596.
As was unusual at that time, the Shakespeares had no more children.
Shakespeare in London
Shakespeare seems to have departed to London sometime in the 1580s.
The 7 years from 1585 to 1592 are called lost years
There is no historical evidence on what he did at this time
In 1592, we have the first clear reference to Shakespeare as an actor / playwright in London
Robert Greene, in A Groatsworth of Wit (1592), makes the famous attack on Shakespeare
Greenes Attack
Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his
Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke
verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his owne conceit
the onely Shake-scene in a countrie.
Upstart crow: a crow from the folk tale, who sticks the feathers of other beautiful
birds to his tail, and thinks he himself has become the prettiest
Tigers heart: A tiger from the folk tale who wears sheepskin and pretends to be a
sheep; here, instead of sheepskin, the cheat Shakespeare is wearing the hide of
an actor.
Johannes Factotum: Jack of all trades; one who pretends to know everything
Shake-scene: This is what reveals to us that he is referring to Shakespeare
Shakespeare & the London Theatre
In London, the Lord Chamberlains Men (also called Lord Stranges Men) performed his plays,
and also probably the Queens Men
Shakespeare owned shares in the Second Blackfriars Theatre, an indoor theatre built by
James Burbage, and later, the Globe.
In the 1590s, the London theatre scene was unsettled
Actors companies were forming and disbanding themselves under the pressure of the
plague.
All London theatres were closed from 1592 to 94 due to the plague.
Shakespeare seems to have turned to non-dramatic poetry at this time
The Plague Years
Shakespeares non-dramatic poetry
Venus and Adonis 1593
The Rape of Lucrece 1594
Both dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, probably seeking his patronage
Minor non-dramatic poems (which are of doubtful authorship)
A Lovers Complaint
The Phoenix and the Turtle
The Passionate Pilgrim (an anthology of 20 poems edited by William Jaggard,
attributed to W. Shakespeare)
The Sonnets: Writing and Publication
Circulated in manuscripts before 1598
In 1598, Francis Meres praised Shakespeares sugared sonnets in his Palladis Tamia, or
Wits Treasury
First publication of sonnets
In 1609, the sonnets were first published in quarto format by Thomas Thorpe,
probably without the authors knowledge
The quarto edition has a mysterious dedication from the publisher to Mr. W.H. as the only
begetter of these poems
Lord Chamberlains Men
49

When the theatres reopened in 1594, the company of actors called Lord Chamberlains Men
was formed
Under the patronage of Henry Carey, Lord Chamberlain
Richard Burbage leading actor
Shakespeare played minor roles
Companys clown was William Kemp
Shakespeare remained with this company for the rest of his career
After the accession of King James I in 1603, the company was renamed Kings Men
The Globe
At first the Lord Chamberlains Men performed in The Theatre built by James Burbage in
1576
In 1597, after a dispute with the Puritan landlord over the terms of lease, the players moved
to the Curtain playhouse
On the night of 28 December 1597, when the landlord was out of town, Burbage and his
friends dismantled The Theatre timber by timber
The wood was used to build The Globe on the Bankside, where the Rose playhouse was
already achieving great success
The first recorded performance at the Globe was of Julius Caesar on 21 September 1599
In the early 17th century
Shakespeare secured a coat-of-arms, which granted him the status of a gentleman
A coat-of-arms is a heraldic shield with a unique design granted by the monarch to an
individual or family as a recognition of social rank
Wrote most of the Great Tragedies, Dark Comedies and Romances
Recognized as a genius in his own time
Queen Elizabeth dies in 1603
King Jamess accession to the throne
The Mermaid Tavern
Was probably a member of the Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen who met at the Mermaid
Tavern in Cheapside
Ben Jonson
John Donne
John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont
Thomas Coryat
John Selden
Robert Bruce Cotton
Richard Carew
Richard Martin
William Strachey
Retirement
1610 retired from theatre
Moved into the big house New Place at Stratford
1613 Globe theatre burns down
Lost money but still wealthy; helps rebuild Globe
Dies on April 23, 1616 at age 52
Buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford
Left his property to the male heirs of his eldest daughter, Susanna
Bequeathed his second-best bed to his wife
The couple had lived apart for 20 years of their marriage
A unique biography
Bill Brysons 2007 book Shakespeare
Brilliantly readable
Examines centuries of myths, half-truths and downright lies
Examines the glory of Shakespeares language
Brings out the man behind the masterpieces
The Works
37 plays
50

 Recently, another play The Double Falsehood, added to the canon

154 sonnets
2 (4) long poems
Shakespeare authorship question
Classification of Plays
First Period Apprenticeship (Age 26-30)
Second Period Mastered his art!
Favourite Romantic Comedy
Third Period Problem of Evil in the World
Fourth Period Creates a new drama form
Tragicomedy or the dramatic romance
Early Comedies
Plots less original
Characters less finished
Style lacks power
Set in exotic locations
Emphasis is on situation rather than character
Strong heroines; clever servants
Multiple plots
Amorous love & friendship, mistaken identity, disguise
Women steadfast in love; men are fickle
Wit and word play, quibbling, slapstick
Loves Labours Lost (printed 1598)
No major source
Has elements of comedy of manners
Themes
o Pretensions are deflated
o Love conquers all
o Unrealistic atmosphere of games and festive play
At the end, characters achieve maturity in the real world and the promise of future
happiness
The King of Navarre and his three lords have sworn celibacy for 3 years
They fall in love with the princess of France and her attendant ladies
Other major characters
o Don Adriano de Armado, a Spaniard, who uses extravagant language
o The pedantic schoolteacher Holofernes
o Dull the constable
o Costard the clown, who speaks the long Latin word honorificabilitudinitatibus (the
state of being loaded with honours)
Play ends with the songs of the cuckoo and the owl
The play-within-the-play of the Nine Worthies occur here
Here the actors dress up as Muscovites (people from Moscow)
This play has been called Mozartian (Mozart-like)
Mozart also created operatic comedies of human frailty
Mixed high and low elements
Offered lyrical leaps of fancy
Influence of Commedia dell Arte
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Two major sources
Story of Titus and Gisippus from Boccaccios Decameron
Portuguese author Jorge de Montemayors Spanish work Diana Enamorade
Theme of male friendship disturbed by sexual jealousy as in Lylys Euphues
Based on two literary tradition
Friendship literature of the Middle Ages
The romantic narrative
The Plot
51

Valentine and Proteus are friends

Proteus loves Julia
Valentine goes to Milan and falls in love with Silvia
Proteus also sets off on his travels and in Milan is captivated by Silvia
Julia comes to Milan in disguise
The betrayer Proteus finally repents
Other major characters
Lance, the clownish servant of Proteus and his dog Crab
The Comedy of Errors (perf. in 1594)
Conforms to the three unities
Principal source is Plautuss The Menaechmi
Also influenced by
Plautuss Amphitryon
The medieval Gesta Romanorum (later source for The Merchant of Venice)
Confessio Amantis (later source for Pericles)
Themes
The essential human condition
The web of domestic and political relationships
Situation of women in Elizabethan society
Redeeming power of love
The Plot
A short farce
The places Syracuse and Ephesus are enemies
Egeon, an old Syracusan merchant, is arrested in Ephesus
One of his twin sons (both named Antipholus, attended by twin slaves named Dromio) is
separated and lives in Ephesus
So does his wife Emilia, who is now an Abbess
After much comedy resulting from mistaken identity, the family is re-united.
Early Tragedies
First attempt at the genre of tragedy was Titus Andronicus
Set in mythical Rome
Themes of pride, family honour, violent revenge
Extravagant rhetorical reflections
Heavy influence of Seneca
Most famous in this group: Romeo and Juliet
The historical tragedy Richard III was written in the same period
Romeo and Juliet
Story of two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths unites their feuding families
Belongs to the ancient tradition of tragic romance
Source: The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562) by Arthur Brooke, retold in prose in
Palace of Pleasure (1567) by William Painter
Use of poetic dramatic structure
Switching between comedy and tragedy to heighten tension
Expansion of minor characters like Mercutio
Use of sub-plots to enrich the story
The Plot
The Montague and the Capulets are warring families in Verona.
Capulet plans a masked ball to demonstrate its willingness for the marriage of his daughter
Juliet with Count Paris.
The lovesick Romeo, the son of Montague, attends the ball in a mask in pursuit of his
beloved Rosaline
He meets Juliet and the two immediately fall in love.
Juliets cousin Tybalt recognizes Romeo, and has to be restrained from fighting him.
Romeo waits under Juliets balcony and arranges a secret marriage with the help of Friar
Lawrence and Juliets nurse.
The marriage takes place and is immediately followed by disaster
52

In a duel with the angry Tybalt, Romeos friend Mercutio is fatally wounded and Romeo kills
Tybalt.
Banished from Verona Romeo leaves for Mantua having spent a single night with Juliet.
Capulet decides that Juliet must marry Paris immediately and Friar Lawrence advices to Juliet
to agree.
He gives her a potion to drink before the wedding which will make her dead for 42 hours.
The Friar would arrange for Romeo to meet her at the family vault when she wakes.
In plague-torn Mantua, the Friars message fails to reach Romeo.
Hearing of Juliets death, Romeo buys poison, visits the Capulets vault, finds Paris there and
kills him, and drinks the poison.
Juliet wakes finds Romeo dead and stabs herself with his dagger.
The events, related by Friar Lawrence, serve to reconcile the two families.
Romeo and Juliet (ascribed to the mid-1590s)
Watch Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet summary on You Tube for the
plot
English Histories (10 plays)
Shaped the genre of the history play that hitherto did not exist
Minor Tetralogy
Henry VI 3 Parts and Richard III
Major Tetralogy
Richard II, Henry IV 2 Parts and Henry V
King John
Henry VIII
Histories in the First Folio
In the First Folio, plays were categorized into 3 groups: tragedies, comedies and histories
British History Plays recognized as a genre in the Folio
Roman, Greek and Scottish history excluded
Histories were categorized according to the time depicted
1st play King John (13th century)
Last play Henry VIII (16th century)
Histories based on chronicle matter (similar to legends) excluded, for eg. King Lear,
Cymbeline
English Histories
Neither tragedy nor comedy; a combination of both
Based on Edward Halls Chronicles (of the Wars of the Roses and establishment of the Tudor
dynasty) and Raphael Holinsheds the incomplete Chronicles of England, Scotland and
Ireland
Written throughout his career; show rapid maturation; characters are more developed
Did not insist on unadorned historical factaddressed not only history, but also
historiography; hence these plays are superior to the lifeless chronicle plays of the age
General Themes
Empire, statehood, nationality
Competition to the crown
Clash of ethical and political concerns
Role of women in politics
Question of whether nobility is derived from birth or behaviour
Monarchs duty to the people
As against the medieval theory of Divine Right of Kings
Neither monarch nor the Parliament is an independent authority
The dual body of the king: the individual body & the body politic (the conflict between the
two may lead to tragedy)
Minor Tetralogy
Early histories
Deal with the recent Wars of the Roses between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists (15 th
century)
Depict the issue of emergent nationhood
53

Tendency to identify villains (Richard III) and heroes (Lord Talbot in Henry VI Part 1,
Humphrey in Henry VI Part 2, Henry Tudor in Richard III)
Henry VI 3 Parts and Richard III
Minor Tetralogy reflects Englands new sense of national identity and power (under the Tudor
dynasty, and following the defeat of the Spanish Armada)
Minor Tetralogy followed by King John (13th century)
Major Tetralogy
On the earlier Plantagenets of the late 14th and early 15th centuries)
Richard II (printed in1597, is usually dated 1595), Henry IV 2 Parts (1600) and Henry V
(written in 1599, printed in 1600)
Written at the same time as the romantic comediesboth have complementary coming-ofage themes, one in love and marriage, the other in a young man growing up to be a worthy
king
Throne as important; desire for stable government
Mixing low life with history (as in John Falstaff)
Use of excellent blank verse
Henry VIII
Written in collaboration with John Fletcher in 1613
Last history play Henry VIII (probably last play)
Original title could have been All is True
The only history play not written during the reign of Elizabeth
The rest of the 10 histories were all written in the first decade of Shakespeares career
The only history play about a Tudor monarch
Most emphatically patriotic play
E.M.W. Tillyards Shakespeares History Plays (1944)
Treats history plays as an expression of the Tudor myth
The Tudor myth presents the period of the Wars of the Roses (15 th c.) as one of anarchy and
bloodshed
Richard III particularly is presented as a deformed hunchback and murderer
Henry Tudor (Henry VII) killed Richard III, put an end to the Wars of the Roses and
established the Tudor dynasty
In contrast the Wars of the Roses period, the Tudor period is presented as a golden age of
peace and prosperity
Tillyard sees the Tudor myth operating more strongly in the chronicles of Hall than
Holinshed
Hence holds that Shakespeares histories were more influenced by Hall than Holinshed
Mature Comedies
Full-fledged romantic comedies; less classical influence
Multiple plots
Profound and complicated treatment of the theme of love; battle of the sexes; focus on
psychological motives; and on marriage
More developed characters full of vitality, warmth, humanity
Powerful heroines
Sophisticated wit, jovial good humour coupled with lighter clowning
Continued use of disguise
Excellent prose
A Midsummer Nights Dream (printed in 1600)
No known source
Written to be performed at an aristocratic wedding
Only two other plays by Shakespeare were written for private performance
Loves Labours Lost
The Tempest
The play has
A dream-world
Intricate masque-like plotting
The mood of celebration
Unrealistic characters
54

The Plot
Four main plots
Egeus wants his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius, but she is in love with Lysander, and
Hermias friend Helena loves Demetrius
Duke Theseus is about to marry the Amazon queen Hippolyta
Six artisans, including the weaver Nick Bottom and Peter Quince, are rehearsing the play
Pyramus and Thisbe in the forest to be enacted at the dukes wedding
The fairy-king Oberon is quarrelling with his queen Titania over the possession of an Indian
changeling page, with the help of Puck (Robin Goodfellow)
Important scenes
o Puck pours the juice of the magic flower love-in-idleness into the characters eyes
and there is confusion in love
o Titania falls in love with the donkey-headed Bottom
o Bottom and friends enact their play at the end so badly that though it is meant to be a
tragedy, all the guests laugh
This play is usually enacted on 23 June, which is the Midsummers Eve, or summer solstice
Similar to an Epithalamium (marriage song)
A Midsummer Nights Dream
Watch on You Tube Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
summary for a brief summary
Also watch the Video Study Guides from enotes on A Midsummer Nights Dream
Much Ado About Nothing (first printed in 1600)
Main plot based on an old European tradition of stories in which a lover is deceived into
believing that his beloved is unfaithful
o Shakespeare must have drawn on versions of this story from Ariostos Orlando Furioso
& Bandellos collection of stories based on Ariosto
Typical romantic comedy
o disrupted romance, but love triumphs
Comedy of character rather than situations
o the threat to romantic happiness is based on psychology of characters rather than
situations
Two levels of plotting
Don Pedros plot makes Beatrice and Benedict fall in love
Don Johns plot breaks the Claudio-Hero alliance
The Main Plot
Claudio, in the service of the Prince of Aragon, Don Pedro, falls in love with Hero, daughter of
Leonato, Governor of Messina
Don Pedros discontented brother Don John determines to destroy the match
With the aid of Borachio, he convinces Claudio that Hero is unfaithful and Claudio rejects his
bride at the marriage altar
Hero faints & Leonato announces her dead
Borachio is overheard boasting of Don Johns trick
Claudio is horrified of having accusing Hero
Leonato forgives him
Hero returns to life
The Sub-Plot
Attracts more attention than the main plot
Claudios friend Benedick and Leonatos niece Beatrice dominate the play
Sub-plot lacks in villainous interference
Conflict and love between Beatrice & Benedict
The two most vital characters in the play
Scorners of love
Their lively battle of wits is exposed by their friends as a disguise of their real love
The Resolution of the Play
Outraged by Claudios treatment of Hero, Beatrice demands Benedick to kill Claudio
Benedick challenges Claudio to a duel
55

Right then, the comical rustic constable Dogberry interrogates Borachio and exposes the
villainous plot
The play ends with a dance
Twelfth Night (1600)
Subtitle: What You Will
Chief source: a romantic tale Apollonius and Silla, in Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581)
by Barnabe Rich
Rich himself took his tale from a French romance in Francoise Belleforests Histories
Tragiques
Last of the mature comedies followed shortly by the first of the tragedies, Hamlet
Has subtle complexity, like a Dark Comedy
Sustains the celebration of triumphant love, that characterizes other mature comedies, yet
has a troubling undertone, that reflects the complexities of the human psyche
The Plot
Viola is separated from her identical twin brother Sebastian in a shipwreck on the coast of
Illyria
Disguised as Cesario, she enters service in the court of Duke Orsino
Orsino is hopelessly in love with the noble woman Olivia, who rejects him because she is
mourning her dead brother
Cesario takes Orsinos love messages to Olivia; Olivia is attracted to Cesario (Viola), who falls
secretly in love with Orsino
Sebastian arrives in Illyria with his friend Antonio
Through a series of accidents resulting from mistaken identity
Antonio believes Sebastian has betrayed his friendship
An astonished Sebastian is married to Olivia
Orsino believes that Cesario has stolen Olivia from him and threatens punishment
Sebastian and Viola appear together on stage and confusions are clarified
Orsino now proposes to marry Viola
The Sub-Plot
Olivias self indulgent uncle Sir Toby Belch, with the help of the gullible Sir Andrew
Aguecheek, Olivias lady-in-waiting Maria, and their friend Fabian, play a practical joke on
Olivias presumptuous and humorless Puritanical steward Malvolio who dislikes merriment
and love
Malvolio is made to believe that Olivia is in love with him
His courtship of Olivia is cold, loveless and based on personal ambition
He is finally incarcerated as a lunatic
Fabian teases the imprisoned Malvolio and the victim makes a final cry for vengeance
His anger at humiliation makes him humanly sympathetic, leaving us disturbed
As a romantic comedy
Stock features arranged like a stately dance
Separated twins
Disguises
Impediments to love
Anti-romantic elements
The self-defeating posture of Orsino and Olivia as romantic lover and mourning lady
respectively
Viola, being in disguise, is unable to express her love
Sir Toby is a parasite and victimizer of Sir Andrew & Malvolio
Feste betrays weary cynicism as in his final song
Malvolios imprisonment and humiliation are vicious and out of proportion to his
offence
The repeated motif of madness
Male vs Female
The main plot has an implicit sexual confusion
Cesarios youthful good looks and imaginative compliments to Olivia bring out her
capacity to love
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The

The

The

The irrepressible femininity beneath Violas disguise offers Orsino the devotion and
loyalty he subconsciously desires, to which he unwittingly responds.
The sudden appearance of Sebastian, whose sound sexual identity is emphasized, offers a
contrast
Character of Sebastian
Represents fulfillment in the incomplete lives of the other characters
He is the dominant male lover
Whom Olivia subconsciously desires
Whom Malvolio absurdly impersonated
Whom Orsino had forgotten he can be
Embodies the positive capacity for love
Merchant of Venice (printed in 1600)
General themes
Triumph of young lovers over their unromantic elders
Triumph over false and inhuman attitudes towards life
Male friendship
o In the essay Brother and Others, WH Auden depicts Antionios love for
Bassanio as homosexual
Anti-Semitic elements
Elements of a problem play
Not fully a comedy because of dark elements
Not a tragedy because of happy ending
Plot
Bassanio woos the heiress Portia
For his dear friend Bassanio, Antonio borrows money from Shylock, a pound of his flesh being
the bond for failure to repay the amount within 3 months
Shylocks daughter Jessica runs away with Christian Lorenzo
Bassanio wins Portia by choosing the right casket
Their marriage celebrations are interrupted by the news that Antonios ships are lost at sea
Shylock, his hatred of Christians having deepened by Jessicas flight, demands his bond
Portia appears
As lawyer Balthazar
Her maid Nerissa as his clerk Stephano
Insists that Shylock can take only the flesh and no blood
Shylock is pardoned by the duke on condition that
He should give one half of his wealth to Antonio
The other half of his wealth to Lorenzo and Jessica
He should become a Christian
Balthazar
Refuses fees but asks for Bassanios ring
Bassanio refuses at first for it is Portias betrothal gift
Then is ashamed of his ingratitude & sends it through his friend Gratiano
Disguised Nerissa now gets her husband Gratianos ring
Later, the women
Scold their husbands for giving away their rings
Then reveal the truth
Three distinct plots
The winning of Portia by lottery of the caskets
The settlement of Shylocks claim
The final complication of the betrothal rings
Important speeches
Shylocks speech Hath not a Jew eyes? which enumerates the cruelties of the
Christians against Jews
Portias speech on the Christian quality of mercy (as against the Jewish value of
justice)
The title character is Antonio
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 Launcelot Gobbo is Shylocks servant

Prince of Morocco and Prince of Arragon were Portias other suitors
Shylock
Stereotypical villain who is the embodiment of medieval notions about Jews
Jews detest Christians and hatch evil plots against them
The practise usury (lending money for interest) which is morally and legally wrong
Shylocks punishment is severe
Threatened with life sentence
Loses all his earnings
Forced to renounce his religion
Influenced by Barabas in The Jew of Malta
Influenced by the trial and execution of Rodrigo Lopez in 1594
Lopez was a Portuguese physician who served Elizabeth I
Accused of plotting with Spaniards to poison the queen
As You Like It (first mention in 1600)
Only important source
Thomas Lodges prose romance Rosalynde
An example as well as parody of the pastoral romance, a favourite Renaissance genre
Assets and drawbacks of country life
Framework of a stock romantic comedy
Disguised princess
Unjustly deposed ruler
A handsome couple in love
Absence of a dramatic plot
The play is largely made up of conversations between different characters on
romantic love and country living
The Plot
Oliver attempts to kill his brother Orlando by making him fight the wrestler Charles
Orlando wins; falls in love with Rosalind, the daughter of the deposed Duke Senior
Orlando flees to the Forest of Arden
Rosalind also reaches Arden
She is banished by Frederick, the usurper duke
Disguised as Ganymede
With her is Celia, Fredericks daughter disguised as Aliena
They are accompanied by the court fool Touchstone
Also in Arden are
Duke Senior, living like Robin Hood
Along with the melancholy philosopher Jaques, and
Lord Amiens
Orlando in Arden
Welcomed by Duke Senior
Posts love poems for Rosalind on trees
Professes his love for Rosalind to Ganymede
Ganymede proposes to cure him of his lovesickness
Ganymede is loved by shepherdess Phebe who in turn is loved by the shepherd Silvius
Oliver in Arden
Comes to Arden to track down Orlando
Is saved by Orlando from death
Has a change of heart
Aliena falls in love with him at first sight
Rosalind oversees the matching of
Celia & Oliver, Silvius & Phebe, Touchstone & Audrey, Orlando & herself
o In the Masque of Hymen (God of marriage) at the end (Symbolizing acceptance
and reconciliation)
Juxtapositions of opposing ideas/temperaments
58

Opposition between country life and court life

Two opposing perspectives of love & life
o The enthusiastic response of Rosalind
o Withdrawal from complexities & commitments (Jaques)
Four pairs of lovers offering striking contrasts
Orlando (a parody of the courtly lover) & Rosalind (realistic and practical)
Silvius (lovesick shepherd) & Phebe (heartless shepherdess)
Touchstone (witty, detached & resigned submission to human instincts) & Audrey
(simple-minded goatherd)
Oliver and Celia (sudden and irrational love)
Ganymede (says love is a kind of madness) and Rosalind (desperately in love)
Problem Plays / Dark Comedies
Alls Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida
Themes: revenge, sexual jealousy, aging, midlife crisis, death
The very genre of comedy is problematized
Elements of tragicomedy: sombre, tragic tone; artificial happy endings
Unconventional turn of events
Complex ambiguous tone
No completely satisfactory resolution of issues
Dark psychological elements; cynical, disillusioned attitude to life
Fondness for objectionable characters, incidents
Expose falsity of romance; reality as sordid
Resemble the satirical comedies of Ben Jonson
The term Problem Play

19th century term: Applied to plays of Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Galsworthy, etc.

Denotes realistic plays dealing with controversial social problems

In the Shakespearean context
Term applied to Shakespearean plays by F.S. Boas in Shakespeare and His
Predecessors (1896)
Boas referred to three Dark Comedies; says Hamlet connects these to the tragedies
(i.e., Hamlet has elements of the problem plays)
The term has also been applied later to The Winters Tale, Timon of Athens, The
Merchant of Venice
Alls Well That Ends Well (c.1604)
Main source: a tale in William Painters The Palace of Pleasure, which is a translation from
Boccaccios Decameron
Helena loves Bertram and gets married to him, but he is unworthy of her love, and leaves
her on the grounds of her being non-aristocratic. She pursues him relentlessly and wins him
back through the sordid and artificial bed trick
Customary material of romantic comedy (triumph of love over obstacles) presented in a
grotesque light
Measure for Measure (played at court in Dec 1604)
Taken from a striking range of sources
A real life incident
Cinthios Italian collection of tales, Hecatommithi
o This is the principal source for Othello
Whetstones play Promos and Cassandra
A dark play that focuses on evil with a cynical view of sex and social order
Title refers to Christs Sermon on the Mount
The Plot
Claudio is sentenced to death by the moralistic Puritan Angelo, the dukes deputy, for
making his lover Juliet pregnant.
Angelo seeks to extort sex from Claudios chaste sister Isabella, who is about to enter a
nunnery, in return for sparing Claudio, but orders him to be killed anyway.
Isabella escapes with the help of a friar (the real duke in disguise) by performing the bed
trick with Mariana, the abandoned fiancee of Angelo.
Finally, Angelo is exposed.
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Themes
The duty of a ruler to punish wrongdoers
Christian themes, especially of mercy
o Isabella and the Duke as well as Mariana forgive Angelo at the end
Right and wrong
o While the Duke admits his failings and investigates his own government, Angelo
feels a self-righteousness and thinks he cannot go wrong
A comic sub-plot involving Pompey, Lucio and Mistress Overdone
Troilus and Cressida (written in 1602, printed in 1609)
Bleak and bloody ending
Bitter picture of love and power
Extravagantly corrupt and artificial world (a distorted picture of the familiar heroic world)
Use of character types
Ajax dim-witted and proud fool
Troilus the deceived lover
Achilles the cruel and ambitious nobleman
Pandarus the voyeur
Thersites the coward and the abusive critic
Pandarus speaks in the bawdy epilogue
Great Tragedies
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (HOKM)
Climax of Shakespeares art
Shakespeare himself believed to have been greatly burdened in spirit at this time
Profound psychological insight
Powerful style
Shakespeares tragedies are Romantic tragedies, which do not conform to classical
conventions
Romantic Tragedy
Emphasizes the element of spectacle, which is the least important element according to
Aristotle
Employs violence on stage for dramatic effect, while violence is only reported in Greek
tragedies
Employs elements of comedy within tragedy
Does not maintain the unities
Violation of the unities result in multiplicity of action
Great Tragedies
No imitation of the classical model
The chief conflict of the protagonist is with aspects of the social order (in Greek
tragedy, they battle against divine forces)
In Shakespearean tragedy, the cause of human suffering is human action, and human
beings are free to exercise the Christian concept of free will. The limitations of their
actions come from within the characters, and there is no divine intrusion of Fate as in
classical tragedy. This is summed up in the phrase, Character is destiny.
Concern with domestic and family relationships
Present a vast range of intense emotions / issues suited to the mature years of human life
Hamlet search for meaning in lifes dilemmas
Othello sexual jealousy
King Lear aging and generational conflict
Macbeth ambition and power
Early tragedies: Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III
Hamlet (1601)
From the late 18th century, this play has been regarded as the greatest in the Shakespearean
canon
Form is that of Senecan revenge tragedy
The whole plots turns upon the character of the protagonist, his irresolution
Shakespeares longest play
The play reflects the skeptical humanism of the late Renaissance
60

Sources
Ur-Hamlet, (c.1588), apparently derived from Belleforests collection Histories
Tragiques (1580)
Belleforests story is retold from Saxo Grammaticus Danish History (1514)
The Plot
King Hamlet of Denmark has died
His brother Claudius has come to the throne and has married his widow queen Gertrude
Denmark is threatened by a Norwegian invasion by Fortinbras
Informed by his friend Horatio, Prince Hamlet meets his fathers ghost who tells him that
Claudius poisoned him
Hamlet swears revenge, but needs to verify Claudius guilt and his mothers innocence
Hamlet persuades a company of actors to revive an old play The Murder of Gonzago , that
parallels the story of Claudius
Hamlet is now behaving strangely; rejects his sweetheart Ophelia; and Ophelias father (the
court chamberlain) Polonius is convinced he is mad.
Claudius guilt is revealed at the play-within-the-play, which Hamlet calls The Mouse Trap.
Claudius orders Hamlet to go to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where he would
be treacherously killed
Hamlet escapes, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are killed instead.
Hamlet encounters Gertrude in her chamber, and stabs to death the eavesdropping Polonius.
To avenge his fathers death, Polonius son Laertes returns to Denmark, and finds his sister
Ophelia mad.
Claudius plots with Laertes to kill Hamlet in a duel, by means of poison tipped sword.
Ophelias death by drowning strengthens Laertes resolve; the duel takes place, culminating
in the death of Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet.
Fortinbras of Norway, proclaimed king of Denmark, orders a military funeral for Hamlet.
The Philosophical Nature of the Play
Protagonist betrays a sensitive nature and painful anxiety to do what is right; his fall results
not from indulgence in passions, but from his philosophic nature (as in the case of Brutus in
Julius Caesar)
Schlegel, and later Coleridge, call Hamlet tragedy of thought / reflection. [The tragedies
after Hamlet and Julius Caesar can be called tragedies of passion.]
AC Bradley calls Hamlet tragedy of moral idealism.
The character of Hamlet
Confused perception that comes with emotional trauma
Sees father as ideal man and a great king
Offended by his mothers hasty and incestuous marriage
Considers her evil and is devastated by the idea
Experiences mental depression
Longs for death, but rejects suicide
Disgust with life and sex
Virtually ignores the political consequences of his fathers murder and focuses only on the
sexual implications
Transfers his mothers guilt to Ophelia, rejects her, though in great confusion
Procrastinates revenge for apparently philosophical reasons
The character of Hamlet
Murder of Gonzago establishes the kings guilt
Hamlet falls victim to a pathological rage
Demands eternal damnation for the king; not merely murderous revenge
Kills Polonius in fury, which leads to Ophelias insanity and subsequent death
Hamlet is exiled and escapes death in England
In the final Act, he is a changed man
No longer hesitant
Realizes his human failings, and his capacity for evil
Calmly accepts destiny
All major characters are killed; Hamlet himself dies at the hands of Laertes
Themes
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 Ambiguous treatment of the psychological tensions pertaining to death and sex

Humanity as essentially flawed
Existence of both good and evil in human nature
Problems in the play
Is Hamlets madness real or feigned?
What is the nature of Hamlets relation to Ophelia?
Why does Hamlet procrastinate revenge?
Critics on Hamlet
ST Coleridge considered Hamlet to be an intellectual who thinks too much
AC Bradley explained Hamlets delay as the result of a deep melancholy which grew out of
his disappointment in his mother
TS Eliot calls Hamlet an artistic failure for the lack of an objective correlative, and said it is
the Mona Lisa of literature (both are enigmatic)
Sigmund Freud explained Hamlets procrastination in terms of the Oedipal Complex, view
endorsed by Ernest Jones
New Historicists read Hamlet in the context of Elizabethan society and politics
Hamlet on You Tube
For a brief, light summary, Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's Hamlet Summary is good
Also watch the Video Study Guides from enotes on Hamlet
Othello (1602-1604)
Subtitled The Moor of Venice
Tragedy of passion
More intimate in scale than the other tragedies
No supernatural terror as in Hamlet or Macbeth
No psychological derangement as in King Lear
No kingdoms are at stake
Political consequences of the action not emphasized
For the first time in Shakespeare, hero is a colossal figure, towering over all other characters
It was not so in the case of Hamlet or Julius Caesar
Coleridge applied the term motiveless malignity to Iago
Major source Cinthios Hecatommithi
The Plot
Othello, a trusted general of the Venetian army, has secretly married Desdemona, daughter
of the Venetian senator Brabantio.
Othellos ensign Iago, whom Othello believes to be honest, is scheming against him mainly
because Othello chose Cassio as his lieutenant, in preference, to Iago.
At Iagos prompting, Roderigo, Desdemonas foolish suitor, reports the marriage to
Brabantio.
Though Brabantio demands Othellos arrest, he has to accept the wholeheartedness of
Desdemonas love, when she appears before the senate.
There is an impending Turkish attack on Cyprus and Othello leaves immediately with
Desdemona, Iago, Cassio and Roderigo.
In Cyprus Iago contrives to discredit Cassio, whom Othello dismisses.
Iago advises Cassio, to appeal Desdemona and implants in Othellos mind a suspicion
regarding Desdemona and Cassio.
Her support of Cassio, along with Iagos innuendos, deepens Othellos suspicion.
Desdemona accidently drops a handkerchief, Othellos first token of love, which Iago brings
into Cassios hand.
Cassio gives the handkerchief to his mistress Bianca.
Biancas possession of the handkerchief convinces Othello of Desdemonas infidelity.
He humiliates Desdemona in public to the dismay of Iagos wife Emilia.
Iago urges Roderigo to kill Cassio but Roderigo manages only to wound him.
Iago kills Roderigo to ensure silence and Othello kills Desdemona in her bed chamber.
In the presence of Venetian representatives, Emilia reveals Iagos guilt.
Iago kills her, is wounded by Othello, and tries to escape.
The remorseful Othello stabs himself and Iago is captured and condemned to torture and
prison.
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 Cassio takes command in Cyprus.

Othello
According to AC Bradley:
the most painfully exciting and the most terrible of all the tragedies, on account of its
theme being sexual jealousy rising to a heightened pitch of passion, bringing with it shame and
humiliation for Othello and helpless suffering for Desdemona (on account of her infinitely sweet
nature and absolute love)
In plot construction, the most masterly and unusual: conflict begins late; after it begins,
there is no comic relief; Iagos intrigue has no parallel in any other tragedy; setting is not the
remote past, but is almost contemporary; as in no other tragedy, fate takes sides with villainy
Themes
Major theme: Jealous mistrust
Central concern of the play is Othellos change in attitude towards Desdemona
Othellos loss of trust in Desdemona, reducing Othello to a bestial frenzy
His trust in Iago never flags
He begins to see love through Iagos eyes than Desdemonas
Iago and Desdemona
Desdemona and Iago thus represent two internalized features of the hero: his loving and
generous self, and his darkly passionate self-centred ego
Iago and Desdemona also present two sides of trust and love: Iago cannot trust or love;
Desdemona offers an ideal, unconditional love and trust
Iago is associated with the devil several times in the play, while Desdemona is a symbol of
Christian love and resignation to the will of God
Other Themes
The mercantile society of Venice (as well as England) as dominated by in human commercial
values
Such a society is parochial, greedy and racist, and cannot appreciate Othellos virtues
However, such a society is united by trust and cooperation
The Venetians, including Brabantio, accept Othello as their general to ward off the
Turkish threat
Venice is not a suitable milieu for Iagos plot, so the scene is moved to isolated Cyprus
Time in Othello
Othello is sent to Cyprus on the very night of his marriage
The time taken for the action is not more than two days
The play however produces the impression that several weeks have passed
Through statements made in dialogues such as told a hundred times, away for a
week, etc
This is called double time scheme
This means that two time schemes are simultaneously at work in the play, the real
time and the experienced time
This creates the impression of a chaotic world
Othello on You Tube
For a brief introduction to the plot, watch Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's Othello
summary
Also watch the Video Study Guides from enotes on Othello
King Lear (dating from1604-5, performed at court 1606)
Central unresolvable question
How can we reconcile human dignity with human failure in the face of lifes demands?
Play is filled with various manifestations of human cruelty, desire for power and agonizing
disasters
Themes: insignificance of human life; whether there is justice in this world; pride; betrayal
Powerful conclusion emphasizing a morbid response to life, and the finality of death
Underlying theme of disease and sex as perverse
Nahum Tate famously produced the play with a happy ending, putting Edgar in the place of
the King of France as Cordelias lover
The Plot
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The aged British King Lear decides to share his kingdom between his three daughters and
spend his remaining years at their courts.
His youngest and favourite daughter Cordelia refuses to earn her share by joining Goneril
and Regan in exaggerated declaration of love for their father.
The angry king divides the kingdom between his two eldest daughters and Cordelia is
married without dowry by the king of France.
The king meets with hostility at his eldest daughters courts.
He rants against them and rages out into a storm, accompanied by his fool, and the loyal
Duke of Kent.
Tried beyond his strength, he goes mad.
Goneril, Regan, and Regans husband the Duke of Cornwall hear that the French army has
landed at Dover, and Lear would meet Cordelia there.
The Duke of Gloucester, who assisted Lear by keeping the French invasion secret, is blinded
and tortured by Cornwall, with the help of Gloucesters illegitimate son Edmund, who is also
the lover of the villainous sisters.
Mad Lear and blind Gloucester meet near Dover.
The French army is defeated in Dover and Lear and Cordelia are arrested.
Edmund gives orders that he should be put to death but is himself killed by his legitimate
brother Edgar who had been wrongly exiled by Gloucester and had cared for Lear and saved
Gloucester from accidental death in the heath disguised as the lunatic Tom o Bedlam.
Edmund makes a dying confession but Cordelia has already hanged by then.
Lear brings his daughters corpse at the stage and dies assertive that she is still alive.
King Lear
According to AC Bradley:
The play has a two-fold character: to lovers of Shakespeare, this is his greatest play;
to general theatergoers, this is not a great success
Along with Othello, the most painful and pathetic of all the four tragedies; in these two
plays, evil appears in its coldest and most inhuman forms
Like Timon of Athens, deals with ingratitude
Sources
Various versions of chronicle material
An earlier anonymous play King Leir (c.1590)
Holinsheds Chronicles
Version of a tale from Mirror for Magistrates
Sub-plot is from Sidneys Arcadia
Religious undertones
Cordelia
Christ-like figure
Her death symbolizes Christs crucifixion
Tragedy as a manifestation of Gods will
The sufferings of Lear and Gloucester which they have brought upon themselves, is
punishment for their sins by God
Their forgiveness is accompanied by death, a symbol of eternal mercy
Political Themes
Reflects the then-prevalent belief of an approaching apocalypse (total collapse of social
structures; end of the world)
Fear of impending Civil War
The play supports civil authority expected from King James I, as against the catastrophe of
Lears reign
The sovereign (king) as responsible for his subjects
As Lear realizes during the storm scenes
Conflict between the rising bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy of Shakespeares day
reflected here
Sub-Plot
Gloucesters blinding
Edwards exile as mad Tom
Regans and Gonerils sexual rivalry
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 Sub-plot is more complex and well-defined than main plot

Comedy in King Lear
Main sources of comedy
Kents accusation of Oswald (Gonerils steward who humiliates Lear)
Edgars remarks as Tom OBedlam
Fools remarks
Complicate our responses to the play and increase its emotional power
Comedic techniques employed
Double-plot
Use of a jester to comment on the action
Use of disguise
Progression of action from the royal court to the country and back to court
Juxtaposition of youth and old age
King Lear on You Tube
To know the plot, watch on You Tube Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's King Lear summary
Also watch the Video Study Guides from enotes on King Lear
Macbeth (1606)
Last of the tragedies; style is completely formed
Source: Holinsheds Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland; George Buchanans Latin
history of Scotland; Reginald Scotts Discovery of Witchcraft; King James Is Daemonologie
Thomas Middleton is believed to have adapted and abridged the original play written by
Shakespeare
Performed before James I, who was believed to have been a descendent of Banquo; the play
shows Shakespeares close relationship with the king
The Plot
Scotland is stormed by rebellion, which is effectively resisted by the generals Macbeth and
Banquo.
On their way back to King Duncans court, the generals meet three witches who prophesy
that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland and that Banquos sons will
be kings.
Almost at once Macbeth learns that he has been proclaimed Thane of Cawdor, which makes
him believe in the witches prophecy.
King Duncan intends to visit Macbeths castle at Inverness and Lady Macbeth overrides her
husbands hesitation and makes him kill the King.
Suspicion falls on Duncans sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, who flee from Scotland.
Macbeth is now king but feels insecure.
Macbeth sends murderers to kill Banquo and his sons, but the sons escape.
Macbeth is weighed down by guilt and sleeplessness but the witches assure him that he will
not be defeated until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinain castle and that no man born of
woman can harm him.
Macduff, the powerful Thane of Fife, joins Malcolm in England against Macbeth, and Macbeth
slaughters Macduffs family.
A distraught Lady Macbeth walks and talks in her sleep, betraying the secret of Duncans
murder.
Malcolms soldiers cut branches from Birnam Wood to camouflage their attack.
Macbeth also gets word that Lady Macbeth is dead.
Macbeth is killed by Macduff who was not born but untimely ripped from his mothers
womb.
Malcolm is now king of Scotland.
Similarities with Hamlet
According to AC Bradley
Evil is followed by remorse
Action is not restricted to human agency
Fascination for the supernatural
Absence of the spectacle of extreme undeserved suffering
Absence of characters who horrify and repel
Sublimity
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Features of the Play

Compared to the other tragedies, action progresses at a fast pace, parallel to which is shown
the agony of a soul rushing towards its doom
In its language and action, the play is full of violence and storm
Darkness broods over this tragedy: The Witches, the vision of the dagger, the murder of
Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, all come in night-scenes
Darkness is relieved by occasional flashes of colour and light: lightning, flames beneath the
cauldron, glitter of the dagger, torches, taper, and above all the colour of blood
Depiction of Evil
Study of the human potential for evil
Presents in a secular context the Judeo-Christian concept of the Fall and humanitys loss of
Gods grace
The triumph of evil in a man of many good qualities, due to
Political ambition
Influence of Lady Macbeth
Instigation of supernatural powers (the witches)
Depiction of evil in the play has two aspects
Natural / human (Macbeth, the man himself)
Supernatural (the witches, omens)
The character of Macbeth
Three major attributes
Bravery
Ambition
Self-doubt
o
The weakness of self-doubt is what prevents Macbeth from becoming a villain
like Iago or Edmund
o
Before he kills Duncan, Macbeth is plagued by worry
o
After the murder, he is increasingly alone
o
Fluctuates between fits of feverish action (plots a series of murders) and
moments of terrible guilt (as when Banquos ghost appears) and pessimism (after his
wifes death)
o
Macbeth is revolted by himself and his self-awareness makes his descent even
more appalling
The character of Lady Macbeth
One of Shakespeares most frightening female characters
Stronger, ruthless and more ambitious than her husband
Relates power, ambition and violence to masculinity
Uses the female method of manipulation to achieve power
Lady Macbeth presents the weakness of humanity in the face of evil
Avoids mentioning the murder too explicitly
Cannot do the deed herself
Falls into an anguished madness and disrupted sleep
Commits suicide
The role of the three Witches
Supernatural beings called weird sisters
In 1.1, they appear in the thunder and lightning of the storm and say they will meet again to
encounter Macbeth
In 1.3, they boast of their evil deeds and greets Macbeth with titles he yet not possesses,
and assures Banquo that his descendants will be kings
Their prophecy sparks Macbeths ambition
Leads him to kill King Duncan and Banquo as well as others
In 3.5, the Witches appear with the more powerful spirit Hecate
The role of the three Witches
In 4.1, the Witches concoct a magical brew in a cauldron and meets Macbeth who wishes to
learn how to assure his safety now that he is a king
The Witches contribute greatly to the pervasive tone of mysterious evil
Offer an important theme of the play: psychology of evil
66

Represent the irrational and supernatural, which is terrifying because it is beyond human
control
Therefore, they are symbolic of the unpredictable force of human motivation & of moral
disruption
Macbeth on You Tube
Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's Macbeth summary is the best introductory summary
Also watch the Video Study Guides from enotes on Macbeth
Shakespeares Roman Plays
Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus
No significant plays were written on Roman history before the time of Shakespeare
All are tragedies; hence placed along with the tragedies in the First Folio
Based on Thomas Norths English translation (1579) from Amyots French translation (1559)
of Plutarchs Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, written in the first century AD
Written at wide intervals
Tragedies of politics
Share some features with the English histories and tragedies
Titus Andronicus is set in mythical Rome, so not included in this group
Julius Caesar
Theme of moral ambiguity in a political setting and the resultant personal tragedy
Written in between the Histories and Great Tragedies (both of which this play resembles)
Like in a tragedy, the protagonist aspires heroism and fails because of his moral
shortcomings
Like in the Histories, discussion of political philosophy
o Avoidance of civil disorder and violence as a higher moral obligation than the
pursuit of power
The Plot
Julius Caesar defeats Pompey; represents a new spirit of prosperity to the Roman people
A group of patricians led by Cassius distrust him
Cassius instigates the respected republican Brutus to turn against Caesar
Ignoring warnings, Caesar goes to the Capitol and is assassinated
Brutus convinces the crowd about the reasons for the murder
Mark Antonys skilful rhetoric however turns the people against the conspirators
Civil War begins
Brutus and Cassius collect their forces
Antony, Octavius and Lepidus form a triumvirate
Brutuss wife Portia commit suicide
Brutus and Cassius have to kill themselves
The character of Brutus
Protagonist and tragic hero of the play
Ambivalent figure, both good and evil
An honourable man dedicated to the good of his country but also the destroyer of its
peace
Orchestrates the plays central action the murder of Caesar
Reflects the tension between Brutuss idealistic rejection of a dominating leader and
the reality that the Roman society requires the discipline that Caesar imposes
Julius Caesar on You Tube
For a quick summary, watch Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar summary on
You Tube
Antony and Cleopatra
Basic conflict of the play established in the opening scenes
Soldierly duty as opposed to sexual involvement
At first Antony refuses to acknowledge the call of duty represented by messages from Rome,
but when he learns about Pompeys revolt and of the death of his wife Fulvia, he leaves
Cleopatra with difficulty along with his loyal general Enobarbus
The Plot
The uneasy triumvirate of the scheming Octavius, the foolish Lepidus and the hedonistic
Antony is patched up, and even Pompey agrees to peace
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Antony marries Octavia, discovers that Octavius has ridiculed him by sending an army
against Pompey, and returns to Egypt and Cleopatra
Octavius is provoked, and attacks Egypt
Against Enobarbuss advice, Antony joins forces with Cleopatra to fight Octavius at sea
(Battle of Actium)
The Egyptian army retracts, leading Antony to defeat
A fearful Cleopatra hides, and sends Antony a message that she is dead
Defeated and despairing, Antony falls on his sword, and dies in Cleopatras arms
Octavius offers mercy to Cleopatra, but secretly intends to put her to shame
Cleopatra achieves a new dignity, dresses herself in her finest robes, and holds deadly asps
(snakes) to her body, thus depriving Octavius of his triumph
Even as love triumphs, the final victory of Rome is affirmed in Caesars closing speech
Coriolanus
Like the other Roman plays, individual versus history theme
Coriolanus is the title taken by Caius Martius, a famed Roman warrior, whose excessive pride
leads him dishonour and death.
He is politically unsophisticated, emotionally immature, a creation entirely of his mother
Volumnia on whom he is psychologically dependent
Romances
Cymbeline, Pericles, The Winters Tale, The Tempest
More serious and less sunny than the romantic comedies
Still concern with love intrigues and have a happy ending
But acknowledge evil and human suffering
Unlike in tragedies, characters get second chances, and can start afresh; there is no
beginning and end
Perfection of the art of tragic-comedy (simultaneously developed by Beaumont and Fletcher
in Philaster; tragicomedy is a term coined by Fletcher in the preface to his play The
Faithful Shepherdess)
Mellowed maturity; powerful creative touch
Style easy and subdued
Romances
Wandering and separation of family members, followed by redemption, forgiveness &
reconciliation
Sea and maritime activity
Magic, supernaturalism and other fantastic elements; hence unrealistic
Henry VIII, written at this time, shows the characteristics of the romances
Appearances of pagan figures similar to those in masques (Jupiter in Cymbeline, and Iris,
Ceres and Juno in The Tempest)
Pastoral coupled with aristocratic, most prominently in The Winters Tale
Romances
Influence of the genre of masque pioneered by Ben Jonson and the stage designer Inigo
Jones.
The term romance was first used for these plays by William Dowden
The Two Noble Kinsmen (the last romance written in collaboration with John Fletcher)
The Tempest (1611) in 1613 it was included in the wedding celebrations for the princess
Elizabeth & the elector Palatine
Cymbeline
Set in mythical Britain
Cymbeline listed as a tragedy in the First Folio
The plot of Cymbeline is partly from Boccaccios Decameron, and partly from Raphael
Holinsheds Chronicles
The play is introduced by the ghost of John Gower as the enactment of an ancient tale
The Plot
Imogen, the daughter of British king Cymbeline, marries Posthumus Leonatus, for which the
latter is banished.
In Rome the banished Posthumus makes a bet on Imogens virtue against Iachimos boasts
that he will seduce her.
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Imogen is indeed virtuous, but Iachimo hides in a trunk in her bedroom, observes a mole on
the breast of the sleeping Imogen, steals a bracelet and presents these as proof of her
infidelity.
Posthumus swears vengeance. Meanwhile Cymbelines second wife wants Posthumus dead,
so that her oafish son Cloten can marry Imogen.
Imogen, disguised as a boy Fidele, travels to Milford Haven, meets with the exiled general
Belarius and his two sons, who are actually Imogens lost brothers, one of whom kills Cloten.
All necessary reconciliations are achieved in the end.
Pericles
Probably written with George Wilkins & printed in a debased text in 1609
Subtitled The Prince of Tyre
Set in Greece
Through no fault of his own, Pericles is driven into exile and becomes separated from both
his wife Thaisa and daughter Marina
Finally reunited with them at the plays close
The major theme of the play is that we cannot control our destiny, and the acceptance of
suffering is humanitys only choice
The Winters Tale
The first half of the play centres on King Leontes of Sicilia
Like Othello, he is jealous of his wife Hermione (having spent time with King Polixenes
of Bohemia)
This leads to her apparent death
Hermione, however, is not dead, and poses as her own statue seeing which, Leontes repents
Resurrection is a common motif in the romances (people believed to be dead reappear)
This points to their similarity to the ancient festivals celebrating the rebirth of spring
each year
The second half of the play is a romantic comedy
The love between Perdita
o The lost daughter of Leontes and Hermione, whom the father had ordered to be
killed
and Florizel
o Son of Polixenes
This play is closely modelled on Robert Greenes Pandosto
The Tempest
A stunning theatrical entertainment of great beauty and emotional power
Offers a masque-like spectacle
The vision of virtues and vices is as complex as human nature itself
Very little actual plot
The lack of suspense is complicated with bold theatrical effects
Role of providence in human affairs (an idea emphasized throughout the romances)
The role of magic
Central aspect of the play
Represented variously throughout the play
Prospero's books
Represent his vulnerability in Milan, leading to Antonios usurpation
Also represents his power
o Gonzalo preserves his wand and books to protect his power
o Symbol of Prosperos power on the island
o Caliban tells Stephano that without his books, Prospero is nothing,a nd
encourages him to burn them
o When Prospero returns to Milan as duke, he must relinquish his magic
The good magic of Prospero and Ariel is in contrast with the black magic of Calibans mother
Sycorax
Three main spectacles created by magic
The tempest
The banquet
The wedding masque
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 Magic in the play is related to the theme of Reality vs Illusion

Reality vs Illusion
The shipwrecked sailors are unable to distinguish between their hallucinations and reality
The island represents a temporary illusion while Milan represents reality, to which the
characters must return
When Prospero leaves the island, he is also leaving behind the world of illusion
At the close of the play, the audience realizes that just as Prospero created an illusion on the
island, Shakespeare created the illusion of the play for them
Thus, the art of Prospero is analogous to the art of Shakespeare
The metaphor of theatre
Prosperos creative art of magic is a parallel for Shakespeares art of drama
Prospero is a representative of the playwright
His magic creates a drama on the island
Everyone else is a character in Prosperos drama
Prosperos bidding farewell to magic is analogous to Shakespeare's farewell to the stage
Indeed, The Tempest is probably the last play Shakespeare wrote single-handedly
However, later, he collaborated with Fletcher in The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII
The role of music
The most musical of Shakespeares plays along with As You Like It
Ever-pervasive presence of music, affecting and shaping the lives of the characters
A powerful symbol of Prosperos magic
Related to the Renaissance idea of divine harmony
Contrasts between the songs of Ariel and Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo
Incorporates dance numbers
Conspiracies
Antonio stole Prosperos dukedom
This crime is re-enacted on the island when
Antonio offers Sebastian a kingdom if he murders Alonso
Caliban recruits Stephano against Prospero
Both these conspiracies are defused by Prospero, and order is restored
Contrast between Art and nature
Prospero rules through his magical Art
Image of magician as philosopher
Prospero is Art; Caliban is nature (lack of self-restraint)
Prospero gains control over nature through Art
The theme of change
Most characters change by the end of the play
Even Prospero, the agent of transformation in others, is not immune to change
From a student of magic, he becomes a seeker of revenge and finally attains a
transcendence of it
Strikingly, the villain Antonio is not completely transfigured
He largely maintains an ambiguous silence
As in other plays, Shakespeare seems to acknowledge that evil once committed can
never be completely compensated for
Caliban and Ariel
Contrasts between these two supernatural characters is developed throughout the play
Ariel is airy, beautiful, pleasant and allied with good
Caliban is dank, ugly, sullen, inclined to evil
Ariel is a spiritual being; Caliban is utterly material (confined to the earth; greedy for
material possessions)
When Prospero arrives on the island, it is in a state of disorder Ariel is imprisoned; Caliban
is free
Towards the end of the play, order is restored when Caliban restores to bondage and Ariel is
to be set free
Ariel is Prosperos analogue (like him, isolated and creative)
Ariels (and Prosperos) good-intentional magic is against the black magic of Calibans
mother Sycorax
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Caliban
All evil elements in the play can be measured against Caliban
Calibans conspiracy against Prospero parallels Antonios
Calibans inability to learn no more than curses contrasts with Mirandas high moral
sensibility (both were educated together)
Calibans response to Mirandas beauty contrasts with that of Ferdinand
Caliban is the natural man, pointedly associated with the inhabitants of the New
World
o Shakespeare rejects the views of contemporaries like Montaigne (essay Of
Cannibals) that natural man is a healthy counter to the ills of civilization
o The Montaigne-connection is evident in the name Caliban, an anagram of
cannibal
Postcolonial Study of The Tempest
Beginning in about 1950 with the publication of the book Prospero and Caliban: The
Psychology of Colonization by French psychoanalyst Octave Mennoni, the play was viewed
through the lens of postcolonial theory.
Aim Csaire, Kamau Brathwaite and other postcolonial critics have written about this
Prospero as a colonizer and Caliban a colonized subject
CalibanOrientalist image of the native: bizarre in appearance, objectified and
dehumanized, and one with nature
The Tempest on You Tube
Watch the Video Study Guides from enotes on The Tempest
Important Scenes in the Tragedies
Nunnery Scene (Hamlet, 3.1)
Flower Scene (Hamlet, 4.5)
Gravediggers Scene (Hamlet, 5.1)
Porters Scene (Macbeth, 2.3)
Sleepwalking Scene (Macbeth, 5.1)
Temptation Scene (Othello, 3.3)
Handkerchief Scene (Othello, 3.4)
Willow Scene (Othello, 4.3)
Storm Scene (King Lear, 3.2)
Trial Scene (King Lear, 3.6)
Important Quotes from Hamlet
Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend
o

This above all: to thine own self be true

o

Act II, Scene II

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and
moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a
god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
o

Act I, Scene III

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

o

Act I, Scene III

Act II, Scene II

Brevity is the soul of wit

o

Act II, Scene II

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To be, or not to be: that is the question

o

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

o

Act III, Scene II

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
o

Act III, Scene II

I will speak daggers to her, but use none

o

Act III, Scene I

Act IV, Scene V

Theres a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

o

Act V, Scene II

Shakespeare in Performance
For those who are fascinated by The Globe Theatre and Shakespearean performances, there
is a video in You Tube, Shakespeare's Globe Mini-Doc
For dramatic performances from BBC, search in You Tube for Shakespeare BBC Collection
More excellent stage footages have been uploaded in You Tube by Royal Shakespeare
Company
Shakespeare in Animation
Watch all the BBC Shakespeare Animated Tales on You Tube, uploaded by
shakespeareanimated
Shakespeare, Seriously!
Harold Bloom on Shakespeare uploaded by Yale University
Stephen Greenblatt - Shakespeare's Freedom uploaded by WGBHForum
To Be Or Not To Be: Shakespeare - Professor Sallie DelVecchio uploaded by
middlesexccedu
Paul Cantor on Antony and Cleopatra uploaded by PCGatHarvard
Ralph Williams on Shakespeare videos uploaded by UMichLSA
And many many more lectures Just browse a bit!
Sonnets
154 Sonnets, mostly written during 1592-98
1st published by Thomas Thorpe in quarto form (1609)
Addressees
First 126 sonnets
o Addressed to W.H. (Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton or William Herbert,
Earl of Pembroke)
o Depicting a kind of spiritual love
Next 26 sonnets
o Addressed to Dark Lady (Mary Fitton or Emilia Lanier or Lucy Morgan)
o Depicting overtly erotic and physical love
Last two about Cupid
Sonnets: Themes
Love
a source of great joy as well as great worry for the speaker
Broken trust of friend
the young man and the dark lady fall in love with each other
Loss of love
young mans rejection of him and the dark ladys multiple sexual partners
Forgiveness
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 Another character: rival poet (probably George Chapman)

Sonnet sequences in the 16th c. were not confessional narratives
Anti-Petrarchan Elements
The sonnets depart from Petrarchan conventions in the following ways:
Subvert conventional gender roles
Not idealized, but a complex and troubled view of love
Makes fun of love, beauty and Petrarchan conventions
Speaks on themes other than love
Style
Three quatrains and a couplet
Rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg
Sonnet No 1
From fairest creatures we desire increase
The first of the Procreation Sonnets
Sonnets 1 to 17
All addressed to the young man
May be addressed to the earl of Southampton at the period when he was resisting
marriage
The poet persuades his friend to start a family so that his beauty can live on through his
children
Sonnet No 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
One of the most famous of all the sonnets
The summers day is found to be lacking in many respects
The poet holds that the young man is like the summers day at its best, without any flaws
The poet tries to immortalize the young man through his own poetry
The poet attempts to preserve the young mans beauty for all time
Sonnet No 30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
The opening lines introduce court imagery
The poet looks back in anguish at his past life
The poet enumerates the sorrows and losses in his life
Realizes in the concluding couplet that the memories of his friend offer comfort to the poet
from past sorrows
The title of Marcel Prousts novel Remembrance of Things Past is taken from this sonnet
Sonnet No 126
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Aberration in form (12 lines)
Consists of 6 rhyming couplets
Seems to anticipate the death of the fair youth
The famous expression sickle hour comes at the end
Time (hour) operates its sickle upon us (i.e., Time is destructive)
But the fair youth has tamed time and its sickle
Sonnet No 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
Mocks the conventional and excessive Petrarchan style
My mistress is not the most beautiful woman but she is no less beautiful than any woman
that is described with false comparisons
Sonnet No 153, 154
The two last sonnets
Focus on a mythical story involving Cupid, the god of love
Based on a poem in the Greek anthology attributed to Marcianus Scholasticus (5th cent. AD)
It was quite common in the age of Petrarch to take the themes for sonnets from Greek
mythology
Aberrations
Sonnet No 99 has 15 lines
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 Sonnet No 126 has 12 lines

On the Sonnets
Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia, or Wits Treasury praised the sugared sonnets of
Shakespeare
Wordsworth made a famous claim: With this key, Shakespeare unlocked his heart
Venus and Adonis (1593)
Non-dramatic erotic poem dedicated to the Earl of Southampton
Form: epyllion (19th c. word for classical poems on the subject of love, with mytholofical
allusions and digressions)
Goddess Venuss infatuation with the young hunter Adonis
Adonis resists her advances, and prefers to go hunting
The next morning she discovers his body, killed by a wild boar
Venus laments
The Rape of Lucrece (1594)
Complex work based on themes from Ovids Metamorphoses, presenting contrasting views
on the nature of love
Ancient Latin story of the rape of Lucretia by Tarquin, the son of the Roman king
Lucreces distress described at length, culminating in her suicide
Her husband and others take revenge upon Tarquin and drive him and his father from Rome
Long Poems of Doubtful Authorship
The Phoenix and the Turtle
Allegorical poem in iambic tetrameter on the mystical nature of love
The poem describes the funeral of two lovers: the phoenix, the symbol of immortality,
and the turtledove, the symbol of fidelity
A spiritual union of the lovers defying rationality and commonsense is achieved
through death
A Lovers Complaint
Accompanied the sonnets in their first edition
In rhyme royal
A distraught young woman who has been betrayed by her lover delivers a monologue
to an aged shepherd
Authorship Controversy
Since the 1700s, many theorists have been voiced by anti-Stratfordians regarding whether
or not Shakespeare actually wrote his plays
Alternate Shakespeare Candidates
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Francis Bacon
Christopher Marlowe
Ben Jonson
Thomas Middleton
Sir Walter Raleigh
Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
Queen Elizabeth
Shakespeare: Early Criticism
Early criticism was directed primarily at questions of form
Shakespeare was criticized for mixing comedy and tragedy and failing to observe the
classical unities of time and place prescribed by the rules of classical drama
Dryden and Johnson were among the critics claiming that he had corrupted the
language with false wit, puns, and ambiguity
However, 20th-century criticism has tended to praise the use of such devices in later
plays as adding depth and resonance of meaning.
Shakespeare Criticism in the 17th and 18th centuries
Critics of the 17th and 18th centuries accused Shakespeare of a lack of artistic restraint while
praising him for a fecund imagination
Samuel Johnson defended Shakespeare on the question of classical rules
74

On the issue of unity of time and place he argued that no one considers the stage play
to be real life anyway
Johnson inaugurated the criticism of Shakespeare's characters that reached its
culmination in the late 19th century with the work of A. C. Bradley.
Shakespeare Criticism in Germany
The German critics Gotthold Lessing and Augustus Wilhelm von Schlegel saw Shakespeare as
a romantic, different in type from the classical poets, but on equal footing.
Schlegel first elucidated the structural unity of Shakespeare's plays, a concept of unity that
is developed much more completely by the English poet and critic Samuel Coleridge.
While Schlegel and Coleridge were establishing Shakespeare's plays as organic unities, such
19th century critics as the German Georg Gervinus and the Irishman Edward Dowden were
trying to see moral tendencies in the plays
19th century Shakespeare Criticism
The 19th century English critic William Hazlitt, who continued the development of character
analysis begun by Johnson, considered each Shakespearean character to be unique, but
found a unity through analogy and gradation of characterization
C. Bradley suggested that the plays had unifying imagistic atmospheres, an idea that was
further developed in the 20th cent.
20th century Shakespeare Criticism
20th century criticism abandoned both the study of character as independent personality and
the assumption that moral considerations can be separated from their dramatic and
aesthetic context
The plays were increasingly viewed in terms of the unity of image, metaphor, and tone
Caroline Spurgeon began the careful classification of Shakespeare's imagery
Other important trends in 20th-century criticism included the Freudian approach, such as
Ernest Jones's Oedipal interpretation of Hamlet; the study of Shakespeare in terms of the
Elizabethan world view and Elizabethan stage conventions; and the study of the plays in
mythic terms.
Shakespeare Industry
The term denotes a complex of different types of Shakespeares works, their theatrical,
cinematographic and TV stagings, and also the commercial exploitation of the playwrights
image and those of the characters that he invented
Also includes the so-called intellectual tourism through the places where the playwright lived
and created his masterpieces, where his famous characters lived their lives
As a socio-economic phenomenon, began as far back as in the 18 th century
Shakespeare Industry
Also relates to those authors, music composers, filmmakers from across Europe and the rest
of the world who were influenced by Shakespeare
Includes numerous portraits, paintings, engravings, operas, documents, books, graphic
images, caricatures and every other product related to the Shakespeare cult
Even Powerpoint presentations!

Chapter 8
Shakespeares Contemporaries
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Considered the embodiment of Castigliones Courtier
Born in Kent into an aristocratic family, King Philip II was his godfather
Lifelong friend and future biographer Fulke Greville
Left Oxford without taking a degree
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 Imbibed values of chivalric humanism

The Beginnings of His Career
In 1572 travelled abroad (France, Italy, Germany and other European regions) to learn
languages
Greville says wheresoever he went he was beloved and obeyed
Many books were dedicated to him in these countries as well as in England
o Including Spensers Shepheardes Calender
o Spenser sought Sidneys patronage
His promising start to a public career never fulfilled
As an Elizabethan Courtier
Fluctuating relations with the queen
Sidney was an ardent Protestant; the queen had cautious religious policy
Wrote to the Queen in 1579 advising her against marriage with Duke of Anjou
Had to leave court on this account and lived with his sister Mary Herbert, Countess of
Pembroke, for a while
Wrote Arcadia at this time
In 1585 returned to Elizabeths court
Death
Got a minor appointment in the Low Countries (northwestern Europe) and left England
In 1586 fought in the unimportant battle of Zutphen and wounded in the thigh
Died within a month before his 32nd birthday
As the funeral procession passed by, London crowds are said to have cried out Farewell, the
worthiest knight that lived
Hailed after his death as the ideal representative of an idealized Elizabethan age
Spenser mourned his death in the pastoral elegy Astrophel
Did you know?
After Sidneys death, his cousin Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, married Sidneys widow
Earl of Essex was the aging queens favourite, who rebelled against her and was executed
for treason, in 1601
Francis Bacon, Essexs former friend and beneficiary, was one of those who investigated the
charges against Essex leading to his execution
Sidneys Works
None of his works published in his life time
Experimented with classical metres in English
Remarked on his own works in a self-deprecating manner
Asked for the Arcadia to be burned
A folio of his work appeared in 1598
Astrophel and Stella (written in c.1582, printed 1591)
First of the famous English sonnet sequences
108 sonnets and 11 songs; addressed to Penelope Devereux, wife of Lord Rich
The preface by Thomas Nashe introduces it as a tragicomedy of love
Astrophel (Astrophil) is the star lover
Stella is his star
Here, Sidney nativized the Petrarchan model
Follows the generic conventions of Elizabethan love poetry
Themes
The power that love has to affect the life of an individual
Astrophels attempts to wrestle with his own anger and depression, with unrequited love
More about love poetry than about his love
o Love is mockingly reduced to a narrative strategy
Offers a critical account of conventional attitudes to love and love poetry in the late 16 th
century
Arcadia (bulk of it written in 1580)
First in the Renaissance imitations of Lylys Euphues
Written for his sister, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke
Title and setting taken from 16th century Italian poet Jacopo Sannazaros Arcadia
Prose romance interspersed with poems
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o Complicated tale of adventures in love and war

o Artificiality of treatment, typical of the pastoral tradition
Devised as a tragic comedy in 5 acts
Combines the pastoral, romance and epic (a patchwork technique theoretically discussed in
Apology)
The Plot
Story has a serious double plot and comic under plot
Theme: various workings of love on human characters
Can be an ennobling & educative passion
Can also bring shame
Overthrows reason & undermines heroic action
Characters
o Duke Basilius, his wife Gynecia
o Two daughters Philoclea and Pamela
Richardson adopted this name for his Pamela
o Their lovers Pyrocles and Musidorus respectively
The trial scene at the end raises questions of justice and equity
Revision of Arcadia
Later, Sidney undertook a revision of Arcadia, giving rise to Old Arcadia and New Arcadia
New Arcadia
o Radical revision, incomplete
o Longer than Old Arcadia
o Includes new subsidiary stories, including that of the blind Paphlagonian King (source
of the Gloucester subplot in King Lear)
o The theme of moral earnestness is deepened especially in the case of Pamela
A Minor Work
The Lady of May
o One-act pastoral play
o A Christian masque composed in 1578, for Elizabeth
Apologie for Poetrie or The Defence of Poesie
Written 1579-80, pub. in 1595 in 2 editions (hence the two titles)
Epitome of Renaissance poetics
Formal inauguration of literary theory in England
Reflects continental as well as Greek and Roman criticism
Passages based on Italian neo-Aristotelians Minturno, Scaliger, Castelvetro
High, enthusiastic style
Apologie for Poetrie: Plan
5 divisions
The antiquity and universality of poetry
Kinds of poetry; their usefulness
Discussion of the current objections against poetry; Sidneys reply
Discussion of the state of contemporary English poetry & drama; objection to tragi-comedy &
violation of the unities
Remarks on Style, Diction, Versification
Apologie for Poetrie: Synopsis
Introduction
o Sidney justifies his own praise of poetry.
Antiquity of Poetry
o Poetry preceded other branches of learning; poetry elucidates other learning.
o Early philosophers / historians appeared as poets.
o Platos works highly poetic.
Universality of Poetry
o Poetry flourishes in all countries in all ages.
o Poetry softens the hard hearts of Turks & Tartars; sharpens the Red Indians wit.
Continuity of Poetry
o Poetry is long lasting; begins first & lasts longest
Wide Respectability of Poetry
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GrecoRomans honoured poets as seers/ creators

Poet is a prophet
Oracles at Delphos, Sibyls prophecies, Biblical Psalms are in verse
Definition of Poetry
o Poetry is an art of imitation
o Poetry is speaking picture and its end is to teach and delight
English Renaissance Criticism
Influences
o Rise of the vernacular
End of a universal culture based on Latin
Importance given to the power of speech
o Humanism
Focus on a secular interpretation of literature
o Translation of the Bible
Simple ordinary language of Christ
o Protestantism
The role of the reader in understanding a work
English Renaissance Criticism (Last quarter of 16th c.)
Efforts to explain, discuss, expound the nature of poetry
Prolific literary output
o Tottels Miscellany (1557)
o England had a nest of singing birds
Rediscovery of Aristotles Poetics
Puritans (like Stephen Gosson) challenged nature, value & function of poetry
Apologies were written by Sidney, Lodge, etc.
Gossons Schoole of Abuse (1579)
Dedicated to Sidney
Poets: pipers, jesters and caterpillars of the Commonwealth
Music is debilitating and undermines virtue.
Drama incites popular debauchery
Plato had banished poets from the Commonwealth
Drama denounced
o For pagan origins
o Males playing female roles is against nature
Tragedy (cruelty, bloodshed, murder) & Comedy (vulgar, degrading love) weaken moral fibre
George Puttenham (1529-1590)
Probably the author of The Art of English Poesie (1589)
A critical discussion of poetry mainly form the formal aspect
Three books
o Book 1 about Poets and Poetry
o Book 2 about Proportion
o Book 3 about Ornament
Arguments same as those in Sidneys Apology
The Art of English Poesie
Book 1
o Definition of poetry, claim for ambiguity and dignity for poetry; educative as well as
corrupting powers of fiction
o Gives major division of fiction (epic tragedy, comedy etc) and minor division of
poems(of praise, lamentation, marriage etc)
Book 2
o Concerns with metrics, pattern poems (such as those written by George Herbert)
anagrams and devices
Book 3
o Concerns with figures of speech
o Provides English equivalents for technical Greek terms
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618)
Courtier, adventurer, poet and historian
o
o

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 Also a pirate / privateer along with Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Humphrey Gilbert
and Sir Richard Grenville
By 1582, Queens favourite
Established in 1584 the first English colony, Virginia, in the New World
In 1594, led an expedition in search of El Dorado, the City of Gold in South America
Disliked by peers for pride and extravagance
Interested in sceptical philosophy, chemistry and mathematics
Suspected of atheistic connections & of conspiring against James I
Executed at Westminster in 1618
Raleighs Works
Very little verse published in his lifetime
Surviving works are of dubious authorship
His Ocean to Cynthia is dedicated to Elizabeth I
Wrote a reply to Marlowes The Passionate Shepherd to His Love titled The Nymphs Reply
to the Shepherd
The poem What is Our Life shows a medieval contempt of the world as against the spirit
of Renaissance humanism
The unfinished The History of the World (1614) was written during imprisonment
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Born in London, received a humanist education
Blended chivalric humanism with Christian ideals
Schoolmates include Kyd and Lodge
Graduated BA and MA from Cambridge, where he began his friendship with Gabriel Harvey
In 1578, became secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester
In 1579, entered Leicesters service, where he became acquainted with Philip Sidney and
poet Edward Dyer
In the same year, he married Maccabeus Chylde
Spenser in Ireland
In 1580, became secretary to Lord Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland
From then on, Spenser lived in Ireland as an English planter
Irish uprisings against English rule was a regular occurrence at this time
For a while he lived in the ruined castle of Kilcolman in Cork
Spenser driven away and the Kilcolman Castle was burned during Tyrones rebellion in 1598
Spensers infant child and first wife believed to have died at this time
The Shepheardes Calender (1579)
Dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney
Published anonymously under the pseudonym Immerito (meaning unworthy)
An accompanying commentary on the poems by E.K. (probably Edward Kirke)
A group of 12 eclogues one for each month, sung by various shepherds
Expressing regret for a lost golden age
Allegory symbolizing the state of humanity
Uses diverse forms and meters
Models: Theocrituss Idylls, Virgils Eclogues, Renaissance poets Marot (French) and Mantuan
(Italian)
Spenser in the 1590s
In 1591, a volume of 9 poems entitled Complaints appeared. Some of the poems are:
o The Ruines of Time, The Tears of the Muses
o The allegorical poem Prosopopoeia, or Mother Hubberds Tale; it antagonized Lord
Burghley, the principal secretary of Elizabeth
In the same year, Daphnaida was published
o An elegy on the death of Lady Howard
o An imitation of Chaucers The Book of the Duchess
In 1594, he courted and married Elizabeth Boyle
In 1595, Amoretti and Epithalamion published together
Spenser in the 1590s
In 1595, Colin Clouts Come Home Again published
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o An autobiographical, pastoral allegory

o Describes Spensers first London journey and the vices inherent in court life
o Dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh
o Colin Clout, a rustic character created by John Skelton, appears in The Shepheardes
Calender and Book VI of the Faerie Queene
o Colin Clout represents Spenser himself
In 1596, Four Hymns
o Platonic reflections on human and divine love
In 1596, Prothalamion
Publication of the Faerie Queene
In 1590, first three books of the Faerie Queene
o Obtained a pension from the Queen for this
Became the first unofficial poet laureate
o Before him, John Gower and John Skelton were important court poets; and John Dryden
became the first poet to get the title Poet Laureate in 1668.
In 1596, 6 books of the Faerie Queene published together
o Mutabilitie Canto, the seventh book (fragment) appeared in the folio in 1609
A View of the Present State of Ireland (1598)
A prose dialogue between two Englishmen, Eudoxus and Irenius
o Irenius is an expert on Irish affairs and condemns the Irish for their nomadic herding
practices, religion, social and familial organization, poetry, hair and dress, and so on
Not published until 1633
Theme of reformation of Ireland
Expresses a colonial zeal for the destruction of Irish culture
Proposed brutal strategies by which English rule could be imposed on Ireland
o Impose martial law
o Bring about a famine and starve the Irish
Death and Fame
Died at the age of 46, at Westminster on 13 January, 1599
o for lack of bread, according to Ben Jonson
o Other poets said to have thrown poems and pens into his grave at the time of burial
Collected works first published in 1611
Critics have pointed out that Spenser used poetry for political purposes
o His pastoral poetry has underlying political themes
o Advocated imperialist themes
Spenser on You Tube
Watch a short documentary Edmund Spenser-Short Documentary featuring Dr. Andrew King
uploaded by Caroline Hopkins
For a life, Edmund Spenser: A Life uploaded by Oxford Academic is good
Critics on Spenser
Sidney and Ben Jonson complained against his archaisms
o Jonson said he writ no language
Milton
o Appreciated the sage and serious Spenser
o Found him a better teacher than Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus
th
18 century
o A period of Spenser scholarship
o Pictorial quality of Spensers works admired
o The Faerie Queene admired for its imaginative quality
o Found its allegory distasteful
o Thomas Wartons Observations on the Faerie Queene
The Romantics
o Spenser was the poets poet
o Admired as the poet of dreams, beauty and sensuous appeal
o Hazlitt and others disliked the allegorical form ?
o Wordsworths The White Doe of Rylstone shows his admiration for Book I of the
Faerie Queene
80

In Book III of The Prelude, Wordsworth describes as having read at Cambridge Sweet
Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven / With the moons beauty and the moons soft
pace
W.B. Yeats
o Liked the charmed sleep of Spensers poetry
o Found his morality official and impersonal; called him the first salaried moralist
T.S. Eliot
o In his Essays (1932), Eliot conceived of the Faerie Queene as a poetic curio, and
doubted that anyone other than scholars had read the book with delight
The Faerie Queene
Long, dense allegory in epic form of Christian values tied to Arthurian legends
o Spenser calls it a dark conceit
Introductory letter to Sir Walter Raleigh
Initially intended as a Courtesy Book, guide to manners popular in the 15 th century
o Like Castigliones The Courtier
o Spensers proclaimed aim in the prefatory letter to Walter Raleigh is to fashion a
gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline
The Plan of the Book
Spenser outlines a plan for 24 books
o 12 books, each based on a knight exemplifying private virtues
o 12 books based on King Arthur displaying public virtues
o Aristotle is the source of these virtues; Aquinas also an influence
o Arthur stands for Magnificence
o Gloriana / Faerie Queene stands for Glory
o Mutabilitie cantos represent constancy
Only 6 out of the first 12 completed
First major poem to be written in Spenserian stanza
The Six Books
Bk I: Redcrosse Knight (Holiness)
o Also represents Anglican Church, St George, England and Sir Philip Sidney
Bk II: Guyon (Temperance)
Bk III: Britomart (Chastity)
Bk IV: Triamond & Cambell (Friendship)
Bk V: Artegall (Justice)
Bk VI: Calidore (Courtesy)
The Faerie Queene: Features
Celebrates and memorializes Tudor dynasty
o Like Virgil glorifies Augustus Caesars Rome in his Aeneid
o Connects Tudor lineage to King Arthur
Allegorical and allusive
Embodies the eternal conflict of good and evil
Influences
o Ludovico Ariostos Orlando Furioso
o Torquato Tassos Jerusalem Delivered
Amoretti (1595)
Sonnet sequence on his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle over a period of two years
o Remarkable among other sonnet sequences for its chronological narration
89 sonnets, followed by 4 short lyrics (called Anacreontics) and Epithalamion
Amoretti means little loves
Follow Petrarchan conventions to a large extent
Epithalamion (1595)
Epithalamium (Greek)
o Song in honour of a newly wed couple
o First written by Sappho
o Form popular among classical Latin and Italian Renaissance poets
Celebrates Spensers marriage with Elizabeth Boyle
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Invocation to the muses before dawn, awakening of the bride, progress to church, wedding
ceremony, onset of night, final prayer in the bridal chamber for fruitful progeny
Refrain: The woods shall to me answer and my Eccho ring
Prothalamion (1596)
Word invented by Spenser, meaning spousal verse
To celebrate the double-betrothal of Katherine and Elizabeth Somerset, daughters of the Earl
of Worcester
Ten stanzas modelled on Italian canzoni (singular canzone; a ballad-like lyric)
A discontented courtier describes sights along the Thames, especially of two beautiful swans
(Katherine and Elizabeth)
The betrothal takes place at Essex House and the Earl of Essex is complimented for his
valiant fighting at Cadiz during the attack on the Spanish Armada
Refrain: Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song
Spensers technical innovations
Spenserian Stanza
o Variation of ottava rima
o Eight lines of iambic pentameter followed by an alexandrine (iambic hexameter)
o Rhyme scheme: ababbcbcc
o Used by Romantic poets
o Byron in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage
o Shelleys Adonais
Spensers technical innovations
Spenserian Sonnet
o Variation of the English sonnet
o Interlocked quatrains
o Rhyme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee
o [English sonnet rhymes abab cdcd efef gg]
Elizabethan Playwrights on You Tube
A useful introduction is Unit 10; Section 39 The Plays and Playwrights uploaded by SSC
Digital Video Productions
University Wits
Prominent in the 1580s
Transformed the didactic interludes and shapeless chronicle histories into real plays
Attended either of the two universities Oxford or Cambridge
Thomas Kyd did not attend any university, but wrote in the style of the Wits
Term first used by Saintsbury
The Oxford School
John Lyly, George Peele, Thomas Lodge
[Thomas Middleton sometimes included]
The Cambridge School
Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Christopher Marlowe
Common Features
Secular intellectuals
Received Humanistic education at the universities
Created complex commercial drama
Used rhetorical language
Occasionally they wrote together; collaborated; had shared enemies and friends
Resented accusations of excessive dependence on one another
Condemned those who were not university-educated
o Such as Ben Jonson and Shakespeare
Their high elitist ambitions found no practical fulfillment in Elizabethan England
Heroic themes (as in Tamburlaine)
Heroic treatment
o Splendid descriptions
o Long swelling speeches
o Magnificent epithets leading to abuse and bombast
Violent incidents, emotions
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Tragedy
o Lack of humour except in Lylys comedies
Campaspe, Endimion, The Woman in the Moon
Protagonists are unconventional non-conformists
o So were the playwrights themselves
o Examples: Tamburlaine, Jack Wilton
Effort to describe the world in terms of individual perception
o Characters were highly individualized and subjective
o This was a Renaissance trait
o This was against the social perspectives in Morality Plays and Estates Satires
John Lyly (1554-1606)
First major prose stylist in English
Powerful in terms of social contact
Had a brilliant career such as that the likes of Greene could only hope for.
Court allegories, witty
Drew themes from classical mythology
Popularity waned with the rise of Marlowe, Kyd and Shakespeare
Died a poor and bitter man
Major Works
Euphues: Anatomy of Wit (1578)
o Romantic intrigue told in letters
o Interspersed with discussions on love, religion, etc
o Plot borrowed from Boccaccio
o Euphues comes from a Greek word meaning well-bred man
o Got the name probably from Aschams The Schoolmaster
o Enormously popular; provoked numerous imitations
Sequel: Euphues & His England (1580)
Euphuism: Features
Formal, elaborate, stylized prose
Sententious (full of moral maxims)
Syntactical balance and antithesis
Patterns of alliteration, assonance
Rhetorical questions
Long similes, learned allusions
Literary responses
o Charles Kingsley defended this style in Westward Ho!
o Walter Scott satirized it in the character Sir Piercie Shafton in The Monastery
Comedies of Lyly
Lyly devoted himself to writing comedies after 1580
Witty dialogues
Skillfully constructed plots
Campaspe (perf. 1583-84)
Sapho and Phao (perf. 1583-84)
Gallathea (perf. 1585-88)
Endimion (perf. 1588)
o His masterpiece
o Influenced Shakespeare
Comedies of Lyly
Midas (perf. 1589)
Loves Metamorphosis (perf. 1590)
Mother Bombie (perf. 1590)
o The only play that represents a modern theme rather than mythological stories
The Woman in the Moon (perf. 1595)
o The only play he wrote in blank verse rather than euphuistic prose
o All except this play were performed by the acting-troupe called Children of Pauls
George Peele (1556-96)
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 Experimented with many types of drama

Predilection for violence and bloodshed
The Arraignment of Paris (c.1584, mythological pastoral comedy)
The Battle of Alcazar (c.1589, Marlovian historical tragedy)
Edward I (c.1593, chronicle play)
David and Fair Bethsabe (c.1594, a Biblical tragedy)
The Old Wives Tale (c.1595, masterpiece; satire on the popular drama of the day)
Sonnet, A Farewell to Arms addressed to Queen Elizabeth
Thomas Kyd (1558-94)
Son of a scrivener (scribe)
Short dramatic career
Must have been in the service of Lord Strange, the patron of Lord Stranges Men
Imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of spreading heresy and atheism in 1593
o Probably due to his sharing lodging with Marlowe
Last years of his life spent in abject poverty
Died soon after release from prison
Career
Believed to be the author of The Spanish Tragedy due to reference in Thomas Heywoods
Apology for Actors (1612)
Also believed to have written a lost original of Hamlet (Ur-Hamlet)
Wrote a Senecan tragedy, Cornelia (1594; trans. From French)
Probably collaborated in Arden of Feversham, one of the first domestic tragedies
The Spanish Tragedy Or, Hieronimo is Mad Again (perf. c.1589)
Produced at about the same period as Tamburlaine and of equal merit
Along with Tamburlaine, the first success on Londons public stage
First English Revenge Tragedy; romantic melodrama
Intense personal passions; madness as metaphor
Did not conform to Senecas austere style; instead, the play retained the loose style of
Elizabethan tragedy
Hieronimo is a marshal of Spain
Spain defeats Portugal in 1580
Hieronimos son Horatio and his nephew Lorenzo capture Balthazar, son of the Viceroy of
Portugal
Balthazar courts Bel-Imperia, Lorenzos sister, with Lorenzos consent
Bel-Imperia, however, loves Horatio
Lorenzo and Balthazar kill Horatio and hang his body
Hieronimo sees his sons body and goes mad with grief
With Bel-Imperia, he plots against the murderers
They enact a play in court
The murderers are killed in the play-within-the-play
Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia then take their own lives
The Spanish Tragedy on You Tube
Watch Beyond the Bard: The Spanish Tragedy uploaded by Cassius614
The Success of The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy was a huge success
o Written at a time (late 1580s) when Spain was regarded Englands most hated enemy
o Elizabethan audience may have therefore been pleased at the denouement of the
tragedy, where the royal lines of both Spain and Portugal are wiped out in an orgy of
violence
Thomas Lodge (1558-1625)
Son of Sir Thomas Lodge, Lord Mayor of London, who was imprisoned for debt
Sailed on expeditions to the Canaries and South America
Practised medicine
Prose was euphuistic
Responded to Stephen Gossons Schoole of Abuse (1579) with Defence of Poetry, Music and
Stage Plays (1580)
84

An Alarm Against the Usurers (1584), prose work

Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589), an Ovidian erotic epyllion, influenced Shakespeares Venus
and Adonis
The Devil Conjured (1596) is a defence of ascetic life in the form of a dialogue
Wits Misery (1596) is a sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins
Other Major Works
Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie (1590)
o Most successful prose romance
o Source for As You Like It
Phillis (1593): sonnet cycle
A Fig for Monus (1595)
o Introduced classical satire and verse epistle (such as those of Horace and Juvenal)
into English for the first time
Major romance: A Margarite of America (1596)
Lodges Plays
Two plays
o The Wounds of Civil Wars (printed 1594, based on Roman history; indirectly influenced
by Marlovian / Tamburlainian hyperbole)
o A Looking Glass for London and England (printed 1594, in collaboration with Greene; a
Biblical morality play)
Believed to have collaborated with Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part II
Robert Greene (1558-1592)
Got degrees from Oxford as well as Cambridge
Left his wife for a life of pleasure in the London underworld
o To make money for which he wrote prolifically
Details of life got from his autobiographical pamphlets which offer descriptions of low life in
London
Got into a feud of pamphlets with Gabriel Harvey (writer, scholar and Spensers friend)
Wrote prose works imitative of Euphues and Arcadia
o Including Pandosto (1588), a source for The Winters Tale
o Menaphon, Mamillia
A Groatsworth of Wit (1592)an upstart crow beautified with our feathersthe only
Shakescene in a country
o Protagonist is Roberto, Greenes alter-ego
Turned to play-writing towards the end of his career
Strong personal element and a confessional tone
Imitated Marlovian style
Alphonsus, King of Aragon (c.1587)
Friar Bacon and Friar Bongay (c.1589)
o First successful romantic comedy in English
James Fourth (a forerunner of As You Like It and A Midsummer Nights Dream for its use of
romance & fairy lore)
Greene describes himself as admired by the uneducated and low-class actors, and wished to
write only because he needed the money to survive (unlike Lyly, who wrote for the court)
Wrote an adaptation of Ariostos Orlando Furioso (1594)
Thomas Nashe (1567-c.1601)

Involved in the Marprelate controversy, replying to the unidentified Puritan Martin

from the Anglican side

Friend of Greene; helped him fight Gabriel Harvey

Euphuistic prose; invented prose hybrids (combining various styles)

The Anatomie of Absurditie (1589; a bold survey of contemporary writing)

Preface to Greenes Menaphon

Major Works
Pierce Penniless (1592)
o A satire on the Seven Deadly Sins
o 1st distinctive work by Nashe
o Satirized Gabriel Harvey and his brothers
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Christs Tears Over Jerusalem (1593)

o During the Black Death, warns his fellowmen to reform
Collaborated with Ben Jonson in the satirical play The Isle of Dogs (1597), for which they
were persecuted
The Unfortunate Traveller or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594)
1st picaresque novel in English
Strong personalized narrative of adventure
Dedicatory epistle to the Earl of Southampton
The rogue-hero Jack Wiltons journey through Italy and Germany as page to Earl of Surrey
Encounters numerous atrocities until he is converted to a better life
Christopher Marlowe (1564-93)
Born in Canterbury as the son of a cobbler
Went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Age of Catholic versus Protestant political intrigue; Marlowe is believed to have been a spy
Violent and disreputable behaviour
Atheism (probably a member of Raleighs School of Night, a circle of free-thinkers)
Suspected to be homosexual
Died in a drunken brawl at Deptford, a couple of days after an order for his arrest was made
Some believe that William Shakespeare was his pseudonym
Shakespeares most important predecessor in drama
Perfected dramatic blank verse
Marlowes Works
All tragedies (written in 5 years)
Blank verse Mighty Line (Jonson)
o Energy, Splendour of diction, Sensuous richness, Variety of pace
Renaissance quest for power and beauty
Poetic vision, unity
No sense of plot except in Edward II
Simple characterization; lacks warm humanity
Critics have pointed out that style is the only greatness of Marlowes plays, not dramatic
spirit
Marlowes Works
The order of his works is not clear.
Tamburlaine the Great (2 parts, pub. anon.1590, story of Central Asian emperor Timur, the
lame
The Jew of Malta (performed c.1592)
Edward II (1594)
Doctor Faustus (1604)
The Tragedy of Dido (with Nashe; 1594)
The Massacre of Paris (historical)
Hero and Leander (unfinished poem)
Tamburlaine the Great (perf. c.1587)

The

Two parts
Central role played by Edward Alleyn
Marked the shift from the clumsy language (jigging veins) and loose plots of early Tudor
drama
Renaissance humanist ideal of tremendous human potential
Typical features of Elizabethan tragedy
o Grand and beautiful imagery
o Hyperbolic and rhetorical language
o Powerful characters with overwhelming passions
Plot
Tamburlaine is Scythian shepherd
Helps Cosroe overthrow his brother; then Tamburlaine ousts Cosroe as King of Persia
Conquers and exhibits Turkish emperor Bajazet in a cage; he and his wife Zabina kill
themselves by beating their heads against the bars of the cage
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 Spares life of Egyptian Soldan, whose daughter Zenocrate he loves

In Part II, Tamburlaines carriage is drawn to Babylon by kings
Zenocrate dies, so does Tamburlaine
The Jew of Malta (written c.1589)
A tragedy with comic elements
Prologue spoken by Machiavel, a Senecan ghost
Barabas called the first Machiavellian villain
Influenced Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice
Themes of racial tension, religious conflict, political intrigue
There were no Jews in England at this time (They had been banished)
Religious heterodoxy was the ground-reality of 16 th century England
The Plot
Barabas, successful Jewish merchant of Malta; hates Christians; longs for power over them
Turks demand tribute from Malta; the governor decides to extract money from the Jews
Barabass wealth taken by force; house becomes nunnery
With the help of the Turkish slave Ithamore, Barabas embarks on an orgy of destruction
o Kills his daughter Abigail and her Christian lover
o Poisons wells; destroys the nunnery
o Plans to destroy the Turks at a banquet by means of a trapdoor
Barabas is betrayed by the Maltese; falls into a cauldron under the same trapdoor; and dies
Doctor Faustus (1604)
Elements of the Morality play
o Good and Bad Angels (symbolizing battle over the spirit)
o Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Covetousness, Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, Sloth, Lechery
o the potential for salvation
o Comic interludes
Conflict between medieval centrality of God and Renaissance centrality of man
Other themes: sin and redemption, power as a corrupting influence
The Plot
Weary of scientific study, Faustus turns to magic
Makes a bargain with the Devil through Mephistophilis
o 24 years of life with Mephistophilis at his command, at the end of which the Devil may
take his soul
His guardian angel tries to prevent him, but Lucifer himself shows him the pleasures of the
Seven Deadly Sins
Faustus encounters the Pope and the cardinals, then summons Helen of Troy
An Old Man pleads with him that there is still hope for redemption, but Faustus has already
made his choice
At the climax, Faustus spends the last hour of his mortal life in terror, but he cannot be
saved
Doctor Faustus
Autobiographical elements
o Humble beginnings
o Rebelled against the strict rules of class
o Made money and fame
o Desired knowledge
o Accused of atheism
Marlovian Hero
Mostly played in his time by Edward Alleyn
Anti-heroes
Humble beginnings; rise to great wealth and power
Lust for power followed by tragedy (Pride goes before a fall)
Ambivalence: Violent, masculine, ruthless, yet winning sympathies
Inner conflicts
Renaissance spirit (power, beauty, knowledge)
Hubris (inordinate pride) Pride of intellect most dangerous temptation of the age
Monomania (single-minded pursuit of a goal)
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Marlowes Mighty Line

Mighty Line was a phrase attributed to Marlowe by Ben Jonson in his prefatory poem to
Shakespeares First Folio
Before Marlowe, blank verse had not been the accepted verse form for drama
Many earlier plays had used rhymed verse; some like Gorboduc, did use blank verse, but the
poetry in Gorboduc was stiff and formal
Marlowe was the first to free the drama from the stiff traditions and prove that blank verse
was an effective and expressive vehicle for Elizabethan drama.
Features of Mighty Line
Musical quality
Natural rhythm (avoided monotony)
o Used run-on lines for this purpose
Resonance and grandeur
Allusions to classical mythology
Splendour of diction
Energy and versatility
Marlowe on You Tube
A brief lecture on the man, Renaissance Era: Christopher Marlowe - A Passionate Shepherd
to His Love (Lecture)
The complete audio book Doctor Faustus is available from Greatest Audio Books in You
Tube
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
Worked as a bricklayer, like his stepfather
Served as a soldier in Flanders, Low Countries
Became an actor and playwright with the Lord Admirals Company in 1597
Imprisoned for writing the satirical play The Isle of Dogs (1597)
Killed a fellow actor in a duel; escaped execution with his wit
Wrote masques for private performances in King Jamess court
Quarrelled bitterly with Inigo Jones, his stage designer
Quarrelled with Marston and Dekker in Wars of the Theatres
Every Man in His Humour (perf. 1598) made him a celebrity
Was something of a literary dictator at the Mermaid Tavern
Buried in Westminster Abbey with the epitaph O rare Ben Jonson!
Jonson on You Tube
Listen to Jonsons thoughts on Shakespeare at Shakespeare: Ben Jonson uploaded by
TheKennedyCenter
Also watch David Bevington: The Complete Works of Ben Jonson uploaded by
WilliamSGilbert
Comedy of Humours
Technique of characterization
Comedy of Humours individual as marked by one characteristic distortion or eccentricity
based on one of the 4 humours (Blood, Phlegm, Choler or yellow bile, Melancholy or black
bile)
Sanguine sociable and pleasure-seeking
Phlegmatic relaxed and quiet
Choleric ambitious and leader-like
Melancholic introverted and thoughtful
Robert Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621) and other cult of melancholy writers were
writing books on humoral physiology during this period
Jonsons Works
Works are scholarly and imaginative
Like Donne, revolted against the artistic conventions of the age
Employed the humanist ideal of close imitation of the classics
Not only an antiquarian, also remarkably responsive to the social, political and artistic issues
of his age
Intimate and first hand awareness of lower-class life in London streets
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Timber, or Discoveries scholarly work

o Commonplace book a collection of conventional wisdom that forms the foundation
of Jonsons poetry & plays
Every Man in His Humour
Performed by the Lord Chamberlains Men in 1598, printed in 1601
o A comedy of intrigue indebted to Roman comedy
o The Prologue to the play
Attacks themes and conventions of contemporary drama
Explains his theory of Humours
o Shakespeare acted in it
o The character Bobadill is one of Jonsons greatest creations, a boastful cowardly
soldier
o Ironic tone, colloquial style
o Draws from a variety of Roman writers
The Plot
The merchant Kitelys brother Wellbred brings home his boisterous friends
Kitely suspects that the men have designs upon his young and pretty wife, Dame Kitely
Edward Knowell, who suffers from his fathers excessive concern for his moral welfare, woos
Kitelys sister Bridget
Captain Bobadill, a cowardly boastful soldier, is also present
Knowells servant Brainworm (who is also his fathers spy) complicates affairs with his
intrigue
The issues are resolved by Justice Clement
Knowell wins Bridgets hand
Other Comedies
Early Comedies
o Every Man Out of His Humour (1599)
o Cynthias Revels (1600)
o The Poetaster (1601)
o All full of vivacity and fun
Middle group of comedies
o Best work: satirical in tone, realistic in dialogue
o Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair
Later comedies
o Less powerful
o The Devil is an Ass (1616), The Staple of News (1625)
Volpone or the Fox (perf. c. 1605, pub. 1607)
Volpone, a rich Venetian feigns that he is dying in order to draw gifts from his would-be heirs.
His parasite servant Mosca (the fly) helps him
Three leading citizens of Venice are greedy to inherit the dying mans fortune and reveal
their corruption
o Voltore (the vulture), a lawyer, is ready to break the law
o Corbaccio (the crow) disinherits his own son
o Corvino (the raven) sends his virtuous wife Celia to Volpones bed
Satire on the customs and values of the rising merchant classes of Jacobean London
Captatores or legacy hunters had been depicted by Roman writers like Petronius (in
Satyricon), etc
Epicene or the Silent Woman (c.1609)

Morose, an egotistic old bachelor with a pathological aversion for noise, will disinherit
his nephew if he doesnt find him a silent woman.

Cutbeard, his barber, finds a soft-spoken and quiet woman, Epicene, who after
marriage becomes talkative and quarrelsome.

The house is invaded by noisy well-wishers.

Morose finally agrees to the proposal to get rid of Epicene and to restore his nephews
inheritance

It is finally revealedthat Epicene was a boy in disguise.

Dryden in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, offers a model analysis of this play

The Alchemist (1610)
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During the outbreak of the plague, Lovewit leaves London, and his house is in the care of his
servant Face
Face and his henchman Subtle use the house as a centre for their fraud
o Subtle poses as an alchemist who possesses the philosophers stone that can confer
health and youth
o Their victims are the greedy, voluptuous knight Sir Epicure Mammon, a tobacconist
Abel Drugger, a lawyers clerk Dapper, two hypocritical Puritans, Kastril and his sister
Dame Pliant
o Surly, a gambler sees through their imposture, and Lovewit returns without notice
o Lovewit marries Dame Pliant and Face is at peace with his master

90

Bartholomew Fair (1614)

One of his most adventurous and original plays
A fair is held annually on St Bartholomews Day on 24 August
Presents a gallery of vivid characters and their different stories
Jonson is observing their behaviour, rather than attempting to correct it
Major Characters
o Adam Overdo, a justice
o Bartholomew Cokes, the country squire, and Grace Wellborn, his suitor
o Cokess servant Waspe, who has a biting tongue
o The hypocritical Puritan Busy, whose mind is more fixed on food than faith
Tragedies
Sejanus His Fall (perf. 1603, printed 1605)
o A Roman tragedy performed by the Kings Men at the Globe, with Shakespeare &
Richard Burbage in the cast
Catiline His Conspiracy (perf. and printed 1611)
o Based on events in the history of the Roman republic
Based on classical models
Too laboured and mechanical to be considered great tragedies
Other Works
Masques
o The Masque of Blackness
o The Masque of Beauty
Anti-masques
o The Masque of the Queens
Lyrics
o Drink to me only with thine eyes
The works of Ben Jonson appear in Folio format in 1616
Francis Bacon (1572-1631)
Philosopher and essayist
Son of Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seal to Elizabeth I
Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge
Entered Grays Inn; practised law
Ambitious man
Enjoyed the patronage of Earl of Essex
Became MP in 1584
Investigated the case against his own patron, leading to Essexs execution in 1601
Bacons Political Career
Career bloomed during the reign of James I
Became Attorney General, Lord Keeper of the Seal and Lord Chancellor
Not popular among his peers
His rival Edward Coke successfully instigated a charge of corruption against him
Bacon was dismissed from office, debarred from Parliament, briefly imprisoned in the
Tower
Retired into private life, devoted subsequent life to writing
Died of pneumonia contracted while studying the use of snow in the preservation of meat
Bacon, the Scientist
Advocated Empiricism: sensory experience is the best source of knowledge
Supported Scientific Revolution of the late Renaissance (religion, superstition & fear replaced
by reason & knowledge)
Established inductive method of scientific enquiry (earlier Baconian method; later developed
into scientific method)
Other Works
1597 10 essays; 1612 38 essays; 1625 58 essays
Reflections and observations in the form of advice for living a successful life
Wide range of topics: government, architecture, human behaviour
Essays show acute intelligence and wit
Incorporates numerous quotations from earlier writers
91

92

Great Instauration
Instauratio Magna or Great Instauration (Great Renewal) was an idea propounded by Bacon
in The Advancement of Learning (1605, a tract on education) & Novum Organum (1620,The
New Instrument)
This was a comprehensive plan to reorganize the sciences and to restore man to that
mastery over nature that he was conceived to have lost by the Fall
Rejects the older Aristotelian structures of knowledge
Seeks to discover a new system of philosophic instruction based upon empirical perception
of nature
Francis Bacons Essays
Adopted the term essai from Montaigne (1580), who wrote essays on friendship, love,
death, and morality
While Montaigne wrote the informal essay, Bacon wrote the formal
Practical everyday philosophy
Detached, epigrammatic style that present finished ideas, rather than develop and explore
them
Later essays more expanded
Employs strategy of balance and opposition
Impersonal, objective; studies the world rather than the self
First writer to attend to the readers: wrote to inform young men of his class (rather than for
self-expression)
From Of Studies
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in
privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and
disposition of business... To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much
for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a
scholar Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them,
for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won
by observation
Other Works
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
De Sapientia Veterum (Latin, 1609)
o Translated as The Wisdom of the Ancients (1619)
Novum Organum (Latin, 1620)
The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh (1622)
Apophthegms New and Old (1624)
Works on law
Sylva Sylvarum, Or, A Natural History
o Posthumously published in 1627
The New Atlantis

Unfinished Utopian fiction

Written in about 1624; Published in Latin (Nova Atlantis) 1627; in English 1629

Accounts of the discovery by English sailors of an island called Bensalem in the Pacific
Ocean

Similar to Platos lost Atlantis

Introduces an ideal design for a college of the sciences

New Atlantis, illustration on the cover of an early edition

Salomons House

A fictional institution, also called the College of the Six Days Works, described in The
New Atlantis

College for the study of the entire physical creation

Publicly financed

Cooperative research

Proposal for a program of experiments

Bacon hoped King James I would establish such a college

Note that James wanted to be known as the British Solomon

Bacons proposal not carried out in his lifetime

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Eventually, the Royal Society in 1660 carried out some of his ideas
Baconian Heresy
The theory that Francis Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare
Advanced by Delia Bacon in her Philosophy of the Works of Shakespeare Unfolded (1857)
Theory supported by other scholars

94

John Donne (c.1572-1631)

Born into a Roman Catholic family
o Persecution, debarred him from taking a university degree and from a public career
Later conversion to Anglican religion
Sailed with Earl of Essex and Walter Raleigh on colonial missions
Secretly married Ann More, for which he was briefly imprisoned
Ever-growing family, poverty
Sir Robert Drury was his patron
Almost none of his poetry was published during his lifetime
Poems circulated privately in manuscript form
5 satires, (probably) 20 elegies (poems of love, not of mourning), epigraphs, verse letters,
Songs and Sonnets, Holy Sonnets
Early poetry
Satires
o conventional Elizabethan topics such as corruption, mediocre poets, pompous
courtiers
o Example: Satire III On Religion depicts the search for religious truth in an age of
religious conflict
Love elegies (In Greek, elegies were written on various themes: death, love, war. In Latin,
elegies were often erotic or mythological in nature)
o Erotic
o Avoided Petrarchan / Elizabethan conventions
o Explored the theme of love in a variety of moods
o Inconstancy of the mistress
o Employs features like blazon, metaphysical conceit, neoplatonism and allusion
o Example: Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed compares the fondling of the
mistress to the exploration of America
Major Poems
The Flea (This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed)
The Canonization (We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; / As well a well-wrought urn
becomes / The greatest ashes)
A Hymn to God the Father
The Relic
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me
end, where I begun)
Sun Rising
Lovers Alchemy
Conversion and After

In 1615, entered Anglican priesthood upon the insistence of James I

Illness, financial strain, death of wife and friends in later life

Early scepticism gives way to firm faith in the traditional teachings of the Bible

Known for moving sermons and religious poems

Holy Sonnets
Later poetry (19 Holy Sonnets or Divine Meditations)
o Published posthumously
o More sombre and pious tone
o Turns passionately to God in a very personal way, with a love forceful, yet fearful
o Themes: temptation, sin, divine grace, redemption
o Titles of Hemingways For Whom the Bell Tolls and Thomas Mertons No Man is an
Island taken from Donnes Meditation 17.
o Wrote works that challenged death (typical of all his work, which shows a healthy
appetite for life)
Sonnet 10: Death, Be Not Proud
Argumentative in tone
The speaker attempts to humble Death partly in an effort to dispel his own fears that he will
physically die but partly to assert his spiritual faith in a greater eternal life
Sonnet 14: Batter my Heart
A desperate and violent plea to God
95

To break the speakers heart (as if it is a pot repaired by a tinker) so that he can be made
new again,
To seize the speaker (as if he is a town usurped by the enemy) so that he can be free again,
and
To ravish the speaker (as if he is a woman betrothed to the enemy / Satan) so that he can be
made chaste again.
Other Works
Donne wrote the two Anniversary poems, An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the
Progress of the Soul (1612) for his patron Robert Drury
In 1610 and 1611 he wrote two anti-Catholic polemics: Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius his
Conclave
Donnes Style
Revolted against Elizabethan styleeasy, fluent, stock imagery, pastoral conventions
Aimed at reality of thought, vividness of expression
Forceful, vigorous poetry
Dramatic rhythm, short lines, like excited talk (Ben Jonson: Donne, for not keeping of
accent, deserves hanging)
Cynical and critical, witty
Move from classical forms to more personal poetry
Psychological; central concern feeling
Holy Sonnets (intensely personal, concern with death)
Donne on You Tube
Listen to the recitation of the poems of John Donne uploaded by SpokenVerse on You
Tube
Satire in the Sixteenth Century
Satire flourished throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (culminating in the golden
age of satire in the late 17th and early 18th cent.)
o beast fables, fabliaux, Chaucerian caricatures, John Skelton, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
Erasmus, Cervantes
Elizabethan satire
o Related to the rude and coarse satyr play
o Therefore contains more straight forward abuse than subtle irony
Pamphlets and rogue-tales of the 16th cent., especially those by the University Wits,
employed satiric character sketches
o Nashes Apologie of Pierce Pennylesse
th
16 Century Satires
Thomas Lodges A Fig for Momus (1595)
John Donnes satires (1590s)
Joseph Halls Virgidemiarum (1597)
John Marstons Scourge of Villany (1597)
Sir John Haringtons Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596)
o Did you know that Harington, in the book New Discourse, described a new toilet that
was installed at his house, and has hence been remembered as the inventor of the
flush toilet?
Epigrams of Ben Jonson, Sir John Davies and Sir John Harington
Bishops Ban

1599 Bishops Ban, prohibiting further publication of satires and destruction of

existing works

Middletons Microcynicon and Marstons Scourge of Villainy burnt

Resulted in War of the Theatres between Ben Jonson, and Marston and Dekker
(Shakespeares role disputed)
War of the Theatres

Marston attacked Jonson in Satiromastix, and later, in What You Will

Jonson in turn satirized Marston in Everyman Out of His Humour, and later, in The
Poetaster. In Cynthias Revels, Jonson attacks both Marston and Dekker.

Later Jonson and Marston made up and collaborated with Chapman on the play
Eastward Ho
Review of the Age
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Exuberant, adventurous spirit of the age reflected in dramatic poetry

Blank verse firmly established

Golden age of drama and steady decline after Shakespeare

Abundance of the lyric and the sonnet

Also narrative poetry

Not much religious, satirical, didactic poetry

Development of the essay

Development of Elizabethan novel (Arcadia, Euphues, New Atlantis, Unfortunate

Traveller)

Growing stature of national literature, literary criticism

Chapter 9
Jacobean Period
Socio-Political Conditions
The last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I died in 1603
Patriotic unity under Elizabeth lost
Elizabeth was an astute manager of men and the nation
Left no heirs
Did not act decisively against the Catholics who remained in England
The rise of landed gentry
They were sympathetic to the Puritans
They were at odds with the nobility who now had diminishing role in the government
James I (r. 1603-25)
Established Stuart dynasty in England
Only son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who was Henry VIIIs niece, and the arch-enemy of
Elizabeth I
James I was a Protestant brought up in the Scottish court, which followed the manners of the
French court
Had little interest in women; preferred male company
In 1589, married the Protestant Anne of Denmark
His visit to Denmark may have sparked an interest in witchcraft
Became obsessed with the threat posed by witches
Persecuted witches
Wrote Daemonologie (1597) which opposed witchcraft and was a source for
Shakespeares Macbeth
James I
Was James VI of Scotland before he became James I of England
Believed in Divine Right; took anti-Parliamentary decisions
Extravagant; had favourites like Buckingham
Took private decisions in foreign affairs
Oppressed Catholics and Puritans (the latter fled to America: known as Pilgrim Fathers)
In England, rising population; emergence of a wealthier middle class
Colonies were established in North America and the West Indies
Succeeded by Charles I
Gun Powder Plot (1605)
Also called Jesuit Treason
A plan made by Catholics against James I to blow up the House of Lords on 5 November 1605
Guy Fawkes Day (Bon Fire Night) is celebrated to condemn Fawkes who was to execute the
plot
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot,
I see no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
(Popular verse condemning the Gun Powder Plot)
Plan for a New Bible
After his accession in 1603, James I conducted the Hampton Court Conference
To address the concerns of the Puritans
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 Puritans led by John Reynolds wanted to reform the Church and a new translation of
the Bible
To replace the Bishops Bible, which itself became a base text for the Authorized
Version
The work on the Bible began in 1607
Three committees were established: at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge
47 leading scholars of the country were brought together
They were organized into 6 companies
The work was overseen by high officials like Lancelot Andrewes
Authorized Version of the Bible
What was produced was not a new version, but a revision which respected earlier versions,
especially that of Tyndale
Retained the archaic words and phrases
Another foundation for the Authorized Version was the Wycliff Bible of 1384
Closely conforms to the Hebrew and Greek Bibles
The work was published in 1611
Came to be called King James Bible
Tremendously influenced British and American writers and societies
Has been called the Miracle of English prose
Authorized Version on You Tube
The video The Story of The King James Bible uploaded by scourbybible offers a good
introduction to the KJB, the book that changed the Western world
17th century: in general
Period of political and religious strife
Puritans
Powerful leadership
Art, literature, theatre curbed
No national literature
Charles II
Fostered a taste for plain, unambiguous, exaggerated writing
Literature of the extremes (Paradise Lost, Restoration Comedy, Lockes writing,
Puritan attacks)
Elizabethans in the 17th century
Many writers of the Elizabethan period continued to write in this period:
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Most creative period of Shakespeare
Wrote Great Tragedies (except Hamlet), Dark Comedies, and Romances
These plays show the decadent spirit of the Jacobean age
Growing taste for spectacle and artificiality, improbable plots
Corruption in court, political intrigues
However, Shakespeare is generally associated with the Elizabethan sensibility
which is defined by
A sense of providential justice
The belief that evil will be ultimately overcome by moral harmony
Elizabethans in the 17th century
Ben Jonson (1709-1784)
The earliest neo-classical writer
Maintained that poets must provide a high ethical ideal for the society
Wrote masques for James Is court
Influenced the Cavalier poets, who came to be called the Sons of Ben or The Tribe
of Ben
After Shakespeares death, there was a decline in his art
Play The New Inn, or The Light Heart met with failure
Deeply affected by the failure, he wrote Ode to Himself (Come leave the
loathed stage, / And the more loathsome age...)
For more details on Jonson, see the chapter Shakespeares Contemporaries
Dryden on Jonson
As for Jonson, I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He
was a most severe judge of himself as well as others He was deeply conversant in the Ancients,
98

both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them He invades authors like a monarch, and
what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him If I would compare him with
Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit.
Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of
elaborate writing. I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.
From Of Dramatic Poesy: An Essay (1668)
Elizabethans in the 17th century
Francis Bacon (1572-1631)
Attained Jamess favour
Reached the heights of his career
His influence on the king antagonized the Parliament
Career ended in public disgrace
His scientific and philosophical writings influenced 17 th century scholars like Sir
Thomas Browne
Elizabethans in the 17th century
John Donne (c.1572-1631)
Revolted against Petrarchan conventions in poetry
Wrote Holy Sonnets (written 1609-10)
Portrays a physical manifestation of the struggle of the believer to find union
with God
This reflects Donnes own soul-searching which led him to convert from
Catholicism to Anglicanism, and become a priest in 1615
Influenced a group of 17th century poets who have come to be called The Metaphysical
Poets
Donnes influence on contemporaries
Donnes devotional verse influenced contemporaries
George Herbert (1593-1633)
Avoided the physical, confrontational elements of the Holy Sonnets
Unlike Donne, explored the musical qualities of language
More refined tone; speakers less egotistical
Richard Crashaw (1613-49)
More extreme, rhetorical conceits that assault the senses
Influenced by Baroque art
For a detailed discussion of Metaphysical poetry, see the chapter The Period of the Civil
War
Jacobean Drama
In early Jacobean period, Elizabethans like Shakespeare and Ben Jonson at their creative
height
Their plays reflected the period
Metropolitan life
Nature of political authority
Intellectual doubt
Show the spirit of decadence: improbable plots, taste for spectacle and artificiality
Jacobean Drama: Context
Drama was increasingly dark and ambiguous in this period, reflecting an era of social and
philosophical transition
The age was characterized by spiritual uncertainty springing in part from the spreading of
Machiavellian materialism
The scepticism engendered by the Scientific Revolution, esp in astronomy, challenged the
ideals of Christian humanism
This resulted in a growing tendency to hold more closely to sensory and practical
experience, to limit knowledge to a non-spiritual world of man and his relations with fellow
men
Decline of Drama
in the Jacobean Period
End of patronage
Only members of the royal family were allowed to patronize playwrights
Drama was brought under the direct subordination of the court
Playwrights were forced to be royalists
Popular character of theatres lost
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 Puritan ascendancy
Genres
Jacobeans depart from the Elizabethan sense of moral order through depictions of corruption
and violence that do not suggest divine retribution and the ultimate triumph of good
Genres in this period reflect a spiritual discord and materialism
Revenge Tragedy
City Comedy
Tragicomedy
Revenge Tragedy
Flourished also in the Caroline period
Shakespeares Hamlet (1600)
Middletons The Revengers Tragedy (1606, also attributed to Cyril Tourneur) and
Women Beware Women (1621)
Websters The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614)
Middleton and Rowleys The Changeling (1622)
John Fords Tis Pity Shes a Whore (1633)
Bacon on revenge
Jacobean revenge tragedy reflects Bacons views put forth in the essay Of Revenge
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more mans nature runs to, the more
ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the
revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office
City Comedy
Romantic comedy and humoural comedy give way to city comedies satirical comedies
based on London life
Primary plot elements: greed and sexual intrigue
Satirizes social habits like the popularity of romance literature (as in Fletchers The Knight of
the Burning Pestle, 1608)
Jonsons Bartholomew Fair (1614)
Middletons A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611-13)
Tragicomedy
A reaction to the excesses of Jacobean tragedy
Improbable, complicated plot; unnatural situations
Characters of high social class, or the nobility
Love as the central theme; pure love and gross love often being contrasted
Rapid action
Contrasts of deep villainy and exalted virtue
Penitent villain
Disguises; surprises; jealousy; intrigue
Tragicomedy: Examples
Shakespeares romances
Fletchers The Faithful Shepherdess (1607-08)
Beaumont & Fletchers Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding (1608-09)
Masques
Courtly entertainment performed by aristocratic amateurs involving music, dancing and
pageantry
Symbolic of the majesty of the king and aristocracy
Ben Jonsonpioneer
The Masque of Beauty and The Masque of Blackness are examples
Inigo Jonesstage designer
Anti-Masques
Introduced by Ben Jonson
Comic and disruptive
Performed by professional actors
Critical of royal policies
Masque of Queens
George Chapman (c.1560-1634)
More famous for translation of Homer (published together in a folio volume in 1616) than for
his plays
Of all books extant in all kinds, Homer is the first and best
Keats wrote the sonnet On First Looking Into Chapmans Homer
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 Five tragedies which show interest in Stoic philosophy

The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (first play,1595-6)
Influenced by commedia dellarte tradition of Italy
Heavy use of disguise
Hero is a swindler Cleanthes, a shepherd by birth who becomes a king
Cleanthes believed to be a parody of Tamburlaine
Other Works by Chapman
Historical tragedies based on recent French history:
Bussy DAmbois (1604)
Story of an old soldier (like Othello) betrayed in a world of courtly intrigue
The Revenge of Bussy DAmbois (c.1610)
The Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608)
Caesar and Pompey (pub. 1631)
All his tragic heroes are stoic, destroyed by their own passions
All Fools is one of his comedies
Influenced by Ben Jonson
Plot adapted from Terence
Eastward Ho! (1605)
Written by Chapman, Jonson & Marston, after the War of the Theatres ended
City comedy on bourgeois morality
Written in response to Westward Ho!, an earlier satire by Dekker and Webster
King James had Jonson and Marston arrested for its anti-Scottish comedy
A city goldsmiths two apprentices virtuous Golding and the rash and ambitious Quicksilver
Also, the goldsmiths two daughters one sweet and modest, the other foolish and worldly
Thomas Heywood (1573-1641)
Had a hand (or at least a main finger) in 220 plays, of which only 23 survive
Charles Lamb called him a sort of prose Shakespeare
Historical and patriotic themes
Glorified London citizenry and prentices
Two domestic tragedies
Best play A Woman Killed With Kindness
The English Traveller
Heywoods Works
A Woman Killed with Kindness (perf. 1603)
Happy marriage is broken when the wife is seduced by the husbands friend
Husband sends the wife away to live with servants
Sinning wife dies repentant and broken-hearted
The English Traveller (c.1604)
Hero chastely in love with a woman happily married to an old man; they will marry
only after the old mans death
Meanwhile, she is seduced by the heros friend, and when the sin is discovered, dies
repentant
The Four Prentices of London
Celebrates the heroic exploits of four prentices
Thomas Dekker (c.1572-c.1632)
Literary hack, pamphleteer and playwright
Little known about his life
Wrote chaotic comedies
Involved in about forty plays for Philip Henslowe, usually in collaboration
Most of his plays are lost
Some Works by Dekker
The Old Fortunatus (1599)
A morality play based on a German legend
Offered a gift by Fortune, chooses an inexhaustible purse rather than a wiser gift,
leading to his own death as well as of his two sons
Satiromastix (written in 1601, printed 1602)
Three tragedies
Lusts Dominion (written with John Day, Marston, and William Haughton, 1600)
The Witch of Edmonton (with Ford and Rowley, 1621)
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 The Virgin Martyr (with Massinger, 1620)

Some Works by Dekker
The Honest Whore (a famous play in two parts;
1st part by Middleton, 2nd part by Dekker, 1630)
Bellafront, a prostitute, redeems herself and is married by her seducer
She is pressed to resume her former life by her debauched husband and by the very
man who instigated her conversion
But she stands firm, watched over unknown to herself) by her father Orlando
Friscobaldo (very important character)
The Roaring Girl (written with Middleton)
A fanciful biography of Mary Frith, a notorious pickpocket of the London underworld
Westward Ho and Northward Ho (both with Webster)
Dekker and Jonson
Jonson considered him a hack writer
Jonson satirized Dekker
as Demetrius Fannius in Poetaster and
as Anaides in Cynthia's Revels
Dekker satirized Jonson
as an affected, hypocritical Horace in Satiromastix
The Shoemakers Holiday, or The Gentle Craft (1599)
Boisterous comedy of London life
A citizen comedy or city comedy
Set in London, portraying the everyday life of the middle classes.
Plot taken from Thomas Deloneys prose story of Simon Eyre, the patron saint of prentices
Main plot: Rowland Lacy who loves Rose, the daughter of the Lord Mayor of London,
disguises as a shoemaker
Famous character Simon Eyre, eccentric shoemaker who becomes lord mayor of London
John Marston (c. 1576-1634)
Began as a writer of violent and coarse verse satires
Later turned to drama; worked for theatre entrepreneur Philip Henslowe and his Admirals
Men
Extravagant language
Melodramatic tragedies of love and revenge
Cynical comedies which combine bitter exposure of human folly and ambition with
farce
Violent, melodramatic Senecan tragedies with exaggerated and excessive speeches
Twin plays: Antonio and Mellida and Antonios Revenge
Set in Italy, like many other Jacobean plays (Italy was seen as the land of
political intrigue and violence)
Both ridiculed by Jonson in The Poetaster
The Malcontent (pub. 1604)
Marstons most famous play
Dedicated to Ben Jonson
A deposed duke returns to his dukedom in disguise as Malevole, a discontented parasite
He vents his bitterness by cynically assisting his usurper
Ending is unexpectedly happy, when the usurper gives the kingdom back to the
Malcontent, who then contemptuously pardons everybody
Has a metatheatrical Induction, in which the plays actors and its onstage spectators
comment on the drama that is to follow
Other Works by Marston
Histriomastix (1599) regarded as his first play
The Scourge of Villanie, his satire was publicly burned in 1599, following the Bishops Ban
Jack Drums Entertainment (c. 1600), a romantic comedy
What You Will (1601), a comedy
The Dutch Courtezan (pub. 1605)
A satire on lust and hypocrisy
Marston and Jonson
In Histriomastix (1599), Marston satirized Jonsons pride through the character Chrisoganus
This sparked off the War of the Theatres
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 Jonson satirized Marston

as Clove in Every Man Out of His Humour
as Crispinus in Poetaster, and
as Hedon in Cynthia's Revels
Marston in turn satirized Jonson
as the complacent, arrogant critic Brabant Senior in Jack Drum's Entertainment and
as the envious, misanthropic playwright and satirist Lampatho Doria in What You Will
Cyril Tourneur (c.1575-1626)
His fame rests on two revenge tragedies
The Revengers Tragedy (c.1607, also attributed to Thomas Middleton)
Corrupting power of revenge; injured innocence turning monstrous
Echoes from Hamlet
The name of the famous avenger is Vendice
The Atheists Tragedy (1611, probably written before Revengers Tragedy)
Subtitled The Honest Man's Revenge
Highly melodramatic
Depicts the court governed by lechery and cruelty
Characters seem like symbols of vices
John Webster (c.1578-c.1638)
Details of life obscure
Major collaborations
Believed to have worked to varying degrees with William Rowley, Thomas Middleton,
John Fletcher, John Ford, and perhaps Philip Massinger
With Dekker: Two city comedies Westward Ho (1604) and Northward Ho (1605)
Known for two macabre revenge tragedies
The White Devil
The Duchess of Malfi
The White Devil (written 1609-1612)
Duke of Brachiano is urged by Machiavellian Flamineo to fall in love with Flamineos sister,
Vittoria Corombona, wife of Camilo
Vittoria urges Brachiano to kill her husband and his wife, Isabella
Famous trial scene
Later Vittoria and Brachiano are married, but are killed by Isabellas brother Francisco and
others
The Duchess of Malfi (pub. 1623, written c.1612)
The Duchess, recently widowed, is in love with a lowly steward called Antonio, secretly
marries him and bears his children.
Her brothers, the incestuous Ferdinand and the corrupt Cardinal, entrust Bosola to spy on
her.
The Duchess takes Bosola into confidence and is killed with two of her youngest children,
while Antonio escapes with their eldest son.
Ferdinand looks at her body and famously says, Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died
young
Bosola turns against Ferdinand and the Cardinal and vows revenge for the duchess.
The play ends with the main characters killing one another.
More Details of the Plot
The play is set in the 16th century
At the beginning, Antonio has just returned home from France, and Ferdinand and the
Cardinal are visiting the Duchess
The Duchesss faithful maid Cariola and Antonios friend Delio are important characters
The Duchesss wooing and marrying her steward Antonio is a reversal of male/female roles
and class distinctions
When Bosola suspects that the Duchess is pregnant, Bosola gives her apricots to induce
labour
To protect Antonio by removing him from Malfi, the Duchess falsely claims he has stolen from
her and hence has him banished to Ancona
Mime scene: Act Three Scene Four is set at the Shrine of Our Lady of Loretto. Here, the
Cardinal ceremoniously gives up his cardinals hat in a ceremony so that he can fight as a
soldier. Then he banishes Antonio, the Duchess, and their children. This all happens in
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pantomime while the churchmen sing a solemn song. They all exit except for two pilgrims, who
discuss what happened.
To make the Duchess insane with despair, Ferdinand presents her with wax corpses of her
family to convince her they have died
The Duchess is strangled to death, and she dies fearlessly
Ferdinand shows signs of insanity, and is finally afflicted with lycanthropia, or the belief that
he is a wolf
The Cardinals mistress Julia declares to Bosola her obsessive love for him
The Cardinal gets rid of Julia by making her kiss a poisoned Bible
A haunting echo comes from the Duchesss tomb that seems to repeat in the Duchesss
voice selected words from what Antonio and Delio speak.
The echo adds to the feeling of inevitability of Antonio's death
The Duchess of Malfi as a revenge tragedy
This is a complicated and unconventional revenge tragedy
There is no clear avenger
Being the victim, the Duchess should be the avenger though she does not take
revenge
Antonio should have avenged his wifes murder, but he does not
Bosola is avenging his own crimes
The villainous brothers seem to be taking revenge on their sister for betraying them
with her marriage
If Duchess is taken as the avenger
The avenger is a woman
The avenger dies in between the play
The villain Bosola later turns out to be a victim
He is used like a puppet, and not rewarded
Features of Websters Tragedies
Pre-Gothic horror
Dark vision of human nature
Renaissance Italy, sinister world of cunning & intrigue
Melodramatic, theatrical scenes
Life as pitiless, cruel, corrupt
Depiction of unbridled Machiavellian ambition (as in Bosola and Ferdinand)
Webster in the 20th century
Rupert Brooke says in his essay on Webster: Maggots are what the inhabitants of this
Universe most suggest and resemble.
T.S. Eliot says in the poem Whispers of Immortality, that Webster always saw "the skull
beneath the skin"
French Modernist Antonin Artaud appropriated Jacobean tragedies as models for his Theatre
of Cruelty,
Bertolt Brecht revised and presented The Duchess of Malfi with W. H. Auden in 1946
In the film in Shakespeare In Love, Webster (Joe Roberts) is represented as a street urchin
cruelly dangling a live mouse in front of a cat
Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Excelled in comedies (tragicomedy) of London life
Influenced by Shakespeare and Jonson
Jointly wrote 52 plays
Superficial plays, full of spectacular incidents and stage effects
John Fletcher was the cousin of
Giles Fletcher, the younger [poet known for long allegorical poem Christ's Victory and
Triumph (1610)], and
Phineas Fletcher [brother of Giles Fletcher, whose important work is the poem The
Purple Island or the Isle of Man (1633)]
Francis Beaumont
Was a friend of Ben Jonson, to whom he wrote verse letters
Was also a poet
Beaumont and Fletcher: Tragicomedies
Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding (c.1610)
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 The first of the tragicomedies of Beaumont and Fletcher

Philaster is the heir to the Sicilian throne, whose position has been usurped
He is in love with the usurpers daughter Arethusa
Arethusa is courted by the boastful Spanish prince Pharamond, the villain
Reminiscent of Twelfth Night and Sidneys Arcadia
A King and No King (1611)
Tragicomedy on the theme of incest, only to reveal at the end that the supposedly
incestuous pair is not really brother and sister after all
Dryden considered this their best work
Beaumont and Fletcher: Tragedies
The Maids Tragedy (c. 1611)
Best of their tragedies
A sensational sex tragedy
A husband discovers on the wedding night that his wife Evadne is the kings mistress;
their marriage is a mere cover for the affair
Evadnes brother awakens her conscience and she murders the king
Her husband does not welcome her back, and she stabs herself
Fletchers Plays
The Faithful Shepherdess (1608-09)
An adaptation of Italian writer Guarinis famous tragicomedy Il Pastor Fido (The
Faithful Shepherd)
Pastoral tragicomedy
An earlier Pastoral tragicomedy was Samuel Daniels The Queen's Arcadia
(1605)
The shepherdess Clorins lover has died, yet she remains loyal to his memory and
retains her chastity.
Its preface contains Fletchers famous definition of tragicomedy:
A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants
[i.e., lacks] deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy; yet brings some near it, which
is enough to make it no comedy.
All is True (also called Henry VIII, a history play, 1613)
Beaumonts Plays
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1608)
Satirical farce mocking the popularity of Spanish romances and chivalric works in
London
A parody of the urban heroism in Thomas Heywoods The Four Prentices of London
and Thomas Dekkers The Shoemaker's Holiday
Uses the device of play-within-a-play
Breaks the fourth wall (imaginary wall between stage and audience) when a Grocer
and his wife in the audience of the play interrupt to complain loudly that plays are
always about nobility and that it is they, the common people, who pay for most of the
tickets. They suggest that their apprentice, Rafe, should have a part in the play. He gets
the role of a knight (with a pestle on his shield as a heraldic device) who will do valiant
deeds.
The main plot (of the play thus interrupted ): Jasper Merrythought, a merchant's
apprentice, is in love with his masters daughter, Luce, and must elope with her to save
her from the arranged marriage with Humphrey, a swell or City man of fashion
At the climax , the interference of the Grocer gets completely out of hand
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)
One of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy as
well as masques and pageants
The son of a bricklayer who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman
Wrote pamphlets on current issues
Worked for Philip Henslowes Admirals Men but remained a free agent
Involved in the War of the Theatres
Many collaborations
T.S. Eliot, a student of Jacobean drama, admired Middleton
Comedies
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (c.1613; not pub. until 1630)
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 City comedy
Middletons comic masterpiece
Three plots centered around the marriage of Moll Yellowhammer
A Game at Chess (perf. 1624)
The Prologue explains that the forthcoming stage play will be based on a game of
chess, with chess pieces representing men and states
The Ghost of Ignatius Loyola appears in the Induction
Black King and his men, representing Spain and the Jesuits, are checkmated by the
White Knight, Prince Charles
The anti-Spanish tone won enormous popularity
Closed after nine performances due to its inflammatory anti-Spanish content and the
Spanish Ambassador's outrage. The writer and the actors were fined
Michaelmas Term (perf.1604)
Rich in irony
Tragedies
Middletons masterpieces are his two tragedies
Women Beware Women
The Changeling
Various collaborations
The Revengers Tragedy
The Second Maidens Tragedy
A Yorkshire Tragedy
Adapted Macbeth and Measure for Measure for performance
The Witch, a revenge play
Charles Lamb made a famous comparative study of Middletons witches with
Macbeths witches
The Changeling (written 1622, pub. 1653)
Tragedy written with William Rowley
Acquired a great deal of critical commentary
Two plots
Main tragic plot involves Beatrice-Joanna, Alonzo (to whom she is betrothed), and
Alsemero (whom she loves).
Beatrice uses De Flores (who loves her and whom she despises) to murder Alonzo.
Once he commits the crime, she finds that she is at his mercy and must become his
mistress.
She dies addressing her father, and her dying words are echoed in Eliots Gerontion
The comic sub-plot involves Alibius, an old, jealous doctor (who runs a lunatic asylum),
and his young wife Isabella.
Antonio attempts to seduce Isabella disguised as an idiot.
But Isabella resists his attempts and retains control of her life, unlike Beatrice
The changeling of the title is both Beatrice (at the end, she becomes unrecognizable from
what she originally been) and Antonio (changeling also means idiot)
Women Beware Women
(written 1620-27, pub. 1657)
The only tragedy that Middleton wrote by himself
Two plots
Main plot loosely based on the life of the historical Bianca Cappello, who became the
mistress and then the consort of Francesco de Medici, the 2nd grand duke of Tuscany
Sub-plot concerns the guilty love of Hippolito for his niece Isabella
The play ends with a bloody masque (where everyone is killed), a scene which verges on
comedy
The play famously uses the device of a game of chess to denote stages in seduction
Biancas mother-in-law plays chess with Livia, a procuress, while the Duke seduces
Bianca in another room
This is alluded to in The Waste Land
Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
Was John Fletchers assistant
Many collaborations
Inspired by Fletcher and Jonson
A New Way to Pay Old Debts (pub. 1633)
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Sir Giles Overreach, a heartless and cunning extortioner (a man who extorts money by
force), has ruined many members of the landed gentry for his own benefit
He is now himself caught in a trap
Miserliness combines with cruelty and lust for power
The City Madam (1632)
Social pretensions of Lady Frugal are mocked and suitably punished
John Ford (c.1586-c.1640)
Collaborations with Dekker, Rowley
Interest in the psychology of frustrated and illicit love
The Broken Heart (c.1629)
Tis Pity Shes a Whore (c.1631)
Incestuous love of Giovanni for his sister Annabella
Annabellas pregnancy forces her to marry Soranzo
Soranzos servant searches out the truth and plans revenge for his master
The revenge, as was usual in Jacobean drama, takes place at a party
James Shirley (c.1586-c.1640)
Charles Lamb called him the last of a great race
Has written many tragedies, tragicomedies, comedies, poems, etc
Best tragedy: The Cardinal (1641)
Most popular comedy: The Lady of Pleasure (pub. 1637)
Early 17th Century Poetry
Earlier poets like Wyatt, Sidney, and Spenser
Formal patterns and specific subjects
Elizabethan style continues, but a new kind of love poetry also emerges
Cavalier Poets (father: Jonson)
A light, witty tone and careless elegance
Metaphysical Poets (father: Donne)
Intellectual complexity
Applying religious images to human love
Using irregular meter, elaborate images, everyday language, and unlikely
comparisons (conceits)
The Last of the Elizabethans
The Elizabethan poets who continued to write in the Jacobean period followed these
conventions:
Petrarchan sonneteering (examples can be found in Samuel Daniel)
Lyricism (Thomas Campion)
Didactic impulse in poetry
Patriotic and historical verse (Michael Drayton)
Philosophical verse (Samuel Daniel, John Davies)
Satires (Joseph Hall, John Marston)
Allegories (Giles and Phineas Fletcher)
Pastoral poetry (Michael Drayton)
Religious poetry (John Donne, George Herbert)
Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621)
One of the first English women to make a reputation for herself as a writer
Younger sister of Sir Philip Sidney
Shared with her brother the desire to strengthen and classicize the English language and to
support true religion
Was a notable literary patron
Published Philip Sidneys works after his death
Works: The Psalms of David, The Tragedy of Antonie (1592, closet drama)
Aunt of the poetess Lady Mary Wroth
Samuel Daniel (1562-1619)
Son of a music-master
Encouraged and patronized by the Countess of Pembroke, whom he praised in his poetry
His sister was Spensers model for Rosalind in The Shepheardes Calender, and she married
John Florio, who translated Montaigne
Ben Jonson never appreciated his work
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An honest man, but no poet, was his phrase. He wrote Civil Wars and yet had not
one battle in all his book.
Samuel Daniels Works
Delia (1592)
Sonnet-cycle addressed to Delia
The Complaint of Rosamond (1592)
A romance
Cleopatra (1594)
A tragedy written in classical style
The Civil Wars (8 books; 1595-1623)
Historical poem on the subject of the Wars of the Roses
Regarded as an epic
Musophilus (pub. 1599)
Long philosophical poem
Dialogue between a worldly courtier & a lover of the Muses
You Tube
For an introductory video on the sonnet, watch What is a Sonnet? uploaded by About.com
Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
First published work appeared in 1591 and his last in 1630
Many works indebted to Holinsheds Chronicles
Responded to the fondness for the pastoral in the 1590s with Idea: The Shepherds Garland
(1593)
Nine eclogues
Influence of Spensers The Shepheardes Calender
Endimion and Phoebe is an epyllion
A fashionable form used by Marlowe in Hero and Leander and Shakespeare in Venus
and Adonis
Revised and appeared again as The Man in the Moon
Two historical poems based on chronicle sources
Piers Gaveston
Matilda
Other Works by Drayton
The Barons Wars (1603)
Describes the troublesome reign of Edward II
Indebted to Marlowes Edward II
Sir John Oldcastle
Caters to popular taste
Cashes in on the popularity of Henry IV plays
The Legend of Great Cromwell (1607)
Offers a detached view of the reign of Henry VIII
Included in The Mirror for Magistrates
Poems Lyric and Pastoral (1606)
Contains imitations of Horaces Odes
First English Renaissance poet to issue a collection of poems in imitation of the Odes
Other Works by Drayton
Poly-Olbion (Two parts, 1612 and 1622)
An enormous poem
Description of the countryside (chorographical description)
The Battle of Agincourt
Historical poem
The Miseries of Queen Margaret
Indebted to Holinshed and Shakespeares Henry VI plays
Nimphidia
Mock-heroic series of fairy poems
Influenced by A Midsummer Nights Dream
Epigram
Sir John Davies, and Sir John Harington (1561-1612), were the two most successful
practitioners of the epigram along with Ben Jonson.
Elizabethan epigram was a miniature verse satire, concise in expression
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The masters of the epigram were the Roman poet Catullus and the Spanish poet
Martial
S.T. Coleridge wrote an epigram on the epigram:
What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
Sir John Davies (1569-1626)
Orchestra (1596)
A successful philosophical poem
Presents dance as the principle of order and pattern in the universe
In the form of an argument between Ulyssess wife Penelope and her suitor
Nosce Teipsum (1599)
Long didactic poem discussing the vanity of human knowledge and the importance of
cultivating the human soul
Thomas Campion (1567-1619)
Combined poetry with music
Produced a large variety of lyrical verse
Book of Airs (1601)
A songbook
Wrote several more books of airs and masques
Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602)
A critical tract
Attacked rhyme
Campions arguments answered by Samuel Daniel in Defence of Rhyme (1603)
Daniel defends rhyme on account of its universality and antiquity
Aemilia Lanier (1569-1645)
One of the earliest women in England to be acknowledged as a professional poet
Fourth woman in England to publish a book of original poetry
Was the mistress of Henry Carey, the patron of Shakespeares acting company, Lord
Chamberlains Men
Could have been the dark lady of Shakespeares sonnets
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
(1611, Hail, God, King of the Jews)
One collection of poems by Aemilia Lanier
Contains several short poems, each dedicated to a different woman, as well as a couple of
long poems
The poems were considered radical by her contemporaries; now considered proto-feminist
An important poem in this collection: Eves Apology in Defence of Women is about the
crucifixion of Jesus. It is written from Pontius Pilot's wifes perspective.
Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650)
Brother of poet Giles Fletcher
Left behind a large number of literary works
The Purple Island (1633)
A poem in 12 cantos
Conventional pastoral opening
Tedious allegory of the human body, the geographical features of the island
corresponding to the parts of the body, described in great anatomical detail
Intellectual qualities are also personified
Piscatorie Eclogues included in this book
Locusts, or Apollyonists (1627)
Anti-Catholic poem
Giles Fletcher (1585-1623)
Brother of poet Phineas Fletcher
Cousin of playwright John Fletcher
Best-known work: Christs Victory and Triumph (1610)
Long allegorical poem
Four cantos
Spenserian
Inspired Miltons Paradise Regained
Elizabeth Cary, or Lady Falkland (1585-1639)
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Poet, translator and dramatist

Mastered 5 languages
Married to Henry Cary, later Lord Falkland; had 11 children
Her husband abandoned her to poverty in 1626 and denied her access to their children when
she made public her conversion to Catholicism
When she tried to get access to her children, she was threatened with imprisonment
Died of consumption in loneliness and want
Elizabeth Carys Works
Best-known work The Tragedy of Mariam, The Fair Queen of Jewry (pub. 1613)
This is the first-known play in English by a woman
The play reflects Carys own life
The History of Edward II (pub. 1680) is the first-known English history play by a woman
Carys biography was written by one of her daughters, all of whom had become Benedictine
nuns
Lady Mary Wroth (1587-c.1651)
Philip Sidneys niece
The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (1621)
A romance inspired by Sidneys Arcadia
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621)
First known sonnet sequence by a woman in English
Petrarchan conventions reversed and applied to a female speaker
17th Century Prose: Context
The age was marked by uncertainty and change, which reflected in the prose of the period
Influence of science and inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning, which
derives knowledge from experience)
Three principles of 17th century prose
Copia
An abundance of rhetorical expression as in Greek and Latin masters
The Humanist, Erasmus wrote a handbook of copia
Robert Burton worked within this tradition
A reliance on authority, and
The doctrine of imitation
Prose: Major Figures
The eras monumental prose achievement was the King James Version of the Bible (1611)
Francis Bacon (scientific and philosophical, anti-humanistic prose)
Nicholas Breton
The Divines
Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)
Jeremy Taylor
John Donne
Robert Burton
Nicholas Breton (c.1545c.1626)
Wrote a number of prose tracts
Also wrote satires and pastoral poetry
Patronized by the Countess of Pembroke
Fantastics (c.1604)
A series of short prose pictures of the months, the Christian festivals and the hours
Cult of Melancholy
During the early 17th century, a curious cultural and literary cult of melancholia arose in
England.
It was believed that religious uncertainties caused by the English Reformation and a greater
attention being paid to issues of sin, damnation, and salvation, led to this effect.
In music, the post-Elizabethan cult of melancholia is associated with John Dowland.
The melancholy man, known to contemporaries as a malcontent, is epitomized by
Shakespeare's Prince Hamlet, the Melancholy Dane.
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Melancholy in Literature
Shakespeares tragedies
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The death-obsessed later works of John Donne

The humoural comedies of Ben Jonson
Robert Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy
Sir Thomas Brownes Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial
Jeremy Taylors Holy Living and Holy Dying
For a discussion of Browne and Taylor, see the chapter The Period of the Civil War
Robert Burton (1577-1640)
Scholar at Oxford
Had knowledge of diverse subjects including mathematics, astrology and humoural
physiology
His only book: The Anatomy of Melancholy
A brilliant mix of psychological speculation and allusive learning
The Anatomy of Melancholy
(1621, enlarged in 1651)
Written under the pseudonym Democritus Junior (Democritus is called the laughing
philosopher and his writing about melancholy is ironic)
Satirical, pessimistic, misanthropic tone
Two kinds of melancholy: love melancholy & religious melancholy
Concludes that the whole world, including himself, is mad
Technique of self-contradiction
Offers many cures for melancholy and says all are useless
Quotes from a tremendous variety of sources, but says erudition is a waste of time
and it is better to be ignorant
Character Writing
Brief prose description of a person / type
Over 200 characters, or books of characters, are said to have been published between
1605 and 1700
Greek origins, in the 3rd century BC writer Theophrastus. Isaac Casaubon published in 1592
a Latin translation of Theophrastus.
Two types
Type character (Theophrastan)
Historical character
Features
Brevity, wit, irony, abstraction & reductiveness
Popular during Restoration
Joseph Hall (1574-1656)
Bishop of Norwich and devotional writer
Wrote many controversial religious works
Author of the satire Virgidemiarum (1597)
Banned during the Bishops Ban (1599)
Characters of Vertues and Vices (1608)
Examples: wise man, valiant man
Nahum Tate paraphrased some of these in verse (1991)
Thomas Overbury (1581-1613)
Jacobean poet and essayist
Had an inseparable friendship with Robert Carr, politician and Jamess favourite
Carr started an affair with the powerful Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, which Overbury
opposed, and a deadly duel started between the mistress and friend
At this time, Overbury wrote a poem A Wife, which depicted the virtues that a young man
should demand of a woman
With Lady Essexs manipulation, Overbury was imprisoned in the Tower, where he died
At the scandalous trial, the murderous involvement of Frances, and probably Carr himself,
was revealed
Overburys Characters
To the later editions of Overburys poem A Wife (1614), characters and other prose works
were added
John Webster, Thomas Dekker and John Donne also wrote Overburian characters
Influenced Addison, Steele and other periodical essayists
John Earle (c.1601-55)

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 Royalist
Tutor to Prince Charles (Charles II)
Microcosmographie,1628
Subtitle: A Piece of the World Discovered, in Essays and Characters
First published anonymously
Witty, humorous, throws light on the manners of the time
Made the Latin translation of Eikon Basilike

Chapter 10
Period of the Civil War
Charles I (r. 1625-49)
Ruled England, Scotland and Ireland
Believed in Divine Right
Had French Catholic queen Henrietta Maria
Was a High Anglican, whose ideals and practices closely resembled those of the Roman
Catholics
Associated himself with controversial ecclesiastics like William Laud, whom he appointed
Archbishop of Canterbury
Events leading to the Civil War
Introduced unpopular taxes, including the one known as ship money (1634)
Parliament opposed Charles
Charles refused to accept the Parliaments demands for constitutional monarchy
Ruled without Parliament for 11 yrs (1629-40), called eleven years tyranny
Bishops Wars broke out in Scotland
Bishops Wars (1639 and 40)
Followed the eleven years of Charless personal rule without the consent of the Parliament
Prelude to the Civil War
Result of the conflict between Charles I and the Scots
o Charles wanted to establish an episcopal system of church governance in Scotland
with bishops
o The Scottish leaders wanted a presbytarian system of church governance without
bishops
The First Bishops War broke out when Charles attempted to regulate liturgy in Scotland by
imposing Archbishop Lauds Book of Common Prayer (1637)
The Civil War
Civil War in two phases 1642-46, 1648-54
Charles was held in captivity from 1647
Put under trial from 20 January 1649
Charles still believed in his divine authority to rule
Over a period of a week, when Charles was asked to plead three times, he refused
Condemned to death in his absence on 26 January
Beheaded on 30 January 1649
Socio-Political Conditions
Theatres closed 1642
o Puritan attacks on professional theatre and female actresses like William Prynnes
Histriomastix 1632
o At that time the queen Henrietta Maria herself was rehearsing a play and Prynne was
sentenced to cruel punishment, which was later revoked
King beheaded in January 1649
1649-1653, The first period of the Commonwealth of England
1653-1658, The Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell
The regicide on film
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 Watch the execution scene film clip Execution of King Charles I - "To Kill a King" [2002]
uploaded by Russel Tarr
Also watch Film Cromwell trial and execution scene uploaded by stmarksHistory
Eikon Basilike (1649)
Published in February 1649, ten days after the king was beheaded
Means the Royal Portrait
Spiritual autobiography attributed to King Charles I
Written in the simple, straightforward style of a diary
Cavalier Poets
Herrick, Carew, Waller, Suckling, Lovelace
Celebrated the idealized relationship between Charles I and his queen, Henrietta Maria
Upheld Platonism (spiritual love as more important than the physical) which is evident in
Caroline masques & visual arts
o In Herricks Hesperides (1648) and Lovelaces Lucasta (1649), the speakers Platonic
relationship with his mistress mirrors the speakers idealized political subjection to the
king
Yet, they (especially Suckling) sometimes questioned the idealized depictions of Platonic love
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Friend of (and influenced by) Ben Jonson
Took holy orders in 1623
Wrote prolifically
Royalist
Died a bachelor at the age of 83
Combined classical paganism with English folk themes
Strove for elegance and precision of form
Major work; Hesperides (1648)
For more details, see Robert Herrick in the section Metaphysical Poets
Thomas Carew (c.1594-1640)
Disciple of Jonson and Donne
Accomplished poet of Charles Is court
Wrote true Cavalier poetry polished, gay and witty, with a tone of urbanity
For more details, see Thomas Carew in the section The Metaphysical Poets
Edmund Waller (1606-87)
Famous wit and poet
Elected to Parliament when he was only 16
Brilliant orator and Royalist
In 1643, plotted to get rid of Parliamentary rebels from London; plot was discovered and
Waller exiled
Travelled in France and Italy with his friend and diarist John Evelyn
Returned to Parliament at the Restoration
Became a model for 18th cent. Ideals of literature
Reputation declined in late 18th century
Two short poems well-known today: On a Girdle and Go, Lovely Rose
John Suckling (1609-41)
Influence of Jonson and Donne
Cavalier poet and playwright
Worldly courtier
Had military and ambassadorial adventures in Europe
The Wits, or Sessions of the Poets
o Satirical mock-ballad in which contemporary writers contend for the laurel, but are
discomfited
Aglaura, a tragedy
The Goblins, a musical comedy indebted to The Tempest
Famous poems: Ballade, Upon a Wedding and Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?
Richard Lovelace (1618-58)
Handsome son of a wealthy Kentish knight
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Gained a romantic reputation

Imprisoned during the Civil War for fighting on behalf of the king
Petrarchan and metaphysical styles combine in
o To Lucasta, Going to the Wars
o To Althea, From Prison
The latter poem included in Thomas Percys Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
Contains the lines Stone walls do not a prison make / Nor iron walls a cage
You Tube : You may listen to Go, Lovely Rose on You Tube, uploaded by SpokenVerse
English Civil War
Effect of Reformation; against divine right theory of kings
Response to the needs of rising middle class
National disillusionment
o Gap between court and Protestants widened
o Golden age of drama and literature was over
o Religion seemed diffused
o Science still unpopular
Aristocracy and its dependants were Cavaliers; commercial & trading classes (gentry)
supported the Parliament
Protectorate 1649-60
Cromwell belonged to the gentry
Supported authority and property and believed that class distinctions were the cornerstone
of society
Cromwells monopoly of power was resented
Ruthless idealist
Succeeded by his son Richard, an ineffectual ruler
John Milton (1608-1674)
A lonely figure not belonging to any movement
Polyglot, scholar
Had broadly Protestant views (i.e., he did not fully conform to Protestant views)
Born in Bread Street, Cheapside
Son of a well-to-do London scrivener (copyist) and composer
At St Pauls School
Enrolled in St Pauls School probably in 1620
Received a Christian Humanist education based on the teachings of Erasmus and Colet
Had a thorough grounding in classical rhetoric
o As a noble skill necessary for the citizen who takes a proper part in public affairs
o A view advocated by Cicero and Isocrates
Later, Milton condemned the abuse of rhetoric in the speeches of Satan in Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained
At Christs College, Cambridge
Came to Christs College, Cambridge in 1625
Because of his hair and delicate manners he was called Lady of Christs
Already a scholar, eager to be a great poet
Young Milton began his poetic career with verse paraphrases of Psalms and Ovidian Latin
elegies
Earliest formal poem is probably Ode on the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough written
in 1628, age 20
o Uses both classical mythology and Christian ideas
o Argues that the infant cannot be dead; she must be in some happy sphere above
A disagreement with the Cambridge curriculum and his tutor William Chappell led to a brief
rustication (i.e., suspension) from the university in his second year, 1627
Writing at Cambridge
At this time, he wrote the first of his Latin elegies, a verse letter to Charles Diodati, his friend
from St. Pauls Elegia Prima
At Cambridge, Milton was on good terms with Edward King and befriended the AngloAmerican theologian Roger Williams
In 1629, he was awarded a BA degree; in 1632 an MA.
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In 1629, he wrote the nativity ode, On the Morning of Christs Nativity

o Describes Christs birth and renunciation of worldly life, and connects it to the
Crucifixion
o First distinctly Miltonic work
o Impressive diction, high literary & religious ideals
Writing at Cambridge
During this time, when he was 22, he wrote The Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W.
Shakespeare
o Now known as On Shakespear
o This was Miltons first published poem
o Appeared anonymously in Shakespeares Second Folio (1632)
Shortly after he left Cambridge, he must have composed LAllegro and Il Penseroso
LAllegro
Meaning happy man, contrasting with the companion pastoral poem, Il Penseroso,
meaning the melancholy man
Invokes Euphrosyne, Greek goddess of Mirth, as well as other allegorical figures of joy
Extols the active and cheerful life in the country
Final lines
These delights, if thou canst give
Mirth with thee, I mean to live
These lines respond to Elizabethan perspectives, especially the lines Come live with me and
be my love (from a pastoral poem by Marlowe)
Il Penseroso
Depicts a similar day spent in contemplation and thought
Offers a vision of poetic melancholy
Dismisses joy from his imagination and invokes Goddess Melancholy, veiled in black
Imagines that the goddess will reward his devotion to her by revealing divine prophetic
visions
Final lines
These pleasures, Melancholy give
And I with thee will choose to live
Horton Poems
Upon leaving Cambridge, he moved briefly into his parents house at Hammersmith
From 1635, Milton spent 6 years at Horton in intensive private study, which made him one of
the most learned of English poets
The poems written during this period are called Horton poems
o Upon the Circumcision
o At a Solemn Music
o On Time
o Arcades (probably earlier) and Comus
o Lycidas
Two Masques
In 1632 and 1634 respectively, Milton wrote the masques Arcades and Comus
Arcades (1632)
o Written in praise of Alice Spencer, Countess Dowager of Darby
o Music written by Henry Lawes
o Jonsons masques
o Served as a basis for Comus
Comus (1634)
Published anonymously in 1637
Upholds the virtues of temperance and chastity
First presented on Michaelmas at Ludlow Castle
Original music composed by Henry Lawes
The Plot
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 Two brothers and their sister (Lady) journey through the woods
When the brothers go off in search of food and water, the debauched god Comus (son of
Bacchus) approaches her disguised as a villager and attempts to seduce her using necromancy,
and binds her to a chair
But the Lady exercises right reason (recta ratio or freedom of mind)
The brothers, aided by the Attendant Spirit, chase off Comus, and the water nymph Sabrina
releases the Lady on account of her steadfast virtue
Comus: Theme
Shows life as a Puritan struggle for the triumph of the virtuous
o This theme recurs in later poems
Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost (1667)
Christ in Paradise Regained (1671)
Samson in Samson Agonistes (1671)
Comus on You Tube : Listen to the songs composed by Henry Lawes for Comus at Henry Lawes
Five Songs for John Miltons Masque: Comus uploaded by Hugh Richmond
Lycidas (1637)
In 1637, he contributed the pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial collection of elegies for
Edward King, Miltons fellow student at Cambridge
Edward King was a young man of great promise, destined for the church
He had drowned in the Irish Sea
Classical, Christian and personal elements fuse here
Reflects the uncertainty and torment in Miltons mind
Realization that death might forestall the achievement of fame, which was his ambition
Finally the realization that true fame is found in heaven
Famous outburst (digression) against the Anglican clergy
Reveals Miltons radical Puritan politics
Lycidas: A Summary
Begins with an eloquent statement of the occasion of the poem
Reminiscence of his student days with King described in moving and pastoral terms
Even guardian angels fail to protect their loved ones
o Even Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, was unable to protect her son Orpheus from
Thracian bacchanals
The poet wonders whether after all it might not have been better to leave the dedicated life
of a poet and lead a life of enjoyment
Alas! What boots it with incessant care
To care the homely, slighted shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaeras hair?
Phoebus answers that fame is the spur, and it is not to be gained on earth but in heaven.
The poem moves on to interrogate those who might have been expected to protect Lycidas
The sense of the inevitability of the tragedy dawns, as Cambridge mourns her lost son, and
St Peter laments that such a one as Lycidas should have been taken when so many bad
shepherds flourish
Nothing can bring back Lycidas, and the poet desperately covers his body with flowers
Then, in a magnificent, patriotic surge of phrase, he calls on the guardian angel of England
(probably meaning St Michael) to look homeward
The ending offers two consolations: (i) Lycidas is not dead, but has found his place in
Heaven, (ii) The poet, who is piping his sad song, knows it is over, and is determined to face the
morrow afresh
At last he rose, and twitchd his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastured new.
Miltons Foreign Tour
In 1638, Milton left England for a tour of the continent, primarily Italy, for approximately 15
months
o Made friends among Italian intellectuals
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o Met Galileo in house arrest (Galileo was the only contemporary mentioned by name in
Paradise Lost)
o Learned of the death of his friend Charles Diodati (1638) and of the impending Civil
War
Epitaphium Damonis (1639)
Back in England, Milton composed a Latin pastoral elegy for Diodati, Epitaphium Damonis
(Damons Epitaph)
o This was the last of Miltons Latin pieces
o Strongly indebted to Theocritus, Virgil and Ovid as well as to Neo-Latin poets such as
Sannazaro, Castiglione and Mantuan
o Corresponds to the English pastoral elegy Lycidas
Miltons farewell to his friend became his farewell to Latin poetry in general
Anti-Prelatical Tracts
Having returned from abroad, Milton turned to prose
He embraced republican iconoclasm, which was admired by later writers like William Blake
He began to write prose tracts against episcopacy in the Puritan and Parliamentary cause
Wrote five anti-prelatical tracts on the reformation of church government
o The main idea of these pamphlets is that the English reformation had not been
completed in the Tudor times, and that it should be completed in Miltons time
Vigorously attacked the High Church Anglicans under the leadership of William Laud,
Archbishop of Canterbury
On Education
Became a private schoolmaster and wrote in 1644 a short tract On Education
o
In the form of a letter to Samuel Hartlib, a scholar and educational reformer
o
Here he urged the reform of universities
o
Outlined an ideal curriculum, emphasizing Greek & Latin languages as a means to
learn directly classical wisdom
Christian Humanist ideal of education: to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to
know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him
Turbulent Marriage
In 1643, at the age of 35, he married 16-year-old Mary Powell
A month later, she returned to her parents, and did not come back until 1645
The emotional shock following her desertion provoked Milton to publish four pamphlets
arguing for the legality and morality of divorce, starting with The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce (1643)
Concept of Women
16th and 17th centuries were characterized by misogyny
o Witch hunts (trial and execution of women accused of witchcraft) were rampant
o Marriages were done solely for procreation
o Divorces were rare and illegal, and expensive
o There was no concept of love or sharing in marriage
o Women were considered potential temptresses or adulteresses, and morally and
intellectually inferior to men
Milton believed that woman is certainly subordinate to man, but he was distanced from
popular misogyny of the time
Divorce Tracts
Milton argued that divorce should be granted to mismatched couples
He praised the bliss of wedded love
He argued that the main objective of marriage is not procreation, but to bring two people
together in completion
Role of conversation, companionship in marriage
Milton argued that the chief end God intended in marriage was the cheerful conversation of
man with woman
Miltons views on marriage are relevant in the analysis of Adam and Eve
Licensing Order of 1643
Miltons controversial views on marriage and divorce naturally provoked opposition from the
authorities (mostly of the Parliament, who were now predominantly Presbyterians, and whom
Milton had earlier defended)
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 In order to silence all opposition, the Parliament passed the Licensing Order of 1643 which
instituted pre-publishing censorship
Against this, in 1644, Milton wrote Areopagitica, a classic defence of the freedom of the
press
Areopagitica (1644)
Titled after a speech written by the Athenian orator Isocrates in the 5th century BC.
Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals
Areopagitica is a noble and eloquent plea, optimistic in tone
The entire truth is inaccessible to men after the Fall
A forceful argument against the Licensing Order of 1643
Such censorship had never been a part of classical Greek and Roman society
Freedom of press is Gods will
Biblical & classical references to strengthen his argument
Areopagitica: Famous Quotes
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as
active as that soul whose progeny they are.
o This means that, like the author, books are also alive.
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,
God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it
were, in the eye.
o This means that it is worse to kill the book than kill the man. Killing a man is like
killing Gods image (representation), but killing a book is like killing God, since God is
Reason.
For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty. She needs no policies, nor
stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious those are the shifts and defences that error
uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she
speaks not true. . . Yet it is not impossible that she may have more shapes than one.
o This means that Truth is all powerful and multiple.
When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist
him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious
friends, after all which he has done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as
any writ before him.
o This means that writing cannot be done easily and carelessly. When a writer takes so
much pains to write, which authority has the power to censor him?
Poems (1645)
A collection of Miltons poems was published in 1645; Republished in 1673
Divided into two sections: English and Latin
Contains all of the poems discussed so far in this chapter
Milton identifies himself as the future poet
Anti-monarchical Pamphlets
After the execution of Charles I, Milton became the official apologist for the Parliamentary
regime
At this time he wrote anti-monarchical pamphlets
o His first pamphlet justifying the trial and execution, The Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates (1649), was issued in a fortnight of the regicide
Argued that a people free by nature have the right to depose and punish
tyrants
o Shortly after, he was appointed Secretary of Foreign Tongues (also called Latin
Secretary)
Eikonoklastes (1649)
In another anti-monarchical tract, Eikonoklastes (1649, meaning Image Breaker), Milton
shatters the image of Charles I, as described in Eikon Basilike, as pious, contemplative and
caring
Milton accuses Charles of hypocrisy; using the example of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in
Richard III, he shows how treachery is disguised by the pretense of piety
Exiled Prince Charles (Charles II)s party replied with a defense written by Claudius
Salamasius, leading to a pamphlet war
In this war, the anonymous Latin polemic The Cry of the Kings Blood appeared in 1654
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The Cry of the Kings Blood and Miltons Reply

The Cry of the Kings Blood asserts that Miltons blindness is Gods punishment
In Second Defence, Milton replied that his blindness is a trial he has to endure for having
received special inner illumination, which distinguishes him from others. Here he also compares
himself with blind heroes & sages from the past
This dignity and fortitude with which he accepted his affliction is evident in the sonnet On
His Blindness also
Similarly, in Paradise Regained, Jesus meditates on his fathers purpose for him, and
concludes that he must trustfully await its manifestation.
Other Prose Works
Three extraordinary prose works were written later in his career
o History of Britain (1670)
Reflects extensive reading
Incomplete; ends with the Norman Conquest
o Artis Logicae (1672; Art of Logic)
Composed in Latin
Inspired by 16th century French scholar Petrus Ramus
Examines the impact of Renaissance Humanism on medieval trivium
o De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine)
Unfinished Latin work
Comprehensive and systematic treatment of theology
Miltons Left Hand
Milton thought of himself primarily as a poet
Said that his prose was written with his left hand
Reserving the right hand for poetry
His prose was primarily of two types: religious and political
In the 17th century, these two spheres of activity were intertwined
Miltons prose identifies him very much as a man of his time
But Milton was ahead of his time, insisting on the separation of the church and the state
Blindness
When he was 44, Miltons eyesight began to fail
By 1654, Milton was totally blind, probably from glaucoma
From then on, he dictated his verse and prose to scribes (amanuenses), who included
Andrew Marvell
During this time, he wrote the sonnet On His Blindness
Miltons wife Mary Powell died in childbirth, and he married Katherine Woodcock in 1656
This marriage was more successful than the former, but just over a year later Katherine also
died in childbirth
In his blindness, Milton had to raise three daughters
Major Poems
Miltons poetry has social, philosophical, and religious purposes
o Glorify God
o Promote religious values
o Help people become better Christians
Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, Paradise Regained
Paradise Lost (1667)
Of Mans first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With the loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat
Paradise Lost (1-5)
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
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Paradise Lost (6-10)

The Plan of Paradise Lost
BOOK I
o Satan and his followers build their House of Parliament called Pandemonium
BOOK II
o Satan opens the debate in Pandemonium
BOOK III
o God foresees the imminent danger to Man by Satan and creates a remedy for Mans
fall: His Son (Jesus Christ) will conquer death. Uriel directs Satan to earth.
BOOK IV
o Satan enters the Garden of Eden
BOOK V
o Raphael, the guardian angel, warns Man of the danger by Satan
BOOK VI
o A warning is again given to Adam and Eve against the possible attempt of Satan to
seduce Man
BOOK VII
o The creation of the New World and of Adam and Eve is described.
BOOK VIII
o Adam inquires about the Heavenly bodies and Raphael answers as far as he could
perceive.
o Raphael warns Adam once again and leaves.
BOOK IX
o In spite of all the warning, they fail and so fall.
BOOK X
o The Son of God comes down to Eden and pronounces the infliction of the punishment
on Man.
BOOK XI
o The Son intercedes the Father on behalf of Man.
BOOK XII
o Michael leads Adam and Eve to the gates of Eden; and they go forth sad, yet consoled
with the hope of salvation at the end.
Paradise Lost: Features
Literary epic poem in blank verse divided into verse paragraphs
Originally in 10 books, later rearranged in 12 (in the manner of the strict unity of the
classical epic, Aeneid)
Printed 1667, with explanatory notes (the first poem to be published in that manner)
Subject Fall of Man
Classical echoes mingle with stark English simplicities and a Christian purpose
Shows Milton as a Christian Humanist
Paradise Lost: Themes
Professed aim is to justify the ways of God to men
Reinstates the importance of Obedience to God
Hierarchy of Universe spatial, social (to obey God is to obey this hierarchy)
Depicts the Fall as inevitable and partly fortunate
o Adam, in Book XII, calls it felix culpa or fortunate mistake
At the end, Adam turns to the paradise within
o As Milton himself turned away from grandiose political ambitions
o Content with the prospect of with good / Still overcoming evil, and by small /
Accomplishing great things
Satan in Paradise Lost
From the early 19th c., Satan has been regarded as the protagonist of Paradise Lost
First major character introduced in the poem
o At the beginning of the poem, war in heaven has been over for two weeks.
o For nine days, Satan and those who fought God alongside him have been lying in Hell,
stunned at the outcome.
o The first character to move is Satan, who begins by speaking to Beelzebub, Satans
closest ally.
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 Ambitious and proud; resents dependence on the Creator

Powerfully persuasive rhetoric
Precursor of the Byronic hero
A humanistic portrayal; a classical hero at the beginning, later reduced to a base creature,
the serpent
18th century Critics on Milton
Dryden said that Milton ranked with Homer and Virgil
Samuel Johnson criticized Milton for various reasons: archaic language, uninspired blank
verse, artificial pastoral conventions in Lycidas, and for Miltons Puritan and republican views
Joseph Addison wrote a series of commendatory essays on Paradise Lost in The Spectator
In the early 18th century, Richard Bentley argued that there are numerous errors in paradise
Lost, and brought out an insensitive revision, which attracted widespread ridicule
Romantic Critics on Milton
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of
Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.
o William Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
Wordsworth addresses Milton in is sonnet London, 1802
The Romantics were fascinated by Miltons Satan. Blake, Shelley, etc believed Satan to be
the real hero of Paradise Lost
Arnold and After
Matthew Arnold held Milton as the supreme English poet and included excerpts from Miltons
verse in his touchstone
What he could do well, he did better than anyone else has ever done.
o TS Eliot, in A Note on the Verse of John Milton
TS Eliot did not appreciate Miltons purposely adopted Grand Style. In fact, he said it was
an influence against which we still have to struggle.
In the 1967 book Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, Reader response critic
Stanley Fish argues that the reader is the real hero in Paradise Lost
Paradise Regained (1671)
Published together with Samson Agonistes
Theme of temptation (as in Comus and Paradise Lost)
Didactic and quasi-allegoric
The Plot
o In the wilderness, Satan tempts Jesus to the public life
o Jesus rejects public life (associated with evil), with all its accompanying splendours
o Jesus remains a private man (associated with virtue) and submits himself patiently
and quietly to Gods purpose
Paradise Regained: Features
Ritualistic re-enaction of the Original Fall
Reinstates the importance of withstanding temptation for mans restoration
Christ (second Adam) faces temptation as a heroic man, rather than as God incarnate; his
triumph is therefore redemptive for mankind
Satans motive in tempting Christ is to find out whether he is really the prophesied Messiah,
and to destroy his messianic perfection by making him commit sins
The heroism of Satan in Paradise Lost is absent here
This brief epic is more limited than Paradise Lost in scope
o Deals with only one specific aspect of Christs story in four books
Samson Agonistes (1671)
Tragic closet drama
Published along with Paradise Regained
Only successful Greek tragedy in English, says David Daiches
o Though the theme is purely Biblical, the structure is entirely Hellenic
o The bare story from Judges in the Bible is dramatized in the form of a classical allegory
Plot: The Plight of Samson
The heathen Philistines have imprisoned blind Samson in a temple
At first he laments his present state Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves contrasted with
his former heroic exploits and life in dedicated service of God
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 He reproaches himself for his wrongdoing, and the governors of Israel for their follies
As Samson verges on despair, Dalila, decked in all finery, enters and explains that she
betrayed Samson for love of him, hoping that the Philistines would simply cut his hair to remove
his great strength and leave him to her care; but now they have blinded and imprisoned him.
Plot: Samson Discovers His Strength
Samson now savagely forbids Dalila from approaching him, and as his hair grows, his
strength returns
Samson now makes it clear to the Philistines that they can no longer subjugate him.
A messenger reports at the end of the play that Samson has torn down the heathen temple
upon the Philistines, killing all, including himself.
Samson Agonistes: Features
Agonistes means wrestler or champion
Unity of Time is maintained
In the form of a series of dialogues between Samson and the various people who visit him,
one at a time, with intervening monologues by Samson, comments by the Chorus, and the final
reported account of Samsons death in pulling down the heathen temple of the Philistines
Aeschylus Promethues Bound and Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus are models
Allegorical of Miltons own life
Miltons Sonnets
23 sonnets written intermittently throughout his career
Adopted the Petrarchan style (not Shakespearean), and in doing so gave new vitality to the
English sonnet
Hazlitt said in the essay, On Miltons Sonnets: Compared with Paradise Lost, they are like
tender flowers that adorn the base of some proud column or stately temple.
Best: On the Late Massacre in Piedmont, On His Blindness
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (Sonnet 18)
Context: In 1655, Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy massacred Waldensians (a Christian
movement declared heretical in the 13th century and persecuted by Roman Catholic church
officials) in Piedmont, Italy. About 2000 people were killed and another 2000 forcibly reformed
to the Catholic faith.
The sonnet compares the theme of vengeance in the Old Testament to the theme of
regeneration in the New Testament
On His Blindness (Sonnet 19)
Opens When I consider how my light is spent
Ends They also serve who only stand and wait.
Shows Miltons jealous watchfulness over the use of his high gifts
Satisfies himself with the idea that virtuous thoughts and patient intentions are more
important than action
After Cromwell
Oliver Cromwells death created havoc in Miltons personal and political life
Milton rebelliously held on to his ideals which antagonized the Parliament, soldiers and the
people
o Advocated freedom of worship
o Upheld republicanism
o Attacked the concept of the state-dominated church
o Denounced corruption in church governance
Restoration and Death
In the wake of the Restoration, Milton wrote several proposals to retain a non-monarchical
government
o On the eve of Restoration, The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free
Commonwealth defended republicanism against the growing ride of royalism
The restoration brought all of Miltons political hopes to an end.
In 1660, Milton went into hiding, was briefly arrested and threatened with possible execution
In 1663, Milton remarried a third time 24-year-old Elizabeth Minshull
He retired to a cottage in Buckinghamshire and spent the last years of his life quietly
He is believed to have died of gout on 8 November 1674
Miltons unconventional views
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 Many scholars believe that Milton had been unpopular in his lifetime due to his
unconventional beliefs:
o Absolute freedom of individual
o In theory, believed in strict hierarchy (where people obeyed their leaders)
o Republicanism: nation should be governed by a leader whose legitimacy is based not
on heredity.
o Superior virtues of a leader
o Despised corruption in Church
o Each individual his own church
o Organized church is an obstacle to faith
Miltons Grand Style
Poet of the sublime
o Dryden was the first to describe him as a poet of the sublime
Numerous allusions and references, leading to comparisons; many of them obscure
Archaic and Latinized vocabulary, esoteric expressions
Use of Latinate syntactical structures that are atypical in English. Such inverted, convoluted
syntax denies easy comprehension but creates a sonorous effect.
Extended similes (epic similes or Homeric similes)
Recurring images or motifs such as the maze or labyrinth, which convey layers of meaning
Miltons Grand Style is the title of a famous book by Christopher Ricks (1967)
Milton on You Tube
A good introduction to Milton: Six Centuries of Verse: Milton 1608-1674 uploaded by
Toddysfins
A great lecture in 4 parts: John Milton - Yale University Lecture uploaded by
2nDoppelganger
And do listen to the poems of John Milton read by SpokenVerse on You Tube
Prose Writers During the Civil War
During the period of the Civil War, prose was mainly of the following types:
o Philosophical
o Religious and Political
Pamphlet Wars
Revolutionary and controversial
o Literary
Thomas Browne (1605-82)
Scientific and religious writer
A fervent royalist and anti-Puritan
Knighted by Charles II
Religio Medici (The Religion of a Doctor, pub. 1642)
o An examination of his religious views
o Reflections on the mysteries of God, nature, and man
o Magnificently sonorous yet intimate prose
o Lack of prejudice, tolerance for other religions, self-doubt
Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Or Vulgar Errors (1646)
o A criticism of the errors and superstitions of his age
o One of the pioneering works of scientific thought in the 17 th century
o Shows his admiration for Francis Bacon
Thomas Fuller (1608-61)
Antiquarian, theologian and prolific writer
Royalist who fought in the Civil War against the Puritans
Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician (1646) is a satire against Oliver Cromwell
History of the Worthies of England (Published posthumously in 1662)
o Unfinished collection of biographies (dictionary of national biography)
Fuller was the friend of the other great biographer of the age, Izaak Walton
Other works: The Church-History of Britain (also a collection of excellent biographies), The
History of the University of Cambridge, The History of the Holy War (about the Crusades)
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)
Clergyman and devotional writer
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 Fought for Charles in the Civil War; imprisoned several times during Puritan rule
Spiritual counsellor to the diarist John Evelyn, in whose Diary, Taylor is repeatedly mentioned
His excellent style earned him the title Shakespeare of Divines
Chief adversary of Milton
Style combined simplicity and grandeur
Works by Jeremy Taylor
Most important works: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) and The Rule and
Exercises of Holy Dying (1651)
o These are devotional handbooks of Christian practice meant to help Anglicans who
were deprived of a regular ministry during the disturbances of the Commonwealth
A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying (1646)
Discourse of the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship (1657, dedicated to Mrs
Katherine Phillips)
Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience . . . (1660)
Several Sermons
Other Works
The Garden of Cyrus (pub. 1658 along with Hydriotaphia)
o A philosophical discourse on the interconnection of art, nature and the Universe
o Explained through numerous symbols
Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial (1658)
o A response to the discovery of Roman burial urns in Norfolk
o Survey of ancient and current burial customs
o In chapter five, famously discusses mans struggles with mortality and melancholy
o Sceptical meditation on human vanity
Baroque prose
Izaak Walton (1593-1683)
Biographical and piscatorial (concerning fishing) writer; Royalist
The Compleat Angler (pub. 1653)
o Sub-titled the Contemplative Mans Recreation
o Walton continued to add more chapters to it at least for another 25 years
o A celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse
o Discusses techniques of fishing
o Describes a life that values serenity and appreciation for creation
o A second part added by his friend Charles Cotton
Waltons Lives
Full title: Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, &c
Walton seems to have chosen these subjects because of
o Their gentleness of disposition and cheerful piety
o Their love of angling, especially in the case of Donne, Wotton and Herbert
These biographies were written with great love, in the same leisurely style as The Compleat
Angler
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Political philosopher
Leviathan was to 17th century prose what Paradise Lost was to its poetry
Man is in a state of nature in which he is drawn towards fulfilling his natural desires,
leading to conflict and war
The only solution is an absolute sovereign who comes to power by social contract
Without a binding social contract between man and the state, human life would be in
disorder solitary poor, nasty, brutish and short
The absolute monarchs body, symbolizing the state or commonwealth, is depicted as
consisting of many human bodies bound within the kings body to constitute this body
This is related to the theory of the kings two bodies a body natural and a body politic,
the latter being mystical and immutable
Leviathan on You Tube
Watch the video 12. The Sovereign State: Hobbes' Leviathan uploaded by YaleCourses
A good introductory audio file is Thomas Hobbes uploaded by Gottfried Leibniz
The Term Metaphysical Poets
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The term refers to loose group of 17th century poets who were influenced by Donne
o Loose group because there were similarities, but also many differences
The term had derogatory use in the neoclassical period
Dryden was the first to use the term metaphysics in the context of Donnes poetry:
Donnes poetry affects the metaphysics (style of medieval scholastic philosophers)
Before Dryden, in Donnes own lifetime William Drummond of Hawthornden had referred
scornfully to poems in which metaphysical diction is employed.
Johnson applied the term metaphysical to the group of poets including Cowley, and
analyzed metaphysical imagery in his Life of Cowley
Metaphysical Poetry: Features
Rough rhythms of speech
Heated arguments (syllogism)
Witty, cynical, metaphysical conceit as opposed to the romantic, idealized Petrarchan conceit
o Both types of conceits are far-fetched comparisons
Shocking, dramatic style
Carpe diem philosophy
Critiqued in 18th century for false wit
Praised in the 20th century, following Herbert Griersons edition of Metaphysical Lyrics and
Poems of the Seventeenth Century (1912), which Eliot reviewed in 1921.
Eliots term Unified sensibility refers to their ability to feel their thoughts and think their
feelings
Metaphysical Poets
John Donne (an Elizabethan / Jacobean poet) influenced the group
o Abraham Cowley
o Andrew Marvell
The Metaphysical Cavaliers
o Robert Herrick
o Thomas Carew
The Religious Metaphysicals
o George Herbert
o Richard Crashaw
o Henry Vaughan
o Thomas Traherne
The last of the Metaphysicals
o John Cleveland
John Donne (c.1572-1631)
Donne made strikingly original departures from conventions of 16 th century verse
o No images of nature
o No allusions to classical mythology
o Mellifluousness replaced with a speaking voice reflecting the emotional intensity of a
confrontation
o No idealized view of human nature as in Elizabethan literature
o Classical Latin models combined with daring experiments in genre, form and imagery
o Transformed the conceit into a vehicle for multiple, even contradictory, feelings and
ideas
o Introduced the presence of a listener (The speaker directly addresses the lady /
listener)
In the Elizabethan love lyric, the listener / lady is absent
o Opposed to the fluid, regular verse of Cavaliers
Donnes Metaphysical Poetry
Poems often show an electrifying directness of language For Gods sake hold your tongue,
and let me love
From explosive beginnings, his poems develop as closely reasoned arguments or
propositions that rely heavily on the use of the conceit
His poems provides clear psychological insights about a broad range of lovers and wide
spectrum of amorous feelings
Drew his imagery from diverse fields as alchemy, astronomy, medicine, politics, global
exploration and philosophical disputation
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 His devotional lyrics passionately explore his love for God, sometimes through sexual
metaphors, depicting his love, fears and sense of spiritual unworthiness
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
Child prodigy of calm spirit who read The Faerie Queene twice before he was sent to school,
and composed 2 epic romances before his 15th year
Royalist and secretary to Queen Henrietta Maria in France during the Civil War
Imprisoned and released upon his return
Studied medicine
The poets reputation earned him a splendid funeral and burial beside Chaucer and Spenser,
but later his fame quickly dwindled
Life of Cowley is the first in Dr Johnsons Lives
Major Works by Cowley
The Mistress (1647) collection of poems; violent expression of love-affectation
o Subtitled Several Copies of Love Verses
o Dr Johnson criticized The Mistress as having no power of seduction
The Davideis (pub. 1656)
o A dreary unfinished religious epic on King David
o Originally Latin, later translated into English
Other Works by Cowley
Classicist who imitated Pindar
Set the style for 18th century Pindaric ode in his collection, Pindarique Odes
Modified the Pindaric ode to form the irregular ode
Wrote essays including On Myself and some plays
In 1660, he wrote Ode Upon the Blessed Restoration
The Civil War
o Unfinished royalist epic
o Fully published only in 1973, because in the preface to his 1656 Poems, Cowley had
wrongly indicated that he had destroyed all manuscripts of the epic
Andrew Marvell (1621-78)
Moderate republican and liberal Puritan
Poet and satirist
Classical reading
Travelled in the continent in the early years of the Civil War
In Rome he met Richard Flecknoe, immortalized as Shadwells predecessor in Mac
Flecknoe, whom he lampooned in a poem
His travels and broad cultural interests contributed much to the civilized and urbane tone of
his works
Marvells Life
In 1648, contributed commendatory verses for Lovelaces Lucasta
Entered politics, praised Lord Protector in An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwells Return from
Ireland (1650)
o Both straightforward praise of Cromwell and ironic deprecation
o Stresses the condition upon which such a leadership must be maintained
His finest poetry composed during the two years (1651-52) Marvell resided at Appleton
house as tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax.
Political involvement
Became a friend of Milton and in 1657 was appointed as Latin Secretary to the Council of
State
Became a Member of Parliament (1659), a post he held rest of his life
At the Restoration he accepted monarchical stability but rapidly became an outspoken
opponent of Charles IIs government
Travelled in Holland for two months and criticized Englands mismanagement of the naval
war with the Dutch
Post-1660 Writing
After Restoration, wrote satirical poems such as The Last Instructions to a Painter, (written
in 1667, but not published until 1689), a catalogue of verse portraits of politicians
Became increasingly satiric and bitter
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 In this last period, wrote The Rehearsal Transpros'd (published in two parts,1672-3), against
Reverend Samuel Parker and censorship, defending Milton
At the time of his death he was well-known for other political and religious satires as well as
The Rehearsal Transprosd
To His Coy Mistress
Perhaps his most famous poem
To His Coy Mistress illustrates the metaphysical blend of passion and conceits
Expression of carpe diem philosophy, or seize the day
o This clashes with other 17th century ideologies (especially religious) like Puritanism,
which emphasized the importance of denying personal pleasures
Use of humorously exaggerated fantasies in opposition to traditional conventions of love
poetry
o An hundred years to praise thine eyes
Images of death and decay are used
o To convey an appetite for life and love
Makes references to speed, urgency and passion
o To convey the speakers impatient desire
A Summary
A man talks to a woman who is hesitant in love
If they had more time and space, this shyness wouldnt be a crime. Then he could have
complimented her part by part.
BUT time is short; death is approaching. It is better for the woman to engage in love before
worms take her virginity. If she is too shy, his desire will also turn to ashes.
So, NOW (youth) is the time for love.
They cannot stop the sun in any case, but, by their love, they can make time fly (run).
The Argument in the Poem
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Coy Mistress on You Tube
Watch the Powerpoint presentation on Marvells classic: 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew
Marvell- analysis uploaded by mrbruff
Upon Appleton House
Addressed to Lord Fairfax
A country-house poem.
A reply to the royalist epic poem Gondibert by DAvenant
Numerous themes
o The poem dwells on Lord Fairfax, his daughter Maria Fairfax, description of their house
(built from the ruins of a nunnery, and which lacks grandeur compared to the excessive
size of ornamentation of other buildings)
o Authors religious beliefs
o His attacks on Catholicism
o Patriotic glorification of England and the problems that the country faces
The Garden
One of the early quiet and reflective poems
Romantic subject matter; metaphysical techniques
Themes
o Poets emotional feelings about life and nature
o Nature is the appropriate place for true luxury
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o Criticism of the busy worldly life

Use of conceit; forceful argument; Biblical and classical allusions and dramatic situations
Bermudas
Begins with an introduction
Followed by a song of thanksgiving sung by the rowers of a boat
Concludes with the identification of these rowers with the English
Brilliantly rhythmic
Indebted to Edmund Wallers The Battle of the Summer Island set in the Bermudas
Mower poems
A series of four pastoral poems
Written in the voice of Damon, the mower
Discusses his relationship with both humanity and nature
Themes
o Theme of rejection (by his sweetheart Juliana)
o Atypical love towards nature (the mower lays his life in the hands of his beloved
nature)
o Inability to care about ultimate renunciation of life
John Cleveland (1613-1658)
Mixture of metaphysical ingenuity and lusty vulgarity
Political satirist, royalist viewpoint, lively verbal tricks
Sometimes called the last metaphysical poet.
His verse has been called strong lines
Metaphysicals and Cavaliers
Many of the Metaphysical poets wrote during the Caroline age (reign of Charles I) and were
contemporaries of the Cavaliers
Both Metaphysicals and Cavaliers wrote about love, but the Metaphysicals often gave it an
intellectual treatment and wrote religious verse as well
Some Cavaliers like Lovelace and Carew were influenced by Petrarch, but all the
Metaphysical poets wrote in an anti-Petrarchan style
Metaphysical Cavaliers like Herrick wrote about nature, but Donne and other Metaphysicals
drew their metaphors from philosophy, theology and science rather than nature
The Cavaliers wrote smooth, conventional, rhythmic verse with stock phrases, but the
Metaphysical poets wrote rugged and difficult verse with conversational, even shocking,
rhythms (they avoided regular metres and rhyme schemes) and unconventional turns of
phrases
The Cavalier poets sometimes imitated the highly intellectual metaphysical conceits
The Metaphysical poets were all influenced by John Donne, and the Cavalier poets by Ben
Jonson
The Metaphysical Cavaliers are Robert Herrick and Thomas Carew
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
A Cavalier poet as well as Metaphysical poet
83 years of his life spans from Shakespeare to Dryden
A country parson by profession
Never married
None of his love poems is addressed to a specific woman
Cavalier poet inspired by Ben Jonson
Wrote over 2,500 poems, half of which appears in Hesperides
Earlier works erotic, with frequent references to lovemaking and the female body
Later works are spiritual and philosophical in nature
Hesperides (1648)
Consists of 1,200 poems including elegies, epitaphs, epigrams, hymns, songs, etc
Employs Carpe Diem theme of Horace, Catullus
Poems celebrating seasons and nature
Subtitle The Works Both Humane and Divine of Robert Herrick
Dedicated to the Prince of Wales
Opens with The Argument of His Book
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 Here, he offers a list of themes: English country life and its seasons, village customs,
complimentary poems to ladies and friends, classical and Christian themes
Contains his spiritual pieces, called Noble Numbers
Noble Numbers
Collection of devotional poems
Unlike his secular verses, not visually brilliant or rich in conceits
Show none of the conflicts or deeper perception of the religious metaphysicals
Major Poems
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (Gather ye rose buds while ye may)
Oberons Feast
To Daffodils
To Violets
To Electra
To the Western Wind
Corinnas Going a-Maying
The Funeral Rites of the Rose
Upon Julias Clothes
Thomas Carew (c.1594-1640)
A Metaphysical Cavalier
Wrote sensuous lyrics
Admired Jonson and Donne
Polished and modified the traditional Petrarchan conceit with vivid diction, elegant variation
and surprising turns of phrases
A master of the game of love
Many of his poems addressed to his mistress Celia
Carews Major Works
Notorious erotic poem A Rapture where he depicts Celia as a landscape
o A Rapture attracted a lot of censure and was denounced by name in the Parliament
Accomplished Caroline masque: Coelum Britannicum (The British Heavens, 1634)
Wrote To Ben Jonson consoling the aging poet over the failure of his play The New Inn
Elegy for John Donne
o In the form of a series of questions and answers
o Attempts to assess Donnes position in English poetry
o Towards the end are the famous lines: Here lies a King, that ruled as he thought fit /
The universal monarchy of wit
To Saxham is a country-house poem
The Religious Metaphysicals
John Donne
o Established what has come to be known as the Metaphysical style of poetry
o Wrote both love poetry and religious poetry
o The two were not mutually exclusive in Donne
The religious Metaphysicals, like Donne, applied the techniques of love poetry to religious
themes
George Herbert (1593-1633)
Contemporary of John Donne
The finest of the religious metaphysicals
Born into an aristocratic family
Initially led a worldly, academic and public life
In the last three years of his short life, turned to the religious vocation
Became a priest in 1630
Considered a saint by his contemporaries
No poetry published in his lifetime
Poems are simple, quiet, modest (all unlike Donne) and honest
Wrote no love poetry
Herberts Works
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 Metaphysical traits of his poems are colloquial manner, the blend of thought and feeling and,
to some extent, conceits
The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations
o Collection of 160 religious poems
o Handed over the manuscript to Nicholas Ferrar in his death bed, asking him to publish
it if it might help some poor soul, or to burn it.
o Published in 1633
o Shows zeal for Church of England and practical theology
o Expresses the conflict between the claims of worldly wit and true Christian devotion
o Explores the significance of the main symbols and beliefs of Protestant Christianity
Herberts Works
Major poems
o Redemption
o Church Monuments
o The Altar
o Virtue
o The Bunch of Grapes
o The Collar
Occasionally used pattern poetry as in Easter Wings
o Two stanzas in the shape of wings
o The sense expands and contracts as the line lengthens and shortens
A short prose work, A Priest to the Temple (1652)
Izaak Walton wrote his biography
The Collar
Begins with characteristic colloquial violence
o I struck the board, and cried, No more;
o I will abroad!...
Violent rebellion against Gods beneficent discipline
Sudden anticlimactic change at the close
He hears the voice of God calling Child, to which he responds My Lord
The mere presence of God removes his discontent
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.
Richard Crashaw (c.1612-49)
Revolted against his fathers religion, Puritanism, and converted to Catholicism
Spent the latter part of his life in exile in the Continent
Considered metaphysical for his fondness for conceits
Crashaw did not have the perfection in blending the sensuous and the spiritual as in Donne
Had none of Herberts quietly controlled ease in developing a Christian theme
Lacks other features like complexity of mind, colloquial manner, intellectual imagery
Latinist, Hellenist, had knowledge of Italian, Spanish, skill in music, painting, did engravings
for his poems
Cowley helped him, memorialized him in an elegy
Steps to the Temple (1646)
o Title is a reference to Herberts The Temple, which he admired
o The preface introduces the author thus: Here's Herberts second, but equall.
Delights of the Muses (initially published along with Steps to the Temple)
Also wrote Latin poetry
Wrote secular poems also
Henry Vaughan (1621-95)
Fought on the Royalist side in the Civil War
Made his living as a physician
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 Early verse showed elements of Cavalier and pastoral poetry

Showed a complete change with Silex Scintillans
Inspired by George Herbert
His love poems are inferior to religious poems
Silex Scintillans (1650)
Best work
Silex Scintillans means The Flashing Flint
Refers to the stony hardness of his heart from which divine steel strikes fire
Preface to Silex condemns the poetry of contemporary wits as well as his own earlier love
poems as vain; attributes his change in perception to the influence of George Herbert
Turned to religious contemplation also because of personal misfortunes, the civil troubles of
the time and the influence of his mystical twin brother Thomas Vaughan
Religious fervour, imagination, powerful, beautiful ideas
The Retreat
A long poem that shows spiritual optimism
Loss of the heavenly glory experienced during the childhood and expresses a fanciful desire
to get back that original stage
A consistent theme in Vaughans poetry
Inspired Wordsworths Immortality Ode
The Waterfall
Two distinct sections: an affectionate address to water, meditation on its mystical
significance
The flowing of water paralleled with the journey of the soul
Wordsworthian in its treatment of nature
Thomas Traherne (1637-74)
Poems lost after his death and found in 20th century
Reveal an ardent, childlike love of God
Centuries of Meditations
o Religious prose
o Joyce quotes from this book in Ulysses
o Gives a clear view of his quest for innocence and joy
o A mood of joyful primitivism and idealization of childhood
Mannerist Art
A Late Renaissance style of art that flourished in Italy during 1520-80
Spread to other regions of Europe in the 17th century, but not quite to England
English Metaphysical poets, however, have been called English Mannerist poets
Mannerist Techniques
Deliberately artificial
Elongated forms and distorted forms
Witty, intellectual quality
A reaction to the idealized compositions prevalent in High Renaissance art
Metaphysical Poetry and Mannerism
Donne and the other metaphysical poets are associated with the Mannerist style in art in the
following ways:
o Stylistic excesses
o Deliberately distorted and exaggerated conceits
o Artificiality of wit and logic
o Disturbing rhythms
Metaphysical Poetry on You Tube
Watch the Six Centuries of Verse: Metaphysical & Devotional Poets video uploaded by
Toddysfins
There is a slide presentation Metaphysical Poetry uploaded by Melissa McClure
For a flip-classroom experience, search for Metaphysical & Cavalier Poets uploaded by
Brandon Abdon
John Denham (c.16151669)
Another important poet of this period is John Denham
Member of Parliament and Royalist; Fellow of Royal Society
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 Increasing mental instability leading to dementia

Along with Edmund Waller, exerted a tremendous influence on contemporary poetry
Together they have been called Sons of British poetry
Coopers Hill (1642)
John Denhams best work
First English poem devoted to a local description
Dryden praised it as an exact pattern of good writing
Description of Thames valley scenery in the neighbourhood of his house in Surrey combined
with historical and moral reflections
o Similar poems in the 18th century: Popes Windsor Forest, John Dyers Grongar Hill
Denham wrote several versions of this poem
Conciseness is an important feature
Famous lines
Both Dryden and Johnson singled out for praise these four lines from Coopers Hill:
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without oerflowing full.
Pamphleteering
A pamphlet typically had between eight and ninety-six pages in quarto size
Cheapest publication; the most prolific and democratic form of expression
Printed in London, a pamphlet would be sold on street corners or in print shops or carried to
more rural locations and sold at a very small price
Polemical and propagandist writing on topical subjects
Earlier pamphleteers: Greene, Nashe, Dekker and Middleton
o Themes: romantic fiction, autobiography, personal abuse, and social and literary
criticism
o As part of rogue literature, a genre of moralizing fiction in which the criminal
underworld is penetrated by an honest man who exposes their deceitful practices
Pamphleteering in the 17th century
In the 17th century, pamphlets were mostly on political subjects, while tracts were written on
religious subjects
During the Civil War, pamphlets played an important role in the debates between Puritans
and Anglicans, between the king and the Parliament
Through pamphlets, different groups (like Levellers, Diggers and Ranters) expressed
themselves
At the time of the Restoration in England in 1660, the flow of pamphlets was checked, their
range restricted to some extent by newspapers and periodicals
During the Glorious Revolution (168889), however, pamphlets increased in importance as
political weapons
The Thomason Collection
In 1640-41, George Thomason, a bookseller, collected the pamphlets and tracts of the period
for the first time. By 1660, he collected about 22,000 publications, including news pamphlets,
newsbooks and early newspapers.
The Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts is a key resource for the study of 17th century
British history
Newsbooks
An important genre of the Civil War period
Early newsbooks pro-parliamentarian
First royalist newsbook: Mercurius Aulicus (Court Mercury, 1642-45)
o Derisively called a court-libel by Milton in Areopagitica
William Prynnes Histriomastix (1633, an attack on the theatre), and subsequent attacks on
the bishops and Archbishop Laud
Female resistance against misogyny
o Margaret Cavendish
John Clevelands The Character of a London Diurnall (1647)
o An attack on parliamentarian newsbooks
th
17 century Art on You Tube
132

The short video Anthony van Dyck uploaded by BlulightGallery

Peter Paul Rubens uploaded by DistantMirrors

Chapter 11

Restoration Period

Restoration of Monarchy (1660)

The Puritan Interregnum ended and monarchy was restored under Charles II, the exiled son of
Charles I
Accompanied by reopening of the theatres that were closed during the Puritan rule
Church of England was restored as the national church
Church and state were still deeply intertwined
Two political factions, the Whigs (liberals) and the Tories (conservatives) were formed
Charles II (r. 1660-1685)
During the Puritan Interregnum, Prince Charles was in exile in France and other parts of
Europe
On 29 May 1660, the day he turned 30, Charles was restored to the English throne
Handsome, popular, cynical, unprincipled
For his luxuriant hedonistic life, he came to called the Merry Monarch
Calamities after the Restoration
Wars with the Dutch
1665-66 Plague broke out again
1666 Great Fire of London
Over 13,000 buildings destroyed
Burnt for 5 days
However, only 6 people known to have died
Charles and Religion
He favoured a policy of religious tolerance but secretly favoured Catholicism, both of which
the Parliament could not accept
The Test Act of 1673 was passed
According to this, all civil and military officers had to take communion with the
Anglican Church at least once a year
Meanwhile, in 1678, the Popish Plot of the Catholics led by Titus Oates to assassinate
Charles II was revealed
Though the Popish Plot turned out to be fictitious, it fanned an anti-Catholic hysteria
throughout England, leading to the Exclusion Crisis
Exclusion Crisis
Charles II had no legitimate heirs, his wife Catherine having had several miscarriages
The next in line to the throne was his Catholic brother James
Two political factions emerged at this time, the Whigs (liberals) who wanted to exclude James
from inheritance, and the Tories (conservatives) who supported Jamess accession
The Whig Party was founded by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 1 st Earl of Shaftesbury
He was one of the 12 members of the Parliament who travelled to the Dutch Republic
to invite Charles II to return to England
The Whigs supported the accession of James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, who was the eldest
of Charless illegitimate sons
The Exclusion Bill
In 1679, the Whigs, under the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Duke of Buckingham, introduced
the Exclusion Bill in the House of Commons
The Bill sought to exclude Catholics from inheriting the English throne
The King interfered, dissolved the Parliament, and imprisoned Shaftesbury on the charge of
high treason in 1681, in order to prevent the passing of the Exclusion Bill
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However, Shaftesbury was later released (and a medal was cast in honour of his aquittal)
and the Bill was passed in the House of Commons
However, it was defeated in the House of Lords
Charless Last Days
Charles ruled without the Parliament for the rest of his reign
In 1685, Charles died of a sudden illness, which raised suspicions of poisoning (later proved
false)
On his deathbed, he converted to Catholicism
He left numerous mistresses and illegitimate children, but no legitimate heirs
Literature and Culture in Charles Age
Charles IIs court championed the right of Englands social elite to pursue pleasure and
libertinism
Literature of 1660-1700 emphasizes decorum, or critical principles based on what is
elegant, fit, and right
Charles II authorized new companies of actors. Women began to appear on stage in
female roles.
Restoration prose style grew more like witty, urbane conversation and less like the
intricate, rhetorical style of previous writers like John Milton and John Donne.
Restoration literature continued to appeal to heroic ideals of love and honor, particularly
on stage, in heroic tragedy.
The other major dramatic genre was the Restoration comedy of manners, which
emphasizes sexual intrigue and satirizes the elite's social behavior with witty dialogue.
Science and Knowledge in Charles Age
Charles patronized the arts and sciences, and supported the Royal Society for the Improving
of Natural Knowledge (1662)
The Royal Society revolutionized scientific method by studying natural history (the collection
and description of facts of nature), natural philosophy (study of the causes of what happens
in nature), and natural religion (study of nature as a book written by God)
Dogmatism, or the blind acceptance of received religious beliefs, was widely regarded as
dangerous
The major idea of the period (founded on Francis Bacon) was that of empiricism (which infers
that experience including experimentation is the reliable source of knowledge)
John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume all pursued differing interpretations of
empiricism, and the concept itself had a profound impact on society and literature
James II (r. 1685-1688)
Came to power as James II of England (and Wales) and Ireland and James VII of Scotland
These 3 kingdoms were united by the Act of Union of 1707
He was the second son of Charles I, and ascended the throne in 1685, after the death of
Charles II
James was pro-French and pro-Catholic
In 1685, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and Charles IIs illegitimate son, attempted to
overthrow James, which came to be called the Monmouth Rebellion
James revoked the Test Act that favoured Anglican Church
Probably he had designs of becoming an absolute monarch
In 1688, a son (Catholic heir, who later came to be known as The Old Pretender) was born
to him, creating political tension in England
Glorious Revolution (1688)
The Protestant nobles called on Jamess Protestant son-in-law and nephew, William III of
Orange, and his wife (Jamess eldest daughter) Mary II to take the throne
Williams army landed from the Netherlands, and James fled
This is the Bloodless Revolution or Glorious Revolution of 1688
For over 50 years, starting from 1689, James II and his supporters attempted to recapture
the throne in what came to be called the Jacobite risings
The most notable of the Jacobite rebellions were in 1715 and 1745, by which time James was
aided by his sons (especially The Old Pretender whose son was called The Young
Pretender)
Glorious Revolution:Rationale and Results
John Locke provided the rationale for the Glorious Revolution

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Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience
or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled,
and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers.
- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 1689
Prevented Catholicism from being re-established in England
Imposed limitations on royal authority
Parliament gained more powers
Joint Monarchy
William and Mary established a joint monarchy
In 1689, they passed the Bill of Rights which made provisions
For freedom of speech in Parliament
For protecting the rights of the Protestants
Against the king dissolving the parliament at will
For general elections to the Parliament
Mary II died and William III continued to rule till 1702
Upon Williams death, Marys sister Anne came to the throne
Restoration Age on You Tube
Watch the Powerpoint presentation Chapter 13 Restoration Monarchy and Glorious
Revolution 1 uploaded by mrcherney23

The

The

The French Connection

King Charles II and his companions had spent the period of exile in France, and brought back
admiration for everything French
Hence the Restoration period came under the compelling influence of French classicism in
art, philosophy, literature, theatre and social behaviour
Whereas the Italian influence had been dominant in Elizabethan period
This was a period of classicism in France, characterized by lucidity, vivacity, and by reason,
the close attention given to form correctness, elegance and finish. It was essentially a
literature of polite society, in which intellect was predominant and the critical faculty always
in control
The Baroque
The baroque is a style in art, architecture, music and literature primarily in the European
continent, in which the classical forms of the Renaissance are enhanced to achieve
elaborate, grandiose, energetic, and highly dramatic effects
Captured the physical tensions of dynamic movement in painting and sculpture
As opposed to the tranquility and mathematical perspective of the Renaissance artists
The word derives from Portuguese word barroco meaning rough pearl
The English Baroque is most associated with the Restoration period (1660-1700), which also
marked the end of the Renaissance
Baroque Artists
Associated with the Baroque are
Richard Crashaws poetry
Miltons Grand Style
Donnes poetry
De Quinceys descriptions of dreams
French Baroque (eg. Architecture of Louis XIVs Versailles)
The works of the Italian artist Caravaggio
The art, architecture and sculpture of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Rome and France
Also the art of Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer
Bernini on You Tube
Watch the video St Peters Basilica, Rome [HD] uploaded by WorldSiteGuides
A good BBC video The Power of Art - Bernini (complete episode) has been uploaded by
kunstskole
The Baroque on You Tube
Listen to Four Seasons by Vivaldi
The file The Best of Baroque uploaded by HALIDONMUSIC would give you good samples of
the baroque.
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A good introduction to baroque architecture is available at Art of the Western World Episode 9: The Birth of Baroque uploaded by kunstskole
Restoration Poetry:The Poetry of Masculine Power
Influence of metaphysical and Cavalier verse continued
Libertine verse (without moral restraints) became prominent
Hedonistic account of the male conquest, often verging on the pornographic as in Charles
Sackville and Charles Sedley
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochesters poetry is a critique of the libertine ideal
The rejection of the masculine libertine body in Rochesters poetry is commensurate with
the female libertinism of AphraBehns verse which explored power relations from a
feminine perspective
Restoration Poetry: Epic and Satire
The epic was held as the highest genre
Miltons successful epics: Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained
Cowleys failed epics: Davideis and The Civil War
The Restoration satire
Marvells The Last Instructions to a Painter (1667)
Satirizes Charles II and his administration
Samuel Butlers mock-heroic satire Hudibras (1661)
Satirizes the Puritans in support of the royal court
Drydens Absalom and Achitophel, The Medal and Mac Flecknoe
Restoration Poetry: Intellectual Foundations
Emphasis on urbanity, decorum, elegance and sweetness of numbers (correctness in
metre, constituting proper rhythm)
Influence of French writers
Rene RapinsReflexions (1672, on Aristotles Poetics)
Nicolas Boileau-Despraux (Boileau)s Le Art Poetique (1674)
Good sense, reason, nature values imbibed from the French
Not every aspect of French neoclassicism adopted
Adopted elegance and wit, which became the criteria of good verse
Wit and judgement were differentiated by Locke, DAvenant, Dryden and Addison
Wit is the putting together of ideas with quickness and variety
Judgement is separating ideas from one another to avoid being misled by similarity
Restoration Prose
The age witnessed the birth of modern prose
Dryden
Critical prose
Romances by women
Margaret Cavendish
The Blazing World (1666)
On the place of women in society; provides a scientific interpretation of a
feminized nature
Can be considered a reply to Bacons New Atlantis
AphraBehn
Oroonoko (1688)
Restoration Drama
Development of Restoration drama illustrated the rise and decline of an artificial pseudocourtly ideal in England
Did not represent any wide or deep current in English life
Two predominant genres
Heroic drama
Relied on spectacle and the heros emotional turmoil as he struggles between
duty to his country and personal honour in order to attain his lady love, who is
usually a paragon of virtue
Comedy of Manners (Restoration Comedy)
Themes of cuckoldry and courtship continue from city comedy of Jonson,
Dekker, Middleton, etc

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The history play disappeared along with the disappearance of the national consciousness
in drama
Restoration Theatre
The theatre and audience of the Restoration period were very different from those of the
Elizabethan era
Indoor theatres
Picture-frame stage
Actresses taking female parts
Moving scenery
Artificial lighting
Stage was dominated by spectacle
Audience was more restricted, geographically and socially
Playhouse was regarded by respectable citizens of the middle classes as a centre of vice and
exhibitionism, and they avoided it
Dramatists in turn ridiculed middle class virtues
Restoration Drama: Influences
Strongest influence on Restoration comedy was Ben Jonson
Restoration writers dandified Jonsons moral comedies; refined and localized his wit
Jacobean writers like Beaumont and Fletcher were still popular and influential
Influence of French writers like Corneille, Moliere, Racine
Comedies of Moliere were translated and adapted
Restoration writers admired and imitated French wit
Plays of the Spanish writer Calderon were popular
Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Fame rests on the long burlesque poem Hudibras (3 parts, 1663, 1664 and 1678
respectively)
Charles II like it and granted him a pension
Butler became Secretary to the Duke of Buckingham; accompanied him to France; and may
have assisted him in the composition of The Rehearsal
Other works
Numerous prose characters
Epigrammatic thoughts
Poems including The Elephant in the Moon, a satire on Sir Paul Nealeof the Royal
Society, concerning a mouse who gets into a telescope

Hudibras (1663, 1664, 1678)

First great verse satire in English in octosyllabic couplets
Its distinctive style has given rise to the name Hudibrastics
A biting satire on the Puritans and the tyranny of the Commonwealth
Immensely popular in its time
The name Hudibras comes from The Faerie Queene
Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralpho broadly modelled on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
The end of the poem describes the activities of the Republicans just before the Restoration,
and gives a study of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Achitophel in Drydens Absalom and
Achitophel
Sir William DAvenant (1606-68)
Playwright, poet and theatre manager
One of the few personalities who were active in English theatre before the Civil War and after
the Restoration
William Shakespeare is said to have been his godfather, and even his biological father
In 1638, named Poet Laureate after Ben Jonsons death the previous year
Royalist in the Civil War
Works by DAvenant
Gondibert (1652)
Epic poem mainly written during his exile to Paris
Contains a Preface, which was published before the poem itself, and an answer to it by
Thomas Hobbes
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The Siege of Rhodes (perf. 1656)

Opera first performed at Rutland House in 1656
Considered to be the first performance of an English opera
Included Englands first known professional actress, Mrs Coleman
Spectacular effects; bombastic speeches
Works by DAvenant
Wrote, along with John Dryden, a comic adaptation of The Tempest, called The Tempest ,
or The Enchanted Island
Added new characters
DAvenant is satirized along with Dryden in the play The Rehearsal, written by George
Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham and others
Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683)
Playwright and theatre manager
Like DAvenant, he was one of the few figures in English theatre to be active before the
Civil War and after the Restoration
Royalist
His most popular play was written before the Civil War
The Parsons Wedding (1637)
Many of his plays are tragicomedies
The poet Anne Killigrew (1660-85) was his niece
Dryden wrote a famous elegy called To The Pious Memory of the Accomplish'd
Young LadyMrs. Anne Killigrew (1686)

John Dryden (1631-1700)

Dryden was the most influential writer of the Restoration

Wrote in every form important to the periodoccasional verse, comedy, tragedy, heroic
plays, odes, satires, translations of classical worksand produced critical essays
concerning how one ought to write these forms.
1st neo-classical critic
1st comparative critic
Liberal neo-classicist
Drydens Life
Born in 1631 at Northamptonshire
He studied at Cambridge, and went to London in 1637, where he wrote several plays and
satires for the court
His first successful play, written in heroic couplets, was The Indian Emperor (1665)
After 1676, he began to write in blank verse, producing his best play, All for Love (1678)
In 1668 he became Poet Laureate and in 1670 historiographer royal

Drydens Later Years

Called to defend the king's party, he wrote a series of satires, notably Absalom and
Achitophel (1681), which did much to turn the tide against the Whigs
To this era also belong the didactic poem ReligioLaici (1682), which argues the case for
Anglicanism, and The Hind and the Panther (1687), marking his conversion to Catholicism
He lost his laureateship on the accession of William III (1688)
His critical works were written mainly in his later years.

Drydens Poetry
Early poetry historical, laudatory
His best poetry is satiric, and came later
However, wrote only two original satires
The Medal and Mac Flecknoe
Offers no emotional excitement or intellectual complexities
Factual, clear, concentrated expression
Initiated neoclassicism in poetry, after Jonson
Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell (1659)
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First major poem

Quatrains in alternate rhyme, a meter he got from DAvenantsGondibert
No attack on royalty
No mention of Cromwells religion
Dryden always favoured authority and peace and had a Hobbesian fear of disorder;
consequently when disorder broke out upon Cromwells death, he, with the rest of the
nation, welcomed the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux(1660)
Astraea Redux(1660)
Royalist panegyric (eulogy) for Charles II
Heroic couplets, with a liberal sprinkling of similes, metaphors, etc
invokes Roman ideas of the return of a golden age under Augustus Caesar in order to
encourage similar hopes for Englands future
Earlier he had written Heroic Stanzas, praising Cromwell
Samuel Johnson justified Dryden thus: if he changed, he changed with the nation

Annus Mirabilis (1667)

Latin phrase meaning wonderful year 1666
It was a year beset with calamities
Great Fire of London
Naval war with the Dutch
Why does Dryden call it wonderful year ?
666 is the Number of the Beast and people thought the year to be totally
disastrous
Dryden interpreted the absence of greater disaster as miraculous intervention by
God
Ambitious historical poem in 304 quatrains
Strong, dignified tone characteristic of Dryden begins to appear
Absalom and Achitophel(1681)
Written after 15 years of writing plays
For a discussion of Drydens plays, see the section Drydens Drama
With this poem, he enters the realm of satirical and argumentative verse, which is where
Dryden truly belongs as a poet
Satirical allegory; Juvenalian satire
Heroic couplets; epic theme
Admirably controlled verse; balanced phrases
Context
The poem celebrates Charles IIs victory over his enemies in the Exclusion Crisis
The Whig agitation to exclude from succession to the throne Charles IIs brother James
(on the grounds that he is a Roman Catholic)
To encourage Charless illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth to claim the throne
Dryden took the Tory side
Dryden emerges as the champion of monarchy
This poem retaliates against Drydens political and literary enemies

Plot and Characters

The biblical story of the rebellion of Absalom (helped by his advisor Achitophel) against his
father King David is applied to the contemporary situation
David King Charles II
Achitophel Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, who encouraged
Monmouth to rebel; portrayed like Miltons Satan
Absalom James, Duke of Monmouth, Charless illegitimate son
Zimri Buckingham (a Whig who had written the play The Rehearsal, satirizing Dryden)
Israel, Jews England
Jebusites Roman Catholics
Jerusalem London
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The opening lines

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
When Nature prompted, and no Law deni'd
Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;
Then, Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart,
His vigorous warmth did variously impart
To wives and slaves: and, wide as his command,
Scatter'd his Maker's image through the land.
The portrait of Shaftesbury
Of these the false Achitophel was first:
A name to all succeeding ages curst.
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit:
Restless, unfixt in principles and place;
In pow'runpleas'd, impatient of disgrace.
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay:
And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide:
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave, what with his toil he won
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son:
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate:
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.
Second part of Absalom and Achitophel
The bulk of the poem is by Nahum Tate
Dryden contributed 200 lines
Shadwell satirized as Og with calculated disgust
Deog is Elkanah Settle, another bad poet and playwright
Portrait of Shadwell
Now stop your noses, readers, all and some,
For heres a tun of Midnight-work to come,
Og from a treason-tavern rolling home.
Round as a Globe, and liquordevry chink,
Goodly and Great he sails behind his link. . .
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessingBe thou dull;
Drink, swear and roar, forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk, do anything but write:
The Medal: Context
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Absalom and Achitophel(1681) appeared about a week before Shaftesbury was tried and
imprisoned on a charge of high treason
There was tremendous excitement over this
Shaftesbury was later acquitted, and to celebrate this victory, the Whigs cast a medal: on
one side, the portrait of Shaftesbury, on the other, a picture of London
Shaftesburys supporters wore this medal to welcome him back
On this occasion, Dryden wrote The Medal (1682), a single-minded and savage attack on
Shaftesbury
The Medal (1682)
Sub-title: A Satire against Sedition
It opens with the preface Epistle to the Whigs
Shadwell responded with the coarsely satiric Medal of John Bayes which has a preface called
Epistle to the Tories
Like in Absalom &Achitophel, the didactic element is strong
Shaftesbury is the Satanic snake in English paradise, cursed for persuading the Eve-like
English subjects to commit the original sin of rebelling against their Adamic King Charles
Dryden attacks Shaftesburys political inconsistency and hypocrisy
Mac Flecknoe (c.1676, pub. 1682)
Sub-title A Satyr upon the True-Blew-Protestant Poet, T.S.
The name means Son of Flecknoe
Dryden represented Shadwell as having inherited the stupidity of an Irish priest named
Flecknoe who thought of himself as a poet, and who had recently died.
Theme is the choice of Shadwell by Flecknoe as his heir to the kingdom of nonsense
and dullness in prose and verse.
Andrew Marvell had written a mocking poem about Flecknoe, and his name had become
synonymous with bad poetry.
Drydens deadly weapon is the tone of ironic politeness (as in Horatian satire)
Model for Popes Dunciad (1728)
Mac Flecknoe: Opening Lines
All human things are subject to decay,
And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was called to empire, and had governed long;
In prose and verse was found without dispute,
Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute.
This agd prince, now flourished in peace,
And blessed with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the state;
Flecknoe chooses Shadwell
And, pondering which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with wit,
Cried,--"'Tis resolved! for nature pleads, that he
Should only rule, who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he,
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.
The Mock-Epic
There was a predominance of the mock-epic genre in the Restoration and Augustan periods
Neoclassical theory put the epic on the top of all the literary kinds or genres
However, these periods were not heroic, and heroic poetry written at this time was
artificial
The epic glorified aristocratic values; the mock-epic thus heralds the rise of the middle class
who eschewed aristocratic values

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A more intimate and social kind of poetry dealing with contemporary events and
personalities was in vogue then
The mock-epic genre enabled them to work within the neoclassical tradition as well as to
write poetry that is suited to their times
As a mock heroic poem (mock epic)
Dryden considered Mac Flecknoeprimarily a satire, rather than an epic (Dryden called both
poems Mac Flecknoeand The Medal Varronian satire)
Varronian satire or Menippean satire is usually long like a novel, and attacks mental
attitudes rather than individuals
Typical neoclassical style
Reaction against the overuse & stereotyping of the epic style
Tradition of mock heroic poetry
Began in the pseudo-Homeric Battle of Frogs and Mice
Continued in Pope; mock heroic novel was written by Fielding
Mock heroic conventions in Mac Flecknoe
Uses the elevated style of the classical epic poem to satirize human follies
Blends grandeur of heroic poetry and triviality of low comedy
Ironic juxtaposition of Shadwell with legendary figures
Arian, the legendary musician
Ascanius, the great emperor of Rome
Hannibal, the hero of Carthage
Christ (whose way was prepared by John the Baptist, who represents Flecknoe)
Shadwells coronation scene
Pomp & gaudiness
The setting is the ancient watchtower Barbican in Augusta (London), the site for brothels
and inferior entertainment
Instead of 'Persian carpets a stock of dull books were spread over the way, along which
poetasters lead a procession to the throne.
Instead of the ball and sceptre, Shadwell holds a mug of ale in his left hand and a copy of
Flecknoes play Loves Kingdom in his right
Shadwell swears to maintain true dullness and to wage perpetual war with truth and sense
A wreath featuring sleep-inducing opium poppies crowns his head, and at the conclusion of
the ceremony, twelve owls, symbols of stupidity, are released to fly aloft
Flecknoes speech
Gives advice on writing
Urges Shadwell to trust his own gifts, not labour to be dull
In his plays, both wits and fops (dandies) should be modelled on himself, for there wont be
any difference between the two
Instead of imitating great playwrights like Jonson or successful ones like Etherege, he should
make poetasters his models.
Like himself, Shadwells characters are dull.
Unlike Jonson or Charles Sedley, he indulges too much in farce, physical humour and
obscene language.
Indeed, Shadwell should give up drama and satire and turn to cheap genres like anagrams,
pattern poems, acrostics or songs
Conclusion
When Flecknoes speech is over, a trapdoor opens beneath him and he sinks down
A wind bears his mantle aloft
Like the prophet Elijas mantle descending upon Elisha, Flecknoes mantle rises upward and
then lands upon Shadwell.
Mac Flecknoe on You Tube
Listen to this recitation of an excerpt: Shadwell - John Dryden uploaded by Samuel
Godfrey George
Subtlety in Satire
Drydens satires owe much to Theophrastian characters
They are characterized by the force of subtlety

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Dryden says in A Discourse concerning satire, which was prefaced to his translation of
Juvenal: How easy is it to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a
man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious
terms!. . . For this reason, he says, the character of Zimri in my Absalom, is, in my opinion,
worth the whole poem.
ReligioLaici, or a Laymans Faith (1682)
A discourse on religion, supporting Anglicanism
Human reason is presented as fallible
Dim as the borrowed beam of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is Reason to the soul. . .
A revealed religion as necessary
Tradition is presented as uncertain
These are reasons for supporting Anglican Church
Argument neither profound nor wholly logical!
And Dryden joined the Catholic Church in 1686
Drydens Conversion (1686)
In 1686, Dryden converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism
Regarded as done for mere self-interest, since James II, a Catholic king, ascended the throne
in 1685
Also due to his desire for ecclesiastical authority and order
However, Dryden reaped no personal benefits from his conversion
When the Protestant Mary and William came to power following the Glorious Revolution,
there was a period of strong anti-Catholic feelings. Even then, Dryden stuck to his new
religion, and spend the last eleven years of his life in relative poverty
The Hind and the Panther (1687)
Allegorical poem in three parts
Argument in support of Roman Catholic Church
Contributed to a debate that raged throughout the nation
Form of a beast fable
Hind Roman Catholic Church
Panther, the best of the beasts of prey Church of England
Bear Independents
Wolf Presbyterians
Hare Quakers
Ape Freethinkers
Lion King James II
After the Glorious Revolution
Lost the offices of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal
Free (and uneven) translations published as Fables, Ancient and Modern
Published in March, 1700
His last work. Dryden died two months later
Virgils Aeneid and Pastorals
Parts of Homers Iliad
Parts of Lucretius works
Parts of Ovids Epistles and Metamorphoses
Tales from Boccaccio and Chaucer
Poetry after the Glorious Revolution
Lyrics
Variety of styles &metres
Free renderings of the Pindaric ode (all are occasional, i.e., written for special
occasions)
Song for St Cecilias Day (1687)
Alexanders Feast, or The Power of Music (written 1693; pub. 1697)
Also in honour of St Cecilias Day
St Cecilia is the patron saint of music
Theme: the power of music to move human emotions
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Has a dramatic setting: The Greeks are celebrating their victory over the
Persian king Darius and Timotheus, the musician, is called upon to
perform
To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew
Poetry after the Glorious Revolution
Operas
The State of Innocence
A rhetorical rewriting of Paradise Lost
Troilus and Cressida (published in Quarto 1 in 1609 as well as in the first folio of 1623)
Attempt to improve Shakespeares language: to uncover the jewels of
Shakespeares verse, hidden beneath a heap of rubbish
Cressida presented as loyal to Troilus

Drydens Drama
Drydens methods & objects vary with public appreciation
4 groups (with examples)
Heroic Plays: The Conquest of Granada
Blank-verse Tragedies: All for Love
Comedies: Amphitryon, The Wild Gallant, The Rival Ladies
Tragicomedies: Marriage a la Mode, Secret Love
Heroic Play
Prominent after Restoration
Dryden was the most skilful proponent of this genre
Easily parodied; hence Drydens interest waned
Heroic Play
Inspired by the romantic plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the heroic world of
DAvenantsGondibert
Either tragedies or comedies
Protagonist heroic figure
Exalted stage incidents (often ridiculously extravagant)
The heroic couplet provided an appropriate medium
Little psychological subtlety; emotions are predictable
The Rival Ladies (1664)
The Indian Emperor (1665)
Tyrannick Love, or The Royal Martyr (1669)
The Conquest of Granada (1670)
Aureng-Zebe (1675)
The Conquest of Granada (1670)
Two-part tragedy
Deals with the Spanish conquest of the province of Granada from the Islamic Moors
In the preface, Dryden laid out the principles of heroic drama
Drydens Theory of the heroic play
Dryden discusses his concept of heroic drama in Essay on Heroic Tragedy, prefixed to
The Conquest of Granada
Heroic play is imitation of heroic poem (epic). Hence to be judged along Aristotelian rules of
tragedy (which is epic in a concentrated form).
Written in heroic verse, it must have the dignity, majesty & grandeur of a heroic poem (epic)
Themes of love and valour
Function: to arouse admiration; not Aristotelian pity & fear
Dramatist can introduce the improbable & the marvellous (supernatural)
Other heroic dramatists
Nathaniel Lee (c. 1653-1692)
Most successful writer of heroic drama after Dryden
Less artistic control and greater verbal violence
Highly artificial drama with no relation to life
Wrote over 10 plays: Nero, Sophisba, Gloriana, etc
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Minor writers of heroic drama

John Crowne
Thomas Southerne
Elkanah Settle
Thomas DUrfey
The Rehearsal (perf. 1671): An attack on heroic drama
A burlesque play by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, perhaps written with the help
of Samuel Butler and others
Mocked the genre of heroic tragedy
Made up of excerpts from existing heroic plays
Believed to have contributed to the decline of Heroic Drama in the Restoration period
Dryden retaliated against this mockery in Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
The Rehearsal : Plot
Protagonist is Bayes (meaning poet laureate, originally representing William DAvenant,
and representing Dryden in the revised edition)
Bayes brings his friends Smith and Johnson to watch the rehearsal of his heroic play
Equates the character Volciuss struggle with putting on his boots to his inner struggle as to
whether love or honour is more important
Bayes emerges as a pompous fool
The epilogue makes fun of rhyme, the most blatantly artificial convention of heroic drama
Blank-verse Tragedies
All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1678)
Dramatic masterpiece
Follows Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra closely, but never quite copies it
Maintains Aristotelian unities
Set in Alexandria; depicts the period after the defeat of Antony at the battle of Actium
Drydens Prose
General subjectLiterary Criticism
Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism Johnson
Essay of DramatickPoesie(1668)
Discussion among 4 characters
Influence of Corneille & Horace
Characters in Of Dramatic Poesy
Eugenius
Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset
Crites
Sir Robert Howard, playwright & Drydens brother-in-law
Lisideius
Sir Charles Sedley
Neander
Dryden
Essay of DramatickPoesie: Themes
Debate over the Ancients & the Moderns
Took no extreme position; argued moderately & tolerantly for the moderns
More interested in a work being good of its kind than in conforming with rules
Appreciated different kinds of literary skills & conventions
Dealt with openness contemporary critical issues
Rhyme or blank verse in drama
Modern French & English Restoration Drama
Classical unities & freedom
Preface to the Fables (1700)
Relaxed piece of critical writing drawing on rich experience
Talks about the authors he has been translating: Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Boccaccio, Chaucer
Compares Homer and Virgil
Compares Ovid and Chaucer
Lengthy appreciation of Chaucer

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Dr Johnson on Dryden
Regarded him the founder of a new versification
From the time of Dryden it is apparent that English poetry has had no tendency to relapse
to its former savageness
There was, before the time of Dryden no poetic diction, no system of words at once refined
from the grossness of domestic use, and free from the harshness of words appropriated to
particular arts.
On Dryden and English poetry: He found it brick and left it marble
Father of English criticism
Dr Johnson called Dryden the father of criticism for taught us to determine upon
principles the merit of composition
Dryden was the first self-conscious critic
Analyzed objects with sympathy and knowledge
Covered all kinds of literary problems
Was anti-dogmatic and sceptical
Engaged in descriptive (not prescriptive) criticism
Does not lay down rules; discovers rules
This was unlike precursors like Jonson or Sidney

The Liberal Neo-classical

No slavish adherence to rules
Argued that violation of unities results in variety & richness of plot
Preferred irregular English plays to the regular French
Defended tragi-comedy
Primary aim of poetry is delight; instruction secondary
Went against Aristotle by preferring Epic to Tragedy
Free from neo-classical prejudices in his appreciation of Chaucers characterization
Admired (the classicist) Jonson, but loved (the romantic) Shakespeare
Nahum Tate (1652-1715)
Nahum Tate was an Irish poet and playwright associated with Dryden
Was Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal
Famous for
Having collaborated with Dryden in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel
A series of adaptations on Elizabethan drama
An immensely popular version of King Lear (1681) which spares Cordelias life and
betroths her to Edgar in a happy ending
Translated the Psalms of David (1696)
Wrote a libretto (poetry written for an opera) for Henry Purcells Dido and Aeneas (1689)
Henry Purcell on You Tube
Henry Purcell (1659-1695) was an English composer associated with Dryden, Nahum Tate
and other 17th century writers.
Listen to Purcells Baroque opera uploaded by Addiobelpassato: Henry Purcell King Arthur Orchestral Suite
Restoration Comedy
French inspiration: Moliere
Intrigue (conspiracy, trickery) in love and marriage
Parallel plots
Upper class characters, stereotypes, master-slave relationships
London was almost always the setting
Unromantic view of marriage; conflict between the sexes
Wit and sparkle of dialogue; innuendos
Focus on sexual attraction, sexual conquest, sexual deceit, depiction of indecency on stage
Attacked by Jeremy Collier in A Short View of the Immortality and Profaneness of the English
Stage
Jeremy Colliers attack (1650-1726)
Pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698)
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Condemned the comedies of Wycherley, Dryden, Congreve, Vanbrugh, DUrfey on two

accounts:
immorality and
attack of clergy
An earlier anti-theatre pamphlet was William Prynnes Histriomastix: The Players Scourge or
Actors Tragedy (1633)
Prynne attacked the playhouses, Inns of Court (legal schools in London) as well as the
royal court.
For this, he was pilloried and his ears were cut off
William Wycherley (1640-1716)
Born into a prosperous family
Sent to France for education
In France, converted to Roman Catholicism
Absorbed French literary culture
Returned to England shortly before the Restoration
Led a fashionable life
Wycherleys Early Works
Love in a Wood, or St James Park (perf.1671)
First play
A biting satire of a sexually and financially rapacious (greedy) society
The Gentleman Dancing Master (1672)
Derived from a play by Spanish playwright Calderon
The Country Wife (1675)
One of the most popular plays of Wycherley
Title is an indecent pun
Sexual explicitness
Aristocratic, anti-Puritan sentiments
Horner spreads the rumour that he is impotent so as to get access to married women; the
innocent Margery Pinchwife comes to London with her jealous husband and is seduced by
Horner, to their mutual satisfaction
After The Country Wife
In 1676, Wycherley left the theatre and lived almost like a character from his plays
Secretly married the wealthy widow, the Countess Drogheda (probably in 1680)
When the news of the marriage reached King Charles II, Wycherley lost the royal patronage
forever
The Duchess died the following year, and Wycherley was imprisoned for debt
James II came to the throne in 1685; and having watched a performance of The Plain Dealer,
arranged for Wycherleys release in 1686
After this, Wycherley wrote only unimpressive, and sometimes obscene, poems
The Plain Dealer (probably perf.1676)
Loosely based on Molieres Le Misanthrope
Manly, the protagonist, got Wycherley the title Manly Wycherley
The most mordant (biting) of Wycherleys four plays
Wycherleys friend Dryden described it as one of the most bold, most general and most
useful satires that has ever been presented on the English stage.
The Plain Dealer : Plot
Manly, the principled and misanthropic hero, is a sea-captain who believes that only his
betrothed and his friend are sincere
When Manly is away at war, the two get married, and do not return his money either
Through his page (who is actually the girl Fidelia in disguise, secretly in love with Manly), he
seeks revenge
Finally, Manly recognizes that his obsession with his ex-mistress is worthless, and marry
Fidelia
Wycherley and Pope
In Wycherleys old age, Alexander Pope, then just a boy, developed a strange friendship with
him

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The aging playwrights poems were prepared for publication by Pope, which remained
contemptible even after his tinkering
Popes correspondence with Wycherley was edited and published by the younger poet to his
own advantage
Still professing friendship and admiration, Pope satirized his friend in An Essay on Criticism
(written in 1709)
A scandalous accusation was raised against Wycherley a few years before his death, when,
at the age of 75, he married a young girl. It was said that this marriage was motivated by
Wycherleys ignoble desire to disinherit his nephew
William Congreve (1670-1729)
Born into a military family as the son of a cavalier
Led a fashionable life
Was a member of the Kit-cat club, & enjoyed the friendship of Swift, Richard Steele &
Alexander Pope
Wrote all his plays before the age of 30, then lead the life of a society gentleman
First work is a novel, Incognita (1692)
First play, The Old Bachelor (1693)
Shaped for performance with the help of Dryden
All plays highly successful
William Congreve (1670-1729)
The Double Dealer (pub. 1694)
Love for Love (1695)
Features of comedies
Wit and elegance of dialogue
Skilful plotting
Crafty deployment of contrasting characters and themes
Themes
Social values, marital practices, intrigue in high places
Wrote only one tragedy: The Mourning Bride (perf. 1697)
As was the fashion then, inflated and self-consciously poetic
Congreves Career after Colliers Attack
Jeremy Collier focused his attack on Congreve and Vanbrugh
Congreve replied in Amendments of Mr Colliers False and Imperfect Citations (1698)
Wrote only one comedy after this his masterpiece, The Way of the World (1700)
In 1717, brought out an edition of The Dramatic Works of John Dryden
Died following a carriage accident

The Way of the World (1700)

Lady Wishfort wants her niece Millamant to marry her boisterous country nephew Sir
WilfulWitwoud
Mirabell loves Millamant and eventually wins her hand
Extremely complicated plot:
Mirabell pretends to woo Lady Wishfort
Mirabell plans to get his servant Waitwell (in disguise) to marry her
MrsMarwood opposes Mirabells plans; her lover Fainall attempts to blackmail Lady
Wishfort
Mirabells undisguised materialism
Millamant insists on retaining her freedom after marriage their pre-nuptial contract (in the
proviso scene)
The play opens in a chocolate house where Mirabell and Fainall had been playing cards; ends
with a dance
Restoration Comedy on You Tube
The lecture Restoration Comedy & Melodrama by Ian Finley is worth watching
The 1976 BBC video the Country Wife - William Wycherley has been uploaded by The
Odentroll Channel
There is a good analysis The Way of the World uploaded by grimkanwood
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George Etherege (1635-91)

May have spent some years in France in his youth, for he had sufficient knowledge of French
customs and literature
After the success of his first play, The Comical Revenge, he entered into the rakish world of
Charles IIs London
In 1668, he went to Constantinople as the secretary to the English ambassador
Resumed his wild life in London upon his return in 1671
Soon, Etherege retired from the theatre, and lost much of his fortune to gambling
After the Glorious Revolution, he joined James II in exile, and died in Paris.
Ethereges Works
The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub (perf. 1664)
She Would If She Could (perf. 1668)
The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter (1676)
The rake Dorimant, the protagonist, is modelled on the Earl of Rochester
Dorimant uses Sir Fopling to lose his current lover and seek out a new conquest
George Farquhar (1678-1707)
Irish playwright who spent the last 10 years of his short life in England
First play Love and the Bottle (1698)
The Constant Couple (1699) was his first success
Adapted John Fletchers The Wild Goose Chase as The Inconstant (1702
Farquhars sentimental comedies
After Jeremy Colliers attack, turned away from Restoration Comedy to sentimental comedy
The Recruiting Officer (1706) draws on his experiences as an army officer
Captain Plume recruits men by courting their sweethearts
This vital play has a brilliant sequel, The Beaux Stratagem (1707), which was completed on
his deathbed
Farquhars comedies are set in the countryside of Shrewsbury, which repudiated the
Restoration conviction that comedy should be set in London
Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726)
Studied architecture in France
In his time, he was honoured more for his architecture than drama
The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger (1696)
Written against Colley Cibbers Loves Last Shift (1696) in which the rakish protagonist
is brought to repentance by his wife
Vanbrughs The Relapse expresses skepticism over the heros sudden reformation and
in this play the rake again succumbs to temptation and has another affair
Other Plays by Vanbrugh
The Provoked Wife (1697)
This play was singled out for attack by Jeremy Collier in his Short View
Remaining plays are adaptations
The Pilgrims (1700) from John Fletcher
The False Friend (1702) from Le Sage
The Mistake (1705) from Moliere
His unfinished A Journey to London was completed by Colley Cibber as The Provoked
Husband

Colley Cibber (1671-1757)

Actor at Drury Lane, playwright, Poet Laureate
Had a major success as actor in the role of Sir Foppington in Vanbrughs The Relapse, which
was ironically a riposte (counter-attack) to Cibbers Loves Last Shift
Loves Last Shift: The Fool in Fashion heralded the beginning of sentimental comedy
Other sentimental comedies by Cibber
The Careless Husband (1704)
The Ladys Last Stake (1707)
The Provoked Husband (completion of Vanbrughs A Journey to London)
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Cibbers Other Works

Adapted Shakespeares Richard III (1700) which replaced the original on the English stage for
150 years
Also adapted Molieres Tartuffe
Many contemporaries ridiculed him, including Pope in the first version of The Dunciad
His discursive autobiography, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian (1740)
Gives an account of the English theatre over four decades
Written in a personal, anecdotal, even rambling style
Other Comedies
John Dryden (1631-1700)
Marriage a la Mode (1672)
Thomas Shadwell (C.1642-92)
Did not employ the comedy of manners style
Closely followed Ben Jonsons comedy of humours, which was one reason for
Drydens antagonism
The Sullen Lovers (1668)
The Squire of Alsatia (1688)
Bury Fair (1689)
Restoration Comedy
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.
Vice always found a sympathetic friend;
They pleas'd their age, and did not aim to mend.
Dr. Johnson, in Gentlemans Magazine
Inspiration of Watteaus paintings on the Restoration period
Jean Antoine Watteau: major exponent of Rococo art in France and throughout Europe
Rococo is often considered the culmination of Baroque
eminent aristocratic art
Style is fashionable, intimate, delicate
Shows a society that loves freedom, good taste and pleasure
Women have an important role
Watteaus paintings
Watteaus paintings feature
figures in aristocratic and theatrical dress
lush imaginary landscapes
amorous and wistful mood
Rococo on You Tube
A video tour of the paintings of Caravaggio and Watteau is available at Baroque and Rococo
Period - Famous Paintings, uploaded by martinhozinho
For even more artists as well as architecture, watch Rococo Style 1700-1760 uploaded by
Stephnagle
Licensing Act of 1737
Plays were censored
The public mistrusted censored plays
Except those of Goldsmith and Sheridan, all other plays that were passed by the
censors were melodramas.
Lack of new plays led to revival of Shakespeare
Related to rising British nationalism
Appealed to social elite as well as emerging middle class
Numerous editions: Nicholas Rowe, George Steevens
Spranger Barry & David Garrick (Drury Lane Theatre) major actors
Mrs. AphraBehn (1640-1689)
Playwright, novelist, translator
One of the fair triumvirate of wit, along with Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood
First Englishwoman to see herself as a professional author
Seems to have had an adventurous life
Childhood in the West Indies
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 Spying mission in Antwerp

Imprisoned for debt in 1666
Turned to writing plays soon after her release
Virginia Woolf in A Room of Ones Own (1928) acclaimed AphraBehn
AphraBehns Plays
Comedies (all derived from various writers)
The Town Fop (1676)
The Rover(2 parts: 1677, 1681)
Sir Patient Fancy (1678)
The Lucky Chance (1686)
Political play
The City Heiress (1682, borrowed from Middletons A Mad World, My Masters)
Farce
The Emperor of the Moon (1687, based on Italian commedia dellarte, and popularized
the harlequinade, the forerunner of the pantomime)
AphraBehns Novels
The Fair Jilt (1688)
A lively account of a femme fatale (seductive woman)
Oroonoko: The Royal Slave (c.1688)
First English work to express sympathy for slaves
Adapted for the stage by Thomas Southerne
Oroonoko is the grandson of an African king, loves Imoinda
The old king himself loves Imoinda, and when he finds out that she loves his
grandson, sells her as a slave
Oroonoko is also captured by a slaver and sold in Surinam, where he finds Imoinda
and escapes with her
Hunted and captured, they have to surrender to the cruel Byam
To save themselves, Oroonoko kills Imoinda, and before he could kill himself, he is
caught and executed with savage cruelty
Eliza Haywood (1693-1756)
Novelist, playwright, poet, actress
Wrote many novels and plays
Collaborated in Tom Thumb the Great (1733), an operatic adaptation of Fieldings play
Tragedy of Tragedies
From 1744 to 1746, edited The Female Spectator, a monthly collection of essays
Collaborated with Daniel Defoe on The Life of Mr Duncan Campbell (1720)
Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to Utopia (1725, a roman a clef)
The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (1753, praised by Scott for its pathos)
Believed to have written Anti-Pamela
Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
Diary records the period 1660-1669
Man of the world, interest in material advancement, music and theatre
John Evelyn (1620-1706)
Diary records the period 1641-97
Led a more respectable life and was less amusing than Pepys
Simple and lucid style
Doesnt have Pepyss freshness
First-hand accounts of the deaths of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell; the last
at Plague of London (1665-66) and the Great Fire of London (1666)
John Locke (1632-1704)
Philosopher who studied medicine, and was interested in the new experimental science of
Newton, Boyle and Harvey
Was associated with the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis
Supported liberalism and empiricism, laissez-faire trade, education and religious tolerance
Major Works
Two Treatises on Government, 1690
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Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690

Begun as a reply on a single sheet of paper
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
An enquiry into the origin and extent of mans knowledge
What man can hope to know and what he cannot
Rejected the doctrine of inborn ideas or knowledge, maintaining that the source of
knowledge is experience
Influenced generations of poets and novelists
Written in lucid and unadorned prose
Sir William Temple (1628-99)
Irish diplomat and essayist
Jonathan Swift was his secretary
Famous for Memoirs (1692) and his letters, edited by Swift (1701)
Essay upon the Present State of Ireland (1668) and other socio-political works
Three volumes of Miscellanea which contains the Essay upon the Ancient and Modern
Learning
Compared modern writers unfavourably with the classical writers, and lavishly praised
the epistles of Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum in the 6 th century BC.
However, the scholars Richard Bentley and William Wotton proved these epistles to be
fake
This led to a controversy that produced Swifts The Battle of the Books
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Non-conformist preacher and writer born near Bedford as the son of a tinker
Took up his fathers trade; read ballads and chapbook romances
Fought in the Civil War on the Parliamentary side
In 1647, after discharge from the army, underwent a psychological crisis
Happened to read some religious books
Arthur Dents The Plain Mans Pathway to Heaven
Lewis BayleysThe Practice of Piety
These books made him repent his sinful life
Bunyans Transformation
Tried repeatedly to reform his life
Devoted himself to the intensive study of the Bible
Came into contact with members of religious sects like Ranters and Quakers
Profoundly influenced by Luthers Commentary on Galatians
About 1653, joined a church in Bedford
Underwent a further spiritual struggle, swinging from moods of despondency to ecstatic
visions
As a Preacher
Two or three years after joining the church, Bunyan began preaching in public
His sermons drew largely upon his own spiritual conflict
The right of unlearned people to preach was hotly debated then, and Bunyan came into
conflict with the regular clergy
His early published works engaged in doctrinal disputes and controversies
His non-controversial works include
A Few Sighs from Hell, or, The Groans of a Damned Soul (1658)
The Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded (1659)
After the Restoration, the freedom of preachers ended, and Bunyan was arrested
In Prison
Bunyan was imprisoned in Bedford jail on charges of not attending the established church,
and for preaching without licence
Bunyan stubbornly refused to give an undertaking to stop preaching, and spent 12 years in
jail
He made shoe laces, preached to fellow prisoners and wrote books
Prison Books
First prison book: Profitable Meditations (1661)
I Will Pray with the Spirit (1662), Christian Behaviour (1663), The Holy City and poems
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Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666)

His spiritual autobiography
Inward-turning, isolated and agonized preoccupation with spiritual transformation
He also began writing his masterpiece religious allegory, The Pilgrims Progress, during these
years
Upon his release in 1672, he obtained a licence to preach, but was imprisoned again for 6
months in 1677
It was then that he put the finishing touches to The Pilgrims Progress (1678)
The Pilgrims Progress and After
Upon its publication, The Pilgrims Progress became so successful that its publisher
Nathaniel Ponder came to be called Bunyan Ponder
More than 11 authorized editions appeared in Bunyans lifetime, it was popular in New
England, and was widely translated
In 1680, Bunyan published The Life and Death of MrBadman
A realistic tale of the ungodly
In the form of a dialogue between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive
The Pilgrims Progress and After
The Holy War (1682) is his most ambitious work
Archetypal theme of mans life as a fight between good and evil
Allegorical story of the town of Man-soul
In 1684, many spurious continuations of The Pilgrims Progress had appeared, and Bunyan
published his own Second Part
Meanwhile, he published more treatises, sermons and controversial works
Bunyan died in 1688, before the Glorious Revolution took place
The Pilgrims Progress: from this world to thatwhich is to come
Archetypal theme of mans life as a journey
Allegory of mans pilgrimage from City of Destruction to Heavenly Jerusalem
Based on Bunyans own experience of conversion
The author sees in his dreams a man called Christian with a book in his hand and a burden
on his back
Christian has read in the book that his City of Destruction will be destroyed
Evangelist advises him to flee towards a Wicket-gate, and Christian sets forth alone, since
his wife and children refuse to accompany him
The course of the pilgrimage
The course of his pilgrimage is through Slough of Despond, Burning Mount, Wicket-Gate,
Interpreters House, The Cross (where his burden rolls away), Hill Difficulty, House Beautiful,
Valley of Humiliation, Valley of Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Lucre Hill, River of the Water of
Life, By-Path Meadow, Doubting Castle, Delectable Mountains, Enchanted Ground, and the
country of Beulah.
From here he crosses a river and reaches the Celestial City
Christians companion Faithful is put to death in Vanity Fair, and then Hopeful accompanies
him to the Celestial City
Characters
Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Ignorance, Talkative and By-ends are seemingly friendly, but give
dangerous advice
Lord Hategood presides over their trial in Vanity Fair
Giant Despair imprisons them in Doubting Castle
Foul fiend Apollyon ("clothed with scales like a fish" and has "wings like a dragon, feet like a
bear," "the mouth of a lion," and smoke coming "out of his belly); he is killed by Christian
Pilgrims Progress on You Tube
For the story told in pictures, watch Full: The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan uploaded
by Spiritlessons
Another animation is available at PILGRIM'S PROGRESS uploaded by TriforceMinistries3
The Pilgrims Progress Part II
Christians wife Christiana, with her 4 sons and neighbour Mercy, undertakes the same
journey from the City of Destruction to salvation

153

From Interpreters House, they are escorted by a guide and protector, Great-Heart, who slays
Giant Despair and other monsters
They meet fellow pilgrims: Mr Feeble-mind, Mr Ready-to-halt, Mr Honest, Valiant-for-truth, Mr
Steadfast, Mr Despondency and his daughter Much-afraid
Christiana however has none of the ordeals that Christian had to undergo
The Second Part lacks the power of the first
Assessment of Pilgrims Progress
Beauty and simplicity of language
Vividness of characterization
Feeling for the world of nature
Anticipates later novelists like Defoe and Dickens in the use of satire, domestic humour and
caricature
Elements of allegory and sermon
Dream-structure
Didacticism and objective drama

Chapter 12

Augustan Poetry

The Augustan Age

The term Augustan applies loosely to the literature and art of the early 18 th century (up to the time
of Jonathan Swift), with its beginnings in the period of Dryden (Restoration period)
A period of literary excellence, like that of the period of Augustus Caesar (1 st century AD), and the
poets Virgil, Horace and Ovid
Augustus Caesar re-established stability after civil war following Julius Caesars assassination. English
writers, following the restoration of King Charles II, felt themselves to be in a similar situation, in
which the arts (repressed under Cromwell) could now flourish.
Neo-classical concerns, especially in poetry, include
Development of an elegant style
Pursuit of precision of expression (which led many Augustan poets to revise their already
published poems)
Dislike of colloquialisms and informal diction
Observation of decorum
Cultivation of good taste and refinement of manner
Queen Anne (r. 1702-1714)
Daughter of James II; last monarch of the Stuart Dynasty
17 pregnancies; miscarriages; several children died
Anne's reign was a prosperous time for Britain
War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713)
French king Louis XIV's grandson was crowned king of Spain. This led to power imbalance and
war in Europe
The war was ultimately settled by the Treaty of Utrecht
Created new trade opportunities for England
Britain became a major military power on land
Growing power of ministers / Parliament
Artistic, literary, and scientific advancement

By the1707 Act of Union, Great Britain is created by the union of England and Scotland (Ireland
became an official part of Britain by the Act of Union of 1800. In the 20th century, Ireland became an
independent republic.)
The Hanoverian Succession (1714)
As Anne, like Mary, had no heirs, the succession was settled upon the royal house of Hanover. A long
line of King Georges (I-IV) ensued, which is why the 18th century is also known as the Georgian period
Succession of George I (Anne's cousin) was supported by the Whigs, resisted by the Tories
After the Hanoverian succession, there was a period of stabilization, tolerance and moderation
(represented by Roger de Coverley), control, reason, critique of enthusiasm
The Hanoverian Period (1714-1837)
Hanoverians re-established Protestantism & resisted French aggression
It was a nationalistic, patriotic period
The Whigs and Tories were alternately dominant

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 Robert Walpole, a Whig politician who served under both King George I and George II, held a
parliamentary seat from 1701 until 1742, and was the first man to be described as a prime minister.
During King George IIIs long rule (1760-1820) Britain became a major colonial power. At home and
abroad, George IIIs subjects engaged with a new rhetoric of liberty and radical reform, as they
witnessed and reacted to the revolutions in France and America.
Hanoverian nationalism
Impetus given to native arts and culture
Disapproval of moral corruption; desire for wholesale renewal of the nation
Resurrection of national heroes like King Arthur and Shakespeare
Creation of new heroes like William Pitt the Younger (in politics) and Samuel Johnson (in literature)
The concept of the "true-born Englishman" (honest, morally pure, frank, "natural", full of "original
genius"; also, political satire by Defoe) as against French negative stereotype
Later, the fictitious character John Bull became a heroic archetype of the freeborn Englishman
By the end of the Hanoverian rule, nationalism had fully transformed England's economy, morality,
institutions and national character
Socio-cultural Background
Towns and cities grew significantly in size and number
Population doubled
Transport and communication between urban centres increased
Rigid social hierarchy existed
The middle class was coming into being
Agriculture developed, so did the industries
Britain's colonial empire was growing and there was increasing significance of Britain in international
affairs
There was a massive expansion of the print trade and books became an easily available commodity
The printed word became the prime channel of social change and interaction
Agricultural Revolution
Vast changes in agriculture and farming in the 18th century
There was increased mechanization of agriculture
Innovations in farming made large-scale farms more economically profitable
Landowners began the process of "enclosure" or fencing large tracts of privately owned land
Enclosure forced many villagers to move to the cities looking for work for wages. This large-scale
urban migration provided the factories with a steady supply of labourers.
Thus agricultural revolution led to the development of a new manufacturing economy, which resulted
in the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century
Conditions of Literary Production
The Stage Licensing Act (1737) established a form of dramatic censorship in which the Lord
Chamberlain pre-approved and licensed all plays for performance in London.
Censorship of other print material changed radically with the 1710 Statute of Anne, the first British
copyright law requiring government approval of a books contents and not merely the approval of
private parties.
The term "public sphere" refers to the material texts concerning matters of national interest and also
to the public venues (including coffeehouses, clubs, taverns, parks, etc.) where readers circulated and
discussed these texts.
The Business of Writing
Thanks to greatly increased literacy rates, the eighteenth century was the first to sustain a large
number of professional authors. Genteel writers could benefit from both patronage and the
subscription system; "Grub Street" hacks at the lower end of the profession were employed on a
piecework basis.
Circulating libraries began in the 1740s.
There was a drift away from poetic passions; the ideals of wit and common sense pursued; there was
the predominance of prose
In poetry, desire for sharpness in style, correctness in technique (as in Pope)
Capital letters began to be used only at the beginnings of sentences and for proper names!
Clubs, Coffeehouses and Groups
on shared political ideologies. They met in the clubs, coffeehouses and chocolate houses, which were
centres of literary debates
The Kit-Kat Club (1690s onward)
To establish Whig political objectives
Aristocratic members including Robert Walpole, William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, Joseph
Addison, Richard Steele, Jacob Tonson
The Scriblerus Club (established in 1713)
A group of writers and politicians who satirized false taste and modern learning

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 Members were Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, Dr John Arbuthnot,
etc
They collaboratively produced The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus
The literary aims of the Club, called Scriblerianism, were followed up in works like Gullivers
Travels, The Dunciad, and even later works like Tristram Shandy
Bluestockings (from the 1750s)
A group of intellectual, literary minded women
Men of letters were also invited to their meetings
Members were Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Carter, Hester Chapone, Mary Delaney, and later,
Hannah More
Produced no distinctly Bluestocking work
Importance of the group lay in its general promotion of womens intellectual powers
Samuel Richardsons Circle (after 1740)
A group of Richardsons fans and admirers, especially women, formed after the publication of
Pamela in 1740
Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, Frances Brooke, Frances Sheridan
Johnsons Circle and The Club (from 1764)
Originally 9 members; over 30 years, membership grew to 35
Members supported one another in producing a range of publications in fields such as
aesthetics, philosophy, history, musicology, biography, botany, etc
Members include Joshua Reynolds (the portraitist who became the first President of the Royal
Academy of Arts), Oliver Goldsmith, the actor David Garrick, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Adam
Smith (the economist who wrote The Wealth of Nations), the philosopher Edmund Burke, and
Johnsons biographer James Boswell
Johnson exerted considerable cultural influence over them, and supported women writers like
charlotte Lennox and Frances Burney
Johnson famously saved Goldsmith from being arrested for debt by speedily arranging the sale
of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) to a bookseller
The Age of Prose and Reason
Arnold in The Study of Poetry said:
We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious founder, Pope as the splendid high
priest, of our age of prose and reason, of our excellent and indispensable eighteenth century.
Called Age of Prose and Reason because
The spirit of neoclassicism in the period
The rise of commerce, the middle classes and their involvement in politics
Age of Pope 1700-1745
Deaths of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope in 1744
Emphasis on satire and on a wider public readership.
Age of Johnson 1745-1784
Death of Samuel Johnson in 1785
Emphasis on revolutionary ideas
Rise of Neoclassicism: Reasons
Revolt against the excesses of Metaphysicals in favour of order, balance, sanity, correctness, decorum
Influence of French classicism patronized by Charles II
Rise of scientific spirit & new philosophy (Hobbes, Royal Society) emphasizing rationalism, clarity and
simplicity in thought and expression
You Tube
Jennifer Black has uploaded a mini-lecture on 18th Century Neoclassicism
The lecture RichardRosivach has uploaded, Neoclassicism, is also about art of the 18 th century
The lecture The Age of Enlightenment uploaded by scsmrwill gives a good introduction
Also watch Why the Enlightenment still matters today - Professor Justin Champion uploaded by
GreshamCollege
Neoclassical Criticism: Features
Follow nature
Be true to reality
Universal human nature
Be true to type (a particular age, sex or profession)
Divine power; its order, harmony.
Follow the ancient masters
Emphasis on correctness, reason, good sense
Fancy and emotion must be controlled
Neoclassical Criticism: Features
Poetry must deal with universal truths and general ideas

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 Originality was not important

The function of poetry is to instruct and delight
Didactic function more important than the aesthetic one
Emphasis on style and diction of poetry
Language of poetry more elevated than that of prose
Emphasis on decorum
Difference between diction of prose and poetry & between dictions of different kinds of poetry
Comparative superiority of rhyme over blank verse.
Heroic measure was the right measure for poetry.
Heroic measure supported by Ancients and French
The Enlightenment and Neoclassicism
The roots of Neoclassicism lie in the Enlightenment.
The underlying beliefs and principles of the Enlightenment deeply influenced neoclassical writers:
Use of reason to discover laws of nature
Desire for order in the society and democratic values
Change to be brought about by intelligent debate rather than force
Desire to protect human liberty
The belief that all men are free and equal
Embrace of monotheistic Deism
Need for a free market
Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Kant, Hegel, Adam Smith, Voltaire, Rousseau
The Enlightenment: History
The intellectual foundations of the Enlightenment were laid by the German philosophers, Kant and
Hegel
The French Enlightenment thinkers had a direct and mutual influence on the British
Newtonian science and Lockean philosophy influenced this new class of intellectuals in France, who
were free thinkers in religion and radicals in politics.
They promoted the systematic application of reason
to discover knowledge of human life and
to improve human existence through the development of non-authoritarian social and political
systems
Enlightenment fuelled American and French revolutions
The term Enlightenment gained in currency from the late 19th century
The Enlightenment Philosophes
The Philosophes were a heterogenous mix of people who pursued a variety of intellectual interests,
but united by a few common themes
Human beings are not perfect
Desire to dispel wrong systems of thought (such as religion)
Dedication to systematizing the various intellectual disciplines.
Their rallying cry was for Progress
Understanding natural laws
Overcoming religious ignorance
Social / political reform
Another important idea was Tolerance
The greatest human crimes have been perpetrated in the name of religion and the name of
God. A fair, just, and productive society absolutely depends on religious tolerance.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
Diderot undertook the production of Encyclopdie 1751
Entire work ran in to 35 volumes
The collective effort of over one hundred French thinkers.
Rationale: "All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard
for anyone's feelings
The central purpose of the work was to secularize learning and to refute the "dangerous" carry-overs
from the Middle Ages.
For the Encyclopedists, human improvement was not a religious issue, but simply a matter of
mastering the natural world through science and technology and mastering human passions through
an understanding of how individuals and societies work.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Pseudonym of Franois Marie dArouet
French philosopher who fought tyranny and bigotry
Concentrated on two specific philosophical projects.
To introduce empiricism, from England into French intellectual life.
To propagate religious tolerance
Candide 1759
Most famous work

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 Strange novel in that it attacks many of the assumptions of the philosophe movement
The novel makes fun of those who think that human beings can endlessly improve themselves
and their environment
You Tube
Watch Voltaire: Candide uploaded by Eric Masters
Sade -A-Vision has uploaded a short documentary Voltaire (Documentary)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Swiss-born French philosopher-novelist-composer-music theorist-language theorist-etc. who influenced
Romanticism
His ideas and passionate rhetoric enflamed a generation and beyond
The first sentence of his most famous work, The Social Contract:
"Man is born free but everywhere is in chains."
The central concept in Rousseau's thought is "liberty," and most of his works deal with the
mechanisms through which humans are forced to give up their liberty.
Other Works
mile, or, On Education (1762)
A long treatise on the corrupting influence of traditional education
Julie, or The New Heloise (1761)
A sentimental novel that elevated and glorified the claims of emotion above those of reason
and self-restraint
Confessions (written 176570)
Autobiographical
Reaffirms the basic tenet of mans innate goodness
Dreams of a Solitary Walker (177678)
Contains descriptions of nature and mans natural response to it.
Status of Women during the Enlightenment
Women were financially and socially more independent in the Renaissance period than in the
Augustan period
A few women were beginning to write and engage in political and philosophical debates, but generally
the status of women was seriously degraded
Women were not given equality socially and intellectually
There were clearly divided public and private spaces, with women relegated to the private domesticity
Definitions pertaining to women (from Johnsons Dictionary)
Bride-(n)-Signifies a beautiful woman; a woman newly married.
Cu'ckingstool-(n)-An engine invented for the punishment of scolds and unquiet woman.
Do'wer-(n)-That which the wife bringeth to her husband in marriage; that which the widow possesses;
the gifts of a husband for a wife.
Inhe'ritress-(n)-A woman that inherits.
Rule-(n)-Government; empire; sway; supreme command.(I am ashame'd, that women should seek for
rule, supremacy or sway, when they are bound to serve, love and obey.- Shakespeare)
Sta'teswoman-(n)-A woman that meddles with public affairs; in contempt.(several object may
innocently ridiculed, as the passions of our stateswoman- Addison)
Miss-(adj)-A term of honour to a young girl; a trumpet; a concubine; a whore; a prostitute.
Vira'go (n)-A female warrior; a woman with the qualities of a man; It is commonly used in detestation
for an impudent woman.
Wo'man-(n)-A female of the human race. (Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than
man; whether it be that their blood is more refined; their fibres more delicate, and their animal spirits
more light; vivacity is the gift of women, gravity that of man.)
So how do you deconstruct these definitions?
Religion in the Augustan Age
The Jacobite Rebellions led to anti-Catholic sentiments
The rise of Methodism
A Protestant denomination beginning from John Wesley
Origins in Oxford University in the 18th century
Accept the Bible as central to religion; Christian tradition and reason are secondary
Stressed the importance of religious experience
Religious satires and allegories flourished
Deism was also popular
Reason as the only guide to truth
God is understood in the limited sense as a creator who does not interfere with his creations
Upheld by Rousseau, Voltaire and Kant
Theism
Much of Western thought about God is theistic.

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 There is a God which is the creator and sustainer of the universe and is unlimited with regard to
knowledge (omniscience), power (omnipotence), extension (omnipresence), and moral perfection
Conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and
the universe.
Deism rose as a philosophical form of theism that used reason as its source of knowledge of God.
Deism does not rely on revelation, and for Deists knowledge of God was minimal.
Deism
Neoclassicism upholds deism.
The existence of God can only be proved based on the application of reason and the world can be
discovered through observation, experience and reasoning
Denies revelation (revealing truth through communication with a deity)
Nature is the inherent order of the universe (The Great Chain of Being).
God is the clockmaker who built this perfect universe to work according to certain immutable laws.
(Clockwork universe)
God does not perform miracles and did not tinker with the watch after its creation.
Deism
The existence of God is deduced from the ordered structure of the universe (patterns, variety, and
complexity of Nature) rather than the Bible (revelationthe "revealed word of God").
The Bible is a great moral authority, but all irrational aspects within it (such as miracles and the
divinity of Christ) are superstitions.
Reason guides men to virtue.
Voltaire made the ideas of Deism popular
Many Deists became Transcendentalists
Art in the Augustan Age
At the beginning of the century, baroque forms were popular
Rococo motifs of the early 1700s reflecting the airy grace and refined pleasures of the French court
life (Watteau)
Mid-century formalism and balance of neoclassicism; Greek and Roman models resurrected.
(Hogarth)
End of the century romantic turn (Reynolds and Gainsborough)
Later Enlightenment Painters
Began to show signs of a Romantic sensibility during the second half of the century
Especially in the tendency to place figures in the middle of wide stretches of landscapes and impart a
greater sense of immediacy

Joshua Reynolds on You Tube

Watch a video tour of Joshua Reynoldss work with Bach in the background: Joshua Reynolds English
Painter uploaded by lucrezia012
Age of Sensibility
This period of later Enlightenment in which romantic sentiments appeared in art and literature is
called the Age of sensibility
Around 1750, the word "sentiment" evolved to describe social behavior based in instinctual feeling.
Sentiment, and the related notions of sensibility and sympathy, all contributed to a growing sense of
the desirability of public philanthropy and social reforms (such as charities for orphans).
Increased importance was placed on the private, individual life, as is evident in literary forms such as
diaries, letters, and the novel
Literature of Sensibility
Age of Sensibility is the Age of Johnson (1740s-80s)
Growing sympathy for the Middle Ages
A vogue of cultural primitivism
An interest in ballads and folk literature
A turn away from neoclassic correctness towards instinct and feeling as in transitional poets
Also novelists like Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne
Music in the Augustan Age
Classicism flourished between Baroque (17th century) and Romantic (19th century) periods
Major practitioners: Haydn, Bach, Mozart
Lighter and clearer, less complicated than Baroque
Socio-economic reasons for the rise of classicism in music:
Unlike the Baroque composer who had patronage and the resources for expensive rehearsals,
the Augustan musician did not have many instruments at his disposal; and could not conduct
many rehearsals
Hence Augustan music was simple, austere and homophonic, not polyphonic like baroque

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 Emphasis on grace and beauty of melody and form, proportion and balance, moderation and control;
polished and elegant in character
Desire for structural clarity derived from Newtonian physics
Science in the Augustan Age
17th century science was based on logic.
Achievements in astronomy, mathematics and physics
New conceptions of the universe and of microstructure of matter
Newton's discoveries, research on the structure of the atom, Toricelli's theory of vacuum, Boyle's work
on pressure.
First experimental instruments like the microscope invented.
18th century political, industrial, cultural changes
Birth of modern science during the Enlightenment
Newton, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin
Discoveries in mathematics influenced philosophy (Kant, Hume), religion (rise of a positive atheism)
as well as society and politics (Adam Smith, Voltaire)
Philosophy in the Augustan Age
Renaissance held man as essentially good. Neo-classicism, as evident in the satire, was a reaction
against this, and held that man as essentially imperfect, sinful, evil
Philosophical foundation for neoclassicism laid by Hobbes (1588-1679)
Reason and wisdom are better foundations for poetry than inspiration
Sees poetry from an empiricist viewpoint, as a somewhat mechanical result of experience, of
judgment and "fancy" (this replaced by "imagination" in Romantic period)
Human nature is naturally competitive and violent (rejected by Rousseau in his theory of the
natural man as essentially good)
Supported Divine Right Theory: without an 'absolute sovereign' to control our desires we will
live in a constant 'State of War', which is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'. No wonder
the Stuarts endorsed the same theory!!
New Morality
Immorality of the Restoration wanes.
William III and Anne were moralists. This was reflected in literature.
Addisons professed aim in The Spectator: I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit and to
temper wit with morality.
The gentleman's leisurely and civilized way of life was the ideal
As portrayed in John Pomfret's immensely popular poem "The Choice
As embodied in John Bull, the heroic archetype of the free-born Englishman, that became
popular in this period
The Cultural Importance of Poetry
Poetry was far more a normal aspect of daily life than it is today
Poetry was written and read by large numbers across the social spectrum
There were many outlets for verse: plays were often written in verse; novels and essays included
verses; periodicals published verses; poetic compilations or "miscellanies" were increasingly published
There was a wider range of subject matter: poetry was considered appropriate to everyday topics like
politics, money, gardening, cookery, fishing, science and what not!
However, from the Romantic period onwards, poetry came to be regarded as suitable for
introspective and lyric subjects only
The Cultural Importance of Poetry
There was a great market for casual, "occasional" poetry that was produced simply to comment on a
recent event, rather than be the agonized expression of the soul
Poetry was used for extended arguments and debates
Poetry became a "profession"
For the first time, a large number of writers earned their livelihood from poetry
This also meant that a lot of "professional" poets struggled to sustain themselves, and the poor
and hungry poet was a recognizable type
Poets emerged from among the labouring classes, from the provinces other than London, as well as
from among the women, and gained slow recognition; this naturally led to a remarkable diversity in
18th century poetry
Augustan Poetry: Genres
Classical forms were admired and imitated, but loosely and inventively
The Pastoral and the related form, the Eclogue
Idealizations of rural life
Agricultural and manufacturing processes blended with political and philosophical reflection
Example:
In "Town Eclogues" by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the city takes the place of the idyllic
countryside

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 In John Gay's "urban georgic", Trivia: or The Art of Walking the Streets of London, the city is

again the centre

Verse epistles modelled on Horace and Pindar
Example: Pope's An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot
Augustan Poetry: Genres
Odes modelled on Horace and Pindar
Examples of : Dryden's Alexander's Feast, Thomas Gray's The Bard and The Progress of Poesy
Mock-epic
Examples: Pope's The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad
Sonnet
Examples: Thomas Gray and Thomas Warton
Ballad
The ballad was certainly not one of the "high" forms of poetry, but readers of all classes
enjoyed them
Bishop Percy's collection of ballads, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1777) appeared during
this time
You Tube
Watch Satire, Print Shops and Comic Illustration in 18th and 19th Century
Poetic Diction
In the 18th century, imitation of the classics led to the development of a specialized vocabulary and
poetic diction for each kind of poetry, pastoral, lyric, philosophical, etc
Typically, neoclassical poetic diction involved effects such as circumlocution, elision (howe'er),
personification and Latinate terminology such as azure skies.
Wordsworth and the Romantic poets rejected artificial poetic diction.
Wordsworth stated in his Preface to The Lyrical Ballads:
There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction; I have
taken as much pains to avoid it as others ordinarily take to produce it; this I have done for the
reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men, and further,
because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart is of a kind very different from
that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry."
The Heroic Couplet
Rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines rhyming aa bb etc
The Augustan poets preferred the heroic couplet (which they called rhyme) over unrhymed iambic
pentameter, or blank verse
Later Augustans (transitional poets) however gave up the heroic couplet and took to Miltonic blank
verse: Ambrose Philips Cyder, James Thomsons The Seasons, poetry of Edward Young and William
Cowper
Poets mostly used end-stopped, closed couplets (meaning is complete within the couplet, with a
stop at the end of the second line)
Well-suited to contain succinct, epigrammatic observations
Joined together, couplets could effectively propel an argument or chain of thought forward, since their
simple rhyme scheme tends to maintain a sense of onward progression
Many rhetorical effects could be achieved through the heroic couplet
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Second important Augustan poet after Dryden
For a detailed discussion of Drydens life and works, see the chapter The Restoration Period
Pope was a Roman Catholic born in London in the year of the Glorious Revolution
Had an uneven education; debarred by his religion from attending University
Largely self taught; precociously bright
Character mass of contradictions
Deliberately misrepresented and concealed facts about his life
Health and Character
In 1700, family moved to Windsor Forest where he contracted tuberculosis, permanently damaging his
health
As he grew older, he grew weaker, had to wear a stiff, bodice to support his spine, and was physically
dependent on others
Referred to "this long disease, my life"
His physical deformity made him sensitive to insult, aggressive in replying to attacks
He maintained personal animosity towards his enemies and was incisive in his attacks
Pope certainly suffered at the hands of his enemies, and was loyal and generous to friends like Swift
Pastorals (1709)
First significant work probably written when Pope was 16
Published by Jacob Tonson in Miscellanies

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Extraordinary degree of technical control

Sensitive awareness of the genre derived from Virgil and Spenser
Qualities of simplicity, brevity, delicacy
Prefatory "Discourse on Pastoral Poetry"
Evolves a theory of the relationship between nature and art
In "Spring" shows that art simply reflects natural beauty.
This idea reversed in the following eclogues
"Summer" shows through personification that man is important
In "Autumn", metaphor replaces personification and human use of nature is highlighted
In "Winter", nature is subservient to the poet

London and the Tories

Began to move in London literary circles including Wycherley, Congreve, Addison, and his Whig friends
By 1713, drifted away from Addison's circle (because the Whigs were anti-Catholic), towards the Tory
circle of Swift
In 1713, became a member of the Scriblerus Club
Meanwhile, An Essay on Criticism was published in 1711
An Essay on Criticism (1711)
Gospel of wit & nature
Verse essay written in the Horatian mode
Turned main critical ideas of the time into polished epigrammatic couplets
How writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of the contemporary age
The poem has three parts
In Essay on Criticism, Pope exhorts his fellow poets to follow nature (which means to imitate the
representations of human nature in classical art)
Equated nature with common sense, reason, the universal, and the rules of classical composition
Learn hence or ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy Nature, is to copy them. . . .
These rules of old discover'd, not devis'd,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodis'd.
An Essay on Criticism: Summary
Part I
Role of Taste
Relation between Art and Nature
Function of the Rules
Importance of the Ancients
Part II
Factors that misguide Man described and illustrated: pride, imperfect learning, judging by parts
instead of the whole, prejudices, excesses
Critics should cultivate good nature & good sense
Dullness & obscenity together are unpardonable (illustrated by Charles II's reign)
Part III
Rules for good critical behaviour
Virtues: truth and candour, diffidence, good breeding, civility and sincerity
Attacks John Dennis as Appius (Dennis has written Appius and Virginia)
Finally, a brief history of criticism from Aristotle to William Walsh (Pope's recently deceased
friend)
Quotes from An Essay on Criticism
"A little learning is a dangerous thing"
"To err is human: to forgive, divine"
"True wit is nature to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but never so well expressed"
"Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment, too?"
"Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found."
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
In 2 cantos in 1712, revised in 5 cantos in 1714
Established Pope's reputation in the London society
"Rape" means "theft"
Inspired by Tassoni's Rape of the Bucket, Vida's Game of Chess, Boileau's Le Lutrin
Witty feminized epic

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 Mock-heroic poem (mock-epic)

Delicate imagination, verbal music, gentle satire on the vanity of the fair sex, faint underlying
melancholy
Rosicrucianism
In the second edition of 1714, Rosicrucian philosophy used as the supernatural epic machinery
Pope wrote in his dedication to Arabella Fermor, The Machinery is a term invented by the
Critics to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Daemons are made to act in a poem.
The Rosicrucians were a secret society popular in the 17th and 18th centuries who proposed a
strange kind of esoteric religious mysticism. According to them, the four elements are
inhabited by spirits, which they call Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. Pope makes
fun of Rosicrucianism in this poem
The Rape of the Lock: Summary
Arabella Fermor (Belinda of the poem) was a member of Popes circle of prominent Roman Catholics.
Robert, Lord Petre (the Baron in the poem) had snipped off a lock of her hair, which led to a rift
between the two families.
This poem was written at John Caryll's request to laugh the two families out of their quarrel
Canto I: Belinda wakes, gets ready for a social gathering.
Canto II: Belinda's journey to Hampton Court Palace
Canto III: The game of ombre. The lock is cut.
Canto IV: Umbriel travels to the cave of Spleen.
Canto V: The combat of wits. The lock is lost.
Windsor Forest (1713)
A royalist pastoral, descriptive and reflective
Combines a celebration of the rustic character Albion with a political affirmation of the peace under
Queen Anne
Expression of Pope's Tory allegiance
Describes a particularly English topography and history
Describes the countryside around his house without much unity
Dr Johnson called this kind of poetry "local poetry"
Reminiscent of John Denham's "Cooper's Hill" and Edmund Waller's "On St. James's Park"
Translations of Homer
At this time, Pope was working on his ambitious translation of Homer into heroic couplets
The first volume of the Iliad appeared in 1716
Iliad project was completed in 1720
Visually arresting descriptions
Less successful is the translation of the Odyssey (1725-26)
Translation of Homer brought financial independence; became the first professional poet
Collected Works (1717)
An adaptation of Chaucer's House of Fame (Temple of Fame)
"Ode on St Cecilia's Day"
Irregular ode in the manner of Dryden's odes
Eloisa and Abelard
A bleak study of the self-imposed loneliness of a rejected female lover
Modelled on Ovid
Psychological treatment
Elegy to the Death of an Unfortunate Lady
Melodramatic poem about a suicide
"Ode on Solitude" (sometimes called "The Quiet Life")
Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.
Leaving London
Formed an attachment with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but this relationship soured
Had a lifelong relationship with Martha Blount, to whom he wrote some epistles
In 1717, collaborated with John Arbuthnot and John Gay on the Restoration comedy, Three Hours After
Marriage
Pope's only venture into drama
Among its satirical targets is the poet Richard Blackmore
Despite his success as a writer, Pope now began to doubt his literary achievements, and tired of the
literary business
He would leave the literary circles of London very soon
At Twickenham

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 Following the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, strict measures were taken against the Catholics; and Pope
moved from London to a villa in Twickenham, where he resided for the rest of his life
Later, for his caustic attacks on his adversaries, he came to be called the "wasp of Twickenham"
At Twickenham, Pope was fascinated by horticulture and landscape gardening, and designed in his
garden, a shell-lined grotto (cave) which remains till today
Here he entertained numerous visitors including Swift, whom he helped with the publication of
Gulliver's Travels
Edition of Shakespeare (1725)
Commissioned by his publisher Jacob Tonson, Pope brought out an edition of Shakespeare's works in
1725
Pope's Shakespeare prompted Lewis Theobald to write the pamphlet Shakespeare Restored (1726),
pointing out Pope's scholarly deficiencies
Pope would attack Theobald severely in the 1728 edition of the unrevised Dunciad
The edition of Shakespeare marked the beginning of his many literary feuds with his enemies
Peri Bathous (1727-28)
A miscellany of the Scriblerus group (1727-28) contained an early version of An Epistle to Dr
Arbuthnot, and the prose piece Martinus Scriblerus Peri Bathous, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry
Peri Bathous is a comic inversion of Longinus's Greek treatise On the Sublime (Peri Hupsous)
Pope's essay illustrates the lowest version of contemporary verse, the tendency for bathos and anticlimax, drawing upon his enemies as examples
Ridiculed Pope's former collaborator William Broome, Lewis Theobald, Ambrose Philips (with whom
Pope had disagreed over the Pastorals, and John Dennis
"Opus Magnum"
Meanwhile, Pope had been planning his greatest work, an "opus magnum, in four parts:
Essay on Man (1733-34)
The Dunciad (in 3 books 1728; in 4 books 1742)
The third part was never finished
Moral Essays, or Ethics (1731-35)
Essay on Man (1733 & 1734)
Verse essay in four Epistles
Addressed to Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke
Presents common 18th century ideas:
Man's position in the Great Chain of Being
Importance of self-knowledge
Rethinking vices and virtues in order to control and balance
Relationship between individual & society
Necessity of virtue for true happiness
Insistence that evil / injustice is part of the ultimate order of things
Great Chain of Being
Latin: scala naturae (the ladder of nature)
A concept derived from Plato and Aristotle
Means a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been ordained by
God
The unifying principles uniting the chain was rational order and divine love
God
Angels
Humans
Animals
Vegetables
Minerals
Four Humours
Yellow Bile (or Choler): causes anger and irritability
Black Bile (or Tears): causes melancholy, sadness
Blood: causes excitement, energy, happiness, sexual arousal
Phlegm: causes lethargy, boredom
Astrological Hierarchy
Sun
Moon
Planets
Stars
Four Elements
Fire (hot and dry)

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 Air (warm and moist)

Water (cold and moist)
Earth (cold and dry)
The Dunciad (anonymous 1728; rev. The New Dunciad 1743)
Pope's reply to Lewis Theobald
Later Colley Cibber replaces Theobald as hero
The poem has a complex and obscure history
Attacks pedantry and "dullness" as associated with boredom and sleep
No fully developed mock-heroic action as in Rape of the Lock
Collection of self-contained episodes
The language is brilliantly and incisively satiric
Imagery shocks and amuses
Pope attacks a great many people and institutions he dislikes
Ending has a tragic sense of doom
The Dunciad: Summary
Book I: The goddess Dullness decides on Bays (Cibber) as the successor to the throne of Dullness and
crowns him
Book II: Filthy games and sports in celebration of the coronation
Book III: Cibber's vision of the past, present and future triumphs of Dullness
Book IV: Goddess substitutes Order & Science with Dullness
Ending
Thy hand, great Anarch! Lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries all.
Moral Essays (1731-35)
Four Epistles on ethical subjects; also called Epistle to Several Persons
Epistle I: To Cobham
Epistle II: To a Lady
Epistle III: To Bathurst
Epistle IV: To the Earl of Burlington
Themes
First Epistle on the knowledge and characters of men
Second Epistle on the characters of women
Devastating attack: "Most women have no characters at all"
At the end, a compliment: "Woman's at best a contradiction still"
Third & Fourth Epistles on the (mis)use of riches
A fifth Epistle to Addison was written earlier and later included (in contrast to his satirical portrait in
Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot)
Imitations of Horace
In 1733, he began to produce his miscellaneous Imitations of Horace
An idea of Bolingbroke's
Imitation was a common genre of the period (homage was paid to past writers by imitating
their forms and outdoing them in the present)
11 translations and adaptations of Horace's odes, epistles and satires
A prologue to these satires was An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735)
An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735)
First published along with Imitations of Horace
The most brilliantly sustained rhetorical performance by Pope
Addressed to his dying friend, Dr John Arbuthnot, an erudite physician, who had in turn cared for the
poet
It was Dr John Arbuthnot who created the character John Bull, the archetypal Englishman
Embodies the ideals of civilized friendship and good sense
Ironic verse autobiography
Formal apologia as a satirist (Pope justifies his satiric art against the attacks of his detractors)
The poem satirizes cowardly critics, hypocritical pedants, insipid patrons of the arts, and corrupt
sycophants
Epistle: Textual Details
Context: Addison was the member of the Little Senate that met at Button's Coffee House in Covent
Garden. The members of the Little Senate attacked Pope and Addison did not restrain them.
Presents himself as a man of peace provoked into satire by the fools & knaves
Opening lines
Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.

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 Later

Why did I write? what sin to me unknown

Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own?
Satirical portraits of Lord Hervey (as Sporus, the young boy Emperor Nero castrated and married),
Addison (Atticus acting as a petty tyrant to a little senate of sycophants), Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, etc
Famous lines
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer
And without sneering teach the rest to sneer
The Last Years
In 1735, published an edition of his correspondence with various people, doctored to his own
advantage
One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight
Titled after the year of its publication
Contains two satirical dialogues modelled on Horace
On 30 May 1744, he said, "Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms", and died that night,
surrounded by his friends
Alexander Pope on You Tube
Listen to recitations of Popes poetry with text uploaded by Audio Productions
An IGNOU video, Pope's - The Rape of the Lock is uploaded by ignousoh
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
For a detailed discussion of Swifts biography, see the chapter Augustan Prose, Fiction, Drama. Here
we deal only with his poetry.
Dryden told Swift, Cousin Swift, you shall never be a poet.
Poems like A Description of the Morning and A Description of the City Shower show a calm
precision of detail
Poems on Stellas birthday show him as humorous and intimate
Swift is at his best in his strong, ironic, octosyllabic couplets
The Grand Question Debated
On Poetry: A Rhapsody
The Beastss Confession (Complete title: The Beastss Confession to the priest, On
observing how most men mistake their own talents)
Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (1739)
Combines an ironic self-portrait with a criticism of the society
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu(1689-1762)
Poet and letter writer
An accomplished belle lettriste (a belle-lettrist is one who does aesthetically fine writing)
Married to Edward Montagu, Member of Parliament and ambassador to Constantinople
The couple was associated with Addison and Pope
Pope had an unhappy disagreement with Lady Mary in 1723 and was bitter towards her in his
subsequent writing, but had a portrait of her in his room when he died
Lady Marys works include Court Poems, Town Eclogues and Letters
Her poems are perceptive vers de societe (social or familiar poetry)
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Only few poems, none of 1st class
Used the heroic couplet for moralizing purposes
With grim effectiveness rather than empty flourish
Two Juvenalian satires
London
Vanity of Human Wishes
London (1739)
1st poem that raised him from hack to poet
Imitation of the 3rd satire of Juvenal
Speaker is Thales, who travels to Wales in order to escape the crime, corruption and poverty of
London
This is a Tory attack on the ruling Whigs under Robert Walpole
Sombre, pessimistic power
The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)
Suggested by the 10th satire of Juvenal
Unlike Juvenal, Johnson sympathizes with subjects
Like Juvenal, focuses on human futility but concludes that Christian values are important
While London is political, this poem is more philosophical
Pessimism transferred to human activities in general

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Johnsons Satire

London and The Vanity of Human Wishes are not typical of the satirical poetry of the age
18th century satires were petty and political, much of it appearing in short-lived periodicals.
Johnson's are moral satires on human delusions and frailities
Anne Finch (1661-1720)
Countess of Winchilsea
Well-educated noblewoman
Wrote several love poems to her husband, including the famous A Letter to Dafnis
Her other works speak on her bouts of depression and belief in social justice for women
Experimented with poetic traditions ranging from the simplistic to the metaphysical and satiric
Skillfuly employed the Pindaric ode
This versatile and gifted poet among the Augustans was praised by Virginia Woolf in A Room of Ones
Own
Matthew Prior (1664-1721)
Poems reveal the complexities and contradictions in the age of Queen Anne
Combined elegance and vulgarity in a striking manner
Poems exemplified vers de societe (French term for social or familiar poetry)
Lived for a while in the heart of the French world of fashion
In collaboration with Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, he wrote City Mouse and Country Mouse which
ridiculed Dryden's The Hind and the Panther
Served as a diplomat in Queen Anne's court
Priors Poetry
Wrote different kinds of poems
Mythological poems
Pastoral dialogues
Balladic poems
Classical poems in imitation of Greek writer Anachreon
Long didactic unimpressive poem, Solomon, or the Vanity of the World (1718)
Another long humorous poem Alma, or the Progress of the Mind (1718)
In imitation of Samuel Butler
John Gay (1685-1732)
Friend of Pope and Swift
Member of Scriblerus Club
Rural Sports (1713)
Early work dedicated to Pope
Stylized pastoral imagery
Reminiscent of Pope's Pastorals
Other Works by John Gay
Shepherd's Week (1714)
Mock-pastoral mocking the rural simplicity of the works of Ambrose Philips (1674-1749)
Alexander Pope also mocked Ambrose Philips' works for their realistic depiction of humble life
(which was not considered a proper subject for poetry in the Augustan age)
Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London
Inspired by Swift's "Description of a City Shower"
Mock-heroic
Lively, realistic description of life on the London streets
Fables
Reflects simple-minded moralism
Beggar's Opera (1728)
Greatest achievement
Written upon the suggestion of Swift for a "Newgate Pastoral"
Picture of the world of politics and high society
Immoralities and treacheries of London lower classes
1st staged by John Rich. It is said that the play made "Rich gay and Gay rich."
The protagonist, the highwayman Macheath, has numerous parallels with Sir Robert Walpole, the head
of the government
Walpole refused a performing license to its sequel, Polly in 1729
The Plot
Peachum, a receiver of stolen goods
Character modelled on the historical character Jonathan Wild
Peachum is mortified when his daughter Polly marries Macheath, a highwayman, who is also
Peachum's client
Peachum informs against Mcheath, and he is imprisoned in Newgate and sentenced to death

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 Mcheath is rescued by the corrupt warder's daughter, Lucy Lockit, whom Mcheath had promised to
marry
The Plot
The rivalry between Polly and Lucy come to a head and Mcheath is recaptured from a brothel
The women plead with their fathers for Mcheath's life
Mcheath now finds that four more women, all pregnant, claim him as their husband, and he declares
that he is ready to be hanged
The narrator (the beggar) states that although it would be morally proper to hang Mcheath, sine the
audience demands a happy ending, he is released
Everybody is invited to a dance to celebrate Mcheath's marriage to Polly
The play inspired Brecht's Three Penny Opera (1928), a satire on corrupt capitalism
The Transitional Poets
In the mid-eighteenth century, the neoclassical ideals of reason and wit became rather tedious
The earlier poets such as Alexander Pope prized order, clarity, precise diction, logic, refinement, and
decorum. Theirs was an age of rationalism, wit, and satire.
This contrasts greatly with the ideal of Romanticism, which was an artistic revolt against the
conventions of the fashionable formal, civilised, and refined neoclassicism of the eighteenth century.
At this time, transitional poets like William Blake, Thomas Gray, and Robert Burns were caught in
the middle of neoclassic writing and the Romantic Age.
Features of Transitional Poetry
Avoided conventional poetic diction and forms in favour of freer forms and bolder language
Advocated a return to nature
Elevated sincere feeling over dry intellect
Shared the revolutionary fervour of the late eighteenth century
Expressed emotion in poetry
Subject of poetry was no longer the city, but the simple countryside, and the lives of rustic, humble
men and women
For more on the Transitional Poets, see the chapter Romantic Revival

Chapter 13 Augustan Prose, Fiction, Drama

The Augustan Period
European imperialist ventures have created turbulence in international politics, leading to
commercial wars
The concept of the British Empire had come into being, and the nationalist pride was succinctly
expressed in the popular song Rule, Britannia!, written by James Thomson, and set to music by
Thomas Arne.
The new middle class had a feeling of complacency politically, morally, intellectually
The Age of Wit
This was the age of polished debate and clever talking, and correctness in the use of language
o Young men learnt correct manners and the art of witty conversation from a Grand Tour of
Europe
o This was the time when grammar books, histories of the language, and above all
dictionaries, came into being
o Great value was placed on manners, on virtues like self-control and self-governance, and
above all on balance all of these denoted by the term decorum
Faith and Reason
Despite the religious turmoils of the previous century, religion was still very powerful
The Royal Society was an attempt to use science to explain and glorify the wonders of Divine
creation
Scientific instrumentation helped to understand and master the universe: accurate clocks, the
calculation of longitude, the refinement of the microscope and the telescope
The New Science explained to man for the first time how God worked. One common image was of
God as a kind of Divine Clockmaker, setting all things in order to run perfectly (Deism).
Augustan Prose
Printing and paper became cheap in the early 18th century; books became easily accessible; and
all types of literature appeared quickly
Periodicals were exceedingly popular, and they multiplied, offering essays on a wide range of
topics of social and literary interest

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 While poetry of the earlier ages as court-centred, prose was a more democratic medium that
suited the Augustan age
A literate, reading middle-class emerged that was hungry for socio-political debate
Consequently, prose rose in stature as high literature
The essay developed; the novel surpassed drama as the popular medium of entertainment
Periodicals
Augustan prose received tremendous support from the newly instituted periodicals of the time
The Daily Courant, first published on 11 March 1702, was the first British daily newspaper
However, Oxford Gazette, was another newspaper introduced in 1645 for Charles IIs courtiers
alone, who had moved to Oxford along with the king to escape the plague in London. Since it was
not for public readership, it is not considered the first newspaper.
The Licensing Act of 1647 that established government control of the press expired in 1694, and
publications sprang up in London and other parts of England as well as in its colonies
Types of Periodicals
18th-19th century periodicals mainly of two types:
o Magazine miscellany
Contents partly, but not exclusively literary
First miscellany: Gentlemans Journal (1692)
Examples: The Tatler (1709), Gentlemans Magazine (1731-1914), Blackwoods
Magazine (1817-1980), Bentleys Miscellany (1836-68)
o The Review
Original, critical and generally literary work
Edinburgh Review (1802-1929), Quarterly Review (1809-1967), The Examiner (1808
onwards)
Major Periodicals
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
o The Tatler (1709-11 three times a week)
o The Spectator (1711-12 daily, in 1714 three times a week for 6 months)
o The Guardian (1713 daily)
o These three were highly successful, and ceased publication because of poor sales or other
financial reasons, but by the choice of their editors.
Daniel Defoe, The Review (1704-1713 weekly, then twice weekly and thrice weekly. First
periodical to address a particular political topic: Englands relationship with France)
The Examiner (1710-16 weekly. Edited by Swift for a year. Tory views)
Samuel Johnson contributed to Edward Caves The Gentlemans Magazine (17311907
monthly)
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler (17501752 twice weekly)
Coffeehouses
Also greatly influential were the coffeehouses and chocolate houses that emerged from the late
Restoration onward
Tea and coffee had not long ago been introduced as beverages, and were still too expensive to
be made in houses. Probably, how to make these beverages was also unknown to many
Each coffeehouse was associated with a patron
Here people met, learnt news, discussed and debated politics, science, philosophy and other
issues of the day
Newspapers and pamphlets were sometimes provided by the coffeehouse itself
Here, for the first time, news and gossip became commodities
You Tube: For a history of coffeehouses and their changing roles in culture, watch Coffee House
Culture | HISTORY CAF uploaded by KCT S9
The Periodical Essay
All the major writers of the period wrote periodical essays
Short, witty, sometimes satirical observations of the contemporary scene
Features
o The fictitious nominal proprietor
o A group of fictitious contributors who offer advice and observations from their special
viewpoints
o Miscellaneous and constantly changing subjects
o Use of exemplary character sketches
o Letters to the editor from fictitious correspondents
Themes and Concerns

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o
o
o
o
o

Moral instruction
Judgement of good taste
Ideals expected of gentlemen
Virtues of women
Fashion, art, social events, contemporary history and politics, business

The Novel
The word novel means new and distinguishes this new genre from chivalric romances of the
previous age
The ground for the novel was laid by periodical writing
Reasons for the rise of the novel:
Empiricism
o Philosophers like Locke focussed on the experience of the individual as the source of
knowledge
Puritanism and Methodism
o Puritanism preached the idea that man must save himself by his own efforts, and own
virtuous life. Methodism stressed the importance of the hard work in daily life

Periodicals that catered to the middle classes

o The increasing circulation of newspapers brought the advent of fact based on reality.
Readers were no longer interested in stories of chivalry and romance, but wanted to
read stories that reflected their own interests, about characters that could more or less
identify with.
Influences on the 18th century novel
Technique of psychological portraiture from Elizabethan prose tales, picaresque stories, and
accounts of the urban underworld
Periodical essays, their social interest and technique of characterization
The straight-forward narrative style of Bunyan in Pilgrims Progress
Factual style of Defoes journalistic and pseudo-autobiographical writing
Heroic romances of the 17th century
Licensing Act of 1737
Robert Walpole and his government was being attacked on the London stage repeatedly,
especially by Henry Fielding
When Fieldings Historical Register for the Year 1736 appeared with its merciless ridicule of
Walpole, he moved the Licensing Act in the Parliament and got it passed
By this Act, all new plays as well as prologues and epilogues had to be approved and licensed by
the Lord Chamberlain before production
All licentious drama was thereby censored, and it ended Fieldings theatrical career
o The public mistrusted censored plays
o Except those of Goldsmith and Sheridan, all other plays that were passed by the censors
were melodramas
Consequences of the Licensing Act
Revival of Shakespeare
o Editions of Shakespeares plays
o Shakespearean plays were enacted
o Shakespearean criticism came into vogue
Revolutionary drama died out and Experimental drama emerged
o Sentimental Comedy and Sentimental Tragedy
o Anti-sentimental comedy developed as a reaction against the sentimental tradition in
drama
Revolution and rebellion merely took another form that of the novel
Revival of Shakespeare
In the absence of Restoration drama, Shakespearean plays dominated the London stage after
1737
This was related to the rising British nationalism
Shakespearean plays appealed to social elite as well as emerging middle classes
Numerous editions of Shakespeare were published, with emphasis on authenticity
o The first of these scholarly editions was Nicholas Rowes edition of 1709
Spranger Barry & David Garrick (Drury Lane Theatre) emerged as major Shakespearean actors
David Garrick
o Introduced the importance of facial expressions & gestures; cleared the stage of
spectators; confirmed Shakespeares popularity with audiences
A Famous Forgery
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As a kind of cult-like reverence for the work of William Shakespeare emerged, several people
passionately hunted for Shakespeare relics.
An engraver and author Samuel Ireland had dedicated his life to Shakespeariana, in the process
neglecting his talented young son, William Henry Ireland (1777-1835)
The son began bringing home letters and documents signed by Shakespeare, including a love
letter written by Shakespeare to Anne Hathaway and a previously unknown historical drama by
Shakespeare titled Vortigern and Rowena. These he claimed to have found among the papers of
a client.
Against the protests of William, Samuel Ireland published these papers in 1795, leading to a
heated controversy
Shakespearean scholar Edmond Malone wrote a 400-page volume, exposing the inaccuracies of
the forgery one by one
The failure of Vortigern
Vortigern was performed at the Drury Lane Theatre on April 2, 1796, much to the displeasure
of the actors who suspected a fraud. When the lead actor, J.P. Kemble, arrived at the line And
when this solemn mockery is ended, he delivered it with such emphasis that everyone in the
audience knew he was referring to the play itself. This prompted a riotous outburst of laughter
and applause.

A few weeks later William Henry confessed that the play and other documents were all his
own work. His father, however, refused to believe the confession and insisted until the day he
died that the Shakespearean treasures his son had brought home all had been real
Sentimental Comedy
Colley Cibber & Richard Steele introduced morality in their plays, giving rise to sentimental
drama
The term sentimental comedy denotes 18th century plays in which middle-class protagonists
triumphantly overcome a series of moral trials
Underlying belief is that human beings are inherently good, and when they go astray, they can
be reformed through comedy
High moral sentiments; good triumphs over vice
These plays evoke tears more than laughter
This was a middle-class reaction against Restoration comedy
Sentimental comedy: Practitioners
Colley Cibbers Loves Last Shift (1696)
George Farquhars The Constant Couple (1699)
Sir Richard Steeles The Conscious Lovers (1722)
o The trials and tribulations of the penniless heroine Indiana. The discovery that she is an
heiress leads to the necessary happy resolution
Hugh Kelly, George Colman the Elder & Richard Cumberland
Their plays emphasized masculine virtue, feminine delicacy, villainous conspiracy, and were
artificial, conventional, melodramatic
For a while, stage hacks flooded the London stage with mediocre, sentimental and sensational
plays
Then Sheridan & Goldsmith revived comedy of manners and gave rise to the anti-sentimental
comedy
Sentimental Tragedy
Nicholas Rowe called them she-tragedies
Like in sentimental comedies, the emphasis is on morality and emotions
Against heroic drama that stresses aristocratic and masculine values
o Celebrated powerful, aggressively masculine heroes and their pursuit of glory
o Rulers and conquerors as well as lovers
Sentimental drama is the result of the growing political disillusion of the middle classes with the
old aristocratic ideology and its traditional masculine ideals
Themes: love, domestic concerns
o Thomas Otway's The Orphan
o John Banks' Virtue Betrayed
o Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage
o Nicholas Rowe's The Fair Penitent
Anti-sentimental comedy
The term anti-sentimental comedy refers to the plays of Goldsmith and Sheridan
o They reacted against the excesses of sentimental comedy

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Revived comedy of manners (Restoration comedy was also comedy of manners) but
without immorality and excesses
o In other words, anti-sentimental comedy deals with themes like gender clashes, family,
marriage, etc and evokes laughter by means of witty dialogues
o But anti-sentimental comedy employs neither licentious plots based on sexual intrigues
and dialogues loaded with innuendos nor moralistic, tearful plots with Daniel Defoe (16601731)idealized characters and dialogues
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Novelist, journalist, and entrepreneur, born in the year of the Restoration; as the son of James
Foe, a butcher
Daniel altered his surname to the more aristocratic sounding Defoe (in 1703), the year he
began write for a living
Being a Presbyterian, Defoe was educated at a school for Dissenters where he had an
acquaintance by the name Timothy Cruso
Defoe entered trade and travelled extensively in Europe, and took part the Monmouth rebellion
(he was a committed anti-Jacobite, or enemy of James)
During the Glorious Revolution he joined the army of William III
Defoe was always attracted by trade and mercantilism in practice and writing
Defoes Early Works
Earliest and greatest of the Grub Street hacks
Highly journalistic writing
Essay on Projects (1697)
o First notable work
o Practical proposals for the establishment of a society
o To encourage polite learning, to refine the English language, proposals for reforming the
banking system, for the management of insurance, etc
Daniel Defoe
The True-Born Englishman (1701)
o Defoes first literary success
o Verse satire
o Defended the foreign-born King William III
o Described the English people as a race uncertain and uneven, / Derived from all the
nations under heaven.
o But subsequently he did not write as much satires as his contemporarie
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702)
Sub-title: Proposals for the Establishment of the Church
Being a dissenter Defoe favoured religious toleration and mimicked the extreme attitude of high
Anglican Tories.
In this work, he impersonates the Tories and pretends to argue for extermination of all Dissenters
Satire on Anglican Tories & the Parliament
Neither the Tories nor the Dissenters were amused
For this he was tried, pilloried and fined
In response he wrote Hymn to the Pillory
Reading the Hymn, people threw flowers at him instead of stones etc
Inspired Swifts A Modest Proposal
The Review
In 1704, with the help of the politically moderate Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Defoe published
the thrice weekly newspaper The Review (1704-1713)
Defoes articles in The Review were on an impressive variety of topics ranging from the
commercial to the moral
Supported Hanoverian succession
For Harley, Defoe worked as a spy especially during the Union with Scotland (1707)
The satirical pamphlet Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover (1712) led to
Defoes imprisonment and The Review ceased publication.
Later Defoe edited Mercator; a trade journal, and wrote other works on trade
Venture into Fiction
After 1720 Defoe ceased the politically controversial in his writing and produced a conduct book
as well as the works of historical interest.
In 1706, at the age of 56 he made his first venture into his fiction with the pamphlet, A True
Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal (1706)
o

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o A realistic account of a supernatural occurrence

o Mrs Bargrave meets Mrs Veals ghost a day after the latters death
o Written to allay the fear death
o Explores the interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm
The Novels
In the following years he produced flow of an important fictional works.
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
The Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1720)
Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720)
Captain Singleton (1720)
The Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
Moll Flanders (1722)
Roxana, or The Fortunate Mistress (1724)
Defoes Contribution
He wrote numerous works in his last years, on a variety of subjects: On the treatment of
servants, Travel, Utopian proposals, Trade
Altogether he has over 500 publications to his name and was phenomenally industrious.
Is the most prolific author in the language
Apart from establishing the tradition of the realistic novel, he was also an outstanding journalist
with over 250 pamphlets to his credit
He was recognizably unlike most of his contemporaries in his plain style of utilitarian clarity
It is noteworthy that Swift, himself a propagandist of Harley, superbly ignored Defoe, and said,
the fellow that was pilloried, I have forgot his name.
Defoe as a Novelist
Established realism as the main principle of fiction
Style derived from common mans speech
Plain narration, realistic portrayal of social and material reality (external realism)
Little interest in character
Robinsonnades
o Swiss Family Robinson (Johann Wyss)
Defoes Fiction
Defoe is sometimes called Father of the English novel
Wrote fiction in the latter half of life, at great speed (which is his fault)
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
o Real-life adventures of Alexander Selkirk
o External realism
o Middle-class view of the relation between man and nature
o Narrated in first person as if it were an autobiography
o The shipwrecked sailor rebuilds in isolation the entire material and moral civilization he
had left behind
o Reveals middle-class values
o Commonsense & prudence of Crusoe (rather than heroism or adventurousness)
You Tube
Search for Robinson Crusoe full movie
Watch Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe uploaded by Eric Masters for a good introduction
For theoretical insights into JM Coetzees rewriting of Robinson Crusoe in the novel Foe, listen to
the lecture by Jon Beasley-Murray on the "Monster in the Mirror" theme, uploaded by Arts One
Digital (A link is also provided to the same video with slides)
Other Novels
Duncan Campbell
o Sometimes considered to be written by William Bond
o Story of a deaf and dumb soothsayer from Scotland
Captain Singleton
o Protagonist is an Englishman stolen from his family as an infant and raised by Gipsies, who
becomes a pirate; Defoe comments on mercantilism of his day
Memories of a Cavalier
o Historical novel set during the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War
Moll Flanders

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o Picaresque novel
o Purports to be the memoirs of a prostitute
o Whig views
o Moll has no moral sense, but dies a penitent
Other Novels
Duncan Campbell
o Sometimes considered to be written by William Bond
o Story of a deaf and dumb soothsayer from Scotland
Captain Singleton
o Protagonist is an Englishman stolen from his family as an infant and raised by Gipsies, who
becomes a pirate; Defoe comments on mercantilism of his day
Memories of a Cavalier
o Historical novel set during the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War
Moll Flanders
o Picaresque novel
o Purports to be the memoirs of a prostitute
o Whig views
o Moll has no moral sense, but dies a penitent
Picaresque Novel
Derives from Spanish picaro: a rogue
An autobiographical chronicle of a rascals travels and adventures as s/he makes his/her way
through the world more by wits than hard work
Episodic, loose structure
Highly realistic: detailed description and uninhibited expression
Satire of social classes
Other Novels
Colonel Jack
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress
o Unnamed prostitute who takes several names, including Roxana
o Fall from wealth into prostitution; accumulates wealth from clients; attains sexual freedom
but is finally exposed by one of her many children
Journal of the Plague Year
o Minutely realistic account of the Great Plague of 1665
Defoes Style
Loose and unequal structure
Style unpolished
At its best, excellent realism
o Grasp of details
o Swift narrative method
o Plain, matter-of-fact style
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Irish satirist and poet
Posthumous son of his father; mother left him in his uncles care
Physical ailments, especially of the ear
Undistinguished academic career at Trinity College, Dublin
A long and disappointing life starting from here, which ended in insanity
With Sir William Temple
Following the Glorious Revolution, James II arrived in Ireland, which led to political troubles
Swift left for England, and became secretary to William Temple
Did voracious reading at Temples library
Early poems were imitations of Cowley, who was then popular.
Dryden remarked: Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet
The first printed work was an unsuccessful Pindaric ode in The Athenian Mercury in 1692
Acted as tutor to the 8-year-old Esther Johnson (whom he called Stella), the daughter of Temples
sisters companion
In 1697, edited Temples correspondence, and wrote The Battle of the Books
The Battle of the Books (1704)
Prose satire on the dispute between Ancients and Moderns, which was then a serious cultural
issue

174

In 1690, Temple had published Essay Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning which unfavourably
attacked New Learning and all it represented, especially Bacons challenging of the Aristotelian
system, which was subsequently developed by Descartes
In extolling the ancient writers, he unfortunately singled out the epistles of Phalaris, which were
later proved to be spurious by Richard Bentley and William Wotton, scholars of the modern
camp, who launched an attack on Temple
The Battle of the Books is Swifts reply on his patrons behalf
The Setting of the Battle
An allegorical, mock-heroic story set in the Royal Library of St James, in London
A debate ensues between the Ancient books and the Moderns about which of them should
rightfully occupy the highest peak of Parnassus
Meanwhile, a dispute arises between a spider and a bee entangled in its web
The quarrel between the books is summarized by Aesop who identifies the Moderns with the
spider (who spins out empty pedantry) and the Ancients with the bee (who goes directly to
nature and produces honey and wax, which give sweetness and light)
The Battle
Aesops verdict provokes the Moderns to attack their enemies, and a battle commences
Under the protection of Pallas, Homer leads the Ancients against the Moderns, led by Milton and
patronized by Goddess Criticism
Individual duels are brilliantly matched, as when
o Virgil attacks his translator Dryden, whose helmet is nine times too big for him
o Aristotle shoots Descartes while aiming at his Bacon
Back in Ireland
When Temple died in 1699, returned to Dublin as chaplain to Lord Berkeley
Stella and her companion Rebecca joined him
Swifts intimate and playful letters to Stella were published posthumously
Visited London with Lord Berkeley in 1701, and published Discourse of the Contests and
Dissensions in Athens and Rome, a political pamphlet about the impeachment of certain Whigs
In 1702-04, during other trips to London, he met Addison and Pope
In 1704, anonymously published A Tale of Tub, a vehement and comprehensive satire on
contemporary intellectual abuses, especially in religion
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Religious allegory; considered his best
Three sons left by their father the legacy of a coat with special instructions to wear it and care for
it
By describing how each son (mis)uses the coat, the history of Christianity is unveiled
Peter (Roman Catholic church)
Jack (Protestant Dissenters)
Martin (Anglican and Lutheran churches)
Brilliant digressions against pride, emptiness of scholars, folly of religious enthusiasm, etc
interspersed with the tale
Intended as attack on first two; but Swift is sceptical about all religion and human nature
The Whig Years
With A Tale of a Tub, he began to gain notoriety for his abrasive pen, and popularity in Whig
circles
From 1707, a period of religious writing began. Published many works including
o Argument Against Abolishing Christianity
o Sentiments of a Church of England Man (both pub. 1711)
o These religious works identified him as a staunch Anglican
In 1708, invented the character Isaac Bickerstaff
o This character appeared in his work Predictions for the Ensuing Year
o This work was written to mock the astrologer Partridge
o The name Isaac Bickerstaff was later adopted by Steele as his pseudonym in editing The
Tatler
As a Tory
By 1710, however, Swift moved away from his Whig associates towards the Tory circle of wits
His allegiance to the Tory ministry led to Swifts editorship of the Tory journal, The Examiner, in
1710, a post he relinquished the following year
The Conduct of the Allies, an outstanding political pamphlet, appeared in 1711

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Swift developed a close friendship with Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, as well as Pope, Arbuthnot
and Gay
With Pope, Arbuthnot and Gay, he formed the Scriblerus Club
In 1713, Swift was made the Dean of St Patricks Cathedral
Until the collapse of the Tory ministry with the death of Queen Anne in 1714, his literary stature
continued to grow
Love Relationships
Meanwhile, he started seeing Esther Vanhomrigh (whom he nicknamed Vanessa), a London lady
whose love he first encouraged, then rebuffed
His poem Cadenus and Vanessa (pub. 1726) represents the equivocal (ambiguous) nature of this
relationship
His relationship with Stella was also complicated; speculations are that either they were secretly
married, or illegitimately related
Swift has the reputation of being a misogynist, which is proved to be a false allegation by the
Birthday Poems to Stella
The Irish Patriot
When the Whigs came to power with the Hanoverian succession, Swift prudently imposed a selfexile in Ireland, where, despite his criticism of the country, he involved himself in championing
the rights of the Irish
Of this period are
o A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720)
o Drapiers Letters (1724), which effectively prevented the exploitation of Ireland through
the introduction of a new coinage
Seven pamphlets that aimed at arousing public opinion against the imposition of
Woods halfpence, a new copper coinage in Ireland
Argued that government without the consent of the governed is the very definition
of slavery
Swift has been hailed as one of the leading Irish patriots of the century
Gullivers Travels (1726)
His best-known book
Satirical novel
Published anonymously in 1726
This was the only piece of writing for which he was ever paid
Satire on human nature, allegorical
Romance blended with satire
Minute realism
Lemuel Gullivers travels to Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, country of Houyhnhnms
The Four Parts
Book I
o Deflates human pride
o Parodies English politics in the quarrels between the High-Heels & the Low-Heels and
between the Big-Enders & the Little-Enders
Book II
o Relentless attack on human pride and pretension: shows how contemptible human
grandeur is
o Gulliver becomes pet of the royal family
o The King of Brobdingnag describes Europeans as the most pernicious race of little odious
vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
Book III
o Satire more particular to Swifts age
o Exaltation of reason leads to anti-intellectualism
o Attacks impractical scholarship and vain philosophy
o From Laputa, he goes to Balnibarbi and its capital Lagado, where he satirizes the
professors at the Academy of Projectors
Book IV
o Shattering satire
o Houyhnhnms are a race of noble horses who live according to the laws of reason and
nature
o Serving them and despised by them are the yahoos, a degenerate species of man
o Disgust for human species

176

o Gulliver becomes a humble admirer and servant of the Houyhnhnms

Orwell on Houyhnhnms
In his essay Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels, George Orwell argues
that the world of the Houyhnhnms is dreary:
The Reason by which they are governed is really a desire for death. They are exempt from
love, friendship, curiosity, fear, sorrow andexcept in their feelings towards the Yahoos, who
occupy rather the same place in their community as the Jews in Nazi Germanyanger and
hatred. . . .
They value conversation, but in their conversations there are no differences of opinion
They practise strict birth control, each couple producing two offspring and thereafter abstaining
from sexual intercourse. . . .

The Houyhnhnms, creatures without a history, continue for generation after generation to live
prudently, maintaining their population at exactly the same level, avoiding all passion, suffering
from no diseases, meeting death indifferently, training up their young in the same principles
and all for what? In order that the same process may continue indefinitely. The notions that life
here and now is worth living, or that it could be made worth living, or that it must be sacrificed
for some future good, are all absent.
More on the Irish Cause
A Short View of the Present State of Ireland (1727)
o Criticized the practice of absentee landlordism and pointed out that half the net revenues
of Ireland was spent in England
o He declared that the ever-increasing taxes are squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals,
and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars.
A Modest Proposal (1729)
o Rest of the title: for preventing the children of poor people from being a burden to their
parents
o Notoriously powerful
o Juvenalian
o Young Irish children must be fattened and sold for food
o Curious combination of bitterness & compassion
Swifts Satire
Considered the best satirist of the age
Satire not personal, but of a general nature
Unlike Pope, keeps to general, not personal attacks
Underlying emphasis on common sense and reason in ordering human affairs
Swift to Pope: I heartily hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John,
Peter, Thomas, and so forth
Sometimes stooped to repulsive coarseness as in A Modest Proposal
Swift on You Tube
A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) uploaded by rt20bg
Search for Gullivers Travels full movies in animation as well as live-action
John Stacy has uploaded short lectures on all four books of Gullivers Travels
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Notable classical scholar
Legitimate fame as essayist
Little merit in poetry, drama, pamphlet
Early verse: The Campaign (1704)
o In heroic couplets
o Celebrating the English victory at Blenheim
Whig supporter; became Member of Parliament in 1708, and remained so till his death, even
after the Whigs lost the general election in 1710
Member of the Kit-Kat Club of Whig writers, where his close associates were Swift and Steele
As a Writer
Contributed anonymously to Steeles Tatler (1709-11, thrice a week)
Together with Steele, founded The Spectator (1711-12, daily. Revived in 1714 without Steeles
involvement, appearing thrice weekly for six months)
Collaborated in Steeles The Guardian, which ran only for a few months in 1713
At the same time, he wrote Cato (1713)
The later prose comedy, The Drummer, was a failure
Cato (1713)

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Blank verse tragedy

Acclaimed by both Whigs and Tories
Hero is a Roman republican who determines to commit suicide rather than submit to the tyranny
of the victorious Caesar
Themes are relevant to Addisons age: individual liberty versus government tyranny,
Republicanism versus Monarchism, etc
Was popular in America, and might even have inspired the American Revolution
The Traumatic Later Years
His political career flourished in the later years of his life
o Chief Secretary for Ireland
o Lord Commissioner of Trade
There was also much unhappiness
o Married the arrogant Countess of Warwick
o Started the newspaper The Freeholder which was much criticized
o One of the major attacks on Addison in these years was from his one-time friend, Pope,
who christened him Atticus in Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot
Pope presents Atticus as blessed with great talents, but as vainglorious, besieged
by flatterers (attentive to his own applause), as wanting to attack his enemies (as
Pope has done), but fearful (willing to wound, but afraid to strike)
o At this time, Addison even fell out with his old friend Steele
Addisons Essays
Wrote about 400 essays
o All of uniform length, excellent in style, wide diversity of themes
Faithful, objective observation of life
Mild censor of morals
Wrote urbane and familiar prose, the model of the middle style
o Dr Johnson said, "the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light
occasions not groveling.
o That is, in between the classical and the everyday styles
Themes
o Lighter themes: fashion, head-dress, practical jokes
o Serious themes: immorality, jealousy, prayer, death
Addisons Essays
Did not deal much with politics
Advocated moderation, tolerance, critiqued enthusiasm
Mild and cautious literary criticism
Wrote the famous series on Spectator Club
Declared the aim of The Spectator to be enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with
morality
Aimed to recover his readers out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is
fallen.
I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought philosophy out of closets and
libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses.
Spectator Club
Introduced in the second number of The Spectator
A fictitious London club with imaginary members
Mr Spectator, one of the fictional characters, an observer of London society, allegedly wrote
the papers
Their imaginary conversations provided opinions in manners, morals, art and literature
Mild, witty portraits of members
Approach to culture and taste as values that transcended political differences
Addison remarked there are none to whom this Paper will be more useful, than to the Female
World. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper
employments and diversions for the Fair ones.
Sir Roger de Coverley
Imaginary, eccentric old country knight who frequented the Spectator Club in London
First introduced by Steele in the second issue of The Spectator
His grandfather was inventor of that famous country-dance which is called after him (Sir Roger
de Coverley is the name of a Scottish dance)

178

Portrayed as an eccentric and lovable Tory squire ridiculed by the Whigs, the symbol of ideal
feudal paternalism, loved by his servants and tenants
You Tube
The Sir Roger de Coverley dance is performed in one of the scenes in Dickens A Christmas Carol,
when Scrooge is confronted with the memories of his sweetheart, whom he gave up for money.
Watch the scene from a 1951 film at Sir Roger de Coverley from A Christmas Carol (1951)
uploaded by makeitfolky
Other Members of the Spectator Club
Mr Spectator (shy, reticent; probably Addison; first number dedicated to his lifestory)
Sir Andrew Freeport (city merchant with noble notions of trade)
Captain Sentry (soldier)
Will Honeycomb (a rake who entertains women; marries at the end)
Together, forerunner of novel
Characters show the authors attempt to educate the society
Richard Steele (1672-1729)
Essayist and playwright born in Dublin
Left college without a degree to join the Life Guards
In 1700, he successfully fought a duel, seriously wounding his adversary, and led a lifelong
campaign against dueling
In 1701, his comedy, The Funeral, was performed, followed by some unsuccessful pieces derived
from Corneille and Moliere
In these plays, he attempted to put into practice the moral advice given by Jeremy Collier in his
Short View to redeem English drama from the indecency which had marked much of it since the
Restoration
At this time, he had some pseudo-academic interests like the discovery of the philosophers
stone
Venture into prose
In 1707, he was appointed by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, to write the government-sponsored
Gazette
Founding of Periodicals
o In 1709, he founded The Tatler
o Edited under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff
o It came to a sudden and unexplained end in January 1711
o Two months later, he founded The Spectator along with Joseph Addison
o This was followed by The Guardian (March-October 1713)
o The more political Englishman (1713-14) also appeared
Pamphleteering
His polemical pamphleteering of this period:
o The Importance of Dunkirk Considered
Provoked a strong reply from Swift, and
o The Crisis (1714)
Discussed the Hanoverian succession, for which he was charged with issuing a
seditious libel, and deprived of the seat as a Whig Member of the Parliament
o However, after George Is accession, he was knighted, and he received a number of official
appointments including patentee of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
o He lost the post of patent because of political differences, which led to his founding of the
journal The Theatre (January-April 1720), full of details of the contemporary theatrical
world
The Conscious Lovers (1722)
When Robert Walpole restored the patent, Steele produced The Conscious Lovers in 1722,
derived from Terences Andria
o Instantly successful
o The preface of the play states that the play is departing from popular comedies of the day
and impresses upon the audience the primacy of morality and manners over lewd jokes
and licentious behaviour, that was prevalent on contemporary stage
o States, laughters a distorted passion
o This is Steeles only important dramatic piece, and influenced the development of the
sentimental comedy in its high moral tone
The Last Years
Steele was a member of the Kit-Kat Club
Both Addison and Steele were associated with Childs Coffee-house
179

As an

Steele fell out with Addison over the Peerage Bill (1719)
He retired to Wales, and spend the remainder of his life there
Essayist
Steeles approach was emotional and sentimental, and not very intellectual
Had fertile ideas, lacked skills of application
Often sowed that other men might reap
He was incapable of irony
Often resorted to didacticism and cheap moralizing
Driven by the desire to correct contemporary social manners
Advocacy of womanly virtue, gentlemanly courtesy, chivalry, good taste
Essays are inferior to Addisons in grace and finish, but are marked by greater spontaneity and
invention
The Tatler
The professed aim in The Tatler:
o For the use of the politically inclined people
o To teach his readers what to think
o To entertain the fair sex (in whose honour he chose the title; tattle means gossip)
The Tatler has the imaginary Trumpet Club
o Sir Jeffrey Notch
o Major Matchlock
o Dick Reptile
o Jack Ogle
o Isaac Bickerstaff himself
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Johnson lived in an age when pre-Romantic ideas were gaining more acceptability than
neoclassicism
o Therefore, he was a flexible exponent of neoclassicism
Was born in Lichfield, near Birmingham as the son of a bookseller
Because of poverty, he didnt get university education. But he was a teacher and had students
like David Garrick, the actor
In 1737, Johnson moved to London and became the pre-eminent member of an intellectual circle
that included the conservative thinker Edmund Burke, the painter Joshua Reynolds and the
economist Adam Smith.
Character peculiarities
Johnson had ailments of the eye, ear, skin
Acute mental stress, melancholia
Had gruff good-will, silent & secret benevolences
Made grimaces, grunts
Tory views, often loudly expressed
Johnsons Circle (Literary Club)Reynolds, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Gibbon
In his Circle of friends, Johnson came to be known for his conversational powers, wit and
powerful personality
He was a practical critic of penetrating insight, honesty and commonsense
Early Struggles as a Writer
Johnson hoped to become a writer, but had no luck with it
Took miscellaneous writing jobs biographies (including the Life of Savage), political satires, and
reports on the debates in Parliament
He loudly proclaimed his views as a devout Anglican and committed Tory
His first major success came in 1738, when he was 29, a poem called London, an imitation of a
satire by the Latin poet Juvenal.
His other famous poem is The Vanity of Human Wishes, written in 1749
Meanwhile, in 1745, Johnson announced his plan to bring out an edition of Shakespeare, which
was completed only in 1765.
This was a time when Shakespeare had begun to be celebrated as a cult figure, following the
censorship of Restoration comedies in the Licensing Act of 1737
Irene (1749)
Johnsons only play
Blank verse tragedy
Turkish theme

180

Johnson employed Oriental themes in other works also:

o Rasselas
o Short tales published in Rambler and Idler
Johnson considered it his greatest failure
Johnsons Dictionary (1755)
In 1746 or so, Johnson started working on a dictionary
His Dictionary remained the pre-eminent English dictionary until the Oxford English
Dictionary appeared in 1928.
Johnsons Dictionary
o was an academic tool
o examined how words were used, especially in literary works
To achieve this, quotations were included
o from Bacon, Hooker, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser
o from fields like natural science, philosophy, poetry, and theology
Dictionary: An Assessment
Weaknesses
o Poor guide to pronunciation
o Inaccurate etymology
o Incorrect definitions
o Lacked dates
Greatnesses
o Superior to any previous dictionary
o For the 1st time, authorities are quoted for the use of words
o Shows talent for definition based on commonsense
Johnsons Periodicals
Johnson published a series of essays in his periodical called The Rambler, which appeared twice a
weekon Tuesdays and Saturdaysfrom 1750 to 1752
While other periodicals of the time were written in common, colloquial prose, Johnsons essays
stood out
o They were written in elevated neo-classical prose
o They were addressed the newly rising middle-class who sought social fluency within
aristocratic circles
Themes: morality, literature, society, politics, religion
Later, he contributed to two other series of essays:
o The Idler and The Adventurer
Rasselas: The Prince of Abyssinia (1759)
An oriental tale modelled on The Arabian Nights
o The Arabian Nights was known to the western world through early 18th century translations
An oriental tale is usually a short work of fiction that provides the vision of an exotic eastern
world contrasting with Europe.
o Egs: Vathek, Citizen of the World
Rasselas is an allegory of life
o As a journey on a road with many choices of direction
o As a struggle, with few lasting rewards
Written to settle the costs of his mothers funeral
Critics think that it is merely a collection of Rambler essays
Johnson and Boswell
James Boswell, a Scotsman, met Johnson in May 1763
From then until Johnsons death in 1784, the two spent only around 240 days together.
o Boswell collected the material for his Life of Samuel Johnson in this period
o Boswell is now a synonym for a constant companion
In 1773, Johnson accompanied Boswell on a tour of Scotland
o Boswells travelogue on this tour: A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson,
LL.D. (1785)
Boswells Life was published in 1791
Lives of the Poets (1781)
Between 1779 and 1781 Johnson wrote a series of 52 prefaces to a large edition of the works of
the English poets. These prefaces were published separately as The Lives of the Poets in 1781

181

Of the 52 Lives, 6 have been classified and edited by Matthew Arnold as the most important:
those of John Milton, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Jonathan Swift, and Thomas
Gray.
The oldest of these 52 poets is Milton and the first Life is that of Abraham Cowley
Johnson as Biographer
The Lives of the Poets raised biography to an art.
These biographies
o Appeal to the intellect, and to emotions and moral sensibilities
o The notion of nature, as encompassing reason, truth and moral propriety, is highlighted
in these writers
Johnson places the work of a poet within these contexts:
o Political context
o Personal circumstances
o The poets learning and character and
o The poets relationship with his contemporaries and the public
Discusses why a poet was praised and blamed
Does a close analysis of select verses
Attempts a comparative judgement of the poets greatness, and his place in the English literary
tradition
Edition of Shakespeare: Context
Nicholas Rowes edition of Shakespeares plays appeared in 1709, the year in which Johnson was
born. The Rowe edition had the current biography of Shakespeare
By the mid-18th century, Alexander Pope, Lewis Theobald, Thomas Hanmer and William
Warburton had all produced editions
At the beginning of the century, the theatre-going public had already been familiar with
Shakespeares plays, though often in a greatly altered form
Johnsons pupil, David Garrick
o Successful Shakespearean actor
o Made radical new portrayals of the main Shakespearean characters
o Did new adaptations of popular plays
o Organized in 1769 the great Stratford Shakespeare Jubilee
Johnsons Edition
Johnson used Warburtons and Theobalds editions as his model
Johnsons edition was brought out in eight volumes in October 1765
Only the plays were included, and not the poems
The order of plays in the First Folio was followed, with the omission of Pericles
In 1803, Johnson brought out along with George Steevens, a Shakespearean commentator, the
first variorum edition of Shakespeare. This was edited by Isaac Reed. (Johnsons involvement
was that his comments were added.)
A variorum edition is a work that collates all known variants of a text.
Preface to Shakespeare (1765)
The glory of Johnsons edition of Shakespeare is in its Preface
Lays down a historical understanding of Shakespeare
Weighs Shakespeares achievements against his faults
Praises him for a just representation of general nature
Justifies his violation of unities and use of tragicomedy
Shakespeares major faults are
o Lack of moral purpose (sacrifices virtue to convenience)
o The fondness for puns and gross jokes
o Tendency to use ornate and pompous diction
o Carelessness in creating plots
o Anachronisms
Johnsons Prose Style
Ridiculed as Johnsonesepompous, artificial, verbose
Notably in Rambler and Rasselas, prose heavy, Latinized, rhetorical, affected
Later style (Lives of Poets) has ease, lucidity, force, vigorous directness
Style best with serious themessentences packed with meaning, even dogmatic tone
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
First British novelist to combine material facts with the complexities of human personality
Novelist and printer in London
182

At school nicknamed Serious and Gravity, he entertained his schoolmates with moralistic
tales recollected from his reading
From the age of thirteen, served as an apprentice as a writer of love letters (loving letters written
to relatives) for servant girls
o This laid the foundations of his epistolary style
He also wrote prefaces and dedications to booksellers
Also completed Daniel Defoes A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain which was
published anonymously
Later Life
Richardson prospered, owned other homes, and was elected Master of the Stationers Company
Among his circle of admirers and friends were women, an insight into whose psychology he
quickly gained
o This included the Bluestocking ladies
o Called them the little spitfire
In later life he became quite vain and suffered from ill-health
Richardsons three novels
All the three novels were epistolary
Pamela
o First part 1740, second part 1741-42
o Made him famous
Clarissa (1747-48)
o Consolidated his reputation as a celebrant of female virtue and a subtle psychologist
The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754-55)
o A portrait of male virtue
Upon the suggestion of Samuel Johnson he wrote an index for his novels that is for short called
Collection
Pamela: Virtue Rewarded (1740)
Negotiation between literature as education and literature as entertainment
Squire B. bent on seduction, then rape, of the maid Pamela
Does everything to bring her under his physical power
She resists; wants to go home to her parents, but keeps postponing it
Finally leaves reluctantly
Yet she willingly returns when he sends for her, all respect and admiration for him (so is
Richardson)
Finally, when he convinces her that her successful resistance has led him to offer marriage, she
accepts his proposal with humble love and gratitude
Pamela: Virtue Rewarded
Based on a real story he had heard
Best-seller, yet controversial
Epistolary technique
Focus on morality
Realism
Richardsons class view: worth depended on individual effort rather than status; yet he admired
status
Basic problems with Richardsons worldview: a reformed rake makes a perfect husband, but a girl
who has lost her virtue (even in the most minimal technical sense) is undone forever
Pamela: Counter-Texts
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741) by Henry Fielding
Anti-Pamela: or, Feignd Innocence Detected (1741) by Eliza Haywood
Memoirs of the Life of Lady H-, The Celebrated Pamela. From her Birth to the Present Time
(1741), anonymous
The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams (1742) by
Henry Fielding
Pamela Part II
Added in 1742
Purpose: to replace and disown the continuations written by detractors
A dull marriage manual showing the ideal couple in action
Perfect felicity of their marriage broken only once when Squire B became involved with a
widowed countess

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Pamelas letters full of wisdom on everything from the state of drama to Lockes view on
education
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady
Subtler & profounder than Pamela
Virtuous, beautiful Clarissa Harlowes family is newly rich and desires class upgradation.
Family urges Clarissa to marry old and ugly Roger Solmes
Desperately she runs away with Robert Lovelace, a rake and enemy of the family, who keeps her
prisoner in many places including a brothel
Lovelace has a growing passion for her and rapes her; she becomes mentally ill
She escapes from Lovelace, is protected by the poor Smiths, admired for her virtue by John
Belford and others, prepares for her death and dies like a true Christian
o The novel illustrates Ars moriendithe art of dying like a true Christian
Her family is overcome by remorse, and the villains get their deserving end
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Born of aristocratic descent; pursued legal studies
Tory views
Younger sister Sarah also renowned writer
Legitimate fame is as a novelist
But in his early career, he was a writer of comedies, satirical plays, and also a journalist and
magistrate
In drama, caricatured sentimental comedy
Wrote around 25 plays between 1728 and 1737
These did not conform to the prevailing Renaissance style but followed several forms from the
ballad opera to the conventional five act comedy
Major play is Tom Thumb (1713)
The Historical Register for the Year 1736 another dramatic satire came just before the Licensing
Act of 1737
Tom Thumb
Early successful play Tom Thumb: A Tragedy (1713)
o
Originally, a companion piece to the play The Author's Farce and the Pleasures of the Town
o
Revised the following year as The Tragedy of Tragedies
o
A low tragedy about a character who is small in both size and status who is granted the
hand of a princess in marriage
o
A burlesque of the traditions of heroic drama
o
Set in the absurd court of King Arthur humourously
o
Attacks Robert Walpole
Entry into Prose
As editor of the thrice-weekly Champion (1739-41), he used the pseudonym Captain Hercules
Vinegar to continue his attack on Walpoles government
Fielding did very good stylistic parody (parody of the style of another writer)
The popularity of Richardsons Pamela prompted Fielding to reply with a skillful parodic squib
entitled An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741)
o Here he makes the innocent virtue of Richardsons heroine appear scheming
o This short piece was followed up with his funniest novel Joseph Andrews (1742)
Joseph Andrews (1742)
First full-length novel of Fielding
Written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote
Neoclassical elements
Picaresque
Rejection of letter-method
Humour
Genial & half-contemptuous insight into human nature
Hero is supposed to be Pamelas brother, a footman in the household of Lady Booby
Josephs misadventures problematize Richardsons moral world and offer an alternate view of
morality
In the opening chapter, Fielding claims that books communicate valuable patterns of virtue to a
wide public. He mockingly lists several biographies, including those of Colley Cibber and Pamela
Andrews (Richardsons Pamela) , as examples of male virtue and female chastity. Fielding then
introduces his own work by remarking that it was by keeping his sister's excellent example of virtue
before him that Joseph Andrews was able to preserve his own purity.

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 By referring to the poet laureate Colley Cibber (already attacked by Pope in The Dunciad in
1728), Fielding places Pamela within an entire culture of literary abuses in the mid-18th century
While Pamela is seduced by Squire Booby (called Mr B. by Richardson), another member of the
household, Lady Booby attempts to seduce Joseph
In situations similar to Pamelas, he resists due to his Christian commitment to chastity before
marriage, and Lady Booby dismisses him
Joseph embarks on a series of adventures along with his sweetheart Fanny Goodwill and their
mentor Parson Adams
Fielding treats male chastity in the manner of female chastity
Unlike in Richardson, virtue and reputation are not the same thing in Fieldingvirtue is an innate
disposition and intention; publicly approved signs of morality bear little relation to it
As a comic epic in prose
In the preface, Fielding calls this novel a comic epic in prose (mock-heroic novel)
o Dignity and solemnity of epic
o Variety of characters involved in epic-scale action
o Behind the frivolous tone, there is strict moral responsibility
o Interpolation of sub-stories (three in Joseph Andrews)
o Devices like Aristotelian anagnorisis (Joseph is recognized as the child of Mr Wilson by the
strawberry mark which he bears on his chest.)
Later satirical novels
His Miscellanies (1743) comprised
o The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great
o A Journey from this World to the Next
A spirited Lucianic satire which describes the progress of the soul
Lucian was an ancient Greek satirist
Lucianic satire employs self-parody
His greatest literary achievement The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling came in 1749
o Ambitious in scope
o Refreshingly unidealized hero, narrator is virtually a character
Jonathan Wild
The History of the Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great
Biography of a notorious highwayman
Wild symbolised all that was wrong in 18th century culture: crime, corruption, violence
Presented as if it is history, and not romance
Draws parallels between Jonathan Wild and Robert Walpole
Turns morality inside out
o Story told as if the narrator agreed with the ideals of unscrupulous egotism
o Attempt to convey moral ideas through irony
Tom Jones (1749)
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
o A foundling indicates that Fielding will reject normal epic procedure and deal with
English society as it is
Comic epic developed on a more impressive scale
Moral aim explained in the dedicatory preface to Lord Lyttleton
Tom Jones is a lusty, imprudent and impulsive picaro, possessing goodness of heart rather than
technical virtue
o Fielding insists that nothing in Tom Jones can offend even the chastest eye on perusal
Tom Jones (1749)
Autobiographical elements:
o Love and reverence he had for his first wife
o Extensive knowledge of the southwestern of England
o Tom Jones represents Fielding, with his careless good nature as well as a profound
awareness of poverty and the reversals of fortune
Tom and Sophia revolt against conventional society (represented by Blifil)
Toms character: full of vigour and life, heroism, reckless of youth, wantonness with women,
ultimately his goodness pays

Plot movement from extreme low to extreme high

Tom introduced as a bastard, his reputation and his hopes are progressively blackened

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In London he is kept by Lady Bellaston and even accused of murdering Fitzpatrick and thrown
into jail.
He is also accused of incest with his supposed mother Jenny Jones.
When Blifils villainous plotting and Toms true goodness are finally revealed, he reaches the
zenith of romantic happiness.
He is proved to be of high birth and he marries the girl of his choice and he inherits wealth.
Fielding, the Magistrate
When his wife Charlotte died, he married her maid, which attracted the derision of his critics
In 1748 Fielding is appointed as a magistrate
o Had a serious concern for social abuses and judicial corruption
These concerns are revealed in various essays of this period as well as in the novel Amelia (1751)
Amelia (1751)
Last novel; different from any of his other novels
Satire; autobiographical elements
Pathos and moral gravity rather than comic violence and irony
Domestic focus; variety of social abuses depicted
Heroine Amelia good and gentle; her husband Captain Booth is an erring man who is forgiven by
her
Influence of Homer & Virgil
Critique of legal system in England
Features of Fieldings Fiction
Realism
o Warmth of life
o No heroes, villains
Energy, openness, in narrative; unlike the bloodlessness in Richardson
Humour
o Genial, boisterous, but often coarse and ironic
Style fresh, natural, easy
Later Years
Together with his blind brother John, Fielding is responsible for the first organized detective police
force in Britain, The Bow Street Runners
In 1752 he returned to journalism, an editor of Covent Garden Journal under the pseudonym Sir
Alexander Drawcansir
o Some of the essays he contributed to Covent Garden were literary debates with Smollett
His health was failing
o In 1757 he went to Lisbon with his family for recuperation and died there
The Journal of the Voyage to Lisbon (1755) is a sharp and depressing account of his final travels
Fielding: An Assessment
Despite a rakish life style, Fielding had a reputation for a generosity of spirit and natural
sympathy for his fellow men
He was a committed critic of societys corruptions and hypocrisy, like his friend and artist
Hogarth
He brought to the novel a new degree of psychological realism and narrative strength
As a novelist he was influenced by the classical epic prose romances, European picaresque, and
Scriblerian satire
In drama he brought a new sophistication in structure as well as in the representation of comic
character through dialogue
Shaw considered him the greatest practising dramatist, with the single exception of
Shakespeare produced by England between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century.
Fielding on You Tube
Henry Fielding: Tom Jones uploaded by Eric Masters
There is a 1963 film Tom Jones, and a 1965 film The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders.
Watch clips in You Tube.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Son of an army subaltern, born in Ireland
Entered Jesus College, Cambridge as a sizar (poor scholar)
After receiving degree, took holy orders and became a vicar in a Yorkshire parish
Got married, and his wife suffered an emotional breakdown when he got involved in
sentimental relationships with some local ladies
Sternes Early Works

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His first novel was a satirical allegory called A Political Romance (1759)
o This was a roman a clef (novel with a key, where characters have real-life originals)
o Describes a squabble between a church-lawyer, an archbishop and a dean
o It was suppressed and burned
The restricted social environment of Yorkshire furnished him with a mass of minutely observed
details which he put into his masterpiece published within a year, Tristram Shandy (1759)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
First two chapters published in 1759, which catapulted Sterne to literary fame
Further chapters (total nine) appeared in subsequent years
Sterne entered the fashionable society in London, and relished it after his parochial Yorkshire life
Playing the parts of his own characters, he soon became a cult figure
Despite the immense popularity of the book in his lifetime, its full significance has been
acknowledged only after his death
Features of the Novel
Intensely comic, moral, sentimental treatment
Tone of informal conversation
o Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is), is but a different
name for conversation
Mocks pedantry
o Through the device of presenting idiosyncrasies of the human mind and of the obsession
of scholars with theories
Treats sex as absurd and sad
o At the moment of Tristrams conception, Mrs Shandy asks her middle-aged husband
whether he has remembered to wind the clock
o Uncle Tobys romance with Widow Wadman has a sad end because of his impotence
Occasional peaks of sentimentality bound up with comic and moral elements
o Uncle Toby gently releasing a fly out of the window because he does not want to hurt it
o The paradox of Tobys hobby-horse: his interest in mock sieges is theoretical; he would
never apply his principles to war
Yorick, village parson and close friend of the Shandys; is a representation of Sterne himself
o However, Tristram is also identified with the author
The concept of the protagonist as hero is subverted
o The protagonist-cum-narrator refuses to tell his story properly; often turning himself into a
minor character who has no control over the happenings in his life
o Aspects of the protagonists life are sidelined to give centrality to his opinions
Hobby horses
o Walter Shandy: philosophizing, theory of names, long noses, etc
o Uncle Toby: theory and practice of fortification
o Tristram: writing
Breaking up of chronology
o Focus is on psychological time, not clock time
o Past exists in present consciousness and colours it (we ARE our memories)
o A firm skeleton of date underlies the authors jumping about in time
Influence of John Lockes empiricism
Consciousness of every individual is conditioned by his private train of association
Every individual lives in a world of his own, with his own hobby horse or private obsession, in
the light of which he (mis)interprets other people: Human loneliness
Past exists in present consciousness and colours it (we ARE our memories): Relativity of time
Critical Reception
Europeans like Voltaire, Schopenhauer and Goethe
praised it lavishly
Sternes British contemporaries condemned it
o Dr Johnson: Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.
o Samuel Richardson and Goldsmith also condemned the anarchic method and playful
indecency of the work
The Russian Formalists used the example of Tristram Shandy to illustrate the concepts of
literariness and defamiliarization
Victor Shklovsky called Tristram Shandy the most typical novel in western literature.
Postmodern Elements

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The novel claims to be a biography of the titular character; its style is progressive-digressive
and marked by distortion
Focus on insufficiency of language and experience (to reinforce which there are frequent
references to the empiricist John Locke)
Erratic narration
Cheerful view of the unreality of the realistic novel
The conventions of plot, character and realism subverted
Typographical idiocyncrasies like dashes and exclamation marks, changes in type, black page
and marbled page and blank page where we are to fill in
Dark satire, playful vulgarity, mockery of morality and intellectual solemnity, identity as fluid and
unstable
Innumerable allusions and elements of pastiche
Structure that defies norms of genre
Self-reflexivity and elements of stream-of-consciousness
Tristram Shandy is a parody of the novel; it is an anti-novel
Google Books
To get acquainted with the production of this anti-novel, search The first editions of Tristram
Shandy in Google Books
In Google Books, read the book Sterne: Tristram Shandy by Wolfgang Iser
You Tube
Watch clips from the film Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Must-watch is the reading of the book uploaded by NaxosAudioBooks at Laurence Sterne Tristram Shandy (sample)
Sermons
Living in his house now renamed Shandy Hall, Sterne wrote The Sermons of Mr Yorick
o Here Sterne assumes the persona and pseudonym of Yorick, the parson in Tristram
Shandy
o More sermons appeared in the following years, which were well-received despite their lack
of doctrinal content
o In his sermons, as in his fiction, Sterne employed shock tactics, while at the same time
capable of powerful emotion
o Tolstoy is said to have been influenced by Sternes sermons, which he read as a young
man
A Sentimental Journey (1768)
A seven months tour of France and Italy during 1765 resulted in A Sentimental Journey through
France and Italy (1768)
o This second novel is as arresting and fragmentary as the first
o A travel book describing intimate glimpses of characters and emotions
o Feeling as the ability to feel oneself in some one elses situation and to be moved by the
emotions of others
o It satirizes Smollett as the character Smelfungus
Shortly after this, he died of tuberculosis and was buried in St Georges churchyard
In his last years, Sterne had kept a journal for a woman called Eliza, the wife of an East India
Company officer, which was published with her consent after her death as Letters from Yorick to
Eliza (1775)
The Anti-climax
In a typical Shandean manner, there was a rumour that his body was stolen from the grave and
sold to anatomists at the Cambridge University
Then it was said that it was secretly buried again
A memorial stone was erected with some factual errors, and brought down and replaced with
another
In the 20th century, thousands of skulls were found from St Georges churchyard which had all
been cut open for postmortem examination, and one of them was said to be Sternes. It was
given a decent burial once again, along with some skeletal remains found nearby.
Not surprising, for a man who called himself Yorick (which was also the name of Hamlets exjester, whose skull he finds).
A postmodern end indeed, to the author of Tristram Shandy!
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Smollett was the first of the Scots novelists
Was also a travel writer, critic, political controversialist, unsuccessful playwright and poet

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Quarreled with many contemporaries, and vented his anger in his writings
Best known for his picaresque novels
Translated Le Sages Gil Blas
Picaresque novel
o Roguish hero has a series of violent adventures at sea and land
o Social life of his time is realistically depicted.
o Episodic plot, hasty movement of action
Early play The Regicide is about James I of Scotland
Early Years
Smollett wrote an opera Alceste, set to music by Handel
o When the piece was not performed, Handel adapted the music to Drydens Song for St.
Cecilias Day
Became a medical doctor but gave up the profession and made his living as a hack writer
In 1706 appeared a compilation of travelogues, A Compendium of Authentic Voyages in seven
volumes, of which Smollett is believed to be the editor
In the 1750s
His first novel, Roderick Random, appeared in 1748
This was followed by Peregrine Pickle (1751) and Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753, a novel with
Gothic elements)
Produced translations of Don Quixote with explanatory notes in 1755
o This was an inadequate work for he lacked sufficient knowledge in the Spanish language
In 1757 his comedy The Reprisal was staged at Drury Lane by Garrick
The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748)
First novel
In the preface, acknowledges debt to Gil Blas and explains his purpose
Episodes of Smolletts own life
Based on his naval experience and theatrical disappointments
Added innumerable other and violent episodes
Characters like Crab, Potion, and Squire are living portraits
Young Scottish hero; his father has disappeared; has a series of misadventures in London; finally
marries his sweetheart; reunites with father and lives happily ever after in Scotland
Contains an attack on Garrick as the character Marmoset
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751)
Longest and most rambling of his novels
The famous comic character Commodore Trunnion (hero is brought up by him)
The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753)
History of a scoundrel, in the style of Fieldings Jonathan Wild
However, Smollett abused & maligned Fielding and accused Fielding of stealing from him
Several journalistic projects from translating Don Quixote to compiling a continuation of Humes
History of England.
Editor of The Critical Review
In 1756, he became the editor of the periodical The Critical Review, to which Dr Johnson and
Oliver Goldsmith contributed, in which he pursued quarrels with other authors
Because of a libel against The Critical Review Smollett was fined and imprisoned for three
months
In prison he wrote The Life and Adventures of Launcelot Greaves (1760
Adventures of Launcelot Greaves (1760)
Imitation of Cervantes
Sir Launcelot is an eighteenth-century gentleman who rides about the country in armour,
attended by his comic squire, Timothy Crabshaw, redressing grievances
Launcelot and Crabshaw are modelled on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
Other Works
Smollett also wrote A Complete History of England and started the controversial journal The
Briton
Always having been ill in health, Smollett went to France and Italy in 1664 and published Travels
through France and Italy in 1766
Laurence Sterne in A Sentimental Journey satirized Smollett as the learned Smelfungus who
set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured and
distorted

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Adventures of an Atom, a political satire, attacked British political parties under the guise of
Japanese names
Last Years
In 1770 again he travelled in search of health
His last novel, Humphry Clinker, was published the following year
Retired to Italy and died there
Smollett inspired Dickens and George Eliot
Smollett famously nicknamed Dr Johnson the Great Cham of literature(Cham means khan)
The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771)
o Last and most popular novel
o Epistolary
o Inspired by Smolletts recent visit to Scotland
o Bramble and family travel through England and Scotland
o Through Matthew Bramble Smollett inserted into the novel the observations he made on
revisiting his country after his travels
o Humphrey Clinker is apparently a minor character, their ostler, later discovered to be
Brambles illegitimate son
Sarah Fielding (1710-1768)
Novelist and younger sister of Henry Fielding
Friend of Samuel Richardson
Her novel The Adventures of David Simple (1744)
o Published anonymously
o Subtitle: Containing An Account of his Travels Through the Cities of London and
Westminster, In the Search of A Real Friend
In 1747 appeared Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simpleton, as well
as the second edition of the novel both with prefaces by her brother.
The Governess or The Little Female Academy (pub. 1749)
David Simpleton: The Last Volume appeared in 1753.
She has written other minor works as well
Charlotte Lennox (1730-1804)
Scottish; spent her childhood in the British colony of Gibraltar, and in America
She met Dr Johnson in the early 1750s, and he held her in very high regard
Other women writers of the time disapproved of her, and Johnson thought Charlotte to be
superior to them
Most successful poem, The Art of Coquetry
First novel The Life of Harriot Stuart, Written by Herself
Second and most successful novel, The Female Quixote, or, The Adventures of Arabella
o Inverts Don Quixote
Her other works are not very successful
Oliver Goldsmith (1732-1774)
Irish playwright, novelist and essayist
Protestant clerical family
Beaten as a dunce in grammar school and persecuted by his fellows
Entered Trinity College, Dublin as a sizar (poor scholar) and did menial jobs to support his
education
Unsuccessful at getting jobs
Travelled in France, Switzerland and Italy playing Irish tunes on his food and eating food
distributed at convents
Started writing the poem The Traveller (pub. 1764) at this time
As a hack writer
Back in England, scraped a living doing small-time jobs and as hack writer
First important work was a translation of Memoirs of Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a Protestant
condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion
Chinese Letters, written for Newberys The Public Ledger was republished as The Citizen of the
World (1762)
o Gave a satirical view of contemporary English life and manners through the eyes of an
imaginary foreigner
Contributed to at least eight journals between 1759 and 1773
Member of Johnsons Circle

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In 1761, met Dr Johnson, and became a member of Johnsons Club

At this time, he gathered ideas and information from other peoples books, and reduced them to
clarity, as in his essays written for Lloyds Evening Post
When Goldsmith was about to be arrested for debt, Johnson sold the manuscript of Goldsmiths
only novel, The Vicar of Wakefield for him
The Vicar of Wakefield (written 1761 or 1762; pub. 1766)
Goldsmiths only novel
Fictitious memoir of the Vicar, Dr Primrose
Wife Deborah, 6 children; they are a contented family despite the social ambition of Mrs Primrose
On the day of his son Georges marriage, the Vicar loses his wealth when a merchant company
goes bankrupt
Seeks patronage of Squire Thornhill, who jilts the Vicars eldest daughter Olivia, after faking a
marriage with her
The Vicars home is destroyed by fire; the Vicar is thrown into prison for failing to pay Thornhills
debt
George challenges Thornhill go a duel, but is also imprisoned
The Vicar suffers stoically
The Plot Thickens
The Vicars younger daughter Sophia is abducted by an unknown villain (who is later revealed as
the Squire)
The Vicar is told that Olivia has died of grief
The kind and poor Mr Burchell, who had always been their well-wisher, saves Sophia from
drowning and she feels affection for him
Mr Burchell is none other than the evil Squires worthy uncle Sir William Thornhill
The fake marriage of Olivia and Thornhill is revealed to be real, and Olivia is not dead
Here is a double wedding of George and Arabella, and Sir William and Sophia
The Vicars wealth is restored by the reformation of the swindler, Ephraim Jenkinson
Diversity of early works
He continued his diverse output with books like
o An History of England in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to His Son (1764)
o Poems for Young Ladies (1766)
o The Roman History (1769)
o The Beauties of English Poetry (1767)
o Biographies of Thomas Parnell and Bolingbroke
Goldsmiths Plays
Goldsmiths first comedy, The Good Naturd Man was produced at Covent Garden in 1768 after
being rejected by Garrick
She Stoops to Conquer was staged in 1773
His most famous poem, The Deserted Village appeared in 1770
o Draws in part on his childhood memories of Ireland
A book of comic verse, The Haunch of Venison, was published posthumously
The Good Naturd Man (perf. 1768)
Sir William Honeywood despairs of his generous and improvident nephew
Young Honeywood is in love with wealthy Miss Richland, but does not have the confidence to
propose
Sir William has him arrested for debt to show him who his true friends are
After confusions involving the government official Lofty, the lovers are united
The sub-plot concerns Croaker, Miss Richlands guardian who wants his son Leontine to marry
her.
Leontine, however, is in love with Olivia.
Miss Richland, who knows this, mischievously accepts Leontines proposal, which throws him into
panic
Miss Richland is independent, clever, equal or above men, and is not a sentimental heroine
She Stoops to Conquer (perf. 1773)
Subtitle: The Mistakes of a Night
Mrs and Mr Hardcastle have a daughter, Kate
Mrs Hardcastle has a son by a previous marriage, the oafish Tony Lumpkin
Sir Charles Marlow has proposed a match between his son and Kate

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 Young Marlow and his friend Hastings make the journey to the Hardcastles home in the country,
which, due to Tonys misdirections, they mistake to be an inn
Young Marlow takes Kate to be a servant and falls in love, and his mistake rids him of the
inhibitions he normally has in the company of ladies
Kates friend Constance falls in love with Hastings, displeasing Mrs Hardcastle, who wants her to
marry Tony
Sir Charles arrives, and puts everything right
Death and Fame
Goldsmith died early of a kidney infection
His coffin was followed by Edmund Burke and Joshua Reynolds
His epitaph was written by Dr Johnson
David Garricks impromptu epitaph was
Here lies Molly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Irish playwright; both parents were writers of some repute
Was sent to Harrow to study law; but instead got involved with, and scandalously married, a
singer
The lovers had met in Bath, the setting of his first play, The Rivals (1775)
o Became a success after some rewriting
Wrote other works, and bought a share in Drury Lane, where all his later works were performed
His Best Works
The best of his work appeared at the end of 1770s
o A Trip to Scarborough (1777)
o The School for Scandal (1777)
Probably the finest of all 18th century comedies
o The Critic (1779)
Modelled on the Duke of Buckinghams The Rehearsal
Only one later work, Pizarro (1779), based on a German play, matched the success of his earlier
works
As a Politician
In the second part of his life, Sheridan was politically active
o As a parliamentary speaker, he rivaled Edmund Burke
o Took a famous role in the impeachment of Warren Hastings in 1788-94
The Rivals (perf. 1775)
Captain Jack Absolute arrives in Bath, humbly disguised as Ensign Beverley to suit the love and
poverty of his sweetheart Lydia Languish
Lydias robust friend Julia is loved by the self-tormenting man of feeling, Faulkland
Their love has a happy end, despite the obstacles erected by Lydias aunt Mrs Malaprop and
impoverished Irish knight Sir Lucius O Trigger
The School for Scandal (perf. 1777)
Blend between sentimental comedy & comedy of manners
Knowledge of society; brilliant plot
Aging Sir Peter Teazle has married a young wife from the country, who is enamoured by the
social excitements of London
Among the people she meet are the brothers Charles and Joseph Surface Charles is dissolute,
but good at heart; Joseph is decorous, but hypocritical
Each of the brothers wants to marry Maria, an heiress, and Sir Peters ward
Maria is also courted by Sir Benjamin Backbite, who belongs to the malicious circle of Lady
Sneerwell
The Resolution of the Play
As the complex and ingenious plot unravels, Sir Oliver Surface returns from Bengal, recognizes
the true characters of his nephews, and Joseph is unmasked in the famous screen scene
Charles is united with Maria, and the Teazles are reconciled
Frances Burney (1752-1840)
Self-educated novelist and playwright
Her father was part of Johnsons Circle, which gained her also entry
Married to a French exile
For a while, Fanny Burney lived in France, when her husband returned to that country
Returned upon her husbands death

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 Lived in Bath until her death

Evelina (1778)
Subtitled The History of a Young Ladys Entry into the World
First novel
Made her famous; praise by Edmund Burke and Dr Johnson
Published anonymously, without her fathers knowledge or permission
Manuscript was written in a disguised handwriting to prevent identification with the Burneys
Epistolary novel of manners
Other Works
Other novels
o Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782)
o Camilla: A Picture of Youth (1796)
o The Wanderer (1814)
As a novelist, she followed the style of Richardson and Fielding
Also wrote eight plays including Edwy and Elgiva
Her Diaries give first-hand accounts of Johnson and Garrick
Her strength lay in the comedy of domestic life

Chapter 14 Romantic Revival

Context on You Tube
For a revision of the 18th century up to the Romantic Revival, watch the video The Transition Between
the Augustan Age to the Romantic Age uploaded by Julie Wigley
Romanticism: A Basic Definition
A style in the fine arts and literature that emphasizes
Passion over reason
Imagination and intuition over logic
Full expression of the emotions and spontaneous action over restraint and order
In these ways, romanticism contrasts with classicism
Romantic tendencies are found throughout literary history
But the Romantic Movement refers to the period from late 18 th century to mid-19th century
Romanticism and Neoclassicism
Romantic
Neoclassical
Emphasis on Imagination
Emphasis on Intellect
Free Play of Emotions and Passions
Restraint and Obsession with Reason
Proximity to the everyday life of common man
Remoteness or aloofness from everyday life
Inspiration sought from country life and nature
Incidents from urban life prevailed
Primarily Subjective
Primarily Objective
Turned to Medieval Age for inspiration
Turned to Classical writers for inspiration
Medieval Romances
Medieval romance began in the 12th century when clerks, working for aristocratic patrons, began to write for a
leisured and refined society. Like the courtly lyric, romance was thus a vehicle of a new aristocratic culture
which was based in France, and spread to other parts of western Europe.
Features of medieval romances (which influenced the Romantic movement):
Stories based on legendary material
Themes of courtly love and seduction
Fantasy and imaginative freedom
Secular portrayals of history, politics, or everyday life
Romantic Revival
The 18th century in both England and Germany saw a strong reaction against the rationalistic canons of French
classicism.
This reaction drew upon the romantic material that had survived from medieval times.
Hence it is called Romantic Revival
Precursors of Romanticism
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 Herder, Schiller, Goethe

Gothic novelists
Transitional poets
Walter Scott
Qualities of Romanticism
Romanticism saw a shift
from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination
from interest in urban society to an interest in the rural and natural
a shift from public, impersonal poetry to subjective poetry
from concern with the scientific and mundane to interest in the mysterious and infinite.
These qualities of Romanticism are here illustrated with snippets from art and literature
1. Freedom and uninhibited self-expression
"In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently
gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire
of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet's thoughts are every
where; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can
find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings.
Preface to The Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth
In revolt against literary conventions
Keats (1795-1821) If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
Lines were often enjambed, loose, with a free use of caesura and other spontaneous breaks in patterns.
. . . spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me . . .
The Prelude, Wordsworth
Freedom and revolution
Wordsworth remembers the early years of the Revolution as a time when all Europe
. . . was thrilled with joy,
France standing on the top of golden hours,
And human nature seeming born again.
The Prelude, by Wordsworth
Freedom of the common man
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear? . . .
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, . . .
Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, let no imposter heap;
To the Men of England, by PB Shelley
Strong, original, authentic feeling
Wordsworth Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility.
Hazlitt Poetry is the language of imagination and the passions.
Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:
Strong, original, authentic feeling
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
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Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,

In word, or sigh, or tear
Dejection: An Ode, Coleridge
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
Ode to the West Wind, Shelley
Beethoven on You Tube
For a powerful experience of the romantic ideals of freedom of expression and strong emotion, listen to
Beethovens Symphonies No. 3, 5, 7 & 9
The BBC documentary The Genius of Beethoven is also available
Natural language
The principal objective of the poems in The Lyrical Ballads, says Wordsworth in the Preface, was to choose
incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible
in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring
of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect
From The Solitary Reaper:
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
Individualism
The Poet
As prophet, seer and legislator
In the age of American and French revolutions, when moral, religious and psychic systems of
control had collapsed, the social responsibility of the poet is emphasized
The Romantic Hero
A solitary dreamer, even an outlaw, who turns away from the society, one who is plagued by
guilt and remorse
In revolt against social conventions
Examples
Byronic hero
Manfred in Otranto
Beethoven: After his death, Beethoven became a mythic figure, one immortalized by his
music as the tragic genius, and Romantic revolutionary and hero
The Poet as Prophet
From Shelleys Ode to the West Wind
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy!
From Coleridges Kubla Khan
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Yearning for the Infinite
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
Auguries of Innocence, Blake
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Ode to a Nightingale, Keats
Subjectivity and introspection
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed.
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Dejection: An Ode, Coleridge

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; -- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be, Keats
Sublime beauty of nature
But who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
The Seasons: Spring, James Thomson
The mountains are ecstatic.. None but.. God know how to join so much beauty with so much
horror.
Thomas Gray about his Grand Tour in the Scottish Highlands
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion. . .
Tintern Abbey Lines, Wordsworth
Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, Byron
Idealization of Rural Living
I met a little Cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
Her beauty made me glad.
We are Seven, Wordsworth
The Lure of the Exotic Orient
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As eer beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
Kubla Khan, Coleridge
Sultan Mohareb, yes, ye have me here
In chains; but not forsaken, tho opprest;
Cast down, but not destroyed. Shall danger daunt,
Shall death dismay his soul, whose life is given
For God and for his brethren of mankind?
Thalaba, the Destroyer, Southey
You Tube
There is a short video Romanticism and British Literature uploaded by Heather Barton
Romanticism and Society
The belief that people are naturally good and have been corrupted by institutions of civilization
Influence of Rousseau, idealization of the noble savage
Opposition to political tyranny
Inspiration of the American and French revolutions
The common man gains voice and greater freedom
Suffrage, abolitionist and other socialist movements
Educational theory and practice were reformed
Influenced by Rousseau
Romanticism in Painting
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Bold lighting effects and deep shadows to cast a visionary gleam over their subjects
Faraway exotic subjects, such as the Oriental scenes painted by Eugene Delacroix
Dramatic scenes of nature
Landscapes
John Constable
Casper Friedrich (Germany)
JMW Turner
The ideal of the picturesque
The aesthetic ideal of the picturesque was introduced by William Gilpin in 1782
Means in the manner of a picture; capable of being illustrated by painting
In between the regularity and control of beauty and the horror and infinity of the sublime
Related to travel, landscape painting, to places like Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, and Lake District
Romantic Music
Increased emotional expression, deeper truths
Greater fluidity; freedom in form & design
Lyricism, adventurous modulation, rich harmonies
Literary inspiration; links to other arts
Nationalism, esp. revival of folk elements

Centrality of artist as creator

Artists estrangement from society and consequent introspection
Beethoven, Wagner, Verdi
Romanticism in Music
Romantic composers aimed for a strong powerful expression of emotion, often revealing their innermost thoughts
and feelings. Romantic music is not just about the emotion of love, it can also be about hate or death. Many
Romantic composers took an interest in art and literature, with which they shared themes:
Far off lands and the distant past
Dreams, night and moonlight
Rivers, lakes and forests, and the seasons
The joy and pain of love
Fairy tales
The supernatural and magic
Romanticism in Literature
Writers were discontented with the world
The world seemed to them commercial, inhuman and standardized
To escape from modern life, they turned to faraway places, medieval past, legends and folklore, nature and common
people
They were also drawn to the supernatural
A poetic age
An Organic View of Poetry
Poets began to regard a poem as an organic whole to be described in terms of a biological organism (and not as a
craftsmans rendering of previous material described in mechanistic terms)
Coleridge, drawing on German philosophy, was the first to emphasize the organic nature of art.
Recognition of a unique universe created by an individual poem.
Decorum and rules become irrelevant
Rather than delight the reader or imitate nature, the objective of poetry the reflection of the experiences of the
author.
What lead to the Romantic Revival?
Discovery of Shakespeare
Following the Licensing Act of 1737
Shakespeare was a romantic in temperament
Revival of Folk Traditions
Fairy tale and folklore themes appeared in painting, literature, music
Bishop Percys Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1775)
Translation of Grimms Fairy Tales from German (1823)
Orientalism in literature and art
Oriental Tales: Johnsons Rasselas, Goldsmiths The Citizen of the World, Beckfords Vathek
Translations from Sanskrit, made by Indologist William Jones (Shakuntala in 1789)
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Biblical, mythical and mystical literature

William Blakes apocalyptic poetry
Macphersons Ossianic poems
Influence of Rousseau (1712-78)
Explored in his fiction the agonies of frustrated love
Exalted the noble savage
Man is born with the potential for goodness
This was in opposition to Thomas Hobbes
The phrase noble savage first appears in Drydens The Conquest of Granada Almanzor, a
Spanish Muslim who is actually a Christian prince refers to himself as a noble savage
Exhorted poets to return to nature
French Revolution
With its ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity
Edmund Burkes sublime of terror
The sublime as something that could provoke terror in the audience
Terror and pain are the strongest of emotions.
Burke believed there was an inherent "pleasure" in this sublime of terror.
Anything that is great, infinite or obscure could be an object of terror and the sublime, for there was an
element of the unknown about them
Macabre and Gothic elements in paintings
Gothic Romances
Transitional Poetry
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
You Tube
Search for the BBC documentary series on The Romantics
Liberty
Nature
Eternity
Transitional Poetry
The Augustan poets such as Alexander Pope valued order, clarity, poetic diction, logic, refinement, and decorum.
Theirs was an age of rationalism, wit, and satire
This contrasts greatly with the ideal of Romanticism, which was an artistic revolt against the conventions of the
fashionable formal, civilised, and refined Neoclassicism of the eighteenth century.
18th century poets like William Blake, Thomas Gray, and Robert Burns employed classical forms, romantic themes
They are the precursors of romanticism.
Transitional Poetry: Features
Reaction against intellectual Augustan poetry
Deep sense of mystery and wonder
Renewed impetus on passion, imagination
Emphasis on originality & inspiration (as against craftsmanship)
Sentimentalism
Rural life (against Augustan poetry of the Town)
Augustan elements in their poetry
Presented an ordered universe governed by universal laws framed by God
Formal rules maintained to some extent
John Dyer (1699-1757)
Poet and successful artist
Like other contemporaries, applied elevated poetic language to rustic or familiar themes
The Fleece
About care and shearing of sheep etc
Grongar Hill
Best-known work
Describes a country landscape the valley of the River Towy in Dyfed
Anticipates some of the spirit of Romanticism
James Thomson (1700-48)
Scottish poet educated at Edinburgh University
Came to London in 1725; got introduced to celebrities like Pope, Arbuthnot and Gay
In the 1730s, travelled in France and Italy as tutor to Charles Talbot, son of the solicitor general

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 Gained his reputation with The Seasons (1730), which is still considered his best poem
In Yonder Grave a Druid Lies is an elegy written by William Collins to commemorate his friends death.
The Seasons
Four poems: Winter (1726), Summer (1727), Spring (1728), Autumn (1730)
A revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1744, probably with the help of Pope and Lyttelton
Quasi-Miltonic blank verse
Description of the countryside at various times of the year
Reflection deeper & mood more pensive than the descriptions of the local poetry of Coopers Hill
Represented an optimistic Deism
Pope and Johnson admired Thomson
Patriotic poems
Britannia, a poem prompting British interests against Spain, appeared in 1729.
Liberty (1734-36) is a long patriotic poem celebrating the progress of liberty from ancient Greece and Rome to
Britain. Hyperbolic tone.
His famous patriotic poem Rule, Britannia was set to music by Thomas Arne in 1740
Tragedies
Sophonisba (1730)
A tragedy for which Pope wrote a verse prologue (completed probably by David Mallet)
Has the famous line, O! Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O! criticized by Dr Johnson as a feeble line
Turned again to tragedy after the death of Talbot in 1737
Agamemnon (1738): Pope attended the first night
Tancred and Sigismunda: Acted in 1745 with David Garrick as Tancred
Coriolanus: Performed posthumously in 1749
Oliver Goldsmith (c.1728-74)
For a detailed analysis of Goldsmiths life and works, see the chapter Augustan Prose, Fiction, Drama
Wrote poems in the tradition of mid-18th century verse: moralizing, descriptive, sententious
Two major poems that show features of transitional poetry: The Traveller (1764) and The Deserted Village
(1770)
Used heroic couplet in both these poems
Disapproved of the verse experiments of the period
The Traveller (1764)
Philosophically surveys different European countries and their people
Contains descriptive passages phrased in simple language
Sympathy for the sufferings of the poor, where laws grind the poor, and rich men make the laws.
Narrated by a restless wanderer whose heart yet yearns after his own native land, where his brother still dwells
The Deserted Village (1770)
Pastoral poem
Expresses a fear that the destruction of villages and the conversion of land from productive agriculture to
ornamental landscape gardens would ruin the peasantry
Experience is one of enforced exile
The same experience of a rural idyll destroyed is at the centre of his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
The Retaliation (1774)
Incomplete poem published after Goldsmiths death
A dazzling series of character portraits in the form of mock epitaphs on a group of his closest acquaintances
Graveyard Poets
Not a formal school
A common term for 18th century poets (especially in the 1740s-50s) who found inspiration in graveyards and
contemplated on mortality
Gloomy meditation in verse was fashionable at this time
Poems set in graveyards with yew trees
Contributed to the melancholy side of Romanticism
Authors and Works
Parnells Night-Piece on Death (1721)
Parnell was a contemporary of the Augustan poets whose only outstanding verse, Night-Piece, anticipated
Graveyard Poetry
Robert Blairs The Grave (1743)
Blank-verse poem of morbid meditation
Edward Youngs Complaint, or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742-46)
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Lengthy didactic poem in nine books or nights

A major part of the poem is a rebuke of the worldly Lorenzo, who is exhorted to turn to faith and a virtuous
life

Other Works
James Thomsons The Seasons (1730)
James Herveys Meditations among the Tombs (1746-47)
Prose
Thomas Grays Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878, America)s Thanatopsis (1817)
The emotional states depicted in Graveyard poetry is later found in poems like
Coleridges Dejection: An Ode
Keats Ode on Melancholy, etc
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
The second most important poet of the 18th century, after the dominant Alexander Pope
Despite his great talent, Gray wrote only a small body of poetry which he published rather reluctantly
There was a reclusiveness and timidity that characterized his whole life, partly due to his frail health and
homosexuality
Of the many children born to his parents, only Thomas survived infancy, and was deeply attached to his mother
Education
At Eton College (a preparatory school where his uncles were teaching), Gray formed friendships with Horace
Walpole, Richard West and Thomas Ashton
Horace Walpole was the architect of the Gothic novel, and the son of Englands Prime Minister
Later, he entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge University, which he later quit for Pembroke College
Debating whether to join the legal profession, he went on a Grand Tour to France and Italy with Walpole (1739-41),
but returned home with others when the two of them quarrelled.
Having become financially independent by the death of his father in 1741, he turned to writing
Early Works
In 1742, Gray sent Richard West his Ode on the Spring, shortly before the latters death due to tuberculosis
Gray was translating Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding at this time
At his mothers house in Stoke Poges, Gray wrote Sonnet on the Death of Richard West, Hymn to Adversity, Ode on
a Distant Prospect of Eton College and the unfinished Hymn to Ignorance
In 1743, he graduated in law and became reconciled with Walpole the following year
In 1747, when Walpoles cat died, he sent him Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Bowl of Gold
Fishes
Three Early Poems
Sonnet on the Death of Richard West
On the death of his friend
Hymn to Adversity
Spenserian allegory
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
Recalls his schooldays as a time of great happiness
Ends with the lines No more; where ignorance is bliss, / Tis folly to be wise (Gray is not promoting
ignorance, but reflecting nostalgically on a time when he was allowed to be ignorant, his youth)
Grays Elegy
Gray became famous for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard published in 1751, vxnb xc
Written in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1750
Spirit of late 18th century sentimentalism
Dr. Johnson praised the Elegy (but was not appreciative of Gray)
In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader. . . The "Churchyard"
abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom
returns an echo.
Grays Elegy: A Summary
Begins with a contemplation of the landscape
Moves to a consideration of the short and simple annals of the poor
Moral ideas arise from this consideration
Poet then muses upon human potential and mortality
Presents the prospect of the poets own death; Art (this poem) might offer a durable memorial against time
Deep personal feelings involved
Gray in the 1750s
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Unique in his oeuvre is A Long Story, a burlesque tale of magic and intrigue similar in tone to Coleridges Christabel
In 1753, Horace Walpole arranged with Richard Bentley, the son of the famous scholar satirized in Swifts The
Battle of the Books, to make engravings for Six Poems of Gray.
Grays Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard were printed by Walpole in his press at Strawberry
Hill
When Colley Cibber died in 1757, Gray was offered the post of Poet Laureate, but he declined
The Pindaric Odes
The Progress of Poesy
Subtitled A Pindaric Ode
The Bard
Speaker is the last survivor of the ancient Celtic Bards, cursing the Norman king Edward I after his conquest
of Wales, thus censuring tyranny and oppression. The Bard prophesies in detail the downfall of the House of
Plantagenet. It ends with the bard hurling himself to his death from the top of a mountain.
Gray in the 1760s
To write a History of English Poetry, Gray did two years of research at the British museum and made several tours
across England and Scotland
Attracted by the work of James Macpherson and his 1760 publication of Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in
the Highlands of Scotland, Gray made investigations of his own into the Celtic and Scandinavian past, and translated
Welsh and Icelandic originals
His two Norse odes, The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin written in 1761, are anticipative of Scott and
Coleridge
In 1762, Gray applied for the post of Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, but the post was given to Lawrence
Brockett. In 1768, when Brockett died in an accident, Gray got the appointment, but never delivered any public
lectures.
Last Years
In his last years, Gray wrote a few poems translations from Welsh and some occasional satirical verse which
were circulated among his closest friends only
He went on long walking tours to the picturesque districts of England, including the Lake District. His journal of
these years which describes a sublime experience of nature has influenced the later Romantics in their picturesque
appreciation of landscape
Gray died at his rooms in Cambridge of a violent attack of gout; he was buried near his mother in Stoke Poges
Thomas Grays Oeuvre
Pastoral Elegy
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Horatian Odes
Hymn to Adversity
Ode on the Spring
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, etc
Pindaric Odes
More passionate compared to the calmer, moderate Horatian Odes
The Progress of Poesy
The Bard
Mock-heroic poetry
On the Death of a Favourite Cat
Poems on Celtic, Norse, Welsh subjects
The Fatal Sisters
The Descent of Odin
Thomas Gray: An Assessment
Grays poetry was strongly marked by the taste for sentiment controlled by classical ideals of restraint and
composure that characterized the later Augustans, but prepared the way for the inward emotional exploration
displayed by the Romantics
He combined traditional forms and poetic diction with new topics and modes of expression. He almost worshipped
Dryden and loved Racine as heartily as Shakespeare. He valued polish and symmetry as highly as the school of
Pope, and shared their taste for didactic reflection and for pompous personification. Yet he also shared the taste for
sensibility, which found expression in the Romanticism of the following period.
William Collins (1721-1759)
Among the transitional poets, Collins was second only to Gray in influence
The son of a poor hatter, William Collins went to London after his Oxford education, determined on a literary career
In London, he befriended James Thomson, Samuel Johnson and David Garrick

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 When he was 17 and still at college, he completed the Persian Eclogues (1742, revised as Oriental Eclogues)
Was a lifelong friend of the poet Joseph Warton (1722-1800)
Odes (1746)
In London, he published his second and last collection of poems, Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical
Subjects (1746)
Did not gain recognition immediately because these poems were at odds with the conventional style of
Augustan poetry
Collins descended into depression because of the failure of his collection to attain popularity
As typical of odes, these poems show strong emotional descriptions and the personal relationship to the
subject.
Some of these odes are on patriotic odes, some offer poignant descriptions of nature
Collins odes show a contrived extravagance of utterance
Ode to Fear
Allegorical
Shows the influence of classical Greek forms
Like a Pindaric ode, this ode is arranged into strophe, antistrophe and epode
Describes the unnerving and sublime power of monsters, tempests, shipwrecks and ghosts
Pays tribute to the effects achieved by Aeschylus and Sophocles
20th century American poet Allen Tate has written a variation of the same theme, under the same title
Ode to Pity
Addresses and celebrates Euripides
Like in the other odes, the poet addresses the subject directly, through personification
Though the theme is pity, the tone is jubilant as in Miltons LAllegro
Miltons companion poems are models for this poem
Ode on the Poetical Character
Most complex of his odes in imagery and thought
Pindaric form
Allusion to The Faerie Queene
Romantic theme of poetic creativity
Discusses the ideal of the poet
Voices with increasing emphasis Collins disillusionment with his age and with his own work
Ode to Evening
One of the few successful examples of the unrhymed lyric in English
Was a touchstone poem for early Romantic poets, and was frequently imitated
The evening is personified in rich, complex descriptions, as chaste Eve, as a classical Muse, etc
Religious imagery
Superstitions Ode
Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland is one of those incomplete pieces published
posthumously

This ode is called Superstitions Ode, was found after Collins death

When it was printed in 1788, the missing stanzas were provided by Henry Mackenzie, the Scottish poet

This was one of the first attempts in English literature to explore the romantic aspects of Scottish scenery
and legends

Dedicated to John Home (1724-1808), the author of the tragedy of Douglas

Last Years
Collins was greatly supported and admired by his friend, James Thomson, the Scottish poet. Until Thomsons death
in 1748, they had been on terms of affectionate intimacy. The next year, Collins wrote Ode on the Death of
Thomson (1749)
In 1750 he wrote an Ode on the Music of the Grecian Theatre, which he invited the Oxford composer, William
Hayes (1707-1777), to set to music. Unfortunately this and some later odes have never been recovered.
In the last years of his life, he fell into a state of insanity and was confined to a lunatic asylum
The Life of Collins was written by Dr Johnson
William Cowper (1731-1800)
An important forerunner of Romantic poetry who wrote about evening life and scenes of English country life
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Melancholy and devout man, retired to rustic seclusion

Sensitive and disappointed in life

Tone of morbidity and tragedy in poetry

Had a landscape painters eye

Tremendous popularity in the Romantic period owed to his fervent advocacy of religious and humanitarian ideals,
including his support of the anti-slavery movement

Coleridge called him the best modern poet

Robert Southey wrote the monumental Life and Works of Cowper (1837)

Youth

Cowpers mother died in his childhood, and he was sent to a boarding school where he suffered from bullying
His dislike of public school education was evident later in his work
Cowper suffered from depression throughout his life, but had a wide circle of friends who cared for his welfare
In his youth, he fell in love with his cousin, Theodora, but the relationship ended when his father did not approve of
the match
In 1763, through his family connections, Cowper got appointed as a clerk of the Journals at the House of Lords, but
his appointment was challenged by a rival faction. This ordeal led to a bout of depression and Cowper had to enter a
lunatic asylum for a while. Here he converted to Evangelicalism.
The Unwins
By this time, he was on intimate terms with a retired clergyman, Morley Unwin and his wife Mary, and stayed with
them. After Unwins death, Mary continued to care for Cowper, and together they moved to the town of Olney.
In 1773, Cowper suffered another attack of madness. He had terrible nightmares, believing that God has rejected
him. Cowper would never again enter a church or say a prayer. When he recovered his health, he kept busy by
gardening, carpentry, and keeping animals. In spite of periods of acute depression, Cowpers twenty-six years in
Olney and later at Weston Underwood were marked by great achievement as poet, hymn-writer, and letter-writer.
Soon, Cowper came under the powerful influence of James Newton , a pastor and former slave trader, and
contributed to Newtons hymn book known as Olney Hymns (1779)
Major Works
When Newton left for London, Mary Unwin, to whom Cowper as now engaged but never married, encouraged him
to write The Progress of Error and other poems, including eight satires. These were published in 1782 under the title
Poems by William Cowper
In 1781, Cowper met a charming widow named Lady Austen, who inspired him to write his most substantial work,
The Task, a long poem in six books and nearly five thousand lines. The Diverting History of John Gilpin was also
included in this volume.
The Task
Blank verse poem on a variety of subjects related to country scenes & domestic interiors
Famous lines: God made the country, and man made the town.
Although the poem begins as a mock-heroic account of a wooden stool developing into a sofa (The Sofa,
beginning I sing the Sofa.), in later sections of the poem Cowper meditates on the immediate world around him
his village, garden, animals, and parlor (The Timepiece, The Garden, etc) as well as larger religious and
humanitarian concerns.
Later Works
Cowpers cousin Martin Madan wrote a book supporting polygamy, Thelyphthora (1780). Cowper replied with AntiThelyphthora: A Tale in Verse (1781)
Cowper and Mary moved to the village of Weston Underwood in 1786. Here he wrote several short poems (which
were published after his death), and blank verse translations of Homers Iliad and Odyssey, which have been
criticized for being too Miltonic
Mary died in 1794
By now an invalid, Cowper received a royal pension and wrote the depressingly powerful poem The Castaway
He also made translations from Latin, Italian and French
The Castaway
Advocates liberty, brotherhood of man
Powerfully detailed description of a sailor washed overboard and left alone in the midst of the ocean to swim vainly
for an hour before drowning
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Its last lines are continually quoted by Mr Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, a novel much concerned with human
loneliness.
James Macpherson (1736-1796)
Scottish poet, literary collector, politician and translator of Ossianic poems
After completing his education from Edinburgh University, Macpherson met the Scottish writer John Home, the
author of the blank verse tragedy Douglas. Macpherson recited some Gaelic verses and also showed Home
manuscripts of Gaelic poetry, supposed to have been picked up in the Scottish Highlands and the Western Isles
Ancient Scottish Poems
Encouraged by Home and others, he produced a number of pieces translated from the Scottish Gaelic, which he
published at Edinburgh in 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland
The authenticity of these so-called translations from the works of Ossian, a 3rd-century bard, was immediately
challenged by Irish historians, and also Samuel Johnson in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775).
Macpherson was unable to defend himself.
He went on to write several historical works, and became a member of parliament
Ossianic Poems
Ossian, based on the legendary bard Oisin, is the narrator, and supposed author, of a cycle of poems which
the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic.
These poems are based on Irish mythology.
Despite the controversy these poems blew up, the Ossianic poems are noteworthy for the deep appreciation of
natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)
Thomas Chatterton symbolized to his great Romantic successors a commitment to the life of imagination.
His poverty and untimely suicide in a London garret at the age of seventeen made him the martyr-poet who suffered
at the hands of the materialistic society of his time
The life and death of Chatterton coincided with new awarenesses of political ideas, individual potentialities, class
differences, and the stultifying (crippling) narrowness of provincial life.
Chatterton and the Romantics
After his death, Chatterton achieved the status of a myth. He came to represent to the Romantics and their successors
a kind of idealism in the face of the rationalizing materialism of the eighteenth century
Wordsworth, listing in Resolution and Independence (1807) those poets to whom he owed most, describes
Chatterton as the marvellous Boy, / The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a monody on Chatterton
Robert Southey edited his poems (1803)
In Adonais (1821), Percy Bysshe Shelley ranks Chatterton with Sir Philip Sidney as inheritors of
unfulfilled renown
John Keats dedicated Endymion (1817) to him
Rowley poems
Chatterton wrote poems in a Middle English dialect, and claimed that these are poems by one Thomas Rowley, an
imaginary 15th century monk from Bristol.
He also adopted for himself the pseudonym Thomas Rowley for subsequent poetry and history.
The imposture was quickly detected, but the Rowley poems, published after his death, became influential on
English, French, and German literature.
In literary history, Chattertons invention of Rowley coincides with other famous forgeries: James Macphersons
Ossian, which preceded him, and William Henry Irelands Shakespeare, which followed.
William Blake (1757-1827)
Poet and painter; son of a successful London hosier and Dissenter influenced by the Swedish religious philosopher
Emmanuel Swedenborg
Blake never went to school and was educated at home by his mother
Read widely in literature and languages
At the age of 14, was apprenticed to an antiquarian engraver, where he was influenced by Gothic art, and his
fascination with the nude began
Nudity is associated with classical art, and was appropriate in the late 18 th century
Nudity / sexuality was an expression of his views on life and the times
Early Career
Having married Catherine Boucher, Blake lived in Leicester Fields, where their neighbours included the wife of the
artist Hogarth, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose art epitomized neoclassicism, which Blake rejected
Poetical Sketches was published by Blakes friends in 1783
In 1789, he published Songs of Innocence, the gentlest of his volumes of lyrics
The Book of Thel illustrates his early mysticism

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 Tiriel, written 1788-89, was the first of his elaborately symbolic writing
Innocence and Experience
Songs of Innocence (1789) initiated his series of Illuminated Books incorporating the identification of ideas with
symbols which could be translated into visual images.
Songs of Experience appeared in 1793 and a combined edition the next year bearing the title Songs of Innocence and
Experience showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
The poems in this volume contrasted the world of pastoral innocence and childhood (meek virtues of the
Lamb) with the world of adult corruption and repression (the dark forces of energy in the Tyger)
Blake as a radical
Blakes dislike of human authority and radical sympathies led to his friendships with William Godwin and Thomas
Paine, and also reflected in his writings about religion, French revolution, etc during his period
He sympathized with the revolution, and disapproved of Enlightenment rationalism, of institutionalized religion, and
of the institution of marriage in its conventional legal and social form
His unorthodox religious views derived partly from Emmanuel Swedenborg (16881772), whom he also criticized,
and are particularly evident in Blakes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
Blakes principal prose work, which appeared in 1790 along with his engravings
Written in imitation of biblical prophecy
Expression of Blake's intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs
Title is an ironic reference to Swedenborgs Latin book on afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758)
Cites and criticizes Swedenborg several times in the book
The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise
Lost
At Lambeth
The Blakes moved to Lambeth in 1793 at which time he shifted his poetic voice from the lyric to the prophetic
mode, began his work on his prophetic books
Here he did his most famous engraving including those for The Book of Job and for Edward Youngs Night
Thoughts
Blakes admiration for the Graveyard Poets gradually waned
Prophetic Books
The Prophetic Books are a series of lengthy, interrelated poetic works drawing upon Blakes personal mythology
(mythopoeia)
Important Prophetic Books:
Milton: A Poem in Two Books, To Justify the Ways of God to Men (1804-1810)
The most famous part of his poem is when Milton returns to earth and in the person of the living poet,
corrects the spiritual error glorified in Paradise Lost
The preface to Milton includes the famous short poem Jerusalem
The last and the longest of the Prophetic Books is the epic Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (18041820)
A complex account of Albion (Man) torn between the forces of imagination and the forces of natural religion
Blakes Personal Mythology
In The Vision of the Daughters of Albion (1793), Blake introduced the figures of his personal mythology
Urizen, symbol of restrictive morality, appearing in America: A Prophecy (1793)
Orc, the arch-rebel
Along with the ideas of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, these symbols are developed in Europe and The Book of
Urizen, The Book of Ahania, The Book of Los and The Song of Los
Urizen has been expelled from the abode of the immortals and has taken possession of man
Los is the champion of light, and the lord of time, but is held in bondage
Orc is the symbol of anarchy, opposed to Urizen
Blakes Personal Mythology
The whole sequence is an inversion of Miltons Paradise Lost, which Blake denounced for justifying the evil
committed by God.
Blakes criticism of Christianity is strongest in Europe and The Song of Los
The Four Zoas appeared in 1797.
Albion is the primeval universal man whose fall and division results in the Four Zoas. Albion also represents Britain.
The Four Zoas are:
Urizen (reason)
Urthonah (spirit)
Luvah (passion)
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 Tharmas (body)
Blakes Last Works
In 1803, after an unsuccessful association with the patron William Hayley, Blake settled down in London for the rest
of his life
Here he finished his Prophetic Books
The Ghost of Abel is a minute poetic drama of 70 lines, that questions the views of Byron in 1821
Auguries of Innocence (written 1803)
Contains a series of paradoxes which speak of innocence juxtaposed with evil and corruption
The Everlasting Gospel
Presents Jesus not as the traditional messianic figure but as a supremely creative being, above dogma, logic
and even morality
Blake: An Assessment
Like medieval craftsmen, Blake designed, engraved and produced his own works.
He was a mixture of extremes in both thought and work, profound as well as nave
His vision of the contradictory forces beneath the appearance of human civilization mirrors the intense political
turmoil of Europe and the New World in this period.
His interest in legend and antiquity was revived in the Romantics rediscovery of the past, especially the Gothic and
the medieval
Features of poems: lyricism, democratic sentiment, love of nature & simple life, childhood, home, apocalyptic vision
As an apocalyptic poet
Blake deliberately wrote in the style of the Hebrew prophets and apocalyptic writers.
He envisioned his works as expressions of prophecy, following in the footsteps of Milton.
Book: Blakes Apocalypse by Harold Bloom
Blake on You Tube
BBC Documentary William Blake - Singing for England
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Scottish peasant poet, called Ploughman Poet
Wrote in English as well as Scots language
Born in Ayrshire, Robert and his brother Gilbert were educated by their father, who was financially unfortunate and
died fighting a legal battle with his landlord, after which his sons lost their farm
Burns spent his childhood in poverty and severe physical labour, and in his later life he turned increasingly to the
passions of poetry, nature, drink and women
Commonplace Books
Burns left 2 Commonplace Books. The first, which was clearly not intended for publication, was begun in April
1783 and abruptly terminated in October 1785. It contained a number of his earlier poems and numerous reflections
on life and poetry.
The second Commonplace Book was begun in Edinburgh in April 1787 and seems much more of a rough draft of
ideas and observations intended for later use. The second Commonplace Book is sometimes loosely referred to as
the Edinburgh Journal.
Kilmarnock Volume
It was not until 1786 that Burns poetry began to appear in print
The early Kilmarnock edition of Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786)
Included first-rate Scottish poems such as To a Mouse, The Cotters Saturday Night (in Spenserian
Stanza), To a Mountain Daisy, To a Mouse, A Red, Red Rose written while he lived at the Mossgiel
Farm, after his fathers death
Verse letters to friends
Six gloomy and histrionic poems in English (such as Despondency: An Ode) and
Four songs such as Auld Lang Syne (on friendship)
The Kilmarnock volume was published in order to make money to emigrate to Jamaica, which, however, he
never did
Burns Most Famous Poem
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
Thats newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
Thats sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a the seas gang dry:
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Till a the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o life shall run.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho it were ten thousand mile.
You Tube
Listen to Burns:

Richard Morrison sings "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose

Eddi Reader sings "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose

Auld Lang Syne (with lyrics)

Later Years
The Kilmarnock volume brought him fame and he went to Edinburgh, where the success of his poems led to a new
edition being published

Burns is also acclaimed as a songwriter for his hundreds of songs including Auld Lang Syne (traditionally sung on
New Years Eve) and A Red, Red Rose

He developed a pronounced sympathy with the French revolutionary movement

Later in his career, he wrote little of importance, except Tom o Shanter, Captain Matthew Henderson and 100 or
so lyrics

He died at the age of 37

Burns Poetry
Burns was proud of his Scottish peasant background and had read widely among the French and English poets

In the tradition of Scottish poets Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, whom he admired, he was also skilled in the
Scots vernacular, many of his celebrated lyrics based on the strong native material of Scottish folklore and daily life

His poems about animals are famous, and often anthropomorphic (For eg., To a Mouse)

He also wrote some vigorous satires on religion, such as The Ordination and The Holy Willies Prayer (a
powerful satire attacking religious hypocrisy)

His rural poems dating from the late 1780s are consistently the best, with a blend of humour and sadness

Tom o Shanter

Only narrative poem

It tells the story of Tam, a farmer who gets drunk with his friends in a public house and then rides home on his horse
Meg. On the way he sees the local haunted church lit up with witches dancing and the devil playing the bagpipes. He
creeps into the churchyard to watch and on seeing a pretty witch in a short dress he shouts, Weel done, cutty-sark!
(cutty-sark means short shirt). The dancing stops abruptly and the witches chase him and Meg to the River Doon.
The witches cannot cross the water but they pull Megs tail off just as she reaches the bridge over the Doon

George Crabbe (1754-1832)

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Belated Augustan surviving into the Romantic world

Byron praised him as Natures sternest painter, yet the best

Moralist and psychologist

Used heroic couplet, predominantly

Major poems

The Village

The Parish Register

The Borough

John Dennis (1657-1734)

Acquainted with leading figures of the day like Dryden, Congreve, Wycherley

Playwright

Liberty Asserted (1704), a tragedy that violently attacks the French in harmony with popular prejudice

Adaptations of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Coriolanus

Several other plays

As critic

Pioneer of the concept of the sublime as an aesthetic quality. After taking the Grand Tour of the Alps he
published his comments in a journal letter published as Miscellanies in 1693, where he expressed the terror
of the beauty of nature

Gothic Romance

Gothic novel is a European Romantic, pseudo-medieval fiction having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror

Called Gothic because its imaginative impulse was drawn from medieval buildings and ruins, such novels commonly
used such settings as castles or monasteries equipped with subterranean passages, dark battlements, hidden panels,
and trapdoors.

The vogue was initiated in England by Horace Walpoles immensely successful Castle of Otranto (1765)

The Medieval Gothic

Gothic is originally the name given to the art of Late Middle Ages (c. mid-1100s to c. 1400)

The medieval Gothic originated with the Humanists of the Italian Renaissance

The Gothic style is associated with the age of cathedral construction in Europe, and is characterized by

Pointed arches

Ribbed vaults

Flying buttresses

Immense size and height of buildings

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The English developed a unique Gothic style in architecture, following the rebuilding of the Canterbury Cathedral
following a fire in 1174

The Medieval Gothic

Gothic sculpture was created to decorate cathedral entrances

With the advent of Gothic architecture, stained glass flourished as the expansion of immense window spaces in
Gothic cathedrals. Red and blue were the predominant colour choices.

During the later Renaissance period, the term Gothic was used in art and architecture with contempt, for being

Without any proportion, use or beauty

Congested, heavy, dark, and melancholy

The late 18th century Gothic novels adopted such dark themes and medieval settings

Other Gothic Novelists

Walpoles most important successor was Ann Radcliffe, whose Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Italian (1797) are
among the best examples of the genre

A more sensational type of Gothic romance exploiting horror and violence flourished in Germany and was
introduced to England by Matthew Gregory Lewis with The Monk (1796)

Other landmarks of Gothic fiction are William Beckfords Oriental romance Vathek (1786) and CR Maturins story
of an Irish Faust, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). The classic horror stories Frankenstein (1818) by Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, are also in the Gothic tradition.

Later Writers

Gothic atmospheric machinery continued to be employed by such major writers as

Charlotte Bront in Jane Eyre

Emily Bront in Wuthering Heights

Edgar Allan Poe in all his fiction and poetry

Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter

Charles Dickens in Bleak House and Great Expectations

You Tube

Introduction to Gothic Literature uploaded by mrsgehres

Horace Walpole (1717-1797)

Art historian, Whig politician, letter-writer and novelist

The youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of Great Britain during the reigns of George I and George II

Educated at Eton College (along with Thomas Gray) and Kings college, Cambridge

Effeminate, and probably homosexual

In March 1739, he set off on a Grand Tour to Italy with Thom as Gray, during the course of which they disagreed
and temporarily separated

While he way away on the Grand Tour, he was elected member of parliament in his absence
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Strawberry Hill and Other Works

In 1747, he moved to Twickenham and started to Gothicize his house Strawberry Hill, an activity which continued
for 25 years

This famous reconstruction, along with the publication of his Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole (1774,
printed at his own press at Strawberry Hill), heralded the Gothic movement in architecture and landscape gardening

In 1757, he printed Odes by Mr Gray, followed by Walpoles own Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of
England

Inspired by his recent construction at Strawberry Hill and a nightmare he had had, Walpole wrote what is often
deemed the first Gothic novel Castle of Otranto (1764)

The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story (1764)

In the first edition, it was offered as a translation from an imaginary Italian original: Translated by William
Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto.

In the 13th century, the Prince of Otranto is Manfred, the grandson of a usurper who had poisoned the rightful heir,
Alfonso

A prophecy foretold that the usurpers would remain in power as long as they had male issue, and while the castle
remained large enough to hold the lawful ruler

Manfreds only son, sickly Conrad, gets mysteriously killed (when a gigantic helmet from a statue falls on him) the
night before his marriage with princess Isabella

Now suddenly bereft of an heir, Manfred determines to divorce his wife Hippolita and marry Isabella himself

Isabella is terrified of Manfred and escapes to a church with the help of a peasant named Theodore, who is suspected
of being connected with Conrads death

Manfreds daughter Matilda loves Theodore, and when he is arrested, she releases him

Isabella is given sanctuary by Friar Jerome

Friar Jerome

Revealed as being a Count

Discovers that Theodore is his son

Reveals that Theodores mother was Alfonsos daughter

Theodore wounds Isabellas father, mistaking him to be an enemy

Manfred, suspecting that Isabella is meeting Theodore in the church, goes there and stabs a woman whom he thinks
is Isabella but discovers that he has murdered his own daughter Matilda

The ghost of Alfonso, now grown too enormous to be contained by the castle, overthrows it and rises from the ruins

Manfred confesses the usurpation by his family, and the ghost proclaims Theodore the heir

The tale ends with the marriage of Theodore and Isabella

Other Works
Otranto was the first of a long line of far more successful Gothic novels by writers such as Clara Reeve, Ann
Radcliffe and Gregory Lewis
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Otranto was followed with a blank verse tragedy, The Mysterious Mother (1768)

Walpole also wrote a large number of political and historical works, which are all insignificant compared to his
letters, of which about 4000 have survived and have been published in many volumes.

He wrote his letters with an eye to publication, successfully requesting the return of about 1000, which he then
carefully annotated for the benefit of future editors.

The letters address such topics as politics, history, geography, travel, Great Britain, music, literature, and drama

Walpole and Chatterton

In 1769, Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) sent Walpole a number of his forgeries of medieval poetry, and Walpole
replied, showing some interest

Walpoles friends Thomas Gray and William Mason, however, recognized these poems as modern, and Walpoles
manner to the boy changed abruptly and he rebuffed him

When Chatterton committed suicide in a few months, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Hazlitt wrongly thought
Walpole responsible for his death.

Last Years
Horace Walpoles intensive literary activity was supported by the Strawberry Hill press.

However, this press was not used to print The Castle of Otranto anonymously in 1764

In the last couple of decades of his life, Walpole suffered from gout and rheumatism, and he retreated to France for a
cure, where he became acquainted with a number of society figures. He returned home, and his brother and many of
his friends died in subsequent years.

Walpole became the Fourth Earl of Orford in 1791, and the title died with him.

Clara Reeve (1729-1807)

She was the author of several novels, of which only one is remembered: The Old English Baron (1778; published the
year before under the title The Champion of Virtue)

She attempted to correct the Gothic excesses of Horace Walpoles Castle of Otranto, but the supernaturalism in
Reeves novel is not quite subtle

Her treatment of history is also rather lifeless, compared to the novels of Walter Scott

Reeves best work is probably her contribution to literary history, The Progress of Romance (1785), an analysis of
the evolution of epic into romance and then into the novel.

None of Reeves other novels or writings deal with the Gothic, and none had the popularity of The Old English
Baron.

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)

Novelist who helped establish the Gothic tradition and wrote political novels of sensibility

As a Romantic poet, she revived the English sonnet

Father was a reckless spendthrift; husband violent and profligate

Deeply unhappy marriage; 12 children

Joined husband in debtors prison where she wrote Elegiac Sonnets

Left her husband and began writing to support her children

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Her struggle to provide for her children and her frustrated attempts to gain legal protection as a woman provided
themes for her poetry and novels

Smith and the Revolution

At the beginning of the French Revolution, she, like many radicals, supported the revolution and its cause.

The epistolary novel Desmond tells the story of a man who journeys to revolutionary France and is convinced of the
rightness of the revolution and contends that England should be reformed as well

However, the Reign of Terror turned the British against the revolutionaries. Smith also criticized the revolutionaries,
but upheld the original ideals of the revolution.

The Old Manor House (1793) is considered her best novel

Supports the ideals of the French Revolution

Smith wrote ten novels, three books of poetry, four childrens books, and other assorted works

Her work was praised by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Scott

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)

Hugely popular Gothic novelist of the 1790s

Her supernaturalism owed much to the early novels of Charlotte Turner Smith, who had helped establish the
conventions of the Gothic tradition

Radcliffe is praised for her unique ability to infuse scenes of terror and suspense with an aura of romantic sensibility,
and her blend of moralism, aesthetics, and drama

Her first novels, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789) and A Sicilian Romance (1790) were published
anonymously.

Radcliffe achieved fame with her third novel, The Romance of the Forest (1791), a tale of 17th century France

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

Made her the most popular novelist in England

The story of the orphaned Emily St. Aubert subjected to cruelties by guardians, threatened with the loss of her
fortune, and imprisoned in castles but finally freed and united with her lover.

Signor Montoni is the villain.

Strange and fearful events take place in the haunted atmosphere of the solitary castle of Udolpho, set high in the dark
and majestic Apennines.

The Mysteries of Udolpho plays a prominent role in Jane Austens novel Northanger Abbey, in which the
impressionable Catherine Morland, after reading Radcliffes novel, comes to see her friends and acquaintances as
Gothic villains and victims with amusing results

Later Career
The Italian (1797)

Shows improved dialogue and plot construction

Its villain, Schedoni, a monk of massive physique and sinister disposition, is treated with a psychological
insight unusual in her work.

Though Radcliffe made considerable money from these novels, she published no more fiction in her lifetime and led
a reclusive life
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In her later career, she wrote a great deal of poetry

Her novel Gaston de Blondeville (1826) was posthumously published

Matthew Gregory Monk Lewis(1775-1818)

Educated at Christ College, Cambridge, Lewis became a member of parliament

In 1812, he inherited a fortune and large properties in Jamaica.

Sincerely interested in the conditions of his 500 slaves, he made two West Indian voyages, contracted yellow fever
on his return from the second, and died at sea.

The Monk (1796)

Horror-Gothic novel written when Lewis was 19

Influenced by Ann Radcliffe, William Godwins Caleb Williams, and by contemporary German Gothic literature

The story of a monk, Ambrosio, who is initiated into a life of depravity by Matilda, a woman who has disguised
herself as a man to gain entrance to the monastery. Ambrosio eventually sells his soul to the devil to avoid being
tortured by the Spanish Inquisition, but the devil throws him from a precipice to his death on the rocks below.

No sentimentality as in Radcliffe; focus is on the sensational and the horrible

Other Works
Followed by a popular musical drama in the same vein, The Castle Spectre (perf. 1797; pub. 1798), produced by the
dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Lewis also wrote the Journal of a West India Proprietor (published 1834), which attests to his humane and liberal
attitudes

William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844)

Novelist and wealthy art-collector

He is remembered as the author of the Gothic novel Vathek, the builder of the remarkable lost Fonthill Abbey and
Lansdown Tower (Beckfords Tower)

Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents (1783)

Based on his travels in Italy

Took a Grand Tour of Europe and lived in Portugal for a while

Other Works

Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters (1780, a satire)

Letters from Italy with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (1834)

Vathek (1786)
Written originally in French

He boasted that it took a single sitting of three days and two nights

Subtitle: An Arabian Tale

Alternate title: The History of the Caliph Vathek

Oriental Tale inspired by Antoine Gallands translation of The Arabian Nights

William Godwin (1756-1836)

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Philosopher, journalist, novelist

Exponent of utilitarianism

Anticipated the Romantic movement with his writings on atheism, anarchism and personal freedom

Married Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797, and their daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley married PB Shelley

An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), written when the French Revolution was in full swing, offering a
middle way in politics, between the fiery extremes of Burke and Paine

Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794)

An ideological Gothic novel

The story of a servant who finds out a dark secret about Falkland, his aristocratic master, and is forced to flee
because of his knowledge

Godwin began with the conclusion of Caleb being chased through Britain and developed the plot backwards. This
narrative method, described in the introduction to the novel, proved influential.

Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824)

Irish Protestant clergyman

Wrote Gothic plays and novels, the most famous of which is Melmoth

Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)

The story of an Irish Faust: Melmoth, a wandering Jew, sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150
extra years of life; he spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him

PB Shelley (1792-1822)
The poet who was married to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein (1818)

For more on Shelley, see the chapter Late Romantics and Prose Writers

Wrote two Gothic novels while he was a student at Oxford

Zastrozzi: A Romance (1810)

Presents an atheistic worldview through the villain Zastrozzi

St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian (1810)

The main character is Wolfstein, a solitary wanderer, who encounters Ginotti, an alchemist of the
Rosicrucian or Rose Cross Order who seeks to impart the secret of immortality

Other Works
In 1811, he wrote The Necessity of Atheism, a controversial pamphlet, for which he was expelled from the university.

Some of his poems also have Gothic elements

In Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, he wrote:

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

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Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)
Daughter of political philosopher William Godwin and liberal feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft

Mother died in her infancy

Educated according to liberal political ideals

Scandalous affair with the married Percy Bysshe Shelley, elopement, and marriage after Shelleys first wife
committed suicide

The Shelleys famously spent the summer of 1816 in Switzerland with Lord Byron and John Polidori, where Mary
conceived the idea of Frankenstein, her Gothic novel

Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus (1818)

Mary Shelley began writing this novel in 1816, when she, Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori wrote ghost stories
to pass the time during the summer in Switzerland

Epistolary novel in the form of story-within-a-story

Frame narrative: The novel documents a correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret.
Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the Arctic to attain fame. During the voyage the crew spots a dog
sled driven by a gigantic man. Later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor
Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man they had seen. Frankenstein starts to recover from
his exertion, sees in Walton the same over-ambitiousness he has had, and recounts his story to Walton as a warning.

Frankenstein: The Plot

Victor Frankenstein, a student of natural philosophy in Geneva, builds an 8 feet tall monster in the semblance of a
man and gives it life

Possessed by unnatural strength, the creature inspires horror in those who see it, but is miserably eager to be loved

Repulsed by his own creation, the unhappy Frankenstein deserts it, and falls ill. He is nursed back to health by his
cheerful childhood friend, Henry Clerval

Frankenstein is pursued by the monster to Chamonix in France, where he agrees to make a female counterpart for
him

However, a wave of remorse makes him destroy the female he has been constructing, and the monster swears
revenge on its creator

He kills Frankensteins bride on their wedding night

Frankensteins father dies of grief, and the scientists mind gives way

Eventually he recovers, and sets out to destroy his creation

After a chase across the world, the two at last confront each other in the Arctic

Frankenstein dies and the monster, mourning the loss of the man who gave him life, disappears into the frozen
wilderness, hoping for his own annihilation

Romantic Themes
Knowledge is symbolized by light in this novel, as against the dark natural world. The ruthless pursuit of
knowledge, denoted by fire, which both Walton and Frankenstein engage in, is dangerous and self-destructive

The novel offers a powerful treatment of the sublime natural world as a source of unrestrained emotional experience

The theme of monstrosity pervades the novel.

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The Theme of Monstrosity

The hideous monster is a social outcast

Victor Frankenstein himself is a monster inside, whose ambition and selfishness alienate him from the society

Critics have described the novel itself as a monster, like Frankensteins creation: it is a stitched-together combination
of different voices and texts

Within the framework of Waltons letters, Victors story fits, inside which the monsters story fits

Within the monsters story, there is the love story of the peasant Felix and the foreign woman Safie. The monster
learns to speak and behave by observing this peasant family, but they chase him away.

Intertextuality
There are numerous references to Paradise Lost, Tintern Abbey and a profusion of other texts.

The subtitle of the novel underscores the intertextual nature of the novel.

The Greek god Prometheus, a Titan, gave the knowledge of fire to humanity, and is severely punished for it.

Victor has the knowledge of the secret of life, for which he is punished, and the knowledge remains a secret,
and ends with him.

Paradise Lost
The epigraph to Frankenstein is from Miltons epic:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?

There are parallels between the characters:

God

Victor played God

Like God, he neglected his creation

Satan

Frankensteins monster was created benevolent

The creation defied his master

Adam

Victor created life against natural order

The creation was in complete solitude

Tintern Abbey
Shelley makes this reference to Wordsworths poem after the monster meets Victor and tells him his story

In Tintern Abbey, the speaker has almost three selves, representing the past, the present, or the future. When the
speaker is younger, the speaker finds great pleasure and joy in being with nature. But he no longer has that same
boyish love, and is more like a man / Flying from something that he dreads, than one / who sought the thing he
loved. The two people in Tintern Abbey are significant in Frankenstein because they parallel Victor and Clerval.

Several lines from the poem are quoted to illustrate the fall of both Victor and the monster, and to reinforce the
romantic themes of the novel, especially that nature ultimately wins
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Two Types of the Gothic

According to Robert D. Hume (1969):

Radcliffean (novel of terror)

Radcliffe was the only practitioner

and

Lewisian (novel of horror)

Beckford, Maturin, Shelley and Godwin along with Lewis

The Gothic and Resistance

The Gothic is a genre that rejects the rationalism and order of a masculinist, colonial world, and works
within the aesthetics of irrationality and hysteric passions.

Hence, the Gothic genre offers scope for resistance against the patriarchal / colonial order; it presents a
parallel universe occupied by those unheard and unwritten.

The genre has therefore been employed by women writers as well as postcolonial writers alike.

The Female Gothic

Context: The Gothic novel has a predominant female presence written by women; readers are women; feature a
central heroine

Ellen Moers coined the term Female Gothic in Literary Women in 1977

Female Gothic refers to the unique treatment of the Gothic genre by women writers, and how it implicates their
gender

This term laid the foundation for a new way of thinking about women and the Gothic genre

Humes Male-centric View

In a 1969 article titled Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel, Robert Hume had
distinguished between the novel of terror and the novel of horror, positing Ann Radcliffes books as epitomizing
the former and M.G. Lewis the latter

Hume, however, focused his piece on the male-dominated horror-gothic, dismissing Radcliffe and her many
emulators as not serious, leading to a flood of critical attention to both the Gothic genre itself and the female
authors within the Gothic tradition

Moers View
Moers analyzed the Radcliffean heroine.

Traditionally, the Gothic heroine is young, attractive, virginal and terminally helpless, running away from a
psychotic man or a demon.

However, Radcliffean heroines are quite contradictory in their actions and implications.

Instead of conforming to the style of male Gothic writers, Radcliffe invented a fictional language and a set
of conventions within which respectable feminine sexuality finds expression.

The Postcolonial Gothic

There has been abundant critical output in the 21st century, regarding the interrelationship between the postcolonial
and Gothic fields

In Gothic fiction, there is a frightening presence of the colonial ideology

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The postcolonial Gothic re-imagines and re-creates ways of being, seeing, and expressing so as to give voice to those
who have largely been unheard of and even discredited

The Postcolonial Gothic: Examples

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

VS Naipauls Guerrillas (1975)

Joan Foster, a romance novelist, is an escapist who fakes her own death

Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987)

The tale of a horrid murder in the Caribbean

Margaret Atwoods Lady Oracle (1976)

A Prequel to Jane Eyre; story of Antoinette Cosway (Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre)

Sethe, an escaped slave, has to kill her daughter; and a woman (Beloved), presumed to be the daughter,
returns to haunt her home

Angela Carters Black Venus (1985)

An anthology of short stories

Gothic Romance: Influences

Edmund Burkes sublime of terror

In Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757)

Anything that creates terror, pain and danger is a source of the sublime

Macabre and Gothic elements in paintings

Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), German artist

Francisco Goya

Macphersons Ossianic poems

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

Famous Spanish artist of this period

The first modern artist

Early career: painted royalty, carnivals, portraits

Later career at the end of 18th century:

dark, dramatic realm of fantasy and nightmare

horrifying and imaginary vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation

Francisco Goya (1746 - 1828)

The paintings are an indictment of the widespread punitive treatment of the insane, who were confined with
criminals, put in iron chains, and subjected to physical punishment.

One of the essential goals of the Enlightenment was to reform the prisons and asylums, a subject common in the
writings of Voltaire and others.
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Macphersons Ossianic Poems

James Macphersons translations of Ossians poems were Gothic in tone and imagery.

The furore created by Macphersons Ossianic poems led to a flurry of artistic production as well

Subjects from the Ossian poems were popular in the art of northern Europe, especially among French, Danish and
German artists, other than the British

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

Scottish writer and poet; one of the greatest historical novelists

Man over six feet lame in the right leg

Interest in the old Border tales and ballads

Came under the influence of German Romantics, especially Brger and Goethe

Studied arts and law at Edinburgh University

Minstrelsy of The Scottish Border (1802-03)

Scotts first major work

The Lay of The Last Minstrel (1805) brought instant fame

About a 16th century border feud

Story told by an aged bard who seeks shelter in the Castle of Newark

Christabel metre

Scotts Narrative Poems

Marmion (1808)

A historical romance in tetrameter

Set against the 16th century Battle of Flodden Field

Lord Marmion, a favourite of Henry VIII of England, lusts for Clara de Clare, a rich woman

The Lady of the Lake (1810)

6 cantos, each taking place on a single day

Clash between highland Scots and highland Scots

Rokeby (1813)

Set during the English Civil War

The Lord of the Isles (1815)

Scott's last major poem

Scotts Novels
To increase his income Scott started a publishing business with his friend James. The business failed and Scott
accepted all debts and tried to pay them off with his writings.

In the 1810s Scott published several novels.

Waverley (1814)
219

Published anonymously

Deals with the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, which attempted to restore a Scottish family to the British throne.

Guy Mannering (1815) and Tales Of My Landlord (1816)

Rob Roy (1817) a portrait of one of Scotlands greatest heroes.

Waverley Novels
For nearly a century they were among the most popular and widely-read novels in all of Europe

Scott did not reveal his name

The Monastery

The Abbot

The Heart of Midlothian

The Talisman

Woodstock

English Novels
Ivanhoe (1819)

Set in the reign of Richard I, the Lion-Heart (12th century)

Perhaps the best known of Scott's novels today

The story of one of the remaining Saxon noble families at a time when the English nobility was
overwhelmingly Norman

The legendary Robin Hood, initially under the name of Locksley, and his merry men are characters in the
story

Kenilworth (1821)

Set in Elizabethan England (1575)

Centres on the secret marriage of Robert Dudley, the ambitious Earl of Leicester, and Amy Robsart

The queen finally discovers the truth, to the shame of the Earl.

But the disclosure has come too late, for Amy has been murdered by the Earls even more ambitious
steward, Varney.

Chapter 15
Early Romantics
Principles of Early Romantic Poetry
Revolted against
Industrialization and modernity
Aristocratic and urban values of the Age of Enlightenment
Scientific rationalization of nature
Supported
Strong and sublime emotion (including terror, horror and awe) as the authentic source of
aesthetic experience
Rustic life and folk arts as noble
Spontaneity of artistic expression
Medievalism and exoticism (concern with the unfamiliar)
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 The power of imagination to envision and to escape

The Age of Revolution
A time of war: American Revolution (1775-83); French Revolution (1789-99) followed by the
Napoleonic Wars until 1815
Thomas Paines Common Sense (1776) argued that America should free itself from Britain
In the American Revolution, Britain lost all its colonies in the New World
After the American Revolution, writers like the clergyman Joseph Priestley wrote travelogues
describing America as the land of the free
Priestley had fled to America when he was attacked by the mob during the Birmingham
riot of 1791
Accounts like those of Priestley inspired Coleridge and Southey to devise the plan of
Pantisocracy
The French Revolution
Early phase of the French Revolution
Absolute monarchy in France collapsed
Working classes were liberated after years of oppression
One of their slogans was Libert (freedom of the common man), galit (equality of all
men), fraternit (brotherhood)
The Revolution gave expression to individualism and revolt that had spread across Europe
at the end of the 18th century
At the time of the Revolution, in England, landlords had started enclosure farming
and common people lost their land and dwellings
But the revolutionary spirit was confined to literature
Responses to the Revolution
The Revolution provided a stimulus to writers, who welcomed it with joy, hope
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Burns, Byron, Shelley
Wrote poetry celebrating the Revolution as the beginning of a change in the society
Wrote about common man rather than about the aristocracy and clergy
Hegel & Schelling (Germany), Victor Hugo (France)
However, Edmund Burke condemned it as a mere war between the old interests of the
nobility and the new interests of money
Burkes response provoked a pamphlet war, with over a hundred responses to it published
Revolution Controversy
Edmund Burkes Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Written in the form of a letter; sentimental denouncement of revolutionary violence
Refused to accept that natural rights could be the basis of a society
Defends aristocracy, constitutional monarchy, Church of England
Provoked two famous responses from Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft
Paines Reply to Burke
Thomas Paines Rights of Man (1791-92)
Paine was an English-American revolutionary and friend of Burke
Argued that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not
safeguard its people and their natural rights
The French revolution is against the despotic interests of the monarchy, not against the
king alone
Opposes the idea of hereditary government
Nearly 50,000 copies were circulated, and Paine was sentenced to death by hanging in his
absence
But Paine lived in France from then on and never returned to America to be hanged
Mary Wollstonecrafts Reply to Burke
A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1791)
In the form of a letter to Burke
Attacked aristocracy and hereditary privilege
Defended republicanism
This pamphlet was hugely popular and widely reviewed

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The reviews contrasted Wollstonecrafts passion with Burkes reason and spoke
condescendingly of the text and its female author.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
The revolutionaries had made The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in
1793, which asserted that the rights of man are universal. Wollstonecraft argued that the
Declaration actively excluded women.
Other Revolutions
The French Revolution fostered the spirit of nationalism
Independence movements
In Corsica (1793)
In Ireland (series of failed rebellions against England) and
In Greece (begun in 1821, against Turkey)
The Revolution and Wordsworth
Visited France in 1791, before the Revolution took a gory turn (before innocents were guillotined
by the Jacobins)
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven! O times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance! (The Prelude)
A spirit of revolt and indignation against all social iniquities pervaded Wordsworth, together with
a sympathy for the poorer and humbler members of the community
England was at war continuously with the French revolutionary government from 1793 to 1802,
which Wordsworth abhorred
The Revolution passes into the Reign of Terror
Wordsworth lost his trust in immediate social reform
He turned to abstract meditation on man and society
He was influenced by anarchist philosopher William Godwins recently published book Political
Justice (1793)
Godwin argued that government is a corrupting force in society, perpetuating dependence
and ignorance, but that it will be rendered increasingly unnecessary and powerless by the
gradual spread of knowledge and the expansion of the human understanding. Politics will
be displaced by an enlarged personal morality.
Godwins novel Caleb Williams (1794) also is a call to end the abuse of power in legal and
other institutions
His idealism gave way to increasingly conservative and establishment views, and he was decried
as the lost leader
The Revolution and Coleridge
Attracted, like Wordsworth, by the ideals of the French Revolution
Left Cambridge without a degree, and together with Southey planned to found a utopian
community based on the egalitarian ideals of the revolution, which they called Pantisocracy,
meaning equal government by and for all.
Lectured on the French Revolution
After the trip to Germany, returned in 1800, with his views radically changed. He becomes a
passionate religious philosopher, a royalist, and even a critic of the French Revolution.
The Revolution and Byron
Rebelled against authority
Opposed all forms of tyranny and attempts of rulers to control man
His characters are often in complete communion with nature
Had faith in nothing neither democracy nor equality
Said I deny nothing but I doubt everything
The Revolution and Shelley
Was always against tradition, and questioned religion
Supported the ideals of the Revolution till the end
Incorporated into poetry ideas inspired by the Revolution
Hatred of kings

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 Faith in the natural goodness of man

The belief in the corruption of present society
The power of reason
The desire for a revolution
Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)
After the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in France
Napoleon returned the country to a dictatorship much like the absolute monarchy which the
Revolution had overthrown
In 1804, Napoleon declared himself emperor of France for life, and waged war on neighbouring
countries
The series of wars declared against Napoleons French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran
from 1803 to 1815 were together called the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleon was finally defeated at the Waterloo (in Belgium) in 1815 by the Allied Forces
commanded by Wellington
Free Trade
The influence of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations (1776), which inaugurated the trend of freemarket economics
Free-market or free-trade means that the government does not interfere in import and
export
This is also called laissez-faire system (French term meaning allow to do)
Population
There was a dramatic rise in population, which more than doubled between 1771 and 1831
The living conditions of the poor were worsening
There was a widespread worry that the land would be unable to provide food for all
In 1798, demographer Thomas Malthus published his famous Essay on the Principle of Population
Anticipated terrible disasters resulting from population growth.
This was countered by William Godwin in a famous debate, who optimistically made claims
about human perfectibility
Riots
Political agitations and riots were common; and all of these popular uprisings were dealt with
harshly
Food riots
Slogans of Bread or Blood
Riots for employment and increased wages
Luddite Movement (1811 and 12) attacked machines that were intended to replace human
labour; crushed by the army
Campaigns for voting rights
The character Hawkins in William Godwins Caleb Williams upholds the voting right
Gordon Riots
A series of Catholic Relief Bills were passed during the late 18th and early 19th centuries to
remove certain restrictions and prohibitions on British and Irish Catholics
The Papists Act 1778 was the first of the Catholic Relief Acts passed during the reign of George III
Gordon riots were named after Lord George Gordon (not Byron)
Such measures of toleration towards the Catholics provoked the Gordon riots
The rioters stormed and burnt the Newgate Prison and released the prisoners; and William Blake
was among the first wave of attackers
Painted on the wall of Newgate Prison was the proclamation that the prisoners had been freed by
the authority of "His Majesty, King Mob"
Governments Oppression
The government clamped down on radicals
With several Gagging Acts, which aimed at silencing the press
Habeus Corpus (anyone imprisoned has a right to a trial) was suspended twice during the
Romantic period
Passed a series of Acts:
Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Act
Training Prevention Act
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Corn

Seizure of Arms Act

Peterloo Massacre
On 16 August 1819, 60,000 men, women and children assembled in St Peters Field in
Manchester for a peaceful open-air demonstration and call for parliamentary reform
The crowd was forcibly dispersed; 10 people killed, 100s injured
Lamented in Shelleys poem England, 1819
Laws
In 1815, Britain was in heavy debt and there was also a bad harvest.
That year, the Corn Laws were passed by the Tory government.
These trade barriers were against free trade and imposed high import duties on foreign corn.
The Corn Laws were designed to protect cereal producers in Great Britain and Ireland against
competition from cheap foreign imports.
The Corn Laws led to widespread discontent among the merchants, who demanded free trade.
In 1846, the Corn Laws were repealed.

Race
During the nineteenth century pseudo-scientific theories of race were advanced both by the
scientific community and in the popular press
These theories placed the European above the African on the physical and intellectual
scale
At this time, British colonists imported slaves to work on sugar plantations in the Caribbean
The slaves were treated inhumanely
Rights of slaves were beginning to be asserted during this period
Society for Abolition of Slave Trade established in 1787
The issue of race in Mansfield Park
In Mansfield Park (1814) by Jane Austen, Sir Bertram visits the plantation he owns in
Antigua, the source of the familys wealth.
Upon his return, Fanny asks him about the slave trade and her enquiry is met with silence.
It is to be noted that Fanny has the role of a servant in the Bertram household, and is not
their equal.
This incident in the novel has been regarded as an implicit criticism of the decadent British
aristocracy of the period.
The Enlightenment and Romanticism
Enlightenment immediately preceded the Romantic period
Romanticisms emphasis on imagination, the irrational, the superstitious, the mysterious is a
reaction against Enlightenments emphasis on reason
Romantics, especially Coleridge, was influenced by German philosopher Kants philosophy that
something exists beyond the material world (transcendental idealism)
The Enlightenment thinker John Locke emphasized empiricism (a belief in experience of the
physical world) and stated that the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa)
Lockes empiricism is related to romantic idealism (the belief that the external reality is
somehow created by our mind)
Locke influenced Hartleys associationism (which influenced Coleridge for a while, before he
turned to German romanticism)
Romanticism and Gender
Big Six (male poets): Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats
Female Romantics: Mary Shelley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mary Robinson,
Hannah More, Alice Trickey, and Joanna Baillie
Masculine Romanticism (typified by Wordsworth): concerned with nature rather than society,
introspective, looking beyond the material world to something transcendent
Feminine Romanticism: celebrates domestic affections, family and social bonds
Literature of the Romantic Period
Most fertile period
There was fresh inspiration for poetry
Fruitful use of the novel
Rejuvenation of the essay

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 Unprecedented activity of criticism

Great Range of Subject
Classical themes (Keats, Shelley)
Some turned to the Middle Ages for themes (Scott, Coleridge, Southey)
Some depicted the modern times (novelists)
Almost all the Romantics depicted nature
The Romantics Attitude to Nature
Transitional poets
Sympathetic observation of natural features
Romantics had a mature and intimate relationship with nature
Wordsworth and Coleridge, especially in their youth, had a love of nature amplified
(glorified) into a religion (pantheism)
Byron did not idealize or deify Nature, like Wordsworth. For him, Nature complements
human emotion and civilization.
For Shelley, nature represents a sublime world of sights, sounds and sensations, linked to
ideas of Freedom or Love
Keats relationship to Nature was simple; he loves Nature not because of any spiritual
significance or divine meaning but chiefly because of her external charm and beauty.
Periodical Writing
New technologies in printing, wider literacy and increased political involvement of people led to
more number of periodicals
The Examiner (1808-1886)
A Sunday newspaper started by Leigh Hunt and his brother John Hunt
Contributors Byron, Shelley, Keats and Hazlitt
Edinburgh Review (1802-1929)
Whig newspaper
Rival of Quarterly Review
Attacked Lake Poets, especially Wordsworth
Quarterly Review (1809-1967)
Tory newspaper
Published by the well-known publisher John Murray (who was Byrons publisher)
One of the famous editors was John Gibson Lockhart
Published scathing reviews against Walter Savage Landor, Mary Shelley and PB Shelley
In 1817, John Wilson Croker attacked Keats in a review of Endymion for his association with Leigh
Hunt and the Cockney School of poetry
Cockney School was a term originally used in Blackwoods Magazine by John Wilson
Blackwoods Magazine (1817-1980)
Tory magazine
Rival of Edinburgh Review
Principal writer John Wilson wrote under the pseudonym Christopher North
Despite conservative leanings, published works by radicals like Coleridge and Shelley
Supported Wordsworth
Parodied the Byronmania of Europe
Unjustly attacked Keats, Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt as the Cockney School
London Magazine (18201829, etc)
Founded in 1732, London Magazine was resurrected several times till the present
Published Wordsworth, Shelley, John Clare, Keats, De Quincey, Lamb, etc
Westminster Review (1824-1914)
Paper of the radical group called Philosophical Radicals
Founded by Jeremy Bentham
The utilitarians, James Mill and John Stuart Mill published numerous articles
Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) was assistant editor
She and others were evolutionists, later associated with Darwinism, a term which first
appeared in this periodical
The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal

225

F.L. Lucas, in The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal identifies 11,396 definitions of
romanticism.
Published in 1936, this book provides a critical examination of the potential for excess in
Romantic thought
Lucas argues that Romanticism involves a form of excess which denies the reality principle in
favour of the unbridled exploration of the imagination
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, Lake District, Northwest England
Third of the five children of John Wordsworth, who was always away from home being a solicitor
to Sir James Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale. Lowther was an irresponsible nobleman and owed John
Wordsworth 4,000 at the time of the latters death
His sister Dorothy was born the year after, and they were baptized together
Wordsworth lost his mother when he was 8, and his father when he was 15; after this the children
lived separately with relatives.
Childhood
Wordsworths interest in poetry developed from his fathers library as well as from Hawkshead
Grammar School
Met the Hutchinsons in his school days, including Mary, his future wife
First poem to be published (in The European Magazine, 1787) was On Seeing Miss Helen Maria
Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress
After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. Johns College, Cambridge, from where he got a BA
degree in 1791.
A Walking Tour
During this time, he set out on a walking tour of France, Switzerland and Germany
Influenced both his poetry and his political sensibilities
Gave him first-hand experience of the French Revolution
Toured the Alps extensively
Aroused his interest and sympathy for the life, sufferings and language of the common
man
The two early collections of poems An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, both
published in 1793, commemorate his walking tour.
Poems in these collections draw heavily on eighteenth-century descriptive
traditions
The French Years
In 1791, during his visit to revolutionary France, Wordsworth fell in love with Annette Vallon, the
daughter of a surgeon at Blois, by whom he had a daughter, Caroline
Wordsworth returned to England even before Caroline was born, and was separated from
Annette and their daughter for 10 years due to financial difficulties, the Reign of Terror,
Englands war with France, etc
Wordsworth visited Annette along with Dorothy in 1802, shortly before his marriage to
Mary Hutchinson.
Wordsworth saw Caroline for the first time and took a memorable seaside walk with the 9year-old, which he recalls in the sonnet It is a beauteous evening, calm and free
At his wife Marys insistence, Wordsworth made a generous annual allowance to Caroline
when she married in 1816
The affair with Annette inspired the poem Vaudracour and Julia
Racedown Lodge
In 1795, Wordsworth received a legacy of 900 from his friend Raisley Calvert, whom he cared
for during a fatal illness.
Later that year, Wordsworth and Dorothy were re-united, and having decided to stay together,
settled at Racedown Lodge near Pilsdon in Dorset, Southwest England.
From the Pilsdon Pen (a small hill) behind their house, Wordsworth got breathtaking views
of the countryside
The Dorset peasantry now came to embody for Wordsworth the virtues he had noticed
long ago in their Cumbrian counterparts: courage, endurance, faith, compassion and love

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Mary Hutchinson came for a 6-month stay at Racedown, and Wordsworth married her in
1802
Wordsworth was generally miserable at this time due to financial difficulties, a feeling of
isolation, and a writers block
Dorothy, Coleridge
In 1795, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Somerset (which is near Dorset, where they
lived)
The two poets became intimate friends
Coleridge recognized in Wordsworth a genius, and the awakenings of a new type of
poetry
Coleridge usually walked nearly 50 miles to go to Wordsworths house and see him!
In 1797, Wordsworth and Dorothy moved to Alfoxden House Somerset, within a few miles
of Coleridges house in Nether Stowey
From this time, Dorothy became an inseparable companion of her brother, and a vital
inspiration for his poetry
Dorothy began her journals in Alfoxden in January 1798 but discontinued it 2 months later to
recommence when they moved to Grasmere in the Lake District, upon their return from Germany.
These were posthumously published as The Alfoxden Journal, 1798 and The Grasmere Journals,
1800-1803
The Borderers (1797)
In 1797, Wordsworth completed his only play The Borderers.
A tragedy on the theme of guilt, crime and punishment set during the reign of Henry III
Wordsworth attempted to get it staged at Covent Garden, but it was rejected for being
unactable.
The play was published only much later, in 1842, after extensive revision.
The Publication of the Lyrical Ballads
In 1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly brought out a collection of poems, the historic Lyrical
Ballads
Neither Wordsworths nor Coleridges name was given as the author
The second edition (1800) named Wordsworth alone as the author, and had a short
Preface
The Preface, the manifesto of English Romantic criticism, was enlarged in its present form
in the 1802 edition
The volume was greeted with hostility by critics
Believed to mark the beginning of the Romantic Movement
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
1st edition 1798, with an Advertisement
Stated that these poems were experiments written chiefly to ascertain how far the language of
conversation of the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic
pleasure
Attempt to reduce stylization; poetry from naked experience, not within any tradition
Preface added in 2nd edn, 1800, enlarged 1802
19 poems by Wordsworth; 4 by Coleridge
First poem Ancient Mariner; concluding piece Tintern Abbey
Tintern Abbey
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a
Tour. July 13, 1798
Five years have passed since he last visited this location, encountered its tranquil, rustic scenery.
He describes the scenery again, and reflects on their effect upon him
Shows the development of Wordsworths attitude to nature:
Stage 1: the animal pleasures of childhood
Stage 2: adolescent passion for the wild and gloomy
Stage 3: awareness of the relation between our perception of the natural world and our human
and moral world
Tintern Abbey as the Greater Romantic Lyric

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The 3 stages described by Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey correspond to those described by M.H.
Abrams in the essay Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric (1965)
a) description of the scene
b) analysis of the scenes significance with regard to the problem that troubles the poet
c) affective resolution of the problem that has been articulated
Abrams term greater Romantic Lyric
a) Denotes an extended lyric poem of description and serious meditation
b) Other examples: Coleridges conversation poems
In Germany
Wordsworth, Dorothy and Coleridge travelled to Germany in the autumn of 1798, the day after
the Lyrical Ballads was published.
They parted ways, and Coleridge travelled to university towns, learning German language
and coming under the profound influence of the German romantics
The Wordsworths lived in the town of Goslar, suffering in homesickness and from a particularly
harsh winter. Here, Wordsworth wrote some of the Lucy poems, and began writing The Prelude
The Prelude
Spiritual autobiography in blank verse
Written between 1798 and 1805, extensively revised in later years
Published posthumously in 1850 in 14 books (an earlier 1805 version has 13 books)
Sub-titled Growth of a Poets Mind
Prologue to the unfinished long poem The Recluse, which he did not complete
Another portion of The Recluse was published as The Excursion
Addressed to Coleridge (Poem to Coleridge)
Present title suggested by Mary Wordsworth, when the poem was published
The Prelude
The Recluse was intended to be an epic that would surpass Paradise Lost
Wordsworths epic theme is his own development as a poet
Offers remarkable insight into childhood experiences
The theme of The Prelude was unconventional because the confessional mode in poetry was still
undeveloped at this time.
A constant concern in The Prelude is Wordsworths sense of himself as a chosen being, with an
overriding duty to his poetic vocation
Lucy Poems
A series of five poems written between 1798 and 1801
Strange fits of passion have I known
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
I travelled among unknown men
Three years she grew in sun and shower, and
A slumber did my spirit seal
Four of these published in the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth did not conceive of them as a group
As a series they focus on the poets longing for the company of his friend Coleridge, and on his
increasing impatience with his sister Dorothy
Michael (1800)
Written in 1800 and included in the 1800 edition of the Lyrical Ballads
A pastoral poem in blank verse
The lonely life in Grasmere of the old shepherd Michael and his wife
Their beloved son Luke is sent away to a dissolute, degenerate city, where he disgraces himself,
and disappears
Michel dies in grief; his farm lies in ruins

Back in Lake District

Upon their return to England in 1799, Wordsworth and Dorothy visited the Hutchinsons in Lake
District.

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They settled down in Dove Cottage in the neighbouring village of Grasmere. Nearby, in Keswick,
lived Robert Southey and Coleridges family (Coleridge has nearly abandoned them). Here,
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey came to be called the Lake Poets
In 1802, Wordsworth got 4,000, the money Lowther owed his father. This enabled him to marry
Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy lived with them.
Subsequently, five children were born to Wordsworth and Mary; Wordsworths younger brother
John died in a shipwreck, and in 1812, their two youngest children died.
Immortality Ode (1807)
Written while living at Grasmere
Full title: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections from Early Childhood
Irregular Ode (first written by Abraham Cowley)
Inspired by Henry Vaughans The Retreat
Profound exploration of the childhood experience of the natural world; its gradual fading into the
light of common day; the consolations of maturity when men can still retain shadowy
recollections of former glory; affirmation of the poets faith in the philosophic mind and the
human heart
Concept of pre-existence (Platos anamnesis: humans possess knowledge from past incarnations;
learning is a re-discovery of knowledge that already exists within man)
At Rydal Mount
They moved houses within Grasmere due to the overcrowding of the household, finally settling
down at Rydal Mount in 1813. It was Thomas de Quincey who took over Dove Cottage when the
Wordsworths moved.
The Wordsworths residence became a meeting place for the notable literary figures of the day
including Thomas de Quincey, Charles Lamb, Walter Scott, and William Godwin.
By 1812, Wordsworth had parted company with Coleridge, when both he and Mary tired of his
opium abuse and erratic behaviour. However, the two were fully reconciled in the 1820s, and in
1828, they toured the Rhineland together.
The Lost Leader
By this time, Wordsworth had gained some recognition.
The themes of his earlier poetry loss, death, endurance, separation and abandonment were
given up
Following the rise of Napoleon, Wordsworth left his radical ideals and became a conservative
In 1813, Wordsworth accepted a government job
This surrender of the poets independence was attacked by Leigh Hunt
An anonymous poem in The Morning Chronicle, probably by Hazlitt, accused Wordsworth for
abandoning his ideals
Later this accusation was made more strongly in the poem The Lost Leader by Robert
Browning.
As a conservative
In 1843, Southey died, and Wordsworth succeeded him as Poet Laureate.
Wordsworths former radicalism had completely given way to conservatism and establishment
views by then.
Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers mocked Wordsworth as being simple and dull.
Keats distrusted his egotistical sublime.
In the poem The Lost Leader, Robert Browning accused that Wordsworth had betrayed his
youthful ideas.
However, Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill venerated him for his work which, in an age of
doubt, emphasized the transcendent in nature and the good in man
Death
By 1829, Dorothys physical and mental health deteriorated; Coleridge and Lamb both died in
1834; in 1843, Southey
In 1847 Wordsworths much loved daughter Dora died of tuberculosis. He did not write much
after this. A small field lies between Rydal Mount and the main road, now called Doras Field,
with hundreds of daffodil bulbs planted by him in memory of his daughter.
Wordsworth died of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried St. Oswalds Church at Grasmere.
His lengthy autobiographical Poem to Coleridge was published as The Prelude after his death.

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 Dorothy died in 1855 and Mary in 1859, and were both buried next to Wordsworth
Wordsworths Petrarchan Sonnets
Written mostly in the early 1800s
Offers criticism of the decadent materialism of the time
The world is too much with us
Humans are too preoccupied with the material world, and have lost touch with the
spiritual and with nature; he wishes he had been born a pagan with a different vision of
the world
London, 1802
The poet dreams of bringing back the dead poet John Milton to save his decadent era.
It is a Beauteous Evening
No moral or political outrage; a description of the evening as quiet as a nun, of mans
communion with nature
Other poems
The Solitary Reaper, The Old Cumberland Beggar, Daffodils
Resolution and Independence
Describes the poets meeting of a leech-gatherer in Barton Fell
Original title The Leech Gatherer
Refers to the poet Chatterton as the marvellous boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in
his pride
Ode to Duty, Nutting
Wordsworth as a Critic
Criticism comprises
Advertisement to the Lyrical Ballads (1798)
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800, revised 1802)
Essay Supplementary to Preface (1815)
Lyrical Ballads
Experimental poems
To overturn what they considered the priggish, learned and highly sculpted forms of 18th
century poetry
To ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of
society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1802)
Preface is in the nature of a defence of the theory that poetry must be written in the real
language of men when in a state of vivid sensation
His poems were a revolt against the artificial poetic diction popular in the 18th century
Poetry and the Poet: Definitions
Poetry is
the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge
the product of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings which results from
emotions recollected in tranquillity
A poet has more than usual organic sensibility and is one who has thought long and deeply
Subject of Poetry
The materials of poetry can be found in every subject which can interest the human mind
The subject of poetry must be incidents and situations from common life
Wordsworth drew themes from humble rustic life in his own poetry
He asserted that ordinary things should be presented in an unusual aspect (supernaturalizing
the natural)
This was against the urban tone of the Augustan Poetry of the Town
Style of Poetry
Wordsworths views on the style of poetry were revolutionary
Rejected the century-old tradition of Alexander Pope
Poetry should avoid gaudiness, poetic diction
Poetry should be written in the language of the common man (Real language of men in a state
of vivid sensation)

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Made the controversial statement that there is essentially no difference between the language of
prose and poetry

The Poetic Process

An experience is converted into a composition in 4 stages:
Observation
Observation or perception of some object, character or incident which sets up
powerful emotions in the mind of the poet
Recollection
Revisiting past experiences stored in the memory
Contemplation
The memory is fused with thought and purged of non-essential elements to make
his experience communicable to all men
Composition
In this stage, poetry is actually written, and the poet becomes a man speaking to
men
Wordsworth: Theory and Praxis
In subject, he conformed to his theory; in style very often not
When he conformed to his theory, often fell to prosaic banality
He was aware of the dangers of his theory
In his greatest verse of emotional stimulus, style simple, joyous, of Miltonic sweep and resonance
Features of Poetry
Inequality of quality
It is said that his best work stops with The Prelude
No sense of humour or dramatic power
Characterized by egoism: due to adoration of wife and sister, most poetry deals with himself or
his experiences
Lyrical quality inferior to Burns or Shelley,
Excels in reflective, analytical mood
Treatment of Nature
Accurate, first-hand; describes with eye steadily fixed on the subject
Personal note, joy, pantheism
You Tube
Listen to recitations of Wordsworths poems (along with text) uploaded by SpokenVerse
There is a documentary uploaded by Impossible Paradise: William Wordsworth
Documentary
The tour-videos of Lake District available on You Tube are also worth watching.
Arnold on Wordsworth: Essays in Criticism
Wordsworth was at the height of popularity between 1830 and 1840, at Cambridge
But after his death, he was not well-received in Europe
However, Arnold asserts that Wordsworths name should stand above our chief poetical names,
besides Shakespeare and Milton
Arnolds views in a nutshell
Though Wordsworth is not popular at that time, he deserves to be among the greatest
poets
His best work is the dozen short pieces
He deals with life in a powerful, inspired manner
However, he relied too much on inspiration & nature
S.T. Coleridge (1772-1834)
Poet, critic and philosopher
Born in Devonshire, as the youngest of 14 children of a vicar
After his fathers death in 1781, he attended Christs Hospital School, where he met his lifelong
friend Charles Lamb, as well as Leigh Hunt. Here he also fell in love with Mary Evans, his
classmate Tom Evanss sister.
Charles Lamb later recorded their school life in the essay, Christs Hospital Five and Thirty Years
Ago

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At Cambridge
Intended for the Church, Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge in 1791
However, soon his views began to change.
At this time, he had two troubles at least: his increasing debt, and his rejection by Mary Evans.
Coleridge abandoned his studies in December 1793, and impulsively enlisted in the army under
the name of Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. This turned out to be a mistake, from which his
brothers rescued him.
During this time, he began getting bouts of depression, which continued throughout his life.
Coleridge meets Southey
Back at the university, during a walking tour, he met a student named Robert Southey in June
1794, with whom he struck an instant friendship
While exchanging philosophical ideas, they made a plan, on the basis of Platos Republic, to
found a utopian society, called Pantisocracy (equal government by all). They decided to
emigrate to the New World with ten other families to set up a commune on the banks of the
Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Here the men would share the labour and their rewards in
Christian selflessness, engage in philosophical discussions, and have freedom of religious and
political beliefs.
A hasty marriage
An essential part of the plan for Pantisocracy was marriage. Southey was engaged to Edith
Fricker, and Coleridge reluctantly decided to marry her sister, Sara Fricker.
Coleridges marriage to Sara Fricker (1795) proved to be an unhappy one, and Coleridge spent
most of his time away from his wife.
In 1795, Coleridge and Southey collaborated on a play, The Fall of Robespierre.
Southey now abandoned the plan for Pantisocracy in order to pursue a career in law.
Early Poems
Coleridges first poems had appeared in The Morning Chronicle in December 1794. These poems
were conventional and celebratory.
In 1795, Coleridge met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and they spent much time
discussing poetry, politics, and philosophy. This intellectual relationship greatly influenced
Coleridges verse.
At this time, Coleridge wrote some of his conversation poems
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at Midnight, Fears in Solitude, The
Nightingale
Used his intimate friends and their experiences as subjects, with characteristic emotional
frankness
The 8 Conversation Poems
Coleridge has written 8 conversation poems in all:
The Eolian Harp
Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
Frost at Midnight
Fears in Solitude
The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem
Dejection: An Ode
To William Wordsworth
Conversation Poems
Examination of a particular life experience which leads to the poets meditation on nature and
the role of poetry.
Conversational language while examining higher ideas
Themes: virtuous conduct and mans obligation to God, nature and society
Idea of One Life, a belief that people are spiritually connected through a universal relationship
with God that joins all natural beings
1796-97
In 1796, Coleridge published his first volume of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects
At this time he also published ten issues of a liberal political periodical called The Watchman.
The Watchman was printed every eight days in order to avoid a weekly newspaper tax.
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In the same year, Coleridges first son, Hartley David (who became a poet) was born, named
after the philosopher David Hartley, whose associationism influenced Coleridge for a while.
The enigmatic fragment Kubla Khan was written in 1797

Kubla Khan: A Vision in a Dream

A fragment, and a psychological curiosity
The poet explains in the short preface that he had fallen asleep after taking an anodyne
(opium)
Chant-like, musical incantations of Kubla Khan result from Coleridges masterful use of iambic
tetrameter and alternating rhyme schemes
Before falling asleep, he had been reading in Samuel Purchass pilgrimage a story in which Kubla
Khan commanded the building of a new palace
Coleridge claims that while he slept, he had a fantastic vision and composedwhile sleeping
some two or three hundred lines of poetry
Waking after about three hours, the poet began writing this incomplete poem
Kubla Khan: A Vision in a Dream
Xanadu, the palace of Kubla Khan, a Mongol emperor and the grandson of Genghis Khan, is first
decsribed.
The speaker tells us about a river that runs across the land and then flows through some
underground caves and into the sea. He also tells us about the fertile land that surrounds the
palace.
Near the river is a canyon, a haunted place, where a woman wails for her demon lover. The river
leaps through the canyon, first exploding up into a noisy fountain and then finally flowing through
the underground caves into the ocean far away.
Kubla Khan
The speaker then goes on to describe Kubla Khan himself, who is listening to the river and
thinking about war.
Suddenly, the speaker tells us about another vision he had, where he saw an Abyssinian woman
playing a dulcimer and singing.
The speaker then imagines himself singing his own song, using it to create a vision of Xanadu.
At this point, the poem becomes more personal and mysterious
The speaker describes himself as a terrifying figure with flashing eyes, almost godlike: For he on
honey-dew hath fed/And drunk the milk of paradise
Lyrical Ballads
The best poems of Coleridges poems were written in 2 years1797 and 1798
In 1797-98, Wordsworth and Dorothy lived near Coleridges house in Nether Stowey,
Somersetshire.
In 1798, the two young poets jointly brought out a volume of experimental poems entitled
Lyrical Ballads, which contained Coleridges most famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
Soon after the publication of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Dorothy travelled to
Germany.
The Rime of Ancient Mariner
First published in Lyrical Ballads; revised version in Sybilline Leaves
Bizarre moral narrative in ballad stanzas; archaic language; scholarly explanatory notes
A mariner tells his story to three Wedding Guests
Near the South Pole, he shot an albatross that travelled with his ship; ship is cursed; dead
albatross hangs round his neck; a skeleton ship approaches where Death and Life-in-Death are
playing dice; ship vanishes and all the crew die; dead bird falls from mariners neck; cursed to
travel from land to land and teach the value of love and reverence for Gods creatures.
Interpretations of Ancient Mariner
Meditation on the original sin
Re-enactment of Fall of Man or Crucifixion
Dark and unyielding form of medieval Catholicism
An allegory of what Coleridge calls in The Eolian Harp as the One life within us and abroad
In Germany

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Coleridge parted ways with his friends and travelled alone, studying the philosophy of Immanuel
Kant, Jakob Boehme, and G.E. Lessing
Learnt the German language and began translating German works into English
Helped introduce German idealist philosophy of Immanuel Kant in England
Interested in the literary criticism of the 18th century dramatist Gotthold Lessing
Back in England, translated the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the German classical poet
Friedrich Schiller into English
Back in Lake District
Coleridge returned to England in 1800, and settled with family and friends at Keswick, near the
Lake District. The Southeys also lived nearby, while Wordsworth and Dorothy lived at Grasmere,
12 miles away.
At this time, Coleridge fell in love with Sara Hutchinson (whom he called Asra, and for whom he
wrote the Asra poems), the sister of Wordsworths future wife. Though he never married her,
this relationship caused the poet much domestic trouble and despondency, as expressed in
Dejection: An Ode (1802).
By now, Coleridge was increasingly dependent on laudanum, an elixir of opium
Asra Poems
A series of poems discussing love dedicated to Sara Hutchinson
Inspired Coleridges visit to the Hutchinson family farm at Sockburn
Asra is anagram of Sara
Includes Dejection: An Ode
Eventually, Coleridge cut himself off from Hutchinson and renounced his feelings for her, which
ended the problems discussed in the poem
Opium and The Friend
Over the next two decades Coleridge lectured on and wrote about literature and philosophy.
In 1804-1806, he was on the island of Malta (a southern European country near Sicily, where the
climate is warm) as a secretary to the governor in an effort to overcome his poor health and his
opium addiction.
He separated from his wife Sara in 1808, and the Southeys cared for his family
The Friend was a weekly periodical written almost entirely by Coleridge in 1809-1810, spanning
28 issues. It included diverse themes from rhetorical orations about politics, history and war, to
poems and metaphysical observations.
In 1810, Coleridge was estranged from Wordsworth, for the latter disapproved of his irresponsible
ways.
Coleridges Shakespeare Criticism
Between 1810 and 1820, despite his ill health and dependence on opium, Coleridge lectured on
Shakespeare in London and Bristol
Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets
These lectures have placed him in history as one of the first of the modern Shakespearean critics.
His lectures were characterized by delays, irregularities and digressions, which reflected his
erratic personality.
The best of his lectures was on Hamlet, delivered in 1812, that rescued the play from the
denigrating remarks of earlier critics such as Voltaire and Dr. Johnson.
In his lecture on Othello, characterized Iago as motiveless malignity
Coleridges Concern with Evil
In as early as 1797, Coleridge had written a verse tragedy called Osorio on the human potential
for evil.
Set in Granada during the Spanish Inquisition, Osorio is a re-working of the Cain and Abel myth.
Coleridges play Remorse: A Tragedy in Five Acts (1813), is a reworking of Osorio. It was a
failure.
Evil is the predominant theme in his poems also.
In 1814, inspired by the works of the 17th century Anglican divine, Robert Leighton, he
abandoned the Unitarianism he had practised and embraced the Church of England
Regarded as the greatest living writer on evil, Coleridge was commissioned by publisher John
Murray to translate Goethes Faust. However, he abandoned the project
Two Volumes of Verse
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James Gillman
Still addicted to opium, he moved in with the physician James Gillman in 1816
Gillman even built an extension to his house to accommodate the poet
Their house was frequented by writers including Carlyle and Emerson.
Reputation
From 1815, Coleridges major endeavour was to restore his reputation as a significant poet
of the age
Published two successive volumes of verse
Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep (1816)
Sibylline Leaves: A Collection of Poems (1817)
Christabel (1816)
Incomplete Gothic ballad (in two parts, three more planned, but not written)
Medieval supernatural romance
Writing began in 1797
A witch disguises as lovely lady Geraldine to win Christabels confidence
Themes of sexuality and corruption of innocence
Christabel metre (couplets with four accents per line: accentual metre)
Biographia Literaria (1817)
The biographical preface originally intended for Sibylline Leaves grew into a lengthy, two-volume
work in 23 chapters, called Biographia Literaria
This work, Coleridges greatest contribution to prose, was published at the same time as Sybilline
Leaves
A combination of literary criticism, autobiography, and philosophical speculation
Traces Coleridges life through
Childhood
His fascination and later disillusionment with the associationist philosophy of David
Hartley
The theory of imagination developed under the influence of the German romantics
His collaboration with and criticism of Wordsworth
Coleridges view of poetry
Every work is an organic, developing whole, subject to its own laws
Revolt against Augustan conception that poetry should instruct.
Maintained that poetry should provide pleasure through the medium of beauty
Last Years
Prose works of this period
Aids to Reflection (1825)
Subtitle: in the formation of a manly character, on the several grounds of prudence,
morality, and religion: illustrated by select passages from our elder divines,
especially from Archbishop Leighton
Church and State (1830)
Full title: On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the idea of
each: with aids toward a right judgement on the late Catholic Bill
Coleridge died of heart and lung illnesses (probably due to his opium addiction) in London on July
25, 1834
Features of Poetry and Prose
Imaginative power
Weird, supernatural, obscure tone and themes
Willing suspension of disbelief
Excellence in the use of language
Simplicity of diction
Prose
Journalistic in origin
In theme philosophic, literary
You Tube
Listen to Coleridges poems uploaded by SpokenVerse

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There is a lecture COLERIDGE & ROMANTICISM BY DOUGLAS HADLEY uploaded by

StJohnsNottingham
Coleridge as a Critic
Two major critical works
Biographia Literaria
Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets
Formative influences
From Wordsworth, got his interest in imagination
Hartley & Associationist psychology: human mind is reduced to a passive & inactive
recipient of external impressions & sensations (Hartley also influenced Wordsworth)
German philosophy: after German tour became anti-Associationist; shared Kantian view
of imagination as an esemplastic power: art is re-creation; soul of the artist fuses with
external reality; transforms & recreates it
Post-Enlightenment in Germany
The early 18th century in France and Germany was the period of Enlightenment, which stressed
the importance of reason and scientific progress.
At this time of feudality and absolutism, writers and philosophers like Schiller and Goethe
expressed a new penchant for strong emotion and nature, influenced by the writings of J.J.
Rousseau.
This movement is called Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang)
Storm and Stress
Rejected reason for the emotional and mystical side of human nature
Rejected rigid adherence to formal Aristotelian conventions
Strove to replace the objective representation of nature with subjective representation of feeling
Strove to replace the simplicity of ancient art with the complexity and turmoil of the inner world
of feelings, intuitions and the unconscious
German Romanticism
German Romanticism attacked the leaders of the Storm and StressHamann, Herder and Goethe
for rejecting reason.
The Romantics argued that their goal of attaining the knowledge of the infinite was a rational
striving.
As Kant had taught them, it was a postulate of reason itself to seek the eternal and the infinite.
In short, German Romanticism sought to integrate the two opposing forces of Neoclassicism and
Storm and Stress
You Tube
The video German Romanticism (Die Deutsche Romantik) uploaded by Geisterkerker
German Romantics
Schlegel (1772-1829)
Schleiermacher (1768- 1834)
Schelling (1775-1854)
Rooted in Kantian theory
Sought to overthrow the extremism of Storm and Stress
Insisted on the necessity to synthesize feeling and reason
Learned from Kant that reason could be an ally of the sublime
Believed that feelings could be related to thought so as to become knowledge
Coleridges View of Imagination
Coleridge separated between fancy and imagination as two distinct and widely different
faculties
Imagination is of two types: Primary and Secondary
Secondary imagination is poetic
Imagination and German Romanticism
Since the medieval period
Fancy (free play of thought)
had been considered superior to
Imagination (restricted faculty of recalling images)

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Several German thinkers of the 18th century overturned this hierarchy, defining imagination as a
creative and unifying force
Influence of German Romantics
Coleridges theory is indebted to Kant
Primary imagination
Roughly equivalent to Kants idea of reproductive imagination
Operates in our normal perception
Helps us to understand the world in a fragmentary fashion
Secondary imagination
Like Kants productive or spontaneous imagination
Creates and synthesizes new complex unities out of raw sense impressions
Also indebted to Schelling who identified 3 levels of imagination
Lectures on Shakespeare
Collection of lectures, published posthumously
Essays employ practical criticism
Impressionistic approach to Shakespeare
Impressionism is judging a work on the basis of the impressions in the critics mind
Against Coleridges and Walter Paters impressionism, the New Critics Wimsatt and
Beardsley advocated the concept of Affective fallacy
Affective fallacy means that it is wrong to judge a poem on the basis of the impressions of
the reader
Revolts against the Augustan conception of poetrysaid poetry provides pleasure
Considered as an ancestor to modern Shakespearean critics
Coleridges Friend
In 1794 he became friendly with Coleridge
They collaborated on a play, The Fall of Robespierre
They planned to set up a Pantisocratic community in the United States
This was aimed at putting into practice Godwins ideas of human perfectibility
Southeys enthusiasm soon waned, causing a break with Coleridge
Secret marriage to Edith Fricker
Also played a significant role as matchmaker in Coleridges marriage to her sister, Sara
Travelled to Portugal at the end of 1795
Early Poems
In the final years of the 18th century
Wrote many of the lyrics and ballads by which he is now chiefly remembered,
These poems contributed to the dismantling of the formal constrictions of late 18 th century
verse
My days among the dead are past "The Inchcape Rock", "The Battle of Blenheim", as
well as "The Holly Tree", perhaps his best-known poem
Changed from radical to Tory (conservative) after a further visit to Portugal and Spain in 1800-01
This led many of his contemporaries to attack him.
A Lake Poet
Back in England, he settled at Keswick, in Lake District
Called a "Lake Poet", though his work has little in common with that of Wordsworth and Coleridge
Thalaba the Destroyer (1801)
Oriental verse epic
Indifferently received by critics
Shelley later borrowed its irregular verse form for Queen Mab (1813)
Madoc (1805)
Another exotic narrative
South American adventures of the son of the medieval Welsh king, Owen Gwyneth
Prolific Output
From then on, had to write virtually without pause: numerous poems, history, biography,
translations and editions of earlier writers

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Poet

The long epic poem, The Curse of Kehama, another Oriental tale (which was the current fashion),
appeared in 1810
Laureate
In 1813 Southey succeeded Henry James Pye as poet laureate, a post which he did not
particularly enjoy, but which gave him the reputation as a radical who had prostituted himself to
the establishment
His short and interesting Life of Nelson appeared in the same year, and was followed in 1814 by
his Christian romance Roderich the Last of the Goths
During the next three years he completed his three volume History of Brazil (1810-19), and his
Life of Wesley (1820)
In his official capacity as Laureate, he wrote poems for various public events

Controversies
In 1817 he tried in vain to secure an injunction from chancery to stop the publication, by his
liberal enemies, of Wat Tyler, the play of his radical youth
He was repeatedly attacked and lampooned during these politically tense years, notably by
Thomas Love Peacock, who caricatures him as Mr Feathernest in the novel Melincourt (1817)
Southeys A Vision of Judgement (1820)
When King George III died, Southey, the Poet Laureate and a Tory, commemorated his
elevation into heaven. In the poem Southey also made a dig at Byron and his "Satanic
school."
Byrons satirical poem The Vision of Judgment was a response which depicts the fate of the kings
soul from a very different political perspective
Last Years
Southeys prolific output continued in the 1820s
His wife died in 1837, following a period of insanity, and in 1839 he married Caroline Bowles
His own mind was to become clouded during his last years

Chapter 16

Late Romantics and Prose Writers

The Romantic Period

Romanticism is not easily defined
The Romantic period varies greatly between
Different countries
Different artistic media
Different areas of thought
Romanticism was more pronounced in Protestant countries like Germany and Britain
A Time of War
The Romantic Era was a time of war
The French Revolution (17891799)
The Napoleonic Wars until 1815
Political and social turmoil following these wars
Revolutions of 1830
Rebellions against conservative kings and governments by liberals and
revolutionaries in different parts of Europe in 183032: Belgium, France, Poland,
Switzerland
Later Romantic Period: Context
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Early Romantic visionary optimism and belief in change vanished

Shared their predecessors passion for liberty
Desire to be free of convention and tyranny
A new emphasis on the rights and dignity of the individual
Criticism of the bourgeois society
Displays of intense emotion continued
Experimentation with form and technique was generally reduced, often replaced with
meticulous technique, as in the poems of Tennyson
Romantic ideas about the nature and purpose of art, above all the importance of originality,
continued to be important
Realism and Romanticism
The rise of Realism marked the end of Romanticism
In especially the novel (Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, Dickens)
Drama (Ibsen and Shaw)
Painting (Gustav Courbet, Francisco Goya)
Music (Verismo opera which brought the naturalism of Emile Zola and Henrik Ibsen
into the opera)
Realism rebelled against Romanticism
But Romanticism did not die out completely
In literature, for e.g., it continued to flourish in the Victorian writers like Tennyson and
the Brontes
Romanticism in Germany
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) established the cult figure of a young artist with
a very sensitive and passionate temperament
At that time Germany comprised many small separate states, and Goethes works
helped develop a unifying sense of nationalism
Other Romantics
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (German idealist) and Friedrich Schelling
Jena (where Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schiller and the brothers Schlegel lived) became
a center for early German Romanticism
Important writers were Tieck, Novalis, Kleist and Hlderlin.
Heidelberg later became a center of German Romanticism

Romanticism in Germany
Important motifs in German Romanticism
Travelling, nature
Folk literature and childrens literature
The first collection of Grimms Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm was published
in 1812
Non-classical Germanic myths
Childhood innocence, the importance of imagination
Later German Romanticism of
For e.g., ETA Hoffmanns Der Sandmann (The Sandman, 1817)
Darker in its motifs and has gothic elements
Romanticism in America
Romantic Period in the U.S. (1830-1860) overlaps with the early Victorian period (1837-1901)
Major Writers
James Fenimore Cooper
Emily Dickinson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Margaret Fuller
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Washington Irving
Edgar Allan Poe
Walt Whitman
American Romantics
Nature as a haven where the Self can fulfill its potential
This is against the earlier Puritan view that nature is the fallen wilderness, full of
savage Indians
Self-reliant individualism
Egotistic, futile, destructive actions of heroes (Captain Ahab)
Highlighted how such self-reliance conflicts with social and religious conventions
(Dickinson, Hester Prynne)
Were radically egalitarian and politically progressive (Transcendentalists)
Receptive to non-heterosexual relations (Whitman and Melville)
Used symbols, myths, or fantasy to convey deeper psychological or archetypal themes
(Walden Pond, the White Whale, the House of Usher)
Their style is often very original and not rule-bound (Dickinson, Whitman)
The 2nd Generation in England
Byron, Shelley, Keats three poets distinct from the Lake School, forming a group but not a
formal school
All born on the wake of the French Revolution
None affected directly by its commotion
But all three touched by revolutionary ideas
Influenced by
The liberal agitations after 1815
The progress of utilitarian philosophy
The over two decades of political unrest in Europe which would be followed by
the order of the Victorian period
Wordsworth, with whom they had a literary love-hate relationship
Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)
The most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics
Born in London with a clubbed right foot
Mother Catherine Gordon
An impoverished Scottish heiress
Had bouts of melancholy
Father Captain Mad Jack Byron
A profligate who squandered his money as well as his own
Had a daughter Augusta by a previous marriage
Died when his poet-son was 3 years old
Spent his childhood at Aberdeenshire in Scotland
Scottish scenery & Calvinism both influenced him
Inherited barony and family home when he was 10
Education
Educated at
Aberdeen School
Harrow (a famous school for boys) and
Trinity College, Cambridge
Profligate behaviour
Had a few love affairs
Formed lifelong friendships with some men which probably had a homosexual
aspect
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Early Career
Fugitive Pieces, a small volume of verse, was published in 1807
Some of the poems in this collection are highly amorous
Upon the advice of a friend, Byron burnt all but four copies
In the same year, he brought out a miraculously chaste revised edition with some
additions: Poems on Various Occasions (1807)
The first distinguished collection came a few months later, Hours of Idleness (1807), By
George Gordon, Lord Byron, A Minor
Imitative and sentimental
The preface, with pompous mock modesty, pleaded the poets youth and inexperience
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
In 1808, a scathing review of Hours of Idleness appeared in The Edinburgh Review
Byron replied with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire (1809), published by John
Murray II who published all his poems later
First published anonymously in January 1819
When the satire found favourable response from reviewers, in the 2 nd edition, his
name was mentioned
Attack on literary innovators and critics who had annoyed him
Attack on turgid Coleridge, simple Wordsworth, Southey and critic Francis
Jeffrey
Faint praise for Scott and Monk Lewis
Endorsed neoclassical virtues of poets like Dryden and Pope
Heroic couplet; modelled on Popes satirical verse
Grand Tour
Byron left on a tour in June 1809 with John Hobhouse, his intimate friend from Cambridge
whom he called Hobby
Travelled in the East, rather than Europe (as was customary) because of the Napoleonic Wars
Portugal, Spain, Mediterranean, Albania, Athens
Swam across the Hellespont (now called Dardanelles, a narrow strait of the Aegean Sea in
Turkey)
Seems to have been attracted to Islam (especially Sufi mysticism)
Had several sexual encounters
Details of these travels are known through his letters to friends
An interesting (horrifying) fact
In 1811, on his return to England, Byron travelled for a while in the ship Hydra which carried
large shipments of Lord Elgins marbles
The Elgin Marbles receive their name from the British lord Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of
Elgin and ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
He grew to admire the Parthenons extensive collection of ancient marble sculptures and
claimed to have got permission from the Ottoman Sultan to extract and send them to Britain
in 1801.
Despite objections that Lord Elgin had ruined Athens by the time his work was done in
1805, the British Government purchased the marbles from him in 1816.
The marbles have been housed at the British Museum ever since.
All this, of course, had nothing to do with Byron!
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (1812)
Account of his travels in Spenserian stanza
First two cantos published in 1812
Two more cantos appeared in 1816 and 1818
Made Byron a celebrity
4500 copies sold in less than 6 months
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 I awoke one morning and found myself famous

Beat Scott as the best-selling poet of the decade
Offers a view of the western Mediterranean torn by war and the sad relic of Greece
decaying under Ottoman misrule
Harold is the first Byronic Hero.
The poets relationship with nature is explored
After Childe Harold
Childe Harold was followed by 4 popular Oriental Tales (1813-14)
The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair and its sequel Lara
All tales of illicit love, guilt, violence and death
These poems orientalize the themes of the Gothic novel in verse
In 1815, in the midst of affairs including one with his half-sister Augusta, Byron married
Annabella Milbanke
In 1814, on the occasion of Napolons exile, Byron wrote Ode to Napolon Buonaparte,
which shows ambivalent feelings
In 1815, he wrote Hebrew Melodies, lyrics for the Jewish music composed by Isaac Nathan
This includes the now-famous lyric, She Walks in Beauty
Farewell to England
In 1815, Byron was plagued by financial problems, followed by drinking and irrational
behaviour
Convinced that her husband is mad, his wife left him with their daughter
The legal separation was painful for the poet, about whom and Augusta tales of an
incestuous relationship had spread by then
He had also started a cautious relationship with Claire Clairmont, William Godwins
stepdaughter
In 1816, he left for Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician Dr John Polidori and a
few others, only to find a pregnant Claire waiting for him there, along with her stepsister
Mary Shelley and her husband PB Shelley
In Geneva
In Geneva in 1816, Byron rented a villa and all of them spent time together there
In this environment
A genuine friendship and mutual admiration developed between Byron and Shelley
Mary Shelley started to write Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus (1818)
When they visited Chteau de Chillon, the story of Franois Bonivard, a 16 th century
Swiss patriot imprisoned for his defense of the freedom of Geneva, inspired Byron to
write the poem The Prisoner of Chillon
Byron also wrote the third canto of Childe Harolds Pilgrimage
The Prisoner of Chillon
A long dramatic monologue about political tyranny which begins with Sonnet on Chillon
Bonivard, shackled to a pillar by civil authorities for his religious beliefs, reminds the reader
of the mythological Prometheus, who was also a rebel against tyrannical authority
Ends with a startling confession:
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: even I
Regaind my freedom with a sigh.
The chainless Mind cannot be imprisoned even if the body is
The prisoner is not Byronic hero
From Childe Harolds Pilgrimage Canto III
The third canto is based on his journey from Dover to Waterloo, then along the Rhine to
Switzerland; based on the theme of war
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I have not loved the world, nor the world me,

But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me: and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
of human cities torture.
Blank Verse Drama
After the Shelleys left, John Hobhouse joined Byron and together they toured the Alps.
Meanwhile, Claire gave birth to a daughter.
Byron turned to blank verse drama to purge his broodings and guilt
All his plays have a Byronic hero
Manfred (1817)
Gothic Closet drama of Manfred tormented by a nameless guilt and remorse; seeks
forgetfulness; dies defiantly without submitting to higher powers
Signals Byrons rejection of the Wordsworthian belief in the benevolence of Nature
Cain (1821), The Two Foscari (1821), Marino Faliero (1821), Heaven and Earth (1821),
Sardanapalus (1822), etc
In Italy
In 1816-17, Byron and Hobhouse travelled to Italy
His visit to the cell where the 16th century poet Torquato Tasso had been confined for
madness inspired a dramatic monologue, The Lament of Tasso
Other poems that expressed sympathy for great Italian poets: The Prophecy of Dante: A
Poem, Francesca of Rimini
The story of Paolo and Francesca in Hell, from Dantes Inferno has also been retold by
Leigh Hunt as The Story of Rimini (1816)
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage Canto IV written at this time
Based on his travels in Rome
On his 30th birthday, met 19-year-old Countess Teresa Guiccioli, wife of a middle-aged count,
and the relationship was lasting
Beppo (1817)
In Italy, he wrote the long poem Beppo: A Venetian Story
Beppo, a Venetian merchant, returns home after years of Turkish captivity, to discover
that his wife, Laura, has taken a count for her lover. The three pleasantly form a love
triangle.
Not dark like earlier stories; the tormented hero with his pride and pessimism is
replaced with a witty, cynical hero
Influenced by the relaxed moral code of Italy
Used ottava rima in this poem for the first time, which later became his predominant
metre
Mazeppa (1819)
A poem based on a story told by Voltaire
Swedish king Charles XII and his officers, resting after a war, listen to Mazeppas lifestory
Mazeppa was page to the Polish king; his affair with a wealthy mans wife was discovered,
and he was put on a mad horses back and chased away. He escapes after the horse falls
dead.
Don Juan (1821)
The seriocomic tone of the Italian medley poem, Beppo, led to his comic epic, Don Juan
(story of the legendary libertine)
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Satiric picaresque novel in verse; mock epic

Spanish legend of Don Juan reversed: as someone easily seduced by women
Nave heros travels & accidental adventures
Begins with a dedication to Robert Southey and William Wordsworth, whom Byron lampoons
here
16 completed cantos; 17th unfinished
Whole of human race comes under the lash
Fullest expression of Byrons complex personality
Don Juan: Reception
The poem was published cautiously by Murray without the poets name and without his
savage Dedication to the poet laureate Robert Southey
Many critics, especially in the Blackwoods Magazine, attacked it with great fury
Scott, Goethe, Shelley, etc appreciated it
Goethe, at this time, started a correspondence with Byron
Byron dedicated Sardanapalus to Goethe
Goethe honoured Byron in the second part of Faust (1832), where he appears as
Euphorion, the child of Faust and Helen
Later Years
Byron was at this time certainly the most famous nobleman in Europe
Though an exile from England, Byron followed English political, literary and domestic affairs
with keen interest
He kept up his correspondence with his friends in England
In 1818 he had begun his Memoirs, which he handed over to his future biographer Thomas
Moore visited him in Venice
This work was however burnt after his death as per the wishes of Hobhouse and
Augusta
Under the influence of Teresa, now separated from her husband, Byron now became
virtuous, healthy and happy
Feud with Southey
The antagonism between Byron and Southey was an old one
In 1821 appeared Southeys A Vision of Judgement
A Tory poem imagining the soul of recently deceased King George triumphantly
entering Heaven
Its Preface was an onslaught upon Don Juan
There was a reference to its author as the founder of the Satanic school
Byron wrote the very effective rejoinder, The Vision of Judgment (1822), published in Leigh
Hunts magazine, The Liberal
Whig point of view
Examines the plight of George IIIs soul
Nationalist Causes
Byron and Teresa were now involved with Carbonari, the militant nationalist movement in
Italy
However, the movement was soon put to an end, and they had to flee from the city of
Ravenna to Pisa
In 1821, Byron embraced the cause of Greek nationalism, an interest which was apparent in
Childe Harold and Don Juan
He went to Greece and worked ceaselessly for Greek independence from Turkish rulers.
For the Greeks, Byron is a national hero.
Death
In 1824, Byron caught rheumatic fever after being soaked to the skin in an open boat. He
died on 19 April.

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The Greeks wanted to bury him in Athens, but his body was taken to England, only to be
denied burial at Westminster Abbey.
He was buried in the family vault at Nottinghamshire.
Tennyson, then a boy of 14, heard the news of Byrons death, and said, The whole world
darkened to me; on a rock near his house he inscribed, Byron is dead.
Byronic Hero
Gothic elements
A lack of respect for rank and privilege
Having conflicting emotions or moodiness
Having a troubled past

Self-critical and introspective

Being cynical, demanding, and/or arrogant
Struggles with integrity
Often self-destructive
Having a distaste for social institutions / norms
Troubles with sexual identity
Being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
Loner rejected from society
Watch this
A student video on Byron: Irresistible Bad Boys - The Byronic Hero uploaded by Tangible
Productions
Now something more serious: The Romantic Spirit: Battle of the Stage (4/4) Byronic Hero
uploaded by HerAeolianHarp
P.B. Shelley (1792-1822)
Born at Sussex as the eldest son of Timothy Shelley, a country squire
At Eton College, his independent spirit won him the nickname Mad Shelley and Eton
Atheist
While at Eton he wrote 2 wild Gothic romances Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne, or The
Rosicrucian (1811)
Atheistic themes of irresponsible self-indulgence & violent revenge
Also wrote poems with his sister, published anonymously
At University College, Oxford, he continued to read radical authors and adopted eccentric
dress and behaviour
In 1811, with Thomas J Hogg he wrote & circulated The Necessity of Atheism, probably the
first English pamphlet to profess atheism
Hogg and Shelley refused to answer questions from the college authorities, and were
expelled
Scandalous Marriages
Shelley eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern-keeper, to
Scotland & they married in 1811
The expulsion and elopement estranged him from his father
Engaged in radical politics, Shelley went briefly to Ireland where he wrote the utopian
allegory Queen Mab (1813) and An Address to the Irish People (1812)
He also met Southey (whom Shelley mistook to be still a radical) and started corresponding
with William Godwin, the anarchist philosopher and author of the radical book Political
Justice
Godwin influenced Shelley, but by 1820, the poet had tired of him.
His marriage ended in a fiasco, with Shelley eloping to Switzerland with 16-year-old Mary
Godwin (a radical and idealist like himself with whom he had fallen madly in love)
Another elopement and death
When they eloped, Mary and Shelley took with them Claire Clairmont, Marys step-sister
They returned to England after a few weeks, homesick and penniless
Having give birth to two of Shelleys children, Harriet, now pregnant with another mans
child, drowned herself in 1816 (having mistakenly thought that her new lover had
abandoned her)
Shelley married Mary & she gave birth to a daughter and a son, and both died prematurely
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The Shelleys now lived in a cottage at Marlow near Windsor Park, where Shelleys friend
Thomas Love Peacock also lived
Here Shelley wrote Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude (1816)
Two Early Works
Queen Mab (1813)
Visionary philosophical and political poem
Much of the poem is devoted to the fairy queens speeches
Theme of corruption of man by institutions
Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816)
The name Alastor suggested by Thomas Love Peacock, referring not to the
protagonist but to the spirit who divinely animates the protagonist (Poet)s
imagination
Kind of spiritual autobiography
Long poem in blank verse about a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous
genius
Protagonist, shadowy projection of Shelley, travels through wilderness in search of
ideal beauty
Byron and Hunt
The Shelleys went to Switzerland again with Claire, now pregnant with Byrons child
The summer they spent with Byron in Geneva in 1816 was intellectually stimulating for all of
them
Here Shelley wrote Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Mont Blanc
Shelley now moved in the intellectual circles of Leigh Hunt
Hunt had given Shelley favourable reviews in The Examiner
Hunt introduced Shelley to Keats
At this time, Shelley wrote Laon and Cythna, a narrative poem featuring incestuous lovers
and which attacks religion
This poem was later re-edited to form The Revolt of Islam (1818)
Two Poems
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Incorporates the Romantic ideal of communion with nature into his own aesthetic
philosophy
Intellectual Beauty means the intellectual idea of beauty
Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
An ode which compares the power of the mountain against the power of the human
imagination
Emphasizes the ability of the human imagination to uncover truth through a study of
nature, but questions the notion of religious certainty.
The poet concludes that only a privileged few can see nature as it really is
The Revolt of Islam (1818)
Originally published as Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of
the Nineteenth Century
Epic political poem in Spenserian stanzas
Brother and sister Laon and Cythna have an incestuous relationship
They organize a revolt against the despotic ruler of the fictional state of Argolis, modelled on
the Ottoman Sultan
The poem has nothing to do with Islam in particular
Idealized and orientalized version of the French revolution, discussed also in the prose
preface
Ozymandias
While living at Marlow, Shelley also wrote the sonnet Ozymandias

246

Italy

This is a famous sonnet on the statue of an Egyptian king

A shattered, ruined statue in the desert wasteland, with an arrogant, passionate face and
inscription, (Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Ozymandias civilization is now gone, all has been turned to dust
The destructive power of history
The ruined statue is now merely a monument to one mans pride
A powerful statement about the insignificance of human life to the passage of time

The Shelleys moved to Italy in 1818 and Shelley would never return home again
Both their children died here. In 1819, another son was born.
In Italy, he wrote Julian and Maddalo, an exploration of his relations with Byron
He also met Byron again at Pisa, and had a circle of friends around him including Edward
Trelawney and other exiles and expatriates
That Shelley in Naples registered himself as the father of a baby girl is still an enigma
1819-1820 was his most creative period
1819-1820
He wrote many of his famous works during this period:
The lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound (1820)
The Cenci (1819), a sordid verse tragedy
Upon hearing the news of the Peterloo Massacre
The Mask of Anarchy (1819)
The Ode to the West Wind (written on 25 Oct 1819)
Peter Bell the Third (a satire)
To Liberty, To Naples (political odes)
Letter to Maria Gisborne (written to their friend)
The Witch of Atlas
Song to the Men of England
England 1819 (a sonnet)
Two verse plays
Prometheus Unbound (1820)
Lyrical drama in four acts, written in Italy
Inspired by the view of Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost, and God as oppressor
Spirit of defiance
Replete with sexual, scientific and political symbolism
The Cenci (1819)
Bleak, sordid family tragedy
Themes of incest, parricide and atheism
The melodramatic plot is taken from the true story of Beatrice Cenci, who was tried
and executed for the murder of her father
Two Poems
The Mask of Anarchy (1819)
Ballad form
Blames politicians like Castlereagh, Eldon, Sidmouth
Anarchy masquerades on a horse; his progress prevented by Hope
Ends with celebration of freedom
England in 1819
A sonnet
Like Ozymandias, condemns the arrogance of power
Condemns violently the King, the nobility, the army, the laws, religion, and the
Parliament
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1819-1820
To a Skylark, The Cloud
A Philosophical View of Reform (a political document)
Essay on the Devil
A Defence of Poetry
Swellfoot the Tyrant (a satirical burlesque)
Adonais (on the death of Keats)
Translated scenes from Goethes Faust & wrote his last completed verse drama, Hellas, to
raise money in England for the Greek war of independence
The Triumph of Life (his last major poem)
Adonais (1821)
Model of classical elegy; Spenserian stanza
Lament on the death of Keats (Adonais, the Greek god of beauty and fertility)
Other young poets who died (Chatterton, Sidney, Lucan) are also mourned
Attacks Tory critics for hostility to Keats
Refers to Byron as the Pilgrim of eternity
Episychidion (1821)
Written in the context of 19-year-old Teresa Viviani, daughter of the governor of Pisa, being
imprisoned in a convent by her family
Autobiographical poem on Shelleys search for the eternal image of Beauty in the form of
women
The theme of the work is a meditation on the nature of ideal love. Shelley advocates free
love, criticising conventional marriage, which he described as the weariest and the longest
journey
Discusses sexual and platonic love
The Triumph of Life (1822)
Last major work
Unfinished visionary poem in terza rima
Influence of Dantes Divine Comedy and Petrarchs Trionfi
Here, Life himself (on a triumphal chariot) appears as the universal conqueror (one of the
many tyrants in Shelley)
Describes life as the painted veil which obscures and disguises the immortal spirit
Ultimately, natural life corrupts and triumphs over the spirit
Death
In 1822, the periodical The Liberal was started
Started by Shelley, Byron and Leigh Hunt
To disseminate their radical views
As a counter-blast to the Tory Blackwoods Magazine & Quarterly Review
The editor was Hunt who had recently arrived in Italy
On 8 July 1822, having met Leigh Hunt, Shelley was returning home on his schooner named
Don Juan, he drowned in a boat-capsize at the Bay of Spezia
There have been theories that he wanted to die, that it was a political murder, etc
His body was cremated on the beach of Viareggio in the presence of Byron, Trelawney and
Hunt
Posthumous Poems was published in 1824
Shelleys Odes
Older Romantics: nature as a source of truth and authentic experience
Younger Romantics: nature as a source of beauty and aesthetic experience
Ode to the West Wind
Terza rima; five stanzas each in the form of a sonnet
248

Odes
To a

Shelleys first convincing attempt to articulate an aesthetic philosophy through

metaphors of nature
West Wind as Destroyer and Preserver associated with renewal, self-sacrifice,
unextinguished political hopes, creativity
Hope and energy achieved through suffering and despair

Skylark
Five-lined quintain rhyming ababb
Skylark symbol of poetic expression, the harmonious madness of pure inspiration
Comparisons
A lonely maiden in a palace tower
A golden glow-worm
A rose embowered in its own green leaves
The poet asks the bird to teach him half the gladness it knows, for then he would
overflow with harmonious madness
The Cloud, To Night
You Tube
Listen to the poems by Shelley as well as the other Romantics recited by SpokenVerse
Raja Sharma has uploaded many poetry analysis videos for Shelley and other poets.
Useful introductions.
Shelley: Features of Poetry
Exquisite lyrical power. Best when expressing emotional ecstasy
2 types of themes:
(1) Visionary, prophetic
e.g. Alastor, Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound
These have the Shelleyan hero
Grand, tragic, prophetic hero isolated from the world
A rebel against tyranny
Leader in struggle for ultimate happiness to humanity
Conveys cosmic truths and has the power to change the world for the better
(2) other shorter lyrics
Shelley: Features of Poetry
Descriptive power
Gives form, radiance and loveliness to wild and elemental thingsthrough
personification
Style is simple, passionate, clear
Emotional outbursts sometimes become tedious, diffuse and argumentative
Poetry has no humour
Political poetry is often violent and unreasonable
Shelleys Prose
Wrote many radical pamphlets, some under the pseudonym The Hermit of Marlow
The Defence of Poetry (written in 1821; pub 1840 posthumously)
Written in reply to Thomas Love Peacocks The Four Ages of Poetry
The four ages of poetry are the ages of iron, gold, silver, and brass
Central idea: poetry brings about moral good
Poetry exercises and expands the imagination
Imagination is the source of sympathy, compassion, and love, which helps one to
project oneself into the position of another person
Emphasized the connection between beauty and goodness,
Emphasized the power of arts sensual pleasures to improve society
John Keats (1795-1821)
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Keats father was the manager of the livery stables of his father-in-law in Moorfields, and
died when he was 8
His mother Frances Jennings remarried but was soon separated from her second husband,
and died of TB when he was 14
John was the oldest of the family had two brothers George and Tom and a sister Fanny, who
were deeply devoted to one another
While at Clarks School at Enfield, he was interested in cricket and boxing, began to read
voraciously, especially Greek mythology, and began to translate Aeneid.
Soon, he was apprenticed to Dr Hammond, a local surgeon
Early Encounter with Literature
Cowden Clarke, his friend from Clarks School, encouraged his interest in literature, and his
reading of Faerie Queene motivated him to write his first poem, Lines in Imitation of
Spenser (1814)
Having quarrelled with Hammond in 1814, he resumed his surgical studies at Guys Hospital
In the same year, he wrote some minor odes
In 1814, he also started to read Wordsworth, with whom, like the other younger Romantics,
he developed a love-hate relationship
Leigh Hunt, the founder of the liberal journal The Examiner, took Keats under his wing, and
published Keatss sonnet O Solitude
Early Poems
In Leigh Hunts circle, he met the poet and playwright John Hamilton Reynolds, painter
Benjamin Haydon and PB Shelley
With Shelley he maintained a cautious distance, because the older poet had a
domineering personality
In the Young Poets issue of The Examiner in November 1816, Hunt hailed Keats, Shelley
and Reynolds as the most promising writers of their generation
In 1816
The sonnet On First Looking Into Chapmans Homer is printed
Wrote I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill and Sleep and Poetry
The first volume of poetry, Poems, was published in 1817
In a review that appeared in Blackwoods Magazine, Keats, Hunt and Hazlitt were ridiculed
as the Cockney School
Letters & Endymion
In 1817, Keats travelled a great deal from London to the seaside along with his brother Tom
During this time he wrote letters to his siblings and friends
These letters were the vehicles of Keatss thoughts on poetry, love and philosophy,
and were published posthumously
In 1818 his first long poem Endymion published
Written in Heroic couplets; dedicated to Thomas Chatterton
Supposedly undertaken in friendly rivalry with Shelley, who at this time was writing
Laon and Cythna (later called The Revolt of Islam)
A flowery, elaborate allegory of the myth of Endymion kissed by moon goddess
Cynthia (Selene in mythology) on Mount Latmos
First line: A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Coming of Age as a Poet
In 1817-18, Keats regularly attended Hazlitts lectures on poetry
Helped Keats shape his ideas on poetry
Developed the idea of the poet as possessing negative capability
He wrote in a December 1817 letter to his brother that Negative Capability is when a
man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason

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This was a time of intense introspection and transition marking Keats's emergence as a poet
At this time, he wrote Isabella, or The Pot of Basil, a work which marks great advancement in
his poetic technique
Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1818)
Narrative poem in ottava rima, which Keats later disliked
Story adapted from Boccaccios Decameron
Medieval theme like The Eve of St. Agnes
Plot
Isabella falls in love with Lorenzo, employee of her brother
Her brothers learn of this, murder Lorenzo and bury him in the forest
Isabella finds the grave, digs up the body, cuts off Lorenzos head and places it in a
pot which she plants with basil and waters with her tears
As the girl wastes away, the suspicious brothers steal the pot and discovers the head
Having lost Lorenzo and her of basil, Isabella loses her reason and dies
Inspired the Pre-Raphaelites
The year 1818
1818 was a painful year
By then, Tom Keats was seriously ill with tuberculosis, and the poet spent much time
nursing his brother until he died at the end of the year
Another brother George, who was Keatss closest confidante, married and departed to
America
Endymion met with severe attacks in Blackwoods Magazine and Quarterly Review
With his friend Charles Armitage Brown, Keats toured the Lakes, Scotland and northern
Ireland
Back in London, he moved to Wentworth Place, near Hampstead Heath, a house owned by
Brown and now known as Keats House
He considered giving up poetry, but wrote to George, I think I shall be among the English
poets after my death, and started on Hyperion
Attacks by Tory Critics
Endymion was severely criticized in the Tory magazines, Blackwoods Magazine and The
Quarterly Review
A harsh review by John Wilson Croker appeared in The Quarterly Review, which derided the
Cockney School of Hunt, Hazlitt and Keats
John Gibson Lockhart writing in Blackwood's Magazine took up the attack on the Cockney
School
These attacks were as much political as literary, aimed at upstart young writers considered
uncouth for their lack of education, non-formal rhyming and low diction. They had not
attended Eton, Harrow or Oxbridge and they were not from the upper classes
Keats never recovered from these attacks, and Byron quipped that Keats was ultimately
snuffed out by an article
In Adonais, Shelley blames the hostile critics for Keatss death
Annus Mirabilis: 1819
In 1818, Keats was attracted to Isabella Jones, and by 1819, Keats had fallen deeply and
jealously in love with Fanny Brawne whom he didnt marry because of lack of financial
means and the onset of his illness
This year, he showed astonishing poetic development and productivity
He worked on Hyperion, but gave it up for having too many Miltonic overtones; so it remains
incomplete
Wrote The Eve of St Agnes and several of the reflective odes
On Indolence, On a Grecian Urn, To Psyche, To Nightingale, To Melancholy,
To Autumn

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 La Belle Dame Sans Merci, a lyrical ballad

Sonnets: Fame and Why Did I Laugh Tonight
1819: 2nd half
In 1819, his most productive year, Keats was unhappy in love and had financial difficulties.
At this time he also wrote:
Tragedy Otho the Great (written with Charles Brown)
Lamia
The Fall of Hyperion
A second volume of poems was published (the first appeared in 1817)
The critics were more generous this time.
In early 1820, he was seriously ill with tuberculosis and couldnt write
He was nursed by the Hunts and by Fanny and her mother
In a last desperate attempt to regain his health, Keats travelled to Rome with his friend and
painter Joseph Severn
He died in Rome in February 1821
The Eve of St. Agnes
Narrative poem in Spenserian stanzas
Composed when he was under the double emotional charge of the recent death of his
brother Tom and the first flush of his love affair with his Hampstead neighbor Fanny Brawne
Based on the superstition that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she
performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes
Characters: Porphyro and Madeline
Two Greek Epics
Hyperion
Based on mythical Titanomachia (In Greek mythology, Titan gods were defeated by
the Olympians)
Unfinished epic of the primeval struggle between older gods: Saturn, Hyperion, etc.
and younger divinities: Apollo, etc.
Model, Paradise Lost
Blank verse
The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream
A Vision alternate subtitle
Unfinished epic
Influence of Virgil, Dante, Milton
Two Poems
Lamia
Written 1819, along with Great Odes & La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Tale of an enchantress taken from Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy
Influenced Poes sonnet To Science
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Title derived from a medieval French poem on courtly love (of the same title) written
by Alain Chartier
A knight is enamored by a beautiful lady who appears partly as a witch and partly as
a fairy
Inspired the Pre-Raphaelites
Great Odes
All written in 1819
Ode to Psyche
An important departure from Keats early poems, which frequently describe an escape
into the pleasant realms of ones imagination
Keats interpretation of Cupid and Psyche myth
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Ode on a Grecian Urn

Two scenes: one in which a piper eternally pursues a beloved without fulfillment, and
another of villagers about to perform a sacrifice
An example of ekphrasis, or a work of art about another work of art in a different
medium
Five stanzas containing 10 lines each
Great Odes
Ode on Indolence
Break from the structure of the classical form.
A morning spent in idleness
Three figures are presentedAmbition, Love and Poesy
Contemplation on life and art.
The poet realizes that he cannot have all three in his life.
Ode on Melancholy
Subject of how to cope with sadness
Personification
Keats does not appear in the poem

Great Odes
Ode to a Nightingale
Describes Keats experience of Negative capability
Conflicts between reality and the Romantic ideal of uniting with nature
To Autumn
Like in the other odes, this ode shows Keatss speaker paying homage to a particular
goddessin this case, the deified season of Autumn
Keats: Odes
Odes do not tell a single story
There are no unifying characters
But there are numerous suggestive interrelations
Keatss unmistakable consciousness unites them
A personal, psychological progress can be seen here
A movement from an impassioned longing for escape (Nightingale) to calm fulfillment
(Melancholy & Autumn)
Keats: Sonnets
Keatss sonnets rank with the best in English
Wrote both Petrarchan to Shakespearean
On first looking into Chapmans Homer
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art
Features of Poetry
Keats is the poet of legend, myth, romance, chivalric tale
His love of nature is intense
But there is no mystical worship of Wordsworth; no satirical bend of Byron; no prophetic
vision of Shelley
Had no knowledge of Greece, but employed Greek images and characters (Hyperion,
Endymion, Lamia, Grecian urn) and gave them an intense treatment
Hellenism and Hebraism
Hellenism refers to a representation of the culture, ideals, and pattern of life of classical
Greece
It involves pagan joy, freedom, and love of life
This is contrasted with Hebraism
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 Austere morality and monotheism of the Old Testament

Keats: Influence
Great influence on later poetsTennyson, Arnold and the Pre-Raphaelites
Learnt from Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Hunt; but gave it originality
Early verse is characterized by melody, decorative images, senses, especially touch
Often resulted in over-luxuriousness and lack of restraint
Later verse shows more poise and restraint, delicacy and purer taste
Arnold on Keats
No one, save Shakespeare, has such fascinating felicity, such perfection of loveliness,
such indescribable gusto in the voice as Keats.
Keats said humbly, I think I shall be among the English poets after my death.
So Arnold said: He is, he is with Shakespeare.
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
Poet, journalist, critic
Friend of Byron, Shelley and Keats
Dickens caricatured him as Harold Skimpole in Bleak House
Edited journals
The Examiner, The Reflector, The Indicator
The Liberal was started with Byron and Shelley, and only four issues appeared
He also wrote the journals The Companion, the new Tatler, and Leigh Hunts London
Journal
Hunts Works
The Feast of the Poets
The Story of Rimini
Hero and Leander
Amyntas: A Tale of the Woods
Translated from the Italian Tasso
Captain Sword and Captain Pen
A Legend of Florence (a play)
Abou Ben Adham and Jenny Kissed Me (short poems)
John Clare (1793-1864)
Son of an agricultural labourer
His poetry is marked by an intense sense of place, moving descriptions of the rural poor
In the formative years of his youth, the landscape had been changing due to enclosure
farming
Poems Descriptive of Rural Life (1820)
The Village Minstrel (1821)
A long poem in Spenserian stanzas
The Shepherds Calendar (1827)
The Rural Muse (1835)
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Scottish novelist, poet, editor & critic
Scott was born at Edinburgh, the ninth of 12 children, and was early lamed by infantile
paralysis; but he never let this make him an invalid
He was educated at Edinburgh High School & at Edinburgh University, where his major study
was law
Scott had an astonishing memory, and was an obsessive collector of stories; he read
voraciously ancient oral stories, ballads, fairy tales, chivalric romances & exotic tales of
distant places
In 1795 Scott married, became a deputy-sheriff, and was just about to enter a literary life
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Translations from German

The next year (1796), at the age of 25, he began to professionally translate works from
German
In 1796 his adaptation of ballads by Gottfried August Burger appeared anonymously
In 1799, made the first English translation of Goethes play Gtz of the Iron Hand into
English
In 1801 contributed translations to the Gothic novelist Matthew Gregory Lewiss
collection, Tales of Wonder
Early Poems
In 1802-03, brought out The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of ballads in three
volumes
Scotts metrical version of the medieval romance of Sir Tristrem appeared in 1804
Scotts poetic writing so far was dominated by a blend of Gothic Germanic sorcery &
antiquarian enthusiasm
In 1805, with the publication of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, an old border story, his name
became widely known
In the same year, Scott entered into a secret partnership with James Ballantyne, his friend, in
the publishing industry; later, until the company collapsed in 1813, he was the half-owner of
the company
More Poetry
After 1805, a number of longer poems were published, including
Marmion (1808)
Considered his masterpiece in poetry
Antiquarian theme; contains the poem Lochinvar
The Lady of the Lake (1810)
The Vision of Don Roderick (1811)
Rokeby and The Bridal of Triermain (1813)
There were other shorter poems written in this period
But some of Scotts best verses are found in the novels
Scotts Poetry: An Appraisal
Picturesque descriptions
Effective use of wild scenery
Vigorous tone; too many incidents and details; physical action is simply portrayed without
analysis
Criticized for superficial treatment
Lacks greater poetic virtues such as reflection, melody, sympathy, sense of humou
Revived and gave a new zest to Romantic methods
Prodigious Output of Prose
During these years Scott also produced a tremendous volume of prose work & editorial work,
much of it relating to criticism, antiquarianism and history
Includes an edition of Dryden with biographical material (1808
Numerous book reviews for the Whig Edinburgh Review, then edited by Francis Jeffrey
In 1809 Scott took a prominent force in establishing the Tory Quarterly Review
Scotts Finances
Until 1811, Scott was fairly prosperous; extended his old cottage and named it Abbotsford.
Ballantyne publishing company collapsed in 1813 and the company was bought by Archibald
Constable and Co. who were Scotts publishers until 1826.
Scott is rescued from impending bankruptcy by his patron, the Duke of Buccleuch
Conditions improved when
Scott embarked on a career as a novelist
Inherited his brothers estate in 1816
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Headed a team which rediscovered the lost Crown Jewels of Scotland and he was
made a baron as a reward
As a Novelist
Scotts highly acclaimed novel Waverley was published anonymously by Constable in 1814
Subtitled Tis Sixty Years Since
Regarded as the first historical novel
Set against the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745
Portrayed peasant characters sympathetically
A series of novels on similar themes written by the author of Waverley appeared soon after
Major Waverley Novels
Guy Mannering (1815)
The Antiquary (1816)
Rob Roy (1817)
The Bride of Lammermoor (1819)
The Monastery & The Abbot (both 1820)
The Pirate (1821)
The Talisman (part of Tales of the Crusaders, 1825)
Woodstock (1826)
Novels on English History
Ivanhoe (1820)
Set in 12th century England
A story of one of the remaining Saxon noble families at a time when the English
nobility was predominantly Norman
Revived medievalism in English literature
The legendary Robin Hood is a character under the name Locksley
Kenilworth (1821)
A romance set in Elizabethan England; tragedy
Centers on the secret marriage of the ambitious nobleman Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of
Leicester, and Amy Robsart
More Works
Beyond writing novels, Scott was, throughout these years, again busy with editions,
antiquarian studies & literary criticism
An edition of Swift came in 1814, along with biographical data
This was followed by a tremendous output of writings, mostly historical in nature
The hard work he engaged in as writer, lawyer and as a social figure took a toll on his health
By 1826, the failure of his publisher Constable led him to a financial crisis once again
He set to work at an even more furious pace, producing more works including The Life of
Napoleon
Last Years and Death
In 1827, he finally admitted to the authorship of the Waverley novels at a public dinner.
The next year, he started the series called Tales of a Grandfather for his grandson (the son of
John Gibson Lockhart, Scotts future biographer)
In 1831, following a stroke, Scott went to Italy in an attempt to revive his health, but
returned to his beloved Abbotsford the next year and died in September 1832
Reputation
His Scottish novels, particularly Waverly & Rob Roy, did much to rescue that country from
the low esteem it had acquired after the 1745 rebellion & to make it at once respectable &
romantic
The descriptions of the landscape & ruins with which his books abound helped to shape
romanticism

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Above all, his use of history confirmed the taste for medievalism which lasted throughout the
19th century & the conduct of the historical figures served as the model of the chivalric code
by which Victorian gentlemen attempted to live
Scott Today
Scott was one of the first writers in England to enjoy an international reputation
Yet today Scott is a comparatively neglected writer
The immense bulk of his writing & the sheer length of his individual works is intimidating
His characters are dismissed as artificial, and his plots as stilted & melodramatic; his
fascination with history can appear a mere fancy
Scotts Imitators, Contemporaries
William H. Ainsworth (1805-82)
Novels cover many periods of English history
Brute realism, crude sensationalism
George James (1799-1860)
Extremely prolific
Stock pattern, florid pageantry, ingeniously mysterious
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
Headlong Hall, Melincourt, Nightmare Abbey
Ironical, satirical attacks on romanticism in The Four Ages of Poetry (iron, gold,
silver, brass); his age is called age of brass and second childhood
Austens Early Fiction
Love and Friendship, a burlesque of Richardson, written when 15
Early novels (of the 1790s) caricature the sentimentality or excessive sensibility of late
18th century literature
Northanger Abbey (published posthumously in 1818 but probably her earliest extended work
of fiction)
Satirizes the ridiculous in contemporary taste
Satirizes her heroines penchant for Gothic fiction
Sense and Sensibility (begun in 1797 but not pub until 1811)
Earlier title Elinor and Marianne
Austens Mature Works
Pride and Prejudice (begun in c.1796 & pub in 1813)
Has the same high spirits as its predecessors
First of her mature works
Original title First Impressions
Began as an epistolary novel
Opening line: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Mansfield Park (begun 1811, published 1814)
Emma (begun 1814, published 1816)
Persuasion (begun 1815, published posthumously in 1818)
Pride and Prejudice
Charles Bingley, a rich single man, moves to the Netherfield estate
Mrs. Bennet is thrilled, hoping to marry one of her five daughters to him.
The Bennet daughters meet Bingley at a ball and are impressed
They are less impressed by Bingleys proud friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, a landowning aristocrat
who is too proud to speak to any of the locals and whom Elizabeth Bennet overhears refusing
to dance with her.
Bingley and the oldest Bennet daughter, Jane, fall in love. The relationship is opposed by
Bingley's sisters (who do not approve of Jane as a wife for Bingley because of her mother's
lower status) and by Darcy (who believes that Jane is indifferent to Bingley)
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Pride and Prejudice

Meanwhile, Darcy is attracted to Elizabeths wit and expressive eyes, and Caroline Bingley is
jealous.
Elizabeth however despises Darcy and is instead attracted to George Wickham, a handsome
military officer.
Wickham tells Elizabeth that Darcy had selfishly deprived him of a living Darcys father had
offered him. Elizabeth is even more prejudiced to Darcy now.
The Bennets are visited by Mr. Bennets cousin, William Collins, a clergyman who will inherit
Mr. Bennets estate because of a legal stricture.
Mr. Collins has been asked by his patroness, Lady Catherine De Bourgh to marry, and he
proposes to Elizabeth, but is stunned and offended when she refuses him.
Pride and Prejudice
Collins then proposes to Elizabeth's friend, Charlotte Lucas, who wants to marry for security
rather than love, and the two are soon engaged and married.
Jane is dismayed to find out that Bingley and family have unexpectedly left for London.
Caroline Bingley writes to Jane that they do not intend to return, and she predicts a match
between Bingley and Darcys sister, Georgiana.
Elizabeth suspects that Bingleys sisters and Darcy are trying to keep him from Jane.
Elizabeth visits Charlotte at her new home in Hunsford, Kent, and meets Mr. Collins
patroness and Darcys aunt, Lady Catherine De Bourgh, an overbearing woman who meddles
in other peoples lives.
Pride and Prejudice
While Elizabeth is in Kent, Darcy visits his aunt with his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam.
One day, he surprises Elizabeth by proposing to her. Still repelled by his pride and her
prejudice, Elizabeth refuses him. The next day, Darcy gives her a letter explaining his role in
influencing Bingley away from Jane and details the facts of Wickham's situation. The letter
reveals that Darcy, though proud, is innocent of wrongdoing.
Back home, Elizabeth goes on a trip with her aunt and uncle to Derbyshire county, where
they visit Darcys estate of Pemberley. There they meet Darcy unexpectedly and are all
surprised at how graciously he treats them. Elizabeth begins to feel love for him.
Elizabeth hears from Jane that Lydia has eloped with Wickham
Elizabeth fears that the Bennet family is permanently disgraced.
Pride and Prejudice
When Lydia is found, however, she and Wickham marry.
After the wedding, Elizabeth discovers that Darcy was instrumental in orchestrating the
marriage, thereby saving the reputation of the other Bennet daughters.
Bingley returns to Netherfield and asks Jane to marry him. Jane, of course, accepts.
Meanwhile, Lady Catherine De Bourgh arrives, on hearing a rumor that Darcy and Elizabeth
are engaged. She asks Elizabeth not to accept any proposal from Darcy, and Elizabeth
refuses.
Lady Catherine complains to Darcy about Elizabeths impertinence which gives Darcy hope
that Elizabeth has had a change of heart.
He proposes again and Elizabeth happily accepts.
Emma
20-year-old Emma Woodhouse of the village of Highbury has decided never to marry, but
imagines herself to be naturally gifted in matchmaking.
Her only friend and critic is her neighbour, George Knightley
Taking credit for the marriage between her governess and Mr. Weston, a village widower, and
against the advice of Knightley, Emma sets out to match her friend, Harriet Smith (a girl of
unknown parentage ), with Mr. Elton, the village vicar.
She also persuades Harriet to reject the proposal of Robert Martin, a well-to-do farmer whom
Harriet clearly liked
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Emmas plan is spoiled when Mr. Elton proposes to Emma.

Offended by Emmas refusal, Elton marries a newly rich girl in Bath, at which Harriet
considers herself heartbroken
Emma
At this time, Frank Churchill, Mr. Westons son, who has been raised by his aunt and uncle in
London, arrives in Highbury
Knightley distrusts Frank, but Emma flirts with him
Another person arrives in Highbury: the beautiful and orphaned Jane Fairfax, niece of poor
Miss Bates, whom Emma envies
Despite Knightleys warnings, Emma tries to fix the match between Harriet and Frank, only
to know that Frank is engaged to Jane
Harriet reveals that she is in love with Knightley, at which Emma is dismayed because she
herself is in love with him
Knightley proposes to Emma, and Harriet is comforted by a second proposal from Robert
Martin, which she accepts
The novel ends with the double wedding of Emma and Knightley, and Harriet and Robert
Martin
Sense and Sensibility
First published work
Published under the pseudonym A Lady
The story is about the romantic attachments, heartbreaks and marriages of the sisters Elinor
and Marianne Dashwood, representing sense and sensibility respectively
Mansfield Park
The virtuous protagonist Fanny Price is a Cinderella brought up by her rich uncle Sir
Thomas Bertram who has plantations in Antigua
Fannys virtuous love for her cousin Edmund wins over the immortal romantic entanglements
of Henry Crawford, Maria Bertram, etc
The characters rehearse a play, Elizabeth Inchbalds play Lovers Vows, which has the theme
of adultery
Persuasion
Published along with Northanger Abbey
Both novels partly set against the superficial social life in Bath
Contains biting satire
Anne Elliott of Kellynch Hall had been engaged to naval officer Frederick Wentworth, but had
been persuaded to break of the engagement due to the pressures of her family who are
obsessed with rank and wealth.
Eight years later, she meets her former love, when his sister and brother-in-law, the Crofts,
lease out Kellynch Hall.
Amidst confusions, the lovers are reunited.
Northanger Abbey
17-year-old Catherine Morland is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels, especially Anne
Radcliffes The Mysteries of Udolpho
She accompanies her wealthy neighbours, the Allens, to bath, where they partake in balls
and other social delights
She makes friends: the flirtatious Isabella Thorpe and her rough-mannered brother John
Thorpe who pursues her, while Catherine falls in love with Henry Tilney, brother of Eleanor
Catherine visits the Tilneys estate, Northanger Abbey, which she expects to be exotic and
frightening, like in Gothic novels
General Tilney finds out from a vengeful John Thorpe that Catherine is not wealthy, and
sends her away from Northanger Abbey

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Henry breaks with his father and proposes to Catherine, which she delightedly accepts; and
the father later acquiesces
More Novels
Lady Susan, an epistolary novel, and The Watsons were published after they appeared in the
second edition of J.E. Austen Leighs Memoir of Jane Austen (1871)
The fragment of Sanditon, on which she was working in the last months of her life, was first
published in 1925
Features of Novels
Portray small groups of people in a limited environment
Highlight social hypocrisy through irony
Employ domestic realism
Characters are middle-class and provincial; their major preoccupation is with courtship and
marriage
The apparently trivial incidents of everyday lives are moulded into comedy of manners
Contain elements of fairy tales
Heroines undergo a process of education and self-realization
Delicate economy, subtle irony, underlying moral commentary
Smooth, unobtrusive style; avoidance of anything unusual, startling, loud or garrish
Jane Austens Style
Parodied the sentimental novel
Perfected the 18th century technique of free indirect speech, in which the voices of the
characters blend with that of the narrator
More emphasis on dialogues than on scenic descriptions
Many allusions to contemporary fiction
Reading Austen
Scott wrote of that exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and
characters interesting
Charlotte Bronte & EB Browning critiqued her
DW Harding in a major essayAustens satire more astringent than delicate, a social critic in
search of unobtrusive spiritual survival
Reputation high (Jane Austen cult), tho shifts in emphasis
Domestic Realism
Plot focuses on a heroine who embodies one of two types of exemplar: the angel and the
practical woman who sometimes exist in the same work. This heroine is contrasted with the
passive woman (incompetent, cowardly, ignorant; often the heroine's mother is this type)
and the belle, who suffers from a defective education.
The heroine struggles for self-mastery, learning the pain of conquering her own passions.
The heroine learns to balance societys demands for self-denial with her own desire for
autonomy, a struggle often addressed in terms of religion.
Domestic Realism
She suffers at the hands of abusers of power before establishing a network of surrogate kin.
The plots repeatedly identify immersion in feeling as one of the great temptations and
dangers for a developing woman. They show that feeling must be controlled. . . The
heroines thus undergo a full education within which to realize feminine obligations.
Domestic Realism
The tales generally end with marriage, usually one of two possible kinds:
A. Reforming the bad or wild male
B. Marrying the solid male who already meets her qualifications.
The novels may use a language of tears that evokes sympathy from the readers.

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Class is an important issue, as the ideal family or heroine is poised between a lower-class
family exemplifying poverty and domestic disorganization and upper-class characters
exemplifying an idle, frivolous existence.
Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849)
Prolific Irish writer
Wrote short-stories for children
Some of her works are about education, modifying Rousseaus ideas
Walter Scott admired her work
The best of her novels celebrate Irish culture; show the Irish as equal to the English
Castle Rackrent, The Absentee, Ormond
Other novels
Belinda, Harrington (resents a sympathetic view of Jews, in apology for an anti-Semitic
remark in The Absentee)
Edgeworths WorksFeatures
Over-mastering didacticism except in Castle Rackrent
Over-simplification of life & character to show the ultimate triumph of virtue
Esp. Irish taleslevel-headed, accurate, vivid portrayals. Scott admired these
Limited domestic circle
Influenced Scott in writing historical novel
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
Essayist and poet
The youngest child of Elizabeth & John Lamb, a lawyers clerk, he went to Christs Hospital
School, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Coleridge
In his youth Lamb spent some time at Blakesware in Hertfordshire where his grandmother
was housekeeper
Later Lamb was employed in the South Sea House and later at the East India House where
he worked until his retirement
In 1796 his sister Mary Ann Lamb (1764-1847) murdered their mother in a fit of insanity &
was confined to an asylum, at length being released into her brothers care
Lamb himself suffered a period of insanity in 1795-6
Lambs Early Works
Contributed four sonnets to Coleridges Poems on Various Subjects (1796)
In 1798
Blank Verse published with Charles Lloyd; included The Old Familiar Faces, a famous
and unabashedly sentimental poem
A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret
John Woodvil (1802; a tragedy initially entitled Prides Cure)
Mr H (1806), a farce
Lamb established a reputation in literary circles as a contributor to The Albion, The Morning
Chronicle & The Morning Post, & as the popular host to intellectual gatherings which
included Coleridge, Southey, and Leigh Hunt

Writing for Children etc.

William Godwin suggested that Lamb contribute to his Juvenile Library and with his sister,
he produced the well-known Tales From Shakespeare (1807)
Other books for children were:
The Adventures of Ulysses (1808)
Mrs Leicesters School (1809, written with Mary & containing reminiscences of their
childhood)
Poetry for Children
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Contribution to journals
On the Character and Genius of Hogarth (in Leigh Hunts Reflector)
On the Tragedies of Shakespeare
A review of Wordsworths The Excursion
Essays
Lamb is best remembered for The Essays of Elia, pseudonymously contributed to the London
Magazine from 1820 to 1823
The essays were collected in 1823
A second series, The Last Essays of Elia, appeared in 1833
Features of his essays
Deliberately good-humoured
On a wide range of topics, touched with personal opinions, recollections
Cheerful and sad, a delicate clashing of humours
Old-fashioned style, echoes older writers; long and curious words
Major Essays
Christs Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago
Blakesmoor in Hshire
Dream Children
A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig
Last Years
In 1827 Lamb, his sister & Emma Isola, an orphan whom they had adopted, moved to Enfield
& later to Edmonton, where he died and was buried
Memorials of Charles Lamb was published in 1848
The memoirs of his friends record
Lambs gentle and engaging personality
His debilitating stammer
His burden of responsibility &
His whimsical humour
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
Essayist and critic
He was an outstanding student at grammar school, but lost interest in formal education
Having read Lyrical Ballads, he thought of presenting himself to Wordsworth in the Lake
District, but felt that he wouldnt make a favourable impression on his hero & embarked
instead on a tour of Wales
Completely destitute, he reached London in November 1802, suffered extreme deprivation &
befriended a young prostitute named Ann
The story of this London venture is told in the first part of The Confessions of an English
Opium Eater
The Confessions of an English Opium Eater
An account of his opium addiction interwoven with descriptions of his life
Controversial for its advocacy of the drug
Lofty, sonorous, impassioned prose
Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire were influenced by De Quinceys book
Youth
In 1803 he entered Worcester College, Oxford
He read voraciously, made few friends at college & frequently absented to London, where in
1804 he first took opium to alleviate a prolonged attack of facial neuralgia
He experimented with the drug over the next nine years
He had begun a correspondence with Wordsworth in 1803, and in 1805 and 1806 travelled to
the Lakes in order to visit him; on each occasion he turned back, overcome by feelings of his
own inadequacy
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A similar diffidence caused him to absent himself from his final examinations at Oxford in
1808
In 1807 he finally met Coleridge and through him Wordsworth
Early Career
By 1813 he was a confirmed opium-addict, which estranged him from the Wordsworths, who
also looked with disfavour on his affair with a local farmers daughter, whom he married in
1817, following the birth of a son in 1816
But for the need to support a family, De Quincey might never have become a writer
His work consisted almost entirely of contributions to magazines,and was collected only in
the last years of his life in the 14-volume Selections Grave and Gay from Writings Published
and Unpublished
From 1821 to 1824 he wrote mainly for The London Magazine, where Confessions of an
English Opium Eater appeared in 1821, bringing him immediate notoriety & recognition
Later Career
His 48 pieces for the periodical are remarkably varied both in quality & character, and
include articles on Goethe, Herder, Richter, Malthus, Rosicrucians etc, English & German
dictionaries, education, & one of his best critical essays, On the Knocking at the Gate in
Macbeth
Following the demise of The London Magazine he published his best essays in Blackwoods
Edinburgh Magazine for the next 23 years. This included the long historical series entitled
The Caesars, The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, an important article Rhetoric,& one of his
humorous masterpieces, On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts
His Gothic novel, Klosterheim, appeared in 1832
On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth
Discusses Act II, Scene 3 (Porter Scene) in Macbeth
The murder of King Duncan by Macbeth is followed by a loud knocking at the gate by
Macduff and Lennox, which opens the Porter Scene
De Quincey analyses the scene from a psychological perspective and explores how the
knocking reflects on the murderers state of mind
Later Career
Despite his productivity, De Quincey was poor
Sketches From the autobiography of an English Opium Eater (later entitled
Autobiographic Sketches)
Recollections of the Lakes and the Lakes Poets, which effectively set the seal on his
alienation from Wordsworth, Coleridge & Southey
The Revolt of the Tartars (1837)
The uncompleted series Suspiria de Profundis (1845) with its magnificent dream-visions
Two remarkable articles on The Glory of Motion & The Vision of Sudden Death, which make
up The English Mail Coach (1849)
The book, The Logic of Political Economy (1844)
De Quincey died in Edinburgh
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
Essayist, journalist and critic
Hazlitt was born at Kent, where his father, a friend of writers Joseph Priestley and Richard
Price, was a Unitarian minister
After a period in America the family settled at a village in Shropshire, and here Hazlitt spent
most of his youth
Hazlitt developed a distaste for the religious life and spent the next three years reading and
painting
Through his father he became acquainted with Coleridge, who introduced him to
Wordsworth, and although he was later to quarrel bitterly with them on politics and criticism,
it was largely under their influence that he developed as a writer
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Early Career
In London his friend Charles Lamb introduced him to Godwin & other literary figures, and he
began a long career as a prolific critic, journalist, essayist and lecturer
Political views
Radical and republican sympathies
Strongly supported the French Revolution
Deeply concerned about social conditions in England
Admired Napoleon indiscriminately
Early writings are on philosophy, politics, language
Early Criticism
In 1808 married and settled in London
He then left philosophy for literature & journalism, and became a theatrical critic for The
Morning Chronicle
Contributed essays to other periodicals
Characters of Shakespeare (1817)
Established him as a Shakespearean critic second only to Coleridge
Dedicated to Lamb; admired by Keats
Keats also admired The Round Table (written with Leigh Hunt; 1817) and The Lectures on the
English Poets (1818), which anticipated Keatss idea of the poet as possessing negative
capability
Hazlitts next important critical work was the Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819),
which was followed in the same year by his Political Essays addressing the conditions of the
poor
Scandals
In 1820 Hazlitt, who had been living apart from his wife, became passionately involved with
his landlords daughter
This attachment brought him close to insanity
After divorcing his wife in Scotland, he returned to London to discover that the young lady
had transferred her affection to another
His Liber Amoris (1823) is a transparent description of the whole affair
Characteristics, in imitation of La Rochefoucauld, appeared in the same year
Hazlitt made a spiteful attack on Shelley in his Table Talk (1821-22)
Later he made partial amends by contributing 5 pieces to The Liberal (1823-4), a journal
planned, with Hunt as editor, by Byron & Shelley in Italy, shortly before the latters death
Later Career
Then came two collections of essays containing some of his best work, The Spirit of the Age
(1825) and The Plain Speaker (1826)
The major project of his last years was his Life of Napoleon (4 vols, 1828-30), a rather poorly
researched & one-sided account which he considered his most important work
Hazlitts claim to literary fame is founded on his work as a descriptive and critical essayist
While his judgements are based on Romantic ideas, he was hostile to the ideas of
Wordsworth and Coleridge, and fought against their tendency to exempt the artist from
social and political responsibilities
The Spirit of the Age
Essays on the work and personalities of Hazlitts contemporaries
Contains his mature and balanced criticism of Godwin, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Lamb
and Scott

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Chapter 17

Victorian Poetry

The Victorian Age

Queen Victoria, the last Hanoverian monarch
Long reign from 1837 to 1901
Heyday of colonial trade and commerce
Exploding population
Society is considered to have been priggish (formal and pretentious), moralistic, and narrowminded
Early Victorian literature witnessed the continuing spirit of Romanticism
Later Victorian literature saw the rise of modernism
Major events during Victorias reign
Rise of Technology and Innovation
Industrial Revolution
The Great Exhibition of London
The Indian Rebellion (1857)
The Great Irish Famine (1846-52)
Irish Home Rule
The Chartist Movement (1838-48)
The Great Reform Acts (1832, 1867, 1884)
The Boer Wars
The Crimean War
Technology and Innovation
The blast furnace was the trailblazer in the Industrial Revolution
The spinning mill revolutionized textiles
Powerful steam engines became popular
The introduction of the railways
Made travel faster
Made it possible for large quantities of goods to be transported quickly and efficiently
over land
Industrial Revolution
Inaugurated the modern era of mass production and consumption
Began in England before it reached the other parts of Europe
Methods of production changed.
An age of materialism started
The main aim was to produce large quantities of goods as quickly as possible
Companies were highly profit-oriented
Working classes suffered from over-exploitation
The workers united and formed trade unions
The Great Exhibition of London
Great Britain was the leader of the industrial revolution and feeling very secure in that ideal.
To symbolize this industrial, military and economic superiority, the Great Exhibition of
London (1851) was held in Hyde Park in London in the specially constructed Crystal Palace.
Along with the feats of Britain, the technological achievements pioneered by the British in its
colonies and protectorates, and exhibits from less civilized countries were included
The Great Exhibition of London
The Exhibition was a nationalistic parading the accomplishments of Britain and gave
expression to the smug satisfaction or Victorianism
Millions of visitors who came from European cities
Among the 13,000 exhibits were the Jacquard loom, an envelope machine, steel-making
displays and a reaping machine from the United States
The profits from the event allowed for the foundation of public works such as the Albert Hall,
the Science Museum, the National History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Indian Rebellion of 1857
For the British, it is a mutiny of sepoys of the army of the East India Company
For the Indians, it is the First War of Independence
Many British were killed
Literature based on the Indian rebellion:
John Masters Nightrunners of Bengal (1951), a fictionalised account of the Rebellion
by a British Captain based in Bhowani, a fictionalised version of Jhansi
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JG Farrells The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), the siege of a fictional Indian town,
Krishnapur, during the Rebellion
Tennysons ballad The Defence of Lucknow (1879), an account of the heroic
resistance by the English soldiers
Ireland in the Victorian Period
While the population of England doubled, that of Ireland halved
Ireland did not partake in the Industrial Revolution
Ireland also endured a devastating famine from 1845-1847, as the result of a failed potato
crop
Large numbers of the Irish emigrated to Britain, the Americas and Australia
Irish Catholics blamed the British government
'The Irish Question' became a burning issue and home rule campaigns abounded in Ireland,
though it did not materialize
The Chartist Movement (1838-48)
In 1837, six Members of the Parliament and six working men formed a committee and
published the People's Charter in 1838, which demanded Parliamentary reforms and voting
rights.
This was followed by many working class movements for political reform between 1838 and
1848, which are together called the Chartist Movements
Chartism was a continuation of fight in the 18 th century against corruption and for
democracy in the industrial society
The Great Reform Acts (1832, 1867, 1884)
The three Reform Acts, of 1832, 1867, and 1884, all extended voting rights to previously
disfranchised citizens, leading to controversies
Women were not allowed to vote until 18 years after Victoria's death
In works such as Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, authors debated whether this shift of power
would create democracy that would, in turn, destroy high culture
From the 1840s onwards, several Factory Acts were also passed to provide better working
conditions in factories
Two Wars
The Boer Wars (18801881 and 18991902)
The Dutch had established a colony in South Africa, and came to be called Boers.
The British drove the Dutch settlers out in the Boer Wars, and South Africa was made
a British dominion.
The Crimean War (1853-56)
Russia lost to France, Britain and the Ottoman Empire
Fight was over the rights of Christians in the Holy Land, (controlled by the Ottoman
Empire), and due to Britains and Frances unwillingness to let Russia gain more power
The Crimean War, the setting for Tennysons 'Charge of the Light Brigade', altered the
balance of power in Europe and set the stage for I World War
Socio-Cultural Background
England became
the leading industrial power in Europe
an empire that occupied more than a quarter of the earth's surface
A mood of nationalist pride and optimism about future progress
Expanding, wealthy middle class
Unregulated industrialization leading to the deterioration of rural England, shoddy
urbanization, and massive poverty concentrated in slums
Socio-Cultural Background
Impatience with new ideas on the one hand; numerous intellectual activities on the other
Victorian Dilemma: In religion, literature and philosophy the Victorian period was an age of
doubt.
Conflict between science & religion following the publication of Darwin (1809-82)'s
Origin of Species (1859)
Conflict between the industrial (urban) and the agrarian (rural) ways of life
Conflict between oligarchy and monarchy
New socio-political theories
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903, Social Darwinism)
JS Mill (1806-73, Utilitarianism)
Positivism (August Comte)

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The view that all valid knowledge must be based on the methods of empirical
investigation established by the natural sciences
The woman question
The early feminist agitation for equal status and rights
Victorian dress reform or rational dress movement urged women to adopt simplified
garments for athletic activities such as bicycling or swimming
New Woman fiction
Literary Features
Two trends
(1) Insistence on morality, propriety; revolt against the grossness of the earlier age;
respect for convention (Tennyson and Dickens)
(2) Revolt against convention; conservatism (Carlyle, Arnold, Thackeray, Browning)
The revolt strengthened with the age: In the Pre-Raphaelites, there is no morality
except the authors regard for his art
Literary Features
New ideas propagated in science, religion and politics reflected in literature
The spirit of scepticism is found in Tennyson's In Memoriam and Idylls of the King, in Arnolds
meditative poetry & Carlyle
New religious and ethical thought emerged in Oxford Movement (Cardinal Newman) which
reflected widespread discontent with Church of England
Literary Features
After the Education Act of 1870, elementary education became compulsory
This gave rise to an enormous reading public
At this time, printing and paper became cheap
These developments led to a greater demand for the novel
Many writers came under international influences
American-British writers interaction (Carlyle and Transcendentalists, Henry James)
German influence (Carlyle, Arnold)
Italian influence (Browning, Swinburne, Morris, Meredith)
Alfred Tennyson (1809-92)
Born as one of eight children in the gloomy and neurotic household of the local vicar
Most of Tennyson's early education was under the direction of his father
Due to family background, certain themes recurred:
madness, murder, avarice, miserliness
social climbing, marriages arranged for profit instead of love
estrangements between families and friends
At Cambridge
Entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827
First volume of poetry, Poems by Two Brothers (1827)
Became member of the club called Apostles, which gave him much needed friends
and confidence
Won the Chancellors Gold medal for Timbuctoo
Formed a close friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam
Poems, Chiefly Lyrical appeared in 1830
The next year his father, a past victim of severe physical and mental breakdown, died, and
the young Tennyson left the university without degree
Timbuctoo (1829)
Written when Tennyson was 19
Won the Chancellors Gold Medal at Cambridge
Reworking of his earlier poem Armageddon (a poem written when he was 15, which offers
a vision of the distant human future, in outer space)
About a legendary city in Africa
At that time, European colonization of the interior of Africa was beginning
Optimistic poem showing the modern expectation that the human race, guided by reason
and science, would come together and build a better world for everyone
Tennyson didnt think this poem was good.
Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830)
The Kraken
Irregular sonnet

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About a massive legendary creature from Icelandic saga that dwells at the bottom of
the sea
Ode to Memory
Picturesque description of landscape, as in later poetry
Mariana
Based on the character Mariana in Measure for Measure
Theme of a woman waiting for her lover's return
Typical style: brilliant use of objects and landscapes to convey a state of strong
emotion
The Young Poet
Poems (1832-1833) received a savage criticism from John Wilson Croker of The Quarterly
Review
There followed the Ten Years Silence, a period of neurotic refusal to publish, when
Tennysons life lacked direction and his emotional instability seemed unusually apparent
Arthur Hallam fell in love with Tennysons sister, Emily
In 1830, Tennyson and Hallam went to Pyrenees in France-Spain border with a plan to make
money.
Poems inspired by life at Pyrenees
Oenone
Dramatic monologue
Describes the Greek mythological character Oenone and her witnessing of the events
in the life of her lover, Paris, as he is involved in the events of the Trojan War
The Lotos-Eaters
Dramatic monologue on Ulysses adventures
Describes Ulysses mariners who, upon eating the lotos fruit, are put into a lethargic
state and isolated from the outside world; argue that death is a completion of life
Biblical overtones; but the message is a reversal: here, the fruit offers a release from
the life of labour
Adversities
Tennysons poetry was meeting with very adverse criticism
John Wilson Croker of the Quarterly Review, who had devastated Keats, accused Tennyson
and his poetry of lack of masculinity and considered him a member of the Cockney School,
for imitating Keats.
Meanwhile, Arthur Hallam died in Vienna of a congenital brain disease in 1833, at the age of
22.
Poverty, madness, epilepsy in the family
Family moved to Epping
Tennyson began his long and interrupted engagement to Emily Sellwood and made a
disastrous investment in the woodcarving scheme of his friend Dr Allen
Greatest Short Poems
The adversities inspired Tennysons greatest poems:
Ulysses, Morte dArthur, Tithonus, Tiresias, Break, break, break and the many
elegies later collected into In Memoriam (1850)
Tennyson felt compelled to publish because of pressures over copyright and prodding of
friends like Edward Fitzgerald
Poems (1842)
First volume comprised earlier revised poems: The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos-Eaters
The second contained new poems: Locksley Hall, Ulysses
The Lady of Shalott
An Arthurian story in ballad form, depicting tragic love.
The story of the Lady of Shalott, separated from the outside world because she is cursed to
remain in her tower in an island beside a river flowing to Camelot, and should not even look
out of the window.
A large mirror within her chamber reflects the outside world, and she weaves a tapestry
illustrating its wonders by means of the mirror's reflection.
Seeing Sir Lancelot riding down to Camelot, the Lady leaves her loom to look down on him
directly from her window, which immediately fulfills the curse. Her tapestry begins to unravel
and the mirror cracks.
She tries to escape in a boat, and she must die as a result.
Ulysses
Dramatic monologue; companion-piece of The Lotos-Eaters
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Ulysses declares that there is little point in his staying home by this still hearth with his old
wife, doling out rewards and punishments for the unnamed masses in his kingdom.
His spirit yearns constantly for new experiences that will broaden his horizons; he wishes to
follow knowledge like a sinking star and forever grow in wisdom and in learning.
This poem also concerns the poets own personal journey, and is an elegy for his deeply
cherished friend
to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield, became a motto for the Victorians. For them
Ulysses was a model of individual self-assertion and the Romantic rebellion against
bourgeois conformity.
Morte dArthur
In 1833, Tennyson proposed to write an epic about King Arthur
By 1838, he had completed one of the twelve books, entitled Morte dArthur, which
chronicled the kings death.
He published this single book in 1842 within the framework of the poem, The Epic, which
consists of 51 lines that precede Morte dArthur and thirty lines that follow it.
The Epic provides a modern context for the Arthurian story by casting it as a manuscript
read aloud by a poet to three of his friends following their Christmas-Eve revelry.
After Tennyson completed all twelve books of Idylls of the King in 1869, he discarded this
framing poem and retitled Morte dArthur as The Passing of Arthur.
Tithonus
Dramatic monologue based on Greek mythology.
Initially conceived as a companion-poem to Ulysses
Tithonus was once a beautiful man who was chosen by Aurora, the goddess of dawn, as her
lover.
She granted him immortality but not youth.
Tithonus appeals to Aurora to take back the gift of immortality.
He now realizes the danger in not belonging to the rest of humanity.
This poem was one of a set of 4 works (including Morte dArthur, Ulysses, and Tiresias)
that Tennyson wrote shortly after Arthur Henry Hallams death in 1833.
Locksley Hall
Dramatic Monologue with autobiographical overtones
The emotions of a weary soldier who comes to his childhood home, the fictional Locksley Hall
Theme of disappointed love; evils of worldly marriage
Scorn of industrialized world, but accepts change at the end
The Princess, A Medley (1847)
Tennyson's first attempt at a long narrative poem
Serio-comic poem in blank verse
Theme: education of women and the establishment of female colleges
Presents a ladies academy & a mutinously intellectual princess at the head
The new woman
Tennyson seems to assert that men and women do not have identical roles in the society
Annus Mirabilis
1850 was a great year fro Tennyson
Published his most enduring work, In Memoriam
Succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate
Finally married Emily Sellwood
In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)
A group of 132 elegies written over a period of 17 years
In memory of Arthur Henry Hallam
Original title: The Way of the Soul
Search for hope after great lossVictorian theme
Long series of meditations on life & death
The poets anxieties about change, evolution, immortality
Epilogue is a marriage song on the occasion of the wedding of Tennysons youngest sister,
Cecilia
Iambic tetrameter quatrains rhyming abba called "In Memoriam stanza"
A famous expression Nature red in tooth and claw
More Poems
In 1853 Tennyson and Emily moved to Farringford on the Isle of Wight, where his privacy was
constantly invaded

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Because of his obsessive shyness Tennyson invariably resigned or withdrew from public
engagements
The poetry continued to pour forth
Maud and Other Poems (1855) included The Charge of the Light Brigade and Ode on the
Death of the Duke of Wellington
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)
Describes a disastrous historical military engagement during the initial phase of the Crimean
War fought between Turkey and Russia (1854-56)
The story of a brigade consisting of 600 soldiers who rode on horseback into the valley of
death
Maud (1855)
Narrator falls in love with Maud
Brother forbids alliance
Meets her secretly in the garden (Come into the garden, Maud)
Kills brother, flees to France
Maud also dies
Poet becomes mad and imagines himself dead
Regains sanity and leaves to fight in Crimean War
Imperialist verse
The Defence of Lucknow
Describes the British defence of the Residency that was attacked during the Siege of
Lucknow by Indian mutineers in 1857 (during the First War of Independence)
HavelockNovember 25th, 1857
Another response to the 1857 Mutiny in India
Response to the death of Henry Havelock, one of the British heroes of the defence of
Lucknow
Arthurian Poems and Popularity
In 1859 began The Idylls of the King

In 1864 he published Enoch Arden in a volume which also included Tithonus

Tennyson was extraordinarily popular by this time

He refused a baronetcy four times, though he did eventually agree to a title and took his
seat in the Lords in 1833

Received honorary doctorates from various universities

Also in the 1860s the Tennysons built another home, in Aldworth near Haslemere, and he
developed an interest in the Metaphysical Society

At the end of the decade he published The Holy Grail and Other Poems (1869, dated 1870)

Idylls of the King (1859)

The 1859 edition contained only four ("Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere") of the
eventual twelve idylls

Cycle of twelve narrative poems in blank verse

Last of these "Morte d'Arthur"

Tales of King Arthur and the Round Table

From Arthurs coming to power to his death at the hands of Mordred, the traitor
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Arthurs attempt and failure to lift up mankind and create a perfect kingdom

Allegory of the societal conflicts in Britain

Dedication to recently deceased Prince Albert

Poetic Drama and Last Poems

Wrote poetic drama in later years

In 1875 Tennyson published his first play, Queen Mary

A group of dramatic works followed, including Harold (1876), Becket (1884) and The Cup
(1881), which were not great successes

Prose play The Promise of May (only prose work; shows Tennysons growing despondency
and resentment at the religious, moral, and political tendencies of the age)

Later poemsmuse occasionally nodding; sharper tone; discontent with the artifices of his
time

Perhaps no poets reputation has received and withstood so severe a criticism since his
death

Tennysons Image and Influence

Embodiment of his age

Poet Laureate and official poetic spokesman for the reign of Victoria

Victoria considered him the perfect poet of love and loss

Inspired the Pre-Raphaelites

TS Eliot called him the poet of metric and melancholia

Tennysons Style
Subject of Tennyson's Poetry

Earlier poems lyric and legendary narrative

Later poems are of ethical interest

Tennyson was no deep thinker; was content to mirror the feelings / aspirations of the
time

Tennyson's Craft

Took great care and skill in perfecting the form & technique

Mixed sound and sense (great musical quality)

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Keatsian descriptive power. Ornate description, pictorial effect, sumptuous imagery (created
a lovely image by carefully amassing detail)

Robert Browning (1812-89)

The son of a scholarly father, Browning was largely educated at home, and read widely

At 16 he began to study at the newly established London University, but returned home after
a brief period

He wrote verse from an early age, taking as his literary hero Shelley, who influenced much of
his work and prompted him to adopt vegetarian & atheist principles for a time

In 1833 he published Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession

Early Works
Browning then turned to the dramatic monologue, which characterizes his best work

His next poem, Paracelsus (1835), deals with the life of a Swiss alchemist, a subject
suggested by the poets friend Amde de Ripert-Monclar

In 1837 Browning wrote a play, Strafford, for the actor William Macready

In spite of the efforts of Macready & John Forster, who assisted in revising the work for the
stage, it was not a popular success

After a visit to Italy (1838) he published Sordello (1840),which concentrated on the

incidents in the development of a soul as evinced in the life of a poet who was Dantes
contemporary

Pauline (1833)
Subtitled A Fragment of a Confession

Published anonymously

Introspective long poem

Influence of (and homage to) Shelley

It was briefly noticed in a few journals

John Stuart Mill famously remarked that he found in Pauline a more intense & morbid selfconsciousness than I ever knew in any sane human being

Paracelsus (1835)
Story of a 16th century alchemist

Monodrama* without action (*a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or
singer, usually portraying one character)

Heros unquenchable thirst for that breadth of knowledge which is beyond the grasp of one
man
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Brownings predominant ideas: life without love a failure; Gods will, more than human
conjecture, is behind everything

Sordello
Long poem in heroic couplets

The imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard introduced in Dantes Divine Comedy

Relationship between art and life

Obscure style which led to hostile reception

Dramatic Poetry
From 1841 to 1846 Brownings work was published in a series bearing the general title of
Bells and Pomegranates

These included Pippa Passes (1841), Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
(1845), and some plays

Brownings best known poems date from this early period:

Porphyrias Lover, Johannes Agricola

My Last Duchess, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

The Pied Piper of the Hamelin

How They Brought The Good News From Ghent to Aix

Home Thoughts from Abroad

The Bishop Orders His Tomb in St Praxeds Church

The Flight of the Duchess

Pippa Passes
Verse drama

The first in a series of dramatic pieces

About a woman who works as a silkwinder

Concluding lines: Gods in his heavenAlls right with the world!

Controversial for its frank portrayal of disreputable characters, and for sexual frankness

Marriage
Browning paid a visit to Italy in 1844, returning to take part in the admiration of Elizabeth
Barretts poems that year

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Elizabeth was six years his elder, a semi-invalid in her domineering fathers house in
Wimpole Street

He corresponded with her; met her; admired her poems

Secretly married her and eloped to Italy

The Brownings settled in Florence where their son was born

They lived there until Elizabeths death in 1861.

Brownings Characters

Fra Lippo Lippi (15th century Florentine painter and monk being interrogated by some
Medici watchmen, who have caught him out at night)

Andrea del Sarto (Renaissance painter in Florence talking to his nagging wife Lucrezia)

Caliban Upon Setebos (Shakespeare's Caliban talks about the world and his god Setebos)

Rabbi Ben Ezra (Jewish mathematician and scholar; theme of old age)

Begins: Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be...

Brownings Characters
Abt Vogler (18th-19th century German music composer)

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxeds Church (a Renaissance bishop in his
deathbed)

My Last Duchess (recently widowed Duke of Ferrara)

The Grammarians Funeral (The speaker is a disciple of an accomplished grammarian who

has recently died)

Home Thoughts, From Abroad (A homesick traveller longs for every detail of his beloved
home)

Porphyrias Lover (speaker strangles his beautiful lover to preserve the moment of love)

The Ring and the Book

In Florence Browning had discovered in a stall an old yellow book of documents relating to
a 17th century murder trial & he now began to contemplate his Roman Murder-Story

The murder story, The Ring and the Book, was published in monthly instalments in 18681869

The poem received complimentary reviews & Browning, king of the mystics, was at last
popular with the reading public

The discursive story of the murder of a young wife Pompilia by her worthless husband, told
by nine different people
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Last Works
His vitality continued undiminished as he produced a remarkable series of later works, too
frequently undervalued, ending with Asolando: Fancies and Facts (1889)
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

Brownings prolific output during these years nevertheless left him time to produce a
translation of Aeschylus Agamemnon (1877), to watch anxiously over the career of his
painter son, and to led a demanding social life.

Death
The foundation of the Browning Society (1881) is an indication of the status he had achieved
as sage and celebrity in old age

He died while visiting his son in Venice and, his wish to be buried in Florence providing
impossible to fulfill, his body was returned to England & buried in Westminster Abbey

Brownings Style
Obscurity; sometimes rugged, angular style

At its best, noble dignity & verbal music

Variety of metrical forms

Cleverly manipulated rhythmic effects

Didnt care for beauty of description for its own sake; beauty of expression often captured in
a single image

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)

The eldest of the 12 children of Edward Moulton Barrett & his wife Mary

Spent most of her childhood & youth at the estate of Hope End, near Malvern

A precocious & ardent student, Elizabeth Barrett studied with a governess & shared her
brothers lessons in Latin & Greek

At the age of 15 she suffered a serious illness

She began to write verse at an early age

Marriage
Nevertheless, she embarked on a productive period, writing poems and essays for The
Athenaeum

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Poems (1844), which included A Drama of Exile & Lady Geraldines Courtship received
considerable acclaim

One of her admirers was Robert Browning, whose verse she had complimented in Lady
Geraldine

A correspondence soon developed, growing rapidly into love

In order to avoid her fathers expected prohibition, the poets were married secretly in
September 1846 and left for Italy a week later

They settled at Casa Guidi in Florence, where their son Robert was born

In 1850 she published a further volume of Poems among them the Sonnets from the
Portuguese, written during her courtship

This was followed by Casa Guidi Windows (1851)

On the death of Wordsworth in 1850, The Athenaeum had proposed Elizabeth Barrett
Browning as an appropriate successor to the post of Poet Laureate, but it was not until the
publication of Aurora Leigh (1856) that her recognition as the foremost woman poet in
English was secure

Poems before Congress (1860), which supported the cause of Italian unification, was
branded as hysterical & unwomanly

Saddened by the death of her sister Henrietta & the Italian leader, Cavour, she fell ill and
died at Casa Guidi

Robert Browning prepared her Last Poems (1861)for posthumous publication

Sonnets from the Portuguese (pub 1850)

Collection of 44 love sonnets

Written during the period leading to marriage with Robert Browning in 1846

Elizabeth did not want to publish them for being too personal

Urged by Robert Browning to publish

Appeared as translations of foreign sonnets

Elizabeth admired Portuguese poet Lus de Cames

Browning called her by the pet-name "my little Portuguese"

One famous sonnet: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

Aurora Leigh
Longest and most innovative work

Epic verse novel in blank verse

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Depicts a woman-poet-hero whose countrys destiny depends on the balance of her deeds

Matthew Arnold (1822-88)

For a detailed biography of Matthew Arnold, please see the chapter "Victorian Fiction and
Prose"

Son of the famous headmaster of Rugby School, Thomas Arnold for whom he wrote the poem
Rugby Chapel

Legitimate fame is as a prose writer and critic

Arnold's poems are not numerous, and not of high quality

Classical themes in meditative & melancholy mood (this is a modernist strain)

Themes of alienation, stoicism, despair, spiritual emptiness

Apostle of sanity & culture

Poetic Career
Arnolds poetic career began in 1849 with the publication of The Strayed Reveller and Other
Poems, by A (1849)

Poetic career was over but by New Poems (1867)

Major works:

Empedocles On Etna and Other Poems (1852)

Poems (1853)

Poems Second Series (1855) and

Merope (1858, a classical tragedy)

Arnold: Poetry
Lyrics

Poetic dramas

Empedocles on Etna, Merope

Narrative poems

Marguerite poems, The Forsaken Merman, Dover Beach, Scholar Gipsy,

Philomela

Tristram & Iseult, Sohrab & Rustum

Elegies
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Thyrsis, Scholar Gipsy, Memorial Verses

Dover Beach
The speaker is on the beach, watching the calm sea and the full tide

The moon's bright light shines 0n the French Coast across the English Channel and
disappears, while the cliffs of England glimmer.

The speaker calls his companion to the window to enjoy the sweet night air. He invites her to
listen to the grating of the pebbles as they are flung back and forth by the waves, bringing
"the eternal note of sadness in"

The poet remarks that Sophocles had heard this ebb and flow of human misery, which they
are hearing now.

Dover Beach
The Sea of Faith was was full, and lay around the earth like a girdle

Yet now, the speaker hears only the melancholy roar of the sea of faith

The poet tells his beloved that they should be honest with each other, for the world that they
live in, which looks so beautiful and new, and lay before them like a land of dreams, does not
have joy, love or spiritual light, or certainty or peace or help in times of trouble.

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Thyrsis
Pastoral elegy to commemorate the death of Arnold's friend and poet Arthur Hugh Clough in
1861

Clough is presented as Thyrsis, and Arnold as Corydon

Thyrsis is a character from Virgil Eclogues who lost a singing match with Corydon

Famous are the lines in which Arnold recalls the Oxford countryside the two of them explored
as students in the 1840s

The Scholar Gipsy

A pastoral elegy based on a 17th century story found in Joseph Glanvill's The Vanity of
Dogmatizing

Companion-poem of "Thyrsis"

An impoverished Oxford student was dejected by the fret and fever of modernity, and left his
studies to join a band of gipsies, who had traditional learning and original imagination

Rumours are that the scholar gipsy is not subject to ageing and death, and was again seen
from time to time around Oxford

Arnold ends with an epic simile of a Tyrian merchant seaman who flees from Greek
competitors to seek a new lifein Iberia.
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Empedocles on Etna
Dramatic poem by Matthew Arnold, published anonymously in 1852 in the collection
Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems.

In Poems 1853, he excluded this long poem, and explained in the Preface that the mood of
elegiac gloom and helpless suffering which "finds no vent in action" in the poem were too
depressing

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-61)

Poems charged with the deep-seated despair & despondency of Arnolds works

Typical example of the Victorian intellectual seeking in vain for moral and metaphysical
certainties

Most original work: The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich (1848), a "Long Vacation Pastoral" on
Oxford set in the Scottish Highands

American Contemporaries
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Walt Whitman (1819-92)

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Formed in 1848 by painter poets D. G. Rossetti (1828-82), W. H. Hunt (1827-1910) & John
Millais (1829-96)

Influence of John Ruskin

Revolt against 18th century academism and the canons of the Royal Academy; against
realism

Dedicated to recovering the purity of medieval art which Raphael and the Renaissance had
destroyed

Attempt to return to the truthfulness, simplicity, accuracy & spirit of devotion of Italian
painting before Raphael & Italian Renaissance

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
In painting it is distinguished by its love of bright colour, vividly naturalistic detail and
subjects drawn from religion or literature (Dante, Shakespeare, Keats & Arthurian Literature)

In poetry, Pre-Raphaelitism found congenial precedents in Keatss La Belle Dame Sans Merci
and the work of Tennyson
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The movement was as short-lived as its periodical The Germ

The Fleshly School of Poetry

In a review-essay titled "The Fleshly School of Poetry", Scottish author Robert Buchanan
castigated the PRB (Rossetti, Morris and Swinburne) for its detailed description of scenes and
frank treatment of sexuality

Rossetti replied with The Stealthy School of Criticism in The Athenaeum, December 1871

Swinburne replied with a pamphlet, Under the Microscope, in 1872.

DG Rossetti
Poet, painter and translator

Father was an Italian patriot exiled from Naples and mother was daughter of Byrons
physician, Dr John Polidori

Thus Rossettis background and heritage were essentially Italian

Studied painting

The PRB
Met William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and these friendships led in the autumn of
1848 to the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)

Rossetti worked with unusual consistency in the late 1840s and throughout the 1850s both
as painter and poet and attempted to revolutionized Victorian art

His paintings were highly symbolic, spiritually charged and suggestive of other, remote,
worlds

Rossettis poetry, like his painting, was detailed, symbolic, concerned with the remote and
sometimes erotic; it was often pseudo-medieval cast in ballad form and sometimes archaic
in language

Major Works
His major poems included Jenny, a dramatic monologue about a London prostitute, his bestknown poem The Blessed Damozel, as well as early studies of Dante at Verona, The
Brides Prelude and Sister Helen

In the 1850s Rossetti made drawings for Poems by Alfred Tennyson (1857) in which Millais
and Holman Hunt also participated

He also undertook some mural decorations at Oxford

The Blessed Damozel

Written when DGR was 18 years old

The poem describes the damozel observing her lover from heaven, and her unfulfilled
yearning for their reunion in heaven.

Partly inspired by Poe's "The Raven"

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Medievalism

Pictorial realism and symbolic overtones

Union of flesh and spirit

Sensuousness and religiousness

The Blessed Damozel: Summary

The Damozel in heaven overlooks earth and thinks of her lover.

To the Damozel Time seemed to last forever because she was without her love.

Then the lover on earth talks about his beloved.

The next few stanzas describe heaven, and other lovers reunite around her as she sits and
watches alone.

In stanzas ten and eleven, her lover can hear her and feel her, and describes the sound of
her voice like a bird's song

As she waits at the gates of heaven, she dreams of the day that they ("we two") will be
together and present themselves in the beauty and glory of God.

The Blessed Damozel: Summary

The Damozel wants her love to be ideal and perfect, but it is not possible, now. The two
worlds separating them doesn't keep them apart in thought, but it is not possible to be
together. However, she wishes that their love be as it was on earth with the approval of
Christ the Lord.

The Damozel finally realizes that she can have nothing until the time comes. The Damozel
suddenly becomes peaceful and lets the light take her. She will enter heaven without her
love. Her lover on earth also knows this.

Physically apart, but together at heart, there is nothing that can be done but hope and pray.
Therefore the Damozel "laid her face between her hands, And wept."

The Oxford Murals

Commissioned by John Ruskin

Arthurian themes

Done for the Oxford Union with several of his PRB friends

As the walls were unprepared with plastering or underpainting, the murals soon deteriorated
and later restoration did little to evoke the originals

Two Stunners
In Oxford he met Jane Burden for whom he developed an obsessive love, and who was later
unhappily married to William Morris but continued to play an important role in Rossettis
private life

281

She was one of the many stunners, to use the PRB term, whom the poets and painters
made their subject: beautiful women with red-gold hair, attenuated fingers, faintly, sulky
mouths and swan-like necks

Another stunner was Elizabeth Siddal, whom Rossetti had met and fallen in love with in 1850

They were unable to marry until 1860, and Lizzie died from an overdose of laudanum in 1862

Morbid Years
Although Rossetti had not been a faithful husband or lover, Lizzie's loss affected him deeply
and an increasing morbidity became apparent in his work

However, he published The Early Italian Poets (1861; revised as Dante and His Circle, 1874),
translations from some 60 writers which demonstrate another side of his gifts

In the 1860s, too, Rossettis painting yielded to decorative art he produced designs in
stained glass, furniture, and tiles for William Morriss firm and then, as eye strain developed,
he turned increasingly to poetry

Poems (1870) drew on the manuscripts he had first, in a fit of remorse, interred with Lizzie
Siddal but later exhumed

Last Years
Shortly thereafter he was attacked by Robert Buchanan in a scurrilous pamphlet, The
Fleshly School of Poetry (1872),to which he replied with The Stealthy School of Criticism

By now increasing illness, morbidity and paranoia beset him, and in 1872 he attempted
suicide

Yet he published Ballads and Sonnets (1881), which included a sonnet sequence, The House
of Life

Chloral, imagined treacheries and groundless suspicions took their toll and, a near recluse,
he died shortly before his 54thbirthday

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

Alcoholic and highly excitable character

Cared for by his friend Theodore Watts-Dunton

Swinburne followed the poetic style of Rossetti but was not as successful

When his work Poems and Ballads appeared in 1866, he was much blamed for moral
reasons.

Because of theelements of homosexuality and bestiality in his works, he is classified as a

decadent poet

Tristram of Lyonesse is usually considered to be his best work. It tells the undying story of
Tristram and Iseult.

Atalanta in Calydon is a closet drama.

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William Morris (1834-1896)

Textile designer, architectural designer, poet, novelist, essayist and painter, translator from
Icelandic

Major Poetry

The Defence of Guenevere

The Life and Death of Jason

The Earthly Paradise

Major Fiction ("prose romances" set in a fantasy world)

News from Nowhere (1890, utopian socialism and science fiction)

The Wood Beyond the World

The Well at the Worlds End

Other members
Christina Rossetti (1830-94)

William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919, brother of DG Rossetti and Christina Rossetti)

FG Stephens

James Collinson

Thomas Woolner

Coventry Patmore

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883)

One of the greatest translators of the time

He translated six of Calderons plays, Agamemnon of Aeschylus, and the Rubaiyat of the
Persian poet Omar Khayyam.

At first the Rubaiyat attracted no attention.

When Rossetti discovered the Rubaiyat in 1861, it slowly became famous

In 1868, a new revised edition appeared

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. (famous lines)

The Rubaiyats
Romantic melancholy (anticipating Arnold)
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Epicurean elements (anticipating fin-de-siecle poets)

Rebelled against certain Victorian values

Frank sexuality

Pessimism about the human condition (at the time the translation appeared, the
Victorians were wallowing in a sense of superiority and optimism following the Great
Exhibition)

Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra" seems to be a reply

Rabbi sees life as perfect and thanks God that he is a man

Chapter 18

Victorian Fiction, Prose and Drama

In his preface to The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James compares fiction to a house of vast
proportions:
The house of fiction has in short not one window,
but a million
The Victorian Genres
The novel was the predominant genre of the Victorian period
Other genres of the period:
Autobiography
Melodrama
Satire, Comic operas
The Essay
Art and Literary Criticism
The Victorian Novel
Idealized portraits of difficult lives; hard work, love and luck win in the end; poetic justice
Scepticism, pessimism vis--vis prosperity, optimism
Realism and Naturalism
Serialization and popular nature
Sensation novels, detective fiction
Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle. Bram Stoker
Concern with history, society, economics, philosophy
Writing for children
Lewis Carroll, RM Ballantyne, Anna Sewell, RL Stevenson, Thomas Hughes, Rudyard
Kipling
Some Major Trends / Movements
The Social Novel (The Condition of England Novel)
The Woman Question (New Woman)
Utilitarianism
Oxford Movement
Darwinism
Positivism
Aestheticism
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The Social Novel

Realistic portrayal of social life
Arose in the 1830s-40s as a reaction to the socio-economic upheavals following the Reform
Act of 1832.
Against rapid industrialization
Against the abuses of the government and factory owners
Depicted the sufferings of the poor
Referred to as industrial novel or Condition of England novel
Condition of England
The phrase, the Condition of England Question, was used by Thomas Carlyle in Chartism
(1839)
Chartism was a working-class political reformist movement that sought universal male
suffrage and other parliamentary reforms.
Condition of England novels considered the question of how to resolve the tension
between the new working classes and the owners
Condition of England in Writing
Elizabeth Barrett Brownings poem The Cry of the Children portrays the suffering of
children in mines and factories.
Friedrich Engels The Condition of the Working Class (1845) was written after he spent
twenty months observing industrial conditions in Manchester, and led to the writing of The
Communist Manifesto (1848)
More Condition of England Novels
Frances Trollopes Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy (1839-40)
Benjamin Disraelis Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845)
Elizabeth Gaskells Mary Barton (1848)
Charlotte Bronts Shirley (1849)
Charles Kingsleys Alton Locke (1850)
Charles Dickens Hard Times (1854) depicts the harshness of existence in the industrial
towns through the fictional city of Coketown
The Woman Question
The Woman Question, raised by Mary Wollstonecraft in her pamphlet, A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792), influenced the mid- and late-Victorian feminists.
These early feminists urged upper-class women to obtain a proper education and profession
in order to make themselves financially independent.
The Woman Question in Literature
The novelists Frances Trollope and Elizabeth Gaskell urged upper-class women to become
active in the public sphere.
Charlotte Bront and George Eliot criticized social marginalization of women
The New Woman
The term was coined by Sarah Grand in 1894
A cultural icon of the of the fin de sicle
A departure from the stereotypical Victorian woman
Intelligent, educated, emancipated, independent and self-supporting
Not only middle-class, but also factory and office workers
Expressed dissatisfaction with the contemporary position of women in marriage and in
society
New Woman Novels: Features
Heroines who fight against the perception of woman as angel in the house and challenge
the old codes of conduct and morality
Deal frankly with sex and marriage as well as womens desires for independence and
fulfilment.
The New Woman writers indicated three major areas in which women felt oppressed:
marriage, labour market and suffrage.
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Conventional marriage is viewed as a degrading and oppressive institution because women

suffered inferior status and were often victims of domestic violence
New Woman Novelists: Women
Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm, 1883
Feminist bildungsroman
An assertive heroine who can shape her life
Also deals with sexual initiation, premarital sex, freethinking, gender identity, rejection
of marriage, etc
Sarah Grand, and George Egerton
Criticized the representations of Ideal Womanhood
Amelia Sedley in Vanity Fair (1847)
Esther Summerson in The Bleak House
Bold, independent female characters modelled on New Woman
C. Bronts Shirley; Elizabeth Gaskells Margaret Hale
New Woman Novelists: Men
George Merediths Diana of the Crossways (1885)
A passionate and intelligent upper-class young woman who is trapped into an abusive
and degrading marriage
George Gissings Odd Women (1893)
Focuses on the fates of single women and shows that the patriarchal society is unable
to accept the increasing presence of new independent women in the public sphere.
Grant Allens The Woman Who Did (1895, popular)
Combines the free-love theme with an anti-marriage message
The Cambridge-educated heroine of the novel refuses to marry her lover, but gives
birth to her illegitimate daughter
New Woman and Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy praised the New Woman writers
Created a memorable and tragic female character in his last novel, Jude the Obscure (1896)
Sue Bridehead, an enlightened liberal New Woman, is a victim of oppressive Victorian double
moral standard
Like the New Woman female authors, Hardy objects to the Victorian view of the sacredness
of the institution of marriage
In Jude, he proposes the abolition of conventional marriage because it is not in harmony with
human nature
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its
contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed
among all people.
It is thus a form of Consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is
determined by its outcome.
Utilitarianism: Origins
The origins of utilitarianism are often traced as far back as the Greek philosopher Epicurus,
but, as a specific school of thought, it is generally credited to Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Proposed many legal and social reforms; expounded an underlying moral principle on
which they should be based
Attempted to create a Pannomion, a utilitarian code of law
Greatest happiness principle
All poetry is misrepresentation (Poetry exaggerates.)
Mill and Utilitarianism
Benthams foremost proponent was James Mill, a significant philosopher in his day and the
father of John Stuart Mill.
The younger Mill was educated according to Benthams principles, including transcribing and
summarizing much of his fathers work while still in his teens.
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John Stuart Mill formed the Utilitarian Society in 1823, which was a highly controversial
movement
The Greatest Good Principle
Utilitarianism is described by the phrase the greatest happiness of the greatest number is
the only right and proper end of government
Bentham understood happiness to be pleasure as against pain
It has been characterized as a quantitative and reductionist approach to ethics
JS Mill defended Bentham with his qualitative categorization of pleasures; distinguished
between happiness and contentment
Mills Definition of Pleasure
In his famous short work, Utilitarianism, JS Mill argues that cultural, intellectual and spiritual
pleasures are of greater value than mere physical pleasure.
It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied
than a fool satisfied
This quote demonstrates Mills distinction between higher and lower pleasures, and defends
Bentham and his father in their focus on happiness
Attitude to Social Reform
The utilitarians supported reforms to improve conditions for the lower classes because they
thought the more workers are happy, the more successful an industry will be.
However, they also supported Adam Smiths concept of free trade.
Critics of Utilitarianism
Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens were among the most vocal in opposing utilitarian thinking.
In The Signs of the Times, Carlyle criticized the utilitarian belief that happiness
depends on external circumstances
In Hard Times, which is dedicated to Carlyle, Dickens attacks the utilitarian theories of
society and education, and shows the abuse of utilitarianism
Oxford Movement
An affiliation of High Church Anglicans
Most of them members of the University of Oxford
Sought to
Reform Anglican Church
Demonstrate that the Church of England was a direct descendant of the Church
established by the Apostles
Establish that Anglican Church is a branch of Catholic Church
Also known as the Tractarian Movement (Tractarianism) after its series of publications Tracts
for the Times (1833-1841)
Cardinal Newman
The Tractarians were also called Newmanites and, Puseyites (disparagingly) after the two
prominent Tractarians, Edward Bouverie Pusey and Cardinal John Henry Newman
Cardinal Newman
Apologia Pro Vita Sua (autobiography)
Grammar of Assent (prose work that defends faith and argues that logic is not
practically applicable in real life)
The Dream of Gerontius (poem)
The popular hymn, Lead, Kindly Light
Darwinism
Even before Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
(1859) and Descent of Man (1871), the debate over evolution had been developing
throughout the 19th century
In Origin of Species, Darwin explained evolution as the natural selection of species with
specialized traits, or survival of the fittest
In Descent of Man, Darwin proposed that man descended from primates
Darwinism and Writers

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Darwins theories provoked in Victorian literature a wave of pessimism and scepticism about
the human condition
Till then, all theories of the world had put mankind in a superior position
Darwinism appealed to scientists like Thomas Henry Huxley as well as to novelists and poets
Darwinism in Literature
Two pre-1859 poems reflecting evolutionary theory and the crisis of faith
Tennysons In Memoriam, Arnolds Dover Beach
In Elizabeth Gaskells last novel Wives and Daughters (1866), the naturalist hero Roger
Hamley is modelled on Charles Darwin (Gaskells cousin)
George Eliots Middlemarch (1874) is regarded a demonstration of social Darwinism
Hardys Tess and Jude the Obscure present a Darwinian world where the characters are at
the mercy of their environment,
Positivism
Developed by French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
A form of empiricism
Every rational assertion can be scientifically verified
Regards metaphysical speculations as meaningless
Sense perceptions are the only source of knowledge
Reflected the general tone of Victorian social optimism
Advocated by Victorians like JS Mill, Herbert Spencer, George Henry Lewes, etc
Aestheticism
Rejected John Ruskins and Matthew Arnolds utilitarian view of art as something moral and
useful
Related to Decadence, Symbolism and Fin-de-sicle writers
Upheld the motto Art for arts sake
Developed a cult of beauty
Major proponents: Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, AC Swinburne
For a detailed overview, please see the chapter entitled End of the 19 th Century
Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
Poet, critic & educational administrator
Son of Thomas Arnold, famous headmaster of Rugby School
Educated at Oxford, Arnold travelled abroad in the late 1840s
Met the Swiss girl Marguerite who haunts much of his early lyric poetry
By 1851, became an inspector of schools
Financial security
Married Frances Lucy Wightman
Career
Poetic career started in 1849 with The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems
In 1858, Arnold became professor of poetry at Oxford, but, except the 1867 volume, wrote
prose for the rest of his life!
Like other Victorian polymaths*, he was
Sensitive to the stresses of the age
Sought to deal with social problems in literary, political, religious & educational
writings
[* A polymath is a man of wide-ranging knowledge]
As an educationist
In his reports on educational problems
Possessed a European rather than insular vision
Advocated humane discipline
Emphasized the Bible as a moral and literary strength
Advocated state instruction at home and abroad
Envisaged a national instruction rising above local & political interests
Essays in Criticism
First series appeared in 1865
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The second appeared posthumously in 1888

Contains famous essays
The Study of Poetry
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
The Study of Poetry
Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us
for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry
Great poetry should have high truth and high seriousness
As in Shakespeare and Milton
But not in Chaucer
Criticism should be
a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought
in the world and should confine itself to the pure intellectual sphere
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
Develops his view of criticism as a disinterested & flexible mode of thought whose
application extends far beyond literature
Criticism must lead men to perfection
Advocates a broad, cosmopolitan view of European literature as a basis for comparative
judgements
Attacks provincialism & lack of real knowledge
Culture and Anarchy (1869)
A series of periodical essays published in Cornhill Magazine in 1867-68
Discusses the dilemmas of English society (typical of Sage writers)
Culture is
the great help out of our present difficulties
the pursuit of total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which
most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world
Concepts in Culture and Anarchy
Culture is the study of perfection
Chap I: Sweetness and light (symbols for beauty and intelligence, the two main components
of an excellent culture)
Chap III: English society has three classes: Barbarians (aristocracy); Philistines (middleclass); and Populace (unskilled working class)
America is the same society, with no Barbarians, and very little Populace
Culture is the study of perfection
Chap I: Sweetness and light (symbols for beauty and intelligence, the two main components
of an excellent culture)
Chap III: English society has three classes: Barbarians (aristocracy); Philistines (middleclass); and Populace (unskilled working class)
America is the same society, with no Barbarians, and very little Populace
Chap IV: Hebraism and Hellenism
The two influences of our world
Hellenism is
spontaneity of conscience
to see things as they are
Understanding beauty, reality
Belief that the body gets in the way of right thinking
Hebraism is
strictness of conscience
conduct and obedience
Differentiating between good and evil, self-conquest
Belief that body gets in the way of right doing
Religious Writings

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By the 1870s Arnold had joined the long list of Victorian thinkers who turned their attention
to the theological controversies of the age
Saint Paul and Protestantism (1870)
Literature and Dogma (1873)
God and the Bible (1875)
Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877)
Charles Dickens (1812-70)
Born at Portsmouth
Son of John Dickens, an irresponsible clerk
Charles had an unsettled childhood at Chatham and London
At Chatham, the boy came under the beneficent eye of a schoolmaster who recognized his
talent
Voracious reader of Smollett, Fielding, Cervantes
His restless imagination responded to exotic tales like The Arabian Nights, play-acting,
pageantry and magic-lantern displays
Unforgettable traumas
With his fathers transfer to London, he was for several years neglected
His parents slid into financial difficulties that resulted in John Dickens imprisonment for debt
at Marshalsea
Two days after his 12th birthday, Dickens was put to work in Warrens Blacking factory
His fathers imprisonment and his miserable months at Warrens left a profound a mark on
him
His family never knew about these experiences until, after Dickens death, the biography by
John Forster was published
Start of a journalistic career
When he was released from the Marshalsea, John Dickens sent his son to Willington House
Academy
A slight improvement on his blacking factory life
Remained there until 1827
He then became office boy in a firm of attorneys
Rose swiftly to work as reporter in the Doctors commons, which he called confusion of
different courts
The Young Journalist
In 1829 he fell in love with Maria Beadnell, but their association ended due to her familys
disapproval
Dickens was soon working for his uncles publication The Mirror of Parliament
Soon he was reporting for The True Son, and the Liberal paper, The Morning Chronicle
Also wrote sketches for many journals, among them The Monthly Magazine edited by his
friend George Hogarth
From these reportorial experiences and writings came his first book Sketches By Boz (183637), in which he for the first time adopted the pseudonym derived from his own infant
pronunciation of Moses as Boses
Knowledge of London
Dickens by this time developed a wide knowledge of the squares, highways, courts, alleys,
markets and gardens of London
His endless wanderings, literally from one end of the city to the other gave rise to numerous
situations and descriptions in his later writing
Much of Dickens early experience provided for his later fiction
New Beginnings
Welcomed into George Hogarths family, Dickens courted the eldest daughter of the
household, the pretty Catherine, and the couple were married in 1836
At the same time began the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick
Club, better known as The Pickwick Papers

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Its fourth number, introducing Sam Weller, elevated Dickens to a literary and financial
position from which he never descended
The Pickwick Papers
Subtitled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
Episodic, high-spirited style
Journeys and observations of the Pickwick Club:
Samuel Pickwick (Chairman; a retired businessman and philosopher whose thoughts
never rise above the commonplace), Sam Weller is his servant
Tracy Tupman (a ladies man who never makes a conquest)
Augustus Snodgrass (a poet who never writes a poem)
Nathaniel Winkle (an unskilled sportsman)
Novel ends with the marriage of Augustus Snodgrass and Emily Wardle and the retirement of
Pickwick
Boz and Phiz
With success assured, Dickens worked and lived with even greater intensity and purpose
than before
First, Dickens worked with the illustrator Seymour (who killed himself), then Hablot K.
Browne, who took the pseudonym Phiz
The Boz-Phiz tie up was highly prolific; it explains Dickenss caricatures
Overlapping with the serialization of Pickwick Papers came first Oliver Twist (1837-39) and
then Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39)
Master Humphreys Clock
In the autumn of 1839, as Nicholas Nickleby came to its conclusion, Dickens conceived the
Master Humphreys Clock, a weekly miscellany
The framework of this magazine was that of an antiquarian extracting tales, sketches
and stories from his old quaint queer-cased clock
Sales very soon fell off and Dickens had to expand a short story originally designed for the
miscellany into a full-length serial, The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), quickly followed with
Barnaby Rudge (1841)
A Busy Life
Dickens business & personal life were equally busy

Ever prickly with publishers, he quarreled with Richard Bentley, which caused him to resign
the editorship of Bentleys Miscellany

He was elected to the Athenaeum Club

Met his future biographer John Forster

Rescued his parents many times from financial ruin

Widened his circle of friends beyond the humbler spheres of journalism

Travels
In January 1842 Dickens arrived to an enthusiastic welcome in Boston for his first American
visit
He travelled to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Richmond, Virginia, as
well as various smaller cities and towns; he went down the Ohio river to Cincinnati and
briefly up to Canada
But his American Notes (1842) and the American episodes in his next novel, Martin
Chuzzlewit (1843-4), caused lasting resentment among his American audience
After this, he travelled extensively in Italy and wrote Pictures from Italy (1844)
More Novels
In 1843, prompted by the sight of the ragged schools (schools set up in London to teach
poor children), he produced his first and most famous Christmas story, A Christmas Carol
In the mid 1840s, Dickens also produced Christmas Books
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 The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Hunted Man
Republished together with A Christmas Carol in 1852
Founded his own magazine, Household Words, succeeded by All the Year Round in 1859
Mature Period: 1850s
Dombey and Son (1846-44) was followed in the next decade by David Copperfield (1849-50),
Bleak House (1852-53), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-7) and A Tale of Two Cities
(1859)
His early work overflowed with improvisatory energy
The novels of the 1850s and beyond are more tightly controlled
Equally wide-ranging in their subjects
Unified by theme, images and symbols
Complex and ramifying plots
Other Interests
Love for the theatre
assembled companies
Organized productions
Acted in The Frozen Deep (a play he wrote in collaboration with his friend Wilkie
Collins) etc
Interest in social problems
Capital punishment
Reform of prostitutes
Building model flats in Bethnal Green to replace slums
A Restless Spirit
Moved to a house in Kent, later called Bleak House
He toured Switzerland and Italy with Wilkie Collins and the painter Augustus Egg, and visited
France several times
By the late 1850s, he was captivated by the young actress Ellen Ternan, whose shadow
hovers over his later fiction
His marriage came to an end with the notorious revelation in Household Words (June 1858)
of some domestic troubles of mine, of long-standing and a permanent separation from
Catherine
Aware of his inability to rest or settle, Dickens planned a series of public readings from his
work, the first of them given in 1858
The 1860s
Highly successful, his readings were repeated throughout England and in the United States
Further readings took place on his return to England, but by then the strain had grown too
great, he suffered a stroke, and they were stopped
The 1860s also produced some of his best work:
Great Expectations (1860-61)
Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) and
The incomplete Mystery of Edwin Drood, halted in its serialization by his death in June
1870
Oliver Twist (1837)
Subtitled The Parish Boys Progress
Serialized in Bentleys Magazine
A social novel that shows the underside (bad side) of society
Hostility to Benthams utilitarianism
Criticism of the New Poor Law of 1834
Unromantic portrayal of criminals
Oliver joins Fagins School
Oliver Twist, an orphan, has a miserable life in an orphanage and then a workhouse
When he asks Mr Bumble for more, Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker, is given 5 pounds to
take him away.
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Oliver runs away to London where he meets the Artful Dodger (Jack Dawkins), leader of the
young pickpockets of Fagins School.
Oliver naively joins their company
Brownlow and the Maylies
Fagins boys steal from Mr Brownlow; Oliver runs away horrified; and is taken in by Brownlow
The burglar Bill Sikes and his prostitute-lover Nancy capture Oliver and return him to Fagin
Oliver assists Sikes in a burglary
He is shot at
The women who live in that house, Mrs Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose,
take him in
Fagin and a sickly man named Monks are bent on recapturing Oliver and covering up the
secret of his birth
The True Story
Nancy secretly informs Rose about Fagins designs
She is brutally murdered by Sikes for this disclosure
Unable to escape from his conscience and the mob, Sikes hangs himself
Oliver is reunited with Brownlow who finds the truth of Olivers parentage from Monks
Monks is Olivers half-brother who wants to ensure that Oliver wouldnt get his share
of family inheritance
Olivers mother Agnes was Roses sister
Oliver gets his inheritance and is adopted by Brownlow
Fagin is hanged
Nicholas Nickleby (1838)
Nicholas, a penniless boy, is hated by his uncle Ralph
Works at Dotheboys Hall, where Wackford Squeers starves and ill-treats 20 urchins,
especially Smike.
Nicholas thrashes Squeers and escapes with Smike
Becomes actor in the company of Vincent Crummles; then works under the benevolent
Cheeryble brothers.
Nicholas breaks the head of Sir Mulberrys head for abusing his sister Kate, falls in love with
Madeline Bray
Ralph Nickleby plots against Nicholas and Smike, but all his plans are foiled.
Smike dies of tuberculosis, and Ralph hangs himself when he comes to know that Smike was
his own son.
Barnaby Rudge
Dickens first attempt at a historical novel
Set during the Gordon riots of 1780
Subtitled A Tale of the Riots of Eighty
Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop were the two novels published in Master
Humphreys Clock
The Plot in Brief
Barnaby Rudge is a local idiot with a pet raven, Grip
Grip inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write The Raven
His father, Barnaby Rudge Sr, is revealed to have been the steward and murderer of Rueben
Haredale (killed over 22 years ago)
Lord George Gordon is a fictional character based on the historical personality who led the
Gordon riots
A Christmas Carol
Ebenezer Scrooge
Embittered, miserly man
Experiences supernatural visits from
his recently deceased business partner Jacob Marley
the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come
Undergoes an ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation
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 Five chapters labelled staves, i.e., song stanzas or verses (since the title is carol)
Dombey and Son
Full-title: Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation
Written during the age of the railways in the mid-1840s
Theme: destruction and degradation, of both people and places, caused by industrialisation
The Plot
Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company, dreams to have a son to continue
his business
The child, also named Paul, dies when he only six
Dombey ignores his daughter Florence who later marries the poor employee Walter
Dombey himself marries wealthy Edith Granger who despises him for his pride
Finally, when all his financial and personal hopes are lost, Dombey realizes his follies and is
reunited with his daughter and his grandchildren
David Copperfield
Considered by some to be his last novel
Called the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery
Dickens called David Copperfield his favourite child.
A pseudo-autobiography
Most autobiographical of Dickens novels
Begins with the chapter I am born

First line Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will
be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Growing Up
Adult David Copperfield narrates the story of his childhood
Born in Blunderstone, six months after his father died
Lives with his mother and housekeeper, Clara Peggotty
Mother remarries the violent Mr. Murdstone and his cruel sister Miss Murdstone also
moves in
Bit Mr. Murdstones hand during one beating
Sent to boarding school Salem House with the ruthless headmaster Mr. Creakle
Befriends James Steerforth (an egotistic boy) & Tommy Traddles (a fat boy
always beaten)
Reaches London
Peggotty takes David to visit her family at Yarmouth
Meets her brothers two adopted children, Ham and Little Emly
Davids mother and her baby boy die, and he returns home
Peggotty marries Barkis (Barkis had sent a message through David to Clara that he is willing)
Sent to work at Mr. Murdstones wine business in London
Meets Agnes
His landlord Mr. Micawber mismanages his finances, goes to debtors prison, and when
released, leaves London
David runs away to Dover; finds his eccentric aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood, who adopts him
Miss Betsey calls him Trotwood Copperfield or Trot; sends him to a school in Canterbury
run by Doctor Strong.
He moves in with Mr. Wickfield and his gentle daughter, Agnes.
Agnes and David become best friends. She harbors a secret love for him.
Uriah Heep
A boarder at Wickfields
A snakelike, vengeful man with red hair and red eyes, dressed entirely in black and
skeleton-like in appearance
Later works as clerk for Wickfield and takes over his business fraudulently
Wishes to marry Agnes simply to spite David
His misdeeds are finally exposed by Micawber and Tommy Traddles
Uriah Heeps corruption makes him a foil to David (innocence and compassion)
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Meets Dora
David graduates and visits Peggotty at Yarmouth; wondering which profession to choose
James Steerforth is with David, and Steerforth and the Peggottys become fond of one
another
Miss Betsey persuades David to become a lawyer and he joins the London firm of Spenlow
and Jorkins as apprentice.
He falls in love with Spenlows daughter, Dora.
In London, he is reunited with Tommy Traddles and Mr. Micawber
More of Emly, Dora
Barkis is terminally ill.
Unwilling to marry Ham, Emly runs off with Steerforth, after Barkis death
Steerworth cheats on her and leaves her, and Emly is brought back to the family
Mr. Spenlow dies in a carriage accident; later Dora and David marry, but Dora proves a
terrible housewife. David loves her anyway.
Emly, Mr. Peggotty and the Micawbers move to Australia
Ham tries to save a shipwrecked Steerforth; both die
Dora also falls ill and dies
David is settled
Miss Betseys husband
He was an awful man
She had courageously left him and kept his existence a secret
He dies at this time
David leaves the country to travel abroad and settles in Switzerland.
His love for Agnes grows.
David returns, marries Agnes and they have several children.
He pursues his career in writing successfully
Bleak House
Central concern is a long-running litigation Jarndyce vs Jarndyce in the Court of Chancery
(court of common law) in London that affects all characters
Dickens attacks British judicial system
Partly narrated by Esther Summerson
Only female narrator in Dickens
Raised as an orphan by her aunt Miss Barbery and later John Jarndyce becomes her
guardian
Richard Carstone and Ada Clare become her friends
The discovery of her true identity is a major issue: she is the illegitimate daughter of
Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon who lived as the pauper Nemo
Hard Times
Shortest novel; only novel not set in London
Attack on utilitarianism and rationalization of society
Thomas Gradgrind
wealthy, retired merchant in Coketown
devoted to rationalism, self-interest, and fact
He raises his children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them
imaginative pursuits.
Section 1: Sowing
McChoakumchild is a teacher at Gradgrinds school
The imaginative Sissy Jupe
An abandoned child of a clown in Slearys circus
A student at Gradgrinds school taken in on charity
Tom Gradgrind becomes a selfish pleasure seeker
Louisa is a confused young woman who feels disconnected from her emotions and other
people.
Louisa marries wealthy Josiah Bounderby
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 More than twice her age; Gradgrinds friend

Boasts of being a self-made man, abandoned by his mother in infancy
Tom apprenticed at the Bounderby bank
Sissy is at the Gradgrind home to care for the younger children.
Stephen Blackpool, a poor labourer (Hand) loves Rachael.
Unable to marry because he is already married to a horrible woman
Only the wealthy can obtain a divorce!
Section 2: Reaping
James Harthouse
Wealthy young man from London
Comes to Coketown to enter politics with Gradgrind
Tries to seduce Louisa with the aid of Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderbys housekeeper
The Hands form a union. Only Stephen doesnt join
He is cast out by the other Hands
Fired by Bounderby for refusing to spy on them
Louisa helps Stephen with some money.
Tom advises Stephen to wait outside the bank for several nights when help will arrive. No
help arrives, and Stephen leaves Coketown.
Soon after, the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen.
Harthouse asks Louisa to elope with him.
Louisa flees to her fathers house instead
For the first time, she confronts Gradgrind about the unnaturalness of her upbringing;
then faints.
Gradgrind, shocked, realizes his folly.
Section 3: Garnering
Sissy convinces Harthouse to leave Coketown forever.
When Stephen tries to return to clear his good name, he falls into a mining pit and later dies
like a martyr
Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is the real thief and try to sneak him out of England
with the help of the circus performers. They are stopped by Bitzer, Gradgrinds old student.
But helped by Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor, Tom escapes.
It is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is Bounderbys mother, and he is not a self-made man after
all. Later he dies on the streets.
The End
Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the poor.
Tom realizes his mistakes, but dies without ever seeing his family again.
Sissy marries and has a large and loving family, while Louisa remains unmarried and learns
how to feel sympathy for others
Little Dorrit
Satire on government and society
Debtors prison
Social safety nets (programs that prevent poor people from falling below poverty line)
Safety of workers
Bureaucracy
British Treasury ridiculed as the Circumlocution Office
A Tale of Two Cities
Set in London & Paris before & during French Revolution
In 1775, Mr. Jarvis Lorry, an official of Tellson's Bank in London, accompanies Lucie Manette
to Paris.
Her father, Dr. Alexandre Manette, who had disappeared 18 years ago, is alive. He had been
wrongly imprisoned in the Bastille and left there to die.
On reaching Paris, they meet Monsieur Defarge
A wine-seller who had taken care of Dr Manette
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 Hates oppression of the aristocracy

Dr Manette has lost both his memory and his sense, and spends time cobbling shoes
Darnay and Carton
Dr Manette is taken to London and nursed back to health
Five years later, a young Frenchman, Charles Darnay, is accused of being a traitor and a spy.
Lucie and her father are witnesses for the prosecution, as they had met him before
Lucie stresses his good qualities while the prosecution produces witnesses who swear that
he is a spy
Sydney Carton, an advocate, points out the resemblance between the prisoner and himself
The jury realizes that it could be a case of mistaken identity, and Darnay is acquitted.
Darnay and His Uncle
Years pass; both Darnay and Carton fall in love with Lucie
Carton wastes his life in drinking and idling
Lucie marries Darnay, who is an aristocrat who has renounced his inheritance and now lives
in London under an assumed name
His profligate uncle, the Marquis St. Evremonde, is notorious for his cruelty and callousness
He kills a child on the streets and refuses to help a poor widow in need of a tombstone
to mark her husband's grave.
That very night he is murdered in bed
Darnay in Paris
The French Revolution breaks
Darnay has been happily married to Lucie for eleven years, and they have a beautiful
daughter. On hearing that his steward in France, has been arrested, Darnay secretly returns
to Paris; is caught and imprisoned
Lucie, her daughter, Dr. Manette, and Mr. Lorry rush to Paris to save him, and Darnay is
discharged
Madame Defarge, however, seeks personal revenge against the Evremonde family, for the
cruel Marquis had molested her sister and killed her brother. Largely because of her, Darnay
is re-arrested, tried, and sentenced to death.
Cartons Sacrifice
There is no hope of saving him.
Defarges wish to eliminate anyone who has a connection with aristocracy
Sydney Carton decides to save Darnay's life by taking his place
He gains entry into the prison, drugs Darnay, and with the help of Mr. Lorry gets him
out of danger.
The Darnay family flees back to England while Carton sacrifices his life for Darnay, his
look-alike.
The sacrifice is made to fulfill a promise to Lucie whom he loves.
Great Expectations
Like David Copperfield, fully narrated in the first person
Concise and dense narration
Both novels are bildungsromane
Autobiographical elements
Set in early Victorian England, a time when great social changes were sweeping the nation
An escaped convict
Pip (Philip Pirrip)
A young orphan living with his sister and her husband Joe Gargery in the marshes of
Kent
One evening in the cemetery
Pip was looking at his parents tombstones
Suddenly, an escaped convict (Abel Magwitch) springs up from behind a tombstone
Orders Pip to bring him food and a file for his leg irons.
Pip obeys, but the convict is soon captured.
The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items himself.
297

Estella
Uncle Pumblechook takes Pip to play at Satis House
Gothic mansion of wealthy, eccentric Miss Havisham
Always wears an old wedding dress
Keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time
Here, Pip meets a beautiful young girl named Estella
Meets her regularly at Satis House
Treats him coldly and contemptuously
But he falls in love with her
Dreams of becoming a wealthy gentleman and marrying her
Hopes that Miss Havisham would make him a gentleman
But she decides to help him become a common labourer
Troubles
Miss Havisham gets adolescent Pip apprenticed to his brother-in-law Joe, a blacksmith
Unhappy Pip attempts to read and expand his knowledge
Pip is dejected even more to learn that Estella has been sent abroad
Dolge Orlick
Joes worker and a vicious man who ill-treats Pip
One night, after a quarrel with Orlick, Pips sister, Mrs. Joe, is cruelly attacked and
becomes a mute invalid.
She draws a T like a hammer and Pip suspects that Orlick was responsible for the
attack
In London
A lawyer named Jaggers appears
Brings the news of Pip getting a large fortune
Pip must go to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman
Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor
In London
Pip befriends a young gentleman Herbert Pocket
Jaggerss law clerk, Wemmick
Feels disdain for his former friends, especially Joe
Continues to pine after Estella
Studies with Matthew Pocket, Herberts father
Meets Orlick again as Miss Havishams porter, who is fired when Pip tells Jaggers about his
past
Magwitch again
Pip turns 21 and begins to get an income from his fortune
2 years later, one night, the convict Magwitch appears and announces that he is the source
of Pips fortune
He was moved by Pips kindness in the cemetery
He dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman
Made a fortune in Australia for that very purpose
Magwitch is pursued
by the police, and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime
Pip comes to know that
Compeyson had abandoned Miss Havisham at the altar
Estella is Magwitchs daughter
Miss Havisham has raised her to break mens hearts and was delighted when she
toyed with Pips affections
A changed Miss Havisham
Pip begins to care for Magwitch deeply
Estella marries an upper-class oafish man named Bentley Drummle whom Pip knew at the
Pockets
Pip visits Miss Havisham
298

She begs his forgiveness for the way she has treated him
Later that day, Miss Havishams clothing catches fire. She survives but becomes an
invalid.
In her final days, she will continue to repent for her misdeeds

Losses
Pip and friends attempt to help Magwitch escape down the river
Just before the attempt, the vengeful Orlick attempts to kill Pip
They are discovered by the police, who Compeyson tipped off
Compeyson is drowned when he fights Magwitch
Magwitch is sentenced to death; Pip loses his fortune
Pip is ill; Joe comes to London to care for him
Joe tells him news from home
Orlick, after robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail
Miss Havisham has died and left her fortune to the Pockets
Biddy has taught Joe how to read and write

After Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home and marry Biddy
He arrives to discover that she and Joe have already married
Pip goes abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade
Two Endings
Pip returned many years later
First ending
After Drummles death, Estella married a country doctor in Shropshire
Walking through London with Joe and Biddys son, Pip meets Estella
She thinks it is Pips son
Pip saw that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havishams teaching and had
given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be
Second ending
Met Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House
Drummle, her husband, treated her badly
Drummle is now dead
Estellas coldness and cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness
Pip took her hand in his and walked out of the ruined place
I saw no shadow of another parting from her.
Why Two Endings?
Dickens showed his friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton the manuscript of the novel.
The latter urged him to change the ending.
On 23 June 1861, Dickens wrote to his friend Wilkie Collins:
Bulwer was so very anxious that I should alter the end of Great Expectations the
extreme end I mean, after Bidd and Joe are done with and stated his reasons so well,
that I have resumed the wheel, and taken another turn at it. Upon the whole I think it
is for the better. You shall see the change when we meet.
Our Mutual Friend
Central concern money
John Harmons dead body is found.
Were he alive, his fathers will would require him to marry Bella Wilfer, a beautiful,
mercenary girl whom he had never met.
Instead, the money passes to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread into various
corners of London society.
Features of Novels
Popularity
large number of novels, hasty & ill-considered work
staginess of plot, unreality of characters, loose style
yet rich & enduring tales
Features of Novels
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Concern with Social Reform

no systematic social or political theory
aroused public interest in contemporary evils
Boarding schoolsNicholas Nickleby; WorkhousesOliver Twist
New manufacturing systemHard Times
Court of ChanceryBleak House
Spread of benevolence rather than political upheaval
Contrived poetic justice
Exaggerated characters like the Gradgrinds
Features of Novels
Humour & pathos
Broad, humane, creative humour
Not subtle humour; Sometimes boisterous
Satire sometimes develops into burlesque
Pathos often cheap & third-rate
Depended on devices such as elaborate descriptions of the death of children
Described the horrible as in the death of Bill Sykes
Painfully melodramatic as in Madame Defarge
Features of Novels
Imagination
Multiplicity of characters & situations
Lower & middle classes esp. in & around London
Mannerisms
Flat characters representing one mood or one phrase
Uriah Heep (umble)
Barkis (willing)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63)
Born in Calcutta of Anglo-Indian parents
Came to England in 1817; educated at private schools
Later, went to Charterhouse boarding school
The Slaughterhouse and Grey Friars of his fiction
Never too keen on academic education
Did not complete his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, or Middle Temple (Law) or
in Paris (art)
He squandered much of his wealth by gambling and lost some of it in some unsuccessful
ventures
Visited Paris in 1829
Gave him a lifelong love of the city
Travelled to Germany in 1830; met Goethe
Early Career
In 1836 he published his first book, lithograph caricatures of the ballad La Sylphide entitled
Flore et Zephyr
The same year he married the mentally unstable Isabella Shawe, who went completely
insane later
Thackeray returned to London in 1837, where his daughter Anne was born in June
Later she attained some literary fame as the novelist Anne Thackeray Ritchie
In 1840 Harriet Marian was born
The future wife of Leslie Stephen
That makes Virginia Woolf his granddaughter
Contributions to Magazines (1840s)
For a living, wrote reviews, comic sketches, parodies, satires
Notably in Frasers Magazine and Punch
For Frasers he wrote
The Yellowplush Papers, the comic memoirs of a footman
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Catherine, a pastiche of the popular Newgate Fiction, etc

Took pseudonyms
Charles James Yellowplush, a footman
Michael Angelo Titmarsh (after Thackerays sketching talent and broken nose)
George Savage Fitz-Boodle, a heavy, tobacco-addicted clubman
The autobiographical subject of The Fitz-Boodle Papers (1842-3)
Presented as the editor of Thackerays first real novel, Barry Lyndon, serialised
in Frasers in 1844

Fame
At this period he also wrote 3 travel books
The Paris Sketch Book, The Irish Sketch Book and Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to
Grand Cairo
Growing reputation in the 1840s
Two major works
His writings for Punch were collected in the Book of Snobs
His first major novel, Vanity Fair (1847-48), was serialized monthly, like Dickens
novels
Satirical, anti-heroic vision
Satirized the class consciousness of early Victorian age
Discontent with contemporary fictional stereotypes
Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (184748)
Title taken from Pilgrims Progress where a never-ending fair is held in the town Vanity,
representing mans sinful attachment to worldly things
Becky (Rebecca) Sharp and Amelia Sedley complete their studies at Miss Pinkerton's
Academy for Young Ladies and depart for Amelia's house in Russell Square
Amelia
Good-natured and lovable; passive and nave
Betrothed to the dashing, self-obsessed Captain George Osborne
Becky Sharp
The anti-heroine, and Amelia's opposite
Intelligent and talented; strong-willed and cunning
Becky reaches the Crawleys
Becky is introduced to
Captain George Osborne
Joseph Sedley (Amelia's brother; a boastful, rich civil servant from the East India
Company)
Becky wants Sedley to marry her, but Osborne foils the plan
Becky leaves Russell Square to work as a governess to Sir Pitt Crawleys daughters
Sir Crawley proposes to Becky, but she has secretly married his son, Captain Rawdon
Crawley.
Sir Pitt's affluent half sister, Miss Crawley disinherits Rawdon and bequeathes the Crawley
estate to Rawdons elder brother, also called Pitt Crawley
Amelias Marriage and After
Amelia's father, John Sedley, is bankrupt
George Osbornes father forbids Georges marriage with Amelia
George marries Amelia against his father's will, pressured by his friend William Dobbin, and
George is disinherited
George encounters Becky and Captain Crawley at Brighton, where George and Becky flirt
(George even asks her to run away with him)
Amelia is hurt and a rift develops between the two women
Meanwhile the Napoleonic Wars are taking place. Osborne, Crawley and Dobbin are sent to
Waterloo
Captain Crawley survives, but George dies in the battle. Joseph Sedley had fled from the
battle, but boasts about his valour.
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 Amelia and Becky give birth to sons.

Beckys Rise and Fall
While Amelia is devastated by her husbands death and dotes on her son, Becky enters the
vain high society life in London
Her flirtations extort money from admirers while Captain Crawley drinks and gambles heavily
The couple obtain credit by tricking everyone into believing they are receiving money from
others
At the summit of her success, Becky's relationship with the rich and powerful Marquis of
Steyne is discovered after Rawdon is arrested for debt.
Pitt Rawdon's brother's wife, Lady Jane, bails him out.
Rawdon leaves Becky, and later dies of yellow fever
Becky leaves the country and wanders the continent.
Wherever Becky goes, her disreputable history follows her
The End
Dobbin professes his unchanged love to Amelia, but she cannot forget her dead husband.
Amelias father in law, Osborne finally bequeaths young George half his large fortune and
Amelia a generous annuity
Amelia, Joseph, George and Dobbin go on a trip to Germany, where they meet the destitute
Becky.
Becky resumes her seduction of Joseph Sedley. Joseph later dies after signing a portion of his
money to Becky.
Amelia reconciles with Becky when she hears that Becky's ties with her son have been
severed.
Becky shows Amelia a note from George Osborne. Amelia stops idealizing him, and marries
Dobbin
Beckys son, young Rawdon, becomes the baronet and supports Becky financially, but
declines any further relationship with her
Two More Novels
Vanity Fair was an immediate popular and critical success
It was followed by The History of Pendennis (1848-50)
A semi-autobiographical bildungsroman
Portrays one of the gentlemen of our age
In 1848 Thackeray had an unfulfilled affair with Jane Brookfield, the wife of a college friend
The melancholy of love unfulfilled enters The History of Henry Esmond (1852)
The most carefully planned of his novels
The only one to be published originally in the three-volume format
A historical novel, set during the reign of Queen Anne
More Novels
After a lecture tour of the United States, produced more novels
The Newcomes (1853-55)
A panoramic novel of English social life during the first half of the 19 th century
The Rose and the Ring (1855)
The last and best of his six Christmas books
A second visit to the United States, during which he lectured on The Four Georges (1860)
The Virginians (published in monthly parts in 1857-59 )
Historical novel that is sequel to The Newcomes
Continues the Esmond family saga in 18th century England and America
Last Years
In 1859 Thackeray became the founding editor of The Cornhill Magazine, a monthly literary
journal
His last works were published in the Cornhill
The short novel Lovel the Widower (1860)
The essays gathered in The Roundabout Papers (1860-63)
His last completed novel, The Adventures of Philip (1861-62)
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 A repetition of the themes and situations from Pendennis and The Newcomes
Died on Christmas Eve 1863, leaving Denis Duval unfinished
A central figure in Victorian realism
Sceptical, ironic but compassionate vision of human conduct in a society dominated
by the power of money and class
Thackerays Works
Debt to Fielding
Early neglect; genius blossomed slowly, as Fielding
Reacting against popular novel of the day, especially against romanticizing of rogues
Adopted Fieldings method
To view his characters steadily & fearlessly
To record their failures as well as merits
Characters rounded but no flattery (clever people are rogues; virtuous are fools)
Humour & Pathos
Sneering cynicism; satire potent method of revealing truth
Quiet & effective pathos, seldom sentimental
Charlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48) Anne (1820-49)
Charlotte, Emily and Anne were three of the five daughters of an Irish Anglican clergyman
They had a brother named Branwell
The Bronts lived in Yorkshire, in the village of Haworth
The Haworth parsonage & its surrounding moorland was the centre of his childrens lives
Education
All the girls save Anne attended the Clergy Daughters School,
The original of Lowoods School in Jane Eyre
Harsh regime and poor conditions contributed to the early deaths of their two elder
sisters
Charlotte becomes the oldest child in the motherless family
Later, Charlotte was sent to Miss Woolers School at Roe Head
Here she met her lifelong friends and correspondents Mary Taylor & Ellen Nussey
Emily and Anne also later studied here
Other Influences
The girls real education was from their fathers books at the Haworth parsonage, which
included the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott etc
They enthusiastically read articles from Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Frasers Magazine,
Edinburgh Review, etc
The girls were brought up by their aunt, Elizabeth Branwell and servant Tabitha, who taught
them
About a relentless Calvinistic world with its threats of a vengeful God
Folk-tales & superstitions
As Governesses
All three worked unhappily as governesses to families in Yorkshire
A governess was a young woman employed to teach and train children in a private
household
Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey work as governesses
One of Charlottes wards once threw a Bible at her
At the beginning of Jane Eyre, young Janes cousin John Reed also throws a book at her
At Brussels
In 1842, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to join a boarding school run by Constantin
Heger, and in return for boarding and tuition, taught English and music
The sisters returned home upon the death of their aunt, but Charlotte went back
She got attached to Heger but he did not encourage her affections
For much of her stay she was anxious, melancholy & hostile to the atmosphere around
her
Early Writings
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A box of soldiers Mr Bront brought home formed the basis for imaginary worlds that the
children created
Glass Town
Angria
Gondol (Emily wrote Gondol poems)
This juvenilia
Was replete with melodrama & violence, the wondrous & the fantastic
Showed a strong moral strain suggestive of parsonage life & of their aunts stern
Methodism
Early Poems and Novels
From Roe Head Charlotte sent her poems to Southey, who responded with advice
In 1845 Charlotte discovered the poems written by Emily and proposed a joint volume by all
three sisters
Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton (1846)
Emily was reluctant to publish
Passed unnoticed by the reading public
It was Charlotte who again urged publication of novels which each of them had by then
finished
Her own work, The Professor, which drew heavily on her experiences in Brussels, was
rejected & did not appear until its posthumous publication in 1857
Southey to Charlotte
Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she
is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an
accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when
you are you will be less eager for celebrity.
More Novels
Charlotte got encouragement from the publishing house of Smith, Elder & Co
Submitted Jane Eyre which appeared in Oct 1847
It was immediately followed by
Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights
Anne Brontes Agnes Grey, which concerned a governess unhappy in a family she
disliked
Annes second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, appeared in July 1848
These works
attracted the public interest
were published under male pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis & Acton Bell
In July 1848, Charlotte & Anne visited George Smith to reveal their identity
Jane Eyre (1847)
Originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
Form of pseudo-autobiography
Three volumes
Both are common publishing formats during the 19 th century
Published under the pen name Currer Bell
Love story of the plain, vital heroine told with frankness
Main characters conceived deeply
Poetic intensity
Proto-feministic elements
Bildungsroman, first-person narrative
Second edition dedicated to William Makepeace Thackeray
Five distinct stages in the life of the Jane Eyre
Janes childhood at Gateshead
Jane is a 10-year-old orphan living with her maternal uncles family, the Reeds, as a result of
her uncles dying wish

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Mrs Reed and her three children (John, Eliza, Georgiana) are abusive to Jane, both physically
and emotionally.
The servant Bessie is kind, but she sometimes scolds Jane
Finds solace in a doll and books
One day, as a punishment, Jane is locked in the red room where her uncle died. She sees his
ghost and faints
Dr. Lloyd convinces Mrs. Reed to send Jane away to Lowood School for Girls
Before leaving, she tells Mrs. Reed that she will never call her "aunt" again and that she will
tell everyone at Lowood of their cruel mistreatment
At Lowood School
Mr Brocklehurst, a self-righteous clergyman, is the headmaster
Brocklehurst has been told that Jane is deceitful
Helen Burns
Janes best friend
Teaches Jane to trust Christianity
Dies of consumption in Janes arms
Probably represents Charlottes elder sister Maria who died similarly
During an inspection, Jane accidentally breaks her slate, and Brocklehurst, brands her a liar
and shames her before the entire assembly. Helen Burns comforts her
Miss Temple, a caring superintendent, writes to Mr. Lloyd in order to help Jane.
Finally, Jane is publicly cleared of Brocklehursts accusations
At Lowood School
Brocklehurst preaches the values of poverty to the students and swindles the school funds
The eighty pupils at Lowood are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing.
Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes.
Mr. Brocklehursts maltreatment of the students is eventually exposed
Several benefactors erect a new building and conditions at the school improve dramatically
As governess of Thornfield Hall
After six years as a student and two as a teacher, Jane leaves Lowood
Becomes governess at Thornfield Hall, where Alice Fairfax is housekeeper
She teaches Adele Varens, a young French girl, left in Mr. Rochesters care when her mother
abandoned her.
One night, Jane unknowingly helps Edward Rochester when he falls from the horse.
She falls in love with Rochester
Edward Fairfax Rochester
A Byronic hero
Conceals from Jane that he is tricked into making an unfortunate marriage to Bertha
Mason
The Madwoman in the Attic
Odd things start to happen at the house
A strange laugh, a mysterious fire in Mr. Rochesters room, on which Jane throws
water, and an attack on Mr. Richard Mason
Mrs. Reed gives Jane a letter from Janes paternal uncle, Mr John Eyre, asking for her to live
with him.
Mrs. Reed admits to telling her uncle that Jane had died of fever at Lowood and dies.
Jane returns to Thornfield and begins to communicate to her uncle John Eyre.
Jane broods over Mr. Rochesters impending marriage to the beautiful Blanche Ingram. But
on a midsummer evening, he proposes to her.
On the eve of the wedding, a savage-looking woman sneaks into her room at night and rips
her wedding veil in two.
The Wedding is Called Off
During the wedding ceremony, Mr. Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr. Rochester cannot
marry because he is still married to Mr. Masons sister Bertha.

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Mr. Rochester admits and explains that his father had tricked him into the marriage for
Berthas money. After marriage, she descended into madness and was locked away in
Thornfield. When Grace Poole her maid gets drunk, she causes the strange happenings at
Thornfield.
Despite her love for Rochester, Jane disagrees with Rochesters idea to go to France and live
together.
Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night.
With the Rivers family
Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food.
At last, three siblings Mary, Diana, and St. John Rivers, who live in Marsh End and Moor
House, take her in.
St. John, a clergyman, finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton.
He tells her that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune (20,000 pounds)
and that Jane and the Riverses are cousins.
Jane shares her inheritance equally with the Rivers
Reunion with Rochester
Out of a sense of duty, St. John asks Jane to marry him and to go with him to India.
Jane initially accepts going to India, but rejects the marriage proposal, suggesting they travel
as brother and sister.
She mysteriously hears Rochesters voice calling her and returns to Thornfield Hall. She
learns that Mrs. Rochester set the house on fire and killed herself by jumping from the roof.
In his rescue attempts, Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him,
but he fears that she will be repulsed by his condition.
When Jane assures him of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, they are
married.
He eventually recovers enough sight to see their first-born son
Wuthering Heights
Russian-doll or Chinese-box Structure
story-within-story-within-story
The Frame Narrative
Winter of 1801. Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange. His wealthy landlord Heathcliff
lives at Wuthering Heights, 4 miles away. Wild stormy countryside.
Housekeeper Nelly Dean tells Lockwood the story.
Lockwood writes down her recollections, which form this novel.
The Earnshaws
As a young girl, Nelly worked as a servant at Wuthering Heights, for Mr. Earnshaw
Earnshaw brings orphan Heathcliff from Liverpool, to raise with his own children
Earnshaw children Hindley and Catherine at first detest dark-skinned Heathcliff
Catherine soon comes to love him
Earnshaw attached to Heathcliff; pampers him
In three years Earnshaw dies and Hindley inherits Heights
Hindley marries Frances; seeks revenge on Heathcliff; makes him a labourer in the fields
Catherines Love and Marriage
Heathcliff and Catherine still close
They go to Thrushcross Grange to tease cowardly, snobbish Edgar and Isabella Linton
Catherine bitten by a dog, stays at Grange for 5 weeks to recuperate
Mrs. Linton works to make her a proper lady
By the time she returns, Catherine infatuated with Edgar
Frances dies giving birth to Hareton
Hindley alcoholic, more abusive to Heathcliff
Catherine engaged with Edgar, for social advancement despite her overpowering love
Heathcliff
Heathcliff stays away from Heights for 3 years; returns after Catherines and Edgars
marriage
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Heathcliffs revenge; mysterious wealth

Lends Hindley money; he sinks to despondency and dies.
Heathcliff inherits the manor. Marries Isabella Linton to inherit Thrushcross Grange. Treats
her cruelly.
Catherine gives birth to daughter (Catherine) and dies.
Heathcliff begs her spirit to stay on earth, in whatever form, and not to leave him alone.
Isabella flees to London and gives birth to Linton.
Young Catherine
Thirteen years pass. Nelly Dean is nursemaid to young Catherine at Thrushcross Grange
Catherine is beautiful & headstrong like her mother
She does not know Heights, one day she wanders and discovers the manor & Hareton
When Isabella dies, unhealthy, frail Linton comes to live with Heathcliff
Catherine & Linton begin a secret romance through letters, later at night
Heathcliffs Revenge
Soon it is clear that Heathcliff is forcing Linton into this romance to get full claim over
Thrushcross Grange & complete his revenge upon Edgar Linton
Edgar is ill and dying at Grange
Heathcliff holds Nelly & Catherine prisoners at Heights and forces her into marriage
Edgar dies, followed by Linton.
Catherine is forced to live at Heights & be a servant
The Present
Nellys story ends in the present.
Lockwood returns to London
Six months later, visits Nelly
Though Catherine at first mocked Hareton, they begin to love each other.
Heathcliff obsessed with the memories of his lover.
Speaks to her ghost and sees her everywhere.
One night, walks in the moors and dies
Hareton & Catherine inherit both manors & decide to get married
Deaths in the Bront Family
By this time the family was involved in private sorrow
Branwells alcoholism, clearly represented in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, contributed to
his early death in Sept 1848
He was followed by Emily, who died of tuberculosis in December, stubbornly resisting
the encroachments of the illness until virtually her last hours, and by Anne who died
calmly & resignedly at Scarborough in July 1849
Charlotte survived to cope with a father now sorely tired & going blind
Later Years
She published Shirley in Oct 1849
Villette in 1853
A novel which, like The Professor, drew upon her life in Brussels
Despite her nervous self-consciousness she began to move in literary society
Met Thackeray (to whom she had dedicated Jane Eyre) & G.H. Lewes, and Elizabeth
Gaskell, her future biographer
In June 1854 she overcame her fathers opposition & married his curate; the couple lived
together with Mr. Bronte at the parsonage
She died the following March, apparently from the complications of early pregnancy
Her father survived until 1861 & her husband until 1906
Wuthering Heights (1847)
The very spirit of the wild, desolate moors
Chief characters conceived in gigantic proportions
Passions have an elemental, poetic force
Series of climaxes, sustained intensity of the novel carried to unbelievable peaks of passion
Stark, unflinching realism
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Bronts: Their Importance

Plots largely restricted to authors own experiences
High seriousness, no humour
The wonder & beauty of the romantic world
The romantic movement in poetry felt in the novel
As against the detached observation of Jane Austen, the Bronts painted sufferings of the
individual
New conception of the heroine as a woman of vital strength & passionate feelings
Emotion, imagination, intellect
Poetic language, lyrical tone
Concern with human soul (later in George Eliot & Meredith)
George Eliot (1819-80)
Pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans
Born at Warwickshire
After attending several schools, she lived with her father at Foleshil near Coventry
There Mary Ann Evans was drawn to an intellectual circle
Included Charles Bray
Directed her towards free thinking in religious opinion
In Jan 1842, refused to attend church with her father
Later she completed the translation of The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined by Dr David
Strauss, published by John Chapman in 1846
Adult Years
There followed a continental travel with the Brays
Went to London
Closely associated with the amorous Chapman
Chapman was publisher of the radical Westminster Review
She was assistant editor of Westminster Review from 1852 to 1854
For her services she received no salary but board & lodging at 142 strand, where Chapman
conducted a curious boarding-house frequented by middle-class intellectuals
Another important work of this time was a translation of Feuerbachs Essence of Christianity
(1854)
By this time she had met George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived from 1853 until his
death in 1878
Early Works of Fiction
George Eliots interest in writing fiction goes back to her schooldays when she wrote a story
in 1857 three stories were serially published in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine
The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton
Mr Gilfils Love Story
Janets Repentance
The next year these were collectively published as Scenes of Clerical Life, which was wellreceived
This was followed by
Adam Bede (1859)
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Silas Marner (1861)
Adam Bede
Set in Hayslope
Adam
A local carpenter much admired for his integrity and intelligence
In love with Hetty Sorrel
Hetty is attracted to Arthur Donnithorne, the charming local squire's grandson and heir, and
falls in love with him.
After a fight with Adam, Arthur agrees to give up Hetty and leaves Hayslope to return to his
militia
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 Hetty agrees to marry Adam but discovers she is pregnant.

In desperation, she leaves in search of Arthur.
Adam Bede
Hetty cannot find Arthur; but does not return to the village for fear of shame and ostracism
She delivers her baby and, the child is killed when she abandons it in a field.
Hetty is caught and sentenced to hang for child murder.
Dinah Morris
Her cousin and a Methodist preacher
Pledges to stay with Hetty until the end
Dinahs compassion brings about Hetty's confession
Arthur comes on leave for his grandfathers funeral
Races to the court and has the sentence commuted to transportation.
Adam and Dinah, who gradually become aware of their mutual love, marry and live
peacefully.
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe
Silas Marner is seen as an outsider in Raveloe
Due to his special skills
He came to the village from elsewhere
He suffers from fits
He had come to Raveloe when falsely accused of theft by his religious community in Lantern
Yard
In Raveloe, he leads a miserly life and hoards money
Squire Cass is the wealthiest man in Raveloe; Godfrey and Dunsey are his sons
Godfrey is good-natured; secretly married to the opium addict Molly Farren; in love with
Nancy Lammeter.
Dunsey is greedy and cruel; repeatedly blackmails Godfrey with threats to reveal the
marriage to their father
Silas Marner
Godfrey gives Dunsey 100 pounds of their fathers money, and Dunsey refuses to repay it
Instead, Dunsey offers to sell Godfreys prize-horse but gets it killed in a race
Dunsey plans to extort money from Silas, and finding his cottage empty, steals it
Silas is utterly disconsolate to find the money gone
Townsfolk are sympathetic
Especially Dolly Winthrop who urges Silas to go to church which he had not done after
being falsely accused
When Dunsey does not return, Godfrey tells his father about the dead horse, but not about
his marriage
New Years dance at Squire Casss
Godfreys wife Molly is on the way there with her toddler daughter to reveal the
secret; takes more opium; dies on the way
The girl falls asleep in Silass hearth; Godfrey does not claim his daughter; Silas
adopts her; names her Eppie; gets newfound happiness
Sixteen years later
Godfrey has married Nancy but they have no children
Squire Cass has died
Eppie is a beautiful woman
In the stone-pit near Silass house, Dunseys skeleton is found along with Silas gold
Godfrey confides his story to Nancy who wishes to adopt Eppie
But Eppie prefers to stay with Silas
She marries Aaron Winthrop, Dollys son
Later Novels
After a brief visit to Florence, she wrote Romola
Historical novel set in 15th century Florence
Published serially in The Cornhill Magazine (1862-63)
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 Here she deserted her native literary landscapes

Next came Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, published in independent parts in 1871-72
Daniel Deronda (1874-76)
The Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)
Her last work
A series of essays linked by a narrator
Two Later Novels
Felix Holt
A social novel about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First
Reform Act of 1832
Middlemarch
Set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch
Interlocking narratives
Underlying themes, including the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism
and self-interest, religion and hypocrisy, political reform, and education
Reflects on contemporary issues like the Great Reform Bill, the beginnings of the
railways, the death of King George IV and succession of William IV
The protagonist Dorothea Brooke is an idealistic and well-to-do young woman,
engaged in schemes to help the lot of the local poor
Last Years
Also wrote some novellas and a surprising amount of poetry
including The Spanish Gypsy (1868,the product of a trip to Spain in 1867)
The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (1874)
She was one of the finest letter-writers in the language
After the death of Lewes, she married in 1880 John Walter Cross, a man many years her
junior
She died in December of the same year
Crosss biography of George Eliot was published in 1885
Features of George Eliots Novels
Serious moralist
duty is the supreme law of life
humble life is interesting and exalted
daily choices have moral significance
there is no escape from reward / punishment due to ones action
Association with Herbert Spencer, J. S. Mill and other liberals
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Born in Dorset and trained as an architect
Problematic religiosity (agnostic)
Novels set in partly real, partly dream county of Wessex
Depicted he epoch just before the railways and industrial revolution
Pessimistic and bitterly ironic tone
Eye for poignant detail; real newspaper events used as detail
Himself called his finest novels, Novels of Character and Environment
Emphasis on impersonal & negative power of Fate over working class people
Hardys Writing Career
Began his writing career as a novelist
The Poor Man and a Lady failed to find a publisher
First published novel Desperate Remedies in 1871
Wrote realist novels in the tradition of George Eliot
Highly critical of much in Victorian society
Focused more on a declining rural society
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)
Published anonymously
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 Subtitled A Rural Painting of the Dutch School

Concerns the activities of the Mellstock parish choir
A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
Drawing on Hardys courtship of his wife
The Wessex Novels
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
Hardy said he first introduced Wessex in this novel
Title taken from Grays Elegy
Bathsheba Everdene, William Boldwood, Frank Troy, Gabriel Oak
The Return of the Native (1878)
A year and a day in Egdon Heath; begins on Guy Fawkes night
Clym Yeobright who is a diamond merchant, Eustacia Wye
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
Subtitled The Life and Death of a Man of Character
Michael Henchard, Donald Farfrae, Elizabeth-Jane
The Woodlanders (1887)
Tess of the DUrbervilles (1891)
Controversially subtitled A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented
Far from the Madding Crowd
Hardys first major literary success
Gabriel Oak, the novel's hero, is a farmer and shepherd
Humble and honest ways, his exceptional skill with animals and farming, and an
unparalleled loyalty.
Bathsheba Everdene, the protagonist, is a proud beauty who lives with her aunt Mrs. Hurst
Gabriel watches Bathsheba quietly for several days and proposes to her, but she refuses to
marry him
Upon inheriting her uncle's prosperous farm, she moves away to the town of Weatherbury
Boldwood
A disaster befalls Gabriel's farm and he loses his sheep and is forced to give up farming.
He travels first to Casterbridge and to Shottsford, near Weatherbury, in search of work.
On the way he unknowingly rescues Bathshebas farm from fire. She hires him as shepherd.
She gets acquainted with her rich neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, and on a whim sends him a
valentine with the words "Marry me."
Boldwood becomes obsessed with her and proposes to her
Bathsheba refuses him because she does not love him, but she then agrees to reconsider
her decision.
Frank Troy
Bathsheba meets handsome Sergeant Frank Troy who excites her with a private display of
swordsmanship.
Troy falls in love with Bathsheba and both get married.
Gabriel has remained Bathshebas friend throughout.
Bathsheba soon discovers that Troy is a gambler with little interest in farming.
Troy loves a servant girl, Fanny Robin whom he had promised to marry; but the wedding was
called off as Fanny couldnt appear in church in time for the marriage.
One day Troy sees Fanny, poor and sick; she later dies giving birth to Troys child. Bathsheba
discovers that Troy is the father.
Grief-stricken and ashamed, Troy runs away
Gabriel Oak
With Troy supposedly dead, Boldwood insists that Bathsheba marry him.
But Troy is not dead. He sees Bathsheba at a fair and decides to return to her.
Boldwood holds a Christmas party, and again proposes marriage to Bathsheba . Just then,
Troy arrives to claim her. Bathsheba screams, and Boldwood shoots Troy dead. He is
sentenced to life in prison.
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When Gabriel, now a prosperous bailiff, decides to leave for California, Bathsheba realizes
how important he is to her.
That night, she visits him in his cottage and he again asks for her hand in marriage. She
accepts, and the two are quietly wed.
Tess of the DUrbervilles
Teresa Tess Durbeyfield, daughter of uneducated peasants
Tess's father learns that he is descended from a medieval noble family, the d'Urbervilles
The elder Durbeyfields wish to take advantage of their illustrious ancestry
Send a very reluctant Tess to claim kin with the local newly rich d'Urberville family
(who in fact have no connection to the original d'Urbervilles)
Tess begins working at the d'Urberville house, and attracts the unwanted attentions of the
playboy son of the household, Alec
In a rape or seduction, Tess becomes pregnant.
She returns home against Alec's wishes; bears a son whom she names Sorrow who soon
dies
Fresh Beginnings
Leaving her disgrace behind, she takes a job at Talbothays dairy forty miles away.
At the local May Dance, Tess meets Angel Clare, the virtuous younger son of a minister
Although the two are from different social classes, they fall in love, and Angel repeatedly
urges Tess to marry him.
He perceives her as an innocent country maiden and Tess finds it difficult to tell him her
secret.
On the wedding night, after Angel asks forgiveness for a past sexual indiscretion of his own,
she finally finds the courage to make her confession.
To her horror, Angel is deeply mortified and his attitude toward her changes completely.
Trials
The two separate a few days later; Angel tells Tess he will come to her if he decides he can
endure living with her.
Tess goes to work again as a day laborer on other farms.
During these months, Alec d'Urberville re-enters her life, claiming to be a reformed sinner
and begging her to marry him.
Tess rebuffs him with loathing and continues her difficult, lonely existence, performing
backbreaking field work all winter and waiting for Angel to relent.
Tesss father John Durbeyfield dies and the family is forced to travel the countryside with all
their possessions searching for lodgings and employment.
The Murder
Alec d'Urberville re-appears and a desperate Tess agrees to become his mistress in order to
support her family.
Angel Clare has been in Brazil, where a disease nearly kills him
He returns to England to find Tess and renew their love
Angel discovers her living in a seaside hotel with Alec d'Urberville, beautifully dressed but
miserable.
Tess, in despair, sends Angel away, and goes back to her room, weeping. When Alec scoffs at
her misery and insults her husband, she stabs him to death
Tess wildly hopes that the murder will somehow purify her in Angel's eyes
The End
Tess goes after Angel and they flee together, finally consummating their marriage while
hiding in a guest house.
They eventually reach the Stonehenge, where Tess asks Angel to take care of her younger
sister, Liza-Lu
The police arrive to make their arrest. In the last scene, as Angel and Liza-Lu watch outside
the walls of a prison, a black flag ascends a flagpole, signalling the completion of Tesss
execution.

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Hardy writes: Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase)
had ended his sport with Tess.
Criticism against his novels
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) received negative reviews upon
publication for being too pessimistic and preoccupied with sex
He left fiction writing for poetry, and published eight collections, including Wessex
Poems (1898) and Satires of Circumstance (1912)
Hardys Poetry
Traditionalist in technique
Modernist in themes
Explores a fatalist outlook against the dark, rugged landscape of his native Dorset
Rejects the Victorian belief in a benevolent God
His poetry reads as a sardonic lament on the bleakness of the human condition
Hardy: Modernism]
Class-inflected, skeptical, self-implicating tendencies
Highly ambiguous language
Resistance to conventional attitudes
Insistence on the possibility of achieving a defiant freedom to choose and refuse
Doubt, pessimism, intellectual crisis
Denial of resolution, closure
Unusual distortion and simplification characteristic of expressionism
Tendency to mix sharply contrsting artistic modes in a single work
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59)
Writing for recreation
Balladic poems
French and English history
History of England
No accuracy of fact
Immensely pleasurable style
Essays on Bunyan, Addison, Bacon, Johnson, Goldsmith, Byron
One-sided criticism
Brilliant style and wealth of allusion
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Scottish writer from a Calvinist family, who abandoned the clerical profession
German influence
Translated Goethes Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
Wrote The Life of Schiller
Connections in the US; friendship with Emerson
Time of industrial revolution; but transcendental, not materialistic view of the world
Major Works
On Heroes and Hero Worship
Leaders in religion, poetry, war and politicsDivinity (Odin), Prophet (Mahomet), Poet
(Dante, Shakespeare), Priest (Luther, Knox), Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau,
Burns), King (Cromwell, Napoleon)
development of human intellect
History as the biography of a few heroes; heroism as a matter of power, not of
physical or moral courage
The French Revolution in 3 volumes
Not historical in the modern sense; pictorial and dramatic
Completed draft accidentally burnt by JS Mills maid; then rewritten
Signs of the Times
Collection of essays
Sartor Resartus
Means tailor repatched
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John

Commentary on the thought and life of a German philosopher Teufelsdrckh, author of

Clothes: their Origin and Influence.
Simultaneously factual and fictional, serious and satirical, speculative and historical.
Ironically metafictional.
Central question: Where can one find truth?
The imaginary Philosophy of Clothes is described
The Everlasting Yea is Carlyle's name in the book for the spirit of faith in God, in opposition
to Everlasting No
In Sartor Resartus, the narrator moves from the "Everlasting No" to the "Everlasting
Yea," but only through "The Center of Indifference," a position agnosticism and
detachment
Ruskin (1819-1900)
Spirit of a social reformer
Sensitiveness and sincerity
Art criticisms
Seven Lamps of Architecture
Modern Painters (Ruskins admiration of JMW Turner)
Stones of Venice
Political economy
Unto This Last (political economy is merely commercial; detailed plan to make a
nation wealthy by increasing the health and happiness of human beings)
Sesame and Lilies (on books & womanly character)
Shakespeare has no heroes, only heroines
The End of the 19th Century

Fin de sicle
The period at the end of the 19th century
Especially in France
Characteristic features
Lethargy (Lassitude)
Satiety
Ennui
Relished artifice over the Romantics nave view of nature
Rejected progress as banal
Movements of the period
Decadence, Symbolism, Aestheticism, Avant-Garde
Major figures
AC Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson
Decadence
Late 19th century French movement related to Aestheticism
Based on qualities attributed to literature of Hellenistic Greece and classical Rome
High refinement
Subtle beauties
Decay
The same values were attributed to contemporary European civilization
Central idea is that art is opposed to nature and to standards of moral and sexual behaviour
Major figure: Charles Baudelaire
Symbolism
Use of private symbols in Romantic literature
Shelley, Blake, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Poe
As a movement, associated with
Charles Baudelaire (Fleurs du mal)
Arthur Rimbaud
Paul Verlaine
Stephane Mallarme
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 Paul Valery
Tenets of Symbolist Movement
There is an inherent analogy between human mind and natural / spiritual worlds
This is called correspondence
Poetry was made richly suggestive by the use of an order of private symbols
Avoided traditional techniques of versification in order to allow greater room for "fluidity"
Major work: The Symbolist Movement in Literature by Arthur Symons
Influenced WB Yeats and TS Eliot
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
Irish poet and dramatist
Major role in Irish Literary Revival, which was part of Celtic Revival
Appreciation of traditional Irish literature, Irelands historic past, myths, legends,
folklore
Preoccupation with the political state of Ireland
Sometimes involved a reaction against modernism, because the archaic and the
modern were at odds
Along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, founded Abbey Theatre (1899)
First Irishman to get Nobel Prize (1923); for reflecting the spirit of a whole nation in his
poetry
Yeats Career
Early poems
Unlike modernists, used traditional verse
Drew heavily on Irish myth and folklore
Pre-Raphaelite tone
Self-consciously ornate
Middle period
More austere language and more direct approach to his themes, like modernists
Social irony
Contemporary themes
Later poetry
Personal tone
New imaginative inspiration in the mystical system he worked out for himself
The Second Coming
The speaker describes a nightmarish scene
the falcon, turning in a widening gyre (spiral), cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; anarchy is loosed upon the world;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is
drowned.
The best people, the speaker says, lack all conviction, but the worst are full of passionate
intensity.
The world is near a revelation; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming
The speaker then sees a vast image of the Spiritus Mundi, or the collective spirit of
mankind: somewhere in the desert
Out of the Spiritus Mundi rises a giant sphinx (A shape with lion body and the head of a
man)
The sphinxs twenty centuries of stony sleep have been made a nightmare by the
motions of a rocking cradle.
And what rough beast, he wonders, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards
Bethlehem to be born?
Sailing to Byzantium
The speaker has left a place which is no country for old men
It is full of youth and physical life
There, the world rings with sensual music that makes the young neglect the old,
who are Monuments of unageing intellect.
An old man, the speaker says, is a paltry thing, merely a tattered coat upon a stick
His soul should clap its hands and sing
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The only way for the soul to learn how to sing is to study monuments of its own
magnificence.
Therefore, the speaker has come to the holy city of Byzantium.
Sailing to Byzantium
The speaker addresses the sages standing in Gods holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a
wall, and asks them to be his souls singing-masters.
He hopes they will consume his heart away
His heart knows not what it is
It is sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal
The speaker wishes to be gathered Into the artifice of eternity.
Byzantium
At night in the city of Byzantium, The unpurged images of day recede.
The drunken soldiers of the Emperor are asleep, and the song of night-walkers fades after
the great cathedral gong.
The starlit or moonlit dome, the speaker says, condemns all that is human
The speaker says that before him floats an imagemore a shadow than a man, an image.
The speaker hails this superhuman image, calling it death-in-life and life-in-death.
A golden bird sits on a golden tree, which the speaker says is a miracle; it sings aloud, and
scorns the common bird and complexities of blood.
Byzantium
At midnight, the images of flames flit across the Emperors pavement
Here, blood-begotten spirits come, and die into a dance, leaving behind all the
complexities and furies of life.
Riding the backs of dolphins, spirit after spirit arrives, the flood broken on the golden
smithies of the Emperor.
The marbles of the dancing floor break the bitter furies of complexity, the storms of
images that beget more images, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
The Two Poems
Highly ambiguous and complicated
Show preference for the artificial above the actual
In Sailing to Byzantium, he is travelling to Byzantium
In Byzantium, he has arrived there
In Sailing to Byzantium the speaker stated his desire to be out of nature and to assume
the form of a golden bird
In Byzantium, the bird appears, and scores of dead spirits arrive on the backs of
dolphins, to be forged into the artifice of eternity
Leda and the Swan
One of the Annunciation Poems
A story from Greek mythology, the rape of the girl Leda by the god Zeus, who had assumed
the form of a swan.
Like The Second Coming, Leda and the Swan describes a moment of change in Yeatss
historical model of gyres, which he offers in A Vision, his mystical theory of the universe. But
where The Second Coming represents the end of modern history, Leda and the Swan
represents its beginning
Major concerns in Yeats' Poetry
Art and politics are intrinsically linked
Yeats attitudes toward Irish politics
Mystic idea of a unique spiritual and philosophical system that emphasized the role of fate or
the belief that events have been preordained (historical determinism)
Listen to his poems
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HXQIlpm5tg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEunVObSnVM
Aesthetic Movement
Closely related to Decadents and Symbolists
Anti-Victorian
Art should provide refined sensuous pleasure (Rejection of Ruskins and Arnolds utilitarian
view that art should be moral and useful)
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 Developed the cult of Beauty, the basic factor in Art

Suggestion rather than statement
Sensuality
Massive use of symbols
Synaesthetic effectscorrespondence between words, colours and music
Oscar Wilde
Irish novelist, poet, playwright, aesthete
Homosexuality in life and works led to his downfall
Only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray
Gothic horror
Faustian theme
The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist
Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorians beauty and becomes infatuated with
him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art.
Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses his desire to sell his soul
to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorians wish is
fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts.
Four comedies
Lady Windermeres Fan
A Woman of No Importance
An Ideal Husband
Importance of Being Earnest
Satirized Victorian society and values through epigrams
Divorces are made in heaven
This epigram pokes fun at the popular phrase "A marriage made in heaven".
The truth is rarely pure and never simple
This epigram attacks the truth of the popular phrase "The pure and simple
truth".
In marriage, three is company, two is none
Here Wilde has taken the popular saying "Two is company, three is a crowd" and
adapted it to suit his own purpose.
Farcical elements
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People (1895)
Algernon Moncrieff is an idle young gentleman in London
John Worthing, whom he knows as Ernest, is his friend.
Ernest comes from the country to propose to Algernon's cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax.
Algernon, questions him about the inscription, "From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her
dear Uncle Jack", on his cigarette case.
'Ernest' admits that he is living a double life.
In the country, he is John (also Jack) the serious caretaker of his ward Cecily Cardew.
He also pretends that he has to take care of his wastrel younger brother Ernest in
London so that he can escape to his libertine life as Ernest.
Algernon confesses that he pretends to have an invalid friend named Bunbury in the
country, whom he can "visit" to avoid an unwelcome social obligation.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Gwendolen and her mother Lady Bracknell now call on Algernon.
Gwendolen accepts Jacks proposal mainly due to her fondness for his name Ernest. Jack
resolves to be rechristened "Ernest".
Lady Bracknell
Learns that Jack was adopted after being discovered as a baby in a handbag at
Victoria Station
Refuses her consent for their marriage.
Algernon meets Cecily pretending to be Ernest
Worthing charms Cecily. She too, like Gwendolen, is fond of the name Ernest.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Jack decides to abandon his double life. He announces his brother's death, a story
undermined by Algernon's presence in the guise of Ernest.
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Gwendolen arrives there and meets Cecily; both declare that she is the one engaged to
"Ernest".
When Jack and Algernon appear, their deceptions are exposed.
Lady Bracknell arrives and through her interaction with Miss Prismis (Cecilys governess)
realizes that Jack is her own nephew, and thus Algernon's elder brother.
Now Jack is acceptable as a suitor for Gwendolen.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Gwendolen, insists that she can only love a man named Ernest.
Jack examines the army lists and discovers that his father's nameand hence his own real
namewas in fact Ernest.
Pretence was reality all along
G. M. Hopkins
Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest
His experimental explorations in prosody (especially sprung rhythm) and his use of imagery
established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse.
Friendship at Oxford with Robert Bridges
Homosexual impulses; put himself under strict self-control
Running Rhythm
Before Hopkins, most Middle English and Modern English poetry was based on a rhythmic
structure inherited from the Norman English
This structure is based on repeating groups of two or three syllables, with the stressed
syllable falling in the same place on each repetition.
Hopkins called this structure running rhythm,
Though he wrote some of his early verse in running rhythm he became fascinated
with the older rhythmic structure of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, of which Beowulf is the
most famous example.
Hopkins called his own rhythmic structure sprung rhythm.
Sprung Rhythm
Structured around feet with a variable number of syllables, generally between one and four
syllables per foot
The stress always falls on the first syllable in a foot.
It closely resembles
The rolling stresses of Robinson Jeffers, another poet who rejected conventional
meter
Nursery rhymes
Sprung Rhythm as Modernist
Hopkins saw sprung rhythm as a way to escape the constraints of running rhythm
Running rhythm inevitably pushed poetry written in it to become same and tame.
In this way, Hopkins can be seen as anticipating much of free verse.
His work has no great affinity with either of the contemporary Pre-Raphaelite and neoromanticism schools, although he does share their descriptive love of nature
He is often seen as a precursor to modernist poetry or as a bridge between the two poetic
eras.
Hopkins Style
Imagery simple, metaphysical, sometimes intricate
archaic and dialect words; also new words
compound adjectives
images are concentrated, communicating the instress of the poets perceptions of an
inscape to his reader
Inscape, idea derived from Duns Scotus, the distinctive design that constitutes individual
identity. Instress is an intense thrust of energy toward an object that enables one to realize
its specific distinctiveness; i.e., inscape is realized through instress
extensive use of alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia and rhyme
Hopkins influenced by Welsh language & literature
The Windhover: To Christ, Our Lord
The windhover is a bird with the rare ability to hover in the air.
The poet describes how he saw (or caught) one of these birds in the midst of its hovering.
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The

The

The

The

The bird strikes the poet as the darling (minion) of the morning, the crown prince
(dauphin) of the kingdom of daylight, drawn by the dappled colors of dawn.
It rides the air as if it were on horseback, moving with steady control like a rider whose hold
on the rein is sure and firm.
Windhover
Its motion is controlled and suspended in an ecstatic moment of concentrated energy.
In the next moment, the bird is off again, like an ice skater balancing forces as he makes a
turn.
The bird, first matching the winds force in order to stay still, now rebuffs the big wind with
its forward propulsion.
At the same moment, the poet feels his own heart stir forward out of hiding, moved by
the achieve of, the mastery of the birds performance.
Windhover
The beauty, valour, and act (like air, pride, and plume) buckle in the bird.
Buckle (verb) denotes
Either a fastening (like buckling a belt), a coming together of these different parts of a
creatures being, or
A submissive collapse (like the buckling of the knees), in which all parts subordinate
themselves into some larger purpose or cause.
In either case, a unification takes place.
Windhover
At the moment of this integration, a glorious fire issues forth, like the glory of Christs life
and crucifixion, though not as grand.
It is the striving of the individual (of a religious life) that serves to bring out his or her inner
glow
As in the daily use of a metal plough, instead of wearing it down, actually polishes it
Thus the individual life will sparkle and shine.
Avant-garde
Experimental forms of art
Boundaries of norms challenged
Promotion of radical social forms
No social reform
Art for arts sake
Surrealism, Dadaism, Futurism
Impressionism, Expressionism

Early 20th Century Literature

Political Contexts
Two World Wars
1914-1918
1939-1945
Victorian Period ends
Queen Victoria (r. 1837-1901)
Edwardian era
King Edward VII (r. 1901-1910)
Georgian Era
King George V (1910-1936)
The Edwardian Era
Period of great social change
Imperial domination continues
The power and luxury of the ruling elite solidified
There was a rigid class system; great differences between the wealthy and the poor
Paradoxically, liberal ideas were also popular
The spirit of socialism following the Industrial Revolution
Confused period
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Edwardian Society
Enthusiasm for art & fashions
Women: Corset abandoned; columnar silhouette becomes the fashion
The Edwardian period is later nostalgically imagined as a romantic golden age of long
summer afternoons and garden parties, basking in a sun that never sets on the British
Empire
Art Nouveau
Decorative style that flourished throughout Europe & America, 1880s to 1914
Characterized by
asymmetry, sinuous lines
touched by fin de sicle romantic motifs
willowy, elongated female figures with flowing locks
fantastic curves of stylized flowers
Edwardian Realists
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Born in Bombay; father was art teacher & director of Lahore Museum
Schooling in England
Early career as journalist back in India
Friend of Henry James
Innovator of short story (The Phantom Rickshaw, Wee Willie Winkie, later Mary
Postgate; several collections)
Poetry: Barrack-Room Ballads & Other Verses etc
Kiplings Early Works
Early novels were failures
The Light That Failed and Naulahka
The Jungle Book (1894)
A collection of stories fables that present animals anthropomorphically to teach
morals
The adventures of an abandoned man cub Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the
Indian jungle
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the story of a heroic mongoose
Toomai of the Elephants, the tale of a young elephant-handler
The Second Jungle Book (written in the USA)
Kim
Best-known novel
Picaresque novel about Kimball Hara
Kim is an orphan in British India
Set against the backdrop of The Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and
Britain in Central Asia
More Works
Visited South Africa regularly during the Boer War
Just-So Stories, Puck of Pooks Hill etc. show a remarkable sympathy for children
Poem If is an evocation of Victorian stoicism and stiff upper lip culture
Science fiction (short stories)
Fame and Notoriety
First English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize (1907)
Declined Poet Laureateship and knighthood
Called Poet of Empire
Criticized for blatant racism; Prophet of British imperialism (Orwell)
Early editions of books had swastika and an elephant carrying a lotus flower, a symbol of
luck.
Once the Nazis came to power and appropriated the swastika, Kipling ordered that it should
no longer be used on his books.
The White Mans Burden 1899
Response to the American take-over of Philippines after the Spanish-American war
In the Spanish-American War of 1898 the United States seized the Spanish colonies in the
Caribbean and the Pacific, emerging for the first time as a world power
The anti-imperialist movement in the United States was loudly decrying the plan to annex
the Philippines
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President McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, welcomed Kiplings rousing call for the United
States to engage in savage wars, beginning in the Philippines
White Mans Burden: First Stanza
Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Edwardian Realists
John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Lawyer & friend of Conrad
Numerous novels; 31 full-length plays
Dealt with class, esp. upper middle class lives
Highlighted the insular, snobbish attitudes of characters and their suffocating moral codes
Through his writings he campaigned for a variety of causes including prison reform, women's
rights, animal welfare and censorship
Nobel Prize 1932
Galsworthys Plays
The Silver Box
Rich family paralleled with poor family
Justice
Falder, a junior clerk, forges cheque to help his sweetheart; is arrested and he finally
kills himself
Led to the reform of the practice of solitary confinement in prisons
Galsworthys Plays
Strife
Labour versus Capital
Strike at Trenartha Tin Plate Works. Galsworthy presents both sides of the strike
(directors as well as strikers)
The Skin Game
Aristocratic family and a family of the newly rich juxtaposed
Themes of jealously guarded social privilege and snobbery
Galsworthys
Roman a fleuve (River-novel)
The Forsyte Saga
About an English familys rise to wealth and power
Three novels and two interludes
The Man of Property, In Chancery, To Let
A sequel: A Modern Comedy
Three novels & two interludes again
End of the Chapter
Trilogy on the Charwells, relatives of the Forsytes
Bennetts Plays & Novels
Milestones (play)
Greatest success
Written in collaboration with Edward Knoblock
Lord Raingo
Political novel
Depicts life of the powerful
Riceyman Steps
Ordinary, undistinguished life
Edwardian Realists
H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
Son of an unsuccessful tradesman
Early life reflected in many of his protagonists; father often presented in disguise (esp. Mr.
Polly)
Studied science with scholarship under T.H. Huxley

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 First works textbooks of biology & geography

Futuristic science fiction (scientific romances), and political and satirical fiction
Outspoken socialist (better ways to organize society; utopian)
The Time Machine (1895)
First major novel; developed from a series of articles
Central character The Time Traveller; travels in a machine he has invented
In AD 802701 where he meets the Eloi
A society of small, elegant, childlike adults
His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or
discipline
The result of humanity conquering nature with technology, when strength and
intellect no longer help to survive
Eloi are the prey of the degenerate Morlocks, descendents of labourers who have lived
underground for centuries
In later novels, Wells was preoccupied with the need to save mankind from future
failures (represented by the divided world of the Eloi & Morlocks)
30 million years later, witnesses the worlds final decline as the sun cools
The War of the Worlds (1898)
Part I: missiles from Mars destroy England
Part II: survivors (including unnamed narrator & his brother) hide from the Martians who are
in turn destroyed by earthly bacteria (to which they were not immune, since there are no
bacteria in Mars!)
Other Early Novels
The Island of Dr Moreau
The Invisible Man
When the Sleeper Wakes
The First Men in the Moon
Characteristics of the Early Novels
Satire; Implicit warning
Impact of alien races or advanced science on established society
These elements pre-figure Wells later concern with social reality
Wells Social Novels
A Modern Utopia (social realism + fantasy)
The New Machiavelli (discussion novel)
Ann Veronica
Feminist New Woman novel
Ann Veronicas rebellion against patriarchal father
Images of womens suffragette movement
New Woman
Term popularized by Henry James (eg. Isabel Archer, Daisy Miller)
A feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century
Models of New Women offered in Ibsens plays
Describes the growth in the number of feminist, educated, independent career women in
Europe and the US
The suffragette movement to gain women's democratic rights the most important influence
The History of Mr. Polly
Social comedy
The protagonist Alfred Polly is an anti-hero inspired by Wellss early experience in the
drapery trade.
His unsympathetic father Mr Polly is modelled on Wellss own father.
Edwardian Realists
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Psychologically probing novels
Themes: guilt, heroism, honour
Romanticism tempered with irony
Forerunner of modernism existential, anti-heroic characters, prose-poet, analysis of colonial
themes
Invested late 19th century action novel the Imperialist Boy's Own adventure story with
moral subtlety, aesthetic density, and a powerful sense of ideological seriousness
Almayers Folly (1895)
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First novel
Life of the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer in the Borneo jungle (north of Java) and his
relationship to his half-caste daughter Nina.
The Nigger of Narcissus:
A Tale of the Sea (1897)
Preface famous; example of literary expressionism
Defines art as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible
universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect
The title character, James Wait, is a West Indian black sailor on board the merchant
ship Narcissus sailing from Bombay to London. Wait falls ill with tuberculosis during the
voyage, and five of the crew rescue him from his deck cabin during a storm, placing their
own lives and the ship at risk
Heart of Darkness (1899)
Published serially in Blackwoods Magazine
Savagery vs. civilization; colonialism, racism
Typical Conrad theme: How do we come to terms with the enemy that we are forced to
recognize as ourself? Marlows search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has 'gone too far' in his
exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade.
The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the 'horrors' of what happened when
Europeans invaded the continent.
Conrad is conservative & pessimisticthere is no way out of the human predicament
Heart of Darkness: Plot
A boat is anchored on the Thames
Here, Marlow tells the narrator and other companions about a journey he took to Africa.
Travel and exploration were always his passions. Maps were an obsession.
Marlow is critical of colonization. Was disgusted by the greed of the ivory traders and their
exploitation of the natives.
Soon Marlow becomes the narrator.
The Trip through Congo
African shores are dark and desolate, men have vacant looks
Marlow embarks on a 200 mile journey to Inner Station, where he will work for a mythic man
named Kurtz, the companys madly cruel and most successful agent.
Marlow has to trek to the Central Station reach his steamboat. Long and arduous trip.
Crosses many deserted dwellings and finds black men working, who are never described as
humans, but in animalistic terms.
The Central Station
At the Central Station, Marlow discovers that his boat is mysteriously wrecked.
While Marlow waits he understands that the other agents are jealous of Kurtz and hope for
his death. Marlows arrival at the Inner Station is being deliberately delayed.
Meanwhile it is rumoured that Kurtz is ill.
Marlow and the entire crew at the Central Station set out for Kurtzs station.
The Journey to the Inner Station
The 2-month journey through the motionless forest fills Marlow with dread. It is like
travelling back to the earlier beginnings of the world.
Ominous drumming, dark forms seen through the trees.
8 miles from the destination, attack by tribesmen. The helmsman and a native are killed.
Marlow thinks Kurtz might be dead in the encounter, but they continue journey.
The Inner Station
At the Inner Station, Marlow meets a Russian, who tells him that Kurtz is alive but ill. He also
talks about Kurtzs brilliance and the semi-divine power he exercises over the natives.
Around Kurtzs hut there was a row of severed heads on stakes, indicating ritual dancing,
human sacrifice and other barbaric rites, which Kurtz, an educated and civilized man had
used for his ascendancy, to rule over this dark kingdom.
Kurtz Dies
Marlow talks to Kurtz on his deathbed.
The natives do not want Kurtz to leave because he has expanded their minds.
Kurtz does not want to leave because he has essentially become part of the tribe. He
justifies his actions and motives: he has seen into the very heart of things.
But the steamboat leaves the next day with Kurtz on board, and he dies. His last words were,
The horror! the horror!

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The Real Kurtz

Kurtz had entrusted Marlow with all his papers among which there was an old photograph of
his Intended (fiance)
Marlow manages to find the woman, who talks about Kurtzs wonderful personal qualities
and about how guilty she feels for not being with him at his last moments.
Marlow tells her simply that he died with her name on his lips. The real truth is too dark to
be told.
Achebes critique
Conrad refuses to bestow human expression on Africans, even depriving them of language.
Africa is rendered as the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization
Conrads inordinate love of the word nigger should be of interest to psychoanalysts
Critics have attacked Achebe himself for his critique.
Modernist Elements
Moral degeneracy, corruption
Individual struggling for survival
Alienation, confusion, doubt
Imperialist themes, east-west encounter
A fragmented world, where things fall apart
Materialism versus a philosophical view of life
Psychological delineation of character
Symbolism
Summary of Heart of Darkness
Two more novels
The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (1907)
Set in London; depicts the life of Mr. Verloc and his job as a spy; themes of anarchism,
terrorism.
This is one of Conrads later political novels which moved away from seafaring.
Under Western Eyes (1911)
Setting Russia and Switzerland
Conrads response to the themes explored in Crime and Punishment
Cynicism about the historical failures of revolutionary movements and ideals
Lord Jim (1899)
Explores cowardice and moral redemption.
Jim is a ships captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence - abandoning his
ship (Patna, travelling to Mecca for the hajj) along with his crew.
He is publicly censured for his action and spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful
obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character.
Charles Marlow is a character.
Marlow is also the narrator of three of Conrads other works: Heart of Darkness, Youth, and
Chance.
Nostromo (1904)
Conrads big political novel
Set in the mining town Sulaco in the imaginary Latin America country Costaguana.
A history of political instability and corruption, ruled by the dictator Ribiera.
Charles Gould, a native of English descent; has a silver-mining concession; uses his wealth to
help Ribiera govt.
Revolution breaks out in Costaguana and Gould entrusts his silver with Nostromo, a
seemingly incorruptible Italian expatriate who has tremendous influence over the natives.
Nostromo moves the silver from Sulaco, but feels exploited and slighted, and decides to use
the silver (which others now believe is lost at sea) for himself.
In attempting to recover the silver, he is shot and killed.
Edwardian Realists
E.M. Forster (1879-1970)
Secular humanist
Explores the snobbery and hypocrisy of early 20th century English society
Depicts irreconcilability of class differences
Sexualitymove towards homosexuality
Symbolism & mysticism

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His creed of life which can be summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End,
Only connect
This means in the world of divided relationships of anger and telegrams,
understanding and sympathy between human beings is important
Nature of works
Critique of a London beset by the automobile and other machines, changing at an enormous
pace, a city of "anger and telegrams"
Characters die suddenly
Favourite theme: human relationships
Reinstated importance of honesty and tolerance
Italian novels
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
Lilia, a young English widow, falls in love with an Italian man during her travel to Italy. Her
bourgeois relatives send Philip to bring her back to prevent a misalliance.
Philips mission is similar to that of Lambert Strether in Henry Jamess The
Ambassadors. Forster discussed Jamess novel ironically in his book Aspects of the Novel
(1927).
Italian novels
A Room with a View (1908)
Romantic story set in Italy and England
English woman Lucy Honeychurch touring Italy; staying at the hotel, The Pension Bertolini
Has confused feelings for the Englishman George Emerson in the same hotel; finally elopes
with him.
Title: the women were promised a room overlooking River Arno, but their room overlooks the
courtyard; room represents conservative, uncreative mindset.
Themes: repressed sexuality, freedom from institutional religion, growing up and true love;
the English as frozen, Italy as passionate though irresponsible and cruel
Merchant-Ivory film
English novels
Howards End (1910)
Social and familial relations in turn-of-the-century England
Three families:
the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies;
the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Tibby, and Helen), who have much in
common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group; and
the Basts, a struggling couple in the lower-middle class
English novels
A Passage to India (1924)
Last of his five novels
Set in India (1910-20)the city of Chandrapore, near Marabar caves
General theme: The protagonist Dr. Azizs relationships with British friends; the nature of
Indian-British friendship
Shows English & Indian differences as irreconcilable
Three sectionsMosque, Caves & Temple
Adela Quested, Mrs. Moore, Dr. Aziz, Prof. Godbole
Other Works
Aspects of the Novel
Series of lectures delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1927
Discusses seven aspects he deems universal to the novel: story, characters, plot,
fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm
Flat & round charactersboth flat and round characters may be included in the
successful novel
Maurice
Novel publ. posthumously
Homosexual content
Edwardian Realists
Ford Madox Ford (1873-1938)
Presided over the transition towards modernism
Edited journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, which were instrumental
in the development of early 20th century English literature
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Ford modernized him (Ezra Pound)

Ford is the model for the character Braddocks in Hemingways The Sun Also Rises
The Troubadours
The Fifth Queen trilogythe swan song of historical romance (Conrad); a picturesque Tudor
trilogy about Henry VIIIs Catherine Howard.
More Works
The Good Soldierthe best novel; depicts the decline of the English upper class through the
story of two wealthy couples
Parades End tetralogy
Return to Yesterday, It was the Nightingaleliterary reminiscences
Provencetravel book
The March of Literature, A History of Our Own Times
GK Chesterton (1874-1936)
Novelist, playwright, essayist, Catholic theologian
Huge man
It is famous that he was a friend of GB Shaw
Also a friend of Hilaire Belloc
Shaw coined the term Chesterbelloc
Both criticized capitalism and socialism
Called prince of paradox
Created the character Father Brown, a detective
Chestertons Major Works
Most of his works have a Christian theme
Orthodoxy
Chestertons spiritual journey
The Everlasting Man
The spiritual journey of the Western civilization
The Man Who was Thursday
A thriller
Detective stories of Father Brown
Charles Dickens: A Critical Study
Literary criticism
Saki (1870-1916)
Penname of H.H. Munro
Wrote witty short stories that satirized Edwardian society
Well-known story The Open Window
Set in the drawing-room of an upper-class village house
Vera, a self-possessed girl of fifteen, unfolds a tale of eerie family tragedy for the
highly strung visitor, Framton Nuttel , who is shocked
Nuttels reaction is the core of the story
Henry James
American-born British novelist, short story writer, playwright and critic
Brother of psychologist William James
Many works depicted Americans in Europe
Wrote from the limited point-of-view of a character, whom he described as the centre of
consciousness
This style compared to impressionistic painting
In literary criticism
Endorsed a realistic representation of life in fiction
writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world
James Major Works
The American
An American businessman tours Europe
The Turn of the Screw
An ambiguous ghost story narrated by a governess
The Portrait of a Lady
What Maisie Knew
The Wings of the Dove
Daisy Miller
The Ambassadors

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The Portrait of a Lady

Set in England and Italy
Story of the American woman, Isabel Archer
Rejects the proposals of Warburton and Goodwood due to her commitment to independence
Marries Gilbert Osmond due to machinations of Madame Merle
Marriage sours because Osmond is egotistic and has no affection for his wife
Isabel grows fond of Pansy, Osmonds daughter from a previous marriage
An ambiguous ending
Pansy is discovered to be the daughter of Madame Merle, who had an adulterous relationship
with Osmond
Isabel leaves for England to care for her dying cousin, Ralph
The ending is ambiguous it is not clear whether
Isabel returned to Osmond to suffer out her marriage in noble tragedy (perhaps for
Pansy's sake) or
She would rescue Pansy and leave Osmond
The Ambassadors
A dark comedy from James later career
Third-person narrative told exclusively from Lambert Strethers point of view
Lambert Strether is in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiance's supposedly wayward son
In Paris, Chad is close to a lovely woman, Marie de Vionnet, and her exquisite daughter.
Strether is confused as to whether Chad is more attracted to the mother or the daughter.
Finally Strether advises Chad not to leave Marie
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
American writer
Novels
Depicting New York and employing dramatic irony
Also, 85 short stories and design books (she was a garden designer)
Travelled in Europe
Close friend of Henry James
Her novel The Age of Innocence parallels James The Portrait of a Lady
The Age of Innocence (1920) won the Pulitzer Prize
She was the first woman to win the Prize
Pre-war verse
Romantic impulse less rhetorical
Subjects simpler
Georgian poets
Against the experimentation of modernism and avant-garde
Georgian Era
First Georgian era18th c. Hanoverian era
Reign of George V (1910-1936)
World War
Georgian Poetry
A series of 5 anthologies edited by Edward Marsh
Rupert Brooke, Ralph Hodgson, WH Davies, Walter de la Mare, John Masefield, John
Drinkwater
Many of them associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock
Features of Georgian Poets
Rustic subject matter
Romantic, pastoral poetry
Deft and delicate, traditional tone
TS Eliot ridiculed their poetry as that of Rainbows, Cuckoos, Daffodils, and timid Hares
This criticism was a part of his dictum that we must learn to take literature seriously.
Georgian Poets
WH Davies
Welsh poet who spent many years as a tramp or hobo
Wrote The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
His poem Leisure begins What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand
and stare? (the phrase stand and stare is an subversion of Miltons line, They also
serve who only stand an wait)
Georgian Poets
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Rupert Brooke
Idealistic war sonnets like The Soldier
John Drinkwater
Also wrote plays, including Abraham Lincoln
John Masefield
Poet Laureate
Famous poems The Ever-Lasting Mercy and Sea-Fever
Later Georgian Poetry
After Marshs anthologies, more anthologies appeared edited by JC Squire
At this time, the group came to be ridiculed for their conservatism as Squirearchy
This is also why TS Eliot ridiculed them
Pre-war verse: Thomas Hardy
Wrote nearly 1000 poems
Most ambitious Edwardian poem is The Dynasts
Wessex Poems to Winter Words (6 volumes)
Moments of Vision
Discouraged theorizers
No harmonious philosophy
Wrote workman like poems
Personal & occasional poems prompted by place, time & mood
Strong metrical element with unadjusted diction
War poets
Soldiers who documented their war experiences
Rupert Brookewelcomed war with a spirit of patriotic idealism
Siegfried SassonThe General
Anti-war poems
Wilfred OwenAnthem for Doomed Youth
Isaac Rosenberg
Wilfred Owen
Enlisted in the I World War in 1914
Trench fever, shell-shock
Met Siegfried Sassoon at the hospital in 1917 (meeting described by the latter in Siegfrieds
Journey)
My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
Killed in 1918
Only four poems published in lifetime
WB Yeats was dismissive of his poems and excluded him from The Oxford Book of Modern
Verse (1936)
Brother Herbert Owens memoir Journey from Obscurity
Owens major poems
Strange Meeting
narrated by a soldier who goes to the underworld to escape the hell of the battlefield
and there he meets the enemy soldier he killed the day before
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Form of a Petrarchan sonnet and rhyme of an English sonnet
Dulce et Decorum Est
Title from Horace; calls Horaces patriotism an old Lie
Addressed to Jessie Pope, a poetess and war propagandist
Features
Para-rhyme or half-rhyme or double consonance
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
Does not disturb the solemnity of the mood as full-rhyme sometimes does
Creates a disturbing mood
Other War Writers
Richard Aldington

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 Death of a Hero (novel)

Robert Graves
Goodbye to All That (autobiography)
Ford Madox Ford
Parades End (tetralogy on the I World War)
Edward Thomas
A contemporary Anglo-Welsh poet
Few of his poems deal directly with the theme of war
George Bernard Shaw
Irish; music and literary criticism; 60 plays
Novelist, critic, pamphleteer, essayist and private correspondent
More than 250,000 letters
Plays were first performed in the 1890s. By the end of the decade he was an established
playwright
Major concerns
Deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark
themes more palatable
Angered by the exploitation of the working class
Ardent socialist (Fabian Society, a middle class organization established in 1884 to promote
the gradual spread of socialism by peaceful means )
Only person ever to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize (1925) and an Oscar (1938, for
his work on the film, Pygmalion)
Shaws Plays
Plays of ideas
First successful play, Widowers Houses (1885), later he himself called it his worst work
The Devils Disciple
Mrs. Warrens Profession
Arms and the Man
Candida
Man and Superman
Shaws Plays
Major Barbara
The Doctors Dilemma
Pygmalion
Massive five-play work, Back to Methuselah, dealing with his theory of Life Force
Saint Joan
The Apple Cart
Two Groups
Plays Unpleasant (published 1898)
Widowers' Houses (1892)
The Philanderer (1898)
Mrs Warren's Profession (1893)
Plays Pleasant (published 1898):
Arms and the Man (1894)
Candida (1894)
The Man of Destiny (1895)
You Never Can Tell (1897)
Arms and the Man (1894)
Title is a satire on the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid, Of arms and the man I sing.
Exposes the hollowness of romance and war
Serbo-Bulgarian War (1885) is on. Raina Petkoff (the heroine), a young Bulgarian woman, is
engaged to a war hero named Sergius Saranoff.
One night, a Swiss mercenary soldier in the Serbian army, Captain Bluntschli, bursts through
her bedroom window and begs for protection.
Raina complies, though she thinks the man is a coward, as he tells her that he carries
chocolates instead of pistol cartridges.
When the battle dies down, Raina and her mother, Catherine, sneak Bluntschli out of the
house.
Rainas change of affections

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The war ends and Sergius returns to Raina, but also flirts with her insolent servant girl
Louka ..
Bluntschli unexpectedly returns to give back the old housecoat and to see Raina.
Sergius and Rainas father Major Petkoff, who have met Bluntschli before, ask his help with
troop movements.
Raina realizes that Bluntschli respects her as a woman and Sergius does not.
She tells him that she had left a portrait of herself in the pocket of the coat, inscribed "To my
chocolate-cream soldier", but Bluntschli hadn't seen it. (Later Rainas father finds it in the
pocket.)
Raina proclaims her love
Bluntschlis father dies and he inherits father's enormous wealth.
Louka tells Sergius that Bluntschli is the man whom Raina protected, and that Raina is really
in love with him.
Sergius challenges Bluntschli to a duel, but the latter avoids fighting.
Raina realizes the hollowness of her romantic ideals and her fianc's values, breaks off her
engagement, and proclaims her love for Bluntschli.
Bluntschli settles the major's troop movement problems and will return to be married to
Raina.
Pygmalion (1912)
Two old gentlemen, Professor Higgins (a scientist of phonetics) and Colonel Pickering (linguist
of Indian dialects) meet at Covent Garden.
The first bets the other that he can transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower
girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a woman as poised and well-spoken as a duchess.
Pickering goads him on by agreeing to cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins can pass
Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. The challenge is taken.
The Trial
For several months, Higgins trains Eliza to speak properly. Two trials for Eliza follow. The first
occurs at Higgins' mother's home, where Eliza is introduced to the Eynsford Hills. The son,
Freddy Eynsford, is attracted to her.
A second trial, at an ambassador's party is a resounding success.
Higgins and Pickering are now bored with the project, which causes Eliza to be hurt.
Eliza is settled
She throws slippers at him in a rage because she does not know what is to become of her.
He accuses her of ingratitude.
Higgins tells his mother that Eliza has run away. Mrs. Higgins, who has been hiding Eliza
upstairs, chides the two of them for playing with the girl's affections.
Eliza thanks Pickering for treating her like a lady, but threatens Higgins that she will go work
with his rival phonetician, Nepommuck. Higgins starts to admire her.
Eliza recognizes Higgins as predestined to be a bachelor and marries Freddy instead. With a
gift from Colonel Pickering, Eliza opens a flower shop and they live a fairly comfortable life.
Saint Joan
Joan, a teenage country girl, arrives at the castle of Vaucouleurs.

She's determined to drive the English out of France and to crown the Dauphin Charles, as
King.
She has heard voices from God telling her that this is her destiny.
She manages to persuade the skeptical Captain Robert de Baudricourt to give her soldier's
clothes and other supplies.
Upon arriving at Charles's court, Joan wins over almost everyone. Charles grants her control
of the army.
Saint Joan
She sets off to Orleans, a town under siege by the English marches off with Dunois, the
leader of the French troops, to liberate Orleans.
Meanwhile, Joan's enemies are plotting against her.
The Earl of Warwick wants Peter Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais , to try Joan for heresy.
Cauchon agrees to try Joan, but says that he will do his best to save her soul.
Joan and company liberate Orleans, win other battles, and have Charles crowned as King in
Rheims Cathedral
Joan is Punished
Charles, the Archbishop, and Dunois refuse further support to Joan. She sets out to defeat
the English without them.

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Later she is betrayed, captured, and tried for heresy. She continues to assert that her voices
speak to her directly from God.
Joan is burnt at stake and excommunicated
The Present-day
Twenty five years after Joan's execution, a new trial has cleared her of heresy. Brother Martin
brings the news to the now-King Charles.
Charles then has a dream in which Joan appears to him. She converse cheerfully with
Charles and her old enemies, who also appear in the King's bedroom. An emissary from the
present day brings news that the Catholic Church is to canonize her in 1920.
Joan says that saints can work miracles, and asks if she can be resurrected. At this, all the
characters desert her one by one, asserting that the world is not prepared to receive a saint
such as her.
The play ends with Joan ultimately despairing that mankind will never accept its saints.
Shaws Plays
Shaw's plays, like those of Oscar Wilde, were rich with incisive humor (exceptional among
playwrights of the Victorian era. The Victorian London stage was a site for frothy,
sentimental entertainment)
Shaw revolutionized the stage and made it a forum for considering moral, political and
economic issues
Shaws Plays
Indebted to Henrik Ibsen, who pioneered modern realistic drama (designed to heighten
awareness of some important social issue)
Plays and prefaces vociferous about reforms he advocated
After World War I, his faith in humanity dwindled (Heartbreak House gives the picture of a
cultured, leisured Europe drifting towards destruction)
Sean O Casey
Irish playwright
Used incantatory rhythms in tragic comedies of Dublin slums
Dublin Trilogy
The Shadow of a Gunman
Juno and the Paycock
The Plough & the Stars
Experimented with mingling the realistic & expressionistic types of drama
The Silver Tassierejected by Abbey Theatrewar theme

Chapter 21

Literature Between the Wars

Between the Wars

Two World Wars
Great Economic Depression
A diversity of ideologies
Fascism, Communism, Socialism, Catholicism, Humanism, etc
Society appears to be breaking down
Sense of loss, especially of a moral order
Women and working class became more organized
A mass consumer society develops
Literature Between the Wars
Writers looked for new forms to express the chaos
Avant-garde experimented with new forms of expression
Influence of Freud
Birth of Modernism
Jagged line and free verse
Complex cultural and literary allusions and myth
Spirit of fragmentation
Founding of Penguin books to revive the classics
Modernism: Context
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Beginning can be traced back to 1890

Liberal humanism weakened
No agreed common principles
Rapid changes in society, politics, technology
Slackening of family, local & religious ties
Chaotic experience of war
Automatic writing (Surrealism & Dadaism; Gertrude Stein
Modernism
Unparalleled range & rapidity of change
Joyce, Eliot, Woolf, etc.
Austere, abstract, and anti-humanist vision
Faith in science & technology
To master nature, to provide progress
Disregard for historical, geographical and social contexts
See how Charlie Chaplin has employed the modernist aesthetic
Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times (1936) Full Movie - HD
Modernist Literature
Break from the prevailing formal conditions
Broken images
Refuge in the mythical past & art
Urge to find unity among disunities
Elliptical structure in works
Condensed and obscure
Epiphany in James Joyce
Stream of Consciousness in Virginia Woolf
Self reflexivity
DH Lawrence (1885-1930)
Born in the mining village of Eastwood in Nottinghamshire, the product of an unhappy
marriage between a coal-miner father and a schoolteacher mother
Deeply attached to his mother, who was committed to helping her children escape the
working class
Lawrence was hostile towards the mining industry that destroyed the English countryside
Life and Death
Became schoolteacher, poet, novelist
Eloped with Frieda Weekley, the wife of one of his college professors, and married her in
1914
Elopement was his first rebellion against conventional morality
Started a series of sexual experiments that nearly wrecked his marriage
Diagnosed with tuberculosis
Started travels across Europe and South America in search of a healthy atmosphere
Died of tuberculosis at the age of 44.
Features of Works
Lack of interest in aesthetics; not a formal innovator
Provides psychological explorations into the lives of characters, especially Oedipal complex
Autobiographical elements
Depicts tensions between classes, or sexes, or mind & body, or between natural life & a
civilization of death
Present slices of domestic life
Aims to make a strong emotional impact
Features of Novels
Social life gives way to individual personality
Controversial for frank treatment of sex
The Rainbow and Lady Chatterleys Lover banned during his lifetime
Sexual relations symbolically express both historical and emotional developments
Depiction of the modern condition of man as foul
Poetic language
Novels
The White Peacock (1911)
Portrayal of the gamekeeper Annable
Pre-figuring Mellors in Lady Chatterleys Lover

High

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Homoerotic tension of male friendship

Later developed in Women in Love
Clash of classes: heros father is working class and mother is from the refined middleclass
As in Sons and Lovers
The Trespasser (1912)
Sons and Lovers (1913)
Autobiographical; classic bildungsroman
Psychological realism
Protagonist Paul Morel torn between mothers suffocating love and two love affairs
Clash of classes: heros working class father (coarse vitality) and refined middle-class mother
(genteel pretensions)
Describes the destruction of the English countryside due to coal mining, appetite for
technology and town-building
Mrs. Morels unhappy marriage
Gertrude Coppard Morel belonged to poor family
Friendship with John Field who gave her a Bible when she was 19.
She encouraged him to go into the ministry against his fathers wishes & be a man.
He said being a man isnt everything.
Gertrude & Walter Morel meet at a Christmas party
Married him for his difference from her father
Learns of Walters debts; disappointed with his lower class life
Walters violence on wife
Mrs Morel dotes on her sons
Mrs. Morel dotes on William

Paul and later Arthur are born

Walters illness; wife nurses him back to health

Mrs. Morel

Joins Womens Guild attached to Cooperative Wholesale Society

Gets William a job in the Cooperative office

William leaves for London, to the dismay of his mother

Courts Louisa Western (Gipsy) whom she doesnt like

Later dies of penumonia

Mrs. Morel turns her affec tions on Paul

Paul and Miriam

Paul is a sensitive boy with artistic talents; bonds with his sister Annie

Meanwhile, family moved to house with ash-tree; tree makes noise when wind blows

Works as junior clerk with Thomas Jordan, surgical appliances manufacturer at Nottingham

Meets Miriam Leivers; gets intimate

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Miriams strong religious convictions; aspires for learning; believes she is a princess
inside (which Paul does not see); Miriams intensity of emotion; Mrs. Morel indifferent
to her (logic vs. religion); to Paul she is simultaneously infuriating and attractive;
cannot have physical intimacy with her

Torn between loves

Arthur enlists in the army, later Mrs. Morel buys him out; marries flirtatious Beatrice Wyld

Annie marries Leonard

Mrs. Morel wants Paul to be middle class & marry a good woman. He feels closest to lower
classes

Paul meets suffragette Clara Dawes, separated from her husband Baxter

Paul torn between old mother and Miriam

Sleeps with Miriam, but she is reluctant

Starts a passionate affair with Clara

Paul fights Baxter Dawes, his superior at Jordans

Paul tells mother he cant love while she is alive.

Tells mother he doesnt care about Miriam and Clara

The Release
Mrs. Morel ill. Tumour discovered. Worsens. Heartbroken, Paul cares for her.

Baxter is ill; becomes friends with Paul; Clara returns to him

To end his mothers suffering, Paul gives her an overdose of morphia and she dies peacefully

Paul is lost without his mother

He turns down Miriams proposal for marriage

She believes his soul cannot leave her

Knows that even in death Mrs. Morel possesses Paul

Paul contemplates suicide; then gives it up

Walks towards the town

The Rainbow (1915) and its sequel,Women in Love (1920)

Originally conceived as one novel, The Sisters

The Rainbow is a hymn to Eros; Women in Love is a threnody about the war
334

Three generations of a farming family, the Brangwens: Tom and Lydia, Will and Anna, Ursula
and Anton

The family story parallels Englands change from a rural society to a heavily industrialized
one

Difference between pre-modern and modern England brought out by a comparison between
Marsh Farm and Wigginton colliery.

Attack on British imperialism

Reception of the Two Novels

Somewhat like what FR Leavis called The Novel as a Dramatic Poem

passionate imagination

poetic prose

symbolic power

Banned in Lawrences lifetime

The Rainbow Tom and Lydia

The Brangwen family lives at Marsh Farm; connection with the earth

Tom Brangwen inherits the farm, marries Lydia, a Polish widow with a daughter, Anna.

Tom and Lydia do not understand each other, but have a strong sexual connection.

During Lydia's pregnancies, Tom and Anna become extremely close.

Anna marries Toms nephew, Will, though Tom objects at first.

Anna and Will

Anna and Wills marriage is passionate and stormy, and they have eight children.

Anna is obsessed with fertility and Will withdraws into his handicraft hobbies. The only bond
is sex.

Their oldest child Ursula dislikes taking care of her siblings and longs for a more meaningful
life. As a girl, she dreams of upper class life and explores Christianity.

Ursula
Ursula falls in love with Anton Skrebensky, the son of an old family friend, a British soldier of
Polish ancestry who goes to fight in South Africa.

Ursula connects with her lesbian teacher, Miss Inger; who eventually marries Ursulas
homosexual uncle.

Ursula accepts a teaching position in a poor neighborhood, but dislikes teaching, particularly
the corporal punishment.
335

After teaching for two years, she goes to college to get her degree. She enjoys especially
Botany.

Meanwhile, her father has been promoted as an Arts and Handicrafts Instructor for the
county. They now have a higher social position.

Ursula and Anton

During her last year of college, Ursula reconnects with Anton Skrebensky.

Ursula loses interest in her classes and routinely leaves school to be with Anton. During the
Easter holidays, the two of them go on holiday together, pretending to be married.

Ursula fails her university exams and gets engaged to Anton. Ursula does not really want to
marry Anton and calls off the engagement shortly before he leaves for India.

The Rainbow in her Life

After he leaves, Ursula realizes that she is pregnant. She writes to Anton, but he does not
reply. She miscarries. Anton is married.

Ursula has a vision of a rainbow towering over the Earth, promising a new dawn for
humanity:

She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of
houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to
the over-arching heaven.

Rainbow is the Biblical sign of hope; the transitory after-image of a storm

She feels a new independence; starts her life again.

Women in Love
Lawrence wrote in his foreword to the American edition of Women in Love:

We are now in a period of crisis

Every man who is acutely alive is acutely wrestling with his own soul.

Two Couples
Ursula and her sister Gudrun live in Beldover in the 1910s. Ursula is a teacher, Gudrun an
artist.

Ursula falls in love with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector with unconventional attitudes about
life

Gudrun begins a love affair with Gerald Crich, a coal-mine heir.

Birkin and Crich hate each other at first; later they become friends.

All four are deeply concerned with questions of society, politics, and the relationship
between men and women.

Strained Relationship
336

Birkin is attached to an aristocratic woman, Hermione Roddie; Hermione and Ursula become
enemies; Hermione attacks Birkin with a paperweight at a party.

At a party at Geralds estate, his sister Diana drowns; so does a young doctor who attempts
to rescue her.

Birkin and Gerald are now romantically attached.

Birkin is frustrated with Ursula and leaves for a vacation in the south of France. When he
returns, he asks Ursulas father for her hand in marriage; Ursula is enraged and refuses him.

Relationships Solidified
Meanwhile, Gudrun becomes the art teacher and mentor of his youngest sister Winifred and
grows closer to Gerald.

Birkin and Gerald engage in an violently eroticized wrestling match.

Ursula realizes her love for Birkin; their bond is finally solidified when they sleep together in
Sherwood Forest.

Geralds father dies as well, after a long illness. Days later, Gerald goes to Gudrun's house
and spends the night with her.

The Alps
Birkin marries Ursula. Gerald plans a vacation for all of them in the Alps; Gerald and Gudrun
leave first.

At Innsbruck, Gudrun begins an intense friendship with Loerke, a physically puny but
emotionally commanding artist from Dresden.

Gerald, enraged by Loerke and by Gudruns rejection of his manhood, tries to strangle
Gudrun.

Before he has killed her, however, he leaves Gudrun and on his skis climbs ever
upward on the mountains, where he falls asleep, and freezes to death.

Birkin and Ursula arrive, and the novel ends a few weeks later, with Birkin trying to explain
to Ursula that he needs Gerald as much as he needs her.

More Novels
Aarons Rod

Kangaroo (1923)

Lawrences own experiences in Italy and relationship with German-born wife

Set in Australia

The Plumed Serpent (1926)

Set in Mexico

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Seek a natural life untainted by modern consciousness

Lady Chatterleys Lover (1928)

Penguin was tried (and acquitted) for obscenity in 1960 (along with Henry Millers Tropic of
Cancer and John Clelands Fanny Hill) under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act

CharactersSir Clifford Chatterley & Lady Constance (Connie) Chatterley, Oliver Mellors

Theme of possibility of adequate human relationships in modern civilization

Subversion of social hierarchies through the couples sexual transgression

Two earlier versions: The First Lady Chatterley and John Thomas and Lady Jane

More features of his work

Realism, symbolic projection & an explanatory expressionism lies between the realism of
Sons and Lovers and the symbolism of Women in Love

Modern in its alienation, dislike of modern life, and satire on literary, social and intellectual
elites

Inspired by ancient Etruscan symbols of sex and death, after visiting Etruria, near Rome, with
a close friend, Earl Brewster.

Other influences
Thirst for travel

Love for Frieda Weekley

Later eloped with her

Journey memorialised in the series of love poems titled Look! We Have Come
Through (1917)

A disgust for England especially during the First World War

Rejection of capitalism

Utopian ideals

Millett and Lawrence

Millett attacked the kind of sex Lawrence valorized
(Sexual Politics, 1970) as misogynistic and phallocentric

religious celebration and worship of the phallus

divine status bestowed on the sexual male

in his last years [Lawrence] championed primitive societies, where he was reassured
male supremacy was a religious and total way of life

338

Lawrences dark outsiders, whether Mexican Indian or Derbyshire collier, focus their
ambition on the white mans woman the Lady

His white women often attracted to dark outsiders

Attacked other authors also including Norman Mailer

More Works
The Escaped Cock (published as The Man Who Died)

Novella about the resurrection of Christ

Superimposes the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Isis into the gospel story

Travel Books

Excellent poetic prose

Twilight in Italy

Sea and Sardinia

Mornings in Mexico

Etruscan Places

Lawrences Poetry
Rarely meets a conventional readers expectations

IA Richards offers a case study of the poem The Piano in Practical Criticism (1929)

Richards used 12 poems with his students who ranked The Piano eleventh. They
objected to the poems sentimentality, unrealistic descriptions, etc

Lawrences verse is generally antithetical to New Criticism

Lawrences Poetry
An important collection: Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923)

Nature, sexual symbolism

Biblical and mythical allusions

Amit Chaudhuris D.H. Lawrence and Difference: Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the
Present

Lawrences Short Fiction

Many collections

England, My England
339

The Horse-Dealers Daughter

A pastoral love story of Mabel

The Odour of Chrysanthemums

Theme: decline of English vitality

Life of Nottinghamshire miners

The Rocking-Horse Winner

Dark picture of English middle-class

Form of a fable

The Virgin and the Gypsy

Tickets Please

Lawrences Plays
Many plays; little appreciated in his lifetime

A Collier's Friday Night

Naturalistic play

Ironic allusion to Burns' sentimental The Cotter's Saturday Night

Plot similar to Sons and Lovers

The Daughter-in-Law

Lawrences Plays
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (1914)

A play based on 19th century domestic life

Touch and Go

David

Unlike the other plays

Old Testament story

David brings down two giants, Goliath and Saul

Lawrences Criticism
Study of Thomas Hardy
340

Movements in European History

Studies in Classic American Literature

Books on psychoanalysis

Study of Thomas Hardy (1914)

Longest and most serious work of criticism

Lawrences sensual writing similar to Hardys

Lawrence was inspired by Hardys new and frank treatment of sex and the unconscious.

The most implicit theme which Lawrence took from Hardy and continued in his major fiction
is that of the New Woman, with all her sexual radicalism and Freudian ego.

Lawrence and Hardy

Like Hardy, Lawrence

Vigorously rejected the moral and ethical premises of traditional Victorian society.

Transcended the social perspective of man (which was the Victorian practice) and
created characters as elemental men and women

Explored the mysterious bonds between human existence and the natural universe

Presented the dichotomy between nature and civilization, and between flesh and
spirit

Offered a negative analysis of modernity

Questioned Christianity

Difference in Characterization
Unlike Hardys tragic / passive protagonists, Lawrences characters are

dynamic, autonomous and self-conscious

hardly susceptible to external circumstances and they develop their selfhood to the
full in search for new life

Lawrence on Whitman
Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)

Describes Whitman as the American Moses, pioneering into the wilderness of

unopened life

The first writer to break the mental allegiance and bring the soul back into contact
with the body.

341

Whitman exemplifies Lawrences religion of blood consciousness: know thyself

through the blood, celebration of the body (as against mental consciousness which
is knowing through the eye)

Could not accept Whitmans democratic perspective

Interest in psychoanalysis
Responses to Freudian psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921)

Fantasia and the Unconscious (1922)

Very unusual works which set forth his philosophy that underlies the novels

His knowledge of Freud was indirect

Blood consciousness
In Fantasia of the Unconscious: The blood-consciousness and the blood-passion is the very
source and origin of us. Not that we can stay at the source. Nor even make a goal of the
source, as Freud does. The business of living is to travel away from the source. But you must
start every single day fresh from the source. You must rise every day afresh out of the dark
sea of the blood.

Lawrence believes that men yearn for creative activity, which involves moving away from
the source.

In women blood-consciousness is more dominant than it is in men.

Sex is one means of contacting the source.

James Joyce (1882-1941)

Central figure in modernist prose

Born at a time when Irish nationalism was moving into its fiercest, most desperate phase

Deeply interested in the medium and form of his art

This paralleled his interest in linguistics

Aimed to leave an impersonal and objective work or art for the reader to interpret

Boyhood and Youth

Born in a well-off Catholic family in Dublin, first of 15 children, 5 of whom died in infancy

In boyhood, gradual decline in fathers fortunes, changes of abode (throughout life)

Excellent education at Jesuit institutions

Clongowes School

Belvedere College
342

University College

Rejected the prospect of priesthood, and religion altogether

To Paris and Back

Dissatisfied with the narrowness of Irish life, left for Paris

Studied medicine, which came to nothing

Returned home due to illness of mother; mother died;

bleak family situation

Felt excluded from Dublin literary scene

George Russell (A.E.) invited him to contribute a story to Irish Homestead; thus The Sisters
published under the pseudonym Stephen Daedalus (later spelling changed)

Wrote

Poetry, reviews, short sketches or epiphanies

Autobiographical novel Stephen Hero, later called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man

Met Nora Barnacle, who would be his lifelong companion

Overcoming Struggles
Travelled in Europe until the outbreak of the I World War; spendthrift habits, drinking bouts

Sent Dubliners to a publisher in 1905

Accepted, then turned down

Swear words, references to sexual matters, names of real Dublin establishments

Long struggle to publish

Stephen Hero rewritten in a radically different style by 1912

Dubliners published in 1914 by the same publisher who turned it down earlier.

In the same year, Ezra Pound who read the first chapter of A Portrait enthusiastically
arranges to publish it in The Egoist.

Dubliners (1914)
15 short stories organized through thematic symbols

Realistic sketch of the lives of ordinary Dubliners

Close-up of Dubliners; said he wished to depict the paralysis of his native city
343

Minimal plots

The Sisters: A boy hears of the death of a priest who had befriended him and visits
the old mans sisters

Araby: A boy plans to buy a gift for a girl across the street at a bazaar but gets there
too late

Counterparts: a clerk has a bad day at the office followed by a miserable evening
drinking; takes it out on his son

Ivy day in the Committee Room: A group of election canvassers converse idly as
they wait to be paid

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

(Stephen Hero, earlier version)

Autobiographical

Published while Joyce lived in Zurich, Switzerland (so were his play Exiles and the
serialized form of Ulysses)

Moments of epiphany & mythical elements

Narrates the growing up of hero in the language and range of sensations

Artist protagonistStephen Dedalus

Portrait of a self-absorbed young man

Stephen Dedalus: A Character Sketch

Joyce's fictional recreation of himself.

All events filtered through his consciousness.

Extremely sensitive and imaginative.

Stephen evolves from a shy, almost awkward boy to a fiercely independent and brilliant
young man.

The oldest son of Simon and Mary Dedalus, Irish Catholics with nine other children who did
not get many of the privileges Stephen had.

Finally realizes that Ireland is a trap for him, and that he must escape the bonds of family,
religion, and country in order to create.

Stephens Infancy
Ireland at the turn of the century.

Dedaluses move into increasingly shabby homes

Governess Dante, a fanatically Catholic woman.

344

Uncle Charles also lives with the family.

Stream of consciousness narrative from a child's perspectivebaby talk, concrete imagery

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down
along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens
little boy named baby tuckoo...

No formal grammar and structure

Eileen neighbourhood Protestant girl. Stephen declares he will marry her. Dante furious.

Reaches Clongowes
Stephen at Clongowes. Language reflects age.

Stephen is homesick; prays devoutly

Stephen is a shy boy who cannot stand up for himself

Wells pushes Stephen into cesspool

School clinicBr Michael cares for Stephen & Athy.

Reads to them news about death of Charles Parnell, Irish nationalist.

Charles Parnell
Remembers a Christmas holiday

Irish nationalist Charles Parnell is excommunicated for marital infidelity

Emotional quarrel between Dante and Simon Dedalus & John Casey

Mr Casey says, No God for Ireland!. . . We have had too much God in Ireland! Away
with God!

Stephen discovers his voice

At Clongowes some boys steal altar wine. They will be expelled or flogged. Only Corrigan
chose flogging.

Stephen thinks Mr. Gleeson wont flog hard, because he is kind.

Shows Stephens good nature

Father Dolan punishes Stephen (he wasnt working because his glasses were broken)

Stephen complains to rector Fr Conmee; boys celebrate

Stephen is slowly asserting himself

Uncle Charles and Emma

Family moves to Blackrock.
345

At Church Uncle Charles prays; Stephen questions prayer

Stephen, Aubrey Mills & other boys go on adventures together. Stephen feels different from
the others

Financial trouble. Stephen cant return to Conglowes

Shabby home in Dublinnew urban experiences

Crush on a neighbourhood girl Emma, cant write poem for her.

Stephen will soon go to Belvedere, Jesuit school.

This boy is different

Teenager Stephena reluctant leader, essayist and actor at school

Whitsuntide playStephen talks with Wallis & Heron

Stephen remembers an incident in first term

A teacher found heresy in Stephens essay. He hadnt meant heresy, but liked
the idea.

Fought with Heron etc. & refused to say Tennyson was a better poet than Byron,
though Byron was a heretic

Stephen does not hate Heron for his cowardice

Feels silly about the play

An Epiphany at Cork
Stephens train journey with Simon to Cork

Stephen embarrassed by father's nostalgia & trite advice

Images of death seem unreal; but Uncle Charles has died

Childhood memories seem dim

Anatomy labword Foetus on desktop. Epiphany. Class comes alive. Growing

preoccupation with sex

Wins money in essay contest. Spending binge

To create a feeling of affluence; but in reality poor as ever

To get closer to family, but isolated as ever

First sexual encounter with a prostitute

Change from adventure and romance to visceral sex

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Sin & Retribution

Stephen falls into a variety of sins.

Period of deep confusion and spiritual paralysis (result of his first rebellion against Catholic
virtues). Recognizes sin, but indifferent toward the idea of eternal damnation

Three days retreat at Belvedere.

Father Arnalls sermons; gets nightmares; confession.

His sins trickled from his lips, one by one, trickled in shameful drops from his soul
festering and oozing like a sore, a squalid stream of vice. The last sins oozed forth,
sluggish, filthy.

Thoughts of Escape
Stephen becomes fanatically pious and imposes self-discipline

The school director tries to draw him to priesthood.

Epiphany: Walking in a lane, he realizes he prefers the simple smells (overripe cabbages)
and physicality of life to the stale odour of Clongowes halls.

Stephen is about to enter university. But he is restless.

Imagines himself escaping, like Dedalus who made a pair of wings to escape from his prison.

Epiphany: Beautiful girl wading in water on the beach

Stephen at the university

After a few years Familys poor financial condition.

Stephen at university. A day in his life. Boring lectures.

Cranly, one of his best friends

Lynch, who listens to Stephen's theory of aesthetics

Davin, a simple boy with a great love for Ireland

Temple, a pretentious boy who admires Stephen

McCann, who tells Stephen he is antisocial and antidemocratic and who tries to get
Stephen to sign a petition for universal peace.

Stephen has no interest in Irish nationalism; only in beauty & aesthetics (Aristotle & Thomas
Aquinas)

Stephen tells Lynch

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his
handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
Stephen discovers himself
347

Sees Emma. Speechless as ever. Finally writes poem to her, To E C

Stephen sits on library steps. He dreamily watches birds flying through the air (like Dedalus).

Talks to Cranly about Easter rituals.

Does not believe in religion any more.

Cannot compromise to please his mother.

Long talk about religion, politics, family, Ireland.

Recognizes his need to be independent.

Diary entries of his final days in Ireland.

Finally talks to Emma.

Like Dedalus makes his way out of the trap of Ireland

Style of A Portrait
Linguistic experimentation

Style changes as subject develops

Baby Stephens initiation into language

Young childs innocent apprehensions of older boys and the adult world

Adolescents struggles with sex and religion

A university students doubt and ironies

An artists sophisticated experiments with poetic style

Book ends with a series of diary entries as Stephen prepares to leave Ireland

Ulysses (1922)
Phenomenal success

Portrait of a city: Dublin on 16 June 1904

Unity of place & time observed

First serialized in an American magazine Little Review in 23 instalments starting from 1918

After the 13th episode appeared, the publishers of Little Review were put to trial and fined,
and copies of the magazine seized for publishing obscene material.

Finally, the novel was published after extensive revision, in 1922 by Shakespeare and Co.
348

Banned in many parts of the world; allowed publication in the US in 1933, and in the UK in
1936

Ulysses and Odyssey

A rewriting of Homers Odyssey

Hero is not a battle-scarred adventurer, but an ordinary man dealing with the tribulations of
early twentieth-century urban life.

Divisions of the novel are Homeric

The Telemachiad (episodes 1-3; Stephens need for paternal care mirroring
Telemachuss search for Odysseus)

The Odyssey (episodes 4-15; Odysseuss and Blooms wanderings)

The Nostos, or the Return (episodes 6-18; the heros reunion with his faithful, or
faithless, wife)

Ulysses: Plot
Story of a day and night in the lives of three Dubliners.

Stephen Dedalus is a young writer, back from Paris, mourning the death of his mother,
attempting to gain a foothold in the Dublin literary world.

Leopold Bloom is a middle-aged, part-Jewish advertising agent, takes a fatherly interest in

Stephen while postponing his return home.

Molly Bloom has been married to Leopold for nearly 16 years; she is visited by Hugh Blazes
Boylan, the sleazy manager of her forthcoming singing tour in Belfast, and they start a
sexual affair

Ulysses: Features
Comedy of multiple identities

The characters hopes and fears, longings and frustrations, triumphs and defeats

Stream of Consciousness, interior monologue; moves easily between narrators words and
thoughts of a character, thus presents both inner and outer worlds

Mingled impressions & reflections of Bloom as he wanders around Dublin

Ulysses: Style
Comic exploitation of the traditions of the novel

First six episodes: interior monologues

Seventh episode, Aeolus: newspaper headlines that are not part of the scene or thoughts
of the characters

From the ninth episode, Scylla and Charybdis, each episode has a distinctive style; a
compendium of many styles of comic fiction
349

The tenth episode, Wandering Rocks, breaks with narrative continuity

Ulysses: Style
The eleventh episode, Sirens (set in the Ormond Hotel) uses language to mimic music and
the emotions it evokes

The twelfth episode, Cyclops (set in Barney Kiernans pub), combines a monologue in
Dublin vernacular with interpolated parodies

The thirteenth episode, Nausicaa, offers a pastiche of romantic magazine literature and
interior monologue.

Finnegans Wake (1939)

Written while living in Paris

Joyce regarded this work as his magnum opus

Kept title secret; called it Work in Progress

Joyces fame was increasing at this time; had a large team of helpers, including Samuel
Beckett

However, financial crises, eye troubles, daughter Lucias mental breakdown

Plot

Non-linear style; 17 chapters, four sections

Named after a street ballad

Story unimportant and even unclear

As in Ulysses, the incident at the heart of the book is sexual misdemeanor & its acceptance
by the one who is wronged

At Phoenix Park, a married man watches two girls urinating & is in turn watched by three
soldiers. The soldiers spread the story, but the man is defended by his tolerant wife

The story is not told in a straightforward manner; told over & over again, in shorter and
longer forms; various versions including those of a homosexual encounter & incest

Overtones of Biblical Fall & of the Parnell story in A Portrait

Style

An unorthodox depiction of the Earwicker family

Comic and experimental prose

Names & initials change identity

People become rivers or stones, or personifications of ideas

350

The opening line is a sentence fragment which continues from the book's unfinished closing
line, making the work a never-ending cycle.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a
commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

It means something like: The river runs past Adam and Eves home, by the shore and
around the back to Howth Castle and its surroundings.

The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the

Ezra Pound (18851972)

American expatriate poet

Born in America of Quaker-Puritan parents

Met Hilda Doolittle & William C. Williams at the University of Pennsylvania

Came to England in early years of the 20th century

Made friends with WB Yeats

Influence of Japanese traditional verse & Noh theatre

Formed Imagist group

Experimented with language

To change the structure of your language is to change the way you think and see the
world

Pound as Modernist

Slogan Make it new!

Exhorted writers to reject traditional forms, techniques, and ideas: Imagism

Edited The Waste Land

His imagism called for verbal concentration, direct treatment of the object & expressive
rhythm

Works

Ripostes

First Imagist collection of 25 poems

Translated from Old English and Italian

Cantos: unfinished 120-section epic

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Imagism

Direct presentation of images, or word pictures

Image: that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of

time

Use of specific, not general, words

Careful use of adjectives

Attempt to freeze a single moment in time and capture the emotions of that moment

Ideogrammic Method: technique which allowed poetry to deal with abstract content through
concrete images

Influenced by haiku (3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables) or tanka (5 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables)

First anthology: Des Imagistes (1914)

Imagist authors

Richard Aldington

Skipwith Cannell

John Cournos

H. D.

F. S. Flint

Ford Madox Ford

James Joyce

Amy Lowell

Ezra Pound

Allen Upward

William Carlos Williams

Three principles of Imagism

Direct treatment of the thing whether subjective or objective.

To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

To compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome

352

Haiku
Snow in my shoe
Abandoned
Sparrow's nest
by Jack Kerouac
Vorticism

Pound contributed to Wyndham Lewiss literary magazine BLAST

Together they extended Imagism to Vorticism

Partly inspired by Cubism

Rejected landscape and nude figures in favour of a geometric style tending toward
abstraction

The image is a radiant node or cluster; it is ... a VORTEX, from which, and through which,
and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920)

Depicts a poet whose life, like Pounds, has become sterile and meaningless

Marked his farewell to London

Went to Paris

At this time

The war had shattered Pounds belief in modern western civilization.

He saw the Vorticist movement as finished and doubted his own future as a poet.

In Paris (1921-24)

Entered the intellectual circles of Dada and Surrealist movements

Marcel Duchamp

Tristan Tzara

Fernand Lger

Ernest Hemingway

Made furniture for his apartment and bookshelves for the bookstore Shakespeare and
Company

Edited The Waste Land

353

In Italy (1924-45)

During WW2, Pound lived in Italy and was a supporter of the dictator, Benito Mussolini

In 1945, Pound was arrested by American troops

He was found to be psychologically unfit to stand trial and was confined to a hospital for the
criminally insane; later released

Died in Italy

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Poet, critic and playwright

Pioneer of the Modernist movement

Though experimental in writing, conservative in political and religious views

Edited The Criterion

Nobel Prize in 1948

In America

Born in St Louis, Missouri

Family originally from New England

A 17th century ancestor emigrated from East Coker, Somerset

Went to Harvard (1906)

Teachers included George Santayana and Irving Babbitt

Babbitt influenced

idea of dynamic relationship between past & present

his bias against Romanticism

Interest in Dante, Jules Laforgue and French symbolism

His formal studies were in philosophy

Wrote a thesis eventually published as Knowledge and Experience in the

Philosophy of F.H. Bradley (1964)

Did not take a doctoral degree

Early Career in England

354

Left America in 1914, and settled in London

Troubled marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood (1915 to early 1930s)

Married a second time, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1957

A short term as assistant editor of The Egoist

Became editor of a new quarterly review, The Criterion (1922 until it ceased publication in
1939)

Also worked as a director of Faber and Faber

Helped many younger poets in their careers

Began to publish poetry with the encouragement of Ezra Pound

Poems Up to The Waste Land

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Written while he was at Harvard

Appeared in 1915 in the American magazine Poetry

In his first volume, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)

Initially considered shocking and offensive

Two more collections

Poems (1919)

Printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at Hogarth press

Contained Gerontion

Ara Vos Prec (1920)

The Waste Land (1922)

Published in the first issue of The Criterion in 1922

Dedicated to Pound in acknowledgement of his editorial role

Controversy over its innovatory technique & pessimistic tone

Came to be accepted as a central text of modernism

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

355

Examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man

Overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, anti-heroic

Prufrock seems to be addressing a potential lover, but does not dare to approach the
woman

In his mind he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies

He chides himself for presuming emotional interaction could be possible at all.

Style

A variation on the dramatic monologue

The epigraph

From Dante's Inferno

Describes Prufrock's ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker and will never
betray to the world the content of Prufrock's present confessions

A carefully structured amalgamation of poetic forms

Use of refrains

Presents the consciousness of a modern, neurotic individual

Absurd rhymes

Resembles free verse

Suggests that Prufrock is capable of neither love nor sacrifice

Insistent rhythms

Suggest a ritual approach to a climax

Quotes

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do
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To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince.

I grow old...I grow old...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

The Waste Land

433-line modernist poem.

Themes:

Decline of civilization

Impossibility of recovering meaning in life.

An early title: He Do the Police in Different Voices (taken from Dickens Our Mutual Friend)

Ed. Ezra Pound

First published in The Criterion in 1922

Introduction

Indebted to Jessie L. Westons From Ritual to Romancea study of the Holy Grail Legend, a
symbol of perfection sought by the knights of the Round Table in Arthurian Legend. Quest
motif.

Frazers The Golden Boughdiscusses fertility rites, the sacrificial killing of kings, the dying
god, the scapegoat, etc. & analyses the primitive mind.

Structure

Ironical social commentary by an impersonal viewerTiresias who brings unification of

sensibility

Using classical symbols & imagination, Eliot links the present situation of the modern
wasteland with past and future.

Esoteric, penetrating & richly allusive

Themes fading & dissolving (like film)

No clear cut character or normal plot development

Structure

Modern worldspiritually distempered, fails to find solace in religion, sex & ideologies, full of
broken images.

Main suggestions

Love betrayed
357

Fertility betrayed

Rebirth offered, but demands sacrifice and suffering & therefore not acceptable to the
contemporary world.

The poem is preceded by a Latin and Greek epigraph from The Satyricon of Petronius.

Following this is a dedication that reads For Ezra Pound: il miglior fabbro (the better
craftsman).

The sections of The Waste Land are:

The Burial of the Dead

A Game of Chess

The Fire Sermon

Death by Water

What the Thunder Said

The first four sections of the poem correspond to the Greek classical elements of Earth, Air,
Fire, and Water.

Section I

The Burial of the Dead

Title from a line in the Anglican burial service.

Section presents four different persons perspectives.

An autobiographical snippet from the childhood of an aristocratic woman.

A prophetic, apocalyptic invitation to journey into a desert waste; hyacinth girl passage,
Wagners operatic version of Tristan and Isolde; a nihilistic epiphany.

Imaginative tarot reading.

Surreal picture; speaker walks through a London populated by ghosts of the dead &
confronts a figure with whom he once fought in a battle.

Section II A Game of Chess

Title from Thomas Middletons play A Game at Chess

Title denotes stages in a seduction.

Two scenes.

A wealthy, highly groomed woman surrounded by exquisite furnishings.

A London bar room, where two women discuss a third woman.

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Section III

The Fire Sermon

Longest section; title from a sermon given by Buddha encouraging to give up earthly passion
and seek freedom from earthly things.

Section contains a series of increasingly debased sexual encounters. Concludes with a river
song & a religious incarnation.

Opens with a desolate riverside scene.

Speaker introduces himself as Tiresias

Polluted river stands for spiritual degeneration

Section IV Death by Water

Shortest section

Describes Phlebas the Phoenician, who has died by drowning & has forgotten worldly cares

Narrator asks his reader to consider Phlebas and recall his/her own mortality.

Section V What the Thunder Said

Protagonist turns from the water that drowns to the water that saves

Attempts to achieve peace under the shadow of religion.

Quest for salvation & inner peace expressed through three objective correlatives.

The journey to Emmaus

The approach to the chapel perilous

The present decay of eastern Europe

Section by Section
Burial of the Dead: Consciousness, Communication, and no regeneration
coming to consciousness, no water, lack of communication, Madame Sosostris, vision of
London w/ corrupt regeneration myth
II. A Game of Chess: three encounters, all corrupted
overdone elegance, Philomela, disconnected conversation, Lil
III. The Fire Sermon: seductions, & dealing with passions
Thames and Thames daughters, musing about kings death, Eugenides, typist, Thames
seduction, Augustine
IV. Death by Water: prophecy
Phlebas, and a moralizing
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V. What the Thunder Said: redemption, regeneration, or suffering?

Gethsemane, no water, coming of rain, give, sympathize, control, ending: performative
language?
Tiresias

A blind prophet from classical mythology

Has powerful inner vision

Has both male & female features. Old man with wrinkled female breasts

Tiresias and Sibyl of Cumae symbolize perpetual old age.

Modernist Elements

Pictures of a disintegrated world, broken images

Pessimism & frustration

Use of allusions & mythical elements

Surrealism, imagism

Ray of hope offered. Art will provide unity that is lost in the modern world.

Resorting to the philosophy of the East.

Eliots Criticism

The Sacred Wood (1920)

Hamlet and His Problems

Tradition and the Individual Talent rejected Romantic individualism in favour of a

belief in the impersonality of poetry

Homage to John Dryden (1924)

Contained his essays on Marvell and the metaphysical poets, praised for their unified
sensibility

For Lancelot Andrews: Essays on Style and Order (1928)

Eliot described himself as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and AngloCatholic in religion

Religious Poetry

Joined the Church of England in 1927

The same year he became a British citizen

360

Poems 1909-25 (1925), which includes The Hollow Men

Collected Poems 1909-35 (1936), which includes The Journey of the Magi and Ash
Wednesday

Four Quartets (1943)

Title suggests chamber music played by four poets

Burnt Norton (1935)

East Coker (1940)

The Dry Salvages (1941)

Little Gidding (1942)

Collected Poems 1909-62 (1963)

More Prose

Old Possums Book of Practical Cats, a collection of humorous verse for children, appeared in
1939

Cultural problems absorbed much of Eliots energies as critic after he joined the church

His prose during this period showed his fascination for authority and control in life and
literature during this troubled period of his life

The Idea of a Christian Society (1939)

Notes Towards a Definition of Culture (1948)

On Poetry and Poets (1957)

To Criticize the Critic (1965)

Poetic Drama

Eliots attempt to revive verse drama

Sweeney Agonistes: An Aristophanic Fragment (1932)

Pageant play The Rock (1934)

Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

Yeatsian spiritual vigour and dramatic crispness blend with historicism

Less successful were his later plays

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The Family Reunion (1939)

The Cocktail Party (1950)

The Confidential Clerk (1954)

The Elder Statesman (1959)

Eliots views on Poetic Drama

Reaction to the drama of ideas popularized by Galsworthy and G. B. Shaw under the
influence of Ibsen

Eliot: poetry and drama are inseparable from each other

Poetic drama has far reaching effects as it affects the emotions directly; Poetic drama must
have emotional unity

Poetic drama should be closer to the rhythms of natural speech

Poetry should be a medium not to look at, but to look through

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Third child of Leslie Stephen, Victorian man of letters, and his beautiful second wife, Julia
Duckworth

Sister Vanessa (later wife of Clive Bell, critic of art and literature), brothers Thoby (who died
of typhoid) and Adrian

Family lived at Hyde Park gate, and later Bloomsbury

Virginia nicknamed the Goat.

Virginia had a mental breakdown following Thobys death, and lifelong nervous illness

Virginia Woolf

Married writer Leonard Woolf in 1912, who had been in Ceylon Civil Service before marriage.

Together they founded the Hogarth Press

First published Two Stories (one by each of them, 1917)

Katherine Mansfields short story Prelude

T.S. Eliots The Waste Land (1923)

Bloomsbury group formed

Bloomsbury Group
362

Beginnings at Cambridge University

Informal, fluctuating group of friends

Writers, artists, thinkers

Engaged in modernist fiction, post-impressionist art, aesthetic theory, cultural

analysis, leftist leanings

Rejected Victorian social mores, religion and codes of behaviour

Experiments in sexuality, family life

All influenced by G.E. Moores Principia Ethica

Debated the nature of reality & representation, the fate of idealism and the possibility
of ethics in the 20th century

14 core members (Other members kept shifting)

Leonard & Virginia Woolf

Vanessa & Clive Bell

Lytton Strachey

Roger Fry, David Garnett, Duncan Grant

John Maynard Keynes

Molly & Desmond MacCarthy

EM Forster

Sydney Saxon-Turner, Adrian Stephen

Woolfs life of paradoxes

Englishness in character, yet an outsider

In Three Guineas, she even imagines founding a Society of Outsiders

Legacy of Victorianism, yet defiantly modern

Drawn to the aristocratic and the privileged, yet identified with those on the margins

Most of her protagonists are also misfits in the society

Novels depict inner life of characters shaped by external social reality

Virginia Woolfs Fiction

363

Emphasizes private life: loneliness, love, friendship, art; ignores external social reality; there
is a remarkable lack of incidents

In Modern Fiction, she attacked the materialism of Galsworthy & Bennett, for assuming
that the external details of peoples lives can reveal their inner worlds

Has also written conventional social novels: Night and Day and The Years

Her Modernist novels

Experimental, impressionistic

Emphasize character analysis and personal consciousness

Employ Stream of Consciousness technique

Early Novels

The Voyage Out (1915)

Rachel Vinrace embarks on a modern mythical voyage of self-discovery

Introduces the character Clarissa Dalloway

Night and Day (1919)

Contrasts the daily lives and romantic attachments of two acquaintances, Katharine
Hilbery and Mary Datchet

Short stories and sketches

Kew Gardens (1919)

Monday or Tuesday (1921)

Experimental Novels (1920s)

Jacobs Room (1922)

The life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders presented entirely by the impressions
of other characters

Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

To the Lighthouse (1928)

Orlando: A Biography (1928)

A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West

Protagonist Orlando switches between genders

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Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

A day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway

A female Ulysses

Planning to give a party

Get-together highlights loneliness and impossibility of communication

Moves about a teeming London, shopping

Symbolically related to Septimus Warren Smith, a war-veteran driven to suicide

A penetrating study into the life of characters & London background

Clarissa Dalloway

A high-society woman in post-World War I England. She walks around in London to prepare
for the party she will host that evening.

When she returns, an old suitor and friend, Peter Walsh, drops by her house unexpectedly.
Years earlier, Clarissa had refused Peters marriage proposal, and Peter has never gotten
over it.

Peter asks Clarissa if she is happy with her husband, Richard, but before she can answer, her
daughter, Elizabeth, enters the room. Peter leaves and goes to Regents Park.

Septimus Warren Smith

A World War I veteran suffering from shell-shock. He spends his day in the park with his
Italian-born wife Lucrezia, where Peter Walsh observes them. He gets hallucinations, mostly
concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war.

Sir William, Septimuss psychiatrist, plans to send him to a mental institution. Later that
day, When Dr. Holmes arrives at his apartment, Septimus, fearing that the doctor will
destroy his soul, jumps from a window and commits suicide.

The Party

Peter goes to Clarissas party, where most of the novels major characters are present.
Clarissa works hard to make her party a success but feels dissatisfied by her own role and is
conscious of Peters critical eye.

Clarissa hears about Septimuss death and understands that he was overwhelmed by life
and that men like Sir William make life intolerable. She identifies with Septimus, admiring
him for not compromising his soul. She feels, with her comfortable position as a society
hostess, responsible for his death.

The Hours by Cunningham

The Hours (1998) is a novel by Michael Cunningham

Won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

365

Later made into an Oscar-winning movie (2002) starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl
Streep and Julianne Moore

3 generations of women affected by a Woolf novel

Woolf herself writing Mrs. Dalloway in 1923 and struggling with her own mental
illness.

Mrs. Brown, wife of a World War II veteran, who is reading Mrs. Dalloway in 1949 as
she plans her husbands birthday party.

Clarissa Vaughan, a lesbian, who plans a party in 2001 to celebrate a literary award
received by her poet-friend and former lover, Richard, who is dying of AIDS

To the Lighthouse (1927)

Finest work in Stream of Consciousness technique

The relationship of the members of Ramsay family

Three sections: The Window, Time Passes, To the Lighthouse

Mr & Mrs Ramsay, their children and guests on holiday on an island in the Hebrides, a
few years before the IWW

Time passes; house empty, Mrs Ramsay dies, one of her sons killed in the war, a
daughter dies in childbirth

What remains of the family revisits their house, the visit to the lighthouse, Lily Briscoe
finishes her painting when she is finally able to see the proper significance of Mrs
Ramsay, the family, and everything else.

Time is a character

The Darker Novels of the 1930s

The Waves (1931)

Symbolic work of great poetic beauty

The consciousness of the 6 characters is studied in a series of internal monologues

Described as a prose poem

Flush: A Biography (1933)

Part-biography of the cocker spaniel owned by Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett

Browning

The Years (1937)

The history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the mid-1930s
366

Between the Acts (final novel, 1941)

a highly imaginative and symbolic narrative encompassing almost all of English

history

Essays of the 1920s and 30s

Concerns with Feminism and Pacifism

The Common Reader (1925)

A Room of Ones Own (1929)

Three Guineas (its sequel, 1938)

Professions for Women (1931)

The Death of Moth and Other Essays (1942)

A Room of Ones Own

Hailed as the Feminist Bible

An expansion of her lecture on Women and Fiction

Balanced approach to womens position in society & the factors that impede the natural
outflow of her creativity

Advances the thesis that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to
write fiction. The essay is a partly-fictionalized narrative of the thinking that led her to
adopt this thesis

Dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginary narrator

call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you pleaseit is
not a matter of any importance

A Room of Ones Own: Summary

The narrator begins her investigation at Oxbridge College

Reflects on the different educational experiences available to men and women and on
material differences in their lives.

She then spends a day in the British Library perusing the scholarship on women, all of which
has written by men in anger.

Turning to history, she finds so little data about the everyday lives of women that she
decides to reconstruct their existence imaginatively.

The figure of Judith Shakespeare is generated as an example of the tragic fate of a highly
intelligent woman.
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A Room of Ones Own: Summary

She considers the achievements of the major women novelists of the 19 th century

Then, reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer.

Offers a survey of the current state of literature, conducted through a reading the first novel
of one of the narrator's contemporaries:

Life's Adventure by Mary Carmichael

Finally, there is an exhortation to women to take up the tradition, and to increase the
endowment for their own daughters.

The Poets of the Thirties

Left wing attitudes

Not conservative like the Modernists

Upheld liberal political ideals

Involved in Spanish Civil War

Called Pink poets

Oxford-educated

Bisexual

Industrial imagery; called Pylon poets

Roy Campbell ridiculed them as Macspaunday

W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice,

Cecil Day Lewis, Christopher Isherwood

W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Born in York

Lived at Oxford, Berlin

Married a German

Emigrated to New York (1939)

Converted to Anglicanism in 1940

Anti-Romantic & stressed the importance of clinical & objective attitudes

Works contain frequent image of a lone wanderer in an empty landscape

368

Audens Career

Early poems (1930s)

Poems of the 1940s

Modernist in tone, dramatic manner, show leftist attitudes

Religious and ethical themes, less dramatic

Later Poems

Less rhetorical, more emotional

Early Works

A recurrent theme was the psychological effects of preceding generations on any individual
life (family ghosts)

The Orators: An English Study (1932)

A long poem in prose and verse

About hero-worship

Poetry derived from popular forms

Classical influences of Horace, Dante, Hlderlin, Pope

Came to be known as a left-wing poet

Verse drama with Isherwood: The Dog Beneath the Skin, The Ascent of F6, On the Frontier

Early Works

Collection Look, Stranger!

Letters from Iceland

One of his travel books

Written with MacNeice

Artist should be a kind of journalist

Another Time

Collection of poems including

Muse des Beaux Arts

369

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

The Unknown Citizen

September 1, 1939

In Memory of Sigmund Freud

Middle Period (from 1940)

Religious themes

Three long poems in dramatic form

For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio

The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeares The Tempest

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue

Written in a modern version of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse

Later Works

Later poems revealed a new note of mysticism in his approach to human problems

The Shield of Achilles, contains

A series of six Good Friday poems

A sequence of seven poems about mans relation to nature, Bucolics

Homage to Clio

A group of poems about history (the set of unique events made by human choices),
as opposed to nature (the set of involuntary events created by natural processes)

J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)

Novelist and playwright

Priestley sought legal action against Graham Greene for a defamatory portrait of him in the
novel Stamboul Train (1932) as the Cockney novelist Quin Savory

26 Novels

The Good Companions (1929)

Story of discontented characters told in a picaresque style

Angel Pavement (1930)

Priestleys Plays
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Socialist themes
An Inspector Calls (1945)
Plays influenced by J.W. Dunnes theory of consciousness and time, that past, present and
future are simultaneous.
Dunne also influenced Aldous Huxley
On time, Priestley also wrote Man and Time
More of Priestley
During and after the II World War, made political radio broadcasts showing hopes for a new
England
Involved in the campaign for nuclear disarmament
Literature and Western Man (1960), a 500-page survey of Western literature
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
Travelled widely
Served in the British Army during the II World War
Converted to Catholicism
Fictionalized all his experiences
Main characters were snobs
Attacked the sin of vulgarity
Heroes nave young men who suffered embarrassment & hardship because they failed to
understand or defeat the exponents of vice
Waughs Works
Decline and Fallsatire
Scoopsatire on Fleet Street
A Handful of Dusttitle taken from T. S. Eliots The Waste Land; satire on the heartless and
frivolous world of the wealthy and the fashionable
The Brideshead Revisitedthe first of his Catholic novels
Sword of Honourtrilogy of Second World War novels
Graham Greene (1904-1991)
Works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world
Suffered from bi-polar disorder which reflected in his works
Themes
Catholicism and philosophy
International politics & espionage
Severely criticized the 9-year-old actress Shirley Temple in his criticism of the film Wee Willie
Winkie
Temple displayed a dubious coquetry which appealed to middle-aged men and
clergymen
Greenes Works
Four major Catholic novels
Brighton Rock
The Power and the Glory
The Heart of the Matter
The End of the Affair
A Burnt-Out-Caseset in a leper colony
Our Man in Havanasatire on contemporary spy novels
The Power and the Glory (1940)
Set in the state of Tabasco in Mexico during the 1930s, when the Mexican government strove
to suppress the Catholic Church.
The main character is a nameless Roman Catholic whisky priest, who combines a great
power for self-destruction with a desperate quest for dignity.
The other main character is a Lieutenant of the police who is given the task of hunting down
this priest. He is a committed socialist who despises everything that the church stands for.

371

Chapter 22 Post-War Literature

Cultural impact of II World War
Heroism and patriotism turned sour
Sense of evil and fear of nuclear destruction
Isolation and alienation
Shift from the social to the individual and secular
Democratization of art
New multi-ethnic voices heard
Holocaust Fiction
Atrocities of the Holocaust, hardships of Jews in Auschwitz and other concentration camps
o The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)
By Anne Frank
o The Night Trilogy
By Elie Wiesel
o Sophies Choice
By William Styron
Historical Fiction
Fiction that self-consciously gives a treatment of history
Not only passively reflecting history, but making and re-making history
A.S. Byatts Possession (1990)
Salman Rushdie
V. S. Naipaul (presence of suppressed histories-Nobel citation 2001)
Hilary Mantels Wolf Hall (2005), Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
British Fiction and Postcolonialism
Question of identity, immigration, multiculturalism, politics and history
Hari Kunzru (The Impressionist)
Hanif Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia, youth, pop culture, identity)
V.S. Naipaul
Ben Okri
Salman Rushdie
(Midnights Children, 1981)
Womens Writing
Angela Carter
o Feminist, magic realist, science fiction
Margaret Drabble
o Society vs. individual
Doris Lessing
o Space fiction
Iris Murdoch
o Moral philosophy
Fay Weldon
o Contemp. women trapped in patriarchal oppression
Postmodern Fiction
Many meanings & interpretations
Anti-realistic
Metafiction
Experimental style
Intertextuality
Peter Ackroyd
Magic Realism
Fantastic and dream-like themes, myths, fairy-stories
Mingling of realism and fantasy
Surrealistic & expressionistic images
Convoluted, labyrinthine plots
Not a lot of impact of British fiction
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Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie

Science Fiction
Apocalyptic writers
o Reflecting fear of global annihilation by nuclear weapons
Video games
Posthumanism
John Wyndham
Doris Lessing
George Orwell (1903-1950)
Eric Arthur Blair
Born in Burma
Served in the Imperial Police in Burma, from which he resigned due to his dislike of
imperialism
Did low-paid jobs in Paris and London
Became a regular contributor to The Adelphi from 1930
Was always more of a journalist than a novelist
These experiences are described
o His first book Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
o Burmese Days (1934, a novel)
Expressed indignation over political injustice
More Early Works
A Clergymans Daughter (1935)
o Second novel
o A middle-class woman has a brief period of freedom among tramps
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
o The story of a young booksellers assistant, Gordon Comstock, whose aspirations and
humiliations closely parallel the authors
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
o A milestone in modern literary journalism
o An account of unemployment in the north of England
o Shows his democratic socialism
Masterpieces
Animal Farm (1945)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
General features
o Proletarian sympathies
o Contempt for upper-middle-class society;
o Awareness of social injustice,
o Opposition to totalitarianism
o Commitment to democratic socialism.
o Symbolism
Background to Animal Farm
Social commentary
Orwell has socialist sympathies, though he was aware of the dangers of socialism; was
against both communism and capitalism
Anti-utopian novel
Portrayal of the Russian Revolution
Satire on Soviet Russia and totalitarianism
War plays a very small part
Deals more with the RESULTS of war
Political Background
Published in 1945
In the previous 4 months: Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler had died; Churchill had been voted
out of office.
Germany had surrendered, and the U.S. dropped atomic bombs over Japan.
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More

Of the big three Allied leaders, only Stalin survived.

Background
During World War II, Russia had been an ally of the U.S. and England.
After the Battle of Normandy (1944) Western nations had a feeling of solidarity with the
Russian people. The Russian Army helped protect England from a German invasion.
As a result of the pro-Russian atmosphere, Orwell had a hard time finding a publisher for his
novel.
Major Characters in Animal Farm
Napoleon = Stalin
Snowball = Trotsky
Old Major = Marx/Lenin
Mr. Jones = Tsar Nicholas II
Mr. Frederick = Hitler
Mr. Pilkington = the US and Britain
Plot Summary
Animals plot a rebellion against cruel drunkard Jones
Snowball & Napoleon emerge leaders.
Jones forgets to feed the animals. Revolution. Jones & his men driven out.
Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm.
The Seven Commandments of Animalism painted on the barn wall.
The Seven Commandments
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend
No animal shall wear clothes
No animal shall sleep in a bed
No animal shall drink alcohol
No animal shall kill any other animal
All animals are equal
"Four legs good, two legs bad!"
Napoleon
The animals complete the harvest and meet every Sunday to debate farm policy.
The pigs, because of their intelligence, become the supervisors of the farm.
Napoleon proves to be a power-hungry leader who steals the cows milk and apples to feed
himself and the other pigs.
He also enlists the services of Squealer, a pig with the ability to persuade the other animals
that the pigs are always moral and correct in their decisions.
Defending the Farm
Jones and his men attempt to recapture Animal Farm. The Battle of the Cowshed. Thanks to
Snowball, the animals defeat Jones.
Winter. Mollie, a vain horse concerned only with ribbons and sugar, is lured off the farm by
another human.
The Windmill

] Snowballs plans for a windmillelectricity and more leisure.

Napoleon opposes plan. Building the windmill will allow them less time for producing food.
Vote on windmill. Napoleons dogs chase Snowball off the farm.
Napoleon takes over the project of the windmill as his own.
For the rest of the novel, Napoleon uses Snowball as a scapegoat on whom he blames all of
the animals hardships.
Napoleon turns oppressor
Work on the windmill. Boxer, an incredibly strong horse, proves valuable.
Increasing appetites of pigs & dogs. Living conditions of other animals worsen.
Napoleon hires a solicitor and begins trading with humans, adopts human comforts. Threat
of Jones return used to silence other animals.
When a storm topples the half-finished windmill, Napoleon blames Snowball and orders the
animals to rebuild it in winter.
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 Napoleons dogs kill spies.

Commandments altered
Napoleon and pigs move into Jones house; sleep in beds.
Pigs grow fatter; other animals get less food.
Windmill completed in August.
Napoleon godlike figure, called Leader
Napoleon pretends to dislike neighbourhood farmer Frederick & favour Pilkington; but sells
timber to Frederick. F. pays in forged notes. Attacks Farm. Destroys windmill. Defeated.
Seven Commandments altered. For e.g., No animals shall drink alcohol No animal shall
drink alcohol to excess.
Pigs turn Human
Windmill rebuilt. Boxer worked so hard he collapsed. Sent to horse slaughterer.
Squealer tells animals that Boxer was taken to a vet and died a peaceful death & animals
believe.
Years pass. Napoleon buys two fields from another neighbouring farmer Pilkington. Prosperity
Life harsh for everyone except pigs. Pigs start to walk on 2 legs; take on human character.
All Animals Are Equal / But Some Are More Equal Than Others.
The Futility of Socialism
Pilkington shares drinks with the pigs in Jones house.
Napoleon changes the name of the farm back to Manor Farm
Napoleon quarrels with Pilkington during a card game in which both of them try to play the
ace of spades.
o As other animals watch the scene from outside the window, they cannot tell the pigs
from the humans.
o The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to
man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Wanna watch the movie?
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1954 release
Nineteen Eighty Four (1949)
Freedom no longer exist in 1984
Only three superpowers remain to dominate a world of hatred, isolation, and fear
o Eurasia and Eastasia, with which Oceania is always at war
Big Brother
o The dictator of the Party, whose face is everywhere on posters captioned Big Brother
Is Watching You.
o Controls life in Oceania through the four ministries of Peace, Love, Plenty, and Truth.
Winston Smith
o 39-year-old employee at the Ministry of Truth, London, in Oceania
Oppression in Oceania
Winstons job
o Revision of historical documents
o Rewriting news stories to reflect the Partys infallibility
Oppression by the Party
o The Party rations food and clothing; selects social activities
o Monitors everyone with telescreens, microphones, spies.
o The Thought Police, Big Brothers secret militia, suppress revolt by eliminating all who
think or behave in a disloyal fashion.
o Hate Week intensifies hatred against Emmanuel Goldstein, Enemy of the People, while
increasing devotion to Big Brother.
o The Party preaches that the proles, the majority, are natural inferiors to be kept in
check.
Winstons Rebellion
Winston secretly buys an illegal diary in which he writes the heresy Down With Big Brother
This is a thoughtcrime, a Newspeak term

375

Winston attempts to remember his childhood, especially his mother who had disappeared
years before. But it seems the Party has been successful in eradicating all remnants of the
past.
Winston enters into an affair with the free-spirited Julia, a fellow employee at the Ministry of
Truth. At first they view their desire for one another as an act of rebellion.
Charrington and OBrien
Soon Winston and Julia are deeply in love
They meet secretly in an attic room above a junk shop owned by Mr. Charrington
o The man who sold the diary, and later, a coral paperweight, to Winston
The lovers discuss the repressiveness of their lives and the possibility of joining the
Brotherhood, the secret underground of Emmanuel Goldstein
Winston is approached by OBrien, an acquaintance who seems to share his views.
OBrien recruits them as members of the Brotherhood and promises to send them a copy of
Goldsteins book.
Winston is tortured
Winston pledges to do even murder and suicide to erode the power of the Party.
Julia and Winston are arrested, betrayed by Mr. Charrington, a member of the Thought Police.
Winston is taken to the Ministry of Love where he is starved, beaten, and tortured by
OBrien, a dedicated Inner Party member.
Winston is taken to the mysterious room 101 and his head pushed into a cage of hungry rats
prepared to devour him. At this point he pleads with OBrien to kill Julia, not him
Winston learns to accept
When his spirit is broken, Winston is released, and unexpectedly runs into Julia
She admits that she too had betrayed their love.
Surprisingly, Winston feels no desire for her.
Winston knows that it is only a matter of time before the Party executes him
However, when the telescreen barks the news of the armys latest victory, he weeps with joy.
He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.
Inside the Whale (1940)
Primarily a review of Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
The biblical story of Jonah and the whale is used as a metaphor for accepting experience
without seeking to change it (Jonah inside the whale being comfortably protected from the
problems of the outside world)
In his article, Outside the Whale, Salman Rushdie argues that living quietly inside the
whale isnt proper living; and writes of the need for literature to be analyzed from a political
perspective
Other major essays
Politics and the English Language (1946)
o Criticizes the ugly and inaccurate written English of his time
o Examines the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of
language
Shooting an Elephant (1950)
o The essay describes the experience of the English narrator, possibly Orwell himself,
called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant while working as a police officer in
Burma.
o Because the locals expect him to do the job, he does so, and his anguish is increased
by the elephant's slow and painful death. The story is regarded as a metaphor for
British imperialism
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Born at Swansea in Wales
Worked as reporter, scriptwriter and broadcaster for BBC
New Apocalypse poet (1940s)
Originator of neo-romantic poetry
Enemy of intellectualism in verse
A true Celt, deeply passionate & had an uncontrolled appreciation of the magic of language
Drew upon human body, sex & Old Testament for his imagery
Experimented with metre
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Dylan Thomas Works

Fern Hillbest poemrhythmical voices sounded good to the audiences
Poem in Octoberwritten on his 30th birthday
Other famous poems: Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no
dominion
Under Milk Wooddelightful radio play
Collections of stories
o The Map of Love (1939)
o Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940)
Short stories chronicling the days of his youth
Fern Hill
Autobiographical poem describing Thomas life as he matures from a carefree youth to an
adult who laments the loss of his childhood.
Two parts
o The first three stanzas are related to the poets experience as a child, in his aunts
farm, where he used to spend the summer holidays.
o The last three stanzas are his lamenting the loss of the world of innocence.
Death and Fame
Reading tour of the US
o A charismatic reader of poetry
o A disruptive and hard-drinking Bohemian
o Took a heavy toll on his health
o During a fourth visit to the US in 1953, died of alcoholic poisoning
Overpraised during his lifetime,Thomass work has since suffered critical disparagement
The Movement (1950s)
Emerged with the decline of the New Apocalypse
Poets of the 50s (1955 anthology ed. Dennis Joseph Enright)
Main poetsLarkin, Gunn, Jennings
New Lines (1956 anthology ed. Robert Conquest)
Features of the Movement
Anti-romantic, witty, colloquial style
Anti-Modernists (held Modernism as escapist, elitist, obscure, as antithetical to post-war
democratic & populist values)
Professed no interest in stylistic innovation & in neo-classical mood concerned themselves
with reality
However, conventional verse forms rarely used
Form governed by its relevance of theme & mood
View landscape with Man as an integral part
Approach is intellectual & subject matter is reality
Poems show individual man in all his conditions, showing pity & indignation for his sufferings
& faith in his innate dignity
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
Worked as a librarian
Anti-romantic
Accepts defeatism and rootlessness as part of existence
Work contains a sense of loss, of beauty departed, of the changing qualities of English life
Personal tone
Two novels: Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947)
Reviewed jazz records for The Daily Telegraph
Edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973)
Larkins Poetry
Early collection of verse, The North Ship (1945), is uncharacteristically rhetorical
Poetry collection, The Less Deceived (1955)
o Brought Larkins mature work before the public for the first time
o Inverts a phrase from Shakespeare, I was the more deceived (Ophelia)
Reputation rests on The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1964)
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Major poems
The Whitsun Weddings
o Describes the poets journey by train from Hull to London
Ambulances
o The poet uses an ambulance to convey the loneliness of age and death, and the fact
that death comes to all, sooner or later
o The ambulance is Closed like confessionals and comes to collect souls and ferry's
them into the afterlife.
Church Going
The speaker steps into a church after making sure its empty. He lets the door thud shut
behind him and glances around at all the fancy decorations, showing his ignorance of (or
indifference to) how sacred it is all supposed to be.
After a short pause, he walks up to the altar and reads a few lines from the notes on a
lectern. After this, he walks back out of the church and slides an Irish sixpence into the
collection box.
What will become of churches?
The speaker thinks that the place wasnt worth stopping by. But he also admits that
he did stop, and that this isnt the first time hes done so.
He cant help wondering what hes looking for when he keeps coming back to this place
He also asks himself what will happen to churches when there are no more believers left in
the world.
He wonders if theyll make museums out of the churches, or if theyll just leave the building
open rent-free for rain and sheep.
Who would need religion in future?
The speaker then asks what will happen to the world when religion is gone altogether.
Then he wonders what the very last religious person will be like. Will they be an obsessive
compulsive, who just cant stop wanting to smell incense? Or will they be more like the
speaker, someone whos bored and ignorant about the church, and just passing by without
knowing what theyre looking for?
Finally, the speaker admits that hes pleased by the church because its a serious place for
serious questions.
Humanity, he concludes, will always have a hunger to ask serious questions, for which they
will turn to religion
Angry Young Man (1950s)
Various British novelists and playwrights who emerged in the 1950s and expressed scorn and
disaffection with the established sociopolitical order of their country.
A new breed of intellectuals mostly of working class or of lower middle-class origin. Some
had been educated at the postwar red-brick universities at the states expense
Most writers disliked this label
Irreverence, stridency, impatience with tradition
Vigour, vulgarity, sulky resentment against the cultivated
Sense of betrayal & futility generated by post-war reforms
Dissatisfaction with traditional politics, education, literature
John Osborne (1929-1994)
Tragic-comic depiction of the liar who is a liar and is irresponsible
Shows optimism and nostalgia for the past
Look Back in Anger
o First performed on 8 May 1956 at Royal Court Theatre
o Projects social inequality & futility of individual action
o A young working-class mans resentment at the English class system
o Initiated the Angry Young Man movement
Entertainer
Luther
Look Back in Anger (1956)
Autobiographical play based on Osbornes unhappy marriage and life in cramped dwellings
in Derby
378

Three Sunday afternoons in the one-room attic apartment of Jimmy Porter and Alison in mid1950s small town England.
As usual
o Jimmy Porter and his friend and business partner, Cliff Lewis, are reading the Sunday
papers while Jimmys wife, Alison, irons.
o Jimmy is verbally bashing everyone and everything around him, including Cliff and
Alison (for her upper-middle-class background)
Jimmys Anger
Jimmy sees only political decay and pretension in contemporary England
His anger strikes at everything associated with British bureaucracy
From his demeaning working-class position, he partly yearns for more success; partly
mistrusts success
When Jimmy was ten years old, he spent a year watching his father die. To him, the rest of
the family did not seem to care, and Jimmy sees a similar lack of sensitivity in Alison. He
calls her Lady Pusillanimous (meaning cowardly)
Jimmy and Alison
Cliff attempts to keep peace between Jimmy and Alison
o There is a playful scuffle between the two men
o Alison falls down
o Jimmy is sorry; Alison makes him leave
Alison confides to Cliff that she is pregnant, though she has not yet told Jimmy. Cliff advises
her to tell him.
Later, Jimmy and both Alison fall into an intimate game of a stuffed bear and a toy squirrel.
Alisons old friend, Helena Charles, is coming for a visit. Jimmy does not like her and flies
into a rage.
Helena
Another Sunday. Helena has arrived
Jimmys harangue is now directed at Helena.
Helena thinks Alison should leave Jimmy and sends for her father, Colonel Redfern.
When her father arrives, Alison leaves and Helena stays on.
At the end of Act 2, however, Helena is drawn by some strange attraction to Jimmy and
offers herself to him, becoming his mistress.
In Act 3 begins, it is Sunday afternoon again and Jimmy and Cliff are once more reading their
Sunday papers. Now, however, Helena has replaced Alison at the ironing board.
Kingsley Amis (1922-1995)
Comic novelist
Lucky Jim (1954)
o Story set in the 1940s or early 50s, satirizing the high-brow academics of a red-brick
university in England
o Genre of Campus Novel
o Satire
o Themes
"Luck" as opposed to "entitlement
Straightforwardness over hypocrisy
The difference between social classes
Jims Challenges
Jim Dixon struggles to convince Professor Welch to keep him on at the University.
He must also decide between Margaret Peel, a colleague who is becoming his girlfriend, and
Christine Callaghan, the beautiful, high-class girlfriend of Bertrand Welch.
Dixon makes a drunken pass at Margaret and asks her to the Summer Ball; endangers his job
security by accidentally burning his bedsheets at Welch's house
Jim Dixon breaks free
Dixon escorts Christine home from the Summer Ball; Dixon fights Bertrand; Dixon gives the
end-of-term lecture on Merrie England drunk and insults faculty members.
Dixon gets a well-paid job in London with Julius Gore-Urquhart; Dixon learns from Margaret's
previous companion, Catchpole, that Margaret staged her suicide attempt to get attention,
leaving Dixon free to pursue Christine.
379

Other Works of Amis

That Uncertain Feeling
I Like It Here
The Old Devils (Booker Prize 1986)
Great interest in science fiction. Series of lectures on the genre published as New Maps of
Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction
Wrote much criticism, including the praise of Iris Murdochs Under the Net and Ian Flemings
James Bond novels.
Campus Novel
Main action is set in and around the campus of a university
Against class fiction of pre-war period
late 1940s
Campus novels show
o The peculiarities of human nature
o Reactions to pressure (exams etc)
o Describe the reaction of a social group (the academic staff) to new social attitudes
Later practitioners: Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, Tom Sharpe and Howard Jacobson
Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010)
Working class or lower middle class heroes who celebrate a new spirit of disrespect for the
establishment
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
o Short story
o Colin Smith, a poor Nottingham teenager from a blue-collar area; put into a borstal for
a petty crime; turns to long-distance running as a method of both an emotional and a
physical escape from his situation. He is offered a release if he wins a prestigious
cross-country race, but defiantly throws victory awayhe gets far ahead of the other
runners, and stops and waits in full view of the spectators while the others cross the
finishing line.
Other Angry Young Men
John Wain
o Comic picaresque novel Hurry on Down
o Strike the Father Dead
o Young Shoulders
John Braine
o Room at the Top
o The Crying Game (captures the atmosphere of the Swinging Sixties
Arnold Wesker (b. 1932)
Continued Angry Young Mans social realism
Kitchen-sink realism
o A style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class
Britons living in rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy
pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.
o Also in painting
Lack of progress & purpose of working class for the Welfare State had brought comfort &
destroyed causes
Trilogy: Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots, Im Talking about Jerusalem
Chicken Soup with Barley
The play is about the Jewish communist Kahn family living in 1936 in London
Traces the downfall of their ideals in a changing world, parallel to the disintegration of the
family, until 1956.
The protagonists are the parents, Sarah and Harry, and their children, Ada, and Ronnie.
How they struggle to maintain their convictions in the face of World War II, Stalinism, or the
1956 Hungarian Revolution
Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
Became Poet Laureate in 1984
380

Sees power & vitality as essential principles contending against death, the failure of God to
create a satisfactory universe, the ever present strength of evil
Personal survival as the only goal to achieve
Animal poet who appreciated violence
Great tenderness under the pessimistic exterior
Collections The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal etc
Poems contrasting animal vitality with the artifices of human society: Hawk Roosting,
Pike, Jaguar, Thrushes, Crow poems
The Thought-Fox
The Thought-Fox appeared in Hughess first collection of poems, The Hawk in the Rain
(1957)
The writer is working late at night alone, the only sound being the clocks loneliness.
Beyond the writers experience of time and the blank page exists the primordial force of the
imagination.
The poet becomes actively aware of the approach of imagination in the second stanza.
The poet stares at a blank page, which becomes the dark window, the starless sky, and then
into the forests darkness.
The fox approaches
In the third stanza, the poet has crossed these various thresholds to make contact with the
unconscious or the imagination.
Both the poet and the metaphorical fox are cautious in their approaches. The rhythm of
simple words underscores the directness of the experience : Two eyes serve a movement,
that now/ And again now, and now, and now/ Sets neat prints into the snow.
The fourth stanza traces the movement of the fox through the trees. Gradually the blank,
snowy page fills with print, the tracks of the thought-fox.
The fox vanishes
In the fifth stanza the poet is swept into the deepening greenness, or vitality, of the
imagination.
The force of the reverie overwhelms the poet, until the sudden physical presence and
departure of the fox in the sixth stanza occurs: Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox/ It
enters the dark hole of the head.
The fox is no longer a shadow but dangerously close before vanishing and leaving the page
printed, scented with its presence, its territory marked.
The imagination, for Hughes, is a primordial force; its presence is both creative and
predatory.
Hawk Roosting
Hawk Roosting is included in the volume Lupercal
It is one of the earliest poems in which Hughes used animals to imply the nature of man
It is a monologue of a hawk, a bird of prey, attacking smaller birds to feed himself. It speaks
entirely of instinctual actions.
The egoistic hawk asserts that trees, air, sun and earth are there only for his convenience;
that the purpose of creation was solely to produce him; that the world is at his bidding; and
all other creatures exist only as his prey.
Thus the poet depicts the murderous quality of Nature
The Hawk as Nature
The hawk says that nothing has changed since his life began, that his eye has permitted no
change, and that he is going to keep things like this.
Hawk is a merciless killer and it is his device the allotment of death. It is his whim to kill
where he pleases because it is all his own. The hawks whole business in life is to tear off
heads. His whole concern is to follow the path leading him directly through the bones of the
living creatures.
This poem also offers Hughes sense of imperialistic power and authoritarian politics.
At a deeper level, the hawk becomes a mouthpiece of Nature itself.
Thom Gunn (1929-2004)
Sees life to be tough, cynical, loveless & meaningless
Finds some tenderness in the essentially animal nature of man
Early poetry associated with The Movement
381

 Later poetry exploration of drugs, homosexuality, and poetic form

On the Move Man, You Gotta Go
My Sad Captain
Most famous collection: The Man With Night Sweats (1992), with AIDS-related elegies
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
Nobel Prize 1995
Voice & subject is Irish
Early poems recreate sights, sounds & events of childhood
Looks for the realities of metaphysics, of religion, of presence
Seeing Thingsconcerned with the validity of the visionary in reaching towards life after
death
Famous poems: Digging, Tollund Man, Death of a Naturalist, Mid-Term Break
Digging
Heaney begins the poem with an image of himself, pen in hand. He hears or is remembering
the sound of digging under his window. It is his father, digging; an echo from the past.
Because his father is dead, twenty years away, the sound can also echo the digging of
graves, an image that is further reinforced by the evocations of the smell and feel of the soil.
The father who is dead was a laborer, a potato farmer, as his father before him was a digger
of turf, or peat.
Fathers and Grandfathers Digging
The middle stanzas paint a picture of the activity of digging, as it was part of Heaneys
childhood. The potatoes that his father dug up were loved for their cool hardness, and
digging them is regarded as an art that is boasted of generations later.
The memory of his fathers work leads Heaney to the vivid recollection of bringing a bottle of
milk to his grandfather where, he dug up the dense, wet soil, made up of decayed moss and
blocks of which were cut out, dried, and burned for fuel. Heaney recalls the brief pause his
grandfather took to drink the whole bottle and the style with which he fell to work again.
The Poets Digging
In the second to the last stanza, Heaneys recollection becomes purely sensory: memories of
his father in The cold smell of potato mould and his grandfather in the squelch and slap/
Of soggy peat.
What these memories have awaken[ed] are the living roots in Heaneys head.
The labor of his forefathers is his legacy, for better and for worse, but he lacks something
they had: He has no spade to follow men like them.
In the final stanza, he reinstates that what he does have is his pen; he will do with his
instrument what they did with theirs.
The Absurd in Literature
Began in Europe after the II World War
Imbibed the existentialist philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
o View life as meaningless
o Believe in an absence of values and Christian absolutes
o Emphasize personal feelings over moral values
o Celebrate the breakdown of language and communication
o Loss of meaning: the world appears frightening as it is illogical
From The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world.But in a
universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light people feel strangers. They are
irremediable exiles because they are deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as
they lack the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between people and their lives,
the actor and his setting, truly constitues the feeling of absurdity.
Features of the Absurd theatre
A reaction to the disappearance of the religious dimension from our life
An attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual.
An attempt to make man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him
again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and anguish.
Theatre should pursue the aspects of the internal world. Man should be considered
metaphorically in a wordless language of shapes, light, movement and gesture.
382

Theatre should express what language is incapable of putting into words.

Martin Esslin on Absurd Drama

A well made play
An Absurdist Play
The characters are hardly recognizable
human beings, their actions are
completely unmotivated.
Dialogue seems to have degenerate
into meaningless babble

The characters are well observed

&convincingly motivated
Dialogue is witty & logically built up

A well made play

Beginning-middle-ending clearly
recognizable
Primarily concerned to tell a story or
elucidate an intellectual problem. It can
thus be seen as a narrative or
discursive form of communication
Result :Final Message
DYNAMIC

383

Starts at an arbitrary point & seems to

end as arbitrarily
Intended to convey a poetic image or a
complex pattern of poetic images, and
not a story; it is above all a poetic form
It conveys an atmosphere
STATIC

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

Irish-born playwright and novelist
Emigrated from Dublin to Paris
As a young man he was an associate and assistant of James Joyce,with whom he shares a
relentless urge to test and extend the scope of words
He usually wrote in French and translated his own work into English
Brought to the theatre and the novel an acute awareness of the absurdity of human existence
Samuel Becketts career
Career divided into two phases:
Before and After Waiting for Godot.
o Second phase: dramatic minimalisman ever shorter, more distilled styleplays
(dramaticules) and prose (micronarratives); complex mix of self-quotation, self-reflection,
even self-parody
o First phase: Beckett little-known; more variety; less even quality of creative output
Early Works
His first published works
o A volume of verse, Whoroscope (1930)
o A critical study of Marcel Proust (1931)
More Pricks than Kicks (1934, a volume of short stories)
His first novel, Murphy (1938), made little impact on its first publication
It is almost entirely on his work after 1950 that his fame rests
It earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969
Becketts Fiction
French trilogy : Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable
English novel: Watt
These novels exist in and through their narrators: social misfits, old and ill, on a quest for the
explanation of I
Distinct from the plays, but not cut off from them
The Unnameable searches for an escape from writing in the spoken word
How It Is (an Anti-novel)
o A monologue by the narrator as he crawls through endless mud
o Insistently aural, with its use of murmuring and panting
Short prose fictions followed
Becketts Drama
More widely known for his plays
All of Becketts stage plays replace conventional decor with stark images
Introduced to the post war theatre a philosophical dimension that bemused and intrigued
audiences
The three full-length plays, Waiting for Godot (1952, 1953), Endgame (1957, 1958) and Happy
Days (1961), all concerned with human suffering, survival and immobility
The shorter Krapps Last Tape (1958) and Play (1963) seek to identify moments in the
characters past when something actually happened
En attendant Godot / Waiting for Godot
Subtitled (in English only) a tragicomedy in two acts
Recalls France during the Nazi occupation, where people waited in desolate spots for others
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, meet near a tree.
o They talk on various topics and reveal that they are waiting there for a man named
Godot.
While they wait, two other men enter.
o Pozzo, an aggressive master, is on his way to the market to sell his slave, Lucky. Lucky
entertains them by dancing and thinking, and Pozzo and Lucky leave.
After Pozzo and Lucky leave, a boy enters

He tells them that Godot will come not tonight, but tomorrow. Vladimir asks him some
questions about Godot. After he leaves, Vladimir and Estragon decide to leave, but they
do not.
The second Act
The next evening, Vladimir and Estragon again meet near the tree to wait for Godot.
Lucky and Pozzo enter again
o This time Pozzo is blind and Lucky is dumb. Pozzo does not remember meeting the two
men the night before. They leave and Vladimir and Estragon continue to wait.
Shortly after, the boy enters
o Once again he tells them Godot will not be coming.
o He insists that he did not speak to Vladimir yesterday. After he leaves, Estragon and
Vladimir decide to leave, but again they do not move.
Endgame
In the center sits Hamm, a failed actor, now blind and immobile, confined to a makeshift
wheelchair.
Turning blindness to his own advantage and with delusions of grandeur, Hamm rules his
shrinking domain with the endless mind games, drawn from the game of chess.
Downstage, contained in trash cans, are Hamms parents Nagg and Nell, left legless after a
bicycle accident years earlier.
The only character left standing is Clov, who suffers from an ailment that keeps him from sitting
down and who may or may not be Hamms son.
More Plays
Breath (1970), a fragmentary play
Come and Go (1966), a dramaticule, shows three women behaving according to a regular
pattern but not allowing the audience to hear the whispers that might (or might not) motivate
their behaviour
In Not I (1972) and Footfalls (1976), the stage lighting dictates what the audience sees (a
mouth and feet respectively) as the spoken words reverberate
Features of Becketts Works
Irrationalism, helplessness & absurdity of life in dramatic forms
Mans desperate search for meaning
Individual isolation
The gulf between our desires and the language in which they find expression
Reject realistic settings, logical reasoning or a coherently evolving plot
Harold Pinter (1930-2008)
Nobel Prize in 2005
Although influenced by Beckett associated with him in the Theatre of the Absurd, he is better
appreciated as the inventor of a new kind of comedy, called the comedy of menace
The majority of his plays are set in a single room, whose occupants are threatened by forces or
people whose precise intentions neither the characters nor the audience can define
Plays convey the rambling ambiguities & silences of everyday conversation with an amazing
authority
Comedy of Menace
Plays short, set in an enclosed claustrophobic space & characters always in doubt and fear
Builds the sense of menace & scarcely restrained violence
o The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker
o Silence, Homecoming, Old Times, A Night Out
Other writers: David Campton, Nigel Dennis,
N. F. Simpson
o

The Birthday Party (1958)

Pinters first full-length play
Bad reviews for being confusing and unconvincing
The play centres on Stanley Webber
o A retired musician in his late thirties
o Has lived for years at a dreary boarding house in a resort town in England
o The proprietors Petey and Meg Boles are like father and mother to Stanley
o He seems to be hiding from something, isolated from the outside world
A girl, Lulu, visits the boardinghouse occasionally
The nightmare begins
Stanleys sense of child-like security turns to nightmare
o Two men, McCann and Goldberg, arrive on the night of Stanleys birthday, to finish a
job (job is Stanley himself!)
o In a motherly fashion, Meg has planned a party and gives Stanley a drum.
o For Stanley, the birthday party becomes a grim ritual of psychological terror.
o Stanley hangs his drum around his neck and plays it, at first rhythmically, then savagely,
as if possessed.
The interrogation
Stanley tries to persuade McCann and Goldberg that they he is not the man they are looking for.
The men begin accusing Stanley of a series of offenses.
The allegations seem trivial, but they are existential crimes that Stanley committed in his
refusal to act, in his withdrawing from responsibilities.
McCann and Goldberg use increasingly absurd logic
o To expose Stanleys strategies in hiding from his enemies
o To break down the psychological barriers that he has erected against his own sense of
guilt
Finally Stanley is unable to answer even the silly riddle of why the chicken crossed the road.
The interrogation
By the time Meg and Lulu join the party, Stanleys breakdown is nearly complete.
They play a violent game of blindmans buff
o Stanley tries first to rape Lulu, then to strangle Meg
o Then he giggles uncontrollably as the others close in on him
In the final Act, Goldberg and McCann announce that Stanley has had an unexpected mental
breakdown, and that they are taking him to Monty
Stanley appears resigned to his fate, defeated and docile, and no longer able to speak.
William Golding (1911-1993)
Nobel Prize in 1983
Deals with mans instinct to destroy what is good
Treating cruelty & selfishness presents the view that evil is everywhere & good is almost
impossible to achieve
Works convincingly realistic, characters feasible; forced by unnatural circumstances into
unnatural situations
Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin, The Scorpion God
Lord of the Flies
II World War. A plane carrying a group of British schoolboys is shot down over the Pacific.
Pilot dies. Boys who survive are stranded on an uninhabited island without adult supervision.
Novel begins on the island.
Ralphone of the oldest; handsome; confident
Piggy (mockingly called)asthmatic; glasses; intelligent
Ralph blows a conch shell and all boys gather together
Jackaggressive boy; head of choir
Ralph, Piggy, Jack
Ralph calls a meeting and makes rules

Proposes that they build a fire on the mountain which could signal their presence to any
passing ships.
Jack not concerned over long-term issues of survival.
Piggys intelligence essential. His glasses used for lighting fire.
Jack tries to hunt pigs, Ralph supervises the building of shelters. Only Simon consistently helps
Ralph.
Fire dies out; a ship passes by. Piggy blames Jack; Jack hits Piggy; one lens of his glasses break.
The beast
Jacks choir group enact a ritualistic game: Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in.
Jack is openly hostile to Ralph; wants to be chief
Boys are afraid of a supposed beast on the island.
One night, a pilot parachutes down the island and dies.
Next morning, the twins Samneric are kindling the fire when they see the flapping parachute
and believe it to be a beast
The lord of the flies
Hunters kill a pig. Jack smears blood on Maurices face. They cut off head of beast and leave it
on a stake as offering to the beast.
Jack bribes other boys with meat and fun. All except Ralph, Piggy, Simon & Samneric join him.
The lonely boy Simon discovers the beast is only a dead pilot.
Storm. Simon rushes to tell the boys about the dead pilot. The boys think he is the beast and
kill him.
The beast within
Jack has one boy tied up, and instils fear in the other boys
Jack party steal Piggys glasses at night.
When Ralph and Piggy ask for the glasses, Roger tips a rock on Piggy; he falls & dies.
The boys have become savages.
Boys hunt for Ralph; set forest on fire to smoke him out.
Ralph reaches beach. Finds himself facing a naval officer. He thinks they were playing and
scolds them for not behaving like responsible, civilized Britishers.
Ralph weeps for the death of Piggy and the end of the boys' innocence.
Muriel Spark (1918-2006)
Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet
Shares some of Goldings concerns
Novels often set in large female institutions where personal identity & value are at stake and
creates a comic Gothic pattern of incidents, as in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Talent for irony and black humour
Muriel Sparks Novels
After writing some poetry, literary criticism and biography, she published her well-received first
novel, The Comforters (1957)
Curriculum Vitae (1992), her autobiography , tells her story upto the point when she published
her first novel
Memento Mori (1959, about old age)
The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960, about evil and temptation)
Best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
Girls of Slender Means (1963)
Other Novels
The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)
The Public Image (1968)
The Drivers Seat (1970)
The Take-Over (1976)
Loitering with Intent (1981)
A Far Cry from Kensington (1988)
The best-selling Simposium (1990)
o

 Reality and Dreams (1996)

Aiding and Abetting (2000)
Dystopian novel, Robinson
Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)
Irish-born British novelist and philosopher
Wrote essays in moral philosophy & aesthetics
Novels deal with
o Inner life of individuals
o Serious moral questions
Romantic narration contains strong intellectual impulse as in her first novel, Under the Net
(1954)
Murdochs Major Novels
The Bell (1958)
o Set in Imber Court, a lay religious community situated next to an enclosed order of
Benedictine nuns in Gloucestershire)
A Severed Head (1961, turned into a play by Priestley)
The Unicorn (1963, Gothic elements)
The Black Prince (1973)
The Sea, the Sea (1978, Booker)
o A retired stage director who is overwhelmed by jealousy when he meets his erstwhile
lover after several decades apart
Other Novelists
C. P. Snow
o A series of 11 novels called Strangers and Brothers about changes in university and
government life
Anthony Powell
o A 12-novel series called A Dance to the Music of Time about postwar middle class life
Doris Lessing (1919-2013)
The Grass is Singing (1950)
o Novel about her Rhodesian upbringing
Vision of a post-apocalyptic future in her series of 5 novels, Children of Violence
The Golden Notebook is about changing lives of women after the war
Psychological or inner-space fiction
Outer-space fiction
o Canopus in Argos: Archives, a series of five novels
The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook encompasses the years 1950- 1957.
It is divided into five sections called Free Women 1-5.
o The first four sections contain a part of the main story (the conventional novel) and
excerpts from four differently colored notebooks. The fourth section of the novel also
contains the golden notebook.
o The last section is a straightforward ending to the main story, which presents an
integrated character who no longer needs to compartmentalize experiences
Anna Wulf
When the story begins, the central character, Anna Wulf, has already published a single
successful book, Frontiers of War, set in central Africa, detailing colour-bar hatreds and
cruelties.
This 1951 novel was so successful that Anna has been able to live off the royalties from it for
the next six years while she suffers from writers block.
Living in London, Anna cares for her thirteen-year-old daughter, Janet. In her role as mother,
Anna finds emotional stability and meaning
Meanwhile, Anna writes continually in her notebooks to explore the larger meaning of her life
and of her writing.
Molly and Richard

The main story line evolves around two women, Anna and Molly, who seem to be extensions of
each other.
Their common enemy is Mollys former husband, Richard, a rich business executive. Richard
continues to be very intrusive in Mollys life because they share a son, Tommy.
Richard assumes a relationship with Anna that is much like his relationship with Molly.
Even Richards second wife, Marion, becomes a part of the circle, trying to unburden herself of
hurt feelings stemming from her bad marriage.
Tommy
Once Tommy reaches the age when he should decide upon a career, he is torn between the
idealistic world of his mother and Anna and the capitalistic world of tycoons.
Tommy goes to Anna to confirm that her lifestyle, which seems to him morally superior, is truly
viable.
After reading Annas notebooks, Tommy understands the chaos awaiting a person who tries to
operate outside collectives. In a fit of depression, Tommy shoots himself in the head.
Against the odds, he survives, though he becomes blind. Ironically, he eventually leads the life
of a successful businessman and Marion leaves Richard to be with him.
Annas transformation
At the end of The Golden Notebook, Molly decides to remarry.
Meanwhile, Anna has gained a better understanding of herself as a result of working through
dark areas of her personality with a sexual partner, an American writer, Saul Green, who was in
crisis himself during their relationship. He, too, is able to heal his life.
Annas transformation is completed when she moves from writing in the four separate
notebooksan indication of her fragmented lifeto writing in one notebook, the golden
notebook, which contains the essence of her now-integrated self.
The four notebooks
In the black notebook, Anna gives the African background for her novel Frontiers of War.
The red notebook is the contemporary notebook in which Anna records her present politics and
her disillusionment with the Communist Party.
The yellow notebook is a novel-within-the-novel. It contains Annas fictional, unpublished second
novel, called The Shadow of the Third.
Edward Bond (b. 1934)
Playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter
His play Saved led to the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK in the 1960s
Controversial for
o Violence in his plays
o Radicalism of his statements about modern theatre and society
o His theories on drama
Bonds Major Plays
Saved (1965)
o Depicts the lives of some South London working class youths suppressed by a brutal
economic system and unable to give their lives meaning, who drift into barbarous
violence
Lear (1971, based on King Lear)
o Depicts the decay of an aging tyrannical king.
o Betrayed by his two daughters; pursued by the ghost of a man whose life he has
destroyed and whose death he has caused; imprisoned and tortured
o After a life of violence he finally finds wisdom and peace in a radical opposition to power.
o A forced labourer in a camp, he sets an example for future rebellion by destroying the wall
he once built
Bonds Major Plays
Bingo(1974)
o Depicts the retired Shakespeare as an exploitative landlord, who eventually commits
suicide, repeatedly asking himself Was anything done?
The Bundle (1977)

Subtitled New Narrow Road To The Deep North

Set in an imaginary medieval Japan
Based on an anecdote from the classical Japanese poet Bash
The play shows an eventually successful revolution whose leader nevertheless constantly
faces the cost of political change and experiences an ideology of compassion as futile
Other Playwrights
Tom Stoppard
o Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
o Arcadia
o Jumpers
o Travesties
o Dirty Linen
David Hare
o Racing Demon
o Murmuring Judges
o The Absence of War
Other Playwrights
Peter Shaffer
o Equus
o Amadeus
Caryl Churchill
o Top Girls (all-female cast)
o Softcops (all-male cast)
o
o
o
o

Comprehension Questions on Euphues

1. _________, who wrote Euphues, belongs to the group of ___________.

2. Which is a two-part work by John Lyly?

3. Which literary style does Lyly originate in his first book The Anatomy of Wit?
4. What type of work is Euphues?
5. Lylys book is based on Norths ___________, a translation of ________s Librodel Emperado Marco

Aurelio.
6. From where might the plot of Euphues be borrowed?

7. What do you understand by Euphuism?

8. What does Euphues mean in Greek?
9. From where did Lyly adopt the name Euphues?

10. Which of the following is not among the basic structural principles of writing prose set by Lyly?
a. Equal length phrases appear in succession.
b. Key verbal elements keep balance in successive sentences
c. Sounds and syllables correspond to each other.
d. Sentences should be consistently written in colloquial language.

11. What does the book illustrate about the socio-cultural context of the contemporary time?
12. What does Euphues reflect on the concept of love during the Renaissance?
13. Euphues is succeeded by the development of the genre of ________ in English literature.

14. Who is Euphues in Lylys book?

15. Where does Euphues go in search of new experiences and what does he find there?
16. Who is Eubulus?
17. Who was the courteous friend of Euphues?
18. Which are the main characters in the book Euphues?

Write short notes on:

1. University Wits
2. The Revenge Tragedy
3. The Authorized Version of the Bible
4. Miltons Style
5. Paradise Lost as an Epic
6. The Spanish Tragedy as a Revenge Tragedy
7. Bacons Essays
8. The Faerie Queene
9.

Answers to Comprehension Questions on Euphues

1. John Lyly, University wits
2. Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England.

3. Euphuism
4. A didactic prose romance
5. Lylys book is based on Norths Diall of Princes (1557), a translation of Guevaras Librodel Emperado

Marco Aurelio.
6. Boccaccio
7. It is a style of English prose. A mannered style of writing alliterative, antithetical and embellished prose
with elaborate figures of speech.
8. well endowed by nature, graceful, witty.
9. Probably from Roger Aschams The Schoolmaster.

10. D. Sentences should be consistently written in colloquial language.

11. It describes the intellectual fashion, highly sophisticated and artificial manner and favourite themes of
Renaissance society.
12. It sets an example of the Renaissance dogma that male friendship/ platonic love was superior to male and
female romantic love.
13. Novel
14. A young gentleman of Athens
15. Naples. He finds many people eager to encourage a waste of time and talent.
16. An elderly gentleman of Naples.
17. Philautus
18. Euphues, Philautus, Lucilla, Don Ferarado and Curio.

GORBODUC
Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville

1. What is the subtitle of Gorboduc?

2. When and by whom was the play performed first?
3. Who is considered to have written the first three Acts of the play?
4. What was the title of the corrected authorized quarto?
5. Gorboduc was the first verse drama in English to employ ________.
6. Which British king in the play divided his realm in his lifetime to his sons?
7. Name the sons to whom the realm was divided.
8. Who killed Porrex for killing Ferrex?
9. Who rose in rebellion and killed both the king and the queen?
10. Why did a civil war break out in the kingdom of Britain after the kings death?

11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.

Name the Counselor of King Gorboduc.

For whom was the play first performed?
Name the Counselor assigned by the king to his eldest son Ferrex.
Who was Porrexs Counselor?
Who played the role of chorus in the play?
Who was the secretary to King Gorboduc?
17. What is the source for Gorboduc?
18. Who wrote the final two Acts of the play?

Answers to CQ on GORBODUC

1. Ferrex and Porrex

2. 1561, Inner Temple
3. Thomas Norton
4. The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex
5. Blank verse
6. Gorboduc
7. Ferrex and Porrex
8. Videna, their mother
9. The mob
10. For want of issue of the prince as the succession of the crown became uncertain
11. Arostus
12. Queen Elizabeth I
13. Dordan
14. Philander
15. Four ancient and sage men of Britain
16. Eubulus

17. Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regum Brittaniae

18. Thomas Sackville

Comprehension Questions on MAC FLECKNOE by John Dryden

1. What is the subtitle of Mac Flecknoe?
2. What does T.S in the subtitle signify?
3. What does the word blue in the subtitle signify?
4. What does Mac Flecknoe mean?
5. Who is Richard Flecknoe?
6. Where is Mac Flecknoe set?
7. What are Flecknoe and Shadwell introduced as, soldiers, prophets or scholars?
8. Whom does Dryden compare Flecknoe to? What are the similarities between the two of them?
9. What did Flecknoe, who was the ruler of the realm of Nonsense, find in his old age?
10.According to Flecknoe, who resembled him in every respect and so was the fittest successor to
his kingdom?
11.What fascinates the eyes of the beholders when they see Shadwell?
12.The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, / But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
What does rest mean here?
13.To what is Shadwell being compared due to his huge size, indolence and stupidity?

14.Name the 17th century dramatists mentioned in the poem who were considered to be less
expert in the use of superfluous words and phrases than Shadwell.
15.Who has been called as the last great prophet of Tautology?
16.Who had come only to proclaim to the world that a greater dunce was soon to make his
appearance?
17.Which philosopher does Flecknoe refer to when he called himself a dunce?
18.Why does Flecknoe find Shadwell the most suited to rule after him?
19.Who is Villerius, mentioned in Mac Flecknoe?
20.What does the phrase Epsom blankets refer to?
21.To which musician is Shadwell compared when Flecknoe is delivering a speech in praise of him?
Why?
22.Augusta much to fears inclind which Plot does fears refer to?
23.Flecknoe says that the glory of old London is lost, and in it now stands ___________ and
__________.
24.Flecknoe mentions two great playwrights and says they will never dare to tread the nursery of
actors in present-day London. Who are they?
25.What does Buskin and socks refer to in the poem?
26.But worlds of Misers from his pen should flow; / Humorists and hypocrites it should produce, /
Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce. What do misers, humorists and hypocrites
denote, and what are Raymond families and tribes of Bruce?
27.Who published the news of Shadwells coronation throughout the town?
28.Instead of Persian carpets, what is spread in Shadwells imperial way?
29.What is described as Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum?
30.And Herringman was Captain of the Guard who is Herringman?
31.The hoary prince in majesty appeared who is mentioned here?
32.Who is described as young Ascanius? Why?
33.Like ____________ who was a mortal enemy of Rome, Shadwell swore That he till death true
dullness would maintain.
34.Shadwell vowed that he would remain a dullard and wage an incessant war with ____ and ____.
35.Dryden places Shadwell in the tradition of ____________, who was satirized by Ben Jonson, and
who prophesied that in this pile should reign a mighty prince, / Born for a scourge of wit and
flail of sense.
36.What did Flecknoe place in Shadwells sinister (left) hand instead of the orb (ball)?
37.What did Flecknoe place in Shadwells right hand?

38.What is the meaning of the suggestion that Loves Kingdom will be Shadwells rule of sway?
39.What inspired Shadwell to write Psyche?
40.What consecrated Shadwells head?
41.What was seen on the left side of Shadwell, during the time of coronation ceremony?
42.The scene on the left side of Shadwell during the coronation ceremony is compared to an
auspicious omen. Which is the auspicious omen?
43.What is described as damps of oblivion?
44.The admiring throng loud acclamations make what is the meaning of the admiring throng?
45.Flecknoe prophesies that Shadwells reign, which starts from __________ may stretch as far as
Barbadoes.
46.Flecknoe blesses his son that his kingdom may know no bounds, and that his reign may be
greater than Flecknoes own. Then all people cried, ________.
47.Flecknoe advises Shadwell to let others teach ________, while he learns from his father fruitless
industry.
48.During his coronation speech, what did Flecknoe advise Shadwell to write in five years? What
does this imply?
49.Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage who is gentle George?
50.Flecknoe mentions some characters: Dorimant, Loveit, Cully, Cockwood, Fopling. In which plays
do these characters appear?
51.What is the difference between Ethereges fools and Shadwells fools?
52.Flecknoe says that Shadwells fools desire no foreign aid. What does this imply?
53.Who is Flecknoe referring to here: All full of thee and differing but in name?
54.Which writer does Dryden accuse of having written Epsom Wells for Shadwell?
55.Flecknoe advises Shadwell that he should not labour to be _________.
56.Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill who is Sir Formal?
57.How do Shadwells false friends seduce his name to fame?
58.With which earlier writer does Flecknoe make an extended comparison of Shadwell?
59.Whom does Flecknoe call Shadwells uncle?
60.Which characters of Shadwell does Dryden accuse of wooing a lady in an absurd fashion, and of
performing homely duties as sweeping the dust?
61.Why does Dryden quote the phrases, Whip-stitch, kiss my Arse?
62.Dryden says that Jonson never plagiarized from _______.
63.From whom has Shadwell extensively plagiarized, according to Dryden?

64.Does Dryden admire Etherege?

65.Why does Dryden use water and oil imagery to condemn Shadwells plagiarism?
66.Flecknoe says that it is in inventing new _________ for each play that Shadwells genius exhibits
itself.
67.Dryden says that Shadwell himself illustrates a particular humour, by which he is more inclined
to ________.
68.In what way is Shadwells appearance similar to Jonsons?
69.A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ, / But sure thou art but a kilderkin of wit. What does
kilderkin mean here: failure, enemy, a small measure, or hollow barrel
70.Dryden accuses that Shadwells tragic muse ___________, comic muse __________, and his satires
never ______.
71.Dryden says that Shadwells felonious heart is full of venom, but he does not poison anyone.
Why?
72.Dryden advises Shadwell to stop writing plays and instead to turn to _________.
73.What are some of the ways in which Shadwell can write if he turns to acrostics?
74.Why were Flecknoes last words scarcely heard?
75.In which play do Bruce and Longville appear?
76.Who laid the trap-door through which Flecknoe was dragged in between his speech?
77.Flecknoe being dragged through the trap-door is an allusion to a scene in Shadwells play
named ____.
78.Flecknoes robe wafted upward by a wind fell upon Shadwell. What has this been compared to?
Answers to CQ on Mac Flecknoe
1. A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet T.S.
2. Thomas Shadwell
3. Whigs
4. Son of Flecknoe
5. Richard Flecknoe (1600-1678) was an English dramatist and poet whose writing was
ridiculed by Andrew Marvell. Dryden presents him in Mac Flecknoe as the King of
Nonsense, who chooses Shadwell as his heir.
6. In Augusta, or London
7. Prophets
8. Augustus Caesar (which is why the city he rules is called Augusta). Both Flecknoe and
Augustus Caesar became the rulers of their kingdoms when they were young, and both
ruled for a long time.

9. That everything was liable to decay (and so he should have an heir)

10.Shadwell
11.His enormous size
12.The other children of Flecknoe (other bad poets)
13.A gigantic oak
14.Heywood and Shirley
15.Shadwell
16.Flecknoe
17.Duns Scotus (Even I, a dunce of more renown than they, / Was sent before but to prepare
thy way)
18.Because Shadwell resembles him most (bears Flecknoes perfect image), and has been
mature in dullness from his tender years.
19.A character from The Siege of Rhodes by William Davenant
20.To Shadwells play, Epsom Wells
21.Arion, the legendary Greek musician. While on a sea voyage, he learned that sailors on
the ship planned to rob and kill him. Resigned to his fate, he sang a song to the
accompaniment of his lyre, then jumped overboard. But dolphins were enthralled with his
music and he escaped to Corinth on dolphin back. The dolphins, in Shadwells case,
become little fishes. In the Preface to his play Psyche, Shadwell claims that he has
some knowledge in music.
22.The Popish Plot of the Catholics to assassinate the king.
23.Brothel-houses and a nursery to train actors
24.Fletcher and Jonson will never tread this stage; only a Simkin (stock character who plays
the simpleton) will.
25.Attire of tragedians and comedians (Tragedy and comedy)
26.The Miser, The Humorists, and The Hypocrite were plays by Shadwell. Raymond and
Bruce are characters from them.
27.Empress Fame
28.scattered limbs of mangled poets (the parts of books of bad poets): Much Heywood,
Shirley, Ogleby lay there, But loads of Shadwell almost choked the way!
29.Books of neglected authors coming from dusty shops paper from them was used to line
pie boxes or as toilet paper; whatever is left of these books is now strewn on Shadwells
imperial way
30.Herringman was a London publisher
31.The elderly Flecknoe

32.Shadwell. Ascanius is Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state. Like Ascanius
succeeded Aeneas (in Virgils Aeneid), Shadwell will inherit Flecknoes throne.
33.Hannibal
34.Sense and intelligence (Shadwell swore Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with
sense)
35.Dekker
36.He placed a mug of potent (strong) ale
37.A copy of Richard Flecknoes play, Loves Kingdom
38.It means that Flecknoes play will provide Shadwell rules by which he will govern his
kingdom of dullness.
39.Shadwell had, from a young age, practised the lore or studied the story of Flecknoes
Loves Kingdom, which inspired him to write Psyche.
40.The sleep-inducing poppies that crowned Shadwells head nodded / swayed in the wind,
which seemed to consecrate his head.
41.Twelve aged, solemn-looking owls
42.The sight of twelve vultures that flew to Romulus (who founded Rome), which was a sign
of his future sovereignty.
43.The sweat that dropped from Flecknoes head on to Shadwell, when Flecknoe shook his
locks
44.The cheering crowd
45.Ireland
46.Amen
47.success
48.Virtuosos (that is, plays like The Virtuoso, a play by Shadwell). Flecknoe here accuses
Shadwell of being a slow writer, while Shadwell had always boasted that he is a fast
writer.
49.George Etherege
50.Dorimant, Loveit and Sir Fopling Flutter occur in Ethereges The Man of Mode. Cully is in
The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub; Cockwood is in She Would If She Could.
51.Ethereges foolish wits (fools) show the writers wit; Shadwells fools show the authors
want of sense.
52.This means that Shadwells fools are not copied from any other writer, and are entirely
Shadwells own creations.
53.Shadwells characters (wits)
54.Charles Sedley (But let no alien Sedley interpose / To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom
prose.)

55.dull
56.Sir Formal Trifle, a character in Shadwells The Virtuoso
57.Dryden says that Shadwells false friends misguide him by comparing him with Ben
Jonson. But Jonsons is a hostile name, that is, Jonsons name has no relation
whatsoever with Shadwells, and Shadwells name is more akin to Flecknoes
58.Ben Jonson
59.Ogleby, a minor Scottish writer
60.Prince Nicander and Psyche (characters in Shadwells play The Psyche)
61.These phrases are spoken by Sir Samuel Hearty in Shadwells The Virtuoso. Dryden says
Jonson would never write vulgar phrases like this.
62.Fletcher
63.Etherege
64.Yes, Dryden admires Etherege
65.When Shadwell plagiarizes from Etherege, it is like mixing water and oil. Ethereges
always floats above, and Shadwells sinks below.
66.Humours
67.Dullness
68.Both Shadwell and Jonson are fat and have a mountain belly
69.a small measure
70.smiles, sleeps, bite
71.The venom of Shadwells felonious (ready to commit any heinous crime) heart dies when
it reaches his Irish pen (That means, Shadwells literary powers are feeble)
72.Acrostics
73.He can create verses in the shape of wings or an altar, torture a poor word in ten
thousand ways, or set his songs to music and sing them himself (because others may not
be able to sing such wretched songs!)
74.Because as he was speaking, Flecknoe fell through the trap door.
75.Bruce and Longville appear in Shadwells Virtuoso, where they open a trapdoor through
which Sir Formal Trifle disappears.
76.Bruce and Longville
77.The Virtuoso
78.The mantle of Elijah, the Jewish prophet, falling on his son Elisha when the former was
taken to heaven

Comprehension Questions on PARADISE LOST BOOK IX

John Milton
1. Name the evening star whose office is to bring twilight upon the Earth.
2. Who was the Regent (archangel) of the sun who had seen Satan entering the earth?
3. Whom did Uriel forewarn to watch on the earth to keep Satan away?
4. How long did it take Satan to stealthily find his way to human world by avoiding the watching
eye of the angels on guard?
5. What do Books V-VIII (the four preceding books) deal with?
6. Why does Milton say that the friendly social intercourse between man and angels has to end
now?
7. Why does Milton not invoke a pagan goddess at the beginning of Book IX?
8. After the invocation to the Muse, Milton resumes the story of Satan. In which earlier Book had
Milton narrated the story of Satan?
9. Why does Satan choose the serpent as the most suitable creature for his wicked purposes?
10.Why does Satan find no pleasure in the beauty of the Garden of Eden?
11.How many long soliloquies are there in Book IX?
12.In Satans long soliloquy before entering the serpent body through its mouth, what three things
about himself does Satan reveal?
13.Which creature, according to Satan, would best serve his clever trick of deception and is the
fittest creature for fraud and treachery?
14.What does Satan describe as O foul descent?
15.What does Satan describe thus _______, at first though sweet, / Bitter ere long back on itself
recoils.?
16.What was Satans midnight search for?
17.After describing Satans descent into the serpent, what does Milton describe in Book IX?
18.Before they prepare themselves for the days labour, what do Adam and Eve do?
19.Who proposed the idea of dividing labors as they are required to do more work?
20.What suggestion does Eve make for that days work?
21.What according to Eve are the advantages of working separately?
22.What was Adams response to Eves suggestion that they should work separately?
23.Before leaving on her own, Eve remarks that she is going away with Adams permission. What
does this imply?

24.As Eve walks away from Adam alone, the beauty and grace of her personality is brought out by
comparing her with _________.
25.At what time does Eve promise to return from her work?
26.Why did Satans joy know no bounds when he saw Eve?
27.In the scene Satan sets his eyes on Eve, what / who is described as fairest unsupported
flower?
28.What disarmed Satan of enmity, of guile, of hate, of envy and of revenge?
29.When Satan was for a while disarmed of his hate and revenge, how did he once again excite his
passion for revenge?
30.In what manner did Satan approach Eve?
31.Why was Eve surprised on seeing the serpent?
32.What are the three ways in which Satan attempts to seduce Eve?
33.How, according to Satan, did he get the power of language and reasoning?
34.When the serpent takes her to the forbidden tree, how does Eve react?
35.At which time of the day does Eve eat the Forbidden Fruit?
36.What does Eve feel upon eating the Forbidden Fruit?
37.What does Eve feel about God after eating the Forbidden Fruit?
38.What does Eve first feel about Adam after eating the Forbidden Fruit?
39.While Eve is away working alone, and eventually tempted by Satan, what was Adam doing?
40.Why is Nature pained a second time when Eve meets Adam?
41.Why does Adam decide to eat the fruit?
42.What is the immediate effect of the fruit on Adam?
43.With the leaves of which tree do Adam and Eve cover themselves up?
44.Why does Adam call Eve ungrateful?
45. as built with second thought, reforming what was old. What was built with second
thought and what was considered old?
46.Spite them with spite is best repaid. What does these words of serpent mean?
47.From where according to Adam does pleasant smiles issue from?
48.According to Adam, solitude sometimes is best _______, and short retirement urges _______.
49.What, according to Adam, will be Satans first design upon them?
50.Name the parting angel from whom Eve had overheard about Satans evil intention?

51. According to Adam, if Eve wants to prove her constancy of faith what should she first prove to
him?
52.What has the movement of the serpent been compared to?
53. Name the enchantress who turned men into swine?
54.Whom did Satan address as Universal Dame?
55. What is considered to be the root of all woe?
56.As God has said, what will come upon man if he touch or taste from the Tree of Prohibition?
57.What are the leaves of the fig tree, which they used to cover themselves, compared to?
58. In their barely clad state, who are Adam and Eve compared to?
59.Name some of the uncontrollable passions which agitated and blew within Adam and Eve.
60. Is this the love, is this the recompense of mine to thee, ungrateful Eve. Who expressed so ?
61.What does Eve eating the golden apples without restraint symbolize?
62. Eve prays to the tree and swears to pray to it every morning. What does this symbolize?
63.What does Eves hiding her act of eating the Fruit of Knowledge from Adam with the hope of
becoming equal or superior symbolize?
64. What does her act of sharing guilt with Adam so that he may also die with her and not live to
enjoy Paradise with another created Eve symbolize?
65. What is the large framework of symbolism in Paradise Lost?
66. What is the theme of Paradise Lost?
67.The loss of one paradise and the finding of this earth of a paradise within thee, happier far.
Who opines that Paradise Lost is a mental pilgrimage?
68.Who called Milton God-gifted organ-voice of England?
69.Which angel does Satan trick by disguising himself as cherub?
70. In which book does the Fall take place?
71. In which book of the Bible does the story of Adam and Eve occur?
72. What is Miltons stated purpose in Paradise Lost?
73. When Satan leaps over the fence into paradise, what does Milton liken him to?
74. How many times does Milton invoke a muse in Paradise Lost?
75. Who does Milton name as his heavenly muse?

Answers to Paradise Lost Book IX

1. Hesperus
2. Uriel
3. Cherubim
4. Eighth night
5. The four preceding Books deal with the friendly talk between Adam and Raphael about the
Creation, War in heaven and other cosmic issues.
6. Because of the sin (disobedience and Fall) of Man
7. Since this is a Christian epic, he invokes the Christian celestial Muse
8. In Book IV
9. The serpent is the most cunning of the beasts, and when Satan enters its body, no one will
suspect that its actions are not the result of its own guile, but of some diabolical power that
possessed it.
10.Satan surveys the beauty of the Garden of Eden but finds no pleasure in it; the pleasures
around him served only to intensify his grief and passion for revenge. Satan burned with envy
at the blissful life led by Adam and Eve.
11.Three one each for the three chief characters, Satan, Adam and Eve
12.Satan reveals his inner anguish, his passion for revenge, and his sense of his own degradation
13.Serpent
14.His own revenge on Gods creation in the form of a serpent
15.Revenge
16.The serpent
17.Then Milton presents a magnificent hymn on the beauty of the morning, which is an expression
of the greatness and glory of God
18.Before they prepare themselves for the days labour, Adam and Eve offer sincere prayer and
praises to God in devout faith and humble submission.
19.Eve
20.Till then, Adam and Eve had been working together in the fields, tending and watering the
plants and shaping the flower beds. This day, she proposes that they should work separately so
that they can compare how much work each one can perform independently.
21.When they work separately, they can compare how much work each one can perform
independently. They will also be able to put in more work when they work separately since
when they are together, much of their time is wasted in exchanging looks of love or in
conversation.
22.Adam did not like the suggestion and warned Eve against Satanic powers that might be lurking
around. He also told her that to stay away from him might be dangerous for her.

23.Though Adam disagreed with Eves suggestion at first, soon he gave in. This shows his
weakness of character. Also, Eves remark that she is going away with Adams permission
shows her cunning. After the Fall, she also blames Adam for letting her go.
24.A number of goddesses from classical mythology
25.Eve promises to return in time for their mid-day meal and afternoon rest
26.Satans joy knew no bounds on seeing Eve because she was alone and unprotected, as he had
hoped her to be. He could easily seduce her now.
27.Eve, who was working among flowers, is described as the fairest unsupported flower
28.The sight of beautiful Eve and the beautiful sights of Heaven disarmed Satan for a while of
enmity, of guile, of hate, of envy and of revenge. But then, the hot hell that burns in him
always ended his delight.
29.Satan excited his passion for revenge by reminding himself that he had come there to destroy
Adam and Eve.
30.Satan approached Eve in the form of the serpent, but did not creep on the ground as he does
later in the epic. But he moves on a base of rising folds, with his head held high. The sight is
described as beautiful.
31.At first Eve was too busy to notice the serpent, and when she did notice it, she was surprised to
hear it talk in a human voice. He was the first of the beasts in the field who talked to her in a
human manner.
32.Satan first uses flattery, then hypocrisy by posing as a friend, and finally logic which confuses
her reason to seduce Eve.
33.Satan said he got the power of language and reasoning by eating the fruit of a tree.
34.When the serpent takes her to the forbidden tree, Eve tells him she cannot touch the fruit.
35.It was noon when Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit, at which time she was hungry
36.Eve feels justified in her action and that she is in full command of her situation. She becomes
sly and crafty like Satan, and feels elated, and even of the possibility of her becoming a god.
The she feels that she is growing mature in knowledge.
37.Eve feels that God is perhaps too busy with other matters to take note of such a petty violation.
38.She feels that she should keep the secret to herself and deny Adam the knowledge and thus
claim equality or even superiority over him.
39.Adam was making a wreath of flowers with which to crown her, as reapers crown their queen.
40.Nature was first pained when Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit. When Eve meets Adam, she tempts
him in the manner Satan earlier tempted her. This would end their idyllic innocence, and a life
of deceit and mutual quarrel would take its place. At this, Nature is pained a second time.
41.Adam has clearly understood the deceit of their enemy and that Eve has been defaced,
deflowered and devoted to death by eating the fruit. Even then he decides to eat the fruit
and share her fate. He cannot live without her. The bond of nature proves stronger than the
law of obedience.

42.His carnal desire is aroused.

43.Adam and Eve cover themselves up with the leaves of the fig tree which is famous in India in
Malabar and the Deccan.
44.After sharing her fate by eating the fruit, Adam tells Eve that she should have listened to him
and stayed with him without allowing herself to be tempted by Satan. The allegation hurts Eve
and she says it was with his permission that she went, and accuses him of being infirm in his
opposition. Then Adam says she is ungrateful for his devotion to her.
45.Earth and Heaven
46.Hatred must be returned with hatred
47.Reasoning power
48.Society, sweet return
49.To withdraw loyalty from God or to disturb their conjugal love
50.Raphael
51.Her obedience
52.Ship steered by a skilful seaman
53.Circe
54.Eve
55.Tree of Prohibition
56.They will die.
57.Amazonian shields
58.Aborigines of America
59.Anger, hate, mistrust, suspicion, discord etc
60.Adam
61.Greed
62.Idolatry
63.Selfishness and rivalry
64.Murder and envy
65.Mans own good thoughts are the Heaven within him and his evil thoughts Hell
66.Fall of man
67. Tillyard
68. Tennyson
69. Uriel

70. Book IX
71. Genesis

72.To justify the ways of God to men

73.A wolf leaping into a sheeps pen
74. 3
75. Urania

Comprehension Questions on PARADISE LOST BOOK IX

John Milton
76.Name the evening star whose office is to bring twilight upon the Earth.
77.Who was the Regent (archangel) of the sun who had seen Satan entering the earth?
78.Whom did Uriel forewarn to watch on the earth to keep Satan away?
79.How long did it take Satan to stealthily find his way to human world by avoiding the watching
eye of the angels on guard?
80.What do Books V-VIII (the four preceding books) deal with?
81.Why does Milton say that the friendly social intercourse between man and angels has to end
now?
82.Why does Milton not invoke a pagan goddess at the beginning of Book IX?
83.After the invocation to the Muse, Milton resumes the story of Satan. In which earlier Book had
Milton narrated the story of Satan?
84.Why does Satan choose the serpent as the most suitable creature for his wicked purposes?
85.Why does Satan find no pleasure in the beauty of the Garden of Eden?
86.How many long soliloquies are there in Book IX?
87.In Satans long soliloquy before entering the serpent body through its mouth, what three things
about himself does Satan reveal?
88.Which creature, according to Satan, would best serve his clever trick of deception and is the
fittest creature for fraud and treachery?
89.What does Satan describe as O foul descent?
90.What does Satan describe thus _______, at first though sweet, / Bitter ere long back on itself
recoils.?
91.What was Satans midnight search for?
92.After describing Satans descent into the serpent, what does Milton describe in Book IX?

93.Before they prepare themselves for the days labour, what do Adam and Eve do?
94.Who proposed the idea of dividing labors as they are required to do more work?
95.What suggestion does Eve make for that days work?
96.What according to Eve are the advantages of working separately?
97.What was Adams response to Eves suggestion that they should work separately?
98.Before leaving on her own, Eve remarks that she is going away with Adams permission. What
does this imply?
99.As Eve walks away from Adam alone, the beauty and grace of her personality is brought out by
comparing her with _________.
100.

At what time does Eve promise to return from her work?

101.

Why did Satans joy know no bounds when he saw Eve?

102.
In the scene Satan sets his eyes on Eve, what / who is described as fairest unsupported
flower?
103.

What disarmed Satan of enmity, of guile, of hate, of envy and of revenge?

104.
When Satan was for a while disarmed of his hate and revenge, how did he once again
excite his passion for revenge?
105.

In what manner did Satan approach Eve?

106.

Why was Eve surprised on seeing the serpent?

107.

What are the three ways in which Satan attempts to seduce Eve?

108.

How, according to Satan, did he get the power of language and reasoning?

109.

When the serpent takes her to the forbidden tree, how does Eve react?

110.

At which time of the day does Eve eat the Forbidden Fruit?

111.

What does Eve feel upon eating the Forbidden Fruit?

112.

What does Eve feel about God after eating the Forbidden Fruit?

113.

What does Eve first feel about Adam after eating the Forbidden Fruit?

114.
While Eve is away working alone, and eventually tempted by Satan, what was Adam
doing?
115.

Why is Nature pained a second time when Eve meets Adam?

116.

Why does Adam decide to eat the fruit?

117.

What is the immediate effect of the fruit on Adam?

118.

With the leaves of which tree do Adam and Eve cover themselves up?

119.

Why does Adam call Eve ungrateful?

120.
as built with second thought, reforming what was old. What was built with second
thought and what was considered old?
121.

Spite them with spite is best repaid. What does these words of serpent mean?

122.

From where according to Adam does pleasant smiles issue from?

123.
According to Adam, solitude sometimes is best _______, and short retirement urges
_______.
124.

What, according to Adam, will be Satans first design upon them?

125.

Name the parting angel from whom Eve had overheard about Satans evil intention?

126.
According to Adam, if Eve wants to prove her constancy of faith what should she first
prove to him?
127.
128.

What has the movement of the serpent been compared to?

Name the enchantress who turned men into swine?

129.

Whom did Satan address as Universal Dame?

130.

What is considered to be the root of all woe?

131.
As God has said, what will come upon man if he touch or taste from the Tree of
Prohibition?
132.
133.
134.
Eve.
135.
so ?
136.
137.

What are the leaves of the fig tree, which they used to cover themselves, compared to?
In their barely clad state, who are Adam and Eve compared to?
Name some of the uncontrollable passions which agitated and blew within Adam and
Is this the love, is this the recompense of mine to thee, ungrateful Eve. Who expressed
What does Eve eating the golden apples without restraint symbolize?
Eve prays to the tree and swears to pray to it every morning. What does this symbolize?

138.
What does Eves hiding her act of eating the Fruit of Knowledge from Adam with the hope
of becoming equal or superior symbolize?
139.
What does her act of sharing guilt with Adam so that he may
also die with her and not live to enjoy Paradise with another created Eve symbolize?
140.

What is the large framework of symbolism in Paradise Lost?

141.

What is the theme of Paradise Lost?

142.
The loss of one paradise and the finding of this earth of a
paradise within thee, happier far. Who opines that Paradise Lost is a mental pilgrimage?
143.

Who called Milton God-gifted organ-voice of England?

144.

Which angel does Satan trick by disguising himself as cherub?

145.

In which book does the Fall take place?

146.
occur?

In which book of the Bible does the story of Adam and Eve

147.

What is Miltons stated purpose in Paradise Lost?

148.
liken him to?

When Satan leaps over the fence into paradise, what does Milton

149.

How many times does Milton invoke a muse in Paradise Lost?

150.

Who does Milton name as his heavenly muse?

Answers to Paradise Lost Book IX

76.Hesperus
77.Uriel
78.Cherubim
79.Eighth night
80.The four preceding Books deal with the friendly talk between Adam and Raphael about the
Creation, War in heaven and other cosmic issues.
81.Because of the sin (disobedience and Fall) of Man
82.Since this is a Christian epic, he invokes the Christian celestial Muse
83.In Book IV
84.The serpent is the most cunning of the beasts, and when Satan enters its body, no one will
suspect that its actions are not the result of its own guile, but of some diabolical power that
possessed it.
85.Satan surveys the beauty of the Garden of Eden but finds no pleasure in it; the pleasures
around him served only to intensify his grief and passion for revenge. Satan burned with envy
at the blissful life led by Adam and Eve.
86.Three one each for the three chief characters, Satan, Adam and Eve
87.Satan reveals his inner anguish, his passion for revenge, and his sense of his own degradation
88.Serpent
89.His own revenge on Gods creation in the form of a serpent
90.Revenge
91.The serpent
92.Then Milton presents a magnificent hymn on the beauty of the morning, which is an expression
of the greatness and glory of God
93.Before they prepare themselves for the days labour, Adam and Eve offer sincere prayer and
praises to God in devout faith and humble submission.
94.Eve
95.Till then, Adam and Eve had been working together in the fields, tending and watering the
plants and shaping the flower beds. This day, she proposes that they should work separately so
that they can compare how much work each one can perform independently.
96.When they work separately, they can compare how much work each one can perform
independently. They will also be able to put in more work when they work separately since
when they are together, much of their time is wasted in exchanging looks of love or in
conversation.
97.Adam did not like the suggestion and warned Eve against Satanic powers that might be lurking
around. He also told her that to stay away from him might be dangerous for her.

98.Though Adam disagreed with Eves suggestion at first, soon he gave in. This shows his
weakness of character. Also, Eves remark that she is going away with Adams permission
shows her cunning. After the Fall, she also blames Adam for letting her go.
99.A number of goddesses from classical mythology
100.
afternoon rest

Eve promises to return in time for their mid-day meal and

101.
Satans joy knew no bounds on seeing Eve because she was
alone and unprotected, as he had hoped her to be. He could easily seduce her now.
102.
unsupported flower

Eve, who was working among flowers, is described as the fairest

103.
The sight of beautiful Eve and the beautiful sights of Heaven
disarmed Satan for a while of enmity, of guile, of hate, of envy and of revenge. But then, the
hot hell that burns in him always ended his delight.
104.
Satan excited his passion for revenge by reminding himself that
he had come there to destroy Adam and Eve.
105.
Satan approached Eve in the form of the serpent, but did not
creep on the ground as he does later in the epic. But he moves on a base of rising folds, with
his head held high. The sight is described as beautiful.
106.
At first Eve was too busy to notice the serpent, and when she did
notice it, she was surprised to hear it talk in a human voice. He was the first of the beasts in
the field who talked to her in a human manner.
107.
Satan first uses flattery, then hypocrisy by posing as a friend,
and finally logic which confuses her reason to seduce Eve.
108.
the fruit of a tree.

Satan said he got the power of language and reasoning by eating

109.
she cannot touch the fruit.

When the serpent takes her to the forbidden tree, Eve tells him

110.
was hungry

It was noon when Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit, at which time she

111.
Eve feels justified in her action and that she is in full command of
her situation. She becomes sly and crafty like Satan, and feels elated, and even of the
possibility of her becoming a god. The she feels that she is growing mature in knowledge.
112.
Eve feels that God is perhaps too busy with other matters to take
note of such a petty violation.
113.
She feels that she should keep the secret to herself and deny
Adam the knowledge and thus claim equality or even superiority over him.
114.
Adam was making a wreath of flowers with which to crown her,
as reapers crown their queen.

115.
Nature was first pained when Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit. When
Eve meets Adam, she tempts him in the manner Satan earlier tempted her. This would end
their idyllic innocence, and a life of deceit and mutual quarrel would take its place. At this,
Nature is pained a second time.
116.
Adam has clearly understood the deceit of their enemy and that
Eve has been defaced, deflowered and devoted to death by eating the fruit. Even then he
decides to eat the fruit and share her fate. He cannot live without her. The bond of nature
proves stronger than the law of obedience.
117.

His carnal desire is aroused.

118.
Adam and Eve cover themselves up with the leaves of the fig
tree which is famous in India in Malabar and the Deccan.
119.
After sharing her fate by eating the fruit, Adam tells Eve that she
should have listened to him and stayed with him without allowing herself to be tempted by
Satan. The allegation hurts Eve and she says it was with his permission that she went, and
accuses him of being infirm in his opposition. Then Adam says she is ungrateful for his devotion
to her.
120.

Earth and Heaven

121.

Hatred must be returned with hatred

122.

Reasoning power

123.

Society, sweet return

124.

To withdraw loyalty from God or to disturb their conjugal love

125.

Raphael

126.

Her obedience

127.

Ship steered by a skilful seaman

128.

Circe

129.

Eve

130.

Tree of Prohibition

131.

They will die.

132.

Amazonian shields

133.

Aborigines of America

134.

Anger, hate, mistrust, suspicion, discord etc

135.

Adam

136.

Greed

137.

Idolatry

138.

Selfishness and rivalry

139.

Murder and envy

140.
thoughts Hell

Mans own good thoughts are the Heaven within him and his evil

141.

Fall of man

142.

Tillyard

143.

Tennyson

144.

Uriel

145.

Book IX

146.

Genesis

147.

To justify the ways of God to men

148.

A wolf leaping into a sheeps pen

149.

150.

Urania

Comprehension Questions on Preface to the Fables

1. What do you understand by a Fable?
2. Which is the first book of Drydens Fables?
3. Why does Dryden choose the twelfth book of Ovids Metamorphoses as his second fable?
4. How far are Drydens Fables different than the general concept of fables?
5. Which tales did Dryden borrow from Chaucer?
6. From ___________Dryden took the tales of Sigismonda and Guiscardo, Theodre and Honoria and
Cymon and Iphigenia.
7. Dryden metaphorically said about his work Fables in the Preface that, I planned to build a
_____ but ended with _____________.
8. Whom did Dryden favour: Homer or Virgil? Why?
9. __________ is of a quiet, sedate temper; _______ was violent, impetuous and full of fire.
10.How, according to Dryden, are the heroes of Homer and Virgil related to the authors?
11.What was Drydens assessment about Chaucer with respect to the English language?
12.How is Chaucers relation to the language of his time different from that of Ovid?
13.How are Chaucers tales different from Ovids?

14.In English tradition, Chaucer has the position of _______ among the Greeks, and ________ the
Romans.
15.Whom does Dryden call the perpetual fountain of good sense?
16.In religion, which of his contemporaries was Chaucer inclined towards?
17.Of Chaucer, Dryden says, All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; not only
in their ____________, but in their very _________ and persons.
18.Why did Dryden have to face criticism from his contemporary literary rivals?
19.How does Dryden defend himself?
20.Who are Milbourne and Blackmore?
21.Who charged against Dryden by saying that Dryden had attacked the clerical profession?
22.How does Dryden vindicate his view and answer Milbourne?
23.Dryden made a public apology for the lapse that _________ levelled against him. What was that
mistake and who pointed it out?
24.What are Drydens views about translation?
Comprehension Questions on Essay on Dramatic Poesy
25.Which character expounds the extreme classical view in Essay on Dramatic Poesy?
26.Who argues that Moderns have the advantage of experience as well as the rules made by
ancients?
27.Which character attacks rhyme violently?
28.What does Lisideius criticize for multiplicity of action and incident?
29.Which two characters prefer the use of rhyme to blank verse?
30.In Essay of Dramatic Poesy, what is defined as a just and lively image of human nature?
31.Who praises French plays for upholding the three unities?
32.What is the meaning of Neander?
33.Who says that French plots lack variety, which English plays have due to the violation of the
unities?
34.Which plays have number of characters and more violence on stage?
35.Which French critic does Neander cite as asserting the cramping effect of the unities?

Answers to CQs on Preface to the Fables and Essay on Dramatic Poesy

1) A brief tale conveying a moral, in which animals, birds and beasts are made to act and speak
like human beings.
2) The translation of the first book of Iliad
3) Because it contains the causes, the beginning and the ending of the Trojan War
4) Drydens Fables are in verse. They are verse paraphrases of tales by Chaucer, Ovid and
Boccaccio.
5) Palamon and Arcite, The Cock and the Fox, The Flower and the Leaf, The Wife of Baths Tale and
the Character of the Good Parson (five tales)
6) Boccaccio
7) lodge, building a house
8) Homer. Though the themes of Homer and Virgil are the same, he found, by trial, Homer a more
pleasing task than Virgil.
9) Virgil; Homer
10)
The heroes reflect the character of the authors: Homers Achilles is hot, impatient and
vengeful, while Virgils Aeneas is considerate, patient and submissive to the will of heaven.
11)
According to Dryden, when Chaucer wrote Canterbury Tales in English, the English
language was in its infancy. He gave a definite shape to the English as a literary language. Chaucer
is to be hailed not only as the father of English poetry but also as the father of the English
language.
12)
Ovid wrote Metamorphoses at a time when Latin had reached its highest point in
development. But Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales when English was still in its infancy.
13)

Several of Chaucers tales are original, while there is no originality in Ovids tales.

14)

Homer, Virgil

15)

Chaucer

16)

Wycliff

17)

inclinations, physiognomies

18)
Some people including Mr. Cowley, offended Dryden for turning some of Chaucers tales
into modern English. Due to his attempt to modernize Chaucer, the beauty, grace and good sense
of Chaucers thoughts had gone.
19)
Cahucer wrote in an ancient language. When a language grows obsolete, thoughts also
become obscure. So Chaucer must be modernized. It is true that some beauty is lost in
translation. But in translation, the sense can be preserved, which will otherwise be lost. It is better
to lose a part than lose the whole. Dryden translated Chaucer because he respected Chaucer and
wished to perpetuate his memory.
20)

Two libellers who attacked Dryden

21)

Milbourne

22)
Dryden said that he had attacked only bad priests, like Milbourne himself. Milbournes
attack is so bad that it may seem that Dryden himself bribed him into making it, so that Dryden
could rebut it and thus establish his point.
23)
Jeremy Collier. Collier criticized Dryden of using profane and licentious expressions.
Dryden admitted his lapse and publically apologised.
24)

Translation should not be loose like a paraphrase; it should be close to the original.

25)

Crites

26)

Eugenius

27)

Crites

28)

English plays

29)

Lisideius and Neander

30)

A play

31)

Lisideius

32)

New man

33)

Neander

34)

English plays

35)

Corneille

Comprehension Questions on Ralph Roister Doister

1. Which was the early English comedy written by a schoolmaster for his pupils?
2. Who is the heroine in Ralph Roister Doister?
3. In which play do these lines appear?
Sweet mistress, whereas I love you nothing at all,
Regarding your substance and riches chief of all,
For your personage, beauty, demeanour and wit
I commend me to you never a whit.
4. Who reads out the above love letter written by Ralph for Dame Christian Custance without
proper punctuations, thus reversing the meaning?
5. Where do these lines appear?
What creature is in health, either young or old,
But some mirth with modesty will be glad to use

6. Margerie Mumblecrust in Ralph Roister Doister is _______.

7. Tristram Trustee is a character in _________.
8. Who agrees to help Ralph Roister Doister in wooing the widow Custance?
9. Who is the foolish braggart in Ralph Roister Doister?
10.Which character is a parasite in Ralph Roister Doister?

ANSWERS to Ralph Roister Doister

1.

Ralph Roister Doister. Nicholas Udall was a schoolmaster.

2.

Dame Custance. She is a rich widow betrothed to a merchant named Gawyn Goodluck. Ralph
Roister Doister pompously tries to woo her, and even to take her away by force. When Gawyn
returns, the play ends happily.

3.

Ralph Roister Doister. Ralph sends this letter to Dame Custance and Matthew Merrygreeke reads
it out to her with wrong punctuation, leading to Ralphs rejection. The device of mispunctuation in
a letter is used by Shakespeare in the prologue to the play-within-the-play, Pyramus and Thisbe, in
A Midsummer Nights Dream.

4.

Mathew Merrygreeke

5.

In the Prologue to Ralph Roister Doister. These lines are about the role of comedy in
entertainment, as against the function of medieval drama which was instruction.

6.

Dame Christians nurse

7.

Ralph Roister Doister

8.

Matthew Merrygreeke

9.

Ralph Roister Doister

10. Matthew Merrygreeke

Comprehension Questions
RELIGIO MEDICI by THOMAS BROWNE
1. What is the subtitle of Religio Medici?
2. Which works of Thomas Browne were published posthumously?
3. Which critic in the 1930s saw Browne as an anti-Baconian pleading for religion in an age which

was beginning to be dominated by science?

4. When & where was Browne knighted?
5. Who complained that the Religio was cried up to the whole world for its wit & learning?
6. Who is the publisher of Religio Medici?
7. Religio Medici is predominantly concerned with?
8. The line I have often admired mystical way of Pythagoras and the secret magicke of numbers,

appears in _______.
9. Which 17th century writer imitated the title of Religio Medici?
10. How many sections does Religio Medici have?
11. The first section of Religio Medici has _____ parts.

12. Where does this line appear? The heart of man is the place the Devils in: I feel sometimes a

hell within myself

13. Brownes faith was _________
14. Browne apparently derived suicide in _____.
15. Man is the whole world & the breath of God; woman the rib & crooked piece of man. This line

from Religio Medici shows Brownes __________.

16. According to Browne, he collects Divinity from two sources; one, the Bible-the book of God and

the other is __________.

17. The words ' coelo salus' (from heaven, salvation) appears in ___________.
18. Who engraved the original plate of the front page of Religio Medici?
19. Which part of Religio Medici' deals with charity?
20. Which is Brownes last work?

GORBODUC by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville

19.What is the subtitle of Gorboduc?
20.When and by whom was the play performed first?
21.Who is considered to have written the first three Acts of the play?
22.What was the title of the corrected authorized quarto?
23.Gorboduc was the first verse drama in English to employ ________.
24.Which British king in the play divided his realm in his lifetime to his sons?
25.Name the sons to whom the realm was divided.
26.Who killed Porrex for killing Ferrex?
27.Who rose in rebellion and killed both the king and the queen?
28.Why did a civil war break out in the kingdom of Britain after the kings death?
29.Name the Counselor of King Gorboduc.
30.For whom was the play first performed?
31.Name the Counselor assigned by the king to his eldest son Ferrex.
32.Who was Porrexs Counselor?
33.Who played the role of chorus in the play?
34.Who was the secretary to King Gorboduc?
35.What is the source for Gorboduc?
36.Who wrote the final two Acts of the play?
Answers to RELIGIO MEDICI by THOMAS BROWNE
1.The Religion of a Doctor
2. A Letter to a Friend & Certain Miscellany Tracts
3. Basil Willey
4. 1671 at Norwich

5. Samuel Pepys
6. Andrew Crooke
7. Christian Faith
8. Religio Medici
9. John Dryden (Religio Laici)
10. Two
11. Five
12. Part i. Sect li Religio Medici
13. Anglican
14. Religio Medici
15. Misogynous attitude
16. Nature
17. On the front page of Religio Medici (coming from the mouth of the tumbling figure engraved)
18. William Marshall
19. Second
20. Christian Morality

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Simulacra and Simulation

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Simulacra and Simulation

The English translation

Author

Jean Baudrillard

Original title

Simulacres et Simulation

Translator

Sheila Glaser

Country

France

Language

French

Subject

Postmodern Philosophy

Genre

Non-fiction

Publisher

ditions Galile (French) & University

of Michigan Press (English)

Publication date 1981

Published in
English

1994

Media type

Print (Paperback)

Pages

164 pp

ISBN

ISBN 2-7186-0210-4 (French) &

ISBN 0-472-06521-1 (English)

OCLC

7773126

Dewey Decimal

194 19

LC Class

BD236 .B38

Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by

Jean Baudrillard seeking to interrogate the relationship among reality, symbols, and society.
Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no reality to begin with, or that no longer
have an original.[1] Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system
over time.[2]
...The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truthit is the truth which conceals that there is
none. The simulacrum is true.[3]
Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs, and how they relate to
contemporaneity (simultaneous existences). Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced
all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of
reality.
Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of
reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like
reality is relevant to our current understanding of our lives.
The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media
that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence
is and are rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these
simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being
rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the
"precession of simulacra".
"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:
1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a
sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what
Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
2. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we come to believe the sign to be an
unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearanceit is of the order
of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at
the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a
faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something
real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things
which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery", a regime of
semantic algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to
the (increasingly) hermetic truth.
4. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality
whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of
images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency,
where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a nave sense, because the

experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are
expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal" terms. Any nave pretension to reality as such
is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical
period:
1. First order, associated with the premodern period, where representation is clearly an artificial
placemarker for the real item. The uniqueness of objects and situations marks them as
irreproducibly real and signification obviously gropes towards this reality.
2. Second order, associated with the modernity of the Industrial Revolution, where distinctions
between representation and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-reproducible
copies of items, turning them into commodities. The commodity's ability to imitate reality
threatens to replace the authority of the original version, because the copy is just as "real" as
its prototype.
3. Third order, associated with the postmodernity of Late Capitalism, where the simulacrum
precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation vanishes. There is
only the simulacrum, and originality becomes a totally meaningless concept.[4]
Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several
phenomena:[5]
1. Contemporary media including television, film, print, and the Internet, which are responsible
for blurring the line between products that are needed (in order to live a life) and products for
which a need is created by commercial images.
2. Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money (literally denominated fiat
currency) rather than usefulness, and moreover usefulness comes to be quantified and defined
in monetary terms in order to assist exchange.
3. Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other
original materials and the processes (including the people and their cultural context) used to
create them.
4. Urbanization, which separates humans from the nonhuman world, and re-centres culture
around productive throughput systems so large they cause alienation.
5. Language and ideology, in which language increasingly becomes caught up in the production
of power relations between social groups, especially when powerful groups institute
themselves at least partly in monetary terms.
A specific analogy that Baudrillard uses is a fable derived from "On Exactitude in Science" by Jorge
Luis Borges. In it, a great Empire created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire
itself. The actual map was expanded and destroyed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory.
When the Empire crumbled, all that was left was the map. In Baudrillard's rendition, it is conversely
the map that people live in, the simulation of reality where the people of Empire spend their lives
ensuring their place in the representation is properly circumscribed and detailed by the map-makers;
conversely, it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse.
The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is
nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to
which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and
simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to
separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already
dead and risen in advance.[4]

It is important to note that when Baudrillard refers to the "precession of simulacra" in Simulacra and
Simulation, he is referring to the way simulacra have come to precede the real in the sense mentioned
above, rather than to any succession of historical phases of the image. Referring to "On Exactitude in
Science", he argued that just as for contemporary society the simulated copy had superseded the
original object, so, too, the map had come to precede the geographic territory (c.f. Mapterritory
relation), e.g. the first Gulf War (which Baudrillard later used as an object demonstration): the image
of war preceded real war. War comes not when it is made by sovereign against sovereign (not when
killing for attritive and strategic neutralisation purposes is authorised; nor even, properly spoken,
when shots are fired); rather, war comes when society is generally convinced that it is coming.
Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territoryprecession of simulacrait is the map
that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory
whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.[4]

See also[edit]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Crash
Ghost in the Shell
Laplace's demon
Public Opinion
Simulated reality
Simulation hypothesis
The Matrix
Dark City
Metal Gear Solid 2
Brain in a vat
Symbolic Interactionism, George Herbert Mead.
The Six-Pointed Star: Its Origin & Usage, Dr.O.J. Graham

Footnotes[edit]
^ Robert Goldman; Stephen Papson. "Landscapes of Capital". Information technology. St. Lawrence
University. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
2.
^ J. Banks, J. Carson, B. Nelson, D. Nicol (2001). Discrete-Event System Simulation. Prentice Hall.
p. 3. ISBN 0-13-088702-1.
3.
^ Poster, Mark; Baudrillard, Jean (1988). Selected writings. Cambridge, UK: Polity. ISBN 0-74560586-9.
4.
^ a b c Hegarty, Paul (2004). Jean Baudrillard: live theory. London: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-6283-9.
5.
^ Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Baudrillard: On Simulation." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Last
Update: Jan. 31, 2011. Purdue U. 27 August 2013.
<http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/postmodernism/modules/baudrillardsimulation.html>.
1.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Simulacra_and_Simulation&oldid=609934145"
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ACCORDING TO BAUDRILLARD, what has happened in postmodern culture is that our

society has become so reliant on models and maps that we have lost all contact with the real
world that preceded the map. Reality itself has begun merely to imitate the model, which now
precedes and determines the real world: "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it
survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territoryprecession of simulacrathat
engenders the territory" ("The Precession of Simulacra" 1). According to Baudrillard, when it
comes to postmodern simulation and simulacra, It is no longer a question of imitation, nor
duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real
("The Precession of Simulacra" 2).
Baudrillard is not merely suggesting that postmodern culture is artificial, because the
concept of artificiality still requires some sense of reality against which to recognize the artifice.
His point, rather, is that we have lost all ability to make sense of the distinction between
nature and artifice. To clarify his point, he argues that there are three "orders of simulacra":
1) in the first order of simulacra, which he associates with the pre-modern period, the image
is a clear counterfeit of the real; the image is recognized as just an illusion, a place marker for
the real;
2) in the second order of simulacra, which Baudrillard associates with the industrial
revolution of the nineteenth century, the distinctions between the image and the representation
begin to break down because of mass production and the proliferation of copies. Such
production misrepresents and masks an underlying reality by imitating it so well, thus
threatening to replace it (e.g. in photography or ideology); however, there is still a belief that,
through critique or effective political action, one can still access the hidden fact of the real;
3) in the third order of simulacra, which is associated with the postmodern age, we are
confronted with a precession of simulacra; that is, the representation precedes and determines
the real. There is no longer any distinction between reality and its representation; there is only
the simulacrum.
Baudrillard points to a number of phenomena to explain this loss of distinctions between
"reality" and the simulacrum:

1) Media culture. Contemporary media (television, film, magazines, billboards, the

Internet) are concerned not just with relaying information or stories but with interpreting our
most private selves for us, making us approach each other and the world through the lens of
these media images.
We therefore no longer acquire goods because of real needs but because of desires that are
increasingly defined by commercials and commercialized images, which keep us at one step

removed from the reality of our bodies or of the world around us.

2) Exchange-Value. According to Karl Marx, the entrance into capitalist culture meant
that we ceased to think of purchased goods in terms of use-value, in terms of the real uses to
which an item will be put. Instead, everything began to be translated into how much it is worth,
into what it can be exchanged for (its exchange-value).
Once money became a universal equivalent, against which everything in our lives is
measured, things lost their material reality (real-world uses, the sweat and tears of the laborer).
We began even to think of our own lives in terms of money rather than in terms of the real
things we hold in our hands: how much is my time worth? How does my conspicuous
consumption define me as a person? According to Baudrillard, in the postmodern age, we have
lost all sense of use-value: "It is all capital" (For a Critique 82).

3) Multinational capitalism. As the things we use are increasingly the product of

complex industrial processes, we lose touch with the underlying reality of the goods we
consume. Not even national identity functions in a world of multinational corporations.
According to Baudrillard, it is capital that now defines our identities. We thus continue to lose
touch with the material fact of the laborer, who is increasingly invisible to a consumer oriented
towards retail outlets or the even more impersonal Internet. A common example of this is the
fact that most consumers do not know how the products they consume are related to real-life
things. How many people could identify the actual plant from which is derived the coffee bean?
Starbucks, by contrast, increasingly defines our urban realities. (On multinational capitalism, see
Marxism: Modules: Jameson: Late Capitalism.)

4) Urbanization. As we continue to develop available geographical locations, we lose

touch with any sense of the natural world. Even natural spaces are now understood as
protected, which is to say that they are defined in contradistinction to an urban reality, often
with signs to point out just how real they are. Increasingly, we expect the sign (behold nature!)
to precede access to nature.

5) Language and Ideology. Baudrillard illustrates how in such subtle ways language
keeps us from accessing reality. The earlier understanding of ideology was that it hid the truth,
that it represented a false consciousness, as Marxists phrase it, keeping us from seeing the real
workings of the state, of economic forces, or of the dominant groups in power. (This
understanding of ideology corresponds to Baudrillard's second order of simulacra.)
Postmodernism, on the other hand, understands ideology as the support for our very perception
of reality. There is no outside of ideology, according to this view, at least no outside that can be
articulated in language. Because we are so reliant on language to structure our perceptions, any
representation of reality is always already ideological, always already constructed by simulacra.
Proper Citation of this Page:
Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Baudrillard: On Simulation." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory.
Date of last update, which you can find on the home page. Purdue U. Date you accessed the
site.
<http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/postmodernism/modules/baudrillardsimulation.ht
ml>.

Note: some of this material is reproduced, by permission, from my article, "The Matrix: A
Paradigm of Post-Modernism or an Intellectual Poseur?" Taking the Red Pill: Science,
Philosophy, and Religion in the Matrix, ed. Glenn Yeffeth (Dallas: BenBella Books,
2003).

Visits to the site since July 17, 2002

Comprehension Questions on Sir Patrick Spens

1. Who is the central hero in the poem Sir Patrick Spens?
2. What is the central theme of the poem Sir Patrick Spens?
3. Who asks the sailors to undertake the journey?
4. What happens to the sailors at the end?
5. What is the bad omen a sailor sees?
6. Who waits for the sailors on land?
7. How do the sailors die?
8. The King sits in Dumferling toune/ Drinking the blude-reid wine. What do the words sit and blude-reid
connote?
9. Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor that ever sailed the sea. Which is the sibilant here and what does it
denote?
10. The King has written a broad letter,
And sealed it with his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the strand.
The last line can be read who was walking on the strand. Who seems to be omitted but implied. What is it
called in literary terms?
11. What is the irony with Sir Spens?
12. What does the gold symbolize in the poem?
13. Which Metaphysical poet retold the story of Sir Patrick Spens?

Answers to CQs on Sir Patrick Spens

1) Sir Patrick Spens, the Scottish sailor.
2) An impossible sea journey Sir Patrick Spens and the sailors undertake
3) The king of Dumferling, Scotland
4) They die
5) the new moon in the old moons arms
6) Their women
7) In a shipwreck due to bad weather
8) Sit implies the meaning that Kings seat has power and he sits stationary; though his actions will make others
move. bloud-reid is used for blood-red wine that shows his power over life and death.
9) Repetition ofs sound imitates the sound of waves crashing on the shore.
10) Ellipsis.
11) Spens realizes that the king is serious about sending him on a dangerous voyage. His fate is sealed, but his
tear-blinded eye is ironic.
12) Gold is traditional symbol of worldliness, and while the gold combs will remain shiny, the womens hair will
turn grey with time. Their attention to gold is misplaced, for like their men, they too will pass away.
13) Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

The Authorized Version of the Bible, The Book of Job

Comprehension Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.

King James Version of the Bible is also known as __________.

In which language was the Bible published in 1611?
What linguistic change of the Renaissance period does with the translation of the Bible in 1611 signify?
Who made the earliest attempt in the long series of translations of the Bible into English?
5. __________ translated the Bible in the late 14th century.
6. What is called the Lollard Bible?
7. What was the source for the translations of the Bible by Aelfric and Wycliff?
8. Which Renaissance scholar used a Greek text by Erasmus as well as a Hebrew text for translation of the
Bible?
9. What was the peculiarity of the English language used in Tyndales version of the Bible?
10. What was his objective to translate the New Testament into English from the original Greek?
11. What treatment did Tyndale receive from the society on account of these translations?
12. When did the Anglican Church order an English version of the Bible to be made and which historical event
preceded this?
13. The first complete English Bible, which was a translation from_______, was printed in the year
_________ by Coverdale.
14. Coverdale was the _________ of the Great Bible published in _________.

15. Coverdales Bible was based on ____________, presented to __________ in 1560, and was also known as
the _________ Bible. This text was familiar to most readers of the time, including Shakespeare.
16. ____________ was a revised version of the Great Bible (1539).
17. When did the Bishops Bible publish and what was its significance?
18. The King James Version of the Bible was a collaborative effort. How many scholars made their
contribution for that purpose and what were the sources?
19. What are the salient features of the King James Version of the Bible?
20. Besides its religious importance, the Bible has been one of the major shaping influences in the
development of the _______________.
21. In what way was the use of English in early versions of the Bible controversial?
22. Which are the two major sections of the Bible and how many books does each have?
23. In which languages are the Old and New Testaments written originally and what do they consist of?
24. What do you understand by the Book of Job with reference to the Bible? What is the main theme of the
Book of Job?
25. What does the Prologue or Introduction of the Book of Job describe?
26. To whom does God give permission to test Job?
27. Who are Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar in the Book of Job?
28. How many cycles of speeches are there in the discussion between Job and his friends,
29. What are the main arguments of Jobs friends and what is Jobs reply?
30. Which character in the Book of Job shows his dissatisfaction with Job and his friends and justifies God?
31. Why and how does God speak in the Book of Job?
32. What does the Epilogue tell us?
33. The Book of Job can be called a _____________. (fable/ discussion drama/ religious story)
34. Where does Job belong to?
35. What meaning does the idiom patience of Job convey?
36. Comment upon the structure of the Book of Job.

Answers to the CQs on The Book of Job

1) The Authorized Version of the Bible
2) English
3) It was a victory of the vernacular English language over Latin
4) Aelfric in the Anglo-Saxon era
5) Wycliff (probably in 1382)
6) Wycliffs late 14th century translation of the Bible is known as the Lollard Bible.
7) 4th century Latin version of the Bible by Vulgate.

8) William Tyndale in the 1520s and 1530s used a Greek text established by Erasmus for a translation of the New
Testament and a Hebrew text for translations from the Old Testament.
9) Tyndale took the ill-regarded, unpopular and awkward Middle-English "vulgar" tongue, improved upon it
using Greek and Hebrew syntaxes and idioms, and formed an Early Modern English basis that Shakespeare
and others would later follow
10) He propounded that ordinary working people should be able to read the Bible in their own language. He
contributed to the development of a colloquial English style.
11) Tyndale was regarded as a religious heretic and was strangled and burnt at the stake near Brussels.
12) Henry VIII had broken with Rome in 1534 and the Anglican Church ordered an English version of the Bible to
be made in 1539, two years after Tyndale was burnt at stake.
13) German, 1535
14) Editor, 1539.
15) Tyndales version, Elizabeth I, Geneva Bible.
16) Bishops Bible
17) It was a rival version, published in 1568. It was a return to translate from the Latin Vulgate and published as a
counterbalance to the Calvinist Geneva Bible.
18) 54 scholars. The product was largely based on the Bishops and Geneva Bibles.
19) Rich in poetry, influential parables and its language contributed immensely to English cultural identity.
20) English language
21) English was not considered as a language worthy of conveying the profound moral sentiments of the Bible.
22) The Bible is a composite collection of 66 books, consisting of two main sections: The Old Testament with 39
and The New Testament with 27 distinct books.

23) The Old Testament is originally written in Hebrew, and is a collection of poems, plays, proverbs, history,
theology and prophecy whereas The New Testament, originally written in Greek, contains the Gospels, the
biography of Jesus Christ and the story of spreading Christianity by its first propagandists.
24) The Book of Job is a distinct book, a philosophical drama included in the Old Testament of the Bible. The
main theme is the truth that Gods ways are incomprehensible and that man must believe in His righteousness
though he cannot perceive it, and find refuge from his doubt in faith.
25) It introduces to us Job who lived in happiness and prosperity in the land of Uz and the circumstances which
lead to his downfall and suffering. Satan tells God that Jobs piety is entirely due to the blessings showered on
him and that if these blessings were withdrawn, Job would disown God. This leads to Job being put to a test
in the form of afflictions.
26) To satan
27) They are Jobs friends who come to console Job in his calamity and sit with him upon the ground for seven
days and seven nights without speaking. Then they debate with Job on a series of problems.
28) In the discussion between Job and his friends, there are three cycles of speeches, each comprising six speeches
one by each of the three friends, and each of these followed by Jobs reply. In the third cycle, however, the
last speaker Zophar does not speak. This marks the victory of Job in the discussion. Elihu, who had been a
silent listener till then, speaks after the three cycles, which is followed by the speeches of God.
29) The friends argue that affliction or suffering implies previous sin on the part of the sufferer. However, in the
case of a good man like Job, suffering is punishment meant to wean him from evil that is still lingering in him.
So the friends exhort Job to repentance, which will give him a bright future. Job denies that his sufferings are
due to sin, because he is completely innocent. He feels he is given afflictions wrongly, and exhorts God to
reveal to him the cause of his afflictions.
30) Elihu, a young man who remains a silent character initially but expresses his dissatisfaction with the views of
Job as well as his friends. Elihu expresses shock at the charges Job made against God and blames his friends
for allowing themselves to be brought to silence by Job.
31) God speaks out of the storm due to Jobs repeated demand that God appear and solve the riddle of his
afflictions. God does not refer to Jobs individual problem, but humbles Job with a series of splendid pictures
from the inanimate and animate worlds representing the glory of His being.
32) The Epilogue tells us of Jobs repentance and his restoration to a prosperity which is the double of what he
enjoyed previously.
33) A discussion drama
34) Land of Uz, situated to the north-east of Palestine.
35) In the Book, Jobs piety is put to a severe test by the Almighty at the instigation of Satan. But, Job does not
commit sin of renouncing God or speaking against Him. Job accepts his suffering so patiently and calmly that
the patience of Job has become proverbial.
36) The Book of Job is divided into five parts: (1) The Prologue, (2) The debate between Job and his three Friends,
(3) Speeches of Elihu, (4) The Speeches of the Lord from the Whirlwind and (5) The Epilogue.

Comprehension Questions on THE SPANISH TRAGEDY by THOMAS KYD

1. What is the dominant theme of The Spanish Tragedy?
2. Name the Portuguese prince who kills the Spanish courtier Andrea in war.
3. In the controversy raised in Hades, who objected to the first suggestion that Andrea should be
lodged with the souls of the lovers?
4. Who suggested that Andrea should be sent to the court of Pluto to know whether he should be
sent to the domain of the lovers or that of the warriors?
5. Who sent Andrea back to the earth from Hades to witness the doom of Balthazar?
6. Name the companion assigned to Andrea by the goddess of Hell.
7. Who avenges Andreas death?
8. Who plays the role of chorus in The Spanish Tragedy?
9. Who all claim credit for the capture of Balthazar?
10.How was Lorenzo honoured by the king for capturing Balthazar?
11.How was Horatio honoured by the king?
12.Under whose custody does the king leave Balthazar?
13.Name the noble man who tries to comfort the viceroy of Portugal saying that his son Balthazar
is not dead.
14.Who announces to the viceroy that he had seen Alexandro treacherously shoot Balthazar to
death?
15.According to the Viceroy what prompted Alexandro to kill Balthazar?
16.Who relates the circumstances of Andreas death to Bel-imperia?
17.What did Horatio take from Andreas arm before giving him the funeral, which he now wears in
memory of his friend?
18.What did Bel-imperia present Andrea at their last parting?
19.Whom does Bel-imperia accept as her second love?
20.Who presents a dumb show at the banquet arranged in honour of the Ambassador of Portugal?
21.Who was considered to be the trusted servant of Bel-imperia?
22.How does Horatio die?
23.Who engages Pedringano to murder Serberine as he was suspected of telling the truth behind
Horatios death?
24.Where was Serberine expected to be murdered?

25.And better its that base companions die, Than by their life to hazard our good hops. Whose
doctrine is this?
26.Name the characters included in the play within the play.
27.What all roles did Lorenzo, Bel-imperia and Balthazar play respectively in the play within the
play?
28.Who was angry with her husband for his idleness with respect to avenging his sons death and
later stabbed herself to death?
29.What does Hieronimo do to render himself incapable of speech as he doesnt wish to reveal his
helpers in the plot of killing his enemies?
30.Among the five passages added in the 1602 edition of The Spanish Tragedy, the fourth is known
as ________.
31.What does the fourth scene amplify?
32.Name the character who comes up with a copy of the book by Seneca and quotes the biblical
admonition Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord
33.Which was considered to be an acted soliloquy by Hieronimo?
34.Name the play within the play in The Spanish Tragedy.
35.Who feigns madness in The Spanish Tragedy?

ANSWERS on THE SPANISH TRAGEDY by THOMAS KYD

1. Revenge
2. Balthazar
3. Rhadamanth
4. Minos
5. Proserpine (goddess of hell)
6. Revenge
7. Bel-imperia (his lover)
8. Ghost of Andrea and revenge
9. Lorenzo and Horatio
10.The king honoured Lorenzo by offering him Balthazars weapons and horse
11.The king honoured Horatio by giving him the ransom money and Balthazars armour
12.Lorenzo
13.Alexandro
14.Villuppo
15.To gain Spanish gold given as bribe or ambition to be the next viceroy
16.Horatio
17.Scarf
18.Scarf
19.Horatio
20.Hieronimo
21.Pedringano
22.He was hanged on a tree and stabbed to death
23.Lorenzo
24.St Luigis Park
25.Lorenzo
26.Knight of Rhodes, Perseda , Soliman (Turkish emperor), courtier
27. Knight of Rhodes, Perseda , Soliman (Turkish emperor)
28.Isabella
29.He bites off his tongue

30.Painter Scene
31.Hieronimos grief
32.Hieronimo
33.Third soliloquy at the beginning of act 3 scene 12
34.Soliman and Perseda
35.Hieronimo

Comprehension Questions on The Tempest

1. Which play is believed to be the last complete play by Shakespeare?
2. When was The Tempest first published?
3. What is common to The Tempest, The Winters Tale, Cymbeline and Pericles?
4. How does The Tempest reflect the spirit of the Elizabethan age?
5. Where does the action take place in The Tempest?
6. Who is Prospero in The Tempest?
7. What did Prospero study and what could he achieve from it?
8. A spirit called ______ was the chief of those whom Prospero began to employ in his service.
9. Who were the chief antagonists in the play The Tempest?
10.How many sub-plots are there in the play?
11.Who is Caliban?
12.Jourdans account of The Sea-Ventures wreck on the ______ and_______s translation of the essay
Of the Cannibals can be named as sources for The Tempest.
13.When did Ariel cause a storm on the sea?
14.After how many years did Prospero take his revenge?
15.Ariel takes the form of a monster with the body of a woman and with wings and claws of a bird,
known as ____, and denounces Antonio, Alonso and Sebastian as _____________.
16.Speaking to his would be son-in-law, Prospero says, the whole of this world, the entire globe
itself, would one day melt away and dissolve, leaving no trace behind. What does the use of the
word globe signify?
17.A ________ was enacted by Prosperos spirits for the entertainment of Miranda and ___________.
18.What is a masque?
19.What is the masque presented in The Tempest in Act IV called?

20.Who is the jester in the play?

21.Which character is Sebastians brother?
22.Whom does Caliban mistake for one of Prosperos spirits sent to torment him?
23.What was the name of Calibans mother?
24.Over how many days does the action of The Tempest take place?
25.Which mythological figures appear in the wedding masque Prospero staged for Miranda and
Ferdinand?
26.What do we see Miranda and Ferdinand doing in the plays final scene?
27.What do Prospero and Ariel set out as bait for Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano?
28.What does Caliban say must be done before Prospero can be killed?
29.What is the name of Alonsos daughter?
30.Why does Prospero treat Caliban badly?
31.Who helped Miranda and Prospero to flee Italy?
32.Where did Sycorax imprison Ariel?
33.What tasks are both Caliban and Ferdinand forced to perform?
34.Who persuades Sebastian to try to kill Alonso?
35.What/Who does Prospero intend to drown after he has reconciled with his enemies?
36.What does Caliban say in his chief profit from learning Prosperos language?
37.Caliban is not one character but three. He is a compound of three typical ideas. What are the
triple roles represented by Caliban?
38.Caliban is an anagram of the word _____________.
39.Which character do Stephano and Trinculo most clearly parody?
40.What is the final task Prospero orders Ariel to perform?
41.What does Prospero tell the audience at the end of the play?
42.How does the beginning of the play symbolize Prosperos magic and his power?
43.What meaning does the Game of Chess convey as a symbol?
44.Like the tempest, Prosperos books are a symbol of his ____________.
45.You taught me language and my profit ont/ Is I know how to curse, the red plague rid you/ For
learning me your language! Where does the quote appear and what present day discourse does it
address?
46.There be some sports are painful, and their labour/ Delight in them set off. Who speaks to
whom the above given line?

47.Be not afraid. The isle is full of noises ...The clouds methought would open and show riches/
ready to drop upon me, that when I waked/ I cried to dream again! (Act 3, Scene ii, Line 130-138).
Who refers to I in this poetic speech?
48. Which character appears only in the first and the last scene? He awakes from a long sleep at
the end of the play.
49.__________ a jester and Stephano, a _________ are two minor members of the shipwrecked party.
50.O, I have suffered/ with those that I saw suffer! (I.ii.5-6) who said this? What does the
sentence tells about the characters personality?
51.A fish; he smells like a fish, a very ancient and fish like smell; a kind of, not of the newest PoorJohn. A Strange fish! Who is compared as a fish in these lines from Act 2, Scene ii? Who utters
these words?
52.Who are Francisco and Adrian?
53.Complete the quote: We are such stuff / As ________ are made on, and our little life / Is rounded
with a _______.
54.Who says this and when?
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
55.Which character says, Hell is empty / And all the devils are here?
56.In which 20th century works do these lines appear?
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Answers to CQs on The Tempest

1) The Tempest, written late in the year 1610. It is Shakespeares swan-song (a metaphorical
phrase for a final performance just before death/ retirement). Henry VIII is also sometimes
regarded as the last play of Shakespeare.
2) 1623
3) They are grouped together as Shakespearean romances and are written towards the end of
Shakespeares professional career.
4) Adventures of the Elizabethan sea-men, discovery of new lands and colonization.
5) An island in the Mediterranean sea, probably off the coast of Italy.
6) Plays protagonist, father of Miranda, Former Duke of Milan; ousted from power by his brother
Antonio.
7) Magic. He became able to acquire supernatural powers by means of which he could even
control the forces of Nature.
8) Ariel
9) Antonio, Alonso and Sebastian
10)
Three. (1) Ferdinand falls in love with Miranda, (2) Alonso and Sebastian conspire to
murder Gonzalo and (3) Calibans intrigue against his master Prospero.
11)

A half-human and half-beast, the son of a witch and the servant of Prospero.

12)

Bermudas, Florio

13)
At a time when King Alonso of Naples was voyaging from Tunis to Naples after having got
his daughter Claribel married to the King of Tunis.
14)

Twelve years

15)

Harpy, Three men of Sin

16)
The round earth and also the Globe Theatre (remember The Tempest is regarded as
Shakespeares last play. The play is Shakespeares farewell to the theatre.)
17)

Masque, Ferdinand

18)
Courtly entertainment performed by aristocratic amateurs involving music, dancing and
pageantry, symbolic of the majesty of the king and aristocracy
19)

Masque of Juno.

20)

Trinculo (he is Alonsos jester)

21)

Alonso.

22)

Trinculo

23)

Sycorax

24)

One

25)

Ceres, Juno and Iris

26)

Playing chess

27)

glistening apparel.

28)

His books must be seized

29)

Claribel

30)

Because Caliban attempted to rape Miranda

31)

Gonzalo

32)

In a cloven pine

33)

Carrying wood

34)

Antonio

35)

His books

36)

Now he knows to curse his master in the same language

37)

The monster, the slave and the aboriginal Indian.

38)

cannibal.

39)

Antonio and Sebastian

40)

To give the fleet calm seas on its return to Italy

41)
Prospero delivers an Epilogue and asks them to forgive him for his wrongdoing and set
him free by applauding.
42)

The play begins with the tempest (a storm).

43)
The entire play is like a game of chess Prospero has played: he has captured the king
(Alonso), he has manipulated Miranda like a pawn in the game, and he has replied to the
political intrigue which once ousted him from power in Milan.
44)

Power

45)

Act 1, Scene II. The Tempest. Relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.

46)
In Act 3, Scene I, Ferdinand speaks these words to Miranda, as he expresses his
willingness to perform the task Prospero has set him to, for her sake.
47)
Caliban. His speech conveys the wondrous beauty of the island and the depth of his
attachment to it.
48)

Boatswain

49)

Trinculo, drunken butler.

50)

Miranda says of the shipwreck. It shows her sympathetic and emotional nature.

51)
Trinculo thinks Calban to be a fish. Caliban appears to him as a strange creature that
Trinculo thinks of making money if he could exhibit this fish to the English people.

52)
Two of the lords who attend upon Alonso. Neither of them play any important part in the
action of the play.
53)

dreams, sleep

54)

Miranda says this in Act V Scene 1, when she sees the shipwrecked sailors

55)
Ariel reports the shipwreck to Prospero and says Ferdinand jumped off the burning ship
saying, Hell is empty / And all the devils are here.
56)

This song that Ariel sings to Ferdinand is quoted in The Waste Land.

Comprehension Questions on TWELFTH NIGHT

1. If music be the food of love, play on. Which Shakespearean play opens thus? Which character
says this?
2. What message does Valentine bring from Olivias gentlemen?
3. Name the character who disguises herself in male attire and offers her service as a page to the
Duke.
4. Who complains of his niece (Olivia) taking her brothers death so much to heart?
5. In her male attire, what name does Viola assume?
6. Name the clown in the play.
7. Who is Violas twin brother?
8. What did Olivia give Viola as a token of her love?
9. I am not what I am. Who says so?
10.Who comments that Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
11.Which inn does Antonio recommend to Sebastian as the best in Ilyria?
12.Who is seen wearing cross garters and yellow stockings in order to please Olivia?
13.Who is accused of having captured the ships, Phoenix and Tiger?

14.Why is Antonio arrested in Ilyria?

15.How does Twelfth Night end?
16.Ill be revengd on the whole pack of you. Who utters his last words thus?
17.What is the subtitle of Twelfth Night?
18.Name the rich man whom Sir Toby brings to be Olivia's wooer.
19.What is the significance of the title Twelfth Night?
20.What is the position held by Malvolio?
21._____ is the setting of Twelfth Night.
22.Who forges the letter that Malvolio thinks is from Olivia?
23.What does the forged letter make Malvolio believe?
24.Who takes care of Sebastian after he is shipwrecked?
25.Who challenges Cesario to a duel?
26.Why does Antonio travel to Illyria?
27.Why does Sir Andrew try to fight with Sebastian?
28.What do Sir Toby and the others do to Malvolio?
29.What disguise does Feste wear when he speaks with Malvolio?
30.Who does Olivia Marry?
31.What does Orsino do when he realizes that Cesario is a woman?
32.Towards the end of the play, who made up his mind not to marry?
33.With whom is Viola in love with?
34.With whom is Olivia in love with?
35.Who / what is Orsino in love with?
36.With whom is Antonio in love with?
37.What vice of Sir Toby is being criticized by Maria in the play?
38.Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die. What does orsino
want to be given in excess?
39.Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have
greatness thrust upon them. Where do these lines occur?
40.Which two characters in the play are self-indulgent?

Answers to Twelfth Night

1. Twelfth Night, Orsino , Duke of Illyria
2. Olivia will mourn her dead brother for seven years, live like a nun and see nobody
3. Viola
4. Sir Toby
5. Cesario
6. Feste
7. Sebastian
8. A ring
9. Viola
10.Olivia
11.The Elephant
12.Malvolio
13.Antonio
14.He is arrested in a street fighting
15.With clowns song
16.Malvolio
17.What You Will
18.Sir Andrew Aguecheek
19.Eve of the Feast of Epiphany concluding the 12 days of Christmas, which marks the end
of winter and is a time of revelry
20.Olivias Steward
21.Illyria
22.Maria
23.That Olivia is in love with him
24.Antonio
25.Sir Andrew Aguecheek
26.To be close to Sebastian
27.He thinks that he is Cesario
28.They lock him in a dark room and tell him that he is mad.
29.Sir Topas, the curate

30.Sebastian
31.Decides to marry her
32.Malvolio
33.Duke Orsino
34.Viola disguised as Cesario
35.Orsino is professing his love for Olivia but he is a supreme egoist and is more in love with
the idea of being in love
36.Sebastian
37.He is a drunkard
38.Music
39.In the letter Malvolio receives which he believes is written by Olivia. Olivia is higher in
rank than Malvolio, but that doesnt matter, the letter says.
40.Orsino (in love) and Olivia (in melancholy)
The Retreat By Henry Vaughan
1. Which is Henry Vaughans most famous book, the title of which denotes a burning heart of flint
in which the thunderbolt of God strikes fire?
2. How long is the poem, The Retreat: 12 lines, 32 lines, 60 lines, 99 lines?
3. Name the poem by Wordsworth which The Retreat anticipates.
4. Name the poem by Vaughan which hints at the pre-natal existence of the soul.
5. What is the theme of the poem The Retreat?
6. When yet I had not walked above / A mile or two from my first love what does Vaughan
mean by not walked above a mile or two?
7. Whom does Vaughan call his first love in the poem?
8. On what did Vaughans soul, in his childhood, dwell an hour and see shadows of eternity?
9. In adulthood, how does the poet wound his conscience?
10.Vaughan says that in adulthood, each of his senses has a different _______.
11.What did the poet, in his childhood, feel through this fleshly dress?
12.O, how I long to travel back, / And tread again that _____________! Complete the quotation.
13.Who is the cause of corruption?
14.What is the final hope at which the poet reaches?
15.What had taken away the divine vision of childhood?
16.What does the forward movement in life lead to?
17.What does the backward movement in life lead to?
18.Why does the poets soul stagger?
19.Where does the poet wish to retreat to?

20.In that state I came, return when will the poet return to his former stage?
21.Sure thou didst flourish once! Whom is the poet addressing?
22.Where not so much as dreams of light may shine why doesnt light shine here?
23.The poet says, thou dost great storms resent why is the tree able to resent storms?
24.According to the poem The Timber, is death the complete end of life? Justify.
25.What does the strange resentment after death mean?
26.What philosophy was Henry Vaughan associated with?
Write short notes on:
1. Religious poetry of the Metaphysical poets
2. Henry Vaughans attitude to childhood and nature

Answers to Henry Vaughans The Retreat

1. Silex Scintillans
2. 32 lines
3. Immortality Ode
4. The Retreat
5. The innocence of childhood that is corrupted in adulthood
6. It means when he was still in his childhood
7. God
8. Upon some gilded cloud or flower
9. With a sinful sound
10.Sin
11.The poet says that in his childhood he felt through this fleshly dress Bright shoots of
everlastingness
12.ancient track
13.The adult human
14.That he would return to his former state
15.Adulthood
16.Sin
17.Innocence
18.Because it is drunk with its stay in the adult world
19.Heaven, the abode of God, Childhood innocence
20.After his death, when this dust falls to the urn
21.A dead tree
22.Because the tree is under the sad and heavy line of death
23.Because its soul is lingering, and not dead
24.No. There is a spark of life in the timber even after the death of the tree. In death, there is
new life is a belief Vaughan had upheld.
25.The strange resentment after death is towards those who brokein lifethy peace.
26.Hermeticism