The Restoration &Eighteenth C.
Review Notes
Thinking in Threes
English literature of this era: from the Restoration to the beginnings of Romanticism.
The literature of this transitional age divides into three parts:
1)Restoration -characteristically neoclassical and witty
2)Age of Pope -socially and morally satirical
3)Age of Johnson -literature more 'public' and novel increasingly popular
Equality of the Sexes?
Three poets of 18th C challenged stereotypical views of women:
They comment on interpersonal relations and social customs.
Our focus, on Chudleigh, laments the plight of upper-class married women. She feels that such women waste away in idleness and subservience.
What up, Peeps?
A puritan who held public positions during the Restoration, Pepys began writing a diary at 27 and kept it for 9 years.
As opposed to those who hold public positions and keep diaries, Pepys made no attempt to profit from or glorify himself in his diary.
He loved wine women, music, plays, and books of all kinds, and candidly writes about his struggles with his excesses.
Did you read my diary?!
Pepys kept his diary private otherwise his Puritan sensitivities and social awareness would have forced him to delete some personal matters:
Eating oysters after a hanging reflects the general insensitivity of the age.
Basic humanity illustrated with his fights with wife & servant.
'Flammable contents in warehouse, coat over the shoulders, mention of names': chief archivist
The Age of Pope: 1st 1/2 of 18th C
So called for his tremendous influence on works of many of his contemporaries.
A master of a wide variety of literary activities (fr. translation to moralistic essays).
During the 18th C, many people (optimists) believed that some traditional limits applied to all people and that all people should conform to these limits for their own good and society's (common sense).
Didacticism and moralizing in satire (wit).
Swiftly
-Outside of humanity, passing judgment of it.
-Advocate good sense and reason & distrusted fantasy and speculation.
-Socially and morally conservative.
-Satire: fanaticism, selfishness, speculative imagination, dishonesty, hubris.
-From older, aristocratic tradition assoc, w/ land ownership, thus resented men of commerce taking over gov't, felt discomfort w/ middle class.
Gulliver's Travels
-Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag: magnanimity is symbolized by relative body size.
- Voyage to Lilliput: characters represent English gov't, and incidents, events of Swift's time and court attitudes and people who foster these attitudes, diversions are 'important' trivialities--
Satire is about self-delusion of humans.
- Voyage to Brobdingnag: judiciary, court, military, church (all foolish and vain).
Maybe the Dingo ate Your Baby! A Modest Proposal
How do you prevent poverty or lessen the personal and social devastation it causes?
-The use of persona (projector)
-Calm, reasonable projector presenting the unreasonable
-Benevolent, humanitarian, objective, sensible
"This long disease, my life"
Pope: Arguably greatest poet of 18th C.
Along with Chaucer and Byron, greatest English verse satirist.
Diligent & disciplined writer producing works of wit, precision, and elegance.
"Should I cut my hair?"
Mock Epic: accentuates the triviality of an incident by inflating the incident to heroic proportions, comparing it to great events of classical antiquity and using a form that is reserved for serious and dignified poetry.
Neoclassical Heroic couplet provides a sense of order and clarity.
Singing Epigram
A short poem, condensed and pointed, which usually ends with a surprising witty turn of thought.
Brief and pithy like an inscription (which is what the word actually meant in ancient Greece).
Contains closed couplets.
The Age of Johnson
Noted by sharp social and economic changes: The literary marketplace became more important as literary patronage decreased.
The Age of Reason becomes the Age of Sentiment? Sort of..
In literature: people became more interested in others experiences and emotions yet common sense and reason remained the important principles.
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Note the structure of the poem in which Gray does not mention sorrow but ponders human experiences: humanity, peace of mind, the inevitability of death.
1. setting
2. imagine life of 'rude forefathers of the hamlet
3. death the common end to all
4. unused potential of some villagers
5. desire by all to be remembered
6. speaker anticipates own death
7. epitaph
Auld Lang Syne-er
Burns: the Poetical Ploughman. Think of him the next time you sing the classic New Year's Eve theme song: he wrote it.
To a Mouse
Seemingly sentimental and humorous, yet the poem represents a contemplative truth: A mouse lives only in the present, and, unlike people, suffers no anxieties about the past/present.
The Game Changer
Blake heralds the end of 18th C neoclassicism. For him, the essential universe is not physical and rational, but spiritual and irrational, only to be understood through imagination and intuition.
Blake's world view epitomizes the Romantic Age. As his worldview was at odds with that of the time period in which he was born, his work went widely unappreciated during his lifetime.
Innocence & Experience
The Lamb is both an image of Christ and a traditional figure in the pastoral world. Because children possess innocence they are called by His name.
The Tiger presents a mood of awe at the power of the tiger. The unanswerable questions posed suggests Blake intends to show inadequacy of rationalism.
Both celebrate the greatness of God!
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
For Bonus: 1% on term two report card.
Don't just do it for the mark, though; you have read excellent literature, be inspired and attempt greatness.
Create a Mock Epic. You know the rules of the genre. Don't ask me for a criteria sheet, the only limitations are the ones you put on yourself. If you are not proud of it, do not turn it in.
Due Feb 1.