The age of reason

The Age of Reason was an 18 th-century movement. It represented a genesis in the way man viewed himself, the pursuit of knowledge and the universe. This was the beginning of an open society where individuals were free to pursue individual happiness and liberty. The concepts of medieval world were abandoned. The Age of Reason included the shorter time period described as the Age of Enlightenment; during this time great changes occurred in scientific thought and exploration. New ideas filled the horizon and man was eager to explore these ideas freely. Man began to embrace an exaggerated belief in the perfection of humanity based on reason and clear thinking; they happily abandoned reliance on biblical truth and lost their fear of God. They left the medieval extremes of mysticism and superstition and swung to the other extremes of reason and rationality. Reason, rationality and enlightenment became “new gods”. The Age of Reason saw the introduction of the Scientific Revolution and various progressions of new schools of thought. The Age of Reason was associated with attacks on basic Christian beliefs, rejection of God and denial of miracles. Man, during the Age of Reason, applauded intellect and disdained spirit. God was believed to be unknowable, if he existed at all.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Alexander Pope was the only son of a cloth merchant. At the age of twelve he suffered from tuberculosis of the bone, which stunted his growth and left him deformed and sickly for the rest of his life. As his family was Catholic, he could not attend public schools or go to University, so he was largely self-educated. He based his studies on the Classics and French and Italian authors.

From a very early age he showed a gift for writing. When he was just sixteen years old he wrote his “Pastorals” (1709), which were based on classical models and showed his skill in using poetic metre. In his twenties he wrote “Essay on Criticism” (1711), a didactic poem based on Horace’s “Art of Poetry”, where he set out his principles for writing poetry. The essay may be described as falling into three parts, with the following subdivisions:

I. General qualities needed by the critic:

A. Awareness of his own limitations

B. Knowledge of nature in its general forms

C. Imitation of the Ancients, and the use of rules

II. Particular laws for the critic:

A. Consider the work as a total unit

B. Seek the author’s aim

C. Examples of false critics who mistake the part for the whole

D. Need for tolerance and for aloofness from extremes of fashion and personal mood

III. The ideal character of the critic

A. Qualities needed: integrity, modesty, tact, courage

B. Their opposites

C. Concluding eulogy of ancient critics as models

While he was still in his mid-twenties he wrote his masterpiece “The Rape of the Lock” (1712-1714). Its genre is mock-heroic poem, or mock-epic poem. Such genre imitates the elevated style and conventions of the epic genre in dealing with a frivolous or minor subject. The mock-heroic has been widely used to satirize social vices such as pretentiousness, hypocrisy, superficiality, etc. The inappropriateness of the grandiose epic style highlights the trivial and senseless nature of the writer’s target. Pope uses the lofty, serious style of classical epics not to describe battles or supernatural events, but to satirize the seriousness with which friends in his circle treated a breach of manners at a social gathering: the stealing of a lock of hair. This poem concerns the quarrel between two families caused by Lord Petre’s cutting a love-lock from the head of Arabella Fermor, Belinda in the poem. It is a playful poem full of paradoxes, witty observations and humorous epic allusions. It makes fun of the fatuous upper-class society it depicts. “The rape of the Lock” established Pope’s reputation in literary circles. He became friends with Jonathan Swift and together with some other literary figures they formed the “Scriblerus Club” to discuss topics of contemporary interest and to ridicule all false tastes in learning.

In 1720 he completed a translation of Homer’s “Illiad”, and his translation of “The Odyssey”, which appeared in 1726, gave him financial independence.

“The Dunciad” (1728) is Pope’s most celebrated satire. It is written in the mock-heroic style and is an attack on the author’s literary rivals, critics and enemies, who are grouped together and called “Dulness”. In it Pope describes the triumph of banality (Dulness) which takes over all the arts, sciences, the theatre and the court and leads the world to cultural chaos and artistic bankruptcy.

The origins of the novel. The word “novel” (which wasn’t even used until the end of the 18 th century) is an English transliteration of the Italian word “novella” – used to describe a short, compact, broadly realistic tale popular during the medieval period. The novel appeared from the desire to depict and interpret human character. The reader of a novel is both entertained and aided in a deeper perception of life problems. The novel deals with a human character in a social situation, man as a social being. It places more emphasis on character than on plot. Another major characteristic of the novel is realism – a full and authentic report of human life. The traditional novel has:

1) a unified and plausible plot structure;

2) sharply individualized and believable characters;

3) a pervasive illusion of reality.

The English novel developed during the 18 th century, partly in response to an expansion of the middle-class reading public. More people could read and they had money to spend on literature. The early English novels concerned themselves with complex, middle-class characters struggling with their morality and circumstances. “Pamela”, a series of fictional letters written in 1741 by Samuel Richardson, is considered the first real English novel. Other early novelists include Daniel Defoe who wrote “Robinson Crusoe” (1719) and “Moll Flanders” (1722) and Jonathan Swift with his “Gulliver’s Travels”. Novelists from the mid to the late 18 th century include Laurence Sterne who wrote “Tristram Shandy” and Henry Fielding with his “Tom Jones”.

Daniel Defoe. His major works are “Robinson Crusoe” (1719) and “Moll Flanders” (1722). All of his novels share the same characteristics: 1) they are presented as memoirs or autobiographies and are narrated in the first person; 2) the setting is contemporary and realistic; 3) there is no real plot: the protagonist is presented in a chronological series of episodes; 4) the main character overcomes misfortune through self-reliance, hard work and belief in God; 5) each of the characters repents his evil actions and prays to God for salvation; 6) the prose style is plain yet powerfully effective. In Defoe’s works there is no psychological development of characters, only in their external condition. His characters often seem to be simply fighting their way out of circumstantial dilemmas.

Samuel Ruchardson. He wrote epistolary novels. His first work, “Pamela”, began as a collection of “model” letters. The letters were intended as a model of correct moral conduct and included a special section dedicated to young women who were to became servant, teaching them how to avoid being seduced by their employers. Richardson’s importance lies in his rejection of adventure. His novels are the first to have a domestic setting and characters who are ordinary middle-class people. He is the first novelist to write love stories, exploring the psychology of his characters and the world of passion and feelings. His novels represent the beginning of a debate about the roles of men and women in society. Samuel Richardson created the novel of character.

Henry Fielding. He is the father of the English comic novel. His first novel, “Shamela”, is a parody of Richardson’s “Pamela”, attacking its hypocritical morality. He continued to ridicule Richardson in his second novel “Joseph Andrews”. His novels use a playful and ironic omniscient narrator who comments on and criticizes his characters and who controls their destinies. He was also innovative in several ways: in “Tom Jones” he invented an extremely complex plot involving many characters that went beyond the episodic structure of previous novels. This enabled him to portray not just the lives of a few individuals but the life of society in all its variety. Each of the novel’s eighteen books is prefaced by an introductory chapter in which the reader is reminded that what he is reading is fiction, and instructions are given on how to approach what for contemporary readers was a relatively new literary form. An omniscient third-person narrator is used to comment on the action. The reader is not asked to identify with the protagonists, and the detachment allows him to appreciate the comic episodes. The story is not used as a vehicle for moralising.

Jonathan Swift. He is known principally as a journalist and a satirist. His great novel “Gulliver’s Travels” was conceived as a satire on the political situation in England of his time. Indeed “Gulliver’s Travels” are travels through a surrealistic dream world. Swift uses the properties of his fantastic worlds to explore complex philosophical problems. The great problem is how we can reconcile the needs of our minds with those of our bodies.

Laurence Sterne. He is the father of the English anti-novel. This term refers to novels that break with the traditional conventions of the genre. Anti-novels rely for their effect on the confounding of the reader’s expectations by: 1) the omission or annihilation of traditional elements (character, plot); 2) the introduction of innovative elements. Some of the anti-novel features of his masterpiece “Tristram Shandy” include: a) a non-conventional plot in which the hero of the story is born in the third volume of the book; b) an eccentric narrator who tells the reader to turn back several pages and read a passage a second time; c) syntactical, layout and typographical innovations such as unfinished sentences, blank pages and dashes or asterisks which the reader must interpret; d) the fragmented storyline, in which the sequence of events is deliberately disordered. The author thought that this non-linear approach to storytelling was more successful in capturing the essence of human experience. e) a new perception of time. Sterne thought that time as measured by the clock had little relation to time as perceived by the human mind.

Gothic novel. The gothic novel was mainly popular in the late 18 th and early 19 th century. Originally term meant “medieval” as in architecture, but it gradually came to mean strange, macabre and usually supernatural. A typical setting for a gothic novel might be a ruined castle, in the depths of wild, rugged countryside, preferably haunted and with a large graveyard or family crypt nearby. Kidnappings, stolen inheritances and shocking deathbed confessions are routine. This genre was created and popularized by Horace Walpole in “The Castle of Otranto” in 1764. This genre is also traced in Ann Radcliffe’s “The Mysteries of Udolpho” and “The Italian”, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, William Beckford’s “Vathek”, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”.

Gothic elements include the following:

1. Setting in a castle. The action takes place in and around an old castle, sometimes abandoned, sometimes occupied. The castle often contains secret passages, trap doors, secret rooms, dark or hidden staircases, and possibly ruined sections. The castle may be near or connected to caves or a forest.

2. An atmosphere of mystery and suspense. The work is full of threatening feeling, a fear enhanced by the unknown. Often the plot is built around a mystery, such as unknown parentage, a disappearance, or some other inexplicable event.

3. An ancient prophecy is connected with the castle or its inhabitants (either former or present). The prophecy is usually obscure, partial or confusing.

4. Omens, portents, visions. A character may have a disturbing dream vision, or some phenomenon may be seen as a portent of coming events.

5. Supernatural or inexplicable vents. Dramatic, amazing events occur, such as ghosts or giants walking, or inanimate objects coming to life.

6. High, even overwrought emotion. The narration may be highly sentimental, and the characters are often overcome by anger, sorrow, surprise, and especially terror. Characters suffer from nerves and a feeling of impending doom.

7. Women in distress. The female characters often face events that leave them fainting, terrified, screaming, sobbing. A lonely, pensive and oppressed heroine is often the central figure of the novel, so her sufferings re the focus of attention. Women suffer because they are often abandoned, left alone and have no protector at times.

8. Women often threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male. One or more male characters has the power as king, lord of the manor, father, or guardian to demand that one or more of the female characters do something intolerable. The woman may be commanded to marry someone she does not love or commit a crime.

9. The metaphor of gloom and horror.

In England, the gothic novel as a genre had largely played itself out by 1840. It left a lasting legacy, however in works of Edgar Allan Poe. From these the gothic genre gave way to modern horror fiction.

Pre-Romanticism. In the second half of 18 th century there appeared the so-called Pre-Romanticism. It originated among the conservative groups of men as a reaction against Enlightenment and the French revolution. Robert Burns and William Blake are the representatives of Pre-Romanticism.

Robert Burns (1759-1796). He was born in Scotland. His father was a poor farmer but a man who valued knowledge. It was from his father that Robert received his learning and his love for books. His mother had a beautiful voice and taught Robert old Scottish songs and ballads which he later turned into his best poems. Burns wrote his first verses when he was fifteen. Very soon his poems became popular among his friends. In 1785 he met a girl who became the great love of all his life and inspirer of his numerous lyrical verses. She had a wonderful voice and knew a lot of old melodies to which Burns composed his songs. In 1786 Burns published his first book under the title “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect”. The book was a great success. He was invited to Edinburgh. He conquered the Edinburgh society by his wit and manners as much as by the poetry. There he was advised to write in Standard English on noble themes but he refused. He wanted to write poetry about the people and for the people, that’s why he wrote both in standard English and in Scottish dialect. While he was in Edinburgh, he got acquainted with some enthusiasts of Scottish songs and ballads and became engaged in collecting the treasures of the Scottish folklore. He travelled about Scotland collecting popular songs. The collection was entitled “The Scots Musical Museum” and included 160 songs. His prolific output includes thousands of songs and poems, the best known of which are “Auld Lang Syne” (“Old Times Past”), which is sung all over the English-speaking world on New Year’ Eve, and “My Heart’s in the Highlands”. His poetry was inspired by his deep love for his motherland. Its history and folklore. His poems are dedicated to the descriptions of beautiful Scotland’s nature; national struggle of the Scottish people for their liberation from English oppression and Scottish peasantry.

William Blake (1757-1827). William Blake had a very individual view of the world. His religious philosophy is seen through his works “Songs of Innocence” (1789), “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790) and “Songs of Experience” (1794). His poems are simple but symbolic. For example, in his poems “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”, the tiger is the symbol of mystery, the lamb – the symbol of innocence. The lyrics in the “Songs of Innocence” are fresh, direct observations and show life as perceived by children. The poems in the “Songs of Experience” reflect a gloomier vision of the world, where evil has the upper hand over God. Innocence and experience are the two contrary states of the human soul which are shown in direct contrast in such poems as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”. “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” develops Blake’s idea that without contraries there is no progression. The work includes aphorisms, anecdotes and proverbs. In “Prophetic Books”, a series of long symbolic poems which he started writing in 1789, Blake expresses his condemnation of 18 th-century political and social tyranny. The inspiration for these poems was Milton. The “Prophetic Books”, which contain some of his most powerful images, denounce authority in often abstruse language through a cast of imaginary mythological characters.

Romanticism. The Period of Romanticism began from the last decade of the 18 century and continued up to 1830s. Romanticism as a literary current can be regarded as a result of two historical events: 1) the Industrial Revolution in England and 2) the French Revolution of 1789. These two events had a great influence on the cultural life of the country. Romanticists were dissatisfied with the present state of things in their country. Some of the writers were revolutionary: they denied the existing order, called upon the people to struggle for a better future, shared the people’s desire for liberty and objected to colonial oppression. Such writers were George Gordon Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Others, though they had welcomed the French Revolution and the slogan of liberty, fraternity, later abandoned revolutionary ideas. They turned their attention to nature and simple problems of life. Among these writers were the poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others who formed the “Lake School”, called so because they all lived for a time in the beautiful Lake District in the north-west of England. They dedicated much of what they wrote to nature. Legends, tales, songs and ballads became part of the creative method of the romanticists.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850). In 1795 William Wordsworth met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who became his closest friend. This friendship had an influence on both poets. They discussed political issues, read, wrote, exchanged theories on poetry and made comments on each other’s work. In 1797 (1798) they published their best work “Lyrical Ballads”. Coleridge contributed 4 poems and Wordsworth 19 to the collection. The poem deals with “low” subjects – rural life, rustic characters and are written in simple and unelaborated expressions. The long preface, written by Wordsworth for the second edition (1800), is considered the manifesto for the Romantic movement. It includes such main ideas about poetry:

1) the language of poetry should be simple;

2) the subject of poetry should consist of incidents and situations from common life;

3) the poet’s imagination can reveal the inner truth of ordinary things, to which the mind is blind;

4) the poet is a man speaking to men. He uses his special gift to show other men the essence of things.

Many critics consider the long poem “The Prelude, published after his death in 1850 in 24 books, to be his greatest achievement. The poem describes the crucial experiences and stages of the poet’s life and is an introspective account of his emotional and spiritual development.

He was a great innovator. He found his greatest inspiration in nature, which he believed could elevate the human soul and exert a positive moral influence on human thoughts and feelings. He identified nature with God. His poetry celebrates the lives of simple rural people, whom he sees as more sincere than people living in cities. Children are also regarded as pure and innocent, uncorrupted by the evils of the world.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). While Wordsworth wrote poetry inspired by the simple things of everyday life, Coleridge turned to the past for mystery and wonders and took the readers into the fantastic world of the imagination. Wordsworth asked readers to enjoy his natural descriptions, Coleridge, on the other hand, asked them to let him lead them into mysterious, extraordinary and supernatural worlds. For his most famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” he chose the medieval ballad form. Here one can see the combination of ordinary experience with supernatural events, the use of powerful symbols and striking images which stimulate the reader’s imagination. One more famous poem of Coleridge is “Christabel”. The poem is a medieval romance of the supernatural, which includes many Gothic elements.

Though he is best known today for his poetry, Coleridge also turned his attention to literary criticism and in 1817 published “Biographia Literaria”, where he developed theories that had to be the introduction to a great philosophical work, which he never produced.

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824). Byron experimented with different literary genres, including poetry and drama.

Poems. Byron dealt with a great variety of themes in his poems. In “She Walks in Beauty” and “Ode on Venice” the poet celebrates the city’s beauty and laments its decay. “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812) tells the story of a young disillusioned nobleman who travels to the places that Byron had visited. Harold is enchanted by the glorious past of the Mediterranean countries, reflected in different monuments; he admires the wonders of the natural world. The unfinished poem “Don Juan” (1818), which many critics consider his masterpiece, is a satire with several autobiographical references. The hero’s travels, adventures, love affairs, ideas, impressions and feelings are very close reflections of what Byron did, felt and thought. The poem is a satire against conventional restraint and society.

Drama. In the drama “Manfred” (1816) the protagonist is the stereotype of the romantic hero: handsome, passionate, melancholic, emotional, solitary. Torn between noble aspirations and sin, and unable to solve the dualism, he commits suicide.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). His works are characterized by intense political passion. In his poem “Queen Mab” (1813) Shelley attacks such ‘evils” as commerce, the monarchy, marriage, religion and the eating of meat. In place of these vices he proposes republicanism, free love, atheism and vegetarianism. “The Revolt of Islam” (1817) is a long allegoric poem which transposes a highly personalized version of the French Revolution into an Oriental setting. The poem contains many autobiographical references and introduces the theme of struggle and renewal.

Italian period (1818-1822). His best works during his staying in Italy:

“The Cenci” (1819), a verse tragedy based on the true story of Beatrice Cenci, who was executed for murdering her father in Rome at the end of the 16 century. The story, which involved incest and atheism, fascinated Shelley and so made it the basis of a play which shows strong Shakespearean influences.

“Prometheus Unbound” (1820): a lyrical drama in 4 acts. Prometheus, the giant who in Greek mythology stole fire from Heaven and gave it to people, becomes a hero who embodies the moral salvation of Man from tyranny.

Odes. In 1819 there were produced some of Shelley’s best lyrics: “Ode to Liberty”, “The Cloud”, “Ode to the West Wind”. The latter is considered his greatest short poem. In it the poet asks the spirit of the West Wind to be both destroyer and preserver, and to regenerate hope and energy in nature, in the poet himself and in mankind in general.

“A Defence of Poetry” (1821) is an essay in which Shelley argues that the poetry can reform the world. In it he claims that the poet is a missionary, a prophet and a leader who, through his quest for the eternal truths of beauty, can show the way to a better society.

John Keats (1795-1821). John Keats was born in London, where his father was the manager of a large livery stable. His early life was marked by a series of personal tragedies: his father was killed in an accident when he was 8 years old, his mother died when he was 14 and one of his younger brothers died in infancy. He received relatively little formal education and at the age of 16 he became an apprentice to an apothecary-surgeon. His first attempts at writing date from the years of his apprenticeship and include “Imitation of Spenser”, a homage to the Elizabethan poet he greatly admired.

First poems. In 1816 Keats obtained a licence to practice apothecary, but abandoned the profession for poetry. He became friends with Shelley and in 1817 his first book of poems was published. Although it sold poorly, this first volume of work introduced him into important literary circles. He met several great literary figures, including Wordsworth, who influenced his approach to writing poetry. His early poems included the sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), which describes the poet’s delight at first reading Chapman’s 17 th-century translation of the Greek epic poem. “Endymion” (1817) tells the story of a young shepherd whom the moon-goddess Selene puts to sleep eternally so that she can enjoy his beauty. Although the poem is structurally weak and often obscure, it shows flashes of immature genius. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is a romantic love story which blends elements of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Chaucer and Boccaccio.

Odes. In 1819 he produced some of his finest works, including his five great odes – “Ode to Psyche”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on Melancholy’ and “To Autumn”. In those odes he reached the pinnacle of his creative powers. They are lyrical meditations on art and real life, experience and aspirations, life and dreams. These odes, which are so rich in exquisite and sensuous detail, represent for the many the crowning achievement of English Romanticism.