British

Neoclassicism

The Restoration and

the Enlightenment
1660-1798

Veronica Popescu
 Page | 1

© Veronica Popescu
Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................... 3
Interesting features of the period ............................................................................ 5
Historical ........................................................................................................... 5
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Social, religious, and economic .........................................................................10
Scientific and cultural ........................................................................................11
John Milton – poet, essayist and dramatist of the Puritan Age (1625-1660) ...........14
Paradise Lost (1667) .........................................................................................17
Restoration literature.............................................................................................32
Poetry and drama: John Dryden (1631-1700)—poet, dramatist, essayist and
literary critic ......................................................................................................32
Restoration theatre ............................................................................................40
Restoration prose...............................................................................................45
The Augustan Age (1700-1745/50) as the height of Neoclassicism .......................52
The spirit of the age ...........................................................................................52
Augustan literature ............................................................................................53
Journalism in the Augustan Age and its cultural impact .....................................67
The Augustan Age novel ...................................................................................70
The final decades of Neoclassicism (1745/50-1798): The Age of Johnson (1745-
1784), or the Age of Classical Prose.................................................................... 116
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the last great Enlightenment man of letters ....... 118
The English novel in the Age of Classical Prose: Samuel Richardson and Henry
Fielding ........................................................................................................... 121
Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 138

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Introduction

British Neoclassicism is a term that is generally used to refer to a period in English, and
later British, literary and cultural history which began in 1660, with the restoration of Page | 3
monarchy, and continued throughout the 18th century. It also a period called by
historians and some literary historians “the long eighteenth century,” in which case the
period extends beyond the 18th century proper.1 In literary history, however, British
Neoclassicism is regarded as a three-phase period beginning in 1660, when monarchy
was restored after the Civil War (1642-1651) and the Interregnum (1649-1660), and
ending with the publication, in 1798, of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s volume of poems titled Lyrical Ballads, prefaced by a text that represents
the manifesto of British Romanticism. Such clear-cut demarcation lines between
cultural periods are, of course, a matter of identifying important statements announcing
a break with tradition and the introduction of different poetics and a different
worldview. In fact, a pre-Romantic sensibility is traceable much earlier than the
publication of Lyrical Ballads, and the appearance of the Gothic novel and of the
“Graveyard Poets,” not to mention the significant contribution of William Blake, whose
works and philosophical ideas reflect a Romantic bent and only a few traces of
Enlightenment thought or poetics. Some literary historians, especially those who refer
to the last few decades of British Neoclassicism as The Age of Johnson, after the name
of the most influential intellectual of the time, Dr Samuel Johnson, see his death in 1784
as the end of an era, the end of Enlightenment in British culture, which is why the year
1784 may appear in some literary histories as marking the end of Neoclassicism in
Britain.
For the sake of simplifying matters, we will use 1660 and 1798 as the beginning
and end dates for British Neoclassicism, a period that can be further subdivided into the
Restoration Period (1660-1700; or 1688 if we consider poetry); The Augustan Age

1
For instance, Frank O’Gorman (1997) uses the term “long eighteenth century” to describe the period
between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Reform Act of 1832, which brought changes in the
electoral system and the makeup of Parliament, and marked the end of the old political and social order.
In the words of Gorman, the long eighteenth century is characterised by a “fitful drive towards political
centralization, the search for a harmonious relationship between king and parliament, the defence of the
Protestant realm against the forces of popery and the expansion of industry, commerce and empire.” (54-
55)

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(1700-1750, or 1745 according to those literary historians who regard the deaths of
Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift in 1744 and 1745, respectively, as the end of the
peak period of Neoclassicism; and The Age of Johnson, or The Age of Sentiment
(1750-1798, or 1784, if Johnson’s death is taken into account). Some of the features of
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Neoclassicism in literature (preference for order, clarity, precision, wit, elegance of
expression, didactic character of all forms of writing, fictional or non-fictional)
appeared as early as the second half of the 17th century, and continued to be considered
fundamental throughout the 18th century, a century that is known in Europe as
Enlightenment (from the French term siècle des Lumières), a period defined by
emphasis on reason, logic, individualism and a certain scepticism. However, the height
of Neoclassicism, at least in terms of literature and philosophy, is considered to be the
Augustan Age, an age of poetry, satire (in verse or in prose), of the essay and the
pamphlet, but, perhaps equally important, the time when the genre that was to become
the most important form of prose writing emerged, the modern novel.
Neoclassicism is a remarkable period characterised by significant
advancements not only in scientific research, but also in the knowledge of human nature
in its complexity and its relationship to the surrounding world, freed from superstitions
and religious indoctrination, a period of great thirst for knowledge and a great trust in
the ability of the human mind to understand the laws of nature and man’s relationship
to God and his place in God’s created universe. It is an age when reason, common sense
and morality are extremely important, but so are free enterprise, inquisitiveness,
industriousness and freedom (of thought, of expression, of movement).

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Interesting features of the period

Historical
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The Civil War (1642-1651) and the restoration of monarchy in 1660

The Civil War was a bourgeois revolution of great significance, because it reflected a
significant paradigm shift in the way in which a significant part of the population of
England thought about monarchy, the doctrine of the divine right of kings, 2 and the
balance of power between king and Parliament.
There were several reasons for the war:
 Charles I’s decision to dissolve
Parliament in 1629 and his single-handed ruling
of the country for 11 years until 1940, when he
was forced to reopen Parliament to ask for an
increase in taxes to pay for a war in Scotland.
The Parliament’s refusal to do so led to an open
conflict between the two sides, and when the
Figure 1 Charles I in Three Positions, by Sir
Anthony van Dyck, 1635-36 king refused in turn to yield control of the army
to Parliament, the conflict became inevitable.
 Religious discrimination professed and practised by the English monarch
(traditionally Head of the Church of England since Henry VIII’s time, according
to the Act of Supremacy of 1534) and a large majority of the aristocracy. The
tolerance of Roman Catholics at Charles I’s court (his wife being a Catholic)
and the refusal of the king to deny them important positions in the state further

2
This political doctrine stated the monarch’s supreme authority in the state and divine right to rule the
country single-handedly. It was clearly formulated by James I’s act by the same name, the Divine Right
of Kings (written 1597-98, when he was James VI, King of Scotland), stating among others, the
following: “the king is over-lord of the whole land, so he is master over every person that inhabiteth the
same, having the power of life or death of every one of them ...The state of monarchy is the supremest
thing upon earth: for kings are not only God’s Leutenants upon earth and sit upon God’s throne, but even
by God himself they are called gods. In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a
certain relation is compared to Divine power.” (From a speech addressed in Parliament in 1610)
Fiercely attacked by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651), the divine right of kings was to be further
challenged by the supporters of a republican political system which took the form of the Commonwealth.

© Veronica Popescu
 complicated the nature of the relationship between King Charles I and Puritan3
members of Parliament, who were supported by a significant portion of the
population. When in the House of Commons the majority became Puritan, the
resistance of Parliament to the king’s absolute ruling became highly visible. Page | 6

The Civil War had three major military campaigns, sometimes referred to as the
First Civil War (1642-46), the Second Civil War (1647-49), and the Third Civil War
(1649-51). In 1642 King Charles I fled London and took refuge in the north of England
(Nottingham) followed by and supported by an army of Cavaliers (the royalists). The
Puritans also organised themselves into an army (the Roundheads) led by a man who
was to become the most important political leader of the next decade, a very
charismatic, intelligent and determined man, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658).
The highlight of the Second Civil War is, of course, the defeat of Charles’s army
and his beheading in January 1649. This victory marks the
beginning of the Interregnum (1649-1660), a period that
represents a relatively short republican experience for England,
now called a Commonwealth, where Parliament and Oliver
Cromwell as Lord Protector (1653-1658) represented the
embodiment of political power in the state.
Figure 2 Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's
During the Third Civil War, Ireland (particularly the Soldiers, by Hyppolyte Delaroche, 1836

areas of Ulster, Leinster and Munster) was invaded by Cromwell’s New Model Army
in order to attack Scotland from the West, making it an occupied territory, integrated in
Commonwealth in 1650. Charles’s son, who was later to become Charles II, was in
Scotland at the time and had been crowned King of Scotland in February that year. As
a result of Cromwell’s victory at Worcester in September 1651, Charles II had to flee
England (invaded a little earlier that year) and take refuge in The Netherlands and then
in France, where he would live in exile for 9 years, until he was asked to return to
England as king in 1660.

3
Puritans were Protestants who had taken the religious reform one step further, and who believed that
the Church of England was insufficiently reformed and too close to the Roman Catholic Church. There
are two alternative terms that will be used here, nonconformists and dissenters. Both refer to Christian
denominations that were Protestant in nature yet not affiliated with the Church of England and, as a
consequence, were victims of discrimination by both king and the Anglican Church during certain
periods in the 17th and the 18th century.

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 Overall, the Interregnum (1649-1660) is a period of great political and social
instability, with long stretches of time when Parliament is dissolved and the country’s
stability seems constantly threatened. A series of revolts take place in Ireland, Scotland
and the country is at war with Spain and the Netherlands. In all of these conflicts,
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Cromwell’s “New Model Army” is victorious, which leads to an increase in Cromwell’s
popularity and his rise as an uncontested leader of the country.

Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate (1653-1658)

In 1653 Oliver Cromwell was asked to accept to become king, which he refused.
Instead, he chose the name Lord Protector and accepted all powers and attributes of an
English monarch (he was even “crowned” without accepting to wear the crown) and
continued to rule the country with an iron fist, but this time from
a more legitimate position. There was an increase in people’s
dissatisfaction with the authoritarian rule of Cromwell, which
explains the readiness of a significant part of the members of
Parliament and of the population to restore monarchy less than
2 years after Cromwell’s death, especially since his son Richard,
the new Lord Protector, was only the shadow of the great man
Figure 3 Oliver Cromwell
- Lord Protector (1653- that his father had been. Richard was forced to resign in 1659
1658)
and there followed a period of great political unrest, ended by
the English Governor of Scotland, George Monck, who seized control of the country
with the help of the New Model Army he led, and the period known as the Long
Parliament (1640-1660) ended, making it possible for Charles II to return to England
as king and monarchy to be restored.

Nota Bene
Important to remember, perhaps, is the fact that Cromwell’s authoritarian rule was in
part a consequence of his military training and the long years of military conflict prior
to and following the beheading of Charles I, and in part a consequence in his strong
commitment to his religious beliefs and his conviction that virtue had to overcome vice
in personal as well as social life. He was much loved by many of his contemporaries,
one of the most important ones being the greatest English poet of the 17 th century, John

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Milton, who modelled his Paradise Lost character Satan after Cromwell, at least in the
first four books of the poem.
Oliver Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey with all honours befitting a king,
though with the crown not on his head, but by his side. In 1661 he was exhumed and
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posthumously beheaded.

The Restoration of monarchy and the reign of Charles II

There were several reasons for the restoration of monarchy. First of all, Richard
Cromwell failed to continue to rule with the same strong hand as his father. More
importantly, peace and stability were much needed by a country that had been torn by
years of war and religious and political factions. Moreover, most people resented the
authoritarian rule of Cromwell and had never truly come to terms with Charles I’s
beheading, which to many was a very radical act in the light
of the traditional political and religious doctrine known as the
divine right of kings.
The restoration of monarchy also meant the restoration
of the Church of England, although Charles II was more
tolerant of other religious groups than the Anglicans would
have liked. In his “Declaration of Breda,” published before his
restoration, and his two “Declarations of Indulgence” of 1662
and 1672, he clearly stated his attitude of tolerance towards all Figure 4 Charles II's coronation

religious groups (i.e. including the Roman Catholics and the

Protestants of all kinds). However, this did not reflect the attitudes of his subjects, and
religious factions only increased, especially after 1685, when James II (a public
sympathiser and supporter of Roman Catholics) displayed great religious tolerance,
which led to a political crisis that ended in 1688 with the so-called Glorious Revolution,
when William of Orange (of the House of Hanover) and his wife Mary II (James II’s
daughter) were asked to debark in England and seize the throne, with the support of the
population and of Parliament.
The political scene was much calmer during Charles II’s reign than in the
previous decade because Charles had the wisdom to allow Parliament significant
power. The only exception, perhaps was the Exclusion Crisis in the early 1680s, a
political crisis that was created by politicians who feared that the absence of a legal heir

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to the throne would enable Charles II’s brother, James (a Catholic), ascend on the throne
of England after the former’s death, endangering the country’s religious and, implicitly,
its geopolitical stability. The two major political players at the time were the recently
consolidated main political parties, the Tories (supporters of James, Charles II’s
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brother, and later of the return of the Stuarts to the throne after 1688, mostly members
of the Anglican Church and defenders of the interests of the gentry and the great
landowners), and the Whigs (who, during the Exclusion Crisis, supported the Duke of
Monmouth, Charles’s illegitimate son; also supporters of constitutional monarchy, the
Hanoverian succession, and Protestantism—including the nonconformist
denominations—a party protecting the rights of the aristocratic families and the
merchants).

The Glorious Revolution (1688)

James II ascended on the throne of England in 1685, after the death of Charles II. His
reign was, from the very beginning, controversial and fragile, with a clear opposition
from many Whig politicians and a significant part of the Protestant population,
regardless of denomination. The main reason for this opposition had to do with his
Catholicism and what some considered to be a preference for Catholics in positions of
significant power at his Court. As Head of the Anglican Church, the English monarch
could not be tolerated to represent any other interests than those of his country and the
state church. As a result, negotiations were carried out with William of Orange, of the
House of Hanover, and his wife, Mary, James II’s daughter. In 1688 James II, to avoid
bloodshed and an expected defeat, fled the country, and William of Orange and his wife
became the new English monarchs in February 1689, jointly ruling the country until
William’s death in 1702 (preceded by his wife’s death in 1698).
The reign of William III and Mary II represents the beginning of a new era for
the Church of England (stronger than ever since the outbreak of the war) and for
Parliament. The Bill of Rights of 1689 recognised the central role of Parliament in the
governing of the country and this marked the beginning of the process of turning the
monarchy into a parliamentary democracy, drastically limiting the monarchs’ power,
which, though not preventing political feuding and factions, consolidated the position
of Parliament (ruling without Parliament was no longer possible) and weakened that of
the monarch (now having only limited power in the state), and, eventually, led to greater

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economic and colonial expansion, especially during those periods when the liberal
Whigs had a majority in Parliament.4
The Glorious Revolution also represents the end of the era of the Stuarts.
William and Mary had no surviving children of their own, so the next monarch was Page | 10
Mary’s younger sister, Anne, whose reign extended between 1702 and 1714. Probably
the most important historic event during her reign was the signing of the Acts of Union
in 1706/1707 marking the official union of England (with Wales already incorporated
for centuries) and Scotland, and the “birth” of Great Britain. Queen Anne was the last
English monarch with any connection with the House of the Stuarts. Without a child of
her own surviving beyond childhood, Queen Anne was followed by three kings all
named George, of the House of Hanover, whose reign extended beyond the 18th century
(1714-1820): George I; George II; and George III, or “Mad George,” whose name is
also associated with the loss of the thirteen North-American colonies in 1776.

Social, religious, and economic

Charles I’s reign is also known for two major crises that hit London very hard and led
to the inevitable modernisation of the English capital city: the Plague (1665-66), and
the Great Fire of London (1666), both described in detail in Samuel Pepys’s Diary
(1660-1669). Much of Renaissance London was destroyed at the time and the
population was decimated, but the economic effervescence in the last decades of the
17th century led to an impressive population growth in London, so that almost a tenth
of the English population lived in London by 1700.
The second half of the 17th century (even before the restoration of monarchy)
also witnessed the emergence of an increasingly more important social class, the middle
class, a category that profited from the nation’s interest in becoming an important
international trade and naval power, which it most certainly did by the first half of the
18th century. This social class was instrumental in establishing an early form of
capitalism (so well captured in Defoe’s novels), and it also enjoyed a significantly
stronger representation in Parliament, making it a social and political force that was to

4
By the 1640s there were already around 12 towns in the Boston, Massachusetts area, home to around
15,000 people – mostly Puritans – and this expansion in the North-American continent was to continue
throughout the 17th and the 18th centuries.

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contribute to the growth of the British Empire, which at the time was primarily a
“maritime and commercial empire of settlement” (Keymer xxv).
The Restoration Period also represents a period of religious factions and
discrimination. The restoration of monarchy consolidated the status of the Church of
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England as the state church, with a religious, but also a political power that were
stronger than ever (O’Gorman xii). In spite of promises made before coronation,
Charles II failed to protect the rights of nonconformists, and the Anglican Church,
which was also represented in Parliament, did everything in its power to strengthen its
position and ensure that the country would remain Protestant and Anglican by
controlling politicians (through its own Members of Parliament) and monarchs alike.
Dissenters, or nonconformists, suffered the most during the reigns of Charles II and
James II, with a revival of anti-nonconformist feeling during the reign of Queen Anne,
as reflected in several of Defoe’s texts (Keymer xxx-xxi).

Scientific and cultural

The Restoration Period in England came at the end of a very interesting century from
the point of view of scientific effervescence and paradigm shift in European thought
about the universe, nature (including human nature), the Divine and the self. The
Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, advancing scientific research in fields that we
now see as individual fields of study (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
biology, engineering) led to the appearance of a new mode of thought, more rational
and speculative, as reflected by the Rationalist philosophers of the 17 th century, René
Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (among the continental
philosophers) and Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke in Britain.
Throughout the period called Neoclassicism (1660-1798), a more scientific
approach to research and to all manifestations of nature (including human nature), and
an increasing belief in the capacity of the human mind, of reason, to make the laws of
nature intelligible and dispel superstitions and mysticisms characterised not only
scientific minds, but also the minds of those who, increasingly more at this point in
English history, could read and write and considered education an important aspect of
their lives. Instrumental in consolidating this mode of thought among the learned and
the new readership was the founding, in 1660, of the Royal Society of London for
Improving Natural Knowledge, an academy licensed and sponsored by Charles I, which

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gathered the greatest minds of the time and offered visibility to their research through
its publication, the Philosophical Transactions (1665), which was to have a great
impact on the prose style of neoclassical writers.
One of the most important and impactful scientists of the time was Isaac Newton
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(1642-1702), a mathematician and physicist to whom we owe the Law of Gravity, but
also a new understanding of the laws of nature as being intelligible and demonstrable
through physics and mathematics. Newton’s followers in the 18 th century went even
further, claiming that a careful assessment and understanding of the natural scheme of
things was possible, which not only marked the rise of Deism (probably the most
important development in religious thought in late 17th and early 18th century), but also
helped dispel all traces of superstition and mediaeval religious thought system. This, of
course, was made possible by all remarkable developments in the sciences across
Europe, including Galileo Galilei’s improvement of the telescope and his subsequent
demonstration of the Copernican view of the universe (the heliocentric theory,
presented in On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, 1543) in the first half of the 17th
century. Also important were the contributions of Robert Boyle (1627-91), a theologian
and physicist who formulated Boyle’s Law on gas pressure and separated chemistry
from alchemy, using science to demonstrate the existence of God, or Edmond Halley,
who observed and calculated the orbits of many comets, including the one bearing his
name since 1682.
Another prominent member of the Royal Society was John Locke, a physician
who was also a philosopher, political theorist, and the founder of a new branch of study,
psychology. One of his most influential works is Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690), a text introducing Empiricist philosophy, an English theory
claiming that knowledge is formed through sensual experience of the world, which
continued to be highly influential in the 18th century, two of the most important
Enlightenment philosophers embracing it being David Hume and George Berkley.
Other revolutionary ideas like the separation of church and state, the need for
religious freedom and tolerance, or the innate ‘rights’ of the people to be free (especially
in Locke’s political writings) are major contributions to the thought of the age in Britain
and abroad, ironically contributing to the first major loss of overseas territories, the
thirteen American colonies which declared their independence in 1776.
In very general terms, the spirit of Neoclassicism, also called Enlightenment (or
the Age of Reason) in the 18th century, is characterised by a great interest in instruction,

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speculative reasoning, interest in commentary and dialogue on a variety of subjects,
and a great trust in the ability of man to improve through learning and a moral existence.
People read anything, from travel writings, history tracts, books on law, medicine,
mathematics and all natural sciences, to books on more practical topics such as
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marriage, children’s education, trade, gardening, or architecture. Neoclassical literature
is characterised by moral conservatism and humanism, writing being generally
regarded as a craft rather than the work of a genius. Ancient Greek and Latin literature
are considered, by most writers of the time, valuable sources of inspiration and of
models to be emulated with a modern sensibility. In poetry and drama (and later prose
fiction, with some exceptions) rules, order, moderation, decorum, civility and wit
were considered essential. So were common sense (compare with the Romantics’ belief
in the need to transcend one’s limitations) and the didactic character of all forms of
writing (fictional or non-fictional), the aim of most writers publishing under their own
names or anonymously being to educate, to enlighten, to hopefully produce a necessary
change in behaviour, mentality, or both. Last but not least, it was equally important that
art should be entertaining, which is why one of the most popular forms of drama was
the comedy of manners, and why the comic mode could be found even in some of the
harshest satires written in the English language such as Swift’s, or in the milder satire
to be found in Henry Fielding’s novels.

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John Milton (1608-1674) – poet, essayist and dramatist of the Puritan Age
(1625-1660)

Although not a neoclassical writer proper (although he published some of his best
known long poems after 1660), John Milton’s Page | 14
contribution to the spirit of British
Neoclassicism cannot be underestimated, and
neither can the impact of some of his most
important texts, especially his political tracts
and his magnum opus, Paradise Lost (1667).
Born in 1608, on 9 December, in a
middle-class family, John Milton received a
good education attending St. Paul’s School and
then Christ’s College, of the University of
Cambridge, where he studied to become a
clergyman. While in college he started writing
Figure 5 John Milton, by William Faithorne, poetry in Latin, Italian, and English, and
1670
changed his mind about a career in the clergy,
deciding instead to become a poet. However, his sound religious education and his
exposure to classical literature—mostly Greek epic poetry (Homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey), philosophy (Aristotle and Plato), and tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides—5th c. BC), to Latin poetry (particularly Virgil and Ovid, two major poets of
the age of Emperor Augustus of Rome—27 BC-14 AD) —were highly influential
throughout his life, and most of his work is either an imitation of favourite texts—
particularly in the formative years—or a personal response to them, in his later, more
mature work.
After he received his MA in 1632, he spent six years in his father’s house in
Hammersmith, where he concentrated on his serious study of ancient literature and on
the study of other foreign languages (French, Italian, Spanish and even Hebrew). Some
of the best known poems from his early career were written now: “On Shakespeare”
(Milton’s first published poem, appearing in the second folio of Shakespeare’s plays of
1632, which is particularly interesting when considering the fact that Milton’s father
had been requested to write the dedication to the first folio edition in 1623); “On the
Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” (written when still a student, yet published only in his

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1645 volume, Poems), “L'Allegro,” “Il Penseroso,” (each poem reflecting, celebrating
and encouraging the experience of a different state of mind, and the pastoral elegy
“Lycidas,” written on the death of a dear friend and fellow writer, Edward King.
It is also the period when he wrote two masques,5 Arcades (1632) and Comus. Page | 15
A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634). Comus, written in collaboration with
composer Henry Lawes and performed at the official residence of the recently
appointed Lord President of Wales, was later revised for the page and published as a
poem in his 1645 volume of Poems. It is a morality tale, celebrating virtue and
resistance to temptation. It presents the story of a young woman–the Lady–who is
enchanted by Comus, a pagan god, supposedly the son of Bacchus and Circe, and lured
to his home in the forest. He is a spirit of the natural realm and thus a symbol of natural
forces, an incarnation of temptation that threatens the soul. He uses a magic dust and a
magic potion in his attempt to subdue the woman and is clearly described as a seducer
trying to lure the Lady with promises of enjoyment, of a feast of the senses. His tricks
fail to work, however, and the Lady manages to resist temptation and is eventually
released with the help of nymph Sabrina, called by the Lady’s brothers to help them
free their sister from the enchanted chair to which she is stuck. Virtue is variously
referred to as “chastity” and “continence,” and this poem clearly reflects Milton’s early
interest in the issue of sinlessness (particularly chastity) and sinfulness, further explored
in his Paradise Lost:

Epilogue [the attendant spirit speaking]

Mortals that would follow me,
Love vertue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to clime [ 1020 ]
Higher then the Spheary chime [highest heaven];

5
Masque—a form of amateur dramatic entertainment, popular among the nobility in 16th- and 17th-
century England, which consisted of dancing and acting performed by masked players. (OED) In England
it was very popular during the reign of James I (1603-1625), in part due to set designer Inigo Jones, who
made the most elaborate and beautiful sets. This genre influenced the later performance arts of opera and
ballet.

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 Or if Vertue feeble were,
Heav'n it self would stoop to her. (Comus 1017-1023)

In May 1638, Milton left England on a tour of France and Italy, which lasted 13
months, during which time he met many important intellectuals and also influential Page | 16
people, one of the most important of these being the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei,
the one who perfected Copernicus’ telescope and confirmed his heliocentric theory in
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632). The echoes of his meeting
with Galileo can be traced in Milton’s 1644 tract against censorship and apology for
free speech, Areopagitica (from Areopagus, the name of the meeting place of the
Council of State of ancient Athens), but also in Paradise Lost, in Milton’s description
of Satan’s shield, which looks like the moon seen through Galileo’s telescope.
A Puritan and an advocate of a modern form of Protestantism (not the kind
displayed by the Anglican church), John Milton presented his revolutionary ideas on
the need for genuine religious reform in England in essays like Of Reformation
Touching Church Discipline (1641) and the right and necessity for free speech on
political as well as religious matters (especially in Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr John
Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing (1644). His revolutionary ideas were
further presented in essays like The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643;
rev.1644), an apology for divorce with arguments from history, theology and the
Scriptures. As Andrew Sanders points out in his The Short Oxford History of English
Literature (1994/2004), this tract on divorce “interlinks a Puritan insistence on
rethinking the implications of inherited moral laws with a distinctly personal irritation
with received wisdom.” (229) Displaying, then, a genuine Protestant attitude to ready-
made solutions or answers to critical or ontological questions, Milton was to offer his
own answers in his later work, not only in essays or tracts on political and religious
issues, but also in his masterpiece, Paradise Lost.
Another major contribution to the political and religious thought of the age is
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), a text published after Charles I’s
beheading, showing his approval of this action in the light of a more general political
stance that kings derive their power solely from their people and, therefore, it is up to
them to decide if their ruler is a tyrant or a wicked king and then take the appropriate
measures to remove such an inappropriate ruler from power:

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 It being thus manifest that the power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what is only
derivative, transferr’d and committed to them in trust from the People, to the Common good of
them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be tak’n from them, without
a violation of thir natural birthright. (The Tenure

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Equally important is his 1660 essay The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free
Commonwealth, published not long before the Restoration, in which he once again
defends the Republic (the Commonwealth) and warns against the return of Anglican
authority with the restoration of monarchy which would threaten the “good Old Cause”
of the Protestant Commonwealth (1649-1659) that could preserve civil and religious
liberties.

Paradise Lost (1667)

Paradise Lost was most likely written a long time before its publication, probably soon
after Milton completely lost his eyesight in 1652. Some consider that parts of the poem
had been written even before that, but it is generally accepted that he wrote most of the
poem between 1658 and 1663, and it was published, in 10 books, in 1667, only to be
revised and reorganised into 12 books in 1674, when Milton, at the request of the editor,
added an explanatory preface explaining his choice for blank verse and the brief
summaries preceding each book and pointing out the most important events to follow.
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse on the Fall of Man (and on the
promise of Redemption), meant to “justify the ways of God to men” (PL, 1.26). David
Daiches regards it as “a poetic rendering of the story of the Fall of Man in such a way
as to illuminate some of the central paradoxes of the human situation and illustrate the
tragic ambiguity of man as moral being.” (436) It is by far Milton’s greatest poetic
achievement, a work showing not only a good understanding of the conventions of the
classical epic poem (in the tradition of Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, or Virgil’s
Aeneid), but also of the ability to adapt tone and diction to the events described and
interpreted, and an impressive richness of vocabulary and complexity of expression that
only a genius could show. By far the greatest poet of the 17 th century, Milton was to
impress not only many of his contemporaries (John Dryden, the most important poet of
the Restoration, paid homage to Milton by attempting to imitate him), but also
generations of English poets to come, impressed by the force of Milton’s poetry and his
courage to address debatable topics like the origin of evil, God’s relationship to Man,

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his foreknowledge and his plans for mankind, sin, moral corruption, repentance,
salvation, redemption, or heroism in unprecedented ways. What is more, Milton’s
Satan—a very intriguing character in the poem—was to cause quite a stir at the time,
being—alongside Milton’s ambivalent attitude towards the Doctrine of Predestination Page | 18
(the Protestant view of God’s relationship to Man and the ethereal beings)—issues that
some of the readers of the poem found problematic.
Milton had spent almost a lifetime preparing for this magnum opus, which, in
the words of David Daiches, “shows Milton as Christian Humanist using all the
resources of the European literary tradition that had come down to him—biblical,
classical, medieval, Renaissance.” (438) The biblical sources are: the Book of Genesis
(particularly Genesis: I, II.1-4 – the creation of the world, Genesis: II, III – the
description of Adam and Eve in the Garden; Genesis: vi, VII, VIII, IX – the story of
Noah’s Ark); Hebrews I.6 – Christ presented as the Son of God and as God; Isaiah XIV
– the fall of Lucifer and the birth of the Archenemy, Satan). Among the Greek and Latin
classics, the clearest sources are Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 BC) and Virgil’s Aeneid (29-19
BC), but in fact the entire epic poem6 tradition has echoes in Milton’s poem.
The main elements of the epic or heroic poem, which also appear in Milton’s
poem are: the invocation of the Muse (Calliope, for epic poetry; here the Holy Ghost,
naturally) and the thesis statement (the introduction of the topic of the poem, here a
long thesis statement that promises a Christian perspective to “justify the ways of God
to men”); a war (with several battles described in great detail, with pathos and
empathy); epic heroes (of almost superhuman proportions); supernatural forces
intervening in the conflicts; a vast setting (including the underworld); descriptions of
the lifestyles and customs of both peoples or armies; a sustained, elevated style, poetic
diction requiring that language be appropriate for poetry, not the language of everyday
speech, but an artificial language fit for the ambitious aims of the poet.
The structure7 of Paradise Lost is particularly interesting, and the
rearrangement of events in achronological order is perfectly justified and part of a

6
The epic poem is a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds
and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the past history of a nation, e.g. The Iliad, The Odyssey,
Beowulf, or Gilgamesh,.
7
Originally the poem had 10 books, but now it has 12 books, to which the author himself added
explanatory passages to help the reader follow the story

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complex structural design relying on parallelisms and oppositions, echoing the theme
of war—between the forces of Good and of Evil, between God and his Archenemy,
Satan—which is the underlying theme of the poem. The poem is built on a series of
parallelisms that demonstrate the carefully designed and complex structure of this
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narrative poem: the history of Satan (books I-III) parallels the postlapsarian history of
Man (books X-XII); the destruction of an order (books V-VI) is paralleled by the
establishment of a new order (books VII-VIII); Satan’s entry into Paradise (book IV)
parallels his forced departure (book IX); and the Holy Trinity (Father-Son-Holy
Ghost/Spirit) is mirrored by the “trinity” of Evil (Satan-Sin-Death).
The poem has an in medias res [Lat. “in the middle of things] beginning, a poetic
convention borrowed from other epic poems for its great dramatic impact. The poem
begins with the consequences of the War in Heaven and the reaction of the banished
fallen angels to their new state and it ends with the consequences of Adam and Eve’s
disobedience, with their fall from Grace and the beginning of a new life, on earth,
knowing that the blissful state that they enjoyed in Paradise is now lost but that
redemption is, nevertheless, possible. Milton made this point even clearer in his other
poem on the consequences of Man’s Fall, Paradise Regained (1671), in which he
returned to the figure of Christ as the redeemer of mankind and demonstrated his belief
in man’s regaining of Paradise through the agency of Christ, as his earlier poem had
only suggested. By indirectly comparing the two falls—the angels’ and Man’s Fall—
one opening, the other concluding the poem, we may say that Milton was trying to show
that by comparison, the latter has less dramatic consequences and for Man there is still
the possibility of regaining Paradise.

The main characters of Paradise Lost

The poem features a number of characters, some of greater significance, others
(archangels, angels, cherubim, devils) fulfilling specific functions as suggested by the
biblical sources used by Milton. One interesting aspect of the poem is the presence of
God Himself as a literary character with a voice and a presence, though He only appears
on few instances, such as in Book III, where the reader can hear directly from Him why
He refuses to protect Adam and Eve from Satan and prevent their disobedience. In
Milton’s poem He acts through Christ, archangels Michael and Raphael and other
heavenly beings, drawn as more active participants in the action. In fact, Christ appears
here as a heroic figure, modelled after the classic epic heroes. He is a divine hero

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fighting against the forces of Evil and restoring peace in Heaven, acting in God the
Father’s name when He passes judgement on Adam and Eve and asks them to leave the
Garden of Eden as a consequence of their disobedience.
Although his name indicates that he is God’s archenemy (sâtan means
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“adversary” in Hebrew), Satan, the former archangel Lucifer is here described as
Christ’s opponent in purely epic poem terms, fighting against Christ during the war in
Heaven and being eventually defeated by Him. He is also described with heroic features
and a most seductive rhetoric of republicanism, at least in Books I and II, when the
reader meets him for the first time as the defeated general of the army of fallen angels.
His seductiveness is motivated not only by the story itself, a plausible explanation for
his power over rebellious angles and later over Eve, but also by the fact that Milton
most likely modelled his Satan after Oliver Cromwell, the mastermind behind the
English Civil War and the establishment of a republican political system in England
known as the Commonwealth, who was also remembered by Milton’s contemporaries
as a great general, a declared champion of republican values, and a persuasive military
and political leader who was eventually corrupted by power.
Not surprisingly, the characters that touch the reader most deeply, the ones
whom Milton described with the greatest tenderness and compassion, are Adam and
Eve, described by the poet as embodiments of human ideals of manhood and
womanhood, as conceived in the 17th century, based on Saint Peter’s understanding of
gender inequality (see The New Testament, 1 Peter 3: 1-7). They are the true heroes of
the epic poem in spite of their failings and vulnerability first and foremost for their
ability to repent sincerely and accept divine punishment as a consequence of their
disobedience, even if this means losing the comfort and safety of their lives in the
Garden of Eden. What makes Milton’s portrayal of the mother and father of mankind
particularly interesting is the fact that he manages to turn them into fully fledged human
beings, majestic in their physical and inner beauty, yet also frail and so human in times
of fear, anguish, doubt, helplessness and despair.
If in the Bible Adam and Eve are described strictly in terms of their defining
qualities—Milton’s characters are more complex, their thoughts, feelings and emotions
making them real for the reader, who cannot help but empathise with them and
experience their tragic fate. Milton’s portrayal of the first couple is, however, a
reflection of his own understanding of the qualities and roles ascribed to man and
woman:

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 Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed;
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him: Page | 21
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, Figure 6 Adam and Eve by Gustave
Doré
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed (Paradise Lost, IV. 296-312; emphasis
mine)

His Adam is like Michelangelo’s David. Beautifully shaped and manly in his
appearance, he is a figure of strength and authority for Eve, whose physical frailty is
compensated by her innocent beauty but not also by the kind of inner strength displayed
by her male companion, whom she is expected to obey and regard as a human mirroring
of God’s authority.
Adam embodies a 17th-century male ideal: he is not only noble in spirit but also
intelligent, inquisitive and desirous to learn more and understand the laws of nature and
of the universe as a means to fully grasp God’s greatness and appreciate His creation.
(See books V-VIII, where Raphael answers most of Adam’s questions regarding the
War in Heaven and the destruction of the old order, as well as God’s creation of the
earth and the planets, of Adam and Eve and their beautiful world of Paradise). She, on
the other hand, is credulous and naïve, a perfect target for Satan’s flattery, but Milton
goes even further than the text of the Genesis in explaining the reason for her fall into
temptation. That Adam and Eve were both innocent (where the word innocent can be
defined as not knowing evil, pure, not guilty of any sin) is something we know from
the Biblical text, but Milton feels the need to make an even clearer distinction between
the first man and woman by connecting Eve’s credulity with a certain inability to

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understand certain things, which is why she is not directly warned of the danger of
temptation (it is only Adam who is told of Satan’s entry into Paradise and his desire to
tempt them both). Neither is she a witness to Michael’s account of the future of mankind
on earth just befor they leave the Garden of Eden. Feminist critics have accused Milton
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of misogyny for that reason, but we may say, in Milton’s defence, that he simply voices
an attitude to women that was quite common in his time, as reflected by the female
characters created by many of his contemporaries and even long after Milton’s time.
What takes the poem’s reader by surprise is the fact that Milton’s Edenic couple
live together not so much like children, but like married people who enjoy each other’s
company and are united not only in spirit, but also in flesh:

Observing none, but adoration pure

Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
Handed they went; and, eased the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused:
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity, and place, and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain
But our Destroyer, foe to God and Man? (Paradise Lost, IV.735-747; emphasis mine)

Milton’s position on the nature of the relationship between Adam and Eve in their
prelapsarian state is quite unconventional, but that should not surprise us considering
the equally unconventional views on marriage and divorce he expressed in his early
career. He understood, as a true poet of genius, the need to make his characters so much
like us, the readers, that we may easily identify with them and understand their moral
dilemma after realising the significance of their choice to disobey God, especially in
Adam’s case.
If Eve’s sin is disobedience because of credulity, because she failed to
understand the true implications of Satan’s flattery, promising Eve the gift of
knowledge, which would make her Adam’s equal, Adam’s sin is disobedience caused
by both weakness and courage. He knows what kind of punishment awaits them both if

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they eat the forbidden fruit, yet he also knows that he belongs with his wife, the
companion that God gave him and the woman he loves so dearly. By describing them
both as a perfectly balanced married couple before the arrival of Satan into their world,
Milton prepares us for his unconventional interpretation of Adam’s act of disobedience,
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endowing it with a higher meaning than the text of the Genesis would have us think.
He is weak in his love for God because he makes a conscious choice to break his
promise to God; he is brave, nevertheless, because he chooses his wife in spite of his
understanding of what this disloyalty towards God entails. He chooses to share Eve’s
fate and his choice, though equally wrong as Eve’s, is at least understandable in human
terms as an act of sacrifice in the name of love. His courage—though shaken at some
point by feelings of remorse and fear of God’s punishment—is still admirable, making
him superior to his biblical counterpart. At least in literary terms and for an audience
familiar with the concept of erotic love as described and popularised by chivalric
romance. Adam’s nobility of spirit, his intelligence, thirst for knowledge, higher
understanding and dignified acceptance of his fate and, perhaps most important of all,
his ability to repent sincerely and humbly ask God’s forgiveness, accepting God’s
punishment make him emerge as the true hero of the poem, a Christian hero whose
behaviour serves as a model to all Christians. Like him, Milton seems to suggest, we
have to accept the paradoxes and the suffering of our existence, trusting that Man’s
Saviour will restore us to our “blissful seat” (I.5).
The complexity of Paradise Lost opens the text to many interpretations, as a
long tradition of critical study has demonstrated. One thing is, nevertheless, obvious to
anyone who accepts the challenge of reading and thinking about the text: it is the work
of a man who, after decades of intensive reading and careful consideration of biblical,
theological and classical literary texts, has come to a point where he needs to find his
own answers and he gives them literary form in a poem that represents his testament of
faith as a Christian poet. Some of the most problematic issues of human existence in a
God-created world addressed in the poem could be formulated, in very broad lines, as
follows:
1). The question of Evil and its appearance into this world. Milton does not provide
an answer that may be considered universally satisfactory. Lucifer and all the ethereal
beings were created by God, but that does not automatically make God the creator of
evil, Milton suggests. In fact, as the poem’s God explains in Book III, Lucifer and the
other rebellious angels are guilty of self-corruption (“The first sort [i.e. the angelic

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beings] by their own suggestion fell, / Self-tempted, self-depraved” – Paradise Lost,
III.129-30), and it is their pride and ambition that prevented them, but particularly
Lucifer, from accepting God’s rule and the “debt immense of endless gratitude”
(angelic beings] by their own suggestion fell, / Self-tempted, self-depraved” – Paradise
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Lost, IV.52) which they owed God for having created them and allowing them to be in
Heaven.
2). Man’s relationship with God. For Milton this is clearly a relationship based on
love. Divine love is visible in the fact that He created two beings characterised by
beauty (inner and external) and capable of goodness, but also that He endowed them
with free will, the most precious gift of all, which represents their strength but also their
weakness. Obedience is the clearest form of showing love and gratitude to God, and
that is why Man’s disobedience–whatever form it may take–is considered the Original
Sin, for which absolution is possible but only through sincere repentance and Divine
grace. Satan, in Book IV, admits that, though aware of God’s Almightiness and His
great gifts of life, love and free will, he could no longer love and obey God as soon as
“pride and worse ambition” entered his mind and made him think of taking His place.
Love and gratitude for God the Father are inseparable in the case of His created beings,
just as love and free will are God’s gifts for all those He created.
In Book III, one of the key passages in the entire poem clearly states Milton’s
understanding of God’s relationship to Man as being based on love first and foremost,
a love that frees His created beings (ethereal or human) to the extent that even the
freedom to stop loving Him back and obeying Him is granted:

Such I created all the ethereal Powers

And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail'd;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,
Where only what they needs must do appear'd,
Not what they would? what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd,
Made passive both, had serv'd necessity,
Not me. (Paradise Lost, III. 100-111)

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The Miltonic God, though a discrete presence in the poem, is a God of love and mercy—
an idea Milton conveys even more forcefully through his Christ, who offers to save
Adam and Eve from the fall into temptation even before Satan reaches the Garden of
Eden—which places the English poet closer to the theological schools of the established
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churches and distances him from Calvinism.
3). The question of Divine Providence and the causes and effects of Man’s fall.
Is it all part of a divine plan, as the Doctrine of Predestination would have it, or is it
simply a question of foreknowledge and personal responsibility, as the Doctrine of Free
Will explains God’s knowledge of and refusal to intervene in Man’s fall? In Book III,
Milton has God Himself explain his foreknowledge: “God beholding from his prospect
high,/Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,/Thus to his only Son foreseeing
spake.” (Paradise Lost, III.77-79; emphasis mine). Milton is careful to emphasise that,
in his view, Man’s fall is not part of a divine plan, but it is something that God knows
WILL happen because Eve will be tempted by Satan to taste the forbidden fruit and
Adam will eventually do the same. Just as He knows that they will deeply regret their
disobedience. The Doctrine of Free Will provides Milton with an interpretation of the
story from the Old Testament that makes more sense to someone who chooses the
image of a benevolent, loving God of the New Testament—the one who sacrificed His
own Son for the redemption of mankind and the one who, through Christ, preached a
doctrine of love and forgiveness.
This is, in fact, an interesting aspect of Milton’s theological stance considering
his Puritan education. Milton hesitates between the Protestant Doctrine of
Predestination which, especially in its Calvinist form, eliminates any possibility for
people to determine their redemption, and the claims of the Doctrine of Free Will that
salvation is possible if sinners repent sincerely and accept doing penance for their sins.
Salvation, Milton’s God explains, is possible only with His permission and as a
consequence of His bestowing grace on Man. In other words, it is not automatic, not a
right, but a gift, and only God decides if a man is to be saved or not, but at the same
time, Man’s will, Man’s active participation in his redemption, is also necessary:

Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will;

Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely vouchsafed; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit; and enthralled

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 By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe;
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fallen condition is, and to me owe
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All his deliverance, and to none but me.
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace,
Elect above the rest; so is my will:
The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warned Their sinful state”
(Paradise Lost, III.173-186; emphasis mine)

The importance of sincere repentance and of doing penance as means of obtaining

redemption becomes a central idea in Milton’s poem. Once again, Milton’s Calvinist
doctrine of predestined salvation or damnation and of an implacable God whose mind
cannot be changed regardless of what a person does in this life. If Adam and Eve, the
speaker in Paradise Lost suggests, could find forgiveness and hope, given that they
were able to understand the serious consequence of their disobedience of the Heavenly
Father and the moral obligation to take responsibility for their actions, demonstrating
not only a great courage, but also the kind of humbleness that an act of repentance
presupposes, so can all people work towards the salvation of their souls.
Man’s existence is, therefore, a continuous struggle in which there are no
certainties, only a series of challenges that constantly test the moral strength and power
to resist temptation, something that—paradoxically—also constitutes the source of
human greatness which, in the absence of such challenges, would remain latent within
the soul and prevent spiritual growth. Saint Augustine’s theory of felix culpa (Fortunate
Fall) is adopted by Milton who seems to agree that, no matter how beautiful and serene
life in Paradise may have been for our first parents, their virtue was only passive and
ignorant before the tasting of the fruit of knowledge, whereas ours can be an active,
knowledgeable one.

Milton’s Satan as a tragic hero figure

One of the most controversial aspects of Milton’s poem remains to this day, for many
readers, his portrayal of the character of Satan, through whom the poet expressed his
most revolutionary ideas. In his 1790 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake
went as far as to write that Milton “wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God,

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and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, … because he was a true Poet and of the Devils
party without knowing it.” (6)
Even without going so far as to claim that Satan was Milton’s true hero in this
poem (J. Dryden had remarked that as early as 1697,8 seeing Satan as the true hero Page | 27
owing to the success of his enterprise, albeit in the service of Evil; other contemporary
critics agreed that he did seem to be the essential figure of Paradise Lost), it is true that,
at least in the first books of the poem, he appears as the character that most captures the
reader’s attention. Now a fallen archangel, Lucifer is slowly turning into Satan, his
transformation being visible as a dimming of his former glorious brightness, his
appearance being tragic and pitiful, though still sublime:

he above the rest

In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less then archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured: As when the sun new risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel: but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion to behold
The fellows of his crime (Paradise Lost, I. 589-606; emphasis mine)

Satan’s greatness as a literary character is most clearly evident in his monologue

in Book I and in the soliloquy in Book IV, where Milton shines as a poet of genius,

8
Dryden famously wrote in Dedication of the Aeneis, his translation of The Aeneid, that Milton would
have been one of the greatest poets of all times, on a par with Horace and Virgil, “if the Devil had not
been his Heroe instead of Adam, if the Gyant had not foil'd the Knight, and driven him out of his strong
hold, to wander through the World with his Lady Errant.” (209)

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capable of making Satan a fascinating misguided rebel, torn between hatred, ambition,
rage, and regret, remorse even, and sheer despair. In book I (84-124), for instance, we
hear a great general addressing his legions at the end of a lost battle, encouraging his
troops to continue to wage war and refuse defeat as if there were any hope for a victory
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against God’s legions. His rhetoric is powerful and for a while the reader forgets that
when he speaks of this war as motivated by the desire to free himself and the other
rebellious angels from the “tyranny of Heaven,” he is actually speaking of God as a
tyrant. Constantly referring to God and his hierarchy in Heaven in terms of empyreal
structures of power and even oppression, Satan indirectly
describes himself and stands out with his republican
rhetoric as a Cromwellian figure, motivated by a desire to
destroy what he perceives as a tyrannical rule and give
power to the many. His rhetoric proves effective even
now, after the defeat of the rebellious angels, and he is
appointed by the others to rule Hell and represent them in
the new battle against God. He is, nevertheless, more like
a fallen tragic hero, contemplating his new
Figure 7 Satan talks to the council
of Hell, by Gustave Doré circumstances—the darkness and strangeness of Hell—
and his new status as a fallen angel, with little hope for a
return to his former glory or a victory for him and his followers.
Book IV allows the reader to see another aspect of
Satan, his soliloquy (lines 32-112)—the only genuinely
honest admission of his true thoughts and feelings—being a
fine example of anagnorisis (“recognition” in classical
tragedy) whereby the tragic hero (for that is how Satan
appears to us now) admits his hubris (the Greek tragedy
term for “excessive pride”) and his error of judgement
(hamartia), taking responsibility for the consequences of Figure 8 Satan, by Gustave Doré
his actions and finally accepting his fate:

I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;

Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King:
Ah, wherefore! he deserved no such return

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 From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
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How due! (Paradise Lost, IV. 19-28)

The reader is now reminded of Satan’s original nature as Lucifer, the brightest of the
archangels, the one closest to God, a being of light and goodness, until he started
questioning God’s supremacy and even His nature as Creator of the world and
everything in it. Blinded by dreams of greatness and the self-delusion of almightiness,
Lucifer designed a plan to attract other angels on his side to help him achieve his dream,
and now Satan, whose angelic attributes are slowly disappearing, realises that it was all
in vain and that he alone bears the responsibility for his own fall and that of his fellow
rebellious angels. For a brief moment he stops to contemplate the possibility of
repenting, of asking God’s forgiveness to return to Heaven, yet he quickly realises that
his self-corruption is irreversible and his hatred so consuming that his repentance would
be short-lived and insincere, and a betrayal of the angels whom he had led into the battle
against God. His acknowledgement of the fact that his fall from Heaven is his own fault
and that the destruction of the old order is a direct consequence of his futile dream of
taking God’s place make Satan sound like a tragic hero after the fall from greatness is
complete and there is no turning back:

Me miserable! which way shall I fly

Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
O, then, at last relent: Is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent. Ay me! they little know

© Veronica Popescu
 How dearly I abide that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of Hell.
With diadem and scepter high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
Page | 30
In misery: Such joy ambition finds. (Paradise Lost, IV. 73-92)

That Satan is here endowed with human features and presented like a man in
agony certainly takes the reader by surprise, yet we soon realise that endowing Satan
with human characteristics and describing his inner torment using a rhetoric that we
associate with Greek tragedy is merely a literary device allowing Milton the Christian
poet to explore the darkest recesses of the human soul, and try to understand how even
the most virtuous or righteous of people (consider Oliver Cromwell’s case, for instance)
can fall prey to self-delusion, excessive pride and blinding ambition. Satan’s fall is far
more dramatic and interesting for a poet compared to that of Adam and Eve, which is
why, by comparison, the language of remorse, fear, hatred, regret, and pain in Satan’s
speech is richer and more cathartic than that of remorse and fear as voiced by Adam
and Eve.

Milton’s style
Milton’s style is appropriate for a heroic poem, yet it also shows a certain flexibility
depending on the nature of the situation or the action described, or the character
speaking. Milton is capable of alternating styles and adapting his tone with great ease,
his characters coming to life in the most natural manner, their boasts, complaints, their
fury or frustration, their serene ignorance or calm acceptance of their fate being most
appropriately rendered through a persuasive language and a wide range of vocabulary
that befits the discourse of ethereal or human beings. God Himself impresses the reader
with His calm yet authoritarian rhetoric, making one feel, not only understand his power
and supremacy. The language of hatred and spite is beautifully alternated with that of
despair, remorse, regret, Satan’s soliloquy in Book IV being one of the most impressive
literary exercises in the manner of Greek tragedy, so different from both the discourse
Satan delivers to his defeated legion in Hell in Book I, or in his highly persuasive
language of temptation in Book IX, when he subtly bends Eve’s will and makes her
believe that she needs to eat the forbidden fruit.

© Veronica Popescu
 Milton’s syntax is oftentimes difficult to follow, his long sentences running over
up to 16 lines (see the first 16 lines of the poem) and his word order being anything but
English. Having a sound knowledge of Latin, he often imitates the style of Virgil and
even uses Latin phrases and words (mostly with their original meaning), making the
Page | 31
text difficult to follow without accompanying editorial notes. These, in fact, are most
useful for today’s readers because the text is filled with allusions to mythical characters
and events, to places and worlds that Milton himself only knew from his reading of the
biblical texts or ancient Greek, Roman ones or even tales from the Far East, his
descriptions of the planetary system or of the earth, most certainly of the Garden of
Eden, relying mostly on things he knew from the Bible and from ancient and
contemporary scientists and writers, all filtered through his own imagination in a desire
to help the reader understand the beauty, the perfection of Divine creation, in Heaven
or on earth. His similes are oftentimes extended – an attempt at capturing the vastness,
the sublime nature of the setting – and his enumerations (long lists of characters, plants
and animals, or toponyms) seem endless at times for very much the same reason.
To the late Harold Bloom, one of the greatest literary critics of our time, John
Milton was one of the greatest poets in the English language and a significant influence
on the generations of poets to come. Lord Byron’s heroes (the Byronic characters, as
they are called) are partially modelled after Milton’s fascinating Satan character,
Shelley’s Prometheus—the symbol of rebellion and defiance of the gods—is clearly a
poetic response to Milton’s Archenemy, and William Blake’s entire conception of the
universe and its forces seems strongly influenced by Milton’s explorations of the nature
of Good and Evil, of Man’s relationship to both in Paradise Lost, a poem that continues
to fascinate and engage readers centuries after it was penned.

© Veronica Popescu
Restoration literature

Poetry and drama: John Dryden (1631-1700)—poet, dramatist, essayist and literary
critic

Page | 32
One of the most important writers of the Restoration period, John Dryden was a poet
(Poet Laureate between 1668 and 1688), a playwright, translator and a critic, whose
work displays some of the major elements of
Neoclassicism, such as: choice of topics from ancient
history, concern for compositional rules and
preference for regularity, for order in poetic
construction and a polished style. He went to
Westminster School like John Milton and then took
his BA (1654) at Trinity College in Cambridge, where
he studied the classics and had a very rigorous training
in rhetoric, which proved most valuable in his future
Figure 9 John Dryden, by Godfrey career as a dramatist and poet.
Kneller, 1693
His family (countryside gentry) had been
involved in the Civil War on the side of the Puritans, so it is safe to say that the young
boy (aged 11 when the war broke out) was a republican as well in his youth. During the
Commonwealth, he secured a job working for Oliver Cromwell’s Secretary of State
John Thurloe and met John Milton and Andrew Marvell while working there. His
political convictions seemed to change after the Restoration, when he wrote a poem,
“Astraea Redux”, celebrating the restoration of monarchy and apologising for his
earlier support of Oliver Cromwell. He also wrote “To His Sacred Majesty” in 1661, a
poem written for the coronation of Charles II.
He was a member of the Royal Society and, in 1668, he was made Poet Laureate
(the first to be awarded such a distinction) and Historiographer Royal, both being highly
honourable positions at the court of Charles II. He continued to write poems for various
events and celebrations until the ascension of William of Orange and Mary to the throne
when, as he refused to swear allegiance to them, he was dismissed. He had converted
to Catholicism in 1686 and remained loyal to James II, which is why he did not
celebrate the Glorious Revolution and concentrated more on satires after he left his
public office in 1688.

© Veronica Popescu
 As a poet, he started his career writing occasional poems (elegies, odes, epistles,
complimentary addresses), and he also made translations from the classics. He believed
quite strongly that the main purpose of poetry was delight. For Dryden it was the idea
behind the word rather than poetic artifice (figures of speech) that mattered the most, Page | 33
which is why he used a “common”, not a “poetic” language in his poems, leaving his
lines simple and without unnecessary adornments or sophisticated phrasings, his
interest being in the clarity of expression. He wrote drama in verse as well, showing,
like the French playwrights at the time (Molière, Racine, Corneille) a preference for
rhymed verse instead of the traditional blank verse used by most of his predecessors
(Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson), although in his Of Dramatick
Poesie: An Essay (1668; often appearing as An Essay of Dramatic Poesy in modern
editions) he did defend the use of blank verse by referring to the achievements of earlier
English dramatists.
He was a very rational man, well balanced and hardworking, fully aware of the
need for constant study, a good understanding of human nature and a sound judgement
of the world, as well as a very good command of the English language. He wrote that
“[a] man should be learned in various sciences, and should have a reasonable,
philosophic, and in some measure mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent
poet and besides this should have experience in sorts of humours and manners of man,
should be thoroughly skilled in conversation, and should have a great knowledge of
mankind in general.” (Dryden – “Notes and observations on The Empress of Morocco”,
1674, a pamphlet)
Before 1688, Dryden focused mostly on writing poetry and drama. There were
two main theatre companies, the King’s Company (the Drury Lane theatre, run by
Thomas Killigrew), and the Duke’s Company (at Dorset Gardens, run by William
Davenant) that were licensed by Charles II when theatres reopened in 1660, after 18
years of no theatrical performance. Dryden quickly decided to join a small group of
playwrights writing new plays for the revived English theatre. He was to become one
of the most important playwrights of the Restoration, writing mostly heroic tragedies9

9
The heroic tragedy was a new and soon-to-become very popular genre, something that Dryden
immediately understood. The genre was a development of tragedy (the first author of a heroic play being
Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery – The General [1660]), dramatising conflicts between love and honour. The
protagonists were lovely heroines who charmed the heroes- great men capable of amazing things- ready

© Veronica Popescu
and comedies, and his dramatic talent was matched only by that of William Congreve,
the master of Restoration comedy of manners.
Dryden’s main plays:
 The Wild Gallant (1663) – a farcical comedy without much success Page | 34
 The Indian Queen (1664) – a heroic tragedy in rhymed couplets in which he had
collaborated with Sir Robert Howard, his brother-in-law.
 The Indian Emperour (1665) - a sequel to The Indian Queen and his own first
outstanding success.
 Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen(1667) – a tragicomedy that was very
successful with the king as the part of Florimel, a joyful and witty maid of
honour, was played by the king’s latest mistress, Nell Gwynn, to the delight of
the audience. This play also marks the beginning of a new era in English
comedy, displaying the kind of witty repartee that was to become a trademark
of Restoration comedy of manners, whose master is William Congreve.
 Tyrannick Love (1669), and the two parts of The Conquest of Granada by the
Spaniards (1670) were highly successful, but the heroic play as a genre was
losing ground by now to a new type of play, the comedy of manners, which he
experimented with in his 1672 Marriage A-la-Mode.
 Aureng Zebe (1675) – Dryden’s last heroic play
 All for Love (1677) – a tragedy modelled after Shakespeare’s Antony and
Cleopatra—marks Dryden’s abandonment of rhymed verse and return to a more
traditional verse form for drama, blank verse, but also his entry into a new
period, that of Neoclassicism. This is visible in the careful construction of the
play, the natural development of plot and character, and in the avoidance of
bombast or artifice.

It was also in this first part of his career that he wrote most of his critical work,
in the form of essays and prefaces to plays. The best known example of his critical work
is an essay he wrote during the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, while he was

for any sacrifice in the name of love, very much like in the tradition of mediaeval romances. The public
loved the bombast, the drama, the stage duels, the ranting, the extravagance in speech, behaviour and
costumes, the dynamism of these plays.

© Veronica Popescu
in the countryside, waiting for theatres to reopen. In Of Dramatick Poesie: An Essay
(1668), Dryden discusses all major aspects of drama that constituted topics for heated
debates in the literary circles at the time. That is why Dryden chooses the form of a
dialogue between four friends, each having a different opinion on the course to be taken Page | 35
by contemporary English dramatists, a very elegant manner of presenting different
views without openly taking sides. The young men discussing English drama—past and
present—are:
- Crites (Sir Robert Howard) —promoter of the ancients as true models
of artistic achievement through the establishment of dramatic unities
(action, space, time) and an imitation of life in their drama; the English
playwright that comes closest to the ancients: Ben Jonson
- Eugenius (Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst or Sir William Davenant)
—defender of the moderns as surpassing the ancients from whom they
learned what was to be learned and whose art they perfected10
- Lisideius (Charles Sedley) —claims that French drama is superior to
English drama and insists on the respect the French have for the dramatic
unities and purity of genre, as well as their use of a polished, elegant
style and of rhymed verse, bringing French drama closer to perfection
- Neander (Dryden himself) —a defender of native tradition, he accepts
that the French have reached a high level of artistic accomplishment
through the careful construction of their plays, their concern for order
and balance, their elegance of style, but defends the mixture of genres
(tragicomedy, for instance) as a more realistic reflection of life and
human nature, and he praises the great dramatists of the early 17th
century, Beaumont and Fletcher, but above all he seems to most admire
Shakespeare, whom he compares to Homer, 11 suggesting that he was a

10
The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, a hot debate in the literary circles of Paris in the last
decades of the 17th century, was immediately imported in England, some of the greatest literary minds at
the time (including Swift) being interested in the topic.
11
This is a relevant sample of Dryden’s literary criticism, from a longer passage on Shakespeare and Ben
Johnson in Of Dramatick Poesie: “To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern,
and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of Nature
were still present to him and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing,
you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater

© Veronica Popescu
 true genius. Interestingly enough, though he seems to defend blank
verse, Dryden continued to use rhyme for his own drama until 1672,
when he wrote his tragedy All for Love, where the influence of
Shakespeare seems most evident. (He had also rewritten Shakespeare’s Page | 36
two other plays for the Restoration stage, The Tempest in 1667 and
Troilus and Cressida in 1679).

What is interesting about this essay on drama is the fact that Dryden attempts to
keep a balance between opposing views, allowing his characters to present their views
with arguments and providing examples from the works that they considered best
illustrations of good drama, and although by giving Neander the last word he
manipulates the reader into accepting his point of view as being more convincing, the
text is remarkably balanced and denotes a good understanding of the Platonic model
for the presentation of opposing views and, why not, perhaps Dryden’s own hesitation
between these different ways of addressing key issues at the heart of an art that was
trying to reinvent itself after almost two decades of absence from the English literary
scene.

Dryden’s satires
Some of his best work, however, and the texts for which he is still appreciated as the
greatest writer of his time came in the form of satirical poems, written in the early
1680s. He wrote three political satires that showed not only his gift for irony and his
wonderful sense of humour, but also a good understanding of human nature and the
corrupting influence of power. His greatest achievements from this later period of his

commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he
looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him
injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit
degenerating into clenches [puns], his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some
occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then
raise himself as high above the rest of poets. … If I would compare Jonson 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.” (80; emphasis mine)

© Veronica Popescu
career are: Absalom and Achitophel (I, 1681; II, 1682), The Medall (1682), and
MacFlecknoe (1682).
A Tory and a defender of James, Charles II’s brother, as rightful heir to the
throne, Dryden felt the need to get involved in politics in 1681, when the Earl of Page | 37
Shaftesbury and the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate Protestant son, with
the support of the Whigs, tried to plot against James, the Duke of York and the rightful
heir to the throne. This was later known as the Exclusion Crisis (1679-1681), and it was
triggered by accusations made by a certain Titus Oates, regarding a popish plot that
menaced the life of Charles II and the Protestant future of England, the implication
being that the Catholic James was part of that plot. The aim of the entire operation, in
which the Earl of Shaftesbury played a major part, was to destroy James’s public image
to ensure that he would not be accepted as Charles II’s successor. The king managed
to outsmart the plotters and accused Shaftesbury of treason and imprisoned him.
It was in this context that Dryden wrote the first part of his Absalom and
Achitophel (1681, a week before Shaftesbury’s trial), which he continued with a second
part the following year. This is considered to be the greatest political satire in verse in
the English language. It is an allegorical treatment of the political events (the Exclusion
Crisis) of that time, the main source of inspiration for the poet being the Old Testament
story of King David (Charles II), Absalom, his favourite son (Monmouth) and the
deceiving and conniving Achitophel (Shaftesbury), who persuaded Absalom to rise
against his father, a story told in the second book of Samuel. The value of the poem
lies not so much in its political impact, as in the appropriate use of heroic style, the
brilliancy of diction12 and versification.
The following political satire, The Medall (1682), was occasioned by a rather
surprising turn of events at the trial of Shaftesbury. Having the support of the Whigs
the whole time, Shaftesbury was eventually released from prison as the accusation of
treason was deemed unfounded by the grand jury, and a medal with the effigy of
Shaftesbury was made on that occasion to mark the success of the Whigs. In response
to that Dryden wrote a virulent attack against the Whig party in poetic form (The

12
Diction is a term referring to the choice and use of words and phrases, in speech or writing; it was
believed that each genre had an appropriate diction and it was a breech of the rules of good writing to
use improper words or phrases in a certain type of text.

© Veronica Popescu
Medall), preceded by “Epistle to the Whigs”, an explanatory prose text to clarify the
aim of the poem.
The following satire, MacFlecknoe (1682) was not political but literary in
nature, and some literary historians claim it was published anonymously because it was
Page | 38
a response to Thomas Shadwell’s literary attack on his The Medall earlier that year. It
is not certain if that is the case, but it is well known that Dryden’s lampoon13 had been
written some four years earlier, in 1678, and that Dryden did not take public
responsibility for the text after it was published. Dryden and Shadwell had been friends
in the early days but in time their political views and their opinions on literary matters
made them become enemies, and this enmity was expressed in their writing in the form
of direct or indirect attacks. Shadwell is here presented as a dunce (someone stupid or
slow at learning things), incapable of making any judicious comment on drama
(particularly Ben Jonson, considered by Dryden to lack wit, yet much admired by
Shadwell). Here Dryden managed to criticise Shadwell with such literary mastery and
so convincingly, that his career as a dramatist and literary critic was seriously affected
by this satirical text, which is considered the first important mock-heroic poem in
English, a model for Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad.
Considered by some one of his greatest poetical achievements, The Hind and
the Panther: A Poem, In Three Parts (1687) is most certainly the work of a great poet
attempting to expose his religious views in allegorical form in a poem of impressive
length (2,600 lines – his longest), written in heroic verse. Controversial for many due
to the use of a beast fable to talk about religious issues, the poem is divided into three
parts. Part I is a presentation of all major Christian denominations, where the Catholic
Church is “A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged”, the Anglican Church appears
as a panther, the Independents as a bear, the Presbyterians as a wolf, the Quakers as a
hare, the Freethinkers as an ape. In Part II, Dryden speaks of church authority and the
issue of transubstantiation (the church doctrine that says that the substance of the bread
and the wine used during the sacrament of the Eucharist is changed into the Body and
Blood of Christ, and this change is real, not just symbolic). Part III voices a call for
unity between the Anglican and the Catholic Churches against all forms of
Nonconformists

13
Public criticism by using irony, sarcasm or ridicule

© Veronica Popescu
 Some of his contemporaries and later literary historians accused him of
inconstancy in political and religious views, however, as far as religion is concerned,
his conversion to Catholicism seemed honest and survived the departure of James II
from England, and he had more to lose than to gain by remaining a Catholic during the Page | 39
reign of William and Mary, so perhaps his critics were too harsh.
After the publication of The Hind, Dryden tried to return to the theatre, yet his
plays were no longer successful, so in the 1680s and 90s Dryden supervised poetical
miscellanies and translated the works of Juvenal and Persius. In 1692 he published
Eleonora, a long memorial poem by the husband of the Countess of Abingdon. But his
great late work was his complete translation of Virgil, contracted by Tonson in 1694
and published in 1697. Dryden was a respected man of letters and was often seen at
Will’s Coffee-House in the company of younger writers. His last work for publisher
John Tonson was Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), which were mainly verse
adaptations from the works of Ovid, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Giovanni Boccaccio, with
a critical preface. He died in 1700 and was buried in Westminster Abbey in the Poets’
Corner, next to Geoffrey Chaucer and Abraham Cowley.
His legacy to the English poets of his time and in the subsequent decades was
his eloquence, his skilful use of the rhymed couplet, especially the heroic couplet,14 his
ability to control tone, his dignified, unaffected, precise style and his use of poetic
diction—all features of Neoclassicism that were to set an example to later poets, like
Alexander Pope.

14
The heroic couplet is a form of verse consisting of a rhyming couplet where each line is an iambic
pentameter. This type of verse was to be perfected by Alexander Pope in the first decades of the 18th
century.

© Veronica Popescu
Restoration theatre

The Restoration Period is a time when English theatre is revived but also reinvented.
After 18 years of no public performances and no new material being written (with the Page | 40
exception of morally acceptable texts such as Milton’s masques, discussed earlier,
which were performed in private homes), the English stage had to be reformed under
the powerful influence of French theatre (Racine and Molière being the strongest
influences at the time), where classicism was already manifest. Theatres finally became
respectable, the main theatres (of Drury Lane and of Dorset Gardens) being frequented
primarily by the monarch and the aristocrats, for whom a new, more refined drama had
to be written. The very experience of going to the theatre changed from going to “hear”
a play, as in Shakespeare’s time, when the stage was bare and the text alone created the
fictional universe of the dramatic text, to going to “watch” a play on a stage that stood
out with its beautifully adorned proscenium arch and an impressive stage machinery
(moving scenery). What is more, one went to the theatre to watch a play, but also to be
seen, the theatre becoming the staging for a complex network of social relationships
including illicit love affairs and political scheming.
There were several drama genres that the audiences enjoyed in the last decades
of the 17th century: adaptations of early 17th-century plays (Shakespeare adaptations are
quite common, but also plays by Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher); heroic tragedies
(with romance influences, full of bombast and artifice), the type of plays that
contributed to Dryden’s fame as a playwright; and comedies, which were of various
types: of humours15 (in the tradition of Ben Jonson); of intrigue (or of situation)—
relying on an intricate plot (oftentimes with subplots), with many ridiculous and
contrived situations—in the manner of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors or Molière’s
Le Médecin malgré lui; and the type of comedy that appeared in England after 1660,
under the influence of French drama, the comedy of manners (modelled after
Molière’s comedies of manners), which was to remain a popular genre throughout the
18th century.

15
Humour means “liquid” [umoare]. There are four humours in the human body: blood, phlegm, yellow
bile (choler) and black bile (melancholy), which were believed to influence a person’s health of body
and mind, and which dramatists used as a defining characteristic for their comic characters.

© Veronica Popescu
 Restoration theatre is also remembered for allowing women to play a more
important part both on stage, and backstage. Charles II, at the insistence of his mistress,
Nell Gwyn, permitted women to play women’s parts on stage, invoking the French,
who had done that some time before. The presence of women on stage also influenced
Page | 41
the writing and the enjoyment of plays: playwrights could finally introduce more
sexually suggestive scenarios and dialogue filled with sexual innuendoes, and the
audience was allowed to experience a kind of sexual tension in the characters presented
on stage that made the performances a lot more exciting and more attuned to the
contemporary hedonism and the taste for scandal and gossip. On the other hand, it is
also during the Restoration Period that we see women as professional playwrights, the
first being Mrs Aphra Behn (1640-1689), whose plays were quite successful, in spite
of continuous attacks from fellow male dramatists and from the literary critics of the
time. Other playwrights that took Behn’s example and had their plays performed in the
last decades of the 17th century and the first of the 18th century were: Katherine Phillips,
Catherine Trotter, Delarivier Manley, Mary Pix, and Susannah Centlivre.

Aphra Behn as the first professional dramatist in England

As far as Aphra Behn is concerned, the biographical details are sketchy and not very
reliable, but even her contemporaries showed a great interest in her past. It is known
that Aphra Behn had a humble background (her father was a barber and her mother a
wet nurse, which gave her access, later on, to a
number of influential people who may have
contributed to her role as a spy in the Netherlands),
she did live in Surinam for a few years (as her
popular novel Oroonoko states), she was married
briefly (to Johan Behn, a man of Dutch or German
origin), and she spent a few years in Holland as a spy, but returned to England in 1667,
impoverished and desperate to find a means to earn a living. This is when she started
her dramatic career, first to pay her debts and then as a professional writer in the true
sense of the word, some of her plays being quite successful, even in the 1670s.
Her first play was performed in 1670, by the Duke’s Company (at William
Davenant’s theatre in Drury Lane), and it was a tragicomedy entitled The Forc’d
Marriage, which was relatively successful. There followed other plays performed at the

© Veronica Popescu
same theatre and then published: The Amorous Prince (1671), The Dutch Lover (1673),
both tragicomedies and both apparently not taken very seriously by the wits of the time,
among whom the Duke of Buckingham, who mocked her first two plays in The
Rehearsal, a satirical play (Salzman 202). She continued to write, and her next play was
Page | 42
a “sexual comedy,” (202) which revealed both her boldness as a writer, and her
willingness to carve a place for herself on the literary scene of her time, claiming a right
to express herself and to exist as a female alternative. Her most popular comedies were
The Town Fop (1676) and her most successful play, The Rover (1677), followed by an
even greater literary achievement, though not much of a success with the public, The
Patient Fancy (1678). By this time, Mrs Behn’s reputation as a dramatist, but also as a
vile, immoral woman had been established. Following the failure of her play The
Feign’d Curtizans, Behn began working in other genres, especially literary translation,
poetry, and then prose. Dryden most certainly appreciated her skill as a literary
translator. She continued to write for the stage and had a number of plays performed,
but her open support of the Tory cause during the Exclusion Crisis, reflected in plays
like The Roundheads, and The City Heiress (the latter of which was quite a successful
comedy of manners in 1682), exposed her to attacks by other writers, especially in
satires focusing on the sexually explicit nature of her comedies.

The Restoration comedy of manners

Although John Dryden (Marriage a la Mode [1672]), and Mrs Behn (The City Heiress
[1682]) both experimented with this new genre, the names that continue to be most
associated with the Restoration comedy of manners are: Sir George Etheridge (The
Comical Revenge [1664], She Would if She Could [1668], The Man of Mode [1676]);
William Wycherley (The Country Wife [1675], The Plain Dealer [1676]; John
Vanbrugh (The Relapse [1696], The Provoked Wife [1697]; and William Congreve
(The Old Bachelor [1693], The Double Dealer [1694], Love for Love [1695], The Way
of the World [1700]).
In very simple terms, the comedy of manners is a subgenre of the comedy genre,
appearing during the Restoration Period as a consequence of a change in the make-up
and tastes of the audience attending performances in the two licensed theatres, namely
the aristocrats. The focus of the genre is on the life, customs, interests and manners
of aristocracy, presented in a light-hearted manner, yet also with subversive (subtle)

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comments on the hypocrisy, carelessness, superficiality, cynicism and even moral
corruption of the representatives of the upper class. It is a high comedy genre due to its
sophisticated wit16 and the literary qualities of the text.
The plays shared a number of common themes, of great interest to the audiences Page | 43
of the time:
• the battle of the sexes (sex is tempting and cleverly written in the text and action
of the plays);
• love and marriage (which for aristocrats was primarily a social contract), the
general conclusion being that love can only exist outside marriage;
• the contrast between appearance and nature (with reputation and adultery as
subordinate themes).
The comedy of manners relied on a number of stock characters, the most typical being:
the rake (the libertine) and the reformed rake; the fop (an effeminate male); the
countryside squire (always a fool type); the would-be-wits (fool types, as well); the
coquette (a beautiful, young, flirtatious woman), with its foolish counterparts, the old
coquette, or the lustful widow. Last but not least, these plays also feature the woman
of the world who, in plays like William Congreve’s The Way of the World (ironically
his most accomplished play and the least successful one with the public), in the person
of Mrs Millamant, takes the reader by surprise with her complexity and her overtly
feminist character, making her a respected (not only loved) partner for the equally
interesting reformed rake Mr Mirabell, demonstrating together that true love is possible
even in a world that has replaced love with lust and has taken it out of the reality of
marriage.
One of the greatest literary strengths of the comedy of manners, apart from
providing audiences with a form of mild satire, announcing the growing interest in
satire the following century, was their style. They relied on the use of quick repartee (a
French term for exchanges between characters), making dialogues seem like fencing
matches. Dialogue was often witty and flamboyant, the language elegant, with many
references to fashionable literary texts and even words and phrases in French, reflecting

16
In a mid-17th-century context, wit meant not only intelligence, but also ingenuity and humour,
reflected in wordplay, use of irony and sarcasm; it was a highly valued quality of the sophisticated men
and women at the court and of Restoration comedy protagonists.

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the linguistic decorum of the elegant salons of London palaces and mansions. These
plays played an important part in the refinement and improvement of the English
language, and they also showed a clear preference for qualities that we generally
associate with neoclassical literature, namely a care for decorum, elegance of
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expression, and a reliance on wit (reflected in the use of humour, irony, sarcasm, and
double entendre) as a reflection of the intellectual sophistication of both the playwright
and the characters.

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Restoration prose

Restoration prose was influenced by the Scientific Revolution which had begun in
Europe and in England in the 17th century, the most obvious influence being in style, as
many prose writers showed a preference for a “scholarly” style, such as was used in the Page | 45
most prestigious scientific publication of the Restoration Period, Philosophical
Transactions (established in 1665). The general trend in Restoration thought,
announcing the Age of Enlightenment, was to inquire and search for answers to a
number of questions related to the laws of nature, of the universe, human existence and
man’s relationship to the surrounding world, which constituted a great departure from
the earlier reliance strictly on religion for answers to all questions and a wide spread
dependence on superstitions, especially among the less educated. This shift in thought
led to the appearance of publications that testify a greater interest in a rational inquiry
of all aspects of human existence and a relative freedom of expression (in contrast with
the heavy moralising tone of Puritan writing during the Interregnum), and a preference
for a prose style that is simple, direct and clear, opposing the style preferred by the
Metaphysical Poets just a few decades earlier.

Autobiographies and diaries

From the middle of the 17th century there was a rise in autobiographical writing
associated by some critics with a stronger bourgeois individualism (the middle class
is clearly emerging as a major social class at this time) and an interest in self-
exploration and personal experience. As Andrew Sanders points out (242), the trend
in self-writing and individual consciousness is not confined to the middle class, an
example being A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life (1656) by Margaret
Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-73), a member of the aristocracy who lived
and published some of her works in exile. “Contemporary diarists and
autobiographers,” Sanders writes, “seek to catalogue examples of divine providence, to
count personal blessings, and even to present their financial accounts for God’s
scrutiny. Others recognize a pressing necessity to demonstrate the working-out of
divine purpose in private and public history, either to prove the nature of new
beginnings or to find some immanent end of time.” (242)
Not all the prose texts written in the second half of the 17th century were also
published. In fact, there was a plethora of texts that circulated in manuscript, many of

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which were written by women: spiritual autobiographies (sectarians’ diaries filled
with personal accounts of spiritual discovery, meditations, prophecies, such as Anne
Bathurst’s 1679-1696 diary), or books of prayer and texts on the need to educate
women (mostly written by Quaker women), and mothers’ advice books, all reflecting
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a genuine desire to share personal experience and knowledge and to instruct.
Two of the most important diarists of the Restoration Period are Samuel Pepys
(1633-1703) and John Evelyn (1620-1706). The former wrote a secret diary between
1660 and 1669, documenting not only his social evolution working in various offices
for King Charles II’s government, but, more importantly, most of the important
historical events (including the coronation of Charles II and the political changes the
restoration of monarchy entailed, the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666), the
parliamentary intrigues and gossip, the changes in morals, manners and lifestyle that he
and his family as well as the people he came in contact with underwent in the early
years of Restoration, as well as giving detailed accounts of his marital life and extra-
marital affairs, his expenses, food and clothing choices, study practices and interest in
all new developments in science and philosophy. What is more, as an active theatre
spectator, Pepys includes his personal opinions on the theatrical productions and actors’
performances, showing a clear preference for Ben Jonson and not Shakespeare (A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed in 1662, being described as “the most insipid
ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life”), although both Macbeth and Hamlet seem
to be very much to his taste.
Pepys’ Diary was for the first time transcribed and published in 1825—a
censored version removing all material that was considered offensive or
objectionable—the full version being published as late as 1970-83. Written in shorthand
and clearly not meant for publication, it is an example of Restoration prose in that it is
written in plain English and in a straightforward manner, and it clearly shows a zest for
life and an intellectual effervescence that are typically associated with the spirit of the
time. It is also licentious, which makes it a reflection of a certain distancing from the
kind of Puritan morality that had been dominant just a decade earlier.
In contrast, The Diary of John Evelyn (discovered in 1813 and published in
1818) is more pious and reserved, focusing on the recording of public events and
comments on the “high culture and scientific enterprise of the period” (Sanders 245).
Interestingly enough, his diary covers a period (1620-1706) which he could not possibly
remember, the writer choosing to begin the record of his life from the year of his birth.

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The text is, therefore, a mixture of personal and national history for which he most
likely relied on other historical records and on family stories. Only the period from
1684 onwards is a contemporary diary. On the whole, Evelyn appears as a great admirer
of European Renaissance art, which he came to experience first-hand in his grand tour
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of Europe as a young man, during the Civil War, a preference for the “ordered regularity
of the classical style,” (Sanders 245)17 and he is an enthusiastic admirer of
contemporary scientists whose discoveries and advances in fields like medicine,
mathematics, physics, etc. are carefully documented and praised. Moreover, like many
of his contemporaries, Evelyn is an admirer of Francis Bacon, the early 17 th-century
philosopher who is considered one of the predecessors of the philosophers of the Age
of Reason or Enlightenment, displaying a similar interest in rational clarity and
empiricist attitude to knowledge (noticeable in the writings of Isaac Newton and John
Locke, “The Father of Empiricism” as well).

Religious prose

As far as religious writing is considered, there are many religious tracts written and
published soon after the publication, in 1662, of the Declaration of Breda (which
Charles II had signed during the Civil War to secure help from the Scottish aristocracy,
and which secured freedom of religion), most of the texts written at the time showing a
rise in radicalism and mirroring the religious factions in Restoration England. There are
voices calling for some degree of tolerance (including John Dryden’s The Hind and the
Panther), yet complete tolerance of other Christian denominations seemed too
revolutionary an idea to be embraced by all.
One of the most interesting contributions to religious writing in the Restoration
period is that of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to That which
is to come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream Wherein is Discovered The
manner of his setting out, His Dangerous Journey; And safe Arrival at the Desired
Country (1678, Part II, 1684). It is his greatest and most influential work, giving
allegorical form to his own journey to spiritual awakening and conversion, already
described in his autobiographical Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: Or a Brief
and Faithful Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ, to his poor Servant

17
In that sense he seems attuned to a contemporary move towards the classical style in all arts, a feature
of emerging Neoclassicism.

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(1666). Both texts are testimonies to Puritan thought and attitudes to life, the world (and
its temptations) and to God, preaching a life of renunciation, of suffering in dignity and
with faith in God’s mercy and divine help.
In the first part of The Pilgrim’s Progress he tells the story of a man referred to
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as Christian throughout the book, although this is an acquired name, after his vision of
an approaching destruction of his city, called The City of Destruction, because of the
sinfulness of its inhabitants, and his encounter with Evangelist. He is advised and
encouraged by Evangelist to begin a journey to the Celestial City atop Mt. Zion
(Heaven), where he will find salvation. He is tempted by the devil and his helpers—
some being monsters, others like Obstinate and Pliable, Worldly Wiseman, Mr Legality
and Civility, Mistrust, Timorous or the inhabitants of Vanity Fair city being men whose
ties with this world or with the forces of evil make them enemies to Christian and his
friend Faithful, who try to free themselves from a world of sin and find deliverance in
God’s world.
The text presents man’s spiritual awakening allegorically as a journey with
many obstacles and apparently insurmountable difficulties, as a process that takes time
and requires great commitment. Most of Christian’s neighbours laugh at him for having
decided to leave his wife and four children—unconvinced of the truth of his dream and
his faith in his salvation only in the Celestial City—and some even try to prevent him
from going. Yet the burden on his back—undoubtedly the burden of his sins—proves
too heavy to bear and Christian is convinced that only Christ can release him of his
burden and offer him true salvation, so he decides to leave alone, hoping that he will
have the strength to reach his destination.
On his journey he goes through places with suggestive names: Slough of
Despond (“swamp of despair”), the village of Morality (ironically a place that is ruled
not by God’s but by man’s law, and hence an obstacle that Christian must overcome),
the Wicket Gate which allows entry on the King’s Highway (the road to Christ, who
appears here as the gate-keeper Good Will), the House of the Interpreter, where, in the
form of tableaux, Christian is shown various aspects of life meant to strengthen his
determination to continue his journey, the cross of Calvary—where he sees Christ on
the cross and His sepulchre, being immediately relieved of his burden for correctly
interpreting what he sees, and then being greeted by three “shining ones” (angels) who
rid him of his rags, clothe him in a beautiful white garment and offer him a scroll that
will help him enter the Celestial City (Christian baptism), then he goes up the Hill of

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Difficulty, and then spends the night at the Palace Beautiful (where he meets Prudence,
Piety and Charity, who will walk him through the Valley of Humiliation), then walks
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where he manages to defeat a devilish
creature, and then he is stopped in the town Vanity Fair where his friend and companion
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Faith is tried for condemning the inhabitants of the town for their evil ways and then he
is killed, being immediately lifted to heaven, and finally Christian will make it to
Delectable Mountains, right before reaching the Land of Beulah and the River of Death,
the last obstacles to overcome, with the help of Hopeful, before reaching the Celestial
City.
Part Two of Pilgrim’s Progress describes the similar journey of Christiana,
Christian’s wife, accompanied by their sons and Great-heart and Mercy. She is inspired
by the example offered by her husband’s spiritual victory, which she now tries to
achieve herself for her and the children. Both parts recommend an individual search for
spiritual illumination and much inner strength and faith to allow this journey to lead to
salvation. The book was very popular for the next century or so, especially among those
with little or no formal education, being, next to the Bible, one of the most influential
books for Puritan communities in England. The book is a pleasant reading, highly
imaginative and even entertaining, although its moralising purpose is very clear.
Compared to other texts by Bunyan, it is better written and more entertaining, having a
stronger literary quality than his other writings.

Aphra Behn and the tradition of amatory fiction in the English language

A very interesting aspect of the period is also the appearance of the first professional
female writer, one of the first and most prolific being Aphra Behn, known particularly
as a dramatist (not a very good one, unfortunately, but certainly a very active presence
in the theatre world of the Restoration age as shown in a previous chapter), but also as
a poet, translator and prose writer. Although she wrote fiction mostly for “easy domestic
consumption” (Sanders 267), she is generally regarded as an important literary figure
for setting the stage for the subsequent women writers and for offering audiences a type
of literature (whether in the form of drama, poetry or prose) for which there was a wider
audience than the male authors of the time were willing to accept: transgressive, bold,
and unashamedly sensual.

© Veronica Popescu
 Behn started her career as a prose writer in 1684, with the publication of an
instantly successful epistolary prose text that used as source material a current scandal
that her contemporaries immediately recognised, a scandal caused by Lord Grey’s
elopement with his sister-in-law, made even more interesting to Behn’s readers by
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Grey’s support of the Duke of Monmouth during the Exclusion Crisis just a few years
before. Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684), is a roman a clèf, a
novel with easily recognizable characters and events, in spite of the changes in setting
and character names, and it was published anonymously. It was followed by two
sequels, one in 1685 and the last in 1687. By 1765, this novel already had 8 editions—
a clear sign of its popularity—yet Behn did not live long enough to benefit from the
success of her work.
Before her death in 1689 she did, however, manage to publish the prose work
that was to consolidate her reputation as a significant female writer of early modernity,
Oroonoko: Or, the Royal Slave. A true history (1688), a novel that is still read and
taught today, and which was dramatised by Thomas Southerne, who expressed his
admiration of Behn as a dramatist in the dedication to his play, based on Oroonoko:
“She had a great Command of the Stage; and I have often wonder’d that she should
bury her Favourite Hero in a Novel, when she might have reviv’d him in the Scene.”
(qtd. in Salzman 210)
The novel continues to interest scholars for a number of reasons: its anti-slavery
stance, revealing the darker side of colonial life and providing an emotional depiction
of human exploitation and inhumane treatment of slaves in the English overseas
colonies, which was to make it even more popular with abolitionists during the 18 th and
19th century; its exoticism, having late 17th-century West Africa and Surinam as
settings; its narrative perspective, with a first-person female narrator; and the
supposedly autobiographical nature of the novel, later revealed to have been only a
writer’s strategy to give the account and its author credibility.
This short novel began the noble savage tradition in English fiction, drawing an
emotional portrait of the hardships and humiliations of the West African Prince
Oroonoko—noble not only in origin, but also in manners and sense of honour—and of
his beloved Imoinda, both choosing death over a life-long humiliation as slaves, when
given the opportunity to make that choice. Behn also produced a number of other pieces
of prose fiction, all collected posthumously in 1700 in the volume Histories, Novels,
and Translations, which helped preserve her literary work for later reconsideration,

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especially in the 20th century. Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own, gave Aphra
Behn credit for having the courage to expose herself through writing, carving a place
for herself and for other female writers in a literary context in which women were
seldom allowed opportunities to express themselves: “All women together ought to let
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flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is, most scandalously but rather
appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak
their minds.” (77)
***
Other forms of prose in the final decades of the 17 th century were essays on
literary topics (see, for instance Dryden’s Of Dramatick Poesie: An Essay, or the
prefaces to his plays), scientific and philosophical tracts, written mostly in a clear,
utilitarian style that was to influence the prose style of the early 18 th-century writers
(Defoe and Swift among others). During the Restoration Period histories—both private
and public—show a clear interest in recording the amazing changes in the culture and
society of Restoration England and displaying a certain trust in a great future to come
as a result of all changes in politics, society and science, marking the spirit of the age
as one of great inquisitiveness, thirst for knowledge, trust in reason and man’s ability
to progress and achieve great things. It is obvious by the end of the 1600s that the spirit
of Enlightenment is here.

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The Augustan Age (1700-1745/50) as the height of Neoclassicism

The spirit of the age

The spirit of Enlightenment (also called the Age of Reason) is a consequence not only
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of the continental scientific revolution, but also of the contribution to the advancement
of knowledge in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and political and religious thought of
several great thinkers of the 17th century, among whom the rationalists René Descartes,
Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (who also had empiricist ideas), and
Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke and later David Hume in Britain. All
these great thinkers, though differing in their opinions on the best method of inquiry or
their attitude to knowledge and the way in which it can be reached, shared a common
belief in the power of human reason to comprehend and explain the laws of nature, the
working of the universe and man’s place in the world and his relationship to it and to
God, a belief in the necessity for free thought and free speech, and in experiential
knowledge (English Empiricism). Isaac Newton’s theory of the intelligibility of Nature
and its laws and his trust in the human mind to make sense of the surrounding universe
was embraced by late 17th and 18th-century Deist thinkers, who believed that a careful
assessment and understanding of the natural scheme of things was possible.
Deism was probably the most important development in religious thought of
this century, being described as a natural religion (i.e. based on the belief in a God of
nature), which shifted emphasis from the Church and its teachings about the divinity of
Christ or the unquestionable divine nature of the biblical texts to a rational and objective
study of nature as divine creation and as being governed by a set of established laws,
so the Creator has no reason to further intervene in our lives. Deism, whose basic
principles were formulated much earlier (in late 16th century), gained more supporters
throughout the 17th century and became, next to Calvinism and Puritanism, one of the
major forms of religion (though some argued that Deists were atheists) in late 17 th
century and the first half of the 18th century in Britain. However, so many theories
circulated at the time that no unitary doctrine can be formulated. It was, nevertheless,
one of the major influences of Enlightenment thought in Britain and in other European
countries (France and Germany, for instance) continuing to draw supporters with its
claim that man is not only endowed with reason, but capable of using this faculty to
discover and comprehend the surrounding world, which is why instruction is essential,

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and with its optimism regarding man’s ability to rise above any form of religious excess
or fanaticism.
A famous deist of the age, and a noteworthy Enlightenment thinker bridging the
17th and the 18th centuries was John Locke (1632-1704), whose philosophy—
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formulated in a series of texts, some focusing on politics and social relations, others on
man’s relationship to the surrounding world and on human knowledge—contributed
not only to the popularisation of the tenets of Deism, but also of what came to be termed
Empiricism. One of his most influential texts is Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690), which exerted a great influence on the intellectuals of that time,
in good part through the epistemological rigor that it displays. Locke examined human
understanding in order to determine the limits of human knowledge. For Locke the
source of all our ideas, the ideas out of which human knowledge is constructed, is in
the senses; ideas, he claimed, are not innate. Locke’s epistemology, which expressed
the basic principles of Empiricism, also contributed to the appearance of psychology as
a distinct branch of the study of human thought in the centuries to come. He and Newton
both continued the work of Francis Bacon in turning Empiricism into a respectable
school of thought that was met with great enthusiasm in Britain, particularly as English
culture was very much prepared to embrace the spirit of the age, of Enlightenment in
the final decades of the 17th century.

Augustan literature

The term Augustan Age is sometimes preferred when discussing the first half of the
18th century in Britain, a period that should be regarded as the height of British
Neoclassicism and a period when the Enlightenment (from the French term siècle des
Lumières, or “century of lights”) is already fully fledged. The name used to refer to the
first four, even five decades of the century was inspired by the name given to the reign
of Emperor Augustus of Rome (27 BC- 14 AD), when Horace, Virgil and Ovid (main
models for neoclassical writers lived), suggesting a period of equally great literature.
There are several great literary minds associated with this period: Alexander Pope and
Jonathan Swift, for poetry and satire, respectively, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele,
who gave journalism an unprecedented cultural significance, and Daniel Defoe, whose
name is generally associated with the first significant modern novels in the English

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language, but who was even better known in his lifetime for his career as a journalist
and pamphleteer.
Although many of the writers of the time could hardly be considered men of
genius, great writers to inspire future generations, they most certainly contributed to the Page | 54
development of satirical writing in English and to the rise of the novel as an increasingly
popular prose genre, whose Augustan main representative, Daniel Defoe, demonstrated
that literature could be intelligent, instructive and enjoyable without being
sophisticated, obscure, artificially contrived and addressed only to educated readers.
The beginning of British Neoclassicism is oftentimes associated with John
Dryden, whose preoccupation for rules, order, moderation, decorum,18 civility and
wit is generally considered to be characteristic of a neoclassical writer. Regardless of
the differences between one decade and another, the Augustan Age and most of the 18th
century will remain known as a period of common sense, propriety, good taste and
polish, whether in arts, manners or sensibility. This is also a period in which drama and
poetry—though still popular with writers and the public—are gradually replaced by
prose in impact and degree of innovation, to the extent that the 1740s, the final decade
of the period, belongs more to the novelists Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding,
who also mark the genre’s entry into a period that feels less Augustan and more pre-
Romantic in its sentimental vein, as we will see in a later chapter.
Much of the poetry of the Augustan Age imitates the classical models, the forms
preferred being the ode, the pastoral, the elegy and the ballad (the last being of medieval
origin), and the mock-heroic or satirical poem—made extremely popular by Alexander
Pope and Jonathan Swift. The poets excelled in wit, clarity of expression and
correctness of rhyming or rhythmic patterns,19 but their greatest quality was their
craftsmanship, not their genius. These qualities were to remain highly important
throughout the first half of the 18th century.
Some of the most important features of neoclassical literature are its didactic
nature, its moralising tone and entertaining yet reformative purpose. Whether in

18
Decorum is a term used to describe literary or dramatic propriety, or fitness of style and language to
the literary subject, which is an important feature of neoclassical literature.
19
One of the most popular forms of verse at this time is the heroic couplet, which Pope refined almost
to perfection. That is why, when some literary historians talk about Augustan poetry, they call the period
the Age of Pope, highlighting the fact that he was the quintessential Augustan poet.

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prose or verse essays, mock-heroic poems, pamphlets, lampoons, editorials or novels,
writers take it upon themselves to instruct by exposing and ridiculing, by commenting
on their contemporaries’ hypocrisy, ignorance, superficiality, affectation, moral or
political corruption, pretentiousness, arrogance, while at the same time offering them
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the opportunity to be amused, entertained, challenged in a variety of literary genres now
increasingly available to wide audiences owing to the appearance of weekly and daily
news publications (periodicals and newspapers) and to the development of publishing
houses ready to supply an increasing demand for instructive published materials to
aristocrats and middle class readers alike.
As M.H. Abrams explains in A Glossary of Literary Terms (175-76), one of the
texts where the features of Neoclassicism and, implicitly, Augustan literature, are best
formulated is Pope’s An Essay on Criticism (1711). The key five features that are
formulated there could be reformulated as follows:
1. Traditionalism and rejection of radical innovation, connected with the writers’
preference for the classical models of ancient Greek and Roman writers,
“classic” being the word used to refer to a work that has set a standard of
excellence and presents itself as a model to subsequent works, being part of the
literary canon (hence the names “neoclassic” or “neoclassical”)
2. Art is craft and not the work of a natural genius (though geniuses are much
appreciated as well, as both Dryden and Pope demonstrated) and as a craft it can
be mastered through discipline and dedication. The craftsman’s ideal,
formulated by Horace in his Ars Poetica (c. 18 B.C.), is characterised by finish,
correction and attention to detail, as well as the use of a set of compositional
rules that have been tested and therefore ensure a particular effect on readers,
e.g. using the three unities in drama, fixed forms in poetry, and the use of
decorum.
3. Humanism—the primary subject matter of literature and the arts is the human
being, art being an imitation (mimesis) of human nature in its complexity and
variety of manifestations. Man’s existence, thoughts, concerns, feelings, tastes,
experiences—regarded as common to most humans (insistence on what is
shared by most rather than what is special or exceptional, which is what the
romantics will explore)—constitute the major source of inspiration for writers
of poetry, drama, essays, satires, pamphlets and, more recently, novels. It is,
however, the ordinary, the common, the unexceptional aspects of human

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 existence that constitute a source of inspiration for writers, the widely shared
belief being that “universal human agreement, everywhere and always, is the
best test of moral and religious truths, as well as of aesthetic values.”
4. Common sense should overrule any desire to transcend human limitations, in
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life or in art. Pope, like most philosophers of his time, believes in the flawed,
limited nature of the human being, whose only hope for happiness is to
understand his position within the chain of being correctly and to humbly accept
that position and not strive to go beyond the natural limits of the human race. In
literature this translated in the form of moderation, common sense and
acceptance of limitations of one’s freedom of composition, the willingness to
write within the conventions of a genre or literary form, and a preference for
genres that allowed them to imitate their classic masters without directly
competing with them in exactly the same genre (e.g. essays in verse or prose,
comedies of manners, or satires and mock-heroic poems).

These features continued to appear in the works of writers after the deaths of Pope or
Swift, even though the literary sensibility and overall mood of the decades following
the late 1740s, though the second half of the 18th century is characterised by the
coexistence of the spirit of Neoclassicism and pre-Romantic experimentation,
especially noticeable in the poetry of the “Graveyard Poets.”

Important changes in readership

In the 18th century, more and more people had access to some form of education, and
the spirit of the age encouraged instruction (and self-instruction), speculative reasoning,
commentary and dialogue. The essay, the editorial, the pamphlet, the lampoon, and
the satire (in verse, prose or dramatic form) were clearly preferred forms of expression
and favourite types of texts consumed by readers of all walks of life. Philosophy was
being made accessible to wider audiences, moral philosophy being integrated in all
literary genres and made explicit and easier to follow for the purpose of educating the
masses. A major role in that respect was to be played by the new publications in the
form of periodicals or daily journals, the first decade of the 18 th century marking the
rise of journalism, which was to be highly influential not only socially and politically,
but also in the prose style of the first major novels written during the Augustan Age and

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throughout the 18th and the 19th century, developing the readers’ interest in factual
information, precision of detail and a faithful representation of reality. Moreover,
Augustan Age readers were avid consumers of travel writings, history tracts, books on
law, medicine, mathematics and all natural sciences (gradually separating from each
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other), but also books on more practical topics such as marriage, children’s education,
trade, gardening, or architecture, topics that constituted favourite subjects for the editors
of the major publications of the time as well.
A large portion of 18th-century readership consisted of women readers, no
longer members of the upper classes alone, but also middle-class and lower-class
women who knew how to read and write and had (or found) time to read. Confined, as
many of them were, to their domestic sphere, many were drawn to texts that either
revealed to them worlds accessible only to overseas travellers, or the lives of people
with whom they could identify and whose lives were relevant and recognizable as based
on the reality they knew. It is no wonder that the novel became so popular in a relatively
short time, whether we are talking about the kind of amatory fiction of Aphra Behn,
Delarivier Manley, Eliza Haywood and others, or the novels of Daniel Defoe, Oliver
Goldsmith, and later Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding.

© Veronica Popescu
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) as the Augustan poet

The son of a linen merchant of Plough Court, London, Alexander Pope was afflicted
with Pott’s disease, a kind of tuberculosis which
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affected his bones, in his youth. This disease
prevented him from reaching a normal height
(1.37m) and gave him a crooked back. He attended
several (illegal) Catholic schools until the age of 12
(which is also when his health problems worsened),
when his family was forced to move out of London,
to the countryside, as the law forbid Catholics to
live within 10 miles of London. As a Catholic he
was not allowed to attend university either, so most
Figure 10 Alexander Pope, by Godfrey
Kneller of his education as a teenager and as a young man
was informal, Pope being a great autodidact,
learning from the masters of Greek, Latin and English literature, some of his favourites
being Homer (whose two epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey he was to translate
later), Horace, Juvenal, Virgil, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dryden. He had a sound
knowledge of ancient Greek, Latin, French and Italian, his (creative) translations of
Homer’s and Horace’s poems being quite appreciated at the time.
Though living most of his life in relative isolation, he had several influential
friends among whom Joseph Addison, with whom he collaborated on the latter’s play
Cato and by writing texts for his The Spectator and The Guardian, the poet and
dramatist John Gay, the satirist and poet Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot and Thomas
Parnell (with whom he formed the Scriblerus Club, 20 and he even had several female
friends, though he never married. He was one of the most respected poets of his time
and he managed to make a good living out of writing, his poetry and his essays (in prose
or in verse) being most influential during his lifetime.
The first published work of Alexander Pope was a collection of poems entitled
“Pastorals,” published in a volume entitled Poetical Miscellanies. In these pastoral

20
This was a satirical club whose role was to expose all forms of intellectual ignorance and pedantry.
Originally Gulliver’s Travels was a common literary project which could never be completed as initially
planned.

© Veronica Popescu
poems the master of Augustan poetry already demonstrates his literary skill, his clarity
and conciseness of expression, his mastery of rhyming patterns and ability to vary
rhymes and create musical effects, but also his interest in classical poetry, which he
seems eager to imitate.
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Pope’s Essay on Criticism (published in 1711 but probably finished by 1709) is
a remarkable text in that it continues the tradition of Restoration literary criticism (John
Dryden’s work, in particular) and also shows a clear dependence on Horace’s Ars
Poetica (c. 18 BC). Like his predecessors, the young poet’s intention is to affirm and
explain his position regarding the art of writing and the role of criticism, depicting
himself as both poet and critic. This essay in verse is part of the contemporary debate
between the defenders of the ancients and those of the moderns, Pope positing himself
on the side of those praising the ancient poets as true models of excellence for
contemporary poets. The poem has a clear personal aim, as Pope attempts to present
and justify his position within the literary world of his time, to voice his opinions on
matters of literary conventions, compositional norms and general critical principles
(which he regards as essential to a poet, aiding him in his work by providing guidance,
rather than criticism), yet for today’s reader it is also a very instructive reading, offering
us a critical presentation of the state of literature in Pope’s time, the major concerns of
neoclassical poets, the relationship between the poet and the critic (the bad and the
good), and the literary quarrels of his time, the most important being the one between
the ancients and the moderns.
Written in the heroic couplet, a form of versification that was relatively new at
the time and which Pope turned into a fashionable verse-form, perfected by him in
subsequent poems, the poem is a good example of Augustan style, the language being
rich and the style elegant and polished, without being obscure or unnecessarily
sophisticated. It is a fine example of neoclassical poetic style, the line of argumentation
flowing smoothly, the topic being addressed from several perspectives with great
ingenuity and wit, the speaker in the poem demonstrating the qualities he advocates a
good poet and a good critic should have: common sense, clear-headedness, observance
of rules, of conventions, ingenuity, wit, and moral propriety.
His other very interesting essay in verse, An Essay on Man (1733-34, published
anonymously), is a meditation on man’s place in the chain of being, “an audacious
attempt to illuminate and explain the premises of contemporary moral philosophy in
the form of popular and accessible verse” (Sanders 292), and a work influenced by

© Veronica Popescu
Deism. The poem is structured in four epistles that aim to “vindicate the ways of God
to Man”, a variation on Milton’s thesis statement in Paradise Lost, although Pope’s
philosophical poem cannot be seen strictly as a Christian poem, Newtonian philosophy
being particularly influential in Pope’s understanding of the world as a divine creation
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functioning according to natural laws.
God’s created world is described as “a mighty maze! but not without a plan”,
and the human being is seen as a divided nature, placed between beasts and angels,
under God’s power as an ordering agency. Pope insists on the idea of order, which links
the human being with nature and with a benevolent Creator in a “vast chain of being”,
and also demonstrates a faith in man’s capacity to discipline himself, particularly as he
regards man as a flawed creature, ruled by passions, frail, limited, contradictory in
behaviour, attitudes and his very nature, “[t]he glory, jest, and riddle of the world”. The
poem voices Pope’s main ideas regarding human existence and its limitations, yet it
also displays his optimist take on the possibility for happiness and evolution which he
believes to be possible only if human condition is accepted with humbleness and a
constant desire to discipline oneself, to control one’s passions. His philosophical ideas
were to be further developed in a series of other essays published as Moral Essays
(1731-35), where Pope is less optimistic about man’s capacity to live in harmony and
order, to overcome his self-destructive impulses and his passions. The earlier satirist of
The Rape of the Lock or The Dunciad was by now a moral philosopher who could no
longer see his social and political ideals reflected in the contemporary society ruled by
economic individualism and opportunism.
Apart from his moral essays, his pastorals and epistolary poems (Eloisa to
Abelard of 1717 being among the best known), his translations of Homer or Horace,
Alexander Pope built a solid reputation as a representative poet of his age owing to his
verse satires in mock-heroic form, The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised in 1714 and
1717) and The Dunciad (1728, with subsequent revisions in 1729 and 1743).

The Rape of the Lock

The Rape of the Lock is a fine example of Augustan verse satire, based on a real scandal
at the Court, which provided the poet with a perfect opportunity to address female and
even male vanity, and the affectation, hypocrisy and superficiality of the aristocrats at
the court of Queen Anne (herself a target for satire in the poem). The poetic form used

© Veronica Popescu
by Pope, the mock-heroic poem (which uses the heroic, elevated style of the serious
epic to present a trivial subject), reflects Pope’s disappointment with contemporary
manners and the overall atmosphere of hedonism and moral corruption at the Court,
which he exposes with the amused detachment of a Horatian satirist. The story of a
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rake’s assault upon a beautiful young woman at Court in order to obtain something of
hers (a lock of hair) to remember her by, possibly also to use it as yet another trophy
from his amorous adventures, becomes here the starting point for a humorous treatment
of the theme of the battle of the sexes in the manner of a serious epic, ironically
presenting the protagonists of the social incident, Arabella Fermour (here Belinda) and
Lord Petre (here the Baron) as epic heroes, and the Lord’s faux pas and the young
woman’s loud protestations as strategies in the battle between the beaux and the belles,
a battle of no historic significance, but rather a reflection of gender dynamics in a high
society context.
Writing about Pope’s choice for the mock-heroic genre, Donald B. Clark (1967)
points out the poet’s ingenuous use of the typical generic features of the serious epic
with all the twists required by their use in a parody of the genre itself (41). The muse,
for instance, is here replaced by John Caryll, the man who asked Pope to write a poem
that would reconcile the two families involved in the real scandal. The epic hero
becomes here a beautiful young woman, a coquette that Pope frequently calls a nymph,
which is quite ironic considering that Belinda relies less on her natural attributes—as
nymphs do in Greek mythology—and more on “cosmetic Pow’rs” (The Rape, I.124)
and the art of her maid. By turning an eminently masculine world
of warfare into a woman’s universe of beautification strategies and
accessories, the entire epic theme of heroism in the name of a noble
cause is replaced by the theme of vanity in the social game of
flirting and amorous conquest, where what is at stake is not the fate
of a community or the stability of a world order, but a woman’s
reputation. Weapons are replaced by scissors, screaming and
shouting, tears, sobs, protestations. The epic battles become either
a card game (the fashionable game of ombre in Canto III) or a
quarrel between the ladies and the gentlemen in Canto V—which Figure 11 ‘The Toilet’ – Belinda at
her dressing table, by Aubrey
is the final battle, won by Belinda’s “army” of quarrelsome ladies. Beardsley, 1896
Last but not least, the intervention of the gods and goddesses,
instrumental in deciding the winner of the epic war, is here replaced by the intervention

© Veronica Popescu
of sylphs—souls of dead coquettes, as Pope explains, acting like guardian angels—and
gnome Umbriel—the spirit who arms Belinda with the “weapons” of a boudoir
Amazon: “the Force of Female Lungs, / Sighs, Sobs, and Passions, and the War of
Tongues. /… Fears, Soft Sorrows, melting Griefs, and flowing Tears. (The Rape, III.83-
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86).
There is nothing heroic either about vain Belinda or
her suitor, the rakish Baron. She is so self-absorbed and
confident in her power to fascinate and subdue, that she fails
to see the danger in flirting with an experienced rake, who
interprets her momentary hesitation and naivety as an
invitation to boldly take a souvenir of their intimacy—
occasioned by the game of cards—by cutting a lock of her
hair. When she realises what the Baron has done, she quickly
Figure 12 ‘The Rape of the understands the implications of his inappropriate gesture: she
Lock’ – the Baron can be
seen on the left of the picture has not just lost a lock of her hair (described by Pope as her
snipping off a lock of
Belinda’s hair with a pair of secret weapon of seduction and as a key element in creating
scissors, by Aubrey
Beardsley, 1896 a sense of divine beauty in her appearance), but she has
become publicly exposed to gossip and suspicion regarding
her chastity—such an important aspect of her reputation, next to her exceptional beauty.
Through Belinda and the Baron, Pope exposes the vanity, immorality and
careless, irresponsible social behaviour of many aristocrats at the time, people who
seem unaware of the difference between appearance and nature, inner virtue and
reputation. Clarissa, whose speech in Canto V is among Pope’s last additions to the
original version of the poem, reflects the poet’s own views on the matter, highlighting
the importance of virtue over youthful beauty and of a sense of humour—a sign of
wisdom—over hysterics:

© Veronica Popescu
 Say, why are Beauties prais'd and honour'd most,
The wise Man's Passion, and the vain Man's Toast?
Why deck'd with all that Land and Sea afford,
Why Angels call'd, and Angel-like ador'd? Page | 63
Why round our Coaches crowd the white-glov'd Beaus,
Why bows the Side-box from its inmost Rows?
How vain are all these Glories, all our Pains,
Unless good Sense preserve what Beauty gains:
That Men may say, when we the Front-box grace,
Behold the first in Virtue, as in Face!
Oh! if to dance all Night, and dress all Day,
Charm'd the Small-pox, or chas'd old Age away;
Figure 13 ‘The Battle of the Beaux
Who would not scorn what Huswife's Cares produce, and Belles’ – Belinda confronts the
Or who would learn one earthly Thing of Use? Baron, by Aubrey Beardsley, 1896

To patch, nay ogle, might become a Saint,

Nor could it sure be such a Sin to paint.
But since, alas! frail Beauty must decay,
Curl'd or uncurl'd, since Locks will turn to grey,
Since paint'd, or not paint'd, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid;
What then remains, but well our Pow'r to use,
And keep good Humour still whate'er we lose?
And trust me, Dear! good Humour can prevail,
When Airs, and Flights, and Screams, and Scolding fail.
Beauties in vain their pretty Eyes may roll;
Charms strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul. (The Rape, V.9-34; emphasis mine)

Although Pope’s moralising speech, as well as the “half-ironic, half-serious

moral overtones” (Daiches 630) in the entire poem, reflect an Enlightenment mode of
thinking, emphasising reason over heightened emotion in social behaviour, it is
particularly his style that makes The Rape of the Lock such a fine example of Augustan
poetry. David Daiches, for instance, highlights the poet’s “[d]elicate imagination,
subtly ironic wit, mock heroic extravagance, the most perfect control over cunningly
manipulated verse … together with a most tenderly affectionate humour” and his
perfect sense of literary decorum that requires an appropriate diction and tone (628).
There are countless examples of Pope’s masterful control not only of the rhyming
scheme of the heroic couplet, carefully alternating rhymes so as to avoid annoying

© Veronica Popescu
repetition, but also of the tension between the seriousness of the epic style and the
triviality of the incidents, or that created from the ironic juxtaposition of the serious and
the ridiculous, for a satirical effect, as we can see in the fragment below:

Whether the Nymph shall break Diana's Law, Page | 64

Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw,
Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade,
Forget her Pray'rs, or miss a Masquerade,
Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball;
Or whether Heav'n has doom'd that Shock must fall. (The Rape, II. 105-110)

Pope’s style is typically neoclassical in its elegance, refinement, clarity and wit. Among
his favourite stylistic devices are periphrasis (or “roundabout talk”)—an indirect way
of referring to something that may be considered inappropriate or even taboo according
to the norms of literary decorum (see, for instance, “cosmetic Pow’rs” for “cosmetics,”
suggesting that they become a goddess’ mystical powers when applied, “two-edged
sword” for the scissors used by the Baron to “boldly” attack poor Belinda), hyperbole
and irony.
He manages to express social criticism in such an entertaining fashion that
satire, though present, is much softened and more enjoyable, even when the realities
exposed are quite serious:

Close by those Meads for ever crown'd with Flow'rs,

Where Thames with Pride surveys his rising Tow'rs,
There stands a Structure of Majestick Frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its Name.
Here Britain's Statesmen oft the Fall foredoom
Of Foreign Tyrants, and of Nymphs at home;
Here Thou, great Anna! whom three Realms obey,
Dost sometimes Counsel take — and sometimes Tea. …
Mean while declining from the Noon of Day,
The Sun obliquely shoots his burning Ray;
The hungry Judges soon the Sentence sign,
And Wretches hang that Jury-men may Dine (The Rape, III. 1-8; 19-22; emphasis mine)

Pope’s greatest literary achievement among his early works, to many of his entire
literary career, The Rape of the Lock may have lost some of its charm with

© Veronica Popescu
contemporary readers, less attuned to the kind of humour and poetic style of Pope, but
it certainly stands the test of time as a representative work of its time, being one of the
finest examples of neoclassical verse satires.
The Dunciad (1728, 1729, 1743), a mock-heroic poem published anonymously
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in three different versions, is a response to John Dryden’s MacFlecknoe (1682), being
a literary satire about the goddess Dullness and her representatives on earth (namely
ungifted writers and intellectuals) who corrupt British culture with their imbecility and
lack of taste. The first version of the text appeared in 1728 in Dublin, and it consisted
of only three books in which Pope attacked several untalented contemporary writers,
one of them being the editor of a recent edition of Shakespeare, Shakespeare Restored,
edited by Lewis Theobald, who had suggested that Pope’s own edition of 1725 was full
of errors that needed correction, something that Pope admitted later on, in one of the
prefatory materials included in his new edition of The Dunciad entitled The Dunciad
Variorum. This was published in 1732, three years after his signed edition of The
Dunciad (1729). As the publication of this satire led to a series of attacks on Pope and
his work and a wrongful deciphering of the initials of bad writers in the first version,
Pope accepted to take public responsibility for his work and also devised a series of
texts signed under different names but generally attributed to him, included in the 1732
version as a prolegomenon (introduction which explains the purpose of the text), in
which Pope also gives as main reason for not revealing the names of the writers he had
exposed for their dullness and lack of literary talent the fact that he did not wish to make
them famous this way. However, many of his references in the text were easily
identified by his contemporaries, particularly Tibbald the King of Dunces, and this
made Pope very unpopular with many of the wits posing as writers, editors and even
politicians of the time. Not limited to literary discourse, the Dunciad exposes the
dullness and lack of rhetorical qualities of political discourses as well, so the satire is
more general in scope.
The last version of the text, the “four-book” Dunciad appeared in 1743, after
the fourth book had first appeared independently the year before. This time the hero of
the text is no longer Lewis Theobald but Colley Cibber, a contemporary dramatist and
Poet Laureate, known for his questionable taste and bad poetry yet made truly famous
by Pope’s portrayal in this mock-heroic poem. The last version of the poem is even
darker in mood and tone, showing Pope’s growing discontent with the literary scene of
his time and his contemporaries’ inability to judge writers according to the criteria he

© Veronica Popescu
had exposed in his Essay on Criticism and other essays, as well as a general
discontentment with the society and its failure to cultivate common sense, good taste,
reasonableness, order and balance, neoclassical ideals that he and his friends in the
Scriblerus Club had tried so hard to promote.
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Apart from Pope’s refinement of the heroic couplet and of neoclassical
decorum, he also contributed to the establishment of high standards in Augustan poetry,
cultivating the readers’ taste for fine language, elegant phrasing, refined poetic diction
and eloquence, exemplifying better than any of his contemporaries that neoclassical
ideals can be the guiding principles of poetry and the resulting work be instructive,
ingenious and enjoyable, as the literary standards of the time required.

© Veronica Popescu
Journalism in the Augustan Age and its cultural impact

Early history

The first publications to print news in English were called “Relations” and they
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appeared in the 16th century; one of the earliest surviving examples (1513) gave an
account of the battle of Flodden between the English (victorious) and the Scots. These
16th-century relations took the form of pamphlets and they appeared occasionally, until
the early decades of the 17th century, when they started to appear more regularly, but
not in England. The Star Chamber decree of 1586 forbade the publication of news in
England, so the first news periodicals in English, called corantos, appeared in
Amsterdam, one of the earliest surviving ones being from 1620 (on the Thirty Years
War in Europe). During the Civil War, such news publications appeared for propaganda
reasons and they were finally printed in England. They were small in format and had
several pages (unlike the earlier corantos, which were usually printed on one page only).

Later developments

During the Restoration Period, all publications were under strict control by the
government. The Printing Act of 1662 specified that every work must be licensed
before it could be printed. The Oxford Gazette was established as a government
newsbook in 1665, and it was followed by the London Gazette in 1666. In 1689 the
Printing Act was not renewed, so a lot of unlicensed publications appeared, some issued
three times a week, showing an increasing desire for the expression and sharing of
opinions on various matters.
The post-Restoration major periodicals were The Tatler (founded by Richard
Steele and published between 1709 and 1711) and The Spectator (1711-1712), the joint
venture of Richard Steele and Thomas Addison, whom David Daiches calls “the great
Educators of the English middle-class at the beginning of the eighteenth century” (593).

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Steele’s initial desire was to make The Tatler a periodical dedicated to political
comment, but Joseph Addison advised him instead to provide readers with comments
on “safer” issues like “accounts on Gallantry, Pleasure and
Entertainment”, introduced by the editor’s literary persona Page | 68
Isaac Bickerstaf, an advocate of ethical propriety and a
constant critic of “Rakes”, “Thoughtless Atheists and
Illiterate Drunkards” or “the Men of Modern Wit”. The
Spectator,21 a collaboration between Steele and Addison,
continued The Tatler’s policy of offering social comment,
and it also included a special drama review section, where
most of the excesses of the early 18th-century stage were
taxed. Also worthy of being mentioned here are two other
publications, Daniel Defoe’s Review (1704-1714) and the Tory Examiner where Swift
published many of his anti-Whig pamphlets prior to becoming Dean at St Patrick
Cathedral in Dublin in 1713.
Two other important developments of English journalism at this time need to
be mentioned here: the first daily, The Daily Courant (11 March 1702), and the first
evening paper, which initially appeared three times a week, The Evening Post (1709-
1732), the first newspaper with the word “evening” in its title.
Nathaniel Mist’s Weekly Journal, or, Saturday’s Post (1716-1725) was one of
the earliest titles to emulate The Tatler and the Spectator by including a leading essay.
Another interesting publication was the Country Journal; or, the Craftsman (1727-
1750) which, like Mist’s Weekly Journal, was an anti-government newspaper. In 1735,
the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole contributed to closing down several government-
backed newspapers, including the Daily Courant, and replacing them with the Daily
Gazetteer (1735-1746). Throughout the18th century, a significant number of
newspapers and periodicals appeared carrying not only social and political news, but
also essays on various topics, books and theatre reviews, letters and other types of

21
The Spectator was later imitated by Eliza Haywood in her The Female Spectator (1744-1746), which
was first magazine by and for women, focussing on courtship and marriage (main topics of interest for
women at the time). It used 4 different characters to present opinions on various issues and offered advice
on how to better cope with restrictions imposed on women within a patriarchal society, education and a
sense of personal power being strongly encouraged.

© Veronica Popescu
comment. They had a wide circulation by the end of the 18 th century, which indicates
that practically everyone in England had access to them and the population was clearly
interested in being informed.
The emergence of serious and intelligent journalism in England contributed to
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making English prose clearer, simpler, more intelligible and therefore more “modern”
in the true sense of the word. In spite of attempts by government to exert some control
over what was printed (mostly through the Stamp Act, imposing a significant tax on all
publications, but also through various forms of censorship), anti-government essays and
pamphlets continued to be published throughout the 18th century and, when criticism
was considered too harsh to appear as political pamphlet, it took the form of fiction, as
was the case with some of the more biting satires of Daniel Defoe or Jonathan Swift.

© Veronica Popescu
The Augustan Age novel

Although it is not genius or surprising ingenuity that recommends Augustan authors,

but rather craftsmanship and wit (in the words of Pope, “what oft was thought but ne’er
so well expressed”—Essay on Criticism), they did contribute to the development of Page | 70
genres that had previously been marginal (particularly essays and satires in verse or
prose), and to emergence of the early modern novel as an increasingly popular prose
genre, whose most important Augustan representative, Daniel Defoe, demonstrated that
literature could be intelligent, instructive and enjoyable, and it could also be relevant to
contemporary readers (including those from the middle class and even from the lower
classes) through its appeal to their knowledge and understanding of the world.
The 18th century was readier for prose than for any major developments in
poetry or drama. The most important change in readership was the inclusion of a
growing middle-class audience desirous to learn and be entertained while being
instructed. The development of journalism and the widespread interest in facts of life,
in private and social experience, as well as in accounts of travels and adventures of
sailors and colonists also contributed to the appearance of a literary genre that could
cater for all these needs while offering readers an enjoyable reading experience.
As the daughters and wives of the tradesmen and manufacturers were seldom
employed in any kind of business, they could start to enjoy the same literary privileges
as their richer counterparts. Even chambermaids and other women of modest means,
especially those living in cities, became avid readers in the 18 th century, and amatory
fiction written by women writers, and its interesting development under the pen of the
moralist Samuel Richardson, certainly catered for female readers’ need for stories that
would provide them with a window into other people’s lives and (mis)adventures. We
can say that beginning with the 18th century, literature became increasingly more
democratic in the sense that it is no longer restricted to the upper-class, educated readers
capable of identifying all allusions to Greek and Roman mythology or all references to
Renaissance philosophy or art, being thus open to readers from the higher and lower
middle class, with some formal education and a great desire for self-improvement
through reading and learning.
Although Daniel Defoe is often called the “Father of the English novel,” it
should be pointed out that he is neither the first writer to have experimented with this
genre in the English language, nor the author of novels that reflect a nuanced

© Veronica Popescu
understanding of the genre’s potential, as we see in the novelists two decades later,
particularly Henry Fielding, Defoe’s fictional narratives being rather experiments in the
realist novel genre that constituted models for subsequent writers in the 18 th century.

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Definitions

The origins of the novel as a type of prose fiction of significant length, go all the way
back to Greek and Latin ancient literature and the medieval romances—major sources
of inspiration not only for the subsequent novels of early modernity, but also most of
the poetry and art of Western culture. The term “novel” is applied to a great variety of
writings which share only the quality of being extended works of fiction written in
prose. Due to the wide variety of forms, a single definition of the genre is impossible.
As an extended narrative, the novel is generally distinguished from the short story and
from the work of middle length called the novella (Italian for “something new” and the
etymology of the English term). It is generally accepted that the novel differs from both
the short story and the novella in length, variety of characters and complication of the
plot, ampler development of the milieu, and more sustained development of character
and motives (Abrams 190).
The earliest examples of “novels”—although the term only came into existence
in the Middle Ages—are Petronius's Satyricon (1st cent. A.D.), the Metamorphoses (2d
cent. A.D.) of Lucius Apuleius, and Daphnis and Chloë (3rd cent. A.D.), attributed to
Longus, all of which tell real or imagined stories and more or less believable
occurrences, already establishing the two main directions that were to emerge as distinct
in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance: the realist (Satyricon) and the fantastic
(Metamorphoses and Daphnis and Chloë). In other words, even from these early
examples of prose fiction we can see a tendency to reflect facts of life and tell stories
of real people (or at least people who may be seen as real), such as in Boccaccio’s
Decameron (mid-14th c.), Rabelais’s and Cervantes’s novels in the 16th century and, on
the other hand, the tendency to write of fantastic characters or creatures, imaginary
occurrences and highly idealised feelings or emotions (love, primarily), and of
characters who are larger than life and have little in common in their readers, as in
Amadis of Gaul (13th or 14th c.).
Interestingly enough, in most European languages it is some form of the word
“roman” (deriving from the medieval romance) that is used for “novel,” English being

© Veronica Popescu
the only language to use a term associated with the Italian “novella,” although Italian
romances were quite popular in the 15th and 16th century England. The earliest examples
of novels in the English language were more romances than novels proper: Thomas
Lodge’s Rosalynde, the source for Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and Sir Philip Sidney’s Page | 72
Arcadia. Another Elizabethan extended prose text is John Lyly’s Euphues: The
Anatomy of Wyt (1578) [from Greek “euphues” meaning “graceful, witty”], considered
a didactic romance. In the 17th century, the only writers of extended prose fiction were
John Bunyan, whose Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) can be regarded as a precursor of the
allegorical novel, Aphra Behn, author of 4 novels in the 1680s and an early
representative of the amatory fiction tradition in English—much influenced by the
romance tradition—and William Congreve, whose Incognita, or Love & Duty
Reconcil’d (1692), though of modest size and much influenced by his dramatic work,
is described as a “novel” by its author.
It is important to understand that in many ways, the modern novel of the kind
we see developing in the 18th century is a reaction to the romance tradition that no
longer reflected the readers’ interest in contemporary and believable stories, featuring
characters with whom they could identify and empathise. In the table below,22 you can
see how the romance (in its different variants) and the modern novel differ at various
levels:

Romance (with its subgenres: popular chivalric Novel

romance, political and allegorical romance,
French heroic romance)
settings are distant and idealised
protagonists are of high birth or true heroes,
idealised, which makes identification difficult
for the readers
the actions are rather implausible
plots tend to rely on repetitive patterns and
stereotypes
settings are contemporary and familiar
protagonists are middle-class, more like their
readers in rank, believable, inviting identification
and empathy
the actions derive from contemporary events
(stories are relevant, contemporaneous, and
domestic)
plots are original

22
The table is based on observations made by Lennard Davis in Factual Fictions (1983); J. Paul Hunter
in Before Novels (1990); and Brean Hammond and Shaun Reagan in Making the Novel (2006).

© Veronica Popescu
 main themes: love, honour
construction: episodic and loose
themes are directly related to everyday
experience and they reflect a certain ideology
various types of construction, from episodic
(novel of incident, picaresque novel, epistolary
novel), to plot-driven, careful construction
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It is also important to be aware of the fact that the novel’s development in

Neoclassicism was favoured by the readers’ interest in reading a wide variety of works
in prose that were part of their culture at the end of the 17th century. In Brean Hammond
and Shaun Reagan’s words,

the novel … is a thing of shreds and patches, carbon-dateable to the later seventeenth century…
The mud is a kind of typographical primal soup, an amniotic fluid that includes very many
ingredients: romances and various modifications of romance (popular chivalric romance,
political and allegorical romance, French heroic romance); novellas; ‘picaresque’ fiction …;
criminal biography; spiritual autobiography; imaginary voyages; and utopias. … and a wealth
of non-fictional material: sermons; memoirs; scandalous chronicles of secret histories;
broadsheets; pamphlets; newspapers; letters; diaries; conduct manuals… (16)

In other words, what most novelists in the fisrt decades of the Neoclassical Period did
(though they did not call themselves that at this stage) was to tap into a wealth of
fictional and non-fictional textual sources and the readers’ eagerness for new kinds of
stories they could read in their spare time, using their creative energies and their
knowledge of the world (think of Aphra Behn’s colonial and English spy experience in
Holland, of Defoe’s contact with people from all walks of life when working as a
journalist, Eliza Haywood acting experience before writing her own plays and her
escapist romantic fiction works, or Richardson’s career as a printer, allowing him a
good understanding of the contemporary taste and literary consumption practices,
before he set out to write his own stories).
The development of the modern novel needs to be seen as co-dependent on
significant socio-economic changes, creating a stronger book market and a new kind of
readership, including more women and more socially modest readers than ever before,
and on a cultural dynamics that favoured the early experiments within the novel genre.
The most important landmarks in the early days of the English modern novel are: the
realist novel of adventures or the novel of incident (such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson

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Crusoe and Moll Flanders), the fictional journal (Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague
Year), the picaresque novel (Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Henry Fielding’s Joseph
Andrews), the comic novel (Fielding’s comic epic in prose or comic romance), the first
“psychological” novel (Richardson’s epistolary novels Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded
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and Clarissa), which also happened to be the first sentimental novels (a category in
which we should also include Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield), and the Gothic
novel, announcing the end of Neoclassicism and the appearance of a Romantic
sensibility (Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto).
Also noteworthy for its cultural significance is the development of amatory
fiction in English, a type of prose fiction written mostly by women, for women, being
love-centred and, therefore, more closely connected with the romance tradition. Aphra
Behn’s novels of the 1680s, which were discussed in a previous chapter, paved the way
for a number of women writers, among whom Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood,
who competed on the book market with the more “serious” male authors that became
part of the British literary canon early on. Their prose texts, some of which, like
Delarivier Manley’s Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of
both Sexes, From The New Atalantis. An Island in the Mediterranean (1709), a satirical
long narrative that Manley herself did not see as a novel, or Haywood’s best known
works, Love in Excess, or the Fatal Enquire (1719 –parts1&2; 1720 – part 3), followed
by no less than 26 works of prose fiction of various lengths in the 1720s, including
Idalia (1722), which is obliquely referenced by Defoe in the preface to his 1724
Roxana, and the short novel Fantomina (1725), are more important for their cultural
impact and their proof of a serious commitment to fictional prose writing by women in
the 18th century than for their literary qualities. Their success with the readers was in
part owed to the subjects treated in the stories—mostly related to eroticism as a
perfectly acceptable experience for both men and women, adultery, seduction and rape,
incest and lesbianism—as well as the absence, in many of these texts, of a moralising
tone or scope, allowing readers (especially women) to let their imagination run wild
and experience—by identifying with the protagonists—a kind of intensity of emotion
that no other type of literature offered them.
It was against this type of prose fiction of the Augustan Age that Samuel
Richardson wrote his novels in the 1740s—epistolary novels featuring female
protagonists offered as models of female virtue and resistance to seduction or erotic
experiences, the very opposite of the kind of protagonists featured by amatory fiction

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works at the time. His works, however, stood the test of time much better than those of
his contemporary women writers owing to their superior literary quality and the
psychological complexity of the young women he drew with a kind of understanding
of women’s private thoughts, feelings and emotions that was unprecedented in the
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English novel.
In the first half of the 18 th century, there was an amazing development of the
novel within a relatively short period (from the 1720s to the 1740s), and although the
prose writings of John Bunyan and Aphra Behn, followed by Delarivier Manley did
help set the stage for the new literary form we now call modern novel, it is Daniel Defoe
who is generally credited with having penned the first English novel that comes closest
to our understanding of the term (Abrams 191), though little did Defoe know how
important his experiment in storytelling, episodic and irregular as it was, would become
before the end of Enlightenment, with one of the most important French Enlightenment
philosophers, Jean Jacques Rousseau, praising the novel in his Emile for both its
entertaining and didactic qualities.

© Veronica Popescu
 Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) and the English modern novel

Ironically, “in the half century after his death, Defoe was thought of as a pamphleteer
and an economic thinker, when he was thought on at all.” (Marshall 2010) The son of
a tallow (“animal fat”, used for soap and candles) chandler named James Foe, Daniel Page | 76
Defoe grew up a Presbyterian dissenter and received a
religious education at a dissenting academy in
Newington Green, London, at a time when religious
tolerance was still strong. He became a merchant and
as a consequence he travelled through Europe (mostly
France, Holland and Spain) between 1680 and 1683,
but upon his return to England he became increasingly
interested in politics and didn’t always choose his
allegiances carefully, but rather opportunistically. His
Figure 14 Daniel Defoe, engraving, after character and moral integrity are often described as
Jeremiah Taverner, 1706
questionable, Defoe changing political sides
according to what he seized as being more profitable to him. He started as a Whig,
working for Robert Harley as a political spy and confidential agent between 1688 and
1714, even though during the last 4 years of their collaboration Harley was a Tory
minister. He did not hesitate to leave him when the Whigs came to power in 1714.
Clearly an ungifted tradesman, Daniel Defoe became a pamphleteer and a
journalist after a series of troubles with his creditors (he was arrested for debts in 1692,
in spite of the very good dowry brought by his wife, Mary Tuffley) and several attempts
to get back on his feet economically. His early career is filled with hundreds of texts on
various issues, mostly political and social topics, some of which being quite bold in
purpose and style, others confusing and missing their point, as is the case with his “The
Shortest Way with the Dissenters” (1702), a pamphlet that made both Dissenters and
Anglicans his enemies.
Defoe’s career as a journalist and pamphleteer is absolutely impressive in the
number of texts he published. Some of his best known early texts are:
 “A Poor Man’s Plea” (1698), a pamphlet on the injustice of the laws and the
manner in which law is enforced, insisting on social discrimination and
corruption in the courts of justice;

© Veronica Popescu
  “The True-born Englishman” (1701), a very successful satire commenting on the
appropriateness of a Dutch-born king (William of Orange) to rule England, in
spite of some voices claiming that only an English king should be accepted as
the monarch. Needless to say, this satire in verse won him the king’s sympathy.
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 “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters” (1702), an intriguing pamphlet
published anonymously, occasioned by the rise to power of Queen Anne and the
beginning of the persecution of all Nonconformists, including Presbyterian
dissenters like Defoe. It is a satire of both High-Church Tories (i.e. Anglican
Tories) and the Dissenters whom Defoe regarded as practitioners of “occasional
conformity”. Though himself a dissenter, the author of the pamphlet ironically
recommends dissenting preachers to be hanged and their congregation banished.
His irony was not clear to most readers, and the result was that the intention of
the text was misunderstood, many readers being unable to overcome the
extremism of the writer’s opinions, which Defoe only intended to expose as
grounded in the reality of his society, and not promote as acceptable. The
authorship of the text was unveiled and Defoe was sent to prison in 1703 and
sentenced to stand on the pillory three times.
 “Hymn to the Pillory” (1703), a virulent attack against his persecutors and all
corrupt and intolerant politicians, claiming that it is they who should stand on the
pillory, not him; the poem, written prior to the carrying out of his sentence,
ironically turned his humiliation on the pillory into a triumph, people hailing him
as a hero and not an offender. Some literary historians argue that it is his
experience in Newgate Prison and on the pillory that accentuated his persecution
mania and made him feel isolated from the world, abandoned by friends and the
target of people’s scorn and mean attacks, which may have played a part in his
decision to write about solitude and survival, not only on a desert island, but also
in English society.

The prison experience seemed to be a major turning point in his life. After his release
from prison in 1704, Defoe began working on a publication that was to confirm his
status as a great writer of his time, the Review, a weekly journal at first, then issued
three times a week, in which he expressed his views on political and social matters, also
including historically significant information on domestic and foreign affairs, including
the union between England and Scotland, British commerce, manners and customs of

© Veronica Popescu
the time. One of the most remarkable features of these articles is the straightforward
journalistic style that was to prove not only highly influential for later publications, but
also a feature of his style in his prose fiction in the latter period of his literary career.
Last but not least, Daniel Defoe also stands out as one of the earliest defenders
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of women’s right to be educated. In his 1719 essay “The Education of Women,” Defoe
puts forth a strong argument in favour of creating an Academy for women, deploring
his nation’s ignorance of their mental capacity and ability to compete with men
intellectually. He writes,

I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as
a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We
reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the
advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. (“The
Education”)

This faith in education is characteristic not only of the Age of Reason, but also of the
social class to which he belonged, the bourgeoisie, Defoe’s opinions on the need for
instruction being in fact shared by many fellow Englishmen belonging to the middle
class, whose daughters and wives could now enjoy the pleasures of reading in their free
time and on whom the major novelists of the 18th century (Defoe, Richardson, Fielding,
Goldsmith) relied as an avid and stable readership.

Defoe’s career as a novelist

Having displayed disloyalty to the Whig party on more than one occasion while he was
working as their secret agent in Scotland, as well as having written offensive political
comments in the Review in 1713, the Whig government turned against him and sent
him to prison. Upon his release he stopped issuing the Review and started a new
publication, this time a trade journal that was meant to keep him out of trouble. It is
perhaps his break with the world of politics and his financial difficulties that made him
turn to writing fiction although this was considered unacceptable by dissenters.
His novels were published anonymously and presented as memoirs of people
that find themselves in extraordinary situations yet manage to survive and rise above
all difficulties because they are intelligent, resourceful, dynamic and self-reliant human
beings, whether they belong to the middle or to the lower class. Written in a relatively

© Veronica Popescu
short period of time (1719-1724), his 9 novels (out of which 2 are sequels to Robinson
Crusoe) are characterised by the writer’s fascination with life in its variety of human
experience and its great dynamism, with people’s behaviour in various circumstances,
oftentimes extreme situations. The characters are modelled after real people that
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someone like Defoe—a tradesman, journalist, prisoner and traveller—would have met
in the first 59 years of his life, which is why his texts were immediately popular and
some of his characters continue to fascinate writers and readers today, almost three
centuries later.
Though still far from the psychological realism of the 19 th century, Defoe
managed to create living and breathing, at times surprising characters of endless
resourcefulness, determination and trust in their ability to survive and improve their
condition, whether they are faced with perilous journeys, storms, the plague, complete
isolation on a desert island, or extreme poverty and all sorts of dangers in the streets of
London. With their help, the modern reader can get a sense of the life and manners of
people previously ignored by writers, members of the lower classes whose destinies,
motivations, life-choices, personal experiences and private emotions are revealed to the
reader straightforwardly, in their own words, letting the reader judge for himself or
herself the character of the protagonist.
The protagonists of his novels are usually announced by the titles, all promising
great adventures and extraordinary occurrences that would fire up the readers’
imagination and insure the sale of the books: Robinson Crusoe (or rather The Life and
Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight
and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near
the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck,
wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as
strangely deliver'd by Pyrates – 1719), with its two sequels, The Farther
[sic!]Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of His Life, And
of the Strange Surprising Accounts of his Travels Round three Parts of the Globe
(1719); Serious reflections during the life and surprising adventures of Robinson
Crusoe: with his Vision of the angelick world (1720); Memoirs of a Cavalier and
Captain Singleton (both published in 1720), The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the
Famous Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Colonel Jack—all published
in 1722—and Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724).

© Veronica Popescu
 In terms of style, these works are characterised by a plain, direct, matter-of-
fact style and a vivid concreteness of factual detail, which contributes to the creation
of an effect of verisimilitude and an investment of the fictional worlds he creates with
reality value. Although in terms of form his novels can be seen as loosely constructed
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and episodic, the greatest strength of his novels lies in his ability to recreate life
convincingly and to persuade readers of the actuality of the facts presented, his
unreliable narrators being such convincing liars, that it is no surprise that he was capable
of hiding the identity of the author of these texts during his lifetime, when he was
famous only for his activity as a pamphleteer and editorialist.

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who
lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America,
near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck,
wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely
deliver'd by Pyrates (1719)

Defoe’s sources for Robinson Crusoe

Traditionally, the major source of inspiration for Robinson Crusoe is considered to be
the account of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk on the Pacific island called “Más a
Tierra,” close to the coast of today’s Chile (between 1704 and 1709), but Tim Severin
argues, in his 2003 book In Search of Robinson Crusoe, that the true source for
Robinson Crusoe is the story of Henry Pitman, who also wrote about his escape from
a Caribbean penal colony and subsequent shipwrecking and desert island life and
adventures. Arthur Wellesley Secord in his Studies in the narrative method of Defoe
(21-111) also offers alternative sources after analysing the novel and comparing it with
other travel narratives published around the time Defoe wrote his novel. In other words,
it may be argued that the novel was inspired by several accounts that readers of the
novel may have known, which made Robinson Crusoe a credible memoir, although
Defoe’s narrative only used documented reality as a starting point for his narrative,
modelled on the spiritual autobiographies so popular at the time, variously interpreted
as one of the most memorable accounts of human survival and endurance under extreme
conditions, as a tale of colonialism, or an essay on 18th-century individualism,
foregrounding the qualities of the members of the English bourgeoisie and their ability
to build the nation at home and abroad, contributing to the growth and development of
the British Empire.

© Veronica Popescu
 There are several readings to which this novel renders itself. Probably the most
traditional is the view that it is a realistic novel of adventures (Ian Watt), or a novel
of incident, a story about a common man whose fate is to end up a castaway on a
Caribbean island for 28 years, more than 25 being years of complete solitude, finding
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comfort only in religion and the animals that keep him company. The novel introduces
Robinson as a member of the middle class, a young man in search for adventure and
desirous to improve his condition in the New World, from where news of instant
success and easily obtainable fortunes came via accounts written and published at that
time.
Robinson is not special in any way, except perhaps in name—Crusoe, we are
told is an English version of the German Kreutznaer—as both in English and in German
his name echoes the word “cross” and seems to point to a special destiny for its bearer.
Socially, the Crusoes are members of the middle class and, according to Robinson’s
father, this is the happiest state possible: “which he had found, by long experience, was
the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the
miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and
not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of
mankind.” (Robinson Crusoe) What the father emphasises is not only the state of
economic well-being of fellow middle-class people, but also the moral aspects of this
way of life. Dissenters like them (and like Defoe) are blessed with the possibility to
lead an honest and virtuous life, working hard but also benefiting from the results of
their diligence and wise investments. It is a blessed state, to God’s liking, and any other
lifestyle exposes the human being to either the dangers of a criminal lifestyle, or those
of self-sufficiency, greed and laziness—all leading to damnation.
That Defoe should include this long discussion between father and son so early
into the novel can only point to the moral lesson that this novel is supposed to convey.
Like many other members of the English middle class, Defoe has no doubts that this
increasingly strong social class is accountable for the progress of the nation, the
economic growth and successful expansion of the British Empire, and he feels the need
to put this conviction in narrative form to demonstrate how, through what individual
and shared attributes, this social class emerges as the most dynamic, resourceful,
reliable and productive of all social classes in the final decades of the 17 th and the first
of the 18th century.

© Veronica Popescu
 The adventures that Robinson experiences before his arrival on the island reveal
only some of his qualities: he is enterprising, courageous, intelligent and resourceful,
and he has the great desire to succeed and the eye for profit that all successful merchants
and colonists should have. He does not hesitate to sell the young Moor Xury to a
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Portuguese captain, although the former had helped him escape slavery, because he
needs money to get to America and his disregard for the boy is perfectly justifiable in
his world. As a white Christian he has very little consideration for non-whites or for
heathens—inferior human beings and possible enemies. As a Protestant he has little
tolerance for Catholics, too—at least before the solitary experience on the island—let
alone Muslims like Xury or black slaves working on his plantation in Brazil, slaves that
he trades to increase his fortune. His adventures in the first part of the book are
interesting and certainly draw the reader into Robinson’s world, but the real adventure
begins on the island, where Robinson is left all alone, with limited means of survival
and a series of dangers that test his character and his faith.
Much has been written on Robinson’s sense of property and economic
individualism. Even Karl Marx dedicated a section of his Capital. A Critique of
Political Economy, vol. I (1867) to Defoe’s hero, commenting on the character’s
pragmatism and display of early capitalist mentality. Ian Watt takes Marx’s argument
further, arguing that, by emphasising the individual, capitalism

tended to diminish the importance of personal as well as group relationships, and especially of
those based on sex; for sex, as Weber pointed out, being one of the strongest non-rational factors
in human life, is one of the strongest potential menaces to the individual’s rational pursuit of
economic ends… (Watt 67)

As the embodiment of the typical middle-class Englishman of Defoe’s time,

Robinson displays a series of qualities that the author presents as being characteristic
of most people with a similar social background: economic individualism—understood
as an accentuated self-interest—pragmatism and concern with material aspects of life,
as well as an almost unshaken trust in his Presbyterian faith as the only source of Truth
and superior path to redemption (Robinson dislikes all other Christian denominations—
particularly Catholicism—and feels superior to Muslims and all other non-Christians,
whom he treats as almost non-human until he meets Friday). He believes in divine
providence (the Doctrine of Predestination) and has confidence in his interpretation of

© Veronica Popescu
God’s plan for him, which is vitally important for his survival on the island. It is these
qualities that enable Robinson not only to survive year after year, but, more importantly,
to build a world that mirrors that of his native country.
When he leaves the island on that English ship, 28 years after his shipwreck, the Page | 83
Island of Despair has become a colony in the true sense of the word: the English sailors
left behind are offered not only a running farm (with carefully planned crops and storage
facilities, with cleverly bred goats), but also a defence system (the fortress), a set of
laws and a state organization as English colony, 23 as well as a religious system which
he introduced from the early days of his being on the island and reinforced through the
conversion of Friday later on.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the novel has been considered an allegory of
the process of colonisation, with Robinson as the embodiment of the colonial

Figure 15 The British Empire in 1713

impulses driving young Englishmen away from the security of their homes and the
promise of a safe yet slow prosperity with the promise of great adventures at sea and
the possibility to become successful men of property in the colonies. Robinson gets
even more than he hoped, as he is allowed to be a true civiliser, a man who masters an
island and channels his energies into a long process of turning a desert island into a
smooth-running colony, demonstrating that diligence, determination, intelligence,
resourcefulness, self-confidence, pragmatism and optimism can have transformative
powers and could be seen as the essential qualities of the empire-building English
nation. It is therefore of little importance that Robinson has no inclination towards a

23
The island is indirectly claimed in the name of the English monarch when Robinson introduces himself
as the governor of the island, and his and Friday’s civilising work there can be regarded as constituting
the early stage of colonisation.

© Veronica Popescu
family life or need for emotional ties until very late in life, and even then, his
relationship with Friday is just as much pragmatic as it is emotional.
Seen from a colonial perspective, Friday serves a metonymic function: he
represents multitudes, the native tribes civilised by the English, the French, the Spanish
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or the Portuguese in the New World, nameless, obedient, naïve people that proved
useful as slaves or near-slaves for the European colonists. Moreover, in Robinson’s
case, Friday is instrumental in Robinson’s performing the role of a genuine colonist,
allowing him to impose his language, religion and culture, transforming him so
completely, that he is unable to return to his tribe and chooses to accompany Robinson
to his native England. By teaching Friday to speak English and many other things about
his native country and European culture (“I describ’d to him the Country of Europe,
particularly England, which I came from; how we liv’d, how we worshipp’d God, how
we behav’d to one another, and how we traded in Ships to all Parts of the World.”
(Robinson Crusoe 187), Robinson returns to his pre-island self, so upon his return to
Europe he is ready to pick up things from where he left off, having a most normal life
in England, including a prosperous business and a family (wife and three children),
which does not prevent him from desiring to travel once again and to revisit his island,
which he does in the Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719).
His restlessness and refusal to let any family ties—any emotional attachment—
keep him in England can be read as representing the manifestation of a certain state of
mind, of a middle-class dynamism that reflected in the rapid development of a capitalist
system, characterised by the enterprising and profit-driven spirit of the bourgeoisie, and
in the equally rapid growth and development of the British empire. The English
enterprising spirit and economic individualism of Robinsons in England and the
colonies were already regarded as inspirational and typical by most of Defoe’s readers,
which is why his Robinson Crusoe narratives, and later his other pseudo-
autobiographies were so immediately successful, especially since they were read as life
writings (memoirs or autobiographies) and not as works of fiction.
Perhaps one of the most important reasons for the success of this novel lies in
its moralising character. As a tale of survival under the harshest of circumstances,
Robinson Crusoe is also the story of the victory of the spirit over matter, not only of
individualism and enterprising spirit as typical middle-class qualities. Read in an
allegorical key, the novel teaches about the fifth commandment (“Honour your father
and mother”) and tells a modern version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, in which

© Veronica Popescu
the lost son understands—through a lesson of hardship and humiliation—that he needs
to turn his face to God as his parents taught him to, not only in times of need, but also
to give Him thanks. The moral reflections of Robinson reveal a strong Puritan
education, grounded in the belief in divine providence and trust not only in God’s
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assistance, but also in his own powers to make a life for himself. Robinson is no
theologian. When Friday asks him about the devil and the reasons why God tolerates
evil in the world, Robinson is caught off guard and is unable to give the newly converted
Friday a satisfactory answer. His religious practices have more to do with the necessity
to keep his hope and give his experience on the island a spiritual interpretation than
with a genuine search for meaning in faith.
Soon after his shipwreck, Robinson tries to make sense of his being the only
survivor and he chooses to interpret reality through the doctrine of Predestination, like
a good Protestant. If God had planned for him to die any time soon, he would have
allowed him to sink to the bottom of the sea together with the other slave-traders on the
ship. By giving him the gift of life a second time, Robinson thinks, God wants him to
understand the great chance he has just been offered to repent for his sins (disobeying
his elderly father and trading human beings as slaves) and do penance on the island for
as long as it is necessary.
Like any human being, however, Robinson is not constant in his beliefs or state
of mind. His faith is strong enough to keep him going, to provide him with some
acceptable interpretation of reality that allows him to hope for salvation, yet he also has
moments of despair, of loss of confidence and fear that he will never be able to return
to his native country. This does not weaken his faith, but it simply shows Robinson’s
humanity and his rational faculties. Rather than allowing himself to remain passive, he
interprets his new life as an opportunity to prove himself a good Christian, which to a
dissenter means a hard-working, self-confident man who interprets the success of his
actions in terms of what he considers divine acknowledgement of the judiciousness of
his decisions and the appropriateness of his deeds. Back in England this would have
meant a prosperous business and a good family, yet here it all comes down to little
victories over nature: cultivating the land and ensuring food for a whole year and a new
crop after the next rainy season, making earthen pots to store grains and making his
own bread, taming goats and breeding them, making his cave a home and furnishing it
appropriately, building a “summer residence” and a fortress to defend himself against
the cannibals visiting the island, civilising a desert island and turning it into a paradise

© Veronica Popescu
that eventually makes him think less and less about England. Not that he stops dreaming
of returning to his homeland, but he finds a reason to want to stay, and that reason is
his spiritual balance, his awareness that the island keeps him safe from temptation and
allows him to lead a harmonious life, all by himself.
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The very thought of having to share his paradise with someone else turns into
an obsession after he finds a single footprint in the sand in the 24 th year on the island,
his first impulse being to interpret it as the devil’s attempt to play with his mind and
disturb his peace and quiet. The rational Robinson, however, finally thinks of a logical
explanation for the footprint which, far from easing his mind, at least helps him have a
mental image of the danger he is facing, the possible encounter with the cannibals. It is
only after his mind gets accustomed to the idea of a human being with whom he could
share all he has, in exchange for companionship, that Robinson is ready for Friday.

Robinson’s relationship with Friday

Traditionally, the relationship between Robinson and the cannibal he rescues less than
two years before he leaves the island has been regarded as one between a master and a
servant or a slave. If we consider Robinson’s spiritual evolution on the island, as
incomplete as it may be, and his deep need for human companionship—suggested by
his dream of rescuing a cannibal not long before the actual rescue of Friday—the
relationship between the two can only be seen as one between master and servant.
Interpreting Robinson’s naming of Friday—which Maximilian E. Novak argues, in
“Friday: or, the Power of Naming,” stands for Crusoe’s “assum[ing] possession of him
in the same way that Columbus assumed possession of the land by his namings” (117)
—and his imposition of his language, religion and culture as indicative of a slave-
owner’s attitude would simply be wrong. That Friday offers himself to Robinson-the
master-saviour for having rescued him from immanent death is certainly true, and in
Friday’s culture the notion of slavery was certainly not foreign; however, Robinson is
so happy to have a young man he obviously likes for his physical pleasant appearance
and his readiness to obey and learn, and even more for his affectionate nature, that he
treats Friday as a valuable companion, even if he sees himself as superior to him in all
respects. Robinson’s mentality reflects a white European’s perspective, convinced of
his cultural and racial superiority, yet capable of tolerating difference as long as it can
be reworked into some kind of “sameness.” His description of Friday’s appearance

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betrays his appreciation of this young man’s qualities and, in spite of a long tradition
of misrepresentation,24 of his non-African racial features:

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He was a comely, handsome Fellow, perfectly well made; with straight, strong Limbs, not too
large; tall, and well shap’d; and, as I reckon, about twenty-six Years of Age. He had a very good
Countenance, not a fierce and surly Aspect, but seemed to have something very manly in his
Face; and yet he had all the Sweetness and Softness of a European in his Countenance, too,
especially when he smil’d. His Hair was long and black, not curl’d like Wool; his Forehead very
high and large; and a great Vivacity and sparkling Sharpness in his Eyes. The Colour of his Skin
was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the
Brasilians, and Virginians, and other Natives of America are, but of a bright kind of a dun olive
Colour, that had in it something very agreeable, tho’ not very easy to describe. His Face was
round and plump; his Nose small, not flat, like the Negroes; a very good Mouth, thin Lips, and
his fine Teeth well set, and as white as Ivory. (Robinson Crusoe 173)

The fact that he names him and shows very little regard for his real name or identity,
for his culture and system of values needs to be put in the right cultural perspective. As
an 18th-century white, Christian European, Robinson is no different from his fellow
countrymen or anyone from Europe for that matter.25 He is convinced he belongs to a
superior race and culture and displays more tolerance and kindness than many of the

24
In most visual representations, whether in the form of book illustrations or film adaptations, Friday is
usually shown as a man displaying the racial features of an African black man, instead of a Caribbean.
The most plausible explanation for this is that it is easier to think of race in terms of the most common
binary pair, black vs. white, which helps the Western world reader understand better the remarkable
difference between the two characters, representatives of racial groups represented for so long as being
unequal in level of civilization and even intellectual capacity.
25
Consider Defoe’s own views on slavery and the native populations of the new British colonies, as
expressed in The Complete English Tradesman (1726): “We have not increased our power … by
subduing the nations which possessed those countries, and incorporating them into our own, but have
entirely planted our colonies, and peopled the countries with our own subjects, natives of this island; and,
excepting the negroes, which we transport from Africa to America, as slaves to work in the sugar
and tobacco plantations, all our colonies, as well in the islands as on the continent of America, are
entirely peopled from Great Britain and Ireland, and chiefly the former; the natives having either
removed farther up into the country, or by their own folly and treachery raising war against us,
been destroyed and cut off.” [emphasis mine]

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European colonists in the New World. It is perhaps the island that brings this
transformation upon him.
The younger Robinson, who distrusted the Spaniards or the Portuguese for
being Catholic, and who was convinced that only a Puritan could hope for salvation,
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would not have hesitated to kill all cannibals that day, including poor Friday. It is his
desperate need for companionship that brings about this kind of tolerance, doubled,
perhaps, by years of practicing rational thought on the island, enabling Robinson to fear
(cultural) otherness a little less and to feel more confident in the power of instruction to
“civilise” and “enlighten” even someone like Friday, a heathen and a savage. Even
Friday’s cannibalism is easily dismissed by Robinson as a sign of ignorance and lack
of proper instruction, which is not his fault but a trait of his tribal culture. Displaying a
humanist attitude, Robinson believes that it is his duty as a Christian and as a man of
reason to save Friday from ignorance and certain damnation, taking upon himself to
direct Friday towards a path of spiritual self-improvement that would serve as an aid
for his own salvation, his missionary work being pleasing to God. He goes even so far
as to believe that Friday is a better Christian (and a true representative of the Age of
Reason, we might add) for wanting to understand the Scripture, for constantly inquiring
and keeping his mind open to instruction and understanding what he was taught and
what he read:

In this thankful Frame I continu’d all the Remainder of my Time; and the Conversation which
employ’d the Hours between Friday and me, was such, as made the three Years which we liv’d
there together perfectly and completely happy, if any such Thing as compleat Happiness can be
formed in a sublunary State. This Savage was now a good Christian, a much better than I;
though I have reason to hope, and bless God for it, that we were equally penitent, and comforted,
restor’d Penitents. We had here the Word of God to read, and no farther off from His Spirit to
instruct than if we had been in England. … and he …, by his serious Enquiries and
Questionings, made me, as I said before, a much better Scholar in the Scripture Knowledge
than I should ever have been by my own private meere Reading. Another thing I cannot
refrain from observing here also, from Experience, in this retir’d Part of my Life, viz. How
infinite and inexpressible a Blessing it is that the Knowledge of God, and of the Doctrine of
Salvation by Christ Jesus, is so plainly laid down in the Word of God, so easy to be receiv’d
and understood: That, as the bare reading the Scripture made me capable of understanding
enough of my Duty to carry me directly on to the great Work of sincere Repentance for my Sins,
and laying hold of a Saviour for Life and Salvation, to a stated Reformation in Practice, and
Obedience to all God's Commands, and this without any Teacher or Instructer, I mean humane;

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 so the same plain Instruction sufficiently serv’d to the enlightening this Savage Creature,
and bringing him to be such a Christian as I have known few equal to him in my Life.
(Robinson Crusoe 186; emphasis mine)

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That Robinson Crusoe was written at the height of the expansion of British and
European colonialism, when no one thought in terms of the right of the indigenous
populations to keep their culture and tradition intact, to preserve their beliefs and have
them respected by the others, can clearly be seen in Robinson’s (and Defoe’s) account
of how eager Friday is to learn everything that Robinson teaches him, as if he placed
no value on his own culture. He is joyfully submissive and ready to absorb Robinson’s
superior culture, with little resistance to the Master’s authority (with the exception of
one or two uncomfortable questions on religion, interpreted by Robinson as a sign of
Friday’s intelligence and genuine desire to understand what he was being taught), and
perhaps with gratitude for being instructed and civilised. Robinson certainly believes
that about Friday.
An alternative reading of Robinson Crusoe and of this relationship is offered by
postcolonial theory. 26 Defoe’s novel can thus be revisited from a contemporary
perspective, one that rejects the idea of cultural hegemony and subverts traditional,
imperialist attitudes that place the white, European Christian at the centre of the cultural
system, allowing the formerly marginal, the Other, to have a voice and to be
empowered.
An early example is offered by a rewriting of the Robinson Crusoe story in Man
Friday, a 1972 novel and a play by British writer Adrian Mitchell, adapted for the
screen by Jack Gold in 1975. Here the narrative voice is given to Friday and the
perspective on the relationship between the two men is also his. Robinson is portrayed
as an inflexible, ignorant, emotionally deficient Englishman, an interesting caricature
of everything that Robinson Crusoe is traditionally seen to stand for: the enterprising,
strong, pragmatic, cool-headed economic individualist. After demonstrating to him that

26
Leela Gandhi defines postcolonial theory as a “disciplinary project devoted to the academic task of
revisiting, remembering and crucially interrogating the colonial past.” (Gandhi 4) It has been the task of
postcolonial theorists and critics to revisit fictional and non-fictional tests written before the
disappearance of colonial empires to examine the ways in which cultural encounters were
(mis)represented as a direct consequence of contemporary imperialist ideology and also religious
thought.

© Veronica Popescu
he is capable of outsmarting him—they have a bet and Friday gradually earns all of
Robinson’s money and possessions—and of having more earnest emotions and a better
grasp on the important things in life (enjoyment of life’s pleasures, optimism,
communal), Friday takes Robinson to his tribe only to humiliate him, denying him the
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right to move there for fear he might spoil the children’s education and sends Robinson
back to his island. Left alone and convinced that he has nothing to live for any more,
Robinson takes his own life, a sad, desperate man.
As long as it is his story, Robinson has complete control over it and the people
and events presented in his narrative. The reader of Robinson Crusoe has no alternative
but to embrace his perspective on things. Even so, a reader of Defoe’s novel today
cannot help but feel that Robinson’s imperialist attitudes are inadequate and unfair. The
kind of empowerment given to him by his dominion over the island and his mentality
is no longer justifiable and, as the 1997 adaptation of the novel (dir. Rod Hardy, George
Miller) shows, or even the more radical adaptation The Castaway (2000, dir. Robert
Zemeckis) demonstrates, can no longer be offered to audiences today.

The realism of the novel

One of the most important literary features of Defoe’s novels is their formal realism. In
his seminal work on the early English novel, The Rise of the Novel (1957), Ian Watt
defines formal realism—as exemplified by Defoe’s prose—as the narrative method
whereby the novel embodies [a] “circumstantial view of life”; its realism is formal
because it does not “refer to any special literary doctrine or purpose, but only to a set
of narrative procedures which are so commonly found together in the novel, and so
rarely in other literary genres, that they may be regarded as typical of the form itself.”
(Watt 32) He sees this narrative method to be the result of a mentality and philosophical
approach to life typical of the age (late 17th and most of the 18th century), creating in
the readers a need to be informed of all particulars, all circumstantial details of an
occurrence or life experience, with precision of detail and accuracy. Much of what
Robinson experiences from the moment he leaves his parents’ home to the moment of
his return to England is described with such precision and—where imagination had to
replace experience—so convincingly, that Robinson’s life acquires a truth value that
only realist text could create. Defoe’s wide experience as traveller and journalist
certainly contributed to the writers’ recreation of domestic and foreign realities, but
equally important are his imaginative powers and his “involvement in other literary

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forms, most notably the polemic pamphlet, the biography, the history and, latterly, the
travel-book. His novels included elements of all these forms. … Defoe was merely
mastering and exploiting a literary form of various and uncertain origins.” (Sanders
307)
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Daniel Defoe may not be a master of characterisation, or a great narrative
technician, or even a wizard of prose style, but his novels, Robinson Crusoe and Moll
Flanders in particular, created memorable characters whose energy, self-confidence,
resourcefulness, economic individualism and pragmatic attitude to others and to their
world continue to surprise and inspire, or at least convince readers of their reality, of
their ability to represent the universally human in an 18 th –century mode of being.

Daniel Defoe’s later novels

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who was born in
Newgate, and during a life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her
Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own
brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew
Rich, liv'd Honest and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums (1722)

Defoe’s other literary achievement—though not as popular at the time of its publication
as Robinson Crusoe—was Moll Flanders (1722), the pseudo-autobiography of an
orphan born in the prison of Newgate to a mother imprisoned for theft and who was to
be deported to America, and raised by a foster mother and then sent to a middle-class
family as a servant, where she began her life of questionable morality as a woman who
learned early in life that beauty and an amiable nature can translate into money. In short,
Moll Flanders, whose real name is never revealed, begins her adult life as a woman who
sells herself to men of means—as wife and later as a prostitute—trying to survive in a
hostile society that has no mercy for unprotected women like her, who have to find
ways to achieve social and financial stability—only possible through marriage or the
generosity of a married man who was willing to provide for his mistress. When men
are no longer dependable, Moll resorts to her own skills: shrewdness, intelligence and
cunningness. She survives (and thrives) as a thief, and like a character in a picaresque
novel (after which Moll Flanders was modelled) she succeeds in thriving in her life of

© Veronica Popescu
crime and eventually makes a better life for herself, even if this means leaving her native
England and making a fresh start in America.
Moll is in many ways similar to Robinson. Like him, she is a true survivor and
an economic individualist. Her greatest ambition from early youth is to improve her
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social condition, which is why she opts for a marriage to the brother of her first lover,
love being a luxury she considers unnecessary in a marriage. Climbing the social ladder
seems to be a duty to herself, not simply something that happens to her. Like Robinson,
she is a product of her environment and her strongest motivation is self-improvement
for the sake of social and material well-being, her struggle being with poverty and the
kind of humiliation that poverty entailed in early 18 th century. She could have easily
stayed a servant in the two brothers’ house, content to occasionally receive money for
her sexual favours to the older brother, but her ambitious nature makes her restless and
desirous to become a gentlewoman, something that she achieves several times through
marriages (she marries five times, and only once for love, ironically to a man as poor
as herself), yet she only reaches the much desired economic and social stability at the
end of her life. Looking back, however, the old Moll feels that what she has done is
justified and, though not always morally appropriate, at least partially understandable
in that social context, as many of her decisions were motivated by her need to survive,
to escape dire poverty or imprisonment and by her determination to reach that place in
society which she always considered to be fit for her intelligence and skills.
Her life can be divided into two main phases: her life as a wife and her career
as a thief. Her first husband is Robert (the younger brother of her first lover), in whose
house young Moll was working as a servant. Soon widowed, Moll leaves her children
with her mother-in-law and decides to go search for a rich husband, posing as a woman
of means herself. Her second husband (the Draper) is a tradesman who manages to go
bankrupt so he leaves her and flees to the Continent, giving her leave to do whatever
she can to survive, which she interprets as an unofficial divorce and sets out to look for
another husband. Her third husband—a plantation owner from Virginia—takes her to
America where they have a pleasant life together and a son they both love, until Moll
realises that her mother-in-law happens to be her natural mother as well, at which point
she decides to leave her husband and return to England, horrified by the thought of
having married her own half-brother.
Before meeting her fifth (and favourite) husband Jemy, Moll lives with two
other men, both married: the Gentleman—who has a revelation after six years and, torn

© Veronica Popescu
by remorse, leaves her—and the Banker, who dies soon after their marriage, leaving
Moll unprotected and unprovided for once more. Jemy is the first man Moll truly loves.
Unfortunately, each thinks the other is rich and they only discover the truth about the
other’s poverty after they get married, so, with pain in their hearts, they decide to part
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and try their luck elsewhere. They will eventually be reunited in prison years later and
they will start a new life together in America as deportees, but before that Moll will go
through a series of adventures that will test her intelligence and resourcefulness.
Looking back at her marriages, Ian Watt notices an interesting narrative strategy
that serves as a transitional device in a novel with an episodic structure, oftentimes not
seeming a novel at all. Thus the first marriage, to the middle-class man, Robert,
provides a prelude to the novel, announcing Moll’s social ambition and her
determination to improve her condition. The third marriage, to her half-brother, is
connected to the last phase of her life, when she returns to America and meets her
brother and their son again, and her marriage to the highwayman Jemy anticipates her
return to Newgate—this time as a thief—and her return to America with him, as
deportees.
The second phase of Moll’s life is equally dynamic and eventful, being clearly
inspired by rogue narratives and picaresque novels, quite popular at the time. Unlike
the typical picaresque novel protagonist, however, Moll is more than schematically
presented, although the number of incidents and the exciting nature of her adventures
betray the novel’s reliance on the picaresque narratives for plot content. What the latter
phase of Moll’s life adds to the portrayal of the protagonist is her constant ability to
adapt, her intelligent use of her skills and physical attributes, as well as her acting skills
and her ability to pass for a gentlewoman; unlike other thieves Moll is able to deceive
her victims by making them trust her as being one of their own, a respectable middle-
class woman. What is more, she has the wisdom to think each attack through and
quickly change her strategy if in danger of being exposed, her survival instincts being
stronger than her conscience. She does not hesitate to steal from children or to send
someone else to prison in her place, and each time she does something bad she
immediately finds some excuse for her actions and quickly dismisses the pangs of
remorse as being conterproductive. Thus, after having stolen a pearl necklace from a
little girl (and even considering the possibility of killing her so as not to tell on her),
Moll says to herself:

© Veronica Popescu
 The thoughts of this booty put out all the thoughts of the first, and the reflections I had made
wore quickly off; poverty, as I have said, hardened my heart, and my own necessities made me
regardless of anything. The last affair left no great concern upon me, for as I did the poor child
no harm, I only said to myself, I had given the parents a just reproof for their negligence in
leaving the poor little lamb to come home by itself, and it would teach them to take more care
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of it another time. (Moll Flanders 190)

Later on, when she allows another woman to go through trial for her theft, she feels
sorry for her victim, yet does nothing to save her from deportation (after all, this was a
mild sentence at the time), and defends herself by motivating her cowardice as a
strategy of survival:

I must repeat it again, that the fate of this poor woman troubled me exceedingly, and I began to
be very pensive, knowing that I was really the instrument of her disaster; but the preservation
of my own life, which was so evidently in danger, took off all my tenderness; and seeing that
she was not put to death, I was very easy at her transportation, because she was then out of the
way of doing me any mischief, whatever should happen. (Moll Flanders 218-19)

Like other vagrants, pirates, pickpockets and thieves populating Defoe’s novels, Moll
is presented to the reader as a victim of circumstance and a hostile society. After all,
like in the other novels, we read the protagonist’s own version of the story and,
consequently, we are invited to accept her perspective on things as being a correct one,
although Moll constantly changes her mind and seems undecided as to the true purpose
of her account. Although she often comments on the evil nature of her deeds and seems
aware of her sins as she commits them, throughout the account of her early life, Moll
seems more preoccupied to reveal to us the ingenious ways in which she found solutions
to her problems and managed to get away with illicit love affairs, unwanted children
(most of whom either conveniently die or are immediately dispensed with, being sent
to be raised by foster mothers), an incestuous marriage and bigamy, prostitution, lying,
cheating, or stealing. In the second part of her life, however, and only when facing
imprisonment or death, Moll has brief moments of repentance which she feels the need
to share with us:

Them I repented heartily of all my life past, but that repentance yielded me no satisfaction, no
peace, no, not in the least, because, as I said to myself, it was repenting after the power of further
sinning was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I had committed such crimes, and for the

© Veronica Popescu
 fact as it was an offence against God and my neighbour, but I mourned that I was to be punished
for it. I was a penitent, as I thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer, and this took
away all the comfort, and even the hope of my repentance in my own thoughts (Moll Flanders
270)

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Like Robinson during the storms in his first voyages, Moll is too busy pursuing her
plans to think of God and repentance as long as there is still hope to get what she wants.
It will only be in prison, at Newgate, when she realises that her old life is over and her
only hope for salvation from almost certain death is repentance that she thinks of God
and her sins with greater commitment and honest repentance. What is more, she claims
it is her duty to offer her life as a moral lesson to the readers of her account:

The good man having made a very Christian exhortation to me, not to let the joy of my reprieve
put the remembrance of my past sorrow out of my mind, and having told me that he must leave
me, to go and enter the reprieve in the books, and show it to the sheriffs, stood up just before
his going away, and in a very earnest manner prayed to God for me, that my repentance might
be made unfeigned and sincere; and that my coming back, as it were, into life again, might not
be a returning to the follies of life which I had made such solemn resolutions to forsake, and to
repent of them. I joined heartily in the petition, and must needs say I had deeper impressions
upon my mind all that night, of the mercy of God in sparing my life, and a greater detestation
of my past sins, from a sense of the goodness which I had tasted in this case, than I had in all
my sorrow before.
This may be thought inconsistent in itself, and wide from the business of this book; particularly,
I reflect that many of those who may be pleased and diverted with the relation of the wild and
wicked part of my story may not relish this, which is really the best part of my life, the most
advantageous to myself, and the most instructive to others. Such, however, will, I hope, allow
me the liberty to make my story complete. It would be a severe satire on such to say they do not
relish the repentance as much as they do the crime; and that they had rather the history were a
complete tragedy, as it was very likely to have been. (Moll Flanders 286-87)

At the same time, the reader cannot help but notice that there is a hint in the second part
of her confession that the scope of the book is not to lecture readers in matters of
Christian morality but rather to give a truthful (and entertaining, we may add) account
of her eventful and exciting life, in spite of the author’s claim in the preface that the
story, retold and purged somewhat to spare the readers of some gory details—though
one wonders what could be worse than the things already included in the story—is
offered as a moral lesson, being, Defoe writes in the preface, “chiefly recommended to

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those who know how to read it, and how to make the good uses of it which the story all
along recommends to them, so it is to be hoped that such readers will be more leased
with the moral than the fable, with the application than with the relation, and with the
end of the writer than with the life of the person written of.” Page | 96
The end of the book puts things in a slightly different perspective, however.
Even after her repentance in jail and her determination to change her life, Moll is
incapable of being honest even to the people she supposedly loves, like her son by her
third husband (the half-brother). When she returns to America, she soon inherits her
mother and becomes a plantation owner in Virginia. She meets her son once again and
gives him a watch as a gift, “forgetting” to tell him that she stole that watch, or that she
and his father are brother and sister, for that matter. When her brother/husband dies,
she seizes the opportunity to remarry Jemy (whom she had never officially divorced,
like she had never divorced her second or third husband) and this marks the end of her
adventurous life, though not the end of a life of lying. What matters to her most that she
has reached her goal, being now the respectable wife of a plantation owner, a woman
with a new life and a new identity, her troubled past behind her.
***
Most of Defoe’s characters end like this, content and well positioned in society,
in spite of their rogueries and immoral character. They are not sentimental, nostalgic
or even too apologetic for their deeds, for their outlook on life is typical of survivors.
The readers’ fascination with these people springs from their ability to constantly adapt,
to use all their skills and innate abilities to their advantage, their earnestness and
unapologetic attitude, their energy and self-confidence, which turn them into victors in
the end. Their desires, ideals, motivations are easy to understand and quite realistic.
They never desire more than they feel they can achieve. Like Moll, Jack, the protagonist
of Colonel Jack,27 is also an orphan destined to become a pick-pocket and get into
trouble in his early youth, yet he manages to overcome all obstacles and becomes a
plantation owner in America. Captain Singleton, the protagonist of the eponymous

27
The History and Remarkable Life of the truly Honourable Col. Jacque, commonly call'd Col. Jack,
who was Born a Gentleman, put 'Prentice to a Pick−Pocket, was Six and Twenty Years a Thief, and then
Kidnapp'd to Virginia, Came back a Merchant; was Five times married to Four Whores; went into the
Wars, behav'd bravely, got Preferment, was made Colonel of a Regiment, came over, and fled with the
Chevalier, is still abroad compleating a Life of Wonders, and resolves to dye a General

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novel, is of good origin, yet he is stolen by Gypsies as a child and thrown into a life of
poverty, roguery and crime and ends up a pirate (possibly Henry Every, the most
notorious pirate at the end of the 17th century, served as a model for Defoe), but a clever,
business-driven pirate who sets out an example to merchants and pirates by carefully
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managing his ship, his crew and his assets.
Last but not least, possibly the third in terms of character portrayal and
complexity, Roxana, the protagonist of the romance novel The Fortunate Mistress: Or,
A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau,
Afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim, in Germany, Being the Person known
by the Name of the Lady Roxana, in the Time of King Charles II (1724) provides readers
with a similar account of a tumultuous, wicked life as Moll Flanders, showing once
more that a life of crime—especially one in which crime is regarded as a means of
survival and the sinner a victim of an ill-designed, unjust and cruel world. Victimised
by her own husband, a London brewer who spends all her fortune and then deserts her
and their five children, Roxana—as she comes to be called—uses her beauty and her
intelligence to become mistress to several influential people at the courts of England,
France and Holland, managing to accumulate much wealth and to exert some influence
on the people she meets, obtaining thus a kind of freedom that she would never have
dreamt of having in a patriarchal society like her own, where the only decent way of
acquiring a financial and social stability was through marriage.
Like Moll Flanders, Roxana is a feminist in action, demonstrating through
action that a woman has the intellectual, psychological and physical power that only
men were assumed to possess, that a woman can survive on her own, without the
protection or guidance of a man and that she can even surpass men of some importance
in intelligence, shrewdness and manipulative skills. It is also true that for both Moll and
Roxana prostitution is not the only price they have to pay, the stigma of being bad
mothers haunting them and making women readers wonder about the monstrosity of
such mothers who abandon their children in the blink of an eye and hardly ever wonder
about their fate. In that respect, of course, both novels betray a novelist not yet aware
of the dramatic potential of narrative treatment of characters’ inner life. It will be the
task of Richardson and Goldsmith a few decades later to compensate for this early
clumsiness and superficiality of character portrayal. Let us not forget, however, that the
novel is yet taking shape as a prose genre in its own right and that Defoe’s fascination
seems to have been with the outwardly drama of adventures, near escapes, life-

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threatening situations and reversals of fate—borrowed from the romance and
picaresque novel traditions—for these situations could allow him to explore a theme
that remained dear to his heart in all novels: survival. The exploration of this theme
allowed Daniel Defoe to offer his readers an unembellished perspective of the realities
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of his time, with the mercantilism and individualism that he saw thriving around him,
making people leave their homes, the safety and security of the world they knew, to
explore new environments and test their inner and their physical strength.
Most of his novels have what may be regarded as a happy ending of some kind,
his protagonists having overcome adversity and found some peace in their lives, and
having achieved their social goals. The only exception is Roxana, whose final years
seem marked by misfortune and suffering. She takes it all with the dignity of a repentant
woman who understands that the time for paying for her sins has come and she has no
other choice but accept divine punishment. Her repentance sounds genuine and her
words, which conclude her life narrative, are also the last words of a fictional character
of Defoe’s invention, casting an interesting light upon all his protagonists and their
amazing adventures, now called to judgment and found guilty of moral depravity and
corruption.

After Roxana, the author published a three-volume travel book, A Tour Thro’
the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–27), providing a first-hand account of the state
of the new country, followed by The Complete English Tradesman (1726) and Augusta
Triumphans: Or, the Way to Make London, the Most Flourishing City in the Universe
(1728). In 1731 he died famous for his pamphlets, essays, travel accounts and for the
Review, the journal he had founded and written for almost a decade. The irony is that if
Daniel Defoe’s name continues to be known all over the world, this is not owing to his
work as a journalist but as a fiction writer, something he never publicly acknowledged
nor ever considered to be more than a temporary profession that could provide him with
some financial security.

© Veronica Popescu
 Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the ultimate satirist of the Augustan Age

One of the chief figures of the Augustan Age, Jonathan Swift is remembered mostly for
his satirical writings either in the form of essays, pamphlets, or in his best known work,
Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Of Anglo-Irish ancestry, Page | 99
Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin,
Ireland, his father, Jonathan Swift, an attorney at
King’s Inn, dying just two months before his son’s
birth. As his mother struggled with poverty after her
husband’s death, he was raised by his uncle Godwin
Swift, also an attorney, and studied first at Kilkenny
Grammar School in South-East Ireland (where he met
and befriended William Congreve) and then, at the
age of 14, at Trinity College (Dublin), where he
Figure 16, Jonathan Swift, by Charles obtained a B.A. in 1686. After graduation he had to
Jervas, 1718
take a job as his uncle no longer supported him, so he
obtained a position as Secretary to retired diplomat and Tory politician Sir William
Temple (1628-1699), staying with him at his home in Moor Park, Surrey. There he
became interested in politics and social issues, an interest that he was to express in his
political and satirical writings later on. He also took full advantage of Temple’s vast
library and his employer’s knowledge and style, which he put to good use in his own
writings.
During his stay with Sir William Temple, he took some time off to study at
Oxford University and earned his M.A. in 1692; three years later he received a parish
in Kilroot, in Ireland, having been ordained priest, but he returned to Moor Park a year
and a half later and remained there in Temple’s employment until the latter’s death in
1699. By this time, the little girl Esther Johnson, whom he had met at Moor Park and
tutored for a while, had turned into a beautiful girl and it is generally agreed that more
than a mere friendship developed between the two, some even claiming that the two
were secretly married. Whether this was true or not, Swift never publicly acknowledged
a relationship with the much younger woman, yet after Temple’s death he persuaded
Esther and her mother to move to his parish in Ireland, and he continued to write poems
and letters to her throughout his life, the letters being collected and published
posthumously under the title Journal to Stella (1766).

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 It was Temple who encouraged young Swift to write his own texts, so after
finishing Temple’s memoirs he started publishing his essays anonymously. The first
texts he published were A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, in 1704. The
former, a satire of corruption in religion and in learning, although widely popular with
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the readers, was disapproved of by the Church of England because it also vaguely
suggests that religion can be used inappropriately by absolute monarchs to divert
people’s attention from social problems, the same way sailors divert the whales’
attention from the ship by throwing a tub in the water. The text is in fact a collection of
essays taking the form of several sections (digressions, in fact, on matters such as
criticism, ancient and modern literature, and madness) and an allegorical “tale” of the
history of Christianity, referring to its three forms present in England at the time:
Catholicism, Protestantism and Calvinistic Dissent.
The tale, which has a central position within the collection, tells the story of a
father, Christian, who before his death gave each of his three sons a coat—a
metaphorical expression of the fundamental doctrines of the Church. The sons, Peter
(standing for the Roman Catholic church), Martin (representing the Anglican church),
and Jack (representing the Dissenters) are told to take good care of it and keep it
unaltered as long as they live, but once they go out into the world they are tempted by
all kinds of worldly things and they start making changes to the coat. In Swift’s view,
neither Peter’s alterations representing the Catholics’ additions, nor Jacks’ changes,
Calvinist detractions from the original Church doctrines are acceptable. The only
brother whose alterations are but youthful mistakes with no serious consequences is
Martin, by which Swift suggests the superiority of the Church of England to the other
two denominations. This has generally been interpreted as an early attempt on his part
to show his allegiance to the Church of England in the hope of a parish in England.
Much to his disappointment, he only received positions within the Church of Ireland,
for ever feeling marginalised and persecuted.
A Tale of a Tub is still considered one of the finest examples of irony in prose
in the long eighteenth century, being an immediate success with the readers, like the
other text published in that same volume, known as The Battle of the Books. This mock-
heroic in prose is a response to Sir William Temple’s 1690 text Of Ancient and Modern
Learning, in its turn a response to Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s disputed thesis that
modern learning is superior to that of the ancients, the former having the advantage of
modern progress in science and intellectual thought. This view was not shared by

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William Temple or Swift, yet the latter’s approach to the matter of the Quarrel of the
Ancients and the Moderns is rather tongue-in-cheek and less passionate than that of his
predecessors in this text. The full title of the essay is A Full and True Account of the
Battel fought last Friday, Between the Antient and the Modern Books in St. James’s
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Library and, like A Tale of a Tub, it was written while Swift was still under Temple’s
employment between 1694 and 1697, yet published at a time when the debate itself
could only be thought of with some ironic distance. The text echoes earlier mock-
heroic poems (such as Samuel Butler’s Hudibras), and it presents an allegorical battle
between the Classics and the Moderns, on the one hand, and also between authors and
critics, in the form of a series of battles between books in the library. In a parallel
allegory, the Moderns are compared to spiders, spinning their webs out of their own
entrails, and the Ancients to bees, producing “sweetness and light” by going directly to
nature, so it would be safe to say that Swift himself seems to favour the latter, as will
become even more evident in his critical comments on some of his contemporaries in
his later essays and also in Book III of Gulliver’s Travels, where some modern
commentators of the Ancients’ works are made to look ridiculous by the spirits of the
authors whom Lemuel Gulliver meets in one of his voyages. As the title suggests, the
issue is treated allegorically and with humour, with no clear conclusion as the text ends
rather abruptly, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions on the matter.

Swift the Augustan satirist par excellence

Swift continued to publish essays on various social, political and religious matters, texts
which are mostly satires showing a mind alert to current issues and a keen eye for social
injustice, moral corruption, pretentiousness and hypocrisy, and a gift for words that
enabled him to entertain as well as expose and criticise harshly. In his view, satire
could be defined as

a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which
is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are
offended with it. But, if it should happen otherwise, the danger is not great; and I have learned
from long experience never to apprehend mischief from those understandings I have been able
to provoke: for anger and fury, though they add strength to the sinews of the body, yet are found
to relax those of the mind, and to render all its efforts feeble and impotent. .... Wit without
knowledge being a sort of cream, which gathers in a night to the top, and by a skilful hand may

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 be soon whipped into froth; but once scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for
nothing but to be thrown to the hogs. (The Battle of the Books, 375)

Indeed, Swift’s writing is never a mere display of wit without a strong argument
underlying the humorous puns or ironic comments made by his narrators, oftentimes Page | 102
assuming a literary mask that misleads readers or ironically exposes the ridiculousness
of the opinions or views of many of his contemporaries. His most interesting texts,
consolidating his position as one of the most representative intellectuals of his age,
surprise the reader not only through the force of the argument and the clear, logical
manner of expressing ideas, but also through the masterful use of irony and sarcasm,
peppered with humour, and defined by a certain playfulness that counterpointed the
seriousness of the matters discussed.
Swift was writing satires at a time when the genre was popular with writers and
readers alike, whether in poetic, dramatic or prose form. M.H. Abrams defines satire as
“the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and
evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation. It differs
from the comic in that comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself, while satire
derides; that is, it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt that exists outside the
work itself.” (275)
This mode of writing was not new, however. The earliest known satirist in
Western culture is the Cynic Menippus, whose criticism of fellow philosophers in
ancient Greece made people call him spoudogeloios (meaning “the man who jokes
about serious things”), a name referring both to the subject matter and the style (jest
was to become the central method of satire later on) of his writings (Highet 233). Roman
satire appeared later on, deriving in fact from a tradition of comic performances that
could not be described as comedies proper yet consisted of several scenes, comic in
nature and only loosely connected, providing audiences with a light form of
entertainment imitating reality, much like the later revue or vaudeville shows, called
saturae. (Highet 232). Saturae later took poetic form, and by early 2 nd century BC this
new literary species was characterised by a series of elements that were to remain
essential to most subsequent satires, such as: “variety, down-to-earth unsophistication,
coarseness, an improvisatory tone, humour, mimicry, echoes of the speaking voice,
abusive gibing, and a general feeling, real or assumed, of devil-may-care nonchalance.”

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(233) Roman poet Lucilius added social criticism to satire and thus he became the father
of Roman satire, best represented by two later poets, Horace and Juvenal.
As to the purpose of satire, there are two main scopes that have been identified, each
with its own satirical tradition:
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1. Horatian satire is milder in its criticism of human folly, pretentiousness or
absurdity, the speaker in the text posing as a man of the world who generally
likes people yet finds some people’s failings laughable or even absurd and feels
the need to expose them, with a smile and a certain ironic detachment, to correct
and instruct (Cf. Abrams 276; Highet 235). In the early 18 th century, two of the
most important representatives of this form of satire were Richard Steele and
Joseph Addison, whose texts in The Tatler (1709-1711) and The Spectator
(1711-1712) advocated satire with a didactic purpose, voiced by a sympathetic
speaker, whose role was less that of a judge and more that of a teacher; theirs
was a “reformative satire” (Marshall 170).
2. Juvenalian satire is harsh and sceptical of human goodness or ability to change,
so the scope of the speaker in this type of satire is “to wound, to punish, to
destroy” (Highet 235). He is a serious moralist who “undertakes to evoke from
readers contempt, moral indignation, or an unillusioned sadness at the
aberrations of humanity.” (Abrams 276)

Swift was mostly a Juvenalian in his approach to the question of social, political,
religious and moral criticism. He was a Cynic like Menippus and a ruthless, pessimistic
critic of his age and of his contemporaries, yet he expressed his views only indirectly,
thorough a literary persona and using allegory as a preferred literary technique, mostly
for fear of censorship and persecution. In his ironic “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”
(1739), Swift described himself as follows:

Yet malice never was his aim;

He lashed the vice, but spared the name. . ..
His satire points at no defect,
But what all mortals may correct....
He spared a hump, or crooked nose (109-110; 113-114; 117)

His targets for satire in texts written before and after Gulliver’s Travels—Drapier’s
Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729) being the best of them—were both

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topical, referring to easily recognizable monarchs (especially Queen Anne and King
George I), politicians (Robert Walpole, for instance), political and social situations, the
Royal Academy in London, but also more general aspects, regarded as common traits
to most European nations, such as corruption in politics and the judicial system,
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religious factions and religious intolerance, with serious consequences in everyday life,
social exploitation of the masses and of the Irish (his attitudes towards the Irish cause
being often ambivalent in his personal life, yet never anything but supportive in his
writings), or universal human traits such as hypocrisy, vanity, human folly, greed, envy,
irrationality, thoughtlessness and pretentiousness, debauchery and all human vices in
general.
Though not universally accepted by critics, the contention that Swift was a
misanthrope is difficult to contradict, especially since Swift himself admitted to being
generally disgusted or disappointed by human race in general. In a letter to his friend
Alexander Pope, dated September 29, 1725, he writes of his work on the final draft of
Gulliver’s Travels and the prospect of not finding a publisher bold enough to undertake
the publication of his text, and then he confesses:

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward
individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge
Such-a-one: so with physicians—I will not speak of my own trade—soldiers, English, Scotch,
French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily
love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. (“Swift to Alexander Pope” 584-85)

It is in this private confession that the explanation for Swift’s ambivalent attitude to
Man in Gulliver’s Travels is to be found, with all the physical distortions of the human
body in each of the four parts and the insistence on the flawed nature of Man, even in
its most apparently tolerable form (the monarchs of Brobdingnag, for instance), though
he was a man of the Church and should have preached and offered an example of love,
tolerance and forgiveness. Like all Juvenalian satirists, however, Swift’s pessimism and
cynicism spring perhaps from a kind of idealism that affects most writers of satire. In
his The Anatomy of Satire (1961), Gilbert Highet explains:

…satire does not compare two real societies: it compares a real and an ideal, or a noble dream
with a debased reality. All reality was, for Swift, debased. He could not believe that human
beings would ever make use of their capacities for kindness, reason and nobility; and, although

© Veronica Popescu
 outwardly a member of the Christian church, he believed so strongly in original sin and so little
in the supernatural that he saw, neither in his own faith nor in its founder, any possibility of
redemption. (159-60)

And the only way he could cope with this understanding of the human and the divine Page | 105
was through irony (including self-irony), sarcasm and humour, the most effective
disguises for his shifting opinions and attitudes, as well as powerful tools and weapons
of satirical writing. He seemed unable to reconcile his conflicting urges either in his life
as a man (his amorous life and marital status still remain a question of debate though
his emotional attachment to Esther – his “Stella” from the letters and poems – is
unquestionable and the rumours of their being lovers too strong to discard), or as an
Irish-born, desperately trying to escape Ireland and remain in England, yet one of the
greatest defenders of the Irish cause and a dedicated Dean at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in
Dublin. Even as a man of the Church he was often suspected of lacking faith and
empathy, although he was a highly conscientious Dean and a very dedicated servant of
the Church as an institution (Cf.Mahoney, np). In many ways we can say that he was a
sad man with a hyper-sensitivity to all forms of sinfulness, human frailty and social
injustice, to which he reacted by penning some of the most intriguing, interesting yet
also highly entertaining satires in the English language.
To many of the readers of his texts, one of their greatest literary qualities is the
manner in which Swift constructs his narrators as personas that are entirely unreliable
and purposely misleading, usually stating the opposite of what Swift believed or the
reader knew to be the truth of the matter. The technique of employing masks for his
narrators in his satires was doubly justified. On the one hand, this offered him some
degree of protection from governmental censorship. Even though he did not publish his
pamphlets or essays in his own name, most of his contemporaries knew who the real
authors of his texts was and Swift feared persecution for his implicit criticism of
government policies and various institutions. For instance, following the publication of
the pamphlet Proposal for the Universal use of Irish Manufacture (1720), the printer,
John Harding, was prosecuted by the British Government, infuriated by the text’s claim
that Irish industry could be better managed by the British authorities; a similar
persecution of the printer was attempted after the publication of Drapier’s Letters
(1724), a series of letters written and published over a period of several months
exposing British interference in the monetary policy of Ireland. Both texts consolidated

© Veronica Popescu
Dean Swift’s public persona as an Irish patriot although, ironically, Swift never felt
very much at home in his native Ireland and it was his abhorrence of social injustice
(rather than a patriotic zeal) that had prompted him to write against the British
government.
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On the other hand, Swift the writer found the use of a persona more interesting
from a narrative point of view, a good means to display his wit and toy with the reader.
Readers’ naivety sometimes led to misreadings of his texts, which is why a text like
Gulliver’s Travels could be regarded by some as a book for children, and A Modest
Proposal infuriated both English and Irish readers, though its intention was to expose
the cruelty and mercilessness of the English oppressors in Ireland and hopefully awaken
the conscience of the English readers who could make a change, while making the Irish
realise even more clearly the need to protest against the English policies of exploitation
and humiliation.

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a
surgeon, and then a captain of several ships (1726)

The idea of a parody of the travel writing genre and of the human credulousness that
was to be the driving idea behind Gulliver’s Travels was not Swift’s own, originally.
While still in London prior do 1713, Swift became good friends with Alexander Pope,
Joseph Addison, John Arbuthnot, John Gay and Thomas Parnell, meeting them
regularly as co-members of the Scriblerus Club. On such occasions they commented on
the literary scene of their age, encouraged each other and offered useful advice for on-
going projects, but they also concocted a common project that never materialised as
originally intended, namely a text written by all in which they would criticise the worst
writers and philosophers, the most absurd theories and scientific experiments of the
time, all in allegorical form as an adventure novel that would consist of several travels
to imaginary worlds where the narrator, Dr. Martin Scriblerus, would go. Scriblerus’s
travels were to be re-imagined by Dean Swift years later, in 1725, while he was living
in Dublin, and it was only in 1726 that Swift found a publisher bold enough to print his
text as it was, once again anonymously. Dr. Scriblerus was replaced by Lemuel
Gulliver, surgeon and ship captain, whose name (from the English “gullible”, meaning
“easily deceived, or duped”) signalled the unreliability of the narrator and subverted the
authority of his narratorial comments and the judiciousness of his opinions on the

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systems of government, societies and lifestyles of the fantastic worlds he describes in
minute detail in the four books of the Travels.
The virulent attacks on Robert Walpole’s Whig government and his tolerance
of corruption, on King George I’s inefficiency and even his risqué comments on the
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state of religious institutions in Britain made Swift choose an indirect form of satire,
allegory, and the use of distortion (in size, shape and basic features) of both
recognizable geographical locations and of the physical body as a technique of disguise
for the most sensitive targets of satire. Moreover, by subverting the authority of his own
narrator—presented in the prefatory texts (a letter from Gulliver to his cousin Sympson,
the publisher, and the latter’s preface) as not entirely sane and capable of distinguishing
between reality and fiction, Swift simply teases the readers and plays upon their
expectations, placing the entire account of the several voyages in the realm of the
fantastic, a world apparently removed from the reality of his contemporaries. The claim
of truthfulness that Gulliver constantly makes by providing his readers with a wealth of
circumstantial detail is thus called into question before the first page of the text proper
(although it may be argued that in this case the paratextual material—the title, the letter
from Gulliver, the preface—are all part of the text being as fictional as it is) is therefore
just a narratorial trick, a trap for the gullible reader, who should be able to read between
the lines and understand that Gulliver’s opinions are never to be taken seriously,
especially when his comments are unsupported by the reality readers know only too
well.
Jonathan Swift disguises his critical views on all aspects of human existence—
social, spiritual and private—with allegorical means which allow him to change the
manner in which his targets for satire are exposed and criticised. Though each book
takes the reader on voyages to lands that seem more the creation of a rich imagination
than actual parts of our world, most of the countries he visits are in fact distorting
mirrorings of his native England, to which he constantly opposes a real England—as
described by Gulliver to the natives of each land—so readers are constantly exposed to
a double vision that they need to decipher and understand critically, peeling away all
layers of fictional reality and intentional distortions of their reality, all playful
deceptions that make Swift’s satire a complex and entertaining reading.
Gulliver’s Travels has mistakenly been regarded and is still marketed as a book
for children (especially in its abridged form, containing only the first two books)
because of its reliance on allegory and its detailed descriptions of imaginary lands

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where Lemuel Gulliver is placed in ridiculous situations and where he meets
extraordinary humans (midgets in Lilliput and giants in Brobdingnag), the narrative
apparently following the logic of the tale though cast in the form of a travel narrative.
Beyond the charming allegorical tale, however, lie some of the most caustic comments
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on English society and human nature ever written in English, for the appreciation of
which the reader needs to be familiarised with the state of the country and of Europe in
early 18th century, as well as have an ability to understand from where Swift’s cynical
attitude to human nature springs.
Though sometimes labelled a satirical novel, the book displays very few
novelistic features. Taken independently, each of the four books has a protagonist
(Lemuel Gulliver) and some form of plot, each voyage being an opportunity for
adventure and problem solving for Gulliver, yet there is little connection among the
books apart from the presence of the protagonist in each and the unifying narrative
voice the reader hears from the first page to the last. The work should be described as
a satire in prose that uses some elements of the 18th-century novel of adventures in the
manner of Defoe, but nothing more. Its scope is not to present action and draw
interesting characters but to expose, criticise and tax all forms of human frailty, social
injustice and moral corruption with irony and humour, disguising a genuine concern
and a sobriety and pessimism that characterised Swift in the later part of his life, in the
good satiric tradition of his Roman models and in the spirit of the Scriblerians.
In terms of construction, only Books I and II can be seen as being related, their
connection being the use of proportions to caricaturize English society. In Lilliput there
is an inverse proportion between the size of the inhabitants of the island (they are twelve
times smaller than Gulliver) and the level of self-confidence, pride, greed, corruption
and viciousness; the opposite can be seen in Brobdingnag where the giants (twelve
times bigger than Gulliver) are mild and generous, instructed, rational and peaceful
people—particularly the monarch and the members of his court—making Gulliver
seem a Lilliputian by comparison. In the first book English society is described by
exaggerating its evils and the high level of generalised corruption, and the lens through
which readers are invited to look at England exaggerates the vices by diminishing the
size of the inhabitants (the name of the country, Lilliput, being derived from “little” and
the Latin “putridus”, meaning “rotten, decayed”).
Robert Walpole’s Whig government—which Swift criticised constantly when
he was writing for the Tory journal Examiner and later on as a Dean at St Patrick’s—

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appears as ridiculously over-confident and corrupt, and the political scene is mercilessly
painted in the worst possible colours yet with a wonderful sense of humour that makes
the whole account very amusing and more light-hearted than the one in Book IV. It
would be difficult to forget the story of the long enmity and history of war between
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Lilliput and Blefuscu, two neighbouring countries divided by an artificially created
conflict (a law stipulating that eggs could only be broken at the smaller and no longer
at the larger end driving many into exile—a clear reference to Henry VIII’s reformation
of the Church in England and his persecution of Catholics, leading to a series of wars
and “Popish” plots involving France and Spain), or the manner in which the two
political parties, Tramecksan (standing for the Tories) and Slamecksan (standing for
the Whig party) differentiate themselves by wearing shoes with high and low heels,
respectively, and how the emperor of Lilliput (a mock version of King George I,
supporter of the Whigs) wears shoes with low heels, while the heir to the throne (a Tory
at heart) wears shoes with different heels so as not to offend the king and endanger his
position. Allegory is thus used as a form of critique as well as an entertaining tale, the
criticism of early 18 th-century Britain being indirectly, obliquely expressed, the reader
being invited to decipher the allegorical elements of the text.
The second book uses allegory differently and Swift’s targets of satire are
exposed both by Gulliver, who naively gives a full account of Britain’s long history of
domestic and foreign conflict, of corruption in politics and the judicial system, of
misgovernment and exploitation of the underprivileged, of intrigues and plots,
inhumanity and injustice, presenting them in a matter-of-fact manner, as if these were
the most natural social, political and spiritual realities—the way things are and not
deviations from how things should be—a masterful example of how Swift can use
subtle irony for misleading purposes—, and by the monarch of Brobdingnag, who
comments that the English must be “the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin
that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth” (Gulliver’s Travels,
Book II, Ch. 6, 108). Brobdingnag must be seen as an idealised version of England,
according to a utopian perspective that Swift could see emerge in early 18 th century
political thought. Brobdingnag is an agrarian enlightened monarchy ruled according to
the principles of common sense, reason, justice and good will, education being held in
high regard (though mostly by the aristocracy), just as the thinkers of the Age of Reason
would have wished things to be. However Gulliver seems quite unimpressed by this
country and his comments voice a barely disguised contempt for a nation that is, to his

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mind, quite simplistic and uninterested in achieving greatness, his offer to share with
them the secret of gunpowder, which could make the country rule the world, being
rejected with abhorrence by the king. Gulliver’s critical comments of Brobdingnag do
not reflect Swifts’ opinions; Brobdingnag represents an idealised version of Britain,
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shaped by a conservative and anti-progressive ideology, and in many respects Swift felt
more comfortable with this type of ideology than the aggressively progressive Whig
ideology, against which he had written before.
However, although Brobdingnag comes close to an ideal society in many
respects, the cynical Swift could not refrain from mocking the idealising tendency of
his contemporaries, the implicit suggestion being that an educated aristocracy is not the
answer to social improvement as long as the majority of the people remain uninterested
in education and ruled by selfish interests, greed and ignorance, as exemplified by
Glumdalclitch’s father, the farmer who exploited Gulliver to near death prior to selling
him to the Queen. For Swift societies are only as good as the people that make them
and humans are flawed creatures that cannot be perfected simply through instruction,
nor are all people willing or capable of working on their personal development, so
believing that an ideal society as that envisioned by Enlightenment thinkers could
become reality is in itself ridiculous, the author seems to suggest.
Book III, the last one Swift completed, is the most difficult to analyse as a whole
due to the variety of aspects that the author scrutinises: social inequality and
exploitation, misgovernment, systems of government, human folly, pseudo-science and
futile philosophical explorations, the state of contemporary critical thought, or a
generalised obsession with immortality and the universal nature of human vices, all
approached once again by means of allegory. Probably the part that most readers
remember from this book is the account of Gulliver’s visit to the flying island of
Laputa—the residence of absent-minded philosophers, mathematicians and astrologers
who are also the rulers of Balnibarbi, the country supporting life on the flying island—
where Gulliver is amused to see that excessive learnedness and self-imposed isolation
from reality result in economic disaster and, ironically, an acceptance on the part of the
oppressed to be ruled by people who know so much about celestial bodies and yet so
little about the life of their people. Interpreted as a double satire, exposing both the
relationship between the ruling class and lower-class citizens, and that between England
and Ireland, the tale of flying Laputa amuses and perplexes at the same time because it

© Veronica Popescu
shows the power of authority imposed by force, preventing the many from rebelling
against the few simply because they are not aware of their power.
Also part of this visit Gulliver travels to the Academy of Lagado in Balnibarbi,
and the weird experiments he sees being conducted there—most of which are incredibly
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ridiculous because they defy the laws of physics and of common sense—were not only
inspired, but also taken from the publication of the Royal Academy, Philosophical
Transactions, which is not to be interpreted as an attack against the Academy itself, but
against the waste of money and energy fostered by this institution where, according to
Swift, pseudo-science replaced proper scientific research the results of which could
improve people’s lives. Like the scientists of Lagado, busy trying to extract sunbeams
from cucumbers, building houses from the roof down, imposing linguistic reforms
whereby words would be completely discarded, communication being reduced to the
pointing to various objects (a prophetic anticipation of today’s reduction of complex
communication through the use of emoticons and chat acronyms, or the use of
interjections and gestures instead of words)—in the hope of protecting the vocal chords
and prolonging life, to mention just some of the most absurd, English scientists were
also sometimes accused of performing equally absurd experiments, to the amusement
and frustration of the Scriblerians.
Physical distortion is present in this book as well. The half-mad scholars of
Laputa have heads that are too large for their bodies and are unable to keep them
straight, so they constantly recline to one side and their eyes are one turned inwards,
and the other directed towards the zenith; their hearing and their speech are affected by
their self-absorbed nature, and they need flappers to touch their ears when they need to
listen or their mouths when they have to speak. More shocking, however, are the
deformed, decayed bodies of the Struldbruggs, immortals who are condemned to an
eternal life (but not eternal youth) and are therefore spiteful, hateful frustrated human
beings for whom life is a burden and not a joy. Needless to say, Dean Swift is here
mocking people’s obsession with immortality, their desperate measures to prolong their
earthly life when, in fact, they are also ensuring their prolonged misery as aged, decayed
human beings unable to enjoy life.
The human body and its bodily functions is something that Swift finds
disgusting not only in the old, but also in the young and, surprisingly, in women. In
Lilliput the people’s physical defects may be invisible to the gigantic Gulliver, yet it is
his own body that our traveller finds repulsive, as he indirectly suggests every time he

© Veronica Popescu
talks about getting rid of his own excreta, or when he describes his urinating on the
palace to extinguish a fire. Gulliver—much like Swift himself, finds the human body a
repulsive shell for the mind and soul of man. There is a progression in the manner in
which this disgust is revealed to us. In Book II, for instance, the tiny Gulliver has to
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cope with the sight of the female body with its flaws twelve times magnified—as if
observed at a microscope—and with the body odours, which he finds extremely
disgusting. The decayed bodies of the Struldbruggs of Luggnagg are described with
similar abhorrence as a “mortifying sight,” yet nowhere is Gulliver’s repulsion to the
human body more violent and maddening than in Book IV, where the human being is
divided between spirit (the Houyhnhnms) and body (the Yahoos), where the former
dehumanise man by giving him a horse’s body, and the latter by turning man into an
ape (or something that comes close to a Neanderthal humanoid), a primitive human
untouched by civilisation.
Book IV is clearly the most troubling satire of all his works. It surpasses even
his later A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a
Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick
(1729), where Swift describes the horrors to which the British government subjects the
Irish poor as a form of cannibalism, the speaker in the text pretending to advise the
English on how to better exploit their resources in Ireland by eating the babies of poor
Irish people, offering a series of recipes and even suggesting that the children’s skin be
used to make lovely gloves for ladies. In both works the Juvenalian satirist shows the
same preoccupation with the effects of enslavement: of the Irish, in A Modest Proposal,
of the Yahoos in Gulliver’s Travels (Cf. Cline Kelley 846 ff). It might seem a bit of a
stretch to see the Irish poor in the Yahoos, yet the parallel becomes more acceptable if
we consider what both types of oppressed communities share: the dehumanising force
of enslavement. The Irish are held captive by a ruthless and inhumane English
aristocracy interested solely in making their Irish properties profitable, extreme poverty
and dependence on the will of the English landowners making the Irish poor
dehumanised slaves; the Yahoos are treated as beasts, overworked, abused and even
bred as animals by the rational Houyhnhnms, who show no desire to improve their
living conditions or help them become less brutish and more in control of their lives.
There is, one may say, a darker side to the apparently perfect society of the Houhnhnms,
yet few readers seem aware of this, especially when Gulliver is so ecstatic about their
apparently flawless social system and their apparent irreproachable morality.

© Veronica Popescu
 What makes Book IV even more disturbing than the previous three books for
most is the fact that it reads like a generalised (rather than topical) satire, being a critique
of the human race in general and not simply the English politicians, monarchs or corrupt
officials. We find here a dystopian vision of the world, where the apparently perfect
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social order—the utopian society—belongs to beasts, and chaos rules the community
of humanlike creatures. For the first time in his travels, Gulliver no longer feels normal
or happy with his national and racial identity, wishing to rid himself of any feature that
he might share with the beastly Yahoos and to become a Houyhnhnm, in whom he sees
all the qualities that he holds in high esteem: reason, common sense, honesty,
sociability, and stoic morality.
Because physically he is more like the Yahoos—something he immediately
understands from the Houyhnhnms’ reaction of disgust and distrust towards him
initially—Gulliver gradually begins to hate his own body and the entire human race, as
he realises that the rational beings he aspires to emulate might not allow him to stay in
their land, in spite of all his efforts to adapt and become like them. For the first time in
his voyages, it is Gulliver himself who criticises his country and European culture, as
if in the face of evidence that a perfect society does exist, his native land and the general
moral decay of the human race appeared to him as undeniable reality for the first time.
His accounts of British and European history, of state institutions and politics, of
people’s behaviour in his native England and their ignorance shock the Houyhnhnms,
who do not even have words for evil things and whose society is so regulated that
nothing can disturb its harmony and smooth running, at least as long as the base Yahoos
are kept subdued. It is the fear that a rational Yahoo might endanger their society by
leading a Yahoo rebellion that makes the Houyhnhnms ask Gulliver to leave, which for
Gulliver is the trigger of his insanity, as he no longer perceives humans as other than
Yahoos (including his family) and even years later he prefers the company of horses to
that of people, whom he considers the basest of creatures. This attack on the human
race itself has made many of his readers and critics label Swift a hopeless misanthrope,
something that he did not entirely disprove, especially since he had already confided in
his friend Pope that he could like individuals, but not people as a whole, and that he did
not agree with his contemporaries that man is animal rationale (a rational animal), but
rather rationis capax (that is, capable of rational thought).
There are at least four lines of interpretation for this fourth book. One claim is
that this book is an attack on the degradation of the human race, the Yahoos being the

© Veronica Popescu
reflection of how Swift saw people around him: instinctual, rudimentary, uncivilised,
brutish. Another line of interpretation places Swift’s perspective in relation to the
concept of “natural man” as defined by Hobbes in The Leviathan (1667), as being a
naturally wicked being, and that of 18th-century philosophers (more clearly formulated
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by Jean Jacques Rousseau in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in 1754), who
presented the natural man as having uncorrupted morals and being naturally good, being
superior to the decayed civilised modern. Swift must have considered that an
idealisation of the natural man—thought of in terms of the Edenic couple most likely—
was absurd, because it would also mean a denial of the positive effects of culture and
civilisation.
It is more likely that the Yahoos and the Hoyhnhnms represent two states of
man in spiritual terms. The former are the representation of sinfulness, which Swift
found intolerable and disgusting; the latter would represent the rational, independent-
thinking Deists. As an intellectual of the Augustan Age and a man of the Church, Swift
is an advocate of morality, self-discipline and reason, yet he is also a believer in divine
grace and in the need for the Church as an institution, which is why his Houyhnhnms
are most admirable, yet they are not embodiments of human perfection, their self-
sufficiency and their inability to experience profound emotions being contrary to what
Swift believed to be essential qualities in a man. (In this respect, Swift’s perspective is
similar to that expressed by Alexander Pope in his An Essay on Man, where man’s
faulty nature and the necessity for a humble worship of God are central to the
argument.)
Last but not least, from a Freudian perspective, the Yahoos and the
Houyhnhnms appear as two of the aspects of the human psyche, the id (the irrational,
subconscious aspect) and a benign super-ego (the conscious, regulatory, oppressive
aspect of the psyche, appearing here in a more friendly aspect as ideal reason)
respectively, whereas Gulliver is the embodiment of both, a perfectly balanced human
being whose rejection of his id leads to a distorted perception of his self, of his identity;
it leads to insanity.
Regardless of the line of interpretation adopted, the text offers a disturbingly
unflattering representation of human race meant to shake readers out of their self-
indulging acceptance of what is primitive, instinctual, sinful, base in order to
contemplate more seriously the possibility for self-improvement, spiritual development
through discipline and hard work, evolution towards what Man could be if only he tried.

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What continues to ensure Gullivers Travels the masterpiece status centuries after its
publication, however, is the writer’s ability to clothe even the harshest comments on
human depravity and flaws in a humorous, witty attire, attenuating the force of his
blows and strikes and making them tolerable as an enjoyable reading experience.
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Regardless of what we choose to read in Swift’s allegorical presentations of Britain, the
Western world and humanity, his text remains—even for readers in our time—a highly
entertaining yet equally thought-provoking text, a perfect example of Augustan
literature: witty and instructive, but also subversive and sobering.

© Veronica Popescu
The final decades of Neoclassicism (1745/50-1798): The Age of Johnson
(1745-1784), or the Age of Classical Prose

The second half of the 18th century is generally called the Age of Johnson, with direct
reference to the greatest Enlightenment writer of the period, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Page | 116
alternative names—depending on the angle from which these decades are discussed—
being the Age of Classical Prose (as, from the 1740s onwards, the English modern
novel steps into maturity, with better developed characters, of greater complexity, and
coherent, well-controlled plots), the Age of Sensibility (a reference to an increasing
interest in individuals and their private, emotional existence, reflected in the prose and
poetry of the age), the Age of the Literature of Everyday Life (reflecting the
popularity of autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, diaries and novels representing
the world of common people), or the Age of Revolutions (referring to the American
Revolution or War of Independence, beginning in 1776, and the French Revolution,
beginning in 1787/89).
From a strictly literary point of view, this is the period when neoclassical
aesthetics and Enlightenment thought—so well reflected in Samuel Johnson’s literary
criticism— are still strong, though gradually contested by a series of writers animated
by a different kind of sensibility and interested in literary experiments that led to the
appearance of Romanticism in Britain. It is also the time when three major contributions
to English letters (all three belonging to Samuel Johnson) saw the light of print and cast
a guiding light for future men of letters long after the 18 th century: the first major
dictionary in the English language (1755), the first work of critical biographies of the
major English poets of the 17th and 18th century, Lives of the Most Eminent English
Poets (1765), as well as the first annotated edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published in
1765, in partnership with George Steevens. It is also a period of major breakthroughs
in novel writing in English, hence the name Age of the Classical Prose: Samuel
Richardson’s epistolary novels, beginning a tradition of sentimental literature and even
an early form of psychological novel; Henry Fielding’s improvement of the novel of
adventures made popular by Daniel Defoe just two decades earlier, supported by a solid
theory of the novel—the first in English literature—perfectly exemplified by his own
novels; Laurence Sterne’s postmodern experiments 200 years ahead of its time; or the
emergence of the Gothic novel (e.g. Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto of 1764).

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 The comedy of manners becomes a popular genre once again, but it is more
refined and morally appropriate in content. The two most important representatives of
the genre in the second half of the 18th century were the Anglo-Irish writer Oliver
Goldsmith, whose play She Stoops to Conquer (1773) was a great success, Richard Page | 117
Brinsley Sheridan, whose most important plays are The Rivals (1775), a rather bawdy
comedy of manners that scandalised many of his contemporaries to such an extent that
its author had to rewrite parts of the play, turning it into a huge success, and The School
for Scandal (1777), praised by critics long after the death of its author and still popular
in drama schools.28 Also popular are adaptations of Elizabethan plays, particularly
Shakespeare’s, and 17th century plays, some of them being quite radical adaptations,
modernised versions more appropriate for a neoclassical audience.
Like in the first half of the 18th century, readers enjoy travel books, biographies,
letters, diaries and autobiographies, philosophical dialogues, essays, political speeches,
and historical tracts, a reflection of the spirit of the Age of Reason, with signs, however,
of a growing interest in the intimate aspects of people’s lives, in the emotional
experience of reality and the working of the human mind, shared with the readers
through access to the fictional characters’ minds and souls. This is reflected in the clear
tendency toward sentimentalism and the depiction of private lives in prose fiction
(Richardson’s Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady and Sterne’s The Life and
Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, for instance), and particularly in the poetry
of the “Graveyard Poets” (name related to their melancholy meditations on mortality):
Thomas Gray, William Cowper and Christopher Smart, among many others. These
poets displayed certain Romantic features in their poems, such as interest in
imagination, emotion, passion even, in the mysterious, the supernatural, the legendary,
the rural and the natural; and a more natural, simpler and free manner of poetic
expression. Towards the end of the period, especially from the 1780s onwards, it will
be the genius of William Blake—generally described as a pre-Romantic—that will
dominate English poetry. With Blake, the break with Neoclassicism is clearer than in
the work of any other poet of the time, his visionary art (his poetry and prose being
often accompanied by illustrations, engravings betraying a highly personal style)

28
These plays continue to be performed more often than their Restoration counterparts, being considered
more complex and with better developed characters. What is more, they have been adapted for the screen
several times.

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placing him more in the company of the free-spirited Romantic poets at the turn of the
century than, for instance, a poet like Pope, Swift, or even Oliver Goldsmith.
In this period the neoclassical features of the first half of the century (reason,
precision, order, clarity and harmony) coexisted with new ideas and a new poetics that
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were to become the norm in the last decades of the century with the emergence of a
romantic sensibility: interest in themes based on feelings, in country life and natural
landscape, a sense of melancholy and return to the past—specifically to the Middle
Ages—and to folklore for inspiration. The final decades of the 18th century should be
seen as a period of transition and experiment, as the spirit of Neoclassicism gradually
gives way to that of Romanticism, especially in poetry, which is why the term pre-
Romanticism is often used to refer to the final decades of the 18th century to suggest
that there is a co-existence of competing ideas and artistic sensibilities, creating a fertile
ground for the emergence of British Romanticism in the last decade of the century.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the last great Enlightenment man of letters

Although of a modest background and unable to graduate from Oxford for financial
reasons, Samuel Johnson was such an influential intellectual
in his time that he was awarded two doctoral degrees, one in
1765, from Trinity College in Dublin, and one in 1775 from
the University of Oxford. The son of a bookseller in
Lichfield, Johnson acquired a love of literature and a passion
for language and for writing at an early age. After a brief
time working as assistant to a teacher, he turned to
journalism and was to build a remarkable career as a
publicist, writing articles, editorials, essays and political Figure 17 Dr. Samuel Johnson,
by Joshua Reynolds, ? 1772
pamphlets on a variety of topics, yet his most important
contribution was to be in the field of literary criticism. As a journalist, he wrote
especially for The Rambler, his own journal (1750-52), where he published more than
200 articles, and for a London weekly, the Universal Chronicle, where he published 91
articles in the Idler series between 1758 and 1760. He also edited and contributed to
The Literary Magazine, where his political pamphlets alternated with reviews of books
by various writers of his generation. His work in general focused on neoclassical
aesthetics and the values of Enlightenment, such as the advancement of knowledge

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through education and research and the application of new scientific discoveries or
breakthroughs in political, economic or scientific thought towards sustaining progress
in all fields. It is no surprise, therefore, that even his contemporaries looked up to him
as the greatest intellectual of their time, or, as Andrew Sanders describes him in The
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Short Oxford History of English Literature, “a senior man of letters and a galvanizing
force in contemporary literature and society” (329).
Johnson was not only a journalist and literary critic, he was also a poet, a
dramatist and a prose writer. His literary texts, though not as numerous as his
contributions to literary studies, include poems—mostly verse satires in a Juvenalian
style—a play, and The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759), a philosophical
tale on the meaning of life and the pursuit of human happiness. This was to be his only
novel, which, in desperate need for money, he chose to write in the form of an “Oriental
tale,” a very popular form in his time.
Johnson had exceptional lexicographical skills, evident in the range of
vocabulary and the originality of presentation evident in his Dictionary of the English
Language (1755), one of the most famous dictionaries in history. It listed 40,000 words
and took about eight years to compile, with only 6 assistants helping him to finish a
work of unprecedented complexity, reflecting not only the span of the scholar’s
knowledge, but also an understanding of the need to provide readers with definitions
accompanied by quotations, for a better understanding of the use of the words defined,
a method that revolutionised the style of the dictionaries made since then. He was also
among the first to notice and comment on the instability and unruliness of the
language—something that he initially saw as a cause for much frustration, and later
understood to be one of the natural features of language. He did not always display the
kind of scholarly detachment expected of a dictionary-maker in his definitions,
occasionally expressing his personal views on the matter at hand. One famous example
is in his definition of “oats,” which he defines as “A Grain, which in England is
generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” He was, even at the
time the dictionary was published, criticised for his occasional pompousness and
irreverence, yet his contribution to English lexicography is so important, that the fact
that his personality seems too present in his dictionary and his quotations reflect his
personal views on various matters remains just a peculiarity of his work that does not
chip away from its status as a major landmark in British culture in the eighteenth

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century, unchallenged until the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years
later.
He was also the author of an annotated edition of The Plays of William
Shakespeare (1765, with George Steevens as co-editor) and the author of a very Page | 120
influential book, combining literary biography with literary criticism, Lives of the Most
Eminent English Poets (1765),29 in which the author strived to offer readers an accurate
portrait of his subjects, including their faults and weaknesses as moral people and as
authors, revolutionising the manner in which biography was written. His friend and
disciple Boswell was to tread in his master’s footsteps by writing a biography of Dr.
Johnson entitled The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), a biography that painted his
portrait not only as the leading scholar of his time, but also an example of intelligence,
tenacity, hard work, and commitment for his contemporaries. Of all the writers of the
time, Johnson was indeed the most prolific and influential, a true Enlightenment
intellectual in his dedication to the advancement of knowledge thorough education and
research, his trust in progress, as supported by breakthroughs in scientific, political, or
economic thought, as well as a defender of neoclassical aesthetics and ideals (logic,
clarity of thought, elegance, simplicity and clarity of expression), setting an example of
prose style in non-fictional prose more effectively than Swift, Addison and Steele had
done in the previous decades.

29
The Life of Pope is the longest and the best part of the book. He not only praised the Augustan poet for
his mastery and role in the history of English literature, but also defended him against his detractors,
although he also seemed to prefer John Dryden’s craft.

© Veronica Popescu
The English novel in the Age of Classical Prose: Samuel Richardson and Henry
Fielding

Probably one of the most influential historiographers of the English novel in the 18th
century, Ian Watt, believed that this was the period of the modern novel’s rise because Page | 121
the cultural and social circumstances were favourable in Britain for such a development.
In The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957), Watt
mentions five major factors that contributed to creating the appropriate environment for
the kind of realist novel (that is, defined by a formal realism, as he terms it) specific to
the 18th century: 1. a growing demand for realism in fiction; 2. the rise of individualism;
3. changes in the intellectual and psychological disposition of readers; 4. the rise of the
middle class; 5. an increase in the number of women readers. To Watt’s five factors we
may add the Augustan growing interest in private lives, which also contributed to the
popularity of prose fiction (alongside non-fictional forms of life writing such as
autobiographies, memoirs or biographies).
Also in this seminal study, Ian Watt describes Daniel Defoe, Samuel
Richardson, and Henry Fielding as the most important representatives of the modern
English novel (clearly opposed to the mediaeval romance tradition, which Fielding
parodies in such entertaining and instructive fashion), attributing to each a role in the
development of a native novel tradition which displays one major, unifying trait: its
formal realism (Watt 34). However, he also distinguishes two different tendencies in
the works of the three novelists, prioritising Defoe’s and Richardson’s “realism of
presentation” (in which emphasis is placed on the detailed descriptions of the fictional
worlds of the characters) to Fielding's “realism of assessment” (a feature of the novel
placing the focus on the manner in which the narrator presents the characters, their
actions and motivations, with additional comments, which makes it a higher form of
rhetoric). Ian Watt’s study of the English novel, reductive as it may be, does capture
the essential feature of most works of extended prose of the 18th century, the interest of
writers and readers alike in the fictional exploration of the lives of ordinary people. It
is their adventures or misadventures, manners, moral principles or immoral behaviour,
qualities and vices, hypocrisy and vanity, innocence or viciousness, emotional
experiences and private thoughts that make them easily relatable or at least familiar to
the readers, and the main reason for their popularity with readers of various
backgrounds.

© Veronica Popescu
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), and the tradition of sentimental fiction

Like Samuel Johnson, Samuel Richardson came

from a modest background and could not go to Page | 122
college for financial reasons. An apprentice to a
printer from an early age, he later started his own
printing business and was instrumental in reprinting
various of Daniel Defoe’s novels in the 1830s. He
was a self-made man, autodidact and ambitious, a
man of strong moral principles, as his readers would
eventually find out from his novels. His literary
Figure 18 Samuel Richardson, by Joseph debut came very late, at the age of 51. By that time
Highmore, circa 1747
he had been married twice and had fathered nine
children, five of whom were daughters. It is no surprise, then, that he knew so much
about a woman’s soul and he chose to write about it in three of his four novels. Among
the trademarks of his fiction, the most notable are his choice of the sentimental
epistolary novel form meant to move and teach at the same time, and an unprecedented
insight into women’s soul, which helped him develop the psychological profiles of his
characters. His novels, as John Richetti (1999) points out, reflect the writer’s
commitment to redefining amatory fiction by making it more morally acceptable and,
we may add, more complex and superior as works of fiction.
Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740) was his first novel. It tells the story of a
fifteen-year old servant who is the victim of her employer’s repeated attempts to seduce
her, culminating with her imprisonment in Mr B’s country house for forty days, in the
hope that this will break the girl’s resistance. After Mr B realises that a gentle, tender
approach might be more successful and he starts courting her, the girl changes her mind
about the young man and finally agrees to marry him. The novel was instantly popular
especially with chambermaids, who saw a Cinderella-type of story in the novel which
fuelled their own ambitions of marrying well and above their condition. It is the first
influential epistolary novel in the English language, an exercise in the genre preceding
his masterpiece, Clarissa: or, the History of A Young Lady. By 1741 it had reached its
fourth edition, and it was soon translated into various languages. Pamela was followed
by a sequel, Pamela's Conduct in High Life (1741), which did not enjoy the same

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popularity, however. After seeing the reception of his debut novel, Richardson
confessed, in a letter to his friend, Aaron Hill:

Little did I think, at first, of making one, much less two volumes of it... I thought the story, if
written in an easy and natural manner, suitably to the simplicity of it, might possibly introduce Page | 123
a new species of writing, that might possibly turn young people into a course of reading different
from the pomp and parade of romance-writing, and dismissing the improbable and marvellous,
with which novels generally abound, might tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue.
(Selected Letters 41)

Not everyone met Richardson’s debut novel with the same enthusiasm. In 1741, Henry
Fielding wrote a parody of Pamela, a satirical burlesque, entitled An Apology for the
Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews. From it we learn that Pamela’s real name was Shamela
and that, far from being the virtuous, innocent brave girl of Richardson’s novel, she was
nothing more than a scheming former prostitute who wanted to get her hands on Mr
Booby’s fortune. Fielding apparently never took credit for this parody, but it certainly
proved a good exercise for Fielding, who then decided to switch to prose writing
afterwards.
Samuel Richardson’s third novel and his greatest literary achievement is another
epistolary novel about a virtuous young woman, Clarissa: or, the History of A Young
Lady (1747-48), published over a period of two years. Though the novel has been
described as prolix (Richardson himself admitting that he could have been more
concise) and too long (more than one million-words long, to be more precise), it is
nevertheless the work of a good writer, who manages to control the various voices in
the novel, achieving a multi-voiced novel with a polyphonic structure that tells the
dramatic story of virtue, temptation, human meanness, cunningness, cruelty and greed,
with a tragic denouement, promising a much-deserved redemption. Samuel
Richardson’s moral principles, as represented in this novel, appear inspired by puritan
dogmatic thought, and it is here that we need to search for his choice of an unhappy
ending, as he explains in the Postscript of his novel:

if the temporary sufferings of the Virtuous and the Good can be accounted for and justified on
Pagan principles, many more and infinitely stronger reasons will occur to a Christian Reader in
behalf of what are called unhappy Catastrophes, from a consideration of the doctrine of future
rewards; which is every where strongly enforced in the History of Clarissa. (Clarissa 375)

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Richardson’s tale of virtue and stoic resistance to temptation was particularly moving
because, unlike Pamela, the protagonist of this story seems the victim of multiple
aggressors, of whom reformed rake Lovelace is not necessarily the worst or most
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worthy of blame. Forced by her parents to marry someone she abhors, for no other
reason than the fact that he is considered a socially suitable husband, Clarissa Harlowe
runs away from home with the help of her suitor, a reformed rake who professes his
love for her but whom she does not trust. She documents her misfortune, her feelings
and her fears in a series of letters to her best friend Anna Howe, whose replies offer her
some comfort and advice. The other two important letter writers are Lovelace and his
friend John Belford. Through them readers find out about Lovelace’s exceptional
villainy, cunningness and his hidden plans to seduce Clarissa, made even worse by his
desperate rape of the poor woman when she would not yield to his insistent requests for
acceptance, which made some of the novel’s readers question his credibility, while
others were simply fascinated with him and with the representations violence in the
novel.
Even so, it is said that Fielding himself, in spite of the rivalry and the difference
of opinion in moral and aesthetic principles between them, wrote to Richardson to
declare his admiration for the novel and to praise its author. Some did complain about
Clarissa’s exaggerated virtue and her stubborn commitment to her principles, leading
to her death in misery, but to many readers of the novel, in English or in various
translations on the Continent, she was a true model. Diderot praised the novel in Eloge
de Richardson (1762) and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise
(1761), one of the major French novels of the time, was clearly influenced by
Richardson’s novel.
Richardson himself was apparently surprised by the reactions that his novels
had caused and regretted his portrayal of Robert Lovelace in such dark colours—
something he tried to amend in the subsequent five editions of the novel, and that is
why in his last epistolary novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754) he
created a much softer version of Lovelace, condemning his novel to a much more
moderate success. Undeniably, however, no English writer before him had managed to
create such emulation among the readers, had triggered such heated debates about moral
issues and had stimulated the imagination of women from all social classes as
Richardson did. Allowing readers access to the characters’ innermost thoughts, to the

© Veronica Popescu
recesses of their minds and souls, making them experience empathy more than ever
before made Richardson instantly popular with readers of various backgrounds. The
foundations to the psychological novel of the next century had already been laid.
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Henry Fielding (1707-1754) and the development of the English modern novel in the 18th
century

Henry Fielding was not only Samuel Richardson’s

contemporary but also his rival. He was a
gentleman by birth, the son of small landowners in
the South of Somerset. He encountered financial
difficulties in his early life, but this did not prevent
him from eventually becoming a magistrate, a
businessman and a very influential writer in the
1730s and 1740s, known for his drama, novels and
his constant contributions to various journals. His
Figure 19 Henry Fielding, engraving after
portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, circa early passion as a writer was for the stage, and he
1740
made his dramatic debut with Love in Several
Masques in 1728. He continued with two adaptations from Molière (The Mock Doctor
and The Miser), several sharp comedies (The Author’s Farce and Rape upon Rape; or,
the Justice Caught in his own Trap, and an exuberant burlesque Tom Thumb: A
Tragedy, all performed in 1730, and among his best plays). He loved writing comedies
and experimented with the burlesque,30 something that he chose to do in his prose
writing as well. In the 1730s he was the most influential playwright since John Dryden
and, in George Bernard Shaw’s view, he was the best English playwright, apart from
Shakespeare, before the 19th century (cf. Battestin ix), which, coming from a dramatist
of Shaw’s calibre is certainly a praise to be taken very seriously.

30
The burlesque, M.H. Abrams explains, “imitates the manner (the form and style) or else the subject
matter of a serious literary work or a literary genre, in verse or in prose, but makes the imitation amusing
by a ridiculous disparity between the manner and the matter. … In a burlesque imitation, the form and
style may be either lower or higher in level and dignity than the subject to which it is incongruously
applied. … If the form and style are high and dignified but the subject is low or trivial, we have ‘high
burlesque’; if the subject is high in status and dignity but the style and manner of treatment are low and
undignified, we have ‘low burlesque.’” (26)

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 The Licensing Act of 1737 prevented him from having his plays performed ever
again, following his publication of an offensive political pamphlet criticising the
government, which infuriated the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, so he turned to
writing prose instead. He wrote five novels, all of which contain elements of satire or
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31
social criticism. His debut was a satire on Pamela, An Apology for the Life of Mrs
Shamela Andrews (1741), published under the name Mr Conny Keyber (most likely a
reference to a contemporary writer, Colley Cibber, not held in high regard by Fielding),
in which Richardson’s virtuous young maid becomes a shameless, scheming fortune-
hunter, who seduces Mr Booby in order to make him marry her. It is Fielding’s response
to what he perceived to be Richardson’s quite unsubtle moralising message and the
exaggeration of his female protagonist’s virtue, which Fielding perceived as not being
realistic. As he was to prove in his subsequent novels, even the best of people have
flaws, and this does not make them less likeable, but more human.
He intended to continue his parody of Richardson’s novel in The Adventures of
Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr Abraham Adams, Written in the Manner of
Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote (1742), but after writing the first chapters of this new
novel, he supposedly changed his mind and turned it into the first example of a new
kind of novel, a comic epic in prose—Fielding’s legacy to the modern English novel.
Not only did he forget about Richardson’s successful novel, but he also crafted his own
theory of the novel—carefully presented to the readers in the Author’s Preface—which
provided him with guidelines for his masterpiece, The History of Tom Jones, a
Foundling (1749).
Joseph Andrews is a novel of incident with picaresque novel features that takes
Defoe’s model one step further towards the realist novel of the 19th century. It features
ordinary people as heroes (Joseph Andrews is a footman, parson Andrews a man of the
Church—neither exceptional in any way), and a realistic representation of human
nature and of 18th-century English society, with manners, customs, age-specific
problems and a wide range of typical characters showing a not-so-likable picture of
doctors, lawyers, innkeepers and servants, as well as of English aristocracy. The eye of
the Horatian satirist is quick to notice any sign of vanity and hypocrisy, of human folly

31
Richardson’s debut novel was also parodied by Eliza Haywood in her The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d
Innocence Detected, also published in 1741.

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and greed or stinginess, demonstrating a good understanding of human nature and the
intricate web of human relationships in his society.
The adventures of the young, inexperienced and naive Joseph Andrews, on his
way back from London to his native village where his beloved, Fanny, is waiting for Page | 127
him, accompanied by the kind, equally naive and gullible Parson Adams—too generous
and absent-minded for his own good—provide the writer with many opportunities to
comment on human folly, vice and the effects of an emerging capitalist mindset as a
detached, amused moralist believing in the possibility of change and improvement.
Fielding’s England, as represented here and in Tom Jones, is a universe of realistically
and convincingly presented characters from various social backgrounds, important not
so much as individuals, but as representatives of their class or professional group.
Some, however, are truly memorable comic characters, re-emerging in different guises
in Fielding’s later novels or in those of the writers he impacted the most: Tobias
Smollett,32 Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens.
To a certain extent Joseph Andrews is similar to Defoe’s novels of adventures,
borrowing from them—as from Don Quixote—the episodic nature of many of the
novel’s scenes, centred on the title characters and focusing on their adventures and
mishaps in what becomes a journey of initiation for both of them. Joseph Andrews, in
particular, is the character we expect to learn the most from these adventures as a young
man still discovering the multiple facets of human nature; it is Parson Adams, however,
who takes the reader by surprise with his unexpected innocence and ignorance of human
selfishness, cruelty, shrewdness and meanness, so unexpected in a man his age. He
shares this sweet innocence with Cervantes’s unforgettable Don Quixote, whose
confidence in human goodness and his trust in people—his gullibility, one might
argue—were only shaken after a series of misadventures that proved him `wrong. Like
Cervantes’s would-be-knight, whose perception of the world is distorted by the
romances he has read, to Parson Adams reality appears filtered through the lenses of
the books he has read—a fine allusion to the negative effects of mediaeval romances

32
Tobias Smollett was a Scottish novelist of the Johnson Age, known for his picaresque novels and his
satiric writing, though not on a par with Samuel Richardson and his model, Henry Fielding. His best-
known novels are The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and his last work, The Expedition of
Humphrey Clinker (1771).

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on the readers’ imagination and a justification for this new kind of novel, which
Fielding calls a comic romance, that Joseph Andrews represents.
Aware of his responsibility as a fiction writer, of the important task at hand,
Fielding adds an Author’s Preface to the novel, in order to present his intentions and
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help the readers discover and enjoy a new type of fictional prose text, deriving from the
long Western epic poem tradition and opposing the romance tradition, still popular with
some readers. The comic epic in prose or the comic romance, as he calls this new novel
form,

differ[s] from comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy: its action being more extended and
comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of incidents, and introducing a greater variety
of characters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and action, in this; that as in the
one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous: it differs in its
characters by introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently, of inferior manners,
whereas the grave romance sets the highest before us: lastly, in its sentiments and diction; by
preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime. In the diction, I think, burlesque itself may be
sometimes admitted; of which many instances will occur in this work, as in the description of
the battles, and some other places, not necessary to be pointed out to the classical reader, for
whose entertainment those parodies or burlesque imitations are chiefly calculated. (Joseph
Andrews 25-26)

It is, therefore, a type of novel using comedy and the burlesque as strategies to expose
and comment on those situations or traits of characters that are ridiculous, so that the
prose text could “successfully adopt a moral stance without resorting to the cant of a
novel such as Pamela ... laugh[ing] away faults rather than preach[ing] against them.”
(Sanders 312) However, the author is keen on pointing out that he will use both the
comic and the burlesque in his work, though he claims he prefers the former:

But though we have sometimes admitted this in our diction, we have carefully excluded it from
our sentiments and characters; for there it is never properly introduced, unless in writings of the
burlesque kind, which this is not intended to be. Indeed, no two species of writing can differ
more widely than the comic and the burlesque; for as the latter is ever the exhibition of what is
monstrous and unnatural, and where our delight, if we examine it, arises from the surprizing
absurdity, as in appropriating the manners of the highest to the lowest, or e converso; so in the
former we should ever confine ourselves strictly to nature, from the just imitation of which will
flow all the pleasure we can this way convey to a sensible reader. And perhaps there is one
reason why a comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature,

© Veronica Popescu
 since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable;
but life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous. (Joseph Andrews 27)

The true ridiculous, Fielding further explains, has its main source in human affectation
which proceeds from either vanity or hypocrisy:
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The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation. But though it arises
from one spring only, when we consider the infinite streams into which this one branches, we
shall presently cease to admire at the copious field it affords to an observer. Now, affectation
proceeds from one of these two causes, vanity or hypocrisy: for as vanity puts us on affecting
false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavour to avoid
censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues. (Joseph Andrews
28)

With every page turned, the reader enjoys discovering these human follies as captured
by the author, deriving pleasure from the whole process while also learning something
about the ways of the world.
Fielding’s concern with human nature, with the complexities of the human
being in a variety of guises and contexts, in brilliantly crafted and amusing prose,
becomes his trademark in his next two novels, The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great
(1743) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1949). The former is a moral fable
rather than a novel proper, telling the story of a villain (both a “thief-taker” and a gang-
leader) ironically called “great,” Jonathan Wild (or Wilde). It is a satiric text in which
a parallel is drawn between Jonathan Wild(e) and the Prime Minister Sir Robert
Walpole, known as “The Great Corrupter” in Fielding’s time.
Tom Jones, Fielding’s masterpiece, is a novel that reveals the maturity of its
author and his loyalty to the neoclassical principles of humanism, order, craftsmanship,
moderation and wit. Symmetrically constructed, with 18 books organised in 3 parts,
each corresponding to three major stages of the plot and phases of Tom’s development:
the countryside, the road, and London, each with its own microcosm of characters,
manners and lessons to be learned by the protagonist. This main plot—a typical
Bildungsroman plot with the protagonist learning important life lessons in order to
become mature enough for marriage—also has elements of a comedy plot, and its happy
ending, with Tom and Sophia Western finally being allowed to get married as Tom is
revealed to be of high birth after all, gives satisfaction to the readers who have hoped
for this ending since part one. The novel also has minor plots feeding into the major

© Veronica Popescu
one—Tom Jones’s life and his adventures—and each of these plots (Sophia’s journey
and her life lessons; schoolmaster Partridge’s life and Jenny Jones’ adventures; Mrs
Fitzpatrick’s adventures (Irish jealous husband); Mrs’ Miller’s misfortunes, beginning
with the death of her husband and her daughter’s seduction by Mr Nightingale and
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Tom’s help in saving the daughter’s reputation) provides the reader not only with
additional information on the main action, but also an opportunity to see represented
even more aspects of English society, which creates a more detailed and textured
canvass of 18th century England.
It soon becomes clear to the reader that he novel is the work of an experienced
writer, fully aware of his task as presenter and commentator of contemporary England
and as novelist working in a form of his own invention, consolidating his theory of the
comic epic in prose through metafictional interludes that warn the reader about possible
interpretative traps or false expectations. These interventions in the text are not only
highly original, revealing the writer behind the omnipresent, omniscient narrator—a
persona that appears to share Fielding’s own slightly critical yet amused attitude to life,
human nature and English society—they also disrupt the narrative with comic, at times
critical or self-ironic or self-reflexive comments that make the readers aware, more than
ever before, of the fact that they are reading fiction, an imaginative prose narrative, a
“(hi)story” penned by an author who meditates on his own work and makes assumptions
about his readers. See, for instance, the author’s comments regarding the writing or
reading process (e.g. the extended metaphor in Book I, Ch. 1 presenting the novel as a
complex meal, with many dishes, all part of “Human Nature”; or the author’s claim that
he controls all aspects of the narrative as a piece of fiction - Book II, Ch. 1); or his
critical views on literary critics (Book V, Ch. 1); or his clearly signalled forced
intervention in the narrative, forcing the reader to acknowledge the presence of a writer
behind the text, imagining a reader in need of advice or explanations:

In which the author himself makes his appearance on the stage I ask pardon for this short
appearance, by way of chorus, on the stage. It is in reality for my own sake, that, while I am
discovering the rocks on which innocence and goodness often split, I may not be misunderstood
to recommend the very means to my worthy readers, by which I intend to show them they will
be undone. And this, as I could not prevail on any of my actors to speak, I myself was obliged
to declare. (Tom Jones, Book III, Ch. 7, 142)

© Veronica Popescu
Also metafictional is the writer’s use of burlesque in such a manner as to point to the
artificiality of the genre—the classical epic poem, but also the heroic romance—which
he parodies for its exaggerated use of the sublime (in Longinus’s sense of the term33)
in the description of the protagonists. See the contrast between the beginning of the text Page | 131
which prepares the introduction of the lovely Sophia Western—Tom’s love interest and
a very sweet, kind, lovely young woman, though far from being perfect—and the
manner in which the writer brings the reader back to reality with a more down-to-earth,
prosaic description of Sophia’s appearance. Compare:

Hushed be every ruder breath. May the heathen ruler of the winds confine in iron chains the
boisterous limbs of noisy Boreas, and the sharp-pointed nose of bitter-biting Eurus. Do thou,
sweet Zephyrus, rising from thy fragrant bed, mount the western sky, and lead on those delicious
gales, the charms of which call forth the lovely Flora from her chamber, perfumed with pearly
dews, when on the 1st of June, her birth-day, the blooming maid, in loose attire, gently trips it
over the verdant mead, where every flower rises to do her homage, till the whole field becomes
enamelled, and colours contend with sweets which shall ravish her most.
So charming may she now appear! and you the feathered choristers of nature, whose sweetest
notes not even Handel can excell, tune your melodious throats to celebrate her appearance. From
love proceeds your music, and to love it returns. Awaken therefore that gentle passion in every
swain: for lo! adorned with all the charms in which nature can array her; bedecked with beauty,
youth, sprightliness, innocence, modesty, and tenderness, breathing sweetness from her rosy
lips, and darting brightness from her sparkling eyes, the lovely Sophia comes! (Tom Jones, Book
IV, Ch. 2, 153-54)

in which the writer does, indeed, present us with an exercise in the sublime, to the
deceptively unimaginative description of Sophia below:

Sophia, then, the only daughter of Mr Western, was a middle-sized woman; but rather inclining
to tall. Her shape was not only exact, but extremely delicate: and the nice proportion of her arms
promised the truest symmetry in her limbs. Her hair, which was black, was so luxuriant, that it

33
Longinus, a Greek writer of the 1st or 3rd century AD, describes literary sublime in On the Sublime as
“excellence in language,” the “expression of a great spirit” and the power to provoke “ecstasy” in one's
readers. The term will be redefined by Edmund Burke in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of
Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), influencing Romantic aesthetics and even philosophy,
his definition of the sublime as referring to something that is difficult for the human mind to comprehend,
that it is beautiful but also awe-inspiring, being picked up and further developed by writers and
philosophers in late Enlightenment, including the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

© Veronica Popescu
 reached her middle, before she cut it to comply with the modern fashion; and it was now curled
so gracefully in her neck, that few could believe it to be her own. If envy could find any part of
the face which demanded less commendation than the rest, it might possibly think her forehead
might have been higher without prejudice to her. Her eyebrows were full, even, and arched
beyond the power of art to imitate. Her black eyes had a lustre in them, which all her softness Page | 132
could not extinguish. Her nose was exactly regular… (Tom Jones, Book IV, Ch. 2, 155)

Fielding’s originality lies not only in his invention of a new novel form,
integrating two prose traditions of his time (that of the realist novel of adventures, with
picaresque elements, best represented by Defoe, and that of the sentimental, domestic
novel, with an interest in characters’ psychology that Richardson had penned), but also
in his fictional construction of a relationship between writer and readers through a
talkative, manipulative, amiable and occasionally ironic and sarcastic narrator—fully
in control of his story, as he sometimes explains—omniscient and so much a presence
in the text that the reader feels he is a character in his own right.34
The story of Tom Jones follows the conventions of a Bildungsroman with a
romantic comedy plot, yet the true literary value of the text comes from the manner in
which the narrator controls his story and takes the reader through every phase of the
protagonist’s development through a series of life experiences that help him learn
something about the real world, that outside the safety of his protector’s home, not that
Mr Allworthy’s home is necessarily a place where a foundling like poor Tom can be
safe from harm. Thanks to Fielding’s narrator, we learn that human goodness and
personal value are independent of birth, that generosity, sincere affection, gratitude and
kindness do exist and are not necessarily found in people of high birth. Here Fielding
seems to question the old assumption that birth and character are connected, allowing
a foundling, believed to be the son of a schoolmaster and a village girl, to become the
hero of his tale and the most likable of all his characters, in spite of his flaws. Fielding
brings the story closer to the readers by making the characters easier for the reader to
perceive as familiar, relatable and likable, and by suggesting that heroes are not
necessarily people of high birth, as the epic and romance traditions would have it. In
the logic of realist fiction, the hero can and should be a common man. To quote

34
John Osborne, the screenwriter for the 1963 British adaptation of the novel, was so convinced that the
narrator in Fielding’s novel was a presence that simply could not be ignored, that he turned the omniscient
narrator into a character speaking directly into the camera and looking a bit like Fielding himself.

© Veronica Popescu
Fielding, in the comic epic in prose “everything is copied from the book of nature, and
scarce a character or action produced which I have not taken from my I own
observations and experience.” (Joseph Andrews 30) Not that the writer necessarily
believed that people of lower birth were necessarily better than those born in the
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wealthy families. The host of low-birth and middle-class characters one finds in Joseph
Andrews or Tom Jones, easily corruptible, greedy, immoral, selfish, superficial in their
assessment of people’s worth, clearly demonstrates Fielding’s understanding of human
nature as being somewhat independent of social background when it comes to one’s
qualities or flaws; they are innate and can only be accentuated or made manifest in
certain social circumstances.
To illustrate his understanding of his fellow human beings, Fielding uses
various types in his fiction, some having their portraits drawn in more detail, others
being just doodled for the sake of representativeness in an impressively comprehensive
canvass of mid-18th century English society. We find here the kind protector in Mr
Allworthy, the justice of peace who finds a baby in his bed one night, when he returns
from a journey and he decides to raise the child as if he were his nephew, investing in
his education and wishing to provide for him after his death. Or Squire Western, the
typical countryside squire, noble only in name, not in behaviour, loving his dogs and
hunting more than his only daughter, Sophia, a man confirming the contemporary idea
that countryside nobility is unpolished, uneducated and incapable of mastering the rules
of polite behaviour; not to mention Mr Fitzpatrick, the Irish nobleman whose passionate
nature and jealousy make him a fool in the eyes of all those who see him chasing his
wife across the country, challenging poor Tom to a duel on suspicion that he might be
his wife’s lover, although he has been repeatedly told that this is not true. Or consider
the sophisticated, selfish and immoral London aristocrats, Lady Bellaston (whose name
suggests both beauty and a heart of stone) and Lord Fellamar (a fallen, sinful lover,
perhaps), who stop at nothing to get what they want, manipulating and cruelly using the
innocent Tom and Sophia to satisfy their appetites (or at least try, if we consider
Fellamar’s failure to seduce or take Sophia by force).
The servants on the whole are described as people willing to make unexpected
sacrifices for their masters and mistresses, yet they do not sacrifice out of the goodness
of their heart; their loyalty and their silence are always handsomely rewarded. Take
Jenny Jones, for instance, the young servant suspected of having given birth to Tom
Jones, who accepts to lie and even leave the village because, as it turns out, she was

© Veronica Popescu
persuaded to do so and paid by Miss. Bridget Allworthy, Tom’s real mother, who had
to protect her good name. Or consider Mrs Honour, Sophia Western’s servant, who was
like a mother to her (which might explain Sophia’s lack of polite manners and her lack
of finesse, according to her much more sophisticated aunt, Mrs Western), who
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accompanies Sophia when she runs away from home to find the man she loves, Tom,
and to escape an arranged marriage only because she thinks that keeping Sophia out of
trouble and delivering her to her father would provide her with a most generous reward
from Squire Western. Not to mention Mr Partridge, believed to be Tom’s father, who
happens to meet Tom soon after his banishment from Mr Allworthy’s home, and who
decides to accompany Tom on his journey—wherever he may go—hoping to receive
Mr Allworthy’s pardon and a good reward for keeping him safe.
Representatives of the middle station in life, to quote Robinson’s father, are not
spared by Fielding either. All the doctors, lawyers, innkeepers that Tom meets on his
journey of initiation prove to be motivated by money alone, showing little concern for
people’s problems and helping those in need only if they are paid for their services.
Reverend Mr Thwackum and Mr Square perfectly illustrate Fielding’s thesis. They are
employed by Mr Allworthy as tutors for young Tom and young Blifil, Allworthy’s
nephew, and they are remarkably different in their views on most aspects of life, but
share the same concern for their future and an equal interest in Blifil’s mother, now a
widow, hoping to marry her and get access to her money and improve their social
position. They are terrible hypocrites and exceedingly vain—the man of the church and
the philosopher being each convinced of holding the truth to all life’s questions—and
they mistreat Tom exaggerating his naughtiness and his flaws to highlight Blifil’s
qualities in order to be in his mother’s and uncle’s good graces. Although unsuccessful
with Miss. Bridget, their actions will not only change Allworthy’s opinion of Tom—in
spite of his love for the young man and his appreciation of Tom’s generosity and
kindness—but also determine his banishment and a series of misfortunes that nearly get
him killed, although it is Mr. Square’s conscience that will save him in the end.
Unlike Swift, whose satire was dark, pessimistic, distrustful of people’s ability
to change, Fielding’s satire is Horatian in style and in his approach to human nature.
Most of the characters populating this and his other novels are flawed and presented in
a comic and even burlesque mode, the narrator occasionally exaggerating their attitudes
and reactions for a humorous effect, but the human being as such is never caricaturised.
The writer never loses his faith in human goodness and lives lived according to solid

© Veronica Popescu
moral principles; he is simply representing the ridiculous, absurd manifestations of
human behaviour which, unfortunately, he perceives as prevailing.
Some of his characters confirm his conviction that goodness is manifest in
people across the social spectrum, not being limited to those of high birth and not even
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dependent on people’s level of education. His critical views on doctors, lawyers,
aristocrats, teachers, and members of the clergy certainly prove that. Goodness is innate
and, in some circumstances, may be perceived as naivety or gullibility. Take Mr
Allworthy, for instance, a character modelled after one of Fielding’s personal friends,
a virtuous trusting man, almost too good to be true. Like Parson Adams, Mr Allworthy
is not equipped to see evil, dishonesty, and hypocrisy around him, which makes him a
victim of other people’s schemes and malevolence. His trust in human goodness is so
strong, that he manages to awaken in some a similar commitment to doing good. Tom’s
innate generosity, optimism, kindness towards others may, in retrospect, be considered
inherited from his uncle and his mother, but they are also virtues that the boy learns to
display under the influence of his uncle. Tom’s cousin, Blifil (named after his father,
Captain Blifil, to suggest that he is in his father’s image), is immune to such
contamination; his meanness and selfishness, his hypocritical nature are also inherited
and too deeply rooted to be changed by others. Acting as Tom’s foil, Blifil demonstrates
from the beginning of the novel Fielding’s thesis that personal value is not dependent
on the social background of the individual. The same idea is exemplified by two other
characters, one a peasant turned gentle woman, the other a middle-class woman: Jenny
Jones/Mrs Waters (who eventually reveals the secret of Tom’s birth to save him and
repay his honourable behaviour) and Mrs Miller (Tom’s landlady in London, grateful
to both Mr Allworthy and Tom for their help in times of need). They both believe in
gratitude, honour and generosity and their deeds counteract the scheming, malevolence
of others, restoring the readers’ confidence in virtue.
The complexity of the novel is not limited to its ability to canvass a wide range
of human types and life experiences—with a hopeful, optimistic conclusion and an
instructive moral lesson—or to the portrayal of a wide variety of convincing and
colourful characters. It also emerges from Fielding’s narrative technique, one that frees
the novel of the need to persuade readers of the veracity of the account, such as in
Defoe’s pseudo-autobiographical narratives or Richardson’s confessional tales in
epistolary form, exposing the fictional nature of his writings. Even if one forgets details
of the main plot, with multiple adventures helping Tom learn something about the real

© Veronica Popescu
world, no one can forget the tone and chatty manner of the narrator, who allows the
reader not only to see the characters in action, but also to understand their motivations,
their thoughts, dreams, aspirations, their feelings and their emotions.
Page | 136
With Joseph Andrews, Jonathan Wilde the Great and Tom Jones (though not
with Fielding’s last novel, Amelia, a sentimental novel35 with a strong autobiographical
content) the English novel begins a new tradition, celebrating the writer as a master of
his craft and of his stories. Fielding’s memorable narrator in Tom Jones, for instance,
makes it impossible for the reader to escape his manipulative strategies, immersing the
reader into the story fully by using what Percy Lubbock36 defined as the “telling mode”
in The Craft of Fiction (1957). Through this intrusive, omniscient narrator, an organic
part of the text, the reader begins to enjoy the story knowing only too well that it is
entirely fictional and not a fictional text posing as life writing. The reader learns from
Fielding that reality can be reflected truthfully and convincingly although filtered
through the mind and soul of a writer, that the truth promised in the title through the
word “history” can become the truth of a work of fiction, a story, as long as the writer’s
technique involves using his personal experience and his knowledge about the world to
create fictional characters and describe actions that the readers perceive as real and
credible.
On a final note, Fielding’s most important contribution to the development of
the modern English novel and to the literature of his time is ability to harmonise the
thematic content of his stories and his experiments with narrative perspective, multiple
plots (one main, four secondary plots), characterisation and narrative modes (comic and
burlesque) in a highly entertaining and instructive piece of literature of impressive

35
Although Amelia is Fielding’s most sentimental and personal novel, it is also notable for its critical
stance on the English judicial system and its Constitution, being, in the words of Martin Battestin (x)
“the first novel of social protest,” revealing its author’s commitment to the exposure not only of human
nature in its complexity, but also of social evils which, he believed, could be combated.
36
Lubbock echoes Henry James’ theoretical remarks on narrative modes. The difference between these
two modes—though still the subject of narratologists’ debates—can be simply put as follows: in the
showing mode, exemplified by Defoe’s novels or much of Ernest Hemingway’s fiction, for instance, the
narrator is almost absent as a manipulating voice in the text, the focus being on description of actions
and on dialogue, with little assessment of either; the telling mode is characterised by an intrusive narrator,
one whose voice is clear, controlling, manipulative and whose comments on character or action constitute
the most important quality of the narrative. Fielding is considered the first English novelist to operate in
this mode and Tom Jones is often mentioned as a masterful example of this narrative strategy.

© Veronica Popescu
length, where one feels that nothing is out of place or redundant. Though
chronologically speaking he wrote his novels in the last decade of the Augustan Age,
Fielding is one of the last major neoclassical writers offering, a splendid example of
Enlightenment craftsmanship and ideology through his humanism and his commitment
Page | 137
to order, structure and balance. A strong influence in his time (Laurence Sterne, for
instance, followed his example by using metafictional strategies as well as the comic
and burlesque modes in his novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman published between 1759 and 1765), Henry Fielding’s influence spanned
over almost a century, contributing in its own way to the development of the realistic
novel of the 19th century.

© Veronica Popescu
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© Veronica Popescu
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Interesting websites:
http://www.luminarium.org/ – useful information on the authors, their work and some
critical essays written by specialist or students
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/
http://www.paradiselost.org/ (New Arts Library web page) – the full poem
(annotated) and additional information on Milton, the sources for his poem and
various illustrations

Recommended film:
Stage Beauty (2004), directed by Richard Eyre

Interesting documentaries:
Monarchy. Oliver Cromwell, the King Killer
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAtsyMGeRS4 )

© Veronica Popescu
Monarchy. The Return of the King
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGF_63w9hh8 )
Monarchy. The Glorious Revolution
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m0VG01w6lU)
Page | 143
Kings and Queens of England series – episode 5: The Georgians
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2mDgYQS7ZA )
Music of the English Restoration
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtsDPaG3GQ

© Veronica Popescu