1.

John Donne “Batter my heart”

The father of metaphysical poetry was John Donne (• pp. D2-9). Although he lived in the Elizabethan era, his poems were
published posthumously and belong both thematically and stylistically to this period. In Songs and Sonnets Donne deals
with the theme of love in a way that strongly contrasts with the Elizabethan tradition. Love is presented as an intensely
intimate and physical experience. The poems are addressed to a very real lover, often the poet's wife. The rhythm of the
poems is the rhythm of natural speech and the language is dramatic. Striking and original images called conceits*(Conceit
- comparison between objects which at first glance seem to have nothing in common;) associate dissimilar ideas,The poet
often tries to persuade his lover to share his point of view through poetry which appeals both to the intellect and the
emotions. John Donne deals with religious themes in the Holy Sonnets in an equally original way. The poet addresses
God in a tone that often borders on the irreverent, and uses the language of physical suffering and love to describe his
spiritual crises and devotion. The basic idea, though, is that Donne is really into physical, earthly love, but also really into
God and holiness. As you can imagine, these often run into conflict, and Donne likes to write poems that play with this
tension.

2. John Donne ”The Good Morrow”

The father of metaphysical poetry was John Donne (• pp. D2-9). Although he lived in the Elizabethan era, his poems were
published posthumously and belong both thematically and stylistically to this period. In Songs and Sonnets Donne deals
with the theme of love in a way that strongly contrasts with the Elizabethan tradition. Love is presented as an intensely
intimate and physical experience. The poems are addressed to a very real lover, often the poet's wife. The rhythm of the
poems is the rhythm of natural speech and the language is dramatic
Poetic diction is the term used to refer to the linguistic style, the vocabulary, and the metaphors used in the
writing of poetry.Donne himself referred to this poem as a sonnet, which is confusing since sonnets are those
14-line critters with a turning point and a rhyming couplet wrap-up. And this definitely doesn't fit that mode.
Basically, Donne used "sonnet" to mean "any poem that deals with women and love. “The Good-Morrow” is a
poem of twenty-one lines divided into three stanzas. The poet addresses the woman he loves as they awaken
after having spent the night together. The language and imagery of the poem, however, are deliberately
exaggerated, with a strong element of paradox.
3/4/John Donne/Methaphysical Poetry
He is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets. This group of poets also includes George Herbert,
Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and John Cleveland. The features of
Metaphysical poetry are:
• the use of conceits*: comparisons between objects which at first glance seem to
have nothing in common;
• the argumentative quality of the love poems, in which the poet tries to persuade
his lover to share his point of view;
• the dramatic quality of the language, which often seems to be one side of a
dialogue between the poet and his lover, or God, or himself;
• the wide range of subjects from which the poet draws his imagery. Metaphysical
poets used, for example, the areas of the sciences, travel, medicine, alchemy
and philosophy to create original imagery. This is in stark contrast with much
of Elizabethan poetry which used the stock imagery of the period (birds,
flowers, sun, moon, stars);
• the use of wit*: wit in the seventeenth century referred to the ability to relate
dissimilar ideas, and implied intellectual genius. The Metaphysical poets
displayed this form of genius in the use of paradoxes*, conceits* and puns*..John Donne is regarded as the
“leading poet” of this highly intellectual form of poetry. He also used unconventional and colloquial rhythm
and tone, which was highly contrary to the Elizabethan poetry style.
5. Andrew Marvell.’To his Coy Misteress’.Imagery.Hyperbole.
Marvell's style has the elegant sophistication of the Cavaliers while his use of intense imagery, paradox and
wit* is reminiscent of the metaphysicals. Marvell was a prolific prose writer and essayist, but it is for his
poems, which were first printed three years after his death, that he is best remembered.
"To His Coy Mistress," is a lyrical poem that scholars also classify as a metaphysical poem. Most of Andrew
Marvell’s poetry was not published during his lifetime, due to political controversy and the popular tradition of
manuscript circulation. To His Coy Mistress:This poem is spoken by a male lover to his female beloved as an
attempt to convince her to make love to him. The speaker argues that the Lady’s shyness and hesitancy would
be acceptable if the two had “world enough, and time.” Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”
contains examples of both hyperbole and understatement. Instances of both traits include the following:In line
2, the speaker seems to suggest, hyperbolically, that the lady’s refusal of his advances amounts to a “crime.”
Hyperbole is used far more obviously in this poem than understatement is, partly to emphasize the pride,
foolishness, and exaggerated confidence of the speaker. Each time speaker speaks hyperbolically (one might
argue) we are meant to smile and perhaps even laugh. Like Donne's poetry, Marvell's poetry is packed with
images.

6.Andrew Marwell. Sources of inspiration. Satirical poems and prose.

Marvell drew inspiration from a wide range of sources including the Cavalier poets (• p. D94) and John Donne
(• pp. D2-9) but, like Milton, it was his classical training that exercised the greatest influence on his work.
Satirical poems. From 1667 to the end of his life Marvell wrote a series of satirical poems about
public figures and the events of the day. His biting satirical attacks were directed towards political
leaders, members of the aristocracy, the Court and the king himself. To protect Marvell, the satirical
poems were only circulated among friends in manuscript form. It was not until 1688, ten years after
his death, that they were published.
Prose. Marvell's prose work consists of political pamphlets and a long series of news letters he wrote
to his constituents on the work of Parliament. The letters are important historical documents because
they give us information about proceedings in Parliament at a time when no other records were kept.
In the eighteenth century Marvell was chiefly remembered as an outstanding patriot and politician.
Marvell the poet had always had his admirers, but it was only at the beginning of the nineteenth
7.Cavelier Poets
For a period after the Renaissance, poetry lost its originality and power
and generally consisted of poor copies of Elizabethan models. There were,
however, some poets who broke with the Elizabethan tradition. They are commonly
divided into two groups: the Cavalier poets and the Metaphysical poets.
The Cavalier poets defended the monarchy against the Puritans during the reign of
Charles I. They included Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Robert Lovelace and Sir
John Suckling. They did not believe in an overly studious approach to the writing
of poetry. They saw the ideal gentleman as being a lover, a soldier, a wit, a musician
and a poet, and their poetry reflects their rather light-hearted approach to life. Their
poems embodied the spirit of the upper classes before the Puritan Commonwealth.
They wrote poetry for occasions such as births, marriages or great parties. They are
remembered primarily as the first poets to celebrate the events of everyday life,
and as such are the forerunners of an important tradition in English literature.
8.John Milton. Paradise Lost.Style
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, and man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of
England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known
for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse. Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal
convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his
day. Writing in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, In
Paradise Lost Milton also ignores the traditional epic format, which started with Homer, of a plot based on a
mortal conflict between opposing armies with deities watching over and occasionally interfering with the
action. Instead, both divinity and mortal are involved in a conflict that, while momentarily ending in tragedy,
offers a future salvation.[6] In both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Milton incorporates aspects of
Lucan's epic model, the epic from the view of the defeated.
9./13/ .John Milton. Paradise Lost. The classical epic conventions.
The greatest seventeenth century poet J o h n Milton ( • pp. D14-22) also defies
classification. Although some of his greatest works were published in the
Restoration period, Milton belongs in spirit to the Puritan age of Cromwell's
Commonwealth, which he supported fervently. He was educated as a Humanist
(• p. C54) and had a thorough knowledge of classical Greek and Latin literature.
His masterpiece Paradise Lost (1667) is written in the style of the Aeneid or the
Iliad and contains the classic conventions of the epic:
• the hero is a figure of great importance. Adam represents the entire human race;
• the setting of the poem is ample in scale: the action takes place on Earth, in Heaven and in Hell;
 the action involves superhuman deeds in battle and a long and arduous journey: Paradise Lost includes
the war in Heaven and then Satan's journey to the newly-created world to corrupt mankind;
• there are catalogues of some of the principal characters, introduced in formal detail: in Book I
Milton describes the procession of fallen angels;
• an epic poem is narrated in an elevated style that is deliberately distanced from ordinary speech:
Milton's grand style* is created by the use of Latinate diction and syntax, wide-ranging allusions
(there are references to Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, Spenser and the Bible) and long
listings of names; .
• the narrator begins by stating his theme and invoking a muse: in the opening lines Milton calls on
God to be his guiding spirit in writing his 'adventurous song';
• the narrative starts when the action is at a critical point: Paradise Lost opens with Satan and the
fallen angels in Hell, gathering their forces and plotting revenge. It is not until Books
10.John Milton. Early poems and masque
Early poems and a masque The first phase covers his
years as a student. When only fifteen years old he wrote his first poems, which were paraphrases of
Psalms. While studying at Cambridge he wrote poetry in Latin, as was the custom at the time, but it
was his burning ambition to produce great poetry in his native language, and in 1629 he wrote his
first masterpiece, the Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, a celebration of the coming of Christ and
the abandonment of pagan Gods.
Milton was fascinated by Italian culture. He studied writers like Petrarch, Dante and Tasso, and their
works influenced his early poems L'Allegro and II Penseroso (1632).
In 1634 his masque Comus, which combined music, verse and dancing, was first performed. In 1637
he published his greatest minor poem, Lycidas, a pastoral elegy written in remembrance of the death
of a fellow student.
11. John Milton. Prose writings.
Prose writings. In 1643 he published The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, claiming the right of a husband or
wife to dissolve a marriage on the grounds of incompatibility.
One of his greatest prose works, Areopagitica ('Things to be declared before the Areopagus', a hill in Athens
where a respected council met to take important decisions), published in 1644, is Milton's impassioned plea for
freedom of speech and the press. In this pamphlet he compares the Greek council and the English Parliament,
which had just passed a law controlling the press.
In the same year he wrote the pamphlet Of Education which promoted encyclopaedic educational schooling for
the formation of humanistic leaders. However, while publicly Milton explained the importance of a broad
education, in private he did nothing to educate his daughters. His eldest daughter was totally illiterate.
Because his eyesight was failing he taught his other daughters to read mechanically to him in foreign languages,
without understanding the words they read. They took revenge by selling books from their father's library.
In 1649 he wrote The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in which he justified the execution of Charles I.
England was criticised by several European countries for the execution of the monarch* In reply, Milton wrote
Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (Defence of the People of England) and Pro Populo Anglicano Secunda
Defensio (Second Defence of the People of England) in 1651 and 1654 respectively. Both documents were
written in Latin so that they could be read throughout Europe.
12. . John Milton.”Paradise Regained.”
In 1671 Milton published Paradise Regained in four books. Written in the same epic style as Paradise
Lost, it tells the story of Christ's temptation by Satan in the desert.
Paradise Regained is connected by name to his earlier and more famous epic poem Paradise Lost, with which it
shares similar theological themes; indeed, its title, its use of blank verse, and its progression through Christian
history recall the earlier work. However, this effort deals primarily with the temptation of Christ as recounted in
the Gospel of Luke. Whereas Paradise Lost is ornate in style and decorative in its verse, Paradise Regained is
carried out in a fairly plain style. Specifically, Milton reduces his use of simile and deploys a simpler syntax in
Paradise Regained than he does in Paradise Lost, and this is consistent with Jesus's sublime plainness in his life
and teachings
14. . John Milton.Sonnet 18. On the late Massancre in Piemont.Didactic and propagandist literature.
John Milton's 'Sonnet 18' uses the biblical paradigm of vengeance and resolution in its two halves, the octave
and the sestet. The octave echoes the Old Testament theme of vengeance, while the sestet reflects the New
Testament theme of regeneration through sowing and reaping. While the form of the sonnet resolves the issue
on the death of the Piemontese, the theme involving the perpetrators of the massacre offers no resolution.
Rather, in contradiction to the form, the theme progresses from culpability to definite punishment, which is
consistent with Milton's theology.
Poetry, plays, novels and stories whose primary purpose is to guide, instruct or teach
come under the heading of didactic literature. They are distinguished from purely
imaginative works (sometimes called 'mimetic' works) whose goal is purely to interest
and appeal to the reader. Didactic literature was particularly popular in seventeenthcentury
England. Much of the poetry of the period was written to educate the readers
on subjects as diverse as morality, religion, philosophy, gardening and beer-making.
Propagandist literature is a particular type of didactic literature which tries to convince
the reader to take a position or direct action on a contemporary moral or political issue.
Milton's Paradise Lost may be considered to be didactic literature, while his sonnet On the
Late Massacre in Piemont falls into the category of propagandist literature.
15.John Dryden.The heroic couplet. Political poems
Classical influences can also be seen in the work of J o hn Dryden. The son of a wealthy Puritan family, he
received a classical education and had a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin literature. He was inspired by
the Latin poets Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Tibullus and tried to reproduce the balance and clarity of their work in
his poetry. He became a master of the heroic couplet* - two rhyming lines of iambic pentameters - and
rhetorical devices such as parallelism*, antithesis* and repetition*. His best work is political: Absalom and
Achitophel (1681-1682), generally considered to be his greatest poem, was written in support of the court in a
period of political crisis.
Although he is best remembered for his poetry, Dryden also wrote prose and drama and is widely regarded as
the father of literary criticism. He wrote several essays on poetry and theatre, and tried to establish guidelines
for good taste in literature. He exercised a major influence on the poets of the early eighteenth century, in
particular Alexander Pope.
16/17.Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock. Mock-heroic poems
Alexander Pope was the most celebrated poet of the early part of the eighteenth
century.
Written while he was still in his mid-twenties, The Rape of the Lock (1712-1714) is a masterpiece of
the mock-heroic*.( A mock-heroic (or mock-epic) poem imitates the elevated style and conventions
(invocations of the Gods, descriptions of armour, battles, extended similes, etc.) of the
epic genre in dealing with a frivolous or minor subject. The mock-heroic has been
widely used to satirise social vices such as pretentiousness, hypocrisy, superficiality, etc.
The inappropriateness of the grandiose epic style highlights the trivial and senseless
nature of the writer's target.) The Rape of the Lock is an example of the mock-epic form. In it Pope uses the
lofty, serious style of classical epics not to describe battles or supernatural events, but to
satirise the seriousness with which friends in his circle treated a breach of manners at a
social gathering: the stealing of a lock of hair.
It concerns the quarrel between two families caused by Lord Petre's cutting a lovelock from the head of
Arabella Fermor, Belinda in the poem. It is a playful poem full of paradoxes*,
witty observations and humorous epic allusions. It makes fun of the fatuous upper-class society it
depicts and shows Pope's unrivalled mastery of the heroic couplet*. Pope wrote in rhymed heroic couplets.
This is an understatement. He was considered the master of all time of all universes of the heroic couplet.The
Rape of the Lock established
Pope's reputation in literary circles. He became friends with Jonathan Swift and, together with some
other leading literary figures, they formed the 'Scriblerus Club' to discuss topics of contemporary
interest and to ridicule all false tastes in learning.
18. Alexander Pope.Translations. The Dunciad
In 1720 he completed a translation of Homer's Illiad, and his translation of The Odyssey, which appeared in
1726, gave him financial independence. He was one of the first poets to become economically self-sufficient
through his poetry, and he was widely recognised as the leading man of letters of his day.
The Dunciad (1728) is Pope's most celebrated satire. It is written in the mock-heroic style and is an attack on
the author's literary rivals, critics and enemies, who are grouped together and called 'Dulness'. In it Pope
describes the triumph of banality (Dulness), which takes over all the arts, sciences, the theatre and the court and
leads the world to cultural chaos and artistic bankruptcy. The Dunciad (1728) is a satirical attack on the
debased moral values of eighteenth century society
It satirizes Pope's enemies in the literary world and also details what Pope thinks is wrong with the art of his
time. The first version—the "three book" Dunciad—was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version,
the Dunciad Variorum was published anonymously in 1729. The New Dunciad, in a new fourth book conceived
as a sequel to the previous three, appeared in 1742, and The Dunciad in Four Books a revised version of the
original three books and a slightly revised version of the fourth book with revised commentary was published in
1743 with a new character.
19.Thomas Gray “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. The Graveyard poetry.
Thomas Gray was born I London to a prosperous middle-class family. In 1750 Gray sent Walpole a manuscript
of his most celebrated poem Elegy Written in a Conntry Churchyard. It was published in
1751 to great acclaim, making Gray one of the most celebrated poets of the time. In his poem Gray
describes the small village graveyard of Stoke Poges, where the poet muses about the lives of the
villagers who lie buried there and contemplates mortality and human potential. At the end of the
poem he considers his own death and wonders if in some way his art will grant him a form of
immortality. As a matter of fact, the gloomy melancholy and meditative quality of Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard were new in the neoclassical period. It struck a chord with other
writers, who began to write in a similar style and became known as the 'Graveyard poets’.Like Gray, they found
inspiration in graveyards and wrote on the theme of mortality.
In 1764, Horace Walpole, a close friend of Gray's, published a novel entitled The
Castle of Otranto. This tale tells the story of a family curse and is full of ghosts,
demons, torment, images of ruin and decay and violent emotions. Walpole was so
unsure of how the public would react to his work that he published it anonymously,
claiming that it was a translation of a work by a medieval Italian writer.
The novel was, in fact, a great success and gave rise to a new literary genre: the
Gothic novel (the word Gothic at the time was synonymous with the wild and
barbarous). This genre was further developed by Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley
in the Romantic period
20.William Congreve. “The way of the World”. Wit.A dialogue-driven play
William Congreve was a true master of comedy. He drew inspiration from a world he knew well: the
fashionable, licentious and often amoral court of Charles II.
Unlike other writers of the time, he did not create characters that were gross or farcical. His characters
were refined men and women who talked wittily and displayed quick brains and a sharp sense of
humour. Millamant in The Way of the World is a perfect example of Congreve's art: she is an
exquisitely well-drawn character, a lady of fashion who displays her intelligence, humour and heart
through her brilliant speeches. Congreve's work is witty and amusing but it also has a serious side. In
The Double Dealer, Love For Love and particularly in The Way of the World, he criticises the class to
which the play is addressed, accusing it of having lost the true value of love and replaced it with
sexual excess. One of the reasons for the lack of success of The Way of the World may indeed have been
that the theatre audience had gradually become aware that they were laughing at themselves.
In the second half of the seventeenth century the term 'wit' became associated with humour. It was used to refer
to the humorous linguistic invention and wordplay which characterised the comic style of Restoration
dramatists. It has maintained this meaning to the present day. An example of wordplay can be seen in
Congreve's choice of names for his characters. Each character is called after a particular personality trait. This
form of character naming already existed in Morality plays (• p. B47), but Congreve uses it not for didactic
purposes, but for comic effect.
In a play such as The Way of the World the action, i.e. what the characters do, is of limited importance. Most of
the events of the play take place in genteel drawing rooms and consist of characters speaking to each other.
When producing dialogue-driven plays where there is little physical action, a director must find alternative
ways of holding the audience's attention. He must highlight the play's strengths which, in the case of Congreve's
work, is the sparkling dialogue, but also add elements which the audience will find visually appealing. He must,
however, make sure that any additions do not detract from the original spirit of the play.

21. William Congreve. A master of the Comedy of Manners

The most outstanding writer of the Comedy of Manners was William Congreve. In his masterpiece The Way of
the World he eliminated the coarser elements of the genre and pushed its literary limits to new heights of
sophistication and refinement.
Its main features of comedy of manners were:
• it reflected the life of the Court, which was portrayed as being immoral, corrupt and licentious but also
elegant, witty and intelligent;
• its main targets of criticism were middle-class values and ideals, conventions, hypocrisy and above all the
institution of marriage.
• the dialogues were prose rather than verse.
• in Elizabethan drama comic characters were usually low and humble in origin. In the Comedy of Manners
they were aristocratic ladies and gentlemen who were easily recognised by the audience as fashionable
members of society;
• two new male character types were created: the gallant and the fop. The gallant was usually the hero of the
play. He was a witty, elegant, sophisticated yet cynical lover. The fop was a figure of fun, ridiculed for his
stupidity and pompous pretentiousness;
• the leading female characters generally had no feelings or morals. Their only interests were fashion and
breaking their marital vows;
• the characters usually had names that captured some aspects of their personality: Scandal, Lady Fidget,
Petulant, Mrs Squeamish, Sir Fopling Flutter and Tattle. Although this form of character naming dates back to
the Morality plays (• p. B47), it is important to note that the Comedy of Manners had no
moral didactic purpose. These plays were written purely to entertain theatre audiences.
22.Oliver Goldsmith.She Stoops to Conquer” Farce
Oliver Goldsmith was born in the west of Ireland, the son of a poor clergyman
A play, She Stoops to Conquer (1773), his greatest literary achievement, which continues to be
staged today. Criticising contemporary drama as unimaginative and melodramatic Goldsmith, for
his masterpiece, looked for inspiration to an earlier form of drama, the Comedy of Manners of the
Restoration period (• pp. D96-97). The play's well-structured comic plot, based on mistaken
identities and likeable characters, made it an instant success with theatre audiences and helped
breathe new life into an art form that was experiencing a particularly colourless period.
Farce is a type of comedy designed simply to make an audience laugh. Typical
ingredients of farce include ludicrous plots, deception, mistaken identity, discovery,
coincidence, misunderstanding, caricature, type characters, verbal humour and
physical horseplay. Farce is one of the oldest and most popular forms of theatre.
Farce is often referred to as 'low comedy' because it does not require intellectualism or
literary sensitivity of the audience
.
23.Daniel Defoe.Robinson Crusoe.Narrative technique
Little is known about the personal life of Daniel Defoe. Even his date of birth is not certain because his father, a
Protestant Dissenter, did not accept the authority of the State Church and refused to register his son's birth. We
do know, however, that Daniel Foe - he later changed his name to the more fashionable Defoe - was born in
London, probably in September 1660.
When he was sixty years old Defoe turned to novel-writing, and in 1719 he produced
his masterpiece, Robinson Crusoe. It was not until late in his literary career that Defoe turned to writing prose
fiction. He had read of the adventures of a sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who had been put ashore on the desert
island of Juan Fernandez in the Pacific Ocean, where he survived for five years before being rescued. Defoe
used Selkirk's story as the basis for his fictional work Robinson Crusoe. At the time when Defoe was
writing, the public demand was for fact-based writings such as diaries, travel journals, biographies
and letters. Fiction was viewed with suspicion by the Puritan middle-class readers, as it was
considered to be a form of lying. Defoe found a way around this prejudice: he presented his work as
a true story based on real events. He also made a direct appeal to Puritan readers by including moral lessons in
his work and showing that an ordinary man such as Robinson, who believed in God and in the principles of
self-reliance and hard work, could overcome any obstacle. In this way, Robinson Crusoe became the model of
the middle class, a self-made man convinced that Britain had a right and duty to bring civilisation to other parts
of the world.
Features All of Defoe's novels share the same characteristics:
• they are presented as memoirs or autobiographies and are narrated in the first person;
• the setting is contemporary and realistic;
• there is no real plot: the protagonist is presented in a chronological series of episodes;
• the main character overcomes misfortune through self-reliance, hard work and belief in God;
• each of the characters repents his evil actions and prays to God for salvation;
• the prose style is plain yet powerfully effective.
24. Daniel Defoe.Robinson Crusoe. Realism
The term realism is used to denote the attempt by writers to present an accurate
imitation of life as it is. The realist sets out to write fiction which reflects a world that is
convincing and recognisable to the common reader. He does this by:
• writing about ordinary characters, usually of the middle class, who have no special
gifts. Under normal circumstances these characters would live unexceptional lives,
but in special conditions they may display a kind of heroism;
• placing the characters in a setting that is familiar to the reader;
• using a special literary style that gives the reader the illusion of actual experience. The style may be defined as
reportorial or journalistic, and it seems to render the events in a matter-of-fact way;
• being unselective in his choice of subject matter;
• dealing, in the same way, with both the trivial and the extraordinary;
• paying great, almost scientific attention to descriptive detail.
25. Daniel Defoe.Satirical Pamphlets. Mock-odes
Early writings Daniel Defoe was a prolific writer. His earliest writings were political and largely consisted of
pamphlets, essays and articles for journals. He was well respected as a satirist and his satirical pamphlet The
Shortest
Way with the Dissenters won him great popularity. In it Defoe, a Dissenter himself, demanded the
extermination of Dissenters, exaggerating and ridiculing views held by the State Church. He was
fined, imprisoned and pilloried for the work. While in prison he wrote the poem Hymn to the Pillory,
a mock-Pindaric ode* which was sold in the streets to his many supporters.
The mock ode is a genre that split from the mock epic. The mock epic uses the language and conventions of
epic poetry to describe trivial events. The mock ode is the same principle. Having always been interested in
politics, Defoe published his first literary piece, a political pamphlet, in 1683. Not all of Defoe's pamphlet
writing was political. One pamphlet was originally published anonymously, entitled "A True Relation of the
Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day after her Death to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury the 8th of
September, 1705." It deals with interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm and was most
likely written in support of Charles Drelincourt's The Christian Defense against the Fears of Death (1651).
26. Daniel Defoe.Robinson Crusoe as a model of the middle-class
Defoe found a way around this prejudice: he presented his work as a true story based on real events. He also
made a direct appeal to Puritan readers by including moral lessons in his work and showing that an ordinary
man such as Robinson, who believed in God and in the principles of self-reliance and hard work, could
overcome any obstacle. In this way,Robinson Crusoe became the model of the middle class, a self-made man
convinced that Britain had a right and duty to bring civilisation to other parts of the world. Following the
success of Robinson Crusoe Defoe wrote four more novels between 1720 and 1724: Captain Singleton, Moll
Flanders, Colonel Jack and Roxana.
27. Daniel Defoe. Fiction
Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731), English businessman, journalist, pamphleteer and prolific author wrote Robinson
Crusoe (1719); Fiction is the classification for any story created by the imagination,[1][2] rather than based
strictly on history or fact. Features All of Defoe's novels share the same characteristics:• they are presented as
memoirs or autobiographies and are narrated in the first person;• the setting is contemporary and realistic;•
there is no real plot: the protagonist is presented in a chronological series of episodes;• the main character
overcomes misfortune through self-reliance, hard work and belief in God;• each of the characters repents his
evil actions and prays to God for salvation;• the prose style is plain yet powerfully effective. Fiction It was not
until late in his literary career that Defoe turned to writing prose fiction. He had read of the adventures of a
sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who had been put ashore on the desert island of Juan Fernandez in the Pacific Ocean,
where he survived for five years before being rescued. Defoe used Selkirk's story as the basis for his fictional
work Robinson Crusoe. At the time when Defoe was writing, the public demand was for fact-based writings
such as diaries, travel journals, biographies and letters. Fiction was viewed with suspicion by the Puritan
middle-class readers, as it was considered to be a form of lying. Defoe found a way around this prejudice: he
presented his work as a true story based on real events. He also made a direct appeal to Puritan readers by
including moral lessons in his work and showing that an ordinary man such as Robinson, who believed in God
and in the principles of self-reliance and hard work, could overcome any obstacle. In this way, Robinson
Crusoe became the model of the middle class, a self-made man convinced that Britain had a right and duty to
bring civilisation to other parts of the world. Following the success of Robinson Crusoe Defoe wrote four more
novels between 1720 and 1724: Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack and Roxana.
28. Jonatan Swift. A modest Proposal/Satire
Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin of English parents. His father died before he was born and he was
maintained by a rich relative. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was an unruly and
uninterested student.
In 1713 Swift moved back to Ireland where, outraged by the injustices he perceived in England's treatment of
Ireland, he used his writing skills to support Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable political
pamphlets. The publication of A Modest Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), The
Drapier's Letters (1724) and his masterpiece Gulliver's Travels (1726) won him public acclaim.
Jonathan Swift was a complex, passionate individual. His biting satirical writing has often given rise to the idea
that he was a misanthrope. However, he showed great concern for his fellow human beings, spending a third of
his income on charities and dedicating much of his time and writing to the causes of the poor and the victims of
injustice.
A modest Proposal. Here the author suggested in satirical menner to feed poor children to rich people.
Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food
for rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as
British policy toward Ireland in general.In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now
conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.
Satire is the art of ridiculing a subject through laughter and scorn. While comedy evokes laughter as an end in
itself, satire uses laughter as a weapon against a vice. Satire may be directed at an individual, a type of person, a
social class, an institution, a political ideology, a nation or even the entire human race. Satirists try to use their
art to improve the world we live in.
29..Jonatan Swift. The BATTLE OF THE books
The Battle of the Books (1704) is a mock-heroic satire in which Swift imagines a real battle between
books at the Royal Library over the controversy about ancient and modern learning. The Ancients
are led by Homer while the Moderns are under the leadership of Milton.
It depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library (housed in St. James's Palace at the time of the
writing), as ideas and authors struggle for supremacy. Because of the satire, "The Battle of the Books" has
become a term for the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.
30. Jonatan Swift. A Tale of Tube
A Tale of a Tub (1704) is a satirical allegory about the three major religious groupings in eighteenth- century
Britain: Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Dissenters. The narrator tells the story of a father who leaves each of
his three sons a coat (the Christian religion) with strict instructions that on no account should they alter it. Peter
(St - the Roman Catholic Church), Martin (Luther - the Anglican Church) and Jack (Calvin - the Dissenters)
gradually disobey their father by altering their coats to make them more fashionable. Though the book was
meant to defend the Church of England, many passages pour a torrent of ridicule on all three opponents.
31. . Jonatan Swift. Guliver’s Travels.Satire
Gulliver's Travels (1726) is generally regarded to be Jonathan Swift's masterpiece, one of the great
literary works and perhaps the greatest satiric work of all time. Like all of his other writings, Swift
published the Travels under a pseudonym. Several of his writings had already incurred the wrath of
important people, and there was enough criticism of the English government and monarchy to
bring charges of sedition. Initially Swift set out to write a satire on the vices and follies of his time,
but as the work proceeded he widened his aim to target virtually every aspect of human experience.
Swift's satire is pointed and pessimistic: his task is to expose absurdities, not to provide remedies.
The book takes the form of a parody of travel literature, which at the time was very popular. It is
divided into four books.
32. Jonatan Swift. Guliver’s Travels Book1
In Book I Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon on a merchant ship, tells of how he was shipwrecked and
washed up on the island of Lilliput, where the inhabitants are only six inches tall. Despite their
diminutive size, the Lilliputians have delusions of grandeur, and the pomp of their emperor
(representing the British monarchy) and their war with their neighbours across the channel (the war
between England and France) are made to look ridiculous.
33. Jonatan Swift. Guliver’s Travels Book2
JonatIt is divided into four books: In Book II Gulliver is in Brobdingnag, a kingdom of giants. In an interview
with the king about European civilisation, Gulliver boasts about the marvels of gunpowder and the glory of the
judicial system. To Gulliver's surprise, the king is horrified and says that what he has heard would lead him to
believe that mankind is 'the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl
upon the surface of the Earth'.
34. Jonatan Swift. Guliver’s Travels Book3
. It is divided into four books: In Book III Gulliver visits Laputa, a flying island where the nobles literally have
their heads in the cloud. Here the satire is directed against philosophers, men of science and historians. On
Laputa Gulliver meets philosophers who have become so absorbed in their speculations that they are totally
divorced from reality.
35. Jonatan Swift. Guliver’s Travels Book4
It is divided into four books: In Book IV Gulliver travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms, rational horse-like
creatures that are contrasted with the filthy humanlike Yahoos. The two races represent the two extremes of
human potential: rationality and bestiality. When Gulliver returns home, he feels so alienated from his own
species that he prefers to spend his time in the stable with the horses than with his own family.
36.Samuel Richardson.Pamela.The novel of Character
Early years Samuel Richardson was born into a lower middle class family.
Samuel Richardson was one of the chief exponents of the epistolary novel in English. An epistolary novel was a
series of letters between the main characters, that together made up a coherent story. Pamela was the most
successful of this type of novel in the eighteenth century.. The novel of incident and the novel of character are
two broad categories that are widely used to classify novels. The novel of incident is story-driven: the plot is
carefully developed and the reader's attention is held by the unfolding of events. The novel of character is
character-driven and focuses on the character's motive for what he or she does and how he or she will turn out
as a person. In this type of novel the reader finds psychologically complex characters, whose inner worlds of
feelings and emotions are explored and analysed. Written in an epistolary form and as a personal journal,
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) became, by eighteenth-century standards, a best-seller. The epistolary form
which he used in it was already popular in France but Richardson took it to new heights. The single-story plot,
built on domestic conflict in familiar indoor settings, contrasted greatly with the episodic adventures in an
exotic desert island setting of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Richardson also explored the psychological dimension
of characters and showed a deep insight into the workings of the heart.
In 1742, Richardson published a second part to Pamela, where the heroine is displayed as a perfect wife and
mother, who writes long letters of advice on moral, domestic and general subjects. Although very successful at
the time, today it is considered of less importance.
37.Samuel Richardson.The epistolary form.
Samuel Richardson was one of the chief exponents of the epistolary novel in English. An epistolary novel was a
series of letters between the main characters, that together made up a coherent story. Written in an epistolary
form and as a personal journal, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) became, by eighteenth-century standards, a
best-seller. The epistolary form which he used in it was already popular in France but Richardson took it to new
heights. The single-story plot, built on domestic conflict in familiar indoor settings, contrasted greatly with the
episodic adventures in an exotic desert island setting of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
38.Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones. A Foundling .Main features
Henry Fielding was born into an aristocratic family in Somerset, in 1707. He was educated first at Eton, then
for two years at the Dutch University of Leyden.
Henry Fielding described Tom Jones as a 'comic epic in prose'. It is indeed epic in length and describes a huge
cross-section of people in a humorous way. More than any other writer of his time, he saw the vast potential of
the novel as a new literary genre. Several features of his novel mark it out as a clear development of and
improvement on the works of Defoe and Richardson:
• the plot is no longer a series of episodes or a single story: it involves a large cast of characters, representing
various social ranks, and the episodes are interwoven in a structured and organised way;
• each of the novel's eighteen books is prefaced by an introductory chapter in which the reader is reminded that
what he is reading is fiction, and instructions are given on how to approach what for contemporary readers was
a relatively new literary form;
• an omniscient third-person narrator is used to comment on the action. The reader is not asked to identify with
the protagonists, and the detachment allows him to appreciate the comic episodes;
• the story is not used as a vehicle for Puritan moralising. Tom is not, for example, criticised for his numerous
sexual encounters.
39. .Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones. A Foundling. The narrator
The novel tells the story of an orphan, Tom Jones, who after many adventures discovers his true identity and
marries the lady he loves. Fielding was the first English novelist to create a well-structured complex plot
involving many characters drawn from different social classes. His work is innovative and original and he is
generally considered to be the father of the English comic novel.
In a novel the person who is telling the story is referred to as 'the narrator'. The narrator may be first-person or
third-person.
• The first-person narrator has a part in the story. He speaks as 'I' and usually talks about himself although he
may also narrate a story about other people.
• The third-person narrator stands outside the story. He always refers to the characters by name or uses the
third-person pronouns 'he', 'she' or 'they'.The third-person narrator may be omniscient or non-omniscient.
• The omniscient narrator knows everything about the fictional world he is describing. He reports on all the
characters and events and knows not only what characters do but also their thoughts and motivations.
• The non-omniscient narrator tells the story in the third person, but limits himself to what is experienced,
thought and felt by a single character or at most by a very limited number of characters in the story.The narrator
may also be intrusive or non-intrusive
.• The intrusive narrator has opinions about the characters and expresses his views on the personalities or
events.
• The non-intrusive narrator does not comment or evaluate. He remains impartial and describes without
intruding.
The narrator predominantly speaks in the 3d person, The narrator is essentially omniscient and intrusive/.
40. Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones. A Foundling. Comic epic in prose.
Henry Fielding described Tom Jones as a 'comic epic in prose'. It is indeed epic in length and describes a huge
cross-section of people in a humorous way. Fielding had an in-depth knowledge of human nature and depicted
his characters with all their vices and virtues. Tom Jones is by no means a perfect human being but, for all his
faults, he comes across as one of the most lovable characters in English literature. He considered the novel to be a
'comic epic in prose', dealing not with heroic actions but with the trivial events of daily life.. His humour and his
innovations in thestructure of the novel have earned him the title of 'father of the English comic novel'.
41.Laurence Sterne. Tristram Shandy.The Anti- novel
Laurence Sterne was born in Ireland of English parents
Tristram Shandy is unique in the history of English literature. In a period when the conventions for the novel
were being laid down by writers such as Defoe, Fielding and Richardson,Laurence Sterne challenged those
conventions. Unfinished sentences, blank pages, exuberant digressions, wordplay, dashes, diagrams and
eccentric typography are just some of the innovative features of this remarkable work. The most revolutionary
aspect, however, is the time structure. Sterne does not present the reader with a chronological order of events,
but follows the thought patterns of the main character. Sterne's literary reputation is built mainly on his
masterpiece The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Written in nine volumes, it is
unquestionably one of the most original works in the history of English literature. There is no plot in the
conventional sense of the word (the reader has to wait until Volume III for the main protagonist to be born) and
there is no clearly identifiable beginning, middle or end to the storyline. Essentially the book is a series of
exuberant digressions on subjects as diverse as birth and death, joy and sorrow, wit and folly.
The term anti-novel refers to novels that break with the traditional conventions of the genre. Anti-novels rely
for their effect on the confounding of the reader's expectations by:
• the omission or annihilation of traditional elements (character, plot etc.);
• the introduction of innovative elements.
Laurence Sterne is widely considered to be the father of the English anti-novel. Some of the anti-novel features
of his masterpiece Tristram Shandy include: - a non-conventional plot in which the hero of the story is born in
the third volume of the book; - an eccentric narrator who, for example, tells the reader to turn back several
pages and read a passage a second time;- syntactical, layout and typographical innovations such as unfinished
sentences, blank pages and dashes or asterisks which the reader must interpret.
42. Laurence Sterne. Sentimental Journey. A parody of the travel literature
Sentimental Journey Sterne's second and last novel Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) is
written in a similar style to Tristam Shandy. In it Sterne uses the character of Parson Yorick, who describes his
journey through France (he never actually reaches Italy). The novel is a parody of the travel literature which
was popular at the time and, in particular, the work of Tobias Smollet, who is caricatured in the book as
Smelfungus. The extent of Laurence Sterne's creative genius was only truly appreciated after his death. His
great skill in creating comic characters influenced a host of later writers, including Charles Dickens (• Module
F). His experimentation with the notion of time and free association of ideas foreshadowed Bergson's theory of
'la duree' and James Joyce's (• Module G) 'stream of consciousness'. He is widely regarded as one of the truly
outstanding figures in English literature.
43.The features of Cavalier Poetry
For a period after the Renaissance, poetry lost its originality and power and generally consisted of poor copies
of Elizabethan models. There were, however, some poets who broke with the Elizabethan tradition. They are
commonly divided into two groups: the Cavalier poets and the Metaphysical poets. The Cavalier poets
defended the monarchy against the Puritans during the reign of Charles I. They included Robert Herrick,
Thomas Carew, Robert Lovelace and Sir John Suckling. They did not believe in an overly studious approach to
the writing of poetry. They saw the ideal gentleman as being a lover, a soldier, a wit, a musician and a poet, and
their poetry reflects their rather light-hearted approach to life. Their poems embodied the spirit of the upper
classes before the Puritan Commonwealth. They wrote poetry for occasions such as births, marriages or great
parties. They are remembered primarily as the first poets to celebrate the events of everyday life, and as such
are the forerunners of an important tradition in English literature.
44. .The features of Metaphysical poetry
The Metaphysical poets, who included George Herbert, Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughan, followed in the
tradition of John Donne. The features of Metaphysical poetry are:
• the use of conceits*: comparisons between objects which at first glance seem to have nothing in common;
• the argumentative quality of the love poems, in which the poet tries to persuade his lover to share his point of
view;
• the dramatic quality of the language, which often seems to be one side of a dialogue between the poet and his
lover, or God, or himself;
• the wide range of subjects from which the poet draws his imagery. Metaphysical poets used, for example, the
areas of the sciences, travel, medicine, alchemy and philosophy to create original imagery. This is in stark
contrast with much of Elizabethan poetry which used the stock imagery of the period (birds, flowers, sun,
moon, stars);
• the use of wit*: wit in the seventeenth century referred to the ability to relate dissimilar ideas, and implied
intellectual genius. The Metaphysical poets displayed this form of genius in the use of paradoxes*, conceits*
and puns*. The term 'metaphysical', which was used by the literary critic Samuel Johnson (• p. D104) in the
eighteenth century, may be misleading because the poetry did not deal with philosophical speculation but with
the themes of religion and love. Johnson, who was not an admirer of this form of poetry, used the word
'metaphysical' to criticise what he considered to be the poets' desire to be original at any cost. He was not alone
in his criticism and, in fact, the Metaphysical poets were unpopular throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the admiration of the great modern poet
T.S. Eliot helped generate new appreciation for Donne and his followers.
45. Restoration vs Elizabethan theatres
Restoration theatres were very different from Elizabethan playhouses (• pp. C58-60). They were smaller and
indoor. The audience no longer surrounded the stage but sat facing the actors, who did not enter the stage
through doors at the back as they had in Elizabethan times, but from the sides. Painted scenery was used to
reproduce settings. Performances took place at night: the audience sat in the dark while the stage was
illuminated by candles and torches. Female roles, which in the past had been played by young boys, were now
played by women.The middle and lower classes, who still lived by a strict Puritan moral code, considered
theatre-going to be immoral, so drama became a form of entertainment for the upper classes, and theatres
became meeting places where socialites displayed their fashionable clothes and discussed the latest gossip.
46.Heroic Tragedy
Restoration audiences favoured spectacular productions. Shakespeare's works continued to be performed but
changes were often made to the original texts to make the productions more lavish and sensational. The Court
had spent almost twenty years in France, and the French influence can be seen in a new type of drama called
heroic tragedy, which became popular for a while. Heroic tragedies:
• tried to emulate epic poetry;
• were mainly about love and valour; the main character was generally a hero who passionate love conflicted
with the demands of honour and his patriotic duty;
• were written in rhyming couplets and in an elevated style, both of which made the language extremely
artificial.
Dryden's All for Love is a good example of this type of drama.
47.The Comedy of Manners
It was, however, in a type of play called the Comedy of Manners that the Restoration found its peculiar
excellence. Its main features were:
• it reflected the life of the Court, which was portrayed as being immoral, corrupt and licentious but also
elegant, witty and intelligent;
• its main targets of criticism were middle-class values and ideals, conventions, hypocrisy and above all the
institution of marriage. True love was rarely a theme as sex was favoured over feelings;
• the dialogues were prose rather than verse.
• In the Comedy of Manners characters were aristocratic ladies and gentlemen who were easily recognised by
the audience as fashionable members of society;
• two new male character types were created: the gallant and the fop. The gallant was usually the hero of the
play. He was a witty, elegant, sophisticated yet cynical lover. The fop was a figure of fun, ridiculed for his
stupidity and pompous pretentiousness;
• the leading female characters generally had no feelings or morals. Their only interests were fashion and
breaking their marital vows;
• the characters usually had names that captured some aspects of their personality: Scandal, Lady Fidget,
Petulant, Mrs Squeamish, Sir Fopling Flutter and Tattle. Although this form of character naming dates back to
the Morality plays (• p. B47), it is important to note that the Comedy of Manners had no moral didactic
purpose. These plays were written purely to entertain theatre audiences.
48.Puritan Prose: Robert Burton, Thomas Browne,John Milton
The great political and social turmoil of the first half of the seventeenth century was reflected in the prose
writing of the time. The language used in these prose works was heavily influenced by Latin, which was still
the principal language of international culture.
Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne are perhaps the two most representative prose writers of the period.
Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), a huge treatise of over half a million words. It is an
analysis of the causes, symptoms and cures for melancholy, which was considered an illness at the time.
Sir Thomas Browne wrote Religio Medici (1642), a spiritual autobiography in which he shows that religion
and science can coexist. Although he preferred poetry (he described writing prose as writing with his left hand),
John Milton also produced some excellent pamphlets including Areopagitica (1644), a defence of free speech
and writing, and Of Education (1664) in which he expresses his opinions on how young people should be
educated. All three of these writers were extremely familiar with Latin, and its influence is clear in their works:
the sentences are long and complex with numerous subordinate clauses which often lead to confusion.
49. John Bunyan. “The Pilgrim`s Progress”. Allegory
The writer who most successfully captured the Puritan spirit is undoubtedly John Bunyan. A firm believer in
Parliament, he joined Cromwell's army at the age of sixteen to fight against Charles I. When the army
disbanded in 1649 Bunyan returned home to Bedford near London and started preaching. He was self-taught
and based most of his learning on the Authorised Version of the Bible, which had been published in 1611.
During the Restoration he was imprisoned for twelve years for preaching without a licence. He subsequently
spent several spells in prison but finally obtained a licence and continued preaching until his death in 1688. He
started writing his great masterpiece The Pilgrim's Progress, which was published in 1678, during one of his
periods in prison. It is a powerful allegory of man's quest for salvation that is widely considered to be one of
the greatest works of religious literature of all time and a forerunner to the eighteenth- century novel.
It tells the story of the main character, Christian, who travels from the City of Destruction to the City of God,
has many adventures and faces many perils on his way. The language is simple and concise and accurately
represents the speech of rural people at the time when Bunyan wrote. The book's engaging plot, humorous
episodes and often ironic tone made it hugely successful in Britain and abroad.
50.The scientific revolution and new prose style
The scientific revolution, which took place after the Restoration, also played an important part in creating a new
and clear, concise prose style. Charles II was fascinated by science and carried out his own experiments in
anatomy. Empiricism - the idea that scientific assertions had to be tested by experiment - was becoming
increasingly important. From 1697 weekly lectures were held in London on astronomy, geometry, medicine,
law, divinity and music. These lectures - which strangely for the time were given in English and not Latin -
attracted some of the great thinkers of the time and prompted the foundation of the Royal Society of London for
Improving Natural Knowledge.(Isaak Newton) The new studies in experimental science needed clear, concise
language. English gradually abandoned the long and complex sentence structures which led to ambiguities and
obscurities and replaced them with a simpler, more accurate style. The new prose style can be seen in the works
of the two great philosophers of the period, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
50. The diary Samuel Pepy’s and John Evelyn
The second half of the seventeenth century saw the emergence of a new literary form: the diary. As science
started to explore the workings of the human mind, people became more interested in themselves, and started to
keep records of their private thoughts and actions in diaries.
The most famous diarist of the period was Samuel Pepys. He was an extraordinary man: he founded the Royal
Navy, was an outstanding Civil Servant and became President of the Royal Society. It is not, however, the
public side of the man that his diary reveals but the intimate details of his private life. He wrote the diary in
eleven volumes between 1660 and 1669. He wrote for himself, in a secret code of shorthand, contractions and
foreign words, and the texts were only deciphered in 1825. He spoke of the great events of the day such as the
Great Plague (1665), the Great Fire (1666), the Dutch Wars (1664) and political intrigues. But it is his frank
accounts of everyday life in a wealthy family, written in a simple style and rich in detail and humour, that make
his work unique.
Pepys's friend John Evelyn, a country gentleman and one of the founders of the Royal Society, also kept a
diary. He started writing it when he was only twenty-one years old and continued for most of his life. He was
interested in gardens, travel and life at court. He wrote mostly about places and events and his diary is full of
information and scientific observation. Unlike Pepys, he did not include intimate details about his personal life.
Indeed, the more detached, impersonal tone suggests that he may have written the diary not purely for personal
pleasure but for a possible future audience. Like Pepys', his diary is a valuable historical document.
51. The Augustian Age. Origin
The seventeenth century was a period of tumultuous change, witnessing as it did a revolution, a civil war, major
parliamentary reform and the emergence of a powerful new middle class. The extravagance of the Renaissance
was replaced by Puritan pragmatism and although the Commonwealth failed, Puritan morality became an
integral part of the English character. The scientific revolution and rationalist philosophers such as Thomas
Hobbes, Rene Descartes and John Locke (• p. D100) spread the idea that reason rather than religion was the key
to the understanding of man and the world that surrounds him. It is not surprising, therefore, that the eighteenth
century brought with it a general desire for order, clarity and stability. Writers of the period drew inspiration
from the Latin poets Virgil, Horace and Ovid who, under the patronage of Emperor Augustus (27 BC-AD 14),
created the golden age of classical literature. English writers tried to emulate the Latin poets, and indeed the
early and mid-eighteenth century became known as 'the Augustan Age'. The influence of the classical writers is
most clearly seen in the poetry of the first half of the century.
52.Proliferation of prose-writing in the Augustan Age
Although the neo-classical poetry of the Augustan Age is still widely admired, the eighteenth century is best
remembered for the development of prose-writing. The early part of the century witnessed a dramatic rise in
prose output in the form of journalism, essay writing, political satire and pamphleteering.
This proliferation of prose-writing can be attributed to a number of factors:
• the advancement of printing technology, which made publishing more efficient and cheaper;
• the expansion of the school system and the subsequent growth in the number of people who could read and
write;
• the opening of circulating libraries, which gave people access to newspapers, journals and books;
• the growth in the number of middle-class readers. In previous centuries reading had largely been confined to
the aristocracy and the upper classes. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the middle classes were better
educated and wished to understand the world in which they had become a potent economic and political force;
• the increase in the number of women readers. The Puritans considered their wives to be equal partners in
marriage, business and spiritual affairs, and encouraged them to read. Time-consuming household tasks such as
making bread, candles and clothes were no longer necessary since most of these commodities could now be
bought in shops, and consequently women had more time to dedicate to reading.
52.Journalism.Richard Steele. The Tatler
The new middle-class reader- ship was largely Puritan and showed a distinct preference for factual writing
over fiction (which they regarded to some extent as lying). In response to this taste there was a remarkable
proliferation of journalistic writing. Two great figures stand out in this field in the early part of the century:
Richard Steele and Joseph Addison.
When Richard Steele started publishing his newspaper The Tatler in 1709, there were already several
newspapers in circulation containing information about home and foreign affairs. Steele understood that the
new middle-class reader needed to be entertained as well as informed, and so he included in his newspaper
articles on fashion, taste, gossip, duelling and gambling as well as serious pieces on the political issues of the
day. Later Steele joined forces with his old school friend Joseph Addison and together they published a new
periodical called The Spectator
53. Journalism. Joseph Adison. The Spectator
The new middle-class reader- ship was largely Puritan and showed a distinct preference for factual writing
over fiction (which they regarded to some extent as lying). In response to this taste there was a remarkable
proliferation of journalistic writing. Two great figures stand out in this field in the early part of the century:
Richard Steele and Joseph Addison.
Like its predecessor, The Spectator was aimed at a middle-class reading public. However, it contained more
essays on literary and moral issues and was less concerned with political news. It was written in clear, simple,
almost conversational prose which could be understood by any reasonably educated person. Its appeal was
increased by the introduction of a group of fictitious characters representing all walks of life in eighteenth-
century England including commerce, the army, the country gentry, the Church and the town. It appeared daily
and was immensely popular. Its articles were often the subject of debate in the fashionable coffee houses which
had become centres of business transactions and social life.
54. Journalism. Samuel Johnson. The Rambler. Literary criticism
Samuel Johnson also started his literary career as a journalist, making contributions to various publications and
eventually publishing his own periodical, The Rambler. A great classicist, Johnson wrote poetry, drama, essays
on political and moral matters, biographies and literary criticism of the highest order. However, he is perhaps
best remembered for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the first attempt to standardise the
pronunciation, definitions and meaning of over 40,000 English words.
55. The novel. Evolution of prose-writing.
The eighteenth-century novel was, to a large degree, an evolution of the non-fictional prose-writing of the
period. Prose fictional works of the previous centuries, based on old legends, ancient battles and chivalrous
medieval adventures, had little appeal for the new middle-class readers who wished to read about themselves
and the world they lived in. Five towering literary figures - Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding,
Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne - moulded fictional prose into a literary form that appealed to the
eighteenth-century reader. In doing so they created the dominant literary genre of the next three centuries: the
modern novel.
56 Drama as a licesing Act of 1737. New trends.
The eighteenth century was not a particularly interesting period for drama. The Licensing Act of 1737 allowed
the Lord Chamberlain to censor theatrical performances, and many talented writers including Henry Fielding
turned their attention from drama to the new literary genre of novel-writing. While theatre-goers in the
seventeenth century were largely aristocratic, the eighteenthcentury theatre audience was predominantly middle
class and dictated new trends:
• the seventeenth-century Comedy of Manners (• pp. D96-97) was rejected for its licentiousness and amorality;
• Shakespeare continued to be performed, but his plays were often cut or transformed to suit the public's taste;
• melodramas - unimaginative sentimental pieces with strong didactic elements - became very popular but were
of little literary value;
• pantomime, a mixture of singing, dancing and knockabout comedy, which was clearly inspired by the Italian
Commedia dell'Arte, was also very fashionable.
57.John Gray. “The Beggar`s Opera” as a forerunner of the modern musical.
Perhaps the most notable theatrical work of the early part of the century is John Gay's The Beggar's Opera
(1727). The play is a combination of prose and sixty-nine songs set to traditional or fashionable melodies of the
day. In it Gay makes fun of the fashion for Italian opera and satirises contemporary politics. T/ie Beggar's
Opera is generally considered to be the forerunner of the modern musical.
58. Richard B. Sheridan. The School For Scandal. Development of the Comedy of Manners
Towards the end of the century a more refined version of the Comedy of Manners again became popular.
Playwrights such as Oliver Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer (• Text D9) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan in
The School for Scandal maintained the witty dialogue of Restoration comedies and excluded the indecent and
amoral elements.
59.Transition period. Thomas Gray and the Graveyard poets.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the admiration for the classical ideals which had characterised the
Augustan Age began to wane:
• the grandeur, rationalism and elevated sentiments of the early part of the century gave way to a simpler, more
genuine form of expression;
• there was a renewed interest in nature and the simple rural life;
• in France the influential philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau questioned the importance of reason and exalted
man's emotional capacities and imaginative powers.
In English literature the earliest evidence of this cultural shift can be seen in the poetry of Thomas Gray and the
Graveyard Poets, and in Horace Walpole's Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto.
Thomas Gray's literary reputation rests on a handful of poems written in the middle years of the century. One of
these poems, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (• Text D7), is generally considered to be his masterpiece.
In it the poet walks around a graveyard reflecting on the mortality of the villagers who are buried there. In the
final lines the poet considers his own death and composes his epitaph. The sentimental, melancholic
introspection of the poem was a clear shift from the neo-classical style, and foreshadowed what was to come
during the Romantic period.
60.Transition period. Horace Walpole and Gothic novel.
Thomas Gray's work inspired a group of poets known as the 'Graveyard Poets'. Like Gray, they found
inspiration in graveyards and wrote on the theme of mortality. In 1764, Horace Walpole, a close friend of
Gray's, published a novel entitled The Castle of Otranto. This tale tells the story of a family curse and is full of
ghosts, demons, torment, images of ruin and decay and violent emotions. Walpole was so unsure of how the
public would react to his work that he published it anonymously, claiming that it was a translation of a work by
a medieval Italian writer. The novel was, in fact, a great success and gave rise to a new literary genre: the
Gothic novel (the word Gothic at the time was synonymous with the wild and barbarous). This genre was
further developed by Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley in the Romantic period
61. Pre-Romanticism.
Pre-Romanticism, cultural movement in Europe from about the 1740s that preceded the artistic movement
known as Romanticism. Chief among these trends was a shift in public taste away from the grandeur, austerity,
nobility, idealization, and elevated sentiments of Neoclassicism or Classicism toward simpler, more sincere,
and more natural forms of expression. This new emphasis partly reflected the tastes of the growing middle
class, who found the refined and elegant art forms patronized by aristocratic society to be artificial and overly
sophisticated;
A major intellectual precursor of Romanticism was the French philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
He emphasized the free expression of emotion rather than polite restraint in friendship and love, repudiated
aristocratic elegance and recognized the virtues of middle-class domestic life, and helped open the public’s eyes
to the beauties of nature. He also introduced the idea that the free expression of the creative spirit is more
important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures.
62. The romantic age. The main characters.
Romanticism is the name given to a dominant movement in literature and the other arts – particularly music and
painting – in the the period from the 1770s to the mid-nineteenth century:
Main features
 An emphasis on emotional and imaginative spontaneity
 The importance of self-expression and individual feeling. ‘truth of the imagination' rather than scientific
truth.
  An almost religious response to nature. They were concerned that Nature should not just be seen
scientifically but as a living force, either made by a Creator, or as in some way divine, to be neglected at
humankind's peril.
 Emphasis on the imagination as a positive and creative faculty
 An interest in ‘primitive' forms of art – for instance in the work of early poets (bards), in ancient ballads
and folksongs.
 An idea of the poet as a visionary figure, with an important role to play as prophet (in both political and
religious terms).
There were 2 generations of poets:
1st: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
2nd: George Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keat
63. Romantic age. The meaning of the term ‘romantic’ in the Romantic Age.
The word “romantic” comes from the French word “roman” from meadieval epic sagas.
This term was initially used in the mid 17 cent in a derogatory way. It was thought that the characters and
settings of the medieval sagas were unrealistic. The term “romantic” was used to mean exaggerated or
unconvicing.
In the 18th cent it took a positive meaning describing the expression of personal feelings and emotions.
64. Poetry in the Romantic Age. National tradition in Robert Burn`s poetry.
Robert Burns was born in Scotland in 1759, the eldest of seven children. Although the family often had
financial difficulties, Burns received a good education and was well-read.
For many people, Burns's work epitomises the romance and beauty of Scotland. In his poems he sings with
great sincerity of the simple joys of ordinary people, and the virtues of friendship, compassion and domestic
life. He is at his best in the poems which celebrate the things he loved, especially women and drink, or those
which express his love for the beauty of his native countryside. His passionate love for its country and its
traditions have made him a symbol of national identity. Burn wrote a collection of traditional Scottish folk
songs which eventually ran to six volumes, The Scots Musical Museum. The collection included 160 songs by
Burns himself, including the world-famous Auld Lang Syne (Old Times Past) and the poem A Red, Red Rose.
Some of Burns's songs have been set to music by great composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Haydn,
Shostakovich and Beethoven.
65. Poetry in the Romantic Age. Symbols in William Blake`s poetry.
William Blake was born in London in 1757, where he was raised in a state of economic hardship and received
very little formal education.
Blake's greatness as one of the leading poets of English Romanticism is best expressed in his 'illuminated
books' - Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) They read like simple, tender poetry
written in a natural, unaffected style. However, these simple poems and illustrations often hide deeper meanings
and more intricate patterns than first appear. The poems in the Songs of Experience reflect a gloomier vision of
the world, where Evil has the upper hand over Good. Innocence and Experience, 'the two contrary states of the
human soul', are shown in direct contrast in such poems as The Lamb
In the so-called Prophetic Books, a series of long symbolic poems which he started writing in 1789, Blake
expresses his condemnation of eighteenth-century political and social tyranny.
A symbol is an example of what is called the transference of meaning: a writer takes a concrete item - an object,
a colour, a person, a place, an animal - and attributes to it a deeper meaning. Sometimes writers use symbols
which are part of their culture, water representing life, for example. Writers can also use non-conventional,
private symbols. We usually understand their meaning from the context in which they occur.
His belief in the absolute predominance of Imagination over Reason subverted all the rules that governed
eighteenth-century art and poetic forms. He rejected the basic principles of the Age of Reason and the classic
models that restricted free artistic and poetic expession.
66. Poetry in the Romantic Age. The lake District poets. William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in a little town in the Lake District in the north-west of England.
Two events then changed his life forever: he inherited a sum of money which covered his daily necessities and,
in 1795, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge (• pp. E24-31), a poet with similar radical political and literary views.
This friendship had a lasting impact on both poets. William and Dorothy(sister) went to live close to Coleridge.
Together they discussed political issues, read, wrote, exchanged theories on poetry and commented on each
other's work. In this period of intense creativity they produced the Lyrical Ballads
William and Dorothy moved to Grasmere, one of the loveliest villages in the Lake District, a region which
Wordworth immortalised in his poetry. In 1802 Wordsworth married a childhood friend and together they had
five children. During this period he produced Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), a collection which includes
some of his finest verse and most famous sonnets. His reputation began to grow and his work became
increasingly popular. He did, however, suffer personal tragedy when two of his children died.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772, the youngest of ten children. When his father died he was sent
away to a London charity school for children of the clergy.
In 1795 Coleridge met William Wordsworth (• pp. E16-23), a poet with similar political and literary views. The
encounter produced one of the most creative partnerships in English literature. The result of their collaboration
was the Lyrical Ballads. In 1808 he moved back to the Lake District, close to the Wordsworths and Southey.
Together they became known as the 'Lake Poets'. He fell in love with Wordsworth's sisterin- law, a love that
was to be a source of great suffering all through his life. In 1810 his friendship with Wordsworth came to a
bitter end. His addiction to opium got worse, producing terrible mood swings and making him unable to work
productively.
67. Poetry in the Romantic Age. The Byronic hero in the Geaorge Byron`s poetry.
George Gordon Lord Byron was born in London in 1788. His parents had been living in France while hiding
from their creditors, but just before Byron's birth his mother returned to England. His father stayed on in
France, where he died three years later, possibly committing suicide. Byron was born lame and limped all of his
life.
The u n f i n i s h e d p o em Don Juan, which many critics consider his masterpiece, is a picaresque verse satire
with several autobiographical references. The hero's travels, adventures, love affairs, ideas, impressions and
feelings are very close reflections of what Byron did, felt and thought. The poem is also a satire against
conventional restraint, society and the Romantic poets who had turned from political radicalism to conservatism
Although Byron's work was widely c r i t i c i s ed o n moral grounds and f r e q u e n t ly attacked by critics, it
was immensely popular in England and the rest of Europe; his sales were better in Germany and France than in
Britain. As a Romantic icon his importance was enormous. The poet Tennyson ( • Module F) summed up the
general reaction to his death when he wrote on hearing the news: ' t h e whole world darkened t o m e ' . Byron
e m b o d i e d t h e R o m a n t i c spirit and gave it a recognisable face. He left behind h im the enduring image
of the Byronic hero: a gloomy, unsatisfied social outcast, a wanderer in foreign lands, a fighter against social
injustice, who in his quest for selfrealisation, refuses to accept social codes and conventions.
68. Poetry in the Romantic Age. Personification in Percy Bysshe Shelley`s poetry.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792 into a prosperous aristocratic family.
The year 1819 also saw the composition of some of Shelley's finest lyrics: Ode to Liberty, The Cloud, To a
Skylark and Ode to the West Wind. The latter is considered by many critics to be Shelley's greatest short poem.
In it the poet asks the spirit of the West Wind to be both destroyer and preserver, and to regenerate hope and
energy in Nature, in the poet himself and in mankind in general. It is written in five majestic stanzas, each
taking the form of a sonnet. The musical patterns, which are built on internal rhyme*, assonance* and run-on
lines*, clearly show the poet's mastery of his art.
As a writer, Shelley has been criticised for his obscure symbolism, intellectual arrogance and intense self-pity.
However, in his greatest works he transcends these limitations and conveys a message of hope and aspiration
through strikingly beautiful prose and poetry
Personification is a type of metaphor in which human characteristics such as emotions, personality, behaviour
and so on are attributed to an animal, object or idea. The primary function of personification is to make abstract
ideas clearer to the reader by comparing t h em to everyday human experience. Humanising cold and complex
abstractions can bring t h em to life, render t h em more interesting and make t h em easier to understand.
69. Poetry in the Romantic Age. John Keat`s poetry.
John Keats was born in London, where his father was the manager of a large livery stable. His early life was
marked by a series of personal tragedies: his father was killed in an accident when he was eight years old, his
mother died when he was fourteen and one of his younger brothers died in infancy.
In his short literary career John Keats wrote some of the most outstanding and best-loved poems in the English
language.
His early poems included the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816), which describes the
poet's delight at first reading Chapman's seventeenth-century translation of the Greek epic poem.
Endymion (1817) tells the story of a young shepherd whom the moon-goddess Selene puts to sleep eternally so
that she can enjoy his beauty. Although the poem is structurally weak and often vobscure, it shows flashes of
immature genius.
The Eve of St. Agnes is a romantic love story which blends elements of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,
Chaucer and Boccaccio. The rich sensuousness of the imagery in the poem is an indication of the greatness to
come.
In the five odes of 1 8 1 9 , Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn ( • Text E17), Ode to a Nightingale (• Text
E18), Ode on Melancholy and To Autumn, Keats reached the pinnacle of his creative powers. They are lyrical
meditations on art and real life, experience and aspirations, life and dreams.
After a particularly savage attack on one of his early works, Keats wrote to his brother 'I think I shall be
among the English Poets after my death'. His prophecy has indeed come true. Keats's reputation continued t o
grow during the nineteenth century, and since t h e n he has, together with Wordsworth, been the most widely
read of the English Romantic poets. His Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale and To Autiimn are as
well-known and loved as anything by Shakespeare.
70. Fiction in the Romantic Age. The narrative technique in Jane Austen`s “Emma”
3 types of novel:
1. Hisorical novel.Walter Scott
2. Gothic Novel. Marry Shelly
3. The novel of manners. Kane Austen.
Jane Austen was born on 16th December, 1775, in the village of Steventon, near Basingstoke, in Hampshire.
She was educated mainly at home and never lived apart from her family.
Her major novels are Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1816), Persuasion
(1818)
The narrative technique Jane Austen uses in Emma is a development of the third-person narrative. Sometimes
the narrator is omniscient, at other times he sees things from the main character's point of view. In setting the
scene, for example, the narrator is independent, looking down on the characters from a point outside the action.
At other times it is clearly Emma's point of view. Although the narrating voice remains outside the story, the
phrase 'This would not do' is obviously an expression of Emma's point of view, conveying her frustration at
Harriet's behaviour. The technique of shifting the narrative viewpoint between an objective account and
subjective interpretation is called free indirect speech. This technique makes the reader feel less detached from
the story. Also, because much of the story is told from the partial viewpoint of one of t h e characters, the reader
gets the idea that anything can happen in the course of the novel, just as it can in real life. In the case of Emma
it adds an element of humour, as t h e reader contrasts the way Emma sees the world around her and how it
really is. Free indirect speech is widely used in modern novel writing.
71. Fiction in the Romantic Age. The “showing and telling” technique in Jane Austen`s “Pride and
Prejudice”
There are two basic techniques for revealing a character: 'showing' and 'telling'. A writer shows characters
through dialogue, monologue or interior monologue. The reader is left to interpret and draw conclusions from
what is said with little or no help from the narrator.
A writer tells the reader about characters when he describes their personality, appearance, feelings and motives
for their behaviour. The reader does not have much freedom to form an opinion and must depend on what the
narrator says about the character.
72. Fiction in the Romantic Age. The historical novel by Sir Walter Scott.
Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh on 15th August, 1771. When he was only two years old he got polio,
which left h im lame for t h e rest of his life.
He is best remembered, however, as t h e first great writer of historical novels in the English language. His first
novel Waverley, which deals with the Scottish rebellion of 1745, appeared anonymously in 1814 and was
immediately successful.
Scott was a born storyteller. In his novels he placed vivid characters in violent, dramatic historical settings.
Ivanhoe (1820), for example, is set against the conflict between Normans and Saxons in England. Scott
arranged his plots and characters so the reader enters into the lives of both great and ordinary people. He was
the first novelist to portray peasant characters sympathetically and realistically and to recognise the important
role they had in history. In Ivanhoe, for example, there are many famous historical figures like Richard the
Lionheart and Robin Hood but the hero of the novel, Ivanhoe, is an ordinary knight, no different from
thousands of others.
Tolerance is a major theme in Scott's historical works. His heroes represent the 'middle course' between
extremes. Ivanhoe is an example of a hero who is both tolerant and fearless in his pursuit of Justice.
Scott created a new literary form, the historical novel, which is still popular to th s day. Hev told the stories of
fictional characters and real people against authentic historical backgrounds.
73. Fiction in the Romantic age. The Gothic Novel by Mary Shelley.
Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797 to well-known parents.
The idea of writing Frankenstein came when Mary was on holiday in Switzerland in 1816 with Shelley and
Lord Byron ( • p. E 3 2 - 3 9 ) . They were telling each other ghost stories and decided that each of them would
write their own. In a half - waking nightmare, Mary struck on the idea of a man-made monster, and
immediately set about writing Frankenstein, which she t h e n finished in May 1817.
She is best remembered as the author of Frankenstein, or the The Modern Prometheus (1818). She dedicated
the novel to her father, whose views o n property, social justice and education are represented. She shared Percy
Shelley's interest in science and, in particular, in chemistry and evolutionary theories. The transformation of
Frankenstein from a gentle, loving being to a murderous monster reflects many of the contemporary beliefs
regarding how social environment affects man's behaviour. Mary Shelley's work embodies the spirit of the age
in which it was written.
74. The 17th century.
The first americans were explorers, adventuarists and idealists who crossed the ocean in searching the way from
poverty or intolerance. Their writings were matter of fact of life accounts of life in America, which explored the
Englishmen.
An example of this form can be seen in witings of John Smiths “A true relation of Virginia” which is
considered to be the 1st example of am. Literature.
The early years of the 17th cent was the the period of mass colonialism and produced a lot of diaries,
biographies, phamphlets, diaries of voyages.
The wrirings were addressed to the problem of church and state. There were very few example of fiction and
drama.
Anne Bradstreet published some lyrical poems
Edward Taylor wrote some poetry in the style of metaphysical poets.
75. The 18th century.
The greatest lit. figures of 18th cent were: Bengamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson.
 Franklin set up his own series known as “Poor Richard`s Almanac” –series of aphorisms of common
sense, applied to colonial readers.
 Thomas Paine inspired the colonialists during the revolution with his pamphlets “Common Sense” and
“American Crysis Papers”.
 Thomas Jefferson also had influential political writings and made contribution to “The Federalist”
papers in which he outlined the am. Governmental systm and basic principles of republican theory.
1776- Declaration of Independance
76. the 19th century.
In the Post-Revolutionary period the search of characteristics of am lit began. The most important writers:
Washington Irving, James Cooper, Allan Poe.
 Irving was one of the 1st who initiated series of public, described life in New York, criticized aristocratic
Dutch colonialists. Most famous novels: “A History of New York”, “The legend of the Sleepy Hollow”
 Cooper was the most popular writer – series “Lovestocking tales” in 5 volumes. The most famous tale
“The last of Mochickons”.
 Poe is reagarede as a father of modern detective story.
77. American literature. Edgar Allan Poe. Tales of Ratiocination.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809. While he was still a young child, he lost both his parents.
Poe is widely regarded as the father of the modern detective story. Murder stories were already existence at the
time he wrote. However, he shifted the emphasis from the action to the investigation and solution of the crime.
He created a detective, Monsieur Dupin, who, through intuition, observation of detail, reason and
psychological analysis could solve extremely complicated cases. He called his stories 'tales of ratiocination'.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is one of the finest examples. In creating this genre he paved the way
for detective story writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
Poe's reputation in America during his lifetime was undermined by accusations of paedophilia, sadism,
alcoholism and drug addiction. It was the French poet Baudelaire, through his excellent translations, who
encouraged appreciation of his work in Europe. Since that time, Poe has been given both the public and critical
recognition he deserves
78. American literature. Edgar Allan Poe. Tales of terror.
He also wrote tales of terror, which he called 'arabesques'. Gothic fiction was popular at the time and provided
such basic elements as castles, animated portraits, physical decay, stormy weather and howling wolves. His
characters are often involved in a life-threatening situation, about to be executed or to have a fatal accident. In
The Premature Burial (1844) he explores the terror of a man who regains consciousness only to discover he has
been buried alive. Other outstanding tales of terror are The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), The Black Cat
(1843) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1843), in which Poe uses his great talent to make imagined horror
become totally physical.
79. American literature. Edgar Allan Poe. Psychological thrillers.
Poe was also a master of the psychological thriller. Many of his characters show symptoms of paranoia and
have to deal with obsessions, nightmares and nervous disorders. His analysis in William Wilson is an intriguing
exploration of a split personality long before Freud studied the subject.
80. American literature. Edgar Allan Poe. Poetry.
He was also an influential poet and literary critic. In his works of literary theory he outlined a series of
principles and techniques which he believed had to be applied in the writing of poetry. He believed that poetry
should be devoid of any message or moral teaching, its only purpose being to give pleasure. He identified the
need for a 'condensed' style, and paid particular attention to imagery and sound. He also underlined the
importance of the musical elements in poetry when he defined it as 'the rhythmic creation of beauty'. The best
examples of this approach are The Raven (1845) and Annabel Lee (1849), a poem dedicated to his wife and
inspired by one of his favourite themes, the death of a beautiful woman. His poetry and literary theory paved
the way for symbolist poetry and inspired such French poets as Rimbaud and Baudelaire.