The Neo-classical Age T-6

Syllabus topics (RTMNU)

• Satirists of the period – Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift
• The Four Wheels of English Novel

Satirists of the Period – Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift

The early 18th century (about 1700–1745) is called the Neo-classical or Augustan Age. Writers copied the classical writers of the age of Emperor Augustus (Virgil, Horace). They valued reason, order, correctness, good taste and common sense. Satire was the main mode.

Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

• The greatest poet of the age; master of the heroic couplet.
• Works: An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712/1714, mock-epic), translations of Homer, The Dunciad (1728–1743), An Essay on Man (1733–34), Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735).
• Satire: personal and literary (dull writers, critics), and social (fashionable society in The Rape of the Lock).
• Style: polish, wit, balance, antithesis, epigrams ("A little learning is a dang'rous thing"; "To err is human, to forgive divine").

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

• Irish-born clergyman, Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin; greatest prose satirist.
• Works: A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704), Gulliver's Travels (1726), A Modest Proposal (1729).
• Satire on politics, religion, science and human pride; savage irony (in A Modest Proposal he "suggests" that the poor Irish sell their babies as food).
• Style: plain, clear, serious tone hiding bitter irony.

Both were members of the Scriblerus Club (with Arbuthnot, Gay) that mocked false learning.

The Four Wheels of the English Novel

The four great novelists of the mid-18th century who established the novel are called its "four wheels":

Likely exam questions

1. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Discuss Pope and Swift as the chief satirists of the Neo-classical age.
2. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Who are the "four wheels" of the English novel? Explain their contribution.
3. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a note on the Augustan / Neo-classical age.
4. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a note on Swift's A Modest Proposal.
5. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) What is an epistolary novel? Give an example.

Syllabus topics (RTMNU)

• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Tom Jones – Henry Fielding

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) is Fielding's masterpiece. It is in 18 books, each opening with an essay-like chapter by the narrator. Coleridge counted its plot among the three most perfect plots in literature.

Story in brief (our own words)

1. Squire Allworthy, a good and wealthy gentleman of Somerset, finds a baby boy in his bed. He raises him as Tom Jones. His sister Bridget marries Captain Blifil and has a son, Master Blifil.
2. Tom grows up warm-hearted, generous and brave but careless and impulsive. Blifil is outwardly correct but selfish and sly. Their tutors – Thwackum (a harsh clergyman) and Square (a philosopher) – both favour Blifil.
3. Tom loves Sophia Western, daughter of the rough, fox-hunting neighbour Squire Western. Western wants Sophia to marry Blifil.
4. Through Blifil's lies, Allworthy drives Tom from home. Tom travels towards London with the comic barber-schoolmaster Partridge (thought to be his father). Sophia also runs away to escape Blifil. The road is full of adventures in inns (e.g. at Upton).
5. In London Tom gets into trouble with Lady Bellaston, is imprisoned after a duel, and is wrongly told he has slept with his own mother (Mrs Waters).
6. The truth comes out: Tom is the son of Bridget Allworthy (so Allworthy's nephew); Blifil had hidden this. Blifil is exposed. Tom, now reformed and wiser, marries Sophia.

Themes

• Goodness of heart vs hypocrisy (Tom vs Blifil).
• Prudence – Tom must learn self-control.
• Love and marriage for love vs for money.
• Picture of 18th-century English society – country, road and town.

Features

• Fielding's idea of the novel as a "comic epic in prose".
• Intrusive, ironic omniscient narrator.
• Three-part structure: country – road – London.
• Realism, humour, mock-heroic passages, rich gallery of characters.

Likely exam questions

1. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Discuss Tom Jones as a comic epic in prose.
2. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Compare and contrast Tom Jones and Blifil.
3. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a character sketch of Sophia Western.
4. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a note on Squire Western.
5. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Comment on the plot construction of Tom Jones.

Syllabus topics (RTMNU)

• Poems of Alexander Pope: 1. Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
• 2. Ode on Solitude
• 3. The Dunciad

Alexander Pope – "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" (1717)

The ghost of a young lady who killed herself for love appears to the poet with a bleeding sword. She was proud and noble-hearted. Her cruel guardian (uncle) separated her from her lover, and she died alone in a foreign land. The poet curses her unkind relatives, who will be punished. Her body lies without proper funeral rites or mourners, yet nature – flowers and morning dew – mourns her. She will be forgotten, and so will the poet who praises her. Themes: love, death, pity, attack on cruelty; questions the judgement of suicide. Features: emotional, near-romantic tone (unusual for Pope), heroic couplets, apostrophe, rhetorical questions.

Ode on Solitude (written c. 1700, when Pope was about 12)

Happy is the man whose wishes are limited to a few acres of his father's land, who breathes his native air on his own ground. His cows give milk, his fields bread, his flocks clothing, his trees shade in summer and fire in winter. Blessed is he who lives peacefully, with health and calm mind, sleeps soundly, studies and rests, and enjoys innocence. The poet wishes to live unseen and unknown and to die unlamented, with no stone to tell where he lies. Themes: simple rural life, contentment, peace, self-sufficiency (the classical "Beatus ille" theme from Horace). Form: 5 quatrains, simple language. (This poem also appears in the BA English Language T-1 paper.)

The Dunciad (1728; enlarged 1743)

A mock-epic satire on dull writers, bad critics and publishers. The goddess Dulness chooses a king of dunces to spread her empire over Britain. In the first version the hero was Lewis Theobald (who had criticised Pope's edition of Shakespeare); in the 1743 version it became Colley Cibber, the Poet Laureate. There are mock-heroic games (like the epic games in Homer) among booksellers and poets. Book IV ends with the triumph of Dulness: "universal darkness buries all" – the end of learning and culture.

Features

• Mock-heroic style: epic machinery for trivial people.
• Personal satire leading to cultural warning.
• Heroic couplets, wit, irony, allusions; modelled on Dryden's Mac Flecknoe.

Likely exam questions

1. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Discuss The Dunciad as a mock-epic satire.
2. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Critically appreciate Pope's "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady".
3. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write the central idea of "Ode on Solitude".
4. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Who is the hero of The Dunciad?
5. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a note on Pope's heroic couplet.