E N G L I S H L I T E R AT U R E

E L A B O R A T E D

B Y :

S C U T A R I

V I C T O R I A

Literatur

espiritual
Literature
spiritual
treasure
treasure of mankind
of
mankind

Contents:

Definition
Main Characteristics
Main Figures

Difinition

Neoclassicism comprised a
return to the classical models,
literary styles, and values of
ancient Greek and Roman
authors.
Neoclassicism refers to a broad

Characteristics of Neoclassicism
Imitation and Nature: Two of
the concepts central to
neoclassical literary theory and
practice were imitation and
nature, which were intimately
related.
Imitation The imitation of
classical models, especially
Homer and Vergil.
Nature the harmonious and
hierarchical order of the
universe, including the various

The neoclassical writers

The neoclassical writers generally saw the
ancients such as Homer and Vergil as having
already discovered and expressed the
fundamental laws of nature. Hence, the
external world, including the world of human
action, could best be expressed by modern
writers if they followed the path of imitation
already paved by the ancients. Invention
was of course allowed, but only as a
modification of past models, not in the form
of a rupture.

18 TH CENTURY POETRY

The age of Swift and Pope

of romanticism
(1700-1745)
1800)

The age of Samuel Johnson

(1745- 1789)

The beginning
(1789-

FAMOUS WRITERS

FAMOUS
FAMOUS
WRITERS
WRITERS
FAMOUS WRITERS

1.ALEXANDER POPE
2.JONATHAN SWIFT
3.DANIEL DEFOE
4.SAMUEL RICHARDSON
5.HENRY FIELDING
6.LAURENCE STERNE

ALEXANDER POPE
The most important English neoclassical poet of the 18
th poetry;
Born May 21, 1688 (Restoration), London
Crippled at 12; hunchback
Never married, but involved with two women in his life
Martha Blount and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Never formally educated because he was Catholic
Gained an appreciate for the classics and writing
Conformed to strict writing rules
Greatest work (at 24) was The Rape of the Lock, a mockheroic
Financially independent through translations of the Iliad
and the Odyssey
Died 1744, Twickenham

HIS WORKS :
The pastorals;
Essay on man;
Essay on criticism reflects his desire to rival Boileaus art poetic;
The Rape of the Lock;
Steel and Addition:
The tattler in 1709 and The spectator in 1711
The spectator includes representative of various section of society.
The work Addition reveals at once the charm of the old England and the
coming of the new
To Lord Bathurst
On the use of the riches
Of the knowledge & character of men
Of the characters of women

POPES METHODS:
Pope and the 18 Century
No advantage of vernacular
speech, but he used
colloquialisms;
Mature outlook, poise and
control, careful judgment;
Exposed shallow flaws in society;
th

Imitation
Re-creation of a work;
Pope translated old into
Augustan phraseology;

Pope and Society

Poked fun at society, e.g. The Rape
of the Lock
Commentary on British legal
system;
Biting satire against others;
Pope and the Classics
Looked to Homer (favorite) and
French classicism;

Pope and Didactic Poetry

Teach lessons to society;
Hope springs eternal in the human
breast and A little learning is a
dangerous thing

THE RAPE OF THE

LOCK

Alexander Pope

THE EPIC CONVENTIONS

High formal diction
Invocation of the Muse
machinery (i.e. gods or supernatural figures)
Gods speak to hero in a dream
The arming of the hero
Sacrifice to the gods
Exhortation of the general to the troops
Catalog of the armies
Battle scenes
Descent into the underworld
Intercession of the gods
Ascension of the dead into the heavens

SATIRE & THE MOCK HEROIC

SATIRE: the use of
irony, sarcasm,
ridicule, or the like,
in exposing,
denouncing, or
deriding vice, folly,
etc.

humo
ur

Object
of
attack

MOCK HEROIC is a form of satire that

adapts the elevated heroic style of the
classical epic poem to a trivial subject

BACKGROUND
Refashioned like Virgils Aeneid or Homers Odyssey
Pope had three aims:

Make fun
of the
epic
conventi
ons

Patch a
feud
between
two wellknown
families (a
lock of hair
was stolen)

Patch a feud
between two
well-known
families (a
lock of hair
was stolen)

The strategy of Popes mock-epic is not

to mock the form itself, but to mock his
society in its very failure to rise to epic
standards, exposing its pettiness by
casting it against the grandeur of the
traditional epic subjects and the bravery
and fortitude of epic heroes: Popes
mock-heroic treatment inThe Rape of
the Lockunderscores the ridiculousness
of a society in which values have lost all
proportion, and the trivial is handled with
the gravity and solemnity that ought to

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Rape of the Lock is a social
satire, it discloses the falsehood of
social conventions and exposes the
false values of age in which female
beauty is used as a weapon, while
reputation.
The poem reconstructs the world of
fashion in the 18th centry.

CHARACTERS:
Belind The
Caryl- Goddes Ariel Umbri Brillan Clariss
,s-
a-
Baron The
s- The muse -
el- The te- The a- A
historical
Belindas
Belinda is
who, according Belindas
chief gnome, sylph who is woman in
basis
for
the
- This is
friend,
based on
to classical
guardian
who travels
assigned to
attendance
Caryl
the
historical
Arabella
Fermor, a
member of
Popes
circle of
prominent
Roman
Catholics.
Robert,
Lord Petre
(the Baron
in the
poem) had
precipitate
d a rift
between
their two
families by
snipping

the
pseudonym
for the
historical
Robert, Lord
Petre, the
young
gentleman
in Popes
social circle
who
offended
Arabella
Fermor and
her family
by cutting
off a lock of
her hair. In
the poems
version of
events,
Arabella is

character is
John Caryll,
a friend of
Pope and of
the two
families that
had become
estranged
over the
incident the
poem
relates. It
was Caryll
who
suggested
that Pope
encourage a
reconciliatio
n by writing
a humorous
poem.

convention,
inspires poets
to write their
verses

sylph,
who
oversees
an army
of
invisible
protective
deities

to the Cave
of Spleen
and returns
with bundles
of sighs and
tears to
aggravate
Belindas
vexation

guard
Belindas
earrings

at the
Hampton
Court party.
She lends
the Baron
the pair of
scissors with
which he
cuts
Belindas
hair, and
later
delivers a
moralizing
lecture.

named for
the Queen of
the Amazons
and
representing
the historical
Gertrude
Morley, a
friend of
Popes and
the wife of
Sir George
Browne
(rendered as
her beau,
Sir Plume, in
the poem).
She eggs
Belinda on in
her anger
and
demands

JONATHAN
SWIFT
Gullivers Travels

1667-1745

Jonathan Swift, Irish

author and journalist, the
foremost prose satirist in
the English language.
Swift's best known work
is Gulliver's Travels
(1726).Swift was born in
Dublin on November
30,1667. He studied at
Kilkenny Grammar
School (1674-82) and at
Trinity College in Dublin
(1682-89), receiving his
B.A. in 1868 and M.A. in
1692.

His most famous works

other than Gulliver's
Travels include The Battle
Of The Books (1697) which
explores the merits of the
ancients and the moderns
in literature and A Tale Of
A Tub (1704), a religious
satire. In Arguments
Against Abolishing
Christianity (1708) the
narrator argues for the
preservation of the
Christian religion as a
social necessity.

GULLIVERS TRAVELS
Jonathans masterpiece,
Gullivers Travels appeared in
1726. It is divided into four
books, but the young people
prefer only two of them:
Gullivers voyages to Lilliput
( where the people are six
inches high) and Brobdingnag
(where the people are giants).
The Lilliputians fight wars which
seem foolish. The King of
Brobdingnag thinks that people
are the most terrible creatures
on the Earth.

GULLIVERS TRAVEL AS A SATIRE:

1.Multi-layered text.
2.Swifts satire is inspired by his hatred of mankind.
3.His ridiculous jokes appear very serious.
4.The novel is the imagination of Swift, a fully
fictional world, but the real intent is different.
5.The society seems unreal with it has a magic
mirror.
6.The novel can be read as the most powerful attack
ever made against man's wickedness and stupidity.

INTRODUCTION
Gulliver's Travelsis an adventure story (in reality, a
misadventure story) involving several voyages of Lemuel
Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of
mishaps en route to recognized ports, ends up, instead, on
several unknown islands living with people and animals of
unusual sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after
each adventure, is somehow able to return to his home in
England where he recovers from these unusual experiences
and then sets out again on a new voyage.

CHARACTERS:
1.Gulliver- the protagonist and the narrator of the story. The novel is about
his journey, his exposure to different worlds.
2.The Emperor of Liliput
3.The farmer- Gullivers master in Brobdingnag
4.Glumdalclitch- the farmers daughter
5.The Queen and the King of Brobdingnag
6.Lord Munodi- Lord of Lagado, Laputa island
7.Yahoos- they represent savage human society
8.Houyhnhnms- they represent disciplined, cultured society
9.Gullivers Houyhnhnms master

THEMES
Might Versus Right
Gullivers Travelsimplicitly poses the question
of whether physical power or moral
righteousness should be the governing factor
in social life. Gulliver experiences the
advantages of physical might both as one who
has it, as a giant in Lilliput where he can
defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his
immense size, and as one who does not have
it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where
he is harassed by the hugeness of everything
from insects to household pets. His first
encounter with another society is one of
entrapment, when he is physically tied down
by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag, he is
enslaved by a farmer. He also observes
physical force used against others, as with the
Houyhnhnms chaining up of the Yahoos

The Individual Versus SocietyLike

many narratives about voyages to
nonexistent lands,Gullivers
Travelsexplores the idea of utopiaan
imaginary model of the ideal
community. The idea of a utopia is an
ancient one, going back at least as far
as the description in PlatosRepublicof
a city-state governed by the wise and
expressed most famously in English by
Thomas MoresUtopia.Swift nods to
both works in his own narrative, though
his attitude toward utopia is much
more skeptical, and one of the main
aspects he points out about famous
historical utopias is the tendency to
privilege the collective group over the
individual. The children of
PlatosRepublicare raised
communally, with no knowledge of
their biological parents, in the
understanding that this system

SYMBOLS
Lilliputians

The Lilliputians symbolize humankinds wildly excessive

pride in its own puny existence. Swift fully intends the irony
of representing the tiniest race visited by Gulliver as by far
the most vainglorious and smug, both collectively and
individually. There is surely no character more odious in all
of Gullivers travels than the noxious Skyresh. There is more
backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere else,
and more of the pettiness of small minds who imagine
themselves to be grand. Gulliver is a nave consumer of the
Lilliputians grandiose imaginings: he is flattered by the
attention of their royal family and cowed by their threats of
punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical
power over him. Their formally worded condemnation of
Gulliver on grounds of treason is a model of pompous and
self-important verbiage, but it works quite effectively on the
nave Gulliver.
The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to
themselves as well. There is no mention of armies proudly
marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visitsonly in
Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu are the six-inch inhabitants
possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with
such displays.

Laputans
The Laputans represent the folly of theoretical
knowledge that has no relation to human life and no
use in the actual world. As a profound cultural
conservative, Swift was a critic of the newfangled
ideas springing up around him at the dawn of the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a period of great
intellectual experimentation and theorization. He
much preferred the traditional knowledge that had
been tested over centuries. Laputa symbolizes the
absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or
applied, the ludicrous side of Enlightenment
intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where
the local academy is more inclined to practical
application, knowledge is not made socially useful as
Swift demands. Indeed, theoretical knowledge there
has proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin
of agriculture and architecture and the
impoverishment of the population. Even up above,
the pursuit of theoretical understanding has not
improved the lot of the Laputans

THE HOUYHNHNMS
The Houyhnhnms areendued with a proportionable
degree of reasonandorderly and rational, acute
and judicious. The Houyhnhnmsarethe Perfection
of Naturewhilethe yahoos were observed to be
the most unteachable of all brutes
Part IV of Gullivers Travels describes man as a
lump of deformity and disease both in body and
mind, smitten with pride.
Swift has so muchhatred towards mankind that he
makes Gulliver tell- I expressed my uneasiness at
his giving me so often the appellation of Yahoo, an

CONCLUSION:
Gullivers
Travels
is
presentation of an impossible
physical smallness of the
human race is desired to show
the possible mental smallness.

THE ENGLISH NOVEL OF THE 18TH CENTURY

The present English word,
Novel, derives from the
Italian novella for "new",
"news", or "short story of
something new", itself from the
Latin novella.
It was born in the 18th century,
dealing with the life of the citydweller, the middle-class man,
the bourgeois.
It pictured life as lived by the
individual in society.

THE WRITERS WHO DID REALLY MAKE

CONTRIBUTIONS IN IMPROVING THE NOVEL
OF THE 18 TH CENTURY ARE:

Laurence SterneDanielHenry Fielding

Samuel Richardson

Daniel Defoe

The
picaresque
novel

The
Quixotic
novel

The
satirical
novel

The novel
of
adventures

THE
NOVEL
The Gothic
novel

The novel
of travels

The
epistolary
novel

Any novel is made up of two type of text:

The paratext- letters to the readers , footsnotes, or any other part of the novel that is
exterior to it and usually coments upon it.
The literary text- imparts information about
the world of the narrated events.

There are two types of novels:

The novels with a narrator

The novels without a narrato

DANIEL
DEFOE

Moll Flandersmark the

birth of
modern
Present
novel.
ed a
world of
action

AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Born to James and Alice Foe of London in 1660
James Foe was a butcher.
Defoe studied at Charles Morton's Academy in London.
Defoe married Mary Tuffley in 1684, the daughter of a London merchant
He was possibly a merchant in Spain from 1678 to 1683.
Defoe was part of the Duke of Monmouths failed rebellion against King
James II, a Catholic king.
Daniel was unable to attend such traditional and prestigious schools as
Oxford and Cambridge.
Defoe's education began in the Rev. James Fisher's school in Dorking, and
later, at about the age of fourteen, he was enrolled in the Dissenting
academy in Newington Green.

DANIEL
DEFOE

Moll
Flanders

Picaresq
ue novel

Novel of adventures

Influenced by journalistic style

INTRODUCTION
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the
Famous Moll Flanders(commonly known
simply asMoll Flanders) is a novel written
byDaniel Defoe in 1722.
Moll Flanders narrates a female-picaros
authobiography. She is born in prison. She grows
with different people and in all kind of
circumstances. As a woman her options are
limited and Moll embarks on a rollicking career
of incest, bigamy and crime. Five times married,
a whore and a thief, her business is survival.

Turning points in Moll Flanders

Moll is caught and imprisoned in Newgate, where
she meets Jemy
Moll begins a life of crime
Molls affair with a married man and the
other
two
marriages(Lancashire
husband, Jemy, and the banker)
The marriage with the
half-brother
and
the
discovery of her mother
Molls first
marriage, with
Robin

Molls sentence is
reduced

Moll rediscover in America

her and her brothers son

Molls first act of

prostitution
Moll is placed
with a nurse
Molls birth in Newgate

Moll with Jemy returns to England at

the age of 70.

The three main themes

in the novel

CONCLUSION:
Moll shows the desire to repent on many occasions, but it often seems
forced. Moll's first repentance appears when Robin proposes marriage.
'I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I have repented
heartily my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any
reflection of conscience, for I was a stranger to those things, but I
could not think of being a whore to one brother and a wife to the
other'

Later on, when Moll is imprisoned, she describes her life.

a horrid Complication of Wickedness, whoredom, adultery,
incest, lying, theft, and in a word everything but Murder and
Treason

 RICHARDSON'S
GREATEST
CONTRIBUTION WAS HIS
INTRODUCTION OF
CHARACTER INSIGHT TO
THE NOVEL.
The
Father
epistola
ry
novels

Present
sa
world of
feeling
Samuel Richardson

The
epistol
ary
novels

CLARISSA
BY SAMUEL RICHARDSON

KEY FACTS:
FULL TITLEClarissa, or The History of a Young Lady
AUTHORSamuel Richardson
TYPE OF WORKNovel
GENREEpistolary, realist, psychological
LANGUAGEEnglish
TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN1740s, London
DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION17471748(7serial volumes)
PUBLISHERSamuel Richardson
NARRATORNone. The plot is presented in a series of letters written by the
characters.
POINT OF VIEWThe story is told in a series of letters, giving the point of
view of several characters. The characters provide information about one
another, but there is no omniscient or objective narrator.
TONEVaries; Clarissa and Belfords letters tend to be serious, while
Lovelace and Annas are humorous and sometimes ironic.
TENSEPresent
SETTING (TIME)Mid-eighteenth century
SETTING (PLACE)The English countryside; London
PROTAGONISTClarissa Harlowe
MAJOR CONFLICTClarissa struggles to maintain her virtue against
Lovelaces plots and violence.

Clarissatells the story of a virtuous,

beautiful young woman who is brought to
tragedy by the wickedness of her world. The
eighteen-year-old Clarissa Harlowe is
universally loved and admired, considered
an exemplary woman by everyone around
her. The Harlowes are an up-and-coming
family, possessing great wealth but little
status. The other members of the family are
avaricious and eager to improve their
standing in the world, and Clarissa becomes
the victim of their greed

THEME
S

The immoral rake

versus the
innocent heroine;
The individual
versus society;
The rewards of
virtue and the
punishments of

MOTIFS

Enclosur
e;
Dreams;
Money

MOLL
CLARISSA

VS

Defoes novels
present the
middle class
striving for
economic
security.
Riscardsons

Henry
Fielding
Tom
Jones
First
Narrator
concerned
with the
architectur
e of his
novels

Henry Fielding was well known

novelist & drametist.
Born on April 22, 1707 in
England.
Educated from Eton College.
Trained in Law.
His literary career was began in
London.
Best known works are Tom Jones,
Miscellanies and Amelia.
He criticized Government and
social convetions
Died on October 8, 1774 in
Libson, Portugal.

ABOUT
NOVEL
This novel deals
with Toms life and
nature.
Major themes of this
novel are: Toms
love, Villainy of
some people,
hypocrisy & human
nature.

IN TOM JONES, FIELDING CLEARLY APPEALS TO

THE READERS SAGACITY AND URGES THE
READER NOT TO BE LAZY OR COMPLACENT.
A READER BECOMES SOMEBODY WHO SHOULD
CONSTANTLY ENGAGE IN DISCERNMENT.
THROUGH THIS PROCESS, THE READERS
JUDGEMENT IS CONTINUALLY IMPROVED.
READING BECOMES A LEARNING PROCESS.
THE MEANING OF A NOVEL MATERIALIZES ONLY
THROUGH THE RESPONSES OF THE READER.

Conclusion
Fielding was different,
though, in that he has been
called "the first unashamed
novelist in England" for his
use of an omniscient
narrator over an

LAURENCE STERNE

Tristram Shandy
Antinovel

ANTI-NOVEL:
The elements of the plot are reduced to
the minimum;
Many false begining, disgresions, blanks
and asterics in the text stress the inability
of words to communicate;
The inadequacy of language and reason;
The failure of fiction to discover truth;

LAURENCE
STERNE
LAURENCE STERNE

Try to achives a balance between mind and

heart.
Sterns work aims at symphathy,
identification, concern for common aspects of
life, for any living creature.
Sterns characters have a story, a trade, an
individuality.
Sterns novel no longer follows the memoir
style, with the chronological progression. The