The Neo-classical age

 This task was given by Kavisha ma'am. It is based on Neo-classical Age.

1.Tom Jones as a picaresque novels:-

     

The term picaresque has been derived from a Spanish word 'Picaro'. Its meaning is - a rouge or knave or a villain etc. Thus a picaresque novel is an episodic depiction of the adventures and the misadventures of a picaro. Mostly he wanders on the highways. He moves from one place to the other.

The picaresque form gives ample scope to the novelist. This form does not require a well organised plot. The movements of the protagonist give an opportunity to introduce a wide variety of events and characters. The hero is now in the country, now on the highways, now in London. He confronts thieves, rescues beautiful damsels and falls in love. He fights duels, suffers arresting and comes in touch with a vast variety of people. In fact, the novelist paints the society as a whole. This form gives the novelist enough scope to throw light on the life, culture and morality of the age.

Picaresque novel emerged as a distinctive genre in the 16th century in Spain. A notable French example of the form is Lesage's Gil Blas. In Spanish Cervantes' Don Quixote is also a fine example of it. In English Thomas Nash and Defoe followed the tradition. Later Fielding and Smollett maintained it.

Fielding's Tom Jones has been considered a picaresque novel. Though it is not a regular picaresque novel, it reflects the major characteristics of the picaresque form.Tom Jones, the protagonist of the novel, is an illegitimate child. He is turned out of home by his patron. The one-third of the novel depicts Tom's adventures in the countryside. Molly's battle in the churchyard and Tom's escapade with Molly in the bushes are all in picaresque tradition.

When Allworthy dismisses Tom in Book VII, he takes the road to bristol. Here the picaresque nature of the novel becomes evident. In this novel one can find Tom's involvement in some breathtaking adventures on the roadside. Sophia and Mrs. Honour are also put on the road to London. As the protagonist passes through various scenes, meets with various incidents. He comes in contact with a great variety of characters. He joins the army. He rescues the man of the hill.

Tom fights several times for a good cause. He is beaten and wounded. He saves Mrs. Waters. He stays at the Upton Inn. Here some hilarious comedies take place. Tom continues on the roadside. He meets ruffians, beggars, highway-men and gypsies. Many thrilling and sensational incidents take place. Once he is arrested and presented before civil magistrate. In this way Fielding employs a lot of picaresque elements. It enables him to bring his hero in contact with different strata of the society. With the help of this form, he presents the true and complete picture of the life of the times. He presents the contemporary social evils as well as human follies and foibles.

In short, Tom Jones has a lot of picaresque elements. But in many respects it does not follow the picaresque tradition. Its hero is not a rogue. He is kind, generous and sensitive person. He is a man of helping attitude. Its plot construction differs from the picaresque novel. The aim of the novelist is definitely moral. Its adventures are not arbitrarily designed. Thus it can be said that though Tom Jones has a lot of elements of picaresque novel, but it is not a regular picaresque novel.

2.Alexander Po

 

 

Alexander Pope was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century.

• His famous works:-

Essay On Criticism:-

An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously on 15 May 1711 and had taken Pope around three years to finish. It is written in a heroic couplet style, which, at the time, was a moderately new poetic form.

The poem is a response to an ongoing debate on the question of whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past.

The Rape of the Lock:-

    

The Rape of the Lock is Pope’s most famous poem and was first published in 1712. A revised version was published in 1714. It is a mock-epic poem that satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre, who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without her permission. However, the satirical style is toned down by the genuine and almost voyeuristic interest in the fashionable world of 18th century English society.

The Dunciad:-

The Dunciad was first published anonymously in Dublin in 1728, but it was clearly authored by Pope. It was published three different times between 1728 and 1743. The poem celebrates a goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Many of Pope’s targets were so enraged by The Dunciad that they threatened him.

Moral Essays:-

Pope published his “Epistle to Burlington” in 1731, which, on the subject of agriculture, was the first of four poems which would later be grouped under the title Moral Essays (1731–1735). In the first poem, Pope criticised the bad taste of the aristocrat “Timon” and Pope’s enemies claimed he was attacking the Duke of Chandos and his estate, Cannons. This ended up harming Pope’s reputation.

An Essay On Man:-

An Essay On Man is a philosophical poem that was written and published between 1732 and 1734. It was written in heroic couplets and Pope intended it to be the centrepiece of a proposed system of ethics that was to be put forth in poetic form. He had planned on expanding it into a larger piece of work, but died before he could do so.

The poem was dedicated to Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke and is an effort to rationalise or rather “vindicate the ways of God to man” , a variation of John Milton’s claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will “justify the ways of God to men” . It is comprised of four epistles and received great admiration throughout Europe when it was published.

There was most famous works of Pope.

3. Write on 18th Century Women Poets.

Aphra Behn, 1640?-1689

            

Often credited with being the first woman writer to earn a living by her pen, Behn apparently led a most unusual and eventful life. Although the details concerning her life are scant and often based on speculation, evidence suggests that in her youth she visited Surinam, where she had an affair with the political radical William Scot. Returning to England, she may have married a "Mr. Behn" in 1664; however, she was probably widowed and penniless by 1665. To earn money, she took employment by the Crown as a spy in Antwerp, but arrived back in England in debt, and in 1668 was thrown in debtor’s prison. Upon her emergence, she started to support herself by writing plays for the London theater, and later novels for print. She is best known for Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave (1688), the story of a captured African prince who is forced into slavery in Surinam. Oroonoko is at once an adventure narrative and a horrific tale of the African experience in the New World. Overall, Behn composed at least sixteen plays for the stage, and wrote fourteen novels, only six of which were published during her lifetime.

Fanny Burney, 1752-1840

                

Burney’s novels were immensely popular during the late eighteenth century. However, Burney herself had to overcome family disapproval in order to make a name among English literary circles. Her father, Charles Burney, a renowned musicologist, discouraged his daughter’s literary activity and provided her with no formal education. In spite of this, she read widely and began writing at a young age. But at the age of fifteen, in response to her father and perhaps her stepmother’s objections to imaginative poetry, plays, and stories, she dramatically sacrificed all of her writings to a huge bonfire. Not completely deterred, she resumed writing and anonymously published her first novel, Evelina (1778), which became a great success. Evelina won Burney not only her father’s approval, but also writer and critic Dr. Samuel Johnson’s. She went on to secure a place in Queen Charlotte’s court and in English literary society. She later left court to marry French General Alexandre D’Arblay (1791) and lived until the age of eighty-seven.

Her novels deal with women’s roles in relation to the British aristocracy, marriage, wealth, and power. Her successful works influenced other women writers, including Jane Austen, whose name is among the list of subscribers to Camilla.

Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress. By the Author of Evelina. London: Printed for T. Payne and Son, and T. Cadell, 1782. 5 vols. First edition.

Burney’s second novel, Cecilia, concerns a heroine who, in order to save her inheritance from her guardians, must marry a man who will take her name. In her writing, Burney uniquely abandons the common epistolary (or letter writing) first person form to use authorial narration, and becomes one of the first novelists to employ style indirect libre, or free indirect speech.

Ceciliasmall_fade.jpg (11329 bytes)

Camilla: Or, a Picture of Youth by the Author of Evelina and Cecilia. London: Printed for T. Payne, T. Cadell, and W. Davies, 1796. 5 vols. First edition.

Burney’s fourth published novel involves the "courtship of lighthearted Camilla by somber Edgar. Led by his tutor Marchmont, a misogynist, to demand perfection and the full possession of his lady’s heart before he declares himself, Edgar puts Camilla through a series of tests and suffers torments of misapprehension and jealously, for the girl has been warned by her father never to let her feelings show" (Doody).

Mary masters , (1706?- 1759?)

Not a great deal is known about Mary Masters. According to James Boswell, she was acquainted with Samuel Johnson, who may have helped to edit some of her verses. She is also linked with Edmund Cave, editor of Gentleman’s Magazine. She advocates women’s rights in her Familiar Letters and Poems on Several Occasions (1755): "a Woman is equal to a Man, as being of the same Species, and endow’d with every Faculty which distinguishes him from the Brutes."

Poems on Several Occasions. London: Printed by T. Browne for the author, 1733.