17 and 18 Century British Literature

Program postuniversitar de conversie profesională
pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural

Specializarea LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ
Forma de învăţământ ID - semestrul III
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
Cornelia MACSINIUC
2006
Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural
LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century

British Literature
Cornelia MACSINIUC
2006
© 2006 Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural
Nici o parte a acestei lucrări

nu poate fi reprodusă fără
acordul scris al Ministerului Educaţiei şi Cercetării
ISBN 10 973-0-04576-3;
ISBN 13 978-973-0-04576-5.
Contents
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:

intellectual and literary background 9
Unit objectives 10
1.1. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment 10
1.1.1. The intellectual scene in the 17th and 18th centuries 10
1.1.2. Reason and faith in the Age of the Enlightenment 11
1.1.3. From the Age of Reason to the Age of Feeling 12
1.1.4. The Enlightenment: an age of progress 12
1.2. An overview of the literary scene in the 17th and 18th centuries 13
1.3. The evolution of poetic forms 15
1.4. Drama in the 17th and 18th centuries 16
1.4.1. Jacobean tragedy 17
1.4.2. Comedy in the early 17th century 18
1.4.3. Drama during the Restoration period 19
1.4.4. Sentimental drama and burlesque comedy in the 18th century 19
1.5. The evolution of prose style 21
1.5.1. Varieties of prose writing in the 17th and 18th centuries 21
Summary 23
Key words 24
Glossary 24
Gallery of personalities 28
Solutions and suggestions for SAQs 30
Further reading 30
2 The late Renaissance and the Baroque 31

Unit objectives 32
2.1. The emergence of the baroque sensibility 32
2.1.1. The late Renaissance: characteristics of the baroque sensibility 33
2.1.2. Baroque features of late Renaissance drama and poetry 33
2.2. Shakespeare’s genius. His later plays 35
2.2.1. The baroque spirit of Shakespeare’s great tragedies 36
2.2.2. Hamlet: a revenge play 37
2.2.3. Renaissance man and the baroque sensibility in Hamlet 37
2.2.4. Hamlet: the philosopher vs. the man of action 38
2.2.5. King Lear: the madness of tragic grief 39
2.2.6. To be or to seem: Othello 40
2.2.7. Macbeth: the tragedy of “diseased” conscience 41
2.2.8. Shakespeare’s last plays 43
2.2.9. The plot of The Tempest 43
2.2.10. Major themes 44
2.2.11. Symbols in The Tempest 46
2.2.12. The play-metaphor 46
2.3. The metaphysical poets 47
2.3.1. Characteristics of metaphysical poetry 48
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Contents
2.3.2. The metaphysical conceit 48
2.3.3. Themes in John Donne’s poetry 49
2.3.4. Donne’s love poems 50
2.3.5. Donne’s religious poems 52
2.3.6. Andrew Marvell: the patriotic theme in the Horatian Ode 53
2.3.7. Nature as “mystic book” in Marvell’s poetry 54
2.3.8. The theme of love in Marvell’s poems 54
Summary 56
Key words 56
Glossary 57
Further reading 61
3 The Works of John Milton 62

Unit objectives 63
3.1. Milton, the Christian humanist 63
3.2. Milton’s early poems 64
3.2.1. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso 64
3.2.2. Lycidas – a pastoral elegy 66
3.3. Milton’s sonnets 66
3.3.1. Sonnet VII 67
3.3.2. Sonnet XVII 67
3.4. Paradise Lost – the Christian epic 68
3.4.1. Satan and the fallen angels in Hell 69
3.4.2. The divine foreknowledge of the Fall 70
3.4.3. Raphael’s warning to Adam 72
3.4.4. The creation of the world 72
3.4.5. The seduction of Eve 74
3.4.6. The world after the Fall 75
3.5. The heroes of Paradise Lost 77
3.5.1. Milton’s Satan: the rebel’s inner hell 78
3.5.2. Satan, the “author of all ill” 79
3.5.3. Milton’s depiction of Adam and Eve 81
Summary 82
Key words 83
Glossary 83
SAA No. 1 85
Further reading 87
4 The Restoration and the Augustan Age 88

Unit objectives 89
4.1. Restoration drama 89
4.1.1. Restoration theatre – a form of Court entertainment 89
4.1.2. Dominant forms in Restoration drama 90
4.1.3. Restoration comedy and its character types 90
4.1.4. William Congreve, a master of satirical comedy of manners 92
4.1.5. The rise of sentimental comedy 93
4.2. English literary Neoclassicism 95
4.2.1. Great Augustan writers: John Dryden and Alexander Pope 95
4.2.2. Principles of Neoclassic literary poetics 96
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Contents
4.2.3. Nature and Reason 96
4.2.4. The Augustan ideal of style 98
4.2.5. “To divert and instruct” – the imperative of Augustan literature 98
4.3. The periodical essay 98
4.3.1. The Tatler and The Spectator. “The Spectator’s Club” 100
4.4. Augustan satire 103
4.4.1. John Dryden 103
4.4.2. Alexander Pope 103
4.4.3. Jonathan Swift 105
4.4.4. The structure of Gulliver’s Travels 105
4.4.5. Lilliput and Brobdingnag: satire and utopia 107
4.4.6. The fourth voyage. Gulliver, the frustrated idealist 107
4.4.7. The importance of Gulliver’s Travels 110
Summary 110
Key words 111
Glossary 111
Further reading 116
5 The Age of the Enlightenment: the rise of the 117

novel
Unit objectives 118
5.1. Background and main concerns 118
5.1.1. Novel and romance in the 18th century 118
5.1.2. Didacticism and realism in the 18th century novel 119
5.1.3. Typology of the novel in the 18th century 121
5.2. Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson: from circumstantial
realism to sentimental truth 123
5.2.1. Daniel Defoe and the novel of adventure 123
5.2.2. Robinson Crusoe: theme and plot 124
5.2.3. Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe 125
5.2.4. Defoe’s style 127
5.2.5. Samuel Richardson’s contribution to the development of the novel 128
5.2.6. The plot of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded 128
5.2.7. Social hierarchy and the individual self 129
5.2.8. Psychological realism and the epistolary technique 130
5.3. Henry Fielding and the novel of manners 132
5.3.1. Comedy and parody in Joseph Andrews 132
5.3.2. The novel as comic romance 133
5.3.3. The character of parson Adams 134
5.3.4. Fielding’s conception of character in Joseph Andrews 134
5.3.5. Fielding’s Augustanism 135
5.4. Laurence Sterne and the “anti-novel” 136
5.4.1. Tristram Shandy: an unconventional autobiographical novel 136
5.4.2. Eccentric characters in Tristram Shandy 136
5.4.3. Sentimentalism and tragi-comic vision 137
5.4.4. The “Shandean” view of writing 139
5.4.5. The defamiliarisation of realistic conventions 139
5.4.6. Tristram Shandy as metafiction 140
Summary 142
Key words 142
Glossary 143
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural iii
Contents
SAA No. 2 145
Further reading 148
6 English pre-Romantic poetry 149

Unit objectives 150
6.1. Pre-Romantic tendencies in 18th century poetry 150
6.1.1. The poetry of melancholy meditation 151
6.1.2. The interest in early poetry 151
6.1.3. The pre-Romantic sensibility and the interest in new poetic
forms 153
6.2. The rural universe in 18thcentury poetry 153
6.2.1. The sentimental approach: Oliver Goldsmith 154
6.2.2. Character sketch in The Deserted Village 154
6.2.3. The realistic approach: George Crabbe 155
6.2.4. Robert Burns and the popular tradition 156
6.3. Pre-Romantic nature poetry 158
6.3.1. James Thomson, The Seasons 158
6.3.2. William Cowper, The Task 159
6.4. William Blake – the visionary artist 161
6.4.1. Blake as a pre-Romantic poet 161
6.4.2. Blake, the Romantic visionary 162
6.4.3. The theme of childhood in Songs of Innocence 163
6.4.4. Ironic implications in Songs of Innocence 166
6.4.5. The fall from Innocence: Songs of Experience 166
6.4.6. Knowledge in the world of Experience 167
6.4.7. The double vision in Blake’s Songs 168
Summary 170
Key words 171
Glossary 171
SAA No. 3 173
Further reading 176
Reader in seventeenth and eighteenth century

literature 177
Selected bibliography 216
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Introduction
INTRODUCTION
1. What this course is about

This course is a brief introduction to English literature in the 17th
and 18th centuries. It will familiarise you with the defining features of
the literary trends and doctrines of these two centuries, and will
highlight the contributions of their most representative literary
personalities. You will be able to build a general picture of the main
literary achievements of this period, but also to examine more closely
particular texts by the most important authors (Shakespeare, Milton,
Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Blake, among others).
2. How this course can help you

The study of this course will widen your perspective on English
literature and its evolution. It will thus contribute to the consolidation
of your knowledge and understanding of British culture and
civilisation, and to the enrichment of your grasp of the English
language.
The double focus of the course – on general aspects of a
particular period or doctrine, and on certain texts – will hopefully help
you to overcome the relatively great temporal and cultural distance
separating us from those centuries.
You are expected and urged to bring to the understanding of
this extended literary period the knowledge acquired in your previous
study. Being concerned with aspects of literary history, this course
will give you a minimum of contextual detail. Before starting your
study, it would be helpful if you refreshed your acquaintance with the
basic historical and cultural framework of the 17th and 18th centuries,
such as was presented in your Cultural Studies course.
In this way, the study of the present course will more efficiently
contribute to your professional becoming. You must bear in mind that
the teaching of a foreign language does not presuppose only a good
command of its grammatical structures and vocabulary, but also an
intimate acquaintance with the spirit of that culture and civilisation.
Literature is always an important testimony to the evolution of this
spirit, a carrier of values, and an “agent” in the cultural dynamics in a
country.
3. Course objectives
As already mentioned, this course aims at enlarging your
understanding of British culture and civilisation. It also aims at
developing your “reading competence,” at helping you refine your
perception of literary phenomena and categories, by encouraging
your response to particular texts.
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 1

lIntroduction
This complex aim presupposes your development of certain

specific competences. By the end of your study of this course, you
should therefore be able to:
• define the distinctive features, the characteristic attitudes

and concerns of such cultural-historical-literary movements or
periods as the Renaissance, the Restoration, the Augustan
Age, the Enlightenment
• identify elements of continuity and discontinuity between
these periods and movements
• define the main features of an aesthetic-literary doctrine or
type of literary sensibility (e.g. the Baroque, Neoclassicism, pre-
Romanticism)
• identify such features in the work of a particular author or in
a particular text (e.g. identify the features of the baroque
sensibility in Shakespeare’s tragedies, or establish what links
Fielding’s novels to literary Neoclassicism, or what makes Blake
a Romantic poet)
• identify, in a given text, the values of a particular cultural-
historical or literary age
• distinguish the proportion of originality and conformity to a
tradition in a particular work or a given text
• specify the contribution of the studied authors and their
works to the evolution of literary forms and styles
• describe and compare particularities of style,
characterisation, thematic and formal structure in the works of
various authors.
4. Course content and structure

This course is structured in six units of study, forming a
chronological survey of the major literary developments in the 17th
and 18th centuries. Each unit, in its turn, is structured around a series
of tasks that you must accomplish – the self-assessing questions (the
SAQs). The solutions and suggestions for SAQs are provided in a
separate section. Besides them, a unit contains a series of “auxiliary”
sections: a Summary, a list of key words, a Glossary, and a Gallery
of personalities. Some of the units also contain an assignment that
you have to do and send to your tutor, as part of your overall
assessment.
2 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Introduction
4.1. The units of learning

• Unit 1 (The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
intellectual and literary background) offers a general picture of
the literary scene and its intellectual-cultural context, with an
emphasis on the evolution of genres and styles and their main
representatives.
• Unit 2 (The late Renaissance and the Baroque) deals with
the emergence of the baroque sensibility in English late
Renaissance literature. The major authors considered in this
unit are Shakespeare and the poets John Donne and Andrew
Marvell.
• Unit 3 (The works of John Milton) emphasises Milton’s
Christian humanism. The main focus in this unit is on the
imaginative structure and thematic interest of Milton’s
masterpiece, the epic poem Paradise Lost.
• Unit 4 (The Restoration and the Augustan Age) deals with
four major aspects: the comedy of manners during the age of
the Restoration; the literary doctrine of Neoclassicism; the
periodical essay of the 18th century as an important contribution
to Augustan literature; and Augustan satire, with main focus on
Jonathan Swift.
• Unit 5 (The Age of the Enlightenment: the rise of the novel)
presents the main concerns and the typology of the novel as a
dominant genre in the 18th century. You will get acquainted with
the contributions of four major novelists – D. Defoe, S.
Richardson, H. Fielding and L. Sterne –, and with the evolution
of this genre.
• Unit 6 (English pre-Romantic poetry) introduces you to the
poetry of sensibility of the 18th century as the illustration of an
important literary tendency. The unit surveys characteristic pre-
Romantic themes and motifs, as well as major representatives,
and insists on William Blake as both a pre-Romantic and
Romantic poet.
4.2. The self-assessment questions (SAQs)

The self-assessment questions in each unit have the role of
helping you to structure and organise your study. These tasks will
guide you in the process of ordering your knowledge, and they will
enable you to work with it in a specific context, and to draw your own
conclusions.
The SAQs encourage you to see your course work as more
than a simple effort of memory (although the importance of memory
in the process of learning must not be underrated). They appeal not
only to your memory, but also to your independent thinking and to
your imagination. The variety of these learning tasks will, hopefully,
engage you actively and in diverse ways in the process of study.
The most common SAQs in this course will require you to:

lIntroduction
• answer questions about the theme, symbolic elements,
stylistic features, narrative technique, characterisation, etc, of a
certain work or a provided fragment
• explain the relevance or significance of a certain item
(phrase, line, fragment)
• complete sentences, so as to re-describe certain important
aspects about a literary period or a particular writer’s work
• fill in blanks with the features of a certain literary movement
or style, with the typological definition of a work, the title of a
work, etc., after you have identified them in/after a provided
short description
• match a given literary fragment with a given paraphrase;
match incomplete statements so as to reconstruct an idea or a
description
• identify true/false sentences, so as to obtain synthetic
reformulations or rephrasings of relevant details about a literary
period, an author’s work, etc.
• paraphrase a given fragment from a studied literary work;
summarise its argument; state its theme
• comment on / interpret a given fragment.
A self-assessed question (SAQ) is signalled in the course

text by this icon accompanying a textbox.
You are required to solve these SAQs in the blank spaces

provided for each of them in textboxes. You are given detailed
instructions about what is expected from you, and you are advised to
read those instructions carefully and to follow them. The estimated
length of your answers will be indicated as number of words / number
of lines. A line in your textboxes is estimated to contain ten words on
the average.
You are also given instructions about how to proceed if your
answers differ significantly from the ones given in the section
Solutions and suggestions for SAQs (see below).
4.3. Solutions and suggestions for SAQs
You can check your answers to each SAQ by going to this

section, at the end of the unit. You are strongly advised to resist the
temptation of consulting this section before you have actually tried to
do the exercises yourself. Remember that what counts most is the
process of thinking that leads you to a particular answer, the
independent intellectual effort that you are encouraged to put into
your learning.
Do not get discouraged if some of your answers should not
come near the suggestions offered at the end. Try to analyse your
errors and to become aware of everything you have missed in the
instructions of the SAQ, and, if the case may be, in the literary text
you were asked to work on.
Introduction
4.4. Auxiliary sections

Each unit contains, at the end, other instruments meant to
assist your study. These auxiliary sections are:
• the Summary and a list of key words, which will enable you
to review and focus your knowledge, to organise it around the
most important issues
• the Glossary (in alphabetical order), in which terms or
phrases that have been considered difficult or unfamiliar to you
are explained.
Some terms may recur in several units; you will be
sometimes returned to the Glossary of a previous unit to
reinforce or refresh your understanding of them. For example,
the term Enlightenment, which is explained in the Glossary in
Unit 1, will also appear in Units 5 and 6, whose Glossaries will
send you back to the Glossary in Unit 1.
You may also be directed back to a certain subchapter in a
previous unit, in order to make sure you remember exactly what
a term refers to. For instance, the notion of heroic couplet is
explained in subchapter 1.3.1. in Unit 1; when this notion is
used again in Units 4 or 6, the Glossaries will send you back to
1.3.1.
The terms included in the Glossary are marked by an
asterisk (*) in the text of the unit. Sometimes, an asterisk must
be understood to mark not just the word it is attached to, but the
phrase of which that word is part. Thus, for the Great Chain of
Being*, you will look up the whole phrase in the Glossary, not
just Being.
• the Gallery of personalities (in the alphabetical order of the
last names), which includes basic information about the life and
work of the mentioned personalities. The materials indicated in
the Further reading section and in the Selective bibliography
(see below) offer you supplementary information, if necessary or
desired.
• Further reading, which indicates a minimal bibliography for
each unit, with the pages where you may find relevant
information. Most of the books included there are available in
any University library. You may ask your tutor to help you with
the access to those sources.
• the Selective bibliography at the end of the course, which
contains titles that should not be very hard to find in libraries, if
you wish to supplement or clarify your knowledge

lIntroduction
4.5. The Reader

The course is accompanied by a Reader, which contains the
selection of texts you need in order to accomplish some of the course
tasks.
As we are dealing with 17th and 18th century literature, some of
these texts might seem difficult to you, especially the poetry texts.
The Reader provides you with little glossaries for each text, in which
the words and phrases supposed to be unknown, difficult, or
misleadingly familiar to you are explained either in English or in
Romanian.
The given explanation or translation into Romanian applies only
to the respective context. This is why the same word may appear
with different explanations/translations in several glossaries, or one
word may be given an explanation/translation different from the one
you might be familiar with.
If you should find these lexical notes insufficient for your
understanding of a particular text, don’t hesitate to use a good
dictionary. In any case, try to read each fragment more than once,
and make sure you understand its general meaning or basic ideas,
before you start solving the task. As the texts are not very long, this
should not take you too much time.
5. Assessment and evaluation

Besides the self-assessment questions included in each unit,
the course contains three send-away assignments (SAAs), which
will enable your tutor to assess your performance in the course work.
A send-away assignment (SAA) is signalled in the text by the

icon accompanying this textbox.
The cumulated weight of these SAAs in your final grade is 40%.

The written test that you will sit at the end of the semester will add
the other 60%.
The three SAAs are placed at the end of units 3, 5, and 6. SAA
no. 1 will assess your knowledge of units 2 and 3, while SAA no.2 will
cover units 4 and 5. These first two SAAs will therefore consist in
more than one task.
The table below represents the place, the number of tasks, and
the weight of each assignment:

Introduction
Unit Number of tasks and their Weight of each

weight in each SAA SAA in the final
assessment
1. 50%
SAA no.1 3 2 2. 50% 10%
1. 50%
SAA no.2 5 3 2. 30% 20%
3. 20%
SAA no.3 6 1 1. 100% 10%
40%
In the assessment of each assignment, the tutor will take into

account:
• the degree to which your answer respects the formulated
requirement. Your ability to identify and use the knowledge
required by a particular situation is part of what is assessed in
any test. As in the case of the SAQs, make sure you
understand what is being asked of you in each assignment.
Most of the time, half of the answer is already contained in the
question, so pay special attention to the instructions for each
task (30%).
• the coherence, clarity, and consistence of your ideas (40%)
• the accuracy of your grammar (20%)
• the accuracy of your spelling (10%)
Each assignment must be completed and sent to the tutor in the

allotted study week (see Your study schedule below). Note that a
typewritten paper is likely to ease your tutor’s work. If you have no
possibility to type your assignment, at least take care that your
handwriting should be fully legible.
6. Your study schedule
This course is devised for 42 hours of study. Of these hours, 28

are meant for individual study of the course material (the solving of
the SAQs included), 6 hours are allotted to your tutorial meetings,
and 8 hours to the completion of your SAAs.
If your level of proficiency is lower, your course work may take
you more time. This is more likely to happen when you are required
to work on literary texts, whose reading may take you some extra
time.
Plan your study by taking into account that a semester has 14
weeks. You can reserve two weeks for each unit of learning – which
means that you are expected, theoretically, to go through each unit in
approximately 4 hours. You may, however, find your own rhythm and
divide your study time into several sessions.

lIntroduction
The first and the last week should be reserved for the
Introduction and, respectively, a revision of the course material.
A provisional study schedule may look like this:
Number Number of
Week Unit of study Assignment hours for the
hours SAAs
1 Introduction 2
2 Unit 1 4
3
4 Unit 2 4
5
6 Unit 3 4 SAA no.1 2
7
8 Unit 4 4
9
11
13
14 Revision 2 8
28
Planning your course work is important as it will enable you to

send your assignments to the tutor in due time.
Summary
This course offers you an overview of the literary periods and
trends, of the evolution of literary genres, forms and styles, along the
17th and 18th centuries in England.
It is structured in six units of study, whose content follows a
chronological line, but which also focus on dominant genres and on
outstanding, representative authors. Each unit includes a series of
self-assessing tasks (SAQs), which will help you to organise and
focus your knowledge. Many of these SAQs require your response to
a literary text, which you will find in the Reader accompanying the
coursebook. You have the possibility to monitor your work by
verifying your answers, as the course provides you with the solutions
and suggestions for SAQs at the end of each unit.
The course contains several auxiliary sections (summary, list of
key words, glossary, and gallery of personalities), as well as a list of
suggested further reading. More information about the subjects in
each unit is available in the selective bibliography which concludes
the coursebook.
At the end of Units 3, 5, and 6, there are SAAs, which you must
write and send to your tutor, according to a pre-established schedule.
The three assignments will count, together, as 40% of the final grade,
while the final written test will represent 60 % in your overall
evaluation.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: intellectual and literary background
UNIT 1
THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES: INTELLECTUAL
AND LITERARY BACKGROUND
Unit Outline
Unit objectives 10
1 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: intellectual and
literary background 10
1.1. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment 10
1.1.1. The intellectual scene in the 17th and 18th centuries 10
1.1.2. Reason and faith in the Age of the Enlightenment 11
1.1.3. From the Age of Reason to the Age of Feeling 12
1.1.4. The Enlightenment: an age of progress 12
1.2. An overview of the literary scene in the 17th and 18th centuries 13
1.3. The evolution of poetic forms 15
1.4. Drama in the 17th and 18th centuries 16
1.4.1. Jacobean tragedy 17
1.4.2. Comedy in the early 17th century 18
1.4.3. Drama during the Restoration period 19
1.4.4. Sentimental drama and burlesque comedy in the 18th century 19
1.5. The evolution of prose style 21
1.5.1. Varieties of prose writing in the 17th and 18th centuries 21
Summary 23
Key words 24
Glossary 24
Further reading 30

By the end of this unit you should be able to:
♦ define the most important tendencies in the evolution of

intellectual attitudes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Unit objectives ♦ establish connections between the historical and intellectual
context and the literary scene
♦ describe the major divisions of this long period according to
historical, cultural and literary aspects
♦ establish elements of continuity and discontinuity along the two
centuries
♦ explain the process of literary “modernisation” along these two
centuries through the evolution of styles and the dynamic of genres
♦ place various poetic, dramatic and prose genres and their main
representatives in their proper literary-historical context within the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
1.1. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries constitute a complex
period, in which the progress of England to modernity was steady in
all fields. The gradual achievement of political stability, colonial
expansion and an extraordinary economic development made
England, at the end of this period, a powerful flourishing nation.
Culturally the two centuries correspond to two movements
whose basic tendency was the emancipation of man: the
Renaissance* and the Enlightenment*.
The end of “high Renaissance” (the flourishing of the
Elizabethan* Age) and the “late Renaissance”, seen as extending up
to the Restoration* (1660) were periods of gradual but irreversible
changes in modes of thought, mentalities, attitudes and practices.
Political, social and economic life, religion, philosophy, science,
literature, the arts – all fields of human endeavour went through
crucial transformations during the 17th century. The completion of this
transition was to take place during the next age, of the
Enlightenment, which in England is in fact considered to have started
in 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution*.
1.1.1. The intellectual scene

Along the two centuries, radical changes occurred in intellectual
habits and preoccupations. The rise, in the latter part of the 17th
century, of philosophical empiricism* determined to a great extent the
attitudes to man in his relationship to society, nature and divinity
during the Age of Reason, as the Enlightenment is often described.
The growing critical spirit enthroned a rationalistic attitude in all
spheres of culture. The victory of Reason over dogmatism,
obscurantism and intolerance, as well as the faith in progress,
marked the entrance into modernity.

It is also during these two centuries that modern science was
born. One of the most ardent promoters of the new scientific spirit
was Francis Bacon* (1561-1626). His well-known maxim
“Knowledge is Power” points to the utilitarian conception of the role of
science. In his work Novum Organum (1620) he explicitly states that
“The true and lawful goal of the sciences is simply this, that human
life be enriched by new discoveries and powers.”
This idea will be echoed several decades later, when The Royal
Society “for the improving of Natural Knowledge” was founded, in
1662, under the patronage of Charles II. Engaging in a variety of
Francis Bacon original scientific experiments, The Royal Society endeavoured, in a
systematic effort, to “overcome the mysteries of all the works of
Nature” and to apply that knowledge “for the benefit of human life.”
1.1.2. Reason and faith in the Age of the Enlightenment

The rationalism of the Renaissance and Enlightenment thought
determined a reconsideration of the relation between Nature and
Divinity and a new vision of the universe.
The scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton*, in particular,
had important philosophical and theological implications: the universe
was now conceived as a perfect mechanism, working according to
impersonal laws which testified to the supreme intelligence of the
Creator, the “universal Architect.” God was seen as the prime cause
of a harmonious universe, which was left to develop by itself on the
basis of these perfect laws.
This new faith – Deism, or Natural Religion –, initiated by Isaac
Newton and John Locke*, combined the traditional confidence in the
divine infinite wisdom with the intellectual spirit of the age. It was a
rational alternative to religious dogmatism, a reaction against
mysticism and obscurantism, and it was essentially optimistic. Deists
believed that the admirable order of the universe, manifest in its
rationally and experimentally discernible laws, was an evidence of
the creator’s good will.
The optimism of the Deists extended to human nature. The
moral philosophy of the Deists argued that man was innately good,
endowed with a sixth sense: the moral sense, the capacity of
John Locke
distinguishing right from wrong.
Deism attempted to give a rational foundation to religious
thought, to reconcile Reason and Faith. It was a highly
intellectualised religious approach, which could not offer spiritual
comfort to the large masses of the poor and uneducated. It was to be
counter-balanced by the Evangelical Revival*, a religious movement
which aimed at reviving the Evangelical spirit and the ideal of
Christian life, and which encouraged emotional effusion as a way of
achieving communion with God.

1.1.3. From the Age of Reason to the Age of Feeling

This infusion of emotionalism in spiritual life may be seen as
the sign of a certain evolution in the temper of the 18th century.
The Deist notion of innate virtue came to be connected with
man’s capacity for feeling. The interest in the constitution and
workings of the human mind awakened the awareness that man’s
response to reality was not only rational, but also affective and
instinctual.
The cult of Reason thus gave way to the cult of Feeling, in the
latter part of the Age of the Enlightenment, which may be defined as
the Age of Sensibility, and which prepared the way for the Romantic
Age*.
1.1.4. The Enlightenment: an age of progress

On the whole, the Enlightenment, with its belief in the
perfectibility of man, continued the project of the Renaissance. The
poet Alexander Pope indicated, in his philosophical poem An Essay
on Man (1733), the central concern of the Enlightenment, when he
declared: ”The proper study of mankind is Man.” The whole century
was preoccupied with the idea of man’s happiness and of the
improvement of man’s condition on earth.
Individual and social good was the object of all endeavours in this
age. The growing spirit of individualism, the awareness of the complex
interdependencies in a modern civilisation made it necessary to reconcile
the individual pursuit of happiness and freedom with the general well-
being. It was a general dedication to the cause of progress, which made
Enlightenment England a model of civilisation for the Western world.
SAQ 1
The following exercise will help you revise some of the more
important aspects concerning the intellectual and cultural background
of the 17th and 18th centuries. Read the statements below and
identify the true ones. Circle T (true) or F (false), appropriately, for
each sentence.
1. The Enlightenment continued the Renaissance faith in man’s

perfectibility and sought for man’s emancipation both as an individual
and as a social being. T F
2. The development of modern science and the rise of
philosophical empiricism are major aspects of the process of
intellectual modernisation in England in the 17th and 18th centuries.
T F
3. The Royal Society was an institution concerned with the spreading
of Neoclassical principles in art and literature. T F
4. The Deist image of God as the “Universal Architect” reveals a
rationalist-mechanicist conception of the universe. T F
5. The emergence of Deism was a reaction to religious
dogmatism, to superstition and obscurantism. T F

6. The Evangelical Revival shared with Deism the attempt to give
a rational foundation to religious faith. T F
7. The Age of the Enlightenment excluded completely the interest
in human feeling and emotion, and exalted Reason as the only
defining human faculty. T F
8. Alexander Pope pointed out the humanistic orientation of the
Enlightenment in his maxim “The proper study of mankind is man.”
T F
Check your answers in the section Solutions and suggestions

for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If you have failed to identify any of
the sentences correctly as true or false, read again subchapters.1.1.
to 1.1.4. You may also need to revise some of the terms explained in
the Glossary.
1.2. An overview of the literary scene in the 17th and 18th centuries
From a literary point of view, the great ages of the Renaissance
and of the Enlightenment may be further divided according to various
criteria. The division into Elizabethan, Jacobean* and Caroline* of the
“high” and late Renaissance literature points not only to a temporal
delimitation, but also to the close connection between the dominant
literary values of those ages and Court life.
The absolute authority of the monarch made the Court the
Influence of Court centre of intellectual and literary life. The Court was not only the
life on literature catalyst of the emerging national feeling, but also the ultimate arbiter
in matters of literary and artistic fashions. It was the main focus of
literary attention, and both writers and audiences were, in one way or
another, in the orbit of the crown.
After 1688, the decrease in the power of the Crown, the social
diversification and the “unfixing” of the strictly hierarchical order of
the Renaissance led gradually towards a “democratisation” of
literature. This is mainly connected with the rise of the middle classes
and the growth of their cultural importance.
The 18th century is called sometimes The Age of Common Man,
Literature in the and the literary field was no longer confined to the learned, with their
Age of Common Man cultivated taste. It is significant, for instance, that the notion of
reading public emerges now, when the literary audience becomes
more diversified, including readers of more modest education, with
little or no classical knowledge.
The literature of the Renaissance was under the sign of the
classical revival*. The study and imitation of the great Latin and
Greek authors and the concern with literary tradition as a reliable
source of models made literature highly conventional. Numerous
treatises on literary art established norms and precepts, and the
accepted patterns and conventions were touchstones for literary
virtuosity and originality.
There was a general care for discipline and refinement in
composition, for proportion, regularity, symmetry. A new interest in
rhetoric animated authors to pursue eloquence by a lavish use of
figures of speech and the display of wit*. The abundance of classical

allusions demonstrated the author’s erudition and required from the
readers familiarity with classical learning.
The mid-seventeenth century was an age of transition, in which
the declining phase of the Renaissance was characterised by a
The Augustan Age:
return to the classics. This led to the emergence Neoclassicism* in
literary Neoclassicism
England, during the Augustan Age*.
English Neoclassicism must be linked not only to the survival of
the Renaissance humanism, but also to the influence of the French
authors of the great classical century – the age of Louis XIV, the
“Sun King” –: Nicolas Boileau, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Molière.
England’s intellectual and literary exchanges with Catholic France
had been suspended during the Civil War*, but they were resumed
during the Restoration*.
A significant aspect of Augustan literature is the development
and importance of literary criticism. This reflects, above all, a new
consciousness of the relationship between literary tradition and
modernity. The comparative merit of ancient and modern standards
of literary excellence and learning became a central issue of critical
debate, on the model of the French controversy known as the
“Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns,” started in the late 17th
century.
SAQ 2
Read the partial statements below and match them, so as to

obtain complete sentences describing aspects of the general literary
picture of the 17th and 18th centuries. Complete each sentence in the
provided space.
a. The Court was the main source of influence……
b. Much of Renaissance literature, with its highly conventional

forms and rhetorical style, ……
c. The great French classical authors of the 17th century (Boileau,

Corneille, Racine, Molière)……
d. The relationship between tradition and modernity became a

matter of literary consciousness during……
1. …the Augustan Age, when the merits of the “Ancients” and the
“Moderns” became the object of comparison.
2. …on literary taste and fashions during the Renaissance.

3. …addressed itself to learned readers, acquainted with the great
classical authors and works.
4. …influenced English literary Neoclassicism.
Check your answers by looking in the section Solutions and

suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If you have failed to
make the right match, you need to revise subchapter 1.2.
1.3. The evolution of poetic forms

The lyric, in its various forms – the song*, the pastoral* lyric, the
ode*, the sonnet* – dominated Renaissance poetry. The most
Renaissance lyric enduring poetic achievements of the early 17th century is the
forms sequence of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609). The chief model for
The sonnet sequence Renaissance soneteers was Petrarch* and his love sonnets to Laura,
but English poets varied the highly conventional form of this kind of
poem. They approached other themes besides love: e.g. religious
faith – John Donne, or religion and politics – John Milton.
The sonnet fell into disuse during the late Renaissance and it
was revived only towards the end of the 18th century, by the
Romantic poets. Other lyric forms endured: the ode, for instance,
continued to be used throughout the 17th and 18th centuries: John
Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Dryden (in the former), Alexander
Pope, James Thomson, Thomas Gray and William Collins (in the
latter).
A remarkable poetic development in the first half of the 17th
century was the metaphysical poetry (John Donne, George
Herbert, Thomas Carew, Robert Herrick). Its name refers to a certain
Metaphysical
expressive strategy, which departed from the artificiality and
poetry conventionalism of most Elizabethan poetry. It favoured conciseness,
concentration, tight logical coherence and striking imagery. It
appealed both to the intellect and to the emotions, and it made
extensive use of wit. A “metaphysical” strain exists in Shakespeare’s
final period of creation, and the Puritan Andrew Marvell must also
be included here.
Apart from the classical poetic forms that survived into the
Restoration and the Augustan Age, the verse satire emerged as a
novelty at the end of the 17th century and flourished during the next –
John Dryden and Alexander Pope being its unequalled masters.
The common vehicle for it was the heroic couplet – two rhyming
The Augustan heroic lines containing a complete statement, conveyed by means of a rich
couplet variety of rhetorical effects. The heroic couplet was the perfect verse
structure of the Age of Reason, combining classical restraint with
force of argument and expressive clarity. Its perfect mastery is
illustrated by works like Pope’s didactic poem An Essay on Criticism
(1711), or his philosophical poem An Essay on Man (1733).
Blank verse In parallel, the blank verse* – on the model of Milton in his great
epic* Paradise Lost (1667) – was extensively used in the 18th
century, in a variety of poetical forms: philosophical poems, original
or translated epics, or meditative-descriptive poems like James
Thomson’s The Seasons (1726-1730) or William Cowper’s The Task
(1785), which are illustrative of a pre-Romantic* cross-current.
Towards the end of the century, a new appreciation of older
poetic forms, some of them of popular origin (the song, the ballad)
and the increasing hostility to the artificiality and conventionalism of
Augustan poetic diction* heralded the shift in taste which marked the
beginning of Romanticism.
SAQ 3
Which are the most popular kinds of poems in the 17th and 18th
centuries? Mention at least six of them, together with their most
outstanding representatives, in the space left below.
Compare your answer with the one provided in the section

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If
there should be major differences between them, revise subchapter
1.3.
In the following units of this course, we shall look more closely

at some of the most representative poetic works of these two
centuries: the metaphysical poetry of Donne and Marvell (Unit 2), the
verse satires of Dryden and Pope (Unit 4), and the “poetry of
sensibility” which announced the coming of the Romantic Age (Unit 6).
1.4. Drama in the 17th and 18th centuries

The Renaissance was the Golden Age of English drama. In little
more than half a century (1580-1642), a brilliant constellation of
playwrights founded a dramatic tradition which represents the best
and most original expression of the nation’s creative genius.
The flourishing of English drama during the Renaissance is a
unique phenomenon, comparable perhaps only with the rise of the
novel in the next century. It was the only form of literature which,
through its representation on stage, enjoyed a widely popular appeal.
The play-house, with its audience arranged according to rank, was a
miniature of the English society, each variety of spectator responding
to the performance according to his/her education and imagination.
The dramatic genres popular during the Renaissance were
extremely diverse: tragedy and comedy with their varieties, historical
drama, pastoral drama, masque*, tragi-comedy.
Contemporary The great age of English drama ended abruptly in 1642, when
reconstruction of a the Puritans* closed the theatres. The great acting companies were
Jacobean playhouse under the patronage of the king, and this “unholy alliance” between
crown and stage increased the intransigence of the Puritans. They
saw the theatre as a source of moral corruption through the “idle”
pleasure that it offered.
In 1660, with the restoration of monarchy, play-houses were re-
opened, but the spirit of the great tradition was never recaptured.
Some dramatic forms went out of fashion, while others changed, to
accommodate the tastes of a new public. On the whole, drama
witnessed a decline, and in the 18th century it was replaced by the
novel in popularity.
1.4.1. Jacobean tragedy

One of the most widespread forms of tragedy was the revenge
tragedy, inspired by the plays of the Roman Stoic Seneca*. From
Revenge tragedy Senecan tragedy, Renaissance playwrights borrowed the five-act
structure, the sensational plot, built around the theme of revenge,
and the rhetorical manner.
In such plays, the wronged hero plans revenge, but destroys
himself along with his enemies; sometimes he rights the wrong done
to another, who usually appears as a ghost on the stage.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1601) is the finest illustration of this kind of
tragedy.
Unlike Senecan plays, where bloody deeds were only evoked
through an efficient rhetoric of the dramatic discourse, Jacobean and
Caroline plays usually represented atrocities on stage. They were
generally, sensational and macabre, exploiting excessively morbid
ingredients like incest, insanity, rape, murder, treachery, etc.
Masters of this genre were the Jacobean dramatists Cyril
Tourneur (The Revenger’s Tragedy, 1607), Thomas Middleton
(Women Beware Women, 1612) and especially John Webster (The
Duchess of Malfi, 1614). Of the Caroline playwrights, John Ford (‘Tis
Pity She’s a Whore, 1633), with his exploration of the darkness of
strange passions, is the most gifted.
A particular type of protagonist became fashionable in revenge
The villain in tragedies: the villain, the fundamentally evil hero/heroine, fascinating
revenge tragedy through unbounded ambition, daring and wit. The type of the villain is
the descendant of the Devil in the mediaeval Mystery plays* and a
forerunner of the arch-villain in English literature, Milton’s Satan, in
Paradise Lost. Shakespeare’s protagonist in Richard III (1592-3) and
Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, 1605-6), as well as John Webster’s
heroine in The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona (1612) are among
the most accomplished portrayals of the villain in drama.

A distinct type in late Renaissance drama is domestic tragedy,
dealing with middle or lower class life and concentrating on personal
and domestic maters – unlike “grand” tragedy, with its noble
characters, whose fall from eminence marks the destruction of an
order.
SAQ 4
For a revision of some important features of Renaissance

English drama, read the following statements, identifying the four true
ones. For each sentence, circle the appropriate letter: T (true) or F
(false).
1. The English play-house during the Renaissance

accommodated a diverse audience, reflecting, in miniature, the
hierarchy of English society. T F
2. The Jacobean and Caroline authors of revenge tragedies had
Seneca as their model. T F
3. Renaissance tragedy had four acts – a structure borrowed from
Seneca. T F
4. The hero of revenge tragedy often destroys himself in his
desire to right a wrong done to him or to another. T F
5. Seneca’s tragedies inspired Jacobean and Caroline authors in
the representation of atrocities on stage. T F
6. Milton’s Satan, in Paradise Lost, reminds of the fascinating
villain-heroes of the Renaissance revenge tragedies by his
extraordinary ambition and boldness. T F
7. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a classic example of domestic
tragedy. T F

identify the true statements, read again subchapters 1.4. and 1.4.1.
1.4.2. Comedy in the early 17th century
In the field of comedy, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson are the

great masters, though each in a different way. Shakespeare’s
Elizabethan phase included a number of exquisite romantic
comedies, centred on the theme of love, but, in the last period of
creation, his comedies become darker, or at least tinged with
bitterness, as in All’s Well That Ends Well (1602-3) or Measure for
Measure (1604-5).
The mixture of serious and comic elements results in tragi-
comedy, as in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1601-2) or The
Winter’s Tale (1610-11), or in Philaster (1609) by John Fletcher and
Francis Beaumont.
Ben Jonson* illustrates another form, the satirical comedy, a
genre which will survive into the 18th century. His best plays, Volpone
(1606), Epicoene, or The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist
(1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) are social comedies of city life,
intended to correct vices and follies by denouncing them.

1.4.3. Drama during the Restoration period

Restoration drama developed in an age of scepticism and
cynicism, of pleasure-seeking and relaxation after the strict moral
code imposed to the nation by the Puritans. The painful intensity of
Renaissance tragedy did no longer move the hearts of audiences
that either were too frivolous or whose mind had been subtly
influenced by Puritan morality.
Tragedy was replaced in popular taste by a form that stood in
sharp contrast with the unheroic spirit of the age: heroic drama.
Heroic drama
Under the influence of French tragedies, but also of French and
Spanish romantic novels of adventure, these plays built a world of
high passion and incredible bravery, with idealised heroes and
heroines divided between love and honour or duty. The best
achievement in this genre belongs to John Dryden (The Indian
Emperor, 1665; The Conquest of Granada, 1669-70).
Heroic plays, with their grandiose declamations and artificial
conception of heroism, were a passing extravagance. There were a
few attempts to revive classical tragedy or domestic tragedy, but
serious drama declined during the 18th century.
A more representative achievement of the Restoration is the
The comedy of comedy of manners, which continued the realistic spirit of the earlier
manners satirical plays, but whose aim was not so much to correct manners
as to entertain.
Restoration comedy presented an elegant society, a stylish and
sophisticated world, and it denounced puritanical virtue as hypocrisy.
The main representatives – the Restoration Wits* – were courtiers
and aristocrats who assumed the role of leaders of fashion and taste.
1.4.4. Sentimental drama and burlesque comedy in the 18th

century
The drama of sensibility – with sentimental comedy as its
dominant type – emerged as a reaction to the Restoration comedy. It
lacked the latter’s liveliness and brilliance, but it appealed to a wide
middle class public, who demanded models of virtue and decency.
The most representative works of this kind belong to Richard
Steele (The Conscious Lovers, 1722), Oliver Goldsmith (The Good-
Natured Man, 1768; She Stoops to Conquer, or The Mistakes of a
Night, 1773), Richard Cumberland (The Brothers, 1769), and
Richard Brinsely Sheridan (The Rivals, 1775; The School for
Scandal, 1777).
The feeling that some dramatic forms were out of their time and
were maintained artificially led to the emergence of a burlesque* kind
of comedy, which ridiculed them through exaggerated imitation. In
The Rehearsal (1671), for instance, George Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, satirises heroic tragedy and so does Henry Fielding in
his successful parody The Tragedy of Tragedies; or The Life and
Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1731). John Gay, too, in his satirical
play The Beggar’s Opera (1728), mocks at certain theatrical
conventions. This parodic spirit was not confined to drama: the mock-
heroic style* was also used in poetry (e.g. Alexander Pope) and in
the novel (e.g. Henry Fielding).
SAQ 5
What are the main varieties of comedy during the 17th and 18th
centuries? Mention at least five of them in the space below, together
with their most outstanding representatives.

there should be major differences between them, revise subchapters
1.4.2. to 1.4.4.
Two moments in the evolution of English drama will be further

detailed in this course: in Unit 2, we shall focus on William
Shakespeare’s later plays, and in Unit 4 you will be acquainted with
more features of Restoration comedy.

1.5. The evolution of prose style

At the beginning of the 17th century, English as an instrument of
literary and intellectual communication still competed with classical
Influence of Latin Latin, the universal language of the Renaissance. Under the
on prose style influence of Latin – especially of Cicero* –, prose works written in
English displayed a highly rhetorical style, a precious and highly
ornate language, deliberately artificial and intricate.
Gradually, another Latin influence began to mould English
prose style: that of Seneca and Tacitus*. The development of an
aphoristic style*, blending concision with wit, prepared the English
language for a variety of uses: in scientific, philosophical and
theological writings, in political tracts and pamphlets.
Francis Bacon was the first notable writer to plead for – and to
illustrate – a prose style more suited for intellectual argument, in
which rhetorical figures were subordinated to rational lucidity.
Later in the century, Thomas Hobbes* and John Locke also
The prose of insisted on the necessity of a language at once flexible and precise,
intellectual on clarity and rationality. The language of prose tended to become
argument plain and transparent, suitable for conveying “the knowledge of
things” and intelligible to the average Englishman.
Journalism as a form of prose writing emerged during the Civil
War and flourished during the 18th century, contributing essentially to
the forging of a more straightforward and simple style.
More and more, the virtues of common speech permeated the
language of all kinds of writings, as the growing complexity of life
increased the need for social and intellectual communication. The
rhetorical extravagance and ingenuity which had still dominated the
early 17th century (not only in prose), gave way to an ideal of prose
style more suited to the Age of Common Man.
1.5.1. Varieties of prose writing in the 17th and 18th centuries

Of the literary forms that contributed significantly to the
development of English prose, religious writings are particularly
important. The English translation of the Bible – the “Authorised
Version” of 1611, accomplished under the patronage of James I –
established a model of English whose beauty, wealth and freshness
greatly influenced the language of prose. Sermons were a widely
popular form of prose-writing, displaying a variety of styles.
A different vein in religious writing is illustrated by the Puritan
John Bunyan (1628-1688) and his extremely popular book The
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Here, he describes the Christian soul’s
search for salvation in the form of an allegorical journey along the
path of life, with its trials, temptations, weaknesses, struggles and
William Blake: aspirations. This allegorical expression of Puritan faith, with its
illustration to simplicity and natural flow of common speech, influenced immensely
Bunyan’s the language of prose.
The Pilgrim’s Progress Among the prose forms widely used for intellectual argument,
the essay* proved the most flexible. Francis Bacon’s Essays (1597;
1612; 1625) are prose classics in English literature. John Locke
provides another example of this prose form – this time in book-
length – as a vehicle for analysis of ideas and intellectual
demonstration, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690).
In the 17th century, another form of prose writing which
displayed divergent tendencies in style was the anatomy. Anatomies
were monuments of learning, exhausting the subjects they dealt with,
delighting in speculation and building the knowledge they explored
into an elaborate structure. Robert Burton (The Anatomy of
Melancholy, 1621) and Sir Thomas Browne (Religio Medici, “The
Religion of a Doctor,” 1642) are the most outstanding representatives
of this genre.
The same encyclopaedic, inclusive character is displayed by
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), which analyses the constitution
of human society, but its impressive intellectual architecture is
achieved in a simple, unadorned style, of remarkable precision and
force, which anticipates the prose of the Neoclassical period.
A variety of other prose genres developed during the 17th
century: historical and geographical accounts (Walter Raleigh,
Samuel Purchas), biographies (Izaak Walton, with his Life of John
Donne among other works of this kind – 1670), spiritual biographies
Frontispiece (John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 1666),
to Leviathan diaries (John Evelyn, Samuel Pepys), letters, pamphlets* (e.g.
William Prynne’s Histriomastix, 1632 – the most virulent Puritan
attack on the theatre; Milton’s Areopagitica, 1644 – a famous
defense of the freedom of the press), etc.
To these must be added the character, a prose genre whose
model was provided by the Greek writer Theophrastus*. “Characters”
were miniature portraits of human types, executed in a witty,
aphoristic style, whose purpose was didactic or satirical. Joseph Hall
inaugurated the English tradition of this genre, with Characters of
Virtue and Vices (1608).
Like drama, with its explorations of the complexities of human
mind and character, the biography as an emerging prose genre, the
spiritual autobiography and the “character” were literary expressions
of the growing interest in human individuality.
The character as a prose genre influenced Richard Steele and
Joseph Addison in their periodical essays. Human character as
portrayed in their essays was at the same time typical and
individualised. This kind of approach had a considerable influence on
the realistic novel, the great literary achievement of the 18th century.

SAQ 6
In what direction did English prose style tend to develop along

the 17th and 18th centuries? Answer in the space below, in a
paragraph of no more than 7 lines / 70 words.

there should be major differences between them, read again
subchapters 1.5. and 1.5.1., more carefully.
The following units will detail some aspects concerning the

development of prose in the two centuries: in Unit 4, you will learn
more about the periodical essay, while Unit 5 will deal entirely with
the novel in the 18th century.
Summary
This unit has offered you a brief introduction to the intellectual
and literary developments of the 17th and 18th centuries. This was a
period of great changes at all levels of life in England. Within these
two centuries, the progress from the old order of the feudal world to
the modern age was completed. A steady process of economic
development and imperial expansion made England the world’s
greatest power.
Culturally, these two centuries correspond, roughly, to the great
movements of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, between
which there is continuity, since both place Man and the improvement
of his condition at the centre of their concerns. Within these two
centuries, intellectual habits and preoccupations changed radically:
philosophic thought became secular, modern science was born, the
image of the universe was changed, the growing scepticism and
critical spirit enthroned a rationalistic attitude in all spheres of culture.
The victory of Reason over dogmatism, obscurantism and
intolerance, as well as the faith in progress, marked the entrance into
modernity. It is, however, part of the process of modernisation that
the Age of Reason came to acknowledge its own limits, and the
emergence of the Age of Feeling prepared the way to the Romantic
sensibility.
From a literary point of view, a slow transition took place, from a
system of genres and styles dominated by classical influences to a
more “democratic” tendency, with new genres accessible to a more
inclusive reading public, predominantly middle-class. The birth of the
novel is the most significant literary development of this “Age of
Common Man.”
The short review of the dominant forms of poetry, drama and
prose in the 17th and 18th centuries has been meant to offer you a
general idea of the literary background of this extremely diverse and
dynamic period.
Key words
• The Renaissance
• The Enlightenment
• The Restoration
• The Age of Reason
• The Age of Common Man
• The Age of Feeling
• The Augustan Age
• Neoclassicism
• modernity
• tradition
• change
• emancipation
• progress
• poetry
• drama
• prose
Glossary
• aphoristic style: (from Greek aphorismos: definition) a style

characterised by condensation and precision, used to express
observations of general truth, often by means of paradox.
• Augustan Age: a phrase designating the period of English
Neoclassicism (extending from the Restoration to the latter half of
the 18th century) by analogy with the golden age of Latin
literature, of the time of emperor Caesar Augustus (27 B.C.-14
A.D.). The Great Latin writers of that age – Horace, Ovid, Virgil –
were revered models for the English Augustan writers, and a
major influence on their aesthetic ideal.
• blank verse: unrhymed verse.
• burlesque: the exaggerated imitation, in a caricatural spirit, of
serious action, elevated style, noble and heroic characters, which
are reduced to the comically trivial.
• Caroline: (from Latin Carolus) related to the reign of Charles I
Stuart (1625-1642)
• Civil War (1642-1649): the pivotal event of the 17th century,
illustrating the close link between religion and politics in English
history. The open conflict between king and Parliament set the
whole nation to war. The victory of the Parliamentary forces led to
the abolition of monarchy in 1649, until 1660, when it was restored.
• classical revival: the intellectual, artistic and literary life of the
Renaissance was defined by a revived interest in the classical
culture and its ideals. This return to the Ancients is the foundation
of Renaissance humanism, which began as an educational
programme (the humanities – humaniora) propagating those
values in Greek and Latin culture which could be harmonised
with Christian values. The founder of the revival of classical
learning was Petrarch (see note below). In a broader sense, the
humanism of the Renaissance refers to a view of life which we
find summarised in the maxim of the Greek philosopher
Protagoras (480-410 B.C.): “Man is the measure of all things”; it
evokes an attitude to life which stresses the individual’s dignity,
worth and capacity for self-accomplishment.
• Elizabethan: related to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603).
• empiricism: a philosophical orientation which established the
primacy of experience in the process of knowledge, reconciling a
materialist account of reality with a rationalist attitude (i.e. the
conviction that reality is ordered according to laws that are
accessible to human reason). The founders of English empiricism
were Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704).
• Enlightenment: ideological and cultural movement in the 18th
century in Europe and America, characterised by anti-dogmatism
and the cult of reason as the supreme guiding principle in human
action, by the promotion of intellectual emancipation and the
belief in social and moral progress, and by the search for a model
of society in which man’s rights and duties should be exercised in
freedom. Concepts like human rights, civil rights, individual
liberty, natural law, social contract, separation of powers were
central to Enlightenment political, social and moral thought, and
contributed to the intellectual preparation of the French
Revolution (1789). Tolerance, anti-obscurantism, anti-fanaticism,
pragmatism, humanism, rejection of arbitrary authority and of
absolutism are some of the characteristic attitudes of this age.
Thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume (Britain),
Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot (France), Thomas
Jefferson, Thomas Paine (the United States) are among the great
representatives of this movement.
• epic: long narrative poem celebrating the achievements of heroic
personages. The subjects and heroes are taken either from myth,
legend, the folk tradition, or from history.
• essay: a prose composition of varying length, in which personal
opinions and observations are presented in a formal or informal
manner. It is one of the most flexible and adaptable prose forms,
widely used in all ages.
• Evangelical Revival: a trend which started within the Anglican
Church (the official, state church) as a reaction against the
excessive rationalism in matters of faith, and soon developed into
a distinct religious orientation. It addressed itself to the poor, the
marginal sections of society, encouraging a personal experience
of conversion, of spiritual regeneration by grace. The basis of this
kind of faith was the Gospel (the New Testament) and its
revealed truth. This religious orientation developed into a church:
the Methodist Church, founded by John Wesley in the 1740s.
• Glorious Revolution: in 1688, James II Stuart, who was a
Catholic, was forced to leave the throne and fled to France. The
accession of William III (of Orange) and his wife Mary (James’s
Protestant daughter) marked the beginning of constitutional
monarchy in England (monarchic power was limited and the
Parliament’s prerogatives increased).
• Jacobean: (from Latin Jacobus) related to the reign of James I
Stuart (1603-1625).
• masque: courtly entertainment in dramatic form, often of an
allegorical nature, involving elaborate dialogue, singing and
dancing, spectacular scenic effects, sumptuous costumes and
settings. The actors used masks and personified pastoral or
mythological figures. The most famous author of masques in the
17th century (when the genre flourished) was Ben Jonson, who
collaborated with the equally famous architect and stage designer
Inigo Jones.
• mock-heroic style: a style mocking the serious grandeur of the epic.
It was used in order to make a trivial subject seem dignified and
impressive, and it was often a device of parody and of burlesque.
• mystery plays: early popular forms of English drama (13th to 16th
century) developed out of the Liturgy of the Church and enacting
biblical events, from the Creation to the Ascension.
• Neoclassicism: an aesthetic doctrine inspired from classical
Antiquity (especially Latin), whose authors were deeply revered
and were recommended as models. In English literature, the
Neoclassic period is taken to cover almost a century (1660-
1780). In architecture, decorative art, painting and sculpture,
Neoclassicism flourished in the latter half of the 18th century and
the beginning of the 19th. Neoclassicism meant a return to the
purity, restraint, and harmony of classical art, and corresponded
to the rationalistic spirit of the 18th century, to its need for clarity
and its aspiration to universality.
• ode: an extended lyric poem, with an elaborate stanza structure
and a dignified, solemn style, expressing lofty sentiments and
thoughts regarding an event, an idea, a person or an object. The
Greek poet Pindar (522-442 B.C.) and the Latin poet Horace (65-
8 B.C.) are the great ancient models for English writers.
• pamphlet: a short prose work on a subject (often political or
religious) that the author defends polemically. The term also refers
to the form in which such a work was published: a booklet with
paper covers.
• pastoral: a literary composition on a rural theme, idealising
shepherd life and creating a nostalgic image of a peaceful, simple,
uncorrupted life, in harmony with nature. The origins of pastoral
are in the work of the Greek poet Theocritus (316-260 B.C.). Its
conventions may be found not only in lyric poetry, but also in
drama, romance or the novel, and they continued to be used in the
18th century.
• poetic diction: a term that, for the Neoclassic writers, implied the idea
that the language of poetry is different in quality from ordinary
language. It refers to the particular kind of language – vocabulary,
tone, style – used by a poet, selected according to genre and subject.
• pre-Romantic: the term is sometimes used to refer to the literary
tendencies which accompanied the rise of the cult of Feeling in the
18th century. “The poetry of sensibility” is another generic term for
these pre-Romantic tendencies.
• Puritans: members of a Protestant religious group, in the 16th
and 17th centuries, who rejected the authority of the English
Church because, in their view, it had not fully reformed itself. The
Puritans insisted on man’s duty of actively serving God and on
his responsibility towards his own conscience, which was the
ultimate authority in the interpretation of God’s word in the Holy
Scriptures. They propagated a doctrine of spiritual equality and
cultivated a stern morality, centred on integrity, effort, industry,
the sense of purpose. Their beliefs and convictions, especially
their work ethics, favoured the growth of individualism, which was
to play an essential role in the rise of capitalism.
• Renaissance: cultural movement which started in Italy in the 14th
century and spread to Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries,
consisting in a tremendous development and transformation in all
spheres. It is the period of transition from the Middle Ages and
the feudal order to early capitalism, which opened the modern
era. It was characterised by a remarkable flourishing of arts and
literature, and brilliant accomplishments in scholarship and
science. It placed emphasis on the individual’s spiritual autonomy
and creative potential, on the enlargement of his knowledge of
himself and of nature. The Renaissance was the age of the great
geographical discoveries (e.g. of America, by Columbus, 1492),
of the rebirth of learning, of the expansion of education, and of
the awakening of the reformist spirit. Prominent figures of the
Renaissance are Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Pico della
Mirandola, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Ariosto, Tasso (Italy),
Lope de Vega, Cervantes (Spain), Desiderius Erasmus (Holland),
Thomas More, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare,
Francis Bacon (England).
• Restoration Wits: the generic name for the Restoration
dramatists. “Wit” designates here the person who displays
liveliness and brilliance of spirit. The most outstanding of the
Restoration Wits (or Court Wits) were George Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, Sir Charles Sedley, Sir George Etherege, William
Wycherley, John Vanbrugh.
• Restoration: historically, it was the period of Charles II’s reign
(1660-1685), when monarchy was re-established in England after
the Puritan rule (1649-1660). From a literary point of view, its
limits are less well defined. It is sometimes seen as extending to
the end of the 17th century; thus, it overlaps with the Augustan
Age.
• Romantic: the Romantic Age in England is usually considered to
extend from the end of the 18th century to the 1830s.
Romanticism is a European cultural and literary movement,
which emerged in Britain in the context of the sympathy with the
struggle of the American colonies for independence from British
domination (1775-1781), and with the French Revolution (1789).
The Romantic spirit is usually associated with the championship
of progressive social and political causes. Romanticism reacted
against the rationalist empiricism of the Enlightenment by an
intense idealism and the cult of Imagination as man’s supreme
faculty of the mind. The assertion of the self, the belief in the
spiritual correspondence between man and nature, the emphasis
on the spontaneity of poetic inspiration are also among distinctive
features of Romanticism.
• song: a poem composed for singing, with or without musical
accompaniment. Sometimes, Renaissance dramatists used
songs in their plays to create a particular atmosphere. The
tradition survived into the 18th century.
• sonnet: a poem consisting of 14 lines, with various rhyme
patterns. The sonnet sequence/cycle was frequently used during
the Renaissance (Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, 1591;
Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, 1591-1595).
• wit: intellectual brilliance and ingenuity, the capacity or talent of
making unexpected, surprising associations; the quality of a
writing that displays this capacity. During the Renaissance, it
meant intelligence or wisdom; in the 17th century it came to mean
fancy or liveliness of thought and imagination.
Gallery of personalities
• Bacon, Francis (1561-1626): the most influential thinker of the

English Renaissance, the founder of modern rationalist
materialism, the promoter of the new scientific spirit, and a firm
believer in man’s creative potential. He was also an eminent
statesman, and a writer. His literary work includes a series of
essays on a wide variety of subjects, as well as an unfinished
utopia, The New Atlantis (published in 1627), in which he
anticipates many of the later conquests of modern science.
• Jonson, Ben (1572-1637): dramatist, poet and scholar, one of the
most influential literary voices of his age. He started his literary
career as a playwright, with Every Man in His Humour (1598) and
Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), two fine examples of
comedy of humours, in which the characters act, independently
of circumstances, according to a dominating inclination or passion.
In mediaeval and Renaissance physiology and pathology, the four
“humours” (i.e. fluids) of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow bile – or
choler, and black bile – or melancholy) were believed to determine
a person’s disposition and character. The four traditional
temperaments – sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic –
were seen as the result of the dominance of one of these
humours. This theory had a great influence on the conception of
character in the 16th and 17th century comedy.
• Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 B.C.): Roman statesman, orator,
philosopher and writer. His famous political speeches and writings
on rhetoric and style provided a model of eloquence in prose.
• Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679): materialist philosopher, whose
conceptions were profoundly influenced by the development of
physics and mathematics. In his work of moral and political
philosophy Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a
Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651), Hobbes applies
rationalist-materialist principles to the explanation of human
nature and society. For Hobbes, the laws and regulations of
human society imitate the laws of nature: the “great Leviathan” is
the State, the “body politic” created in perfect analogy with the
“body natural” of “that rational and most excellent work of nature,
Man.” A fundamental problem for Hobbes is that of the foundation
of the social and political order. According to him, humanity in the
state of nature is driven by aggressive competition, and Hobbes
describes this generalised state of war by the famous formula
“homo homini lupus” (“man is wolf to man”). It is fear of death, the
instinct of self-preservation, that determines man to surrender
part of his natural rights to the authority of a civil government, in a
kind of social contract.
• Locke, John (1632-1704): considered the “father” of English
empiricism, greatly influenced by Hobbes. Locke studied
medicine, but he was interested in a variety of intellectual fields:
philosophy, ethics, economics, politics, religion. His political
philosophy, unlike that of Hobbes, insists on man’s perfect
freedom in the state of nature, and man’s agreement to submit to
a governing authority is an expression of that freedom. Locke
insists on the mutual obligations of the individual and the
instituted authority; the latter, for instance, must guarantee man’s
natural right to liberty and life. Locke was a firm supporter of the
Glorious Revolution and of constitutional monarchy, and his
political doctrine inspired the American constitution. Both Hobbes
and Locke can be seen as the initiators of the “social contract”
theory, which was central to Enlightenment thought.
• Newton, Isaac (1642-1727): English physicist, mathematician,
astronomer and philosopher, chief figure of the scientific
revolution of the 17th century. He laid the foundations of the
differential calculus, made important discoveries in the field of
optics, studied the mechanics of planetary motion and formulated
the law of gravitation.
• Petrarch: Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), Italian poet and
humanist, the initiator of the revival of the study of ancient Greek
and Latin literature.
• Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (4 B.C.-65 A.D.): Roman philosopher,
writer and statesman.
• Tacitus, Publius Cornelius (55-120 A.D.): Roman historian and
statesman, whose concise and trenchant style inspired 17th
century English prose writers.
• Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.): Greek philosopher and naturalist,
author, besides the Characters, of the first treatise of ancient
philosophy.

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs
SAQ 1
1.T; 2.T; 3.F; 4.T; 5.T; 6.F; 8.T
SAQ 2
a.2; b.3; c.4; d.1
SAQ 3
• the sonnet: Shakespeare, Donne, Milton
• the pastoral: Milton, Marvell, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Blake
• the ode: Marvell, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Pope, , Collins, Gray
• the epic: Milton
• metaphysical poetry: Donne, Herbert, Carew, Herrick, Marvell
• satire: Dryden, Pope
• didactic poems: Pope
• philosophical poems: Pope
• descriptive-meditative poems: Thomson, Cowper
SAQ 4
1.T; 2.T; 3.F; 4.T; 5.F; 6.T; 7.F
SAQ 5
• romantic comedy: Shakespeare
• dark comedy: Shakespeare
• tragi-comedy: Shakespeare; Fletcher and Beaumont
• satirical comedy: Ben Jonson; Goldsmith
• comedy of manners: the “Restoration Wits” (George Villiers, Duke
of Buckingham, Sir George Sedley, Sir George Etherege, William
Wycherley, John Vanbrugh); Goldsmith, Sheridan
• sentimental comedy: Steele; Goldsmith; Cumberland
• burlesque comedy: George Villiers; Fielding, John Gay
SAQ 6
In general, there was a tendency towards simplicity, concision and
plainness: from the highly ornate, artificial, even extravagant style of the
Renaissance to the simple elegance, precision, clarity and
straightforwardness of the Augustan style; from a highly rhetorical style to
forms of expression which aspired to the plainness of common speech.
Further reading
1. Macsiniuc, Cornelia, The English Eighteenth Century. The Novel
in Its Beginnings, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2003 (pp. 9-32)
2. Preda, Ioan-Aurel (ed.), English Literature and Civilisation. The
Renaissance and the Restoration Period, Bucureşti: Editura
Didactică şi Pedagogică, 1983 (pp. 7-49)
3. Turcu, Luminiţa Elena, The Literature of the Beginnings. From Beowulf
to Paradise Lost, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2003 (pp. 115-141)
The late Renaissance and the Baroque
UNIT 2
THE LATE RENAISSANCE AND THE BAROQUE
Unit Outline
Unit objectives 32
2 The late Renaissance and the Baroque 32
2.1. The emergence of the baroque sensibility 32
2.1.1. The late Renaissance: characteristics of the baroque sensibility 33
2.1.2. Baroque features of late Renaissance drama and poetry 33
2.2. Shakespeare’s genius. His later plays 35
2.2.1. The baroque spirit of Shakespeare’s great tragedies 36
2.2.2. Hamlet: a revenge play 37
2.2.3. Renaissance man and the baroque sensibility in Hamlet 37
2.2.4. Hamlet: the philosopher vs. the man of action 38
2.2.5. King Lear: the madness of tragic grief 39
2.2.6. To be or to seem: Othello 40
2.2.7. Macbeth: the tragedy of “diseased” conscience 40
2.2.8. Shakespeare’s last plays 43
2.2.9. The plot of The Tempest 43
2.2.10. Major themes 44
2.2.11. Symbols in The Tempest 46
2.2.12. The play-metaphor 46
2.3. The metaphysical poets 47
2.3.1. Characteristics of metaphysical poetry 48
2.3.2. The metaphysical conceit 48
2.3.3. Themes in John Donne’s poetry 49
2.3.4. Donne’s love poems 50
2.3.5. Donne’s religious poems 52
2.3.6. Andrew Marvell: the patriotic theme in the Horatian Ode 53
2.3.7. Nature as “mystic book” in Marvell’s poetry 54
2.3.8. The theme of love in Marvell’s poems 54
Summary 56
Key words 56
Glossary 57
Further reading 61

♦ define the characteristic aspects of the baroque sensibility

Unit objectives ♦ compare the Renaissance and the baroque visions on man
and the universe
♦ compare aspects of Renaissance and baroque literary taste
in the 17th century
♦ explain the baroque character of the main themes and motifs
in Shakespeare’s tragedies
♦ identify patterns of symbolism and imagery in the studied
plays by Shakespeare
♦ describe the main features of metaphysical poetry
♦ explain what a metaphysical conceit is
♦ analyse the use of conceits in poems by John Donne and
Andrew Marvell
♦ point out the elements of baroque sensibility in the poetry of
Donne and Marvell
2.1. The emergence of the baroque sensibility
The early and high Renaissance* in England developed under

the Tudor monarchs*, during whose reign England developed into a
strong, stable and modern state. Under Queen Elizabeth I,
Renaissance England reached the climax in its flourishing.
The Elizabethan Increasingly prosperous and powerful owing to colonial expansion
age: the English and economic progress, Elizabethan England also witnessed an
high Renaissance explosion of creative energies in the field of letters and arts.
High Renaissance English literature has its most accomplished
expression in Shakespeare’s work, but the outstanding achievements
of writers like Thomas Kyd*, Christopher Marlowe*, Philip
Sydney*, and Edmund Spenser* complete the literary picture of the
glorious Elizabethan Age.
The spirit that dominated this age was typical of the
Renaissance, with its sense of confidence and optimism. The vision
Features of the of a harmonious, well-ordered universe, the sense of tradition as a
high Renaissance guarantee for order, the enormous vitality nourished by the trust in
spirit man’s powers – these are general features of the high Renaissance
spirit that found their expression in literature as well.
In the late Renaissance, this spirit declined under the pressure
of certain historical events* and cultural tendencies. The former
expansiveness, idealism and confidence gave way to a growing
sense of disorder and violence, to the perception of man as a bundle
of contradictions and the view of the universe as threatened by
instability, to scepticism, anxiety and even pessimism.

2.1.1. The late Renaissance: characteristics of the baroque

sensibility
The baroque* sensibility that emerged during the late
Renaissance registered with particular acuteness the conflicts and
turbulences in man’s existence, the tragic divisions in man’s soul, the
paradoxes and contrasts which make up man’s mixed nature.
The Renaissance celebrated Nature and life with its joys; the
Baroque displayed a sharp consciousness of life’s ephemerality, of
man’s limitations and the inevitability of death. Characteristic baroque
themes were those of life as dream and life as theatre, or the world
as stage, on which the “show” of life must end.
Characteristic of the baroque spirit are the sense of ethical
relativism and the exploration of the borderline between truth and
St. Paul’s Cathedral illusion, wisdom and madness, sensualism and mysticism,
in London (1675- refinement and cruelty, life and death, reason and superstition. The
1708): an example Baroque displays attraction to obscurity and melancholy, to the
of baroque macabre, but also to pomp, splendour, grandeur, the spectacular and
architecture the sumptuous.
The Renaissance cult of rational order, proportion and
symmetry, its sense of form, contrasts with the baroque taste for the
extravagant, for excess, with the tendency of breaking proportions, of
confusing or transgressing limits.
2.1.2. Baroque features of late Renaissance drama and poetry

The essence of the baroque sensibility is conflict and tension,
and, in literature, nothing reflects better its emergence than drama.
Even the Elizabethan dramatists cultivated elements which
Revenge tragedy announced the Baroque. The best examples are Thomas Kyd’s
revenge tragedy, with its abundance of bloody deaths, and
Christopher Marlowe’s characters, destroyed by the monstrous
excess of their ambition. The Jacobean and Caroline drama* is
essentially baroque, both in its themes and motifs, and in its dramatic
conception.
Shakespeare’s early comedies and history plays* are Elizabethan
in spirit, but his great tragedies belong not only chronologically to the
Jacobean age: as embodiments of the baroque spirit, they are the
supreme dramatic achievement of late Renaissance.
In lyric poetry, a tendency commonly associated with the
Metaphysical baroque is represented by the Metaphysical Poets of the 17th
poetry century. Although very diverse, and not properly forming a “school,”
these poets distinguish themselves by the ingenuity with which they
force the limits of language.
The unexpected, striking imagery, the extensive use of paradox,
irony and ambiguity, the difficult – often irregular – rhythms, the
concentration of expression in their poems stand in contrast with the
Elizabethan smooth and orderly patterns of versification, ornamental
rhetoric and preference for convention and artifice.
The baroque vision of experience of the Metaphysical Poets
required a new kind of poetic language, capable of rendering its
complexities. Metaphysical poetry blends passion and reason,
complicated feeling and analytical detachment, and it is appealing
simultaneously to the sensibility and the intellect of the reader.
SAQ 1
Fill in the spaces left below with those features of the Baroque
(B) which contrast with the following features of the high Renaissance
(R):
1. R: vision of the world as harmonious and well-ordered
B:
2. R: celebration of life’s joys

B:
3. R: cult for order and symmetry; classical balance; sense of form

B:
4. R: confidence, optimism, exuberance

B:
Compare your answers to those provided in the section

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of this unit. If
there should be major differences, read again the preceding
subchapters.
In the following two subchapters, you will be acquainted,

respectively, with the two most relevant accomplishments of the late
Renaissance English literature: William Shakespeare’s great
tragedies (Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth) and his last
romance play, The Tempest, as well as some of the metaphysical
poems of John Donne and Andrew Marvell, as expressions of the
baroque spirit of the age.

2.2. Shakespeare’s genius. His later plays

Shakespeare’s greatness as a dramatist comes, among other
features, from the variety of his work. He was a master of every
contemporary dramatic form, and the range of his subjects is
extremely diverse. He was not original in the use of his subjects: with
a few exceptions, all of them are re-workings and adaptations of
subjects taken from a variety of ancient, medieval and contemporary
sources – English, Italian, and French. His inventiveness and
imagination were invested not in the intrigues, but in the creation of
characters and the exploration of their mind and heart.
William Shakespeare A whole human universe inhabits Shakespeare’s plays, in which
(1564-1616) every character – major or minor – has a consistent individuality and
is animated by passions, conflicts, aspirations and interests,
rendered accurately in their poetic truth. His characters emerge from
the dramatic situation with an unsurpassed force of conviction. They
are always credible, irrespective of the register in which they are
conceived – tragic or comic, sublime or burlesque, romantic or trivial.
Shakespeare had a natural instinct for the stage, which brought
him enormous success during his lifetime, but his enduring pre-
eminence has been insured by his extraordinary insight into human
nature, his deep understanding of humanity. A wide range of
feelings, states of mind, moral attitudes, and experiences are given
dramatic shape in his plays: love, friendship, devotion, hate, jealousy,
envy, loyalty and betrayal, gratitude and ingratitude, struggle for
power, search for truth, etc.
According to the dramatic necessity, Shakespeare modulates
the language in each play, so that it displays a similar variety. It
Language in ranges from the sublime accents of pure poetry, in the great blank
Shakespeare’s verse* soliloquies*, where the lyrical and dramatic elements are in
plays perfect fusion, to the prose speech of simple folk, craftsmen or
servants, in plain, sometimes even trivial, language. In
Shakespeare’s whole work, there is an astonishing variety of styles
and registers, all mastered with supreme art, and a perfect adequacy
of the language to the character’s moral nature and to the dramatised
experience or emotion.
Shakespeare’s whole work is a synthesis of the concerns and
convictions of the Renaissance, and a culmination of its literary art.
The richness and profundity of his comprehensive creation establish
him as a universal genius, transcending the artistic hierarchy of his
age and consecrating him as always “our contemporary.”
Shakespeare’s work is conventionally divided into several

phases, or periods of creation. The beginning of the 17th century is
The second period also the beginning of his second phase (1600-1608), when his artistic
of creation: maturity and depth of vision produced his four monumental tragedies:
the great Hamlet (1601), Othello (1604), King Lear and Macbeth (1605). These
tragedies plays may be seen as strongly influenced by the emerging baroque
sensibility in their themes, motifs and imagery, as well as in the tragic
grandeur of the inner conflicts that they portray.
In his last period of creation (1608-1611), Shakespeare seems
to propose an alternative to the stormy and bloody worlds of his great
tragedies. His romance plays, of which The Tempest (1611) is the
crowning achievement, are also tributary to the spirit of the Baroque,
The last period: but they deal, basically, with the restoration of order, with innocence
the romance plays and vitality triumphing over evil and death, with the sense of hope
overcoming spiritual desolation.
SAQ 2
Answer the following questions, in no more than 4 lines / 40

words each:
1. What does Shakespeare’s greatness consist in, as far as his

approach to character is concerned?
2. How does Shakespeare’s dramatic vision in his last plays differ

from that of the tragedies of his second period of creation?
Compare your answers with those offered in the section

they should differ significantly, read again the preceding
subchapter.
2.2.1. The baroque spirit of Shakespeare’s tragedies

Shakespeare’s tragedies preserve the pattern of the “fall of
princes”*, common in the Renaissance, but he adds to it
philosophical and ethical implications of the deepest significance. In
these plays, the downfall of the tragic hero is accompanied by the
destruction of a natural order, by the chaos arising from the
corruption and collapse of values.
The issues that are explored dramatically in Shakespeare’s
later tragedies reflect the spirit of uncertainty and increasing
scepticism of a baroque age. He is concerned here with the
paradoxes in the relationship between reality and appearance,
between truth and falsehood, with the effects of evil on innocence,
with the consequences of imperfect knowledge and self-blindness,
with the human endeavour to understand if suffering is part of the
natural order of things or if it betrays the indifference of Nature – or
God – towards man.
It is in these four great tragedies that Shakespeare gives the full
proof of his artistic genius. The enlargement of meaning through
consistent patterns of imagery running throughout each play, the
masterful treatment of highly complex characters, the intensity of
poetic expression – especially in the soliloquies – are features that
rank these plays highest in the whole history of the genre.
2.2.2. Hamlet: a revenge play

In Hamlet, the first in this series of masterpieces, Shakespeare
deals with his great tragic themes in the frame of a revenge tragedy.
Upon his return to Denmark from his university studies, young
prince Hamlet learns from the ghost of his recently dead father, old
king Hamlet, that he had actually been poisoned by his brother,
Claudius, who was now the new king and who had married Gertrude,
the widow queen. Young Hamlet is thus confronted with the horrors
of fratricide and incest, and with the immense burden of revenge,
required by his dead father.
In order to find confirmation for the ghost’s story, Hamlet
arranges a play to be performed at court. During the play, which
represents a similar scene of murder, Claudius’s guilty conscience
betrays him.
Hamlet hides his terrible grief behind the mask of madness, and
continually delays the act of revenge, absorbed more and more by his
consciousness of the paradoxes of his difficult task of exposing the truth.
Sir Laurence Olivier At one point, he has the occasion to kill Claudius, but refrains
in Hamlet (1948) from doing it as the latter was in prayer. In another scene, he kills
Polonius, a courtier, mistaking him for Claudius. Polonius is the
father of beautiful Ophelia, rejected by Hamlet in spite of their mutual
affection, as he now sees in her only another embodiment of
woman’s frailty.
Sent on a diplomatic mission to England, Hamlet escapes a
criminal plot set up by Claudius, who suspects him of aspiring to take
his throne. Back to the castle, Hamlet learns that Ophelia, who had
really gone mad, has drowned herself. Her brother, Laertes, accepts
Claudius’s treacherous plan of killing Hamlet during a duel, with a
poisoned sword, but the plot escapes their control and, in the
confusions of the final scene, all the main protagonists find their death.
In spite of this bloody outcome, the play ends on a note of hope,
when Fortinbras, the Norwegian prince and glorious military hero,
takes over the rule of Denmark, bringing in the prospect of renewal
and of the restoration of order.
2.2.3. Renaissance man and the baroque sensibility

Hamlet has been seen as the embodiment of the ideal
Renaissance prince – refined and cultivated, sensitive and idealistic,
brave, generous and brilliantly intelligent. Confronted with the moral
corruption around him, Hamlet feels all his certainties destroyed. His
new consciousness that “something’s rotten in Denmark” plunges
him into a nightmare, in which all the values on which he had relied
have lost their meaning.
In Hamlet’s tormented soul, the balance and confidence of the
Renaissance man have been replaced by scepticism and mistrust.
The sign of this confusion is the typically baroque motif of Hamlet’s
madness, which is only partly dissimulated. Madness becomes the
refuge of the sensitive conscience from moral chaos. It allows the
hero to take distance from the corrupt order of the “prison” that
Denmark has become for him.
SAQ 3
Text 2.1. from the Reader contains a short meditation on man

and the universe, revealing Hamlet’s dualistic vision. What is the
essence of this divided view? Formulate your answer in the space
left below, in no more than 10 lines / 100 words.
Compare your answer with the suggestions offered in the

section Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the
unit. If they should differ significantly, read again the preceding
subchapter, as well as the indicated fragment.
2.2.4. Hamlet: the philosopher vs. the man of action

Hamlet’s penetrating spirit has discerned a reality of human
nature that he had not suspected, and this makes him now aware of
the ironies and ambiguities inherent in the discrepancy between what
is and what seems. His effort to see beyond the veil of illusion, his
obsessive quest for truth and certainty, is eminently a philosopher’s
effort, and this may explain his indefinite postponing of the revenge,
his incapacity to act, which has been interpreted in innumerable
The delay of ways.
Hamlet’s revenge Hamlet’s introspective, questioning side is exacerbated by the
irruption of evil in a universe that he had thought well-ordered. His
intellectual energies are now concentrated in his search for the
meaning of the ultimate questions of life and death, of human
suffering.
These explorations become more important than the technical
matter of revenge, which would not undo the past. Tragically, Hamlet
feels overwhelmed by the real task that he is called to fulfil, which is
that of restoring a lost order, of setting right again the “time” which is
“out of joint.”
2.2.5. King Lear: the madness of tragic grief

King Lear, another “fall of princes” tragedy, starts with a folk tale
motif: old Lear plans to leave his kingdom to his three daughters if he
is pleased with their declarations of love. Disappointed by the
reticence of his youngest daughter, Cordelia, whom he disinherits,
Lear becomes the victim of the ingratitude of his two elder daughters,
Goneril and Reagan, who deprive him of all prerogatives and turn
him out of their castles.
Maddened with grief, exiled Lear wanders in a terrible storm in
the company of Edgar, son of Lear’s loyal supporter, the Earl of
Gloucester. He is also accompanied by the faithful Earl of Kent in
disguise and by the Court Fool. Edgar, who is disguised as a lunatic
beggar, is also an exile from his own family, as his father has been
deceived by his other son Edmund, a bastard, to believe him a traitor
and usurper.
The earl of Gloucester joins them, after his eyes have been put
out for having helped Lear, and he is thus reunited with his son
without knowing it. Edgar, like Lear’s daughter Cordelia, is the victim
of a staged play of appearances; in reality, both of them prove to be
the loyal, unconditionally loving ones.
The storm scenes in the play contain the highest symbolic
Storm and concentration. The storm outside matches the storm in Lear’s hurt
madness soul; there is madness in nature itself, an outburst of violence which
evokes to Lear the cruelty of his daughters.
Lear’s own madness, on the other hand, marks in fact a growth
in his moral understanding, and, as in Hamlet, the quest for higher
meanings. Lear strives to understand the roots of evil, if there is a
purpose for its existence in the world of man; he is wondering: “Is
there a cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?”
Edgar’s disguised madness, which helps him endure his
suffering, and the Fool’s comments, which hide much wisdom under
the appearance of playful nonsense, are skilfully brought together
and create a new ironic dimension in the play.
The motif of madness, like that of blindness, is closely linked,
through paradox, to the themes of knowledge and self-knowledge, of
truth and illusion.
Shakespeare develops the theme of evil by contrasting the
natural order of the moral universe with the chaos produced by the

unnatural acts which violate this order. Evil is that which destroys
Evil as destruction Nature, acting against it.
of the “natural” Shakespeare gives a special intensity to this theme by dealing
order with evil in the context of the most natural of human relationships:
kinship (relations by blood or by marriage). Claudius’s fratricide and
the cruelty of Lear’s daughters are transgressions which turn the
tragic hero’s world upside down.
2.2.6. To be or to seem: Othello

Evil coming from those who are naturally closest to us is
intolerable, and its outburst is always accompanied by the awakening
of the tragic hero’s consciousness of the divorce between seeming
and being.
In Othello, the bond of a love marriage is the frame in which
Shakespeare explores the theme of evil in connection with that of
appearance vs. essence. The noble protagonist, Othello, a brave and
honest general of the Venetian republic, is led by Iago to believe his
wife, Desdemona, unfaithful, and this destroys his confidence in a
moral order.
As a result of Iago’s manipulations, Othello is thrown into the
terrible agony of suspecting that beauty and innocence might
disguise corruption. With his mind poisoned by a false evidence of
Desdemona’s infidelity, Othello kills her and takes his own life when
her innocence is proved to him.
In Othello, evil succeeds precisely because of the perfection of
Desdemona’s purity and Othello’s trusting nature, and the tragic
disaster shows how the play of appearances can dissolve firm moral
opposites like truth/lie, innocence/guilt, faithfulness/betrayal.
Scene from Othello, painted by James Graham (early 17th century)

SAQ 4
Each of the following sentences refers to one or several of

the three tragedies mentioned so far. Read them carefully and fill
in the indicated space with the right title(s).
1. The hero’s exacerbated introspective tendency makes him

postpone action. ____________________
2. The theme of evil is dramatised as a crime against the bonds of

blood, which constitutes a violation of the natural (therefore moral)
order. ____________________
3. The protagonist, who has a trusting nature, is manipulated into

confusion about truth and falsehood, innocence and corruption.
____________________
4. The baroque motif of madness is, paradoxically, underlining the

theme of knowledge, since it accompanies the hero’s revelation of
the discrepancy between appearance and reality, illusion and
truth. ____________________
5. The storm scenes intensify symbolically the hero’s tragic sense

of confusion, disorder, and unmotivated violence and cruelty.
____________________

suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If any of your
solutions should not correspond, you need to revise subchapters
2.2.2. to 2.2.6.
2.2.7. Macbeth: the tragedy of “diseased” conscience

In Macbeth, the horror of evil is amplified by the fact that the
protagonist’s crime is committed against Duncan as his king, kinsman
and guest. Macbeth’s ambitions are inflamed by the prediction of three
witches that he shall be king of Scotland. Persuaded by his wife to
hasten the fulfillment, Macbeth, a brave and worthy general in Duncan’s
army, kills the sleeping king and takes the throne.
The effects of this sacrilege against Nature are devastating.
Macbeth’s conscience soon starts accusing him, but, at the
instigation of his wife, he multiples his crimes, arranging the murder
of all those who might threaten his power.
The evil reverberates in the whole land: in the words of
Malcolm, one of Duncan’s sons, “Our country sinks beneath the
yoke, / It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash / Is added to her
wounds.” The imagery* of disease is extended to the protagonist’s
conscience, invaded by “horrible imaginings” and hallucinations.
There is “no sweet oblivious antidote” to cure Lady Macbeth’s
“diseased” mind either, and she is destroyed by the unbearable
burden of sin, from which the ultimate relief is suicide.
Macbeth’s heroic strength of will enables him to survive the
terrible inner torments, and he meets his punishment in the final
battle, in which he fights to the end with the same determination that
had brought him the glory of a hero at the beginning of the play.
Shakespeare’s shortest and most poetic tragedy reveals the
incalculable effects of the darkness with which destiny may cloud the
moral conscience of a noble hero, who ends up by losing the belief in
any meaning of life.
SAQ 5
In Act II, scene 2, Macbeth joins his wife after he has killed
Duncan. Text 2.2. from the Reader, extracted from this scene,
reveals how soon the abominable crime has begun to work on his
spirit. His words to Lady Macbeth render his first thoughts after the
murder. How can we interpret Macbeth’s hallucination about the
voice crying “Sleep no more, / Macbeth does murder sleep,” heard
immediately after he has committed the murder? What does sleep
represent for Macbeth here? Answer in the space left below, in no
more than 120 words / 12 lines.
Compare your answer with the one offered at the end of the unit,
in the section Solutions and suggestions for SAQs. If there
should be significant differences, read the fragment once more.

2.2.8. Shakespeare’s last plays

Shakespeare’s four plays belonging to his last period of creation
(1608-1611) – Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The
Tempest – are described either as tragi-comedies or as romance
plays.
They mix serious and comic action, their plots contain
characteristic ingredients like dangers which are finally avoided, or
tension and suspense followed by happy reversals – features that
make them tragi-comedies.
They may also be described as romance plays, owing to the
improbability of the action, the pronounced elements of the
supernatural, marvelous, magic, myth, the fairy-tale atmosphere, the
choice of a remote setting, and certain themes and motifs (e.g. the
long journey, the shipwreck, the theme of loss and recovery, of exile
and return).
After the tragedies, these plays offer patterns of reconciliation
and positive solutions to life’s contradictions, the sense of a
benevolent providential design. It is also in these last plays that
Shakespeare’s dramatic imagination relies to a greater extent on
symbolism.
2.2.9. The plot of The Tempest

Of these four plays, The Tempest (1611), the last expression of
Shakespeare’s mature genius, is considered the finest.
In its opening scene, a storm wrecks the ship carrying Antonio,
duke of Milan, Alonzo, king of Naples, Sebastian and Ferdinand –
Alonzo’s brother and son, respectively –, as well as other
passengers. We soon find out that the storm and shipwreck have
been magically provoked by Prospero, the master of an island, on
which he lives alone with his daughter, Miranda.
Prospero is the former and legitimate duke of Milan, usurped by
his brother Antonio and forced into exile twelve years before. He had
long studied the arts of magic, and his supernatural powers have
given him control over both the natural elements and the spirits.
John William
His acts of magic are fulfilled through Ariel, his faithful spirit-
Waterhouse:
servant, while for physical labour he uses Caliban, a creature whose
Miranda –The
beastly nature is beyond Prospero’s attempt of educating him.
Caliban hates and fears Prospero, who, by his powers, has turned
Tempest
him into a slave.
(1916)
Three lines of action develop, involving the shipwrecked
characters, separated from each other in various parts of the island
and all believing the others dead. One of these sub-plots involves the
courtiers: Antonio persuades Sebastian to kill his sleeping brother,
Alonzo, to take his throne, but his plan is prevented by Ariel’s music.
In a plot-line that parallels and parodies the latter, Trinculo, the
jester, and Sebastian, a drunken servant, are encouraged by Caliban
to kill Prospero and take over the rule of the island. Another sub-plot
brings together Ferdinand and Miranda, who instantly fall in love with
each other.
Prospero’s initial plan had been revenge; now, influenced by
Ariel, he has a change of heart and sees in the union of the lovers a
possibility of reconciliation and of a new beginning. In the final act,
Ariel is commanded to bring all the characters before Prospero, who
reveals himself to them as “the wronged duke of Milan,” claiming his
throne. He forgives his treacherous brother and those involved in his
usurpation, who now repent. Prospero plans a safe return to Naples
for the wedding of Miranda and Ferdinand, and then to Milan.
2.2.10. Major themes

An important theme in The Tempest is that of the nature of power.
Prospero, the scholar-magician, assumes a certain responsibility for his
The theme of
own dethronement: absorbed in his studies, “neglecting worldly ends,”
power
he had also failed to see his brother’s true character. On the island, he
regains his authority and learns again the arts of power, but, more
importantly, he learns, at the end, to master himself.
His act of forgiveness is the highest demonstration of princely
power, and it is significant that this act is accompanied by his
decision to abandon his magic, to break his staff (symbol of
supernatural power) and to drown his book (symbol of supernatural
knowledge), and to return to the world in his full humanity.
Evil is not absent in The Tempest: there are echoes of
Shakespeare’s previous plays in the motif of the usurping brother planning
murder, or of the wickedness of the servant turning against his master.
The grossest instincts of human nature and a fundamental
viciousness are symbolically embodied in the grotesque figure of
Caliban, a “thing of darkness,” “on whose nature / Nurture [i.e.
Ariel vs. Caliban
education] can never stick,” who can be controlled only by the art of
magic. At the opposite pole, Ariel, one of Shakespeare’s most
fascinating creations, represents pure spirit, the control of intelligence
over nature, the personification of Prospero’s imagination.
The power of innocence to redeem evil and restore order and
Innocence vs. evil the values of humanity is another important theme. Prospero’s
project acquires a wider dimension through the union of Ferdinand
and Miranda, whose youth and innocence are the premises for the
undoing of the wrongs of the past, for the emergence of a
regenerated world.
While Caliban and the plotting courtiers and servants
demonstrate that both nature and society are capable of corruption,
in Ferdinand and Miranda civilisation and nature are united in their
most innocent forms.
Elizabeth Green – Ariel: The Tempest (1922)

SAQ 6
Read Text 2.4., extracted from The Tempest, Act I, scene 2.

Here, Prospero reminds Caliban that he did his best to raise him
from his animal condition, by teaching him to speak. Full of
resentment, Caliban answers that the only benefit of being able to
speak is that he can now curse Prospero. What implications can
you find in their exchange of replies? You may think, for instance,
of the role of language in acquiring knowledge, or in developing
self-identity. Formulate your answer in 150 words / 15 lines.
Compare your answer with the one offered at the end of the unit,
in the section Solutions and suggestions for SAQs. If there should
be major differences, read the fragment again, more carefully.

2.2.11. Symbols in The Tempest

Several symbolic elements contribute to the treatment of the themes
in The Tempest. The title itself points to the importance of the symbolism of
the sea-journey. The miraculous survival of the ship’s passengers,
suggests the victory of life over death and of spirit over the elemental
The sea-journey
power of nature. The sea-journey and shipwreck are the symbols of a “sea
change”*, a profound spiritual transformation and growth.
Another pervading symbol is that of music. In opposition with
the convulsions and dangers of the tempest, music suggests
harmony and the power of the spirit to purify human nature,
sublimating its primitive energies.
Music
Music is not only a necessary element in the spectacular quality
of The Tempest, but an important symbolic ingredient in its major
events, and it is constantly associated with the magic actions of Ariel.
It is through music that he calms down the fury of the waters,
comforts Ferdinand’s despair when he thinks his father dead, and
prevents the wicked plots of both the courtiers and the drunken
servants. Prospero also needs “some heavenly music” to accomplish
the final act of his plan. Even Caliban seems to be responsive to the
“sounds and sweet airs” of the island, which “delight and hurt not.”
2.2.12. The play-metaphor

The action in The Tempest is practically managed by Prospero,
whose magic art controls every incident, manipulates the characters
and prescribes the ending. The whole play insists on the idea of
spectacle, of performance, and it even contains (like Hamlet) a play
within the play: a masque* performed as a celebration of Ferdinand
and Miranda’s engagement.
This emphasis on spectacle and its power to reveal truths by its
illusion constitutes a baroque element in The Tempest. The play-
metaphor, the association of life with the insubstantiality and
briefness of a theatre show, is frequent in Shakespeare’s plays.
Shakespeare’s last masterpiece seems to suggest that if life is
transient like a theatre performance, then at least man should strive
to discern in it, or to impose upon it, the same features as those of
the Renaissance aesthetic ideal: beauty, order and harmony. It is
through the perfection of Ariel’s art that Prospero re-establishes the
moral law in the world to which he can now return.
Ariel – illustration to the 1873 edition of

The Works of Shakespeare

SAQ 7
Let us remember a few things about The Tempest. You must

find them among the following statements, of which three are
false. Circle appropriately T (true) or F (false) for each sentence.
1. Prospero had lost his power as the duke of Milan because his
studies distanced him from the immediate world which he was
supposed to rule. T F
2. The betrayal of his brother and the plotting of the courtiers on

the island were severely punished by Prospero. T F
3. Prospero intends to use his magic power and supernatural

knowledge in his regained authority as duke of Milan. T F
4. Ferdinand and Miranda represent the innocent young generation

capable of renewing Prospero’s former world. T F
5. Two essential symbolic elements contribute to the development of

the theme of regeneration: the sea-journey and music. T F
6. The power of music has no effect on Caliban, except that of

terrifying him. T F
7. A baroque feature of The Tempest is the emphasis on the

theatrical quality of the action, staged and managed by Prospero
through his magic art. T F
Make sure your answers are right by looking in the section

any of your choices should be wrong, revise subchapters2.2.9 to
2.2.12.
2.3. The metaphysical poets

The term metaphysical, applied to certain poets of the early and
mid-seventeenth century, was first intended to bring discredit on
them. The contemporaries referred to their poetry as “strong lines,”
and many disliked its cultivated difficulty.
John Donne and Andrew Marvell illustrate best the baroque
sensibility of the 17th century in their themes and expressive
strategies.
Their styles are different, but each of them, in his own way,
combines an outstanding intellectual brilliance with lyric grace, and
this makes them both masters of metaphysical wit.

2.3.1. Characteristics of metaphysical poetry

Metaphysical poetry displayed a new quality of writing, which
was in fact the expression of a new spiritual context. Starting with the
“More matter last decade of the 16th century, writers had to face a new exigency, a
and less words” demand for “more matter and less words.” A new kind of poetry
emerged, with patterns of rhythms closer to those of spoken
language than to the requirements of literary tradition, and which
blended expressive conciseness with density of meaning.
The main features of metaphysical poetry are concentration and
logical coherence. A poem in this tradition is usually focused on an
idea or line of argument, which is developed through the exploitation
of an image in all its possible implications. The reader is expected to
approach such a poem with an active mind, to bring not only his
imagination and emotion into play, but also his reason.
Irrespective of the kind of experience they endeavour to render, all
metaphysical poets are self-conscious and analytic. The impression is
that this experience, and the emotions involved, is contemplated from a
certain distance, that the poet detaches himself from his own feelings in
order to better understand and analyse them.
In spite of its logical, argumentative quality, a metaphysical
poem is not a piece of abstract thinking, a cold intellectual exercise.
The thought goes hand in hand with the feeling, and almost always
such a poem starts from a very personal situation, from a most
ordinary circumstance, which helps the poet to develop his subject.
There is always a connection between the abstract and the concrete,
and a blend of the commonplace and the sublime, regardless of the
subject of the poem.
2.3.2. The metaphysical conceit

The poetic device by which such opposites are brought together
and reconciled is the conceit. This is an elaborate figurative device,
which starts from a comparison, a metaphor or an analogy, often
extended by the use of hyperbole* or oxymoron*.
As extended comparisons, conceits were abundant in
Elizabethan dramatic and lyrical poetry, but metaphysical conceits
were far-fetched* comparisons, meant to surprise and delight the
reader by their wit*, by the ingenuity with which they forced the
perception of similarity in the most unexpected elements.
Dr. Samuel Johnson* was to describe (in 1779) the kind of wit
Discordia concors which characterised a metaphysical conceit as discordia concors*, as “a
combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult [i.e. hidden,
secret] resemblances in things apparently unlike,” as “the most
heterogeneous ideas yoked [i.e. linked, united] by violence together.”
Conceits were effective instruments in developing an argument
and in rendering complication and subtlety of thought, as well as in
ordering and mastering intense emotion. By means of conceits, the
poet was able to reconcile contradictory states of mind and feeling,
and to unify diverse and even discordant aspects of inner and outer
reality into a single experience.
SAQ 8
Order the main aspects describing metaphysical poetry into

four essential features. Use the space left below. Each answer
should not exceed 2 lines / 20 words.
Compare your answers with those provided in the section

they should differ considerably, revise subchapters 2.3.1. and
2.3.2.
In the following subchapters, you will look at some famous

examples of metaphysical conceits, in poems belonging to John
Donne and Andrew Marvell, the two most outstanding
representatives of this poetic trend in the 17th century.
2.3.3. Themes in John Donne’s poetry

John Donne is one of the most influential poets of the 17th
century, and a highly original one. He rejected the regular
versification of Elizabethan poetry , its decorative use of classical
mythology, pastoral* conventions, and allegory, and created a style
which had the vigour and liveliness of colloquial speech, and which
confers dramatic realism to his poems.
Two important themes in his poetic work are love and faith, and
both are explored in the whole richness and variety of their possible
experiences. In the treatment of both themes, Donne displays the
same sophisticated wit, the same blend of ingenious reasoning and
intense passion, and the same realistic force.

2.3.4. Donne’s love poems

In his love poems, Donne adopts a wide range of tones and
attitudes, from cynicism and playfulness to passionate sincerity and
the celebration of both physical love and spiritual union.
His love poetry is revolutionary in its rejection of the Petrarchan*
Donne’s rejection conventions of courtly love*, according to which woman was always
of the Petrarchan an unattainable ideal. Chaste, beautiful, superior – woman was an
tradition object of never fulfilled desire, and all that the faithful lover could
hope for were symbolic rewards and favours for his constancy and
humble submission.
Donne changes this conventional vision of love, sometimes
presenting woman as inconstant and unfaithful, sometimes speaking
frankly of his erotic desire, and often emphasising the need for
mutual love. His approach of the theme of love is more “realistic”: he
often glorifies sexuality and the body as important aspects in the
experience of love. He also suggests sometimes that physical union,
when accompanied by genuine feeling, may afford an experience of
the transcendental.
A famous poem celebrating shared love is A Valediction*:
Forbidding Mourning, in which the lover tries to persuade his mistress not
A Valediction:
to cry at his imminent departure. The various comparisons and analogies
Forbidding
by which he describes their love function as arguments in his plea.
Mourning
Their superior love is founded on spiritual union and is not
dependent on physical presence for its survival. Crying over their
separation would bring to mind an analogy with earthly disasters
(“sigh-tempests,” “tear-floods”), but, their love being so great and
“refined,” their separation must be seen in analogy with cosmic
disturbances (“the trepidation of the spheres”), which, though greater,
are however harmless to man. These are conceits which illustrate the
preference of the metaphysical poets for analogies between the
macrocosm and the (human) microcosm.
The poem celebrates the stability and comfort of a secure
relationship, dealing with profound personal feeling and emotion from
the distance of intellectual argument.
Another powerful example of Donne’s use of logical argument in a
The Flea: poem about love is The Flea. This is a seduction poem, in which the
seduction and wit speaker brings all his argumentative skill in support of his attempt to
convince the woman to accept physical intimacy. Mingling the trivial with
the mystical sublime, he resorts to the extravagant identification of a
flea that has bitten both of them with their “marriage bed” and a
“marriage temple.” He tries to persuade his mistress not to kill the flea,
in which their blood is now mixed, as this would be a triple “sin.” In fact,
he pleads that she should abandon the intransigence of the chaste,
unattainable lady and enjoy the pleasures of sensuality.
Donne is highly playful in this poem, shocking the reader by the
unexpected analogy developed in the central conceit (the flea as
symbolic marriage bed), and he seems to amuse himself, carrying
the lover’s witty arguments to their logical extremes.

SAQ 9
Read Donne’s poem (Text 2.6. in the Reader), paying special

attention to the last three stanzas. Here, he develops one of his most
famous conceits. Explain the surprising analogy that he makes in
order to speak about mutual love. Formulate your answer in the
space left below, in no more than 18 lines / 180 words.

they should differ significantly, you need to revise subchapter
2.3.2., which explains what a metaphysical conceit is. Read the
poem again, as well.

2.3.5. Donne’s religious poems

Donne’s baroque sensibility is evident in his love poems in
the tension between conflicting, paradoxical aspects of the
experience of love, between the need for permanence and the
need for variety, between idealised passion and erotic desire.
Tension and paradox are also explored in his religious
poems, in which the delight in witty logical argumentation, in the
exercise of reason, clashes with the poet’s scepticism that the
mystery of faith can be penetrated intellectually.
In his religious meditations in verse, Donne’s focus is on
his deep sense of sin, on death, divine judgement, resurrection
and salvation. These poems usually display contrary impulses,
which parallel those in his love poetry.
Actually, Donne’s religious poems often develop an
analogy between sexual love and divine love, as if suggesting
that the experience of erotic union is the only way of
understanding our relationship with God. If love is often a holy
mystery for Donne, in his religious poems the mystery of faith is
often explored in erotic terms.
The most eloquent example is the sonnet Batter My Heart,
one of Donne’s nineteen Holy Sonnets, in which the poet
expresses his deep need for a close relationship with God, for
the divine saving grace.
In Batter My Heart, this need is expressed by means of
several conceits, in which the poet’s desire to abandon himself
Batter My Heart to God’s love is rendered through paradoxical images. He fights
against his own sense of sin and guilt, which makes him a
prisoner of God’s enemy, Satan. The insistence on violence and
struggle, on the paradoxes of freedom and captivity, of loyalty
and betrayal, gives this sonnet a particular dramatic intensity,
comparable to that of Shakespeare.
Portrait of John Donne

(1572-1631)
(author unknown)

SAQ 10
Read Text 2.7. from the Reader, representing Donne’s

sonnet Batter My Heart. In the last six lines, Donne suggests his
contradictory, paradoxical feelings by means of a conceit which
exploits metaphorically the contrast between marriage and rape.
How does he use this contrast in order to speak about his religious
experience? Analyse this conceit in no more than 12 lines / 120
words.
Compare your answer with the one offered in the section

there should be significant differences, revise subchapter 2.3.5.
and read the poem again.
2.3.6. Andrew Marvell: the patriotic theme in the Horatian Ode

The last of the metaphysical poets, Andrew Marvell combines in
his poetic work the sophistication of metaphysical wit with the elegance
and grace of classical forms and attitudes. Three major themes can be
detached from his poetry: love, nature, and love of country.
As a Puritan* patriot, living through the turbulent years of the
Civil War*, Marvell left, according to some critics, the greatest of
political poems in English literature: An Horatian Ode* upon
Cromwell’s Return from Ireland (written in 1650). This meditation on
political conflict and national history is impressive by its clarity and
controlled variations of tone.
Its classical perfection manages to hold in balance the
ambivalence of attitude and the complication of thought characteristic
of the metaphysical trend. Although loyal to the Puritan cause,
Marvell does not portray Oliver Cromwell and his opponent, King
Charles I Stuart, in contrasting colours. He rather sees the events
and the fate of the two rulers in the context of a providential history,
in which both of them act according to a divine order, and thus he
can find reason to praise both of them.
Victorious Cromwell is admirable for his fiery spirit and the
courage with which he assumed the task to “cast the kingdoms old /
Andrew Marvell
Into another mould” (i.e. to change the form of ruling power). On the
(1621-1678)
other hand, Marvell emphasises the dignity with which the defeated king
met his fate, behaving with royal grace in his last minute, on the
scaffold.
2.3.7. Nature as “mystic book”

Another side of Marvell’s poetic personality is illustrated by his
nature poetry. He showed a deep love for the countryside,
anticipating the early Romantic attitude to nature, and many of his
poems reveal his delight in the contemplation of rural nature.
Gifted with a sharp sense of observation of natural detail,
Marvell often sees, however, these details as emblems of a
transcendent reality. His nature poems have usually a mystical
tendency, as if Nature itself were a “mystic book,” whose visible
beauties are the key to spiritual truths.
The most illustrative poem, in this respect, is On a Drop of
Dew, which begins with a most accurate description of a dew-drop on
On a Drop of Dew a rose petal, developed then into a complex analogy with the pure
Christian soul and its relation with earth and with heaven.
What begins as a nature poem is extended into a religious
poem by means of a metaphysical conceit. Just as the dew-drop is
“trembling, lest it grow [i.e. for fear that it might grow] impure,” and
finally dissolves itself “into the glories of the almighty Sun,” so the
Christian Soul denies the earth and its “impure” pleasures, aspiring to
union with almighty God. A natural detail, pictured with remarkable
precision, reveals thus its symbolic dimension to the poet’s
contemplative mind.
2.3.8. The theme of love in Marvell’s poetry

Of Marvell’s love poems, the most accomplished is To His Coy
Mistress, a masterpiece of metaphysical wit, which illustrates the
poet’s skill in combining the playful and the serious. It is a seduction
poem, in which the speaker develops an ingenious argument in order
to persuade his mistress to give up her coyness [i.e. shyness] and
accept his passionate love.
Carpe diem The carpe diem* motif was popular in Renaissance poetry, but
Marvell’s poem extends it into a meditation on time.
The speaker’s argument opposes the “deserts of vast eternity,”
associated with his mistress’s preference for a prolonged courtship,
to the imperative of conquering time by the intensity of sensual
enjoyment. Love, in its sexual fulfillment, is presented as the only
way of transcending our mortality. Love can suspend the inexorable
laws of nature; it can arrest the inevitable course towards physical
extinction by a moment of ecstatic pleasure.
SAQ 11
Read Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress (Text 2.8. in the

Reader), paying attention to the logic of the argument, which has the
structure If…, but…, then (therefore)…. What are the main ideas
corresponding to these three steps? Formulate them succinctly in the
space left below. Do not exceed 12 lines / 120 words in all.
If…
But…
Therefore…

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If the
difference is considerable, read the poem again, more carefully, after
revising subchapter 2.3.8.

Summary
This unit has introduced you to an important aspect of the
English Renaissance: the development, in the early 17th century, of
the Baroque as a structure of sensibility different from that of the
Elizabethan age (corresponding to the high Renaissance).
Subchapter 2.1 focuses on the contrast between the optimism,
confidence, exuberance, sense of order, harmony and balance
characterising the high Renaissance spirit, and the baroque vision with
its emphasis on disorder, conflict, tension and confusion, scepticism
and anxiety. Paradox and irony are favourite devices for the
exploration of the relationship between contraries, such as truth and
illusion, wisdom and madness, life and death, body and spirit, action
and contemplation, etc. A taste for the obscure, for melancholy, for the
macabre often defines the Baroque, but it may also display an
attraction to the spectacular, to extravagance and excess.
Subchapters 2.2 and 2.3 focus, respectively, on Shakespeare
and on two great metaphysical poets, John Donne and Andrew
Marvell, who best illustrate this spirit of the late Renaissance.
Subchapter 2.2 deals with Shakespeare’s four great plays of his
second period of creation – Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth.
The themes they explore (the nature of evil, the meaning of human
suffering, the paradoxes of innocence and knowledge, truth and
falsehood, etc.(reflect the baroque sensibility of the age).
This subchapter includes also a discussion of Shakespeare’s last
major dramatic creation, The Tempest, a romance play in which his tone
changes into a more affirmative one and the central thematic concern is
the possibility of moral regeneration, of the restoration of order.
Subchapter 2.3 aims to acquaint you with some of the basic
features of metaphysical poetry, insisting on its use of conceits, on its
argumentative structure, on its mixture of intense feeling and
intellectual detachment. Both John Donne and Andrew Marvell display
a baroque sensibility in their attraction to paradox and ambiguity, and
they are both great masters of metaphysical wit, skillfully controlling
lyrical effusion by subtle and precise logical argument.
Key words
● Renaissance
● Baroque
● paradox
● scepticism
● tragedy
● romance play
● play-metaphor
● metaphysical poetry
● conceit
● discordia concors

Glossary
• Baroque: the term comes from the Portuguese barroco and the
Spanish barrueco, meaning a rough or imperfectly shaped pearl.
It describes a style in architecture and the visual arts, music and
literature, which dominated the 17th century, and which was
characterised by sumptuous ornamentation and by the search for
effect. Its meaning is often extended to a certain type of
sensibility, not necessarily restricted to the historical period in
which the baroque style flourished. In art, the Baroque is
opposed to Classicism and Neoclassicism.
• blank verse: see the Glossary in Unit 1.
• carpe diem: literally, “seize the day” in Latin; a phrase from one
of Horace’s Odes, meaning “enjoy yourself while you can.” The
carpe diem motif is associated with the theme of the brevity of life
and the inevitability of death.
• Civil War: see the Glossary in Unit 1.
• courtly love: a concept developed during the Middle Ages, in
literary and aristocratic/courtly circles, which was closely linked to
the feudal concept of vassalage and the cult of the Virgin Mary.
• discordia concors: (Latin) literally: harmonious discord; combination
of apparently discordant images or ideas, the joining of opposites in
such a way that a paradoxical sense of harmony is created.
• fall of princes: the traditional theme of a tragedy, as established
by Aristotle (see the Gallery of personalities below), in his treatise
on Poetics. According to him, tragedy was supposed to deal with
the downfall of a noble character, enjoying “reputation and
prosperity.” The disaster is brought on him not by vice and
depravity, but by “some error of judgement,” and its
representation is meant to arouse pity and fear.
• far-fetched: literally: carried too far; improbable, unlikely.
• history plays (or chronicle plays): a form of drama invented by
the Elizabethans, which dramatises a certain historical period,
starting from historical record rather than from myth and legend.
Shakespeare’s chronicle plays include a sequence of four plays
on the War of the Roses (the three parts of Henry VI, and
Richard III – 1590-1592), and another series, consisting in
Richard II, King John, the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V,
written between 1595-1599. These plays are mainly inspired from
the 16th century chronicles of Raphael Holinshed, and they were
highly influential in the shaping of a national consciousness. They
scrutinise the national past, underlining the importance of a
centralised authority which should put an end to the dangers of
anarchy, inherent in the feudal struggles for power.
• Horatian Ode: an ode (see the Glossary in Unit 1) written in a
highly formal, regular pattern, on the model of the ancient Latin
poet Horace (65-8 B.C.).
• hyperbole: a rhetorical figure consisting in deliberate
exaggeration, for the purpose of emphasis.
• imagery: basically, language appealing to the senses. Imagery
represents the coherent system of mental images evoked by

figurative language, to which certain patterns of feeling are
associated, and which direct the reader’s reaction. For instance, in
Macbeth, the recurrent imagery of clothes sitting ill on their owner
intensifies our perception of the protagonist as a usurper, and the
dominant imagery of darkness contributes to the suggestion of the
proportions of the moral evil. In King Lear, frequent images
connected with bodily pain and torture and with animals of prey
strengthen our sense of the extraordinary power of evil, of a humanity
that has become a toy in the hands of indifferent gods.
• Jacobean and Caroline drama: see again subchapter 1.4.1 in
Unit 1.
• masque: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Metaphysical Poets: see again subchapter 1.3 in Unit 1.
• oxymoron: a rhetorical figure in which apparently contradictory
terms are used in conjunction (as in “beautiful tyrant”).
• pastoral: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Petrarchan: related to or modelled on Petrarch (see again the
Gallery of personalities in Unit 1).
• Puritan: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Renaissance: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• revenge tragedy: see again subchapter 1.4.1 in Unit 1.
• sea-change: this phrase from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, used
by Ariel in one of his songs, is used to refer to a complete change
in the nature or character of something, a change which seems
almost magical.
• soliloquy: from Latin solus, i.e. alone, and loqui, i.e. to speak; a
widely accepted dramatic convention, by which a character,
speaking alone on the stage, reveals to the audience his
thoughts, feelings, motives and intentions. In Shakespeare’s
plays, the soliloquies mark the moments of the characters’ most
profound insight, in which some important revelation is reached,
or in which the character discloses the full complexity of his
motives and reveals the depths of his consciousness.
• valediction: a farewell speech (from Latin vale: farewell, and
dicere: to say).
• wit: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.): Greek philosopher, author of works on

logic, ethics, politics, poetics, rhetoric, metaphysics.
• Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784): the most influential critic of the
18th century, author of the impressive critical-biographical work
Lives of the Poets (1779-1781), editor of Shakespeare’s work
(1765). He compiled the first important Dictionary of the English
Language (1755).
• Kyd, Thomas (1557-1595): one of the most popular Elizabethan
dramatists, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, the prototype of
the Renaissance revenge tragedy, modelled on the plays of
Seneca (se again subchapter 1.3.2 in Unit 1).
• Marlowe, Christopher (1564-1593): Elizabethan dramatist, the
most important and influential of Shakespeare’s precursors. His
tragedies (Tamburlane the Great, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of
Malta) depict titanic heroes, whose extraordinary will power and
ambition set them on a risky quest (for absolute power,
knowledge and wealth, respectively).
• Sidney, Philip (1554-1586): important poet of the Elizabethan
age, best known through his sequence of love sonnets Astrophil
and Stella. He is also the author of a prose romance, Arcadia,
and of a critical prose essay, An Apology [i.e. defense] of Poetry,
which played a major role in the definition of English
Renaissance literary aesthetics.
• Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599): one of the greatest English poets,
whose influence on later poets is comparable to that of
Shakespeare and Milton. Like Sidney (see below), Spenser wrote a
sonnet sequence, Amoretti, which enjoyed great popularity. His
masterpiece is the allegorical poem The Fairie Queen, a culmination
of Renaissance poetic art, which glorifies Queen Elizabeth.
• Tudor monarchs: Henry VII (1485-1509), who established
national order and unity after a long period of feudal war; Henry
VIII (1509-1547), Elizabeth I (1558-1603).
SAQ 1
1. emphasis on disorder, violence, conflict, instability
2. emphasis on life’s shortness and insubstantiality (life as dream),
on the macabre and the morbid, on melancholy
3. taste for extravagance, excess, breaking of limits and proportions,
ambiguity
4. scepticism, anxiety, tension
SAQ 2
1. Shakespeare shows a deep understanding of human nature in its
extraordinary variety; he portrays a wide range of feelings,
emotions, attitudes and moral features; he achieves perfectly
convincing characters, in a variety of dramatic registers.
2. The last plays are characterised by a vision of hope and of order
restored; here, innocence is victorious over evil, by contrast with
the former tragic vision of the universe and of man as torn by inner
conflicts.
SAQ 3
The fragment contrasts the confidence and exuberance of the
Renaissance with the scepticism and melancholy characteristic of the
baroque spirit. Hamlet as a Renaissance man glorifies the beauty
and majesty of the universe, and praises man as the masterpiece of
creation, close to angels and God in his power of understanding and
the infinity of his creative potential. On the other hand, to his tragic
consciousness the world appears as irremediably corrupt and
infested with evil, and man as a creature limited by his mortal
condition (“quintessence of dust”).

SAQ 4
1. Hamlet; 2. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello; 3. Othello; 4. Hamlet;
King Lear; 5. King Lear
SAQ 5
In the first place, this hallucination proves Macbeth’s strong
imagination. He is not a cold-blooded killer, and the horrible crime
has immediate effects on his conscience. “Sleep no more”
anticipates the torments of Macbeth’s conscience, unable to find
peace once it has been corrupted by evil. “The innocent sleep” is the
symbol of moral integrity, of a clean mind. As “chief nourisher in life’s
feast,” sleep (i.e. innocent conscience) is part of the natural order of
man’s existence. Macbeth’s feeling that he has lost this privilege of
nature reflects his awareness that his “unnatural” deed is a violation
of moral law (which is “natural”).
SAQ 6
Prospero might have better controlled Caliban in his “brutish”
state. As a truly superior being, however, he chose to raise Caliban
to the condition of a rational creature, endowed with speech. He thus
expected Caliban to overcome his primitive impulses and to develop
more civilised tendencies (“purposes”), guided by rational will.
Prospero seemed also to think that Caliban could be socialised
through speech, which would have enabled him to communicate (e.g.
make his purposes known through words). From Prospero’s point of
view, he failed in his effort to enlighten Caliban, because the latter’s
nature was hopelessly evil. From Caliban’s point of view, the
development of conscience, of his own sense of self, through
language (knowing his “own meaning”), led to his awareness of his
condition as a slave, which he resents.
SAQ 7
1. T; 2. F; 3. F; 4. T; 5. T; 6. F; 7. T
SAQ 8
1. concise expression and density of meaning
2. use of conceits (extended comparisons, usually between highly
dissimilar elements; unexpected, surprising associations)
3. complicated line of argument, which organises and “manages”
intense feeling and emotion; analytical detachment from emotion
4. attempt to reconcile contradictory or discordant experiences, to
blend contraries (e.g. passion and reason, the abstract and the
concrete, etc.)
SAQ 9
The poet associates mutual love with the way in which a pair of
compasses works. This instrument, made of two moving legs articulated
at one end, is a suitable emblem for their souls, which remain perfectly
united, even if physically the lovers must be apart. Perfect circles
(symbolising perfect love) may be traced by means of the compasses,
by keeping one foot fixed and moving the other round this centre. By
analogy, the poet’s love depends on the certainty of his mistress’s
faithfulness and constancy: “Thy firmness makes my circle just.”
Depending on the distance from the centre to the circumference, the
inclination of the fixed leg may vary – it seems to “lean after” the moving
leg, just as the mistress, waiting for her departed lover, will long for him.
But, as the moving leg will “come home” and join its “twin,” so there is
always the certainty of reunion for the lovers. The speaker tries thus to
persuade his mistress of his own constancy of feeling.
SAQ 10
Marriage is associated with love, consent and legality, while rape
presupposes the violation of one’s will. Paradoxically, however, the
metaphor of the speaker’s “marriage” to God’s enemy suggests his
sense of sin. He loves God, in fact, but the implication is that his will and
reason are too weak to defend his faith. The only way out of his loveless
“marriage” to sin is a “divorce,” which only God can effect, and which
would resemble rape. Taking him by force – by the force of the divine
grace –, God would set him free for a complete experience of religious
devotion, which would restore the purity of his faith (being “chaste”).
SAQ 11
If we had time enough and the world were all ours, I would
spend ages in praising every part of your body, because your charms
deserve such praise.
But I know time is merciless; your beauty will fade and my
songs of praise will have no object when you lie in your grave; your
virginity will then be worth nothing, since only worms will “enjoy” it.
Therefore let us enjoy each other while we are still young and
you are beautiful. Your own passion “transpires” in the blush of your
skin, so let us devour Time with the intensity of our desire, instead of
letting it devour us slowly, in the absence of joy.
Further reading
1. Ford, Boris (ed.), The New Pelican Guide to English Literature,
vol. 3, Penguin Books Ltd., 1991 (pp. 97-105; 273-287)
2. Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, vol. 2
(“Shakespeare to Milton”), London: Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1969
(pp. 246-249; 267-283; 302-305)
3. Preda, Ioan-Aurel (coord.), English Literature and Civilisation. The
Didactică şi Pedagogică, 1983 (pp. 34-40; 130-140)

The works of John Milton
UNIT 3
THE WORKS OF JOHN MILTON
Unit Outline
Unit objectives 63
3. The Works of John Milton 63
3.1. Milton, the Christian humanist 63
3.2. Milton’s early poems 64
3.2.1. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso 64
3.2.2. Lycidas – a pastoral elegy 66
3.3. Milton’s sonnets 66
3.3.1. Sonnet VII 67
3.3.2. Sonnet XVII 67
3.4. Paradise Lost – the Christian epic 68
3.4.1. Satan and the fallen angels in Hell 69
3.4.2. The divine foreknowledge of the Fall 70
3.4.3. Raphael’s warning to Adam 72
3.4.4. The creation of the world 72
3.4.5. The seduction of Eve 74
3.4.6. The world after the Fall 75
3.5. The heroes of Paradise Lost 77
3.5.1. Milton’s Satan: the rebel’s inner hell 78
3.5.2. Satan, the “author of all ill” 79
3.5.3. Milton’s depiction of Adam and Eve 81
Summary 82
Key words 83
Glossary 83
SAA No. 1 85
Further reading 87

♦ situate Milton’s literary activity in the historical context

Unit objectives ♦ explain what features of Milton’s work define him as a
Christian humanist
♦ identify themes, motifs and concerns in Milton’s earlier poems
♦ describe the kind of sonnet structure used by Milton
♦ analyse the way in which Milton develops imaginatively and
interprets biblical events in Paradise Lost
♦ state and explain the theme of Paradise Lost
♦ summarise the argument that enables Milton to “justify the
ways of God to men” in his epic poem
♦ define the main features of the character of Milton’s Satan
♦ describe Milton’s treatment of the characters of Adam and
Eve in Paradise Lost
3.1. Milton, the Christian humanist
Milton is one of the most prominent figures of the 17th century,

the author of a work which represents a highly original synthesis of
Renaissance humanism*, baroque* vision, Christian faith and
classical formal perfection.
He lived and created in an age of historical turbulence and
profound change, and the course of his literary career was
consistently marked by his involvement in the political, religious and
civil debates of his age.
Milton’s enduring reputation is ensured by his masterpiece,
John Milton Paradise Lost, the greatest epic poem in English literature, which
(1608-1674) exerted a huge influence on many generations of poets.
Milton had from an early age the conviction of his poetic
vocation, and he dedicated long years of study and preparation to his
accomplishment as a creator. His education was eminently that of a
Christian humanist. At Cambridge (1625-1629), he studied Latin,
A man of Greek and Hebrew, rhetoric and the great works of the classics. After
impressive learning that, he continued to read intensively, accumulating an impressive
knowledge in a diversity of fields (e.g. mathematics, music, theology,
geography, etc.).
In 1638, he went on a trip to Italy, and his acquaintance with the
great artistic achievements of that country and with prominent
personalities enriched his education and contributed to his erudition.
He returned to England when the troubles which were to lead to
the Civil War* started, and he made up his mind about his own
position in the conflicts that agitated his country. He devoted himself
The Puritan heart and soul to the cause defended by the Puritans*, and for almost
patriot twenty years he served their ideal of a truly reformed England, as a
publicist. In his prose essays and pamphlets*, written in English and
in Latin, he approached a diversity of subjects, such as education,
family, politics, religion, the freedom of the press, etc.
His enormous learning, as well as his moral inflexibility,
recommended him for the office of Latin Secretary to the Council of State,

a position that he occupied from 1649 until 1660. With the Restoration*,
his political hopes ended, but his maturity and experience enabled him to
bring to fulfilment the most important part of his poetic work.
As a poet, Milton wrote with the same ease and grace both in
English and in Latin, and he was perfect master of a variety of styles.
His models were the great Greek and Latin poets (Homer*, Ovid*,
Virgil*, etc.), to whose excellence he aspired to rise.
As his poetic personality gained in self-confidence, he started to
move away from themes and concerns which were defining for the
The Christian classicist spirit of the Renaissance. He sought inspiration in biblical
humanist poet mythology, approaching the great religious themes that enabled him
to assert his genius.
Milton’s Christian humanism consists in this fusion of classical
form and Christian themes, in the perfect integration of classical
allusion and pagan mythology with Christian spirituality.
3.2. Milton’s early poems

Milton started writing poetry very early, and his first notable
poems were seven Latin elegies*, which already displayed the
The Latin elegies ambivalence in Milton’s poetic identity as both Christian poet and
classicist humanist. However, these two sides are usually kept apart
in these poems. In some of them, Milton follows Ovid in the emphasis
on sensuous enjoyment, in the optimism and exuberance
accompanying the contemplation of reviving nature, in the treatment
of the theme of love and the use of Greek mythology.
On the other hand, in these poems Milton appears highly
preoccupied by his poetic vocation, by his aspiration to be a Christian
epic* poet, who, like a priest, is in touch with divine secrets. In the
Sixth elegy, for instance, the pastoral* image of the shepherd
becomes a metaphor for the poet-priest engaged in the exploration of
high Christian themes.
Milton’s first important poem in English on a religious theme was
written in 1629: On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, celebrating the
birth (the “nativity”) of Christ and its inauguration of a new order for
humanity. This poem was intended as the first in a series about the
The Nativity Ode significant moments of the Christian year, but Milton did not complete
his plan. However, the Nativity Ode* is a landmark in his creation, as
it is also an ambitious assertion of Milton’s own literary birth as a
“poet-priest.”
3.2.1. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso

To Milton’s long years of preparation for the fulfilment of his
vocation belong also two poems, which are in fact complementary:
L’Allegro [“the cheerful man”] and Il Penseroso [“the
pensive/melancholy man”]. They deal with contrasting moods of
poetic inspiration, or the two sides of the poet’s soul.
L’Allegro describes a day – from morning till sunset – in the life
of the cheerful man, with its pastoral delights. As in other poems,
Milton places emphasis on the dignity of agricultural labour and the
satisfactions that it offers, and on the happiness of rural life, with its
simple pleasures.
In Il Penseroso, the poet emphasises the blessings of the
“pensive,” contemplative mood. The diurnal activities and the
cheerfulness of L’Allegro are replaced here by the nocturnal peace
and quiet of the “lonely tower,” in which the studious poet finds the
gratification of intellectual experience.
There is both parallelism and contrast between the two poems.
In each poem, appropriate mythological allusions contribute to the
creation of the atmosphere.
In both poems, there is a strong emphasis on music, but the
“natural” music of L’Allegro (the song of the lark, the crowing of the
cock, the song of the milkmaid) contrasts with the deep, polyphonic
sounds of the organ. The secular* pleasures of common life, in
L’Allegro, gives way to the mystic exaltation of the poet-student
listening to religious music, in Il Penseroso. In the latter, the poet
hopes to hear “more than is meant to meet the ear” – i.e. he expects
to discern in the heavenly notes a spiritual truth. The final part of Il
Penseroso expresses the poet’s aspiration of attaining visionary
power.
SAQ 1
Make the right choice to continue each of the three beginning

statements; you will thus review some aspects of Milton’s literary
personality.
1. Milton’s Christian humanism is reflected in

a. the integration, in his poetic work, of classical
erudition with biblical themes.
b. his constant preoccupation with his own poetic
becoming.
c. the diversity of subjects in his prose essays and
pamphlets.
2. Milton’s literary ambition was

a. to master a variety of styles.
b. to rival the classics in his perfect mastery of Latin.
c. to become a great epic poet of the Christian age.
3. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso

a. celebrate the diurnal pleasures of pastoral life and
its activities.
b. are complementary poems about poetic inspiration
and creative moods.
c. Are Milton’s first poems in English which deal with
a Christian theme.

suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If your choices
should be wrong, revise subchapters 3.1. and 3.2.

3.2.2. Lycidas – a pastoral elegy

In the same year with L’Allegro and Il Penseroso (1637), Milton
composed another poem in which, again, he defines his poetic
ambition in terms which are both Christian and classical-humanist.
The elegy Lycidas, written at the death of a fellow-student at
Cambridge, uses again the pastoral frame, representing both himself
and his dead mate as shepherds.
The death of a promising young man makes the poet meditate
on existential problems. He asks himself if there is any sense in
preparing oneself for poetic fame and giving up the pleasures of life
when death may so unexpectedly put an end to all endeavour.
Milton adds a contemporary Christian relevance to the classical
pastoral convention when he reflects on the corruption of the church.
The death of the dedicated young man, preparing himself seriously
for becoming a priest, may appear unjust in a world in which corrupt
priests prosper and accede to high offices.
The answer to such questions enlarges the frame of the
pastoral elegy: the true reward for both merit and vice is in heaven,
not on earth. The lamenting poet finds comfort in the thought that the
soul of the dead friend is now with God, in a heavenly pastoral world,
and the end of the elegy brings in a note of personal confidence.
Confronted with the tragic inevitability of death, the shepherd-
poet’s consolation is in his own sense of purpose, in his
determination to carry on with his task and do each day’s work:
“Tomorrow, to fresh woods and pastures new.”
Lycidas shows Milton again preoccupied by his own becoming a
Milton’s concern poet. The early death of his Cambridge mate was an occasion for
with his poetic meditating on the possibility of his own death before having accomplished
fulfilment the great work for which he had been preparing himself for so long.
This fear was accompanied by the paradoxical feeling that his
genius was not ripe enough for the poetic task for which he felt he
was destined. If in other poems of Milton’s early career this thought is
expressed more obliquely, in two of his sonnets he reveals these
anxieties in a direct, personal manner.
3.3. Milton’s sonnets

Milton revived the tradition of the sonnet*, which had known a
period of decline since the Elizabethan age*. He wrote sonnets
intermittently throughout his life, and they were either testimonies of
personal experience and feeling, or occasional and complimentary
compositions.
Irrespective of their nature, Milton’s sonnets demonstrate a
remarkable flexibility, variety and originality in the use of this poetic form.

3.3.1. Sonnet VII

In Sonnet VII (“How soon hath time”), written in 1631, Milton
laments the passing of his youth without any sign of poetic ripeness,
but finds consolation in his faith in Providence. He has reached the
age of twenty four, and confronts the evidence of a “late spring,” with
no “bud or blossom” to promise ripe fruit. The life of study and leisure
that the poet had been leading was a period of prolonged
apprenticeship*, in which the accumulation of knowledge was meant
to create a solid foundation for his future great work.
In the first part of the sonnet, he admits, with a certain sadness,
that, at his age, other young men have demonstrated “inward
ripeness,” that they are “timely happy spirits”, i.e. they have been
fortunately able to prove their maturity at the right time.
The final six lines of the sonnet change this tone of lamentation
to one of self-comfort at the thought that heaven has already decided
his “lot,” “mean or high” as it may be, and that the passing of the time
will eventually confirm if he is destined for glory.
As a Christian poet, Milton has the strong sense that his poetic
accomplishment is a task imposed by God (his “great task-master”).
Since for God time is in fact eternity (“All is…as ever” in God’s eye), it
God: the poet’s does not matter if this task is fulfilled soon or late. The only thing that
“great task- matters is that he should have “grace to use it so,” to carry out the
master” task in such a way as to make his achievement count in eternity. If he
is to transcend time by literary fame, he must admit, patiently, that the
unfolding of his poetic destiny is not only a matter of time, but of
God’s eternal will.
3.3.2. Sonnet XVII

After almost twenty years, in 1652, in another poem of this kind
(Sonnet XVII), Milton was still invoking Patience to avoid the anxiety
caused by his feeling of “unripeness.”
By this time, he had asserted himself as a successful publicist,
Lamenting the loss making his political and religious views known in a series of influential
of his eyesight essays, but he had not fulfilled his great poetic promise. A sad
biographical circumstance increased Milton’s anxiety in this respect:
he was going blind. When he wrote Sonet XVII, Milton’s eye-sight
was definitively compromised, and the theme of blindness was to
accompany the great themes of his coming masterpieces.
In Sonnet XVII, Milton meditates on his loss of sight, confessing
his temptation to ask, foolishly: how can God expect him to fulfill his
task if He has decided to make him blind? (“Doth God exact day-
labour, light denied?”).
To prevent such a complaint, Patience – a Christian virtue –
teaches him that God is served not only by actions, but also by
Christian humility, by the acceptance of one’s fortune – of God’s “mild
Milton dictating yoke.” It would be arrogance to think that God needs “either man’s
Paradise Lost to work or gift” to assert His greatness, since, as King of Heaven, he
his daughters commands “thousands” (of spirits, angels), who carry out the divine
will. Patient and dignified waiting for God’s will to be fulfilled is also a
way of serving Him.
SAQ 2
Milton adopted the form of the Italian sonnet, made up of two

sections: an octave (an eight-line stanza) and a sestet (a six-line
stanza). This formal pattern usually corresponds to a certain
thematic structure, which in Sonnets VII and XVII is the same.
Read these sonnets (Texts 3.1. and 3.2. in the Reader), paying
attention to what their octave and sestet deal with, respectively.
What is the common thematic development in these two sonnets?
Your answer should not exceed 8 lines/80 words.

there should be significant differences, read again subchapter
3.2.3. and the two sonnets.
3.4. Paradise Lost – the Christian epic

Milton began the composition of his masterpiece in 1657, when
he was already blind, and he worked at it over several years,
completing it in 1665 and publishing it in 1667. Paradise Lost was the
fruit of long years of preparation and meditation, and it represented
the fulfillment of his ambition to write an epic which would be
“doctrinal to a nation.”
He had always dreamed of reaching the stature of the great epic
poets that were his models – Homer, Virgil, Dante* –, and of leaving
to posterity an undying work. His blindness was no obstacle – as he
advanced in the composition of the poem, the passages stored in his
mind were transcribed after his dictation.
As the several Invocations in the poem suggest, he expected
the inspiring Muse to compensate for his physical blindness with a

more penetrating understanding of spiritual truths, to “illumine” what
is “dark” in him, and thus to enable him to attain indeed to a
“prophetic strain,” as he anticipated in Il Penseroso.
Milton had thought, over the years, of many possible subjects
The subject and for his capital work – subjects inspired either from British or from
theme of Paradise biblical history. Finally, he decided on the subject of the Fall – the
Lost double fall, in fact, of Lucifer* from Heaven, and of Adam and Eve
from Paradise.
The twelve books which make up Paradise Lost unfold an
impressive epic action, whose main moments are the fall of the rebel
angels, the creation of the world and of man, man’s temptation and
fall into sin, and his loss of Paradise.
Milton’s ambition was, as he stated in the opening Invocation,
“to justify the ways of God to men,” and the central theme of his
poem is that of felix culpa* – the fortunate mistake, the fault with
The Felix culpa
happy consequences. He interprets poetically the biblical events, in
theme
a daring, original epic scenario, in which man’s fall, brought about by
his disobedience, is presented as a necessary moment in the
“Eternal Providence*”, an evil which is turned to good in God’s overall
plan for the history of creation.
Milton approached in his grandiose epic problems which
provoked heated polemics in his time. These problems may be
The belief in summarised by the alternative freedom vs. predestination*. The
free will poem’s doctrinal foundation is the idea that God’s infinite knowledge
and power do not exclude man’s freedom of action and choice.
Starting from the dualism good/evil, the poem develops an implicit
debate on such contraries as freedom and tyranny, obedience and
rebellion, knowledge and ignorance/innocence, (divine) love and
(Satanic) hatred, etc.
Paradise Lost defines Milton best as a Christian humanist. His
work is encyclopaedic, the greatest synthesis of the Western literary
tradition. Its Christian frame absorbs and integrates Milton’s
astonishing learning, accumulated throughout his life, but his
erudition, which is never ornamental, is subordinated to the poetic
intensification or clarification of the main theme.
3.4.1. Satan and the fallen angels in Hell

The poem begins in conventional epic manner, with the
poet’s invocation of the Muse. Then the reader is plunged into
the middle of the action: the fallen angels in Hell, burning in the
“darkness visible” of those “regions of sorrow,” forever deprived
of the glory, happiness and peace they had enjoyed in Heaven,
are gathered to listen to Satan.
The “lost Archangel,” full of the bitterness of defeat,
declares his hatred against God and his intention to regain
Heaven. Incapable of accepting the thought of submission and
of his imprisonment in Hell, Satan is determined to wage “eternal
war” to his “grand Foe [i.e. enemy]” who “holds the tyranny of
Heaven.”
He suggests to his followers that their “work” should no longer
be done by force – since that is the attribute of the Almighty –, but by
“fraud or guile [i.e. cunning].” He thus anticipates the moment of the
Temptation, in which his success was due to deceit and
dissimulation. Satan also tells his companions of a prophecy
according to which a new world and a new kind of creature were to
be brought into being by God.
The fallen angels are all called to a council in Satan’s infernal
The council of the palace, Pandemonium*, and their discussions are rendered in Book
fallen angels II. The accepted solution is to reach the new world created by God, to
find the weakness of man and to seduce him to join their party. The
corruption of God’s creation was thought better than any kind of
revenge.
Satan, by virtue of his leading position, assumes the danger of
trying to break free from the formidable prison of Hell, to seek the
newly created Earth. His voyage through the great gulf separating
Hell from Heaven, the ascension from darkness to the light of his
“native seat” – now forbidden to him –, is rendered in one of the most
highly poetic passages in the poem. Milton displays here at his best
his gift of evoking vast spaces and general chaos, the overwhelming
discord of the elements of a yet uncreated world, the “wild abyss”
governed by Night, Chaos and Chance.
3.4.2. The divine foreknowledge of the Fall

Book III, whose setting is in Heaven, concentrates the doctrinal
argument of the poem. God, knowing in advance that Satan will be
successful in his attempt to “pervert” man, explains to His Son the
reason for his allowing this to happen.
Man’s sin of disobedience must be punished justly, and the only
Divine justice and way to satisfy divine justice is a sacrificial death that would redeem
mercy man, i.e. set him free from sin. God’s Son offers to pay this price for
the reconciliation of man to his heavenly Father, and so “Heavenly
love shall outdo [i.e. surpass] hellish hate.”
God anticipates the event of His Son’s incarnation, death and
resurrection, and He commands His angels to adore and celebrate
man’s Saviour and “universal king.”
Meanwhile, Satan has reached the Garden of Eden, whose
splendour is described more effectively through Satan’s jealous eyes.
Book IV: He contemplates with envy the beauty and the innocent happiness of
Satan’s arrival Adam and Eve, and plans to “excite their minds / With more desire to
in the know,” and to make them transgress God’s interdiction of tasting the
Garden of Eden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Satan is prevented from carrying out
his design by the angels guarding Paradise, and he flies away.

SAQ 3
Read Text 3.4. in the Reader, which contains God’s
justification for allowing man to fall. What is God’s argument, and
what are its implications? Answer in no more than 15 lines/150
words.

there should be major differences, read again the text, more
carefully.

3.4.3. Raphael’s warning to Adam

In Book V, the angel Raphael, sent by God, visits Adam in
Paradise to warn him about the danger from Satan. Raphael tries to
restrain Adam’s curiosity about “things above this world,” and
reminds him that obedience to his Maker means enjoying the present
happy state, without aspiring to know things above his power of
understanding. He draws Adam’s attention that God has made him
“perfect, not immutable [i.e. that cannot change],” and that this
happiness depends on his free will.
Adam asks Raphael to tell him the story of the fallen angels, so
that he may know more about his enemy, Satan. The rest of Book V
and Book VI are a retrospective account of the war in Heaven,
instigated by Lucifer, whose pride had been hurt when God
W. Blake: proclaimed His Son the “Messiah, King Anointed*”, as this diminished
The downfall of the his own power and pre-eminence.
rebel angels (1808) The story of the “deep fall / Of those too high aspiring who
rebelled / With Satan” is given by Raphael as a “terrible example” of
the reward for disobedience, and he explicitly warns Adam:
“remember, and fear to transgress!”
3.4.4. The creation of the world

Raphael also tells Adam the story of the creation of the world and
of man, after the defeat of the rebel angels. The six days of the biblical
Genesis are developed by Milton into an impressive poetic vision, in
Book VII. In Milton’s interpretation, God entrusted His Son with the act
of Creation and the latter’s “powerful Word / And Spirit” gave life and
order to “unformed” matter and turned chaos into cosmos. Milton
displays an extraordinary evocative power, both in the large-scale
description of the making of celestial bodies or in the sublime picture of
the primal waters, and in the description of more familiar details of
earthly Nature, in the multitude of its phenomena and living forms.
It is interesting that, in Milton’s poem, the divine creation took
place after the fall of Lucifer, and its impulse was God’s desire to
The divine creation: create “good out of evil.” Man himself was created as a “better race,”
Good coming out of to fill in the “vacant room [i.e. space]” left by the fallen angels. The
Evil idea of Good coming out of Evil is central to Paradise Lost, and most
evident in the treatment of the fall of Adam and Eve.
In Book VIII, Adam is grateful to Raphael, the “divine historian,”
for the evocation of the making of the world, and wishes to know
more about the celestial motions. Raphael once again advises him
against trying to penetrate the secrets of the “great Architect.” He
explains to Adam that true wisdom lies in the desire to know those
things which directly concern one’s own being.
Adam admits that, and, in order to prolong his guest’s visit, he
tells him about his own experiences after he was created, and about
his perfect happiness in the company of “divinely fair” Eve, with her
“absolute” loveliness and grace, sweetness, innocence and “virgin
modesty.” Raphael leaves them, not before repeating his warning.

SAQ 4
Text 3.7. in the Reader presents, through Raphael’s words,

the first moments in the creation of the world: the making of
heavens and skies, and the “Spirit of God” infusing life into the
primal ocean. What does Milton suggest by the image of God
using his “golden compasses”? Answer in the space below, in no
more than 10 lines/100 words.

your answer should differ significantly from the offered
suggestions, read the fragment again, more carefully.
W. Blake: Urizen as the creator of the material world

(from the poem Europe. A Prophecy, 1794)

3.4.5. The seduction of Eve

Book IX presents the great scene of Eve’s seduction by Satan,
whose spirit has entered the body of a serpent, the “subtlest [i.e.
most subtle*] beast of all the field.” Back to guarded Paradise in this
disguise, Satan gives voice again to his torments and to his ambition
of destroying God’s creation.
Meanwhile, Adam and Eve have a difference of opinion: Eve
insists that they should divide their daily labour and work in different
places, while Adam tries to convince her that together they would be
more safe from harm. At last, her argument wins: she is willing to put
her innocence to trial, certain that the proud tempter will not be
successful.
W. Blake: Satan finds Eve alone, and, for a moment, he is disarmed by her
Satan with Adam and angelic grace, but he regains the strength of his hate and appears to
Eve (1808) her in the splendid shape of the Serpent. Eve is amazed at the miracle
of a beast capable of speech and, flattered by his praise of her
“celestial beauty,” she is finally seduced by his promise of higher
knowledge and by his assurance that there is no sin in such aspiration.
Credulous Eve tastes from the forbidden fruit and tries to
convince Adam that its effect is not to open the way to “evil
unknown,” but to “open eyes” and bring those who taste closer to the
condition of a god. Adam is chilled with horror at Eve’s irresponsible
mistake but decides to share her fate, since the “link of nature” is so
strong between them that he cannot imagine living without her.
The disaster of the original sin shakes the foundations of the
The effects of natural order: Earth trembles, the thundering skies weep, and all
the fall on Nature Nature is in pain. The “calm region” of their state of mind, their inward
peace, is now troubled by the “higher winds” of negative passions –
“anger, hate / Mistrust, suspicion, discord” – which make reason and
will helpless. Their former innocent sensuality is now replaced by
guilty lust and the feeling of shame, and all harmony between them is
destroyed by bitter reciprocal accusations.
Book IX: Eve and the Serpent (illustration by John Martin, 1827)

SAQ 5
Text 3.8. in the Reader contains four fragments from Book IX,
from the speech by which Satan tempts Eve into disobeying God
and eating the forbidden fruit. The sentences below describe
various moves in Satan’s strategy of seduction. Match these
sentences with the fragment, or fragments, in which these moves
are illustrated. Write the number(s) of the corresponding
fragment(s) in the indicated space, at the end of each sentence.
a. He flatters Eve, hoping to arouse her pride. _______

b. He denigrates God, accusing Him of keeping Adam and
Eve ignorant so that He may hold them in a state of
servitude. _______
c. He tries to awaken in Eve the spirit of defiance and
insubordination. _______
d. He tries to dispel Eve’s fear of death, by inciting her to
disbelieve God’s threat. _______
e. He tempts Eve with the promise of absolute knowledge,
which will bring her close to the condition of God. _______
f. He tries to introduce into Eve’s mind the doubt about God’s
being “the author of all things.” _______
g. He tries to arouse Eve’s suspicion that God’s reason for
His interdiction may not be man’s own good, but His fear
that His power might be weakened if His creatures
equalled him in knowledge. _______

any of your matches should be wrong, read once more the
indicated text and do the exercise again, on a separate sheet.
3.4.6. The world after the Fall

In the next books, the consequences of man’s original sin
are unfolded in episodes of great poetic and emotional intensity.
Book X: the world Milton continues to expand moments of the biblical Genesis, but
open to Sin and he also adds symbolic episodes, such as the building of a huge
Death bridge across chaos by Sin and Death, which marks the
conquest of the world by Satan.
Satan’s victory seems complete, and he proudly boasts of it
in the Pandemonium, but, in the middle of this speech, the whole
assembly of fallen angels are temporarily turned into monstrous
hissing snakes and dragons. Seduced by the illusion of the Tree
of Knowledge, they taste its fruit, but are terribly humiliated to
find that they are tasting only dust and ashes. This emphasises
the idea that Satan’s victory is not final, as God himself predicts:
His Son, the destined “restorer of Mankind*,” is the one who will,
at last, annihilate Sin and Death.

After the story of man’s fall, the emphasis on the presence
and role of the Son of God increases. In Book X, God sends Him
to communicate the divine punishment to Adam and Eve,
combining thus justice with mercy. In Book XI, the Son of God
acts as a mediator between the sinful humans and His Father,
asking God to accept their prayers and sincere repentance, and
offering to pay the price of His own death for the peace between
God and mankind.
God consents, but He decides that Adam and Eve may no
God decides Adam longer live in Paradise, and He sends the archangel Michael to
and Eve’s expulsion show them out. Adam suffers deeply for the loss of his native
from Heaven place and of God’s proximity, but Michael comforts him.
Before they leave Paradise, Michael shows Adam a vision
of the future, an anticipation of the effects of the original sin on
the following generations. Moments of the biblical history are
unfolded before Adam’s eyes, who can see the “many shapes of
Death” and the many ways that lead to it, from man’s own vices
– violence, intemperance, pride, etc. – to the hostility of Nature,
changed drastically after Adam’s fall.
The vision is replaced by Michael’s narrative in Book XII,
The promise of
where the central episode is the promised birth of God’s Son,
redemption*:
Jesus, his suffering, death, resurrection and ascension to
the coming of
Heaven. This comforting story gives Adam peace of mind and
Christ
the hope that man is able to build – in Michael’s words – “a
paradise within,” founded on love, faith and good deeds.
The certainty that, through Christ, evil will finally be turned
to good makes Adam and Eve’s exile from Paradise more
tolerable, and the poem closes not on a note of despair, but of
sadness.
Book XII: Adam and Eve leaving Paradise (illustration by John Martin, 1827)

SAQ 6
Text 3.9. in the Reader represents the ending of Paradise Lost.

How do these lines present Adam and Eve at the moment of their exile
into the world? Your answer should not exceed 12 lines /120 words.

they should differ in major points, read the fragment again, more
carefully.
3.5. The heroes of Paradise Lost

Many critics have remarked the paradox that the heroic spirit of
Milton’s epic is embodied in Satan, while Adam has more in common
with a tragic hero. It may be argued, however, that both Satan and
the human couple are heroic – each in a different way in their
endurance of the bitter consequences of their sin, which they fully
assume.

3.5.1. Milton’s Satan: the rebel’s inner hell

The most fascinating of Milton’s heroes is undoubtedly
Satan. Over a century after the poem’s publication, the
Romantic poets were to establish the view that Satan is
actually the main hero, in whom they saw an embodiment of the
spirit of freedom and of resistance to tyrannical oppression.
William Blake remarked that Satan is Milton’s most
accomplished creation, and that Milton gave the full measure of
his literary genius in the character of Satan because he
instinctively supported the idea of freedom.
From the beginning of the poem, Satan appears indeed as
a champion of freedom, unwilling to serve a power that he
considered tyrannical. He displays majesty and grandeur even
in his fallen condition, and his extraordinary courage “never to
submit or yield” inspires his followers. In moments when the
fallen angels feel despair at having lost Heaven, Satan knows
how to inflame again their ambition of re-ascending and their
thirst for revenge.
In Hell, Satan seems to comfort himself with the thought
that at least he is free, but he also knows that this freedom is a
form of punishment, since it is accompanied by suffering and
torment. This is why he is in a continual state of frustration and
anger, and he finds inner strength only in the intensity of his
hatred.
Pride is one of Satan’s most prominent features in
Pride and ambition Paradise Lost. Before his fall, he had been the first Archangel,
“great in power / In favour and pre-eminence.” He instigates the
other angels to rebellion in the name of freedom from servitude,
but for him freedom does not mean equality: among the rebel
angels, he naturally assumes the role of a leader, and his great
ambition is “to reign.”
Envy accompanies Satan’s thirst for power. He is envious
Envy and hate
of God’s Son and His title as King of Heaven, he is envious of
God’s omnipotence, and his longing for the delights of his
former existence torments him like an inner hell.
One of the most powerful illustrations of this feeling which
consumes Satan is the scene in which he sees Adam and Eve
for the first time, “Imparadised in one another’s arms” – i.e.
made happy in their innocent love, which is itself a paradise.
This sight is for him “hateful” and “tormenting,” as he cannot
help comparing their bliss with his own condition in Hell, where
there is “neither joy nor love,” only the pain of longing and
unfulfilled desire.

3.5.2. Satan, the “author of all ill”

The only way in which Satan can define himself as an
equal to the power that he refuses to serve is to become its
irreconcilable opponent. As God’s absolute antagonist, Satan
can assert his freedom of action only in the sphere of evil.
He is determined “to do ill” – which is “the contrary to his
high will” – or to pervert the good done by God, and “out of
good still to find means of evil.” He is “the author of all ill,” and
the “Enemy of Mankind,” in whose destruction he finds
complete satisfaction for his hurt pride.
Satan’s greatness as a character comes from the sublime
intensity of his negative passions. His “immortal hate” makes
revenge his only aim, and he invests all his titanic energies in
his destructive plan. Satan represents the negation of the
creative power of the divine Word: his revenge is accomplished
not by force, but by the evil subtlety of his mind and the
corrupting power of his word. Awakening in man the impulse to
question, he is the promoter of suspicion and doubt, the
destroyer of faith.
Satan is The Tempter, and his power of seduction comes
The negative from the mastery of a very efficient rhetoric. Satan’s speeches
power of have an impressive convincing force, but the epic poet
rhetoric: insistently underlines their manipulative intentions.
Satan the It is with “high words,” which actually lacked substance
Tempter that he manages to revive the courage of the depressed fallen
angels. It is also with “persuasive* words,” seeming reasonable
and true, that he determines Eve to break the divine
interdiction.
The temptation of Eve is in fact the repetition of the earlier
act of persuading the angels to join him in his rebellion. Milton
insists on the fact that they abandoned “the eternal splendours
of Heaven” and followed Satan seduced by his promises of
freedom and greatness.
Gustave Doré:
Satan (1870)

SAQ 7
Text 3.3. in the Reader contains a part of Satan’s speech

before his followers, in Hell. His words reveal some of the defining
features of Milton’s hero. Read the whole fragment carefully, and
point out what features of Satan’s nature are illustrated by the
following lines:
A. “A mind not to be changed by time or place, “and “The mind is

its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell
of Heaven”? (Answer in no more than 4 lines/40 words.)
B. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” (6 lines /60

words)
Compare your answers with those offered in the section

there are significant differences, revise subchapters 3.5.1. and
3.5.2., and read the indicated fragment again.

3.5.3. Milton’s depiction of Adam and Eve

Poetically, the character of Satan is Milton’s greatest
achievement in Paradise Lost. But it is an evidence of Milton’s genius
that, in spite of the fascination and seductive power with which he is
invested, there is not any doubt left about his fundamental evil.
Satan’s torments in Hell, the titanic dimension of his suffering,
are set against Adam and Eve’s lamentations after the fall. While
Satan’s pain is always accompanied by the proud defiance of God,
the sorrow of the fallen humans at their own weakness and their final
recognition of their fault entitles them to God’s mercy.
Both Adam and Eve display a certain Satanic fascination with
W. Blake: the possibility of overcoming their condition through knowledge, but
The expulsion from Milton deals with it as one of the central paradoxes of the human
Eden 1808) condition. Created in God’s image, gifted with reason – a divine
attribute –, man has paid a terrible price for the wisdom of not
imitating Satan, of understanding and accepting his limits.
Milton depicts Adam and Eve’s fall not as the result of
depravity, but as a consequence of their wrong choices, of their
wrong use of the freedom given by God. There is a tragic
combination of greatness and weakness in their portrayal, and Milton
expresses both admiration and compassion for them. Fallen man is
not a hateful creature, deprived of worth. He is now more aware of
his freedom and his potentiality.
The way in which Milton refers to Adam and Eve throughout the
poem points out his reverence to the original pair, as well as his
identification with them in their condition of creatures that have fallen,
but who can hope for redemption*. Adam is called Sire* of Men,”
“Patriarch of Mankind,” “Our great Progenitor [i.e. ancestor,
precursor],” “Our Author.” Eve is the “Mother of Mankind,” “our
general mother,” “mother of human race,” but also “our credulous
mother.” The insistent use of the adjective “our” suggests Milton’s
invitation to the reader to join him in his identification.
In his last conversation with Michael, in Book XII, Adam’s
enlarged understanding emerges in perfect fusion with his
strengthened faith. He has the revelation of the grandeur of God’s
plan and of the “goodness infinite” of the Creator. He is now able to
understand God’s final purpose, of turning all evil into good by the
supreme act of divine grace: the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice for
man.
Although Paradise has become a forbidden place for them, the
protagonists of Milton’s ambitious epic leave it not in hopeless
disgrace, but armed with the wisdom of faith. The consequences of
their fall are great because their virtues – so tragically tested – are
great.
As a humanist, Milton is the heir of the Renaissance in his
glorification of man and his virtues. As a Christian, he justifies “the
ways of God to men” by showing the necessity of the divine grace.

SAQ 8
Text 3.5. in the Reader, contains a fragment from God’s

speech in Book III, in which he explains to His Son why the fall of
man was inevitable, a necessary part of His design. Read this
fragment and summarise its argument, in no more than 8 lines/80
words.
Compare your answer with that offered in the section

there should be major differences, you are recommended a more
careful reading of the indicated text.
Summary
In this unit, you have been acquainted with some aspects of the
prominent literary personality of John Milton, one of the greatest
English poets. His work is that of a Christian humanist: his
astonishing classical erudition and his aspiration to the formal
perfection of his classical models combine with his interest in
religious themes.
Devoted to the Puritan cause during the Civil War, Milton was
deeply involved in the religious and political debates of mid-17th
century. Convinced also of his poetic vocation, he prepared himself
for it during long years.
Some of Milton’s earlier works display this obsessive concern
with his becoming a great poet. Subchapter 3.2. presents some of his
notable early compositions – the Latin elegies, the Nativity Ode, the
pastoral elegy Lycidas, and the twin poems L’Allegro and Il
Penseroso. The same obsession with poetic ripeness may be found

in two of his sonnets, presented in subchapter 3.3.
Milton’s impressive epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) is the fruit
of his mature vision, and the culmination of his poetic achievement
as a Christian humanist. The declared aim of Milton’s epic is “to
justify the ways of God to men,” and its great Christian theme is that
of felix culpa. Subchapter 3.4. offers a brief presentation of the
subject and structure of the poem, which interprets poetically key
moments in biblical history and elements of biblical mythology. The
central events in Milton’s epic are the fall of Lucifer and of the rebel
angels, the creation of the world and of man, the fall of man and the
loss of Paradise, and the promise of man’s reconciliation with God
through the sacrifice of Christ.
Subchapter 3.5. concerns itself with Milton’s heroes in Paradise
Lost. Undoubtedly, the most fascinating and complex creation is
Satan – Lucifer in his fallen condition. Milton emphasises his fortitude
and strength of will, his love of freedom, his courage and majesty,
which are, however, put in the service of evil. His destructive energy
represents a negation of the creative power of the divine word. Satan
is dominated by powerful negative passions which keep him the
prisoner of an inner hell.
In Milton’s vision of the original sin, Adam and Eve are treated
both with the typical Renaissance admiration for man’s potential and
virtues, and with the Christian compassion for their unhappy choice.
Milton justifies the fall of man and his exile from Paradise in the
context of a providential history, in which divine grace will eventually
turn all evil into good, but also in which man may, at any time, be
tested for the responsibility which must accompany the exercise of
his free will.
Key words
● Christian humanism
● elegy
● sonnet
● epic
● the Fall of Man
● the original sin
● free will
● Lucifer / Satan
● Felix culpa
Glossary
• anointed: from to anoint: to apply oil on someone in a religious

ceremony, as a sign of consecration or sanctification.
• apprenticeship: the training for a trade or for any kind of activity.
• Baroque: see the Glossary in Unit 2.
• Civil War: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.

• elegy: a meditative poem lamenting the death of someone, or
some tragic event. In classical literature, the range of subjects in
an elegy was wider.
• epic: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• felix culpa: this phrase comes from a line in the Latin version of
the Catholic religious service held on Easter Sunday. Man’s
sin/fault was “happy” because its reward was Christ, the “great
and good redeemer” (i.e. the one who sets man free from sin).
• foreknowledge: knowledge of something before it happens.
• humanism: see classical revival in the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Lucifer: the name of the archangel who led the rebel angels. It
means “the carrier of light.” After the fall from Heaven, he is
called Satan.
• ode: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• pamphlet: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Pandemonium: a word coined by Milton (from Greek pan: all,
every, and daimon: demon) – the place where all demons
gathered. The word may refer, by extension, to a place of wild
confusion, noise and chaos.
• pastoral: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• persuasive: having the power or ability to persuade (i.e. to
convince, to cause to believe).
• predestination: from a theological point of view, the act by which
God determines in advance the events and their course.
• Providence: God’s kindness, benevolent care or protection of his
creatures.
• Puritans: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• redemption: the deliverance (the rescuing) of man from sin
through the incarnation, suffering and death of Christ.
• Restoration: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Restorer of Mankind: Christ as the one who will return (restore)
man to God’s grace and to his original condition.
• secular: related to worldly things (as opposed to sacred); not
concerned with or related to religion.
• Sire: a respectful term of address, formerly used when speaking
to a king.
• sonnet: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• subtle: not immediately evident, difficult to detect (or analyse). It
may also mean cunning, clever in using tricks.
• Dante: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet, author of La

Divina Commedia, the allegorical account of the poet’s journey
through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, guided by Virgil and his
idealised love Beatrice.
• Homer: Greek poet (c. 800 B.C.), to whom are attributed the
great epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey.
• Ovid: Publius Ovidius Nasso (43 B.C.-17 A.D.), Roman poet,
whose works include the poem on love Ars Amatoria and the
poem on myths Metamorphoses.
• Virgil: Publius Ovidius Maro (70-19 B.C.), one of the greatest
Roman poets, whose epic poem The Aeneid relates the
experiences of Aeneas after the fall of legendary Troy.
Send-away assignment no. 1
This assignment covers Unit 2 and Unit 3. It will be therefore

advisable to revise the preceding unit, with special attention to the
indicated subchapters.
1. Texts 2.3. and 2.5. in the Reader represent short fragments

from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and The Tempest. In both of
them, the baroque motif of the theatrical illusion is developed.
Macbeth delivers his monologue immediately after he is
informed about Lady Macbeth’s death, at the end of the play,
before the final battle. Prospero’s speech closes the
representation given in honour of Ferdinand and Miranda.
• What characteristic baroque theme do both fragments
illustrate? Given the different context – tragic in Macbeth, romantic
in The Tempest –, what is the difference in the implications of the
two play-metaphors?
The answer to these questions should not exceed 25 lines / 250
words. You will find it helpful to read again subchapter 2.1., the
paragraphs about Macbeth in 2.2.1., and the last paragraph of
2.2.2.
The weight of this task in the assessment of this SAA is 50%.
2. At the beginning of Book IV, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan

prepares himself to enter Paradise and to accomplish his
diabolical design of tempting Eve, and thus of destroying man,
God’s creation. His speech reveals Satan’s tormented mind
and the multitude of passions that agitate his soul. Text 3.6. in
the Reader renders most of his memorable monologue, in
which he explores his inner hell, either with remarkable lucidity
or blinded by his hate and ambition.
• Read attentively this fragment, which reveals the complexity of
Milton’s hero. Identify his conflicting feelings and the various
thoughts that trouble his conscience, before he firmly decides to
carry out his evil plan. You will thus be drawing a portrait of
Milton’s Satan.
40 lines/400 words should be enough for your answer (apart from
the lines that you are expected to quote for illustration). A revision
of subchapter 3.4. as well as of SAQ 7 and its solution at the end
of the unit might help you to better understand the text and
organise your answer. You may also consider it useful to pay
attention to the following aspects when reading the text:
• Satan’s present misery set in opposition with the memories of
his former condition, in Heaven
• his oscillation between remorse and pride
• his oscillation between self-justification and self-blame for his
rebellion against God
• his consideration and rejection of the possibility of rehabilitating
himself before God
• his determination to turn his suffering into satisfaction
• his impressive self-knowledge
The weight of this task in this SAA is 50%.
SAA no. 1 will count as 10% in your final assessment. Remember

that, in grading your paper, your tutor will take into account:
• the closeness of your answer to the formulated requirement
(30%). Pay special attention to the instructions for each task.
SAQ 1
1.a.; 2.c.; 3.b.
SAQ 2
In the first section (the octave), both sonnets deal with the
theme of loss (the poet’s sense of the passing of time; his blindness,
respectively) and with the anxiety that poetic fulfilment is late to
come. The latter part of both sonnets (the sestet) changes the mood
to one of patient confidence. The poet places his trust in Providence,
comforting himself with the faith that his poetic destiny is in God’s
hands.
SAQ 3
God’s whole argument is based on the idea of freedom.
Created “just and right,” man shared the perfection of the angels
(“the Ethereal Powers and Spirits”) and their complete freedom of will
and judgment. The paradox of freedom, however, is that one may
choose right or wrong. The implication is that God gave man
conscience, or reason, i.e. the “instrument” by which to exercise his
free will, and reason makes man, not God, responsible for his
choices. God cannot use His infinite power and knowledge to prevent
the errors of those who are free to choose, since that would mean
the “revocation” of His own “high decree” by which man was made
free. The fall of man, like that of the angels, is thus not attributable to
God. Both man and the rebel angels are “authors to themselves in
all.” In the case of man, the divine punishment is compensated by
mercy (the sending of Jesus as mankind’s saviour), as man’s wrong
choice was not the pure result of his free will, but the consequence of
evil influence.
SAQ 4
The image of God using His divine instrument (the “golden
compasses”) to draw the “just circumference” of the world implies the
idea of perfection and rationality. Milton emphasises the geometrical,
rational spirit of the Creator (he refers to Him elsewhere as “the great
Architect”), who draws a firm line between the formed and the
formless (chaos), the intelligible and the unintelligible (the dark void).
The same rational spirit separates what is vital from what is “adverse
to life” (the “infernal dregs”).
SAQ 5
a. 1,4; b. 2; c. 2,3,4; d. 1; e. 2; f. 3; g. 4
SAQ 6
For Adam and Eve, Paradise is now a forbidden place, and the
image of the terrible gates, guarded by fear-inspiring armed angels,
is meant to keep alive the memory of their transgression. Forced to
look ahead, they soon master the sadness of their loss and confront
the wide world as a place in which they are expected to exercise
judiciously their free will, under the guidance of Providence. Their
hesitant steps suggest their awareness of the difficulty of all choice,
of the responsibility that accompanies freedom, but at least they have
the mutual comfort of their love, of human solidarity.
SAQ 7
1. These lines suggest Satan’s formidable strength of will and the
independence of his indestructible spirit. It is his will and desire
that give value to things around. If Hell is a space of freedom,
then it is like Heaven for a spirit that cannot accept constraints.
2. This line illustrates both his aspiration to complete independence
and his ambition. Incapable of obedience to God, Satan is willing
to exchange the happiness of Heaven for the torments in Hell,
comforting himself that he exchanged submission for sovereignty.
Satan feels God’s absolute power as a limitation to his enormous
ambition, and for him servitude in Heaven is the real hell.
SAQ 8
God cannot be pleased with blind submission, with passive
virtue. He wants man’s obedience to be the result of an act of free
choice, i.e. to be dictated by Reason. If God leaves man’s loyalty,
faith and love untested, His gift of Reason to man has no justification
(it is “useless and vain”). Man is not a free creature, as God has
made him, unless he exercises his will and reason, i.e. unless he is
put in the situation of making choices.
Further reading
1. Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, vol. 2
(“Shakespeare to Milton”), London: Secker and Warburg Ltd.,
1969 (pp. 435-449)
3. Turcu, Luminiţa Elena, The Literature of the Beginnings. From
Beowulf to Paradise Lost, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2003 (pp.
141-152)

The Restoration and the Augustan Age
UNIT 4
THE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE
Unit Outline
Unit objectives 89
4. The Restoration and the Augustan Age 89
4.1. Restoration drama 89
4.1.1. Restoration theatre – a form of Court entertainment 89
4.1.2. Dominant forms in Restoration drama 90
4.1.3. Restoration comedy and its character types 90
4.1.4. William Congreve, a master of satirical comedy of manners 92
4.1.5. The rise of sentimental comedy 93
4.2 English literary Neoclassicism 95
4.2.1. Great Augustan writers: John Dryden and Alexander Pope 95
4.2.2. Principles of Neoclassic literary poetics 96
4.2.3. Nature and Reason 96
4.2.4. The Augustan ideal of style 98
4.2.5. “To divert and instruct” – the imperative of Augustan literature 98
4.3. The periodical essay 98
4.3.1. The Tatler and The Spectator. “The Spectator’s Club” 100
4.4. Augustan satire 103
4.4.1. John Dryden 103
4.4.2. Alexander Pope 103
4.4.3. Jonathan Swift 105
4.4.4. The structure of Gulliver’s Travels 105
4.4.5. Lilliput and Brobdingnag: satire and utopia 107
4.4.6. The fourth voyage. Gulliver, the frustrated idealist 107
4.4.7. The importance of Gulliver’s Travels 110
Summary 110
Key words 111
Glossary 111
Further reading 116

♦ identify the favourite themes and the typical characters of

Unit objectives Restoration drama.
♦ establish a relation between the spirit of Restoration comedy
and the cultural-historical circumstances in which it emerged.
♦ identify the main concerns of literary Neoclassicism.
♦ explain the relevance of concepts like Art, Nature, Human
nature, central to the Neoclassic poetics of the Augustan Age.
♦ define the purposes and literary strategies of the periodical
essay as an instrument of cultural enlightenment
♦ explain the remarkable development of satire in the
Augustan Age.
♦ describe satirical devices used by John Dryden, Alexander
Pope, and Jonathan Swift.
♦ specify the main targets of satire in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
4.1. Restoration drama

The Restoration* was a period of significant social and
institutional change, of increasing rationalism and secularisation, the
age in which the ideological premises of the Enlightenment were
constituted. From a literary point of view, it was a period of transition
as well, and of considerable diversity. One of the most important
aspects of this literary age is the shift from the baroque* sensibility of
the late Renaissance to the Neoclassic ideal of order, clarity and
elegant restraint.
4.1.1. Restoration theatre – a form of Court entertainment

In the heterogeneous literary picture of the Restoration, drama
holds a place apart. The Puritans had closed theatres in 1642, and
their re-opening in 1660, under the patronage of king Charles II, was
attended by a strong anti-Puritan reaction.
The Renaissance tradition of the theatre as popular
entertainment, addressing itself to an inclusive public, was
interrupted: Restoration theatre became almost exclusively a form of
Court entertainment, its audience being restricted to the fashionable
circles gravitating around the Crown. Restoration drama marked a
clear split between popular and aristocratic standards of taste.
Significant changes took place in the theatre: the stage became
closed on three sides, with spectators no longer allowed to sit on it;
the scenery became more elaborate – more “realistic” in comedies,
Charles II Stuart grandiose and extravagant in tragedies –, and, under the influence
(reign: 1660-1685) of French theatres, the cast of actors included women.

4.1.2. Dominant forms in Restoration drama

The main kinds of drama were heroic tragedy and comedy of
manners, both of them highly conventional forms, although each in
its own way and for different reasons.
Heroic tragedy* was a dramatic development from the epic
poem, with characters conventionally distributed into fabulously
valiant heroes and virtuous beautiful heroines, on the one hand, and
absolute villains, of incredible cruelty and perfidy, on the other.
The action was usually set in remote, exotic places, and the
Heroic tragedy characteristic theme was the conflict between love and honour, ending in
the death of the hero or heroine or both and the triumph of honour, or in
the survival of love over the criminal machinations of the villains.
Sensational turns of situation, sumptuous costumes,
magnificent settings, grandiloquent declamations and sentimental
exaltation, an artificial, inflated conception of heroism – these were
the ingredients of a dramatic genre whose spirit was in sharp
contrast with the unheroic age of the Restoration.
The highest achievement of this kind of baroque theatre was
provided by John Dryden’s plays*.
Another dominant dramatic form during the Restoration was the
Comedy of manners comedy of manners. Restoration comedy was a mirror of the
environment in which it developed. The Puritan rigidity and austerity
of the former period were repudiated, and the plays of the
Restoration Wits*, or Court Wits, reflected the hedonism* and
promiscuity encouraged at court by Charles II himself (nicknamed
“the Merry Monarch” for his pleasure-loving way of life).
Restoration comedies dealt primarily with sexual intrigue and the
pursuit of pleasure – including the pleasure of cynical manipulation of
others. Conquest and seduction, jealousy, adultery, lust, betrayal and
mockery were recurrent motives in the comic plots of Restoration drama.
Marriage and the games of love were a prevailing theme, but they were
loveless marriages and love affairs without warmth and affection.
A certain coarseness of feeling, the cynicism, the
licentiousness* and frivolity characterising Restoration comedy were
accompanied by a cult for elegance, refinement and sophistication.
Gallantry, fashionable manners, and, above all, wit*, were essential
for the true man of the world.
4.1.3. Restoration comedy and its character types

Restoration comedy was “class drama,” reflecting the
aristocratic ethos of the time, and its audience was restricted to the
exclusive and fashionable circles in London. It made fun of the
people from the countryside, ridiculing their crude manners and lack
of sophistication, and satirised the aspiration of social climbing and
the ideal of virtue and respectability of the middle classes.
The conception of character in Restoration comedy was
indebted to the Renaissance comedy of humours*. The range of
character types in Restoration comedy was very diverse.
One of the most common types was the rake – the libertine, the
“young-man-about-town,” without scruples, cynical, selfish and
manipulative, pleasure-seeking, despising marriage, more concerned
for his reputation as a wit than for honour.
Another frequent type was the fop*, who tried to imitate
fashionable manners, but whose affectation* became the object of
irony and satire.
Contrasting types were the coquette, usually an unprincipled
and heartless married woman, aspiring to the perfect adventure, and
the trusting husband as dupe, or fool, whose generosity and
kindness are satirised as weaknesses.
Other common character types in Restoration comedy were the
country girl, whose simplicity and ingenuousness made her a perfect
prey to the sophisticated seducer; the ingénue; the scheming valet; the
lusty widow, young or old; the country squire*, etc.
If characters were usually static, lacking complexity, deliberately
superficial in construction, the plot of Restoration comedy was
usually highly complicated, with several subplots and with action
developing at a fast pace.
Nell Gwynn (1650-1687), one of the first

actresses and the mistress of Charles II
William Hogarth*
Detail from The Rake’s Progresss (1735)

SAQ 1
Let us revise some aspects concerning the Restoration drama,

by doing the exercise that follows. Read the statements below and
identify five true ones. Circle appropriately T (true) or F (false).
1. Restoration theatre introduced professional women actors in

performances. T F
2. Heroic tragedy reflected the realities and spirit of the

Restoration Age. T F
3. The baroque character of Restoration heroic tragedy resided in

its sensational plot, extravagant stage settings and highly
rhetorical language. T F
4. The main themes of heroic tragedy were seduction and the

games of love. T F
5. The middle classes and their moral code found a mirror in the
comedy of the Restoration. T F
6. Restoration comedy praised wit, elegance, refinement and

sophistication, and satirised clumsy manners and dull
simplicity. T F
7. The Restoration rake as a typical character in comedy was

representative for the atmosphere of licentiousness, frivolity,
hedonism and amorality at Court. T F
8. The Renaissance comedy of humours inspired Restoration

dramatists in their construction of dramatic character. T F
9. Restoration comedy built its plot on a single, simple action.

T F
Check your answers in the section Solutions and

suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If any of them should
turn out to be wrong, read again subchapters 4.1.1. to 4.1.3.
4.1.4. William Congreve, a master of satirical comedy of manners

Among the most representative authors of comedies during the
Restoration period there were George Etherege*, William
Wycherley* and John Dryden*.
The true master of Restoration comedy of manners was
William Congreve (1679-1723). His satirical play Love for Love
(1695) deals with the contrast between public reputation and private
behaviour. It displays typical Restoration characters, such as the
impoverished gallant, who resorts to all kinds of devices to avoid

his creditors, restore his fortunes and win the love of his mistress;
the witty and resourceful servant; the awkward country-girl, etc.
Congreve’s finest comedy is The Way of the World (1700). It
has a sophisticated plot containing several strands of action and
centering on the relation between Mirabell and beautiful
Millamant, the pair of witty lovers, perfectly aware of each other’s
faults and playing various games which keep them on the border
between independence and surrender.
William Congreve The situation, involving a multitude of characters, is
(1679-1723) extremely complex, and the shifting relationships and alliances,
the ambivalent motivations and feelings (ranging from love,
affection, admiration, and friendship to jealousy, hate and
disgust) give this play an equivocal tone, half-amused, half-sad,
which reminds of some of Shakespeare’s comedies.
Congreve’s merit is to have turned stereotypical characters
into credible, consistent characters, psychologically subtle and
complex. He is the most gifted of the Restoration dramatists, with
a rare concern for the accuracy and elegance of expression and
for the balance of sentences. He gave grace to the conventions
of a highly artificial form of drama, bringing it to perfection.
4.1.5. The rise of sentimental comedy*

Congreve belongs to a period of transition in the evolution of
comedy. A shift in taste was taking place in the context of social
change – the rise of a prosperous class of merchants, mixed
marriages between aristocracy and the newly rich.
The new audience in the theatres, increasingly middle class,
disapproved of the licentiousness of Restoration comedy, and
were not interested in the rituals and games of fashionable life or
in the sparkling wit duels, as these were remote from their
experience.
Towards the end of the 17 th century, the dramatic
productions still preserved characteristic farcical elements and
something of the brilliant artificiality of Restoration comedy, but
they were now clearly intended for a middle class audience,
adopting a moralising tone and recommending virtue and
sensibility above refinement and wit. The indecencies and
blasphemous spirit of earlier Restoration comedy became the
object of severe condemnation by public opinion.
Drama was changing under the pressure of middle class
taste, and it had to take into account the general concern for the
improvement of manners that developed in the late 17th century,
when Augustan* England was seeking for social stability and
cohesion.

SAQ 2
In Congreve's play The Way of the World, Mirabell is a

reformed rake, who is sincerely in love with Millamant and wishes
to marry her. Millamant is also in love, but she accepts Mirabell's
marriage proposal on certain conditions. In a witty dialogue, in Act
IV, they establish and agree on the terms of a "contract."
Presenting their expectations from each other in a half-joking way,
they seem to be playing a game. However, under the appearance
of frivolity, their agreement has serious implications.
Read Text 4.1., which presents Millamant's demands. What
is the idea of marriage that her conditions suggest? Answer in the
space below, in no more than 15 lines / 150 words.

4.1.4., as well as the indicated fragment.

4.2. English literary Neoclassicism*

The Neoclassic aspiration for order, balance, and harmony
extended beyond literature. The return to the ancient models of
the classical era was accompanied by the sense of an analogy
between the present of England and the Roman times of Caesar
Augustus*. In both cases, a society exhausted by civil wars was
expressing its need for stability and moderation.
Augustan England believed that a cultural idea of balance,
elegance, and propriety would favour the spirit of social unity
and order and would contribute to the protection of the
achievements of civilisation.
4.2.1. Great Augustan writers: John Dryden and Alexander Pope

Two great writers constituted the main influence in the
development of the Neoclassic literary doctrine in England:
John Dryden in the 17 th century, and Alexander Pope* in the
18 th . The excellence of their literary work and the elegance and
force of their critical arguments made them central figures of the
Augustan Age.
John Dryden illustrated with masterpieces all
contemporary literary genres, and he laid the foundations of
modern literary criticism, in a series of essays and prefaces
John Dryden where he discussed matters of literary composition and taste
(1631-1700) and defended his own literary practice. His main critical work is
An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668), in which he systematises
his Neoclassic view on literary art.
The dialogue form of this essay allows Dryden to avoid
being dogmatic and to look with healthy scepticism at a wide
range of critical issues, such as the superiority of the Ancients
over the Moderns, of the elegant French classical drama over
English Renaissance drama, or of the heroic couplet* over blank
verse*.
Alexander Pope brought to perfection Dryden’s
achievements in poetic style and technique. His work doesn’t
equal in variety that of his predecessor and master, but it
represents the quintessence of the Augustan literary ideal. His
didactic poem An Essay on Criticism (1711) is the most
outstanding literary manifesto of English Neoclassicism. In it,
Pope presents the basic concepts and theses of this literary
orientation in a poetic form of remarkable elegance and clarity.
Besides Dryden and Pope, other great writers who were
influenced by Neoclassicism or defended its doctrine were
Jonathan Swift*, Joseph Addison*, Oliver Goldsmith* and
Samuel Johnson*.

4.2.2. Principles of Neoclassic literary poetics

One of the most important features of literary Neoclassicism
was the concern with rules and norms, the emphasis on discipline in
art. A poet’s innate talent needed training, and he could master the
secrets of poetic art by the study and imitation of the works of ancient
authors, the most valuable store of literary experience.
The belief in order and correctness was reflected in the
The rule of neoclassic principle of decorum [from Latin: propriety], which referred
decorum to the writer’s obligation to use those elements of diction* and
composition which were considered proper for each genre, i.e. to
make form and substance adequate to each other.
Epic and tragedy, for instance, required an elevated style, a
dignified diction, since it dealt with noble characters and actions;
comedy, on the other hand, which usually presented ordinary people
and actions, was expected to use a common, humble style, lacking
ornament.
It was the existence of this rule of decorum that enabled
Neoclassic authors to derive great effects from its deliberate, skilful
transgression, in satirical or burlesque* works.
The Neoclassic emphasis on the principles and rules that guided
successful creation did not mean blind adherence to them. The
Augustans were aware that the heights of literary achievement couldn’t
be reached by simply learning the trade, that it was an inborn gift that
made a poet. Sometimes rules might be too constraining for this natural
gift, and the poet might disregard them, yet achieve great beauty.
This was the case of the genius, whose imagination had nothing
to do with training or learning. The most eloquent example, for the
Augustans, was Shakespeare, who respected no particular rules and
followed no particular models, and whose creative power was a
matter of intuitive genius and not of acquired art, i.e., skill.
4.2.3. Nature and Reason

According to the Neoclassic doctrine, the main source of
inspiration for the writer was Nature*, by which the Augustans meant
most frequently Human Nature.
The concept of Human Nature referred to those features of
Human Nature human character and experience, and to those patterns of behaviour,
which were seen as common to all humanity and as permanent and
unchanging.
The quest for patterns of general significance through the study
of particulars was not only a literary precept, but a general intellectual
tendency in the age. The study of human nature in its individual
aspects, of infinite variety, would lead to the revelation of the typical
and universal features.
To follow / copy Nature was the writer’s main endeavour, and in
order to do that accurately he was supposed to follow Reason as the
main guide. Following Nature presupposed first of all its
understanding, which in turn required good judgment and common
sense.
All the faculties involved in the process of creation were seen as
subordinated to Reason. Emotion was supposed to be filtered and
controlled by reason, and beauty was the result of the balanced
combination of talent and inspiration with skill, or art*, a combination
A rationalist achieved through reason. The rationalist poetics* of Neoclassicism
poetics owed greatly to Horace*, but also to imported French ideas – e.g. to
those of Nicolas Boileau*.
SAQ 3
Text 4.3. in the Reader represents a fragment from Samuel

Johnson’s Preface to his 1765 edition of Shakespeare’s works.
What are the main ideas in this fragment, and what Neoclassic
conviction do they imply? Answer in the space below, in a
paragraph of no more than 4 complex sentences (80-100 words /
8-10 lines).

4.2.3. and the indicated fragment.

4.2.4. The Augustan ideal of style

The suitable doctrine for the Age of Reason, Neoclassicism
cultivated an ideal of style characterised in the first place by
intellectual clarity and expressive restraint.
Ostentation, unnecessary ornament, affectation were rejected,
and the measure of the writer’s skill was his ability to convey an
impression of “natural easiness and unaffected grace, where nothing
seems to be studied, yet everything is extraordinary” (Thomas Sprat*).
This ideal of style is best summed up by the Augustan notion of
Augustan wit wit. Wit described a style which combined elegance with profundity,
refinement with wisdom, eloquence with restraint. It displayed
flexibility skilfully controlled, or, as Oliver Goldsmith defined it, “grace
and strength united.”
4.2.5. “To divert and instruct” – the imperative of Augustan

literature
The Neoclassic concern with standards of good writing must be
seen in connection with an important feature of Augustan literature:
its integration with social life.
Literature was supposed to delight but also to instruct – to offer
not only aesthetic pleasure, but also moral edification and standards
of good judgment and behaviour. The writer's art was a form of social
communication, and he was not supposed to withdraw in an ivory
tower, but to be a functional part of the community.
It must not be forgotten that this was the age of the
Enlightenment*, of the belief in progress an in man’s perfectibility.
The marked didactic tendency of much of the literature of this period
reflects the Augustans’ pride in the conquests of their civilisation and
their determination to assume responsibility for the defence of its
achievements.
4.3. The periodical essay

Although the normative poetics of Neoclassicism had in view
mainly poetry and drama, its effects were considerable on prose, too.
In the context of general progress, of quick accumulation of
information, of critical debate in every field, and of the increase and
diversification of the reading public, the language of prose aimed
more and more at simplicity, precision and clarity.
A more straightforward style in prose was an imperative in an
age so much concerned with education of mentalities, manners and
taste, with the cultivation of men’s best virtues through polite
learning*.
The periodical essay is the Augustan prose genre which
contributed immensely to the forging of a modern prose style, and
which illustrated most eloquently the didactic impulse of all Augustan
literature.

It developed in the late 17 and early 18th centuries, as a
th
reaction to the ever greater demand for political news and gossip, at
a time when political tension in the country and the events of war on
the Continent engaged public attention to a high degree.
Journalism and coffee houses* were the main instruments by
which people’s curiosity was satisfied. Some writers felt that this
popular avidity for political news might inflame partisanship and
favour a spirit of social discord. In order to counterbalance this
tendency, they created an alternative kind of periodical publication,
consisting in essays on a variety of topics, meant to provide guidance
in matters of manners and morals, and to offer intellectual
enlightenment to a wide audience, dominantly middle class.
Essay periodicals were usually the work of a single author, and
they were published with varying regularity, some of them being
issued daily.
The periodical essay constituted a chronicle of contemporary
manners and an effective instrument of moral and social criticism. At
the same time, the periodical essayists aimed at broadening the
intellectual horizon of their readers, at cultivating their minds. They
believed, with Alexander Pope, that “a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing,” that ignorance is a source of evil.
Many periodical essays were dedicated to the dissemination of
philosophical and scientific notions, or to the discussion of literary
matters. The reflections on both modern and ancient works, the
debate on a variety of critical and aesthetic issues made the latter
familiar to the public, contributing significantly to the “polite”
education, the enlightenment and the improvement of taste of its
widest section, the middle class readers.
Edward Lloyd’s coffee house, opened in 1688, for a

clientele of ships' captains, merchants and ship owners
17th century coffee house in Covent Garden

SAQ 4
In one of his periodical essays, Joseph Addison wrote:

The mind that lies fallow* but [i.e. only] a single day sprouts
up* in follies that are only to be killed by an assiduous culture.
Explain the analogy that his observation invites us to
develop, in no more than 12 lines / 120 words. Think of present
relevance of this remark.

they are significantly different, think again and try to do the
exercise once more, on a separate sheet.
4.3.1. The Tatler and The Spectator. “The Spectator’s Club”

Among the most important periodical essayists, and by far the
most popular ones, were Richard Steele*’s The Tatler* (1709-1711),
and Joseph Addison’s The Spectator (1711-1714), whose essays
were published several times in the century, collected in book form.
Like other writers, Steele and Addison assumed the mission of
public educators and proceeded to rescue their audience from what
they perceived as “that desperate state of vice and folly into which
the age is fallen” (Steele). To increase the efficiency of their
undertaking, they tried to make their essays not only instructive but
also attractive and amusing.
For example, for The Spectator, in which they collaborated,
Steele and Addison invented The Spectator’s Club, a group of six
fictional characters “engaged in different ways of life” and
representing various social and human types. Many essays
presented little stories about incidents in their daily lives, and the
reflections of “Mr. Spectator” on their opinions and behaviour in a
variety of circumstances constituted real lessons in manners and
morals.
The six members of The Spectator’s Club were:
• Sir Roger de Coverley, a middle-aged squire, who had spent a
turbulent youth in the company of the Restoration Wits. Now, he is a
Joseph Addison somewhat old-fashioned gentleman, generous and cheerful, a
(1672-1719) competent justice of the peace*, in his county.
He is a pleasant company for his acquaintances in town, and
his harmless eccentricities are accompanied by a natural
benevolence that endears him to everybody. He is the prototype for
the character of the country squire in many 18th century novels.
• Sir Andrew Freeport, a rich London merchant, “a person of
indefatigable industry*, strong reason, and great experience.”
He is a worthy representative of the middle class, an
embodiment of its energies and enterprising spirit, a model of
honesty, hard work and skill. His character is the first notable literary
representation of the merchant class in a serious and dignified way,
no longer as repulsively materialistic and greedy.
Sir Andrew Freeport’s convictions are those of an enlightened
middle class, ready to take responsibility for the progress of the
nation. He believes, for instance, that “it is stupid and barbarous way
to extend dominion by arms; for true power is to be got by arts [i.e.
skills] and industry,” or that “diligence [i.e. steady effort] makes more
lasting acquisitions than valour [i.e. bravery in battle], and sloth [i.e.
laziness, idleness] has ruined more nations than the sword.”
• Captain Sentry, a courageous, modest and commonsensical
person, who had to quit the military profession because his strict
honesty proved to be an obstacle to the advancement of his career,
rather than a merit.
• A gentleman who, instead of pursuing the career of a lawyer, as
his father had intended for him, turned to the study of literature. He is
a man of “great probity, wit and understanding,” and “his familiarity
with the customs, manners, actions and writings of the ancients
makes him a very delicate observer of what occurs to him in the
world.” He thus embodies the Augustan humanist view that true
knowledge of human nature comes from a combination of first hand
experience and learning.
• Will Honeycomb, a gallant, a man of the world, an expert in
fashion and gossip, interested in his appearance and displaying a
certain affectation in behaviour; otherwise harmless and a well-bred
gentleman.
• A clergyman, “a very philosophic man,” of wide learning, taciturn
and with “no interest in this world,” but whose life constitutes an
eloquent example of moral integrity. His wisdom and gravity are set
against the frivolous interests of Will Honeycombe, but their good
breeding qualifies them both for the same society of gentlemen.

The gentleman represented an ideal of social behaviour,
combining the external marks of social decency (pleasant
conversation, cheerful disposition, the talent of never offending the
others) with such qualities as moral and physical courage, common
sense, a cultivated mind and superior understanding.
SAQ 5
From the description of the members of the Spectator’s Club,

it is clear that Addison promotes certain virtues, which are
important for the Enlightenment ideal of social integration. Identify
at least eight such features, and write them in the indicated spaces
below.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

there should be major discrepancies, read again subchapter 4.3.1.
more carefully.
Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)

4.4. Augustan satire

The refinement and elegant surface of the Augustan Age, its
cult of reason and common sense, could not entirely remove or hide
its tensions, contradictions and dark aspects.
Political and religious dissensions, intrigues, struggle for power
and profit, selfishness, greed, hypocrisy, folly, and affectation were
felt as diseases which threatened to weaken the force, stability and
order of a remarkable civilisation. The writers’ sense of mission
turned them into guardians of the enlightened values of their time,
and satire became their formidable weapon.
The Augustan Age is the great age of satire in English
literature, and its most outstanding representatives – Dryden, Pope,
Swift – aimed it at a variety of targets, from political and social life, to
religious debates and literary practices. Augustan satire defended the
values of civilisation in a civilised way: elegance, urbanity and
refinement made it a sophisticated instrument of correction.
4.4.1. John Dryden

A remarkable example of political satire is John Dryden’s
Absalom and Achitophel (1681-1682). It tells the biblical story of
Absalom’s rebellion against his father, king David, at the advice of
Achitophel* (cf. Samuel, 15-18), turning it into an allegory of
contemporary political struggles.
The biblical characters represent English political figures: King
David is Charles II, Absalom is the latter’s illegitimate son, the Duke
of Monmouth, whose claim to the throne was justified by his
Protestant religion, and Achitophel is the first Earl of Shaftesbury, the
instigator of the opposition to Catholic James Stuart, Charles’s
brother and heir to the throne.
The perfection of Dryden’s diction and his masterful use of the
sketches heroic couplet* combine with his brilliant of character, often
touched by ironic humour. The best achieved portrait is that of Achitophel
/ the Earl of Shaftesbury, in which Dryden’s praise and criticism,
admiration and condemnation, are mingled: the evil conspirator, disloyal
and excessively ambitious, appears also as a stormy spirit, a passionate,
brave and fearless man, genuinely gifted for leadership.
4.4.2. Alexander Pope

Satirical attacks on literary mediocrity and incompetence were
frequent in an age so preoccupied with standards of correctness and
excellence. Perhaps the greatest Augustan satire on the world of
letters is Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad* (1728; 1743), a merciless
attack on literary pedantry and dulness, with implications concerning
the whole of Augustan civilisation.
The hero of this mock-heroic epic* is Mr. Bayes*, made king by
the Goddess Dulness* in a realm turned to complete confusion by
the vain ambitions of the Dunces – the multitude of bad writers and

critics who aspire to undeserved fame.
The empire of Dulness finally extends to the whole universe of
the spirit, and the satire ends with the apocalyptic extinction of the
enemies of Dulness: Fancy (i.e. imagination), Science, Art, Truth,
Philosophy, Religion, and Morality. The final triumph of this “great
Anarch*” is rendered by a parodic allusion to the biblical Genesis: the
“uncreated word*” of Dulness restores the primordial chaos.
Pope’s satirical allegory displays unequalled comic virtuosity and
wit, imaginative inventiveness, and skill in the use of parody and the
burlesque. Its implications, however, are more disturbing than
entertaining, as it betrays Pope’s fear that civilisation and its conquests
Alexander Pope are vulnerable to unreason, that the corruption of the spirit (which follows
(1688-1744) from the corruption of the word) leads to the crumbling of all order.
SAQ 6
Text 4.2. in the Reader represents a fragment from one of John

Dryden’s essays, concerning satire. Here, he reflects on the art of the
satirist, drawing an analogy between satire and a public execution.
Explain this analogy, pointing out the Augustan conception of satire,
in a paragraph not exceeding 12 lines / 120 words.
Compare your answer with the suggestions provided at the

end of the unit, in the section Solutions and suggestions for
SAQs. If it should be significantly different, read the fragment
again, more attentively, and revise subchapter 4.4.

4.4.3. Jonathan Swift

Pope’s friend, Jonathan Swift, is one of the greatest satirists in
world literature. Like many of his contemporaries, Swift was divided
between the idealist confidence in man’s capacity of self-
improvement, in his potential as a rational creature, and the
disappointment and anger at seeing reason so often abused.
His hurt sensitivity and disillusionment are conveyed in a series of
prose satires which cover a wide range of issues – political, religious,
philosophical, economic, and literary. These satires have established
his reputation as a champion of moral virtue, justice and freedom, a
hater of pedantry and pretence, an uncompromising defender of truth,
Jonathan Swift as well as an unequalled master of satirical wit and irony.
(1667-1745) The most powerful expression of Swift’s satirical genius is
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World “by Lemuel
Gulliver,” a work which Swift published anonymously in 1726. It is an
allegorical satirical travel book, combining the conventions of utopia*
and of the imaginary voyage, popular in the 16th and 17th centuries,
with elements of the marvelous or fantastic fable.
In it, Swift alludes satirically to a multitude of aspects from the
contemporary political, social and intellectual realities, but the
significance of his work may be extended to the philosophical
question of the human condition itself.
4.4.4. The structure of Gulliver’s Travels

Consisting of four books, Gulliver’s Travels pretends to be the
record of the most astonishing experiences of an average man,
curious and resourceful, with a sharp sense of observation, whose
adventures as a surgeon and then the captain of several ships take
him through the most unusual places.
In Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Gulliver finds himself among people
who are twelve times smaller and, respectively, bigger than himself.
In his third voyage he visits several strange places. Laputa, the
flying island, is inhabited by impractical intellectuals, absorbed in
mathematical speculations and music. In Balnibarbi, he is shown the
I.A Voyage to Academy of Lagado (a burlesque of the Royal Society), where mad
Lilliput scientists are engaged in phantasmagoric projects, like extracting
II.A Voyage to sunshine from cucumbers, building houses starting from the roof, or
Brodingnag softening marble to make pincushions. In Luggnagg, he learns about
III.A Voyage to the Struldbruggs, a race of immortal people whose eternal life is in
Laputa, fact a curse of endless decay.
Balnibarbi, In his last voyage, Gulliver is cast on the shore of a country
Glubbdubdrib, inhabited by the Houyhnhnms, intelligent speaking horses, whose
Luggnagg and admirable society is built entirely on rational principles, and where human
Japan creatures, the Yahoos, appear in the utmost state of degeneracy.
IV.A Voyage to From this last country, Gulliver is finally expelled, because he is
the Country of perceived as a Yahoo endowed with “a rudiment of reason,”
the Houyhnhnms therefore a potential threat to that civilisation.
Back in England, Gulliver can’t help seeing his fellow humans
as disgusting Yahoos, and his nostalgia for the perfect world of the
rational horses alienates him completely from his own kind. His initial
curiosity and openness to the diversity of human nature turns into
madness and misanthropy, and he prefers now the company of
horses, incapable of suffering the proximity of humans.
SAQ 7
Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master tries to understand human

nature by analysing the behaviour of the Yahoos (since he
perceives Gulliver to be one), and he also re-interprets attitudes
observed in the Yahoos in the light of the information received
from Gulliver about human customs and institutions. The parallel
results in a grotesque image of humankind, who is thus forced to
examine itself in a distorting mirror. Find, in Text 4.5. from the
Reader, four features which humans and Yahoos are found to
share. Each answer should be limited to 3 lines / 30 words.
1.
2.
3.
4.

none of the features mentioned there corresponds with your
answers, read the fragment carefully once more.

4.4.5. Lilliput and Brobdingnag: satire and utopia

In the first two books of Gulliver’s Travels, physical size
indicates allegorically features of human nature. The Lilliputians’
physical smallness is accompanied by moral flaws – they prove to be
mean, vain, ambitious, cruel and hypocritical. Their society is deeply
divided by absurd dissensions: for example, between those who
wear shoes with high heels and with low heels, or between those
who break a boiled egg at the round end – the "Big Endians" – and
those who break it at the pointed end).
Political corruption is institutionalised (for example, the highest
offices in the state are obtained by those who know how to entertain
the king best, by dancing on a rope, jumping over or creeping under
a stick, etc.).
These comic details are satirical allusions to contemporary or
recent events, issues or figures, and they constitute a miniature
picture of England, with its religious controversies among Anglicans,
Dissenters and Catholics, its political parties – Whigs and Tories –,
its thirst for war – the endless conflict with France, etc.
In spite of Gulliver’s dimensions (an allegorical representation
of his complex of superiority), he is actually physically vulnerable in
this world, from which he chooses to leave.
In Brobdingnag, his vulnerability increases, as he is in
permanent danger from creatures so much larger than him. However,
his real humiliation is caused by the unflattering contrast between his
own race and civilisation, and the utopian commonwealth of
Brobdingnag, ruled by an enlightened monarch. The latter is shocked
Gulliver in at the moral abjection and contempt for reason that he discerns
Brobdingnag under the gilded surface of Gulliver’s patriotic description of his
country.
4.4.6. The fourth voyage. Gulliver, the frustrated idealist

After the comic-disturbing examples of unreason witnessed in
his third voyage, Gulliver is confronted, in his last adventure, with the
hardest dilemma and the deepest humiliation. He is no longer certain
of the essence of his own nature, and his position in that strange land
is highly ambiguous.
The Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms are a double mirror for
Gulliver. In the Houyhnhnms, he sees ideal creatures, governed only
by reason, and he realises how far man is from moral perfection. In
the Yahoos, he contemplates with shame and despair all the
imperfections of the human race.
The error of Gulliver* is that he adopts an impossible deal of
perfection, forgetting that man holds a middle place in the Great
Chain of Being*. The Houyhnhnms may be an allegorical
embodiment of moral perfection attained through the exercise of pure
reason, but their universe is completely deprived of emotion and
feeling. Their non-human shape suggests that the absence of
passion, of the capacity for affection, means de-humanisation.
Gulliver’s failure to accept the mixed essence of man, to integrate
reason with feeling and instinct, makes him a frustrated idealist, and
he ultimately becomes the target of Swift’s irony.
The last book of Gulliver’s Travels has been given a multitude of
interpretations. For many readers, the Yahoos embodied Swift’s own
vision of mankind as hopelessly degraded, filthy, unteachable and
ungovernable, an image which earned Swift the reputation of a
misanthrope. The Houyhnhms and the Yahoos have also been seen
as allegorical representations of Reason and Instinct, or as opposite
caricatural views of man in the state of nature. In a “theological”
perspective, the Yahoos would stand for the essentially corrupt
nature of man, while the Houyhnhms would represent man who has
escaped the consequences of the original sin.
Illustration from an early

nineteenth century abridged
editions (for children): Gulliver
entertaining and being entertained
by the tiny Lilliputians.
Houyhnhnm and Yahoo - illustration from a

1947 edition of Gulliver’s Travels

SAQ 8
Swift’s ironic method is to mislead the reader by giving the

appearance of rationality to the absurd, and by mixing the
desirable with the unacceptable. For Gulliver, the Houyhnhnms’
society is perfect – a true utopia. The careful reader will, however,
find anti-utopian elements in it.
Point out both kinds of aspects in the description contained in
Text 4.6. from the Reader. Formulate your answer in no more than
10 lines / 100 words for each aspect.
Utopian aspects:
Anti-utopian aspects
Compare your answer with the one provided at the end of the
unit, in the section Solutions and suggestions for SAQs. If there
should be major differences, you need to read the fragment again,
more carefully, and to revise subchapter 4.4.6.

4.4.7. The importance of Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels is the expression of Swift’s indignation and
anger at man’s foolishness, narrow-sightedness, arrogant ignorance
and unfounded pride in his reason. For Swift, reason was not to be
taken for granted: man was only a creature capable of reason,
therefore also capable of error.
He intended to “vex the world” in order to “mend” it, and he used
every weapon in the satirist’s arsenal to awaken man from his self-
complacency: biting irony, caricature, grotesque, parody.
Swift’s extraordinary inventiveness and narrative gift, his
learning and sense of literary tradition, and his brilliant wit make
Gulliver’s Travels not only a landmark in Augustan literature, but also
an enduring achievement of the enlightened spirit.
Summary
The Restoration is a historical and a literary period. It is an age
of transition, accommodating a diversity of literary forms and
traditions – old and new. A representative literary genre for this age
is the comedy of manners (Etherege, Dryden, Congreve, etc.). Like
heroic tragedy (e.g. Dryden), this highly artificial and conventional
form was an expression of the taste of the Court aristocracy. While
heroic drama sustained an impossible, inflated ideal of heroism and
virtue, comedy was licentious and cynical, placing wit above virtue.
Gradually, the pressure of the taste of the rising middle class
replaced it with sentimental comedy.
The period of the Restoration overlaps with the emerging
Augustan Age, when literary Neoclassicism developed. The latter’s
eminently rationalist poetics placed emphasis on clarity and elegance
in style and composition, on expressive restraint and skilfully
controlled wit, on the rule of decorum, on Reason and common
sense in aesthetic choice. It cultivated the idea of the “marriage” of
Art and Nature, and recommended as a model the literary wisdom of
the Ancients. Dryden, Pope, Swift, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith,
Johnson are central figures of the Augustan Age.
One of the literary forms that developed during this period was
the periodical essay (Addison, Steele), which contributed greatly to
the development of a modern prose style. It was a chronicle of
manners and an instrument of social and moral criticism, and by
means of it, a wide public, dominantly middle class, was enlightened
in matters of literary taste and intellectual achievements.
Satire, both in verse (Dryden, Pope) and in prose (Swift), was
another characteristic genre. Its flourishing in the Augustan Age
reflects the integration of literature with social life, the writers’ sense
of responsibility towards the values of their civilisation, and, generally,
the belief in progress and improvement in an age which was also that
of the Enlightenment. Swift’s allegorical satire Gulliver’s Travels is the
most accomplished exploration of the contradictions of the Age of
Reason, a masterpiece of irony which places under scrutiny many of
the myths of the Enlightenment, including that of Reason itself.
Key words
• The Restoration
• The Augustan Age
• heroic tragedy
• comedy of manners
• Neoclassicism
• rationalist poetics
• Nature/Human Nature
• art
• wit
• to delight and instruct
• periodical essay
• The Spectator’s Club
• satire
• allegory
• utopia
• irony
Glossary
• Achitophel: the story of Absalom and Achitophel is told in
The Old Testament, in the 2nd Book of Kings (verses 15-18).
• affectation: a manner of speech, dress or behaviour which
is not natural, but is intended to impress others.
• Anarch: a personification of anarchy. In Pope’s satire,
Dulness as “Great Anarch” is the ruler of spiritual chaos. In
her empire of darkness and confusion, all the acquisitions of
the human spirit become meaningless.
• art: in the Neoclassic doctrine, the acquired competence of
the writer, his craftsmanship, achieved by training and
practice. Art may generally refer to the work of man, or
human skill (as contrasted to the work of Nature).
• Augustan: see Augustan Age in the Glossary in Unit 1.
• baroque: see again subchapter 2.1.1. and the Glossary in
Unit 2.
• beaux: plural of beau (“handsome” in French), which
designated a fashionable, well-dressed man, greatly
concerned with appearances; it may also refer to a woman’s
lover, admirer, or escort.
• blank verse: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• burlesque: see the Glossary in Unit 1.
• coffee houses: since the 1650s, they were convenient
places for socialising and for the dissemination of news,
acquiring quickly the status of real “institutions” of opinion.
They were usually frequented by people of the same social
rank, profession or interest, political or religious orientation.
For instance, “Will’s Coffee House,” where Dryden would
come regularly, gathered people of the literary profession or
interested in literary matters.

• comedy of humours: see Jonson in the Glossary in Unit 1.
In this kind of comedy, characters were constructed on the
basis of a particular disposition, inclination, trait , or
“humour.”
• diction : see poetic diction in the Glossary in Unit 1.
• dulness: in a strict sense, stupidity, slowness in thinking and
learning. “Dull” also means uninteresting, unexciting, boring.
Pope uses the word in the enlarged sense of “all slowness of
apprehension, shortness of sight or imperfect sense of
things,” a “force inertly strong” which corrupts understanding
and confuses the mind.
• Dunciad: the title is coined after The Iliad, from dunce, a
word designating a person who is stupid or slow to learn.
• Enlightenment: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• fallow: (about land) left unplanted or unseeded; figuratively:
undeveloped or inactive.
• fop: a man who is excessively concerned with fashion and
elegance.
• Great Chain of Being: an ancient world-picture, surviving
through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the 18th
century, which conceived of every being in nature as having
its well-established place in an uninterrupted chain of
increasing degrees of complexity; a strictly ordered
hierarchical system, in which the destruction of one “link”
would bring chaos.
• Gulliver: the name sounds very similar to the adjective
“gullible,” which means easy to fool or persuade to believe
something (from “to gull”: to cheat, to deceive).
• hedonism: a lifestyle devoted to the seeking of sensual
pleasure.
• heroic couplet: see again subchapter 1.3 in Unit 1.
• heroic tragedy: see again subchapter 1.4.3 in Unit 1 (heroic
drama).
• industry: the quality of being hard-working or of being
always employed usefully.
• justice of the peace: a person appointed by the crown to
judge less serious cases in small courts of law.
• licentiousness: uncontrolled sexual behaviour.
• mock-heroic epic: see mock-heroic style and epic in the
Glossary in Unit 1.
• Mr. Bayes: a name which was frequently applied satirically
to a writer. It derives from “bay,” another word for “laurel”;
the bay-leaf crown was the ancient emblem of fame, honour,
and distinction. In Pope’s satire, “Mr. Bayes” refers to Lewis
Theobald, who had criticised Pope for his edition of
Shakespeare (1725). In the 1743 version of The Dunciad,
Pope replaced Theobald by Colley Cibber, who in 1730 had
become Poet Laureate. Dryden himself had been attacked
several times as “Mr. Bayes.”
• Nature: an inclusive concept, referring not only to external
nature, i.e. landscape, but to the whole of created reality; the

cosmic harmony and order manifested in the appearances of
this world.
• Neoclassicism: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• poetics: the system of principles and conventions which
govern a certain literary form, or literature in general; the
conception about literature and the creative act of a certain
literary school or writer.
• polite learning: the knowledge acquired through classical
education (polite: refined, elegant, polished).
• Restoration Wits: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Restoration: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• sentimental comedy see again subchapter 1.4.4 in Unit 1,
and sentimental novel in subchapter 5.1.3 in Unit 5, for the
notion of sentimentalism.
• sprout up: to begin to grow or develop.
• squire: a country gentleman, especially the main landowner
in a village.
• Tatler: a “tattler” is a person who gossips, or who chats or
talks idly.
• uncreated word: with reference to the literary world, this
phrase suggests the lack of inspiration, of imagination and
originality, of taste or skill. Pope’s satire warns thus about
the dangers of lowering literary standards, i.e. making
literature “dull.”
• utopia: a genre in fiction whose name comes from Sir
Thomas More’s work Utopia (1516), in which he outlines the
features of an ideal, perfect society (literally: “no place,” from
Greek u = not, and topos = place).
• wit: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Addison, Joseph (1672-1719): representative of English
literary Neoclassicisn, author of poems, essays and dramatic
works, founder of literary journalism. He established the
periodical essay as a literary genre, and he contributed
significantly to the dissemination of the values of the
Enlightenment in England.
• Boileau, Nicolas (1636-1711): outstanding French poet and
critic, whose poem L’art poétique (1674) established the
canons of taste and the standards of literary judgement for
European Neoclassicism.
• Dryden, John (1637-1700): one of the most outstanding
figures of the Restoration and the Augustan Age. He
excelled in all literary genres of his time; he translated from
ancient authors, and he was the pioneer of modern English
literary criticism. He was equally successful as an author of
heroic dramas (see again subchapter 1.4.3 in Unit 1) and of
comedies of manners. Among the latter, Marriage à la Mode
(1672) distinguishes itself by its brilliant wit combats and
effective social satire.

• Etherege, George (1634-1691): a member of the group of
Restoration Wits. His best comedies are She Would If She
Could (1668), and The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter
(1676).
• Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-1774): upholder of the Neoclassic
standards of style and composition, and a major
representative of English sentimentalism. Among various
other works, he is the author of the novel The Vicar of
Wakefield (1766), a masterpiece of 18th century fiction.
• Hogarth, William (1697-1764): painter and engraver,
extremely popular owing to his “modern moral subjects” – a
series of paintings or engravings which tell a story and
constitute a comment on social, political and moral vices. He
was a friend of the novelist Henry Fielding, who called him a
“comic history-painter.”
• Horace: Quintus Horatius Flavius (65-8 B.C.), Latin poet of
the time of Caesar Augustus, author of odes, satires and
epistles, and of the influential critical work Ars Poetica. Like
his friend, Virgil, he endeavoured to lift Latin literature to the
level of Greek literature.
• Johnson, Samuel: see the Gallery of personalities in Unit 2.
• Pope, Alexander (1688-1744): the most illustrious
representative of English literary Neoclassicism. His works
include the philosophical poem An Essay on Man (1733), in
which he is the optimistic spokesman of the Age of Reason,
as well as the mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock
(1712).
• Sprat, Thomas (1635-1713): mathematician and writer,
member of the Royal Society, preoccupied by the cultivation
of an English style that should be simple, clear, concise and
flexible.
• Steele, Richard (1672-1725): Augustan essayist and
dramatist (he established sentimental comedy on the English
stage), of Irish origin. Together with Addison, he contributed
to the spreading of Enlightenment ideas, as well as to the
forging of a polished literary prose style.
• Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745): the greatest English satirist,
an unequalled master of irony and wit. Besides his famous
Gulliver’s Travels, his works include A Tale of a Tub (1704),
which contains an allegorical satire on the division of the
Christian Church, and A Modest Proposal (1729), a bitter
satire in defense of the Irish people. In the mock-heroic
allegory The Battle of the Books (1704), he argues for the
superiority of the Ancients over modern authors.
• Wycherley, William (1640-1716): one of the Restoration
Wits. His comedies The Country Wife (1675) and The Plain
Dealer (1676) satirise the discrepancies between the social
surface of respectability and the unscrupulous selfishness
that may hide behind it.

SAQ 1
1.T; 2.F; 3.T; 4.F; 5.F; 6.T; 7.T; 8.T; 9.F
SAQ 2
Millamant has an unconventional view of marriage, by the standards
of her social environment. She wishes for a sincere and authentic
relationship, and she proposes to reject the social rituals and fashions that
would require them to wear masks. Civilised reserve in society, the refusal
to make a public show of their affection, is, for sophisticated Millamant, a
way of protecting their intimacy and their feelings. She also refuses to see
marriage as a limitation of the woman’s freedom, and she rejects the idea
of the wife’s subordination. In marriage, each partner should accept and
respect the other’s wishes, opinions and tastes, and should not try to
impose his/her habits on the other. Her desire to preserve an area of
privacy in her domestic life reflects the fact that she does not conceive love
and marriage as incompatible with one’s independence.
SAQ 3
The pleasure of contemplating representations of “general nature”
– i.e. of those features which are universal, common to all humanity – is
greater than the pleasure of “sudden wonder” procured by the depiction
of “particular manners” and by “fanciful invention.” Shakespeare will
appeal to readers across the ages, regardless of their particular
condition, because he succeeded in rendering the general “truths” of
human nature. His characters embody the fundamental human
passions which will always move mankind. Johnson implies that an
author’s greatness depend on his insight into Human Nature.
SAQ 4
Addison builds an analogy between the human mind and a field,
which may be cultivated or left to “lie fallow.” Just as weeds (i.e. wild
plants growing where they are not wanted) will invade an uncultivated
field, so the mind which is not assiduously and constantly cultivated –
i.e. furnished with ideas, educated to think – will employ itself with
trifles, abdicating from reason, good sense, or judgment. Culture is
thus seen as an improvement of nature, and, in an analogous sense,
of Human nature. Addison’s observation reflects the faith in man’s
intellectual and moral perfectibility through responsible education – an
attitude characteristic of the Enlightenment.
SAQ 5
honesty, integrity, benevolence, industry, diligence,
reasonableness, sense of responsibility, common sense, good
judgment, open-mindedness, modesty, good breeding.
SAQ 6
Satire is the art of pointing at people’s faults without resorting to
insult or calumny. Dryden makes an analogy between the sharp blade
of the executioner’s sword and the sharp irony and wit of the satirist.
Just as the executioner will implacably carry out the capital
punishment, so the satirist is merciless in his denouncing human
flaws. Both of them need skill – or “art” – to do this in a satisfactory
way. The art of the accomplished satirist consists in the elegance, the
“fineness,” the subtlety of his accusations. The civilised art of satire is
opposed to the coarseness and brutality of personal attack and insult,
which are the literary equivalent of a man’s “slovenly butchering.”
SAQ 7
1. The spirit of competition, the jealousy (envy) and the
aggressiveness towards one’s fellows.
2. The irrational greed and avarice, the “unnatural appetite” for
things whose value doesn’t justify the effort and energy spent in their
acquisition and preservation.
3. The incapacity of choosing a ruler according to real merit;
the ability of the worst to set themselves as leaders; the rulers’ habit
of surrounding themselves by favourites whose role is to flatter and
to encourage them in their abuses.
4. The tendency to idleness, which breeds imaginary ills.
5. Womankind’s lustfulness and inclination to coquetry; the silly
behaviour of women determined to draw attention to themselves.
SAQ 8
Utopian aspects: The cultivation and exercise of reason, the
education in the spirit of moderation and industry, the generalises
extension of friendship and benevolence, decency and civility are
certainly desiderata of any civilisation. The Houyhnhms are not
divided by quarrels, conflict and self-interest, and the equal education
of males and females was a progressive Enlightenment ideal.
Anti-utopian aspects: the absolutisation of reason, the exclusion
of opinion, deprives their thinking of flexibility and nuance, ultimately
of imagination. The tyranny of reason also rules out affection and
emotion: they have no particular feelings for their own offspring, and
no personal choice in the matter of marriage, which is meant only for
procreation. The individual is of no importance, only the species
counts. In the absence of affective attachment, civility and friendship
become a cold and superficial form of social relationship. They
practice population control, and the hierarchy of their society is based
on racial discrimination (“inferior” Houyhnhnms will fatally be
servants), which makes social progress inconceivable.
Further reading
1. Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, vol. 3 (“The
Restoration to 1800”), London: Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1969
(pp. 537-550)
3. Macsiniuc, Cornelia, The English Eighteenth Century. The Novel in
Its Beginnings, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2003 (pp.33-66)

The Age of the Enlightenment: the rise of the novel
UNIT 5
THE AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT:

THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Unit Outline
Unit objectives 118
5 The Age of the Enlightenment: the rise of the novel 118
5.1. Background and main concerns 118
5.1.1. Novel and romance in the 18th century 118
5.1.2. Didacticism and realism in the 18th century novel 119
5.1.3. Typology of the novel in the 18th century 121
5.2. Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson: from circumstantial realism
to sentimental truth 123
5.2.1. Daniel Defoe and the novel of adventure 123
5.2.2. Robinson Crusoe: theme and plot 124
5.2.3. Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe 125
5.2.4. Defoe’s style 127
5.2.5. Samuel Richardson’s contribution to the development of the novel 128
5.2.6. The plot of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded 128
5.2.7. Social hierarchy and the individual self 129
5.2.8. Psychological realism and the epistolary technique 130
5.3. Henry Fielding and the novel of manners 132
5.3.1. Comedy and parody in Joseph Andrews 132
5.3.2. The novel as comic romance 133
5.3.3. The character of parson Adams 134
5.3.4. Fielding’s conception of character in Joseph Andrews 134
5.3.5. Fielding’s Augustanism 135
5.4. Laurence Sterne and the “anti-novel” 136
5.4.1. Tristram Shandy: an unconventional autobiographical novel 136
5.4.2. Eccentric characters in Tristram Shandy 136
5.4.3. Sentimentalism and tragi-comic vision 137
5.4.4. The “Shandean” view of writing 139
5.4.5. The defamiliarisation of realistic conventions 139
5.4.6. Tristram Shandy as metafiction 140
Summary 142
Key words 142
Glossary 143
SAA No. 2 145
Further reading 148

♦ identify, in various aspects of the novels discussed in this

Unit objectives unit, values and attitudes characteristic of the Age of the
Enlightenment
♦ describe typological features of the studied novels
♦ compare the studied novelists from the point of view of their
approach to character and plot
♦ delineate a character from one of the novels under
discussion, in the light of the author’s aesthetic principles
♦ describe the peculiarities of the narrative technique and style
used by the studied authors
♦ define the concept of metafiction and describe metafictional
strategies in Sterne’s novel
5.1. Background and main concerns

The novel’s emergence is commonly associated with the
aspiration of the middle classes to overcome cultural
marginality. This new literary form embodied the democratic and
revolutionary impulse of a century in which the issues of
individual liberty, natural rights, tolerance, emancipation and
progress received unprecedented prominence and were vital for
the self-assertion of the new class.
The general growth of literacy* in the 18 th century led to the
rise of a new, more inclusive reading public, whose vast majority
was middle-class. A significant part of this new reading public
consisted in women, and there is a connection between, the rise
of the middle classes, a certain tendency to women’s
emancipation, and the development of the novel.
Women’s education was beginning to be encouraged, and
their involvement with literary life was increasing. Not only were
women the most numerous “consumers” of novels, but there was
a considerable amount of novels written by women, and
generally about women.
5.1.1. Novel and romance in the 18th century

The dominance of female readership explains the enduring
popularity, in the early years of the 18 th century, of a genre
which became the main rival of the novel: the romance. The late
17 th century had seen a flourishing of this kind of fiction, mostly
imitations of French models.
Romances were long narratives combining heroic
adventure and passionate love, whose action was often set in
remote, exotic settings, and whose protagonists were of noble
stock.
Such tales gratified the fantasies of a class of readers who
were still barred from public self-assertion, confined to the

domestic universe, socially and materially dependent on men.
For most women, romances were therefore literature of escape,
whose province was the spectacular and the extraordinary.
By contrast, the province of the novel was the familiar. The
ordinary aspects of life, its normality, a reality that was close to
the average reader’s experience became a source of imaginative
interest.
The knights and princesses of romances were replaced, in
the novel, by common people. Characters are no longer
idealised, vague and abstract figures, but distinct individualities,
realised with an unprecedented wealth of social, moral or
psychological detail. The readers of novels could identify
themselves with the characters, because the depicted
experience and universe were more or less familiar to them.
The novelist no longer drew his plots from mythology,
history, legend, or previous literature, but from contemporary
life. The represented experience was meant to engage the
reader’s interest both because it was familiar and because of its
uniqueness.
5.1.2. Didacticism and realism in the 18th century novel

Whereas the basic aim of romance was to entertain, the
novel’s aspiration was to fulfil the double mission of all Augustan
literature: to entertain (to divert) and to instruct (to edify), with
entertainment frequently subordinated to the instructive aim.
The novel proposed norms of moral conduct and standards
of social integration, it recommended patterns of behaviour and
models of success that were relevant to the condition of middle
class readers. It attempted to correct morals and educate
manners by censuring vice and folly. Thus, the novel reflected
the general critical spirit of the Age of the Enlightenment and
participated in its project of emancipation through education.
The popularity of the novel and the success of its didactic
mission owed greatly to its endeavour of convincing the reader
of the lifelikeness* of the represented characters and actions, to
their relevance for the reader’s aspirations and possibilities. In
spite of the great diversity of novels in the 18th century, their
common denominator was the attempt to convey an impression
of authentic experience. Realism – or, in Augustan terms, truth
to Nature – is what primarily distinguished the novel from
romance.
The novel reflects, in its concerns, a double tendency of the
Age of the Enlightenment. On the one hand, its emphasis on
individual experience is the literary expression of the spirit of
individualism associated with the growing importance of the
middle classes. On the other hand, the novel’s didactic vocation,
its endeavour to propagate a certain moral and social code,
shows its assumed responsibility towards contemporary
civilisation, its determination to participate in the general
Augustan quest for an ideal of social harmony.

The novel offers imaginative versions of the reconciliation
of these two tendencies, by centering its interest on the
relationship between the individual and his/her social
environment. The tensions and conflicts between
private/individual convictions and inclinations, on the one hand,
and public/social norms and conventions, on the other,
constitute the foundation of all novelistic plots in the 18 th
century.
SAQ 1
Complete the sentences below. Each full statement should

describe a general aspect concerning the rise of the novel as a
genre in the 18th century. Two or three lines (20-30 words) should
be enough for each completion.
1. The rise of the middle classes …
2. Women were …
3. By contrast with the escapist spirit of romances, …
4. The didactic mission of the novel in the 18th century consisted

in …
5. The novel’s interest in the tensions between the public and the
private reflected …
Compare your answers with those given in the section

there should be major differences, read again subchapters 5.1.1.
and 5.1.2.

5.1.3. Typology of the novel in the 18th century

The novel as a genre had no authoritative, classic models to
follow. Instead, a wide variety of influences went into its making, and
its beginnings are defined by a tendency to “sponge” on other literary
forms, from which it borrowed devices, forms of expression, patterns
and motifs. This makes the 18th century novel rather difficult to classify.
Many novels cut across divisions, belonging to several categories at
once. The most popular kinds of novels in the 18th century were:
• Adventure novels share with romances an emphasis on

action, on events, which claim the reader’s attention more than the
characters do. They invariably contain the motif of the journey, but
they differ from romances in their attention to realistic detail, in
imitation of the descriptive accuracy of travel literature, popular in the
17th and 18th centuries.
• Picaresque* novels may be considered a special case of

adventure novels, in which the action is episodic, repetitious, loosely
structured, and the hero’s various encounters are, for the author, an
opportunity for comprehensive social criticism. The motif of the travel
is central, and the world represented in such novels is open,
inclusive, and extremely diverse.
• The novel of manners submits to the reader’s judgements

various types of social behaviour, examining the conflicts between
private morality and public expectation. It may either offer a
comprehensive mirror of the social diversity of the age (e.g. Fielding),
or explore personal conflicts which involve different sets of values
(e.g. Richardson).
• The comic novel in the 18th century is inscribed in a long

tradition of deflation of romance, i.e. romance is trivialised through parody*,
irony and burlesque*. The comic novel is an opportunity for writers to
display a critical attitude not only to reality, but to literature as well, since
this kind of fiction subverts the prestige of older genres (the epic, the
romance), exposing their irrelevance and unreality, their distance from the
every day experience of common readers. On the other hand, the comic
vision is always in the service of social and moral criticism, therefore an ally
to realism. The characteristic comic plot presupposes the passage from
disorder, confusion, misfortune to the solution of all conflicts and the
integration of the protagonist in a social structure.
• The sentimental novel is the literary manifestation of that

cross-current within the Age of the Enlightenment which placed value
in emotional response rather than in reason, and which emphasised
the importance of feeling and its close connection with moral virtue.
Sentimentalism became a literary fashion, displayed not only in
fiction, but also in poetry and in drama. The sentimental hero/heroine
unites a remarkably acute sensibility with spotless virtue and a deep
sense of honour. The analysis of sentimental response was meant to
elicit from the reader an empathic understanding.
• The novel of education (the Bildungsroman*) is concerned

with the formation of character through the accumulation of experience.
The achievement of maturity leads to the hero’s satisfactory social
integration; this illustrates the concern of the Enlightenment with the
development of the individual as a social being.
SAQ 2
What kinds of novels do the following sentences describe?

Write the answer in the space indicated by the continuous line,
after each sentence. Two of these descriptions do not match any
of the types of novels described in the subchapter above.
1. It explores the labyrinth of emotion and feeling, in their

confrontation with moral choice. ________________________
2. It offers more delight in action than in character.

________________________
3. It defines itself in contrast with the “serious” narrative genres,

mocking their elevated style by applying it to common, trivial
subjects. ________________________
4. It presents a tale of mystery and horror, usually with

supernatural ingredients, in an atmosphere of gloom.
________________________
5. It is concerned with the individual’s full assertion as a social

being, at the end of a process in which he/she learns to accord
private impulse with social expectation.
________________________
6. Its hero is a marginal figure who aspires to social success, and

his/her experiences provide a satirical survey of the
contemporary society. ________________________
7. It centres on intellectual debate and confrontation of ideas,

deliberately reducing the importance of plot or emotional conflict.
________________________
8. It explores the diversity of social manners and their articulation

with moral values. ________________________

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If you
have failed to match any of the descriptions with the right type of
novel, read again subchapter 5.1.3..

5.2. Defoe and Richardson: from circumstantial realism to

sentimental truth
Each of these two novelists had an essential contribution to the
rise of the novel, establishing it as the most popular literary genre in
the 18th century. Both of them enjoyed enormous popularity not only
in England, but also on the Continent.
They share a middle class, Puritan* background, and both of them
focus on the individual in his/her struggle of securing a legitimate
position in the social structure, on the individual’s striving towards some
form of personal achievement. Their novels are the literary reflection of
the spirit of individualism that characterised the age.
Both Defoe and Richardson display in their narratives a
remarkable faithfulness to detail, the constant striving towards
accuracy of description. This confers vividness to their narratives, the
power to hold attention and keep curiosity awake.
They differ in the objects of their “realistic” approach: whereas
Defoe’s interest is invested in the external world of fact, in actions, in
circumstantial details, Richardson focuses on the inner world of
thought and feeling, on the movements of consciousness and the
emotional response to moral problems.
5.2.1. Daniel Defoe and the novel of adventure

Defoe’s career as a novelist started with his masterpiece, The
Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York,
Mariner, published in 1719, when the writer was almost sixty. Its
tremendous success encouraged Defoe to produce, in the next
years, several adventure novels. They were all stories of success,
cast in a picaresque form, and tracing the protagonists’ struggles to
Features of achieve material prosperity as a condition of a stable social position.
Defoe’s heroes His heroes are remarkable in their vitality, resourcefulness and
capacity for adjustment and survival. They are pragmatic, dynamic
and versatile, and their adventures show the individual victorious over
circumstances and environment (physical or social).
Their rise to social respectability and wealth, their social
insertion, is invariably accompanied by moral reformation. This
aspect in Defoe’s novels points to his Puritan background, to the
influence, on his fiction, of such non-fictional kinds of writing as the
spiritual autobiography or didactic religious treatises.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

5.2.2. Robinson Crusoe: theme and plot

Robinson Crusoe is recommended as “a just history of fact,”
without “any appearance of fiction in it.” It is, in fact, one of Defoe’s
“honest cheats,” as he came to call his novels – the attempt to
inculcate religion and morality through a gripping story which has the
appearance of authenticity.
The subject is inspired by 17th century stories of castaways on
desert islands, as well by the more recent case of a sailor who had lived
in complete solitude for five years on an uninhabited island. Under
Defoe’s pen, such an experience became an archetypal one, a
celebration of man’s power of spiritual endurance in adversity, of his
moral strength to carry on against all obstacles.
Son of a successful German merchant settled in England, Robinson
displays from a young age the romantic inclination of wandering, the
Illustration to
desire for adventure and for “seeing the world.” He disregards his father’s
the first edition
advice of continuing the family trade and keeping within the limits of his
(1719)
“middle station in life,” and leaves home on board a ship.
After several misadventures at sea, Robinson settles in Brazil
where he becomes a relatively prosperous plantation owner. In the hope
of increasing his wealth, he starts a voyage to Africa, to buy slaves, but
during a terrible storm he is shipwrecked on a desert island.
The only survivor, Robinson becomes engaged in a heroic
struggle for survival, not only physical but also spiritual. In the 28
years of solitary life, he turns from a reckless, romantic youth into a
realistic, prudent and calculating mature man, struggling to impose on
an alien space his middle class idea of order.
After 26 years, he rescues a savage from his fellow cannibals,
names him Friday and turns him into his loyal servant and receptive
pupil. Providence helps him finally leave the island. On his return to
England, he learns that his prospering business in Brazil has made
him a rich man. He marries, has three children, in soon left a
widower, and the book ends with his promise of further accounts of
his island, where he has established a colony.
Robinson on the beach

(illustration by N. C. Wyeth - 1920)

SAQ 3
How does the description “honest cheat” apply to Robinson

Crusoe? Answer in no more than 8 lines / 80 words.

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If it
should differ considerably, read again subchapters 5.2.1. and
5.2.2., making sure you understand the meaning of the phrase
“honest cheat.”
5.2.3. Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe

Defoe’s novel lends itself to a variety of interpretations: as an
allegory of man’s evolution from the state of nature to civilisation and
its institutions; as an allegory of the ecological development of
history; as a political or economic utopia, embodying elements of
contemporary social philosophy and economic theory; as one of the
great myths of individualism of Western civilisation.
It may also be read as a spiritual autobiography in the Puritan
tradition, tracing Robinson’s progress from sin (his disobedience of
his father), to the awakening of religious conscience, the awareness
of his sinfulness and the sincere desire for repentance, and finally to
his conviction of God’s benevolent design.
In this light, the motif of the island acquires symbolic
Robinson’s island dimensions. In his initial struggle with despair, Robinson perceives
his exile from the world as a terrible punishment for his transgression
of his father’s word. Gradually, as his life becomes more secure and
his trust in Providence increases, Robinson comes to see his solitude
rather as a spiritual and moral shelter.
Isolation is no longer a misfortune, but the proper condition for
the examination of consciousness. It corresponds to the
characteristic Puritan tendency to self-scrutiny and introspection, and
it is also symbolic of the Puritan sense of an intense personal
relationship with God.
Changed in his “notion of things,” desires and “delights,”
Robinson perceives the island as the equivalent of a regained
Paradise. In this connection, the protagonist’s experience evokes the
theme of the fortunate fall, or the felix culpa*.
Like Adam, Robinson is cast out from the “edenic” safety and
happiness of his father’s home into an uncertain world of toil, where
his daily bread is earned with “infinite labour.” However, if the biblical
curse of work is meant to remind Adam permanently of his original
disobedience, Robinson finds in it a “therapeutic” value.
The enormous effort by which he secures shelter, food and the
basic commodities of life turns into a source of satisfaction. It has its
The celebration
spiritual rewards, and is thus a way of restoring a lost Paradise.
of homo faber
Defoe’s novel is thus a celebration of the dignity of work, its essential
role in man’s material and spiritual progress.
Robinson Crusoe also celebrates those human features which
enable man to master circumstances: pragmatism, perseverance,
inventiveness, perspicacity. Crusoe’s years of solitude trained him for
social insertion, as a self-reliant individual, morally autonomous, with
a well-defined utilitarian view of life, which will serve his instinct for
independence.
SAQ 4
Read Text 5.2., describing in minute detail Robinson’s

attempt to make an earthenware pot. Enumerate, in the space
below, at least four features of the hero’s character as they are
illustrated by this description. You may render these features
either by a single noun (e. g. ingenuity), or by a sentence (e.g. He
takes pleasure in his work).
1.
2.
3.
4.

you should fail to find any of the features mentioned there, you
must read again the last two paragraphs of subchapter 5.2.3.,
subchapter 5.2., as well as the fragment in the Reader.

5.2.4. Defoe’s style

The world of Defoe’s novels is the world of common fact and
action, of familiar detail, rendered in a simple, clear language.
Defoe’s novels imposed a model of style that contributed
considerably to the “democratisation” of literature. His fiction has the
remarkable power to evoke a tangible reality, containing, at the same
time, the promise of symbolic meanings.
Robinson Crusoe is a gripping narrative, which draws much of
its force from Defoe’s peculiar narrative manner and style. The latter
owes greatly to Defoe’s experience as a journalist, which, in turn
benefited from his innate gift for telling stories.
The “journalistic” style of Defoe’s fiction is consonant with an ideal
of prose style characterised by plainness, clarity, lack of unnecessary
ornamentation, concreteness. His simple, easy and eminently factual
style made his writings accessible to a large audience. He convinced
readers of the truthfulness of his narrative by evoking, with unmatched
vividness, the most common objects and actions in their particularity.
The richness of concrete detail, the frequent enumerations and
inventories, the accumulation of circumstantial detail create a strong
sense of a palpable, solid world, whose reality is difficult to doubt.
Defoe is the first major fiction writer whose narrative realism
conveyed such a powerful impression of authenticity and
completeness in the representation of the interaction of the individual
with the environment. In his aspiration to create an effect of reality in
his narrative, he paid little attention to matters of form. His linear,
episodic plots imitate the episodic quality of life itself.
It was with Richardson that “the sense of life” conveyed by the
narrative was completed by a sense of form, arising from the
complication of a plot centering not on episodic adventure, but on the
complexity of character and human relationship.
SAQ 5
Analyse Text 5.2. in the Reader from the point of view of its
style. Identify in it at least four features of Defoe’s characteristic
narrative style and write them in the space provided below.
1.
2.
3.
4.

your list contains none of the features mentioned there, read the
fragment and subchapter 5.2.4 once more and do the exercise
again, on a separate sheet.

5.2.5. Richardson’s contribution to the development of the novel
Richardson is the first to combine a sense of social reality with

the interest in individual psychology. As the first great sentimental
novelist, Richardson focuses on the relation between feeling and
virtue, sensibility and morality. His influence was considerable, not
only in England but also on the Continent.
His focus on the inner life of feeling and emotion prefigures the
Romantic* sensibility. At the same time, his exploration of
Samuel Richardson unconscious motivation makes him a forerunner in the great tradition
(1689-1761) of the novel of psychological analysis.
Richardson’s prominent place in the history of the English novel
is ensured by two novels: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1748).
Both novels concentrate on the microcosm of the family and
develop the themes of the trial of innocence, of the struggle between
virtue and vice, of individual freedom threatened by arbitrary power.
Both are written in the epistolary manner*, which Richardson found
best suited for the realistic rendering of psychological and moral
complexity, as well as for his didactic purpose.
Pamela differs from Clarissa in tone and ending. In Clarissa, the
death of the heroine turns her into a tragic figure, the double victim of
the libertine aristocrat who raped her and of her narrow-minded, cruel
and greedy relatives. In Pamela, the tone is rather that of a comedy
of manners and the ending is in the spirit of the Cinderella* tale.
5.2.6. The plot of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded

Pamela is a simple countryside girl who works as a maid-
servant in the house of Lady B_, in Bedfordshire. Upon the death of
her mistress, the latter’s son, Mr. B_, impressed by Pamela’s unusual
beauty and grace, tries to seduce her and make her his mistress.
Faced with her resistance, Mr. B_ abducts her and keeps her a
prisoner for a while in his Lincolnshire house, hoping that she will
give in. There, Pamela continues a diary, recording the details of her
ordeal, but also the agitation of her heart and its conflicting impulses.
Her diary – intended for her parents – falls into Mr. B_’s hands, who
is now convinced of the purity of her motives and of her innocence.
He acknowledges his love and proposes marriage to her.
In her new state, Pamela has one more test to pass: winning the
approval of Mr. B’s relatives and friends. Her disarming combination
of graceful modesty and pride helps her come victorious in an
encounter with haughty Lady Davers, Mr. B_’s sister, whose affection
she finally gains. Back to Bedfordshire as mistress of the house,
unanimously loved and admired, Pamela decides to thank
Providence by doing as much good as she can to those around her.

5.2.7. Social hierarchy and the individual self

Pamela’s problem is not only the defense of her chastity. The
moral conflict in the novel is accompanied by social issues. Pamela is
brought up by her modest parents in the spirit of the strictest religious
principles, but the education she received in Lady B_’s house is far
above that of a servant. This ambiguity in her condition makes her
remarkably class-conscious.
She sees social hierarchy as “natural,” but she defends her
dignity as an individual. She perceives her imprisonment by Mr. B_,
the freedoms that he takes with her, his violation of her privacy
(including the private space of her correspondence) as abusive
attempts to reduce her to the condition of an object.
Richardson’s creation of Pamela is revolutionary, a complete
novelty in fiction, as he embodies perfect virtue in a lower middle-class
girl. He thus questions the exclusive right of aristocracy, as a traditionally
dominant class, to set moral standards to the nation. Pamela’s position of
moral superiority reflects Richardson’s confidence that the values of the
middle class entitled them to claim moral leadership.
Through its subject and theme, Richardson’s novel participates
in the larger illuminist debate on the issue of authority and absolute
power vs. the rights of the individual. Richardson’s implicit radical
message, that no one has the right to control the ideas and feelings
of another, is consistent with the spirit of individual freedom which
defines the Enlightenment.
The cover engraving and title page of the 1741 edition
Mr. B_ intercepting Pamela’s first letter to her parents

(Engraving by H. F. Gravelot to the 1742 edition)

SAQ 6
Considering the heroine’s dilemma in the novel, what are the

implications of her exclamation: “My soul is of equal importance
with the soul of a princess, though in quality [i.e. social standing] I
am but upon a foot with the meanest slave.”? Answer in the space
left below, in no more than 10 lines / 100 words.

there should be significant differences, read again attentively
subchapters 5.2.6. and 5.2.7.
5.2.8. Psychological realism and the epistolary technique

What makes Richardson a real innovator is the credibility with
which he renders the heroine’s inner conflicts, her contradictory
impulses and unconscious motivations. Pamela struggles from the
start between fright and fascination, between hate and admiration.
Her initial innocent regard for her master’s benevolence turns
gradually into the apprehension of danger, but her letters betray her
growing affection for her master.
Her conscience is divided between her loyalty to the moral
principles inculcated by her parents and her social duty, as a servant,
to obey Mr. B_ When the latter acts openly as her oppressor, it is
easier for her to stand his abuses, but his moments of kindness
confuse her and make her feel vulnerable. Richardson’s mastery
consists in the subtlety with which he suggests the gradual surfacing
of unconscious feeling and with which he traces the heroine’s slow
process of self-knowledge.
The character of Mr. B_ follows a similar evolution. He proves
as unaware of his feelings as Pamela is. There is a struggle in him
between the “pride of birth” and “pride of fortune”, on the one hand,
and his developing love, on the other. The spectacular change in him
is his overcoming of class prejudice under the influence of feeling.
What Richardson manages to convey most convincingly is the
psychological truth that feeling and emotion may sometimes run
counter to our rational will, and that human actions may have their
true motivation hidden from consciousness.
The exploration of the complexities of emotional response to
pressing moral issues defines Richardson as a sentimental novelist.
He found the epistolary narrative to be best suited for his sentimental
focus. The use of the epistolary technique afforded direct access to
the character’s thoughts and feelings, which are captured in the
process of their emergence.
In Pamela’s letters and diary, events are recorded with the same
care for detail as in Defoe’s narratives. She has a remarkable gift for
rendering an incident vividly or delineating another character. What
counts, however, is the impact of these incidents and encounters on
her mind and heart, her sentimental response to them.
SAQ 7
Starting from Richardson’s own description of his epistolary

manner (Text 5.3. in the Reader), and considering also Text 5.4.,
excerpted from Pamela, find two main advantages of the epistolary
technique. Your answers should not exceed 4 lines / 40 words each.
1.
2.
Compare your answers with the ones given in the section

they should correspond to none of the offered suggestions, read
again subchapter 5.2.9., as well as the indicated fragments in the
Reader.

5.3. Henry Fielding and the novel of manners

Fielding is the creator of the novels of manners. His works are
panoramic reflections of the age; they mirror a wide range of human
types, relationships and actions.
He is also the first novelist who displayed a remarkable sense of
form. The careful narrative architecture of his novels, as well as their
inclusiveness, required a narrator who should be no longer a
character, but a voice external to the story. Through the omniscient*
narrator, the author asserts himself, controlling the narrative and
Henry Fielding imposing his own values explicitly.
(1707-1754) Omniscient narration afforded a comic vision of life. Fielding was
a master of parody, irony, burlesque and comic satire. His
acknowledged literary models were Swift, Pope, and, above all,
Cervantes. Fielding’s combination of realism and comedy inaugurated
a lasting tradition of realistic fiction as an instrument of criticism of
manners, performed by means of comic satiric devices.
5.3.1. Comedy and parody in Joseph Andrews
The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of His

Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams, “written in imitation of the manner of
Cervantes*, author of Don Quixote” (1742), started as a parody.
Fielding considered the Puritan morality preached by Rhichardson’s
Pamela as narrow and ungenerous, and he thought to propose his
own version of morality. The result was the first comic novel of
manners in England, and the first comprehensive literary picture of
the manners and mentalities of the age.
Fielding uses the technique of reversal as a parodic device.
Joseph Andrews is presented as Pamela’s brother, emulating his
sister in the exemplarity of his virtue. He is the object of seduction of
“Lady Booby*,” Mr. B_’s aunt, whose servant he was, in London.
Treating seriously of male virtue results in comic effect, which is
doubled by the fact that Joseph is pursued not only by the mistress,
but also by the maid, Mrs. Slipslop. His rejection of both leads to his
dismissal, so that he sets out for home, to his native village.
At this point, Fielding abandons parody, and the long central
section of the novel – its picaresque part – describes Joseph’s
adventures on the road. The hero’s companions are Parson Abraham
Adams and Fanny Goodwill, Joseph’s sweetheart. The multitude of
incidents during their journey acquaints the reader with the most
diverse aspects of English countryside life and with an impressive
variety of human types.
Lady Booby and
Lady Booby’s estate in Somersetshire is the scene for the
Joseph Andrews
novel’s last series of adventures. All important characters meet here,
(engraving by
including Pamela and her husband, Mr. Booby. Parodic accents are
James Heath,
revived: Pamela is not Richardson’s humble, modest and gentle
1790)
creature, but a snobbish, priggish* upstart, who opposes her
brother’s marriage to a simple country-girl.
A somber discovery marks the climax of confusion: it appears
that Joseph and Fanny are brother and sister. More unexpected
disclosures bring about the final clarification and the great reversal of
the plot: Joseph turns out to be the son of a gentleman, Mr. Wilson,
whom they had met during their journey, while Fanny and Pamela are
revealed to be sisters. This removes all obstacles in the way of Joseph
and Fanny’s marriage, which closes the plot, in the spirit of comedy.
5.3.2. The novel as comic romance

Like his invoked literary master, Cervantes, Fielding likes to play
with genres, to be both serious and ironic about their conventions.
For instance, the spectacular reversal of Joseph’s status, which
turns out to be gentle*, is an ingredient of romantic plots, like the
motif of love fulfilled against all obstacles, or the pattern of the
adventurous journey. Fielding exploits such motifs in a comic or
burlesque key, indeed “in imitation of the manner of Cervantes.”
Fielding himself speaks of his work as a comic romance, alluding
thus to the older genre, but rooting his action in contemporaneity and
the ordinary.
SAQ 8
In the Preface to Joseph Andrews, Fielding gives his definition

of a comic romance and discusses the nature and the source of the
comic (“the Ridiculous”). Read Text 5.5. very carefully and identify
which of the statements below are true and which are false. Circle
the appropriate letter (T or F, for true or false) for each of them.
1. The action of a comic romance is more extended and

comprehensive than that of a comedy. T F
2. Both comedy and comic romance introduce characters of low
social rank and inferior manners. T F
3. Fielding resorts to the burlesque both in the creation of his
characters and in diction. T F
4. The comic writer gives pleasure by strictly imitating nature.
T F
5. The burlesque in writing and the caricatura in painting
presuppose distortion and exaggeration. T F
6. Affectation arising from vanity presupposes the concealment of
vice under an appearance of virtue. T F
7. Affectation arising from hypocrisy is more efficiently comic.
T F
8. Natural imperfections are a source of the Ridiculous for the
comic writer. T F

you should fail to identify the sentences correctly as true or false,
read the text once more, carefully.

5.3.3. The character of Parson Adams

The influence of Cervantes is clear in Fielding’s delineation of
Parson* Adams, one of the most successfully accomplished quixotic*
characters. Like his literary ancestor, the parson combines innocence
and simplicity with dignity and learning.
Parson Adams as a
Adams’s unsuspecting nature often gets him in trouble, and he
quixotic character
never seems to learn from disappointing experiences. His fund of
Christian idealism is inexhaustible, in spite of the many instances of
greed, cruelty, hypocrisy and intolerance he is confronted with.
Fielding involves him in a multitude of comic situations, often making
him appear ridiculous. At the same time, his virtues always outshine
his occasional foolishness.
Parson Adams’s character remains the moral center of the
novel, and the reader is invited to judge all the other characters
against the moral standard that he embodies. He represents what
Fielding considers the highest Christian value: goodness.
For the author, the essence of Christian morality is not
prudence, as for Richardson, but good deeds and charity, which must
give substance to faith. In the combination of foolishness and
idealism that characterises the parson, Fielding makes a synthesis
between the comic and the morally serious, fulfilling thus the novel’s
double aim of entertaining and instructing.
The presence of Parson Adams is essential for the evolution of the
main character. In the beginning, Joseph appears to follow his sister in
his restriction of virtue to the question of chastity. Along the novel, Joseph
emerges as morally mature, quickly assimilating his mentor’s lesson and
convinced that true Christianity means, above all, active goodness.
5.3.4. Fielding’s conception of character in Joseph Andrews

The way in which Fielding conceives his characters in his novels
is of great importance for his didactic purpose. Defoe and Richardson
were also concerned with the relation individual-society, but they
placed their main interest in the individual. Fielding’s panoramic
approach led him to find uniform patterns in human behaviour. In
Character as type other words, as he himself says, he describes “not men, but
manners; not an individual, but a species” (Joseph Andrews).
Fielding’s fiction displays an immense gallery of characters.
Every social class, profession and temperament is represented in his
novels, in various nuances of behaviour and in its moral diversity.
Virtue and vice are not the “privilege” of a certain class or profession;
in Fielding, there are both good and bad innkeepers, doctors,
lawyers, masters, etc; both honest and hypocrite priests, both loyal
The principle of and treacherous servants or friends, etc.
contrast in In order to make the extraordinary variety of human types easier
characterisation to deal with, Fielding resorts to the principle of contrast in
characterisation, because “beauty and excellence” are always best
demonstrated by their reverse. By means of techniques of contrast,
which often create comic effects, Fielding offers aesthetic delight, but
also moral instruction.
5.3.5. Fielding’s Augustanism*

Of all 18th century novelists, Fielding is the most “Augustan.” His
exploration of the diversity of Human Nature, through its moral and
temperamental types, reveals his Augustan view of the writer’s
province. He is a moralist, preoccupied with the reformation of
manners, and he believes, like many Augustan writers, in the
superior corrective efficiency of comedy and its devices.
His narrative style is eminently Augustan: articulate and refined,
unaffected, combining elegant seriousness with wit and irony. At the
same time, he had the exceptional gift of individualizing his
characters through speech, of evoking his characters’ social position
and moral nature through their language.
He had a solid classical education and a strong sense of literary
tradition, and he tried to give full legitimacy to the novel, defining it in
relation with the respectable genres of the epic and drama.
His commentaries and reflections on his own art, incorporated in
the substance of his works, provide the first theory of the novel. Such
reflections show his Neoclassic emphasis on discipline and
craftsmanship as essential for successful creation.
SAQ 9
Mention at least three features of Fielding’s art of the novel

which distinguish him from Defoe and Richardson. Explain them,
drawing short comparisons, of no more than 3 lines / 30 words each.
1.
2.
3.
Compare your answer with the one given in the section

they should differ substantially, read again subchapters 5.2.,
5.2.4., 5.2.8., 5.3., and 5.3.4.

5.4. Laurence Sterne and the “anti-novel”

Sterne’s only novel was published in instalments: its nine
volumes appeared between 1760 and 1768.
Fielding had demonstrated, in Joseph Andrews, that parody was
a factor of innovation in the development of the novel as a literary
genre. With Sterne, the testing of the possibilities and limits of fiction
took the novel into a radical direction. His Tristram Shandy has been
seen as an anti-novel, a sceptical examination of the conventions of
realistic fiction, i.e. of those procedures by which an author
“transcribes“ life, moulds reality into a literary pattern.
Laurence Sterne The ultimate question that Sterne raises in his novel is the
(1713-1768) nature of fictional representation, the relation between life and
literature. This makes his novel a work of metafiction*.
5.4.1. Tristram Shandy: an unconventional autobiographical novel

The title of the novel raises in the reader the expectation of an
autobiographical narrative, the history of a private life. However,
instead of a linear narration of a life's story and the rational
coherence of an autobiographical retrospective account, we are
drawn into an extremely irregular, unpredictable narrative.
In spite of his promises, Tristram, the narrator, does not manage
to give a shape to his story. He digresses continually; he seems to
have, at every point, other interesting things to relate. He tells us
about his birth only in Volume III. We learn few things about his life:
that his nose was crushed at birth by the doctor’s forceps; that he
was, by accident, christened Tristram (a name which evokes the
French word “triste”) instead of Trismegistus* as his father had
intended; that his brother Bobby died suddenly; that his father
decided to write a “system of education” (Tristrapaedia), which
progressed at a slower pace than the growth of his son; that, at the
age of five, Tristram suffered a new misfortune: an accidental
“circumcision,” when a window sash fell over him owing to the maid’s
carelessness.
These few tragi-comic episodes from Tristram’s early life make
him a “small HERO,” in every sense. Much more of the narrative is
dedicated to the unforgettable figures of his father, Walter, of his
uncle, Toby and the latter’s devoted servant, corporal Trim, as well as
of Parson Yorick, the priest who baptised Tristram.
5.4.2. Eccentric characters in Tristram Shandy

Tristram’s family is a collection of “originals,” individuals
dominated by some private obsession, which isolates each of them in
his mental universe. His father, Walter Shandy, is an erudite
philosopher, who has read “the oddest books in the universe” and
consequently has “the oddest way of thinking.” He is fond of building
strange theories and hypotheses about the smallest things, and his
long, pedantic discourses are completely incomprehensible to those
around him.
Among his most eccentric theories, there are his “system of
noses” – his conviction that the quality of a person’s nose determines
his character – and the hypothesis concerning Christian names,
which were expected to influence a man’s conduct, character and
destiny. Understandably, therefore, the early accidents in his son’s
life cause him great distress.
“My uncle Toby” is the most memorable character in the book, a
quixotic figure forming an eccentric couple with corporal Trim.
Wounded in Flanders, during the War of the Spanish Succession*,
and discharged from the army, uncle Toby continues to live the reality
of war through a substitute. He transforms his bowling green into a
miniature military field, representing there the main battles as they
William Hogarth, were being fought on the continent. He becomes completely
Tristram Shandy, absorbed in this activity, gathering “almost as many books on military
frontispiece to vol.1 architecture as Don Quixote was found to have of chivalry,” forgetting
(1760) everything in pursuit of his obsession, which influences all his
thoughts and actions.
Tristram calls such obsessions hobby-horses. Characterisation
by hobby-horse is a negation of conventional means of realistic
character delineation. It is not type (social, moral or psychological)
that interests Sterne, but the uniqueness of each individual mind. On
the other hand, uniqueness is achieved in extreme, ironic terms, as
comic eccentricity, which becomes almost a parody of human
individuality. There are many eccentric characters in 18th century
fiction, but in Sterne’s novel all characters are eccentrics.
5.4.3. Sentimentalism and tragi-comic vision

The characters’ obsessions and idiosyncrasies are an
intellectual barrier in their communication, and this is made obvious in
their endless conversations recorded in the novel. However, the
members of the Shandy family reach mutual understanding on the
affective level. They cannot share their thoughts, but they can enter a
dialogue of the hearts, where compassion and empathy bridge the
gap created by their singularity.
Sterne places emphasis on the sentimental nature of his heroes
as an aspect of their “moral character.” Toby Shandy is Sterne’s best
accomplished sentimental character – the narrator continually praises
his uncle’s good nature, amiability, gentleness, modesty and, above
all, generosity.
Tristram Shandy displays a unique combination of
sentimentalism and comedy. The narrator sees laughter as the
The Shandean
ultimate defense of the sensitive soul against life’s miseries and
view of life
limitations. His narrative emphasises a tragi-comic vision of life, with
man as a vulnerable, pitiful creature, doomed to pass from sorrow to
sorrow. Suffering is a permanence in Tristram’s world, and it is either
dealt with sentimentally or revealed in its comic absurdity.
The “nonsensical, good-humoured, Shandean* book” that
Tristram is trying to write is meant to do good to the reader’s both
heart and head. Its approach to the frustrations of life is called by
Tristram “true Shandeism,” defined as the capacity to mock at the
blows of fate, to preserve good humour in the middle of trouble, to
take a lightly ironic distance from suffering. It is a combination of
wisdom and mirth*, which enables man to keep a healthy spirit and to
get around the evils of life by joking about them.
SAQ 10
In Vol. I, Ch. V, Sterne introduces the theme of Fortune – a

theme which he will develop with a characteristic mixture of
sentimental pathos and comic wit. Read this short chapter (Text
5.6. in the Reader) attentively and explain why Tristram’s self-
description as a “small HERO” suggests a tragi-comic vision of life.
Write the answer in the space left below, restricting it to 12 lines /
120 words.

the difference is considerable, read again subchapter 5.4.3., as
well as the fragment from the Reader. To remember the features
of the tragic hero, see again the fall of princes, in the Glossary to
Unit 2.

5.4.4. The “Shandean” view of writing

This ambivalent view of life corresponds, in Sterne’s novel, to a
certain view of writing. Tristram is earnestly trying to tell the story of
his life and his opinions as accurately as possible, and to involve the
reader both imaginatively and sentimentally. The difficulty he
experiences as a writer is due to the limits of language, the
“imperfections of words.” Not only as a man, but also as an author,
Tristram has the consciousness of his tragi-comic predicament.
Faced with the problems of accurate representation through words,
Tristram resorts to other means of communication.
Typographically, the book is a comic oddity, with its multitude of
dashes, asterisks, points of suspension, with its blank pages for the
reader to fill in, drawings and graphs, even a black sheet introduced
at the death of Yorick, marking a moment of affectionate recollection.
The structure of the book is equally odd. It is, for instance, only
in the middle of Volume III that we find the author’s Preface; there are
several dedications scattered through the book; there are numberless
digressions and interpolated stories, etc. Tristram constantly
oscillates between the comic despair at his incapacity to master his
narrative and the delight he takes in complete narrative freedom. The
same “Shandean” view applies to writing: Tristram counteracts the
frustrations of the author who aims at perfect communication by
putting on the mask of the literary jester* and mocking at the
conventions of the genre.
5.4.5. The defamiliarisation of realistic conventions

By taking extreme freedoms with narrative and compositional
conventions, by exploiting them in a parodic way, Sterne
defamiliarises them, i.e. makes the reader aware of them, by drawing
his attention not only to what is told, but also to how it is told.
For example, the restriction of the hero’s “life” to a few episodes
breaks the convention of autobiographical focus. The zigzagging
narrative, its unpredictable returns to various moments in the past,
frustrates our expectation of chronological linearity commonly
Digressive associated with an autobiographical account. The narrator explicitly
narrative refuses to keep the story straight, and he takes great delight in
digressions, which he calls “the sunshine of reading.”
The confused chronology and the digressive excesses frustrate
also our expectation of a plot. Sterne’s rambling narrative, so different
from Fielding’s tight, coherent plots, does not seem to move towards
any climax, and gives the impression of stagnation.
This impression is increased by Tristram’s effort to be exhaustive
in his presentation. He delights in minute descriptions of postures and
small gestures, watched as if by a slow motion camera. He thus
exaggerates parodically the realistic pursuit of accuracy and immediacy.

5.4.6. Tristram Shandy as metafiction

The constant reference to the devices and conventions
operating in fiction, the permanent inquiry into what a novel can do
and cannot do, makes Tristram Shandy a work of metafiction.
Basically, metafiction is fiction about fiction, i.e. works which call
attention to their own devices. The main subject of Sterne’s novel is,
ultimately, the process of its own writing.
The meaning of metafiction depends, however, on the author’s
vision of life. Sterne’s particular approach to narrative correponds to a
certain vision of human experience. There are themes in Sterne’s
Metafictional novel which may be called “metafictional”; i.e. they may be related to
themes the problem of fictional representation and its limits.
One such theme in Tristram Shandy is that of human
communication – or rather incommunication –, which is connected, at
the structural level, with the narrator’s desperate effort to be all-
inclusive and his incapacity of managing his narrative.
The unpredictable, random course of the narrative has a
correspondent in the theme of Fortune, of life as pure chance. The
randomness of the narrative is a mirror of the narrator’s sense of his
own life as tragi-comically governed by accident.
The theme of time Another prominent theme with a metafictional relevance is that
of time and its relation with the imagination. Tristram Shandy may be
called the first philosophical novel in English, as it explores – half-
seriously, half-comically – the distinction between subjective and
objective time. Sterne’s literary treatment of the notion of duration
makes him a precursor of 20th century modernist writers like James
Joyce and Virginia Woolf, also concerned with the way in which
consciousness refracts external reality.
Metafictionally, the theme of time corresponds to the narrator’s
concern with the distinction between the time of writing, the narrated
time and the time of reading. Tristram constantly draws attention to
the way in which he manipulates fictional time, making the reader
aware that “literary time” is arbitrary and conventional.
As metafiction, Tristram Shandy questions the mimetic illusion
that realistic fiction endeavours to create. It is a half-amused, half-
sceptical meditation on the condition of literature and its relation with
reality, on the possibilities of fiction to render in an intelligible pattern
the elusive, formless reality. Its extravagant, experimental character
affords the reader a glimpse into the novelist’s dilemmas and arsenal
of choices, into the “laboratory” of his literary consciousness.
In volume VI, Tristram draws the narrative “lines,” with their

digressions, in the first four volumes.

SAQ 11
Text 5.7. in the Reader illustrates the metafictional dimension

of Sterne’s novel. Instead of continuing the story, the narrator
stops and considers his eccentric way of telling it. In this way, the
author reveals to the reader one aspect of his conception of
writing, which he discusses in the very text of the work. The
fragment is practically about the writing of the novel.
Read the text and find three reasons for Tristram’s praise of
digressions. Write them in the spaces indicated below, using no
more than 3 lines / 30 words for each of them.
1.
2.
3.

they differ significantly, go again through subchapters 5.4.5. and
5.4.6., and read the fragment attentively once more.
Henry William Bunbury: Uncle Toby and Trim reviving

a scene of war on the bowling green (1773)

Summary
The birth of the novel is a literary phenomenon that must be seen
as part of the process of modernisation defining the Age of the
Enlightenment in England. Since its settlement on the literary scene,
this genre has enjoyed unrivalled popularity. At the beginning of the
18th century, the novel was a minor form, completely ignored by
Augustan poetics. The absence of norms and models made it an
exceptionally flexible and inclusive form. This is reflected in the wide
diversity of directions in which the novel developed in the 18th century.
You have formed an idea of this diversity from the chapters of this
unit, which has dealt with four major novelists of this age: Daniel Defoe,
Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne. Their
works illustrate various aspects and tendencies in the evolution of the
genre. We have only concentrated on one novel for each writer, selected
as an illustration of the most characteristic features of his art.
Defoe illustrates best the new narrative realism that emerged in
fiction, and with Robinson Crusoe the middle class hero is imposed
on the literary scene. However, in a work so committed to the matter-
of-fact, to the palpable reality of common objects and actions,
readers along the ages have been able to find a wealth of symbolic
meanings and a story of archetypal significance.
Richardson takes the novel in the direction of the minute
analysis of emotion and feeling, but his interest in the psychological
complexity of the individual is completed by a remarkable sensitivity
to social aspects.
Fielding, on the other hand, in his novels of manners, looks for
the permanences in human nature and investigates the border area
in which the individual’s aspirations and pursuits are submitted to the
pressure of social demand.
Lastly, Sterne, who shares with Fielding the attraction to
comedy and parody, tests the possibilities and limitations of the
newly-born literary genre in an experimental, self-conscious novel
that makes him highly modern.
Key words
• realism
• romance
• character
• to divert and instruct
• parody
• comic
• novel of manners
• sentimental novel
• narrative technique
• metafiction
• convention

Glossary
• Augustanism: the features of style and the aesthetic views of a
writer belonging to the Augustan Age (for the latter, see again the
Glossary in Unit 1).
• Bildungsroman: German term; literally: novel of formation, or
education.
• booby: silly or stupid person.
• burlesque: see the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Cinderella: an old fairy story, in which the poor heroine,
persecuted by her stepmother and ugly stepsisters, ends up by
marrying Prince Charming. Cinderella is the prototype of the
obscure and neglected young person, who achieves success
owing to beauty and virtue.
• epistolary manner: in a novel, the way of telling the story
through a character’s letters or through an exchange of letters.
The letter (epistle) as a literary species was widely used in the
18th century.
• felix culpa: see subchapter 3.3 and the Glossary in Unit 3.
• gentle: of good breeding; belonging to a high social class (as in
gentleman).
• harpsichord: an old musical instrument, played like a piano, but
producing a different sound.
• hobby horse: a favourite topic or an obsessive, fixed idea.
Concretely, a hobbyhorse is a toy, consisting of a stick with a
figure of a horse’s head at one end.
• jester: a professional clown employed by a king or nobleman, a
Fool.
• lifelikeness: closeness to life; exact representation of life.
• literacy: the ability to read and write.
• metafiction: literally, “beyond fiction”; a term designating the
contemporary mode of fiction – postmodern fiction – which is
essentially self-reflexive, or “narcissistic” – i.e. in which its form
becomes explicitly its subject.
• mimetic: the adjective derived from mimesis (Greek: imitation), a
term associated with the aesthetic view according to which the
work of art is an imitation – a representation – of reality. It was
Aristotle who articulated this theory, which dominated Western
aesthetics until the end of the 18th century.
• minuteness: exactness in the rendering of small detail.
• mirth: laughter, gaiety, fun, happiness.
• omniscient: describes the perspective of a narrator who appears
to know all about the characters and their action.
• parody: the satirical imitation of a serious work, whose style,
tone, attitude and subject are deliberately distorted so as to make
them appear ridiculous.
• parson: an Anglican priest in charge of a local church.
• picaresque: the origin of English picaresque novels is in the
Spanish picaresque fiction of the 16th century, which became
popular in England through translation and imitation. The hero –
the picaro (i.e. rogue) – belongs, characteristically, to the lower
ranks of society, and he seeks social integration. He is forced to
find his way in a hostile world by means of his resourcefulness
and ingenuity, having often to go through the experience of
humiliation and frustration, which stands in an ironic contrast with
the successive triumphs of the noble hero of romance).
• priggish: describes a person who is strict about rules and correct
behaviour and thinks him/herself morally superior to others.
• Puritan: see the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Romantic: see Romanticism in the Glossary in Unit 1.
• quixotic: the word describes a character moulded after
Cervantes’s Don Quixote; “quixotic” indicates an unrealistically
optimistic and impractically idealistic approach to life.
• Shandean: the adjective that Tristram derives from his family
name.
• War of the Spanish Succession: 1702-1713; Britain joined
Austria, Prussia and the Netherlands against France, Spain and
Bavaria in this war fought over the disputed succession to the
Spanish throne.
• Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra): Spanish writer

(1547-1616), author of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605; 1615),
the famous satirical romance in which the hero’s sense of reality
is altered by his obsession with the romantic chivalric ideal.
Stimulated by the numberless stories of romantic heroism that he
has read, Don Quixote starts, like a knight-errant of former times,
on a quest that is both admirable and ridiculous. The high
aspirations of this generous, honest and brave hidalgo (i.e.
squire) appear as madness in a world whose reality is obscured
to him by the idealism of the old romances. Don Quixote is an
implicit debate on the relation between fiction and reality.
• Trismegistus: Hermes Trismegistos (thrice-greatest) is the
Greek name given to the Egyptian god Thoth as supposed author
of various works of mysticism and magic.

This assignment includes tasks concerning both Unit 4 and

Unit 5. You will have, therefore, to revise the preceding unit, with
special attention to subchapter 4.4., which presents Swift as a
master of allegorical satire.
1. Text 4.4. in the Reader presents an incident at the court of

Brobdingnag, in Book II of Gulliver’s Travels. In order to win the
good graces of the king, who had just pronounced a severe
judgement on his civilisation, Gulliver offers him the secret of
the recipe for gunpowder, revealing candidly to him the
“benefits” of this invention. Horrified, the king rejects this
tribute, and Gulliver’s new humiliation will make him partial in
the subsequent description of the king’s rule. Read the
fragment carefully and analyse:
• the ironic-satirical treatment of Gulliver himself.
• the features that make the kingdom of Brobdingnag a
utopia of reasonable government, and its contrast with
European civilisation as Gulliver presents it.
Limit your answer to 35 lines/350 words.
2. The novel as a literary genre both reflects and helps

consolidate values and attitudes which define the Age of the
Enlightenment. Mention at least four aspects in support of this
idea. You may refer both to the general circumstances of the
novel’s emergence and its concerns, and to the illustration of
those values and attitudes in a particular novel.
You might find it helpful to revise subchapters 5.1. and 5.1.2., as
well as the presentation of the novel you choose to discuss.
Limit your answer to 25 lines / 250 words.
3. Text 5.1. in the Reader represents a fragment from Robinson

Crusoe in which the motif of the island is particularly prominent.
What is the double symbolic significance of Robinson’s island,
as illustrated by this fragment, in the context of the novel’s
pattern of Puritan autobiography?
Your answer should be no longer than 10 lines /100 words.

(30%). Pay special attention to the instructions for each task.

SAQ 1
1. The rise of the middle classes … coincides with the emergence
of the novel as a literary genre.
2. Women were … a consistent part of the novel’s reading public,
and also authors of novels.
3. By contrast with the escapist spirit of romances, … novels
focused on the ordinary and the familiar aspects of life, on
contemporary social reality and on the experience of the
common individual.
4. The didactic mission of the novel in the 18th century consisted in
… offering the middle class readers models of moral and ethical
conduct and of social success.
5. The novel’s interest in the tensions between the public and the
private reflected … the attempt to reconcile the growing spirit of
individualism with the aspiration to social harmony.
SAQ 2
1. the novel of adventure
2. the sentimental novel
3. the picaresque novel
4. the Bildungsroman
5. the novel of manners
6. the comic novel
SAQ 3
Defoe’s own phrase refers to the purpose of his novels: to
entertain and to instruct. He delights the reader with an extraordinary
adventure and a story of success, which is given an air of authenticity
by the meticulous, realistic account, and by the form of
autobiographical record. He thus “cheats” the reader with the illusion
of truth, but this is a way of accomplishing more efficiently his honest
intention of conveying a moral message.
SAQ 4
Tenacity; patience; industriousness; sharp sense of observation;
inventiveness; pragmatism; optimism; the capacity for learning from
mistakes; rationality; resilience.
SAQ 5
factuality; concreteness; plainness; immediacy; vividness; minuteness
SAQ 6
Pamela’s assertion points to her conviction that the right to defend
the moral integrity of one’s self is independent of social status. In the
social order, she may be deprived of the privilege of class and fortune,
but she lives with the deep conviction that in the spiritual order of a
Christian world, all souls are equal. She will accept humbly her social
inferiority, but she denies any human being the right to control her moral
will. Her statement reflects the strength of her sense of individual worth,
as well as a paradoxical combination of social conformity and
rebelliousness, which makes her sensitive to any form of power abuse.
SAQ 7
1. The reader is made witness to the most private thoughts of the
character, and this impression of unmediaded communication
strengthens his belief in the character’s sincerity.
2. It creates a greater sense of suspense and anticipation, since the
letters usually record moments of crisis in the character’s experience.
This technique may thus give a dramatic quality to the narrative.
3. It allows a more profound insight into the character’s mind; it enables
the author to give greater psychological complexity to the characters.
SAQ 8
1.T; 2.T; 3F; 4.T; 5.T; 6.F; 7.T; 8.F
SAQ 9
1. The narrative manner: unlike Defoe and Richardson, who write in
the first person, Fielding finds the omniscient point of view more
suitable to his intentions.
2. The conception of character: he is interested not in the
uniqueness of individuals, but in the way in which the individual
embodies general traits of human nature; that is, he is concerned
with human types.
3. His style: while the style of Defoe and Richardson is closer to the
plainness of common speech, Fielding displays the elegance and
refinement of the Augustan ideal of style.
SAQ 10
In formulating your answer, you should think first of the features
of a tragic hero. He is always a prominent figure, enjoying title,
wealth and power; his gifts and virtues set him above common
people. This is not Tristram’s case. He is a “small HERO” because
the misfortunes of his life do not consist in some “great or signal evil,”
but in “pitiful misadventures.” The image of the “ungracious Duchess”
– Fortune – pelting him with a series of “cross [i.e unfavourable]
accidents” is in comic contrast with the ideas of tragic disaster and
the fall of the great.
SAQ 11
1. The use of digressions is meant to show Tristram’s narrative skill
and constitutes a mark of his originality.
2. Digressions keep the reader’s curiosity awake; they create a sort of
suspense, forbidding the reading “appetite” to fail and bringing in
variety.
3. It prevents the writing from ending – it allows the writer to go on
indefinitely. In this way, living and the act of writing overlap each
other.

Further reading
1. Allen, Walter, The English Novel, Penguin Books Limited, 1991
(pp. 37-42; 43-46; 53-59; 76-80)
2. Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, vol.3 (“The
Restoration to 1800”), London: Secker and Warburg Ltd, 1969
(pp. 598-602; 701-704; 712-718; 731-736)
3. Macsiniuc, Cornelia, The English Eighteenth Century: The Novel
in Its Beginnings, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2003 (pp. 116-
127; 143-163; 179-195; 217-231; 234-238)

English pre-Romantic poetry
UNIT 6
ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTIC POETRY
Unit Outline
Unit objectives 150
6 English pre-Romantic poetry 150
6.1. Pre-Romantic tendencies in 18th century poetry 150
6.1.1. The poetry of melancholy meditation 151
6.1.2. The interest in early poetry 151
6.1.3. The pre-Romantic sensibility and the interest in new poetic forms 153
6.2. The rural universe in 18thcentury poetry 153
6.2.1. The sentimental approach: Oliver Goldsmith 154
6.2.2. Character sketch in The Deserted Village 154
6.2.3. The realistic approach: George Crabbe 155
6.2.4. Robert Burns and the popular tradition 156
6.3. Pre-Romantic nature poetry 158
6.3.1. James Thomson, The Seasons 158
6.3.2. William Cowper, The Task 159
6.4. William Blake – the visionary artist 161
6.4.1. Blake as a pre-Romantic poet 161
6.4.2. Blake, the Romantic visionary 162
6.4.3. The theme of childhood in Songs of Innocence 163
6.4.4. Ironic implications in Songs of Innocence 166
6.4.5. The fall from Innocence: Songs of Experience 166
6.4.6. Knowledge in the world of Experience 167
6.4.7. The double vision in Blake’s Songs 168
Summary 170
Key words 171
Glossary 171
SAA No. 3 173
Further reading 176

♦ explain the shift in literary taste that occurred in the latter half
Unit objectives of the 18th century
♦ define the main interests and tendencies in pre-Romantic
poetry
♦ point out elements of continuity and discontinuity between
pre-Romantic poetry and Augustan literature
♦ compare the representation of the rural universe in the works
of 18th century poets
♦ describe the pre-Romantic approach to the theme of nature
♦ specify pre-Romantic and Romantic features of William
Blake’s work
♦ analyse Blake’s notions of Innocence and Experience in the
context of particular poems
♦ describe the contrasting visions in poems by Blake
6.1. Pre-Romantic tendencies in 18th century poetry

The eighteenth century, the century of the Enlightenment*, was
eminently the Age of Reason, whose literary-artistic expression was
the Neoclassical doctrine. Neoclassicism*, with its emphasis on
order, discipline, harmony, elegance and decorum*, regarded art as
the product of civilisation, and cultivated its public relevance.
Literature was called to deal with matters of public interest, to bring
the significant aspects of human life and behaviour into the light of
public attention. The optimism and pragmatism of a rational age
which believed in progress were reflected in literature as well, as is
proved by the works of the great Augustan writers (Steele, Addison,
Pope, Swift, and Fielding).
Like any modern age, however, the century of the Enlightenment
was not without paradoxes and contradictions. For instance, the cult of
Reason favoured an attitude of humanitarianism and social
benevolence, which in turn favoured the emergence of the cult of
From the Age of Feeling. The interest in individual psychology, as well as the
Reason to the Age preoccupation of 18th century analytic thought with the workings of the
of Feeling human mind, led to an increasing attention to emotional response. The
sentimental novel* (e.g. Samuel Richardson) is one manifestation of
this tendency.
The concern with personal, subjective experience is displayed
not only in fiction, but also in a new kind of meditative poetry, which
became the vehicle for the expression of private feeling and assumed
a personal voice.
One trend in the 18th century poetry of meditation was the
preference for the expression of melancholy and dark thoughts, and
for night as a setting. This new poetic trend ran counter to the
optimistic confidence of the Age of Reason, and the sensibility that it
cultivated favoured the rise of the Gothic novel.

6.1.1. The poetry of melancholy meditation

Edward Young is one of the most important representatives of
this new kind of reflective poetry, whose basic motifs were the
shortness and sorrows of life and the inexorable passage of time. His
long poem in nine books, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), is the most
outstanding expression of this new spirit in poetry, and it exerted an
immense influence both in England and on the Continent. It consisted
in long blank verse* meditations on such things as earthly vanity,
death and immortality. Its gloomy setting – the churchyard, with
Edward Young tombstones lit by the pale moon – contributed to the birth of the taste
(1683-1765) for Gothic.
Young and other poets formed a distinct trend in the mid-
eighteenth century, known as the Graveyard School of poetry. It is in
this tradition that one of the most popular poems in English must be
placed: Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray
(1716-1771). It begins with the contemplation of the landscape, which
leads the poet to a sad meditation on “the short and simple annals* of
the poor” – the joys and sorrows of the country-folk, whose life had
passed in complete anonymity. The perfect form of Gray’s poem
shows his classical training, but its subject and mood are pre-
Romantic.
6.1.2. The interest in early poetry

Another tendency which announced a change in literary
sensibility was a new sense of the past, which contrasts with the
Augustan focus on contemporary civilisation. This new interest was
reflected in the curiosity about “primitive* poetry” – biblical poetry,
Celtic* and Norse* legend and mythology, and folk literature in
general.
The most spectacular manifestation of this interest is the volume
Poems of Ossian, published in 1765 by James Macpherson (1736-
1796). Macpherson claimed to have translated these poems from “the
Ossian Gaelic or Erse* language,” and to have collected them in the
(painted by Highlands of Scotland*. He also claimed that their author was the
Nicolai Abildgaard, legendary Irish bard and hero Ossian, supposed to have lived in the
1782) 3rd century A.D.
What Macpherson presented as a great primitive Celtic epic
turned out to be entirely his own imaginary creation, but its influence
on the birth of Romanticism* in England and on the Continent was
huge.
Macpherson’s “Ossianic poems” are pieces of highly rhetorical
poetic prose, imitating partly the cadence of biblical verses and of
Milton’s blank verse. The lamentations of the blind bard evoke an
ancient world of heroic virtue, and misty, wild, sublime landscapes,
and the dominant tone is that of nostalgia and regret.
The fascination with the Middle Ages is another feature which
illustrated the rise of the Romantic sensibility. In 1765, Thomas Percy
published a collection of mediaeval ballads, Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry, which awakened a steady interest in older poetic
styles.
In 1770, young Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), aspiring to

poetic fame, published a volume of poems presented as belonging to
the mediaeval poet-monk Thomas Rowley. These poems displayed
lyric grace and the promise of talent, but they proved to be (like the
Ossianic poems) entirely the product of Chatterton’s inflamed
Death of Chatterton, imagination. When his literary fraud was exposed, Chatterton
by Henry Wallis committed suicide. The coming generation of Romantic poets turned
(1856) him into a legend, regarding him as a martyr, the victim of an
insensitive and hostile world.
SAQ 1
Read the partial statements below and match them. The

completed sentences will describe aspects of the emergence of a
pre-Romantic current in 18th century poetry. Write the correct
sequel in the space provided for each sentence.
1. The churchyard was a favourite setting …
2. The melancholy poetry of the Graveyard School, with its

gloomy atmosphere, …
3. The publication, in 1765, of Thomas Percy’s collection of

ballads, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, reflected…
4. Like James Macpherson, who claimed to have translated an

ancient Celtic epic poem by the legendary Ossian, …
a. … the pre-Romantic interest in the Middle Ages and popular poetry.

b. … for the pre-Romantic poetry of melancholy meditation.
c. … Chatterton is also the author of a literary “fraud,” presenting
his own poems as authentic mediaeval verse.
d. … as well as Gothic fiction, with its taste for the macabre and
the supernatural, is a pre-Romantic reaction against Neoclassic
literary decorum.

make the right match for every sentence, read again the previous
subchapters.

6.1.3. The pre- Romantic sensibility and the interest in new poetic
forms
The transition from the Augustan to the Romantic age was
slow and long. Elements of a pre-Romantic sensibility can be
found all along the century, sometimes within the context of
Augustan conventions. The emphasis on sentimental response,
the inspiration from folk myths and legends, the interest in the
local and national past, the interest in rural life and its contrast
with civilisation, the new feeling for nature – these were features
indicating that literary taste was changing.
This change in taste concerned not only themes and
subjects, but also literary forms. Towards the end of the century,
William Blake would call the heroic couplet* the “great cage” of
The return to Augustan poetry, and indeed the tendency along the century
blank verse was to abandon it for poetic forms that allowed more freedom. A
return to blank verse – for which Shakespeare and Milton were
the great models – allowed greater flexibility of expression. In
the latter part of the century, an interest developed in popular
forms of poetry, such as the song and the ballad, valued for their
simplicity and directness by the first Romantics (William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge).
In the following subchapters, we shall look more closely at

two important pre-Romantic aspects of 18 th century poetry: the
development of a sentimental interest in rural life, and the
emergence of a distinct poetic attitude towards nature.
6.2. The rural universe in 18th century poetry
The emerging Age of Sensibility oriented the critical spirit,

characteristic of the Enlightenment, towards the highest
achievement of man’s Reason: civilisation itself. There was a
growing suspicion that civilisation may have a corrupting effect
on man’s innate goodness. Under the influence of Jean Jacques
Rousseau*, the state of nature began to be idealised, and the
18 th century abounded in optimistic utopias about an idyllic,
patriarchal society in which men could enjoy fully their natural
right to freedom.
The sentimental opposition between town and country was
to become a convention in 18 th century literature. The great
novelists (e.g. Henry Fielding) would often associate the
turbulent, busy life of the city with moral confusion, and the
simplicity of country life with moral virtue.

6.2.1. The sentimental approach: Oliver Goldsmith
An idyllic view of the countryside is present in the poem The

Deserted Village (1770), by Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774).
Goldsmith’s literary preferences were Neoclassic, but his remarkable
achievement is to have combined a sentimental theme with the
elegant, balanced form of the Augustan couplet. The poem is
Goldsmith’s reaction to a social and economic reality: the enclosure*
of land, a capitalist process which changed radically the life of the
traditional village.
Goldsmith sets in contrast the former happiness of Auburn (an
idealised version of his native village, in Ireland) with the desolation
of the present, when the land is concentrated in the hand of “one only
The Deserted Village master.” He remembers the days gone by, with their “humble
illustration by happiness” spent in the middle of a hard-working but cheerful and
W. Lee Hankey warm-hearted community. Their life was measured then by the cycles
(1900 edition) of agricultural labour, alternating with the simple “sports” (i.e.
amusements) and pleasures of the moments of well-deserved
leisure. Goldsmith gives an idyllic picture of a rural paradise, in which
man lives in harmony with nature and enjoys “health and plenty,”
“innocence and ease,” and in which toil becomes a pleasure.
This sentimental image of the “loveliest village of the plain” is
only a memory, and the poet constantly moves between the happy
past and the sorrowful present. His evocation of the past charms of
“sweet Auburn” has an elegiac tone, and he laments the
disintegration of the traditional, stable rural civilisation.
Goldsmith blames the decay of the former way of country life on
the increasing greed of man, on the excessive concern with
accumulation of wealth, and on the vice of “luxury.” His village was an
idyllic microcosm, a small but organic universe sustained by
temperance and virtue, but incapable to resist the pressure of the
new economic tendencies.
6.2.2. Character sketch in The Deserted Village

The Deserted Village illustrates not only Goldsmith’s sharp
sense of observation in the description of natural beauty and of the
human scene, but also his art of character sketch. His remembrance
of the old days in Auburn focuses now and then on some member of
the community, whom he evokes in short, precise and vivid features.
Among his notable miniature portraits is that of the village
schoolmaster, whose small eccentricities are captured with
affectionate humour. A memorable sentimental description is that of
the village preacher. Goldsmith emphasises the decency, moderation
and humility of his simple life, “remote from towns,” his complete lack
of ambition and vanity, and his strong attachment to the place and
community which he serves. Firm in his moral guidance and a severe
judge of human “wanderings,” Goldsmith’s parson is, however, a truly
charitable soul, “to all the country dear.”

SAQ 2
The portrait of the preacher in The Deserted Village

completes the idyllic picture of Auburn in the old days. Below,
there are several features of this character. Read Text 6.1.,
containing a fragment from Goldsmith’s poem, and identify those
lines which illustrate or suggest these features. Write these lines
down in the provided spaces, after each mentioned feature.
1. moderation (1 line):
2. strong attachment to the humble community that he served (2 lines):
3. complete lack of worldly ambition or vanity ( 2 lines):
4. selflessness and sincere concern for the fate and spirit of those in
pitiful circumstances (1 line):
5. hospitality to the poor (2 lines):
6. severity in his judgement of human error, but unconditional charity

(1 line):

they should differ significantly, read the fragment from Goldsmith
again.
6.2.3. The realistic approach: George Crabbe

Goldsmith’s idealisation of rural life received a sharply realistic
reply from a poet who also continues the Augustan tradition: George
Crabbe (1754-1832). His poem in rhymed couplets The Village
(1783) is an attack on those poetic conventions which created the
illusion of the innocence and happiness of country life. Crabbe’s
medical practice afforded him a first hand observation of the rural
world, and the sentimental cult of its idyllic charm had little to do with
the realities that he encountered.
His poem aims to paint village life “as Truth will paint it and as
bards will not”. Instead of the cheerful ease, the innocent pleasures
and the rewarding toil described in Goldsmith’s Deserted Village,
Crabbe presents a sordid reality. For him, the sad truth of village life
is the people’s hopeless poverty, their many vices, their struggle with
an unfriendly nature for the daily bread. Despised and neglected by
the rich, they lead a bitter existence, whose miseries never end.
Crabbe denounces the unreality and artificiality of pastoral
poetry, whose Muse knows nothing of the real pains and cares of the
peasants. The moralist in him could not accept to disguise their
deplorable fortune “in tinsel trappings [i.e. glittering ornaments] of
poetic pride.” The classical image of the happy shepherd playing his
pipe in the fields is out of place in the contemporary world, only a
“mechanic echo” of other literary times.
To prolong this convention, painting everything in “fair colours,”
means to deviate from “Truth and Nature.” Crabbe pleads for a
change in the poets’ attitude towards the subject of country life, in the
belief that its realistic reflection will at least awaken curiosity and
sympathy in the reader. The superficial praise of an idealised,
conventional world serves only the poet’s vanity. The peasant,
Illustration to
“overcome by labour” and consumed with many cares, would not get
The Village any comfort from such praise.
(1905 edition)
Crabbe’s poem is completely unromantic, removing the veil of
poetic illusion from a subject that was already a conventional one.
However, his realism and critical spirit did not exclude genuine
compassion. His sympathetic interest in the life of humble people
anticipates the radical attitude of the first great English Romantic
poet, William Wordsworth.
6.2.4. Robert Burns and the popular tradition

At about the same time, the Scottish peasant-poet Robert Burns
(1759-1796) was opening a path towards the Romantic revolution in
poetry. Written in his native tongue, the collected poems he published in
1786 were the authentic expression of a passionate nature, whose
experiences were fundamentally linked to the universe of rural life.
These poems are greatly indebted to the popular tradition of
poetic forms (songs, ballads, etc.) and they display either delicate
sentimental lyricism or vigorous realism, spirit and humour. Their
intensely personal tone and their vividness and warmth in the
description of the natural scene contrasted sharply with the formal
rigidity and didacticism of much late 18th century poetry.
Burns’s success as a poet confirmed the early Romantic belief
in the close connection between nature, spontaneity of feeling, and
poetic imagination.
It was Burns who provided the lyrics for the song Auld Lang
Syne, whose title means “old times” or “times past”. They were partly
Burns’s composition, partly his transcription, as he said, “from an old
man’s singing.”

SAQ 3
Text 6.2. in the Reader contains a fragment from The Village,

in which Crabbe invites those who idealise the countryside in
“smooth” verse to take a closer look at its realities. Read the
fragment and point out that the image he offers is an antithesis to
the idyllic picture of “rural ease.” How does Crabbe’s description
contradict the nostalgic image in Goldsmith’s poem?
You might find it helpful to read again subchapter 6.2.1. for a
better perception of the contrast. Answer in the space below, in no
more than 15 lines / 150 words.

they should differ significantly, read the fragment from Crabbe
again, making sure you have understood it correctly. Read again
the paragraphs referring to Goldsmith in the preceding subchapter,
as well.

6.3. Pre-Romantic nature poetry

One of the most significant shifts in poetic sensibility was the
new attitude to nature, manifest as early as the 1730s. The
Augustans were interested in nature only to the extent that it helped
them emphasise the conquests of civilization. The conventional
Augustan “local” poem (or “topographical” poem*) looked at nature
from the perspective of historical or classical mythological
associations. With James Thomson (1700-1748) and his long poem
The Seasons (1726-1730), nature, in its magnificence and diversity,
becomes an object of interest in itself.
6.3.1. James Thomson, The Seasons

In the Preface to the fourth part of The Seasons, “Winter,”
Thomson confesses that he knows “of no other subject more
elevating, more amusing, more ready to awake the poetical
enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment,
than the works of Nature.”
Thomson’s ambitious poem in blank verse is remarkably
inclusive: its descriptions of nature occasion indeed frequent
meditations on a variety of contemporary ideas and interests. It
James Thomson contains reflections on the natural and social condition of man and on
(1700-1748) Nature as the manifestation of the divine ordering mind, poetic
renderings of current notions of natural history, political comments,
patriotic enthusiasm, praise of friends, etc.
In spite of its eclectic nature, The Seasons has a unity ensured
by the recurrent themes and motifs related to the observable natural
universe. Each of the four parts of the poem describes seasonal
aspects of nature and rural life, with a remarkable attention to detail
and precision of notation. Thomson evokes the glory and joy of
reviving nature in spring, the splendour of summer, the peace of
autumn – bringer of “Philosophic Melancholy” –, and the apparent
cruelty of winter. His poem educated, in many generations of readers,
not only the perception of nature, but also the feeling for it. As Dr.
Samuel Johnson said, “The reader of The Seasons wonders that he
never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet
has felt what Thomson impresses.”
The Seasons marked an important moment in 18th century
poetry. It appealed both to the Augustans and to the Romantics,
exerting a considerable influence on both of them. Thomson practically
inaugurated the trend of descriptive-meditative poetry, in which the
descriptive detail was often used in order to create a certain mood. His
praise of nature and of the countryside, as well as his glorification of
“retirement in solitude” as the best state in which to “sing the works of
nature,” inspired many other poets along the 18th century.
Thomson is also famous for the patriotic lyrics that he wrote for
the song Rule, Britannia, an expression of national pride.

SAQ 4
Read Text 6.3., which represents a fragment from Thomson’s

The Seasons – more exactly, from the third part, “Autumn.”
Autumnal nature favours a contemplative-meditative mood, which
the poet calls “Philosophic Melancholy” (remember Milton’s Il
Penseroso*, which actually inspired Thomson). How does the
Philosophic Melancholy influence the poet? Answer below, in a
paragraph of no more than 6 lines / 60 words.
Compare your answer with the one given in the section

there should be major differences, read text C again, more
carefully.
One of Thomson’s great admirers was William Collins (1721-

1759), whose work brings into harmony the various tendencies in 18th
William Collins century poetry. He preferred the classical form of the ode*, and he
displayed the Augustan taste for stylistic refinement, but his subjects
anticipate the Romantic sensibility. He was interested in the mediaeval
past, in popular superstitions and the supernatural, and his feeling for
Nature is that of a pre-Romantic. He reaches perfection in his famous
Ode to Evening (1746), with its short, unrhymed stanzas, in which he
captures with precision and delicacy the crepuscular atmosphere.
6.3.2. William Cowper, The Task

Much closer in time to the beginning of the Romantic Age, the
poem The Task (1785) by William Cowper (1731-1800) reflects a
similar attraction to the theme of nature. Like Thomson and Collins,
Cowper displays an Augustan concern for elegance and refinement in
expression, but his blank verse poem has a much more personal tone.
The Task has actually been described as a spiritual
autobiography, in which a sensitive and thoughtful Christian, living in
retirement from the city, records his observations and reflections.
Passages of moral and political commentary, social satire, religious
meditations and character sketches accompany Cowper’s celebration
of rural domestic happiness and communion with nature.
As a poet of nature, Cowper displays a remarkable eye for detail

and a landscape-painter’s sense of perspective. His meticulous
descriptions of countryside scenery and animal life, of the seasonal
diversity of natural aspects, indicate an affectionate observer. The
contemplation of nature has a healing effect on Cowper, and his
expressions of gratitude for the spiritual comfort and superior joys
that it offers anticipated the first generation of English Romantics (W.
Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge).
The Task, Cowper’s love of nature is closely linked to his love of the
illustration by countryside, which he opposes to the civilisation of the city, with its
Birket Foster, 1856 vices and follies. He praises the simple pleasures, the peace and
quiet of village life, in which he can find shelter against depression
and anxiety. Retirement to the countryside does not mean for him idle
solitude – it is not isolation that he seeks in rural nature, but the joy of
communion with friends, and of simple, domestic activities, like
gardening. Rural “domestic happiness” seems to him “the only bliss, /
Paradise that has survived the fall.” Sometimes, however, he
becomes aware of the instability of this last retreat from the
confusions and corruption of modern urban civilisation, fearing that
“The town has tinged [i.e. affected] the country.
SAQ 5
Text 6.4. in the Reader, extracted from Cowper’s The Task,

represents one of the most memorable statements, in the 18th
century, concerning the opposition country/town. Read this fragment
and explain why Cowper finds the countryside superior to the urban
world. Your answer should not exceed 10 lines / 100 words.

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit.
Read again the fragment if you answer is significantly different.

Both Thomson and Cowper see a strong connection between

love of nature and a humanitarian spirit. Nature “nurses” the
sympathy for our fellow beings, our sense of a common fate for all
humanity. A heart that is insensitive to nature is a hard heart, “unfit
for human fellowship” and “dead” to “love and friendship both”
(Cowper).
The charms of nature have also an almost magic influence on
human creativity and depth of thought. These beliefs – in Nature as a
moral teacher and as a guide for imagination – were central to the
creed of the first Romantics.
6.4. William Blake, the visionary artist

William Blake holds a unique place in the history of English
literature. He was a relatively marginal figure during his lifetime,
exerting influence only on a small circle of friends and admirers, and
being regarded as an eccentric artist. It was in the latter half of the
19th century that he was rediscovered by a group of poets and
painters, and recognised as one of the most original creators.
Blake’s late fame is due, to a large extent, to the special way in
William Blake which he produced his work. He was not only a poet, but also a gifted
(1757-1827) painter and engraver, and his creative personality manifested itself in
combined and complementary modes of expression. Blake did not
publish his poems in conventional printed form. He used a special
method for engraving and printing the handwritten text, which was
accompanied by drawings and decorations. Each copy was then
coloured by hand, and this laborious process restricted the number of
copies that Blake could produce.
Apart from a volume of early verse, all Blake’s major poems
were composed in this way. The combination of calligraphic text,
picture and decoration reminds of the painful, minute work of
mediaeval miniaturists and their illuminated* manuscripts. In Blake,
these various dimensions of his works shed light on each other,
widening the range of meanings.
6.4.1. Blake as a pre-Romantic poet

Blake is often regarded as a pre-Romantic poet, whose attitudes
and concerns define him sharply as an anti-Augustan. He was an
admirer of Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Thomson, and Macpherson,
and he rejected the classical standards of style, finding literary
inspiration in the simplicity and directness of popular poetry, in the
tone and rhythms of Biblical psalms and religious hymns.
Like other pre-Romantic poets, he turns his attention to the rural
world, and displays the same humanitarian spirit as his
contemporaries. In his first great illuminated work, Songs of
Innocence and of Experience (1794), the rural setting, rendered in its
pastoral simplicity, represents symbolically the uncorrupt order of
nature. The theme of childhood in this work enables Blake to explore
the opposition nature - civilisation. He associates nature with the
innocence of man in his condition before the Fall – the “childhood” of
humanity –, and he denounces the evils of civilisation, which
oppresses man in the name of Reason and Progress.
6.4.2. Blake, the Romantic visionary

Blake is also frequently assimilated to the first generation of
Romantic poets, owing to the intensity with which he proclaimed the
primacy of the Imagination over Reason and his deep conviction that
the poet was a seer, a prophet. Like the other English Romantics,
Blake was a rebel. He distrusted all systems of thought and
institutions that restrained man’s freedom and imagination.
The classical Muses were for him the “Daughters of Memory”*,
and he opposed to them the “Daughters of Inspiration,” asserting that
”Imagination has nothing to do with Memory.” He is a true Romantic
in his belief that poetic creation is a spontaneous, unpremeditated
act. He insisted on the visionary and inspired quality of his writings –
he asserted, for instance: “I copy Imagination,” or “I write when
commanded by spirits.”
Blake worshipped Imagination as the only true way to spiritual
freedom. His rebellion against the “systems” which limit the energies
of the Imagination takes a literary form in his Prophetic Books*, in
which Blake creates a mythology of his own. They are, in a way, a
tribute to Milton, whom Blake (like the other Romantics) venerated,
and whom he saw as the embodiment of the revolutionary impulse.
One of Blake’s mythological creatures in these poems, Los*,
says, in Blake’s last poem, Jerusalem: “I must create a system, or be
enslaved by another man’s; / I will not reason and compare: my
business is to create.” This is Blake’s own creed, and his whole work,
original and strange, is one of the most powerful assertions of
Romantic creativity.
Plate from the poem Jerusalem (1805-1820), by William Blake

SAQ 6
Read the following sentences and identify the four true

statements which describe features of Blake’s work, and the three
statements that are false. Circle appropriately T (true) or F (false).
1. As a poet, Blake enjoyed a great popularity during his lifetime.

T F
2. Blake’s works combine the handwritten text with picture and
decoration – a technique that reminds of mediaeval
manuscripts. T F
3. In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the association of
childhood with edenic nature is opposed to civilisation as the
fallen condition of man. T F
4. The main influence in Blake’s work were the ancient Greek and
Latin poets admired by the Augustans. T F
5. For Blake, poetic creation was the spontaneous fruit of
inspiration, and its origin was visionary experience. T F
6. Blake is a creator of myths in his Prophetic Books, which are
the expression of his Romantic rebellion against all forms of
constraint. T F
7. What chiefly impressed Blake in Milton’s Paradise Lost was its
astonishing display of classical-humanistic erudition. T F
Check your answers in the section Solutions and

suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If you have made
mistaken choices, revise the whole subchapter.
The subchapter that follows will acquaint you with some of the
poems illustrating Blake’s “double vision” in Songs of Innocence and
of Experience.
6.4.3. The theme of childhood in Songs of Innocence

In 1789 – the year of the French Revolution –, Blake composed
his first significant work: Songs of Innocence. It was the year of a
revolution in poetry as well. The extreme formal simplicity and the
apparent lack of sophistication of these short poems anticipated the
Romantic rejection of poetic diction*, with its repertoire of rhetorical
conventions. Songs of Innocence marked a new departure in English
poetry, by their remarkable lyrical delicacy, their clarity of expression
and their musicality, which echoed the rhythms of popular verse.
As the poet emphasises in the Introduction, these are “happy
Title page of songs / Every child may joy [i.e. enjoy] to hear.” They build a
Songs of Innocence charming picture of the universe of childhood, that is, of the world
(1789) seen through the eyes of the child. Poems like Infant Joy, The
Echoing Green, The Shepherd, Laughing Song, Spring, The
Blossom, or Cradle Song offer a glimpse into a world filled with
simple, innocent delights, echoing with laughter and sustained by
love and by the belief in the goodness of nature.

The theme of childhood emerged in late 18th century poetry in the
context of the rising cult of Feeling, and the perception of childhood
was greatly influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ideas, with which
Blake was acquainted. Rousseau believed in the original innocence of
man, in his natural tendency to virtue, which a proper education should
develop. According to him, the pressure of civilisation and an
education which cultivates the intellect at the expense of the soul are
likely to destroy in man the natural state of grace.
Blake filtered these ideas through his own intense idealism and his
unconventional religious beliefs. The innocence associated with
childhood is for him the equivalent of the original state of paradisal
innocence. For Blake, childhood represents the unfallen state of man.
The world of Innocence is the paradise of freedom, love,
gratified desire, and absence of frustration or inhibition. It is a world in
which evil has not penetrated and in which there is no suffering. The
pastoral setting symbolises the closeness of man to a benevolent
nature and the bliss enjoyed by man in Paradise.
Besides the children themselves, who express their candid
feelings of piety and uninhibited joy, the Songs of Innocence display
protective figures like the caring mother or nurse, the guardian angel,
the shepherd, or even Jesus.
The pastoral figure of the shepherd receives in Blake a Christian
Nurse’s Song connotation. The good shepherd, taking care of his flock of innocent
(in Songs of
lambs, is a biblical allusion, suggesting the child’s closeness to a
Innocence)
protective divinity.
The adult figures represented in these poems share the child’s
freshness of perception and capacity for joy. The nurse, in Nurse’s
Song, allows the children more time to play “on the green [i.e.
meadow]”, although the sun has set, because she has the empathic
understanding of the children’s need for freedom. In The Echoing
Green, “Old John, with white hair,” can “laugh away care,” as the
happiness of the children playing around him and the animation of
nature in Spring enable him to recreate his own joys of childhood.
In these poems, Innocence, associated with childhood, does not
mean ignorance. The child has a kind of wisdom which comes from
the freshness and freedom of his imagination. Blake rejected the
praise of Reason as man’s supreme faculty and proclaimed instead
the importance of man’s “Poetic Genius.” Throughout his work, Blake
identifies Jesus with the Imagination, and every child is a
manifestation of the Divine Imagination in the world.
Infant Joy (Songs of Innocence)

SAQ 7
Read Text 6.5. in the Reader, which reproduces Blake’s

poem The Lamb. What makes this poem a Song of Innocence?
Start from the idea that The Lamb may be read as the vision of
Innocence on the act of Creation. Focus on the way in which the
child imagines the creator of the lamb, and in which he represents
to himself its “making.” Answer in the space below, in no more
than 20 lines / 200 words.

there should be a significant difference between them, revise this
subchapter and read the poem more attentively.

6.4.4. Ironic implications in Songs of Innocence

Blake’s graceful Songs of Innocence may appear to be simple
and transparent, but, often, the reader cannot help noticing paradoxes
and contradictions. Beyond the children’s innocent visions of
happiness and harmony, a gloomy reality makes itself felt sometimes.
In The Chimney Sweeper*, for instance, the reader cannot miss
the implicit reference to the social reality of children’s exploitation and
cruel treatment, but the child in the poem is comforted by the vision of
the Angel, which is a promise of divine mercy.
In The Little Black Boy – an anti-slavery poem –, the child has a
wonderful vision of all souls freed from their “clouds” of flesh – black
or white –, standing equal before God, when this life ends. Like the
chimney sweeper, the little black boy is “protected” by his imagination
and finds the same comfort for the present sorrows in the Christian
promise of a happy afterlife. However, the ironic implication in the
poem is that the English colonisers “taught” Christianity to the natives
only to be able to exert better control over them.
6.4.5. The fall from Innocence: Songs of Experience
Blake developed such implications into open statements, full of

indignation and anger, in the poems that he added in 1794: the
Songs of Experience. The complete work offered now a set of
contrary symbolic visions of man, nature, society and divinity.
The serene and peaceful pastoral setting of the world of
Innocence is set in opposition with the sombre world of Experience, in
which man’s lot is hard work, disease, poverty and oppression. The fall
from the paradise of Innocence to Experience is the entrance in a world
of rules and constraints, of “stony laws*”, which deny man his freedom.
In the fallen state of Experience, love and joy have been replaced
by fear, hate, envy and deceit. A poem like A Poison Tree points out
Title page of
the murderous effects of secret hate; The Clod and the Pebble
Songs of Experience
contrasts selfless with selfish love, and Nurse’s Song shows the
(1794)
jealousy consuming an adult who has lost the vision of Innocence.
In Songs of Experience, the ethical and social implications are
more obvious. The world is seen through the eyes of an angry
observer, protesting against the evils of his time. Blake’s speakers in
these poems are often bitter and ironic, even sarcastic. The poet
attacks the tyranny exercised on the individual by the church and
state, the thirst for war, the greed of the powerful and their
indifference to the sufferings caused by social injustice.
The source of corruption in the world of Experience and the
impediments to happiness are as much in the systems regulating
social life as in the individual heart and mind. In London, for instance,
it is suggested that human suffering and oppression is the result of
“mind-forged manacles*”, i.e. of the prejudices and constraints with
which man “enchains” his own mind, or the mind of others.

6.4.6. Knowledge in the world of Experience

The clarity and directness of Songs of Innocence is replaced, in
Songs of Experience, by ambiguity and even obscurity, and the
rhythms of the poems are also more difficult. This suggests that the
world of Experience is more opaque and uncertain.
The counterpart of The Lamb in Songs of Experience is The
Tyger* and this pair of poems illustrates very well the contrastive vision
in Blake’s work. The speaker in the latter poem wonders not only who
created the “fearful symmetry” of the powerful, dangerous tiger, but also
if this creator is also that of the gentle lamb. The two stanzas of The
Lamb contain the child’s simple, innocent question (“Little Lamb, who
made thee [i.e. you]?) and his own answer, while The Tyger consists
only in an accumulation of questions, with no explicit answer. The
implication is that knowledge in the state of Experience is always
incomplete and fragmentary, provoking more anxiety than certainty.
SAQ 8
In Blake’s poem Infant Sorrow, the event of a child’s birth

becomes the symbol of the fall into the world of Experience. Read this
poem – Text 6.6. in the Reader – and find out in its lines suggestions
for at least one aspect which defines this “dangerous” world. Quote the
respective words or line(s) and give your comment in the space below,
in a paragraph of 10 lines / 100 words at the most.

Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If it
should differ in major respects, revise this subchapter and read the
poem more attentively.

6.4.7. The double vision in Blake’s Songs

Several other poems in Songs of Experience have a counterpart
in Songs of Experience, bearing even the same titles. There is a
Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Experience as well, and he is also a
child, but he seems to be fully aware of his condition in an unjust
world. He displays, in fact, a double awareness of his own innocence
and of the hypocritical and cruel world around him.
One of the targets of Blake’s critical attacks is the Church. A
deeply religious person, Blake hated nevertheless the church as an
institution, seeing it as an instrument of oppression and a source of
corruption. The church, with its “mysteries”*, was responsible, in
Blake’s view, for keeping man at a distance from God.
The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Experience is bitterly ironic
about the way in which “God, and His Priest, and King” “make up a
Heaven of our misery.” The idea of Heaven as a reward of happiness
for earthly misery, like that of Hell as a punishment for sin, was seen
by Blake as an instrument by which the church kept men in a state of
obedience.
Blake made in fact a distinction between the God of the Old
Testament and God of the New Testament. The former is
represented in Blake’s work (the Prophetic Books included) as an
“angry” God, a stern, tyrannical figure, imposing constraints and
inflicting punishment. This is the God of the world of Experience,
served by the institutionalised churches, which are thus strengthening
their own power.
The two poems entitled Holy Thursday* deal with the hypocrisy
of the church, which allows the rich and powerful of this world to ease
their conscience and “buy” Heaven by occasional and festive acts of
charity. In the poem of Innocence, this sad reality is shadowed by the
speaker’s idyllic description of the poor children of London, compared
with “flowers” and “Thames’ waters,” or with a “multitude of lambs.”
In the counterpart poem, in Songs of Experience, the spectator
to the same scene has a quite different vision. He sees nothing “holy”
in the beautiful picture, since those are “babes reduced to misery,” in
a country that is “rich and fruitful.” The angry speaker protests against
the duplicity of a society that feeds its poor “with cold and usurous*
hand.”
Such corresponding poems illustrate the fact that Innocence
and Experience are not necessarily to be associated with ages in
man’s life, but with ways of seeing and feeling. They reveal, indeed,
as Blake indicated in the subtitle, “contrary states of the human soul,”
which lead to contrary visions.
Contraries are essential to progression, in Blake’s view:
“Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy*, Love and Hate are
necessary to Human existence.” Blake’s Songs suggest that
Innocence and Experience are not only inevitable stages in human
growth, but also complementary aspects of man’s imagination.

SAQ 9
The poem The Garden of Love – Text 6.7. in the Reader – tells
the story of the loss of Innocence and the entrance in the state of
Experience. The two “states of the human soul” are here set in contrast.
The speaker’s “journey” to the garden of Love is an attempt to revive the
former state, to regain the vision of Innocence, but he is no longer able
to do that, except as an act of remembering. Read the poem carefully
and identify the symbols by means of which the two states are
contrasted. Explain them in no more than 20 lines / 200 words.

there should be major differences between them, revise
subchapters 6.4.1. to 6.4.2., and read the poem again more
carefully.

Summary
This unit aims at enlarging your picture of the literary diversity of
the 18th century, by focusing on those tendencies in poetry which
prefigure the Romantic Age.
The transition from the Age of Reason to the Age of Feeling in
the 18th century was accompanied by changes in literary taste. The
first subchapter of this unit deals with two prominent features
announcing the Romantic sensibility. One of them is the emergence
of a kind of meditative poetry fond of melancholy themes and gloomy
settings. The “Graveyard” poets (e. g. Edward Young and Thomas
Gray) illustrate this new trend. The other feature is primitivism, the
interest in early poetry. The fascination of James Macpherson with
Britain’s Celtic past, and of Thomas Chatterton with the Middle Ages
anticipates the Romantic spirit.
In subchapter 6.2., you have been acquainted with two poets
who turned their attention to the rural universe. Oliver Goldsmith
emphasises the idyllic happiness of the traditional rural civilisation,
now threatened by the march of Progress. George Crabbe adopts a
more realistic and critical view. He condemns the literary habit of
idealising the countryside, and seeks to arouse compassion for the
life of labour and poverty of the English peasant.
Another feature of 18th century pre-Romantic poetry is the
perception of rural life in its close connection with Nature. The theme
of Nature in pre-Romantic poetry is sometimes closely associated
with the opposition country-town, nature-civilisation.
Subchapter 6.3. deals with the way in which poets like James
Thomson, William Collins and William Cowper approach the theme of
Nature. Their poetry displays an unprecedented attention to natural
detail, and they acknowledge Nature’s subtle influence on man’s
thoughts, imagination and feelings.
The last subchapter, 6.4., presents the outstanding figure of
William Blake, in whose work pre-Romantic and Romantic elements
meet. His Songs of Innocence and of Experience are the testimony
of the visionary artist, who sees the opposition nature-civilisation in
the light of the myth of Paradise and of the Fall.
The theme of childhood is examined in several Songs, in its
relation with “the two contrary states of the human soul”: Innocence
and Experience. The latter may be also seen as complementary
aspects of poetic imagination, as Blake’s “double” poems suggest.
The same theme and situation acquires contrary implications, the
vision of Innocence and the vision of Experience completing each
other.

Key words
● pre-Romantic
● nature vs. civilisation
● rural universe
● primitivism
● melancholy
● sentimentalism
● humanitarianism
● childhood
● imagination
● Innocence and Experience
● double vision
Glossary
• annals: yearly record of events. Gray is sadly ironic, because the

life of the poor was not actually reflected in such official records.
• blank verse: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Celtic: related to the Celts, the members of an Indo-European
people who inhabited Britain before the arrival of the Romans.
Celtic refers also to the language spoken by the Celts, which has
survived in parts of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The Celtic
variety spoken in Ireland and Scotland is called Gaelic, or Erse.
• chimney sweeper: in the 18th century, children were often
employed for the cleaning of chimneys, which they could climb
more easily. It was a kind of work that contributed to the child
mortality rate.
• Daughters of Memory: in Greek mythology, the nine Muses
were indeed the daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of Memory.
Their father was Zeus.
• decorum: see subchapter 4.2.2. in Unit 4. The Neoclassic
principle of decorum did not, for instance, favour melancholy or
morbid themes. A tendency in 18th century poetry went precisely
against this rule, as the next subchapter will show.
• enclosure: in the latter half of the 18th century, the changes in
agriculture led to the enclosing (i.e. putting fences round)
common land, for the sake of more profitable farming.
Sometimes, enclosed portions of land were turned into private
parks and gardens. For the small farmers, the enclosures meant
ruin, and they were forced to find work in towns or to emigrate to
America.
• Energy: for Blake, Imagination was free Energy, while Reason
was concerned with setting limits.
• Enlightenment: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• Gothic novel: a type of fiction that emerged in opposition with
the realistic novel in the 18th century. The first Gothic novel was
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). Initially, the term
“Gothic” referred to the mediaeval inspiration of such tales of
mystery, passion, and horror. Haunted castles, graveyards, ruins,

secret chambers and corridors, wild landscapes, etc. were typical
settings in Gothic fiction.
• heroic couplet: see again subchapter 1.3. in Unit 1.
• Highlands of Scotland: the mountainous area in northern
Scotland, which still preserves elements of the ancient Gaelic
culture.
• Holy Thursday: another name for Ascension Day, the 39th day
after Easter, when the ascension of Christ is celebrated. The
custom in London was to bring the poor, orphaned children from
the charity schools to St. Paul’s Cathedral, to attend the religious
service.
• illuminated (about a piece of writing): decorated by the
application of colour, or of gold or silver paint.
• Il Penseroso: see again subchapter 3.2.1. in Unit 3.
• Los: Blake’s mythological character represents human
Imagination in his epics.
• manacles: a pair of iron rings linked by a chain, used to secure
the hands of a prisoner.
• mysteries: the system of sacramental rites affording access to
divinely revealed truths. Blake associated “mystery” with secrecy
and deceit, and he rejected the pretense of the Church to
intermediate between man and God.
• Neoclassicism: see the Glossary in Unit 1. See also subchapter
4. 2 in Unit 4.
• Norse: related to the ancient Scandinavian people, especially to
the Vikings (or Norsemen), who attacked and sometimes settled
in parts of Britain between the 8th and 11th centuries.
• ode: see the Glossary in Unit 1. Most of Collins’s odes are
addressed to personified abstractions (Fear, Pity, the Passions,
etc.)
• poetic diction: see again the Glossary in Unit 1.
• primitive: original, belonging to the beginnings. Primitivism in
literature refers to the admiration for and revival of early forms. It
is associated with the reaction against Neoclassicism, as well as
against the sophistication, luxury and materialism of urban
civilisation. The feeling of nostalgia for a supposed Golden Age
and the praise of the “state of Nature” are also features of
primitivism.
• Prophetic Books: the generic name for Blake’s longer (and often
obscure) epics, which have a complex structure of symbolism
and analogies, and in which he gives an allegorical shape to his
religious, philosophical and political convictions. Among the most
important of them are America. A Prophecy, The Book of Urizen,
The Book of Los, The Four Zoas, Milton, Jerusalem.
• Romanticism: see again Romantic in the Glossary in Unit 1.
• sentimental novel: see subchapter 5.1.3., concerning the
typology of the novel in the 18th century, in Unit 5.
• stony laws: the figurative meaning of “stony” – heartless,
unfeeling – is intensified by Blake’s allusion to Moses and the
Tables of the Law, on which the Ten Commandments were
written. Blake distinguished between the prohibitive divinity of the
Old Testament, with His laws formulated as interdictions, and

Jesus, with his law of love.
• topographical poem: a poem in which the description of a
landscape is accompanied by meditation and historical
retrospection. Many topographical poems were praises of
particular parks, gardens or estates, meant to win a patron’s
favour.
• Tyger: Blake’s spelling of “tiger.”
• usurous: from usury, the unlawful practice of lending money at
an exorbitant rate of interest.
• Rousseau, Jean Jacques: (1712-1778): French writer and

philosopher, whose radicalism strongly influenced the ideology of
the French Revolution. He condemned social inequality and
regarded the sovereignty of the people as the only legitimate
form of political power. He is the precursor of Romanticism by his
belief in the primacy of feeling over reason and in the necessity of
the return to nature – a principle which he defended in his treatise
on education Émile (1762).
The Reader includes some of the “pair poems” from Blake’s

Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Nurse’s Song, The
Chimney Sweeper, and Holy Thursday (Texts 6.8., 6.9.,
6.10., 6.11., 6.12. and 6.13.).
• Read them and show that Blake’s treatment of the theme of
childhood depends on the contrast between the vision of
Innocence and the vision of Experience on the same reality. Pay
special attention to the images in these poems and to their
symbolic significance.
Point out the pre-Romantic themes and attitudes that these
poems illustrate.
Your commentary should not exceed 50 lines / 500 words.

(30%). Pay special attention to the instructions for the task.

SAQ 1
1. b; 2. d; 3. a; 4. c
SAQ 2
1. “His house was known to all the vagrant train”
“The long-remembered beggar was his guest”
2. “Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e’er had changed, nor wished to change his place”
3. “More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise”
4. “Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour”
5. “He chid their [i.e. the vagants’] wanderings, but relieved their pain”
6. “passing rich with forty pounds a year”
SAQ 3
In contrast with Goldsmith’s idealised image of rural happiness
and ease, Crabbe presents a desolate picture, in which everything
seems to be in decline. There is a general sense of decay and
exhaustion in the humble scene in the cottage: the “pale” mother, the
“drooping weary” father, the “feeble,” “expiring” fire suggest
overwork, disease and poverty. Their hard life has no room for
illusions about the comforts of old age. Crabbe’s descriptin of the old
man’s weakness and of the pains of old age is meant to contradict
the pastoral emphasis on the “health and plenty,” vitality and
cheerfulness of the idyllic village life. Crabbe also gives a reply to
those who idealise rural nature: instead of the pleasing “smooth
stream” sung in such poetry, he focuses sharply on the withered tree.
Its bare, broken branches are a “sad emblem” of the unrewarding
existence of the poor in the countryside.
SAQ 4
The personified Philosophic Melancholy exerts “his” influence
on man’s imagination, on his soul, and on his thoughts. Meditation
leads to illumination; the mind can see beyond the “dim” surface of
things. This heightened understanding is accompanied by
“correspondent passions”: love of God, love of nature, and love of
man, all intensified.
SAQ 5
The first line of the fragment contains the implication that
everything made by God is perfect, whereas what man makes is
inevitably deficient. The country is thus a substitute for Eden, the place
where “health and virtue” can be found abounding. Health and virtue
are God’s “gifts” to man, to enable him to bear more easily the burden
of life. In the city, these gifts are “threatened” – the life of pleasure and
luxury with which the city tempts man may corrupt his moral fiber. For
Cowper, the country is therefore morally superior to the city.

SAQ 6
1. F; 2. T; 3. T; 4. F; 5. T; 6. T; 7. F
SAQ 7
The child cannot imagine the Creator of the lovely and tender
creature otherwise than “meek and mild,” that is, gentle and humble
like the lamb itself. It is the intuition of Innocence that dictates the
confident answer to the child: the Creator is Jesus, the “Lamb of
God.” The child imagines the making of the lamb as the act of love of
a generous and protective creator – “making” and “giving” are made
somehow equivalent in the first stanza. At the same time, the lamb is
God’s gift to the child: it is a “delight” to look at and to touch, and his
“tender voice” fills all nature with joy. In the second stanza, the child
identifies himself and the lamb with Jesus, the God of Love,
incarnated in a child and having the Lamb as a symbol. In the simple
economy of the poem, the few elements of the natural setting
(stream, meadow, vales) emphasise the close connection between
Innocence and Nature. In a vision of Innocence, therefore, Man,
Nature and Divinity form a harmonious whole.
SAQ 8
Examples:
1. “My mother groaned, my father wept” – In the vision of Experience, a
child’s birth is no cause for joy. The mother “groans” with the pains
of delivery, and the father weeps perhaps because his new baby
comes into a world of trouble and cares, and is itself one more care
in the family. The pain and sorrow accompanying birth are symbolic
anticipations of the suffering, disappointments and frustrations that
await man in the world of Experience.
2. “Struggling in my father’s hands / Striving against my swaddling
bands” – The new born infant is practically a “prisoner” from his
first moments in the world. His swaddling bands and his father’s
arms do not suggest care and protection, but are symbols of
limitation, confinement and oppressive authority, against which
man, in the state of Experience, struggles in vain.
SAQ 9
The “garden” where he “used to play” – the Eden of childhood – is
the symbol of the state of Innocence, which he has lost. The vision of
Experience reveals to him the perspective of death: the garden turns out
to be a graveyard, and the beauty of the “sweet flowers” – symbols of
life – is replaced by the grim image of the tombstones. If the child’s play
suggests the freedom and pleasure enjoyed in the state of Innocence,
Experience brings about inhibition and constraint. The interdiction “Thou
shall not” on the door of the chapel suggests repression and limitation.
The church as an institution belongs to the world of Experience, and, in
Blake’s vision, it controls man’s relationship with Divinity, being thus a
source of oppression. The shut gates of the chapel symbolise the
estrangement of man from God, no longer able – or permitted – to relate
to God “naturally” and directly. This is also suggested by the gloomy
figure of the priests, “walking their rounds” like soldiers guarding a

restricted area, and conditioning man’s access to the mystery of Divinity
on the suppression of his desire.
Further reading
1. Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, vol. 3 (“The
Restoration to 1800”), London: Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1969
(pp. 652-658; 671-684; 692-699)
vol.4 (“From Dryden to Johnson”), Penguin Books Ltd., 1991 (pp.
84-94)
vol.5 (“From Blake to Byron”), Penguin Books Ltd., 1991 (pp. 69-
87)

Reader
READER
in
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century
British Literature

Reader
UNIT 2
THE LATE RENAISSANCE AND THE BAROQUE
TEXT 2.1.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act II, Scene II)
Hamlet: (…) I have of late*, – but wherefore* I know not, – lost all my
mirth*, foregone* all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so
heavily with my disposition that this goodly* frame*, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy*,
the air, look you, this brave* overhanging* firmament*, this
majestical roof fretted* with golden fire, it appears no other thing
to me but a foul* and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a
piece of work is man! How noble in Reason! How infinite in
faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In
action how like an angel, in apprehension* how like a god!! The
beauty of the world! The paragon* of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights me not (…).
of late recently brave minunat,excelent; strălucitor
wherefore why, for what reason overhanging hanging over
mirth happiness and laughter firmament (archaic, literary) the sky
foregone to forego, forewent, foregone: to give up fretted decorated
goodly pleasant or satisfying in appearance foul very bad or unpleasant
frame form, shape apprehension understanding; ability to understand
canopy a large or wide covering (e.g. the sky) paragon a model of excellence
Romanian translation (by Leon Leviţchi and Dan Duţescu)

Hamlet: În ultima vreme – de ce, nu ştiu – mi-am pierdut toată
voioşia, m-am lăsat de toate obişnuitele exerciţii; şi, într-adevăr,
sufletul îmi este atât de apăsat, încât acest frumos tărâm,
pământul, îmi pare un promontoriu sterp; acest preaminunat
baldachin, văzduhul, vedeţi, acest mândru firmament ce se-
nalţă deasupra noastră, această boltă falnică împodobită cu
scântei de aur, cum să spun, nu-mi pare alta decât un
vălmăşag odios şi infect de miasme. Ce minunată lucrare e
omul, cât de nobilă îi este inteligenţa, ce fără de număr îi sunt
facultăţile, alcătuirile şi mişcările, cât de chibzuit şi de admirabil
e în faptele sale, cât de asemenea unui înger în puterea sa de
înţelegere, cât de asemenea unui zeu: frumuseţea lumii; pildă a
vieţuitoarelor; şi totuşi, pentru mine, ce înseamnă această
chintesenţă a ţărânii? Omul nu mă desfată (…).

Reader
TEXT 2.2.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act II, scene II)

Macbeth: Methought* I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up* the ravelled* sleeve* of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore* labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course*,
Chief* nourisher* in life’s feast* (…).
methought past tense from methinks (archaic): it seems to course fel de mâncare
me chief most important, principal
to knit up a împleti, a înnoda nourisher that which gives (someone) what is needed to
ravelled destrămat, desfirat, desfăcut grow, live or stay healthy
sleeve mânecă feast ospăţ
sore causing grief or sorrow (dureros, chinuitor)
Romanian translation (by Ion Vinea)

Macbeth: Mi s-a părut c-aud un glas strigând:
“Nu mai dormi! Macbeth ucide somnul”
Nevinovatul somn, cel ce desface
Fuiorul încâlcit al grijii – somnul:
El, moartea vieţii fiecărei zile,
El, scalda grelei trude şi balsamul
Durerii sufleteşti, şi-a doua mană
A marii firi, iar la ospăţul vieţii
Cel mai de seamă fel.
TEXT 2.3.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act V, scene V)
Macbeth: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps* in this petty* pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out*, out, brief* candle*!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts* and frets* his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound* and fury,
Signifying nothing.
to creep, crept to move quiety and slowly (a se târî; a se to strut a umbla/păşi/călca mândru, ţanţoş, semeţ, cu un aer
furişa) important
petty inessential, trivial, trifling (mărunt, neînsemnat) to fret to be distressed; to be in a state of anxiety and
out (interjection) termină, isprăveşte (stinge-te) agitation (a se agita, a se frământa)
brief short in duration sound zgomot
candle lumânare

Reader
Romanian translation (by Ion Vinea)

Macbeth: Dar mâine şi iar mâine, tot mereu,
Cu pas mărunt se-alungă zi de zi,
Spre cel din urmă semn din cartea vremii,
Şi fiecare “ieri” a luminat
Nebunilor pe-al morţii drum de colb.
Te stinge, lumânare de o clipă!
Ni-e viaţa doar o umbră călătoare,
Un biet actor, ce-n ceasul lui pe scenă
Se grozăveşte şi se tot frământă
Şi-n urmă nu mai este auzit.
E o poveste spusă de-un nătâng,
Din vorbe-alcătuită şi din zbucium
Şi nensemnând nimic.
TEXT 2.4.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Act I, scene II)

Prospero: Abhorred* slave,
Which any print* of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee*,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other: when thou didst not*, savage,
Know thine* own meaning, but wouldst* gabble* like
A thing most brutish*, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known: but thy vile* race*,
Though thou didst learn*, had that in it which good natures
Could not abide* to be with; therefore* wast thou*
Deservedly* confined* into this rock
Who hadst deserved more than a prison.
Caliban: You taught me language; and my profit on it
Is I know how to curse: the red plague rid you,
For learning* me your language!
abhorred detested vehemently vile shameful and evil; nasty (josnic, mârşav, netrebnic,
print mark made on a surface abject, ticălos)
thee you race neam, tagmă
thou didst not you did not thou didst learn you did learn
thine / thy your to abide a răbda, a suporta
wouldst would therefore as a result; for that reason
gabble to utter words rapidly and indistinctly (a bolborosi, a wast thou were you
bâigui) deservedly rightly
brutish coarse, cruel, stupid (necioplit, sălbatic; redus, learning teaching
mărginit)

Reader
Romanian translation (by Leon Leviţchi)

Prospero: Slugoi scârbavnic,
În stare de orice, afară doar
De-un dram de bunătate! Mi-a fost milă,
M-am străduit sa te deprind cu graiul,
Te-am învăţat de toate; când tu, fiară,
Scoteai doar mugete, nepricepând
Nici tu ce bălmăjeşti, ţi-am arătat
Al vorbei meşteşug; dar proasta-ţi fire,
Deşi-ai fost dăscălit, avea ceva
Ce bunul simţ nu rabdă; pe drept, dar,
Te-am surghiunit aici, când meritai
Mai mult decât o temniţă.
Caliban: M-ai învăţat vorbi, cu singurul folos
Că ştiu acum să-njur – dea ciuma-n tine
Şi-n limba ce m-ai învăţat.
TEXT 2.5.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Act IV, scene I)

Prospero: Our revels* are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold* you, were all spirits and
Are melted* into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless* fabric* of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers*, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea*, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant* faded*,
Leave not a rack* behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
revels festivitate teatrală pentru curteni cloud-capped towers towers whose tops are capped
foretold to foretell, foretold: a anunţa, a spune dinainte (covered) by clouds
melted to melt: a se topi, a se dizolva yea (archaic, literary) truly, indeed
baseless unfounded (fără bază, temelie) pageant splendid public show or ceremony
fabric building; structure, framework (clădire; alcătuire) faded to fade: to lose brightness, colour, consistency, etc.
rack a floating cloud
Romanian translation (by Leon Leviţchi)

Prospero: Serbarea noastră s-a sfârşit. Actorii
Ţi-am spus, au fost, toţi, duhuri, şi-n văzduh
S-au destrămat cu toţii. Şi întocmai
Ca funigeii viziunii, turnuri
Cu turlele în nori, palate mândre,
Biserici maiestoase, chiar pământul,
Cu tot ce-a moştenit, se vor topi
Şi, duşi, ca-nchipuită scena-aceasta,
Nici spulber n-au să lase-n urma lor.
Plămadă suntem precum cea din care
Reader
Făcute-s visele; şi scurta viaţă
Împrejmuită ni-e de somn.
TEXT 2.6.
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly* away*,
And whisper* to their souls, to go,
Whilst* some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:
So let us melt*, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests* move,
‘Twere* profanation of our joys
To tell the laity* our love.
Moving of the earth* brings harms and fears,

Men reckon* what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull* sublunary* lovers’ love

(Whose soul is sense*) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth* remove*
Those things which elemented* it.
But we by a love so much refined,

That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind*,
Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure* not yet
A breach*, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so

As stiff* twin* compasses are two,
Thy* soul the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam*,
It leans*, and hearkens* after it,
And grows erect*, as that comes home.
Such wilt* thou* be to me, who must,

Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just*,
And makes me end, where I begun.

Reader
pass away to die to remove to take away, to make disappear

mildly gently, softly which elemented it which constituted/founded it
to whisper a şopti inter-assured of the mind we are both assured that our love
whilst while is primarily the union of our minds
to melt a-şi înmuia firea, a fi supus (the speaker urges his to endure to suffer, to undergo
beloved to face the separation calmly and quietly) breach break, rupture
tear-floods, sigh-tempests şuvoaie/potop de lacrimi, furtuni stiff rigid; fig.: inflexibil, ferm, hotărât
de suspine) these are Petrarchan conceits – see the twin îngemănat
Glossary) thy your
‘twere it were (it would be) to roam a hoinări, a rătăci
the laity those who do not know how strong their love is (from to lean, leant a se apleca, a se înclina
lay: profan, mirean) to hearken a asculta, a fi atent la (here: to seek to join; to
moving of the earth earthquake long for)
to reckon a gândi, a presupune to grow erect a se îndrepta, a ajunge în poziţie verticală
dull not intense wilt will
sublunary: beneath the moon, therefore subject to change thou you
whose soul is sense in which physical presence is essential just corect, precis, exact
doth does
Text 2.7.
John Donne, Batter My Heart

Batter* my heart, three-personed God*; for, you
As yet* but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may* rise, and stand, o’erthrow me*, and bend
Your force*, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due*,
Labour* to admit you, but oh, to no end*,
Reason your viceroy* in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue*,
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain*,
But am betrothed* unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie*, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except your enthrall* me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish* me.
batter to hit or beat someone heavily viceroy governor of a territory who acts for and rules in the
three-personed God the Trinity name of his sovereign (Reason is the viceroy of God in
as yet până acum man)
that I may in order that I may untrue disloyal
o’erthrow to overthrow, overthrew, overthrown: a nimici, a fain (archaic) willingly, gladly
înfrânge betrothed unto logodit cu
bend your force concentrate, apply your force to untie a dezlega, a elibera
due cuvenit, datorat to enthrall a supune, a înrobi, a subjuga
to labour to work hard, to struggle to ravish a răpi, a lua cu sila; a silui
to no end vainly, with no result

Reader
TEXT 2.8.
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

Had we but* world enough, and time,
This coyness*, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To talk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou* by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst* rubies* find; I by the tide
Of Humber* would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood*,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews*.
My vegetable* love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine* eyes, and on thy* forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state*,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged* chariot* hurrying near;
And yonder* all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault*, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint* honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust*:
The grave*’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful* hue*
Sits on thy skin like morning dew*,
And while thy willing* soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires*,
Now let us sport* while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our devour
Than languish* in his slow-chapt power*.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear* our pleasure with rough strife*
Thorough* the iron gates of life;
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Reader
had we but… if only we had quaint odd, peculiar, inappropriate (nefiresc)

coyness timiditate, sfială, modestie ashes cenuşă
thou you lust strong sexual desire (dorinţă, patimă)
shouldst should grave mormânt, groapă
ruby rubin youthful de tinereţe, tineresc
Humber an estuary in the north-east of England hue culoare, nuanţă, tentă
the Flood Potopul dew rouă
the conversion of the Jews considered to be one of the willing favourably disposed, inclined
events at the end of history instant fires the flush in her face, which, in spite of her
vegetable growing slowly as a plant coyness, indicates her “willing soul”
thine, thy your to sport a petrece, a se veseli
state ceremonial treatment to languish a se ofili; a lâncezi, a se plictisi
winged having wings; fig.: swift, fast slow-chapt power the power of its slowly devouring jaws
chariot ceremonial carriage (car) to tear (tore, torn) a smulge, a lua cu de-a sila
yonder (poetic) over there strife violent struggle
vault burial chamber (cavou) thorough through

Reader
UNIT 3
THE WORKS OF JOHN MILTON
TEXT 3.1.
John Milton, Sonnet VII

How soon hath* time, the subtle* thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year*!
My hasting days fly on with full career*,
But my late spring no bud* or blossom showeth*.
Perhaps my semblance* might deceive* the truth,
That I to manhood* am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness* doth* much less appear,
That some more timely*-happy* spirits endueth*.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still* in strictest measure even
To that same lot*, however mean* or high,
Toward which time leads me, and the will of heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever* in my great task-master's* eye.
hath has timely occuring atjust the right moment, opportune
subtle difficult to perceive or describe because fine or delicate happy fortunate, lucky
my three and twentieth year my twenty-third year endueth endues; to endue: a înzestra (Inward ripeness,
career swift movement ahead, speed, rush which endues some more timely-happy spirits, appears
bud mugur, boboc [in me] much less – i.e to a lesser extent)
showeth shows (My late spring shows no bud or blossom) still always
semblance outward appearance lot fortune, destiny
to deceive to mislead (a înşela) mean humble, obscure, insignificant
manhood bărbăţie, vârstă adultă ever eternity
ripeness maturitate task-master the one who imposes tasks; a strict overseer
doth does
TEXT 3.2.
John Milton, Sonnet XVII

When I consider how my light* is spent*,
Ere* half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent* which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless*, though my soul more bent*
To serve therewith* my maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide*.
'”Doth God exact* day-labour, light denied*?”
I fondly* ask; but Patience, to prevent
That murmur*, soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke*, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly – thousands at his bidding* speed*
And post* o'er land and ocean without rest*:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Reader
light eyesight therewith with that

spent used up, exhausted (When I think that my eyesight is lest he… chide să nu mă dojenească
gone, before I have even reached the middle of my lifetime… I to exact to demand as a right
fondly ask…) light denied if he denies me (deprives me of) eyesight
ere (poetic) before fondly foolishly (cu naivitate)
talent an allusion to the biblical parable of the talents in murmur complaint
Matthew (25: 14-30 – parabola talanţilor). Its moral is who…bear his mild yoke cei care-I îndură jugul blând
that a gift from God must not be stored and left unused, (allusion to Matthew, 11: 30)
but must be multiplied. Milton felt that his “talent” – his at his bidding la porunca sa
gift for poetry – lay useless in darkness, as he had not to speed (sped) to hurry, to hasten
begun the great epic poem he intended to write. to post to travel with speed
lodged with me useless [talantul/talentul] mi-a fost o’er over
încredinţat în zadar rest odihnă, repaus
bent to bend, bent: to incline
TEXT 3.3.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book I)
Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy for ever dwells! Hail*, horrors! hail,
Infernal World! And thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy* new possessor – one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath* made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty* hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive* us hence*;
Here we may reign* secure*, and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
hail an exclamation of greeting hence (archaic) from here; away (will not drive us hence: nu
thy your ne va alunga de aici)
hath has to reign a domni, a stăpâni
the Almighty Atotputernicul secure liniştit, în siguranţă
TEXT 3.4.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book III)

[God is speaking to His Son, foreseeing man’s fall]
Whose fault?
Whose but his own? Ingrate, he [i.e. man] had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood*, though free to fall.
Such I created all the Ethereal* Powers
And Spirits, both them who stood and them who failed;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
….
I formed them free, and free they must remain
Till* they enthrall* themselves: I else* must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Reader
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained*
Their freedom; they themselves ordained their fall.
The first sort* by their own suggestion fell,
Self-tempted, self-depraved; Man falls, deceived
By the other first: Man, therefore, shall find grace,
The other none; in mercy and justice both,
Through Heaven and Earth, so shall my glory excel*,
But mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine.
stood to stand, stood: a rămâne, a rezista, a se menţine într-o else altfel, altminteri
anumită poziţie ordained to ordain: to order, to establish, to predestine
ethereal celestial, spiritual irrevocably
til until the first sort the angels who had fallen
to enthrall to enslave to excel to increase
TEXT 3.5.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book III)
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere

Of true allegiance*, constant faith, or love,
Where only what they needs must* do appeared,
Not what they would*? What praise could they receive,
What pleasure I, from such obedience paid,
When Will and Reason (Reason is also Choice),
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served Necessity,
Not me?
allegiance loyalty
needs must trebuie neapărat
not what they would nu ceea ce ar vrea / ar voi
despoiled (of freedom) lipsit (de libertate)
TEXT 3.6.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book IV)

Sometimes towards Eden which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved* look he fixes sad,
Sometimes towards heaven and the full-blazing* sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian* tower.
Then much revolving*, thus in sighs* began:
'O thou that with surpassing glory crowned
Look'st* from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams*
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring* in heaven against heaven's matchless* king.
Ah wherefore*? He deserved no such return*
Reader
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence*, and with his good
Upbraided* none; nor was his service* hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise*,
The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks,
How due*! Yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice*; lifted up so high
I ‘sdained subjection*, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit*
The debt immense of endless gratitude.
……….
O had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferior angel, I had stood*
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition. Yet why not? Some other power
As great might have aspired, and me though mean
Drawn to his part; but other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken*, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
……….
Me miserable*! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
O then at last relent*: is there no place
Left for repentance*, none for pardon* left?
None left but by submission*; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts*
Than to submit, boasting* I could subdue*
The omnipotent*. Ay me*, they little know
How dearly I abide* that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan*;
While they adore* me on the throne of hell,
With diadem and scepter high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery; such joy ambition finds.
But say* I could repent and could obtain
By act of grace my former state; how soon
Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned* submission swore: ease would recant*
Vows* made in pain, as violent and void*.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where sounds of deadly hate have pierced* so deep;
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse*
And heavier fall:
……….
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou* my good; by thee* at least

Reader
Divided empire* with heaven's king I hold
By thee, and more than half perhaps will govern;
As man ere long, and this new world shall know.
grieved mâhnit, întristat miserable unhappy, depressed (nenorocit, nefericit)
full-blazing în plină strălucire/splendoare to relent to show pity, to become less severe or cruel
meridian the peak, zenith; noon repentance căinţă, părere de rău
much revolving with many thoughts revolving in his mind pardon iertare
sighs suspine sumbission supunere (to submit: a se supune)
nd
look’st look (2 person sg.) vaunt laudă, preamărire de sine
beams rays of light boasting to boast: a se lăuda
warring…against războindu-se/purtând război cu…, to subdue to defeat and gain control (a supune, a subjuga)
matchless unequalled, incomparable ay me (archaic) an expression of unhappiness (vai mie!)
wherefore why to abide a suporta (consecinţele)
return recompensă, răsplată to groan a geme, a se văita, a suspina, a ofta
eminence position of superiority, distinction, high rank to adore to worship (a preamări, a se închina la)
upbraided to upbraid: a mustra, a dojeni say să zicem; închipuindu-mi că
his service serving him (i.e. God) feigned prefăcut, simulat
to afford him praise a-i aduce/oferi laudă to recant a retracta, a se dezice de, a se lepăda de
due cuvenit, datorat vow jurământ, legământ, făgăduială
wrought but malice worked/produced only evil intent, the void empty
desire to do harm pierced to pierce: a pătrunde
I ‘sdained [disdained] subjection: am dispreţuit supunerea relapse recădere
to quit a părăsi, a abandona thou you
I had stood I would have stood by thee by you
unshaken neclintit empire stăpânire, putere
TEXT 3.7.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book VII)

In his hand
He took his golden compasses, prepared
In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things.
One foot he centred and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, “Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds*;
This be thy just circumference, O World.”
Thus God the Heaven created, thus the Earth,
Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound
Covered the abyss, but on the watery calm
His brooding* wings the Spirit of God outspread*,
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth,
Throughout the fluid mass, but downward purged*
The black, tartareous*, cold, infernal dregs*,
Adverse to life; then founded, then conglobed*
Like* things to like, the rest to several* place
Disparted*, and between spun* out the air,
And Earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung.
bounds limits, margins conglobed formed into a ball or a globe
brooding covering perfectly like asemănător; de aceeaşi natură
to outspread a întinde, a desfăşura several mai mulţi/multe; diferiţi, diferite
to purge a curăţi, a limpezi, a spăla, a purifica to dispart a distribui
tartareous of the underworld, infernal (from Tartarus: Hades) spun to spin, spun: a ţese, a urzi
dregs impurităţi, drojdii, rămăşiţe

Reader
TEXT 3.8.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book IX)

1. Queen of the Universe, do not believe
Those rigid threats of death; ye* shall not die.
How should ye? by the fruit? it gives you life
To knowledge; by the Threatener? look on me,
Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live
And life more perfect have attained than Fate
Meant me, by venturing* higher than my lot.
Shall that be shut to Man which to the beast
Is open?
2. Why, then, was this forbid*? Why but to awe?

Why but to keep ye low* and ignorant,
His worshippers? He knows that, in the day
Ye eat thereof*, your eyes, that seem so clear
Yet are but dim*, shall perfectly be then
Opened and cleared, and ye shall be like Gods,
Knowing both good and evil, as they know.
3. And what are Gods, that Man may not become

As they, participating* godlike* food?
The Gods are first, and that advantage use
On our belief, that all from them proceeds*.
I question it, for this fair* Earth I see,
Warmed by the Sun, producing every kind,
Them nothing.
4. What can your knowledge hurt him, or this tree

Impart against his will, if all be his?
Or is it envy? and can envy dwell
In heavenly breasts? These, these and many more
Causes import* your need of this fair fruit.
Goddess humane, reach* then, and freely taste.
ye you (pl.)
venturing to venture: a îndrăzni, a se încumeta participating sharing
forbid forbidden godlike divine
low humble, modest to proceed (from) to originate, to emerge
thereof din ace(a)sta, din el/ea (eat from the Tree of fair beautiful
Knowledge) to import a însemna
dim having weak or indistinct vision to reach a întinde mâna, a apuca

Reader
TEXT 3.9.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book XII)

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld*
Of Paradise, so late* their happy seat*,
Waved over by that flaming brand*, the gate
With dreadful faces thronged* and fiery* arms:
Some natural* tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide;
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
beheld to behold, beheld (archaic, literary): to look at
so late până nu demult
seat locaş, sălaş
flaming brand sabia de foc/flăcări
thronged (with dreadful faces) plină (de chipuri de temut)
fiery în flăcări, care arde
natural firesc

Reader
UNIT 4
THE RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE
TEXT 4.1.
William Congreve, The Way of the World

Millamant: (…) Good Mirabell, don’t let us be familiar or fond*, nor
kiss before folks*, like my Lady Faddler and Sir Francis, nor go
to Hyde Park together the first Sunday in a new chariot*, to
provoke eyes and whispers*, and then never be seen there
together again, as if we were proud of one another the first
week, and ashamed of one another ever after. Let us never visit
together, nor go to a play together, but let us be very strange*
and well bred*; let us be as strange as if we had been married a
great while*, and as well bred as if we were not married at all.
Mirabell: Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto* your
demands are pretty reasonable.
Millamant: Trifles* – as liberty to pay and receive visits* to and from
whom I please; to write and receive letters, without
interrogatories or wry faces* on your part; to wear what I please,
and choose conversation with regard only to my own taste; to
have no obligation upon me to converse with wits* that I don’t
like, because they are your acquaintance, or to be intimate with
fools, because they may be your relations*. Come to dinner
when I please, dine in my dressing room when I’m out of
humour*, without giving a reason. To have my closet* inviolate*;
to be sole* empress of my tea table, which you must never
presume* to approach without first asking leave*. And lastly,
wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you
come in. (…)
fond affectionate, tender to pay…visits a face vizite
folks people wry faces grimase (to make wry faces: a strâmba din nas)
chariot trăsură wit a person who has the ability to say things that are both
to provoke eyes and whispers to attract attention and clever and amusing
provoke gossip (bârfă) relation relative (rudă)
strange distant, reserved out of humour prost dispus, abătut
well-bred binecrescut, manierat, politicos closet a small private room
a great while a long time inviolate in which nobody intrudes
hitherto until this time, so far sole only, the only oneto presume to dare (a îndrăzni)
trifle fleac, bagatelă to ask leave to ask permission

Reader
TEXT 4.2.
John Dryden, A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress

of Satire
How easy is it to call rogue* and villain*, and that wittily*! But
how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead*, or a
knave* without using any of those opprobrious* terms! (…)
There is (…) a vast difference betwixt* the slovenly*
butchering* of a man, and the fineness* of a stroke* that
separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its
place.
rogue pungaş, escroc, potlogar betwixt between
villain nemernic, secătură, lichea slovenly neglijent
wittily in a witty manner (cu mult spirit) butchering căsăpire, măcelărire
blockhead nătâng, dobitoc, cap sec fineness eleganţă, perfecţiune
knave escroc, pungaş, ticălos, nemernic stroke lovitură
opprobrious insulting
TEXT 4.3.
Samuel Johnson, The Preface to Shakespeare

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just
representations of general nature. Particular manners* may be
known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly*
they are copied. The irregular* combinations of fanciful*
invention may delight awhile* by that novelty of which the
common satiety* of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures
of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only
repose on the stability of truth.
Shakespeare is, above all writers, at least above all modern
writers, the poet of nature, the poet that holds up to his readers
a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not
modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the
rest of the world; by the peculiarities* of studies or professions,
which can operate but* upon small numbers; or by the
accidents of transient* fashions or temporary opinions: they are
the genuine progeny* of common humanity, such as the world
will always supply* and observation will always find. His
persons act and speak by the influence of those general
passions and principles by which all minds are agitated and the
whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of
other poets a character is too often an individual: in those of
Shakespeare it is commonly a species.
manners moravuri peculiarity particularitate
nearly faithfully; successfully but only
irregular neuniform, variabil transient temporary, transitory (trecător)
fanciful capricios, fantezist progeny urmaşi, descendenţi
awhile for a short period to supply a oferi, a livra, a furniza
satiety the state of being too much filled or satisfied

Reader
TEXT 4.4.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Book II, chapter VII)

The King was struck with horror* at the description I had given
of those terrible engines* and the proposal I had made. He was
amazed how so impotent and grovelling* an insect as I (these were
his expressions) could entertain* such inhuman ideas, and in so
familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of
blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of
those destructive machines (…) As for himself, he protested* that
although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art
or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy*
to such a secret (…).
A strange effect of narrow principles and short views*! that a
prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love,
and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning;
endued* with admirable talents for government, and almost adored
by his subjects, should from a nice*, unnecessary scruple, whereof*
in Europe we can have no conception, let slip* an opportunity put into
his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the
liberties, and the fortunes of his people. (…)
I take* this defect among them to have risen from their
ignorance; they not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as
the more acute wits* of Europe have done. For I remember very well,
in a discourse one day with the King, when I happened to say there
were several thousand books among us written upon the art of
government, it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very
mean opinion* of our understandings. He professed both to
abominate* and despise all mystery*, refinement and intrigue, either
in a prince or a minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of
state, where an enemy or some rival nation were not in case. He
confined* the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds*: to
common sense and reason, to justice and lenity*, to the speedy*
determination* of civil and criminal causes, with some other obvious
topics* which are not worth considering. And he gave it for his
opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn* or two blades of
grass* to grow upon a spot of ground* where only one grew before
would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his
country than the whole race of politicians put together.
The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in
morality, history, poetry, and mathematics; wherein* they must be
allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may
be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture and all mechanical
arts*; so that among us would be little esteemed. And as to ideas,
entities, abstractions, and transcendentals*, I could never drive* the
least conception into their heads.

Reader
struck with horror cuprins de groază to abominate to detest, to dislike intensely

engines maşini (piese de artilerie) mystery urzeli tainice
grovelling to grovel: to crawl, as in fear or humility (a se târî) to confine to limit, to restrict
to entertain (an idea) a nutri (o idee) bound limit, boundary (hotar)
to protest a declara; a asigura, a încredinţa lenity tolerance (îngăduinţă)
to be privy to a fi făcut părtaş la, a fi iniţiat în, a i se speedy quick, without delay
încredinţa (e.g. un secret) determination rezolvare, încheiere (a unei cauze juridice)
short views concepţii înguste topic temă, subiect
endued înzestrat ear of corn spic de grâu
nice fastidious, excessively particular about details blade of grass fir de iarbă
(pretenţios, greu de mulţumit) spot of ground petec de pământ
whereof of which wherein in which
to let slip (an opportunity) a lăsa să-i scape, a scăpa din mechanical arts meşteşuguri
mână (o ocazie) transcendentals categorii metafizice
I take I think, I suppose to drive (drove, driven) an idea into one’s head a băga în
acute wits spirite luminate (acute: pătrunzător, perspicace) cap, a face să priceapă
mean opinion părere nefavorabilă
TEXT 4.5.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Book IV, Ch. VII)

He observed that I agreed* in every feature of my body with
other Yahoos, except where it was to my real disadvantage in point
of* strength, speed, and activity, the shortness of my claws*, and
some other particulars* where Nature had no part*; so, from the
representation I had given him of our lives, our manners, and our
actions, he found as near a resemblance in the disposition* of our
minds. He said the Yahoos were known to hate one another more
than they did any different species of animals; and the reason usually
assigned* was the odiousness* of their own shapes, which all could
see in the rest, but not in themselves. (…) But he now found he had
been mistaken; and that the dissensions of those brutes in his
country were owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described
them. For, if (said he) you throw among five Yahoos as much food as
would be sufficient for fifty, they will instead of eating peaceably, fall
together by ears*, each single one impatient* to have all to itself. (…)
That, in some fields of his country, there are certain shining
stones of several colors, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond*; and
when part of these stones are fixed in the earth, as sometimes
happens, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out,
and carry them away, and hide them by heaps* in their kennels*; but
still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should
find out their treasure. (…)
As to learning, government, arts, manufactures*, and the like,
my master confessed he could find little or no resemblance between
the Yahoos of that country and those in ours. For he only meant to
observe what parity* there was in our natures. He had heard indeed
some curious Houyhnhnms observe that in most herds* there was a
sort of ruling* Yahoo (as among us there is generally some leading or
principal stag* in a park*) who was always more deformed in body,
and mischievous* in disposition, than any of the rest. That this leader
had usually a favorite as like himself as he could get, whose
employment was to lick* his masters feet and posteriors, and drive
the female Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was known and then
rewarded with a piece of ass’s flesh*. This favorite is hated by the
whole herd; and therefore* to protect himself, keeps always near the
Reader
person of his leader. (…) But how far this might be applicable to our
courts and favorites, and ministers of state, my master said I could
best determine.
(…) My master likewise* mentioned another quality, which his
servants had discovered in several Yahoos, and to him was wholly
unaccountable*. He said, a fancy* would sometimes take a Yahoo, to
retire into a corner, to lie down and howl*, and groan*, and spurn*
away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, and
wanted* neither food nor water; nor did the servants imagine what
could possibly ail* him. And the only remedy they found was to set*
him to hard work*, after which he would infallibly* come to himself*.
To this I was silent out of partiality* to my own kind*; yet here I could
plainly discover the true seeds* of spleen*, which only seizes on* the
lazy, the luxurious, and the rich (…).
His Honor had farther observed, that a female Yahoo would
often stand behind a bank* or a bush*, to gaze* on the young males
passing by, and then appear, and hide, using many antic* gestures
and grimaces; at which time it was observed, that she had a most
offensive* smell; and when any of the males advanced, would slowly
retire, looking back, and with a counterfeit* show of fear, run off into
some convenient place where she knew the male would follow her.
At other times, if a female stranger came along them, three or
four of her own sex would get about her, and stare* and chatter*, and
grin*, and smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures that
seemed to express contempt and disdain.
I agreed I corresponded unaccountable inexplicable
in point of în ceea ce priveşte a fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo din când în când i
claws gheare se năzare câte unui Yahoo
particulars details to howl a urla
no part no role, no contribution to groan a geme
near close to spurn (away) a îndepărta, a refuza, a alunga
disposition predispoziţie, înclinare to want a duce lipsă de
to assign (a reason) to give, to attribute (a reason) to ail a durea, a deranja
odiousness hidoşenie to set (somebody) to work a pune la muncă
they will fall together by ears se vor lua la bătaie infallibly negreşit
impatient zorit, grăbit he would come to himself îşi revenea, îşi venea în fire
whereof of which partiality părtinire, slăbiciune, înclinaţie
to be fond of a fi amator, a-i plăcea mult my own kind cei de-un neam cu mine
by heaps în grămezi seeds seminţe (fig.: izvor, cauză)
kennel culcuş, vizuină spleen ipohondrie, melancolie
manufacture meşteşuguri seizes on se abate asupra, îi cuprinde pe
parity corespondenţă, asemănare, analogie bank movilă
herd cireadă bush tufiş
ruling dominant, conducător to gaze to look long and fixedly
stag cerb antic grotesque
park parc cinegetic offensive unpleasant, disgusting
mischievous răutăcios, rău intenţionat, pus pe rele counterfeit simulated; a counterfeit show of fear: prefăcându-
to lick a linge se că îi este teamă
ass’s flesh carne de măgar to stare a se holba
therefore that is why to chatter a flecări
likewise also to grin a rânji

Reader
TEXT 4.6.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Book IV, chapter VIII)
As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by Nature with a

general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of
what is evil in a rational creature; so their grand* maxim is to cultivate
reason, and to be wholly governed by it. (…)
Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among
the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular objects, but
universal to the whole race. For a stranger from the remotest* part is
equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes,
looks upon himself* as at home. They preserve decency and civility*
in the highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony*.
They have no fondness* for their colts or foals*; but the care they
take in educating them proceeds* entirely from the dictates of reason.
And I observed my master to show the same affection to his
neighbour’s issue* that he had for his own. They will have that*
Nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only
that makes a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree
of virtue.
When the matron* Houyhnhnms have produced one of each
sex, they no longer accompany* with their consorts, except they lose
one of their issue by some casualty*, which very seldom* happens;
but in such a case they meet again; or when the like accident*
befalls* a person whose wife is past bearing*, some other couple
bestows* on him one of their own colts, and then go together* a
second time, until the mother be pregnant*. This caution* is
necessary to prevent the country from being overburdened with
numbers*. But the race of inferior Houyhnhnms bred up to be
servants is not so strictly limited upon this article*; these are allowed
to produce* three of each sex, to be domestics* in the noble families.
Courtship, love, presents*, jointures*, settlements*, have no
place in their thoughts, or terms whereby* to express them in their
language. The young couple meet and are joined, merely because it
is the determination* of their parents and friends; it is what they see
done every day; and they look upon it as one of necessary actions in
a reasonable being. But the violation* of marriage, or any other
unchastity* was never heard of; and the married pair pass their lives
with the same friendship and mutual benevolence that they bear to all
others of the same species who come in their way, without jealousy,
fondness, quarreling*, or discontent*.
Temperance*, industry*, exercise*, and cleanliness* are the
lessons equally enjoined* to the young ones of both sexes; and my
master thought it monstrous in us to give the females a different kind
of education from the males, except in some articles of domestic
management (…).

Reader
grand principal, capital, supreme caution măsură de prevedere

remote distant, far away overburdened with numbers overpopulated
looks upon himself considers himself upon this article în această privinţă, la acest capitol
civility amabilitate, curtenie, politeţe, bună creştere to produce a zămisli
ceremony protocol, etichetă domestic servitor
fondness duioşie, afecţiune, dragoste present dar, cadou
colt, foal mânz jointure averea cuvenită soţiei după moartea soţului
to proceed (from) to come from, to originate in (a izvorî) settlement contract
issue odrasle, progenituri, urmaşi whereby by which
they will have that they say that determination decision
matron mamă de familie violation necinstire
to acompany (with) a se împreuna unchastity infidelitate
casualty accident, nenorocire, năpastă quarreling ceartă
seldom rarely discontent nemulţumire
the like accident o năpastă de felul acesta temperance cumpătare
to befall (befell, befallen) a se abate asupra industry hărnicie
is past bearing nu mai poate zămisli exercise exerciţii fizice
to bestow to give, to offer cleanliness curăţenie
they go together se împreunează enjoined imposed, prescribed
pregnant grea, însărcinată

Reader
UNIT 5
THE AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT:

THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
TEXT 5.1.
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
It was now that I began sensibly* to feel how much more happy
this life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the
wicked*, cursed*, abominable* life I led all the past part of my days.
And now I changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires
altered*, my affections changed their gusts*, and my delights were
perfectly new from what they were at my first coming, or indeed for
the two years past.
Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting or for viewing
the country, the anguish* of my soul at my condition would break out*
upon me on a sudden*, and my very heart would die within me to
think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in, and how I
was a prisoner locked up with the eternal bars* and bolts* of the
ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption*. In the
midst* of the greatest composures* of my mind, this would break out
upon me like a storm, and make me wring* my hands like a child.
(…).
But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts. I daily
read the Word of God, and applied all the comforts* of it to my
present state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon
these words: “I will never, never leave thee*, nor forsake* thee.”
Immediately it occurred* to me that these words were to me. Why
else* should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment
when I was mourning over my condition as one forsaken of* God and
Man? (…)
From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was
possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition
than it was probable I should have ever been I any other particular
state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to
God for bringing me to this place.
sensibly în mod apreciabil, destul de mult redemption mântuire, izbăvire, salvare
wicked păcătos midst middle
cursed nelegiuit, ticălos composure linişte, calm, cumpăt, stăpânire de sine
abominable odios to wring (wrung) a frânge; to wring one’s hands: a-şi frânge
to alter to change mâinile de durere
gust răbufnire, explozie, izbucnire comfort mângâiere, consolare, încurajare
anguish pain, misery, agony thee you
to break out a se dezlănţui, a izbucni to forsake (forsook, forsaken) to abandon
on a sudden suddenly, abruptly to occur (to someone) a-i veni în minte, a-i trece prin gând
bars gratii, zăbrele why else? altfel de ce?
bolt zăvor forsaken of forsaken by

Reader
TEXT 5.2.
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
It would make the reader pity* me, or rather laugh at me, to tell
how many awkward* ways I took to raise this paste*; what odd,
misshapen*, ugly things I made; how many of them fell in*, and how
many fell out*, the clay* not being stiff* enough to bear its own
weight*; how many cracked* by the over-violent heat of the sun,
being set out too hastily*; and how many fell in pieces with only
removing* as well before as after they were dried; and, in a word
how, after having laboured hard to find the clay, to dig* it, to temper*
it, to bring it home and work it, I could not make above* two large
earthen* ugly things – I cannot call them jars* – in about two months’
labour. (…)
Though I miscarried* so much in my design* for large pots*, yet
I made several smaller things with better success – such as little
round pots, flat dishes*, pitchers*, and pipkins*, and any things my
hand turned to*; and the heat of the sun baked* them strangely
hard*.
But all this would not answer my end*, which was to get an
earthen pot to hold what was liquid, and bear* the fire, which none of
these could do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large
fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out* after I had done
with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels* in
the fire burned as hard as a stone, and red as a tile*. I was agreeably
surprised to see it, and said to myself that certainly they might be
made to burn whole if they would burn broken.
This set me to studying how to order* my fire, so as to make it
burn me some pots. I had no notion of a kiln*, such as the potters*
burn in, or glazing* them with lead*, though I had some lead to do it
with.; but I placed three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile,
one upon another, and placed my firewood* all round it, with a great
heap of embers* under them. I plied the fire* with fresh fuel round the
outside and upon the top till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite
through*, and observed that they did not crack at all*. When I saw
them clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six
hours(…). In the morning I had three very good – I will not say
handsome* – pipkins and two other earthen pots as hard burned as
could be desired (…).
No joy at a thing of so mean a nature* was ever equal to mine
when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and
I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold before I set one upon
the fire again with some water in it to boil me some meat, which it did
admirably well.
to pity a căina set out too hastily expuse prea devreme
awkward incomod, anevoios, dificil with only removing doar ce le-am mişcat
paste cocă to dig, dug a săpa
misshapen diform to temper a amesteca, a frământa, a prelucra
fell in to fall, (fell, fallen) in: a se prăbuşi, a cădea above more than
fell out to fall, (fell, fallen) out: a se desface, a se desprinde earthen de lut, de pământ
clay lut, argilă jar oală, vas
stiff tare to miscarry a da greş
weight to bear its own weight: să reziste la propria greutate design intenţie
to crack a crăpa pot vas, oală
Reader
dish blid, farfurie kiln cuptor
pitcher ulcior ulcea potter olar
pipkin gavanos to glaze a smălţui
to turn to a se apuca de lucru, a se pune pe lucru lead plumb
to bake a coace firewood lemn de foc
strangely hard neobişnuit de tare embers jăratec
end ţel, scop, intenţie I plied the fire am întreţinut focul
to bear (bore, born) a rezista, a ţine la quite through cu totul, în întregime
to put out (the fire) a stinge (focul) at all deloc
earthenware vessels vase de lut handsome frumos, arătos
tile ţiglă; placă de ceramică a thing of so mean a nature un lucru atât de mărunt
how to order the fire cum să potrivesc focul
TEXT 5.3.
Samuel Richardson, Preface to Clarissa

All the letters are written while the hearts of the writers must be
supposed to be wholly engaged in their subjects (the events at the
time dubious*): so that they abound not only with critical situations,
but with what may be called instantaneous descriptions and
reflections (…). Much more lively* and affecting must be the style of
those who write in the height* of a present distress*; the mind
tortured by the pangs* of uncertainty (the events then hidden in the
womb* of fate); than the dry*, narrative, unanimated style of a person
relating difficulties and dangers surmounted*, can be.
dubious uncertain, doubtful pangs mâhnire, chinuri
lively vivid (însufleţit, plin de viaţă) womb pântece; the womb of fate: incertitudinea sorţii
height culme, punct culminant, apogeu dry sec, neutru
distress nefericire, durere, nenorocire to surmount to overcome (a birui, a învinge, a depăşi)
TEXT 5.4.
Samuel Richardson, Pamela

[Pamela receives a letter from Mr. B_, in which he confesses
his affection for her. She seems taken by surprise by her own
feelings.]
This letter, when I expected some new plot*, has greatly
affected me. For here plainly* does he confess his great value for
me; and accounts for his rigorous* behaviour to me. […] O my dear
parents, forgive me! but I found, to my grief*, before, that my heart
was too partial* in his favour; but now, to find him capable of so much
openness, so much affection, nay*, and of so much honour too, I am
quite overcome*. This was a good fortune, however, I had no reason
to expect. But to be sure*, I must own* to you, that I shall never be
able to think of any body in the world but him! Presumption*! you will
say; and so it is: but love, I imagine, is not a voluntary thing – Love,
did I say! […] I know not how it came, nor when it began; but it has
crept*, crept, like a thief, upon me; and before I knew what was the
matter, it looked like love.
[…]
Forgive, I beseech* you, my dear father, forgive your poor
daughter! How am I grieved* to find this trial so severe* upon me. O
my unguarded* youth, and tender years*, will ye* not in some
Reader
measure excuse me? I never before knew, I could have no notion of
what it was to be so affected! But prayer, and resignation to the
Divine Will, and the benefits of your good lesson and examples, I
hope, will enable me to get over this heavy trial.
Yet, O my treacherous*, treacherous heart! How couldst thou
serve* me thus! And give no notice* to me of the mischiefs* thou
wert* about to bring upon me! How couldst thou thus inconsiderately*
give thyself* up to the proud invader, without ever consulting thy poor
mistress* in the least*! But thy punishment will be the first and the
greatest: and well, perfidious traitor*! deservest* thou to smart, for
giving up so weakly, thy whole self, before summons* came, and to
one too, who had used me so hardly; and when likewise* thou hadst*
so well maintained thy post* against the most violent and avowed*,
and therefore*, as I thought, only dangerous attacks!
After all, I must either not show you this confession of my
weakness, or tear* it out of my writing. [Memorandum*, to consider of
this, when I get home.]
plot uneltire, intrigă notice to give notice: a preveni, a înştiinţa
plainly în mod deschis, în mod clar mischief neajuns, necaz
rigorous aspru, sever wert were
grief durere, mâhnire inconsiderately (în mod) nesocotit, nechibzuit
partial to având o slăbiciune pentru thyself yourself
nay (literary) ba mai mult, mai mult chiar thy poor mistress biata ta stăpână
to overcome a depăşi, a copleşi (not) in the least câtuşi de puţin, nicidecum
to be sure cu siguranţă traitor trădător (noun)
to own a mărturisi deservest well …deservest thou to smart: you [i.e.my heart]
presumption cutezanţă, îndrăzneală fully deserve to suffer
crept to creep (crept): a se strecura, a se furişa summons chemare; avertizare
to beseech (besought) a ruga cu stăruinţă, a implora likewise de asemenea
grieved amărât, întristat, mâhnit hadst (you) had
severe trial încercare grea thou hadst so well maintained thy post you put up
unguarded imprudent resistance successfully
tender years vârstă fragedă avowed făţiş
ye you (pl.) therefore aşadar, în consecinţă
treacherous trădător (adj.) to tear (tore, torn) out a smulge, a rupe
couldst thou could you memorandum notă, însemnare
serve how couldst thou serve me thus? Cum ai putut să te
porţi astfel?
TEXT 5.5.
Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (Preface)
Now, a comic romance* is a comic epic poem* in prose;

differing from comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy: its action
being more extended and comprehensive*; containing a much larger
circle of incidents, and introducing a greater variety of characters. It
differs from the serious romance in its fable* and action, in this; that
as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are
light* and ridiculous: it differs in its characters by introducing persons
of inferior rank, and consequently, of inferior manners, whereas the
grave romance sets the highest* before us: lastly, in its sentiments
and diction*; by preserving the ludicrous* instead of the sublime. In
the diction, I think, burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of
which many instances will occur in these works […].
But though we have sometimes admitted this in our diction, we
have carefully excluded it from our sentiments and characters; for
there it is never properly introduced, unless* in writings of the
Reader
burlesque kind, which this is not intended to be. Indeed, no two
species of writing can differ more widely than the comic and the
burlesque; for as the latter is ever* the exhibition* of what is
monstrous and unnatural, and where our delight, if we examine it,
arises from the surprising absurdity, as in appropriating the manners
of the highest to the lowest*, or e converso*; so in the former we
should ever confine* ourselves strictly to nature, from the just*
imitation of which will flow all the pleasure we can this way convey to
a sensible* reader.
[…]
Let us examine the works of a comic history painter, with those
performances which the Italians call Caricatura, where we shall find
the true excellence of the former to consist in the exactest copying of
nature; in so much that a judicious eye instantly rejects anything
outré*, any liberty which the painter hath* taken with the features of
that alma mater*; whereas in the Caricatura we allow all licence* – its
aim is to exhibit monsters, not men; and all distortions and
exaggerations whatever are within its proper province*.
Now, what Caricatura is in painting, Burlesque is in writing; and
in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each
other. And here I shall observe, that, as in the former the painter
seems to have the advantage; so it is in the latter infinitely on the
side of the writer; for the Monstrous is much easier to paint than
describe, and the Ridiculous to describe than paint.
[…]
The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is
affectation. […] Now, affectation proceeds from one of these two
causes, vanity or hypocrisy: for as vanity puts us on affecting false
characters*, in order to purchase* applause; so hypocrisy sets us on
an endeavour to avoid censure*, by concealing* our vices under an
appearance of their opposite virtues. And though these two causes
are often confounded (for there is some difficulty in distinguishing
them), yet, as they proceed* from very different motives, so they are
as clearly distinct in their operations: for indeed, the affectation which
arises from vanity is nearer to truth than the other, as it hath not that
violent repugnancy* of nature to struggle with, which that of the
hypocrite hath. It may be likewise noted, that affectation doth* not
imply an absolute negation of those qualities which are affected; and,
therefore, though, when it proceeds from hypocrisy, it be nearly allied
to deceit*; yet when it comes from vanity only, it partakes* of the
nature of ostentation: for instance, the affectation of liberality* in a
vain* man differs visibly from the same affectation in the avaricious;
for though the vain man is not what he would appear, or hath not the
virtue he affects, to the degree he would be thought to have it; yet it
sits less awkwardly* on him than on the avaricious man, who is the
very reverse of what he would seem to be.
From the discovery of this affectation arises the Ridiculous,
which always strikes* the reader with surprise and pleasure; and that
in a higher and stronger degree when the affectation arises from
hypocrisy, than when from vanity; for to discover any one to be the
exact reverse of what he affects, is more surprising, and
consequently more ridiculous, than to find him a little deficient in the
quality he desires the reputation of.

Reader
[…]
Much less are natural imperfections the objects of derision; but
when ugliness aims at the applause* of beauty, or lameness*
endeavours to display* agility, it is then that these unfortunate
circumstances, which at first moved our compassion, tend* only to
raise our mirth*.
The poet carries this very far:
None are for being what they are in fault,

But for not being what they would be thought*.
[…] Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation,

smaller faults, of our pity; but affectation appears to me the only true
source of the Ridiculous.
comic romance roman comic to purchase to obtain
comic epic poem poem eroicomic censure so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavour to avoid
comprehensive cuprinzător censure tot astfel ipocrizia ne îndeamnă/ne face să ne
fable subiect, intrigă străduim a evita critica
light uşor to conceal to hide
highest sets the highest before us aduce în faţa ochilor pe cei to proceed from to come/to emerge from
de rang superior repugnancy incompatibility, contradiction
diction stil doth does
ludicrous grotesc deceit înşelătorie
unless except it partakes of se înrudeşte cu, face parte din
ever always liberality generosity (mărinimie, dărnicie)
exhibition display (expunere) vain vanitos
appropriating the manners of the highest to the lowest awkwardly stângaci, cu stângăcie; it sits less awkwardly on
atribuirea obiceiurilor din lumea bună unor oameni din him than: îi şade mai puţin rău decât
popor strikes the reader with surprise and pleasure îi oferă
e converso (Italian)and viceversa cititorului plăcerea surprizei
to confine oneself to a se limita la applause when ugliness aims at the applause of beauty: când
just faithful, exact urâtul/urâţenia aspiră la aplauzele meritate de frumuseţe
sensible endowed with common sense (cu judecată, cu bun lameness şchiopătare, şchiopătat
simţ) to display to show
outré (French) exaggerated to tend a tinde
hath has mirth laughter
alma mater (Latin) the nourishing mother; fig.: the primary thought the lines quoted by Fielding are from Alexander
source Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711): “Nimeni nu este
licence liberty vinovat de a fi ceea ce e, / Ci de-a nu fi ceea ce vrea să
province domeniu, sferă pară.”
affecting false characters pretending to be in a way that one
is not, putting on a flattering mask

Reader
TEXT 5.6.
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (Vol.I, Chapter V)

On the fifth day of November, 1718 […] was I Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman, brought forth* into this scurvy* and disastrous world of
ours. I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any of the planets […]
than in this vile*, dirty planet of ours, which, on my conscience, with
reverence be it spoken*, I take to be made up of the shreds* and
clippings* of the rest; – not but the planet is well enough*, provided a
man could be born in it to a great title* or to a great estate*, or could
any how contrive* to be called up to public charges* and
employments* of dignity or power – but that is not my case […]. I can
truly say that from the first hour I drew my breath into it […] I have
been the continual sport* of what the world calls Fortune; and though
I will not wrong her by saying she has ever made me feel the weight*
of any great or signal* evil, yet with all the good temper* in the world I
affirm it of her that in every stage of my life, and at every turn* and
corner where she could get* fairly at me, the ungracious* Duchess
has pelted* me with a set of as pitiful* misadventures* and cross*
accidents as ever small HERO sustained.
brought forth born employment slujbă
scurvy păcătos, abject sport jucărie
vile ticălos weight greutate, povară
with reverence be it spoken fie spus cu tot respectul signal însemnat, remarcabil
shreds zdrenţe good temper voie bună
clippings resturi, rămăşiţe turn cotitură
not but the planet is well enough nu că n-ar fi bună planeta to get at (somebody) to irritate, to annoy
provided a man could be born to a great title cu condiţia să ungracious răutăcios, lipsit de cordialitate/amabilitate
te naşti cu un titlu însemnat to pelt a bombarda, a asalta
estate avere pitiful jalnic
to contrive a o brodi, a izbuti, a reuşi misadventure nenorocire
public charges însărcinare, răspundere publică cross potrivnic, nefericit
TEXT 5.7.
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (Vol I, Chapter XXII)

For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as
in my all digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke* of
digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been
overlooked* by my reader, not for want of penetration* in him, but
because it is an excellence seldom* looked for, or expected indeed,
in a digression; – and it is this: That though my digressions are all
fair*, as you observe, and that I fly off* from what I am about, as far
and as often too as any writer in Great-Britain, yet I constantly take
care to order affairs so, that my main business does not stand still in
my absence.
[…] The machinery* of my work is of a species by itself; two
contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were
thought to be at variance* with each other. In a word, my work is
digressive, and it is progressive too, – and at the same time.
[…]

Reader
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; – they are the life,
the soul of reading; – take them out of this book for instance, you
might as well take the book along with them; – one cold eternal
winter would reign* in every page of it; restore them to the writer, he
steps forth* like a bridegroom*, bids* All hail*, brings in variety, and
forbids the appetite to fail.
All the dexterity* is in the good cookery* and management of
them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of
the author, whose distress*, in this matter, is truly pitiable*: For, if he
begins a digression, from that moment, I observe, his whole work
stands stock-still*; and if he goes on with his main work, then there is
an end of his digression.
This is vile work*. For which reason, from the beginning of this,
you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious*
parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and
involved* the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel
within another*, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-
going; – and, what’s more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if
it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good
spirits*.
master-stroke mişcare măiestrită to bid (bade, bidden) a ura
skill meşteşug all hail trăiască!, slavă!
to overlook a-i scăpa, a trece cu vederea dexterity îndemânare
for want of penetration din pricina lipsei de cookery gătit, artă culinară
pătrundere/înţelegere distress stare jalnică
seldom arareori pitiable vrednic de milă
fair fără cusur, cum trebuie, sadea to stand stock-still a încremeni, a sta pe loc
to fly off a-şi lua zborul vile work ticăloasă treabă
machinery mecanism adventitious întâmplător
at variance potrivnic, în contradicţie to involve a încurca, a încâlci
to reign a domni one wheel within another cu rotiţele îmbucându-se una într-
to step forth a păşi alta
bridegroom mire good spirits voie bună

Reader
UNIT 6
ENGLISH PRE-ROMANTIC POETRY
TEXT 6.1.
Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village

A man he was, to all the country dear,
And passing rich* with forty pounds* a year;
Remote* from towns he ran his godly* race,
Nor e’er* had changed, nor wished to change his place;
Unpracticed he to fawn*, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned* to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize*,
More skilled to raise the wretched* than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant* train*,
He chid* their wanderings*, but relieved* their pain:
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast.
passing rich trecând drept bogat, fiind considerat bogat to prize a preţui, a aprecia
pound liră the wretched cei sărmani/nenorociţi
remote far away, distant vagrant vagabond, hoinar; cerşetor
godly pious, devout (evlavios, cucernic) train alai, cortegiu şir
e’er ever chid to chide, chid: to rebuke, to scold (a dojeni, a mustra)
to fawn to seek attention and admiration by flattering (a se wandering rătăcire
ploconi, a linguşi) to relieve to bring alleviation (a uşura, a alina, a mângâia)
fashioned potrivit, modelat, croit
TEXT 6.2.
George Crabbe, The Village

Ye* gentle* souls who dream of rural ease*,
Whom the smooth* stream and smoother sonnet please,
Go! if the peaceful cot* your praises share,
Go, look within, and ask if peace be there.
If peace be his – that drooping* weary* sire*,
Or theirs, that offspring* round their feeble* fire;
Or hers, the matron* pale, whose trembling hand
Turns on the wretched* hearth* the expiring* brand*! (…)
(…) yonder* see that hoary swain*, whose age
Can with no cares except his own engage;
Who, propped* on that rude* staff*, looks up to see
The bare arms* broken from the withering* tree
On which, a boy, he climbed the loftiest bough*,
Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now.

Reader
ye you (pl.) hearth vatră, cămin

gentle nobil, ales, generos expiring dying (care se stinge)
ease tihnă, linişte, pace brand tăciune
smooth calm, liniştit yonder (poetic) there
cot căsuţă hoary swain săteanul cărunt/nins/venerabil
drooping aplecat, încovoiat propped proptit, sprijinit, rezemat
weary exhausted (istovit) rude rudimentary, coarse; simple, lacking adornments
sire (poetic) tată, părinte staff toiag
offspring vlăstar, urmaş bare arms ramurile/crengile desfrunzite
feeble plăpând, slab withering decaying, losing vitality (care se usucă)
matron mamă de familie loftiest bough ramura cea mai înaltă
wretched biet, jalnic, nenorocit
TEXT 6.3.
James Thomson, The Seasons (from Autumn)

He comes! he comes! in every breeze the Power
Of Philosophic Melancholy comes! (…)
O’er* all the soul his sacred influence breathes;
Inflames imagination, through the breast
Infuses every tenderness, and far
Beyond dim earth exalts* the swelling* thought. (…)
As fast the correspondent passions rise,
As varied, and as high: Devotion, raised
To rapture* and divine astonishment;
The love of Nature, unconfined*, and, chief*,
Of human race; the large ambitious wish
To make them blest; the sigh for suffering worth*
Lost in obscurity; the noble scorn*
Of tyrant pride*; (…)
The sympathies of love and friendship dear,
With all the social offspring of the heart*.
o’er over suffering worth men of merit and virtue who suffer
to exalt to raise, to elevate; to stimulate, to excite scorn contempt, disdain (dispreţ)
swelling expanding tyrant pride the arrogance of arbitrary or unjust power
rapture ecstasy; ecstatic joy the social offspring of the heart the community, whom the
unconfined unlimited heart feels as a family
chief most important
TEXT 6.4.
William Cowper, The Task (1785)

God made the country, and man made the town.
What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught*
That life holds to all, should most abound
And least be threatened in the fields and groves*?
draught înghiţitură, sorbitură
grove crâng, dumbravă

Reader
TEXT 6.5.
William Blake,The Lamb (from Songs of Innocence)

Little Lamb who made thee*?
Dost thou know* who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed*,
By the stream and o’er* the mead*;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly* bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice*!
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy* name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek*, and he is mild*,
He became a little child:
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
who made thee who made you to rejoice to feel or show great joy
dost thou know do you know thy your
bid thee feed ţi-a oferit hrană, te-a poftit să te hrăneşti meek very quiet, gentle and uncomplaining (blând, cuminte,
o’er over supus)
mead meadow (pajişte, luncă) mild gentle, not violent (blajin, îngăduitor)
wooly made of or feeling like wool (lânos)
TEXT 6.6.
William Blake, Infant Sorrow (from Songs of Experience)

My mother groaned*, my father wept*,
Into the dangerous world I leapt*;
Helpless, naked, piping* loud,
Like a fiend* hid* in a cloud.
Struggling in my father’s hands,

Striving against my swaddling bands*,
Bound* and weary*, I thought best
To sulk* upon my mother’s breast.
to groan a geme, a suspina swaddling bands scutece
wept to weep (wept): a plânge bound to bind, bound: a lega strâns; a înlănţui; a închide
leapt to leap, leapt: a sări, a ţâşni, a se arunca weary tired, exhausted
piping to pipe: to utter something in a high and thin voice to sulk to be silent and resentful a se bosumfla, a fi
fiend demon supărat/îmbufnat
hid hidden

Reader
TEXT 6.7.
William Blake, The Garden of Love (from Songs of Experience)

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst*,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of the Chapel were shut,

And ‘Thou shalt not’* writ* over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore*.
And I saw it was filled with graves*,

And tomb-stones* where flowers should be,
And Priests in black gowns* were walking their rounds*,
And binding* with briars* my joys and desires.
midst middle tomb-stone piatră funerară
‘Thou shalt not’ ‘You shall not’ (the interdictory formula gown mantie; robă
beginning the ten commandments in the Bible) walking their rounds făcându-şi rondul
writ written binding to bind, bound: to tie
bore to bear, bore, borne: to give birth to briar a wild bush with branches that have thorns (măceş,
grave mormânt iarbă neagră)
TEXT 6.8.
William Blake, Nurse’s Song (from Songs of Innocence)

When the voices of children are heard on the green*,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest* within my breast,
And every thing else is still.
“Then come home my children, the sun is gone down,

And the dews* of night arise;
Come, come leave off play, and let us away*
Till the morning appears in the skies.”
“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,

And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep.”
“Well, well, go and play till the light fades away*,

And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped* and shouted and laughed
And all the hills echoed*.
green pajişte verde to fade away to die, to disappear
at rest calm, tranquil, at ease to leap (leaped/leapt) a sări, a sălta, a ţopăi
dew rouă to echo a răsuna
let us away să megrem

Reader
TEXT 6.9.
William Blake, Nurse’s Song (from Songs of Experience)

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisperings* are in the dale*,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green* and pale.
Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,

And the dews of night arise;
Your spring and your day are wasted* in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.
whisperings şoapte; foşnet, freamăt
dale vale, vâlcea
my face turns green as in “green with envy”
to waste a pierde, a irosi
TEXT 6.10.
William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper* (from Songs of Innocence)

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold* me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “weep*, weep, weep, weep!”
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot* I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

That curled* like a lamb’s back, was shaved: so I said
“Hush*, Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.”
And so he was quiet, and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight*!–
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins* of black.
And by* came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the Sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds, and sport* in the wind;
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father and never want* joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose* in the dark,

And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
Reader
chimney sweeper coşar, hornar hush taci, potoleşte-te, fii liniştit

sold to sell, sold: a vinde (the boy’s father has put him to work sight vision
to bring money in the family) coffin sicriu, coşciug
weep the boy is so young that he could scarcely cry “sweep!” by aproape, alături, în preajmă
)to advertise his work in the streets); it is ironic that to sport a zburda, a se juca
“sweep” becomes “weep” (a plânge) to want to feel the need or longing for something; to be
soot funingine lacking something
to curl a se încreţi/cârlionţa rose to rise (rose, risen): a se scula, a se deştepta
TEXT 6.11.
William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper (from Songs of Experience)
A little black thing among the snow,

Crying “weep*, weep!” in notes of woe*!
“Where are thy* father and mother? say*?”
“They are both gone up to church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath*,

And smiled among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy and dance and sing,

They think they have done me no injury*,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a Heaven of our misery*.”
weep see explanation above
woe intense grief/sorrow/unhappiness
thy your
say? ia spune!
heath câmpie stearpă
injury rău, nedreptate
misery intense unhappiness or suffering
TEXT 6.12.
William Blake, Holy Thursday (from Songs of Innocence)

‘Twas* on a Holy Thursday*, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two in red and blue and green,
Grey-headed beadles* walked before, with wands* as white as snow,
Till into the high dome* of Paul’s* they like Thames’ waters flow.
O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!

Seated* in companies they sit with radiance* all their own*.
The hum* of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty* wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings* the seats* of heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish* pity, lest* you drive* an angel from your door.

Reader
radiance great happiness that shows in someone’s face; soft,
‘twas it was gentle light (strălucire)
th
Holy Thursday Ascension Day, the 40 day after Easter, all their own coming from inside themselves
when the ascension of Christ to heaven is celebrated hum a low continuous murmuring sound
beadle an officer in British churches in the past, who helped mighty very strong and powerful
the priest in various ways, especially by keeping order thundering tunet
wand baghetă the seats of heaven among among the seats of heaven: in
dome hemispherical roof the sky (allusion to judgement seat, and to the Last
St Paul’s Cathedral the largest cathedral in London, re-built Judgement, in the Revelation)
th
in the late 17 century, a monument of baroque to cherish to treasure something (a preţui, a iubi)
architecture lest ca să nu, ca nu cumva
seated aşezaţi to drive (from) a alunga, a goni
TEXT 6.13.
William Blake, Holy Thursday (from Songs of Experience)
Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful* land
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed* with cold and usurous* hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine.

And their fields are bleak* and bare*.
And their ways are filled with thorns*.
It is eternal winter there.
For where-e’er* the sun does shine,

And where-e’er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appal*.
fruitful fecund, fertil, roditor

fed to feed (fed): a hrăni
usurous cămătăresc (see again the Glossary)
bleak sterp, rece, lugubru
bare gol, sterp, neroditor
thorn spin, ghimpe
where-e’er wherever
to appal to make someone feel shocked and upset (a îngrozi)

Sources
Abrams, M. H (Gen. Ed.), The Norton Anthology of English
Literature, Vols. I, II New York, London: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1993
Defoe, Daniel, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York,
Mariner, edited with an Introduction by Angus Ross, Penguin
Books Ltd., 1965
Fielding, Henry, Joseph Andrews and Shamela, edited with an
introduction by Arthur Humphreys, London and Melbourne: J.
M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1987
Milton, John, Paradise Lost, Penguin Books Ltd., 1996
Richardson, Samuel, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady, edited
with an introduction by Angus Ross, Penguin Books Ltd., 1985
Richardson, Samuel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, ed. by Peter
Sabor, with and introduction by Margaret Ann Doody, Penguin
Books, Ltd., 1980
Shakespeare, William, Opere complete, vol. 5 (Hamlet), ediţie
îngrijită şi comentată de Leon D. Leviţchi, Bucureşti: Editura
Univers, 1986
Shakespeare, William, Opere complete, vol. 7 (Macbeth), ediţie
îngrijită şi comentată de Leon D. Leviţchi, Bucureşti: Editura
Univers, 1988
Shakespeare, William, Opere, vol. XI (Furtuna) Bucureşti: Editura
pentru Literatură Universală, 1963
Shakespeare, William, The Complete Works, edited, with a glossary
by W.J. Craig, London: Henry Pordes, 1984)
Sterne, Laurence, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman, edited with an introduction by Ian Campbell Ross,
Oxford University Press, 1983

Bibliography
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abrams, M. H (Gen. Ed.), The Norton Anthology of English

Literature, Vols. I, II New York, London: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1993
Allen, Walter, The English Novel, Penguin Books Ltd., 1991
Alter, Robert, Partial Magic. The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre,
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press,
1975
Bloom, Clive (ed.), Jacobean Poetry and Prose: Rhetoric,
Representation and the Popular Imagination, The Macmillan
Press Ltd., 1988
Butt, John, The Mid-Eighteenth Century, Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1979
Cartianu, Ana; Ioan Aurel Preda (eds.), Dicţionar al Literaturii
Engleze, Bucureşti: Editura Ştiinţifică, 1970
Corns, Thomas N (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English
Poetry. Donne to Marvell¸ Cambridge University Press, 1993
Coveney, Peter, The Image of Childhood (with an introduction by
F.R. Leavis), London: Penguin Books, 1967
Cuddon, J. A., The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary
Theory, London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1992
Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, (vols. 2, 3),
London: Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1969
Day, Aiden, Romanticism, London and New York: Routlege, 1996
Day, Martin, History of English Literature. 1660-1837, New York,
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963
Drabble, Margaret (ed.), The Oxford Companion to English
Literature, Oxford University Press, 1985
Fairer, David, The Poetry of Alexander Pope, Penguin Books Ltd.,
1989
Ferber, Michael, The Poetry of William Blake, Penguin Books, 1991
Ford, Boris (ed.), The New Pelican Guide to English Literature (vols.
3, 4, 5), Penguin Books Ltd., 1991
Greenberg, Robert A. (ed.), Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. An
Annotated Text with Critical Essays, New York: W. W. Norton
and Company, Inc., 1961
Hammond, Gerald (ed.), The Metaphysical Poets, Macmillan
Education Ltd., 1988
Hunting, Robert, Jonathan Swift, Twayne Publishers, 1971
Legouis, Émile, A Short History of English Literature (transl. V.F.
Boyson and J. Coulson), Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1965
Macsiniuc, Cornelia, The English Eighteenth Century. The Novel in
Its Beginnings, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2003
McDermott, Hubert, Novel and Romance. The Odyssey to Tom
Jones, London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1989
Munteanu, Romul, Literatura europeană în epoca luminilor,
Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică Română, 1974
Nokes, David, Joseph Andrews, Penguin Books, 1987

Bibliography
Olteanu, Tudor, Morfologia romanului european în secolul al XVIII-
lea, Bucureşti: Editura Univers, 1974
Preda, Ioan-Aurel (ed.), English Literature and Civilisation. The
Didactică şi Pedagogică, 1983
Preda, Ioan-Aurel, Studies in Eighteenth Century Fiction and
Romantic Poetry, Editura Universităţii Bucureşti, 1994
Protopopescu, Dragoş, Fenomenul englez (vol. 3), ediţie îngrijită,
studiu introductiv şi note de Dan Grigorescu, Bucureşti: Editura
“Grai şi suflet – Cultura naţională”, 2003
Raine, Kathleen, Blake and the New Age, London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1979
Richetti, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-
Century Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1996
Robert, Marthe, Romanul începuturilor şi începuturile romanului,
Bucureşti: Editura Univers, 1983
Sampson, George, The Concise Cambridge History of English
Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Turcu, Luminiţa Elena, The Literature of the Beginnings. From
Beowulf to Paradise Lost, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2003
Volceanov, George, A Survey of English Literature from Beowulf to
Jane Austen, Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei “România de Mâine,”
2000
Watt, Ian, Four Myths of Individualism, Cambridge University Press,
1991
Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson and
Fielding, Chatto & Windus, 1974

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Program postuniversitar de conversie profesională

pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural

Forma de învăţământ ID - semestrul III

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH

LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century

Nici o parte a acestei lucrări

1 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:

2 The late Renaissance and the Baroque 31

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural i

3 The Works of John Milton 62

4 The Restoration and the Augustan Age 88

5 The Age of the Enlightenment: the rise of the 117

6 English pre-Romantic poetry 149

Reader in seventeenth and eighteenth century

Selected bibliography 216

iv Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

1. What this course is about

2. How this course can help you

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 1

This complex aim presupposes your development of certain

• define the distinctive features, the characteristic attitudes

4. Course content and structure

2 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

4.1. The units of learning

4.2. The self-assessment questions (SAQs)

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 3

A self-assessed question (SAQ) is signalled in the course

You are required to solve these SAQs in the blank spaces

4.3. Solutions and suggestions for SAQs

You can check your answers to each SAQ by going to this

4.4. Auxiliary sections

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 5

4.5. The Reader

5. Assessment and evaluation

A send-away assignment (SAA) is signalled in the text by the

The cumulated weight of these SAAs in your final grade is 40%.

6 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Unit Number of tasks and their Weight of each

SAA no.3 6 1 1. 100% 10%

In the assessment of each assignment, the tutor will take into

Each assignment must be completed and sent to the tutor in the

6. Your study schedule

This course is devised for 42 hours of study. Of these hours, 28

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 7

Planning your course work is important as it will enable you to

8 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 9

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

♦ define the most important tendencies in the evolution of

1.1. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment

1.1.1. The intellectual scene

10 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

1.1.2. Reason and faith in the Age of the Enlightenment

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 11

1.1.3. From the Age of Reason to the Age of Feeling

1.1.4. The Enlightenment: an age of progress

1. The Enlightenment continued the Renaissance faith in man’s

12 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Check your answers in the section Solutions and suggestions

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 13

Read the partial statements below and match them, so as to

a. The Court was the main source of influence……