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COURSE NO. 551

1. Name of student: Danish Iqbal

2. Name of Teacher: Sir Syed Farhan Shaukat
3. Name of course: History of English Literature
4. Date of submission:

Assignment Question : Discuss in detail the poetic ideals of

the Augustan Age with reference to James Sudherland’s
essay.
 “Warning: If you read the second word of this first line of this essay, a demon will appear behind
you and if you look behind yourself, you would really get frightened”.
By now you might already have realized that you have read the second word and the demon has not
appeared behind you and if you have not looked behind yourself till now, you can, because nothing like a
demon has appeared behind you. This is because of the Augustan Age and its enlightenment which went
against over imagination and which had pointed out such beliefs and figures to be absurdity of over thinking
without any sense of reasoning.
Imagination, a great intelligent tool which has its uses to determine different matters related to this
world and our affairs related to our past, present and future, has a never ending capacity and no boundaries
and it can go to infinite levels of creativity. But the point is reason. The imagination as we have already
mentioned has no limits needs to be controlled according to the Augustan system of reasoning. Imagination
is a vast space with uncountable destinations but if a person goes into this space he is likely to be lost in this
vast space. To reach a specific destination one needs to have a correct address of that destination and for
Augustans, that address is called sense.
Reasoning is a process of determining whether a concept produced by a human mind makes sense
or not. If a concept makes perfect sense then it is called sensible concept and that is what Augustans were
after, to bring sense in the society. The society before the Augustan Age suffered from superstition and the
ideas which were not allowing themselves to be explained. Demons, fairies and other such imaginary
concepts were in the minds of the people before this age and all such things were also present in the things
related to those minds in one way or the other. Literature of an era is directly influenced by such minds
because literature is produced by the minds of people.
After having a brief understanding of imagination and sense, and understanding the struggle of
Augustans we now get to the primary objective of the essay. Because having no understanding of the above
concepts, it becomes a bit difficult to understand what comes after all this. Poetry, which is undoubtedly as
essential element of literature of any age, is directly connected to the minds of people and those who
produce poetry are known as poets. The poets of the Augustan Age decided to take a decision and put the
poetry into a shape. Before that poetry was a tool of general expressions of a poet’s imaginations and
emotions, but with the new experiment which was applied on poetry, caused it to be no more a general tool
of expression of imagination and emotions but it was under control of those who possessed the art of
reasoning and sense who had locked the doors towards imagination.
The Augustan Age was known as the age of enlightenment and reason, which also affected poetry.
Poetry had become rational in this age and it possessed the rational elements and ignored all the irrational
elements whose examples are mentioned above. Rationalism in poetry had an advantage and a disadvantage
both. The advantage was that it brought people out of the things which were not possible to be proven since
past centuries. The horrible tales which had no reality or place in reality were finally proven to be not true
and poetry played a great role in it. Because it was poetry by means of which such takes were populated and
through poetry such tales came to an end, if not the tales then at least their effect on people. Rationalism
influenced poetry and the poetry was then exposed to rationalism.
Science was another thing which had a direct effect on poetry and became an ideal of the Augustan
Age’s poetry. Science demands or provides for any claim which is claimed by anyone. In case of poetry,
science had a direct influence on the Augustan poetry because it forced poetry to have a structure in its
concepts and anything which is produced in poetry must have a scientific evidence. That means if an idea is
presented in poetry it should be supported by evidence.
When talking about science, we remember how idealism is targeted by pragmatism and in Augustan
poetry we can see how idealism is targeted and attacked by reason. This attacking attitude is an important
trait of this poetry because it is an automatic quality which triggers right after a rational poetry is produced.
Because it directly attacks the irrational poetry which has no evidence to provide about the story behind it
and the only story which the rationals know behind irrational poetry is immaturity or immature behavior and
whatever is produced by it.
Maturity is an ideal of Augustan poetry because it attacks immaturity, how does it attacks
immaturity? The answer is simple because they are totally opposite and in opposition of two different
elements there is always something which makes one right and the other wrong as long as right and wrong
are defined and standardized as in the case of Augustan Poetry where standard was already set to be rational.
In that case the standard of the choice of either right or wrong is obvious. And that is the reason for choosing
maturity for Augustan Age poetry.
 Choices display the objective of the one who makes the choice. Choice’s standard is an
extremely important ideal of Augustan poetry, which gives us an idea how Augustan poetry carves out a line
around what is rational and leaves outside everything which is irrational. Standard of choice also gives a
scientific approach to the Augustan poetry. It even seems to be a personified thing, in a way because it
chooses the rational poetry but rejects the irrational as if it knows what to choose. So the establishment of
this poetry and its standard amazingly and implicitly seems to have a personified characteristic.
Rationality in the Augustan Age poetry was greatly a cause by scientific approach and the way
science works. Close observation gives us a general idea of how Augustan poetry works in a scientific way
that it demands for evidence and it clearly rejects any ideas which are based on imagination which has
nothing to do with the real world and fails to provide the evidence of whatever is being said. And if those
who are not ready to give evidence and who do not leave their imagination, Augustan poetry uses satire
against them, their poetry and even their imagination which forces them to leave the idea of irrational poetry.
Satire is also an important ideal of the Augustan poetry because it is a weapon used by the
Augustans against the emotions of those whose emotions have strongly imprisoned them and prevent them
from reasoning(here them means those poets who are considered irrational). Since satire is a device which
goes against ones emotion and it does not support one’s emotions but it violates the state of emotion and
forces a person to reason.
Emotions from different individuals can produce different kinds of poetry based on the intensity of
an individual which the Augustans do not favor. For them individuality and the ideas based on individuality
and of course that includes poetry too, are not acceptable, why is because they believe in objectivity rather
than subjectivity. The objectivity was necessary because through it the general idea can be supported and can
get to a correct judgment and the result. For example a poem gets published in a popular paper and general
public reads it, if they look at it from rational sight and agree with it in general (agreeable poem for the
rational public is the poem which is based on rational reasoning and supported by easy to produce evidences
within the poem itself instead of fairy tales) then the poem is a success in terms of objectivity because it
does fulfill the criteria of judgment.
The poetry should present the ideas based on research and not based on speculation. As we have
seen earlier that rationality and sense were sources of inspiration for the Augustans so they really cared
about poetry which should be based on research and not based on speculation. An idea which is based on a
research (on practical and on collective levels) has the ability to produce clear evidences about the matter
under discussion.
Simplicity was also part of this age’s poetry because when everyone understood it after getting
common understanding of the sense and sensibility, the poetry became simple and easy for all the people
who had to read it. That means it believed in the things which had to do with reality and was specially
connected with the day to day life and with man himself. So we can see how man was firstly given
understanding of getting up from the sleep in which he was experiencing goblins and demons, and after
waking up he looked at himself and the things which in reality were concerned with him. As a result it made
it simple for him to understand poetry which was simply concerned with his own self and his surroundings
rather than a world of thoughts.
Actual direction with an apparent beginning and a clear ending was also an important ideal of the
Augustan Age poetry because it believed in a poetry which has a beginning where the reader knows what is
the topic at hand and what the poet is trying to convey in the poetry. While it also should have a steady path
or direction in which it has to travel and complete its travel to the end. The end should be clear and should
make sense instead of keeping the reader in confusion at the end.
Strictly following the objective question and keeping all the observations which could be presented
in this essay we therefore get to our conclusion that the 18th century Augustan Age poetry was based on
scientific ways of looking at things in general and they made the ideals of the poetry of that age in one
specific restricted direction to the end.