Class : M.A.

Semester-I Subject : English

PAPER Code/Name : I- (LITERARY MOVEMENTS)

Chairperson : Professor MadhurimaVerma
Co-ordinator : Professor Praveen Sharda
Course Leader : Professor Praveen Sharda

M.A. ENGLISH, SEMESTER-I

PAPER I: (LITERARY MOVEMENTS)

 Introductory Letter (i)

 Syllabus (ii)

CONTENTS

L. No. Topic Author Page

Unit I
1. “The Challenge of Literary Movements” Prof. Praveen Sharda 1
2. “Periodization and Difference” Prof. Praveen Sharda 13
Unit II
3. An Introduction to Classicism Dr Nipun Kalia 19
4. “The Classicism of the Classics” Dr Nipun Kalia 25
5. Horace “ Ars Poetica” Dr Nipun Kalia
6. On the Sublime Dr Nipun Kalia 31
Unit III
7. “Renaissance” Satnam Singh 39
8. Prince Satnam Singh 48
9. The Praise of Folly Satnam Singh 58
11. Samuel Johnson “The Necessity of Good Humor” Ms Ravinder Kaur

Unit IV
10. “Neoclassicism” Ms Ravinder Kaur 69
12. “Author’s Preface” to Joseph Andrews Ms Ravinder Kaur 80
Unit V
13. “Romanticism: The Brief History of a Concept” Dr Rajesh K. Jaiswal 94
14. “Romantic Analogues of Mind and Art”,
The Mirror and the Lamp Dr Rajesh K. Jaiswal 100
15. On the Imagination or the Esemplastic Power Dr. Rajesh K. Jaiswal

Vetter: Professor Praveen Sharda

E-Mail of Department - coordeng@pu.ac.in

Contact No. of Department - 0172-2534325
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INTRODUCTORY LETTER

Dear Student,

We welcome you to the first semester of M.A .English. This year you are going to
study a completely new syllabus which is both interesting and according to the latest UGC
guidelines. The entire course of M.A. (English) will now have eighteen papers instead of
sixteen papers. Paper XVII (17) shall be allotted to dissertation work and paper XVIII (18)
shall be based on practical training.

Your first paper is titled as ‘Literary Movements’ and it consists of five units. A basic
understanding of movements such as Classicism, Renaissance, Romanticism and Neo-
Classicism is essential for understanding a vast variety of literary texts. Each movement has
its own cultural and ethical values as well as preferences. Every writing is unique but
writers and writings do converge in fostering an identifiable literary taste and trend.
Students are expected to have a historical and conceptual understanding of various literary
movements. You are expected to study the prescribed texts closely and also secondary
material available on these texts.

We are providing you with study material which is in the self-learning mode. For every
unit, we are providing you with a comprehensive summary of the prescribed text, an
introduction to the critic and his/her work and also a glossary in which you will find the
meanings of difficult words and phrases used in the text. Self-Assessment questions and
model questions have been given in the discussion of every essay. When you come to attend
the Personal Contact Programme, all these essays would be discussed. Your question paper
in the examination will have five compulsory questions with internal choice. Each paper
shall carry eighty marks.

In case of any doubts, please do not hesitate to visit the department. All your doubts
and questions will be addressed during the Personal Contact Programme.

Happy Reading!

Course Leader
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Lesson 1

“THE CHALLENGE OF LITERARY MOVEMENTS”

BY FRANCIS JOST

Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Defining Literary Movements and Identifying Challenges in their Study
1.3 Evolution and Metamorphosis of Literary Movements
1.4 Sustainability of Movements
1.5 Concern over Reversal of Hierarchies- A Challenge for Literary Movements
1.6 Fragmentation of Movements paves way for Evolution of Literary History
1.7 Summary
1.8 Glossary
1.9 References
1.10 Further Readings
1.11 Model Questions
1.0 Objectives:
After reading this lesson, you will be able to
 Identify the driving forces behind Literature
 Acquire a working Knowledge of some Literary Movements
 Describe the challenges in the study of Literary Movements
 Single out factors for Sustaining Literary Movements
 Elucidate factors for evolution of Literary Movements
1.1 Introduction:
It is important to understand the significance of literary movements and why you need to study
them before reading a summary of the prescribed essay. Movements are like labels often attached
to certain writers or texts by critics and literary historians for the sake of efficiency, a better
understanding and being able to define the features associated with the writing specific to a
movement. The task of the literary historian or critic is to locate those features in specific texts.
Just as academia organises itself into disciplines, literature organises itself into periods which are
associated with movements. Some historians observe that when literary history is packaged in
terms of movements, a closer scrutiny of the whole expanse of literature and the texts becomes
much easier. It would be a very difficult task to understand literary history if it was not divided
into various categories by the labelling of movements. Movements provide the much-needed
taxonomy for the comprehension of English Literature and its history. It is Chris Semansky who
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writes in the foreword to “Literary Movements for Students” that the organisation of texts /
writers in terms of literary movements is to provide “readers with a foot in the door, a way to
think about well-known texts and tools with which to think about them”. Literary movements as
Semansky argues facilitate the study of literature as each movement is associated with set
characteristics or regulations. The Critic however argues that this is one way of studying
Literature but certainly not the only way.
A movement signifies organised activities by a group of people with a stated objective but literary
movements according to some are dynamic and never static. They evolve from the fray (struggle)
of competing interests and historical developments. A Movement is studied with reference to the
one preceding it or the one following it, implying that the study of movements is a comparative
one. The investigation into the Romantic Movement for example involves an analytical
understanding of the Neo-classical movement or the period of Augustus. Critical appraisals
compete with each other in building up the literature around a text and they also contribute to
the acceleration of one or even more movements. Many a times there are splinter groups (those
which break away from the larger one) within movements and conflicting interests which lead to
the evolution of not only a particular movement but the whole of Literature. Literary movements
are to be studied more for their dynamism and their comparative characteristics than their static
or chronological qualities found in books on Literary History. Hence their study is a challenging
task.
Literary movements are in fact the expression of a certain way of life and as life changes, there is
a metamorphosis or change in literary movements. During the course of the essay, you will read
that it is the cultural elements of a period which contribute to the growth and the evolution of a
movement. Moreover, in every movement there are dissenting voices or break away groups which
lead to the fragmentation in movements. This makes literary history a collage of various break-
away moves leading to the acceleration of history as a whole. As literary history is a record of the
‘moving’ of movements, literature is an expression of the movement of life. Literary movements
thus follow the movement of life.
1.2 Defining Literary Movements and Identifying Challenges in their Study
The essay begins with an investigation into the definition of literary movements and their effect
on literature. In the opening paragraph, a literary movement is defined as the act or process by
which the whole of literature moves and at the end of a specific movement, it is in a different
position or posture. For example, the move from Neoclassical to the Romantic involves a
remarkable change in the aesthetics or forms or styles in Literature. The transformation of one
movement into another involves a change in the tendencies (social, cultural, political) of the
periods associated with these movements. Thus they lead to the evolution of literature as whole
and not just some parts of it. Every movement in literature contributes to the progress and
evolution of it. Movements such as Classicism, Renaissance, Neoclassicism and Romanticism – all
with their individual features or tendencies contributed to the progress of literature. For example
in the Renaissance, there is the rebirth and revival of learning and knowledge and it also
represents the struggle between the spiritual and the secular. The literature of this period
significantly also involves the study of literature before it, i.e., how to live in an ideal way by
following the teachings of Christ. The study of movements provides us with a holistic view of
literary history where a particular period or age is related to the previous one.
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Coming to the question of what is literature, Jost clarifies that literature like any other art forms
such as painting or sculpture is concerned with the artistic or creative expression of everything
that concerns man. Thus, whether it is poetry, drama, prose or fiction – all genres are intricately
involved with the aesthetic expression of all that happens in life. Aesthetics as a branch of
philosophy deals with both the creation as well as the appreciation of beauty. It is aesthetics that
promotes or educates readers about important artistic expressions, images as well as symbols in
society. However literature while focussing on man, is neither just ‘artistic expression/aesthetics’,
nor criticism nor sociology or philosophy but a joint comprehensive worldview of an individual or
group. It involves a general perception of the nature of the world, implying or containing a system
of value principles. This is Weltanschauung or in other words a philosophical system, which is
constituted or styled in a manner those practical consequences, can be derived from its
theoretical component (see Glossary). Literature is thus the outlook of both an individual and a
social group at a time.
It is indeed paradoxical that the movements that transform literature are themselves confined to
handbooks on literary studies and discussed frequently as static phenomena whereas in a
Physics manual they are examined in chapters on dynamism. Movements in literary history are
also understood as periods, epochs, an era or an age. Whatever be the labels contrived for
movements, their study is essential for you as students in order to have a working definition of
Classicism, Realism, Romanticism, Naturalism and Modernism, according to B. Frank Sedwick in
an article on “The Literary Movements Defined”. What may surprise you is that seldom does a
given work fall entirely into one category or represent a single movement. Both writers and texts
may sometimes be listed under more than one movement. For example Samuel Beckett is
associated with the Absurdist Movement but one can also find him under the category of
Existentialism. Sedwick furthers the argument by saying that a reader cannot become a
connoisseur or an expert of literary history until one acquires, “...first a system of reference, a
knowledge of comparative facts of manufacture.” Teachers must realize that they must give their
students the facts of literary life or the general tendencies of various movements in the pages of
history before expounding case histories. By using the term case histories, the writer is referring
to texts of Literature. It thus becomes all the more imperative to investigate into the nature of
various literary movements to understand the contexts of various texts in the process of their
comparative analysis. “No appraisal is possible without implicit or explicit comparisons,”
according to Jost. There have not been many movements but seldom does a given work fall
entirely into any one category. It is therefore essential for all of you (students) to have a
comprehensive understanding of the major movements such as Classicism, Realism,
Romanticism, Naturalism and Modernism. Sedwick regards it as a wise step to introduce
students to other – isms as well for the sake of a better understanding of the context of any text.
A section of critics doubts the usefulness of movement studies and literary periodization and
argue that every literary work is unique, and its evaluation should not take place within a limited
framework of a period or a genre. Moreover a critical appreciation of a work involves comparisons
with other works which could be representative of other movements. Movements may overlap and
the characteristics of one may be found in another. However critical appraisals or evaluations of
texts are based on certain regulations designed and structured by authors as well as critics while
competing with their peers. It is the spirit of competitiveness and critique in the comparisons that
imparts momentum or movement to literature. This dynamic activity of comparing and
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contrasting a work with many others and of one movement with another; imparts dynamism to
literature, making it move forward. Literary movements as the building blocks of literature
provide a critical phraseology as well as a taxonomy of classification for critics and literary
historians.
Jost observes that it is important to understand and answer the questions related to various
aesthetic and stylistic movements in literary history. All movements differ from one another in
terms of aesthetics and style. Movements in literature or other arenas such as architecture or
sociology are shaped by the broader cultural tendencies in a given period of time. While
examining movements, a literary historian’s task is to see how writers have dealt with the idea of
aesthetics. The aesthetic ideal can be achieved through the three most noble media-- art, music
and literature. All three have the common goal of expressing beauty through the artist, the
musician and the writer or the creator. All the three mediums are engaged in the imitation of
reality and in the process create an artefact out of their imagination which then influences the
reader/spectator. At every step, the question of beauty is paramount and in the reception of the
work, it is the viewer or reader who perceives beauty in accordance with his ideological standing.
In the study of literary movements, it is significant to perceive how writers have dealt with the
idea of beauty or aesthetics and how it has been practiced by them in their works in comparison
to their predecessors. Secondly, it is also important to perceive how critics have negotiated with
them. Movements differ from each other in terms of aesthetics and literary style.
Jost, the critic underscores the point that one must never ignore comparison of one movement
with another as this saves a literary work from being isolated within a set paradigm or a fixed
framework. A comparative analysis always enriches the study of literature. It is the competing
perspectives of critics about movements that lend momentum to literary life. The writer’s objective
in this essay is to analyse the driving forces which lend dynamism or movement to literature. It is
a challenging task to analyse such forces which propel literature in its forward movement. Hence
it is essential to clarify the nature of literary movements, answer questions concerning the role of
aesthetics and style within movements in literary history and also look into the consequences of
the separation of aesthetics and stylistics from literature in its entirety.
1.3 Part One--Evolution and Metamorphosis of Literary Movements
In the first part of the essay, Jost develops the argument that literary movements are spread over
a vast expanse of time and do not get transformed easily. Hence there have not been many
movements in literary history. Literary movements are an inseparable part of philosophy which
like Literature is an interpretation of everything related to man and his world. As philosophies
take a long time to mature with the numerous critical appraisals of concepts over a period of
time; movements too take a similar turn. They evolve and transform only with numerous
perspectives and critiques spread over a considerable span of time. Secondly, the shift in the
cultural paradigm precipitates literary movements. Western literature has thus very few
movements but there have been a hundred moves which have not withstood the test of critical
appraisals.
The critic further argues that some movements like Classicism continue to be the yardstick
of all literatures and are sustainable to the present day as it involves the inseparability of form
and content. As a movement, Classicism is the most authoritative and illustrative in literature.
Movements like Classicism are a recurring phenomenon as its principles continue to pervade all
the literature of the West, though not in the same degree and at the same time. Some of its
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features were there in eighteenth century France, especially in the works of Corneille and Racine
and were also there in the eighteenth century Germany. There could be certain commonalities
with the classical period in Spain too. Inferentially, movements may possess common
characteristics in different linguistic regions. In contemporary criticism, there is a tendency to
give more importance to classical form at the expense of classical thought. The mock epic for
instance uses the classical form for trivial everyday purposes. Classicism is thus not limited by
changing cultures and climes.
B. Frank Sedwick observes that Classicism is a term given by the Renaissance man to the style
of ancient Greeks and Romans, a style that is the embodiment of ‘fixedness of form and purpose’.
Prospectively movements can be reinterpreted or even relabelled, keeping in view the emergence
of new movements. Sedwick in his essay on ‘Literary Movements’ says that Classicism possessed
many other traits such as precision, crystal-clear presentation of undoubted truths, confidence,
satisfaction with life, optimism and a rationalism that places mind over matter in ignoring
unpleasant realities. Works by ancient-Greeks such as Aristotle’s “Poetics”, the tragedies of
Sophocles or the poems by the Roman Classic, Homer are perfect examples of the blending of
reason and aesthetic emotion. This is the condition sine qua non or an indispensable condition for
classics. Works by these writers are examples of the imitation of real life and showing their
fundamental attitudes towards life. In his poems, Homer refers to history and mythology,
anthropology and geography of his times. It was in the creation of their ‘worlds’, in poetry or
prose, that writers created with a certain perspective or in other words, used emotions which were
righteous or derogatory. This emotional colouring of their created ‘worlds’ comes close to
emotional aesthetics. Thus created worlds could be represented in terms of beauty or the
negation of it. Works by these classical writers in addition to their aesthetics are also instances
of a theoretical understanding of the world in which they lived and operated. The world view of
the Romans was not much different from the Greeks and both Horace and Aristotle assumed that
their philosophical thought was well understood by their readers. Their classics or literary works
distinctly brought about their world view on the then existing reality. It is Horace who mentions
in his Ars Poetica that poetry must be pleasant and profitable, both enjoyable and instructive.
Without the fulfilment of these objectives or the condition of blending reason with aesthetic
emotion, there could be no masterpiece. Classics of literature are read time and again for a
theoretical understanding of their worlds as well as their emotional aesthetics or style.
The case of medievalism is different as it revealed remarkable interest within other literary
movements as Romanticism and also that it metamorphosed or transformed into another
movement called Renaissance. The spirit pervading Medievalism was theocentric or regarding God
as the Central interest and ultimate concern. From religion, the focus shifted to man and the
world began to be interpreted in terms of human values and experiences. This reconstruction or
reordering of significance from religion to human values had far-reaching implications for
Literature. Metamorphosis of movements is quite distinctly related to changes in style and world-
views. A new movement imparts new meanings and a new orientation to human existence. The
implications of the process of transformation become apparent in all fields including literature.
The over emphasis on formal elements as in the case of baroque (highly decorated style of
European architecture, art and music), led some modern critics to declare it as a full-fledged
literary movement but it failed to sustain itself for a long time.
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Jost makes a very seminal statement at the end of the First section – “For a movement is the
expression of a certain way of life, and life is movement”. The implication of a certain way of life is
relating literary movements to primary cultural elements or cultural environment such as that of
the middle ages, the periods of Renaissance and Romanticism. In the study of literary
movements, there has to be a reconciliation between subjects and styles, ‘Gehalt’ and ‘Gestalt’(see
Glossary). Once this objective of literature is achieved, then literary history can be studied in the
form of various movements – each having its own ‘Weltbild’- a theoretical interpretation of the
human condition existing at that time. It then becomes easy to differentiate Romanticism from
literary socialism or one movement from another. For example, the basis of Romanticism is the
sovereignty of the self or the antagonism between the self and society. The self is superior to the
society. Socialism, on the contrary, rests on the alliance between the self and society as it is
society which is regarded as responsible for protecting the self. Movements, though an integral
part of literary history are never isolated from the movement of life. The themes and styles
prevalent in a particular period are informed by the experiences of human beings and also
constitute the emotional aesthetics of writers. Movements which focused on ‘form’ alone lived a
very short life. Thus, it is the integration of form and content which has been able to sustain the
major movements of literary history.
1.4 Part Two-- Sustainability of Movements:
The study of literary movements is challenging as it poses a study of the question of priorities – to
give importance to the thought or the form it takes, in other words to give importance to the
content or the style. Jost affirms that the study of movements does not imply questions related to
either content or form but is actually of granting greater significance to either of the two. The
writer of the essay is deeply concerned about the fetishisation (excessive and irrational
commitment to something) regarding peculiar fashionable or modish vogues or the use of specific
poetic devices. Styles in architecture, for example Baroque architecture (highly decorative and
theatrical style which appeared in Italy in the early 17th century) which spread across Europe,
also made its entry into music, dance, painting, sculpture and other art forms in the early
seventeenth until the late mid-eighteenth century. It was declared as a full-fledged literary
movement even though it did not transcend the realm of aesthetics or the formal element. Jost as
a critic is deeply concerned about movements which lend importance to only certain styles rather
than being concerned with human problems. This passivity has been highlighted with reference to
the muses. The muses who were earlier the inspirational goddesses of literature, science and the
arts are now no longer active. They have run out of motivating themes and subjects and are
metaphorically lying on their deathbeds. Lacking in energy, the muses are busy humming on
exotic subjects (those which are non-native and thus alien) or in humming erotic tunes. Jost
regrets that contemporary literary historians, due to a paucity of serious subjects in measuring or
identifying movements in a representative manner, often jump to map the literary past in terms of
some trivial styles that become a rage or fashion for the time being. Only literary tastes that
sustain over a relatively longer period of time and are seen in practice across a broad spectrum of
writers can be harnessed in marking a literary movement.
The critic is quite apprehensive of writers who think that they can focus wholly on style
but “- ... the poet, in order to create the best possible poem, needs an idea, needs motion and
emotion.” Jost affirms that writers following the principle of “Art for Art's Sake” are in fact
adhering to the principles of an aesthetic school and not a literary school. By focussing on form,
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technique or mere expression is not enough for movements to endure through the passage of
literary history, “Primacy has to be granted to the thought or the emotion.” The only exception of
a creator creating out of nothing is that of ‘Yahweh’ or God but the poet as a creator cannot just
focus on technique, style or artistic expression. Such a tendency can only lead the inspirational
muses to their demise.
The argument should not lead you (students) to the idea that style is insignificant and that
only content has a happy fate in the hands of a writer. It is style which makes the content
endurable and it is style which remains the preserving element of a masterpiece handed down to
us from generations. Style however cannot exist on its own as it is the dress of ideas or thoughts.
Thus shapes, forms, and colours have existence only with visual ideas or themes in art. A poet
who can boast only of poetic techniques is a ‘tinkling cymbal’ who will be listed under the
category “cymbalism” and not symbolism. Such a poet would only be concerned with techniques
which enhance the style of a work. For literature of a certain period to be classified as a
movement, it must have a worldview, dressed in a style suitable to that period. Thus the writer of
the essay reaffirms his argument of the previous section – Classicism has endured because of the
inseparability of form and content. Both are the essential prerequisites of literature
1.5 Part III Overemphasis on Form:
In the third part of the essay, the critic laments that literature has been reduced to mere form or
that style and techniques are being given more importance than content. The hierarchy of values
has been reversed. That is the reason why there a hundred moves but only very few movements
in Western literature. This is attributed to the over emphasis on form in this section and Jost
examines the judgement of two French naturalists - Buffon and Bernardin de Saint – Pierre as
an illustration. Both regard style as of primary significance and the same idea was later echoed
by Schopenhauer (German Philosopher) who declared “The style is the physiognomy of the
mind.” The French critics earlier echoed the same idea “...style is man’s heart and mind”. The
common inference drawn from the above two statements refers to style being representative of
man’s heart (i.e. his emotions) and also the qualities of his mind or his intellect. Thus, the
emotions and ideas together are dressed in artistic experience or techniques.
The traditional prerequisite of all literature is the combination of formal beauty with some
prominent thought. Saint Pierre Proclaimed in the ‘Avis’ preceding his novel that form and
content jointly produced a work of art. He affirmed that words were naturally created out of the
subject – matter, “the words follow the thing”. Here the French naturalist is quoting Horace. It is
the object or the action and their meanings which lead to the ‘creation’ of words in a text.
The philosophy of stylistics developed by Saint – Pierre and Buffon is applicable to poetry
as much as it is to prose. It was Emerson, the poet, who criticised his colleagues for giving more
importance to the ‘finish’ or the form of the verses rather than their content. He proclaimed in
his essay “The Poet”, “It is not meters, but a meter – making argument that makes a poem.”
Emerson rightly sums up his doctrine by saying that thought and its form “are equal in the order
of time” but as far as the origin is concerned, it is the idea or the thought which comes before the
form. It was Verlaine who reversed the importance given to the values of content and form. He
limits himself to an investigation of auditory merit for the rhetoric or the form of the text. The
‘utile’ or the instructive part of literature represented in the content is no longer mentioned.
Literary movements for their survival must focus on both the rhetoric and the persuasive
element in the style as well as the instructive part of texts.
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1.6 Part IV-- Fragmentation of Movements paves way for Evolution of Literary History:
Literary movements and their study is a challenge because movements vary greatly in terms of
their natural characteristics as well as their function. Some movements represent the whole of
Literature i. e. ideas of both content and form but there are movements where literature is
represented partially and not fully. Jost the critic says that numerous variations in conception
and mannerisms are to be found in a major movement like the Renaissance and its variant the
Baroque followed Renaissance art and Mannerism. The same is true of other movements which
may have many variants and thus be fragmented. The writer is deeply concerned about the
proliferation of many moves or -isms such as existentialism and socialist realism, dadaism and
surrealism, impressionism and expressionism etc. None of them qualifies as a movement
because they are concerned with aesthetic or technical perfection than with the artistic
expression of the human condition or the meaning of life. The argument is that none qualifies as
a movement in a fundamental sense as it lacks the essential and vital unity of content and form.
Many of these movements which flourished as off-shoots of others are an exemplification of art
for art’s sake rather than the aesthetic expression of some aspect of the human condition. He
quotes the example of the “Parnassiens”, a literary movement headed by Charles-Marie-Rene’
Leconte de Lisle who emphasised upon restraint, objectivity and technical perfection as a
reaction to the emotionalism and verbal imprecision of the Romantics. Thus in every movement
there are voices against the excesses indulged in by that movement. These are the various moves
against the existing ones which finally lead to their evolution.
A perusal of the history of recent literature can bear resemblance to a “grandiose collage
fresco with no frame of reference or organising concept ....” This fragmented literary history
resembles the numerous versions of the popular Shakespearean concept that the world's a stage
and all men and women are actors. Jost observes that as different writers have variously
expressed the same idea, similarly a single movement can have many variants taking the form of
several fragments. A study of literary movements does leave an impression that in earlier
periods, a writer or a poet followed the flow or the tendencies/ characteristics of a movement
whereas in the contemporary scenario, writers are increasingly aware of their rights to propagate
individual principles or practise those of any tradition. A writer of the postcolonial world may
practise the principles which differ from the main current if his work so desires. If Literary
history is not a unified whole and lacks a unifying principle, then this paves the way for the
acceleration of history as a whole. The representation of literary history as a collage with no
unifying concept is in fact a key factor in the evolution of literary history. Movements as
fragments of literary history are associated with the increase of “groupuscules” or the increase in
small groups which practise and spread principles born out of any tradition. Inferentially there
are a few people having the same religious and political beliefs who break away from a larger
group or a movement forming a splinter group by themselves. These splinter groups could differ
in one or the other aspect of a literary movement .Such splinter groups help in the fragmentation
of movements leading to their evolution in literary history. For example, in the eighteenth
century literature, the revolt against Classicism is shown in the revival of the romantic poetry
under Gray, Collins, Burns and Thomson and the beginning of the English novel under Defoe,
Richardson and Fielding. It is ripples of such kind which lead to the fragmentation in
movements.
Part V
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Jost seeks to pinpoint the challenges or the questions/disputes related to literary movements.
The literary Critic clarifies that criticism is not concerned with periods characterised by formal
traits and ideologies but with movements which run parallel to the moving of time in human life.
As already stated, literary movements are always changing. The study of movements is more
challenging as compared to periods which are an abstraction in literary history. The Heraclitian
approach which holds that everything is constantly changing and that everything is and is not at
the same time; is thus best applicable to Literary movements. Literature with its taxonomy of
literary movements is static or stationary only for the period that a text is read and no sooner
does one move to another text that there is a change arousing curiosity and the question of
which movement it follows.
Another strand of the essay relating to literary substance and aesthetics culminates in the
last section. Literary criticism should not focus solely on the analysis of the literary substance or
literary aesthetics but it should be a quest for truth as well as beauty; content as well as form.
Although this is a universal truth, nevertheless the term ‘Literary’ is not denied for a movement
which emphasises just style or some part of literature. The term ‘Literary’ which is all
encompassing functions as a synecdoche where the whole is given for one part of literature.
The examination and the study of literary movements is problematic as it cannot be done
in isolation. The analysis of one move or movement is impossible without “an inquiry into
several” just as the study of one literature involves a comparison with many others at various
points of time. The very word movement signifies comparison of what transpires before and what
comes after. The study is essentially a comparitist one. Movements are also a challenge to a
literary critic as they may be spread across diverse linguistic areas. Thus a movement such as
the Renaissance may appear in various languages and territories. In the study of various
movements, a critic searches for a unifying element in each of them but also searches for diverse
principles that will make these movements comparable. Thus in the study of movements one has
to search for the integrating or unifying element as well as the differential ones. The comparatist
can best gain in the effort of comparing and contrasting movements.
Self-Assessment Questions
Fill in the blanks with correct answers:-
1. For a movement is the a) _______________ of a certain way of life, and b) _____________ is
movement.
2. If the poet speaks without a (i) ________________ to be delivered, he is nothing but a
sounding brass, or a (ii) _____________ (iii) __________________ .
3. By fragmenting the (i) _________________ of literature and philosophy, theorists have
contributed to the (ii) _______________ of history as a whole.
4. Literature is (i) ________________ only during the short span of time needed for the (ii)
______________ of one single work.
Answers to SAQ
1. (i) expression (ii) life
2. (i) message (ii) tinkling (iii) cymbal
3. (i) history (ii) acceleration
 10

4. (i) static (ii) reading

1.7 Summary:
The study of literary movements is important as they provide critical taxonomies to critics and
literary historians for the purpose of analysis. As such, their study is instrumental in the
progress of literature as they are constantly in the process of movement and thus change.
Although there are a few literary movements in literature, their investigation and analysis leads
us to the driving forces behind literature. The essay tries to answer three questions - first, what is
the nature of literary movements, what is the role of aesthetic or stylistic movements in literary
history and lastly what are the consequences of the separation of aesthetics and stylistics from
the whole of literature. The writer does make a few remarks about their properties and qualities.
Classicism is the most authoritative and quoted of all movements as it illustrates the blending of
form and content. All classics, ranging from Aristotle’s Poetics to Sophocles tragedies to Homer’s
poems are an imitation of real life and linked to a theoretical understanding of their respective
worlds. It is the inseparability of content and form that led to the sustainability of Classicism
across cultures and climes.
There is a transformation in movements as the patterns of life change and there is a shift
in the cultural paradigm. Sometimes there are many moves which are a pointer to changing style
but they cannot be labelled as movements. But movements cannot be labelled according to
peculiar modish vogues or stylistic innovations characterised by the use of specific poetic devices.
The writer regrets that the inspirational goddesses of literature, science and the arts are virtually
on their death-beds. Writers are lacking in inspirational themes and thought provoking ideas.
Thus poets without a message may possess rhetoric but s/he is only a tinkling cymbal without
any symbolism. It is only those movements which take into account formal beauty as well as
some prominent thoughts that can survive the test of time. Jost quotes the views of the two
French naturalists, Buffon and Bernardin de Saint Pierre whose ideas on stylistics apply to prose
as well as poetry. The critic regrets on the reversal of values - initiated by Verlaine who stressed
on the importance of literature as mere form. Thus there are movements where only certain
specific aspects of literature are involved overlooking the vital unity of content and form. In the
history of literature, there are many -isms or moves which do not qualify as a movement in a
fundamental sense. There are instances of certain movements which are concerned with art for
art’s sake without taking into account the meaning of life. The recent multiplication of moves and
movements has led to a rise in the awareness of writers to propagate principles born out of any
tradition. This phenomenon of breakaway moves is not recent but has been there since long. In
every movement there are rebel moves or protests at the undercurrents. The history of literature
is thus available in fragments, thereby contributing to the acceleration of literary history as a
whole.
1.8 Glossary:
1. Locus Classicus:- It is a New Latin word which means an authoritative passage from a
standard work, often quoted as an illustration. It also stands for a classic case or the best
known example of something. Here it refers to classicism which is a unique or classic
example of the inseparability of form and content.
 11

2. Peri Poietikes :- It is the Greek title of Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ or a document on the art of poetry.
It is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to
focus on literary theory.
3. Weltbild :- It refers to a theoretical understanding of the world and how it operates.
4. De Arte Poetica :-Ars Poetica or “The Art of Poetry’ is a poem by Horace in which he advises
poets on the art of writing poetry and drama. it had a great influence on European
Literature, especially French Drama.
5. Weltanschauungen :- A comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world from a
specific standpoint, i.e., worldview. It is a concept fundamental to German philosophy and
epistemology and refers to a wide world perception. It also refers to the framework of ideas
and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture
watches and interprets the world and interacts with it. It has been used by Kant and later
popularised by Hegel in German. Leo Apostel , the Belgian Philosopher upheld that
individuals can construct worldviews whereas other writers regard worldviews as operating
at a community level or in an unconscious way.
6. Vates - The earliest Latin writers used ‘Vates’ to denote “ prophets” and soothsayers in
general; the word fell into disuse in Latin until it was revived by Virgil. The vates according
to Ancient Greek writers were one of the three classes of celtic priesthood, the other two
being the druids and bards. The vates had the role of seers and performed human
sacrifices. Figuratively, the word is used for an inspired or prophetic ‘poet’ or other writers.
The term is usually reserved for writers of good poetry.
7. Aesthetics: It is a study of how artists imagine, create and perform works of art and
conversely how readers use, enjoy and criticize art and how they are affected when they
read and understand poetry. It also studies how art can affect their moods, beliefs and
attitudes towards life. It is thus a critical reflection on art, culture and nature”. It can also
refer to a set of principles underlying the works of a particular movement or theory.
8. Rousseau’s contrat Social :- This book was originally published as ‘On the Social contract”
or better understood as ‘Principles of Political Rights’ by Rousseau in 1762. In this
Rousseau theorised about the best way to establish a political community in the face of the
problems of commercial society which he earlier identified in ‘Discourse on Inequality’
9. Gehalt and Gestalt :- The german word ‘Gehalts’ refers to content or contents whereas
‘Gestalt’ refers to an organised whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts. It
is interpreted in psychology as a “pattern” or “configuration” and hence relates to form
rather than content. Gestalt theories of perception are based on human nature being
inclined to understand objects as an entire structure rather than the sum of its parts.
10. ex nihilo: means out of nothing.
11. l’art pour l’art: It is a French slogan from the early nineteenth century which means “Art for
Art’s Sake” in English.
12. Esoterica: it refers to things understood by or meant for a select few.
13. Erotica: It places sex at the centre of the story and may not deal with love or relationships
14. Theatrum Mundi : this is the concept of the great theatre of the world, a metaphorical idea
developed throughout western Literature and apparent in theories of the world as Plato’s
 12

Allegory of the cave. It portrays the world as a theatre where people are characters and their
actions form a drama with God as the author.especially for Christian thinkers.
1.9 References:
 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/List_of_litera
ry_movements.html
 http://www.softschools.com/timelines/literary_movements_timeline/421/
 https://mc.libguides.com/eng/literaryperiods
 https://study.com/academy/lesson/overview-of-literary-periods-and-movements-a-historical-
crash-course.html
1.10 Further Readings:
1. Sedwick Frank B. “The Literary Movements Defined”. American Association of Teachers
of Spanish and Portuguese. Vol. 37, No. 4 (Dec. 1954) pp..466-471.
2. Milne Ira Mark, “Literary Movements for Students” : 2nd edition Presenting Analysis,
Context, and Criticism on Literary Movements. USA
3. David Galen: Literary Movements for Students: Presenting analysis, context and
Criticism on Literary Movements, Vol. 1 (Pennsylvania State University, Gale Cengage,
2002).
1.11 Model Questions:
Q. 1 “For a movement is the expression of a certain way of life and life is movement”.
Discuss critically how movements are related to life and how they constantly move.
Q.2 The acceleration in Literary History takes place because of the existence of literary
fragments found in various movements. Critically Analyse.
Q.3 Literary movements are never static but dynamic. Critically elaborate.

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Lesson 2

“PERIODIZATION AND DIFFERENCE” BY MICAH MATTIX

Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction to the Essay
2.2 Introduction to the Critic
2.3 Detailed Summary of the Essay
2.4 Summary
2.5 References
2.6 Further Reading
2.7 Model Questions
2.0 Objectives
After reading this essay, you will be able to achieve the following objectives:
 Critically discuss the arguments for and against Periodisation of Literature
 Analyse David Perkins’ views on Frank O’Hara
 Describe Limitations of imposing historical techniques on Literature
 Familiarise yourself with various books on the history American Poetry
 Acquaint yourself with better methods of evaluating literary history.
2.1 Introduction to the Essay:
Literary history or the history of literature is often divided into different periods, ages, and
movements. Such division and classification enables the readers to understand the history of
literature conveniently. The periods which we usually come across in the books of literary history
are: Renaissance, the Elizabethan Age, Caroline Period, Restoration, Augustan Age, Romantic
Period, the Victorian Age, Modern Period, and Postmodern Period. There are other divisions and
literary movements like Metaphysical, Symbolist, Absurdist, Surrealist, Dadaist, Imagism, etc.
The essayist, Micah Mattix in this essay “Periodization and Difference” questions this
tendency or strategy of the literary historians to divide literature into different periods without a
clear cut method. Mattix’s essay particularly focuses on some of the books on the history of
American poetry. Mattix lays a great deal of focus and attention on one of the most famous
American poets –Frank O’Hara –and observes how different literary historians deal with O’Hara
and his poetry. With the help of O’Hara, the essayist explains how it is an inappropriate method
to divide literature into different periods because poets like Frank O’Hara cannot be easily
categorized and confined to a single period.
2.2 Introduction to the Critic:
Dr. Mattix is an associate professor of English and currently serves as the English &
Communications Studies chair at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia. His research
 14

interests include modern and contemporary poetry and fiction, and criticism. Micah Mattix is a
member of the National Book Critics Circle and also of the Association of Literary Scholars,
Critics and Writers. He is a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard. One of his famous books
is “Frank O’Hara and the Poetics of Saying I”
Dr. Mattix affirms about his pedagogy in the following words, “In my classes, we read texts
carefully and take writing with clarity and nuance seriously. In studying great works of literature,
we learn about ourselves, our world, and the God who created both. My hope is that students will
not only become clearer thinkers as a result but also come to the value of benefit of contemplating
the true and the beautiful in their own right,” shares Mattix.
2.3 Detailed Summary of the Essay:
The history of English Literature is divided into different periods in order to understand the
writers and works more appropriately. But this periodization has always been questionable. Some
thinkers as well as scholars do not approve of the periodization, classification, and division of
literature because they consider literature as a dynamic system. It was Michel Foucault who
observed that the periodisation of literary history was “… an arbitrary imposition on an otherwise
dynamic system” (685). The creation of periods in literary history was at best the creation of
power centres which tried to control and regulate the knowledge produced in that era. Anything
written in this period was assigned predetermined set characteristics. The critics against this
kind of periodization also assert that this division is neither authentic, nor valid because periods
overlap all the time. To assign particular or special characteristics to a period is nothing more
than assigning, conforming and regulating the continuously changing system and structure of
literature.
Those who are in favour of periodization claim that periodization is necessary to understand the
evolution and development of literature. Literary periods are helpful in understanding particular
authors who belong to a particular period. The process of periodization is reductive, because it
reduces the whole organism of literature to different periods in order to regulate it. Thinkers in
favour of periodization also emphasize how the periods are helpful for understanding the context,
style, and literary achievements of authors. Literary Periods also provide a fictional homogeneous
style against which contrasting styles can be compared. Periods are also helpful in clarifying the
differences between different authors, literary works and literary movements. Although all these
claims in the favour of periodization seem quite authentic, but in practice periodization is never
so clear and justifying.
One of the greatest limitations of periodization is that it imposes predetermined notions on
certain authors and literary works despite the fact that they failed to conform to those well-
established notions. Although the division of literature into different periods is a convenient way
to introduce literary history to undergraduate and graduate students, it does not help scholars in
assessing the uniqueness of a particular writer or work. But that is not the case always,
sometimes the period influences the authors and their works to such a great extent as can be
seen in the poetry of Frank O’Hara.
The writer of this essay has expressed his views about David Perkins’ discussion of Frank
O’Hara in his book History of Modern Poetry. What the essayist points out is that Perkins was
unable to give a full explanation about Frank O’Hara’s similarities and differences with the past
as well as contemporary poets. Perkins argues that in each period, the poets use certain
 15

parameters to which their poetry and thoughts conform, leaving out a lot of other techniques and
conventions of poetry. Perkins also believes that contemporary poets from the same place share
quite a lot of similarities. The essayist questions Perkins belief stating that the very idea and
division of ages has always been questionable and arguable. The concept of ages is a historian’s
technique and its imposition on the otherwise dynamic system of literature is certainly not
without limitations. Even the historians never come to an agreement on the exact division and
time span of different ages. The essayist also states that periodisation obscures the distinctive
qualities of authors by evaluating them in accordance with the predetermined schema of a period
which tends to reduce them to a uniform pattern. Periodisation traits tend to have a levelling
effect on all special, peculiar or idiosyncratic qualities of authors.
Especially there are three literary periods / ages / movements which have been the focus
of constant arguments and debates: romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism. The term
postmodernism is not only limited to literature but involves all other social, cultural,
philosophical and aesthetic areas. Such terms are even more difficult when used in the context of
a particular age or time-span. Even those which were closely associated with political times like
Elizabethan and Victorian periods or those associated with cultural changes like Renaissance and
Enlightenment are debated for their authenticity. Likewise, to say that the style and content
of writing of the same period and place are similar is another mistake to a sound and just
evaluation of the literary works. The style and the content of writers differ from one another to a
great extent, although it is possible to find out similarities among them.
The essayist explains how O’Hara’s poetry on the one hand and Lowell’s and Ginsberg’s on
the other make different uses of commas, periods, section breaks and line length. O’Hara uses
these devices to make a visual impact whereas for Lowell and Ginsberg these devices nourish the
sound impact of the poem.
In this way Perkins’s belief gains certainty that the poets who belong to the same period
and place like O’Hara, Lowell, and Ginsberg are similar in their style and content. The essayist
elaborates how there are significant and remarkable differences between different poets and it
does not matter whether they belong to the different periods and places or not.
Perkins in his history also explains how Frank O’Hara, Ginsberg and other contemporary
American poets shared differences from one another in terms of their subject matter, style, and
content. But still he continued to emphasize the similarities because of the same period to which
these poets belonged.
Frank O’Hara himself asserts, in his interview, that he does not find and feel any
connection, correlation and resemblance with his contemporary poets. John Ashbery in his
obituary essay on O’Hara in 1966 discussed how the poet is different from other poets.
The essayist describes how Frank O’Hara does not belong to any party, movement, -ism
and ideology because he writes poetry for the sake of poetry. His poetry is the product of his own
consciousness, not of something else. This attitude relates O’Hara to Wordsworth, Stevens,
Williams, and Pound. But Perkins in his history was unable to trace down these aspects of
O’Hara because of his emphasis and focus on a period style. This over-emphasis on the unifying
factors of a period narrows down one’s vision to just those; missing out on the differences which
can be traced in the entire canvas of Literature.
 16

The personal and spontaneous elements of the poetry of O’Hara, Olson, Lowell, and
Ginsberg relate them to Wordsworth, Pound, Williams, and Stevens. Perkins was unable to
acknowledge this relationship because of the over-emphasis on the characteristics of a period.
Some poets like Whitman used free verse in order to give a free outlet to their spontaneous
emotions. T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound improved the free verse and used it in their poetry.
The essayist describes how Frank O’Hara has been greatly influenced by the poetic style of
Williams and Stevens. O’Hara’s relationship to Williams is explored to a great extent by the
critics. But nothing much is said and explored of his relation to Stevens. The essayist asserts that
O’Hara “was influenced by Stevens’s honesty in his poems and his ability to develop a style of his
own that expressed his sensibility” (691). O’Hara also admired Stevens because the latter poet did
not follow any style of the previous or contemporary poets. His poetry was different from all other
poets. One of the critics, Marjorie Perloff, explored Stevens’ influence on O’Hara’s poetry. She
studied O’Hara’s poems in the light of Stevens’ poetry and was able to find out the deep traces
which O’Hara’s poetry possessed in following Stevens. Although both the poets use different
styles, they are similar to a great extent in other matters.
According to the essayist, literary styles do not develop in and out of different literary
periods. A particular style cannot be just attributed to one period alone. Literary historians
however try to do so in order to generalize and assign particular styles to particular periods with
the objective to differentiate one period from the others. Perkins likewise divides the history of
American poetry from 1890s onwards into four periods: The American Milieu (1890-1912),
Popular Modernism (1912-1922), High Modernism (1925-1950), and Postmodernism (1954
onwards). Each poet discussed by Perkins covers more than one of these periods.
Consequently, periodization is not logical and rational. It is a strategy of historians to divide
literary authors into different categories in order to understand them in the context of their
periods and ages. But the boundary lines of these ages converge, diverge and conflate.
The essayist states that each poet and each poem is unique and different. It is not a good
strategy to generalize their uniqueness to a particular period. A focus on periods undermines the
poetic excellence of the poet. In the rush to find out the similarities between the poets of the same
age or period; the periodization ignores the differences between the poets of the same age, and
their similarities to the poets of other ages.
The essayist discusses another book of literary history Columbia Literary History of the
United States (1980) by Amory Elliot, though Elliot in his book did not use the terms of literary
periods like modernism, postmodernism etc. He divides periods according to the years which
correspond to Perkins division to a great extent. His book does not treat poetry any different from
Perkins.
Then the next book on literary history which the essayist discusses is Cambridge History of
American Literature edited by Sacvan Bercovitch. This book tries to justify periodization by
dividing periods in to subcategories. Like Postmodernism is divided into Real Guards and Avant-
Gardes, and the latter further is subdivided into four categories. Rather than solving the problem
of periodization and its reductive nature, this subdivision has made the periodization more
noticeable.
The next book of the history of American poetry which the essayist talks about is The
Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry edited by Paul Hoover. Hoover’s justification to
use the term ‘Postmodern’ in the title is that within this anthology, he covers a great deal of
 17

different kinds of poetry ranging from Beat Generation to performance poetry, New York School of
poetry to language poetry. This anthology, just like Cambridge History discussed above,
subdivides the poetry but with a little alteration. Here the focus is not on the period terms (time
and temporal sense) but on the nature of poetry.
In the conclusion of the essay, the essayist has discussed two scholars, Robert Rehder and
Ralph Cohen. Both these scholars provide the new methods in which the poetry and literature of
past ages can be discussed without reducing it to periodization. Rehder proposes that literary
history should focus on the particular poets and authors rather than the particular ages and
periods. Such a history will be a history of literature not a history of literary periods. Ralph Cohen
opines that the changes and development in literary texts should be analysed in terms of their
genre, it means the focus should be the development of genre over a period of time. How
particular genres and the texts related to that genre bring about certain changes to each other is
the focus of the essay. The essayist proposes that a literary history should analyse American
poetry (or literature) from Walt Whitman to Frank O’Hara without dividing it into different
periods. In this way the historian would be able to compare, contrast, and find out similarities
and differences of different poets in a better way. A particular idea or element, as is treated and
used in different literary works, can also be analyzed over a period of time in such a history. Such
a history can also be selective, as it can select only those poets which the historian wants to
discuss in terms of the selected issue or theme. The advantage of this method is that the
historian can clearly state his reasons to select and omit the poets or authors.
The essayist, at the end, states that although it is necessary to use some kind of organizing
principle to understand the past authors, writers, and poets, but to reduce them to particular
periods is not an appropriate way to discuss literary history. Rather a focus on the poets,
novelists, and other writers themselves can serve the purpose of literary history in much better
way.
2.4 Summary of the Lesson:
After having gone through the contents of this essay, you must now be confident about the merits
and demerits of literary periodisation. Periodisation does provide convenient labels but is
otherwise reductive and has a levelling effect on writers who otherwise have fine differences to
add to their merit. You have also become quite aware of the place of Frank O’Hara in the history
of American Literature and his similarity with Stevens. By now, you know that the personal and
spontaneous elements of the poetry of O’Hara, Olson, Lowell, and Ginsberg relate them to
Wordsworth, Pound, Williams, and Stevens. You are also now well acquainted with the new
methods of Robert Rehder and Ralph Cohen to evaluate the past and the achievements of various
writers without resorting to periodisation.
Self-Assessment Questions:
1. According to Michel Foucault, periodisation of literary history… is at best “... an
_______imposition on an otherwise________ system.
2. According to Brown, period terms not only help to establish the_____ of a text but also
provide a fictional____ _____ against which contrasting styles can be compared.
3. Period terms obscure how a particular author is different by superimposing a_______
________ that is reductive.
 18

4. Poems by poets living at the same time and same place do not necessarily resemble each
other in ______ and _______.
5. Another approach to dividing literary history is clearly needed,.... thinking of the past in
terms of changes within literary _____rather than in terms of arbitrary and often
ideologically weighted ______ terms.
Answers:
1. arbitrary, dynamic 2. context, homogeneous, style 3.predetermined, schema 4.style,
content 5.genres,period
2.5 References:
 https://www.regent.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/faculty/ph-d-micah-mattix/
 http://www.micahmattix.com/about/
2.6 Further Reading:
Cristopher Gillie, Movements in English Literature: 1900-1940( Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,1978)
Redrawing the Boundaries, The Transformation of English and American Studies, edited by
Greenblatt and Giles Gunn (1992).
2.7 Model Questions
1. How does Micah Mattix present the arguments for and against the periodisation of Literary
history? Justify with reference to the text.
2. What do you learn about Frank O’Hara as a poet from the various literary histories
mentioned in the text?
3. Is there any other method to replace the periodization of Literary History? Discuss

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 19

Lesson 3

CLASSICISM: AN INTRODUCTION

Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Classicism
3.3 The Neo- Classic Age
3.4 Literary Characteristics
3.5 Neo-classical criticism
3.6 Conclusion
3.7 Summary of the Lesson
3.8 Further Reading
3.9 Model Questions
3.0 Objectives:
After studying this unit, you will be able to:
1. Define Classicism and Neo- Classicism
2. Recognize and delineate a critical background of Neoclassical Age.
3. List the key elements of Neoclassicism.
4. Outline the Greco Roman influence on Neoclassical literature.
3.1 Introduction
In this lesson you will read about the characteristic features of Classicism and how they differed
from those of Renaissance. You will also read how Neoclassicism laid focus on order and reason,
on restraint, on common sense, and on religious, political, economic and philosophical
conservatism which was in contrast to the emphasis on the imagination, on invention and
experimentation, and on mysticism during the renaissance.
3.2 Classicism
In general, classicism can be defined as a style in literature, visual art, music, or architecture
that draws on the styles of ancient Greece and Rome, especially the fifth- and fourth-century
b.c.e. Athens and late Republican Augustan Rome. The term can be confusing, because it has
taken on many other meanings. It can refer to a general aesthetics characterized by clarity,
elegance, and symmetry, or to a style that is generally thought of as exemplifying greatness or
perfection.
Classicism, a term when applied generally means clearness, elegance, symmetry, and repose
produced by attention to traditional forms. It is sometimes synonymous with excellence or artistic
quality of a high distinction. More precisely, the term refers to the admiration and imitation of
Greek and Roman literature, art, and architecture. Because the principles of classicism were
 20

derived from the rules and practices of the ancients, the term came to mean the adherence to
specific academic canons.
The word classicism has become a common term since its first use in the nineteenth century.
Classicism spread across Europe from Italy to Germany, to France, to Russia, to England, with
the place and the time of its usage shading its meaning. It remains a useful term, with contextual
clues indicating its intended meaning.
The intellectual and aesthetic outflow of the Greeks was prodigious(remarkably great in size) and
the extant(surviving) aesthetic, philosophical, historical, and political writings have had a
phenomenal impact on Western culture. Homer's epics (c. 800 b.c.e.), the poetry of Sappho
(seventh century b.c.e.) and Pindar (sixth century b.c.e.); the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripedes, and Aristophanes (fifth century b.c.e.); the sculptures of Phidias; the oratory of
Pericles and the writings of Plato and Aristotle (fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e.) are but some of
the most prominent Greek contributions to Western culture. In the works of these and other
Greeks, future generations have found what has come to be understood as the features of
classicism: beauty, balance, proportion, formal structure, intellectual vigor and depth, rational
content supported by symmetrical form, often accompanied by a sense of humor and skillful
satire.
All of these characteristics are manifested in a humanist context. Unfortunately, much of our
knowledge of this great outpouring comes to us from secondary sources because the originals no
longer exist, although we have some fragments of the writings—a few poems of Sappho and some
works of Aristotle, for example—and some remains of aesthetic works, such as the Elgin Marbles,
the sculpture of Hera, friezes of the battle of the centurians, and drawings on pottery. These
remains have been studied for centuries.
3.3 The Neo- Classic Age (1700-1780):
The period we are studying is known to us by various names. It is often called the Age of Queen
Anne; but, unlike Elizabeth, this "meekly stupid" queen had practically no influence upon our
literature. The name Classic Age is more often heard; but in using it we should remember clearly
these three different ways in which the word "classic" is applied to literature:
(1) The term "Classic" refers, in general, to writers of the highest rank in any nation. As used in
our literature, it was first applied to the works of the great Greek and Roman writers, like Homer
and Virgil; and any English book which followed the simple and noble method of these writers
was said to have a classic style. Later the term was enlarged to cover the great literary works of
other ancient nations; so that the Bible and the Avestas, as well as the Iliad and the Aeneid, are
called classics.
(2) Every national literature has at least one period in which an unusual number of great writers
are producing books, and this is called the classic period of a nation's literature. Thus the reign of
Augustus is the classic or golden age of Rome; the generation of Dante is the classic age of Italian
literature; the age of Louis XIV is the French classic age; and the age of Queen Anne is often
called the classic age of England.
(3) The word "classic" acquired an entirely different meaning in the period we are studying; and
we shall better understand this by reference to the preceding ages. The Elizabethan writers were
led by patriotism, by enthusiasm, and, in general, by romantic emotions. They wrote in a natural
style, without regard to rules; and though they exaggerated and used too many words, their
 21

works are delightful because of their vigor and freshness and fine feeling. In the following age
patriotism had largely disappeared from politics and enthusiasm from literature. Poets no longer
wrote naturally, but artificially, with strange and fantastic verse forms to give effect, since fine
feeling was wanting. And this is the general character of the poetry of the Puritan Age. [Great
writers in every age, men like Shakespeare and Milton, make their own style. They are therefore
not included in this summary. Among the minor writers also there are exceptions to this rule; and
fine feeling is often manifest in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Herrick.] Gradually
our writers rebelled against the exaggerations of both the natural and the fantastic style. They
demanded that poetry should follow exact rules; and in this they were influenced by French
writers, especially by Boileau and Rapin, who insisted on precise methods of writing poetry, and
who professed to have discovered their rules in the classics of Horace and Aristotle.
In our study of the Elizabethan drama the good influence of the classic movement in insisting
upon that beauty of form and definiteness of expression which characterize the dramas of Greece
and Rome is noteworthy; and in the work of Dryden and his followers we see a revival of
classicism in the effort to make English literature conform to rules established by the great
writers of other nations. At first the results were excellent, especially in prose; but as the creative
vigor of the Elizabethans was lacking in this age, writing by rule soon developed a kind of elegant
formalism, which suggests the elaborate social code of the time. Just as a gentleman might not
act naturally, but must follow exact rules in doffing his hat, or addressing a lady, or entering a
room, or wearing a wig, or offering his snuffbox to a friend; so our writers lost individuality and
became formal and artificial. The general tendency of literature was to look at life critically, to
emphasize intellect rather than imagination, the form rather than the content of a sentence.
Writers strove to repress all emotion and enthusiasm, and to use only precise and elegant
methods of expression. This is what is often meant by the "classicism" of the ages of Pope and
Johnson. It refers to the critical, intellectual spirit of many writers, to the fine polish of their
heroic couplets or the elegance of their prose, and not to any resemblance which their work bears
to true classic literature. In a word, the classic movement had become pseudo-classic, i.e. a false
or sham classicism; and the latter term is now often used to designate a considerable part of
eighteenth-century literature. [We have endeavored here simply to show the meaning of terms in
general use in our literature; but it must be remembered that it is impossible to classify or to give
a descriptive name to the writers of any period or century. While "classic" or "pseudo-classic" may
apply to a part of eighteenth-century literature, every age has both its romantic and its classic
movements. In this period the revolt against classicism is shown in the revival of romantic poetry
under Gray, Collins, Burns, and Thomson, and in the beginning of the English novel under Defoe,
Richardson, and Fielding. These poets and novelists, who have little or no connection with
classicism, belong only chronologically to the period we are studying.] To avoid this critical
difficulty we have adopted the term Augustan Age, a name chosen by the writers themselves, who
saw in Pope, Addison, Swift, Johnson, and Burke the modern parallels to Horace, Virgil, Cicero,
and all that brilliant company who made Roman literature famous in the days of Augustus.
3.4 Literary Characteristics:
In every preceding age we have noted especially the poetical works, which constitute, according to
Matthew Arnold, the glory of English literature. Now for the first time we must chronicle the
triumph of English prose. A multitude of practical interests arising from the new social and
political conditions demanded expression, not simply in books, but more especially in pamphlets,
 22

magazines, and newspapers. Poetry was inadequate for such a task; hence the development of
prose, of the "unfettered word," as Dante calls it, - a development which astonishes us by its
rapidity and excellence. The graceful elegance of Addison's essays, the terse vigor of Swift's
satires, the artistic finish of Fielding's novels, the sonorous eloquence of Gibbon's history and of
Burke's orations, - these have no parallel in the poetry of the age. Indeed, poetry itself became
prosaic in this respect, that it was used not for creative works of imagination, but for essays, for
satire, for criticism, - for exactly the same practical ends as was prose.
The poetry of the first half of the century, as typified in the work of Pope, is polished and witty
enough, but artificial; it lacks fire, fine feeling, enthusiasm, the glow of the Elizabethan Age and
the moral earnestness of Puritanism. A work interests us as a study of life rather than delighting
or inspiring us by its appeal to the imagination. The variety and excellence of prose works, and
the development of a serviceable prose style, which had been begun by Dryden served to express
clearly every human interest and emotion, - these are the chief literary glories of the eighteenth
century. In the literature of the preceding age we noted two marked tendencies, - the tendency to
realism in subject matter, and the tendency to polish and refinement of expression. Both these
tendencies were continued in the Augustan Age, and are seen clearly in the poetry of Pope, who
brought the couplet to perfection, and in the prose of Addison. A third tendency is shown in the
prevalence of satire, resulting from the unfortunate union of politics with literature. We have
already noted the power of the press in this age, and the perpetual strife of political parties.
Nearly every writer of the first half of the century was used and rewarded by the Whigs or Tories
for satirizing their enemies and for advancing their special political interests.
Pope was a marked exception, but he nevertheless followed the prose writers in using satire too;
largely in his poetry.
Now satire - that is, a literary work which searches out the faults of men or institutions in order
to hold them up to ridicule - is at best a destructive kind of criticism. A satirist is like a laborer
who clears away the ruins and rubbish of an old house before the architect and builders begin on
a new and beautiful structure. The work may sometimes be necessary, but it rarely arouses our
enthusiasm. While the satires of Pope, Swift, and Addison are doubtless the best in our language,
we hardly place them with our great literature, which is always constructive in spirit; and we have
the feeling that all these men were capable of better things than they ever wrote.
3.5 Neo-Classical Criticism:
In the latter half of the seventeenth century and practically the whole of the eighteenth century
the classical principles of literature derived from the ancient Greek and Latin writers came to hold
a complete sway over English literature. That is why this period is known as the neo-classical age.
It was held that the classics represent the highest standards of literary beauty which the English
writers had only to follow to attain perfection in their art. There were two main reasons for it. One
was the excesses of the Metaphysical poets and the other the unprecedented influence of the
French literary modes on the English. The Metaphysical excesses were the direct consequence, as
Ben Jonson had feared, of the Elizabethan fondness for the liberty in literary matters. Kept within
bounds naturally by gifted writers, it degenerated into license in the hands of the less gifted. For
natural thoughts they substituted far-fetched ones. The metaphysical conceit which was an
effective means of poetic expression in the hands of poets like Donne, Marvell and Herbert
became something wayward and obscure when used by minor poets. This is what made Samuel
Johnson remark in his essay on Cowley that the metaphysical poets yoked by violence discordant
 23

images and that their poetry was a mere show of learning. In reaction to such literary
waywardness, the critics of the neo-classical age began to advocate adherence to certain rules of
poetic and dramatic composition practised and professed by the ancient classical writers.
The second important reason for the prevalence of the classical taste during this period was the
French influence on the English writers. For political reasons France was exercising a strong hold
on the political and intellectual life of England. As it happened, French literature of that period
was dominated by classical ideals. Writers like Boileau, Rapin and Bossu had established a
French classical creed which guided the French writers of that time. Under their influence writers
like Dryden and most of the writers of the eighteenth century began to follow the classical
models.
The neoclassicists laid more stress on the teaching function of poetry than on the delight- giving
or aesthetic. They gave more importance to training in the art of writing than to natural
endowment or genius. So far nature and manner of different kinds of writing was concerned, they
followed rules laid down by the ancients, particularly Aristotle. Followed blindly at first out of
mere reverence for antiquity, these were later discovered to be rooted deep in reason or good
sense. This lent them an unquestioned authority. Whatever the ancients said about plot,
character, and speech were found to sum up whatever appealed most in nature. It was in this
way that they were ‘nature methodised’ as Pope said of them. Great art thus was that which
satisfied the natural test of reason and good taste. Of this test the rules of Aristotle were
considered to be an embodiment.
Among the kinds of poetry, the most important were held to be the epic, tragedy and comedy. As
each kind was believed to be distinct from the others in its aim, subject matter, style and other
respects, it had rules of its own, again deduced from earlier classical theories, which it was
necessary for every poet to follow. The epic which Aristotle had considered inferior to the tragedy
was held to be superior to all kinds, although in the matter of its rules Aristotle continued to be
the final authority. The rules of tragedy and comedy were also defined in the light of what
Aristotle had said. In general, the dramatists were to observe the three unities, probability in plot
and character, and propriety in sentiment, expression and other parts. In tragedy, the plot was to
be borrowed from history; the tragic hero was to be a person of high rank whose ruin would excite
pity and fear. The play was to consist of five acts, and not more than four characters were to
appear on the stage together. The plot of comedy was to be invented rather than taken from the
history. Its characters were to be of lowly rank, typical of their class in their failings.
The major critics of the neo-classical age were Dryden and Johnson, though Addison and Pope
have also made critical observations. Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy is among the most
remarkable critical works in English. Written in the dialogue form, it discusses the merits of the
classical, French and English drama. In it Dryden defends English drama, particularly
Shakespeare for his use of tragic-comedy and violation of the rules of unities. Thus Dryden’s
criticism is partly a restatement of the precepts of Aristotle and partly a deviation from it. Of
critical works of Dr. Johnson, Lives of the Poets and Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare are the
most remarkable. Though he is rather harsh on the Metaphysical poets, most of what he says
about them is true. Towards Shakespeare, he is lenient like Dryden.
3.6 Conclusion
 24

To a certain extent Neoclassicism represented a reaction against the optimistic, exuberant, and
enthusiastic Renaissance view of man as a being fundamentally good and possessed of an infinite
potential for spiritual and intellectual growth. Neoclassical theorists, by contrast, saw man as an
imperfect being, inherently sinful, whose potential was limited. They replaced the Renaissance
emphasis on the imagination, on invention and experimentation, and on mysticism with an
emphasis on order and reason, on restraint, on common sense, and on religious, political,
economic and philosophical conservatism. They maintained that man himself was the most
appropriate subject of art, and saw art itself as essentially pragmatic — as valuable because it
was somehow useful — and as something which was properly intellectual rather than emotional.
Their favorite prose literary forms were the essay, the letter, satire, parody, burlesque and the
moral fable; in poetry, the favorite verse form was the rhymed couplet, which reached its greatest
sophistication in heroic couplet of Pope; while the theatre saw the development of the heroic
drama, melodrama, the sentimental comedy, and the comedy of manners. The fading away of
Neoclassicism may have appeared to represent the last flicker of the Enlightenment, but artistic
movements never really die: many of the primary aesthetic tenets of Neoclassicism, in fact have
reappeared in the twentieth century — in, for example, the poetry and criticism of T. S. Eliot — as
manifestations of a reaction against Romanticism itself: Eliot saw Neo-classicism as emphasising
poetic form and conscious craftsmanship, and Romanticism as a poetics of personal emotion and
"inspiration," and pointedly preferred the former.
3.7 Summary of the Lesson
In this lesson you have read about the characteristic features of Classicism and Neoclassicism.
Also, how the emphasis was on order and reason, on restraint, on common sense, and on
religious, political, economic and philosophical conservatism. In addition to this, you were
introduced to the literary influence of classicism on artists, writing and the arts.
Self-Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
1. The ___________ was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope.
2. The major writers of the age were __________ and John Dryden in poetry.
3. The literary criticism of these writers often sought its justification in ____________.
4. The ___________ is a mock epic, a form of satiric writing in which commonplace subjects
are described in the elevated, heroic style of classical epic.
5. ____________ is recognized as a master of understated irony.
Answers: Self-Assessment
1. Augustan Age
2. Pope
3. Classical precedents
4. Dunciad
5. Swift
3.8 Further Reading:
A History of English Literature-Arthur-Compton-Rickett, UPSPD, New Delhi.
 25

A History of English Literature, Cambridge University Press, London, 1968: Legouis and
Cazamian.
The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, 3rd edition CUP, New Delhi, 2005: Sampson,
George.
3.9 Model Questions
Q1. What do you mean by the word ‘classic’? What are the common factors or characteristic
features of Classicism?
Q2. What are the features of classical literature? Why is classical literature important?
Lesson 4

THE CLASSICISM OF THE CLASSICS

Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Author and the Work
4.3 Classicism in French Literature
4.4 Summary of the prescribed Text
4.7 Summary of the Lesson
4.8 Glossary
4.9 References
4.10 Further Reading
4.11 Model Questions
4.0 Objectives
After studying this unit, you will be able to:
 Design a critical summary of the prescribed text in lucid and comprehensive terms.
 Describe the theoretical principles and nuances of the text.
 Identify a range of questions that can be discussed within the scope of the prescribed text.
4.1 Introduction
In this lesson you will read about what makes a work a classic and what are the parameters on
which a work is judged which ultimately raises it to the level of a classic. ‘‘The Classicism of the
Classics’’ written by Jean Hytier and translated by June Guicharnaud is an interesting
consideration of what defines a French classic. The author looks to the history of French
literature to help him reach some rather interesting conclusions. He evaluates the history of
French literature to find out what was required for a French writer to deserve being called
classical.
4.2 Author and the Work
Dr. Jean Hytier was born in 1899 in Paris and died on 11th March 1983. He was a Professor
emeritus of French at Columbia University and an authority on French literature. Dr. Hytier was
 26

born in Paris and later served as director of letters for the French National Ministry of Education
from 1945 to 1947, when he came to the United States. He taught at Columbia for nineteen
years, retiring as a full professor in 1967. He later taught at the University of California at Davis
for four years and also at the University of Massachusetts. He was the editor of a two-volume
''Oeuvres de Paul Valery,'' published in France in 1960, and was the author of ''Andre Gide,'' a
biography published in the United States in 1962. He also edited the works of Pascal and wrote a
series of books on French poetry and literature.
He received a doctorate in letters from the Sorbonne in 1924. Dr. Hytier also taught at
universities in Iran and Algeria, where he met and befriended Gide. He was a Chevalier of the
Legion d'Honneur and a Commander of L'Ordre des Palmes Academiques.
4.3 Classicism in French Literature
The Seventeenth century produced the great academies and coteries of French literature. The
elegant, controlled aesthetic of French classicism was the hallmark of the age which is evident in
the brilliant dramas of Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Molière; in the poetry and satire of Jean
de La Fontaine and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux; in the prose of Blaise Pascal, Marie, marquise de
Sévigné, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Marie-Madeleine, comtesse de La Fayette, and François, duc
de La Rochefoucauld. The works of the ecclesiastic François de la Mothe Fénelon, the social
philosopher Claude Henri, comte de Saint-Simon, and the satirist and classical scholar Jean de
La Bruyère belong to this illustrious period as well as to the Eighteenth century.
These great writers vary enormously in their attitudes and interests but share a style that is
lucid, polished, and restrained. They are, as a group, chiefly concerned with observing the
subtleties of human behaviour. Their works display qualities that have become permanently
identified with the best French writing: wit, sophistication, imagination, and delight in debate.
In the early part of the Seventeenth century, French literature coincided with the Baroque
movement that was developing in the artistic scene. Typical characteristics of this movement
include the personal, dynamic, colourful elements as well as the use of images to produce an
impact on the readers or spectators. The idea was to surprise, astonish and catch spectators and
readers off guard, to play on their senses. In the mid-17th century, this literary movement was
centred in Paris and both readers and writers formed part of a tightly knit society very much
involved with the royal courts, with the focal point being the aristocracy and the upper social
classes.
Drama continued to bloom with playwrights such as Thomas Corneille, Philippe Quinault and
Jean-Baptiste Racine. Comedy also evolved at the hands of Pierre Scarron, from using mainly
farce to progressing towards romantic comedy. Influence from Spanish and Italian playwrights
was evident. Scarron’s comedies were performed on a regular basis by Molière who was author,
manager, director and actor all in one, and his profound liking for these plays often got him into
trouble with authorities, for whom the satire was sometimes too sharp for their liking, causing
them to ban the plays.
During this time the Académie Française and other theorists worked to codify the Classical styles
and forms used, which turned them into rigid doctrinarian principles and set the standards of
what should and should not be adhered to. This, in a way, curbed French literature for quite
some time and lasted well into the 18th century.
4.4 Summary of the Text
 27

In ‘‘The Classicism of the Classics’’ Jean Hytier makes an attempt to analyse what makes a
literary classic? He examines the history of French literature to find out what was required for a
French writer to deserve being called classical. Efforts were being made during the late eighteenth
century to find out and define the artistic merits of a ‘classic’. Voltaire used the expression
"classical authors" only for the great writers of Greco-Latin tradition, and he contrasted them with
modern writers: "A man who has read nothing but classical authors scorns everything that is
written in modern languages". Voltaire played a decisive role in singling out those writers of the
seventeenth century who were worthy of being remembered.
"It was not until after 1735 that a real distinction was made between first-rate and mediocre
writers, and Voltaire's Temple du gout (Temple of Taste) played a crucial role in that development."
Surely it would be worthwhile to find out how the custom of calling a few of the great
seventeenth-century writers "classical" came to be established. There was a general agreement
among minds, and the label was ready, but it had still to be applied. Early in the next century, in
1801, Marie-Joseph Chenier, in his Observations sur le projet d'un nouveau dictionnaire de la
langue francaise et sur le Dictionnaire de l'Academie (tr. Observations on the project of a new
dictionary of the French language and on the Dictionary of the Academy), alluded not only to the
seventeenth-century writers but those of the eighteenth too and he proposed that the Institut
make up a new dictionary, in which the definitions would be accompanied by examples "skilfully
chosen from classical writers, from Malherbe to Voltaire, from Pascal to Buffon."
In 1824, the Académie Française in the sixth edition of its Dictionnaire, made note of a new
meaning of the word romantic - "Also applied to certain writers who claim to have broken away
from the rules of construction and style laid down by the example of classical authors." During
the same time, Stendhal made a statement that the classicism of Racine at the very time he was
writing should be called romantic.
Stendhal's bold assimilation of the terms was to lead to two very different formulas, both of which
were destined for great success: Emile Deschanel's "the romanticism of the classics," and Andre
Gide's interpretation of classicism as "subdued romanticism."
Stendhal's position was far simpler, but in contrasting every contemporary era with its immediate
past, he was unknowingly leading up to a new opposition that would contrast this romanticism
with a more profound one which would come to be called ‘modern’.
Nodier, writing about "the romantic genre" the same year that Stendhal was defining
"romanticism" (1823), considered that "romanticism might be nothing other than the classicism of
the moderns", setting up a balance with Stendhal, for whom classicism could well have been no
more than the romanticism of earlier writers. To be a classical author, one had first to be a
romantic. "Our classical authors thus began by being literary revolutionaries, who went against
the established rules and provoked some fiery battles". This simply means that every great writer
contributes something, and that he is even when speaking of a Roman writer like Horace, an
"innovator."
The best means of avoiding all the ‘isms’ is to bring them down to one alone. An excellent
principle would be to define them all in relation to classicism, making classicism the norm.
Meanwhile, it has been suggested that the unavoidable opposition between romanticism and
classicism be reduced to a simple variation of the first term. Thus a classical writer would be no
more than a conditioned romantic - "subdued romanticism."
 28

For Gide, if "the work is strong and beautiful only by reason of its subdued romanticism," it is
because "the work is even more beautiful when the element overcome was initially more
rebellious." And if, classicism is an almost exclusively French phenomenon, that is because in
France, he says, "intelligence always tends to prevail over feeling and instinct." Repression is
therefore indeed a condition of classicism - or more precisely, domination, discipline, mastery -
but the essence of classicism lies in a balance of the most contrary qualities: "strength and
gentleness, decorum and grace, logic and unconstraint, precision and poetry," all held in a
perfectly natural equilibrium.
Gide's formula of "subdued romanticism" dates from 1921. It is interesting to see how it fared
through the years, as it was picked up again, adapted, and distorted. In 1924 Valery was to say
that "all classicism presupposes a previous romanticism.
"The essence of classicism is to come afterward. Order presupposes a certain disorder which it
has reduced" (that is indeed subdued romanticism); "a classical writer is one who bears a critic
within himself, whom he closely associates with all his work."
The idea of classicism following romanticism was to become a cliche in criticism and a rather
paradoxical one when we realize that historically it was the other way round. The Renaissance
provides a first and most suitable example of classicism. The same manner of contrasting legacies
was to be picked up by theorists of the baroque: in accordance with orthodox principles, the
baroque should follow classicism; but in France, according to the learned scholars, it could come
either before or after, unless, in trying to be everywhere at once, it reduces classicism to being
sandwiched any which way into a continuous baroque.
In 1929 Ramon Fernandez considered living classicism "the last phase of romantic development,
not its negation, but rather the reshaping and crowning of it”. With the translation into French of
Eugenio d'Ors' book (1935), the debate began dealing rather with the relations of the baroque and
classicism. Jacques Duron combined the Gide-Valery theme with his baroque variation on it and
commented:
Romanticism is classicism given free rein, a delayed classicism . . . Moderation is nothing without
a previous elan, without something passionate or excessive to subjugate . . . Classicism is most
certainly subdued exuberance, freedom yielding to the law, the temptation of the baroque
overcome . . . Baudelaire . . . altogether classical in form, is at bottom baroque, indeed infernally
baroque - and, by the same token, modern.
To complicate the situation of criticism still more, we must not forget that one man's baroque is
not necessarily another's. And trying to pin down romanticism was not always all that easy either.
There are as many romanticisms as there are romantics. As for the classical writers each one has
his own form of classicism. "Once the idea of the baroque is assimilated, the term itself seems less
useful - especially when one looks more closely at individual works."
"What becomes of French classicism in all this?" In 1965, Rousset came to believe that "the
systematic opposition of the baroque and the classical is perhaps a dogma that should be revised,
as should the successive pattern according to which classicism, in France, would always follow
the baroque."
To define classicism, it is perhaps not absolutely necessary to know what the baroque is, any
more than we would need to know what existentialism is, or mannerism, symbolism, naturalism,
 29

realism, or romanticism. It might perhaps be wise to go back to the time when the expression
classical writer was not yet all muddled up by new doctrines.
Those who gradually made a name for the great writers of the seventeenth century, were
concerned not with determining trends, establishing a literary doctrine or a general philosophy,
bringing out elements of civilization, contrasting religious or moral behavior patterns, or weighing
the influence of economic and political factors, etc., but with appreciating the works themselves,
understanding their value, admiring their craftsmanship - in short, with discovering not their
physiognomy but their exemplary qualities. From that perspective, those works which have
certain undeniable merits are classical works.
4.5 Summary of the Lesson
In this lesson you read about the making of a classic and the parameters on which a work is
judged which elevate it to the level of a classic. You read how Jean Hytier made an attempt in
‘‘The Classicism of the Classics’’ to analyse what makes a literary classic, by looking at the French
literary history. You also read how classical work is considered to be an expression of life, truth,
and beauty. Rather than focusing on determining trends, establishing a literary doctrine or a
general philosophy by a work, a work is to be judged with appreciating the work in itself,
understanding its value, admiring its craftsmanship. A classic piece of literature must be of high
quality, at least for the time in which it was written. Although different styles will come and go, a
classic can be appreciated for its construction and literary art.
4.6 Glossary
Classicism: Classicism is associated with that sense of harmony, balance, exact proportion and
dignified restraint exemplified in the arts of Classical Greece, and subsequently carried through,
with modifications, into those of Ancient Rome.
Romanticism: a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century,
characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination
and emotions, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man and an appreciation of external
nature.
Académie française: Académie française (French Academy) is the pre-eminent French council for
matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by
Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII.
Stendhal: Marie-Henri Beyle (1783 – 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-
century French writer. He is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology
and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners of realism.
Subdued romanticism: the art of expressing the most while saying the least, an art of reserve
and modesty.
Baroque: In literary studies and rhetoric, a style of writing that is extravagant, heavily
ornamented, and/or bizarre. A term more commonly used to characterize the visual arts and
music, baroque can also refer to a highly ornate style of prose or poetry.
Marie-Joseph Blaise de Chénier (1764 –1811) was a French poet, dramatist and politician of
French and Greek origin.
Emile Deschanel: Émile Auguste Étienne Martin Deschanel (1819 - 1904) was a French author
and politician, the father of Paul Deschanel, the 11th President of the French Republic.
 30

Andre Gide: André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869 –1951) was a French author and winner of the
Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947).
Charles Nodier: Jean Charles Emmanuel Nodier (1780 – 1844) was an influential French author
and librarian who introduced a younger generation of Romanticists to the gothic literature and
vampire tales.
4.7 Further Reading
David Galen, Literary movements for students: presenting analysis, context, and criticism on
literary movements, Volume 1 (Pennsylvania State University, Gale Cengage, 2002)
Anthony Grafton, Glenn W Most and Salvatore Settis, The Classical Tradition (Harvard: Harvard
University Press, 2010)
Richard Jenkyns, Classical Literature: A Pelican Introduction (Penguin Books UK, 2015)
Dominique Secretan. Classicism (London & New York: Routledge 2017)
4.8 Model Questions
Q1. Summarize the arguments posited in ‘‘The Classicism of the Classics’’ by Jean Hytier.
Q2. How does Jean Hytier chart out the classical virtues of French literature in ‘‘The
Classicism of the Classics’’?

^^^^^^
 31

Lesson - 5
Horace: Ars Poetica

Structure of Lesson

5.1 Objectives
5.2 Introduction
5.3 Author and the Work
5.4 Summary of the Text
5.5 Critical Analysis
5.6 Summary of the Lesson
5.7 Reference and Suggested Reading
5.8 Model Questions

5.1 Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:

 Design a critical summary of the prescribed text in lucid and comprehensive terms.
 Describe the theoretical principles and nuances of the text.
 Identify a range of questions that can be discussed within the scope of the
prescribed text.

5.2 Introduction

In this lesson you are going to read about Horace’s ArsPoetica. ArsPoetica (The Art of
Poetry or On the Nature of Poetry), sometimes known under its original title, Epistula Ad
Pisones (Letters to the Pisos), is a treatise or literary essay on poetics by the Roman poet
Horace, published around 18 or 19 BCE. You will understand how Horace places
particular emphasis on the importance of decorum in poetry, and on the necessity of
“join[ing] the instructive with the agreeable.” Furthermore how he urges poets to keep
their audience in mind at all times, and how he advises that writers “either follow
tradition, or invent such fables as are congruous to themselves.”

5.3 Author and the Work

Horace was the friend of Maecenas and Caesar Augustus. His poetry was a kind of
classical reaction to the baroque poetry of the Alexandrian era. His main critical work is
the verse epistle to the Piso family commonly known as ArsPoetica or De arte poetica.
Another interesting work of his is an epistle to Augustus (Epistles II.I) which is concerned
mainly with Latin drama. Horace does not care much about philosophical questions. He
is concerned with the mundane aspect of poetry; he is writing in a time of aristocratic
patronage, and one in which "the wise and the fools, all of us write poetry," as he
 32

complains. The main role of criticism is for him to give advice to the aristocratic poet not
to compromise his reputation by writing bad verse and be ridiculed.
ArsPoetica is written somewhat at random; it may be divided in three sections, dealing
with poetry (poiesis or matter), the poem (poiema or form) and the poet (poietes),
respectively. The treatment is a loose and conversational one, and to that extent it is "an
art written without art," as Scaliger used to say.
The medieval and neoclassical critics developed the tradition of ArsPoetica, turning it into
a special poetical genre, that which is concerned with the principles of poetry itself.
Boileau'sArt poétique, or Pope's Essay on Criticism are the typical examples. We must not
forget that all these works are poetry as well as criticism: they try to formulate critical
principles in a pointed and witty way, they seek to amuse, as well as to instruct and in
doing this they enact the principles of the Horatian tradition they preach. They are of a
much lighter nature than Aristotle's Poetics. Horace's approach is more consonant than
Aristotle's to the general literary milieu of the Renaissance, and he was more widely
known and followed.

5.4 Critical Summary of the Text

Horace lived in the glorious Augustan Era which was the period of Roman civilization and
culture. Poetry flourished in his age and was considered something good and noble and
not something pernicious and unhealthy. Horace wrote both creative and critical pieces.
He was the greatest exponent of classicism. He also composed Satires, Epodes, Odes,
Epistles; and his ArsPoetica, like Pope’s Essay in Criticism, is in verse. It is a poetic letter
written to his friend Piso and his two sons as a piece of advice on poetic composition.
Horace called it Epistle to the Pisos but it was Quintilian who names it ArsPoetica.
Because of the admirable conciseness of his critical observations and the extremely
quotable quality of his lines, Horace was exalted to the position of a lawgiver by Dante,
Vida, Boileau and Pope. Abercrombie rightly says, “Perhaps no poem of comparable
length has provided so many phrases that have become the common property of
international culture.”
ArsPoetica exercised a tremendous influence during the Middle Ages and the Neo-
classical age. It was the Bible of classicism in England. The main ideas contained
in ArsPoetica are summarized below:

Function and Nature of Poetry

Though not a systematic treatise on criticism, this poem can be divided into three parts:
(a) poesis (subject matter) (b) poema (form) and (c) poeta (the poet). Its main topics of
discussion are poetry, poetic style and drama. Pope rightly says about Horace, ‘his
precepts teach but what his works inspire.’ He is deeply influenced by the Greeks. He
recommends: “my friends, study the great originals of Greece; dream of them by night
and ponder them by day.” Horace nowhere calls poetry a process of imitation like Plato
and Aristotle. Mere imitation, according to him, is not enough for a poet often uses fiction
and mingles facts with fancy. To him the function of poetry was both to delight and
instruct: ‘Poets desire either to improve or to please, or to unite the agreeable and the
profitable; and that ‘it is not enough for poems to have beauty; they must also be pleasing
and lead the listener’s soul whither they will.’
 33

Poetry need not tie itself to actual facts; poets have the license of invention, but they
must use it to create a unified whole. Parts must correspond to the whole, even though in
Horace "parts" and "whole" do not have the technical sense we found in the Poetics.
Horace stresses the importance of guiding principles, of "art" in the sense of "knowledge."
The main role of art is to keep everything in its right place and give it its right share in
the whole. This idea of technical knowledge as a principle of restraint and order we call
decorum: it is a classicist conception par excellence. "Decorum" is probably the key word
in Horace's approach to literature, and we can link it to Aristotle's idea of the proper
nature of things. In the neoclassical critics of the seventeenth century we will find the
general belief that there are two principles at war in the poet's head: fancy and
judgement, and that the role of judgement is to restrain the flights of fancy within the
boundaries of art. There is no mythology of inspiration attached to Horace's idea of
genius. And the relationship between the gift of the poet and his technical expertise is
usually seen as one of complementarity, rather that opposition. Art, in the work or
(understood as technique) in the poet, is the supplier of what is lacking in nature. Art
keeps grand style from becoming bombastic, brevity, which in itself is a merit, from being
unintelligible, smoothness from becoming blandness. It also teaches a poet not to choose
a subject which is beyond his powers (inventio), to give the right distribution to the parts
(dispositio) and to keep a golden middle concerning the use of words (elocutio): Horace
authorizes moderate coinage and novelty, following usage, and understands the
necessary evolution of language. Decorum, then, is not necessarily an enemy of novelty:
the best effects, Horace says, can be obtained when a well-known word is skilfully set so
that it looks as though it were new.
Decorum also dictates the differences between the genres. By Horace's time, the classical
list of genres had been developed. This includes epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric, pastoral,
satire, elegy and epigram. Each has its own rules, it is not clear whether by nature or by
convention:
The changing parts and tone of each kind of poetry have had their limits set, ‘each has
had its becoming place alloted: let them keep to it.’
But Horace immediately qualifies this rule with a much more subtle observation; he says
that tragedy and comedy may sometimes achieve their best effects by approaching one
another.
Horace is presupposing a fit audience who is capable of understanding the rules; it is not
the audience at large-"I hate the ignorant common people, and I keep away from them"
(Odes, III.i) - but rather an ideal aristocratic audience whose taste he is contributing to
educate.
Horace gives some advice on imitation. In contrast to Aristotle or Plato, who spoke of
imitation of nature or ideals, Horace means imitation of other authors. Of course, he
says, you may imitate from nature and may wish to invent your own themes, but it is
safer to learn from others. He warns against choosing bad models, and he praises Homer
because he knows how to give unity to his work mingling fact and fiction, and because he
knows how to be lively by virtue of restraining himself:
It must be kept in mind that Horace is not advocating a frozen kind of beauty: he thinks
that only the poems which follow the rules of art will be able to draw the hearer's feelings;
charming a cultivated audience is the true test of beauty.
 34

The subject-matter of Poetry

The subject-matter of poetry should be simple, i.e., from familiar material, and uniform,
that is full of wholeness. He says that he, who chooses his subject wisely, will find that
neither words nor lucid arrangement will fail him, for sound judgment is the basis and
source of good writing.

Poetic Diction
Horace will always be remembered for his theory of poetic diction. Poetic diction, he says,
can never be altogether established and stationary affair. The function of language in
poetry is to express; but man’s experience, which poetry exists to express, is continually
changing, since it is continually adding to itself. With the growth of experience, the
language of poetry must keep pace, if it is to be truly expressive. Language is like a tree;
and its words are like leaves. As the years go on, the old leaves fall, and new leaves take
their place; but the tree remains the same. Horace’s observations on poetic diction are
like those of Aristotle. Following Aristotle, he also emphasises the right choice of words
and their effective arrangement in composition. A poet is free to use both familiar and
new words. New words continually go on coming to the poet like new leaves to the tree.
The poet must not rely wholly on the vocabulary of his predecessors; he must coin new
words too.

His Observations on Style

Horace wished that the writer should observe the settled forms and shades of style in
poetry. He pointed out some of the shortcomings of style. ‘I endeavour to be brief and
become obscure; sinew and spirit desert the searcher after polish: one striving for
grandeur becomes bombastic; whosoever is excessively cautious and fearful of the
tempest crawls along the ground; and he who yearns after too prodigal a variety in his
theme— he paints a dolphin in the forest, or a wild boar amid the waves. If the poet does
not have genuine artistry, the effort to avoid an imperfection leads him into graver
butchery.

Metres and their appropriateness

‘Homer has shown us in what metre may best be written the deeds of kings and great
captains, and sombre war. Verses of unequal length were first used for laments, later also
for the sentiment that attends granted beseechings. The Muse has given to the lyre the
celebration of the gods and their offspring, the victorious boxer, the horse, first in the
race, the amorous yearnings of youth, and the unrestrained pleasures of wine. If one does
not know and cannot observe the conventions and forms of poems, he does not deserve to
be called a poet. Comic material, for instance, is not to be treated in the verses of tragedy;
similarly, it would be outrageous to narrate the feast of Thyestes in verse proper to
common daily life and almost to comedy.’

Views on Drama
 35

In ArsPoetica the treatment of drama is desultory. No systematic theory of drama is

presented on a larger basis. Only fragmentary and casual views are expressed, e.g. ‘Either
follow tradition or invent a story which is consistent. But the conventional features of
traditional characters should be preserved.’ ‘If in your tale you represent the renowned
Achilles, let him appear restless, passionate, inexorable and dauntless.’ ‘If you commit a
new theme on the stage and venture to create a new character, ct the first impression be
preserved to the end, and let his nature be consistent. ‘Let not Medea murder her
children in front of the audience nor impious Atreus cook human flesh in the public nor
Procne be changed into bird. Let a play be neither shorter nor longer than five acts and
let no god intervene unless some problem arises that demands to be solved. The number
of actors should not be more than three and the chorus should form an integral part of
the action and its songs should advance and subserve the interest of the plot.’ ‘Let it
support the good and give them kindly counsel, restrain the wrathful and favour those
who fear to sin; let it praise the fare of a simple table, salutary justice and Law and Peace
with open gates’.
Horace studies drama under three heads: plot, characterization and style. Plot should be
borrowed from familiar material; the chorus should be an integral part of the plot;
characters should behave consistently and naturally; iambic metre was most suitable for
drama. Dramatic speech should observe propriety: it should suit the character, its sex,
its age; its station in life, its circumstances, its moods. A god will speak differently from a
mortal, a man from a woman, an aged man from a heated youth, a prosperous merchant
from a poor farmer, a man in grief from a man in joy, an angry-fellow from a playful one.
If you utter words ill-suited to your part, I shall either doze or smile.’ In all this Horace
closely follows Aristotle.

The Poet, the Critic and Ridicule

Horace presents us an ideal of the poet as a man of society, who faces a public of learned
and cultivated aristocrats. He laughs at extravagant "bohemian" poets who claim to be
inspired by the Muses; he advises them to cut their hair and their nails, and to wash
without any fear of washing their inspiration away. We may notice that now the theories
of inspiration linger on as myths, but that they are already an object of ridicule. Now it is
the natural gift of the poet, and not an external inspiration, which is opposed to technical
knowledge. Neoptolemus, one of Horace's influences, distinguished the technically skilful
from the born poet. Horace is insisting on the necessity of rules, but it is not that he does
not believe in the necessity of a natural gift: "the source and fountainhead of writing well
is wise thinking." But much study and care are also needed. One must not trust one's
own judgement, but rather ask friends for their sincere opinion before one ventures to
publication, and, in any case, let the poems lay for a long time before you decide
anything. The bad poet falls to the depths of ridicule.
Horace claims that there is no use for bad or middling poets: "to be second-rate is a
privilege which neither men nor gods nor bookstalls ever allowed." Better write nothing.
This is the kind of advice we would not find in Aristotle; Horace is writing an entirely
different type of criticism. Horace gives some advice to critics, too. Criticism must be "a
whetstone, which can make steel sharp, though itself cannot cut." The critic must never
try to flatter the poet when asked for advice, but rather say their sincere opinion. The
flatterer is the worst enemy of the poet. On the other hand, they need not be too harsh
 36

critics of petty faults in a good work. Not all works are equally ambitious and not all
follow the same rules: we must see them in context and not ask from them the kind of
pleasure they cannot provide. However, Horace concludes, the poet is free not to listen to
criticism and make a fool of himself: "Poets should have the right and the power if they
choose to destroy themselves. To save a man against his will is as bad as to murder him."
He concludes the work with a caricature of the bad poet trying to read his poems to
people who escape from him. This is a caricature of the inspired poet, the Democritean
divine madman, and it is advice as well as satire.

The Aim of Poetry

Horace's definition of the aim of poetry is perhaps the most widely known, though not
often in the original: ‘The aim of the poet is either to benefit, or to amuse, or to make his
words at once please and give lessons of life.’
These are three different aims, and not just one ("delectare et docere"), as is often
affirmed. It is clear, however, that Horace favours the third, a combination of pleasure
and profit. In his epistle to Augustus (a more formal piece than the Art of poetry), he
speaks of two aims: to teach, and to placate the anger of the gods. The poets were the
first civilisers of mankind, those who taught men to tell good from bad, to establish laws
and to worship the gods. Horace interprets in this way the myths of Orpheus and
Amphion.
But there is another aim of poetry which is more pervasive in the ArsPoetica. Writing good
poems which instruct or delight is only the means to the real end, which is to achieve
fame and immortality through one's works.

5.5 Critical Analysis

The actual purpose of the ArsPoetica has puzzled critics. As a treatise, it is far from
systematic and, whereas Aristotle’s Poetics is analytical and descriptive, Horace is
impressionistic, personal and allusive. The transitions from one subject to another seem
to occur abruptly, and the subjects are arranged quite haphazardly. Its concentration on
the epic and dramatic forms also seems somewhat irrelevant to the contemporary Roman
literary scene of his day. However, the lively autobiographical approach of the ArsPoetica
and its expression of personal standards in literature make it unique as a work of
criticism in the ancient world.

A few quotes in particular from the work have passed into common literary parlance,
including: in medias res (literally, “in the middle of things”, describing a popular narrative
technique that appears frequently in ancient epics and remains popular to this day,
where the narrative starts in the middle of the story and the characters, setting and
conflict are introduced through a series of flashbacks or through characters relating past
events to each other); bonus dormitatHomerus (literally, “the good Homer nods”, an
indication that even the most skilled poet can make continuity errors); purpureuspannus
(literally, “the purple patch”, describing passages, or sometimes entire literary works,
written in prose so overly extravagant, ornate or flowery as to break the flow and draw
attention to itself); and utpicturapoesis (literally “as painting, so poetry”), meaning that
 37

poetry merits the same careful interpretation that was reserved for painting in Horace‘s
day).

5.6 Summary of the Lesson

In this lesson, you have read the advice that Horace provides in ArsPoetica is a
combination of common sense, practical observations drawn from a lifetime of writing,
and views inherited from earlier literary critics such as Aristotle, Neoptolemus of Parion,
and Philodemus. Probably the last work that Horace wrote, ArsPoetica has played an
important role in defining both the classical style and the canons of good writing
developed in later periods.

Thus, we see that Horace gives his comment in ArsPoetica on different aspects of
dramatic composition; his ideas on the characters, theme and language and style of
drama have been borrowed from Aristotle; his views on the role of chorus, length of the
play and the number of the speakers in a scene, guided a large number of writers for
several generations in many countries in Europe.
5.7 Reference and Suggested Reading

1. David Galen, Literary movements for students: presenting analysis, context, and
criticism on literary movements, Volume 1 (Pennsylvania State University, Gale Cengage,
2002)
2. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W Most and Salvatore Settis, The Classical Tradition (Harvard:
Harvard University Press, 2010)
3. https://www.ancient-literature.com/rome_horace_ars.html
4. http://neoenglishsystem.blogspot.com/2010/12/give-critical-summary-of-ars-
poetica.html
5.https://www.unizar.es/departamentos/filologia_inglesa/garciala/hypercritica/01.Clas
sical/Classical.1.4.html

5.8 Model Questions

Q1. What is central to Horace's approach to criticism and to decorum in his Art of Poetry?
Q2. How important is poetic tradition, according to Horace? To what extent may a poet
depart from earlier traditions, and what limitations do poets face when they so depart?
Q3. What does Horace say is the best sort of poetry? Why should poetry both teach and
delight (i.e. be "utile et dulce," useful and pleasant), rather than just one or the other?
Q4. Why, according to Horace, is the poet, unlike the lawyer, not allowed to be second-
rate? How does the poet's social purpose differ from that of the lawyer?
 38

Lesson 6

LONGINUS: ON THE SUBLIME (CHAPTERS VIII – XXII)

Structure
6.0 Objectives
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Author and the Work
6.3 Central Idea of the Text
6.4 Outline of On the Sublime
6.5 Sublimity in Literature
6.6.1 Definition
6.6.2 Sources of Sublimity
6.6.3 Grandeur of Thought
6.6.4 Grandeur of Emotion
6.6.5 Use of Figures
6.6.6 Noble Diction
6.6.7 Dignity of Composition
6.7 Features Destructive of Sublimity
6.8 Estimate of Longinus as a Critic
6.9 Conclusion
6.10 Summary of the Lesson
6.11 Glossary
6.12 Reference and Suggested Reading
6.13 Model Questions
6.0 Objectives
After reading this lesson, you will be able to
 Formulate a critical introduction to Longinus.
 List the elements that raise a work of literature to the level of greatness.
 Discuss and evaluate the main ideas of the text prescribed.
 Identify a range of questions that can be discussed within the scope of the prescribed text
6.1 Introduction
In this lesson you are going to read about the concept of the sublime in literature. Before
Longinus, the critics regarded the function of poetry to be either to instruct or to delight or to do
both and that of prose to persuade. Longinus went beyond this and held that great literature
moves us. Thus, according to him, the purpose of literature is to transport us to another world. It
is this quality of literature that makes it sublime.
 39

6.2 The Author and the Work

Literature, particularly telling stories and making songs, is as old as human civilization. However,
all the stories and all songs have not been the same. Some have left a deep and lasting
impression on a civilization – some indeed have even crossed the boundaries of time and nation
and come down to us – while others could not withstand the test of time. Moreover, some works
of literature have always moved the readers or the audience while others do not have the same
impact. The question as to what makes a work of literature great has always interested critics.
The first remarkable theory in this regard has been the theory of sublimity put forward by
Longinus.
There is still a controversy about the identity and period of Longinus. The treatise that has come
down to us bears the title, “Longinus on the Sublime”. So the writer is one Longinus but who this
Longinus is and when he lived are still not certain. The Paris manuscript of the tenth century,
which the later critics generally follow, mentions the writer as “Dionysius or Longinus” as well as
“Dionysius Longinus”. Now whether Dionysius and Longinus are two different persons or the
same is not clear. The problem is compounded by the fact that the name or names do not suggest
any known scholar. The issue of the period of this treatise is also undecided. Critics like R. A.
Scott James regard it to be a work of the third century A. D. They identify the author with
Cassius Longinus, Minister of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. Other critics, like J. W. H. Atkin and W.
K. Wimsatt Jr., consider it to be a work of the first century A. D. On the Sublime has been written
in Greek and this makes Longinus to be a Greek writer. It is addressed to one Postumius
Terentius whose identity likewise has not been established. The treatise as it has come down to
us is not in a complete form. It seems as if a considerable part of it is missing. Nonetheless, the
treatise even in its present form is a remarkable work of criticism.
6.3 Central Idea of the Text
The treatise On the Sublime takes an approach to criticism which is completely different from that
of Aristotle. If Aristotle is the model for all neoclassic and systematic approaches to literature,
Longinus may be looked upon as a forerunner of the intuitive and romantic views of the later
neoclassical age, when several critics (Boileau, Burke, Kant) wrote works on the subject of the
sublime. The key concept in Longinus is no longer "decorum," but rather "sublimity."
6.4 Outline of On the Sublime
This outline is based on the headings added by the British classicist D. A. Russell in his
translation, “Longinus” on the Sublime (1964). As Russell states, the source manuscript contains
seven lacunae (in the form of missing pages) which comprise about a third of the text; these
lacunae are indicated in the outline.
I. Preface (chapters 1-2)
A. Definition of sublimity (1)
B. Is there an art of sublimity? (2)
II. Four Faults Incident to the Effort to Achieve Sublimity (3-5)
A. Turgidity
B. Puerility
C. False Emotion
 40

D. Frigidity
III. Some Marks of True Sublimity (6-7)
IV. Five Sources of Sublimity (8-43)
A. The power to conceive great thoughts (9-15)
B. [Emotion. Although announced earlier, this discussion does not appear.]
C. Figures (16-29)
D. Diction (30.1-38.6)
E. Dignified word arrangement, or composition (39-43)
V. Appendix: Causes of the Decline of Literature (44-44)
In the prescribed syllabus, we are concerned with section IV (chapters 8 – 22) only.
6.5 Sublimity in Literature
The concept of ‘to instruct, to delight and to persuade’ about the purpose of literature did not
satisfy Longinus. It failed to account for the powerful impact of literature on the audience/
reader. He agreed that literature delighted us. It enlightened us and it also influenced our
thoughts. But this is not all that literature does. When we read a great work of literature it lifts us
out of ourselves. It makes us forget ourselves and keeps our emotions and imagination captive.
Longinus calls this power of literature ‘sublimity’.
6.6.1 Definition
Longinus was a rhetorician and so in his definition of ‘sublime’ in literature, he lays emphasis on
the excellence of discourse. He writes:
Sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression, and that it is from no other source
that than this that the greatest of writers have derived their eminence and gained an immortality
of renown. The effect of elevated language upon an audience is not persuasion but transport.
(Smith 65)
Longinus compares the impact of the ‘sublime’ literature to that of lightning. It flashes and makes
everything visible to us in a moment. This ability of a writer is neither only a gift of Nature nor
purely an art that he has learnt. No one who is not born with a talent for it can create sublime
literature, but this innate talent has to be cultivated by learning the art of it.
Longinus holds that merely a desire to write something novel does not give birth to sublimity. It
often leads to certain defects which spoil the sublime effect. Longinus lists four such defects –
turgidity, puerility, false emotion and frigidity. While turgidity is an endeavour to go above the
sublime, puerility is the sheer opposite of greatness.
6.6.2 Sources of Sublimity
Longinus holds that both nature and art create sublimity. He does not agree with those who hold
that “the sublime is innate and cannot be acquired by teaching; nature is the only art producing
it.” (78) Longinus found that the power to transport was a gift of nature but it had to be cultivated
by art. He says, “Art is perfect when it seems to be nature, and nature hits the mark when she
contains art hidden within her.” (78) He lists five sources of sublimity which bestow upon a
speech or a work of literature, the power to move the reader or the audience. They are grandeur of
 41

thought, capacity for strong emotions, appropriate use of figure, nobility of diction and dignity of
composition. Of them the first two are the gift of nature and the others are cultivated by art.
6.6.3 Grandeur of Thought
The first source of the sublime is the capacity for grand thoughts. Sublimity, says Longinus, is
“the echo of a great soul”. That is why he lists grandeur of thought as the first source of
sublimity. He writes: “For it is not possible that men with mean and servile ideas and aims
prevailing throughout their lives should produce anything that is admirable and worthy of
immortality.” (72) Grand thoughts lift the audience/ reader out of himself.
He forgets his petty concerns and is filled with those grand thoughts that he has come across.
Grand thoughts come to lofty minds and such minds are the gift of nature. However, grand
thoughts can also be acquired by dwelling constantly on whatever is noble and sublime and by
following the examples of great masters. Longinus says,
It is good for us too, when we are working at some subject which demands sublimity of thought
and expression, to have some idea in our minds as to how Homer might have expressed the same
thought, how Plato or Demosthenes would have raised it to the sublime, or, in history,
Thucydides. Emulation will bring those examples before our eyes, illuminating our path and
lifting our souls to the high standard of perfection, imaged on our minds. (73)
In this way though great minds are born, great ideas can also be imbibed from great masters.
Grand thoughts have an elevating effect both morally and artistically on the audience/ reader.
6.6.4. Grandeur of Emotions
Longinus lists grand or strong emotions as the second source of sublimity. Unfortunately, what
he has said about it is lost. At the end of the book he proposes to deal with the subject in a
separate treatise but that treatise has not come down to us. It is only through his stray remarks
that we gather what he thought about it. At one place for instance, he says, “I would confidently
affirm that nothing makes so much for grandeur as true emotion in the right place, for it inspires
the words as it were, with a wild gust of mad enthusiasm and fills them with divine frenzy.”
(Prasad 56) It is for this reason that he prefers Iliad to Odyssey and Demosthenes to Cicero. The
capacity for intense emotions is also something that only nature can give. Strong emotions of an
orator or writer can move us strongly. Longinus does not agree with Plato that emotions have a
harmful effect on us and they weaken us. He, on the contrary, believes that strong emotions
make us sublime.
6.6.5 Appropriate Use of Figures
While grand thoughts and strong emotions are natural sources of sublimity, Longinus lists
certain artistic sources that make a speech or a work of literature sublime. Among them an
appropriate use of figures of speech is the most prominent artistic device. Longinus describes this
very elaborately in his treatise. He was a rhetorician and so he knew that in oratory a happy or
unhappy use of figures of speech made all the difference. In his treatise he, however, is not
concerned with the various uses the figures of speech can be put to. He describes them as an aid
to sublimity. So he first holds that they should not be used for the purpose of ornamentation. By
introducing an element of strangeness into what one speaks or hears every day, the figures of
speech satisfy a basic urge of human nature – that for a pleasant surprise. B. Prasad notes:
 42

But it is true also that there is an element of artifice in them that ‘tends to raise suspicion in the
mind of the reader . . . that the speaker is treating him like a silly boy and trying to outwit him by
cunning figures’. This handicap, however, disappears in a style that is already elevated in other
ways, for while they heighten the effect of elevation, the elevation in its turn helps to conceal their
artifice. (57)
A figure, therefore, is effective only when it appears in disguise, that is to say when it is shaded by
the brilliance of style. In plain style it stands as an oddity.
Some important figures of speech that create sublimity are the rhetorical question, asyndeton,
hyperbaton and periphrasis. The rhetorical question is either a question which suggests its own
answer or a rapid succession of questions and answers. For example, in the question ‘Who is
there so base that would be a bondman?’, the answer ‘None’ is already implied. A succession of
questions and answers are used to make the speech more effective. They evoke a natural outburst
of emotions. In asyndeton the conjunctions between words or sentences are left out to give the
statement a force. The words tumble out without connection in a kind of stream, almost getting
ahead of the speaker. Longinus gives the example of Xenophon’s speech: “Engaging their shields,
they pushed, fought, slew, died.” Hyperbaton is the inversion of the normal order of words in the
sentence. The use of hyperbaton suggests a mind under extreme stress or excitement when a
man forgets the normal sequence of words and they come out in disorder. Longinus writes:
It is a very real mark of urgent emotion. People who in real life feel anger, fear or indignation, or
are distracted by jealousy or some other emotion . . . often put one thing forward and then rush
off to another, irrationally inserting some remark, and then hark back again to their first point.
They seem to be blown this way and that by their excitement, as if by a veering wind. They inflict
innumerable variations on the expression, the thought, and the natural sequence. Thus
hyperbaton is a means by which, in the best authors, imitation approaches the effect of nature.
(Russell 166 -67)
Periphrasis is a roundabout way of speaking. For example, ‘fair sex’ means womankind and
‘better half’ is used for wife. When overused it becomes commonplace and loses its charm but
when used for the first time they are capable of charming us.
6.6.6 Noble Diction
The fourth source of the sublime is noble diction. Diction and thought are closely related.
Selection of appropriate words is essential for making an effective communication. It is the
language of a composition that brings grandeur, beauty, magnificence and power to it. If thought
and emotion are the soul of a composition, language is its body. Hence Longinus lists noble
diction as a source of sublimity. Longinus writes:
The choice of correct and magnificent words is a source of immense power to entice and charm
the hearer. This is something which all orators and other writers cultivate immensely. It makes
grandeur, beauty, old-world charm, weight, force, strength, and a kind of lustre bloom upon our
words as upon beautiful statues; it gives things life and makes them speak. (172)
Diction, which comprises ‘the proper choice of words and the use of metaphors and ornamented
language’, is ‘the very light of thought’. The use of heightened language suits only a sublime
composition. When the object is “trivial, to invest it with grand and stately words would have the
same effect as putting a full-sized tragic mask on the head of a little child.” So he advocates the
use of noble diction in a serious composition only. Among the ornaments of speech Longinus
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considers metaphor and hyperbole. While much of what he says about both has been discussed
by earlier critics – Aristotle being one of them – also, he has added something of his own. For
example, Aristotle restricts the use of metaphors to two at a time, but Longinus finds no
justification for it. Metaphors being the language of passion, passion alone and no arbitrary rule
should determine the number of metaphors to be used on any occasion. Here is, as B. Prasad
puts it, “the first romantic protest against supposedly inviolable sanctity of rules.” (60) However,
Longinus is with his Greek and Roman predecessors in considering the metaphor a valuable aid
to sublimity in style. On hyperbole he has just this observation to make that it should be natural
outcome of emotion.
6.6.7 Dignity of Composition
The fifth source of the sublime is the harmonious arrangements of the words. A dignified
composition should be one that blends thought, emotions, figures and diction into a unified
whole. Such an arrangement has not only “a natural power of persuasion and of giving pleasure
but also the marvellous power of exalting the soul and swaying the hearts of men.” It makes the
reader/ audience share the thoughts and emotions of the writer/ speaker. A harmonious
composition alone sometimes makes up for the deficiency of any of the elements. An ideal
composition is the one which takes care of its content. It is neither shorter or longer than it is
required to effectively communicate its content.
6.7 Features Destructive of Sublimity
Longinus in his treatise has also mentioned certain features which he considers to be destructive
of sublimity. Of them the first that he mentions is bad and affected rhythm. He writes:
Nothing is so damaging to a sublime effect as effeminate and agitated rhythm . . . they turn into
regular jig. All the rhythmical elements immediately appear artificial and cheap, being constantly
repeated in a monotonous fashion without the slightest emotional effect. Worst of all, just as
songs distract an audience from the action and compel attention for themselves, so the
rhythmical parts of speech produce on the hearer the effect not of speech but of rhythm (Russell
183)
The second feature that is detrimental to sublimity is what Longinus calls the ‘chopped up’ style.
He says “Phrases too closely knit are also devoid of grandeur, as are those which are chopped up
into short elements consisting of short syllables, bolted together, as it were, and rough on joints”.
(183) Another feature destructive of sublimity is excessive brevity of the composition. Excessively
cramped expression also does damage to sublimity. It, as Longinus puts it, “cripples grandeur to
compress it into too short a space. On the other hand, anything developed into an unreasonable
length also falls flat. As sublime diction is a source of sublimity, undignified vocabulary destroys
sublimity. It jolts us out of our rapture and leaves a bad taste. Longinus says, “It is wrong to
descend, in a sublime passage, to the filthy and contemptible, unless we are absolutely compelled
to do so. We ought to use words worthy of things.” (185)
Self-Assessment Questions
Q1. What does Longinus mean by sublimity?
Q2. How many sources of sublimity does Longinus mention? Name them.
Q3. Which sources of sublimity, according to Longinus, are the gift of nature and which can
be acquired by art?
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Q4. What are the figures of speech that confer sublimity on a composition?
Q5. Which features of composition are destructive of sublimity?
6.8 Estimate of Longinus as a Critic
Longinus occupies an important place among the ancient European critics. Saintsbury calls him
the greatest of late Greek critics. Lascelles Abercrombie calls him the first comparative critic of
literature. R. A. Scott-James regards him as the first romantic critic. To David Daiches the
importance of Longinus lies in the fact that he asked quite different questions about literature
from those asked by Plato or Aristotle. These remarks show Longinus’s contribution to criticism.
The greatest contribution of Longinus to the study of literature was that he gave a new dimension
to the existing concept of the function of literature. As pronounced by Plato, Aristotle, Horace and
other important critics of the Greco-Roman period the function of poetry, including drama, was to
instruct or delight or do both and that of prose and oratory was to persuade. This formula
described what literature did or was supposed to do, but it did not account for the appeal and
impact of literature. It was Longinus who for the first time pointed out that literature, great
literature at least, moved us and lifted us out of ourselves. In his description of the elements that
gave force to a work of literature or piece of oratory he did not say much which was not said by
earlier writers, including Aristotle. Features like use of figures, heightened diction and
ornamentation of language were known and standard features of rhetoric with which every
rhetorician was familiar. It is in his theory of sublimity and ‘transport’ that Longinus differs from
his predecessors. B. Prasad comments about it:
But in his main thesis – his theory of transport – he rises above all his predecessors, Greek or
Roman. Here he transcends all rules and pleads for a purely aesthetic appreciation of literature.
He admires the Greek classics not because they observe the rules of their ‘kind’ – sometimes they
do not – but because they excite, move, transport, elevate. And any art that does so is sublime
even though it might be faulty in form. Homer is great for all his formal blemishes. (63)
Longinus holds that a great work of literature lifts the audience/ reader out of himself. So it is not
the power to teach or entertain or persuade but the power to move that makes a work sublime. It
has the power to make one wonder. It is Longinus’s theory of transport that makes R. A. Scott-
James call him ‘the first romantic critic’. But Longinus may be a romantic in spirit, in training he
is a classicist. Scott- James himself says:
Though he was the first to expound the doctrines upon which romanticism rests, he turned and
tempered them with what is sanest in classicism. Whilst he pointed the way to the storm and the
fury of a romantic movement, he himself, with singular critical judgment, set up the danger posts,
and reimposed the classic discipline. (87-88)
Longinus knew that great literature was as much the product of literary art as of a great mind.
6.9 Conclusion: A Critical Appraisal
Longinus cannot define what the sublime is, but he is concerned with the implications of a lively
and elevated style in general, and to that he provides a more explicit approach, also based on the
reactions of the audience. Longinus' most characteristic idea is his use of intuitive response to
measure the greatness of a passage. However, we may not feel that we understand that greatness
much better once we have recognized it.
 45

At its worst, Longinus' idea of sublimity is redundant, a variety of purely rapturous and
impressionistic criticism. But at its best it defines a limit to both art and criticism; it sets us
before the indefinable, that which escapes our power of judgement and can only be grasped
through emotion. In this way, Longinus sets a decorum of his own to poetry, but it is one opposed
to that of Horace. It is not a decorum of restraint, but of transport. Longinus was forgotten for
many centuries, but his treatise was rediscovered in the Renaissance and his sentimental
approach to literature became fashionable in pre-Romantic criticism, when "sublimity" is
resurrected as a criterion to determine literary excellence. Longinus lays the stress in an area of
criticism --valuation-- which is crucial when it comes to determine the ultimate aims of literature
or to make a selection of authors in the mass of written material. Valuation is an area of heated
debate in twentieth-century criticism. Some critical schools (F. R. Leavis and the New Critics) hold
that valuation is the primary aim of the critic, his moral and social function; other schools
(structuralism, deconstruction, feminism) have cast doubt on the legitimacy of the traditional
criteria of valuation, and have stressed the relativity and ideological nature of evaluative criticism.
6.10 Summary
In this lesson, you have read about the seminal ideas of Longinus. After going through the main
ideas of the extract you will realize that Longinus’s On the Sublime is one of the greatest critical
works of the Greco- Roman period. The identity or the writer or the period of the work has not
been finally established but it was written sometime between the first and third century A. D. and
the writer was a Greek rhetorician. Before Longinus, the critics first understood the object of
literature – poetry and drama to be precise - to be teaching. The highest literature made one
better. Later on critics added entertainment to the task of teaching. The task of prose or oratory
was considered to be that of persuasion. You have also read that it was Longinus who asserted
that the greatness of literature lies in its power to transport. It affects us deeply and lifts us out of
ourselves. It is this power of literature that makes it sublime. This sublimity of literature is as
much a creation of natural abilities as that of art. Longinus has listed five sources of sublimity –
grand thoughts, intense emotions, noble diction, proper use of the figures of speech and proper
composition. Of these, the first two are the gifts of nature and the remaining the product of art.
6.11 Glossary
Greco-Roman: belonging to the periods of Greek and Roman civilizations
Sublime: of the greatest, most admirable kind.
Transport: overcome by emotions.
Move: cause to have very powerful feelings.
Treatise: long written work dealing systematically with one subject
6.12 References
Prasad, B. An Introduction to English Criticism. Madras : Macmillan India Ltd., 1989 (reprint)
Smith, James Harry & Edd Winfield Parks. The Great Critics. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1951.
6.13 Further Reading
Russell, D. A. & Michael Winterbottom. Classical Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press,
2007 (reprint)
 46

Scott-James, R. A. The Making of Literature. New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1984 (reprint)
6.14 Model Questions
Q1. What, according to Longinus, is sublimity? What are the sources of sublimity?
Q2. Explain how sublimity is both a gift of nature and a product of art.
Q3. Would you consider Longinus to be a Romantic critic?

^^^^^
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Lesson No. 7

“THE RENAISSANCE” BY GEORGE PARFITT

Structure
7.0 Objectives
7.1 Introduction to Renaissance
7.2 Introduction to George Parfitt
7.3 Detailed Summary of the Essay
7.4 Critical Analysis of the Essay
7.5 Contemporary Relevance of Renaissance
7.6 Summary
7.7 Glossary
7.8 Further Readings
7.9 Model Questions
7.0 Objectives:
After reading this essay you will be able to
 Develop a complete understanding of the background of Renaissance
 Critically discuss the prescribed essay.
 Evaluate the contemporary relevance of reading Renaissance.
7.1 Introduction to Renaissance:
The Renaissance is an important period in the European social, cultural, artistic, scientific,
economic, and national rebirth and revival. The period to which Renaissance is often associated is
fourteenth to seventeenth century. The major characteristics of Renaissance are the rediscovery
of classical literature, philosophy, and art. Apart from this the development and advancements in
the field of geographical exploration, scientific discoveries and technological inventions are equally
important factors of the period of Renaissance.
Renaissance is defined and described as the rebirth and revival of learning and knowledge,
cultural, economic, political, and scientific advancement. It advocates the revival of classical
philosophy, art, and literature. The world history changed at the end of the 1400s. There were two
key dates which marked the emergence of modern times. The Wars of the Roses (between England
and France) came to an end in 1485, and the invention of printing, which helped William Caxton
in publishing the first fictional book in England – Sir Thomas Malory’s retelling of the Arthurian
stories as Le Morte D’Arthur. Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas in 1492 proved
the existence of the new cultures and world. These newly discovered worlds, geographical as well
as spiritual, are the salient features of the Renaissance, the ‘rebirth’ of learning, art, and culture,
reaching to its highest grounds in the early sixteenth century in Italy and in Britain during Queen
Elizabeth I (1558-1603). A new dynasty reigned over England after the Wars of the Roses (1453–
85) –the Tudors.
 48

With the inauguration of Tudor dynasty the issue of succession to the throne became
crucially important for the continuation of power. Henry VIII, who ruled for a long time from 1509
to 1547 was one of the greatest rulers of Tudor dynasty. In order to father a son for the
succession and heir to the dynasty, Henry married for six times. But all of his wives gave him just
one son and two daughters –King Edward VI, Queen Mary I, and Queen Elizabeth I. Henry also
got involved into conflict with the Pope Clement VII and the Catholic Church because of his wish
to divorce his first queen Catherine of Aragon. In order to challenge the power of Pope, Henry took
some decisions which changed the entire socio-cultural, religious, and political system of the
country. He destroyed the power of the Catholic Church in Britain, declare to close and destroy
the monasteries. Henry himself became the head of the church and state. This change was,
known as the Reformation. Because of this change, ages of superstitious faith in religion,
attitudes, practices, and beliefs were terminated and replaced with a new way of thinking.
England’s shift from Catholicism to Protestantism redefined the nation’s political and religious
identity. The origin of Protestantism took place with Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in Wittenberg in
1517.
Despite the fact that England became Protestant and King Henry was excommunicated
from the Catholic faith by the order of the Pope, still he remained Catholic. Being liberated from
the authority of Pope, all the rules and regulations of the Catholic faith were questioned by the
followers of Protestantism. This revolutionary reformation changed and affected the nation to a
great extent.
The Reformation which took place during the reign of Henry VIII also provoked a similarly
severe crisis in England in that century. England started to acquire a different and separate
identity from the rest of the Europe. Further development in the history of the nation took place
with the conquest of Empire and the dominion over seas, achieved during the time of Queen
Elizabeth I.
Henry VIII’s rebellion against Rome was not an isolated revolutionary act. There were two
thinkers who established such a climate which made it possible. The Dutch scholar Erasmus was
the first thinker whose passion for classical literature was one of the primary sources for the
rebirth and revival in classical learning. His disliking and contempt for the shallowness of
Catholic monasteries, as discussed in The Praise of Folly, was not an expression of his attempt to
oppose the authority and power of the Pope, but he tries to challenge the corruption of the
Catholic Church.
The German scholar Martin Luther’s approach was quite different which caused the final
break from the authority of Pope. Although both the scholars, Erasmus and Luther, had similar
views and concerns for the corruption of Catholic Church, but their responses were entirely
different. Whereas Luther directly refused to surrender before the authority of Pope, Erasmus did
not. It is often claimed by historians that the exact date of the beginning of Reformation and
Protestantism can be determined by the first appearance of Luther’s 95 Theses Against the Sale of
Papal Indulgences in 1517.
Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1521 by the order of the Pope
due to his continuous opposition. It is also followed by the spread of religious individualism in
the Northern Europe. Such a background and circumstances led Henry VIII to take the command
of the church as well as state in his hands. Just like Luther, Jean Calvin took the mission to go
against the supremacy of Catholicism in France. They both, Luther and Calvin, believe that the
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Bible is the literal articulation of God and the very basis for the foundation of their ideas. Due to
Calvin’s ideas and enthusiasm, Geneva became the centre of Protestantism.
The importance of this movement can be seen in terms that it soon spread to Northern
Europe, Scotland and Wales. The culmination of this moment occurred with Cromwell’s ideas of
Puritan Commonwealth. Reformation made people think and reflect upon the place of human
beings in this world and their relationship with God.
Christopher Columbus voyaged in 1492 in the search of India and landed on the Caribbean
Islands. Because of this discovery he was considered the discoverer of America. Other scientific
discoveries that took place during this time were Copernicus and Galileo’s views that the Earth is
not the centre of the universe.
This advancement can also be seen in the intellectual inquires advanced by the thinkers of the
time. Erasmus, the Dutch philosopher, is one of the important thinkers of Renaissance. His
writings, ideas, and views were closely associated with Humanism. All these ideas engulfed
almost all of the Renaissance philosophy. Before Renaissance, the motive of literature was to
teach how to live in an ideal way by following the teachings of the Church. With the Reformation
the literature became more occupied with individual subjects and their expressions. The
Renaissance literature is also known for its experimentation with the form, genre, and content
making this a period of literary innovation.
Logical thinking, reason, and scientific inquiry became the hallmark of in the Renaissance
period. Renaissance literature, thus, became concerned with man’s power, will, efforts, and
abilities. This focus on man, as the centre of the world, can be seen in the writings of this period
ranging from Shakespeare to Marlow. Renaissance writings in England are heavily influenced by
the subject matter provided by Reformation in cultural, philosophical, and ideological terms. After
Reformation, the writers started following and exploring the major concerns and issues of human
beings. The writers were the pioneers in reflecting upon the disintegration of the certainty of all
the previous held view, beliefs, and ideas of human beings. The new world and world-view was
dominated by scientific discoveries, inventions, explorations, and geographical discoveries. The
country had never seen such a creative and productive environment before and after
Renaissance.
The advancement and the growth in the field of science, astronomy, and mathematics is
another important aspect of the Renaissance. Copernicus gives his theory that not the Earth but
the sun is the centre of the universe. In the field of medical science and anatomy, the scientist
Harvey was able to discovered (1628) the circulation of blood in the human body. The
technological advancement in the era of Renaissance is equally important as there emerged
constant invention and discoveries in the production and usage of microscopes, telescopes,
clocks, compasses, and thermometers.
But more than any other field of knowledge and discussion, the writing was the richest
resources facing extraordinary changes and developments during Renaissance. The discussions
of human freedom, as expressed in classical writings, find new ways of expressions in this period.
These new expressions and new world-view helped in the creation of a new religious, socio-
cultural, political, and moral identity of the people. Some of the English writers of the
Renaissance period are considered with prestige in the world literature: Shakespeare, Marlowe,
Webster, and Jonson, as dramatists; Sidney, Spenser, Donne, and Milton as poets; Bacon, Nashe,
 50

Raleigh, Browne, and Hooker in prose; and, holding the centre of all of them is the Authorised
Version of the Bible, published in 1611. The major issues of humanity with which the
Renaissance literature was basically concerns was the meaning and nature of life, human beings,
good, bad, king, love, justice, and other such concepts. These issues were the focus of the
literature and philosophy since the very beginning of humanity, but they have never been given as
much importance as in Renaissance period.
There was a political angle of the Renaissance period as well –the unsettled political
atmosphere. Despite her efficient ruling for a good many years, Elizabeth continuously faced and
was unable to remove the threats, scheming against her, rebellion, and defiance. Although after
Reformation the country became Protestant, but the followers of Catholic Church as well as those
in uncertain religious faiths find the policies of Protestant extremists (called Puritans) very
oppressive. Such people left the country to set up colonies in American regions like Virginia and
Pennsylvania. Catholic dissent (the Counter-Reformation) reached its most noted expression in
Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot, dated 5 November 1605 as an expression of Counter-Reformation,
and Earl of Essex’s plot against the Queen Elizabeth were two of the events which disturbed the
political scenario to a great extent. Despite all this political turmoil, Queen Elizabeth’s rule was a
period of stability, security and prosperity in socio-cultural, economic, national, literary and royal
terms. The defeat of Spanish Armada in 1588 was another notable achievement of Queen
Elizabeth’s reign. Due to the English pirates and seamen, the England became the ruler of the
seas. This supremacy over the ocean also made the country one of the richest monarchy. This
prosperity and growth in wealth, and political scenario, the capital of the country –London –
became overcrowded and grew to the extreme level. For the entertainment of the public of
London, a growth in the dramatic art took place. The first public theatre was found in 1576. The
stage became the best way to teach, discuss, argue, and reflect upon the relevant and current
issue of the society, economy, monarchy, politics, and all such issues. The dramatists also
proliferated due to this increasing level of dramatic audience. The stage provided chance to the
writers, actors, dramatists, singers, and other artists. As the dramas were written and performed
in English language, the language grew and started holding the social and national roots.
7.2 Introduction to George Parfitt:
George Parfitt was a reader in English Literature reader at the University of Nottingham. Much of
his critical works are concerned with seventeenth century literature and World War poetry and
fiction. Parfitt is known as a distinguish editor of the complete poems of Ben Jonson which was
published in 1975. He was born in Trinidad and studied in Spain and then worked for a long time
at the University of Nottingham.
7.3 Detailed Summary of the Essay:
Parfitt begins this essay by articulating his view on how the Renaissance, a development or
movement, in human history, has long passed away. He says how there are some prevailed
definitions of Renaissance. And he admits that he has been influenced by these earlier
definitions. But it does not mean that these definitions will restrict him from exploring the
changing nature and definitions of Renaissance in the present times. In this way the essayist is
trying to build a link between the earlier definitions of Renaissance and the present one, and
hence the historical period of that time and the present.
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The essayist quotes Cambridge English Dictionary for defining the term ‘renaissance’. It
defines renaissance as the ‘revival’ or ‘rebirth’ in terms of a period in the history of Europe when
the Middle Ages passed away and modern period began. Renaissance began in Italy in the
fourteenth century. But in England, it emerged in the sixteenth century. Before the advent of the
Renaissance in England, it was considered a barbaric province among the European empires.
The essayist points out that there are two defining aspects of Renaissance; the first as a
rebirth or revival; the second as a period in the history of European empires. The definition of
Renaissance as rebirth or revival requires further explanation. Renaissance is considered the
rebirth or revival of classicism and of everything the classical period stands for. Medieval ages
were considered a dark period as compared to the earlier and the later ones. The essayist
discusses how the cyclical chain of the birth of an age, its death and subsequent rebirth helps us
in understanding the development and decline of different ages in such a way as to give a holistic
view of history where a particular period or age is related to the previous ones.
The essayist opines that Renaissance is not understood as a period but as a tendency (or
movement) within a period. This tendency is associated with the rebirth of classicism. In this way,
it would be problematic to associate renaissance with just one period in the history of European
societies. The essayist, by giving a reference to a book Twentieth Century Renaissance by
Christopher Brooke, said that the relevance and emergence of renaissance is equally significant in
each age and period, not just the fourteenth century Italy and the sixteenth century Britain. In
such uses of the term ‘Renaissance’, it does not refer to the historical period, but to the
characteristics, virtues, and qualities belonging to that period such as innovation, enlightenment,
rationality, logical thinking etc.
The essayist refers to Collins’ definition of ‘Renaissance’ in order to flesh out the meaning
of the term. Collins defines it as a tendency for classical scholarship, predominance of active and
secular over religious and contemplative, scientific and geographical discoveries, and belief in the
individual human potential. Renaissance also exhibits a struggle between new learning and new
knowledge on the one hand and the old beliefs and system on the other. These themes of the era
are also reflected in the literary works of the times. Marlow’s Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare’s
Hamlet are two of the most significant works which identify and express the struggle to realize
individual potential although the titular characters were unsuccessful to do so. Spirituality has
also been an important factor of the lives of people during the renaissance. A struggle between the
spiritual and secular can be observed throughout this period.
The essayist further talks about the social dimension of Renaissance. Castiglione’s Il
Corteginao (1528) and its English translation by Thomas Hoby in 1561 are considered significant
by the essayist when it comes to the social side of Renaissance. The two of the most important
social categories of individuals to which the essayist refers are the gentlemen and courtier. Both
of these exhibit wealth, power, and cultured lifestyle. Gentlemen and courtiers were the richest of
people who could spend time and money on the cultural artefacts, tastes, and lifestyles. This
tendency makes Renaissance restricted only to the rich and upper class people who can afford
leisure and artistic pursuits. The poor, downtrodden, and workers have nothing to do with this
tendency of Renaissance. Likewise there is a patriarchal angel of Renaissance too. Men had
always have upper-hand position in this movement as compared to women. Renaissance
products, inventions and discoveries are male-made. The essayist believes that during this period,
the hegemony of genteel and elite class remained as grounded as earlier.
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Twentieth century academicians have been fascinated in defining Renaissance. But at the
same time there has been resistance among academicians on labelling medieval period as bad
and waning away. Even Edmund Spencer had raised this issue. Despite these resistances, an all
acceptable definition of Renaissance came into being where humanism is considered good,
classicism is considered as desirable, and gentility is approved. And in such a scenario, Sir Philip
Sidney remains the role model for the gentlemen and Stella for the woman, who is created by the
poet.
The essayist further discussed two shifts in literary studies of the sixteenth century. These
shifts were a respond against the view that English Renaissance is cherished and established by
the court of Elizabeth I. This view reduced English Renaissance to a limited period of time. All this
involves the poets like Spencer, Sidney, Wyatt, Raleigh, and Greville. This can also be termed as
the high renaissance as it is associated with the court and royal court. There is another shift
which involves the poetry of Donne and those called after him as The School of Donne and The
Tribes of Ben.
The essayist remarks that Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen (1590, 1596) is the best
example of Renaissance epic which represents the author’s commitment to the classics, his
understanding of the importance of the idea of gentleman, and his sense of the individual and
national. It is considered the best example of High Renaissance art because of its harmonious
organization, unified wholeness, and its decorative refinement.
A shift and reaction against the type of poetry which Spencer wrote can be seen in the
emergence and popularization of lyrical poetry. This movement can be traced from the shifts from
Spencer to Donne. This shift can also be discerned in T. S. Eliot’s use of Spencerianism fragments
in The Waste Land which parodied and questioned the relevance of such renaissance for Eliot’s
time.
Donne and other metaphysical poets have also attracted the attention of New or Practical
School of Criticism. F. R. Leavis was concerned with this school of poetry because of their close
association with native traditions, not with classical one. Some thinkers also argue that the
emphasis on metaphysical poets by the New Critical School is a strategy to revolt against the
genteel class by the bourgeoisie. These critics replace the courtly poets like Spencer and Sidney
with the urban poets like Donne and Marvell. Leavis and his school of criticism was opposed by
C. S. Lewis, F. W. Bateson, and E. M. Tillyard who supported Elizabethan Renaissance and
Elizabethan poets like Spencer.
Both these views, orthodox belief in Elizabethan Renaissance and reaction against it, “lack
real questioning the genteel hegemony” (Parfitt 87). Although Leavis, through his journal Scrutiny,
tries to rewrite the canon of great English Literature, but “the rewriting was based on a
sentimental view of rural past of hierarchic contentment” (Parfitt 87). It did not change the place
and position of gentry. One of the important impacts caused by it was that gradually the previous
view Renaissance started waning away.
Raymond Williams’ work The Country and the City is helpful in understanding this shift of
orientation in discussing Renaissance. For him, what was more important in writing down this
account was his own roots at England-Wales borderland. Williams feels affinity with the native
radical tradition that is what gives a class-struggle angle to his book. Williams’ critique of pastoral
poems informs that this tradition of poetry is marked by a widening of the gap between Nature
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and Art. He analysed Jonson’s poem “To Penshurst” and explains how the poem expresses the
interests of gentry by “excluding that in Nature which is manifest in labour and the peasant”
(Parfitt 87).
Williams’s work helps in understanding the concept of Renaissance which is biased to
gentility and upper classes. His critique favours the marginalized groups and sections of society
giving this discussion a Marxist angle. Especially his discussion of the Country House poetry,
which is viewed as “propaganda for the gentry” (Parfitt 88). Williams also believes that the
orthodox view of Renaissance which supports and promotes courtly and genteel value system can
also be questioned. This critique of orthodox Renaissance values makes Williams’ book important
for understating contemporary thinking of Renaissance.
Williams’ provides a model where the validity and authenticity of orthodox role models of
Renaissance (Sidney and Stella) are questioned. In this way, Williams is hinting at the alternative
models and values which can be used and employed in new understanding of Renaissance. This
understating of Renaissance is pluralistic rather than monolithic. A range of readings can be
deployed to interpret and read the Renaissance literature.
This deconstruction of the orthodox and traditional view of Renaissance which is prevalent
in English literary world is associated with the revision of the recent works in Tudor history. This
revision is brought about by the introduction of historicism in literary studies. Even feminist
voices raised the question that High Renaissance is headed by the Queen Elizabeth, giving it a
female leader. But at the same time, such female image is a male construct which again puts it
into objectionable and questionable situation.
All this is caused by that shift from genteel to marginalize through which the orthodoxy of
Renaissance is challenged and deconstructed. Such a deconstructive view also questions the
precepts of humanism, wonders about the efficacy of classicism, and criticizes the traditional
Renaissance ideals.
After all this improvement and revision, it has not yet achieved much in changing the
established ideas and definitions of Renaissance. Renaissance still does not mean much to the
English undergraduate students except as a period in literary history. Such a reductive view
makes Renaissance a bygone phenomenon having no connection to the present times. In
academic world, it becomes a topic to be learnt and remembered rather than a topic of discussion
and argument.
Because of this orthodox nature of Renaissance, it is important to welcome the shift which
is taking place in defining and describing Renaissance for the present times. It does not mean
that the traditional Renaissance values and ethics should be neglected or ignored completely, but
a critical awareness of these values should be employed while discussing the formations of
Renaissance canon. Neither a blind acceptance of the Elizabethan Court and Renaissance nor a
blind negligence can serve the purpose. Hence a middle approach should be adopted where the
positive and negative components of Elizabethan Renaissance should be kept in mind in order to
arrive at a more contemporary use and understanding of the term. Whereas a blind following of
the traditional concept of Renaissance can handicap the researchers and readers from having a
dynamic understanding of the phenomenon, a blind rejection can equally handicap them because
of their lack of awareness of past history and activities of this phenomenon.
Once the internal imperfectness and cracks of the classic Renaissance works like The
Faerie Queen become visible; it also becomes obvious that other alternatives are also possible
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which can earn the status of classics. But it also makes obvious the tendency of the academic
world to believe in the dominance of certain works, artefacts, and those considered masterpieces.
In his zeal to make the allegory close to reality, Spencer was unable to make use of his best
potential. Especially the Book Five of The Faerie Queen is the target of the critics to illustrate the
contradictions of the poem and the poet. The very subject which Spencer had chosen for Book
Five is problematic, “The oppressive enactment of authoritarian ‘justice’ is evil, whatever the
particular manifestation” (Parfitt 90). But the idea of justice promoted and depicted by this book
is powerful enough although its operations are shameful. Spencer’s The Faerie Queen deals with
the Renaissance acceptance of humanism, goodness, and justice. That’s why it holds a vital and
prominent place in the Renaissance literature.
Challenges to such orthodox and traditional beliefs have been directed towards orthodox
views of Renaissance from the political left thinkers, feminists, gays, and other critical and radical
thinkers. Only the pressure of such challenges and critique can make the supporters of orthodox
Renaissance to review and revise their ideologies and discourses.
The new sense of Renaissance to which the essayist is pointing at is the one which criticize
the insistence on humanist ideology and those structure which support it. The essayist made his
point clear by articulating that this new sense or view of Renaissance is concerned with laying
bare and disclosing the very structure which is involved in making a particular view of
Renaissance as rigid, supreme, and orthodox; pointing out the weaknesses and limitations of the
traditional and orthodox view of Renaissance; and holding the perspective of the marginalized and
silenced. The essayist also believes that this new view of Renaissance has only some of the
chances to establish “its case if the viewpoint is an informed one” (91).
In this way the essayist, throughout the discussion, has argued and questioned the
validity, authenticity, and the scope of orthodox and traditional view of Renaissance as compared
to the new sense of the term in which it liberates the voices of dissent and differences. The essay,
in this way, talks about the present relevance of Renaissance.
7.4 Critical Analysis of the Essay:
George Parfitt’s essay “The Renaissance” is a critical reflection upon the idea of Renaissance. The
term ‘Renaissance’ is often interpreted as revival or rebirth of the classical zeal of learning,
knowledge, and scientific inquiries. Likewise the very period of European history which is known
by this term is characterized by the same geographical and scientific discoveries, inventions, new
knowledge systems, and rational thinking. But the idea of Renaissance, as is given and promoted
by thinkers in this field, was an orthodox, traditional, and restrictive one. Renaissance has
always been interpreted in terms of its association with the upper genteel class who had access to
knowledge, culture, refined tastes, and leisure to pursue these areas. This biased view of
Renaissance has become the major issue of this essay. In order to deconstruct and challenge
such an orthodox belief and idea of Renaissance, the essayist starts dissecting and discerning the
intricacies, complexities, and contradictions involved in this idea. The essayist discusses the idea
of Renaissance by focusing on its traditional understanding and then moves to a contemporary
understanding of Renaissance. By doing this the critic provides the readers with a holistic picture
of renaissance as a movement. The student, while reading this essay, can look at the past and the
present of this seminal movement. This new sense, as is provided by the critic, makes this
concept of renaissance a liberal and open ended one. While probing into this matter, the essayist
provides an alternative view of the Renaissance which can be applicable and useful for the
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contemporary scenario. The present relevance of Renaissance can be manifested through a

critique of the orthodox view of it. By giving voice to those silenced in the orthodox view of
Renaissance, the author provides a liberated and inclusive understanding of the Renaissance.
7.5 Contemporary Relevance of the Idea of Renaissance:
Renaissance defined as the revival or rebirth of classical passion for learning and discoveries
cannot be reduced to a single period of time in the history of a particular country or continent.
Reducing this idea to a single period in history is a narrow approach. The essayist, on the other
hand, tries to discuss renaissance in a broader context. The very idea of Renaissance and the
conception to which it invokes can be seen in the history of almost all the countries. At some
point or other, all societies, cultures, and communities go through a period of transformation
from a traditional to new lifestyles, knowledge, and understanding. When focusing on this
concept of Renaissance, it becomes clear that to attach Renaissance to a particular period, time,
country or nation is a reductionist view. George Parfitt’s point in his essay is the same: to take
this idea of Renaissance from the moors of orthodox thinkers and to bring it to bear on
contemporary times. This practice affirms the contemporary use, value, and understanding of
renaissance.
7.6 Summary:
This chapter introduces you to the historical period of Renaissance and its manifestation in art,
literature, politics, and society. Introduction to Renaissance provides a general introduction to
this period. George Parfitt’s essay discusses Renaissance in a new light by exploring its present
relevance. First, Parfitt discusses how the idea of Renaissance is always understood only in terms
of a historical movement which begins from twelfth to fourteenth century and evolves to sixteenth
and seventeenth century. On the other hand, Parfitt is of the opinion that this reductionist view of
Renaissance does not justify its present relevance. Parfitt tries to provide a comprehensive and
broader view of this idea of Renaissance.
7.7 Glossary:
Elizabethan Age: The age during which Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) reigned over Britain
Reformation: Reformation is a movement in the religious life of Europe during Renaissance.
Under the influence of Martin Luther people start disregarding the authority of Pope and
Catholic Church. A new religious branch begins which is called Protestantism.
Renaissance: That period in the history of Europe which takes place between fourteenth to
seventeenth centuries. It means the rebirth and revival of classical learning. This learning
is reflected in the arts, literature, scientific and technical inventions.
7.8 Further Readings
Brotton, Jerry. Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, 2006.
Fweguson, Margaret et al. Rewriting the Renaissance. Chicago, 1980.
Parry, J. H. The Age of Renaissance. London, 1963.
7.9 Model Questions
1. Discuss the historical background of English Renaissance?
2. How does Parfitt’s essay discuss Renaissance in a new light?
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3. Has Renaissance waned away or can we find some contemporary relevance of

Renaissance? Discuss with illustrations from the prescribed essay.

^^^^^^
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Lesson No. 8

THE PRINCE BY MACHIAVELLI

Structure
8.0 Objectives
8.1 Introduction to the Critic Machiavelli
8.2 Introduction to The Prince
8.3 Detailed Summary of the Prescribed Chapters of the Text
8.4 Critical Analysis of the Prescribed Chapters of the Text
8.5 Summary
8.6 Glossary
8.7 References
8.8 Further Readings
8.9 Model Questions
8.0 Objectives:
Reading this chapter will enable you to
 Write a critical summary of the prescribed chapters of the text The Prince.
 Critically evaluate and analyse the major themes of The Prince.
 Develop an understanding of the political ideas of Machiavelli.
8.1 Introduction to Machiavelli:
Niccolò Machiavelli was born on May 3rd 1469 in Florence and died on June 21st 1527 at his
birthplace in Italy. He is known as one of the most important Renaissance philosophers, political
theorists, and statespersons. He was also the secretary of the Florence republic. The publication
of his political ideas in The Prince marred his reputation to a great extent because of his atheistic
and immoral views on political matters.
Machiavelli belonged to a prominent and wealthy family. His father was a doctor of law and his
other relatives held important positions and offices in Florence. Compared to his other family
members, Machiavelli’s father Bernardo was the only poor person. They earned their livelihood
from the small property which they had near the city.
There are no substantial resources to reveal Machiavelli’s early education despite that his father
had a great library at home from where Machiavelli might have read a great deal. Later Machiavelli
learned Latin and Greek. He also acquired the humanist knowledge as was in vogue during those
days.
He was influenced by the lectures of Marcello Virgilio Adriani, who headed the Studio Fiorentino.
A Dominican Friar Girolamo’s sermons also influenced Machiavelli to a great extent. His sermons
involved criticism of government and religious circles. When he was twenty nine, Machiavelli was
appointed the head of the second chancery, a post which put him in charge of the
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republic’s foreign affairs. It is a mystery how Machiavelli acquired such a great office at such a
young age. He served many diplomatic missions during his office.
In 1513, Machiavelli was suspected for a conspiracy and was imprisoned. Later he was exiled
from the city. During this time he lived at his father’s small property and wrote his classic work
The Prince. The Prince was dedicated to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (1492–1519) who ruled
Florence from 1513 and was the grandson of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–92).
While working in his office Machiavelli was continuously engaged in the writing of a number of
political discourses and poems (the Decennali) on the topic of Florentine history. After he was
exiled from the city, he wrote those politically oriented works for which he is remembered. It was
during this time that Machiavelli wrote The Prince (1513). At the same time he was also engaged
in writing a very different type of book, Discourses on Livy (also known as Discourses on the First
Ten Books of Titus Livy). Both of these works were published only after the death of their author.
The Discourses on Livy was published in 1531 and The Prince two years later in 1532. These
works are the essence of his philosophy and ideas because he wrote that these books contain
everything he knows. Both these works are different in substance and manner. The Prince is
chiefly concerned with princes, and is easy to read, short and also wicked. The Discourses on
Livy is a presentation of “reasoning” that is lengthy, difficult, and full of advice on how to preserve
republics.
8.2 Introduction to The Prince:
Machiavelli’s The Prince is a type of manual for princes, a guide book, a behavior and conduct
book. Machiavelli followed a tradition in which the advice books have always been written for the
kings and princes. It attracted a great deal of attention as a discourse of modern social thinking
and Renaissance political and philosophical inquiries. With its publication, the immediate
purpose of The Prince is superseded by an argument over its moral and theoretical implication.
One of the major purposes of this book was the political connections and fortune of Machiavelli’s
family in relation to the monarchy at power. Moralists opposed the book because of its support to
immoral activities on the part of princes and kings. Machiavelli’s reputation travelled far beyond
his hometown and country to the entire Europe. His name started connoting an ideology known
as Machiavellianism, which can be interpreted as immoral and unethical views advocated by
Machiavelli.
But gradually this view of Machiavelli started waning and a thorough understanding of the views
and philosophy of Machiavelli was being explored by thinkers like James Harrington and Francis
Bacon. These thinkers refuted the view that Machiavelli is an advocator of evil. These scholars
appreciated Machiavelli’s contribution to republican theory and political realism. Other thinkers
like Hume and Rousseau believed The Prince and its author had exposed the political tyranny.
Machiavelli classifies principalities into two categories; one is acquired and the other is inherited.
In general, he states that the more difficult it is to get control over a state, the easier it is to keep
on to it. The cause behind this is that the fear of a new prince is much stronger than the love for
an old prince. It is through the fear that new princes can control the public. And those princes
whose dynasties have long been established will be disappointed to see the public submission to
the new and fearful prince. Thus, every prince, new or old, must look upon himself as a new
prince and learn to rely on “one’s own arms,” both literally in raising one’s own army and
metaphorically in not relying on the goodwill of others.
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Machiavelli advocates the virtue of war and strategy for the prince because without war he cannot
acquire the state and the power. This virtue is not the same virtue as is expected from each
individual, but a virtue which brings reputation, glory and fame to the prince. A prince, according
to Machiavelli, should never be liberal in his dealing with the public because it is out of fear that
the subjects submit to the prince. But at the same time, a prince should also not be too cruel to
be intolerable.
Machiavelli talks about virtue and how it makes individuals believe in their potential and
capabilities by reducing their belief in fortune and fate. He compares fortune to a woman who is
won by the young and impetuous rather than by those who move cautiously. The virtue which
Machiavelli talks about coexists with the traditional view of moral virtue. The virtue of mastery
possessed by a prince is his greatest weapon to command fortune and control the public.
8.3 Detailed Summary of the Prescribed Chapters of the Text:
Chapter XV: Of those things for which men, and particularly princes, are praised or blamed.
Machiavelli in this chapter explains the correct behaviour of the prince and asserts that the
proper behaviour of princes toward the people and friends should be discussed. He accepts that
this matter has been discussed by others, but he claims that an authentic cluster of practical—
not only theoretical—rules is required. Other thinkers have believed that the republics built upon
an ideal concept of how people should lead their lives rather than how they are actually doing so.
The reality is far from these ideal hopes and expectations. Especially people do not lead each part
of their lives virtuously. A prince should not concern himself with a virtuously life, rather his
main motive should be practical benefits for the state power.
Machiavelli discusses how some personal qualities earn praise for some men and condemnation
for others. There are certain characteristics which receive praise like generosity, courage, faith,
compassion, and craftiness. The ones which bring condemnation are the qualities like
stubbornness, cowardice, cruelty, and miserliness. A prince, according to Machiavelli, is
supposed to possess all the good qualities, although this supposition is unrealistic. One of the
primary jobs of a prince is to safeguard and secure the state. In order to do so, the prince might
be required to harbour some of the bad qualities as well. These bad qualities or vices are
acceptable so far as they do not endanger the state. A prince should use these vices in such a way
as not to provoke condemnation from the public.
Machiavelli advises the prince to know when to act immorally. Although everyone believes and
agrees that a prince must have all the good qualities, but that is almost impossible, a virtuous
prince will avoid the vices which could help him to maintain his power. Some of the virtuous
actions can ruin the prince and his state while some of the vices can make a prince prosper.
Chapter XVI: Of generosity and miserliness
In Chapter XVI, Machiavelli focuses upon the outer appearance of generosity and what a prince
should do to improve his public image. Generosity is believed to be one of the desirable qualities,
but it is dangerous to be too generous. His main point is that the exhibition of virtue and good
qualities in office is a deception. A truly virtuous prince would not have any motives to exhibit his
virtues publicly. Visible virtue is often displayed so that the prince may be liked and loved by the
public and that he can maintain a virtuous reputation. Liberal and generous nature of a prince is
often admired by the people. But a generous prince is unable to maintain his power over the
masses because he is unable to invoke the emotion of fear among public. A reputation for
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generosity needs outward lavishness, which gradually reduces all of the prince’s resources. At the
end, the prince would be forced to tax his people excessively to raise the money for the
maintenance of his generosity. Ultimately, this mingling of generosity and liberality of the prince’s
character will make the people hate him. On the other hand, a prince who tries to change his
generosity will be considered a miser.
Machiavelli is teaching the prince not to be a spendthrift. The parsimonious ( the quality of being
careful with money or resources) nature of the prince might be considered as miserly in the
beginning, but he will gradually earn a reputation for his generous nature. A prince who is a
miser would have enough funds to safeguard his realm against aggression and can raise funds
without taxing his people unduly.
Almost all the kings and princes believe that miserliness and saving can help them accomplish
great deeds and projects. Although some might argue that successful kings have gained power
and sustained their rule with the help of their generosity, like Caesar the great did so. But if
Caesar could rule for a long time and had not been killed, he would have found that maintenance
of his rule needed moderating his spending.
In this way generosity is self-destruction. Generosity consumes resources and checks further
generosity. While saving might lead to success, generosity can lead to hatred.
Chapter XVII Concerning Cruelty: Whether It Is Better to Be Loved Than to Be Feared, or
the Reverse.
Machiavelli argues in this chapter that each prince would like to be regarded as merciful, but
mercy should always be well- managed. Compassion, just like generosity, is always admired. But
a prince should always be careful that his compassion is used wisely. To emphasise this point, he
refers to the example of Cesare Borgia who, a cruel and compassionless person, brought peace
and order to the Romagna, and Florence, which was afraid to interfere with the much needed
force in Pistoia and was in turn defeated through civil struggle. He discusses that a prince or king
should never mind to be called cruel if his cruelty is for keeping his public peaceful and loyal. If a
prince is too kind, and does not properly punish those who deserve it, he gives rise to an
environment of disorder, since his public takes the freedom to do what they like—even murder
and theft. Such crimes ruin the entire social system, but by punishing such culprits of wrong
deeds, a prince can save the community. Cruelty in terms of punishing the wrongdoers is
important to maintain the order. Executing a few of the people who are disloyal is a better option
than letting them ruin the entire social order. New princes, he says cannot help being cruel,
because their rule is insecure. Still, a prince must not be too cruel or too fearful. A prince is
supposed to be careful in his execution of cruelty, coating it with humanity and prudence.
Machiavelli then poses the question that is it better to be liked and loved than to be scared of.
Ideally, a prince should be both loved and feared, but this state of affairs is difficult to maintain.
It is better to be feared than loved. Why a prince should adopt this policy is because the public is
mostly ungrateful in terms of the services provided by the princes or kings. They support their
prince till they do not face a real threat or danger to their lives and security. One can easily break
the bond of love, but the bond established by the fear of punishment is much valid and intact.
But a prince should always be careful whether he is indicating fear or hatred because he needs
fear not hatred to rule over his subjects. He should make sure that any punishment is properly
justified. A prince must never grab the property of his people or forcefully take their women,
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because these actions give rise to hatred among the public. In case a prince needs to confiscate
the property of someone, he should have justifiable reasons to do so. Machiavelli gives a very
controversial statement in this chapter by saying that people can forgive the death of their loved
ones but cannot forgive the confiscation of their property. In this manner, a prince is supposed to
exert the emotion of fear and not love to manage his people.
Machiavelli argues that there is not too much cruelty between two enemies. Rather it requires
much cruelty to manage and discipline an army. He gives the example of Hannibal who is known
for his inhuman cruelty. It is because of this cruelty that Hannibal was able to manage and
maintain his organized army. Machiavelli mentions that a prince and a state require a disciplined
and well managed army; on the other hand an undisciplined army can harm the prince, the state
and the citizens more than the enemy. Again he elaborates this point with the example of a king
named Scipio whose army defied and rebelled against him because of his excessive compassion.
At the end, Machiavelli advised a prince to be feared rather than loved by his subjects if he
wanted to manage his state and maintain his control.
Chapter XVIII: How a prince should keep his word.
Machiavelli believes that a prince who keeps his word is always appreciated by others. But
historical evidences elaborate that princes can acquire success when they play crafty, shrewd
cunning, and tricky politics with others. Machiavelli mentions two ways of fighting with the
enemies: law and force. Laws, according to Machiavelli, are the natural qualities of men, and force
of the beast. For a prince to achieve success both these methods are necessary. In this way, he
has to incorporate both the qualities in his personality. In terms of bestial force, Machiavelli
suggests the prince to adopt the two ways: that of a fox and a lion. A fox is clever and faces the
wolves without any defence and a lion faces the gets rescued from traps without any defence. A
prince should know the skills of both a fox and a lion. He must know how to scare off his enemies
and how to ditch their traps.
A prince should never remain stuck to his promises, if the promises are going to put him at a
disadvantage. A prince can never rely on his princes because all men are deceitful. A prince is
supposed to know the skill of deception. However, a prince should display a virtuous aura that
hides his deceitful nature. Machiavelli gives the example of Pope Alexander VI, who was an expert
in this skill. A prince should appear as compassionate, kind, trustworthy, guileless, and pious in
front of his public. Machiavelli opines that in reality it is impossible as well as unnecessary to
possess all these virtues. But the appearance of and acting as a virtuous prince is enough to win
over the people. The belief of the public in the virtuous nature of the prince can let him to manage
the public the way he wants to. A prince is judged by the public on the basis of his personality
and appearance. People do not care whether the prince is using evil and deceitful methods to
accomplish some tasks. What they care more than anything else is the outer display of the
prince.
In this chapter Machiavelli explains how the appearance and reality is different in terms of the
nature of the princes. To appear good and virtuous is more important to win over the public than
actually being virtuous. But this appearance should not let the prince do and exercise evil
methods to achieve something. A prince is supposed to do good so far as it does not stop him
from succeeding. But at the same time he should be ready to employ cunning ways if it is
required.
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Chapter XIX: Of avoiding being despised and hated.

In this chapter Machiavelli talks about the qualities which a prince should avoid otherwise he
would appear hateful. One of the primary focuses of the prince should be to win over his people
for which he needs to avoid appearing hateful in any sense. Because of the lack of virtuous
nature, a prince can be criticized by his public but cannot be hated for that. He will be hated if he
does some anti-public tasks to infuriate the people. A prince is not supposed to confiscate the
property, women, or anything of the common people. A prince can be hated if his nature is
frivolous, cowardly, effeminate, and weak. He should exert his power by making his subjects
accept his decisions as final in each matter. If the public have high regards for the prince he can
secure himself and his state from any risk.
When it comes to the proper control and management of his state, Machiavelli advised the prince
to be careful about the internal conspiracies and troubles and external risks from other invaders
and kings. In order to safeguard his realm from the foreign invaders, a prince needs a powerful
army and equally powerful allies. With a powerful army a prince can also earn good friends and
allies. Internal troubles of the realm can be controlled if the prince is loved and liked by his
public. By devising the ways through which he can win over the trust of the people, a prince can
manage all the internal issues of his state. Conspiracies emerge when people are dissatisfied with
their ruler and want to replace him with someone better. So a prince should never let his subjects
be dissatisfied from his actions and ruling. No conspiracy can emerge if people love his prince.
Conspirators need public support to dethrone the prince. Without public support conspiracies die
as soon as they emerge. If people believe in the prince they will inform him instantly about the
conspiracies. In that way people can earn rewards from the prince.
A prince is supported by the entire government, the laws of his state, and his friends and allies. If
he is able to have the trust of the public, he can be invulnerable for the conspirators. Machiavelli
gives the example of 1445 execution of Annibale Bentivoglio, King of Bologna, by focusing how
public support helps the family to retain their rule despite the assassination of Annibale
Bentivoglio.
Those princes are wise who knows how to keep both the noble people and the common people on
their side. In order to give equal space to the conflicting parties of nobles and common people,
Machiavelli gives the example of France whose parliamentary system gives equal representation to
both groups. In the government of France, the parliament controls the ambition of the nobles and
advocates the rights of the people, without putting the decision in the hands of the king. In this
way the King is saved from the accusation of favouritism. In this way princes should use indirect
way to balance these different groups. If he himself gives the final decision some groups would be
antagonized by his decisions and start hating him.
Next Machiavelli gives a lengthy discussion of many Roman rulers, both good and bad, who were
executed. Although there were many great and good Roman kings who were greatly admired and
praised by their public, but there are cases where the emperors are assassinated by the men.
Such things happened because the kings were incompetent to manage the conflicting demands of
the soldiers who want ferocious leaders and the common people who were looking for peace-
making heroes and kings. Machiavelli gives the example of Marcus, Pertinax, and Alexander. All
these emperors were kind and just, and only Marcus out of all of them was able to escaped
assassination, and that also because he was a hereditary king and did not rely on the army for
his power. There were other kings like Commodus, Severus, Antoninus, and Maximinus who were
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very cruel and greedy, and out of them only Severus escaped assassination, because of his
cunningness and ruthlessness, and because of his splendid reputation.
Chapter XX: Of whether fortresses and many things that princes employ every day are
useful or harmful.
In this chapter, Machiavelli talks about the strategies used by princes to safeguard their realm
from internal insurrection like dividing the towns, disarming the populace, wooing disloyal
subjects, and building or destroying the fortresses. Although the effectiveness of these strategies
depends upon the individual conditions, Machiavelli suggests that a few generalizations can be
made.
Giving reference to the past, Machiavelli said that new princes have never forbidden their subjects
to have weapons. Allowing subjects to be armed brings loyalty and defence to the prince and his
rule. On the other hand, forbidding people to keep armed weapons can bring distrust and unrest
which further can bring civil troubles. Machiavelli advises a prince to disarm the subjects to
newly invaded and acquired states. Only his supporters should be allowed to be armed only to
maintain the order. A prince can allow his soldiers to occupy and control the newly annexed
states. But at the same time, the prince should also be careful not to make the newly annexed
state too weak to defend itself from the attacks of other invaders. At the same time, a prince
should also control the rival groups in those new states. Machiavelli gives the example of
Florentine policy in Pistoia, and accuses factionalism for most of Italy's problems, alluding that
divided cities cannot defend themselves and fall easily when foreign invaders invade, because
foreign invaders bribe one or other groups to enter the cities.
What makes princes and kings look great is their victory on the other princes and kings. In order
to enhance their reputation and stature, princes can cunningly overcome the weaker oppositions.
Machiavelli also advises the new princes to be careful about the conspirators in the newly
acquired states. But it does not mean that he may have suspicion on everyone. Sometimes,
Machiavelli says, those are the most trustworthy friends of the prince whose loyalty he doubts.
Machiavelli talks about how a prince should trust the subjects which are close to him. A prince
should be careful to trust upon those persons who are very close to him and whom he trusts
most. Rather he should give chances to those who are not on influential positions but try their
best to prove their trust to the prince.
Machiavelli sums up the chapter by pointing out how some of the princes have built fortresses to
secure themselves from rebellion. The new invaders destroy these fortresses and establish their
order and control. Only in specific conditions the fortresses are useful. If the prince is hated by
his people, the fortress cannot safeguard him from the wrath and hate of people. It is not that the
prince should not build forts and fortresses, but he should not rely upon them for the safety of
his realm.
Chapter XXI: How a prince should act to acquire esteem.
Machiavelli advises the prince how to earn prestigious reputation: through great campaigns and
noble examples. Machiavelli gives the examples of King Ferdinand of Spain for his great
enterprises like skilfully attacking Italy, France, Granada, and Africa. Because of these attacks,
Ferdinand was able to establish himself as a powerful emperor and nobody dared to attack. In
order to deal with the internal affairs of their states the princes should know how, when and why
to reward and punish their subjects.
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A prince can be noble if he punishes and rewards with proper justice. Princes, according to
Machiavelli, should display extraordinary abilities. In the same way, by supporting one side of the
conflict a prince can achieve prestigious reputation. If a prince chooses to remain neutral, he will
not be able to achieve the trust of any party. Neither the victors nor the losers can rely upon a
neutral prince and hence they would not give their support to him. A true friend of the prince will
always advise him to support a party with his army and all other means. By supporting one side
of a war or conflict, a prince can get a long term ally by supporting that group.
By supporting a stronger side, the prince can acquire the support of the stronger prince in any
subsequent missions. Even if the stronger side of a war loses, the prince still gets the advantage
of a stronger friendship. But if the prince himself is stronger from both sides of a war, he can
destroy the side which he does not like by supporting the opposite.
Machiavelli also advises the prince not to side with the party who is more powerful than him.
Because of that he will lose his independence to the powerful party. But sometimes
circumstances compel the prince to choose the powerful side. In that case, he should be careful
about how to manage and maintain his dependence on that party.
Machiavelli also suggests the prince to inspire his public to achieve excellence in their
occupations and to live a peaceful life. A prince should never become a hindrance in the
development of good commerce by confiscating the private property of the public or by putting
excessive tax upon the public. Machiavelli advises the prince to reward those persons who
contribute greatly to the overall development of his realm. Rewards can be in any form: like
annual festivals and paying personal visits to those individuals.
At the end of the chapter, Machiavelli talks about the importance of public display of prince’s
prosperity, charity, and prestigious reputation. This display can be done through entertaining
festivals, executions, addressing the public, or by other forms of appearing in front of the people.
Through these displays a prince can control the opinion of his people about himself. Rewarding
the trustworthy and punishing the disloyal subjects in front of the common people is also a good
way of spectacle. It can give the people something to talk about their prince’s justice.
8.4 Critical Analysis of the Prescribed Chapters of the Text:
Machiavelli wrote The Prince in order to prove his competence in the art of state and political
matters. Through this book he wishes to be offered a position in the newly founded regime of
Florence. He does not intend this book to be a piece of flattery to the princes in order to obtain
some personal favours; rather the book is an honest and just elaboration of his understanding of
state power and authority. The Prince becomes a solid evidence of Machiavelli’s unquestionable
skills in state and political craft. The newly founded regime in the city of Florence, at the time of
Machiavelli, was Medici which was based on a system of favours and patronage to acquire control
over the state institutions. Machiavelli criticizes such a regime in this work. Machiavelli talks
about the difficulties posed by the supporters of the early republic system of state power like the
aristocrats. Although the aristocrats have helped the new prince to rise to power, yet the prince
must always be careful with them because they are the real threat to the state power. Machiavelli
suggests a new prince to be aware of those noble persons (aristocrats) who are in his favour and
those who are against him. Machiavelli advises the prince to rely upon and win over the public
favour. On the other hand, the nobility and aristocracy should not be the only source upon which
a prince relies for his power. He criticizes the civil government and its practice of ruling through
the appointment of magistrates and other persons appointed at various posts. The power is
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distributed among these personals and the prince has to rely upon them and their favours to
rule. Such a system is not approved by Machiavelli. Another feature of civil government, which
Machiavelli criticizes severely, is the practice of granting favours and patronage. Services taken
and given due to these favours and patronage are not valid for a long time, according to
Machiavelli because it depends on gratitude which can easily be broken down. A government run
by such a system in which friends are acquired through favours, honours, and patronage cannot
hold power for long. Rather than using gratitude, Machiavelli advises the princes to use the
emotion of fear of punishment. In this manner his friends, magistrates, and other officials will
obey his orders without any defiance.
Further explaining what a prince should be an expert at, Machiavelli talks about the art of war. A
prince, according to Machiavelli, should be competent enough in the matter of war and the
strategies of war. This view opposes the Medican view that in order to maintain a peaceful state
the prince should disarm the people. For Machiavelli no regime can maintain its authority and
power over the whole state if not through the means of armed forces. Without an armed force, a
prince would not be able to achieve any greatness or to do any great deed. He expects the new
prince to be capable enough to liberate Italy from the barbarians. In order to be competent
enough, the prince should be free from the influence of and dependence upon the noble
aristocrats.
One of the major motives behind writing this treatise on political affairs for Machiavelli was to
prove to others as well to himself that he knows the art of state and political affairs more
competently than anybody else. Although he was dismissed from his post of the Secretary of
Florence Machiavelli proved that he knew how politics, state power, authority and regimes work.
So he wrote this book to explain the goals and means of political actions at his times. The concept
of the new prince which Machiavelli invoked in this work is also the new redeemer who can
redeem the state from the digressing civil government.
8.5 Summary:
The present script introduces you to the Renaissance thinker Machiavelli and his work The
Prince. After giving a brief introduction to the life, career, and achievements of Machiavelli; the
lesson provides a brief introduction to the book The Prince. The next section deals with the
detailed summary of the prescribed chapters of the book. This section is followed by a critical
commentary on Machiavelli’s views and theories as are presented in this book. Thus by the end of
this script, we hope you have been able to have a comprehensive understanding of Machiavelli
and his book The Prince.
Self-Assessment Questions

1. Machiavelli served as ………………………….. of the Florence Republic.

2. Machiavelli wrote The Prince during his (a) ……………….. in (b)……………… from Florence.
3. Machiavelli dedicated The Prince to ……………………………………………..
4. The Prince is a …………………………..book for the princes and rulers.
5. One of the major purposes of The Prince was (a)………………………………...and
(b)………………………..of Machiavelli’s family in relation to the monarchy at power.

8.6 Glossary:
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Aristocrats: Aristocrats are the upper class people of a society with good ranks and titles.
Aristocrats sometimes belong to the military class, at other times to religious circles, but mostly
to the upper class. They play a significant role in the state, government and power structure.
Discourse: Generally discourse is defined as written or spoken communication, the use of
language in speech or writing in order to produce meaning, and a serious discussion of a subject.
Florence: Florence is the city of Italy where Machiavelli was born and lived.
Humanism: Humanism is the philosophy advocated by Renaissance scholars. It considers human
beings rather than some divine powers to be the center of the world.
Medici or Medican: The House of Medici was an Italian upper class, noble and aristocratic family
and later on a political dynasty which ruled Florence during the fifteenth century.
Monarchy: That system of state power or government which is ruled by a king or queen.
Political Philosophy or Theory: Political philosophy or theory is the study of such topics as politics,
liberty, justice, rights, law, property and the execution of law by authority.
Renaissance: That period in the history of Europe which takes place between fourteenth to
seventeenth centuries. It means the rebirth and revival of classical learning. This learning is
reflected in the arts, literature, scientific and technical inventions.
Republic: Republic is that form of government in which the country, nation or state is considered
a public property and not the individual property of some rulers. The headship of this state is
acquired through democracy, oligarchy or autocracy.
8.7 References:
 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Niccolo-Machiavelli
 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/531158/the-prince-by-niccolo-
machiavelli/9780140449150/readers-guide/
8.8 Further Reading:
Najemy, John M. The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli. CUP, 2010.
Scott, John T. The Routledge Guidebook to Machiavelli’s The Prince. Routledge, 2016.
Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, 2001.

Answers to SAQ
1. Secretary
2. (a) exile (b) 1513
3. Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici
4. guide or conduct
5. (a) political connections (b) fortune

8.9 Model Questions:

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I. How is Machiavelli’s The Prince a proof of his competence in the art of state and political
affairs?
II. Machiavelli’s The Prince is a behaviour-manual or code-of-conduct for the princes.
Discuss with illustrations from the book.
III. Critically evaluate whether Machiavelli’s The Prince is a pro-prince (pro-state) or a pro-
public treatise? Discuss with arguments from the text.
IV. Is Machiavelli’s The Prince a book of the republicans as he himself was a republican?
Discuss with a critical evaluation of the text.
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Lesson No. 9

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY BY ERASMUS

Structure
9.0 Objectives
9.1 Introduction to Erasmus
9.2 Introduction to The Praise of Folly
9.3 Detailed Summary of the Prescribed Part of the Text
9.4 Critical Analysis of the Prescribed Part of the Text
9.5 Summary
9.6 Glossary
9.7 References
9.8 Further Readings
9.9 Model Questions
9.0 Objectives:
Reading this script will enable you to:
 Discuss the detailed summary of the prescribed part of the text The Praise of Folly.
 Critically examine Erasmus’ idea of folly in the context of this text.
 Understand Erasmus’ philosophical and social views
 Understand Satire as a Weapon.
9.1 Introduction to Erasmus:
Erasmus (1466-1536) is known as one of the well-known figures who belong to Renaissance
humanism. The followers of Humanism give more importance to the human potential, worth and
values than to the superstitious beliefs of medieval times. Erasmus wrote The Praise of Folly for
the amusement of Sir Thomas More –who was his close friend. This is also his most famous work.
Erasmus, one of the great writers and philosophers of sixteenth-century Europe, delineated the
personified character of Folly, who is considered the daughter of the great gods, Plutus and
Youth. In The Praise of Folly, Folly introduces herself with a grand speech, exhibiting her bold
confidence. Trained by the gods, Drunkenness and Ignorance, and advised by other gods, Self-
Love, Flattery, Laziness, Pleasure, and Wantonness; Folly lives a life of pleasure, privilege, joy and
indulgence. She has power over the minds of human beings who are meek and weak-willed, and
claims that they cannot procreate without her assistance. Erasmus, by personifying ‘folly has
presented a work in which there is a mixture of fantasy and satire. Folly is dressed as a joker,
who enjoys and celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and it criticizes
human pretensions, eccentricities, and weaknesses. It mocks at religious persons like theologians
and monks and eulogises the ‘folly’ of Christian religious piety. Erasmus’s wisdom, word-play and
wit were the reasons behind the success of the book.
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9.2 Introduction to The Praise of Folly:

The Praise of Folly is a satire written by Erasmus. He was a classical philosopher and a proponent
of the "humanist" movement in the 16th century. Erasmus was a reformist in the sense that he
criticized the practices of the Roman Catholic Church but he himself remained Catholic and also
argued with early Protestants. The Praise of Folly was written by Erasmus on his visit to England
to meet his friend Thomas More in 1509. More was executed on the command of Henry VIII for
defying him by not recognizing him as the head of the Church.
The Praise of Folly criticizes many Catholic rites, beliefs, and practices as well as the officers of
the Catholic Church like popes, priests, theologians and bishops. It was also considered as one of
the basic documents which influenced the arrival of Protestant Reformation, although Erasmus
himself was a Catholic believer.
Erasmus begins with a letter to his friend More in which he explained how, when, and why the
idea of writing on folly came to his mind. This letter serves as a preface to the book in which the
intention of the author is laid bare. The book is narrated by the character of Folly. She is the only
speaker to whom the readers listen throughout the book. Folly gives an elaborative discourse
claiming that she deserves praise. Her intended audience is the entire Europe.
Folly organizes her discourse and speech in several parts to make her arguments more valid. She
begins by introducing herself as well as by giving reasons for her speech. She claims that all the
people know her fairly well.
She states that she deserves divine stature or godly status because of her lineage. Belonging to a
great lineage, she claims her praise. Folly claims that any great action requires her impetus along
with that of others who are her companions. She seeks to acquire wisdom and prudence. Being
foolish, states Folly, is a state of mirth and joy. In this way, she tries to give a new meaning to the
state of foolishness. She asserts her greatness and supreme power among the Roman gods.
She continues to state that all the people of the world should follow her. Erasmus wants to
criticize the followers of Folly, those who practice folly in their lives. Here the satire holds its grip.
And among the followers of Folly are not common people but those considered intellectuals and
noble like Popes, monks, bishops, grammarians, educated and professional people. Her major
focus shifts to the officers of the Catholic Church because of their dishonesty and shrewdness.
She also claims that fools are fortunate people and that is how they achieve influential positions.
Folly also finds similarities between herself and Christianity. At the end of her speech, she does
not summarize or conclude but rather persuades the audience to keep on practicing their folly as
they have always done.
9.3 Detailed Summary of the Prescribed Part of the Text:
Renaissance (see in the glossary) also heralds an era in which the authority, power and rule of
Catholicism was weakened. It was because of the arrival of humanism, reformation, and the
printing press. Erasmus himself was not an anti-Catholic person, rather he believed in
Catholicism. But in his work The Praise of Folly he severely criticizes some of the practices of the
Catholic Church. This book influenced the public to raise their voice against and question the
Catholic tenets. In this book the narrator is none other than Folly who is personified as a Greek
goddess. Folly claims to make a fool of all the intellectual and educated people of the world.
Erasmus wrote this book for the amusement of his friend Thomas More, but the book became
more prominent and popular with its discussion of human folly.
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Folly says that all the noble and wise persons hire poets and orators to get them praised. Such
noble and wise people are praised for nothing because the poets who praise them are hired. Folly,
on the other hand, tries to make her worth remembered and praised as nobody has ever
thought about praising her despite the fact that all know about her and practice her in their lives.
At the same time, Folly also clarifies that she is not going to present a rhetoric in which she will
talk about who she is. She does not want to tell who she is because she expects the audience to
know that without her explaining it. She admits that her very presence defines her reality. She
also says that sometimes people mistake her for wisdom. Folly does not like the reality that
people dislike being called fools though the fact is that they are fools.
Speaking about the rhetoricians, Folly says that they believe themselves to hold the status of gods
because of the manner they can change the status of men with their rhetoric and orations. The
politics which the rhetoricians indulge in is also criticized by Folly. She believes that the
rhetoricians used old manuscripts to write down their orations and rhetoric. Using bygone
expressions and heavy sounding words and language makes them look perfect and intellectual.
When people are unable to understand their meanings, they believe the rhetoricians to be so
great that they cannot understand their writings.
Talking about her birth, she says that she was fathered by the great god Plutus (Riches), who is
the father of gods and men. She continues that she was born at the Fortunate Island which was a
type of utopian land. The goddess Folly was raised and brought up by other goddesses,
Drunkenness and Ignorance. Among her companions and friends she recounts the names of Self-
Love, Flattery, Oblivion, Laziness, Pleasure, Madness, Wantonness, Intemperance, and Dead
Sleep. By inference Folly is aligned with all undesirable and negative qualities. In fact foolishness
is a result of indulging in all these negative characteristics.
Trying to justify her status as a goddess, Folly explains how important she is for both gods and
men. She claims to be given the status of primary (alpha) gods because it is she from whom the
life springs. In this way, the very essence of life is considered foolishness due to which it keeps on
going and moving. It is foolishness on the part of men and women to get married and give birth to
children to raise them up and then to die. Folly questions her supreme status due to all these
things. She observes that her companions –Madness and Oblivion –helped her in all this. So
much so that Folly, along with her companion gods and goddesses, ruled not only over the realm
of men but gods as well. Erasmus is unsparing in his satire directed at Gods who too are victims
of Folly or foolishness.
Folly remarks that the life of human beings is filled with sadness, disappointments, and
displeasures. It is Folly and her companion Pleasure that give some relief to the nerved human
beings. But at the same time Folly and her companion themselves get pleasure and advantage by
serving human beings in this way. This service is reciprocal. According to Folly, a life without
pleasure cannot be considered worth living.
She proves her worth by giving the example of children. Everyone likes and loves the infants
because of their innocence and folly. Infancy is also the happiest, joyous, and most acceptable
part of the lives of human beings. As human beings grow young and then old, and as they try to
run away from folly, their lives become more boring and insipid.
Folly observes that too much of intellectualism and wisdom is always boring. People do not enjoy
the company of those children who mature before their age and the old people who have gathered
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a long span of wisdom and experience. Even the old men profess a liking for children more
because of their foolishness.
Preaching her discourse and advising her audience the benefits of her benevolence, Folly
contends that she can restore the lost, happy and joyous health of the people who have grown too
intellectual. She claims that she can grant solace to the disturbed people with her folly and they
can experience a perpetual state of youth. Why philosophers grow old too early? Because, says
Folly, of their continuous wrestling with their brains and spirit. As compared to philosophers, the
fools are always fat, plump, joyful and hilarious. Even some of the gods are revered for their folly
like Bacchus. And not only Bacchus but almost all gods have shown moments of their folly which
became important acts of their lives.
Folly believes that all the joys and fortunes on the Earth are credited by her. Folly claims that her
worth is equal to nature, because both of them are essential to life on Earth. Stoics defined
wisdom as the ruling of reason and Folly as the ruling of passions over the human mind, soul,
and body. Anger and lust are the two master passions which have ruled the major part of human
life. And hence Folly has played her role through these passions to govern the lives of human
beings. In order to quell the reason and logic of intellectuals, she gave each of them a wife –who
sweetened the roughness and toughness of the masculine reason with her folly. Folly is
represented through women because, as Folly said, their nature and behaviour is opposite to the
rationality of men. Even Plato is of the opinion that women are the followers of Folly.
But Folly defends women on the ground that being her followers they are more fortunate than
men. Women rule over the intellectual and tyrant with the help of their beauty. Intellectuals grow
old, weak, withered, and coarse because of their investment in reason, whereas women remain
plump, smooth, and soft throughout their lives. It is through the folly of women that the men get
some relief and delight from their dull lives. Women’s actions of self-adornment, although may
seem foolish, are the acts through which they get and give pleasure.
Taking about the pleasures of the world, Folly says that she gave birth to almost all the
entertainments like dice, drinking, dancing, and other jolly entertainment. For some people, the
source of pleasure and entertainment are just friends. Folly claims it is she who is at the
beginning and the end of friendship. In friendship, people overlook the vices of friends and adore
their virtues. This practice is itself foolish, according to Folly. Just like this, many people act in a
similar fashion as a person adores his mistress, a father his children; irrespective of their
shortcomings. Their folly is the reason that friends remain close to one another. Good and close
friendship is possible among ordinary people who are born with imperfections. Friendship among
wise men and princes is not possible because friendship is possible among people who are equal.
Folly claims that the lives of married couples will become dull if not for her. It is because of her
that there are pleasant follies and endearment among couples. She says that she is so essential
for life on Earth that without her it would have become impossible for people to tolerate their
governors or rulers, servants their masters, students their tutor, wife their husbands and vice
versa. It is the pinch of folly which sweetens their lives.
Folly, further, points out another significant shortcoming which almost all human beings enact –
Self-praise. Poets, artists, actors, painters, physicians, musicians, young, old, and all others are
filled with an awful feeling about themselves. Folly says that it is her companion Self-Love who
helps her in this regard, making people conscious and careful about their self-importance. This
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self-love has such deep roots among human beings that nobody is ashamed of his or her
weaknesses, limitations, and shortcomings.
Pointing out another great folly on the part of human beings, Folly refers to war. The war is such
an enterprise, Folly says, in which both the parties lose more than what they gain. Despite being
aware of this, they still wage wars over one another. Further Folly compares the intellectuals with
the soldiers. The soldiers, said, Folly are more courageous although not wise enough, than the
intellectuals. In times of war the courage is required by all.
Folly explains how war is not an area where the philosophers can do anything. She challenges
Plato’s belief that those states are the best which are ruled by a philosopher or with the
assistance of them. Folly opposes this belief by giving examples from history where the wise men
who advised the ruled were often behind the maladministration and chaos like Catoes, Bruti,
Casii, and Cicero. Rulers like Antoninus, who were great intellectuals and philosophers, were so
engrossed in their intellectualism that they completely ignored the public.
Folly further explains, with examples, how a wise man can spoil all of the pleasures of human life.
She advises the audience to take a wise man along with them to a dinner, dance, or theatre and
they will see how the wise person will show his contempt or distaste for all these pleasurable
activities. Folly advises the audience to let such wise people live their lives as they want. She tells
them how their lives are getting wasted because they are not aware of real life. Their focus is
abstract and an ideal version of life. Devoid of a real life scenario, says Folly, these wise persons
cannot help humanity in any sense. Folly advises wise men to go to some isolated places like
deserts and enjoy their wisdom over there.
Folly talks about the role which her companion Flattery plays in the world. It is flattery because of
which the people have been doing most of their tasks. To be flattered, in this sense, is the greatest
of weaknesses of human beings. If flattered properly, people can do anything, as Folly gives
examples from history. It was flattery because of which the Roman people withdrew their rebellion
to destroy the city. Folly says that the great philosophers’ ideas have never been implemented by
people. Folly claims that it is she who laid the foundation of great cities, “empire, authority,
religion, policy, and public actions” (Erasmus 12). But the rule of Folly and her companions have
always ruled over the consciousness of people, “neither is there anything in human life that is not
a kind of pastime of folly” (Erasmus 12). People practice folly and flattery in their daily lives rather
than the abstract ideas of great intellectuals.
Speaking about arts, Folly says that the intentions of artists which led them to create their
artistic works is nothing else than glory. It is to achieve glorified recognition that artists suffer the
ordeals of creating a work which is not an easy task. It is also an act of folly, claims Folly,
because artists try to take advantage of the folly of audience, readers, or spectators.
After praising herself for fortitude and industry, Folly pays attention to her prudence. She asks
who deserves to be prudent more than herself because she has a lot of experience if prudence
comes with experience. If asked Folly, prudence is considered the quality of a wise man than why
is that wise person unable to use it. Because of his modesty and distrust of his own views and
beliefs, answered Folly; whereas a fool has no sense of modesty and danger which can discourage
him from executing his prudence. In order to attempt something new, there are two obstacles
which have to be overcome, modesty and fear of any danger. Folly frees people from these
hindrances.
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Pointing out the limitations of prudence, Folly says that it should not be taken as a judgment of
things because the appearance of things and human beings is not their true essence. Everyone
and everything has two faces. The opposites actually encompass rather than being a rejection of
one another. But it does not mean that the double facets of the people and things should be made
visible. If done, so the whole art and playfulness of life will be spoiled. Folly gives the example of a
player / actor in a drama where he may be stripped off his impersonated character. This act will
spoil the whole drama and its fantasy.
If a wise man gives far reaching advice to the people, like telling a person whose father has died
that now he has got the full right on the property, he would be thought as insane. Such wisdom is
more foolish than anything else. Folly says that a prudent person knows that to be wiser than the
requirement of one’s times is a foolish act.
Folly claims that there is no other way to the much famed wisdom and much sought after
happiness except through folly. As all passions come from Folly and wisdom comes from reason,
Folly explains how reasonable wise persons are not human beings but a new species of gods who
are devoid of all emotional passions. Such wise persons are self-obsessed to such an extent that
they do not pay attention and care about anyone else, “the only man that is everything, but in his
own single judgment only; that cares not for the friendship of any man, being himself a friend to
no man” (Erasmus 14).
Folly mocks humanity by exclaiming, “And yet such a beast is this their perfect wise man”
(Erasmus 14). Nobody would like such a person to be the governor of the city, no army would like
such a general, no woman would like to have such a husband, no good-fellow would wish for
such a guest, and no servant would serve such a master. That is the fate of a wise person who is
ruled by his reason alone.
Even the wise men have always been unable to deal with the problems and issues of the world,
like “poverty, imprisonment, infamy, dishonesty, racks, snares, treachery, reproaches, actions,
deceits” (Erasmus 14). Wise men would prefer to die soon rather than solving these never-ending
problems. If all men become wise, said Folly, such would be the fate of humanity that no one
would like to live long. In order to make life endurable and liveable Folly plays her tricks, “But I. .
.do now and then so sprinkle pleasure with the hopes of good and sweeten men up in their
greatest misfortunes that they are not willing to leave this life” (Erasmus 14). What gift Folly gives
humanity is that it makes them appreciate life despite all the hardships and ordeal which life
offers. Even old people are heard to say that ‘life is sweet’ just because the pleasure provided by
Folly. It is good, Folly affirms, to live a foolish life if it is joyful than a wise life if it is unbearable.
Folly further explains how philosophers preach that to live an unwise life is miserable. In order to
defend her stance, Folly replies that there is nothing misfortunate about living an unwise life of
pleasures and passions because human beings are born with them. Just like a horse does not
need to know the strategies of war to participate and fight in a war, likewise all the human beings
need not be wise to live life in this world.
Folly mentions the people from classic ages who live their lives not by following any scientific
rules and norms but the simple rules of nature. Science, Folly claims, is the devil for mankind. To
understand the things which are beyond their reach and understanding has never been the
motive of the people of golden age. But the simplicity and ignorance of the golden age is destroyed
by modern arts and sciences.
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Out of all the sciences, Folly said, only those are esteemed which are closer to common sense i. e.
physicians. Divinity, natural sciences, astrology, and logics are looked down upon because of
their abstract ideas and concepts. Second to physicians are the law-drivers who manage almost
all the businesses of human beings. Folly said that those arts are useful and good which are close
to folly.
Folly advocates how those creatures live more flourishing lives that live according to the rules of
nature and do not exert any other knowledge. Giving the example of bees, Folly said that no
human construction of architecture and republic can match them. Their unity, mutual
cooperation and architectural skills are unmatched. Horses are considered intelligent creatures
and therefore close to human beings. But Folly said that their fate is just like men because they
are cut down to pieces along with their riders in the battlefield.
In order to support her view Folly uses Pythagoras and Homer’s belief that “no creature was more
miserable than man, for that all other creatures and content with those bounds which nature set
them, only man endeavours to exceed them” (Erasmus 16). According to Folly wisdom makes men
more miserable and folly more cheerful, “I think nothing more happy than that generation of men
we commonly call fools, idiots, lack-wits, and dolts” (Erasmus 16). Why they are happy is that
because they are neither afraid of death, fabled ghosts, spirits, nor goblins. They do not have any
evil spirit which may torment them. They don’t have any fear and hope for the future. Folly said
that they are free from all the restrictions imposed on life, “They are neither modest, nor fearful,
nor ambitious, nor envious, nor love they any man” (Erasmus 16).
She compares such happy fools to the wise men and asks whether they enjoy such relaxations as
the fools do. Fools, said Folly, are blessed by Nature with plainness, simplicity, honesty, and
truthfulness. Because of their honesty and truthfulness, they are feared by princes and kings
because fools never fear to speak. Princes and kings wish to listen pleasant praises rather than
the harsh truth. But fools are free enough to speak and listen to the truth. Fools have this
competence to turn serious truths into comical jets.
Folly said that even after their death the fools are happy with their residence in the Elysian field.
As compared to the fools, Folly describes wise man as the, “one that had spent his childhood and
youth in learning the sciences and lost the sweetest part of his life in watching, cares, studies,
and for the remaining part of it never so much as tasted the least of pleasure” (Erasmus 17). In
this way, Folly believes that, the life of a fool is flourishing whereas that of a wise person is
completely barren.
Folly also challenges Stoics’ belief that nothing is worse and miserable than madness. Folly, on
the other hand, believes that folly is the next level of madness. Madness or folly does not mean
anything else except to be out of one’s wits. Madness and folly, affirms Folly, are not miserable
because there are different types of madness. The one is that where the madness is motivated by
revenge and fury. The other type is the one influenced and affected by folly. If madness would
have been miserable in all its forms, then Horace and Virgil would never have used it in their
works.
According to Folly who should be considered mad is the person who is wrong in his judgment.
Other types of madness are trivial because they are pleasurable. Folly claims that she has never
seen a person who is wise for each moment of his life because there are occasions when the
wisest men show folly.
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Folly talks about other types of madness where people take pleasure out of the yells of the beasts
which they hunt. Such is the madness of people who consider themselves courageous. Then there
is the madness of architects who try to turn square into round and then back to square just to
prove their architectural skills. And then there is the madness of those thinkers and artists who
search for the fifth essence of things. They work so hard and passionately in this search that they
do not care about the physical and intellectual problems and pains they suffer. Not only are they
themselves involved in this search rather they encouraged others as well. Despite all their efforts
when they are unable to produce a result they start believing the notion that ‘In great things the
very attempt is enough’ and complain that life is so short to complete such great tasks.
Talking about the priests and pardoners, and other religious personals, Folly criticizes them for
inventing miraculous stories in which there is no element of truth. She said that people believe
such metaphysical stories more than the real ones. Just like the miraculous stories, there are
some superstitious beliefs serving the madness of people. Ridiculing the practices of pardoners,
Folly mocked their practices of foretelling the people whether they will go to hell or heaven and
how much time will they spend in hell. Further she talks about those religious persons who
believe in magic and charms and who claim to bestow wealth, power, beauty, pleasure, honour,
long life and many other gifts with the power of their magic.
Continuously criticizing the practices of Church especially the pardoners’ work, Folly talks about
the merchants, judges, and soldiers who perform a lot of wrongdoings in their lives and seek to
get rid of their sins by paying a small amount of money to the church. This is madness, said
Folly, because such practices are not profitable to anyone except the church. Another folly is
displayed by the daily church goers who recite the psalms in order to achieve happiness. Folly
said that “And these are so foolish that I am half ashamed of them myself, and yet they are
approved, and that not only by the common people but even the professors of religion” (Erasmus
19). Each country and region has its particular saint with special powers and gifts and with
particular ways of worshipping that saint. Folly mocks this practice in these lines, “As, one is
good for the toothache; another for groaning women; a third, for stolen goods; a fourth, for
making a voyage prosperous; and a fifth, to cure sheep of the rot; and so of the rest, for it would
be too tedious to run over all” (Erasmus 19).
After talking about these saints, Folly pays attention to those people who worship them. What do
people wish for while worshipping these saints is something which belongs to the realm of folly?
People worship these saints for so trivial and small concerns like saving them from shipwreck,
dual fight, death sentence, imprisonment, fever, poison, and any such harm. Folly said that after
thanking the saints for this, “but no one gives thanks for his recovery from folly; so sweet a thing
it is not to be wise, that on the contrary men rather pray against anything than folly” (Erasmus
19).
Referring to the self-love among people in terms of their ancestral names and lines, Folly mocks
such people for this false pride. People try to live happy lives because of the fact that they belong
to some ancient and prestigious family line. They start having this sense of greatness and
godliness. Self-love is such a great folly that it makes people believe what they are not. Due to
self-love baboons start believing that they are clever and ugly believe themselves to be handsome,
“But of all the madness that’s the most pleasant when a man, seeing another anyway excellent in
what he pretends to himself, makes his boasts of it as confidently as if it were his own” (Erasmus
20).
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Artists are equally engrossed in this sense of self-love, according to Folly. Poets, orators, fiddlers,
and players all are mad and foolish because of their foolish opinions and beliefs which they never
want to part with. Folly said, “the more foolish anything is, the more ‘tis admired” (Erasmus 20).
Foolish men do not care about true knowledge because a search of true knowledge will cost them
everything, their status, pride, reputation, and admiration.
Self-love is not only a foolish property of particular individuals but nations, cities, and regions as
well. Like English people pride themselves over their love of music, beauty and feasting. Scots are
proud of their nobility, alliance to the crown, and logicality. French think of themselves as the
only well-bred nation. The Italians think themselves to the best masters of eloquence. The Greeks
are proud in their scientific knowledge. Turks believe themselves to be the only true religious
people. The Germans feel pride in their physical tallness and perfection in magic.
In this way Folly, up to this part, has given an elaborative discourse on her origin and growth
from antiquity to the present. She criticizes the intellectualism of humanity and especially the
religious superstitious belief system. She also compares the barren life of intellectuals to the
flourishing life of those who are considered fools. Then she talks about different types of madness
to which almost all of humanity is victim. Self-love is at the root of most of the madness in the
world, according to Folly.
9.4 Critical Analysis of the Prescribed Part of the Text:
Folly as is delineated and personified by Erasmus in his classic work The Praise of Folly is that
quality of human beings without which life is almost impossible. Folly asserts herself to be the
greatest of the well-wishers of human beings. This personified Folly is the originator of all
foolishness. Erasmus gives Folly the status of a goddess who does not rule the mundane world of
mortals but that of the immortal world of gods as well. Folly not only expresses her thoughts but
by implications expresses the thoughts of Erasmus. Through the persona of Folly, Erasmus
expresses his deep regard and polemical views on the wrongdoings of Catholic Church personnel.
His dissatisfaction over the stupidity of religious officers, intellectuals, and common people is
expressed throughout this text with the help of the character of Folly. The ironical presentation
and praise of the folly of common as well as special people is one of the salient features of the
text. There are three major points to which Erasmus has referred throughout the speech of Folly:
evil and superstitious practices of Church officers, disregard for the true Christian philosophy,
and corruption of popery. Erasmus believes that the misinterpretation of the Bible is one of the
main causes behind the superstitious nature of people. If a true and exact interpretation of the
Holy Scripture is provided to the people, there will be no possibility of corruption among
theologians.
Not only the message but the very style and structure of the book play an important role in the
overall meaning. As a first person narration, the book is narrated from the perspective of Folly
who is speaking to a large audience. Behind this cover, Erasmus gives expression to his deep
regard for humanity. Criticizing the conventions of Catholic Church as well as the European
societies, Erasmus through Folly uncovers the foolishness and madness of the European people.
In order to criticize the Roman Church Erasmus uses satire to point out his views in an amusing
way.
Another important feature of the book is its reference to the ancient philosophers, thinkers, and
scholars. This practice encourages education, culture, and past history. Being a devotee of
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Humanism, Erasmus exploits this reference technique to express his great respect and regard for
ancient scholars. Although Erasmus advocates education and intellectualism, yet he is not in
favour of bogus education and hollow intellectualism. Through Folly he criticizes those thinkers
who are too absorbed in their thinking and do not pay any attention to reality. In this way, there
are some important issues raised by Erasmus in this book: education, intellectualism,
humanism, and Catholic Church and its malpractices.
Self-Assessment Questions
1. The first name of Erasmus is ………..
2. Erasmus dedicated this book to his friend ………………
3. Erasmus delineated a personified character of ……… In The Praise of Folly.
4. The Praise of Folly is a narrative from the perspective of Folly which makes it a
……….narrative.
5. The Praise of Folly is a ……………...on the practices of Catholic Church.
9.5 Summary:
The present chapter provides a detailed description and analysis of Erasmus’s work The Praise of
Folly. Introduction to Erasmus makes you understand what type of thinker Erasmus was. The
next section introduces you to the central ideas of the text The Praise of Folly. Erasmus’s main
objective, in the text, is to criticize the malpractices of Catholic Church. The next section provides
a detailed summary of the prescribed part of the text beginning with Folly’s discussion about her
origin to its manifestation in the world. A critical note on the text is provided at the end.
9.6 Glossary :
Catholicism: Catholicism is the traditional and orthodox form of Christianity which follows the
conventions laid by Pope. Catholic Church believes in the supreme authority of Pope. This
religious branch of Christianity follows a strict structure and theology. Its centre is Rome (Italy).
Protestantism: Protestantism is that branch of Christianity which originates after the Reformation
in the sixteenth century. Protestants reject the supremacy of the Pope and Catholic Church. They
do not believe in the religious superstitions advocated by Catholicism. Its centre is England.
Renaissance: Renaissance is an important period in the history of Europe. It takes place in the
fourteenth to seventeenth century. Renaissance means rebirth and revival of classical learning.
Satire: Satire is that form of writing which ridicules and mocks the failure and wrongdoings of
individuals, institutions, and societies. Sometimes satires are amusing, at other times they are
harsh. Horace and Juvenal are known for their satire.

Answers to the SAQ:

1. Desiderius
2. Sir Thomas More
3. Folly
4. First-person
5. Satire
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9.7 References
 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erasmus/
 https://www.iep.utm.edu/erasmus/
 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erasmus-Dutch-humanist
 https://www.gradesaver.com/praise-of-folly/study-guide/summary
9.8 Further Readings
Huizinga, Johan. Erasmus and the Age of Reformation. 1984.
Phillips, Margaret Mann. Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance.
Rummel, Erika. Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus. 2008.
9.9 Model Questions
 Erasmus’s work The Praise of Folly is a satirical commentary on the religious circles of
Catholicism. Critically discuss with illustrations from the text?
 The Praise of Folly is a first person narrative, narrated by Folly. Discuss how Erasmus has
delineated the character of Folly in this text?
 Discuss how the personified character of Folly gives an eloquent discourse on the idea and
practice of folly?

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Lesson No. 10

“NEOCLASSICISM” BY THOMAS KAMINSKI

Structure
10.0 Objectives
10.1 Introduction
10.2 About the Author
10.3 Summary and Analysis of the text
10.4 Summary
10.5 Glossary
10.6 References
10.7 Further Reading
10.8 Model Questions
10.0 Objectives
After reading this lesson, you will be able to:
 discuss various features of neoclassicism
 elaborate Kaminski’s take on neoclassicism
 develop a critical analysis of genres popular in the neoclassical age
 write a critical analysis of the text
10.1 Introduction
In this lesson, you are going to study about Kaminski’s essay on Neoclassicism. Various
arguments and concepts by the writer are simplified to enhance your understanding. Please read
the prescribed essay before reading this lesson and make use of a dictionary to understand the
words according to the context.
In this essay Kaminski enlists the salient features of neoclassicism and also contests and sheds
some light on different accounts of establishing neoclassicism as a refined literature. He further
discusses various genres practiced in this age. The essay also contains a discussion on other
major literary movements followed by neoclassicism such as the Enlightenment.
10.2 About the Author
Thomas Kaminski teaches in the Department of English at Loyola University in Chicago. He is the
author of The Early Career of Samuel Johnson (New York, 1987). He has written a number of
articles on the development of English neoclassicism. The essay “Neoclassicism” is published in A
Companion to the Classical Tradition (USA, 2007) edited by Craig W. Kallendorf.
10.3 Summary and Analysis of “Neoclassicism”
10.3.1.Neoclassicism: From Crudity to Refinement
The period that spans the years 1660-1800 is called the neoclassical period. The literary writers
of this period were not simply “backward-looking” trying to imitate the classical works, in fact,
they wanted to create the most compelling works in an up to date style, argues Kaminski.
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Although he finds this idea of “renovating” forms of classical texts and calling them highly
sophisticated works, contradictory or paradoxical yet he says:
The writers of the age consciously adopted the genres and conventions of ancient literature
and applied ideas and techniques derived from the classics to their own literary practice
(57).
He also adds that these styles were not a blind copying of the classic texts but only those styles
were picked which were popular and famous among the readers of those times.
He asserts that neoclassical style is “true modern style.”
Kaminski provides three versions of the story of neoclassicism i.e. how it came into existence.
According to the first version, the roots of neoclassicism in England go back to early seventeenth
century France. Francois de Malherbe, a French writer, was the major literary figure that
influenced the reforms in French poetry. Although there was nothing “classical” about the reforms
carried out by him in the poetic techniques but with the passage of time, these changes were
equated with the classic poetic style introduced by Vergil and Horace in the Augustus age. In the
second account, Kaminski refers to Nicolas Boileau’s L’Art poe`tique (The Art of Poetry). He writes
that Villon and Marot had established basic verse forms and Ronsard tried to bring reforms to
them but failed. Later, Malherbe brought refinement to the French verse. In the third account,
Dryden in Defence of the Epilogue to the Second Part of the Conquest Granada, evaluates writings
and works of the writers of the previous age including Shakespeare and Ben Johnson and claims
that they were brilliant but crude much like Horace’s Plautus. He argues that the new age
demands a new literature which suits its greater refinement. It can be observed that in all the
three versions, the journey from classics to neoclassic is seen as a change from crudity to
refinement. In Kaminski’s words:
In all three versions of this story, literary progress is directly tied to a certain kind of societal
progress, a move away from the crudity of earlier times and towards refinement and sophistication.
(58)
Kaminski further points out that it was Charles II who brought this culture of sophistication from
France to England. The obsession for sophistication had been popular in France in the
seventeenth century in the aristocratic circles. Charles II had spent Interregnum (see glossary) in
France and after coming back to the throne brought back the prejudices that characterized
French society. Each part of English society was coloured by this new elegance emulated from
their French neighbours. Not only the courts but also the literary landscape was affected by this
change. The literary writers of the times wrote for flattering the king to the extent that Charles
was called the new Augustus (see glossary).
This literature, born out of the interplay of aesthetics and social forces, was called “polite letters”
as it was a polished form of writing that appealed to a cultured and discriminating audience.
10.3.2 The Rules of Art (Imitation, Nature, Art, Sublime, Reason, Decorum)
In the seventeenth century French authors reached a consensus about true classic style.
For that the principles were chiefly drawn from Aristotle, Horace and Malherbe according to
Kaminski. He observes, “the new style was one of restraint and careful craftsmanship; it relied on
imagination, but kept it under tight rein. Exuberance was its enemy” (58). As the statement by
Kaminski indicates, “restraint” “careful craftsmanship” and reason; not imagination are the key
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elements of neoclassical literature. M. A. R. Habib also defines reason as a primary element of

neoclassical literary composition. He defines neoclassical art “as a rational and rule bound
process, requiring a great deal of craft, labour, and study” (273).
Kaminski enlists five major elements of neo-- classical doctrine: 1. Imitation was the basis for
artistic creation. 2. Rules existed to guide the artist. 3. Genius must submit to the yoke of
art. 4. “Propriety” was required in all aspects of work. 5. Art must teach as well as delight.
Kaminski points out that one can see reason at work in all the five principles. Art is not
allowed to be a powerful overflow of emotions but as something created with careful imitation to
teach its readers. But he also admits that these principles encourage creativity as they were
formed in very subtle ways. Kaminski argues that the neoclassical idea of literary composition
does not depend on merely mindless imitation; the classical textual forms were followed in such a
way that would provide creative stimulation and necessary pattern to an artist or writer. He
defines the idea of imitation as a “literary short cut, a means of exploiting the achievements of
one’s predecessors and engaging one’s readers on familiar terrain.”
In one sense, the notion of imitation meant imitation of classical works especially Homer and
Vergil. Kaminski argues that the artistic culture of Romans, on which most of the French critics
based a majority of their judgments, was conservative. They believed that the classic literary
tradition had also discovered answers to almost all the questions related to human nature and
the universe. So it is important for the poet to learn from his predecessors. The best way to record
nature is to imitate existing works. Alexander Pope captures this idea in his poem:
When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t' outlast immortal Rome design'd,
Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law,
And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw:
But when t' examine ev'ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinc'd, amaz'd, he checks the bold design,
And rules as strict his labour'd work confine,
As if the Stagirite o'erlook'd each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; (Essay on Criticism 130-139)
In this way, to copy nature is to copy the classical or ancient authors. One reason to shift towards
the classical writers is also related to the idea of nature. The neoclassical writers generally
believed that ancients such as Homer and Vergil had already discovered the fundamental laws of
nature. That is why the modern writers could best describe the human nature by following their
discoveries and medium of expression. “Invention was allowed, but only as a modification of past
models, not in the form of a rupture (Habib 274).
Aristotle in Poetics says that art imitates nature. The idea of nature is important to be
discussed here as it is related to the concept of imitation. But the word nature in this context
does not indicate nature the way it is understood and used by Romantic poets. Rather it means
imitation of an external world and primarily of human action according to neoclassical writers.
This complex concept of nature had a number of interpretations. It referred to the harmonious
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and hierarchical order of the universe and also to various social and political hierarchies within
the world. In this vast scheme of nature everything has its proper place. The concept also referred
to human nature: to what was central, timeless, and universal in human experience. In the
context of human nature, the word nature referred to moral behaviour, and actions that were
permitted in the 18th century, excluding “unnatural actions”. For instance, the behaviour of Lady
Macbeth’s murderous and cunning behaviour was called unnatural by Shakespeare.
The idea of imitation leads us to another key element of neoclassical literary tradition and
that is ‘rules of art.’ According to Kaminski the rules followed by neoclassical writers were little
more than successful practices of ancient writers. As mentioned earlier, the rules were so subtly
designed as to avoid blind imitation of the classics. Pope describes it as “nature methodiz’d”. So
these rules are “the practical experience reduced to orderly system” (59). While discussing rules of
art, Kaminski discusses the term art, which he thinks had a narrower meaning in neoclassical
times. Art was considered a series of skills that could be taught and only that person will be
called an artist who had mastered those techniques. For neoclassical writers, individual genius to
create literary works did not matter. Even a genius had to be trained to be accepted by
sophisticated taste: “Art without genius was sterile, but genius without art was crude” (59). In
short, genius could be made or fine-tuned by teaching rules of art.
Another important argument and also the rule of neoclassical art was that the art must
instruct as well delight. Art, for them, was not an end in itself. The purpose of a work of art is a
crucial idea. There are two ways to understand the purpose of art in the context of neoclassical
literature: critic oriented and reader oriented. A work of art was accepted as worth reading if it
followed all the rules defined by the neoclassical critics. As discussed earlier neoclassical writers
believed in natural and moral tendencies in human nature and not unnatural ones. Hence one
purpose of neoclassical literature was to depict sane and moral characters and teaching moral
codes through them. The writers of the age wrote to condemn and criticize the ills of the society of
their times. That is why satire becomes one of the most popular genres of the age.
The rules were not the only idea that dominated the neoclassical literature. A writer could
reject traditional practices if he found himself too confined by them. But his work would be
recognized only if it was accepted by the ‘men of taste’ or the sophisticated elite class. If it was
recognized and accepted by them, it might add to the useful artistic knowledge. Kaminski referred
to Pope to elaborate this idea, who says, a daring poet might “snatch a grace beyond the reach of
art” (60). Similarly many critics of the age argued that there was something mysterious about the
way a work of art affected the reader. A French neoclassical critic Dominique Bouhours argues
that a literary work affects its readers in a mysterious way. He captured this quality of a work of
art in his idea je ne saiz quoi which means there is something inexpressible in an art work,
something one doesn’t know “I know not what.” A writer could challenge and disrupt the rules and
a literary piece could not be entirely known are the two ideas which indicate that rules of art were
not an all pervasive idea. Some critics still believed that something “inexpressible” or unknown still
remains to be explored.
In an age known and defined by the rules of art, a concept called sublime was introduced which
challenged and disrupted the way a work of art was defined. Boileau translated Longinus’s
treatise On the Sublime. He introduced the idea of “sublime” which can be achieved through
rhetorical techniques and in this way is related to the tradition of art. The sublime is defined as a
marvellous and extraordinary quality of a work that ravishes, lifts and transports the reader. This
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idea revolutionized the way a work of art was understood in this age because sublime could not
be taught to a writer. Such ideas made way for genius and creativity in this age.
Kaminski further argues that neoclassical writers were suspicious of imagination. It was the age
of Descartes where reason had become the only source of truth and beauty. The reverence for
rules and careful craftsmanship are directly related to the tendency towards rationalism. Not
imagination but judgment was considered the most important attribute of a writer. For
neoclassical writers reason did not oppose the creative mind but rather supported it. In
Kaminski’s words:
This was the element of restraint, the faculty that pruned away all excesses and produced a finished
work of art. The term “judgment” is sufficiently general to allow a variety of elements in its
composition, including even less concrete notion of “taste,” but underlying it is always a hint of
reason. (60)
Propriety or decorum is another element discussed by Kaminski. He writes that the idea of
decorum was exalted to the highest level of importance. According to René Rapin (1621–1687) a
French Jesuit and writer, decorum was the essential principle of literary creation and without it
all the other rules were false. According to Kaminski this term implied a vague but universal
principle of fitness. That is to say, how can one decide to maintain decorum in a literary piece;
what are the parameters for this task and is it about the form or content. Such criteria indicate
the vagueness of the term decorum. Kaminski further argues that propriety had a social
character which means the form and subject both should be designed according to the taste of
the intended audience. If a neoclassical writer is writing a satire he can imitate the tone and
manner of Juvenal but the content should be chosen according to the times in which it is being
written. In case of neoclassical literature, it was written mostly for the taste of aristocratic
Christian audience so the writers were advised to avoid vulgarity. The nymphomaniacs and
homosexuals which were subjects of Juvenal’s poems could not be discussed in the neoclassical
times. In this way, decorum overruled the utility of imitation.
Art for life’s sake was the idea that dominated the neoclassical literary landscape. Moreover the
idea of social decorum was closely associated with the idea of art for moral instruction. So it came
to be known as one of the basic rules of neoclassical literature; to instruct as well as delight. The
French critics who formulated the modern theory agreed that “instruction was necessary; after all,
the poet lived in society and had an obligation to it” (qtd in Kaminski 61). It was a general belief of the
neoclassical critics like Samuel Johnson that art must instruct because mere delight may encourage
sin.
These rules and principles provided a general context by which poets and critics judged and
thought about literary works. Roman authors provided the most important models for imitation
and they were held in high esteem. Because of this reason satire became a popular genre as it
had a direct link to the Roman tradition. But other discursive forms like poetic essays and
epistles also flourished well. The English and French writers of this age also developed verse
forms suitable for such topics. For instance, French poets followed Malherbe and developed
“Alexandrine” couplet suitable for discursive verse. In England, on the other hand, “heroic
couplet” dominated poetry for the next century.
10.3.3 Popular Genres of Neoclassical Age
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In this section Kaminski provides a detailed description of how neoclassical authors developed
certain genres and verse forms and made them their own.
10.3.4 Imitation and Satire
French and English satirists were influenced by the writing of Boileau. He followed models of
Horace and Juvenal but with great ingenuity (see glossary) as Kaminski puts it. “Boileau would
take an idea or situation from Roman satire and develop in terms of his own contemporary world”
(61). Some of Boileau’s poems are direct translations from Juvenal but he makes them as his own
by adding rich and often comic contemporary details of Paris. In his most imaginative satires, he
totally transforms the source. With the passage of time, his imitations went beyond satire and he
wrote epistles inspired by Horace.
In England, Boileau’s most skilful disciple was Alexander Pope. He wrote Imitations of Horace
which is a brilliant reimaging of Horatian material. Like Boileau, Pope imitates Horace’s satires
and epistles but adds a contemporary touch to them. “Like Boileau he had created his own
persona, an urbane English gentleman poet.” He filters Horace’s reflection with a new neoclassical
sensibility. In this way “everything” says Kaminski “is and is not Horace.” Pope’s are reminiscent
not only of Horace but also of Juvenal. But it can be said that like Boileau Pope had created a
voice of his own; he had the capacity to laugh, sneer or rail at the follies of his age.
Kaminski also discusses Johnson’s imitations of Juvenal’s third and Tenth satires. Like Juvenal
in London one can find his contempt for the corrupt metropolis. But Johnson did not practice
biting satire; rather his genius lay in capturing moral reflections. His Vanity of Human Wishes is
a deep reworking of Juvenal’s reflections on human folly. He maintains the basic structure of the
poem but takes control over the tone of the poem.
10.3.5 Epic and Mock Epic
In an age which revered Homer and Vergil, the epic lacked vitality and led to decline. Although
neither Pope nor Dryden wrote any epic but they paid their homage through translations of
Aeneid and Iliad. Kaminski argues that translation of classical texts was not an easy job for these
writers. There were a number of problems that these writers faced. Through translation one can
reproduce the meaning but not the genius of the original work. If a poem is translated into prose,
a writer sacrifices the ‘artistry’ of the poetry as it changes the nature of the original work. That is
why; Dryden in his translation of Aeneid minutely examined Vergil’s meaning through a large
number of comments. He used the diction of English epic borrowed from Spencer and Milton and
deployed that language in heroic couplet. In doing so Dryden has distorted the original work but
has made Aeneid a great English poem. In his translation of Iliad Pope followed Dryden. It invited
mixed reviews; Samuel Johnson in Lives of English Poets called it “a poetical wonder…a
performance which no age or nation can pretend to equal. Richard Bentley says on the other
hand, it is “a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” Both the critics are right
says Kaminski because by doing so Pope had created a new poem, a new work not better but
different from the original.
Despite these translations it can be said that it was an age for mock epic such as Dryden’s Mac
Flecknoe, Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Samuel Garth’s The Dispensary. In these poems,
language of heroic verse was used to ridicule the actions of recognizable contemporaries.
But the most memorable and significant mock heroic poem is Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. The
poem is based on a real incident where a nobleman cut a lock of hair from a young lady’s head.
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The poem is known for its elegance and subtlety. Pope retells the incident with ironic humor and
serious reflections on the relations between the sexes. The poem’s actual genius lies in its echoes
of ancient epic which is presented in a new context. It attracts the reader to muse on the
transformation that this genre has experienced.
10.3.6 The Ode
The Ode is usually a lyric poem of moderate length. It deals with a serious subject in an elevated
style. It usually has an elaborate stanza pattern. In the 17th century, Abraham Cowley published
his collection of Pindarique Odes (1656) imitating Pindar’s grand manner (see glossary). Horace
had warned that no poet can match Pindar’s grand style but Cowley had dared to do so. For him,
style was an end in itself; “long digressions, bold figures, and irregular meters” were used to
mimic the poetic fury of Pindar. According to Kaminski, the new Pindaric ode was “the artificial
expression of overpowering feeling” (64).
This genre found expression in the neoclassical age. It became a medium for “poetically
appropriate articulation” of “strong passions” such as occasions of death of literary figures or for
writing about music. Almost all the important poets of the age tried their hand at writing odes.
Dryden saved this genre for writing about strong emotions like death of a young poet and painter,
Anne Killigrew. Kaminski argues that the odes seem artificial and stiff to modern readers as their
diction is conventional and even the emotions expressed through them seem contrived.
10.3.7 The Drama and Its Criticism
Kaminski argues that drama invited most of the criticism in the neoclassical age. One can expect
this from an age which revered rules more than individual genius. The rules for writing drama
were derived from the ancient theory of drama given by Aristotle in Poetics. One of the most
important rules of this theory is the unity of time, place and action. Secondly, the character
should be typical of their class, age and gender as they are not depicting the individuals but their
types in society. These rules put artistic and social pressure on the writers of the age. It was
believed and argued that rules provide “spur” to the genius of an artist. If a writer neglected these
rules, he exposed himself to scathing criticism; his work was judged on this basis of rules as
there was no other criteria to judge a literary work.
The most highlighted controversy of the neoclassical age was the dispute over Shakespeare’s
plays. Shakespeare paid no heed to the rules or unities while writing his plays. Even his
characters defied many of the guidelines set by neoclassical critics. “To many critics of the late
seventeenth century, such looseness signalled a lack of art” writes Kaminski (65). One of the most
influential critics of the age, Thomas Rymer denied Shakespeare’s plays any merit. His plays were
judged to such an extent that they were rewritten by contemporary playwrights.
Samuel Johnson was one critic of the neoclassical times who believed and proved that
Shakespeare was the greatest dramatist. In his “Preface to Shakespeare” he provides a defence to
his plays. By referring to Aristotle’s idea that art is an imitation of nature, he says that
Shakespeare is above all a poet of nature; “the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror
of manners and of life.” He violates the rules triumphantly, dismisses the intermediaries of art
and goes directly to nature.
Johnson also responds to the criticism of Shakespeare’s characters that they are not the types of
their social class. It was said that his kings do not act like kings always and so are his other
characters. Johnson replies by saying that “Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over
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nature…His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men.” That is to say, every
place consists of men of all dispositions and so are his characters.
He also responds to the critics who blamed Shakespeare of breaking the “unities”. He said that
the audience is always aware that they are watching a play on a stage. They are always in their
senses, so any disruption of “unities” cannot break their illusion of reality. He settles this debate
by addressing the common sense of the spectators.
10.3.8 The Politics of Augustanism
Kaminski further observes that Augustus is a controversial figure because poets and historians
have presented him as they wished to “make” of him. For some historians, he was a king who
took care of the arms and arts and for others he was just a tyrant who just thought about
expanding his territories through ruthless wars. He was either portrayed as an enlightened
monarch or pitiless tyrant.
He argues that King Augustus remained a central agenda of neoclassical writers. The writers in
search of patronage could employ the Augustus myth in their approach to those in power. For
instance, to get advantage from the king they would present him as Augustus the benevolent and
enlightened king responsible for flourishing arts and literature during his reign. And if denied
patronage of the court, the same writers would call him Augustus the tyrant; “bewail the times in
which no Maecenas was to be found” (66).
Alexander Pope made imaginative use of the idea of the Augustus age in his satirical imitation of
Horace’s epistle to Augustus in 1730s. Pope was against the policies of the king and the court,
English freedom was undermined and compromised by the corrupt administration. The court of
the king George discriminated with the writers on the basis of their affiliations with the officials
and true merit was not recognized. In his epistle to Augustus, Horace has praised his king for his
victories, his reformation of the nation’s morals, and his support of the arts. But Pope quite
ironically said that none of the above were merits of king George. Kaminski says that
Pope’s poem, though, is neither a naïve evocation of the Augustan myth, nor a simple attack on
the monarch he despised. It is a serious engagement with thoughts on the place of poetry in the
modern world. It remains a political poem, but its deepest concerns are social; and the figure at
the centre is neither George nor Augustus, but Horace.
10.3.9 Ancient versus Moderns
The period from the 17th to the 18th century is considered the period of great intellectual vitality.
In this period, Descartes had created a new philosophy of reason based on the rejection of all
authority, including ancient philosophy. Apart from that, this period in history boasts of scientific
advancement as never before as in this age we see invention of telescope and microscope,
shipbuilding, navigation, gunpowder and printing press etc.
The French elite began this century with the hope of matching their period to the splendour of
Augustus’s age. But by the end of the age of Louis XIV they had actually surpassed the
magnificent Augustus period says Kaminski. A French writer, Perrault had written a poem Le
Si`ecle de Louis le Grand (The Age of Louis XIV) to appreciate the age of Louis XIV. The poem
appreciated the discoveries of the modern age and also despised the classical texts by calling
them crude. For him, Plato is boring, Aristotle’s physics is all wrong and Homer’s work from the
refined standards of modern taste was crude. Such comments pleased many but offended some of
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his contemporaries like Boileau, Racine, and La Fontaine. For these writers, ancient works were a
source of wisdom and beauty. Consequently, this work triggered the very famous quarrel between
Boileau and Perrault which is known as querelle des Anciens et des Modernes (the quarrel
between the ancients and moderns). These two authors for the next thirteen years kept on
defending their positions and the authors of their choice, and also insulting their opponents’
taste.
At the same time similar sentiments had been growing in England. The enthusiasm for “natural
philosophy” of Bacon had given birth to the Royal Society. Three years after the famous quarrel
began in France, Sir William Temple provided a defense of the ancients through his Essay upon
the Ancient and Modern Learning (1690). Sir Temple was one of the most respected men of
England who had read Roman authors for pleasure and moral instruction. He did not believe that
new science can change the world in any significant ways. This essay gave rise to scholarly
debates in England with William Wotton’s Reflections upon the Ancient and Modern Learning. This
quarrel was carried forward by their followers for instance by Wotton’s friend Richard Bentley and
Temple’s secretary Jonathan Swift.
Swift in his great satires A Tale of a Tub and the Battle of the Books presented modern learning as
pedantry, small-minded and solipsism(quality of being self-cantered or selfish) verging on
madness. The ancients had triumphed it seemed, says Kaminski. For those defending classical
works, ancients offered something else- education for character, and knowledge as a means to
moral insight. In both France and England, the modern world was seen as optimistic,
progressive, and scientific against traditional ideas and values. In the end, the game would go to
moderns says Kaminski.
10.3.10 The Reaction against Neoclassicism
During the early decades of the 18th century, some literary writers became discontent with the
sophisticated style and manners of neoclassical literature. They started experimenting with new
techniques like Blank verse and Latin hexameter despised by their contemporaries. Few poets of
the age separated themselves from their classical past by turning to new subjects and materials.
Instead of Roman, some writers started using Greek tragedies for reference and inspiration. “For
this new generation Greeks seemed to offer a simplicity, nobility and emotional honesty not found
in the polished artificiality of Augustan verse” writes Kaminski (68).
The Odes by William Collins and Thomas Gray were influenced by Greek literature and passion is
the frequent theme of these poems. This shift in taste had also its impact on the criticism.
Johann Winckelmann asserts that greatness of Greek art lies in its “noble simplicity and quiet
grandeur” and this became a new basis for judging works of art.
10.3.11 Neoclassicism and Enlightenment
The temperament of neoclassical age led to Enlightenment period in 18 th century England, which
is also known as “Age of Reason.” Kaminski calls it age of Enlightenment, a period associated
with “social criticism, anticlericalism, and scientific discovery.” The classic texts that were revered
and respected in the neoclassical period had no place in this culture of reason and progress. But
it cannot be said that classical learning was totally done away with in this period, rather all the
important Enlightenment figures were deeply immersed in classical learning. Kamiski writes
about the major proponents of Enlightenment:
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These men were of course virulent and aggressive “moderns” but in case after case we find that
their rejection of contemporary prejudices or their contempt for Christianity had been nourished
by their readings in the ancient moralists and philosophers.” (69)
Kaminski agrees that Cicero through his dialogues examining various ancient philosophical
systems provides justification for the modern versions of scepticism, Stoicism, or Epicureanism
espoused by so many philosophes. Voltaire (see glossary) a major Enlightenment figure, took his
article on Superstition from Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch. David Hume, another important literary
figure of the period, confessed that he preferred classic writers to that of his contemporaries for
knowledge of moral values and virtues.
Later, Kaminski asserts that it was an age of prose. He mentions that it was an age where
literature and arts did not exist. In the seventeenth century some writers got suspicious of
figurative language and wrote instead in a plainer prose style. It definitely also affected the poetry
of the age which is called prosaic by some critics. A number of French critics of the 18th century
were hostile to verse as it according to them interfered with simple, clear expression. But it did
not diminish the popularity of poetry and drama among elite educated classes in England and
France.
The emphasis on reason and rationality by Neo-classicists paved the way for a basic aesthetic
theory of Enlightenment. It became the reason behind inherent compatibility between
Enlightenment ethics and neoclassical aesthetics. In the works by Voltaire enlightenment and
neoclassicism merge, says Kaminski. Through his tragedies he taught the message of freedom
and toleration. Throughout his life, he remained committed to rules of art propounded by neo-
classicists. In this way for form, Voltaire looked forward to the rules laid by the neo-classicists
and for the content his writings followed the principles of Enlightenment.
By the end of the 18th century the neoclassical rules of art became obsolete and came in conflict
with Enlightenment spirit of freedom. Moreover, the idea of “sensibility” introduced a new
emphasis on feelings which also came into direct conflict with the primacy of reason. These
powerful trends led to Romanticism. During this time Rousseau published his Discourse on Arts
and Science where he submitted that modern civilization corrupted rather than ennobled human
nature. These ideas attacked the very premises of neoclassicism. The aim of neoclassical
literature was to instruct and preach for social decorum. But for Rousseau social polish and
artistic decorum were mere screens for dissolute morals and a corrupt taste. In this way,
Enlightenment paved the way for the other major literary movements in European literature i.e.
Romanticism.
10.4 Summary of the lesson
In this lesson you have learnt about the term neoclassicism. You have read about the age in
which classic texts were revered and respected and were also sought after for inspiration and
moral instruction. Roman authors were preferred to Greek and other ancient authors. Pope,
Dryden, Johnson in England and Boileau in France were popular writers of the age. The age is
very much defined by the rules of art. The neoclassical writers believed and proposed that art
cannot be constructed without certain rules like imitation of the classics, three unities, sublimity
and propriety. Reason was preferred over imagination for a creative exercise.
In the neoclassical age classic works were imitated or to put it more accurately refined as they
were crude according to major neoclassical writers. Later in the enlightenment period, spirit of
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freedom came into conflict with rules of art propagated by neo-classicists. The emergence of
writers like Voltaire and Rousseau proved the last nail in the coffin of neoclassical art and
consequently, the age of reason was taken over by the age of imagination and sensibility i.e.
Romanticism.
10.5 Glossary
Interregnum: the period in English history from the execution of Charles I in 1649 to the
Restoration of Charles II in 1660.
The new Augustus: Caesar Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) was the first Roman emperor and Augustan
literature refers to the pieces of Latin literature that were written during the reign of Caesar
Augustus (27 BC–AD 14). The literature during his tenure reached new heights. That is why
writers of the neoclassical age called Charles II the new Augustus.
Ingenuity: with clever, inventive imitation
Ode: An ode is a kind of poem, usually praising something. A famous example is John Keats'
"Ode on a Grecian Urn." The word ode comes from a Greek word for "song," and like a song, an
ode is made up of verses and can have a complex meter.
A Pindaric Ode: A Pindaric Ode is a poem with set meter and rhyme just like all other odes. It is
defined by three triads: the strophe and the antistrophe being of the same stanza form and an
epode as the final which is different. This form of Ode was named after the writer Pindar.
Voltaire: Voltaire (1694 –1778) was a French writer, essayist, and philosopher. He was known for
his wit, satire, and defence of civil liberties. He sought to defend freedom of religious and political
thought and played a major role in the Enlightenment period of the eighteenth century.
10.6 References
M. A. R. Habib, Chapter 12, Neoclassical Literary Criticism
Kaminski ‘Neoclassicsm” A Companion to Classical Tradition
Singh, T. History of English Literature
David, Daiches, History of English Literature 1980
William Henry Hudson - , History of English Literature 1999
John Rochetti The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780, 2005
10.7 Further Reading
Encyclopedia.com. (2016). Neoclassicism - Literary Movements for Students: Presenting
Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Literary Movements | Encyclopedia.com. [online] Available
at: http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3279300031/neoclassicism.html [Accessed 10
Jan. 2016].
Gontar, C. (2016). Neoclassicism | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. [online] Metmuseum.org. Available at:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/neoc_1/hd_neoc_1.htm [Accessed 7 Jan. 2016].
Historywiz.com. (2016). Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment - HistoryWiz. [online] Available
at: http://www.historywiz.com/exhibits/neoclassicism.htm [Accessed 7 Jan. 2016].
 90

Raygoza, E. (2016). Characteristics of Neoclassical Art - art of the enlightenment. [online]

Sites.google.com. Available at: https://sites.google.com/site/neoclassicism123/key-
characteristics-of-neoclassical-art [Accessed 10 Jan. 2016].
Victorianweb.org. (2000). Neoclassicism: An Introduction. [online] Available at:
http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/nc/ncintro.html [Accessed 8 Jan. 2016].
Fowler, A History of English Literature (1987)
The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. by G. Watson (4 vol., 1969–72)
The Penguin Companion to English Literature, ed. by D. Daiches (1972)
The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. by M. Drabble (1985)
The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, ed. by F. Kermode and J. Hollander (2 vol., 1973)
10.8 Model Questions
Q.1 What are the salient features of Neoclassicism according to Kaminski?
Q.2 Write a note on the “rules of art” as described by Kaminski.
Q.3 Write a note on the famous quarrel between ancients and moderns.
^^^^^^
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Lesson No 11

“The Necessity of Good Humour”

By Samuel Johnson

Structure

Objectives
11.1 Introduction
11.2 About the Author
11.2.1 Life and Education
11.2.2 Major Works
11.2.3 The Rambler
11.3 Summary and Critical Analysis of the Essay
11.4 Summary
11.5 References
11.6 Further Reading
11.7 Model Questions

11.0 Objectives

After reading this lesson, you will be able to:

 discuss Samuel Johnson’s art as an essayist

 understand and describe the life and times of Johnson
 comment on the idea of humor
 discuss the element of humor in Johnson’s works
 critically analyze the prescribed essay

11.1 Introduction

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was the great and colourful literary figure of the 18th
century. He wrote essays, poetry, biographies, sermons, travelogues, reviews, and an
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edition of Shakespeare's plays. His most famous work is the Dictionary of the English
Language. He was known as sociable person who had deep and affectionate relationship
with his contemporaries, such as Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Joshua Reynolds, and
also with his younger companion James Boswell. His witty and erudite remarks became
so popular in his times that he was often quoted in discussions on radio and
televisionand in parliamentary debates as well. It is hisvivid and exuberant biography The
Life of Samuel Johnson, written by his friend James Boswell,that has made him live
amongst us even after ages. One can understand the popularity of Johnson’s works from
the fact that a period in the history of English literature is devoted to his name asthe age
of Johnson.

The lesson will provide you a brief overview of the age of Johnson. It was a period of
rationalism and of the development of humanistic thinking with emphasis on the
individual in society. Several literary genres, such as the novel, satire, and essay, gained
importance and a new readership emerged from the middle class. Apart from it, it will
introduce you to the life and works of Samuel Johnsonmentioning specifically his life
story and his mental as well as physical conditions that steered his literary career. His
early years were affected by relative poverty which deeply influenced him and provided
him not only with empathy but also with a sense of charity towards the less fortunate
people for whom he deeply sympathised and worked for.

The lesson will also presentan overview of Johnson’s literary achievements.It also
focuses on the reasons why Johnson was so widely accepted and popular in various
social circles, how he influenced the period he lived in, and why we should still consider
him an important figure in our times.Three topics were very important to Johnson:
philosophy and religion; humanity; women and marriage so a part of the lesson is
devoted to the discussion on Johnson’s major themes. Above all, Johnson had a great
sense of humour which makes the reading of the prescribed essay even more interesting
as it is not merely a theoretical account of a particular human trait by an author but an
experience of his personal life.

11.2 About the Author

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Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner, but no man alive has a more tender
heart. —James Boswell

Boswell his friend and follower described him as a man who may sound rough and
rude in his expression but had a tender heart; a heart that would beat for every poor and
helpless being. His accomplishments and achievements can briefly describe him as a
man who had many feathers in his cap: he was a journalist, essayist, critic, scholar,
lexicographer, biographer, and satirist. If one wants to know Johnson as a person, an
interesting detail of his personal life can be shared. He was immensely fond of three
books; Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Don Quixote. “Alas,’ he said, ‘how few
books there are of which one can never possibly arrive at the last page”1. He read them
continuouslyand never got exhausted because his identification with them was almost
complete. The three wanderers in the novels—one a castaway, one a pilgrim, and one on
an impossible quest—were prototypes of what Johnson felt to be his own life2.

11.2.1 Life and Education

Samuel was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on 7 September 1709 to Michael, a

bookseller, and Sarah. He came to influence the world under rather unfavourable
conditions. He was a sickly, weak-eyed childbecause he had developed a tubercular
infection of the skin and the lymphatic glandsearly in his infancy. The disease, scrofula,
was then popularly named the King’s Evil because the English sovereigns were reputed to
have the privilege of curing it by administrating their ‘royal touch’. That’s why, Johnson
was taken to be touched by Queen Anne. In later years, he said that he retained ‘a sort of
solemn recognition’ of her as a lady wearing ‘diamonds, and a long black hood’ 3.But the
Queen’s magical touch did not cure much. Soon the diseaseirremediably harmed both his
hearing and his eyesight and also left scars on his face. However, he struggled through
the perils of his childhood, and became a stout and powerful boy.

1
G. Birkbeck Hill, ed. Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol.1 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966) 276.

2
W.J. Bate, Samuel Johnson (New York: Hartcourt B. Jovanovich, 1977) 51

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (New York: Doubleday, 1946) 14.
3
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His mother adored himand besides spoiling him, she taught him to read and write.
Yet it was a gloomy household: ‘My father and mother had not much happiness from
each other’4. It partly affected his temperament and was responsible for the ‘vile
melancholy’ that Samuel afterwards accepted as a part of his inheritance. His father’s
business was usually ill-starred and caused lots of financial pressure on the family.

Samuel’s defiant behaviour often put him in troubles but his pride and deep-rooted
sense of his own value, distinguished him from others. In this context, Boswell writes,
“That superiority over his fellows, which he maintained with so much dignity, was not
assumed from vanity but was the natural and constant effect of those extraordinary
powers of mind…He was from the beginning Anax andrōn, a king of men”5.

He received the traditional education at the grammar school in the village of

Lichfield—a place that a writer Henry James did not think highly of. When James visited
‘the cathedral city of Lichfield’, he considered it ‘the dullest and sleepiest of provincial
market-laces’. But he immediately noticed “a huge effigy of Dr Johnson, the genius loci,
who was constructed, humanly, with very nearly as large an architecture as the great
abbey’ and ‘a row of huge elms, which must have been old when Johnson was young, and
between these and the longbuttressed wall of the cathedral, you may stroll to and fro
among as pleasant a mixture of influence as any in England”6.

Later, Johnson managed to find a placein Pembroke College, Oxford. He became

the centre of appreciative friends in the college. Thomas Carlyle described Johnson’s
student days in Oxford luridly: “What a world of blackest gloom, with sun-gleams and
pale tearful moon-gleams and flickering of a celestial and infernal splendor, was this that
now opened for him!”7Bishop Thomas Percyalso observed his student days, “I have heard
that he was generally seen lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students
round him, whom he was encouraging with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not

4
Hill, ed. Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol. 2, 148.
5
Boswell, The Life 18
6
Henry James, Collected Travel Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984) 70.
7
Jan Morris, ed. The Oxford Book of Oxford (Oxford: Oxford UP) 130
 95

spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which in his mature years he
so much extolled”8.

For a year and a half Johnson used to cross the road to the far more opulent
college of Christ Church, to pick up lecture notes from a friend there, until, Boswell says:
“His poverty being so extreme, that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared
through them, he saw that this humiliating circumstance was perceived by the Christ
Church men, and he came no more. He was too proud to accept money, and somebody
having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation”9.
Leaving all his books behind in his room, he left Oxford and did not return until many
years later. Then the ancestral malady struck him down.

When he returned to Lichfield, he suddenly experienced the full force of the disease
and “felt himself overwhelmed with horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation,
fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made
existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved”.
Since then he was never a free man. His melancholia and the necessity of fighting it (or
conceal it) governed all his actions. It transfixed him with terrible sense of dread that he
was a sinner who sinned beyond redemption and was to be punished for eternity. It also
dulled his perceptions, crippled his faculties and gradually reduced him to a state of
overpowering sloth and languor.

Several mundane years followed in the Midlands, where Johnson tried

unsuccessfully to become a schoolmaster, and also undertook some ventures in writing.
Samuel, aged twenty-six, married Elizabeth ‘Tetty’ Porter, who was fortysix, and, as he
said to his friend, ‘It was a love-marriage’, but apart from the married pair, no one could
explain their union. Her modest fortune he invested in a boarding school, which soon
failed. But one important friendship was founded there, that with his pupil David Garrick
(the future famous actor), who later accompanied Johnson to London. Here Johnson tried
to make a living in Grub Street by his pen with ill-paid journalism (in the Gentleman’s
Magazine).

17 ibid.
8

Boswell, The Life 30

9
 96

In the 1730s and 1740s he wrote several political pamphlets, such as Marmor
Norfolciense, A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, contributed to
Harleian Miscellany, and his biography Life of Savage was published. When he was forty,
he started to experience certain degree of success by publication of his two long poems
‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ and ‘London’, and his blank-verse tragic drama Irene (he
wrote it long before but only now it was produced through Garrick’s influence).

It was only in the 1750s when Johnson began to be recognized as one of the most
important literary figures of his time. He published highly-acclaimed series of The
Rambler essays and his great Dictionary of the English Language. Yet, he still was not
relieved from financial burden. He received good amount of money but it was spent
during the eight years of work on it. During that time he was able to edit the Literary
Magazine and publish two other sets of periodical essays, The Adventurer and The Idler.
Moreover, he lost the two people dearest to him—his wife in 1752 and his mother in
1759.

His great story Rasselas was written ‘in the evenings of a week’ to support his
mother during her last illness. Finally, when he was fifty-three, he was granted a royal
pension of £300 per annum. The grant was unexpected because it was from the
government of Lord Bute, the prime minister of King George III. Johnson had written
‘much in virulent opposition to the Whig regimes of Walpole and the Pelhams in the
previous reign which is surely not irrelevant’. Nonetheless it was extremely welcome and
Johnson accepted it with good grace. Having at last ensured a decent yearly income,
Johnson was secure from want. It is not coincidental that his edition (together with his
annotation and emotional responses to the plays) of Shakespeare, announced nine years
before, appeared in 1765.

Yet the financial security and public fame and honors (he received honorary
degrees from Trinity College, Dublin and Oxford University) could not elevate his moods
of black depression. They recurred with hideous regularity and severe power (in his
Meditations he wrote, ‘I have made no reformation; I have lived totally useless, more
sensual in thought, and more addicted to wine and meat’). Johnson, in his mid-fifties,
was a huge man, nearly six feet tall, large-boned, broad-shouldered and thick-necked. By
 97

now, he was short-sighted on one eye and lost the sight of the other one. Moreover, he
suffered from convulsive tics, a condition known nowadays as Tourette syndrome.

Despite his depressions and physical difficulties, he was, fortunately, rarely alone.
Many friends had come his way, such as James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Bennet
Langton, and his new love Mrs Hester Thrale, the wife of a wealthy brewer. For the rest of
his life he cultivated friendships which were lifesavers for him. In 1765 he and Joshua
Reynolds founded the famous ‘Club’ where many brilliant conversations took place and
were vividly reported by Boswell. He also travelled quite a lot, be it his famous tour with
Boswell to then remote and notmuch-known Scottish Highlands (Journey to the Western
Islands of Scotland); his travels with old school friends Edmund Hector and John Taylor;
or travels with the Thrales around Wales and France. Among his last masterpieces belong
fiftytwo Prefaces, Biographical and Critical (commonly but inaccurately called The Lives of
the Poets27). He lived to the respectable age of seventy-five and died in December 1784.

11.2.2 Major Works

Johnson was not, and he did not pretend to be, a classical scholar who could have
ranked with the likes of Richard Bentley (an eighteen-century critic, theologian and
Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University). But, in modern literature, he was
among the best-rated men of his day. He very intensely studied human life, from a variety
of angles that reflected clearly in his works. Bate identifies the years between 1748 and
1760 as a crucial period from which Johnson emerged as the supreme moralist of
modern times, ‘as one of the handful of writers who have become a part of the conscience
of mankind’.

During this period Johnson published the powerful poem ‘The Vanity of Human
Wishes’, the periodical papers The Rambler (and later The Adventurer and The Idler), the
philosophical tale Rasselas and his masterpiece The Dictionary. These twelve years were
the high point of Johnson’s writing career. The second peak arrived in 1777 when
Johnson agreed with booksellers to write prefaces to works of English poets that led to
publication of The Lives of Poets (1779-1781).
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“The Vanity of Human Wishes” a remarkable satirical poem published in 1748

ended Johnson’s days as an unknown scribbler. It was published, like all Johnson’s
work, anonymously. But the inner literary circle knew well that it was the work of ‘that
Mr Johnson who had made a strong impression with “London”, with The Life of Savage,
and with his work on the Harleian library catalogue [of Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, a
collection of illuminated manuscripts from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
Later, the collection formed the basis for the British Library. One autumn morning in
1748 Johnson composed the first seventy lines of the poem before putting them on paper.
As Boswell says, ‘[Johnson] had developed a remarkable ability to plan pieces in his mind
without wasting time in jotting down fragments’. The poem epitomizes Johnson’s life
philosophy, his belief in ‘the inability of human mankind to create a new world’. Yet, this
realistic poem was not tarnished with cynicism. It recognized the burden of life’s struggles
and the value of its pleasures. It deals with the sorrows of old age:

In Life’s last scene what prodigies surprise,

Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise?

From Marlb’rough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,

And swift expires a driv’ler and a show

With the sufferings of neglected genius and warnings against being a scholar:

There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,

Toil, envy, want, the garret, and the jail And with implacable passing time:

Enlarge my life with multitude of days,

In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays;

Time hovers o’er, impatient to destroy,

And shuts up all the passages of joy

Soon this poem gave Johnson his public voice that was regularly heard in The Rambler.
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11.2.3 The Rambler

This prose application of “The Vanity of Human Wishes” contained more than two
hundred periodical essays that Johnson began to write in 1750 twice a week—every
Tuesday and Saturday—consistently for two years. The essays were published by Edward
Cave, who paid him a weekly salary of four guineas, and were again intended as a serious
moral effort. The origin of the title is not clear but given that one of Richard Savage’s
poems was named ‘The Wanderer’, Johnson might have taken his inspiration there, or in
the three books which he was constantly returning to (Pilgrim’s Progress, Don Quixote,
and Robinson Crusoe). The only account from Johnson himself was his remark to
Reynolds: ‘I was at loss how to name it [and sitting at the edge of his bed one night, he
resolved that] I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed the best
that occurred, and I took it’. One way or the other, the publications became immensely
popular. William Rider suggested that ‘the excellent collection of essays, which [Johnson]
published in periodical papers, under the title of The Rambler, would be sufficient to
immortalize his name. It is by many preferred to the Spectator’.

Johnson wrote the essays very quickly, with not much time to ponder upon the
structure and even less time to read them over more than once before they were printed.
It is ironic that one of the finest writings in English of idleness and procrastination (No.
134) was ‘hastily composed [as Mrs Thrale observed] in Sir Joshua Reynolds’ parlour,
while the boy waited to carry it to the press’10. Yet, this does not mean that he merely
dashed off whatever was in his mind at the time. As Boswell shows, Johnson kept a book
full of notes and suggestions for possible essays. The Rambler is often thought as a
sober, moral work, with only flashes of humour. There are a fair number of light and
amusing essays, though Johnson was quite willing to laugh at himself. There are
amusing commentaries on the use of philosophical words, disappointments of marriage,
faulty education, prostitution, disappointed fortune hunters, etc.

11.3 Summary and Critical Analysis of the Essay

Hill, ed. Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol. 2, 290.

10
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The essays in Rambler are defined as moralistic in nature as Johnson instructs the
readers to inculcatecertain qualities and get rid of some. In case of “The Necessity of Good
Humour” Johnson begins the essay by addressing to those people who claim to be
serious natured due to their superior position. He argues that such people do not
understand the value of little pleasure of life. As a result, they inculcate “awful virtues”
which grow bitter with the passage of time and influence all aspects of their lives.

therefore they have endeavoured only to inculcate the more awful virtues, without
condescending to regard those petty qualities, which grow important only by their
frequency, and which, though they produce no single acts of heroism, nor astonish
us by great events, yet are every moment exerting their influence upon us, and
make the draught of life sweet or bitter by imperceptible instillations.

He further argues that good humour is the “balm of being,”as everything that is pleasant
in human life owes itself to good humour. Johnson compares a learned and brave man
without good sense of humour to that of a lion, who roars alone in the desert without any
kind of resistance and reply from other creatures.Moreover, a virtuous and dignified man
will not be gleefully accepted by others. Such a man will always be friendless or will rarely
be able to enjoy good social circle and rarely attract an imitator.

Johnson defines good humour as the habit of being pleased. Such happiness is the result
of something positive that has happened in our lives. In this sense, good humour in
Johnson’s terms entails sophistication and softness of manner. It is state of mind
between gaiety and unconcern; when your mind is at ease and you also regard the
gratification of another person.

Good-humour may be defined a habit of being pleased; a constant and perennial

softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that
which every man perceives in himself, when the first transports of new felicity have
subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft
impulses. Good-humour is a state between gaiety and unconcern; the act or
emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
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He further challenges those who think that one can share the happiness of one’s soul
only by burst of laughter. For that, they need to be cheerful and happy themselves. Such
kinds of experiences do not delight people for longer, says Johnson. He compares
enjoying the company of such people to that of glittering sunshine. One can look at the
sun for some time but soon one has to look at other things like flowers or lush green
vegetation. In a way, for Johnson good humour is like vegetation and flowers that one can
stare at continuously.To elaborate his argument that good humour is not laughing out
loudly, Johnson differentiates gaiety to good humour. He equates gaiety to animal
perfumes and good humour to vegetable fragrance. In case of gaiety, the listeners are
never at ease; they either will have to strain their faculties in order to understand and
laugh at the jokes or they will have to experience despair due to their inability to
comprehend the same.

He argues that if you want to please a man you have to convince him and appreciated
him that you like by his nature or his actions.This kind of attitude will encourage him, on
the other hand, showing attitude of superiority will discourage and depress him and
consequently he will not be able to share his good side with you.Therefore, people with
good sense of humour are able to earn friends everywhere; they will often be invited to
parties, and other social gatherings. Additionally, such people do not need to attain any
other attributes as only good humour masks their flaws or drawback and becomes their
companion in every situation. To quote Johnson, “We see many that by this art only
spend their days in the midst of caresses, invitations, and civilities; and without any
extraordinary qualities or attainments, are the universal favourites of both sexes, and
certainly find a friend in every place.”

Johnson calls people with good sense of humour as “darlings of the world” as they are
welcomed and accepted in social circles more than anyone else. As people with
authoritative and superior position command certain kind of respect and fear among
peopletherefore, whenever such people visit any social function people flood to meet them
in order to pay their greetings. However, Johnson observes that the contact between
common people and such leaders is limited to greetings only. When it comes to spending
time with them, nobody likes the company of such people. Rather everyone prefers to be
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with good natured people even though they are much inferior to them in terms of position
and accomplishments. He defines this person with good sense of humour “as one with
whom all are at ease, who will hear a jest without criticism, and a narrative without
contradiction, who laughs with every wit, and yields to every disputer.”

Johnson mentions further roles of good-humoured people. He says that such people are
taken as companions or friends by them who want to satiate their vanities; who want to
be praised without being criticized or judged. And the people with good sense of humour
serve this purpose the best. Moreover, people usually fall for such human beings who
make them feel special and extraordinary. Johnson in a way is making this argument
that good sense of humour can make you earn friends and lovers and companions
throughout life.He writes, “All therefore are at some hour or another fond of companions
whom they can entertain upon easy terms, and who will relieve them from solitude,
without condemning them to vigilance and caution. We are most inclined to love when we
have nothing to fear, and he that encourages us to please ourselves…” so unlike people
with good humour, serious and so called learned people sometime may leave us feeling
disrespected and depressed.

Johnson cites Falstaff’s relation to Prince Henry to elaborate his argument further.
Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in four play by Shakespeare: Heny IV, Part I,
and Part II and also in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Although he is a comic character but
he has a depth to his character much like other comic characters created by
Shakespeare. Falstaff, a fat, vain, boastful and cowardly knight, was a companion to the
prince since his childhood. He was repudiated when the prince became the king.
Remembering him in the play, Prince Henry says, he laments Falstaff for his vices and
follies however it was his “unenvied merriment” that still pleases him. He is remembered
as a “cheerful companion, the loud buffoon, with whom he had passed his time in all the
luxury of idleness.” In a way, Falstaff was such a man that he loves and despises at the
same time. By taking Falsatff as an example of character with good sense of humour
Johnson in a way provides a portrayal of such a man and how he makes you feel. In this
way, Falstaff was much inferior to the prince in terms of wealth, status and position. But
he is still loved and wanted by him.
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Due to his foolishness the prince also has to face some troubles but that did not let the
prince discard him as a companion. He became source of his joy in the times of sadness.
In the end, Johnson confesses that the readers may think that he has bestowed
undeserved praises on people with good humour. He answers himself by saying that this
is the best way to magnify this trait. How this quality provides value and worth to those
who are destitute of other kind of worldly excellences. It also, “procures regard to the
trifling, friendship to the worthless, and affection to the dull.”

However, Johnson mourns that sucha useful and appreciative quality is disregarded by
those who own it. The reason behind it is that people consider it low and cheap or vulgar
trait. Probably, that is why, the superior or dominant class ignores such qualities in a
person and rather despises him. People in authority make fun of or criticize such
valuable qualities without bothering how it is going to impact people with good sense of
humour. This attitude in a way discourages them from spreading happiness. He
confesses that his motive in writing this piece is to find suitable attention and worth to
such people. He adds that he has a friend who is not willing to be companion to anyone
because of such mindset of society. He wants to change this attitude towards good sense
of humour because of his own preference for good humour and happiness in his life.

He concludes by saying that if such people lose the will to please others, it will be the
worst loss of society. He being a moralist instructs in the end that we should make
virtues approachable; people should learn and imitate our good deeds. Whereas if you are
in position of authority people will be in contact with you as long as they can take
advantage of your position. These kinds of relationships are not authentic and real.
Rather they are nurtured with selfish motives. Johnsoncompares people with virtues
other than good humour as mountains covered with gold that will be frequented by
people until the gold is there. The naked mountains will be left alone. Therefore, basic
human qualities such good behavior and goof sense of humour must be appreciated and
acknowledged so that good natured people are always around to amuse us and entertain
us.

11.4Summary
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The lesson has provided you a brief overview of the age of Johnson. It was a period
of rationalism and of the development of humanistic thinking with emphasis on the
individual in society. Several literary genres, such as the novel, satire, and essay, gained
importance and a new readership emerged from the middle class. Apart from it, it has
introduced you to the life and works of Samuel. Moreover, it has given you an overview of
Johnson’s essay with a detailed analysis of the important points in the essay such as
what according him is humour; how people with good humour are treated in the society
and also how they should be treated instead.

Self-Assessment Questions

1. What according to Johnson is good humour?

2. How people with good humour are treated by those in authority?

11.5 References

Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author By Lawrence Lipking Harvard University Press,
2000

Samuel Johnson: The Critical Heritage By James T. Boulton Routledge, 1995

The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia By Pat Rogers Greenwood Press, 1996

The Lives of the English Poets By Samuel Johnson Jones, 1825

11.6 Further Reading

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. By John Hawkins; O. M. Brack Jr University of

Georgia Press, 2009

A Johnson Handbook By Mildred C. Struble F. S. Crofts, 1933

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11.7 Model Questions

1. Critically analyse Johnson’s essay “The Necessity of Good Humour”.

2. Critically discuss Johnson’s idea of humour.

Lesson No. 12

PREFACE TO JOSEPH ANDREWS BY HENRY FIELDING

Structure
12.0 Objectives
12.1 Introduction
12.2 About the Author
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12.3 Summary and Analysis of the Text

12.4 Fielding’s Theory of Novel
12.5 Comic Epic Poem in Prose: An Elaborate Discussion
12.6 Summary
12.7 References
12.8 Further Reading
12.9 Model Questions
12.0 Objectives
After reading this lesson, you will be able to:
 Critically evaluate the text “Preface to Joseph Andrews”
 Elaborate concepts such as Burlesque, Romance and Comic Epic Poem in Prose
 Discuss the relevance of the text in the context of 18th century literature
 Discuss Fielding’s theory of novel
 Critically evaluate Fielding’s place in the History of English Literature
12.1 Introduction
In this lesson, you are going to study about Henry Fielding’s Preface to his novel Joseph Andrews
also titled as The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of His Friend Mr. Abraham
Adams. The novel was a satirical response to Richardson’s Pamela: Virtue Rewarded. Pamela was
a story of a virtuous girl Pamela who works in the house of Mr. B, a wealthy landowner. He makes
unwanted and inappropriate advances towards her after the death of his mother. He tries to
molest her but she detests his advances. In the end she marries Mr. B leading to conclusion that
virtuous character of Pamela is rewarded as she gets a rich upper class man as her husband.
Fielding, instead of a female, created a virtuous male character as his protagonist named Joseph
Andrews, brother of Richardson’s heroine Pamela Andrews. Joseph just like Pamela faces
advances of Lady Booby and to escape her he runs away from the country to the city in search of
his beloved Fanny. While writing about Joseph’s escape into the city Fielding outgrew any parodic
intent and ended up writing a novel about the adventures or misadventures of Joseph and his
friend Parson Adams. Later this novel was studied as a picaresque novel, a novel about
adventures of a vagabond hero and also a novel inspired by Don Quixote (a French picaresque
novel).
In this context, it becomes important to study the preface to understand Fielding’s objective in
writing this text. What does he mean by the term “comic epic in prose” which he has used for this
novel? What does he mean by burlesque or comic; how does he differentiate between the two; and
whether Joseph Andrews fits into any of these categories? Such questions can be explored while
reading the preface. Moreover, the preface is significant because it introduced a new genre in the
English literary canon. It marked a new journey in the history of English literature; Fielding did
not know that he has written something which will change the literary landscape of England
forever.
Various arguments and concepts by the writer are simplified to enhance your understanding.
Please read the prescribed essay before reading this lesson and make use of dictionary to
understand the words according to the context.
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12.2 About the Author

The father of the English novel, as Henry Fielding is generally known, was born in Glastonbury
England on 22nd April, 1707. His father, Edmund Fielding, married Sarah Gould, and there is
some suspicion that it was a runaway’s match. Henry lost his mother when he was eleven years
old, and his father quickly married again. His early career following graduation from Eton and
attendance at the University of London, was inconspicuous. He became a proficient Latin scholar,
though he did not advance very far in Greek. His familiarity with and enjoyment of the chief Latin
authors accompanied him through life. He was well-read also in English literature, and fairly so
in French. His wide reading is indicated by the frequency and aptness of the allusions which are
found scattered in his writings. Not much is known about him till he is found in London (1728),
in no flourishing circumstances, bringing out his first play Love in Several Masques. Lack of
funds compelled Fielding to quit the University of London and plunge again into the crowd of
competing playwrights in London. There is a good deal of promise in his plays, and he could have
been numbered among the dramatists had he continued but with the closing of the theatres
(Licensing Act, 1737) his occupation was gone. An attempt to earn his living as a lawyer and a
journalist came to a sudden end because of a serious illness.
This lesson would introduce you to his life and works. You will find sections on his development
as a novelist, his major works and a detailed discussion on his masterpiece Joseph Andrews. The
lesson is designed in self-learning mode. In the end some model questions are also provided to
prepare you for examination.
12.2.1 Fielding: the Novelist
Richardson’s Pamela appeared in 1740 and was a great success. Fielding lampooned the then
current success with a sequel that has become a classic under the title, Joseph Andrews. The
editorship of the Jacobite Journal was offered to him and he was so successful in conducting this
crusading periodical that he was given a sinecure as justice of the Peace for Middle and
Westminster. While holding his government post he wrote the novel on which his fame will rest
for ever, Tom Jones. The publication of Amelia in 1751 could not be anything but an anti-climax.
His great powers as a writer waned with his declining health. He died in 1754 in Lisbon where he
had travelled in a vain search of remedy for a complicated disease. A manuscript was
posthumously published as A Journal of a Voyage of Lisbon. One of the merits of this work is the
picture it gives us of the man himself, affectionately considerate to his family, patiently suffering
from an incurable disease, yet observing with undiminishing zest the oddities of human behavior
and seizing such opportunities as incidents, offered for social and political comment. The book is
prefaced by a disquisition on travel literature comparable in kind to the disquisition on the comic
epic-poem in prose which prefaces Joseph Andrews.
12.2.2 Fielding’s Major Works of Fiction
Joseph Andrews (1742) was inspired by the success of Richardson’s Pamela and started as a
burlesque of the false sentimentality and the conventional virtues of Richardson’s heroine.
However, Fielding soon forgets all about Pamela in relating the adventures of Joseph Andrews
and his companion, Parson Adams. In the preface to the novel Fielding said that “life everywhere
furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous,” and he set out to be that accurate observer.
There is an assertion on the title page of Joseph Andrews that it is “written in imitation of the
manner of Cervantes” and Parson Adams indeed has the role of a modern Don Quixote, a man of
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good sense, good parts and good nature, who never loses our affection, partly because his
expectations are novel, and partly because (like Don Quixote) he hurls himself upon the
oppressor thinking only of the blows his two lists or his crabstick will deliver, and nothing of
those who will receive.
Jonathan Wild the Great (1749) is a savage tale of the underworld, in the manner of Defoe. The
novel employed to depict with devastating satire the carrier, the companions and the end of the
rogue who achieved his evil brand of greatness by reversing all the decencies of human behavior.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) Fielding’s best work gives us a balanced insight
into human nature, tolerance of his weakness and large gratitude for his strengths. A spirit of
all-pervading charity, expressing itself in a genial but vigorous compassion enabled Fielding to
bring to the novel, for the first time, a completely dispassionate observing mind. The result was
the appearance in fiction of real human beings, in light and shadow, in weakness and strength
acting and thinking and feeling as you and I and all other flesh and blood mortals, sinners, saints
we usually encounter during our life.
Amelia (1751) has a color more somber than that of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews. Fielding
had been sobered by his close contact with appalling, suffering, and all the baseness as well as
the nobility of human nature as revealed in the Court of the Justice of the Peace where, he
presided. Amelia is a picture of marriage, and all that it means of endurance, sacrifice and gentle
understanding. His first wife, with whom he had been perfectly happy, is portrayed in Amelia, a
gracious example of womanhood. The virtue of meekness is shown probably for the first time in
English fiction, in the character of the gentle wife.
Fielding’s novels are novels of manners, but what is incomparably more important is that they are
novels of humanity, of men and women in character and action. One of the ironies of literary
history is that Fielding is often regarded as a writer of improper novels. This is a gross
misconception of his purpose as a writer and also obscures the fact that he was an active and
ardent social reformer.
12.3 Summary and Analysis of the Text
Fielding provides his readers with a critical framework to understand the text which he says is
hitherto “unattempted.” He claims that there are no instances of such kind of writing in ancient
writers. Drama and epic are the two oldest forms of writing. Aristotle also provided structure for
various types of drama, for instance comic and tragic. But the kind of text he has created does
not fall into any of these categories. He argues that if a text includes elements “such as fable,
action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only” it can be called epic
because no other term exists for this kind of writing:
when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as fable, action, characters,
sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only, it seems, I think, reasonable to
refer it to the epic; at least, as no critic hath thought proper to range it under any other
head, or to assign it a particular name to itself.
He defines the terms romance, comic epic, burlesque and comic to differentiate Joseph Andrews
from the "productions of romance writers on the one hand, and burlesque writers on the other."
He asserts that “a comic romance” is a comic epic poem in prose and it differs from comedy just
as the serious epic differs from tragedy. Its canvas is larger than comedy and smaller than an epic
or tragedy. The actions of comic romance are more extended and comprehensive and it contains
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larger number of incidents and characters than comedy. It differs from “serious romance” or
tragedy in moral instruction and grave and solemn nature of its actions. The comic romance on
the other hand has light and ridiculous actions. To quote Fielding:
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…
The grave romance and comic romance differ in terms of characters too. The comic romance
introduces persons of inferior rank and inferior manners as compared to grave romance which
presents characters of higher reputation and manners. The comic romance preserves the
ludicrous (ridiculous) instead of “sublime” which was primary motivation behind creating a text
(see discussion on sublime in lesson on “Neoclassicism”). Talking about diction, Fielding
discusses the limited way in which he has utilised the element of burlesque especially while
describing battles and places.
Difference between Comic and Burlesque
Fielding asserts that comic and burlesque are totally different forms of writing; as the former
confines strictly to “nature” (human nature) and the latter is exhibition of “monstrous and
unnatural” in human nature. In case of burlesque the pleasure is derived from “surprising
absurdity” and for comedy it comes from just imitation of “nature”. He says:
[Burlesque] is ever the exhibition of what is monstrous and unnatural, and where our
delight, if we examine it, arises from the surprizing absurdity, as in appropriating the
manners of the highest to the lowest, or e converso;
The writer of comedy cannot be excused for not imitating nature because “life everywhere
furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous” but not the great and admirable which is the
content for serious writings.
Ridiculous
“The Ridiculous only, as I have before said, falls within my province in the present work” says
Fielding. He has used this element in his novel Joseph Andrews. He asserts that the meaning of
this term is misunderstood by the earlier writers. We cannot laugh at “dreadful calamities” or if a
protagonist rips “his mother’s belly” or even at exposing “dreadful poverty.” These are shocking
incidents but not laughable. Yes, an element of surprise is required for making the readers laugh
at the follies of the fictional characters but stating the obvious or gory details will not fetch the
required results. Even Aristotle, who according to the author was fond of definitions, has not
defined this term. While discussing comedy he had said that villainy is not the object of comedy
but had not mentioned what is its object instead. Abbe Bellegarde, another writer had also
written treatise on this subject and provided various species/types of comedy. But even that work
has not explored the object of comedy.
Affectation: Vanity and Hypocrisy
The only source of the true ridiculous is according to Fielding “affectation.” Affectation proceeds
from these two causes, he establishes: vanity and hypocrisy. It is difficult to completely
distinguish them from each other because both the terms imply feigning. So it is their motives
which differentiate them: in case of vanity the pretence of character would be somewhat nearer to
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the truth as he wants to take applause; and in case of hypocrisy the pretence of character is
nearly allied to deceit as he wants to avoid censure/criticism. Fielding writes:
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.
He further says that the element of hypocrisy is able to surprise and please the readers on a
greater degree than vanity therefore is more ridiculous than vanity. That is why, he had chosen
hypocrisy as his subject. As described earlier if a hypocrite character is feigning to be liberal he is
of completely opposite character and nature. So when the readers come to know through the
passage of the story of his hypocrisy they get surprised. When his real nature is revealed it
shocks and surprises the readers therefore it becomes appropriate subject for writers of comic
romance, according to Fielding:
From the discovery of this affectation arises the Ridiculous, which always strikes the
reader with surprize 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 surprizing, and consequently more ridiculous,
than to find him a little deficient in the quality he desires the reputation of.
Fielding further elaborates what kind of writings he considers ridiculous. He cites few examples to
prove his point. He says that looking at “the misfortunes and calamities of life, or the
imperfections of nature, may become the objects of ridicule.” But such type of writer may have ill-
frame of mind as he can look on “ugliness, infirmity, or poverty, as ridiculous in themselves.” If a
man meets a dirty fellow riding through the streets in a cart there is nothing Ridiculous about it,
says the author. But if the same fellow is seen “descend from his coach and six, or bolt from his
chair with his hat under his arm” it would definitely bring smile on one’s face. Similarly if we
enter a poor wretched house we expect to see a family shivering with cold and hunger but if the
hut inside is full of luxurious items “adorned with flowers, empty plate or china dishes on the
sideboard, or any other affectation of riches and finery, either on their persons or in their
furniture,” it would be perfect subject for ridiculing. Fielding summarises his choice of ridiculous
in the following lines, “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.”
After charting various rules for his work, he confesses that he has broken his own rules in Joseph
Andrews by introducing vices of “very black kind.” He provides justification for his stance: firstly,
he says that it is very difficult “to pursue a series of human actions,” and not getting affected by
them, that is to say as a writer he observed such characters and incident and could help getting
affected by them. Secondly, the vices mentioned in the work are the accidental consequences of
some human frailty and his characters are not habitual of them. Thirdly, such vices are not the
matter of ridicule in the work but of detestation. Fourthly, they are never the principle figure at
the time of the scene rather a secondary thing happening nearby. Lastly, such black vices never
produce the intended evil.
Characters
While discussing the character Fielding says that all the character are inspired from real life; are
taken from nature, as he puts it; “everything is copied from the book of nature.” But he has
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obscured the characters taken from real life so that no one will recognise them: “I have used the
utmost care to obscure the persons by such different circumstances, degrees, and colours, that it
will be impossible to guess at them with any degree of certainty…” if in any case, a character is
recognised by any reader as himself, he will only laugh at it. Fielding ends this piece with a
reference to calls Parson Adams as one of the ‘glaring’ character, and “a character of perfect
simplicity.” He also hopes to be excused by the Parsons as they are men of high regard and this
character indulges in low adventures. But “no other office could have given him so many
opportunities of displaying his worthy inclinations.”
12.4 Fielding’s Theory of the Novel
Fielding stands as obtrusively as possible between his readers and his story, showing
events to the on-lookers like a surgeon in an operating theatre who reveals not only the ailment
that afflicts the sufferer but also how one should get at it. His authority validates the truth of his
account. Fielding obtrudes himself most deliberately through the Prefatory Essay, which are like
dramatic prologues, and addressed directly by the author to a listener. It reminds one of the
choruses in a Greek comedy.
In justification of the introductory chapters, Fielding says quite clearly right at the
beginning (Tom Jones, Book 1, Chapter 1):
“.....it hath been usual with the honest and well-meaning host to provide a bill of fare
which all persons may peruse at their first entrance into the house; and having thence
acquainted themselves with the entertainment which they may expect, may either stay and
regale with what is provided for them or may depart to some other culinary better
accommodated to their taste. As we do not disdain to borrow wit or wisdom from any man
who is capable of lending us either, we have condescended to take a hint from these honest
victuallers and shall prefix not only a general, bill of fare to our whole entertainment; but
shall likewise give the reader particular bills to every course which is to be served up in
this and the ensuing volumes.”
We are not here concerned with the “Particular Bill” but the “general bill of fare”
(introductory chapters) which must be carefully studied to elucidate Fielding’s mature theory of
the nature and function of the novel. Fielding to some extent keeps the function and the
disquisition in separate compartments, but not entirely.
12.4.1 Emphasis on Human Nature
Fielding deprecates any mixture of the comic and the burlesque, “indeed no two species of
writing can differ more widely.” 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 converse, 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 thus convey to a sensible reader” (Preface to Joseph Andrews). The provision, then, which
we have here made, is no other than Human Nature...we shall represent Human Nature at first to
keep appetite of our reader in that more plain and simple manner in which it is found in the
country, and shall hereafter hash and ragout it with all the high French and Italian seasoning of
affection and vice which courts and cities afford” (Tom Jones, Book I, Chapter I).
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Fielding deliberately speaks of his arts as something different, and himself as, “in reality,
the founder of a new province of writing, “for which he considers himself, “at liberty to make what
laws I please therein.”
12.4.2 Forms and Substance
“The critic, rightly considered, is no more than the clerk, whose office is to transcribe the
rules and laws laid down by those great judges whose vast strength of genius hath placed them in
the light of Legislators, in the several sciences over which they presided. This office was all which
the critics of old aspired to; nor did they ever dare to advance a sentence without supporting it by
the authority of the judge from whence it was borrowed. But in process of time and in age of
ignorance, the clerk began to invade the power and assume the dignity of his master. The laws of
writing were no longer founded on the practice of the author, but on the dictates of the critic. The
clerk became the legislator, and though very peremptorily, gave laws whose business was, at first,
only to transcribe them. Hence arose an obvious, and perhaps an unavoidable error, for these
critics being men of shallow capacities very easily mistook mere form for substance” (Tom Jones,
Book V, Chapter I).
12.4.3 Response from the Reader: Qualification of a Novelist
The novelist must compel the reader to experience what is presented as if it were enacted
before his eyes but before he can accomplish this feat, he must have the following qualification
(Tom Jones, Book IX, Chapter 1):
1. Genius: “By genius I would understand that power, or rather those powers of the
mind, which are capable of penetrating into all things within our reach and
knowledge, and of distinguishing their essential differences. These are no other than
Invention, Judgement and they are both called by the collective name of genius, as
they are those gifts of nature which we bring with us into the world.”
2. Learning: “Tools are of no service to a workman when they are not sharpened by art,
or when he wants rules to direct him in his work, or hath no matter to work upon. All
these uses are supplied by learning; for nature can only furnish us with capacity......
A competent knowledge of history and of the belle’s letters is here absolutely
necessary; and without this share of knowledge at least, to affect the character of a
historian, is as vain as to endeavour at building a house without timber or mortar, or
brick or stone.
3. Practical Knowledge of Life and the World: “So necessary is this to the
understanding of characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those
learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among
books; for however exquisitely human nature have been described by writers, the true
practical system can be learnt only in the world.”
4. A good heart: “Nor will all the qualities I have hitherto given my historian avail him,
unless he has what is generally meant by a good heart and be capable of feeling. The
author who will make me weep, says Horace, must first weep himself.” The same
response is required in the reader for Fielding exhorts him thus: “Examine your heart,
my good reader, and resolve whether you do believe these matters with me. If you do,
you may now proceed to their exemplification in the following pages: if you do not, you
have, I assure you, already read more than you have understood; and it would be
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wiser to pursue your business or your pleasure (such as they are) than to throw away
any more of your time in reading what you can neither taste nor comprehend. To treat
of the effects of love to you, must be as absurd as to discourse no colour to a man
born blind” (Book VI, Chapter I).
5. Bounds to the use of the marvellous: According to Fielding, “It may very reasonable
be required to every writer, that he keeps within the bounds of possibility and still
remembers that what is not possible for man to perform, it is scarce possible for man
to believe he did perform…The only supernatural agents which can in any manner be
allowed to us moderns are ghosts but even of these he advises an author to be very
sparing because they are like arsenic, and other dangerous drugs in physics to be
used with the utmost caution.” Fielding makes a distinction between the “marvellous”
and the “incredible”. “If the historian will confine himself to what really happened, and
utterly reject any circumstance which, though never so well attested, he must be well
assured, is false, he will sometimes fall into the marvellous, but never into the
incredible. He will often raise the wonder and surprise of his reader, but never that
incredulous hatred mentioned by Horace” (Book VIII, Chapter I).
6. Test of probability: Talking about writers of fiction, Fielding advises thus: “But we
who deal in private character, who search into the most retired recesses, and draw
forth examples of virtue and vice from holes and corners of the world, are in a more
dangerous situations. As we have no public notoriety, no concurrent testimony, no
records to support and corroborate what we deliver, it becomes us to keep within
limits not only of possibility too... In the last place, the action should be such as may
not only be within the compass of human agency, and which human agents may
probably be supposed to do; but they should be likely for the very actors and
characters themselves to have performed; for what may be only wonderful and
surprising in one man, may become improbable, or indeed impossible when related to
another” (Book VIII. Chapter 1).
In conclusion, I cannot do better than to advise the student to read in full the “Invocation”
which precedes Book XIII and beautifully enunciates Fielding’s theory of the novel.
12.4.5 Fielding’s Contribution to the English Novel
The importance of Fielding, from the historical point of view, is that he is the first writer to
focus the novel in such a way that it brought the whole world as we see it, within the scope of the
new, rapidly maturing literary form of novel. His characters, Tom Jones, Sophia, Squire Allworthy
and the rest of them, have commanded the interest of millions of readers and the professional
praise, through imitation, of all those hosts of writers who have come after him. Among the great
figures in literature, who owe a debt to Fielding may be mentioned: Scott, Hazlitt, Lamb, Jane
Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot and Meredith. There is no doubt that if Fielding had not
written Tom Jones, the subsequent development of the novel in England would have been very
different indeed. For in this very English novel we find the easy, almost conversational style, that
characters who seem to have vivid life of their own, the wide variety of scene and incident, and
the benign and tolerant attitude which distinguish the work of so many of England’s best
novelists.
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The task Fielding undertook was to depict the age as he saw it and not to evolve a superior
and more refined world. The art form established by him was capable of indefinite expansion.
Others would explore the debatable land of the conscious and the unconscious, pursue ideals of
superhuman perfection, give body to the spirit of romance, and still work within the framework
provided by him. His novel contains the germs of every kind of fiction that has come to maturity
since. The novel of character, of situation, of plot, the novel of intrigue, the novel of adventure or
in embryo; not to mention the “slice of life” the problem novel, or the comic mixture typified by
Joseph Andrews and the sentimental comedy by Amelia.
To Fielding is due the credit of establishing what may be regarded as the standard form
and of making the variations possible. “Defoe and Richardson had merely got together the
materials, provided the stuff out of which the autonomous work of art might be made they had
not realised what further industry was demanded of the artist. Fielding took the material and cast
it into new and fully coherent shapes, without any distortion of the essential truth. In this
manner, he is regarded as the Shakespeare of English fiction. “Fielding was not writing a system,
but a history, that is, what we now call a novel. After Fielding the novel bounded ahead, freed
from its slavery to fact, conscious of its power and possibilities and firmly established as an
independent literary genre.
Fielding’s own robust nature and untrammelled youth gave him knowledge of humanity
tolerant enough to abstain from praise or blame. He showed human nature as he knew it, with
mixed impulses and motives; he showed the consequences in the lives of others, the individual’s
misdeeds. For meanness of motive, for the selfishness that causes the innocent to suffer, and
most of all hypocrisy and sham, he had the utmost scorn, but he did not forget that with
goodness of heart go weakness often less amiable.
Fielding contributed to English fiction the perfection of the satiric novel of manners.
Technically, he set up much needed standards for the management of a complicated plot. In place
of the linear plot of earlier picaresque biographics he substituted a pattern plot, as full of
incidents but with various threads of the action systematically conducted to a preconceived and
dramatic result. Instead of the first person exposition and the unnatural self-analysis of the
characters, he introduced more fully than any novelist before him the realistic method of
portraying human beings naturally and dramatically through their own speech and action.
Fielding is the ancestor of English novelists. He is the “only begetter” whose progeny we see in
the pages of Dickens, Thackeray, Meredith, and even of Kipling, Galsworthy, and Wodehouse. Not
only do we pick out the perennial characters of the main part of English fiction, but he has set many
of its idiosyncrasies and limits. Sociable man, social problems, middle-class concerns, exercise of the
body or the fancy are some of the elements which have continued in the English novel and date from
Fielding.
Fielding always said that he drew from life. But like Cervantes whom he hoped to copy and
whom he so much admired, Fielding had served him apprenticeship as a writer in the theatre.
The English novel was not a development from the reporting of Defoe, a way of writing which by
its nature is prevented from imaginative development. In the end the reporter can do no more
than covering more and more ground; his method gives him nothing to till the ground with.
Fielding took his slice of life, his chain of picaresque episodes, and let the artifice of the theatre
break them up and rebuild them. The English novel started in Tom Jones because the stage
taught Fielding how to break the monotony of flat, continuous narrative.
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The methods of the theatre are abstract and summary; there is, an idea before there is a
scene, and one of the fascinating things in Tom Jones is the use of the summary method to set
the scene, explain the types of character, cover the preparatory ground quickly by a few oblique
moralizing and antics so that all the realism is reserved for the main action. The theatre taught
Fielding economy. It taught him to treat episodes as subjects and not as simple slices of life.
Thackeray developed this method of Fielding’s in Vanity Fair going backwards and forwards in
time, as well as to and fro in moral commentary.
As a novelist, Fielding was subject to two opposing forces which were to leave their mark on the
English novel for a hundred years and to ensure that it had little resemblance to the French and
Russian novel; he was trained in the rogue’s tale which introduced untidiness and irresponsibility
into the English novel and he was trained in the theatre which gave the novel its long obsession
with elaborate plot. In Amelia there is more psychological complexity than there was in Tom
Jones. If we contrast Tom Jones with Mr Booth of Amelia we see that Tom commits his sins,
repents in a moment and ingenuously forgets them. Mr Booth is far more complicated. He is
married man to start with; he sings with caution, is transfixed by remorse and then settles down
to brood with growing misanthropy. The wages of sins is not death, but middle-class worry. His
case never improves for we see that subtle influence of his affair with Miss Mathews on his
relations with other people. Fielding’s rising interest in psychology marks a break with his
interest in moral types. It is a signal of the coming age. It points the way the English novel would
develop as a genre.
12.5 Comic-Epic Poem in Prose: An Elaborate Discussion
The preface to Joseph Andrews is the best known statement of several of Fielding’s critical
doctrines. He draws distinction between comedy and burlesque and calls his novel Joseph
Andrews as “comic epic in prose.” Fielding, here, sought to establish some relation between his
novel and the heroic poems or epics of Homer, Virgil and their imitators. The word “comic” does
not merely mean “funny” though it includes the idea: it suggests realistic rather than heroic
treatment of characters of less exalted rank than in heroic literature. By epic is usually meant a
poem written in an exalted style about a grand subject that describes the heroic deeds. It can be
divided into tragedy or comedy. Fielding’s novel cannot be categorized as any of these as he calls
it:
…comic epic in prose, now 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.
He allows burlesque to enter in diction while describing the battles or fights of characters.
Fielding does so in Joseph Andrews and also in Tom Jones. There are many mock heroic
interludes: high-flown rhetoric, Homeric similes, mock-battles but his point is that they remain
an incidental element of verbal or stylistic run rather than the main essence of the novel.
Addison distinguishes between comedy and burlesque thus: “Comedy ridicules person by drawing
them in their proper character, burlesque by drawing them quite unlike themselves.” Fielding’s
emphasis is on ridiculous rather than burlesque which is like caricature in painting. Joseph
Andrews is neither romance nor burlesque. But we cannot deny that there is a good deal of
mock-heroic in the novel. As the term implies, mock-heroic uses the high style of epics and heroic
romances. It is capable of a great variety of effects. It also provides Fielding with a readymade
guard against portentousness in some “high” situations where his urbanity is at risk, as well as
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offering learned jokes to his “classical reader,” a loyal holiday from admired epics and a satisfying
deflation of high-flown pretensions in romances.
The mock-heroic business is more freely expensive. The situation of Lady Booby trying to
seduce her chaste footman Joseph Andrews is inherently very funny. It places Joseph in a
feminine role. We know that the novel is a parody of Richardson’s Pamela. Fielding’s
characteristic type of mock-heroic is exhibited in these words: “Curse his beauties,” says Lady
Booby of Joseph… “which can barely descend to this despicable wench and he ungratefully deaf
to all the honors I do him. And can I then con this monster?” Here the mock-heroic style is fully
functional revealing the character as it understands itself and as the author wants the readers to
understand it. Fielding does not want his readers to be inside his characters but outside them so
that the discrepancies between the surface of personalities and the personalities as they are, can
be observed. In a comedy the author’s view point is more important than the character’s.
In a mock-epic or comic-epic like Joseph Andrews, small and insignificant things of
everyday life are treated as if they were of great significance. Another example of mock-heroic is
Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. The technique of the epic is applied to matters which
possess far less than epic stature. There are many examples of this in Joseph Andrews, Book I,
Chapter XII. There is this account of Auroras display of her “blooming cheeks” over the downs
“while ten millions of feathered songsters, in jocund chorus” awakened Mr Tow-wouse. Joseph’s
detailed ancestry and provenance of cudgel Book III, Chapter VI, when lady Slipslop is preparing
to “lay her violent amorous hands on young Joseph.” The opening paragraph in Book I, Chapter
VIII, describes
“Now the rake Hesperus had called for his breeches, and having well rubbed his drowsy
eyes, prepared to dress himself for all night by whose example his brother rakes on earth
likewise, leave those beds, in which they had slept away the day. Now, that is, the good
housewife begins to put on the pot, in order to regale the good man Phoebus, after his daily
labors were over.”
In vulgar language, it was in the evening when Joseph attended his lady’s order. There are
several incidents which are described in mock-heroic style, for instance, struggle with the hounds.
At the end of the novel, the hilarious and surprisingly circumstantial travesty of Oedipus should be
carefully noted where the humour is largely at the expense of epic forms and the heroic attitude
towards life.
In the preface of the novel, Fielding writes that he found the tradition of mock-epic best
suited to his purpose of ridiculing the ill-manners of society. He allows his persons to adopt
heroic stances not entitled to them. In order to deflate them he lets them, like Aesop’s frog, inflate
a little more. The comic artist that Fielding is, he subordinates the presentation of life and
experiences, and gives more importance to the relationships between the readers and the
characters experiencing it rather than to the relationship between him and the readers. He
presents life as a spectacle and the readers share this spectacle with him.
Fielding’s distinctive nature of comic point of view characterizes his plot and characters. He
uses comedy to present the readers a picture of life apprehended in the form of spectacle rather
than in the form of experience. And for the comedy to be effective, the reader must be conscious
at all times of the typically of all moments, choices and events. Joseph Andrews has a distinctly
democratic favour with people of inferior rank and manner but with indistinctive decency. The
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emphasis is always on the light-hearted. The imposed plot and the static characters are among
the comic writers’ surest means of establishing communication with the reader. He uses the
devices of comic-irony and mock-heroic which always imply complicity by mock-epic. These
devices poise him and the readers outside the action. Fielding’s highly articulated prose and its
elegant surface keeps us separated from the violence, grotesquery, and postures that it mirrors.
Joseph Andrews is a comic-epic in prose. Its characters are portrayed in a grand epic manner and
it is written in prose. The great epics like Aeneid, Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost deal with a
subject of high seriousness using a grand style of poetry. With time, the significance of epic as a
literary form lost some of its importance, and the parody, burlesque and mock- epic or heroic-epic
came to be appreciated. Fielding seems to have recognized and acted upon the assumption that a
gust of golden laughter is one of great renovation forces of the world.
In the preface, Fielding introduces the readers to Joseph Andrews as a comic romance. It is
comic yet not a comedy, it is romance but of a special kind. The comic romance is different from a
comedy as an epic like The Iliad is different from the tragedy Oedipus. A comic romance is
different form a comedy in its size. Comedies have a limited canvas and fewer incidents whereas
comic romance has a wider and unrestricted scope and so a more comprehensive action;
characters and incidents are more numerous and more various. It is for this scope and variety
that he refers to his comic romance as a “comic-epic in prose.” Instead of writing of grave and
solemn adventures and events as are found in romances, Fielding’s emphasis is on the light-
heartedness and the ridiculous. His concept of the ridiculous is the documentary factor in his
theory of the comic. The true comic writer, he says, must always follow nature, for “life
everywhere furnishes an acute observer with the ridiculous.” However, the “just imitation” of
nature or life is not always comic. It is the affectation which is the source of laughter, and it is the
incongruity which makes the observer laugh. He declares that his purpose was “to laugh
mankind out of their favorite follies and vices” so he has selected “affectation” as the chief subject
of his laughter. A writer like Fielding was always quick to perceive the gap between ideals and
action even in his good and beloved characters. Abraham Adams is one such character. Holding
always preferred natural good breeding to its over-sophisticated aspects, character like Adams are
though, at times, treated in a mock-heroic manner; they are not the subject of his satire.
Fielding’s comic epic does not mean mock-heroic or burlesque but there is good deal of mock-
heroic in him. His comic epic has fun, laughter, irony and satire. But it is free of any bitterness
or harshness.
Fielding announced in the preface that he proposed to give the English reader an example
of a new kind of writing, differing from serious romance in its fable and action, in that this would
be light and ridiculous instead of grave and solemn. In its characters he would, he said, introduce
persons of inferior rank and therefore of inferior manners, while in its sentiments and diction, he
would preserve the “ludicrous instead of the sublime” and the result would be a comic romance,
which is a “comic epic poem in prose, different from comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy.”
Its province is the ridiculous and the only source of true ridiculous is affectation. “Now
affectation”, he continues, “proceeds from one of these two causes, vanity or hypocrisy ; for, as
vanity puts us on affecting false characters to order to purchase applause: so hypocrisy sets us
on an endeavour to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite
virtue.”
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Fielding does not spare anyone when it comes to ridiculing the vanity or hypocritical
behaviour of his characters. Even the simple Parson Adams is vain about the quality of his
sermons on “vanity.” He feels that the Londoners will like these sermons immensely. He
ruthlessly exposes the hypocritical behaviour of Lady Booby, Parson Trulliber and a host of other
characters including the squires, inn-keepers and lawyers who crowd the pages of Joseph
Andrews. The character belonging to the inferior strata of society look comic when they are
hypocritical while the rich are the target of Fielding’s satire. The purpose of all this exercise, as
per the professions of the novelist, is to purge the society of all its dross, to reform it of all its
foibles and follies. It is with a view of correcting the manners of society that he resorted to a new
genre “comic epic in prose.” He was of the opinion that as it is the purpose of a serious epic to
reform the society, in the same way, a comic epic too can be directed to not only laugh at the
people but also laugh with them to bring them out of their vanity and hypocritical behaviour and
to teach them good manners and ideal conduct. Fielding chose the epic form as it provides him
the scope for comprehensive action - action on a larger scale so that he is able to comment on all
shades of abrasive behaviour of the people. As opposed to serious epic, the characters in a comic
epic are common ordinary people and he felt that if the common everyday follies of the common
people are described in an epic manner, it will have a desired effect on the targeted segment of
society.
The scene in Lady Booby’s house where Beau Didapper slips into Mrs Slipslop’s bed by
mistake for Fanny, and Parson Adams hearing a scream rushes in the dark to the bedside can be
termed on a Homeric scale and is described in an apt comical style. The battle – scene between
Adams and Joseph on this side and the hounds on the other is a superb example of comic epical
conflict in which sympathies are involved. The scene is described in an epic style where at one time,
Adams flees the scene of battle. The fist fights, Adams’ eccentricities, his funny dress, described
with flair of exaggeration evoke the comic spirit in Joseph Andrews and amuse the readers. Lady
Booby, Mrs Slipslop, Mrs Tow-Wouse expose themselves to ridicule when they try to hide their real-
self.
It is all comic worlds that we see in Joseph Andrews on an epic scale. Thanks to the comic
genius of Fielding!
12.6 Summary
In this lesson you have learnt about Fielding’s theory of novel. He discusses various terms such
as burlesque, comic epic in prose, and ridiculous to make the readers understand his novel
Joseph Andrews as a new genre: a work which is neither romance nor burlesque. This lesson has
also provided you with a detailed analysis of Fielding’s works and his place as a novelist in the
history of English Literature. In the end, his concept of Comic Epic Poem in Prose” is discussed in
detail with examples from the novel Joseph Andrews.
12.7 References
“Preface to Joseph Andrews” by Henry Fielding
Joseph Andrews with Shamela and Related Writings: Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds and
Sources, Editor Homer Goldberg, Criticism Norton, 1987
The Works of Henry Fielding: With an Essay on His Life and Genius, Volume 2
by Henry Fielding, BiblioBazaar, 2016
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Henry Fielding: Critic and Satirist By Claude Julien Rawson, Haskell House, New York,
1966
The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 By Michael McKeon, the John Hopkins uni P,
Baltimore and London, 1987
12.8 Further Reading
Longman Companion to English Literature by Christopher Gillie, Edition 2, Longman,
1977 (Digitized 14 Dec 2010)
The English Novel: A Short Critical History, Volume 435 of Pelican books, Walter Allen,
Penguin Books, 1958
Fielding and the Woman Question: The Novels of Henry Fielding and Feminist Debate 1700-
1750 by Angela J. Smallwood, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989
Critical Essays on Henry Fielding, Editor Albert J. Rivero, G.K. Hall, 1998, University of
Michigan, Digitized 20 Jan 2010
Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-century England by Ronald Paulson, Yale University
Press, 1967
12.9 Model Questions
Q.1 Discusses Fielding’s theory of novel as discussed in his “Preface to Joseph
Andrews.”
Q.2 What is difference between Burlesque and Comic?
Q.3 Write a detailed note on the concept “Comic Epic Poem in Prose” as used by Fielding
in the Preface

^^^^^
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Lesson No. 13

“ROMANTICISM: THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT”

BY SEAMUS PERRY

Romanticism includes “Imagination for the view of poetry, nature for the view of the world, and
symbol and myth for poetic style.”—Rene Wellek
STRUCTURE
13.0 Objectives
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Introduction to the Author
13.3 An Overview of the Essay:
13.3.1 Romanticism: A Complex Concept
13.3.2 The Making of Romanticism
13.4 Summary
13.5 Glossary
13.6 References
13.7 Further Reading
13.8 Model Questions
13.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this lesson, you will be able to:
 Discuss romanticism as a movement in literature
 Account for a historical trajectory of the concept of romanticism
 Distinguish the various socio-political forces that went into shaping the literary
orientations of romanticism.
 Highlight the significance of the aesthetic, philosophical and ideological underpinnings of
the romantic literary-cultural development.
13.1 INTRODUCTION
After getting introduced to neoclassical literary-cultural movement in the previous unit, in this
lesson you will study Romanticism, a landmark for which the ground was prepared in the second
half of the eighteenth century England, through the economic, political, and cultural
transformations. You will see the ideals of neoclassicism, such as decorum, order, normality of
experience were gradually and increasingly replaced by a thrust on individual/subjective
experience. Literature in its new manifestation stressed on aesthetic pleasure derived from the
experience of beauty and sublimity. Literature was no longer considered primarily as an act of
imitation of classical authors or nature; rather an emphasis was laid on originality and genius.
Romanticism as a literary movement began in 1798, with the publication of Lyrical Ballads and
lasted till the passage of the first Reform Bill of 1832.
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In this lesson, you will be reading a discussion of Seamus Perry’s essay, ‘Romanticism: The Brief
History of a Concept’, published in A Companion to Romanticism, edited by Duncan Wu. The essay
is an account of varied nomenclatures and diverse semantic, cultural and ideological
underpinnings that the term ‘romanticism’ has been subjected to in the course of literary-cultural
history. Since romanticism has failed to receive/acquire a common/unanimous definition owing
to its miscellaneous literary-cultural import and implications, Seamus Perry has treated it as a
concept and not as the concept. A scrutiny of this lesson will clarify that critics/literary
historians have held no unanimity/agreement over this troublesome concept. This lesson will also
look into what goes into the making of this concept, highlighting wide-ranging poetic,
philosophical, psychological, linguistic and ideological underpinnings/dimensions of the term.
13.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHOR
Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature, had his M. A. and Doctor of Philosophy from
Oxford. His interests are principally English romantic poetry, especially Wordsworth and
Coleridge and post-romantic poetry, especially Tennyson, Eliot, Auden, and Larkin etc. His
research areas include 19th and early 20th-century poetry and poetics. He is an author of several
books on major English Romantic and Victorian poets, covering such themes and issues as the
Coleridgean Politics, Eliot, Blake and Unhappiness, Hughes and Urbanity etc.
13.3 AN OVERVIEW OF THE ESSAY
13.3.1 ROMANTICISM: A COMPLEX CONCEPT
Seamus Perry begins the essay by writing that the concept ‘Romanticism’ is a difficult one, on
account of several semantic associations and at times contradictory elements attached to it. The
label, in general, represents the writers and writings of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth
century and the representative ideas found in them. Highlighting a trouble with the concept, Paul
Hamilton, a critic, observes: ‘Definitions of romanticism appear to be back in favor with critics
and theorists’, especially when they focus on the questions of ideology’.
One very distinct way to approach ‘romanticism’ is to return to the authors who have been known
as Romantics. Following this method, Thomas McFarland has identified about a dozen
characteristics of Romanticism. However, McFarland’s method is a circular one, as he
presupposes what is ‘Romantic’ to deduce a platonic idea of ‘Romanticism’ from the selection of
canonical works. The circularity is inescapable. It remains difficult to decide: whether to initiate
from the concept to the canon or the other way. In other words, “you can’t help reasoning in
hermeneutic circle from a concept to a set of texts and from the set of texts to the concept”. There
will be another complication with the above method as “both canon and concept as critical
vocabulary are framed through tradition; but neither is fixed.”
“The fluctuating canon of ‘Romantic’ texts and the concept of ‘Romanticism’ work one
against the other, nudging themselves around an endless circle of redefinition.”
Whatever generalization is made from the canon of the Romantics’, it’s not clear, where to place
a distinct and yet not a typical romantic Poet like Byron in the tradition of romanticism? Even
the distinction between the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ Romanticisms will not do, as pointed out by
Rene Wellek. Byron’s position on ‘Imagination’, ‘Nature’ and Symbol/Myth—the seminal concepts
associated with Romanticism—is antithetical to that of other poets associated with the group.
Some sort of ‘preoccupation with dreams’ is considered another important dimension linked with
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romanticism. Walter Scott and William Blake are both romantic writers, yet to draw an
underlying unity/sameness between the two would be nothing less than an illusory task.
Thus, one can easily see that on account of the accumulated historical contingencies and
diverse trajectories of its development, the label ‘romanticism’ has come to invoke multiple
meanings. A. O. Lovejoy points out that romanticism risks losing its usefulness owing to its
several incompatible and mysterious associations.
13.3.2 THE MAKING OF ‘ROMANTICISM’
The single most important fact about the word ‘romanticism’ is that it is a posthumous invention.
The word ‘romantic’ was in use and it signified a type of literature. However, the writers of the
period did not know that they were defined as a literary group by the term, though they were
certainly classified by the critics as the ‘Lake School’ (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey), the
‘Demonic School’ (most notoriously, Byron), the ‘Cockney School’ (Leigh Hunt and Keats) etc.
Even if the writers knew that they were classified as ‘romantics’, they would not have appreciated
the ‘label ‘as it did not signify anything affirmative. The word represented something as ‘tales of
romances’ characterized as ‘improbable; false’, ‘fanciful; full of wild scenery’ (Johnson’s
dictionary). From the mid-nineteenth century, the word stood for something wild and
impracticable and yet something similar to captivating fancy. Coleridge knew the word in its
simply derogatory sense. However, in defiance of rationalist education theory, he did not
disapprove of children reading romances. In Kubla Khan, the poet used the word ‘romantic’ with a
bit of a positive tinge of a sense of wonder, a typical characteristic of medieval romance. He wrote
‘that deep romantic chasm’ is
‘A savage place, as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover’
It is in this sense that he approved of himself as a Romantic, other critics also classifying his
poems ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Christabel’ as Romantic poems because they
contain elements of the supernatural, as well as treatment of heroic subjects in an epic way. The
word Romantic, in late twentieth century, came to be meant as something ‘having to do with a
love affair’, but this usage is a fairly recent one.
Hippolyte Taine was the first person who describes the English poets of the early nineteenth
century, especially the Lake poets as Romantics. The Romantics have been a subject of two
excellent books by Henry Beers, who says that in contemporary times, there will be no objection
to the exclusion of Scott from the definition of Romantic, in a similar way that the nineteenth
century academicians would have raised no objection on Wordsworth being excluded from the
definition of the Romantic. Beers defends his argument by asserting that Wordsworth was
absolutely unromantic in contrast with Scott and Coleridge. Hopkins divides his literary
ancestors into two schools: the Romantic School and the Sentimental School. In Romantic
School, he places Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Hood etc.; and in the Sentimental School, he puts
Byron, Moore, Mrs Hemans and Haines Bailey. Wordsworth is placed in the Lake school, as
against the Romantics.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a change in the canons under the term
‘Romantics’ caused a change in the concept as well, as some figures like Wordsworth gained more
prominence over figures like Southey, so much so that “Wordsworth had once represented an
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intractable case for historians seeking a generally pervasive revival of romance in the poetry, he
now becomes the dominant figure”. There may be ideological factors as well behind the change,
but the literary culture of the late nineteenth century was largely responsible for it. According to
Perry, “these changes in the canon were obviously not due to the poetry in question somehow
changing: it is the use of the label which has changed”. With this, three major changes occurred
in the redefinition of the canon: the marginalisation of Scott and Byron, the growing centrality of
Wordsworth, and the rise of Blake. By the time Leavis’s ‘New Bearings in English Poetry’ (1932)
was published, there were some poets like Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge and Keats that
could easily pass off as Romantics, whereas Byron had completely turned out from the scene.
Perry contends that a modern romanticist would not choose medievalism or romance or
wondrous mystery as central criteria for Romanticism, but rather idealism, egotism or perhaps
primitivism and a turn to nature. Both these rival senses emerge in the modern history of
classification. Wordsworth is taken as an example of the intense way of naturalism, with Walter
Raleigh saying for him, “there was for him no question of the return to nature, because he had
never deserted her”. Elsewhere, the ‘naturalness’ is seen in the poet’s decision to model their art
on folk ballad literature, for example by Bishop Percy or Pope. Paul de Man’s ‘subjective idealism’
also began to be an important criterion. It was a time when Romanticism came to be placed in a
kind of parallel with the anti-empiricist philosophy of German idealism, as the image of the poet
deeply engrossed in his own dreamy interior world in mind, away from the vulgar and harsh
realities of life, had become a major theme. An important part of the neo-classical aesthetic is an
appeal to nature: one generally notices that a Romantic person is an individual with a very broad
shift of attitudes, the counter-enlightenment, which reconceptualises nature as particular, local
and concrete, rather than looking at it as general, abstract and ideal. Love for nature is another
important feature of romantic poetry, as a source of inspiration. This poetry involves a
relationship with external nature and places, and a belief in pantheism. However, the romantic
poets differed in their views about nature. Wordsworth recognized nature as a living thing,
teacher, god and everything. Shelley was another nature poet, who believed that nature is a living
thing and there is a union between nature and man. Wordsworth approaches nature
philosophically, while Shelley emphasises the intellect. John Keats is another lover of nature, but
Coleridge differs from other romantic poets of his age, in that he has a realistic perspective on
nature. He believes that nature is not the source of joy and pleasure, but rather that people's
reactions to it depends on their mood and disposition. Coleridge believed that joy does not come
from external nature, but that it emanates from the human heart. In time, romanticism came to
be understood as something which was marked by a tendency to be away from reality. Blake had
established himself as an exemplary Romantic even Northrop Frye promoted Blake in his ‘Fearful
Symmetry’ (1947), where he remarks that “idealism is a doctrine congenial to poets”, which exposes
the equation between ‘romanticism’ and ‘idealism’, which affects the working Romantic canon in
turn.
Perry says there are critics who deplore idealism, therefore, taking up an anti-Romantic
stance. He mentions Jerome McGann’s ‘The Romantic Ideology’ (1983), which was a series of
books critiquing romantic idealism from Marxist viewpoint, where ‘ideology’ means false-
consciousnesses. McGann introduced Byron as ‘historically Romantic’, and termed him as the
‘single most important figure in the history of European Romanticism’ who was left out of the
scheme of things’. The Romantic writers were charged with escapism which is evident in the
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poetry of almost all the Romantics. Perry criticises McGann for his total misunderstanding of the
term ‘Romantic’ and overestimating Byron as the romantic poet.
Perry concluded by asserting that one must leave the tendency to generalise; one should not
term the poetry of the nineteenth century as ‘Romantic’ because it makes one look for a
commonality between the poems while one ought to look at the individuality of the poems. As
Blake wrote that “reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitude of things”, we
ought to look at individual poems as subject matter of literary history, and also utilise organising
concepts like ‘Romanticism’ to subsume them, to facilitate thinking historically about the literary
works. Classification helps us deal with the masses of heterogeneous data, which might otherwise
become unmanageable. Perry admits that the concept of Romanticism does not catch the
specifics of what actually happened, and so the charge of historical misrepresentation is never
closed. In the end, the result is that one can never learn anything about Romanticism, in the way
that one learns about Wordsworth’s politics or the responses to the war against France, but it can
be used as a tool for understanding other things.
SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. Does the book, Romantic Ideology critique romanticism’s idealistic undercurrents?
2. Who are the poets associated with the ‘Lake School’?
13.4 SUMMARY
In this lesson, you have read a discussion of Seamus Perry’s essay, Romanticism: The Brief
History of a Concept, published in A Companion to Romanticism, edited by Duncan Wu. The essay
is an account of varied nomenclatures and diverse semantic, cultural and ideological
underpinnings that the term ‘romanticism’ has been subjected to in the course of literary-cultural
history. Since romanticism has failed to receive/acquire a common/unanimous definition owing
to its miscellaneous literary-cultural import and implications, Seamus Perry has treated it as a
concept and not as the concept. Owing to its diverse semantic and ideological underpinnings,
critics/literary historians could not reach any unanimity/agreement over this troublesome
concept. This lesson has also looked into what went into the making of this concept, highlighting
wide-ranging poetic, philosophical, psychological, and linguistic dimensions of the term by
focusing on its major practitioners and critics as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron
and Keats etc. The lesson has also looked into the critiquing of romantic idealism from the very
Marxist, materialist perspective, a seminal concern of Jerome McGann’s The Romantic Ideology.
13.5 GLOSSARY
Positive and Negative Romanticism: In his 1951 article, Towards a Theory of Romanticism, Morse
Peckham, comparing Positive and negative Romanticism, states that positive romanticism offers
“cosmic explanations”, that is, an illustration of a divine or at least spiritual force at work in the
universe, while negative romanticism causes isolation and despair because it offers no cosmic
explanation.
Pantheism: A doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a
manifestation of God. William Wordsworth was a pantheist.
The Romantic ideology: This is a credo/philosophy of the romantic tradition as it appears in the
literary works in the early nineteenth century work in England. This is also the title of a book by
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Jerome J. McGann that proposes a Marxist critique of scholarship of romanticism and an

uncritical absorption in romanticism’s own self-representation.
False consciousness: a way of thinking that prevents a person from perceiving the true nature of
their social or economic situation.
Counter-enlightenment: The Enlightenment, also known as the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ was a
late 17th-century and 18th-century intellectual movement that emphasized reason, scientific
progress and individualism. Counter-enlightenment was a critique of the celebration of abstract
reason. One of the key characteristics of counter-enlightenment was an exploration of the world
of sensation and emotion, also underscored by a cultural movement known as Romanticism.
German idealism: Idealism is a school of philosophy that asserts that reality, or reality as
humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed. It emphasizes how human
ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. German idealism is the name of a movement
in German philosophy that developed between 1780s and 1840s. The key philosophers associated
with the movement included Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. They all shared a commitment to
idealism
13.6 REFERENCES
1. Wellek, Rene, The Concept of “Romanticism” in Literary History II, available on
JSTOR.
2. Wimsatt, W. K. and Brooks, Cleanth. Literary Criticism: A Short History, Oxford &
IBH Publishing Co. PVT. , New Delhi, 1957.
3. Wu, Duncan, ed. A Companion to Romanticism, Wiley-Blackwell, 1999.
13.7 FURTHER READING
1. Abrams, M. H., the mirror and the lamp: romantic theory and the critical tradition,
Oxford University Press, 1971.
2. Wu, Duncan, ed. A Companion to Romanticism, Wiley-Blackwell, 1999.
3. Dabundo, Laura, ed. Encyclopedia of Romanticism, Routledge: New York, 1992.
4. Galen, David M., ed. Literary Movements for Students, Gale Group, 2002.
13.8 MODEL QUESTIONS
1. Why does Seamus Perry find ‘Romanticism’ a troublesome concept?
2. Discuss the seminal ideas/issues as represented in the prescribed essay.
3. Give a detailed critique of ‘Romanticism’ as a literary-cultural movement.

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Lesson No.
14

“ROMANTIC ANALOGUE OF ART AND MIND”

BY M. H. ABRAMS

STRUCTURE
14.0 Objectives
14.1 Introduction
14.2 An Introduction to the Critic: M. H. Abrams
14.3 An Outline of “Romantic Analogues of Art and Mind”
14.4 Summary
14.5 Glossary
14.6 References
14.7 Further Readings
14.8 Model Questions
14.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this lesson, you will be able to:
 Explain the novelty, freshness and shift that romanticism as a critical tradition marks in
literature
 Analyse and evaluate a literary-cultural text by situating the same in the romantic critical
tradition
 Discuss what goes into making the poetics and aesthetics of romanticism
 Explicate why an author/poet is the locus of creativity in the romantic critical tradition
14.1 INTRODUCTION
On the basis of your reading of the previous lesson, it should be clear that romanticism as a
literary cultural movement registers a number of landmark shifts and changes. There was a
significant shift in the creative focus from the high-born to the low-born; the city to the country;
and from the social to the solitary as the objects of literary representation. In romanticism the
poet, his/her psychology and the poetic process of creativity became the locus of creativity.
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In this lesson you will study a text titled as “ROMANTIC ANALOGUES OF ART AND MIND”, a
chapter in the book, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Abrams
makes a point to make it clear that neither art nor literature is a mirror or a lamp in the literal
sense of the term. These are only analogies. The function of analogies is to explain what is
unknown in terms of the known. The function of an analogy can be better explained by a question
that P. B. Shelley posed to the figure of the skylark: “What thou art we know not; /What is most
like thee?” (To a Skylark). In other words, what should Shelley compare the skylark to? That to
which a suitable comparison can be made is the analogue. Writing a poem in the romantic
conception of poetry is mainly about finding images that can serve the function of literary
analogues. Criticising a poem and situating it in the history of romantic poetry then is about
evaluating whether or not the literary analogues, images and metaphors are appropriate and
carry the weight of comparison. The prescribed text provides a lineage of romanticism. In other
words it lists and analyses the analogues of art and mind that constituted the romantic world-
view; and relates the mind of the creative artist to the very being of the romantic poem. Instead of
imitation, the focus is on the artist/poet and upon the relation of the elements of the work to his
state of mind. Thus, the text presents aesthetics and poetics of romanticism as an important
approach to the study of poetic/literary representations.
14.2 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CRITIC: M. H. ABRAMS
Meyer Howard Abrams (1912-2015), a distinguished American literary critic, is well known for
his major works including The Mirror and the Lamp, The Norton Anthology of English Literature
and A Glossary of Literary Terms. As a front rank expert on the history of romantic tradition,
Abrams revolutionised the study of English Romantic literature. His work The Mirror and the
Lamp as a ground breaking critical text gives a very new understanding of literature. For the
renaissance and neo-classical writers, the work of literature was primarily understood as a mirror
reflecting the real world; whereas for the Romantics writing was like a lamp that illuminated the
world. In this connection Wimsatt and Brooks have very pertinently commented: “A recent study
entitled, The Mirror and the Lamp sees one of the main trends of romantic poetics to have been a
turning from Renaissance concepts of art as mechanically effected mimesis towards a new
concept of art as organic creation. The mirror gave back the literal image of reality external to
itself. The lamp threw out its own discovering and organising rays into the void of
darkness.”(P.499) The mirror is a symbol of a reflector; the lamp is a symbol of that which throws
light upon an object. Thus, the symbol of the lamp registers a fundamental shift in the function of
literature; the literary text is interpreted as bearing the insights and the feel of the writer’s mind.
The writer’s mind as a lamp helps the reader to see/think more clearly the reality/situation
portrayed in a literary text. Abrams’ book exhibits enormous scholarship on the aesthetics and
poetics of romanticism from 1800 to 1840.
14.3 An Outline of “Romantic Analogues of Art and Mind”
The period in intellectual history that M. H. Abrams focuses in the “Romantic analogues of art
and mind” is 1800-1840, but that does not, however, restrict him from exhibiting an interest in
the aesthetics of romanticism in the nineteenth century as a whole. Abrams also tries to strike a
relation between the main trends in English romanticism and the aesthetic theories that prevailed
in Germany and France, including those of Kant, Herder, Schiller, Schegel and others. Abrams
describes four theories in the text: objective, mimetic, pragmatic and expressive theories. The
description of these theories signify the failure of any specific theory of art or literature (that is,
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imitation) to take on the status of a general theory. It is for the readers to combine these theories
to generate a general theory of mimesis, without looking for more precision than is realistically
possible within the history of aesthetics.
Abrams quotes Aristotle to the effect that “it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision
in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits”. This amounts to the fact
that while poetry is difficult to define, we know it when we read it, and are deeply moved by it.
The reason that Abrams uses the phrase “art criticism” rather than “literary criticism” is because
of the fact that the “prototype of mimesis is the art object”—the mimetic approach to literature is
based on the model of painting. “The mimetic assumption is that a literary artist must imitate the
world like the painter paints the world”. Also, there are a number of terms that we use commonly
in literary criticism: picture, point-of-view, perspective, texture, and so on. It would not be
difficult to even make the claim that it would be difficult to think through the structure of a
literary text without seeking recourse to the technical vocabulary of art theory. That is also why,
that the technical term ‘mimesis’ links art criticism to literary criticism in not only the Greco-
Roman world, but in the contemporary approaches to literary criticism as well.
The shift of the literary focus from the world to the artist himself as the main source of meaning
(in English romanticism) happened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Abrams’ intent is
to explain the “momentous consequences of these new bearings in criticism for the identification,
analysis, evaluation and the writing on poetry. Relevant to the undertaking of such a criticism are
the following: the artist, the work, the audience, and the universe. Abrams observes that most
critics tend to be reductive and favour only one of these, for instance, mimetic theories focus on
the universe, pragmatic theories focus on pleasing the audience, expressive theories on
celebrating the poet, and the objective theories on the structure of the text—or, in other words,
they function as a special theory rather than a general theory.
Abrams says that when William Wordsworth wrote “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings”, he equated the container with the poet, and the overflow with the materials of
the poem coming from within and representing the fluid feelings of the poet. Now the orientation
has changed, and the focus is now upon the artist and the relation of the elements of the work to
his state of mind. It is assumed that the dynamics of the overflow are inherent in the poet and not
within his direct control. Wordsworth too, declared later, that the emotion was recollected in
tranquillity later, and that the spontaneity of overflow was the result of deliberate thinking. But it
was not until three decades later, that features such as elimination of the conditions of the given
world, the requirements of an audience and the control by conscious purpose, appear in England.
In romantic terms, critics tend to use the phrase ‘overflow’ to signify the internal made external.
The term ‘expression’ also means ‘to press out’. J.S. Mill also said, “Poetry is the expression or
uttering forth of feeling”. Abrams tries to cite certain scholars and critics of the 1830s to prove
that poetry expresses emotions. While Coleridge said that fine arts, like poetry express intellectual
purposes, thoughts, sentiments and conceptions that have their origin in the human mind,
Hazlitt wrote that poetry is the music of language which expresses the music of the mind. For
Shelley, poetry is the expression of imagination whereas Byron equated it with the expression of
“excited passion”. Leigh Hunt finally reconciled all these differences by writing, “poetry is the
utterance of a passion for truth, beauty and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by
imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the principle of variety in uniformity”.
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Sir Walter Scott characterised art as communication and brings the audience to parity with the
stress of the feelings of the artist as a cause of artistic production. Therefore, the artist has the task
of exciting in his audience “a tone of feeling similar to that which existed in his own bosom”, before
it was made concrete. Byron gives certain analogies regarding the process of artistic creation—he
equates the process with the eruption of a ‘volcano’, poetry being the lava, the eruption of which
prevents an earthquake. He also equates it with childbirth, parallels of which can be found in
Elaine Showalter’s “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness”, in which she questions whether the
process of creation is equal to the ejaculation by the man (penis symbolising pen), or with gestation
and labour of a woman.
In the nineteenth century, however, allusions to poetry as a representation of an image, or the famous
analogy of comparing art with a mirror, did survive but with a difference. The modern poet was believed
to have delineated the whole external world from its reflected imagery in the mirror of human thought
and feeling, and often, when the reflector is reversed, it images the state of mind of the artist rather
than the external nature. Therefore, as the German poet Tieck writes: “Not these plants, not these
mountains, do I wish to copy, but my spirit, my mood, which governs me just at this moment. . .”
Abrams writes that the use of painting to show the essential character of poetry, an idea which
was so famous in the eighteenth century, disappears in the criticism of the Romantic period. The
‘painting’ was substituted with ‘music’; if a picture is the nearest thing a mirror-image of the
external world, music is the most remote. As a result, music was the first of all the arts to be
regarded as non-mimetic in nature. German theorists considered music to be immediately
expressive of spirit and emotion, not only of a lyric, but of poetry in general. Friedrich Schlegel
was of the opinion that it was only because contemporary poetry was accompanied with music
that made him say, “Poetry was also a spiritual music”.
Hazlitt said of poetry: “It is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind”. He meant
that there is a connection between music and deep-rooted passion. John Keble said that music and
poetry are like twin sisters to show the extent to which music had substituted painting as the
nearest relation of poetry. Therefore, poetizing is a unilateral activity involving only the materials
inherent in the poet. Shelley even illustrates his definition of poetry as the “expression of the
imagination” by reference to the Aeolian lyre, a favourite Romantic toy. It was in the nineteenth
century that the wind-harp became an analogy for the poetic mind as well as a subject of poetic
description.
Other critics also echo Shelley in their definitions of poetry; Hazlitt in his “On Poetry in General”
writes that poetry is the natural impression of any object or event, which by its vividness excites
involuntary movements of imagination and passion, and produces a certain modulation of voice
during expression. This is reflective of the mimetic theory in the older aesthetic theory; but a
mirror can reflect only what is presented from a single direction, Hazlitt complicates the analogy
by combining the mirror with the lamp to show that the poet reflects a world already bathed in an
emotional light that he has himself projected: “The light of poetry is not only a direct but also a
reflected light, that while it shows us the object, throws a sparkling radiance on all around it”.
According to Coleridge, the essences that are within nature have a kind of duplicate subsistence
as ideas in the mind (“On Poesy or Art”, a lecture based on Schelling’s metaphysics of a psycho-
natural parallelism). Therefore, a new set of metaphors is provided by this world-view which
conveys the romantic theme, that art is a joint product of the objective and the projected. Poetry,
like art, is also purely human, yet “it avails itself of the forms of nature to recall, to express, to
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modify the thoughts and feelings of the mind”. The mystery of genius in Fine Arts is that it makes
the external internal and the internal external, makes the nature thought and the thought
nature. In the central predications about the nature of poetry, the principal difference from earlier
criticism is the difference in metaphor.
The basic problem of aesthetics, that is, the discrepancy between the subject matter in poetry and
the objects found in experience was solved by the reference to the emotions and processes of the
poet’s mind as the source of poetry. Poetry departs from fact because it is a reflection of nature
reassembled, filtered and ornamented to reveal a central form for the delight of the reader. But to
the romantic critic, poetry departs from fact because of the incorporation of the objects of sense
which have already been transformed by the feelings of the poet.
The statement of Wordsworth: “I have at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my subject” is
evident of the fact the subject of Wordsworth is not merely a particularised object of sense.
Refutation of Kant’s idea of “things-in-themselves” is evident in Wordsworth’s insistence that:
“throughout objects. . . derive their influence not from what they are actually in themselves, but
from such as are bestowed upon them by the minds of those who are conversant with or affected
by those objects”. Thomas De Quincey also wrote that nothing that does not present a visual
image is poetic. J.S. Mill on the same lines writes: “Descriptive poetry consists, no doubt, in
description, but in description of things as they appear, not as they are”.
Abrams writes that the way feelings may enter into and alter objects of sense is a minor topic,
which was discussed in the eighteenth century theory as ‘style’. The metaphor is mostly biological
rather than optical, for example Coleridge says that poetry impregnates the things with an
interest not their own by means of the passions”. Hazlitt cites the example from Shakespeare’s
Cymbeline, in which Iachimo says of Imogen:
—The flame o’ th’ taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see the enclosed lights—
Hazlitt writes that the feelings of love, agitation, fear—all distort or magnify the object, and things
having the power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror, admiration, delight or love,
are equal to imagination.
Coleridge was the most concerned with the problem that how poetic minds act to modify or
transform the materials of sense without violating truth to nature. He considers the role of
emotion in the process of such transformation and writes that images do not characterize the
poets by themselves, but become proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a
predominant passion, or by the images or thoughts awakened by that passion. This modifying
action of passion, and of animating the inanimate, was the preoccupation of the romantic poets
and theorists. A poet, according to Wordsworth, is a man who rejoices more than other men in
the spirit of life that is in him. He delights to think about similar passions as manifested in the
whole universe, and is habitually impelled to create the, where he does not find them. Therefore,
personification came to be a major index to the sovereign faculty of imagination. Personification,
in literary criticism, is the valid animation of natural objects.
Abrams concludes the essay by saying that the romantic critics substituted the presentation of
the world instinct with the poet’s feelings for the description of the universal and typical as a
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property which makes a distinction between poetry and the descriptive discourse. The ideal in
poetry lost its special status in the hands of the Romantic critics, but they adapted it to argue the
topic they had inherited from their predecessors. Hazlitt’s interpretation of the ideal resembles the
German theory of the ‘characteristic’. According to Hazlitt, the ideal is not a general abstraction or
an average proportion. It is achieved by “singling out some one thing or quality of an object, and
making it the pervading and regulating principle of all the rest”. He believes in the essence of the
things in saying that a thing does not become perfect by becoming something else, but by being
more itself. With the exceptions of Hazlitt and Blake, there is little to no tendency in the major
English critics to follow the extremists and substitute a particularity to things. For example,
Wordsworth agrees with Aristotle in believing that object of poetry is general and operative.
Coleridge also confirms that for poetry to be considered ideal, it must possess general attributes.
Abrams tries to solve the question of essential versus general by writing that “an involution of the

SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

1. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Who gave this definition of
poetry?
2. Which of the two words does clearly convey the writer’s meaning in the romantic
critical tradition: Expression or Imitation?
universal in the individual” is required, thus suggesting a midway between the two problems.
14.4 SUMMARY
The above reading of Abrams’ text should make it clear that the Romantic Movement constitutes
the most radical breakthrough after the Renaissance in the history of English literature/culture.
The shift of the literary focus from the world to the artist himself as the main source of meaning
(in English romanticism) happened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Abrams’ intent is
to explain the “momentous consequences of these new bearings in criticism for the identification,
analysis, evaluation and the writing on poetry. Abrams’ text is an apology for romanticism that
includes a synthesis of the subject and object, an interaction of the consciousness of the
poet/artist with that of Nature. “The orientation is toward the artist (poet); the focus of attention
is upon the relation of the elements of the work to his state of mind…” (Abrams 47). A physical
analogy of a container/a fountain/ a spring is used for the poet’s mind from which the poetry
flows. Abrams notes: “Aristotle, as is well known, considered the essence of poetry to be
Imitation…Expression we say, rather than imitation; for the latter word clearly conveys a cold and
inadequate notion, of writer’s meaning…” (Abrams 48). ‘The common definition of the fine arts,
Coleridge wrote in ‘Poesy or Art’ (1818), is that all, ‘like poetry, are to express intellectual
purposes, thoughts, conceptions, sentiments, that have their origin in the human mind…”
(Abrams48). The poet experiences emotionally/imaginatively the literary object in a profound way
and poetry is the outcome of an interaction of the triad i.e. the consciousness, imagination and
Nature. “ No less characteristic of romantic theory is a set of … analogies implying that poetry is
an interaction, the joint effect of inner and outer, mind and object, passion and the perceptions of
sense” (Abrams 51).
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14.5 GLOSSARY
Analogue: An analogue is something that is similar to or comparable to something else. In
romantic critical tradition, the mind of a poet is often compared with a container from which
poetry emanates. Mirror and lamp are some other popular examples of literary analogues.
Imitation: Imitation is an act or instance of imitating. It’s a foundational concept in the study or
creation of literature. In the classical and neo-classical tradition, art and literature, it’s believed,
imitates the world. Imitation combines a sense of the literary work as the representation of some
pre-existent reality.
Expression: In romanticism a work of art/literature is not considered as an imitation of pre-
existing reality. It’s rather considered an expression of the writer’s mind. There is a shift of focus
from the objective to the subjective, from the world to the artist himself.
Aesthetics: Aesthetics refers to a theory or a branch of Philosophy that deals with questions
regarding art and beauty. Romantics embraced such artistic precepts as freedom, revolution,
democratic ethos and egalitarian community, liberty, equality and fraternity etc., and thus set
themselves in opposition to Enlightenment values as rationality and order stressed by classicism
and neo-classicism.
Enlightenment: A concise definition of the Enlightenment is difficult to make, but broadly
speaking, it was a philosophical, intellectual and cultural movement during the 17th and 18th
Centuries, which stressed reason, logic and freedom of thought over dogma and blind faith.
Romanticism represented the anti-enlightenment ethos and values by focussing on
emotion/feeling, sensibility, subjectivity and imagination etc.
Poetics: Poetics is primarily concerned with the making of a text; how different elements come
together and produce certain effects on the reader. It’s about how a writer/poet organizes his/her
linguistic material as words, images, symbols and various figurative devices to represent/express
the world. During the romantic period, poetics tended towards expressionism and emphasized the
perceiving subject. Poetics is also about the theory of poetry. Poetics is distinguished from
hermeneutics by its focus not on the meaning of a text, but rather its understanding of how a
text's different elements come together and produce certain effects on the reader. Most literary
criticism combines poetics and hermeneutics in a single analysis; however, one or the other may
predominate given the text and the aims of the one doing the reading.
Organic Unity
In romantic literature, a work has organic form if the structure has originated from the materials
and subjects used by the author. Using the organic metaphor, the structure is seen to grow as a
plant. A text and its author stand in an unalienable relationship. It stands in contrast to a
mechanical form, a work which has been produced in accordance with artificial rules.
Aeolian Lyre: A musical instrument having strings tuned in unison; they sound when the wind
passes over them.
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Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be the expression of the imagination and is innate
with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal
impressions work like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move
it by their motion to ever-changing melody.
14.6 REFERENCES
1. Abrams, M. H. Abrams.: The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition,
Oxford University Press: USA, 1971.
2. Wimsatt, K. W. and Brooks, Cleanth.: Literary Criticism: A Short History, Oxford University
Press: New Delhi, 1957.
14.7 FURTHER READINGS
1. Habib, ,M. A. R..: A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present, Oxford: Blackwell,
2005.
2. Nagrajan, M. S.: English Literary Criticism & Theory: An Introductory History, Hyderabad:
Orient Black Swan, 2006.
3. Abrams, M. H. Abrams.: The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition,
Oxford University Press: USA, 1971.
4. Wimsatt, K. W. and Brooks, Cleanth.: Literary Criticism: A Short History, Oxford University
Press: New Delhi, 1957.
14.8 MODEL QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the key arguments of the text, Romantic Analogues of Art and Mind.
2. Discuss the seminal changes that the nature and function of literature underwent with
the advent of romanticism.
3. What is the expressive theory of literature? How is it different from that of the imitation?

^^^^^^
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Lesson-15

On the Imagination or the Esemplastic Power

-S. T. Coleridge

“Tis to create, and in creating live

A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image… (Childe Harold, III, 46-9)

Structure

15.0Objectives

15.1 Introductionto the Lesson

15.2 An Introduction to the Critic: S. T. Coleridge

15.3 Imagination: As Considered by Other English Romantics

15.4On the Imagination or the Esemplastic Power: An Overview

15.5 Summary of the Lesson

15.6 Glossary

15.7 References

15.8 Further Readings

15.9 Model Questions

15.0 Objectives

After reading this lesson, you will be able to:

 Discuss the very distinctive input of Coleridge as a critic

 Illuminate the significance of imagination in creative writings
 Explain the difference between fancy and imagination
 Deliberate on the philosophical underpinnings of imagination

15.1 Introduction to the Lesson

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In the previous two lessons you have been given a comprehensive introduction/exposure
to romanticism. In this lesson you will study a text, “On the Imagination or the
Esemplastic Power”, a chapter from the book, Biographia Literariaby an English literary
critic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Imagination is a key concept in romantic criticism. It is
often considered as an alternative word for poetry/literature. Esemplastic is a word that
Coleridge devised himself from Greek and means “to shape into one”. The phrase
'esemplastic power' suggests that the imagination itself has some kind of agency in the
real world. As a faculty of mind, imagination facilitates seeing images/pictures of the
world in the mind.It is the ability of the mind to build mental scenes, objects or events
that do not exist. Imagination is known for its creative-artistic power, inventiveness. It’s
mind’s eye.In Coleridge’s view, literature is a union of emotion and thought that he
describes as imagination. He argues that poetry has a unique distinction of
integrating the universal and the particular, the objective and the subjective, the generic
and the individual.The function of criticism for Coleridge is to discern these elements and
to lift them into conscious awareness. As a critic, Coleridge expressed a profound concern
for imagination, an underlying creative principle that is fundamental to human beings
and the universe as a whole. Contrary to the popular perception, you will also see that
fancy and imagination are not synonyms, not one and the same.They are different
faculties of human mind with different functions.

15.2 An Introduction to the Critic: S. T. Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) is a 19th-century English poet and critic. He is

primarily known for his sensuous lyrical poetry and its celebration of the imaginative
power of the human mind. With William Wordsworth, another celebrated poet and critic,
S. T. Coleridge published a volume of poems, Lyrical Ballads (1798), which is said to have
marked the beginning of the Romantic Period in English literature. Lastingly influential,
Biographiya Literaria, (complete title Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and
Opinions, published 1817), is a bewildering book, moving somewhere between
autobiography and abstract critical-philosophical literary criticism.The book is one of the
most important works of literary criticism of the English Romantic period, combining
philosophy and literary criticism in a new way. Though this monumental work of
criticism lacks a coherence of its own, the book became fascinating for a reasoned
critique of Wordsworth’s poems. Over the whole work hovers Coleridge’s veneration for
the power of imagination: once this key is grasped, the unity of the work becomes
evident. To Coleridge, imagination is the archetype of this unifying force because it
represents the means by which the twin human capacities for intuitive, non-rational
understanding and for organizing and discriminating thought concerning the material world
are reconciled. It was by means of this sort of reconciliation of opposites that Coleridge
attempted, with considerable success, to combine a sense of the universal and ideal with
an acute observation of the particular and sensory in his own poetry and in his criticism.
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15.3 Imagination: As Considered by the Other English Romantics

A beautiful account of imagination and its efficacy is the hallmark of almost all the
English Romantics. All the great contemporaries of Coleridge including Blake,
Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats engaged themselves with the task of defining the
worth of imagination. They are of the view that human beings become complete and lead
a fuller life, by dissolving themselves in the works they are make. Someone said ‘poetry as
the lava of the imagination’. John Keats found imagination so attractive that he went to
the extent of making a statement-‘Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream-he
woke and found it truth’. Wordsworth often uses the word ‘imagination ‘quite ordinarily:
when he subdivides ‘Poems of Fancy’ and ‘Poems of Imagination’. In his work,Prelude,
Book XIII he goes overboard:

Imagination, which in truth

Is but another name for absolute strength
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
And reason in her most exalted mood. (167-70)

For William Wordsworth, imagination is that empowering faculty of human mind that
enables him/her to overcome the bodily awareness and attain a new insight into the
invisible world of spirit. He calls this faculty as ‘reason in her most exalted mood’. William
Blake (1757-1827) considers imagination as opposite to reason. Reason and imagination
stand in a relation of opposition to each other. Reason for him is the enemy. It is
rationalism which kills imagination. The rationalist mind undermines the grandeur of
inspiration, the imaginative view of things. It is the ‘rotten rags’ of rationalist thinking
which has stripped him of the imaginative vision. Imagination is the quality that
distinguishes the true poet from the uninspired ones, according to Blake. It is also an
entrance through which man enters the larger world of truth. Imagination is the vision of
the infinite and poetry is the embodiment of imaginative power.

P. B. Shelley shares with William Blake the cleansing/elevating power of imagination.

Poetry/imagination, according to Shelley,transmutes all that it touches; it turns all things
to loveliness. Poetry redeems man from decay and degeneration.

All things exist as they are perceived-at least in relation to the percipient. The mind is its
own place, and in itself/Can make Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. But poetry defeats
the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions.
(Romanticism p.967)

15.4On the Imagination or the Esemplastic Power: An Overview

In the chapter XIII of Biographia Literaria,S. T. Coleridge gives a very grand and
impressive account of imagination, claiming that human creativity is a sharing in the
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creative power of the godhead and this creativity emanates from imagination. Imagination
is nothing less than a sharing in the divine.Coleridge arrived at essential distinctions
between the Primary Imagination and Secondary Imagination, with the secondary
imagination defined as independent of and different from the Fancy. Here it is worth
quoting the concluding lines from the textto make the pictureclearer:

The Imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary

Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception
and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I
Am. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the
conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency,
and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves,
diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered
impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is
essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead."

"Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and
definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from
the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that
empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But
equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready
made from the law of association.

According to Coleridge, Imagination has two forms: Primary and Secondary. Primary
Imagination is merely the power of receiving impressions of the external world through
the senses. It is the power of perceiving the objects of sense, both in their parts and as a
whole. It is an involuntary act of the mind: the human mind receives impressions and
sensations from the outside world, unconsciously and involuntarily, it imposes some sort
of order on those impressions, reduces them to shape and size, so that the mind is able
to form a clear image of the outside world. It is in this way that clear and coherent
perception becomes possible. The Primary Imagination is universal, it is possessed by all.

The Secondary Imagination, on the other hand, may be possessed by others also, but it is
the peculiar and distinctive attribute of the artists and poets. It is the Secondary
Imagination that makes artistic creation possible. Secondary Imagination is more active
and conscious in its working.It is a creative function and thereby repeats the divine
act of creation. It requires an effort of the will, volition and consciousness. It works upon
what is perceived by the Primary Imagination, its raw material is the sensations and
impressions supplied to it by the Primary Imagination. By an effort of the will and the
intellect, the Secondary Imagination selects and orders the raw material, and re-shapes
and re-models it into objects of beauty. It is ‘esemplastic’, i.e., “a shaping and modifying
power”; it “re-shapes objects of the external world and steeps them with a glory and dream
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that never was on sea and land”. It is an active agent which, “dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates, in order to create”. The Secondary Imagination is at the root of all poetic
activity. It is the power which harmonises and reconciles opposites, and hence Coleridge
calls it “a magical, synthetic power”. This unifying power of the Imagination is best seen
in the fact that it synthesises or fuses the various faculties of the soul – perception,
intellect, will, emotion – and fuses the internal with the external, the subjective with the
objective, the human mind with external nature, the spiritual with the physical or
material. It is through the play of this unifying power that nature is coloured by the soul
of the poet, and the soul of the poet is steeped in nature. ‘The identity’ which the poet
discovers in man and nature results from the synthesising activity of the Secondary
Imagination. Thus, Coleridge may have called the secondary imagination ‘secondary’,
while its task is not that of subordinate and inferior significance. The sublime of man is
the highest achievement of beings and this is rendered possible only through the
secondary imagination. However, the primary imagination is primary in two senses. It is
shared by all, whereas the secondary imagination is of the poet or creative artists. And it
is, in its highest achievement, of infinitely greater importance. Man is capable of the
angelic, higher reason (which is the topmost level of imagination). Imagination, in its
highest twinkling, is nothing less than the godly. To illustrate his point about
imagination, Coleridge quotes Milton at the very beginning of the chapter XIII:

O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom

All things proceed, and up to him return

For almost all the romanticists, imagination is a link between man and God.The power of
perception, Coleridge called as Primary Imagination whereas the poetic imagination as
the Secondary Imagination. It differs from the Primary Imagination in degree, but not in
kind.The letter in the text is significant, because it is here that Coleridge sets out his
famous distinction between primary and secondary imagination. In very simple terms, the
primary imagination makes sense of the world around us.

Fancy is a limited faculty of human mind. It handles bits of experiences, bits of memory,
which are brought to mind by the associative process, but it can’t do much with them.
They can be formed into patterns, but the individual components, because they remain
fixed and definite, can take on no life of their own, and forms no vital bonds with their
neighbours. Thus, Coleridge assigns fancy a very negligible role in creativity. Rather,
fancy is not a creative power at all. It only combines what it perceives into beautiful
shapes, but like the imagination it does not dissolve, fuse and unify. The difference
between the two i.e. fancy and imagination is the same as the difference between a
mechanical mixture and a chemical compound. In a mechanical mixture a number of
ingredients are brought together. They are mixed up but they do not lose their individual
properties. They still exist as separate identities. In a chemical compound on the other
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hand, the different ingredients combine to form something new. The different ingredients
no longer exist as separate identities. They lose their respective properties and fuse
together to create something new and entirely different. A compound is an act of creation,
while a mixture is merely a bringing together of a number of separate elements.

Thus Imagination creates new shapes and forms of beauty by fusing and unifying the
different impressions it receives from the external world. Fancy is not creative. It is a kind
of memory, it arbitrarily brings together images and even when brought together, they
continue to retain their separate and individual properties. They receive no colouring or
modification from the mind. Coleridge explains the point by quoting two passages from
Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. The following lines from this poem serve to illustrate
Fancy:

Fully gently now she takes him by the hand

A lily prisoned in a goal of snow
Or ivory in an alabaster band
So white a friend engirds so white a foe.

The above lines do not interpenetrate into one another. But, the following lines from the
same poem illustrate the power and function of Imagination:

Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky

So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye.

“How many images and feelings”, says Coleridge, “are here brought together without effort
and without discord- the beauty of Adonis- the rapidity of the flight- the yearning yet
helplessness of the enamoured gazer- and a shadowy, ideal character thrown over the
whole?”For Coleridge, Fancy is the drapery of the poetic genius, but Imagination is its
very soul, which forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

The Primary and Secondary Imagination differ from each other in degree. And the
difference between imagination and fancy is in kind.

Self-Assessment Questions

1. What do you mean by the term, “esemplastic”?

2. What is fancy, according to Coleridge?

15.5 Summary of the Lesson

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In this lesson you had an introduction to the seminal contribution of S. T. Coleridge as a

critic and his magnum opus, Biographia Literaria, a central text of the romantic tradition.
You also had an elaboration of the concept of imagination in general developed by the
English romanticists. Above all, you studied the theory and the redemptive power of
imagination as developed by Coleridge in the chapter XIII of his book, whereinimagination
is explained as the constitutive power of genius, a mind capable of combining and
modifying ideas into creations. An imaginative mind is visionary, analogous in its powers
to the deity itself. It is the mind in its highest and purest capacity. Imagination has the
transforming and unifying capacity. It is a power capable of elevating “the more- than-
reasoning Mind”. The lesson also elaborated the significance of the Letter wherein he
drew the essential distinction between the primary and secondary imagination and their
independence of fancy.

15.6 Glossary

Esemplastic is a word Coleridge devised himself from Greek which means “to shape into
one”. The word suggests that the imagination itself has some kind of agency/intervention
in shaping the real world.

Fancyis a way of organizing sensory material without really synthesizing it. It has a very
negligible role in creation.

Imaginationis a creative faculty of human mind. The faculty of imagination is divided

into two by Coleridge. Primary imagination is what we all share. It is the basic faculty
that allows us to make sense of our world and give it meaning. The
secondary imagination is the faculty of the poet.Coleridge uses the term to refer to human
ability to transcend this primary organization and to reassemble perceptual elements to
create new meaning. The secondary imagination is basically the creative or poetic one.

15.7 References

1. Habib,M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. UK: Blackwell
Publishing, 2005.

2. Roe, Nicholas. (eds.) Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Great Glaxendon Street: Oxford
University Press, 2005.

15.8 Further Readings

1. Roe, Nicholas. (eds.)Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Great Glaxendon Street: Oxford

University Press, 2005.
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2. Dubando, Laura. (eds.)Encyclopedia of Romanticism. New York: Routledge, 1992.

3. Habib,M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. UK: Blackwell
Publishing, 2005.

4. Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition, Oxford
University Press, 1953.

15.9 Model Questions

1. What is the significance of the Letter that figures in the prescribed text?

2. Comment on the faculty of imagination as explained by Coleridge.

3. Explain the difference between fancy and imagination as expounded by Coleridge.

*******