EG 312: Non-fictional Prose

Prasanta Kumar Das

Department of English
 Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
• Near contemporary of Wordsworth and Coleridge – published own early poems
in combination with those of Coleridge in 1796 and 1797 – supported the Lyrical
Ballads – yet lacks almost all the traits and convictions of what is
characteristically Romantic – lived happily in the city – couldn’t abide Shelley or
his poetry, distrusted Coleridge’s supernaturalism and Wordsworth’s oracular
sublimities and religion of nature – preferred elements in their poetry that were
human and realistic – at a time when many important writers were radicals or
reactionaries, Lamb was uncommitted in both religion and politics – yet was
friends with reformers like William Hazlitt, William Godwin, and Leigh Hunt

• Not until 1820 …at the age of forty-five, did Lamb discover the form that would
make him famous when he began to write essays for John Scott’s new London
Magazine (1820-3)
[Source: Norton]
 Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
• Lamb’s contribution was to accommodate the intimacies of the familiar essay, a genre dating back to
Montaigne in the sixteenth century, to a modern world of magazine writing that aimed to reach a
general public
• The Essays of Elia make the magazine (an impersonal medium that contributed conspicuously to the
information overload of the age) appear to be a forum in which a reader might really know an author
– sense of a paradox never far away in Lamb’s writings (sense that illusion of personality in the
personal essay might be easily debunked)
• lends a fascinating edge to their charm and complicating the autobiographical impulse that seems to
link them to the works of his contemporaries – Elia was the name of an Italian clerk he knew when he
worked in the South Sea House – Lamb projects the character of a man who is whimsical but strong-
willed, self-deprecating yet self-absorbed, with strong likes and dislike, a specialist in nostalgia –
humour that verges on pathos – But Elia anagram for ‘a lie’ – seeming unguarded self-revelation
intertwined with the cunning of a deliberate artist in prose – to write about himself Lamb developed a
prose style that was colored throughout by archaic words and expressions that continually alluded to
literary precursors, including the works of other eccentrics such as Robert Burton and Lawrence
Sterne – as if he was suggesting that he was most himself when most immersed in his beloved books
[Norton]
 Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

• In 1792 when he was nearly 17 went to visit grandmother at Blakesware – fell

in love with local girl Ann Simmons, referred to as ‘Alice W–m’ in ‘Dream
Children’
• 27 July 1992 Samuel Salt (father’s employee) died – Lamb family lost house,
income drastically reduced
• In the winter of 1795/6 Charles suffered episode of psychiatric illness that
required his removal to a lunatic asylum
• Evening of 21 September 1796 Mary snapped
• Themes of imagination, nostalgia
• Unreliable narrator - ‘Deconstruction’ of personal essay – anticipates use of
unreliable narrator by writers like Joseph Conrad and John Fowles
 Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

• First take a look at the prose style of Lamb in ‘Dream-Children’

• ‘A Dissertation upon Roast Pig’ (with apologies to the vegans in
the class)
• Playful, humorous, use of hyperbole, digressive
• Early example of food writing
• Intertextual with Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ and older writers
like Richard Burton
• Is he making a point about history and history writing?