Write about major Neo classical "Poets" of the age:

-> Name:-Bhumi N. Vajni

->M.A.:-English

->Sem-1

->Roll No.:- 06

->Paper-2, "The Neo classical Literature"

->Sub:-Write about major Neo classical "Poets" of the age:

->Submitted to:-Heenamem

->Year:-2012-2013

->Department of English

* History of Neo-Classical Age:-

1. The Age of Neo-Classical in English Literature.

2. Neo-Classical can be divided into three parts.

3. Characteristic of the Neo-Classical Age.

4. Poetry.

5. Court Poets.

6. Satiric Poets.

7. Some poets of Neo-classical Age,

          -Mathew Prior

                   -Alexander Pope

          -James Thomson

                   -Edward Young

          -William Collins

                   -Thomas Gray

          -Robert Burns

                   -John Dryden

          -William Cowper

                   -William Blake

·       The Age of Neo-Classism in English literature:-

In English literature the period from the latter half of the 17^th century to the end of the 18^th century is called the period of Neo-classical. The writer of Elizabethan Age had no respect for the rules, they gave free play to their imagination and depicted what pleased them. In the writers of the genius it was all right, but in the less gifted it degenerated into dicence. A natural reaction against this tendency is seen in the metaphysical poets. They were against Elizabethan writers, and developed their own system of writing poetry. Their method of verification was also not easy and graceful, it was difficult and complicated. Reading poetry became a job and not an entertainment. Both these type of poets, the Elizabethan and the metaphysical, helped in the evolution of Neo-Classism sin England.

          Politically the most important factor responsible for this change was the influence of France an English manner and life. King Charls -2 was restored to monarchy in England in May, 1660. He had lived in exile in France for a long time, and there for, when he come to England, brought with him a love of French manners, ways, elegance and artistic taste. France, during the latter half of the 17^th century, under King Louis xiv, was a model of manners, morals, elegance, and literary taste for Europe. Louis xiv took a keen interest in literature and under his powerful influence neo-classism steadily grew and developed in France Boileav Rapine and Bossy formulated their theory of poetry based on the authority of Aristotle. If appealed to the English writers also, partly because of the excesses of both the Elizabethan and metaphysical poets.

The English Neo-classical movement was started and derived from France models. It was originated much earlier. It was English literature from the restoration period is that from 1660 until the end of the 18^th century.

·       Neo-Classical can be divided into three parts:-

1)    The Restoration Age:-[1660-1700]

-         Milton, Bunyan and Dryden were the dominant figures.

2)    The Augustan Age:-[1700-1750]

-         Smollett, Pope, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding were the dominant figures.

3)    The Age of Johnson:-[1750-1798]

-Dr. Samuel Johnson was the dominant figure of this age.

Neo-classical represented a reaction against the optimisian of Renaissance. They believed that man himself was the most appropriate subject of art. Restoration Age’s literature replaced the Renaissance literature. The imagination invention, religion, politics, economy, philosophies were some of the subject man was at the center.

·       Characteristics of the Neo-Classical Age:-

1)    Literature of this age is concerned with ‘Nature’ i.e...-human nature.

2)    There was the supremacy of reason.

3)    This age is also called classical Age as the writes of this were greatly influenced by the classical writes and thus they imitated then in their work.

4)    This age rejected fancy and desired tube guided by reason.

5)    This age wished to understand and not imagine.

6)    Society of this age demanded instruction and information.

7)    This age helped to establish some practical rules of conduct.

8)    This age had a great influence of French writers.

9)    The work of Dryden, pope, Swift, Addission and John Gay as well as many of their contemporaries, exhibit qualities of order, clarity, and stylistic decorum that were formulated in the major critical documents of the Age.

10)                      ‘Nature’ of Augustan however, was not the wild, spiritual nature the romantics poets would later idealize, but nature as derived from classical theory a rational and comprehensible moral order in the universe, demonstrating God’s providential design.

11)                      Many of the important genres of this period were adaptations of classical forms: mock epic, translation, and imitation.

·       POETRY:-

The Poetry is dominated by Neo-classical traits.

The lyrical Spirit, whatever there is of it is makes by Caroline charm and skill. It is however often artificial in thought and deficient in originality, except for Dryden, only court poets more much consideration. The ode is a favourite form and again Dryden is preeminent. The most spectacular type in the development of the heroic couplet.

·       Court Poets:-

John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, 1647-1680 poet courtier, libertine, wit-In many of his writing obscenity substitutes for its wit and foulness for licentiousness.

Love and life represents perhaps his supreme lyricism; satire against mankind his superior satirical talent and can centered cleverness. Rochester is the only serious court poet, but has left love lyrics of grace and songs of distinctions.

·       Charles Sackville:- [1638-1706] 

Poet and courtier to Dryden dedicated his of drama tickpoesis. He wrote epigrams modern satires and such prettily-turned herself a beauty.

“During sparkling wit and eyes” is a satire a Katherine sadly, mistress of James-2, most famous is the ballad of eleven stanzas called song written as sea which grosses declared as in augur ting.

John Sheffield third earl of Margrave and after words first Duke of Buckingham and Norman by 1648-1721 poet statesman of the court wits Sheffield was the most respectable, his essay on satire published anonymously.

When worth Dillon, poet first critic to praise Milton’s paradise lost, translated Horace Arc poetical (1680) into blank verse. “Poetic diction” destined for fuller development. He was quite free of the low code of morals of his contemporaries.

·       Satiric Poets:-

è John Oldham - [1653-1683]     

John Oldham old written to whose memory Dryden wrote a noble ode and satirist designated by scoot as “the English Juvenal”.

è Samuel Butler :-[1612-1680]

Samuel Butler, satiric poet, son of a Worcestershire farmer, educated at the king’s school Worcester gentleman servant to Elizabethan, countess of Kent at Wrest Park (1919). Money obtained by marriage to Mrs. Herbert soon lost secretary, during lifetime to several country squires including sir Samuel lake, a rigid Presbyterian who may have been the probably the butt in “a duke of bucks” in characters. Although granted an annual pension of one hundred pounds (1678), yet in said to have died in obscure penury and to have been buried at the expense of William Langueville.

·       Hudibras:-

He wrote unfinished mock epic poem of more than ten thousand lines, popular because topical, satirizes the roundheads by exploiting the “humors’” of the long faced Hudibars accompanied by his squire Ralpho. Not the same adventures involved in a lose plot hard to follow through the complex dialog and unrecognized allusion’s but the anti puritan picture of the poem are important withering surface portraiture broadly comic current mock-solemn parade of erudition.

·       Some Poets of Neo-Classical Age:-

è Mathew Prior:- [1664-1721]

-         He wrote his first book (made debug) “Panther” in collaboration with Charles Montague.

-         He used his verse to comment on the event politics.

-         In “Alma” or the “progress of the mind” he denounces worldly vanities even verging on the grotesque.

-         His verse de society shows a light touch and a pleasing turn of expression.

-         His poem ‘Henry’ and ‘Emma’ serves as a text for a study of the blunders of Neo-classical.

è Alexander Pope:- [1688-1744]

-         He wrote one of the famous satirical Epic-poem. He was a famous Essayist, critical and also a poet.

-         His work like ‘The Rape of the lock’, verses to the memory of an unfortunate Lady (1717) and dunciad are (1728) noteworthy.

-         His essays are also written in verse form and are as beautiful as his poems. His first book can be considered as a longer philosophical poem.

-         An essay on criticism is a kind of rhyming verse known as heroic couplets. It first appeared in 1711, yet written in 1709.

-         The ‘Rope of the hock’ is a beautiful heroic narrative poem. It was first published in two cantos and later another three cantos added to the previous ones.

-         The last canto was available only in 1717 with the addition of the moral speech of Charisa.

-         This poem satirizes a minor actual incident pope satirizes the beauty conscious and hypocrite contemporary society of his country. Belinda the heroine is shown elegant. She is a beauty that is fragile. She loses a lock a hair which touches her deeply.

-         His another poem Eloisa to Abelard is inspired by the 12^th century’s illicit love and secret marriage.

-         Pannell, Tickell and Philips can be considered minor poets with one or two noteworthy verses.

-         Pope’s Essay is regarded, in poets as true genius is but rare, True Taste as seldom is the critic’s share.

·       James Thomason:-[1700-1748]

-         James Thomson was born in 1770, at Edam in Roxburghshire, and went at the age of fifteen to Edinburgh University, with the idea of becoming a minister like his father.. The eighteenth century is an age of grate prose, and until its close, of second-rate poetry. Finally led to the splendid outburst of Romantic poetry in the dawn of the new century.

-         As a writer he signalized the departure from the town to the country, chose the senseriasm stanza and blank verse as his medium, and eschewed the stopped couplet that was ubiquitous in the realm of poetry at the time.

-         He wrote some noticeable work of arts “winter”, “spring”, “summer”, and “autumn” (The seasons) and in “The castle of the Indolence.” His long poem a “Liberty”.

-         “The season” is a particular poetry of the nature.

-         “Castle of Indolence” is a half humorous description of the retreat at Richmond where he lived with some of his friends in an indolence to lovely and close to him.

-         Liberty is a very good example of Blank-verse. This poem expresses Thomson attitude as a patriotic Whig.

·       Edward Young:-

He wrote a beautiful collection of poems called “Nine Thoughts” – the complaint or, Night-Thoughts on life, Death and Immortality.

This poem is published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745. The poem is written in blank verse describing the poets musing on death over a series of nine ‘nights’ in which he ponders the loss of his wife and friends and laments human frailties.

è The nine poems are,

1)    Life, Death and Immortality

2)    Time, Death and friendship

3)    Narcissa

4)    The Christian Triumph

5)    The Relapse

6)    The Infidel Reclaimed

7)    The Nature, Proof and Importance of the world Answers

8)    The Consolation

·       William Collins:-

-         He possessed a significant place as poet of his time.

-         His memorable poetries are

1)    Ode on Passions

2)    Popular superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland

3)    Ode to Evening

-         Collins ‘Ode on Passions; is a wonderful example of allegorical form of poetry. Even ‘Ode to evening’ is his masterpiece that creates an amazing and unbelievable picture of the evening.

·       Thomas Gray:- [1716-1771]

-         The author of the famous “Elegy” is the most scholarly and well balanced of all the early romantic poets. He died in his rooms at Pembroke collage in 1771, and was buried in the little churchyard of the stoke pages.

-         Gray’s “Letter”, published in 1775 “Journal”- model of natural description.

-         Thomas poems divide themselves naturally into three periods.

-         Gray’s emancipation from the classic rules which had so long governed English literature.

-         The best are his “Hymn to Adversity” and the odes “To Spring” and “on a distant prospect of Eton collage”.

-         The “Elegy written in a country churchyard” (1750 published in 1751), the most perfect poem of the age, belongs to this period.

-         Two other well known poems of this second period are-

1)    “The Pindaric Odes”(1757)

2)    “The Progress of Poesy” and

3)     “The Bard”.

-         Norse poems “The Fatal sister” and “The Descent of Odin” (1761).

-         He was a scholar, familiar with all the intellectual interests of his age.

-         Gray’s work has much of the precision and polish of the classical school, but he shares also the reawakened interest in nature, in common man, and in mediaeval culture.

-         His work is generally romantic and both in style and in spirit.

·        Robert Burns :- [1759-1796]

-         Robert Burns was born in a clay cottage at allowed, Scotland, in the bleak winter of 1759.His father was an excellent type of scotch peasant of those days a poor, honest, god-fearing man. Burns ’s life is a

-         “A  life  of   fragments”

As Carlyle called it; and the different fragments are as unlike as the noble.

-         “cotter’s Saturday night”

And the rant and riot of

-         “The Jolly Beggars”.

-         Burns lived his sad, toilsome, erring life in the open air with the sum and the rain, and his songs touch all the world. The latter’s poetry, so far as it has a philosophy, rests upon two principles which the classic school never understood, that common people are at heart romantic and lovers of the ideal, and that simple human emotions furnish the elements of true poetry.

-         Burns poetic creed may be summed up in one of his own stanza.

-         “Give me a spark o’ nature‘s fire, That’s a’ the learning I desire; Then, though I trudge thru ‘dub an’ mire At plough or cart, My muse, though homely in attire, may touch the heart.”

-         The publication of the Kilmarnock burns, with the title.

“Poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect” (1786)

 Marks an epoch in the history of English literature such poems as,

“The Mountain Daisy”

                                    “Man was made to Mourn”

“The Twa Dogs”

                                     “Address to the Deil”

“Halloween”

Suggest that the whole spirit of the romantic-revival is embodied in this obscure plowman.

-         Love, human, pathos, the response to nature, all the poetic qualities that touch. The human hearts are here.

-         Among his poems of Nature,

             “To a Mouse”                    

  “To a Mountain Daisy “

Are unquestionably the best. The majority of his poems like,

             “Winter”     

  “Ye banks and braeso’ bonie doon”

-         Of his poems of emotion there is an immense number. Burns without finding this natural juxtaposition of smiles and tears.

-         Burns’ longer poems the two best worth reading are,

“The Cotter’s Saturday night”    

“Tam o’ shanter”   -noble poverty

-         Burns known wherever the English language is spoken and honored wherever Scotchmen gather together. He died miserably in 1796, when only thirty-seven years old.

·       John Dryden :- [1631-1700]

-         “Every age has a kind a universal Genius and perhaps in no poet are his own world more truly verified than are these of John Dryden. “

-         He was born in 1631, in the little village of Aldwinkle in Noprthamptonshire; John was the same of its rector. His works are,                                                                                   “Absalom and Achitophel ”                                                                                 “Ode to st.  Cecilia’s Day “                                               “ Alexander’s Feast “ (1647)                                                                                  “ Annus Mirabills (1667) “

-         Annus mirabilis was his first poem.

He also wrote the critical essay on Dramatic poesy. It’s a prose work.

“The Hind and the Panther, a Defense of the Roman Church “. (1687) which if it accorded the poet same fane. It is certain he received no pecuniary gain from its publication.

·       William Cowper :- [1731-1800]

-         He was particularly and sensitive child, he was the constant companion of a tender and indulgent mother; and after her death in 1737, it was a heart broken little boy of six years old who arrived at Dr. Pitman’s boarding.

-         In 1773 a second period of darkness clouded his life fear three years, but again he recovered and began to make poetry the business of his life.

-         In 1782 he published a volume of poems, and the delightful ballad “John Gilpin”.

-         “The task”, published in 1785 from this time Cowper takes his place our finest English poets.

-         “My Mother’s Picture” is a tender poem which cannot be even Goldsmith in his verse can quite equal.

-         Cowper’s first volume of poems, containing

“The Progress of Error”

“Truth”

                         “Table Talk”

-         Those poems are dreary on the whole, but pure human.

-         “The Task”- written in blank verse, and published in 1785, is coopers’ longest poem.

-         Cowper’s most laborious work,” The translation of homer” in blank verse, was publishing in 1791.

-         Some of his other works are,

“On The Receipt of My Mother’s Picture”

           “The Winter Walk at Noon”

“Report of an Adjudged Case”

            “Gipsies”

“Sketches of autumn”

·       William Blanks :- (1757-1827)

-         His work is quite significant poetry cannot be forgotten.

-         His poetical sketch is the first collection of poetry and prose which was written between 1769 and 1777.

-         The poetical sketches consist of 19 lyrical poems in all. The Nineteen Poems together is called.

                            “Miscellaneous Poems”

-         His song of Innocence and of experience is an illustrated collection of poems. This poem was originally a complete work first printed in 1789 It is conceptual collection of 19 poems interwoven in a same work of art.

-         Blake’s “The French Revolution (1791) has a great significance. In this poem Blake describes the problems of the French monarchy:

-         He also wrote a poem called “milten”.

-         This poem is written in 1804 and 1810. Its hero is milten the concept if this poem is much impressive and innovative. Milton returns from Heaven and unites with black to explore the relationship between living writers and their predecessors, and to under go a mystical journey to correct his own spiritual errors.

          The Neo-classical Age was the richest period of the poetry and prose. Three whole ages the restoration Age, The Augustan Age and The age of Johnson. This age reacted against Renaissance literature.