Eighteenth century

Novel / Age of Transition

/ Towards The Romantic
Revival

Historical background - towards the end of 18th

century
England under Hanoverian Kings - (17141837) - Five monarchs. Stable rule.
constitutional monarchy. George I - Robert
Walpole - first PM

cabinet system of government in England

American war of Independence

French revolutionary wars

Rise of Napoleon

18th century as the Age of hospitals

Emergence of the Novel - a historically significant

event

actual beginnings - debatable?

Evolution of english fiction - Prose fiction during the age of Shakespeare - heroic
romance - Aphra Behn and other women writers - Bunyans use of fictional
allegory - popularity of biography

with Samuel Richardson - a fresh point of departure

popularity of the novel - like periodical essay

growth of a miscellaneous reading public - growing number of reading women

as well

literature beginning to outgrow the cramping limitations of classicism - (in epic

and drama - unable to reject the authority of antiquity altogether - easy to
ignore in the form of novel) - a fresh field, enabled to work independently

result of the democratic movement in 18th century England - other forms have
been consistently aristocratic - growth of commerce and industry, waning
feudal nobility, rise of the middle class

wider scope that novel allows - exploration of inner life - typical art form of the
introspective and analytical modern world - realism, democratic spirit,
psychological explorations

a product of the middle class

plots based on what altered a social relationship - love followed by

marriage, quarrelling and reconciliation, gain or loss of money /
social status

class consciousness

a product of urban imagination

realism and contemporaneity

1740-1800 - hundreds of novels

Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Sterne The work of the four

masters stands high, but the foothills are low (Oliver Elton)

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) - Pamela (1740)

prosperous London printer

began writing at 50 - mere accident - on being asked to compile a volume of letters for
country readers, not sufficiently educated readers

based on a true story he had heard earlier

Pamela or Virtue Rewarded - 1740 - instant sensational success - England in raptures about a young girl resisting the advances of her master, eventually becoming his virtuous
wife

Clarissa Harlowe - 1747-8 - masterpiece - European reputation - one of the greatest 18th
century novels - character of Lovelace

Extremely long, endless repetitions, masses of unimportant detail, stories drag, clumsy
structure. Form - artificial

epistolary method - in the form of letters

patient, microscopic analysis of motive and passion; ethical traditions of Addison and
Steele; purification of society and manners

moralising, sentimental - weary

his genius was feminine?

(Defoe - minimal interest in character Defoes sense of social and material reality PLUS
Richardsons awareness of the complexities of human personality and of the tensions
between moral and public social forces, between morality and gentility = NOVEL

Henry Fielding (1717-54) - Joseph Andrews (1742)

According to Richardson, wretchedly low and dirty

Ten years of play writing - lessons in the art of construction - good preparation in technique unlike Richardson

Fielding - not enthusiastic about Pamela - found absurdities - disgusted with the overwrought
sentimentalism - rejection of morality and value systems of high society (whatever Richardson
revered)

Decides to take advantage of the novels popularity - an honest launch against Pamela - a
burlesque - The Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742) - began by reversing the situation in Pamela
- a parody (Pamelas brother Joseph - rejects the advances of the aristocrat lady)

After the 10th chapter - an epic of the highway - full of adventures, horseplay and not too decent
fun

picaresque - picaro=rogue - who survives on wit and presence of mind amidst unfavourable
circumstances - eventually matures and becomes a good man

experimental - but a good beginning for Fielding

The Adventures of Tom Jones - 1749 - hero, a foundling (biographical mode) - unlike Richardsons
portraits of completely virtuous or completely evil men and women)

Amelia - 1751 - character of a woman

concerned about the structural principles of prose fiction - unlike Defoe or Richardson - engages
with questions related to his craft - ideas of unity and balance (BUT, also some wildly extravagant
praises from Coleridge and Thackeray)

a moralist, social satirist, teacher and a greater artist than Richardson

Tobias Smollet (1721-71)

Lower level than Richardson and Fielding

From medical profession to literature - like Goldsmith - a large amount of

miscellaneous writings - History of England

Fiction - prompted by the success of Richardson and Fielding - half a dozen

novels

English novel of sea and of sailors - brisk, action filled - more entertaining

explored the national peculiarities of Irish, Scottish and Welsh - first attempt in
English literary history

little attempt to organize his materials - strings of adventures - crudely drawn

characters - loose compositions - little cheerfulness - coarse physical humour

critical of moral and ethical hypocrisy

Humphry Clinker - an exception - genuine comedy

a satirist and reformer - ship scenes in Roderick Random (1748) led to the
improvement of conditions in naval service

Other novelists

Laurence Sterne - Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy - hardly a novel?

- sheer irreverence for society - fragmented narrative - influenced 20th
century writers like Rushdie, Joyce, Gunter Grass

New emotionalism - sentimental - feelings run riot - reaction to the dry

intellectualism

Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling - sentimentality to melodrama

Eliza Haywood - Love in Excess - explorations in female sexuality

Frances Burney - real foundations of the womans novel - founder of

tea-table school of fiction (Little Fanny - as Johnson called her - hence,
prominent figure in London literary circles) - about unequal gender
relations - Evelina - greatest success since Clarissa - epistolary method
- wrote of life from a womans point of view

Sarah Fielding (Henry Fieldings sister) - David Simple - social

pretensions as a theme - The Governess - first English novel for children

Womens participation right from the beginning (Pramod Nayar)

Revival of Romance

a growing interest in middle ages - medievalism

Horace Walpole (a letter writer) - a small house transformed into a miniature

Gothic castle - collection of curiosities and art etc

Castle of Otranto - 1765 - Gothic Romance - expression in fiction of the

peculiar tastes already manifested architecturally in his toy castle - jumble
of childish absurdities? - eg: picture which ascends from frame, statue bleeds
at the nose

BUT, it broke new ground - taken seriously (Gray, Byron, Scott)

Clara Reeves Old English Baron - imitation

Sensationalism

Most works - forgotten

Ann Radcliffe - Romance of the Forest, Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian very long, complicated plot, horrors

Matthew Gregory Lewis - Ambrosio or The Monk - just 20 years old - wild
sensationalism (personal relations with Scott)

In poetry

Age of transition

Moving away from classical/augustan models (eg:pope) towards more

poetic forms - wit does not ensure good poetry

Reaction against classical school of poetry (p.158 - Hudson)

Johnson and Goldsmith - continuance of the Augustan tradition - last great

works of the outgoing artificial eighteenth century school - BUT a rupture
from the tradition in some ways - treatment of nature and rural life personal, reminiscent writing

Change in Form - abandonment of the Popean couplet - Use of blank verse

Growing admiration of Milton - Spenserian revival

Back to the wonder-world of chivalry, knight-errantry and medieval

romance

Closed couplet substituted by loose, romantic type verses

Growth of love of nature, development of naturalism - the Romantic

revival

Love of nature

English Augustan poetry - poetry of city life- frequenting coffee houses and drawing
rooms - despised solitude - preferred trim gardens to unspoilt hillside

Influence of Scottish poets (Hudson, 163)

Naturalism - return to nature - replacing individuality with the prevalent artificial

social system

Quest for elementary themes, unsophisticated countryfolk, natural modes of

treatment, simplicity in subject matter, passions and language - poetry back to nature
and reality

ballad revival - (despite Johnsons ridicule of the old ballads) - simpler form is better
than more poetical - change of taste - replacing Augustan theories of elegance and
effect

(The Popular Marketing of Old Ballads: The Ballad Revival and Eighteenth century
Antiquarianism Reconsidered. 1987 essay. By Dianne Dugaw)

Superiority of the natural and the spontaneous in poetry

William Blake - also among early romantic poets - leader in naturalistic poetry - poetry
of ordinary things - Poetical Sketches, Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience perfected by Wordsworth

George Crabbe - extreme and uncompromising realism - fidelity to facts - The Village,
The Newspaper, The Parish Register - knew poverty - BUT entirely uninfluenced by the
romantic movement

The Romantic Revival

(1760-1770)

Revolt against hard temper, dry intellectuality and all the chief characteristics of
Augustan school = the romantic movement

Romantic - no exact definition - loosely used - everything anti-Augustan, including

naturalism (but they are not the same)

Romantic move - origin, direction and meaning (p.167, Hudson)

Middle ages - romantic in temper, tastes - Hence, medieval or Gothic revival (eg:
Castle of Otranto)

Gothic manners - better material for poetry than classical mythology (Richard Hurd)

Ballad revival - Bishop Percys Reliques of Ancient English Poetry - spreading romantic
tastes

fascination in the history of the medieval revival - interest in the romantic past - heroic
and legendary world of Celtic antiquity

Ossianic poems - remains of ancient Scottish poetry - led immense curiosity and
speculation - public interest, controversy on authorship, authenticity - supernatural,
melancholic, sentimental - naturalism and romanticism together (p.170, hudson)

Age of transition

Thomas Gray - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard historically imp - use of nature - churchyard scene,
melancholy - contrast between the country and the town (unprolific)

Robert Burns - a Scottish peasant - spontaneous - NOT to be

regarded as an unlettered plowman - influenced by songs
and ballads of the Scottish peasant folk - natural passion democratic quality - responsive to the revolutionary spirit of
the age - mouthpiece of liberty, equality and fraternity - The
Cotters Saturday Night

William Cowper - most important figure between Pope and

Wordsworth, a connector - wrote to express himself - to keep
him away from religious anxieties - satires modelled on
Pope - The Task, an independent poem - (denunciation of
militarism and slavetrade - 4 years before the fall of Bastille)
- evangelicalism - transcends religious sectarianism - a
premonition of Wordsworth, Byron

a period of transition and experiment in poetic styles and subjects

no longer limited to the refined, civilised group

liberation of poetry

shifts in the view of the nature and function of poetry

imitation of human nature

dual purpose of pleasure and edification - major function, the expression

of the poets emotion

(Johnsons disapproval of Milton - Lycidas is not the overflow of genuine

passion)

Melancholy, interest in the uncivilised and the odd, a sense of change,

impossibility of keeping static

Beginning of Industrial Revolution - end of the 18th century - value of life

in urban society

The Romantic Period

Beginning in 1785 - the age of sensibility

1789 - the French revolution

1798 - publication of Lyrical ballads

Ending in 1830

1832 - death of Walter Scott

1832 - Reform Bill

The Romantic Age

Revolution

Romantic Triumph

Impatience of formulas, traditions, conventions, tyranny of

the dead hand

individuality, freedom, larger life, spontaneity

Reaction against Pope and Augustan tradition

Political and literary movements - did not necessary meet

in the same persons (eg: Scott - a romanticist and a Tory)

Emancipation

English poetry and French revolution (1789)

General background

Romantic poets - most anthologised and studied in English literature

Social movements - abolition of slave trade, poor relief, prison conditions, peoples demand for
greater representation in the Parliament

1789 - fall of Bastille prison - herald of French revolution

source of hope - democratic ideals

Violence increased - hardened reactions in England - supporters targeted

Increased mechanisation

decline in infant mortality

increased Irish immigration - treated as a problem in London

Slums, returning soldiers - unemployment

economic depression of 1819

Peterloo massacre - August 1819 (Henry Hunts speech) - public anger against oppressive govt and
monarchy

Working class education

emancipation of Roman Catholics

IMAGINATION