Timeline for the course

Restoration (1660-1714) was preceded by the Interregnum and followed by the

Georgian Era.
 America was some kind of a “promise land” to the British (“The New
World”); they thought their future society would be a better one and their
lives would be much more fulfilled
 The 1st set of laws: law becomes “the ultimate ruler”
 “The king rules, but does not govern”
 Oliver Cromwell: “The Lord Protector”
 “The Whigs”: the Liberals
 Queen Anne: “No catholic can sit on the throne of England”

 1603: death of Queen Elizabeth I (followed by the instauration of James I)

 1605: “The Gunpowder Plot” (the head of the Church was the king); the
battle with the Vatican – James Stuart I - The Gunpowder Plot of
1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason
Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt
against King James I of England and VI of Scotland by a group of
provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.
 1611: the translation of the Bible – King James Bible: influenced by The
Great Reformation (Martin Luther)
 1620: when a group of Christian people decided to leave the country
(James Down)
 1625: the Puritans
 1642: the closing of the theatres (deceit and temptation; make-believe
situation which the Puritans believed to be demonic)
 1649: the execution of Charles I
 1649-1660: the Interregnum/Commonwealth – Oliver Cromwell; Charles II
was in exile (Netherlands, France); the Restoration of Royalty (re-opening
of the theatres – women were allowed to play on stage)
 1688: William and Mary of Orange (Dutch); The Glorious Revolution – the
overthrow of King James II by an union of English Parliamentarians with the
Dutch William II, Prince of Orange
 1688-1702: Queen Anne (14 pregnancies with no son)
 1702-1714: death of Queen Anne – the Hanoverians came to throne
(George I, II, III, IV)
 1707: England was united with Scotland
 1727-1760: 1727: King George I dies on the route to Hanover
 1760: Seven Years’ War; George II ascends to the throne
 1760-1780: 1763: Canada is ceded to G.B by France
 1776: American Revolution

1. Jacobean Theatre: The Court Masques. The Closet Plays

Closet Plays (meant for reading; they can also be played on stage)

 Written by women
 Limited variability
 Performed as an entertainment (not for the public)
 Performed by the elite
 Most of the topics: religious (to avoid immorality)
 There was no profit; they sold no tickets
 Elizabeth Cary: “The Tragedy of Mariam”; Anne Finch, Lady Cavendish
 At first, these texts were manuscripts
 The plays we first read, then performed
 The plays were elevated, sophisticated, meant for the elite

Court Masques

 Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, George Chapman

 Entertainment that not everybody could afford
 Text written on command
 Matter of status and a matter of wealth
 Christmas, Easter, important family events: marriages, baptisms
 Inspired from ancient mythology and ancient history (Latin, Greek)
 The 1st part: mythological, historical, performed by professional actors; the
2nd part: comical: performed by amateurs
 The court masque ended with a round dance (tradition to keep the spirits
away)
 The actors wanted to transmit some messages
 Ben Jonson introduced “the anti-masque”

Comedy

 The master of comedy is Ben Jonson (born in the 2nd half of the 16th
century)
 Born in the house of an Anglican Priest
 Very successful play-writer and business man
 Works: “Volpone”, “The Alchemist”, “Bartholomew Fair”, “Every man in his
humor/out of his humor”
 He wrote a meta-text on theatre
 He had this vision on how his characters should behave
 4 important liquids: these influenced people’s psychology, it was the
perfect balance: phlegm (the phlegmatic type), the black bile (the introvert,
melancholic type), the yellow bile (choleric type), blood (the sanguine
personality)
 Ben Jonson thought that characters are dominated by a certain future
(French culture)
 The human being is a mixture of features
 “Volpone”: a merciless satire of greed and lust; Jonson’s most performed
play; the finest Jacobean era comedies; Volpone (The Fox) is a Venetian
gentleman who pretends to be on his deathbed after a long illness in order
to dupe Voltore (The Vulture), Corbaccio (The Raven)and Corvino (The
Crow), three men who aspire to inherit his fortune. In their turns, each man
arrives to Volpone’s house bearing a luxurious gift, intenting upon having
his name inscribed to the will of Volpone, as his heir. Mosca (The Fly),
Volpone’s parasite servant, encourages each man, Voltore, Corbaccio, and
Corvino, to believe that he has been named heir to Volpone’s fortune; in
the course of which, Mosca persuades Corbaccio to disinherit his own son
in favour of Volpone

Tragedy

 A more violent genre

 Ideological conflicts; social conflicts
 Characters’ deaths were represented on stage
 Revenge: important mechanism of the tragedy
 John Webster: “The Duchess of Malfi”

The Duchess of Malfi

 Revenge tragedy; still popular

 Plot: reset the world into order: killing-> revenge-> revenger -> killed
 Asian plays: emphasis on the moral party; no death shown
 References: “Hamlet”, “The Spanish Tragedy”
 Orestes’ Circle (forgiven for killing his mother)
 John Webster: the most important Jacobean author; he tried to lead
a double life: coach maker and actor; he chose acting
 Plot: Italy; the corruption of the Catholic world
 The play focuses on the controlling of women (“if you cannot control
the woman in your family, how can you control society?”)
 The duchess: mentally tortured (very modern concept)
 The servant kills the masters to save the duchess and he is killed
afterwards
  The bedroom scene: Ferdinand enters abruptly the bedroom of his
sister (maybe there is more than brotherly love); Ferdinand is
punished with death
 The whole action: happens during the night; wolves: wilderness

The White Devil

 Title: oxymoron (the devil attracts you with his beauty)

 High class women
 2 lovers kill their spouses; they are lucky because the Pope dies too;
the Duke dies and leaves his fortune to Vitoria (she is stabbed to
death by a Media Messenger)
 The play shows a corrupted world
 The play is full of massacres
 There is passion, lust, but no love

2. Baroque. Metaphysical Poetry (poetry during the Jacobean

Age)
 1599-1649
 The Baroque -> art -> The Catholic Church -> Counter-Reformation
 Tension between the body and the soul
 Tension between religiosity and eroticism
 The love of God <-> the love of woman
 Representatives: John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Richard
Crashaw, Andrew Marvell
 Poetic devices and strategies
 Exploration of language; use of scientific/technical language; neologisms
 The concetto (the conceit): compasses=lovers; the flea=messenger of
love
  The oxymoron: “O loving hate/O heavy lightness”; “cold fire, sick
health”
 Catachresis: “Blind mouths”
 Shocking associations, similies, metaphors
 Dialogue -> theatrical/the form of argument
 Feelings and experience, intellectual analysis
 Dr. Samuel Johnson: “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence
together”; “the metaphysical poets were men of learning, and shown their
learning was their whole endeavour” -> “Lives of the English Poets”
 John Donne (1572-1631)
o Poet, lawyer, cleric
o Birth: London
o Education: Oxford – no degree
o Catholic, then Anglican
o Spouse: Ann More (12 children)
o From 1621: dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral
o Work: satires, elegies, songs and sonets -> “The Holy Sonnets”, “The
Progress of the Souls”, sermons – homilies
o “A great visitor of Ladies, a great frequenter of Playes, a great writer of
conceited Verses” (Sir Richard Baker)

The Flea (by John Donne)

 The speaker tells his beloved to look at the flea before them and to note
“how little” is that thing that she denies him. For the flea, he says, has
sucked first his blood, then her blood, so that now, inside the flea, they
are mingled; and that mingling cannot be called “sin, or shame, or loss
of maidenhead.” The flea has joined them together in a way that, “alas,
is more than we would do.”
 As his beloved moves to kill the flea, the speaker stays her hand, asking
her to spare the three lives in the flea: his life, her life, and the flea’s
own life. In the flea, he says, where their blood is mingled, they are
almost married—no, more than married—and the flea is their marriage
 bed and marriage temple mixed into one. Though their parents grudge
their romance and though she will not make love to him, they are
nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea. She is
apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself by killing the
flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be
sacrilege, “three sins in killing three.”
 “Cruel and sudden,” the speaker calls his lover, who has now killed the
flea, “purpling” her fingernail with the “blood of innocence.” The
speaker asks his lover what the flea’s sin was, other than having sucked
from each of them a drop of blood. He says that his lover replies that
neither of them is less noble for having killed the flea. It is true, he says,
and it is this very fact that proves that her fears are false: If she were to
sleep with him (“yield to me”), she would lose no more honor than she
lost when she killed the flea.
 Form: this poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic
tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, a 4-5 stress pattern ending
with two pentameter lines at the end of each stanza. Thus, the stress
pattern in each of the nine-line stanzas is 454545455. The rhyme
scheme in each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line
rhyming with the final couplet: AABBCCDDD.
 This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems
using the flea as an erotic image, a genre derived from an older poem of
Ovid. Donne’s poise of hinting at the erotic without ever explicitly
referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to exactly
what he means, is as much a source of the poem’s humor as the silly
image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would represent
“sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead” gets the point across with a neat
conciseness and clarity that Donne’s later religious lyrics never attained

Batter my heart (by John Donne)

 The speaker asks the “three-person’d God” to “batter” his heart, for
as yet God only knocks politely, breathes, shines, and seeks to mend.
 The speaker says that to rise and stand, he needs God to overthrow
him and bend his force to break, blow, and burn him, and to make
him new. Like a town that has been captured by the enemy, which
seeks unsuccessfully to admit the army of its allies and friends, the
speaker works to admit God into his heart, but Reason, like God’s
viceroy, has been captured by the enemy and proves “weak or
untrue.” Yet the speaker says that he loves God dearly and wants to
be loved in return, but he is like a maiden who is betrothed to God’s
enemy. The speaker asks God to “divorce, untie, or break that knot
again,” to take him prisoner; for until he is God’s prisoner, he says, he
will never be free, and he will never be chaste until God ravishes him.
 Form: This simple sonnet follows an ABBAABBACDDCEE rhyme
scheme and is written in a loose iambic pentameter. In its structural
division, it is a Petrarchan sonnet rather than a Shakespearean one,
with an octet followed by a sestet.
 As is amply illustrated by the contrast between Donne’s religious
lyrics and his metaphysical love poems, Donne is a poet deeply
divided between religious spirituality and a kind of carnal lust for life.
Many of his best poems, including “Batter my heart, three-personed
God,” mix the discourse of the spiritual and the physical or of the
holy and the secular. In this case, the speaker achieves that mix by
claiming that he can only overcome sin and achieve spiritual purity if
he is forced by God in the most physical, violent, and carnal terms
imaginable.

3. The Puritan Literature (17th century)

 Puritans fought for literature and wanted to live as close to God as
they could (pure life)
 Puritans created, through many techniques, the basis of the
psychological novel/the modern novel
 Puritanism: religious movement
 They rejected the luxury (modesty)
  1642: they became more powerful; they closed the theatres
 “one should save oneself”
 The Bible: the guide to a daily life (available to everyone: men and
women) -> literacy
 Not keen on foreign languages
 Puritan: -> a person who has a very strict way of life (does not do
immoralities, does not sin, does not swear, goes to Church): nowadays; ->
historical point of view: middle-class; the most severe from the Anglicans;
influenced by the Reformation; they believed that everyone should have
access to the Bible
 Puritans believed in this strong way of moral behaviour
 They were obsessed with the after-life (“This life is temporary, the after-
life is eternal”); “Only the chosen puritans will end up in Heaven, the
other ones will suffer”
 They believed that knowing how to read was a must in order to read the
Bible
 They considered that their lives are worth putting down
 SALVATION IS INDIVIDUAL
 They believed in art and culture; they appreciated music as an immaterial
art (“art should help us behave”)
 Money was the desire for power in those times
 “A good Christian should get married and have a family and have
children”: the nucleus of a society is family
 It was important to have a job in order to make money is an honest way
 Literature:
 Cavaliers were aristocrats; love poetry; they were elegant: jewelry, velvet,
good food, good life
 Puritans: hard-working people; obsessed with morality and honesty; they
dressed simple (black and white), no jewelry; “the round heads” – cavaliers’
opinion

 John Milton
 The most intelligent of the puritans; he was very exceptional for a middle-
class person; the best educated puritan (he knew Latin, French)
 Little known about his mother (simple woman)
 His father was a musician and a scrivener (occasion type-writer)
 His parents sent him to school because they noticed his exceptional
intelligence (sent to Cambridge)
 He wrote several political essays (in Latin); essays of education
 He considered that by the destroying a book, he also destroys the mind of
the author and the reader
 Milton wrote his poems after he became blind (he also had a musical
background that developed his other senses); he wrote a sonnet after he
became blind: “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”
 He got a M.A from Cambridge and his parents sent him in a grand tour (for
young aristocrats; private tutor) -> field trip: France, Italy
 He reached Venice (“The Orient”) and would’ve liked to go to Athens
 He was given a job in the new administration (very high position); he had
to work hard in order to improve the public image of the economy
 He considered the world we live in a post-lapsarian one (the Fall of Lucifer)
 “The Enlightenment of Education”; “The Doctrine and The Discipline of
Divorce”
 Paradise Lost
 Monism (the doctrine that only one supreme being exists.), arminianism,
Christology (the branch of Christian theology relating to the person, nature,
and role of Christ.), republicanism (support for a republican system of
government.)
 His last epic poem (the last epic of Europe); EPIC(en.)= EPOPEE;
NARRATIVE=EPIC(ro.)
 “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”
 This epic reveals his culture and his knowledge
 Inspired from the Bible; the idea of freedom and the lapse of freedom into
necessity
 The main character becomes Satan and Milton tries to fight him
 Permanent interaction between the fallen world and Heaven

4. The Restoration Literature (1660-1688)

The easiest way to grasp the particular tone of the Restoration period is to
think of it as a reaction against the Puritanism of Cromwell and the period
of the Commonwealth.

 Charles II opened the theatres; Charles and his fellas allowed women to
appear on stage
 The stardom of actresses became in the 17th century, under the
Restoration; they were expected to look well, so they could be visually
attractive
 People knew their limits and the ups and downs of life
 The most important thing was “the erotic game” between men and
women; the purpose was the marriage
 The characters of the Restoration comedy are not as innocent as in
Shakespeares’ comedies, they are more experienced
 The theatre resumed its activity as an aristocratic activity; the aristocrats
started building places for theatres
 Comedy is the preferred genre; the great topic of the Restoration comedy is
love (experienced married couples)
 The characters act according to a strict set of rules; they have as many
erotic experiences as possible
 “Love thrives on variety” – William Congreve
 The Restoration period prepares the world for Oscar Wilde’s comedy
 Admiration for the French culture, fashion, manners (France = the center of
European Culture)
 Although the Restoration ended in 1688, its spirit didn’t die immediately; it
continued for 2 decades afterwards; Restoration ended when Charles II was
obliged to leave
 Restoration theatre/Restoration comedy:
 Charles Lamb: he wrote about the Restoration Comedy: “Utopia of
gallantry where pleasure is beauty and the manners perfect duty”;
“Love is like bivouac, you camp just once” -> these 2 quotes
characterize the Restoration period exactly as it was (the lack of
morality, the enjoyment of life)
 This Restoration didn’t mean that monarchy could go back to what it
was before its fall
 In that time, they frenetically enjoyed power, but were, at the same
time, aware of the fragility of it
 Restoration was also a baroque period (John Donne: metaphysical
poetry)
 Tenet: main principle or belief of a religion/philosophy
 Unlike the puritans, people in the Restoration period enjoyed life
 French words/expressions
 17th century: forget morality, enjoy yourself (sexually); marriage: a
social and financial transaction
 The Restoration theatre was for aristocrats
 The comedies: the most appreciated; appearance vs. essence; wit
(intelligence; charm; the ability to see shocking constructions) and
irony (the ability to say something meaning something else)
 Concetto: manifestation of wit
 The 1st theatrical representations were held is castles; then theatres
were built up (some of them still exist in England nowadays)
 Representatives: William Congreve (“The Way of the World”); Aphra
Behn (“The Rover”); John Dryden [draɪdən] (“Marriage a la Mode”);
William Wicherley (“The Country Wife”); The Earl of Rochester
(“Sodom”); George Etherege (“She would if she could”)
 Authorship(also the power of authority): in order to be a writer, you
must be able to write; the author shares his/her emotions with the
audience
 Aphra Behn gave herself many of her life and who she was (because
of her personality; being a professional writer made her seen as a
whore by the others

 The Evolution of The English Theatre via The Restoration

Comedy
 From cynicism to sentimentality; promoting verbal seduction
and connecting the virgin and the prostitute
 The jealous husband, for example, the Rake (looks only for
pleasures; has no moral limitations in his quest for sex)
 Restoration Comedy releases the idea of consumption of the
woman
 Clear separation between the stage and the audience
 John Dryden: the best poet of the Restoration period; the most
important value: pleasure; very modest family; educated at the best
school in London; student at Cambridge after; university wit; he is the
father of English literary criticism (also a poet, a translator)
 His first literary publication was connected to royalty: “Upon
the death of Lord Hastings”; Dryden wrote mourning poems for
Lord H. (young man from an aristocratic family who died early
because of small pox)
 He turned “Paradise Lost” into a play
 He translated from Latin, Greek into Modern English
 He relied on metaphysics: you soul transmuts into another
body
 He used paraphrase, meta-phrase (translation word by word)
and imitation (includes a creative element)
  Dryden combines the rules and the Shakespearian theatre (love
and time; power and politics); he considered that English
Literature had reached spiritual maturity thanks to Sh.’s work;
the Elizabethans broke rules of common sense: time (24 hours
for a play), location and plot
 “An Essay of Dramatic Poesie” – the merits of the ancients and
the moderns; Dryden imagined 4 schematic characters to
answer these questions: 1. Which is better: the French school
of drama or the English school of drama?; 2. Are the
Elizabethans better or worse than the Restoratiors?; 3. Are the
ancient rules useful?; 4. Rhyme or black verse?
 Personalities of the 17th century, combining literature with other
means of knowledge:
1. Robert Burton: a scholar at Oxford University; famous for “The
Anatomy of Melancholy”; melancholy, according to Burton, is
more than a psychological state; it’s caused by the wrath of God
because of humans’ lack of faith
2. Thomas Barone: a Oxford scholar with a deep curiosity towards
the supernatural, very interested in literature; his works combine
the scientific discourse with the autobiography; he combines, in his
works, science and literature

Restoration Literature. Poetry – the court wits

 Return of Charles II -> outbursts of joy -> disappointment
 Continental influence -> French wit, gallantry, elegance and artistic deftness
 Religious diversity and animosity
 Political parties: Whig and Tory -> Exclusion Crisis (1679-81)
 Philosophy [monarchy, the Civil Wars, execution of the king]-> Thomas
Hobbes: “Leviathan” (1651) -> the social contract; John Locke (the 1st
philosopher concerned with the period of childhood): “Two Treaties of
Government”, “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1689) -> Tabula
 Rasa = blank state; both Hobbes and Locke sustain the idea that kings are
not sent by God
 “the power of the rules is protected by his rights”; Locke: political
government
 The Great Plague (1665-6)
 The Great Fire of London (1666)
 The 2nd (1665-67); ->Cromwell and 3rd(1672-74) Anglo-Dutch Wars
 The Royal Society (1660-62), Royal Charter
 Robert Boyle, John Ray, Sir Isaac Newton
 Motto: “Nullius in verba” -> experimental and empirical in method -> open
mind; take nobody’s words
 Committee to reform the English prose style and fix standards in language
(Dryden, Evelyn, Waller, Sprat)
 Idea of style: “reject all amplification, digressions, and swellings of style”,
“…a close, naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions, clear
senses, a native easiness”
 Essays, philosophy, literary criticism, historical writing (diaries, auto-
biographies), prose
 Great variety: extremes: the courts wits and Restoration comedy vs.
puritan ethos
 Drama => Rest. Lit. (amusing period)

 The Court Wits

o John Wilmot (Earls of Rochester), George Villiers, Charles Sackville:
they wrote for fun; attached to the court of Charles II; poetry, plays
o Sexual awareness, libertinism, hedonism
o Willinges to satirize
o Dependence upon wit
o “the mob of gentlemen who wrotes with ease” (Al. Pope)
o John Wilmot: “the wildest and the most fantastical odd man alive”
(quoted by Defoe in “Moll Flanders”); “the Earl of Rochester was the
only man in England that had the true veine of satire”; censured
during the Victorian Era
 Love and life: A song (by John Wilmot 2nd, Earl of Rochester)

 In this poem love is clearly approached unlike courtly love

 The “carpe diem” idea (seize the moment): love cannot last,
everything is temporary
 Seduction poetry
 The past is gone, the future does not exist, there’s only present
 Verb tenses: present -> supports the “carpe diem” idea
 “The present only has a being in Nature; things Past have a being
in Memory, but things to come have no being at all, the Future
being a fiction of the Mind” (Hobbes)

On Mistress Willis (by John Wilmot)

o Body language; primar instincts

o Non-fictional source of inspirations: England described through
Willis
o It’s not the soul, it’s not the heart but it’s something different
o “we will end up destroying each other because of primar
instincts, just like animals” (Hobbes)

Restoration Comedy (essentially English)-1660

 The theatres reopened (after being closed for 18 years): earlier plays – John
Fletcher (highly popular), Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare
 Comedy of wit (Fletcher) and comedy of humors (Jonson)
 Restoration comedy = comedy of manners
 Roofed playhouses
 Moveable scenery, machines for special effects
 Women were allowed on stage; 1st woman playwright: Aphra Behn (also an
actress)
 Doubling of parts – abandoned
 Aristocratic entertainment
 Professional actors: Thomas Betterton, Edwar Kynaston, Elizabeth Barry,
Moll Davis
  They went to see they plays many times even though they already knew
the plot
 Major influences: pre-Restoration theatre: Ben Jonson; French (Moliere);
Spanish (Calderon); Italian (Comedia dell’ arte)
 Social comedy: comedy of social pretense
 Deficient in moral decency; ridiculed middle-class virtues
 Satirized cultivated insincerity and artificial social rituals
 Conflict between essence and appearance
 Central theme: marriage and money (marriage for the wrong reason;
marriage -> boring ->adultery
 The court gallant: rake => the new her
 Revealing names: Mr. Pinchwife (he would always pinch his wife)
 The witty couple (dramatic convention)
 William Congreve:
o Provoked laughter by surprising characters behaving badly/foolishly
o Superiority of the urban environment and manners
o Witty quotes: meant to amuse; direct
o Minor character flaw; ill-tempered
o “The way of the world”: John Locke philosophy (“The proviso scene”
– the social contract)

Restoration prose naratives – Aphra Behn (the whigs and the thores)
 Aphra Behn (1640-1689): the 1st professional woman writer (she made a
living out of her works)
 British Spy; actress
 Marriage: Mr. Behn (end of the marriage: 1664)
 Born: Kent (as Eoffrey Johnson)
 Poverty, imprisonment
 Commonwealth
 Plays: “The Rover” (1677), “The Forc’d Marriage” (1670); “The Amorous
Prince” (1671); “The Dutch Lover” (1673)
 She was very loyal to the monarchy
 Plays: forced marriage (young woman and old man); hypocrisy (Puritans ->
middle-class -> impotent old bourgeois merchant); rightful heir (loyalist
cavalier); women’s right of self-determination; masquerade and carnival (to
re-normalize the world); the trianny of patriarchy
 Poetry: “Poems upon Several Occasions (1684)
 Proto-novel: very accurate and detailed descriptions of settings, animals,
plants, nature: “Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave”
 Fiction-novellas: political and satirical edginess -> 14 attributed stories:
“The unfortunate happy lady”(unfortunate -> paradox happy end), “The
unfortunate happy bride”, “The dumb virgin”, “The Fair Jilt”, “The history of
the nun” => the status of women

 “The unfortunate happy lady”

 Inspired from a real-life situation
 Easy language; historicity: the truth claim
 Whatever happens to Philadelphia is due to destiny, she doesn’t do
something in order to get something else (machina technique)
 Pre-marital stage: before marriage, women were independent, but not in
charge of their fortune
 Widow status => inherits the whole fortune
 Gender positions; statement of superiority (William is not asked before his
marriage with Eugenia; Phil. saves Will. and he sells her)
 Condition of women; not a “fairytale”
 Characters described through money and how much they worth
 Time: rather specific; we know the place (but it’s not described); space:
inside of London
 The rape scene: intimacy; the dinner scene (conversation)
 Magnification strategy
 Religious: Judas’ betrayal
 The Enlightenment (18th century): The Age of Reason[rațiune]
o The end of the 17th century in England brings about a new and important
era (trend): The Enlightenment (the light of reason)
o The Enlightenment did not start at the time in all Europe; there was a delay
in the Eastern side of the continent
o The Enlightenment is still a trend and does not only exist in history books;
certain countries still have remains of this era
o Main ideas: reason, education, optimism, pragmatism
o The evolution of the British culture, the rising of the middle-class, the
increase of the market economy, the opening toward the New World, the
scientific improvement
o God: “the reasons of all reasons”
o We can cultivate our reason by education
o We should explain reality in order to have reason; look at reality and try to
improve it -> pragmatism
o Hope that reality will be better -> optimism
o Theorizing the Enlightement:
 Immanuel Kant (enlightened absolutist monarch): “What is The
Enlightenment?” -> individual vs. public reason of the state
 Michel Foucault: “What is The Enlightenment?”
 Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno – “Dialectic of The
Enlightenment” (religious myths; superstitions)
 Jane Gallop and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak -> “What is The
Enlightenment?” -> dialog between them
o Reason: understood by monarchy/power
o The good vs. the poisonous fruit of the Enlight.

Neoclassicism
 Decorum (“the rules of behavior”: control one’s passion); restraint
 Cosmopolitism (interest in other cultures)
 Urbanity: the city
 Concern with here and now
  Symmetry and balance
 Analytical spirit
 High genres: epic, tragedy, comedy, satire, ode

Quarrel of the Ancients and the Modern

 Change of taste
 Modern taste becomes localized and nationalized
 Modernity associated with progress
 The Enlight. believes in constant and limitless progress thanks to
reason
 Valorization of the progress
 New value in the 18th century: the press -> periodicals (newspapers)

o The main ideas of the Enlightenment:ethos (the characteristic spirit of a

culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations)
 Reason is the most important human faculty; reason should control
our behavior and our life; God made the man in his image; he gave us
a spark of reason; we should improve our reason as we advance in
life and use it
 The valorization of education for rich and for poor: we are all
humans with the gift of reason => democratic discourse
 Judging and appreciating reality: using our reason to improve reality
 Optimism
 The necessity of revolutions: the desire of a better life (the French
Revolution)
 After the Enlightenment, the pessimism turned into romanticism
 Pragmatism: the necessity to know reality exactly as it is
 Immanuel Kant considers the Enlight. to be the ending of childhood
for humanity; before the 18th century, humans did not understand
the necessity of history; according to Kant, in the private space we
can manifest our reason; we can be free in our private space, but in
 the public space we have to respect the limits established by the
state => the individual should be free
 The level of sophistication, culture; city (urban culture); present
interest (unlike the romantics) -> present world and ways to improve
it (French Revolution); satire, critical, analytical spirit; city -> attitude -
> reasonable -> dignity, moral balance

18th-century poetry; the mock-heroic poem

 Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

 Elderly parents; born among books (his father was a book seller)
 His parents wanted him to study at Oxford; he studied at Pembroke
College and did not finish because of depression
 He started his career as a journalist; he was mostly a rambler
 1747: he came with the idea of compiling an English Dictionary; his
dictionary was as famous as the Bible (everybody wanted to have a
dictionary in those times); his dictionary is still taken into account
(the Oxford Dictionary still uses definitions from Johnson’s
dictionary); those definitions were very well defined; 40.000 entries;
words: quite new, unusual; scientific terms (“atom”; “electricity”);
1754: publication of the dictionary
 He was also a literary critic; critical poet (“The lives of the English
Poets”-> the introduction contains romanticism and neo-classical
elements; he defines the poet as a prophet as a leader of nations; he
talks about the meaning of being a poet)
 He was a man of great taste
 Author of fiction; similar stories to Voltaires’ stories -> philosophical
elements
 “Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia”: Abissinia -> Ethiopia today; the prince
lived in a very well protected and beautiful castle; he didn’t knew
disease, poverty; after a time he got fed up and wanted to see what’s
beyond the walls; he decided to go on a journey with his sister; they
 had many adventures and they explored much; his sister got
kidnapped; after the journey, they return to the palace -> nothing is
concluded after wall

 Alexander Pope (satirist)

 Neo-classic poet; also romantic
 He is very close to being a genius (exceptional intellectual qualities)
 Born in a roman-catholic family; refused to convert to another
religion; in the 18th century, as a roman-catholic you had to pay
higher taxes and you couldn’t go to public schools
 He got a terrible disease (TBC) that couldn’t be treated in those
times; it melted his bones
 He was very admired by many women and very appreciated for his
wit and his exceptional personality
 He stayed in the country side, away from the hustle and bustle of
the town
 Middle-class family, but he had a good education; after the death of
his parents, problems appear in his life
 He thought that he could make a living out of translations after
Homer; in spite of his health problems, he didn’t complain
 He converted to Anglicanism and had a great life; he remained an
independent writer all of his life and didn’t give up on his beliefs; he
was funny, witty and a deep poet
 He defined wit: power=wit, according to him; to be witty = to be
intelligent enough to see the beauty of the world
 According to Pope, a good writer should avoid low satire (vulgar)
and high epic; poetry = imitation (feelings; lyrical) or
representation (characters in a play; speak in verse)
 According to him, rules are necessary, but the writer shouldn’t be
obedient to them
 Poetic power = power given by God
 MAN = entity placed between spirit and matter; the border between
passion and reason; HAPPINESS = acceptance of the reality as it is
 The Rape of the Lock:
 The poem is perhaps the most outstanding example in the
English language of the genre of mock-epic. The epic had long
been considered one of the most serious of literary forms; it
had been applied, in the classical period, to the lofty subject
matter of love and war, and, more recently, by Milton, to the
intricacies of the Christian faith. The strategy of Pope’s mock-
epic is not to mock the form itself, but to mock his society in
its very failure to rise to epic standards, exposing its pettiness
by casting it against the grandeur of the traditional epic
subjects and the bravery and fortitude of epic heroes: Pope’s
mock-heroic treatment in The Rape of the Lock underscores
the ridiculousness of a society in which values have lost all
proportion, and the trivial is handled with the gravity and
solemnity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues.
The society on display in this poem is one that fails to
distinguish between things that matter and things that do not.
The poem mocks the men it portrays by showing them as
unworthy of a form that suited a more heroic culture. Thus
the mock-epic resembles the epic in that its central concerns
are serious and often moral, but the fact that the approach
must now be satirical rather than earnest is symptomatic of
how far the culture has fallen
 Pope’s use of the mock-epic genre is intricate and
exhaustive. The Rape of the Lock is a poem in which every
element of the contemporary scene conjures up some image
from epic tradition or the classical world view, and the pieces
are wrought together with a cleverness and expertise that
makes the poem surprising and delightful. Pope’s
transformations are numerous, striking, and loaded with
moral implications. The great battles of epic become bouts of
gambling and flirtatious tiffs. The great, if capricious, Greek
and Roman gods are converted into a relatively
 undifferentiated army of basically ineffectual sprites.
Cosmetics, clothing, and jewelry substitute for armor and
weapons, and the rituals of religious sacrifice are transplanted
to the dressing room and the altar of love

18th –century poetry; changes in poetic sensibility

 1700-1744
 Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
 Born: Dublin (he was English, not Irish)
 Distant cousin of John Dryden’s
 Trinity College (Dublin)
 Left for England in 1689 -> Sir William Temple
-The Tatler (1st periodical essay): Joseph Addison and Richard
Steele
-Scriblerus Club: Pope, Harley, Parnell
 1713: dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin
 Meniere’s disease: brain tumor
 Literary career: political pamphlets; journalism; satires
(religious and political); letters
 “A tale of a Tub” (1704): prose parody (attack on many
religious abuse)
 “The Battles of the Books”: prolegomenom to “A Tale of a Tub”
 “Journal to Stella”(1710-13)
 “The Drapier’s Letters” (1724): pamphlet (Irish Cause)
 “A modest Proposal “ (1729): very cruel satire; satirical essay
 “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726): novel or not?
 Poetry (1690-1730): “UNPOETIC”/”NOT POETIC” => informal
tetra-metric couplet (8 silables) [heroic couplet: 10 sil,
pentametric]; satiric poems -> comic mode (comedy of the
mechanical); Swift’s anti-poetry (subject matter) or “pseudo-
doggerel” (inapt poetry) – versification and voice
 Mary Robinson (1758-1800)
  Writer and actress
 Poetry, novels, dramas, political essays, memoirs
 Spouse: Thomas Robinson; mistress of George, prince of Wales
(George IV)
 Romantic poet
 “Perclita”
 “The English Sappho”

 “A Description of the Morning” (by Jonathan Swift)

 Town eclogue (pastoral poem)
 Low-class character
 He creates atmosphere (agitation)
 Transforming the city in the morning by hiding what happened
overnight
 Dynamic: everyone fulfills a role (full day)
 The sun: a carriage in classical mythology
 “hackney-coach”: he reworks the neo-classical elements (just
like Pope)
 The heroic couplet; alliteration

 “London’s Summer Morning” (by Mary Robinson)

 Shift in the view of nature and function of poetry
 Light: summer (unlike Swift’s poem, which is cloudy)
 A lot of noise; “shrilly” = high-pitched
 1st the noise, then the visual image, then the appearance of
the poet
 Circularity: the last verse leads to the 1st one
 No couplets

Letter-writing in the 18th-century - the familiar letters of

travellers
 “Turkish Letter”, Mary Wortley Montagu
 “Letter written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and
Denmark”, Mary Wollstonecraft
 “Golden Age” of letters and letter-writing -> chronicles of the time
and individual lines
 Letters of travellers, literary celebrities, public wits
 Letter-writing manuals
 Political, social commentaries, literary criticism, moral advice,
religious meditation, anecdotes and ordinary incidents
 Written for one particular other, but read by numerous others
 Authenticity => artifice
 Private => public
 Influenced by the development of the novel
 Lady Mary W. Montagu (1689-1762)
 She did not benefit of formal education because she was a
woman
 Writer, poet, journalist; she learned Ancient Greek on her own
 Spouse: Edward W. Montagu (ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire - 1716-1718)
 Poems: courts poems – published by Edmund Curll without
permission
 The letters to her daughter: philosophy, literature, education
 “The Nonsense of Common-Sense” (political periodical)
 She was also a very good satirist
 Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) – 38y
 Political theorist, moral philosopher, historian journalist,
novelist, author of children’s books (only one book actually)
 The first feminist activist
 Essays: “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters” (1787); “A
Vindication of the Rights of Men” (1790); “A Vindication of the
Rights of Women” (1792)
 2 novels: “Mary: A fiction”; “Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman”
  Book reviews: “For the Analytical Review”
 Partner: Gilbert Imlay; spouse: William Godwin
 Daughters: Fanny Imlay; Marry Shelley (“Frankenstein”)
 She didn’t become a feminist because she hated men, she just
wanted equality (her husband was not evil, he was just a tool
of the society, just like everybody else)
 She attempted suicide twice

The 18th-century novel (the rise of the novel)

 General characteristics of the 18th-century novel
 Mainly about and for the middle classes
 Recent, familiar settings, often described in detail
 Credibility: very similar characters and actions
 Often denies fictionality, explicity or implicity; it pretends to be a
true story
 Related to history and journalism
 Didacticism; it is supposed to be profitable for the readers
 Primacy of individual experience; emphasis on subjectivity
 Plain style
 Original, compact plots; unity of design; short length
 Innovation: many writers attempted to be original and innovative
and some saw themselves as the creators of a new kind of writing
 Influential Factors
 Rise of the middle class; rise of the reading public
 More libraries and the lower prices of novels
 Development of a “mass culture”: journalism, religious and
didactic texts, (auto)biographies, dairies and letter-writing,
travel narratives, criminal biographies
 Empiricism: importance of the evidence of the tenses in order
to learn the truth about the world; rejection of the “universal
truths”
 New ethical values for a new social order; virtue consisted of
the practice of good manners as the basis of the appropriate
social relationships
 Philosophical and cultural interest in sentiments and passions
 Puritanism: against fiction, emphasis on self-examination, view
of individual life as a parable and tendency to writer in a plain
style

 Something different from what was written before

 Strong rejection to the prose fiction that was written before
 Prose Fiction => Novel (17th-18th century); Romance (18th
century)
 Romances: generally composed of the constant love and
invincible courage of heroes, heroines, kings and queens,
mortals of the 1st rank
 Novels: familiar nature -> come near us and represent to us
intrigues in practice; delight us with accidents and odd events
 “The Rise of the Novel” (Ian Watt); 1719 – THE BIRTH OF THE
MODERN ENGLISH NOVEL
 18th century: crucial moment in the history of English
Literature
 The novel becomes the most common type of prose fiction
 FORMAL REALISM: protagonists are not represented types,
but as particular individuals in a certain environment; plots
intend to regard probability and causality
 The “rise” of the novel in 18th century in England is connected
to: 1. An intellectual tendency to reject universals and base
truth (empiricism); 2. The growth of literacy; 3. The increase of
libraries; 4. Novels -> cheaper than romances; 5. Increasing
power of printers and booksellers
 CHAPTER I: the novel as a new literary form; Watt discuses of
the birth of the English novel in the 18th century; it was
 “created” by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding; realism: this
new literary form challenges traditionalism, by presenting the
truth of the individual experience; the values and mental
attitude of the rising bourgeoisie; back then, reading was a lux;
the price of a novel could feed a family for 1-2 weeks; women
as a part of the reading mass
 Daniel Defoe – “The Life and strange surprising adventures of
Robinson Crusoe of York” – original name
 Daniel Defoe: born: 1660//61? – 1731, London; 1684 – Mary Tuffley
(7/8 children?); middle-class; varied career (trade and business
projects, journalistic enterprises, writer, secret service work for the
government); he used extreme satire (people misunderstood him);
economic journalist; in “Robinson Crusoe” the occupations of the
author are reflected in the novel; he was a spy; he went to jail; Defoe
had 2 preoccupations when he wrote prose fiction: 1. How to make
a fictional story seem real; 2. How to convey (or seem to convey) a
moral message
 “Robinson Crusoe”: the 1st English novel -> 28 years on island; 25
years alone; 35 years away from England; does Robison age? -> no
construction of the aging program; society must value every
individual highly enough to consider him the proper subject of the
story -> individualism; all Defoe’s heroes pursue money -> his hero is
a capitalist, not a primitive or proletarian

The Development of the Novel I

 “The expedition of Humphry Clinker”, Tobias Smollett
 Thobias Smollet: born: 19 march, 1971; Scottish; work: picaresque,
satire; occupation: author, poet, surgeon; he could speak and even
translate Spanish
 “The expedition of Humphry Clinker”:
1. Epistolary Novel (just letters, no frame)
2. Incidents seen through others’ point of view
 3. Letters written by men: considerably longer; letters written by
women: written incorrectly
4. Travelogue: the journey is convincing (formal realism)
5. Polyphony: many voices speaking among the novel
6. The novel reunites many literary conventions
7. Why does the author name the novel after a character that
doesn’t even appear until the last pages of the book?

The development of the Novel II

 “The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”, Laurence
Sterne
 Laurence Sterne
 1713-1768
 Born English Novelist in Ireland in and English family -> he’s not
Irish
 Education: Cambridge (Jesus College), B.A and M.A
 1738 – priest orders in the Church of England
 Vicar: 3 parishes in Yorkshire
 1741 – marries Elizabeth Lumley -> daughter: Lydia
 Work: 1. political pamphlets (anonymous); 2. “York Gazetteer”
(Whig Paper); 3. Sermons (2 publishes – included in “Tristram
Shandy”); 4: “Journal to Eliza” (1904); 5: 1759-67: “The life and
opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” – publishes: each
year a couple of volumes; 1768 – “A sentimental Journey” ->
he described postures (“sentimental journey”: novel that
describes emotions)
 “Tristram Shandy”
 Volume 7: appears to be a travelogue, but is misleading
 Yorick dies but yet appears in the final chapter and, later, as a
narrator in “A sentimental Journey”
 Do we know about the life of Tristram Shandy? -> NO, we
don’t know where he grew up, about his lovers)
 Do we know the opinions of T.S? -> NO; we get the opinions of
his father
 CHAPTER I (BOOK I): you would expect a subjective
perspective, but we don’t have facts as in “Robison Crusoe” (“I
was born in the year of…”
1. “I wish” -> potential, possibility
2. Digression: we know the scene is about sexual
intercourse, but not through language => the language is
not referential here
3. Exaggeration
4. Chapter 25: “Nothing was well hung in our family” – ref.
language
5. “Pray, what was your father saying? Nothing.” =>
implied reader (his father was not speaking, so he wasn’t
interrupted while speaking, but while having sexual
intercourse)
6. Formal self-reflexivity: “the novel being aware of its
being a novel” -> not referring to the character
7. “AB OVO” convention (Horace) -> the book starts with
T.S’ conception
8. “Maternal Novel”: 9 books” -> the mother only appears
in the 1st and last chapter, but, throughout the book, we
are aware of her presence
9. Mother’s question => time ([…] wind up the clock?); the
eternal return => magnification of time => chains of
events generating from one single thought
10. Associating ideas
11. Potentiality
12. Vivid scenes, without actual description: you can
imagine the scenery, even though it is not described =>
anecdotes
 13. The title: might be an auto-biography, development
novel => convention
 “The cock and the bull story” – story of nonsense
 “this story” -> implied reader, just like in the 1st chapter
Patterns of the 18th-century novel
 Picaresque novel: the easiest way to present the society is to
make the characters travel: THE JOURNEY -> in a real space and
time; character: low-born; the purpose of the journey is to get
wealth and respectability; the picaro has to experience 2
things: sex and prison
 The sentimental novel: usually, takes place indoors; more
emphasis on the emotions of the characters; typical characters:
the corrupt aristocrat who wants to ruin the reputation of an
innocent girl; always ends with a happy marriage or the death
of the innocent girl
 The epistolary novel: novel made up of letters; the paratext is
extremely important (it explains how the letters were found,
who wrote and published them); the editor is extremely
important; it is poly-vocal; diminishes the gap between fiction
and reality; it has several layers: 1. The author (omniscient):
wrote the novel as an act of communication, hoping that the
reader will read it; 2. The editor (he addresses to an ideal
reader); 3. The sender; 4. The letters (basic unit of the English
novel) => report letters, love letters; 5. The sendee
 The gothic novel: the gothic pattern represents the dark side of
the Enlightenment; the expression of the anxiety that reason is
not enough; castles, mountains, waterfalls, rusty doors, stairs,
ruins, graveyards; escape route for female authors; men ->
home is a safe place, women -> the dangers hide in the house
 The travelogue: contains the impressions of an individual who
travelled somewhere