Letteratura inglese del XVIII secolo, Dispense di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Letteratura inglese del XVIII secolo e più Dispense in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! 1 During the 18th century we have to mention the contrast between the Whig party and the Tory party. Generally speaking, we may say that the Whig party stood for the pre-eminence of personal freedom as opposed to the Tory view of royal divine right. The Tories, whose numbers were recruited chiefly from the landed classes, objected to the foreign war upon the score that they had to pay taxes to prolong it; and the Whigs, representing the trading classes generally, wanted to continue the war, as it brought them increased prosperity. In the matter of religion the Whigs were Low Churchmen and the Tories High Churchmen. A COUPLET= a pair lines of verse, typically rhyming and of the same length. THE PROSE The age of Pope intensified the movement that began after the Restoration (it is the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration: 1660–1689, which corresponds to the last years of Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland). The drift away from the poetry of passion was more pronounced than ever, the ideals of 'wit' and 'common sense' were more pursued, and the lyrical note was almost unheard. In its place we find in poetry the overmastering desire for neatness (pulizia) and perspicuity (chiarezza). In this type of poetry the supreme master is Pope. 2 The rise of the two political parties gave a fresh importance to men of literary ability, for both parties. In previous ages authors had had to depend on their patrons but now they acquired independence. The increased activity in politics led to a great addition to the number of political clubs and coffee-houses, which became the foci of fashionable and public life so these coffee-houses became the right place for literary business. The interest in politics, and probably the decline in the drama, caused a great increase in the size of the reading public. In its turn this aroused the activities of a number of men who became the forerunners of the modern publishing houses. These men employed numbers of needy writers, who produced the translations, adaptations, and other popular works of the time. JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745) Swift was born in Dublin, and, though both his parents were English, his connexion with Ireland was to be maintained more or less closely till the day he died.)His father died before Jonathan's birth, so the boy was thrown upon the charity of an uncle, who paid for his education in Ireland. At the age of 19 he left Trinity College and he took holy orders. His real chance came in 1710, when the Tories overthrew the Marlborough faction; To them Swift devoted the gigantic powers of his pen and he hoped for substantial rewards so he might have become a bishop, but it is said that Queen Anne objected. He spent the last thirty years of his life in gloom, and largely in retirement. 5 He wrote the poem The Campaign, praising the war policy of the Whigs in general and the worthiness of Marlborough in particular. This poem brought him fame and fortune so it gave him a reputation as one of the major posts of the age, it literally made Addison’s fortune. The hero is Marlborough, who is drawn on a scale of epic grandeur. Talking about his drama we can say that in 1713 he produced the tragedy of Cato. It is written in laborious blank verse and it caught the ear of the political parties, both of which in the course of the play saw pithy references to the inflamed passions of the time. Addison also wrote an opera, Rosamond , which was a failure. His essays began almost casually: 1709, Steele published the first number of The Tatler, a periodical that was to appear thrice weekly. Addison, who was a school and college friend of Steele, saw and liked the new publication, and offered his services as a contributor; his offer was accepted so Addison wrote regularly for the paper, contributing about 42 numbers. The Tatler finished in January 1711; then in March of the same year Steele began The Spectator, which was issued daily. In The Spectator Addison rapidly became the dominating spirit, in fact he wrote 274 essays out of a complete total of 555. They are a faithful reflection of the life of the time viewed with an aloof observation. He set out to be a mild censor of the morals of the age, and most of his compositions deal with topical subjects--fashions, head- dresses, practical jokes, polite conversation. Deeper themes were handled in a popular fashion-- immorality, jealousy, prayer, death, and drunkenness. Politics were touched, but .gingerly. In all things he advocated moderation and tolerance. Sometimes he adopted the allegory as a means of throwing his ideas vividly before his readers. 6 SIR RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729) Steele had a varied and rather an unfortunate career, due largely to his own ardent disposition. Like Addison, he was educated at the Charterhouse, and then proceeded to Oxford, leaving without taking a degree. He wanted to be part of the army as a cadet; but then he took to politics, he became a Member of Parliament, and wrote for the Whigs. Steele, however, was too impetuous to be a successful politician, and he was expelled from the House of Commons. He became a Tory; quarrelled with Addison on private and public grounds; he issued a number of periodicals. Steele wrote some prose comedies, the best of which are The Funeral, The Lying Lover, The Tender Husband and The Conscious Lovers where we can appreciate his amiability of temper. It is as a miscellaneous essayist that Steele finds his place in literature. He was a man fertile in ideas, but he lacked the application that is always so necessary to carry those ideas to fruition. He started The Tatler in 1709, The Spectator in 1711, and several other short-lived periodicals, such as The Guardian, The Englishman, The Reader , and The Plebeian. The aim of Steele's essays was frankly didactic; he desired to bring about a reformation of contemporary society manners, and is notable for his consistent advocacy of womanly virtue and the ideal of the gentleman of courtesy, chivalry, and good taste. 7 DANIEL DEFOE (1659-1731) Much of Defoe's life is still undetermined. He was born in London, became a soldier, and then a journalist. He worked for both the Whigs and the Tories, by whom he was frequently employed in obscure and questionable work. He died in London. Talking about political writings we can say that Defoe turned out a mass of political tracts and pamphlets; many of them appeared in his own journal, The Review. His The Shortest Way with the Dissenters brought upon him official wrath, and caused him to be fined, imprisoned, and pilloried. In all his propaganda Defoe is vigorous and acute, and he has a fair command of irony and invective. His works in fiction were all produced in the latter part of his life, at almost incredible speed. First came Robinson Crusoe ; then Duncan Campbell, Memoirs of a Cavalier, and Captain Singleton, all three books in 1720; in 1722 appeared Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Colonel Jacque; then Roxana and A New Voyage round the World. Robinson Crusoe lived years, all alone in an un-inhabited island and there are introduced two of the most-enduring characters in English literature: Robinson Crusoe and Friday, a savage, and Crusoe gradually turns him into an English-speaking Christian. John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) Arbuthnot studied medicine at Oxford, and spent the latter part of his life in London, where he became acquainted with Pope and Swift. His 10 in which a man of his keen intelligence might have been expected to succeed. Pope became acquainted with Addison, Swift, and Steele, whose friendship he eagerly cultivated. He became the dominating poetical personality of his days. By religion and physical deformity he saw himself as social outcast, so he considered literature as his one way to fame. For it, and for poetry in particular, he 'lived; everything he wrote was created with the desire for perfection. Pope's earliest important work was his Pastorals; these poems, almost certainly written before he was 18. The characters and scenery are based on classical models and lack vigour. In 1712 was published the first version of The Rape of the Lock, one of the most brilliant poems in the language. In it Pope tried to laugh back into good humour two families who had been estranged when Lord Petrie cut off a lock of hair from the head of Miss Arabella Fermor. In 1714, Pope added the machinery of the sylphs to the original version. The poem combines with its humorous, epic treatment of the trivial theme and a good deal of satire on the weaknesses of the fair sex and on society manners in general. For the most part, this satire is gentle and good-humoured, though occasionally the last half-line of a couplet gives us a foretaste of more incisive tones. Furthermore he translated the Iliad, which, as a translation, it is faulty, because Pope had no sound knowledge of Greek and was often led into errors by his reference to earlier translations. On the other hand, it is a 11 brilliant poem, fast moving, and full of eloquent speeches, though it is far removed from the vigour of the original. The Iliad was followed, by the Odyssey, translated with the aid of two classical scholars. Between 1731 and 1735 Pope published a series of philosophical poems, including Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men, Of the Characters of Women, and, the most famous of all, An Essay on Man, in which he discussed man's place in the universe. These moral essays were written under the influence of Lord Bolingbroke, and their confused reasoning shows Pope's lack of philosophical training and background. However, they contain passages full of force and beauty. The years 1733 to 1737 mark Pope's last important period of production. In them appeared his Imitations of Horace, in which, using the Latin satirist as his model, Pope attacked the greed and corruption of his day, and especially of the Whig party then in power. His famous Prologue to the Satires, better known by its other title, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot , contains some of his most brilliant and finished work. So in general it is possible to affirm that his poems take people of his own social class, and they deal with their common experiences and their common interests and aspirations. With regard to his style we can affirm that it is restricted to the heroic couplet, used in a narrative and didactic subject and a study of his technique shows a meticulous sense of the exact word in the exact place. 12 Matthew Prior (1664-1721) He studied at Cambridge, and was early engaged in writing on behalf of the Tories, from whom he received several valuable appointments. He entered the House of Commons; he was involved in Jacobite intrigues, and because of this he was imprisoned. Prior's distinction lies in his miscellaneous verse, which is varied, bulky, and of a high quality. Some of the best of his pieces are The Chameleon and a number of poems, To Chloe. John Gay (1685-1732) Gay was born in humble circumstances, and was apprenticed to a silk- mercer; but, being ambitious, he entered the service of the Duchess of Queensberry. His poems brought him some fame. His chief works are The Rural Sports, written in the heroic couplet, and resembling Pope's Pastorals; Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London that is a witty parody of the heroic style, and it contains bright descriptions of London streets. Edward Young (1683-1765) Young had a long life, and produced a large amount of literary work. He went to Oxford, and late in life he entered the Church. He lived much in retirement, though in his later years he received a public appointment. Among his major works we can mention The Complaint: or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality , which was inspired by the death of his wife, and had a great and long-enduring popularity. 15 In prose we have to chronicle a distinct advance. For the first time we have periodical literature occupying a prominent place in the writing of the time. 1. The Rise of the Periodical Press. The first periodical published in Europe was the Gazetta (1536), in Venice. This was a newspaper which was read publicly in order to give the Venetians information regarding their war with the Turks. In England news-sheets were published during the reign of Elizabeth, but they were irregular in their appearance, being issued only when some notable event, such as a great flood or fire. The first regular English journal was a weekly publication begun in 1622, who were authorized to print information on foreign wars. Such publications, concerned exclusively with foreign news. It is noticeable that during this period, when the Press was coming into being, governments seemed to fear the power of the printed word; these newsbooks had most of the features of the modern newspaper. In 1702 The Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper, was published, and it survived until 1735. Then in the early years of the 18th century the fierce contests between the Whigs and the Tories brought a rapid expansion of the Press and here we have to point out the Tory paper to which men like Swift contributed regularly. These newspapers are almost entirely political, but they also contain satirical work of much merit. 2. The Rise of the Essay. An essay, therefore, must be short. The English essay has its roots in the Elizabethan period even if the first real essayist in English is Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who published a short series of essays. His work follows that of the French writer Montaigne. Essayists of the 18th century were Swift and Pope, who 16 contributed to the periodicals, and Defoe, whose miscellaneous work is of considerable importance. 3. Prose Narrative. Much of the narrative is still disguised as allegory, as in Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In his method Swift shows some advance, because he subordinates the allegory and adds to the interest in the satire and the narrative. 4. Miscellaneous Prose. There is a large body of religious, political, and philosophical work. In political prose Swift is the outstanding figure, with his religious writing like Tale of a Tub. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE 1. Poetry: In poetry we have to point out the domination of the heroic couplet. This metre produced a close and clear style (as we have noticed in the work of Pope). Blank verse is still found in the work of John Philips called The Splendid Shilling (1701). The use of blank verse at this time has a certain dignity and force and is important, for it marks both a resistance to the use of the couplet but also a promise of the revival of the freer forms of verse. 2. Prose: In prose the most important feature is the emergence of the middle style: the maximum exponent is Addison and thanks to him we can find a prose suitable for miscellaneous purposes: for newspaper and political work, for the essay, for history and biography. This step is of 17 immense importance, for we can say that with Addison begins the modern era of prose. Along with this we can find the temporary disappearance of ornate prose because it was unacceptable to the taste of people of this age. While the school of Addison represents the middle style, the plainer style is represented in the work of Swift and Defoe; Swift reveals the style at its best--sure, clean, and strong. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1740-1800) Talking about the middle and later stages of the 18th century we have to mention some important events: 1.Decline of the Party Hostility. The contest between the Whigs and the Tories still continues, but it is weaker. The main reason for this change is found in the weakness of the Tory party, that made itself so unpopular. While with the accession of George III in 1760 the Tories swiftly climbed into power. 2.Commercial and Imperial Expansion. Under the pacific management of the great Whig minister Walpole, the 18th century saw an immense growth in the wealth and importance of the British Empire. On literature this material welfare had its effect by creating original work; for example the possession of India and America in itself was an inspiration. 3.The French Revolution. The French Revolution in 1789, was only the climax of a diffused unrest and we can appreciate revolutionary ideas in literature. 20 After being privately educated, he proceeded to Oxford, where he experienced the miseries and indignities that are the destiny of a poor scholar with a great mind. Leaving the university, he tried school-teaching, with no success; married a woman 20 years older than himself; and then in 1737 went to London and found himself into the squalors of Grub Street that was a street close to London's impoverished Moorfields district. We know almost nothing regarding the life of Johnson during this early period but we know that he slowly went out of poverty. In 1762 he received a pension from the State, and the last 20 years of his life were passed in the manner most acceptable to him: visiting and conversing. It is in these latter years that we find him in his work The Life of Samuel Johnson where it is possible to appreciate, for example, his puerile superstitions; his deep and beautiful piety; his Tory prejudices. His first poem, London, written in the heroic couplet, is of great power and it depicts the vanities and the sins of city life viewed from the depressing standpoint of an embittered and penurious poet. His only other longish poem is The Vanity of Human Wishes where the metre is the same as in London, and there is the same pessimism, but the weight and power of the emotion give the work a great value. Talking about his drama we can mention Irene, a solemn, undramatic, blank verse tragedy but it was no success while referring to his prose we can point out that his earliest work appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine. For this periodical he wrote imaginary Parliamentary debates, based on partial facts which he could obtain without attending the Parliament, and, above all, they were elaborated by his own invention. 21 Then he wrote The Life of Savage, that was about his penurious poet friend recently died in prison. It was later incorporated in The Lives of the Poets that gave a great light on Johnson's struggles. Then, in 1747, he began work on his Dictionary of the English Language. This was his greatest contribution to scholarship because it was superior to any previous dictionary even if it has its weaknesses: it was a poor guide to pronunciation; the etymology was sometimes inaccurate; some definitions were incorrect. He wrote Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, in order to pay for his mother's funeral. It was meant to be a philosophical novel, but it is really a number of essays connected thanks to the personality of an inquiring young prince called Rasselas. The faults are: the tale is not very interesting, the characters are rudimentary, and there are many long, dull discussions. Then came Johnson's second truly great work that is to say his fine edition of Shakespeare, where he succeeded in producing a purer text than any then in existence. His later years were almost unproductive of literary work. He kept himself interested in the events of the day. For instance, he started a violent quarrel with Macpherson, whose Ossian had startled the literary world. He also wrote A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland that is a travel book, containing passages of great skill. His last work was The Lives of the Poets, that is as a series of introductions to the works of 52 poets that are those of the 17th and 18th centuries, the period which Johnson found most interesting. 22 He describes the lives of Dryden and Pope, and, though personal antipathies distort his judgments of Milton and Gray, there can be no doubt of his intention to try to be honest. Talking about his style we can point out that in Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, the prose is heavy, rhetorical in structure, full of affectation, pompous and over-elaborate. These mannerisms disappear as we follow the course of his writings, until, in The Lives of the Poets, his prose has the lucidity, force, and vigorous directness of his conversation. THE TRANSITIONAL POETS JAMES THOMSON (1700-48) Thomson was born in Scotland but early came to London to seek a patron and fame. His Winter , brought him recognition and afterward praise so he travelled as a tutor to a noble family passing a happy and prosperous life. His Winter was afterward quadrupled in size by including the other three seasons, and became The Seasons. It is a blank-verse poem, and consists of a long series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes, mainly those with which he was familiar during his youth in Scotland. Above all, he talks about real nature, obtained from his real life, and not from books. Thomson also wrote Liberty ,a gigantic poem in blank verse that had no success. In the last year of his life he published The Castle of Indolence, which 25 His first poem was the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, then , after years, appeared the famous Elegy written in a Country Churchyard , that contains familiar sentiments turned into admirable, quotable phrases. Its popularity has been maintained to the present day. 2. William Collins (1721-59) Collins tried to follow a literary career in London, but with little success, being arrested for debt. He was released by the generosity of his publishers. Recovering after several violent fits of insanity, he lapsed into a species of melancholia, finally dying in his native city at the early age of 38. The book that gives him his place in literature is his Odes, that is a collection of odes to Pity, Fear, Simplicity, and to other abstract subjects. 3. William Cowper (1731-1800) His father was rector. Family influence obtained for him the offer of a good post on the clerical staff of the House of Lords (is the part of the parliament in Britain whose members have not been elected), but his extreme shyness made him quite unfit for this semi-public job. He attempted suicide, but was fortunately prevented. The latter part of his life was spent with his good friends that treated him with great kindness and good sense. His feeling of gratitude for their care, is one of the most touching features in the literature of the time. During the years immediately preceding his death he suffered from extreme mental and bodily affliction. 26 His first published work was a number of hymns in the Olney Hymns; several of them are still among the best known of English hymns. Cowper's letters, private epistles addressed to various personal friends, are among the most delightful of their kind. They show the man at his best and the style is very 4.George Crabbe (1754-1832) He was apprenticed to a surgeon, but later left his native town to seek fame as an author in London. He had little success at first, but gradually attracted attention. He fixed on a settled career by taking holy orders, and he obtained the patronage of several influential Men. His main poetical works are The Library ,The Village , which made his name as a poet, The Borough, and Tales. The poems in their succession show little development, resembling each other closely both in subject and style. They are collections of tales dealing with the lives of simple countryfolk. Crabbe, however, cannot be classed as a great poet; he lacks the supreme poetic gift of transforming something squalid into things of splendour. 5.Mark Akenside (1721-70) He studied medicine at Edinburgh. He started practice but did not succeed. His best-known book is The Pleasures of the Imagination, a long blank- verse poem. 27 6.Christopher Smart (1722-71) Smart was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated. He was a man of unbalanced mind, which, leading him into many extravagances, brought him finally to a madhouse and a miserable death in a debtor's prison. The poem connected with his name is A Song to David , which is said to have been partly written on the walls of the madhouse in which he was confined. The poem is full of extravagance and incoherence. 7. William Shenstone (1714-63) He was educated at Oxford. After leaving the university he retired to his estate. He was a shy and retiring man, and spent nearly all his life in the country. His poems are largely pastoral, in fact, he studies nature himself. 8. Charles Churchill (1731-64) Churchill was educated at Cambridge, took orders and obtained a curacy. When he was about 27 years old he suddenly abandoned his curacy, took to politics and hack journalism, and to drinking. The work which established his reputation was The Rosciad , where he attacks the leading figures of the contemporary stage, and it was followed by a series of political satires, among which we can mention The Prophecy of Famine, where he attacked the Scots, a race that he dislikes. 8.Robert Blair (1699-1746) He was a clergyman. His most important poem is The Grave; it is a long blank-verse poem of meditation on man's mortality. The poem is reminiscent of Young's Night Thoughts. 30 Blake was born in London; he received no formal education, though in his early years he discovered some works of Shakespeare and Milton, and, above all, the Bible. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to an engraver, even if, during his life, he was better known as an illustrator than as a write. Two of his works were engraved by his own hand, and were not printed in the normal way. Blake's first publication was Poetical Sketches , a series of imitative poems, in which he experimented with various verse forms in the manner of Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser. These were followed by Songs of Innocence, short lyrics where we can appreciate his view of the original state of human society, symbolized in the joy and happiness of children. They betray a passionate sincerity and deep sympathy with the child. He also wrote revolutionary prophetic books like The French Revolution, America , and Europe. Songs of Experience was Blake's last considerable work as a lyric poet and it represents the first great demonstration of “illuminated printing” that is to say that here readers can appreciate his unique technique of publishing both text and hand-coloured illustration together. OTHER POETS OF THE NEW SCHOOL 1.James Macpherson (1736-96) This writer was educated for the Church and he made a literary career. He wrote, for example, Fingal and Temora and he declared that these books were his translations of the poems of an ancient Celtic bard called 31 Ossian. Immediately a violent dispute broke out because many people (including Johnson) affirmed that these books were original compositions of Macpherson himself. The truth is that he gave substance to a large mass of Gaelic tradition, and he puts the stories into his peculiar style. 2. Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) At the age of 18he went to London to seek his fortune as a poet. Almost at once he lapsed into penury, and, being too proud to beg, poisoned himself with arsenic. In 1768, while he was still at Bristol, he issued a collection of poems which seemed archaic in style and spelling. He affirmed that he had found them in an ancient chest lodged in a church in Bristol; and he further stated that most of them had been written by a monk of the 15th century, named Thomas Rowley. The collection received the name of The Rowley Poems, and includes several ballads, one of which is The Battle of Hastings. A slight knowledge of Middle English reveals that they are forgeries (falsificazioni). 3. Robert Fergusson (1750-74) He contributed much to the local press, and acquired some reputation as a poet of the vernacular. His irregular habits led to the madhouse, in which he died at the early age of 24. His best poems are short descriptive pieces dealing with Scottish life, such as The King's Birthday in Edinburgh. Fergusson gives clear and accurate descriptions, and his use of the vernacular Scots tongue is natural. 32 THE NOVELISTS SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761) Richardson was the son of a joiner (falegname) and then he was apprenticed to a London printer finishing by becoming a master-printer, that produced the journals of the House of Commons, and became printer to the King. Richardson's first attempts at writings began at the age of 13, when he was the confidant of three illiterate young women, for whom he wrote love letters. He was over 50 years old before he printed a novel of his own, called Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. The whole book, which takes the form of a series of letters, is about a virtuous maid, Pamela and how she is able to cope with the aggressions of the head master but finally she marries and afterwards reforms her wicked master. The work was instantly successful and here it is fundamental to state an important point namely that, since the protagonist is a young lady, all the young women started to identify themselves with her into the novel. Richardson's next novel, which was also constructed in the form of letters, was Clarissa Harlow that deals with the perfidy of men, in fact we can find a heroine that is persecuted by the villainous Lovelace. His third and last novel, also in letter-form, was Sir Charles Grandison dealing with higher people in the social world. Richardson contemplated calling the book A Good Man, for he intended the hero to be the perfection of the manly virtues. 35 OTHER NOVELISTS Tobias Smollett (1721-71) Smollett was a Scotsman. Though he came of a good family, from an early age he had to work for a living. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, and, becoming a surgeon's mate on board, he saw some fighting and much of the world. When he published The Adventures of Roderick Random the book was successful and he settled in London. Roderick Random is an example of the 'picaresque' novel: the hero is a roving dog, of considerable roguery (furfanteria); he visits many lands, undergoing many tricks of fortune, both good and bad. His other novels are, for example, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom. Most of the characters are disreputable (malfamati) and a brutal humour is present all through. Smollett, however, talks also about local manners and customs. Smollett is the first of our novelists to introduce the naval type. Laurence Sterne (1713-68) Sterne was educated at Cambridge, he took orders, and obtained a living in Yorkshire; his habits were decidedly unclerical. He temporarily left his living for going to London to publish the first two parts of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. Then he wrote his second novel A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, and died in London. 36 His two novels are The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent which won him immediate recognition, and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Unique in English literature, they are the accurate reflection of the personality of their author. Their characters are human, minutely delineated in order to describe their personality. Horace Walpole (1717-97) Walpole was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the famous Whig minister. He touched upon several kinds of literature, his letters being among the best of their kind. His one novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), is of importance, for it was the first of the productions of a large school, sometimes called the 'terror school', of novelists that deals with the grisly and the supernatural. Walpole affirmed that it was a translation of a 16th century Italian work, where a ghostly castle is described, in which we have walking skeletons, pictures that move out of their frames, and other incidents. Other Terror Novelists. Mrs Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) This lady was the most popular of the terror novelists, and published a large number of books. Among these there are her A Sicilian Romance , The Romance of the Forest, and the most popular of them all, The Mysteries of Udolpho. Her stories had almost a uniform plot, with mysterious manuscripts, haunted castles, clanking chains, and cloaked and saturnine strangers. 37 At the end of all the horrors Mrs Radcliffe spoils the effect by giving us the secrets of them, and revealing the fact that the terrors were only illusions after all Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) Lewis is perhaps the crudest of the terror school, and only one book of his, The Monk , is worth recording, his book is probably the ‘creepiest’ of its kind. Frances Burney (1752-1840) She is an important figure in the history of the novel. The first of the women novelists, she created the novel of domestic life. Her four novels are Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla, and The Wanderer , even if her fame rests on the first two. Her observation of life was keen and close, and her descriptions of society are in a delightfully satirical vein, in many ways like that of Jane Austen. THE HISTORIANS EDWARD GIBBON (1737-94) He was a sickly child. His private historical studies led him to become a Roman Catholic when he was 16 years old, to the great horror of his father, and this choice had, as result, his expulsion from the university. His father send him to Lausanne, in Switzerland, in the hope that the Protestant atmosphere of the place would wean him from his new faith. 40 In politics he attached himself to the Whig party, obtained some small Appointments; both as an orator and as a pamphleteer he was a powerful advocate for his party. On the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 he left his party and attacked the revolutionaries with all his energy. In 1794, broken in health, he retired from Parliament, but continued to publish pamphlets till his death 3 years later, in 1797. It is necessary to divide his books into 2 groups: his purely philosophical writings, and his political pamphlets and speeches. His philosophical writings, were composed in the earlier portion of his career. A Vindication of Natural Society is a parody of the ideas of Bolingbroke (was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories). A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is his most considerable work that talks about philosophy. His political works gave him a lot of fame. They fall into other two groups: the speeches and the pamphlets. It is in the former group that Burke's power is at its best. Among them we can mention his speeches On American Taxation and On Conciliation with the Colonies, that are rich in rhetorical effect. His first pamphlet to be produced was Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents , an attack to the Tory Government then in power. 41 Then, between 1790 and 1797, appeared a number of pamphlets, among which there are Reflections on the Revolution in France and A Letter to a Noble Lord. Reflections on the Revolution in France is a fine exposition of his own principles. A Letter to a Noble Lord, in which Burke defends his right to receive a state pension, is a masterpiece of irony. Talking about his style we can point out that he uses a lot of rhetorical figures (such as metaphor, simile, epigram, and exclamation), variation of the sentence structure, homely illustrations, and a vigorous rhythm. His works are full of colour and splendour and with a great imagination. OTHER PROSE-WRITERS Adam Smith (1723-90) He was professor at Glasgow University. His famous book is The Wealth of Nations and it represents another example of that spirit of research and inquiry that was abroad at this time. William Godwin (1756-1836) He is the prominent example of the revolutionary man of letters of the time. He was the son of a dissenting minister, and intended to follow the same profession, but very soon drifted away from it. He then devoted himself writing letters, in which he developed his extreme views on religion, politics, sociology, and other important themes. 42 In his Political Justice we can appreciate revolutionary ideas, and, in fact, it had a great effect on many young and ardent spirits of the age, including Shelley. DRAMA Talking about drama we can state that only 2 writers achieve excellence. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN (1751-1816) He made literature as a means of making money. At the age of 23 he wrote his first play, The Rivals, and when he was 29 he wrote his last, The Critic. After this he entered Parliament and lived a busy political life. His prose comedy, The Rivals, had an enormous success. It was followed by a farce called St Patrick's Day: or, The Scheming Lieutenant, and an operatic play, The Duenna, for which his father-in-law (suocero) composed and arranged the music and it had a great success. His best play will always remain The School for Scandal, which contains his best character, Lady Teazle, where the dialogues are brilliant. His last play was The Critic: or, a Tragedy Rehearsed that is an attack on the popular sentimental drama. In his works we can see the polite world of fashion, but its vices appear to us foolish The dialogue is brilliant and the plays are remarkable for their vivacity and charm. 45 A new type of embryo novel began to appear at the end of the 16th century, and, becoming very popular during the 17th. This class is known as the picaresque novel, a name derived from the Spanish word picaro, which means a wandering rogue. As the name implies, it is of Spanish origin. The hero is something like a rascal who leads a wandering life, and has many adventures, most of them of a scandalous kind. In Spain the greatest picaresque novel is the Don Quixote of Cervantes. Another type that came into favour was the heroic romance. The hero of a heroic romance was usually of high degree, and he underwent a long series of romantic adventures, many of them supernatural. This type of romance collapsed about the end of the 17th century, whereas the picaresque novel survived and influenced the novel in later centuries. Aphra Behn (1640-89) Her Orinooko, or The Royal Slave shows power in describing the persecution of a noble negro, a kind of Othello, at the hands of brutal white men. The genuine novel is very near in the works of Defoe. His novels are of the picaresque type in the case of, for example, Moll Flanders while Tom Jones shows us the novel in its maturity, so with Fielding the principles of the novel were established. The modifications of Fielding's immediate successors can be briefly noticed. 46 Smollett added the professional sailor to fiction; Sterne made the novel sentimental and fantastic, and founded a sentimental school; the Radcliffe novels made fiction terrific. The habit of writing letters became very popular during the 18th century and it was this popularity of the letter that helped Richardson to put his Pamela into public favour. A letter was a long communication during which the characters discuss about some topic of general interest and sometimes the letters contain comments on political and social matters. Another example could be The Life of Samuel Johnson in which Boswell published many of Johnson's letters. MARY SHELLEY She was born in London in 1797; her father was William Godwin and her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after her birth. Then her father remarried, this caused her great suffering. Mary did not receive any formal education, but from an early age, she received great intellectual stimulus, in fact her father’s house was a meeting point of famous philosophers, writers and poets, such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge. There is an anecdote about her as a young girl; it seems that she used to hide behind a sofa while Coleridge read aloud his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which exercised a great influence on her novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. In 1814 Mary met the poet Percy Shelley and the 2 began a relationship even though he was married and had two children, for this reason her father strongly opposed their relationship. The 2 47 lovers decided to go to France and then to Switzerland, but they had to return to England because of financial problems. Because of these actions, Mary was banished by society, even by her own father who refused to speak to her for some time. In Switzerland Mary conceived the idea for the book that would make her famous, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. One rainy day she was among her group of friends and at one point Byron suggested to write a horror story and this led Mary to write Frankenstein, that was published anonymously in 1818. Then Percy Shelley’s wife Harriet committed suicide and later he married Mary. Several factors, such as her anxieties, the difficult relationship with her father, the reading of ghost stories, came together at one point creating Frankenstein. INFLUENCES: 1. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel T. Coleridge, in which the mariner commits a crime against nature when he kills an albatross, a creature of God, without a reason ,influenced Frankenstein in fact he also oversteps human limits when he creates life in an unnatural way thus committing a crime against nature himself. 2. The novelist was also influenced by the latest scientific theories on chemistry, electricity and evolution and philosophical ideas such as the theory of the “noble savage” of Jean Jacques Rousseau, in fact we can consider the monster as the embodiment of Rousseau’s primitive man, the man close to nature, innocent because he is not corrupted by civilization. The monster is good until it comes in touch with society. MARY WOLLSTONECTAFT 50 The 'stream of consciousness' technique and the internal monologue are used with great power. VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) Virginia Woolf was born into a circle where standards of culture, taste, and intelligence were of the highest. From the reading and conversations of her formative years she acquired a wide literary background and a cosmopolitan culture. She began her writing career as a contributor to literary journals. The Voyage Out is her first novel; the same emphasis on character-analysis and the same lack of incident characterize Night and Day, another study of personal adjustment and development. Then came her first really mature work, Jacob's Room (1922), in which her distinctive technique is fully used for the first time. To the Lighthouse shows a firmer mastery of the 'stream of consciousness technique, and is by many accounted her finest work. The ultimate development of her method appears in The Waves; it is a symbolic work of great poetic beauty, in which the consciousness of the six characters is studied in a series of internal monologues. She wrote Orlando, a Biography, which may be said to have established her reputation with the wider reading public. In addition to her novels, Virginia Woolf wrote a number of essays on cultural subjects, which appear in Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown; The Common Reader; A Room of One's Own. Her range of characters is small: she was unable to portray anyone who did not share her own unusual qualities, and it is certainly true that some of her figures, though studied with amazing subtlety, fail to come alive for the reader. 51 LEWIS CARROLL Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, (1832,1898), English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist, especially remembered for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The story was originally told by Carroll to Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell (the daughters of Henry George Liddell, dean of Christ Church) on a picnic in July 1862. Alice asked Carroll to write out the stories for her, and in response he produced a hand-lettered collection entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. A visitor to his home saw the storybook and thought it should be published, so 52 Carroll revised and expanded it. Appearing at a time when children’s literature generally was intended to teach moral lessons, the book at first was criticised. The work attracted a lot of people and led to a sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (published in December 1871). By the end of the 19th century, Alice (taking the two volumes together) had become the most popular children’s book in England. It inspired numerous films, theatrical performances, and ballets. JOHN RUSKIN John Ruskin was a famous artist, and writer of the Victorian era. He was born in a noble family. As a child, Ruskin was reserved. He was educated at home. Then he traveled to Europe with his parents. This gave him an opportunity to appreciate a lot of paintings that would inspire him.