Neoclassical Poetry
The distinctive symptoms of classicism are: belief in reason, emphasis
on the civilized, modern and sophisticated modes of life, interest in the
urbane society, preoccupation with human nature, love for mundane
actuality, satirical tendency, expression of accepted moral truth,
realistic recognition of things as they are, belief in good and evil,…etc.
It is worthwhile before examining the characteristics of the English
versions of classicism and romanticism to examine at some length the
definition, nature, and function of classicism and romanticism in
general.
Accordingly, the main characteristics of classicism can be
summarized as follows. As it has been mentioned above, classical
literature is the main product of the intelligence playing upon the
surface of life. It is a literature of imitation rather than of divine
revelation. On the side of emotion and imagination it is markedly
deficient; it is, in other words, an art of objective representation.
Subjectivity is entirely excluded from classical art and literature. In a
like manner, extreme devotion to form and strict adherence to rules as
well as the distinction between genres are main characteristics of
classical thought and art. To put it in a nutshell, dignity and sublimity
in terms of subject matter and manner of representation are main
features distinguishing it from other movements such as romanticism
and realism.
Most importantly, the 18th century witnessed a distrust of
imagination, wit, and whatever is personal or individual. Imagination
was looked upon as an evil faculty: as an enemy to reality; therefore it
should not be respected by those who think. Nothing outside the scope
of mind was accepted. Reason, therefore, came to replace imagination
in the Augustan Age.
THE GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE PERIOD
The writers of the reigns of Anne and George I called their period
the Augustan Age, because they flattered themselves that with them
English life and literature had reached a culminating period of
civilization and elegance corresponding to that which existed at Rome
under the Emperor Augustus. They believed also that both in the art of
living and in literature they had rediscovered and were practicing the
principles of the best periods of Greek and Roman life. In our own time
this judgment appears equally arrogant and mistaken. In reality the men
of the early eighteenth century, like those of the Restoration, largely
misunderstood the qualities of the classical spirit, and thinking to
reproduce them attained only a superficial, pseudo-classical, imitation.
The main characteristics of the period and its literature continue, with
some further development, those of the Restoration, and may be
summarily indicated as follows:
1- Interest was largely centered in the practical well-being either of
society as a whole or of one's own social class or set. The majority of
writers, furthermore, belonged by birth or association to the upper
social stratum and tended to overemphasize its artificial conventions,
often looking with contempt on the other classes. To them conventional
good breeding, fine manners, the pleasures of the leisure class, and the
standards of 'The Town' (fashionable London society) were the only
part of life much worth regarding.
2. The men of this age carried still further the distrust and dislike felt by
the previous generation for emotion, enthusiasm, and strong
individuality both in life and in literature, and exalted Reason and
Regularity as their guiding stars. The terms 'decency' and 'neatness'
were forever on their lips. They sought a conventional uniformity in
manners, speech, and indeed in nearly everything else, and were uneasy
if they deviated far from the approved, respectable standards of the
body of their fellows. Great poetic imagination, therefore, could
scarcely exist among them, or indeed supreme greatness of any sort.
3. They had little appreciation for external Nature or for any beauty
except that of formalized Art. A forest seemed to most of them merely
wild and gloomy, and great mountains chiefly terrible, but they took
delight in gardens of artificially trimmed trees and in regularly plotted
and alternating beds of domestic flowers. The Elizabethans also, as we
have seen, had had much more feeling for the terror than for the
grandeur of the sublime in Nature, but the Elizabethans had had nothing
of the elegant primness of the Augustans.
4. In speech and especially in literature, most of all in poetry, they were
given to abstractness of thought and expression, intended to secure
elegance, but often serving largely to substitute superficiality for
definiteness and significant meaning. They abounded in
personifications of abstract qualities and ideas ('Laughter, heavenly
maid,' Honor, Glory, Sorrow, and so on, with prominent capital letters),
a sort of a pseudo-classical substitute for emotion.
5. They were still more fully confirmed than the men of the Restoration
in the conviction that the ancients had attained the highest possible
perfection in literature, and some of them made absolute submission of
judgment to the ancients, especially to the Latin poets and the Greek,
Latin, and also the seventeenth century classicizing French critics.
Some authors seemed timidly to desire to be under authority and to
glory in surrendering their independence, individuality, and originality
to foreign and long-established leaders and principles.
6. Under these circumstances the effort to attain the finished beauty of
classical literature naturally resulted largely in a more or less shallow
formal smoothness.
7. There was a strong tendency to moralizing, which also was not
altogether free from conventionality and superficiality.
Although the 'Augustan Age' must be considered to end before the
middle of the century, the same spirit continued dominant among many
writers until near its close, so that almost the whole of the century may
be called the period of pseudo-classicism.
Satire is the main characteristic of Augustan literature. Nowhere did the
classical forms serve so well as in satire. Satire, to define it, is a style,
tone, or technique that moralistically diminishes, by way of ridicule or
scorn, the failings of an individual, institution, or society. Traditionally,
the approach is divided into two major types: formal satire and indirect
satire. Formal satire is a direct attack in which the satirist personally
addresses the person whose failings are the object of attack and whose
technical function is to steer the speaker’s comments as in Pope’s
Moral Essays. The speaker of the formal satire may be an amused
speaker (as in Pope), or he may be a grave speaker who views folly as a
serious threat, and thus hopes to elicit serious reaction from his readers.
What is Romanticism?
Although Romanticism appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century
as a literary movement, and as a revolt against the artificial restrictions of
the Age of Reason, the romantic tendency in art dates as far back as two
or three centuries before the nineteenth century. The romantic tendency in
general reveals a strong noncompliance with classical standards and rules.
Romanticism, however, was crystallized in England in the real sense
of the word in 1800, the date of the publication of Wordsworth’s
manifesto of the romantic movement, “The Preface to the Lyrical
Ballads”. The romantic revolution in literature was, in addition, an echo
of the French revolution and the impression of the new literature of
Germany.
The first thing one should as far as Romanticism is concerned is to give
insights into its nature and function, its subject matter, the nature of its
language, and the role of imagination for poetic creation.
Concerning the nature of poetry and art in romantic theory, the
classical conception of imitation, or mimesis, is replaced by the concept
of divine inspiration. The romantics, in this context, rejected rules
whether drawn from ancient or from modern writers, and believed that
great poetry resulted from the inspiration which seized those uniquely
endowed beings called poets, and compelled them to express their
feelings in a memorable and personal way. They were, that is to say,
egoists, and subjective rather than objective in their approach to poetry.
Equally significant, Romanticism assigned for art and literature
functions different from those recognized by classicism. In the classical
theory the function of literature is to instruct and give pleasure – and
instruction has the upper hand before pleasure. Romanticism, in
contrast, insists that the value of poetry is solely and primarily to give
pleasure, to flirt man’s emotions and imagination, and to present to the
reader compensatory worlds. Wordsworth tells us that even when the
subject manipulated is painful in itself, it must be so treated that it would
result in an “over plus of pleasure”. The poet is himself in a “state of
enjoyment” and it is his duty to communicate his own enjoyment to his
readers.
As for subject-matter, the Romantics widened the scope of poetry by
drawing their subject-matter from the most varied sources, and treating it
subjectively: psychological studies of an individual man’s mind; the
legends of Greece and Rome; the history and Myth of the Middle Ages;
the simple tales of countrymen; all these and more, were grist for the
Romantics’ mill.
From the discussion of the nature and function of art and literature in
the romantic theory of criticism, two highly significant terms emerge; the
concepts of “Nature” and “Imagination. They are considered two pillars
upon which the general edifice of romanticism is founded.
As for the former, “Nature” meant to the Romantics the external
phenomena of the natural world and the influence of these on the spirit of
man. They saw Nature as a direct emanation from God. Its art was
divinely intended to move man’s soul, and exalt him to new heights of
virtue, by bringing him into communion with God. In other words, the
Romantics’ great admiration of the beauty of Nature is based upon the
belief that there is a living spirit in the natural world. Wordsworth, who is
called the “high priest of Nature”, felt that mere were at their best when
they lived in the company of Nature, that Nature has more wisdom than
any wisdom acquired from reading books, and that if one wanted any
moral teaching one should get it from Nature.
The affinity of the concepts of imagination among English romantic
poets scarcely needs demonstration. Blake considers all nature to be
“imagination itself”. Furthermore, Blake believed that artists were
capable of experiencing Eternity through the power of Imagination with
which they are endowed, that “our imaginations are but fragments of the
universal imagination, portions of the universal body of God…”, that
“Christianity is Art” and that “ The historical Christ was indeed no more
than the supreme symbol of the artistic imagination, in which, with every
passion wrought to perfect beauty by art and poetry, we shall live, when
the body has passed away for the last time.”
Thus imagination is not merely the power of visualization,
somewhere in between sense and reason. It is, rather, a creative power
by which the mind “gains insight into reality, reads nature as a symbol of
something behind or written nature not ordinarily perceived.”
The Augustan Age (1660-1798)
1- The Restoration (1660-1700)
2- The Age of Reason/ Enlightenment (1700- 1798)
The restoration:
1- Political Restoration: The restoration of King
Charles II to the throne of England.
2- Literary Restoration: The bringing of classicism to
English literature.
Neoclassicism
1- The essence of art and literature is representation,
imitation, reflection, mirroring, or mimesis. This
difference from the romantic conception of art
and literature as divine inspiration.
2- The function/objective of literature is to instruct
and give pleasure. This deviates from the
romantic vision of the function of literature as
mainly to give pleasure.
3- Classical literature is essentially objective in
contrast with the subjectivity of romanticism.
4- Socio-political criticism.
5- Clarity of expression, direct treatment of subject,
and a heavy use of satire.
A- The essence/nature of art and literature:
In Romanticism: Divine inspiration closely related to subjectivity.
In classicism: all art and literature is imitation, representation, or
mirroring of the world outside the artist.
B- The function or objective of art and literature
In Romanticism: to entertain, amuse, give pleasure
In Classicism: is to instruct/teach/enlighten and to give
pleasure
Mcq's
The theoretical part:
A- Choose the correct answer in the following questions:
1- Neoclassicism is a….of the Elizabethan poetry:
A- Rejection. B- Continuation. C- Modification. D- not
any.
2- The essence of poetry in classicism is:
A- Self-expression. B- Imitation. C- Representation. D-
Both B & C.
3- All classical literature is supposed to be:
A- Subjective. B- Objective. C- A balance of subjectivity
and objectivity. D- Not any.
4- The objective of art and literature is to:
A- Please. B- instruct. C- instruct and give pleasure. D-
Both B & C.
5- The images and figures of speech in classicism appeal to:
A- Emotions. B- The intellect. C- Imagination. D- Not
any.
B- Tick True or False:
1- Classical literature is mainly subjective.
2- Classical literature is one of self-expression.
3- Classical literature relies on flowery and metaphorical
language.
4- Classical literature aims mainly and solely at giving
pleasure.
5- Augustan poetry is mainly a socio-political criticism.
6- Satire is a central technical element in the majority of
Augustan poetry.
7- Augustan poetry is revealing the same type of satire in
all poets.
Romanticism
1- Romanticism is a….of the Augustan poetry:
A- Rejection. B- Continuation. C- Modification. D- not
any.
2- The essence of poetry in Romanticism is:
A- Self-expression. B- Imitation. C- Representation. D-
Both B & C.
3- All Romantic literature is supposed to be:
A- Subjective. B- Objective. C- A balance of subjectivity
and objectivity. D- Not any.
4- The objective of art and literature in Romanticism is to:
A- Please. B- instruct. C- instruct and give pleasure. D-
Both B & C.
5- The images and figures of speech in Romanticism appeal to:
A- Emotions. B- The intellect. C- Imagination. D- Both
A & C.
C- Tick True or False:
1- Romantic literature is mainly subjective.
2- Romantic literature is one of self-expression.
3- Romantic literature mainly appeals to reason.
4- Romantic literature aims mainly and solely at
instructing and giving moral lessons.
5- Romantic poetry is mainly a socio-political criticism.
6- Satire is a central technical element in the majority of
Romantic poetry.
7- Romanticism considers mainly the concepts of Nature
and Imagination.
