DANIEL DEFOE

Daniel Defoe (1657-1731) was a pioneer novelist of adventure and low

life. For the first time he let the readers hear the actual voice of the average
middle class. He notes the moral corruption of the nobility and the decline
of the brutal but ignorant country gentleman. He is the most wonderful
observer of facts and by means of his imagination he can form them anew.
Defoe was the first nonconformist and dissenter in English literature.
When he established his periodical The Review in 1704 the age of English
journalism was less than fifty years. Like Dickens he was highly endowed
with the experiencing nature and nothing seemed to him to be too small to
escape his notice. He knew how to turn the smallest detail into literary
account. He had made fiction appear like truth and truth appear like fiction.
In 1706 Defoe published A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs.
Veal, the day next Day after her Death, to one Mrs. Bargrave at
Canterbury, the 8th of September 1705. At one time this book was thought
to be a hoax but actually turned out to be a well researched work of
imagination. When the first part of ROBINSON CRUSOE was published in
1719 Defoe was sixty years old. During the next few years he was to
become the most extraordinarily prolific old man in the history of English
fiction.
In quick succession he wrote CAPTAIN SINGLETON (1720), MOLL
FLANDERS (1722), COLONEL JACQUE (1722), A Journal of the Plaque
Year (1722) and ROXANA (1724). Defoe regarded novel not as a work of
imagination but as a true relation and even when the element of fact
decreases he maintains the close realism of pseudo fact. ROBINSON
CRUSOE has the shipwreck of Selkirk as its source. CAPTAIN
SINGLETON and MOLL FLANDERS have accounts of travels and the
vague and suggestive geography of the time, the memoirs and biographies
of loose women and criminals. Defoe instinctively applies the
documentary method.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON

The most important development in English novel seems to have come

almost by chance. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) came to London and
apprenticed himself as a printer. Once he was asked to prepare a series of
model letters for those who were unable to write by themselves. Thus he
told maid servants how to negotiate a marriage proposal, apprentices how
to apply for situations and even sons how to plead their fathers
forgiveness. This task made him realize that he possesses the art of
expressing himself in letters. This realization led to the publication of three
epistolary novels titled PAMELA (1740), CLARISSA (1747-8) and SIR
CHARLES GRANDISON (1753-5).
Pamela struck the readers as a virtuous servant who resisted the attempts
of seduction of her master and as a reward gained the marriage proposal
from him. Though Richardson intended Pamela to point out a moral but the
artist in him got the better of the moralist and his first novel belongs to an
order of artistic achievement and psychological truth. Richardsons next
novel CLARRISA grew out of PAMELA. The moralist Richardson must
have found some danger in the hero of PAMELA being a rake reformed by
marriage so CLARRISA was designed as a painful demonstration of the
perfidy of man. It is quite substantial to note here that as CLARISSA had
grown out of PAMELA, SIR CHARLES GRANDISON grew out of
CLARISSA. Richardson took up the moralists burden once again and Sir
Charles Grandison appeared as a model gentleman.
Richardson, like Defoe, was a representative of the average middle class.
In Richardson, his analysis of sentiment becomes the dominant motive and
is pursued with a minuteness and patience which fiction in England was
seldom to parallel. His realism in narration was combined with a skill in
dialogue. He produced the first novels of psychological analysis and made
everyday manners and ordinary persons acceptable in fiction. The French
found in him a herald of revolt. Goethe felt his influence and became
Richardsonian in The Sorrows of Wether. Even in Italy two plays were
adapted from PAMELA by Goldoni.
In the eighteenth century novel grew to its full stature. The Elizabethans
had toyed with romance and realism. Bunyan had made story out of his
religious convictions. Defoe had given to homely fact an imaginative

appeal. Richardson emerged as the typical figure of the changed order. The
English novel firmly established by Richardson was further strengthened
by Fielding and Smollett.
HENRY FIELDING
Henry Fielding (1707-54) began his literary career as a playwright by
writing a comedy in the Restoration manner. But he soon found a real
talent for burlesque. Richardson who was skilled in dramatic parody was
tempted to write a parody of Richardsons PAMELA and the result was
SHAMELA (1741). Soon he found something on a large scale and there
appeared his first published novel JOSEPH ANDREWS (1742). As Pamela
was tempted by her master so her brother Joseph Andrews is tempted by
his mistress, Lady Booby. With Pamela as his example of virtue he resisted
though the reward was only to be kicked out in disgrace. There follows a
series of adventures on the road where Joseph was accompanied by Parson
Adams, a clerical Don Quixote. The comedy is admirably contrived with
the Hogarthian figure of a pig keeping parson as one of its main delights.
Apart from the motive of satire Fielding presented a contrast between the
picture of humble, contemporary life and the classical epic.
Fielding was displeased with Richardsons PAMELA but both of them
were moralists and used the novel to demonstrate what they considered
right and wrong behaviour. For Fielding morals were essentially positive
and he laid emphasis on action. To him Richardson seemed to be saying
that virtue and prudence were identical. Pamela appeared to be a
calculating young woman whose concern for virtue masked a self
regarding intentness on material and social betterment. Fielding made
Shamela a hypocrite who resists her master in order to drive him into
marriage so that she may become a lady and carry on freely with a local
parson.
In his next novel JONATHAN WILD (1743) Fieldings irony was the
fiercest. In this novel Fielding took the life of a thief and receiver, who had
been hanged at Tyburn, as a theme for demonstrating the small division
between a great rogue and a great soldier or a great politician. The said
novel is a satire on human greatness. The condensed irony, the self

mastery, the mental liberty heightened by the implicit violence of the

thwarted passion has a power that recalls Swift.
TOM JONES, appeared in 1749, is the first long English novel conceived
and carried out on a plan that secured artistic unity for the whole. In its
attitude to prudence and to the codes of conduct TOM JONES like
JOSEPH ANDREWS is an anti Richardsonian novel. In TOM JONES
Fielding appears as the innovator of the main tradition of English novel
the novel of panorama. Scott, Dickens and H G Wells followed the suite
later. In this novel Fielding offers a mature presentation and criticism of
almost every topic of general human interest: religion, sex, love, war, the
nature of man and woman.
In his last novel AMELIA (1751) Fielding idealises the main woman
character by making the novel a celebration of womanly virtues. Amelia is
a successful character in English fiction, a credible and convincing
representation of a positively good person. This novel is the work of a
mellower Fielding and represents a fresh start conditioned by Fieldings
admiration for Richardsons CLARISSA.
With Fielding the English novel seems to have come of age. He
established it in one of its most notable formmiddle class realism. He
appeared as one of the most civic minded English writers, a living example
of the Augustan ideal of the public man.

Monday, December 27, 2010

The Oxford Movement in English Literature
Introduction-theAims:
One only Way to life:
One faith, deliver'd once for all;
One holy Band, endow 'd with Heaven's high call;
One earnest, endless strife:
This is the Church, the Eternal framed of old.
These lines from a poem by John Keble (the "founder" of the Oxford Movement)
give us some help to answer the question as to what the Oxford Movement was about.
This Movement was, fundamentally, religious in nature, and one of its aims was to

rehabilitate the dignity of the Church and to deliver it from the grasp of secular
authority.
But that was only one of the manifold issues which the Movement dealt with. Some
other issues may also be mentioned here. One of them was the growing strength of
Liberalism in religion and politics. The protagonists of this movement came forward to
combat tooth and nail all such Liberalism as appeared in the Church as
Latitudinarianism. The Oxford Movement had nothing to do with politics, but it
favoured Conservatism or Toryism (of course, in religion). As W. H. Hutton points out
in The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. XII, it "was certainly not a Tory
movement, but it was opposed to liberalism in all its aspects. To the philosophy of
conservatism the Oxford leaders were much indebted." Further, the Movement was
opposed to rationalism in matters concerned with the Church. The Victorian age
witnessed a rapid and tremendous expansion of physical science and even more than in
the eighteenth century (the age of prose and reason) there was a temptation in the
nineteenth to put religion to the test of rational scientific examination. T. H. Huxley, for
instance, became an agnostic after failing to be convinced ot the truth of Christianity,
considered rationally and scientifically. The Oxford Movement stressed the absurdity of
examining the Church in the light of reason. The Oxford men put special emphasis on
faith as something superrational. "The main-spring of the Oxford Movement," observes
Hugh Walker, "was the dread of rationalism." According to the same critic, the
"problem" for Newman (the chief force of the Movement) "was how to check the growth
of rationalism as he saw it in England."
Anti-Rationalism:
This aggressive anti-rationalism manifested itself in the Oxford men's affirmation
of the miracles associated with the history of the ancient church and numerous saints.
The people, influenced by science in their age, were already finding it too hard to give
credence to the numerous Scriptural miracles, and the Oxford men were adding new
ones which had never been seriously believed except perhaps by the very orthodox
Roman Catholics. This flagrant anti-rationalism, certainly out of tune with the times,
naturally alienated many otherwise sympathetic people.
Romantic:
This anti-rationalism was somewhat "romantic." Indeed between the Romantic
Movement and the Oxford Movement there is something curiously common. The
"romantic" interest in the Middle Ages for their mystery and splendour is one of these
common factors. As Moody and Lovett put it, the Oxford Movement stood for "the
restoration of the poetry, the mystic ritual and service which had characterised the
Catholic Church in the Middle Ages." It was this medievalism which was probably
responsible for the ultimate entry of Newman into the Roman Catholic fold. The
romantic tendency of the protagonists of the Oxford Movement is also apparent in a
different way-their poetry. As Eugene R. Fairweather points out, "their poetic
sensibility-which cannot be ignored, in view of the fact that Keble, Newman and
Williams were all fluent, if'minor', poets-was 'romantic' in tone."
Anti-Erastianism:

But the fundamental factor which sparked off the Movement and which was
taken congnizance of and condemned by almost all the 'brethren" was the increasing
interference of secular authority in the affairs of the Church. All of them were at daggers
drawn with Erastianism (the control of the Church by the State). The chief aim of the
Oxford Movement, in the words of one of its protagonists, was to convince the people
that "the Church was more than a merely human institution; that it had privileges,
sacraments, a ministry, ordained by Christ." Moody and Lovett observe in this
connexion: "Newman and his friends wished also to defend the Church, in view of its
divine character, against the interference of the state, which was disposed to reform it
along with Parliament and other institutions, curtailing its powers and revenues." Thus
the Oxford Movement stood for Anti-Erastianism.
The History of the Movement:
These were the most important points which shaped the Oxford Movement. But
the "brethren" were by no means a united lot. A brief survey of the history of this
Movement will show this.
Newman was the soul of the Movement. But, generally, the name of John Keble is
mentioned as the man who started the Movement. In July 1833 Keble preached a
sermon at Oxford before the judges of assize, on national apostasy and against the
Erastian and Latitudinarian tendencies of the day. His speech formally inaugurated the
Movement, and even Newman accepted Keble as its "true and primary author." But it
must be noted that Keble only provided the spark; the fuel had already been piling for
long. Keble was a quiet, simple, and modest man not of much literary pretension, but
known for his anonymous book of sacred poems, The Christian Year, published in 1827.
According to Hugh Walker, "there is nothing great in his life or in his works." Anyway,
he is the accepted pioneer of the Oxford Movement.
Keble's sermon was followed by the generation of intense feeling in like-minded
men of Oxford. They included Newman, Froude, Pusey and many more. Their concerted
action crystallised in the publication of Tracts for the Times, the first of which came in
September 1833. It was entitled Thought on the Ministerial Commission, respectfully
addressed to the Clergy. The publication of the tracts continued till 1841 with
contributions from many hands. However, Newman who wrote some twenty-nine of
them was, as Hugh Walker puts it "the soul of the Tracts." None approached him in the
clarity of thought as well as of expression.
The avowed aim of the Tracts was to create public opinion in I favour of "the
privileges of the Church and against Popery and Dissent."" However, slowly and steadily
the trend of thought as expressed in the Tracts showed evidence of moving towards the
Church of Rome and away from the Church of England. Things came to a head iffthe
famous (rather notorious) Tract XC, which came from Newman's pen. In it Newman
showed his Romish tendency by taking upon himself the task of arguing that the
thirtynine Articles were in no way opposed to the Council of Trent. In other words, he
was making plea for the Church of Rome and undermining a universally accepted
Anglican view. This tract created a tremendous commotion. All the Anglican bishops
condemned it vociferously. Newman's conversion was complete after he had read
articles by Wiseman, the able leader of the English Roman Catholics.

The general hostility which Newman provoked made it impossible for him to
continue staying at Oxford. So he took refuge at Littlemore. He resigned his
ecclesiastical living at Oxford in September 1843 and joined lay communion. Some of
his ardent followers also joined him at Littlemore.
Meanwhile, W. G. Ward, an ebullient and energetic follower of Newman,
published what W. H. Hutton calls "a heavy and exasperating book"-The Idea of a
Christian Church. Ward openly favoured the Roman Church pointing to what he
described as the "most joyful, most wonderful, most unexpected sight! We find the
whole cycle of Roman doctrine gradually possessing members of English churchmen." It
was a very provocative book. The scandalised members of the University at a
convocation held on February 13, 1845 withdrew from Ward the degrees of B. A. and M.
A. The book had a wide influence but it is poor literature. Well did Jenkyns. the Master
of Balliol, tell Ward : "Well. Ward, your book is like yourself; fat, awkward, and
ungainly."
Newman's conversion to Roman Catholicism was formally complete when on
October 9,1845 he became a member of the Church of Rome. Later, in 1879, the Pope
made him a cardinal. But after 1845 the Oxford Movement spread beyond Oxford. The
"brethren" were no longer perfectly united. Some like Ward accepted Roman
Catholicism, but others like Pusey continued their work staying within the Anglican fold.
The Literary Aspect of the Movement:
The Oxford Movement was basically a religious movement. Directly, it had
nothing to do with literature. However, the numerous writings which it threw up had
some repercussion on contemporary literary taste and style. Previously also, divines
(such as Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and Tillotson), had exerted some influence on
literature even when they had written'on purely religious themes. W. H. Hutton
maintains in this context: "The Oxford movement certainly belongs to the history of
English religion more definitely than to the history of English literature; but it had great
influence, outside its own definite members on the literary taste of its age." But out of
the whole mass of the literature the Movement gave rise to, we can pick out as good
literature only a handful of poems and Apologia, which is, in Hugh Walker's words,
"eminently and emphatically literature." As for the rest of the works, they are biblia
abiblia (=books that are no books).
Some Tractarians Considered-Keble:
John Keble (1792-1866) was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and an Anglican
preacher. It was he, as we have already said, who started the Oxford Movement with his
famous sermon of 1833. He could boast of no intellectual calibre, though he was a
saintly, simple, and humble figure. He, as Compton-Rickett puts it, "gives us the
emotional atmosphere of the movement." His literary merits are negligible, but some of
his poetry is enjoyable for its sincerity and emotion.
Newman:
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was the spirit behind the Movement. Hurrell
Froude called him the "indicating number," the rest of the Tractarians being just so
many ciphers. His contributin to literature is also the most considerable. His pellucid
sincerity and simplicity, which are his distinguishing marks as both man and as writer,

are abundantly visible in his best work Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864). which he wrote in
self-defence in reply to Charles Kingsley's charge of dishonesty against both himself and
his new Church. Newman was stung into action and immediately took up the task of
writing an apology to explain his conduct. As he puts it, he made his fingers "walk
twenty miles a day" so as to finish his work quickly. The Apologia is characterised by
what Hugh Walker calls a "palpitating humanity which vivifies every line." In this work
Newman has poured his heart and soul out. "It has," says W. H. Hutton, "the merits of a
letter rather than of a book." But Newman is a finished artist. The greatest
recommendation of his prose is its directness and simplicity. This crystalline simplicity,
however, is the outcome of a rigorous art and abundant energy in check.
Newman's other works, like the Essay of the Development of Christian Doctrine
(1845), The Idea of a University Defined (1873), and religious novels Loss and Gain
(1848) and Callista (1856), have also the same qualities of style. Mention may also be
made of Newman's verse. He wrote well, but the only memorable poem written by him
is the famous prayer poem "Lead Kindly Light."
Hurrell Froude:
Richard Hurrell Froude (1803-1836) was a link between Keble and Newman. He
was, doubtlessly, a brilliant young man. He is now chiefly known for his posthumous
Remains (1836). He wrote two of the Tracts for the Times and some poems. He was, as
he himselfsaid, quite "hot-headed," and he offended quite a number of people.
Pusey:
Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) was a man of very wide learning. He gave
his name to the protagonists of the Oxford Movement (who came to be commonly
termed "Puseyites")- But in almost every respect he is inferior to Newman. As ComptonRickett observes, "he is far less attractive as a personality, more questionable in his
methods and immeasurably inferior as a literary craftsman." Considered from the
literary point of view, Pusey's work is indeed hopeless. His style is, to quote Hugh
Walker, "crude, ungainly and confused."
Ward:
William George Ward (1812-1882) was an extremely talented man who followed
Newman's lead in conversion to Roman Catholicism. We have already referred to The
Idea of a Christian Church (1844) which is his best known work. His Essays on the
Philosophy of Theism (collected in 1884) were written to controvert the views of Mill.
His style is inelegant and cumbrous, but his ideas stirred his times.
Church:
Richard William Church (1815-1890) is, after Newman, the best of those
connected with the Oxford Movement in the literary quality of their work. His clear and
vigorous style, his sympathy and eclecticism are apparent in his monographs on writers
as diverse in their nature and art as Dante, Spenser, and Bacon. Church also wrote a
quite objective history of the Oxford Movement, published posthumously in 1891. With
a rare degree of self-effacement, he refrains from mentioning his own name in this
history, even though he had played an important role in the Movement.
Conclusion:

Apart from those mentioned, there is "a whole Hydra more." But, to use Dryden's words
To speak the rest, who better are forgot,
Would tire a well-breath'd Witness of the Plot.
So we end here.
What tangible effect did the Movement produce? To quote Eugene R.
Fainveather, "the Oxford Movement, for all its profound conservatism, seriously altered
the accepted patterns of Anglican thought and practice." For one thing, it directed the
attention of the people to "personal holiness," and was responsible for reviving or
confirming the practices of serious prayers, formal piety, and fasting. It re-orientated
the common views about apostolic authority, and, with some success, discovered a link
between the Church of England and the Pre-Reformation-Church (of Rome). It made
the Church of England conscious of the onslaught of Liberalism and Erastianism. Thus
the Oxford Movement was more than a passing ripple on the surface of "the sea of faith."