The Neo-classical age

 The Neo classical age        

    In the Neo classical age writers were inspired by Roman writers and thinkers.  its writers looked back to the ideals and art forms of classical times.

  The Neo classical age is divided in three periods.

1. The restoration age (1660-1700)

2. The augustan age (1700-1750)

3. The age of Johnson or the age of transition (1750-1798)

The Neo classical age is also known as :

 The 18th century 

The age of reason

The age of enlightenment

The age of prose

The age of satire.

    

Q.1 Write about the 18th century women poets.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld :

       Anna Laetitia was poet, critic and author of children literature. She was called 'woman of letters'.

She was famous for her romantic poems and she laid the foundation of development of romanticism in England. 

   In her poem 'washing day', she described a normal routine day of the life of woman. The day when all the women of community do their laundries together.

She describes 'bubble' as children's game and women's imagination and also criticised the invention of hot air balloon as military equipment and Milton's paradise lost.

 She also wrote a faminist poem "the rights of women" in she says that woman can rise herself and achieve what she wants.

Charlotte Smith: 

     

 Charlotte Smith was novelist and poet of the school of sensibility. She was well known for her romantic Sonnets. She was the first of the romantic poets and letter others follow her. She also helped to set convocations for gothic fiction.

            Charlotte Smith wrote Elegiac Sonnets in 1783 when  she was in debtor’s prison with her husband and children. William Wordsworth says that she is  very important influence on the Romantic movement. 

Q.2  Write in brief about your favourite major/minor - writer/poet of the age.

Jonathan Swift: 

        Jonathan Swift was Irish author and satirist, he was born in Dublin, Ireland on November 30, 1667. His father's name was also Jonathan Swift and he was attorney. When his father died his mother gave him to his uncle, Godwin Smith. 

                       Godwin Swift sent him in to the Kilkenny Grammar School (1674–1682), which was the best school in Ireland at the time. Swift's transition from a life of poverty to a rigorous private school setting proved challenging. He made friends with  William Congreve, the future poet and playwright.

    At the age of 14 he started his graduation in Trinity College and in the year 1686 he became Batchelor of arts.His mother found a secretary position for him under the revered English statesman, Sir William Temple. For 10 years, Swift worked in Surrey's Moor Park and acted as an assistant to Temple, helping him with political errands, and also in the researching and publishing of his own essays and memoirs. Temple was impressed by Swift's abilities and after a time, entrusted him with sensitive and important tasks.

                   During his Moor Park years, Swift met the daughter of Temple's housekeeper, a girl just 8 years old named Esther Johnson. When they first met, she was 15 years Swift's junior, but despite the age gap, they would become lovers for the rest of their lives. It was rumored that they married in 1716, and that Swift kept of lock of Johnson's hair in his possession at all times.

 

 Major works

              

In the year 1704 Swift published his work A Tale of a Tub and The battle of the Books. His work became widely popular. After Torries came to power he became the editor of The Examiner.

 In the year 1713 he became dean at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.he engaged in a romantic relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh. His courtship with her inspired his long and storied poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa." He is also rumored to have had a relationship with the celebrated beauty Anne Long.

       

                               While leading his congregation at St. Patrick's, Swift began to write what would become his best-known work. In 1726, at last finished with the manuscript, he traveled to London and benefited from the help of several friends, who anonymously published it as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships — also known, more simply, as Gulliver's Travels. The book was an immediate success and hasn't been out of print since its first run. Interestingly, much of the storyline points to historical events that Swift had lived through years prior during intense political turmoil.

       In 1742, Swift suffered from a stroke and lost the ability to speak. On October 19, 1745, Swift died. He was laid to rest next to Esther Johnson inside Dublin's St. Patrick's Cathedral

Q.3  Tom Jones/ Moll Flanders as picaresque novels.

   

              The term picaresque comes form Spanish. The word Picaro  means rouge or knave or a villain etc.

                    The picaresque novels are basically about a law class Hero, a picaro  who do adventurous things and lives by his smartness and wit in the corrupt society. Those novels  basically have elements of comedy, sarcasm, social criticism and satire. Most picaresque novels have autobiographical form of telling and first person view of narration.

   Tom jones :

  Tom Jones has been considered a picaresque novel. Though it is not a regular picaresque novel, it reflects the major characteristics of the picaresque form.Tom Jones, the protagonist of the novel, is an illegitimate child. He is turned out of home by his patronTom Jones has a lot of picaresque elements. But in many respects it does not follow the picaresque tradition. Its hero is not a rogue. He is kind, generous and sensitive person. He is a man of helping attitude. Its plot construction differs from the picaresque novel. The aim of the novelist is definitely moral. Its adventures are not arbitrarily designed. Thus it can be said that though Tom Jones has a lot of elements of picaresque novel, but it is not a regular picaresque novel.

  

Moll Flanders: 

        Moll Flanders is an eighteenth-century novel by Daniel Defoe. It was first published in 1722, and it is about the adventures of Moll, a poor young woman from London who becomes a criminal by necessity to support her illegitimate child.

          She becomes a thief, pickpocket, and prostitute. Eventually, she finds redemption through her religious faith. There are two main characters in this novel. One is Moll. The other is Flanders, who represents the “real world.” Both of these characters are shown through the eyes of a third-person narrator.

                         The novel follows the pattern of the picaresque novel. It also has elements of realism, fantasy, and satire. The picaresque novel has a lot of historical roots.