The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

This is Unit Eighteen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tied for the heaviest band on the paper. Unit seventeen closed by naming eight writers of this band already read. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off when two documents are set side by side: this band contains a sharp change of taste, its first half prizing order, balance and polish, its second feeling, plainness and the individual voice, so one band wants two reading habits, and the band explains the change in its own words. We begin with the heroic couplet as the first half's taste made audible, worked on Pope's learning and wit. Then the century's level prose, satire as its weapon, Swift, and the comedy of manners. Then the Romantic break, announced in the 1798 Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads and set against Pope's definition of wit, dressed against plain. Then the Romantic subjects and forms, with Blake and Keats and the ballad that returned. Last, the Victorian half: Tennyson conceding before he asserts, the century of the novel, Austen whose manner disagrees with her date, Dickens in instalments, and Brontë's first person. By the end you will be able to read the couplet as a taste. To hear satire in a level manner. To quote the band's own announcement of its break. To place Blake and Keats. And to read the Victorian half through its novelists.

Eight entries to start: the band's weight, its two tastes, the couplet and why it suited the age, and four entries on Pope, from a little learning to true wit and the position behind it.

Thirty to forty percent, tied for heaviest.

AIL 1701 The Heaviest Band, Tied

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries carry thirty to forty percent of the exam, level with the twentieth and twenty-first. Between them the two modern bands account for most of the paper, and a candidate who prepares only the older material has prepared the smaller share.

Polish first, then plainness.

AIL 1702 Two Centuries, Two Tastes

This band contains a sharp change of taste. Its first half prizes order, balance and polish; its second prizes feeling, plainness and the individual voice. The two halves want different reading habits, which no other period band on this paper requires: one band, two habits.

Two rhyming five-beat lines.

AIL 1703 The Age of the Couplet

The heroic couplet, two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter, dominated eighteenth-century English verse. Unit eight defined it, the glossary having no headword. Unit sixteen met it in Pope's Homer. The form's closure and balance are the century's taste made audible.

The form balances by construction.

AIL 1704 Why the Couplet Suited the Age

A couplet closes every two lines, which forces compression and invites antithesis. A writer who wants to state a balanced judgment has a form that balances by construction. Unit seven defined antithesis, and the couplet is its natural home; antithesis lives here.

One complete argument in two lines.

AIL 1705 "A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing"

Pope writes that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and that one should drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring. Two lines, one complete argument, and a classical allusion assumed rather than explained. The couplet does all of it at once, and the allusion is assumed.

More drink, more sobriety.

AIL 1706 "Shallow Draughts Intoxicate the Brain"

He continues that there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain and drinking largely sobers us again. The image is sustained across two more lines and it reverses the expectation: more drink produces sobriety. Unit seven's paradox is doing the work, and the image reverses expectation.

Nature, well dressed.

AIL 1707 "True Wit Is Nature to Advantage Dress'd"

Pope defines true wit as nature to advantage dressed, what was often thought but never so well expressed. Wit here is unit three's sense, inventive intelligence rather than humour, and the definition is an argument about what writing is for; wit means intelligence, per unit three.

Express well, rather than discover.

AIL 1708 Expression Over Discovery

The claim is that a writer's work is to express common truth well rather than to find new truth. That is the eighteenth century's position on originality, and it is exactly what the next generation will reject. Decision D6 applies: this is Pope's position, reported as his.

Five entries on the century's prose and its weapon: the level manner, satire as the glossary defines it, why it suited the age, Swift as the period voice turned on itself, and Sheridan's comedy of manners.

Balanced, level, visibly stepped.

AIL 1709 The Century's Prose Manner

The same taste appears in prose: balanced clauses, a level tone, and an argument built in visible steps. Unit twelve worked Swift, and unit four found his proposal level and statistical. That evenness is a period manner as much as a personal one, period manner and not only personal.

The century's characteristic mode.

AIL 1710 Satire as the Century's Weapon

The glossary defines satire as poking fun at people and institutions a writer thinks corrupt and in need of change. Unit four distinguished Horatian from Juvenalian on Swift and Fielding. Both are this century's writers, and satire is what the period is best known for.

Confidence, and a form that balances.

AIL 1711 Why Satire Suited It

A society confident about its standards can mock departures from them, and a form built on balance can state a departure in one line. The couplet and the satirical purpose fit each other, which is a reading worth attributing rather than asserting, a reading attributed as one.

The period voice, turned on itself.

AIL 1712 Swift Inside the Century

Unit four worked A Modest Proposal for its level manner and unit twelve set it beside Equiano's testimony. Swift is the band's clearest case of the period voice used against the period's own complacency, and both earlier units are the preparation for meeting him here.

Reputation as the subject.

AIL 1713 The Comedy of Manners

Sheridan's School for Scandal, worked in units three and fourteen, belongs to this half. Its subject is a society's reputation and its method is the aside. The form suits a period interested in how people appear to one another; units three and fourteen worked it.

Six entries on the Romantic break: announced in print, the 1798 Advertisement, its experiments in ordinary speech, what it rejects, what it asks readers to suspend, and Pope set against it.

Announced, not inferred afterwards.

AIL 1714 The Romantic Break

Around the turn of the nineteenth century a group of poets rejected the previous century's diction and subjects. The break was announced in print rather than inferred by critics later, which is unusually convenient for a reader; the writers stated it themselves.

A short preface, stating the programme.

AIL 1715 The Advertisement of Seventeen Ninety-Eight

Lyrical Ballads opens with a short Advertisement stating the book's purpose. It is the first edition's preface, shorter than the famous one Wordsworth added later, and it states the programme plainly enough to be read in a minute; the first edition's, not the later one.

Experiments in ordinary speech.

AIL 1716 "To Be Considered as Experiments"

The Advertisement says the majority of the poems are to be considered as experiments, written to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. The subject is diction, and the method is a test.

Gaudiness and inane phraseology, rejected.

AIL 1717 "Gaudiness and Inane Phraseology"

It warns that readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers will struggle with feelings of strangeness. The phrase names what is being rejected, and what is being rejected is the previous century's ornamented diction; the target is the earlier taste.

Suspend the inherited standard.

AIL 1718 "Pre-Established Codes of Decision"

It asks readers to set aside the disputed word Poetry and instead ask whether the book contains a natural delineation of human passions, characters and incidents, rather than judging by their own pre-established codes of decision. The request is to suspend a standard, a request and not an argument.

Dressed against plain.

AIL 1719 Pope Against the Advertisement

Pope says true wit is nature to advantage dressed; the Advertisement proposes the language of conversation among ordinary people. Dressed against plain, in the same two centuries. Setting the two statements beside each other is the fastest way to hold the band's division; here the governing idea pays off.

Six entries on Romantic subjects and forms: feeling, nature, childhood and the self, Blake's plainness, Keats's reversed order, the forms that returned, why the ballad among them, and the antique poem that opens the volume.

Feeling, nature, childhood, the self.

AIL 1720 Feeling, Nature, the Individual

The Romantic writers turned toward strong feeling, the natural world, childhood, and the single perceiving mind. Unit seven worked Keats on the nightingale and on autumn, and Blake on the sunflower and the rose. Those subjects are the band's second half in miniature.

Plain words, unsettled symbols.

AIL 1721 Blake's Plainness

Unit seven noted Blake's method: short poems, plain words, symbols placed and left unexplained. Nothing in The Sick Rose is hard to read and nothing in it is settled. That combination is a Romantic possibility the previous century's taste did not allow; the earlier taste forbade this.

Sensation first, thought after.

AIL 1722 Keats and the Senses

Unit seven found him accumulating sensory detail until a scene is nearly tactile, then letting a thought arrive out of it. Where Pope states a judgment in two lines, Keats builds a stanza of sensation before any judgment appears. The order of operations has reversed.

Ode, ballad, sonnet, blank verse.

AIL 1723 Romantic Forms

The ode, the ballad and the sonnet all returned, and blank verse came back for long meditative poems. Unit eight defined all four. The couplet did not disappear but it stopped being the default, which is a formal marker of the change; the couplet stopped being default.

A popular form, deliberately chosen.

AIL 1724 Why the Ballad Returned

The glossary defines a ballad as a narrative poem in quatrains rhyming A B C B, and unit eight added its alternating four and three beat lines. It is a popular form with a long oral history, which is precisely why poets pursuing ordinary language reached for it; the choice was the argument.

A deliberately antique opening.

AIL 1725 The Rime in Lyrical Ballads

The volume opens with Coleridge's long narrative poem about an ancient mariner, printed in the archaic spelling of its first edition. A book arguing for the language of conversation opens with a deliberately antique poem, which is a tension worth noticing rather than resolving.

Ten entries on the Victorian half: the second half's range, Tennyson's public voice and his ending, concession before assertion, the century of the novel, Austen between the halves and why manner beats date, Dickens, instalments, and Brontë.

Novels, public poetry, doubt.

AIL 1726 The Century's Second Half

After the Romantics came a period of long novels, public poetry and a literature engaged with industry, empire and doubt. Tennyson and Dickens carry it here, and Austen sits a little earlier. The band's range is wider than the Romantic break alone suggests.

A classical subject, a modern point.

AIL 1727 Tennyson's Public Voice

Tennyson writes for an audience rather than a notebook: measured, sonorous, and often taking a classical subject to say something contemporary. Ulysses gives the Homeric hero in old age, restless and unwilling to stop, which unit sixteen's Homer makes legible; unit sixteen supplies the background.

Weak by time, strong in will.

AIL 1728 "To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and Not to Yield"

The poem ends that though much is taken much abides, that we are not now that strength which moved earth and heaven, and that what remains is one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate but strong in will; the concession precedes the claim.

Concede the loss, then assert.

AIL 1729 Concession Before Assertion

Tennyson concedes the loss first and asserts the resolve second. Unit twelve named that move: concede, then refute. A poem built on it sounds earned rather than declaimed, which is part of why the ending is so often quoted; unit twelve named the move.

The novel becomes dominant.

AIL 1730 The Century of the Novel

The nineteenth century is when the novel became the dominant literary form in English. Units ten and eleven worked Austen, Brontë and Dickens, all of this band. The prose passages the exam prints are more likely to come from here than from anywhere else, the likeliest source of prose extracts.

Romantic dates, earlier manner.

AIL 1731 Austen Between the Halves

Austen wrote in the Romantic years and her manner belongs to the earlier taste: balanced, ironic, socially observant. Unit ten worked her opening for free indirect discourse. A writer's date and a writer's manner need not agree, which is a caution about period reasoning.

Read manner, not supposed date.

AIL 1732 Manner Beats Date

Unit eight warned that form is weak evidence about period, and Austen is the case for prose. Read the manner and let it set expectations; do not reason from a supposed date to a manner. The passage is always the better evidence, unit eight's warning in prose.

Long, serialised, argumentative.

AIL 1733 Dickens and the Victorian Novel

Unit eleven worked his opening of Hard Times for its repetition, its geometry, and its family of commercial metaphors. Dickens wrote long, serialised, socially argumentative novels, and that opening is characteristic of the whole band's prose ambition; unit eleven worked the method.

Production shaping the prose.

AIL 1734 Written in Instalments

Many Victorian novels appeared a few chapters at a time, which rewards strong chapter openings and memorable characterisation. The Gradgrind portrait is the kind of writing serial publication encourages, and that is a fact about production shaping style; strong openings were commercially useful.

Retrospective first person, heavily used.

AIL 1735 Brontë and the First Person

Unit ten worked Jane Eyre's opening for its retrospective first-person narrator and its double time-frame. The Victorian novel used that voice heavily, and the exam's attribution questions live in it as much as in free indirect discourse; unit ten built the apparatus.

That is two tastes in one band, the couplet and Pope, satire and Swift, the Advertisement, the Romantic subjects and forms, and the Victorian half, with the governing idea paid off in dressed against plain. You can say the band is tied for heaviest and holds two tastes, read the heroic couplet as balance made audible, and follow Pope from a little learning through shallow draughts to true wit and a position on expression over discovery, reported as his. You can hear the level prose manner, define satire from the glossary, attribute the reading that confidence and balance fit, place Swift as the period voice turned on itself, and Sheridan's comedy of reputation. You can quote the 1798 Advertisement's experiments, its gaudiness and inane phraseology, and its request to suspend pre-established codes, and set it against Pope, dressed against plain. You can name feeling, nature, childhood and the self, Blake's unsettled symbols, Keats's sensation before thought, the forms that returned and the ballad chosen as an argument, and the antique Rime that opens a plain-language book. And you can read Tennyson conceding before asserting, the century of the novel, Austen's manner against her date, Dickens in instalments, and Brontë's first person. Part two gives the profiles and the traps.