The Eighteenth Century

Unit ten ended on Restoration wit and the closed couplet. This unit carries both into the eighteenth century, an age that began by trusting reason and ended by questioning it. This first part is the trust: order, decorum and classical models, reason turned into a weapon by satire, and the new form of the novel. We move in three steps: the Augustans and their satire, Swift and the periodical essay; then Pope and two women poets of the age, Finch and Montagu; and then the novel, from Defoe to Sterne, with Samuel Johnson and Boswell's Life of him.

We begin with the Augustan ideal, reason, order and Rome, and with Swift, who used reason to wound.

First, what the age admired.

ENL 1001 The Augustan Age and Neoclassicism

The Augustan age, under Queen Anne and the first two Georges, took its name from Rome's Augustus. Its neoclassical writers prized reason, order, decorum and classical models, and its satire wore an ironic air of dignified calm that hid sharp criticism. Johnson is linked to it in part. Reason, order, Rome, ironic calm. Neoclassical means imitating the classics.

Next, the age's fiercest satirist.

ENL 1002 Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift, born in Dublin, was an Anglican priest and Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral. His satire began with A Tale of a Tub, of seventeen-oh-four, and his Drapier's Letters against English exploitation of Ireland made him an Irish hero. Priest, Dean, satirist, Irish patriot. Swift's targets are pride and abuse of power.

Swift sent a traveller on four voyages.

ENL 1003 Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels, of seventeen twenty-six, sends a ship's surgeon to Lilliput's tiny, petty politicians, to the giants of Brobdingnag, to Laputa's impractical thinkers, and to the rational horses, the Houyhnhnms, who reject him as a brutish Yahoo. The anchor reads it as showing humans only capable of reason. Small, giant, abstract, and the horses. Each voyage satirizes a different human failing.

Swift's most famous essay is a mask.

ENL 1004 "A Modest Proposal"

"A Modest Proposal," of seventeen twenty-nine, a famous Juvenalian satire, calmly proposes that the Irish poor sell their children as food to the rich, a child being "a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food." Its deadpan logic exposes British exploitation of Ireland. A monstrous plan, told in a calm voice. The speaker is not Swift; the irony is the point.

The coffee-house had its own prose.

ENL 1005 Addison, Steele and the Periodical Essay

Richard Steele's Tatler began in seventeen-oh-nine; with Joseph Addison he published The Spectator daily in seventeen eleven and seventeen twelve. Its essays, voiced by "Mr. Spectator," aimed "to enliven morality with wit," bringing philosophy to clubs, tea-tables and coffee-houses. Daily essays for coffee-house readers. The periodical essay taught manners to a new public.

Now Pope, who perfected the couplet, and two women who wrote beside him.

Pope's signature is polish.

ENL 1006 Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic barred from the universities and disabled by illness from childhood, became the master of the heroic couplet. He translated Homer, edited Shakespeare, and satirized dull writers in The Dunciad. He belonged to the Scriblerus Club with Swift and Gay. The couplet perfected. Polish is Pope's signature; read for balance.

His mock-epic is about a curl.

ENL 1007 The Rape of the Lock

The Rape of the Lock, in five cantos by seventeen fourteen, is a mock epic on a real quarrel: a lord cut a lock of Arabella Fermor's hair. Pope gives the heroine, Belinda, epic machinery, guardian sylphs and a card game as battle, opening, "What dire offence from am'rous causes springs." Epic grandeur, a stolen curl. The mockery targets triviality, not epic.

His couplets became proverbs.

ENL 1008 An Essay on Criticism

An Essay on Criticism, of seventeen eleven, is a verse essay in heroic couplets on literary judgment, after Horace. Its lines became proverbs: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing," "To err is human; to forgive, divine," and "The sound must seem an echo to the sense." Couplets that became proverbs. Pope argues that art, not chance, makes ease.

Pope also wrote philosophy in verse.

ENL 1009 An Essay on Man

An Essay on Man, in four epistles of seventeen thirty-three and thirty-four, aims to "vindicate the ways of God to man," echoing Milton. It places humanity on the "Vast chain of being" and concludes, "One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." The Great Chain of Being; whatever is, is right. The poem's optimism is philosophical, not cheerful.

One woman wrote of writing and of night.

ENL 1010 Anne Finch

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, wrote odes, pastorals and fables, and in "The Introduction" complained that "a woman that attempts the pen" is thought an intruder on the rights of men. Wordsworth and the Romantics admired her nature poetry, as in "A Nocturnal Reverie." A woman who writes, and the night landscape. Finch wrote on gender and on nature.

Another wrote letters from Turkey.

ENL 1011 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the ambassador to Turkey, is chiefly remembered for her Turkish Embassy Letters, which use the East to criticize the constraints on European women. She introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, and Pope, once her friend, later satirized her. Letters from Turkey; inoculation. Her contrasts turn travel into social critique.

Now the novel, the age's new form, and Samuel Johnson, who stood at its centre.

First, a castaway in realistic detail.

ENL 1012 Daniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe, a Dissenter, merchant, pamphleteer and spy, published Robinson Crusoe in seventeen nineteen: a castaway survives twenty-eight years on an island. It is often credited as the start of realistic fiction and called the first English novel, though those labels are disputed. A castaway, realistic detail. "First novel" is a disputed label.

Defoe's second novel is a confession.

ENL 1013 Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders, of seventeen twenty-two, is a picaresque novel narrated by a woman born in Newgate Prison who lives as wife, thief and penitent, is condemned, and ends prosperous in Virginia. Defoe claims the moral will "keep the reader serious," though the crimes are told in vivid detail. A thief's confession, told in detail. The moral frame and the detail pull apart.

Richardson told stories in letters.

ENL 1014 Samuel Richardson: Pamela and Clarissa

Samuel Richardson, a printer, wrote epistolary novels, told in letters. In Pamela, of seventeen forty, a maidservant resists her master, Mr. B, until he reforms and marries her. In Clarissa, of seventeen forty-eight, one of the longest English novels, the libertine Lovelace pursues a virtuous heroine. Letters, virtue, a rake. Epistolary means told through letters.

Fielding answered him with laughter.

ENL 1015 Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones

Henry Fielding, a playwright turned novelist, parodied Pamela in Shamela and in Joseph Andrews, of seventeen forty-two, which he called a "comic epic poem in prose." Tom Jones, of seventeen forty-nine, follows a good-hearted foundling, with Fielding himself as a commenting narrator. Comic epic in prose, an intrusive narrator. Fielding answered Richardson by parody.

Sterne broke the form.

ENL 1016 Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy

Laurence Sterne, a Yorkshire clergyman, published Tristram Shandy in nine volumes from seventeen fifty-nine. Its digressive narrator begins with his own conception and does not reach his birth until volume three, meanwhile describing his father Walter and his gentle Uncle Toby. Digression as the method. The novel plays with its own form.

Critics tell the story of the form.

ENL 1017 The Rise of the Novel

The critic Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel, of nineteen fifty-seven, argued that the modern novel was born in the early eighteenth century with Robinson Crusoe, marked by a new fictional realism. Defoe, Richardson, Fielding and Sterne show four early approaches. Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne. Watt's thesis here rests on one reference source.

Johnson worked in four roles.

ENL 1018 Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson, a bookseller's son from Lichfield, came to London poor and became its leading man of letters: poet, essayist in The Rambler, lexicographer, editor of Shakespeare, biographer and critic. His Lives of the Poets judged fifty-two English poets. Poet, essayist, lexicographer, critic. Johnson's prose is moral and weighty.

His dictionary defined by quotation.

ENL 1019 Johnson's Dictionary

Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, of seventeen fifty-five, was compiled almost single-handedly and illustrated meanings with quotations from English writers. Some definitions are personal: "excise" is "a hateful tax," and "etch," "a country word, of which I know not the meaning." Definitions by quotation; a few jokes. The quotations made it a literary record.

Johnson doubted happiness could be found.

ENL 1020 Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes

The Vanity of Human Wishes, of seventeen forty-nine, imitates Juvenal's tenth satire on the futility of ambition but ends in Christian hope. Rasselas, of seventeen fifty-nine, written in a week to pay for his mother's funeral, follows a prince who leaves the Happy Valley seeking happiness. The futility of wishes; a prince's search. Both question whether happiness can be found.

Johnson also judged Shakespeare.

ENL 1021 Johnson the Critic: The Preface to Shakespeare

Johnson's edition of Shakespeare's plays appeared in seventeen sixty-five. In its Preface he rejected the classical unities, arguing that drama should be faithful to life, but he also named Shakespeare's faults: careless plots, vulgarity and a lack of moral purpose. Praise and faults, together. Johnson defends Shakespeare against the unities.

One friend recorded Johnson's talk.

ENL 1022 Boswell's Life of Johnson

James Boswell, a young Scot, met Johnson in a London bookshop in seventeen sixty-three and recorded his talk for twenty years. His Life of Samuel Johnson, of seventeen ninety-one, is often called the greatest English biography, and in it Boswell portrays himself as well. Recorded conversation; a biography. Boswell's Johnson is filtered through Boswell.

This first part followed an age trusting reason. We explained neoclassical imitation, and read Swift's satire through its mask, from Gulliver's voyages to the calm, monstrous proposal. We described the periodical essay, teaching manners to a coffee-house public. We named Pope's poems: the mock-epic curl, the rules of taste, and the chain of being. We met Anne Finch and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. And we traced the novel from Defoe's detail to Sterne's digression, with Johnson at the centre and Boswell recording him. Part two turns to the limits of reason.