English - Pre-romanticism

PRE-ROMANTICISM

I] The heyday of classicism

A. from journalism to the novel

Novel is born from journalism
The Tatler, 3 issues a week, launched by Steele from 1709 to January 1711 ; March 1711 : Addison joined Steele to issue a daily, the Spectator.

The 18th century, more people could read so it was a period of Literacy, they practiced they become this paper, these papers start to print novels. → the beginning of the novel as a new genre, realist novel.

Beginning of the novel and realism: Novels of Incident → they try to imitate reality, they make believe that what is don’t is the truth.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) Journal of the Plague Year 1722, Robinson Crusoe 1719 (based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, a travel writing) he was a journalist who became a spy for the king. A mysterious man, satiric, who decided to write texts to make believe what he wrote was true. He’s also one of the first who explore the relation ship between the empire and the new colonies with his character Vendredi.
Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) A Tale of the Tub 1704, A Modest Proposal 1729 Gulliver’s travels 1726, he uses imaginary, fantasy to denounce the aspect of England against Ireland. He fought for the independence of Ireland. He denounce the point of view of the politics with a dark humour (let’s feed the rich with the poor’s children if they are too many).

B. Alexander Poe (1688 – 1744)

His death mark the beginning of pre-romanticism

The first writer who lives by his text. The first writer who actually sells books enough to live with, the first professional writer. He spent his life to write. He was a catholic like Swift, and he could never be a public figure, he cannot go to the university. He was sick, a degenerative desise and he has to stay in bed his whole life.

Essay on Man, 1734 = like Montaigne, series of reflections, between literature and philosophy, series of advice to better themselves. A period of celebrated the Reason. Pope became the embodiment, he tried to convince man that Reason was a typical human quality who has to be cultivated.
Between 1715 ans 1726, he translated all Homer, first the Iliad and then, the Odyssey, he gave access to greak and latin culture to people. He returned to the ancient to go back to the structure of latin and greac, the classical culture.
Essay on Criticism, directly inspired from and updating Horace’s Ars Poetica, same founding role in English classicism as Boileau’s L’art poétique in France.
Another aspect of Pope’s work : he was very respected but unlike, he thought the literature was too trivial.
The Dunciad (1728-1743) ; The Rape of the Lock 1714 : both text are a critic to denounce the poorness of literature

II] From Neo-classicism to pre-romanticism (1744-1798)

Literature was not to be dominated by reason, but has to be guided by imagination → big difference.

A. Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)

He went to Oxford, and he created the first literary club, The Club in 1764. And then he was joined by Goldsmith, Reynolds, Burke. He was a figure of the intellectual life in England.

The first biography in Englis was written by his best friend, Boswell, in 1791.He was the subject The Life of Johnson

He also wrote the first Dictionary of the English Language it was very important. In 18^th as in France the language was not very stabilize because of the invasion and so he establish an official statement. It became a reference because he organized a lot of definition of words with stories who develops the idea.

B. The development of the novel

• Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761) Pamela or Virtue Rewarded 1740 = first “novel of character”, an epistolary novel where he will describes the psychology of the character, a female character, about a women for women, he explores the psychology of his character, it’s huge book, he discovered that it was good to write for women → the story is about how men force their servants to have sex with them. Clarissa 1747 is a story with several points of view, it’s important in the story of literature, with several points of view the readers have to decide which one choose.

2 big books who change the type of the novel. He is the first man in Britain to come up with the idea of a story novel, and wants to write for women. He was very successful, but he also provoque a lot of complain because many intellectuals

• Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754) Shamela 1741 (sham* = fake), under the name of Conny Keyber, a parodise of Pamela, story about a calculated woman. Joseph Andrews 1742, a masterpiece, a “comic epic in prose” → The preface where he fights for his point of view about the literature. He is the first author who writes with the third person and so the question of the narrator: objective, omniscient. It makes all the difference, cause it creates a narrator which you have to trust. He’s creating comedy, he wanted a novel that he called it an epic. The novel is like a picture, a presentation. He insisted, the novel is not about a psychology but about telling a story, inventing a fiction. Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), his second best novel, about a orphelin, a wide novel.
• Tobias Smollet (1721-1771) Sir Lancelot Greaves (1762), The Expedition of Hunphry Clinker (1771) follow Fielding tradition, his caracter, like Andros or Tom Jones, but as a picaresque novel.
• Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) a difficult novel The Life and Opinions of Tritram Shandy (1660-1767) a “work in progress”, with multiple versions. A book constantly in the making, in progress. He decided to write the book through his life, constantly re-published. It was new who had no story, there is no beginning and no end, no temporal line, no chronology. A book with many dimensions, with bizarre elements. When he finished a sentence he started again with another idea. It was a complete failure but nowadays we celebrate it as an ancestor, because he establish the fact that literature is not a copy of life, it can’t, but about practicing. Language becomes the center, language is unable to produce life, something apart. He tells event from different view points and so he introduces the idea that people have different views.

IV] Pre-romanticism and the rehabilitation of imagination

A) The pre-romanticism poets

• Robert Burns (1759-1796), the “ploughman poet”, a Scottish. His poetry is a celebration of Scotland, of the nature of Scotland and of the regular life on Scotland. “To a Haggis”; “To a Louse”, “To a Mouse”. He is the first problematic poet, a rupture with the classicism, the poetry has to celebrate the small things, the simple things. A way to resist from the English colonization, a celebration of the original identity.
• William Blake (1757-1827) criticized the revolution in his poems. Song of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794): “London”, the most famous about a draw back; “The Chimney Sweeper”, a tragic poem [Ref Le petit rameneur de Brecht] man is a slave by the new society. ; “The Tyger” man has to rebel, he totally reinvented the live, the rules of poetry.
  *Pentamètre iambique = le vers canonique de la poésie anglaise ( comme l’alexandrin pour la poésie française). 5 accentuations, accentuation forte en anglais. Le contraire = le Trochet

B) The birth of the Gothic novel

To produce terror, and the celebration of imagination and suspense. Defeat Reason.

2 principal creators:

- Horace Walpole (1717-1797), The Castle of Otranto (1764),

- Ann Radcliffe The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

→ In the Gothic literature, the story of a young English girl, blond, innocent. Often the same. In a Gothic medieval castle with a cimetary.

Beckford Vathek (1786) interesting variation, in a exotic country, he mixes the Gothic and a taste for exoticism. He coupled the fear of the Gothic with exoticism of a fairytale.

Matthew Lewis The Monk (1796) very subversive, the vilain is a woman, the monk is a nice man But he falls in love a evil woman, Matilda, she forces him to murder and make crimes. Gender reversal where the woman is dangerous. It’s going to establish a new stereotype of a dangerous woman.

In th 19^th century, there was a revival in the Gothic: Jane Austen, she wrote a parody of gothic’s novel No thinger abbey, story of a young girl who read to many novels, she sees too many strange things. She lives in a fiction, she tells a story of mystery and a sort a questions of genre.