England in the Eighteenth Century (Cross Currents)
England in the Eighteenth Century
Social, Religious, Political and
Literary Waves
Social
Growth of
the middle class, and its impact upon literature and thought
Thinkers:
David Hume, Godwin, Adam Smith; Burke (staunch opposition to the French Revolution)
Religious
Deism vs.
Methodism
Deism: belief that reason and observation of the
natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of God, accompanied
with the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious
knowledge. Deism gained prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries during the
Age of Enlightenment
Methodism began with
a group of men, including John Wesley and his younger brother Charles, as a
movement within the Church of England in the 18th century. The movement focused
on Bible study and a methodical approach to scriptures and Christian living.
Controversial writings on religion
Political - American War
of Independence (1775–1783)
Literary
Defoe – novel established as a
distinct genre
Age of
Johnson
Poetry:
considered
as refined, rationalized and versified ideas
Peak, and
later decline, of Neo-classical poetry
Development
of Prose:
Spirit of polemics, rise of
journalism, popularity of fiction
Proliferation
of periodicals: The Tatler, The Spectator
Writers of
Note:
Alexander
Pope
Master of the couplet: used in satire, and for
expressing nobility of moral sentiment. The
Dunciad is satirical, while Essay on Man is didactic.
English rendering of Homer: a
whole treatise on man
Features of
Pope’s Poetry
Embodies the features of versification
in an age of exuberant prose
Thomas Gray (Elegy written in a Country Churchyard: a
lament over the deprivations of the rustics?)
A visible
predisposition towards elegant urban life
Generalization of the plight of the humble rustic
folk. The absence of an open acceptance
of the way of life in the countryside and the intrusive suggestion of the
advantages of the higher forms of civilization. Contrast between form and theme
(p. 44).
1798:
Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads
Impact of Rousseau on
Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
Preface to the Lyrical
Ballads – attack against the faith
in urban civilization.
Inspired by Rousseau’s praise of the wholesome influence of nature.
Rousseau’s ideas that inspired Wordsworth:
1.
Urbanisation
causes an alienation from the benign and curative rural ambience of nature.
2. Corruption of morals by rapid progress of urban culture.
3.
Innocence
of collective life in the beginning gave way to selfishness and greed, through
urbanization
4.
The noble
savage who is moved by sympathy when he sees suffering has a nobility around
him.
5.
Thus
Rousseau portrays a golden time when the thought of private property had not
yet spoiled human minds.
6.
Hence, he
wanted his ward to be educated in the countryside.
Wordsworth’s view of poetry: (2 components)
1.
The Truth
and Mission of Poetry: Though we cannot recover the original purity of the
prepolitical man, we can get a glimpse of this happy state of life when we look
backward from the urban milieu of modern life. In the rural scene, the mind
functions naturally as it is not under constraint to confirm to forces which
are neither natural nor instinctive. The feelings from such a mind will be
genuine. Here we see the significance of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as a
spontaneous flow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility. Poetry should
be a kind of engagement with primeval innocence as far as is possible through a
meditation on scenes of life in the countryside. This is the truth of poetry.
The mission of poetry will be to provide glimpses of the original innocent
state of human mind as it interacts with a healthy environment.
2.
The
genesis of Poetry: This occurs in the unpolluted atmosphere of the countryside.
There is no dearth of passions elsewhere. But an outpouring of such passions
will not convey the truth as understood by Wordsworth. Hence, poetry is born of
the interplay of the mind in the state of purity with the wholesome natural
environment.
Poetry
must be imaginative. Imagination is needed for the apprehension of truth – the
innate innocence of the apparently dull and familiar incidents. Imagination
helps to recreate the situation in a way truth becomes manifest; it also helps
to cast a thin film of strangeness over the real and familiar, so as to give a
charm.
Analysing
“The Solitary Reaper” in the light of Wordsworth’s philosophy on poetry:
A 4-
stanza poem, about a young girl who is reaping harvest in the field, all alone.
Her song is more welcome and thrilling to the listener than the sweet song of
any nightingale or cuckoo. What can be the meaning of her song, the poet wonders.
Whatever be it, the song continued to charm the poet much longer after he had
left the spot.
The charm
of the poem lies not just in singled out elements. The rural landscape is not a
mere backdrop: there appears to be a dynamic interaction between nature and man.
The poem evolves through three stages:
1.
The girl works,
and sings while she is at her task. The entire valley is filled with the melody.
The poet is enchanted not by singled out elements (the song, the scenery or the
sense of the poem – its meaning): there is a harmony of a unique kind, created when
girl, valley and poet blend into a unique experience through the alchemy of imagination.
(This harmony is seen in Wordsworth’s “Daffodils”, but not in “The Leech Gatherer”.)
2.
Comparison
of the song with the melodious outpourings of birds. This is an expression of
the spiritual ecstasy experienced by the poet. (Here’s an illustration of
Wordsworth’s theory of the primeval purity of the mind, free from the
corrupting influence of urban civilization.
3. The spiritual ecstasy experienced by the poet anticipates weary times ahead, after the mystical bliss of being at one with the entire creation.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge
and Wordsworth have different ways of approaching romanticism. In Coleridge we
see the magic of the supernatural universe. Imagination is the centre of
Coleridge’s theory. His views are explained in “Biographia Literaria”.
The two orders
(types) of imagination, according to Coleridge
Primary
imagination: “the living power and prime agent of all human perception; a
repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I
AM”.
Coleridge
seeks to harmonize and fuse the subject and object in the act of perception.
(This can
be the divine and the human.)
He refuses
Locke’s idea that the human mind is a tabula rasa. The impressions registered
on the mind get modified by the perceiver; thus the finite human mind resembles
in point of creativity the eternal creator.
Thus,
primary imagination is for the entire humanity, and not a faculty that
distinguishes poets.
Secondary
imagination: a gift for the poets. “It dissolves, diffuses and dissipates in
order to recreate…. The end product would have an organic unity which its
constituent parts do not have in the world of objective reality.” Coleridge
calls this ‘essemblastic’ imagination; the word comes from the Greek words
meaning ‘into’, ‘one’, and ‘mould’.
Kubla
Khan
Coleridge
was an addict to opium, a habit developed perhaps due to some medicines with
opium content that he had to take. According to the poet’s account, the poem
was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after
reading a work describing Shangdu (Xanadu in the poem), the summer capital of
the Yuan dynasty founded by the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. Coleridge says he
was not able to complete it as his strain of thought was broken by a visitor.
Critics
such as Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt have built up an aura of mystery over
the poem, which is a hindrance to proper interpretations.
Analysing
“Kubla Khan”
Kubla
Khan has decided to build a pleasure dome in Xanadu, through which flows the
sacred river Alph. For this purpose, ten miles of fertile ground with forests
was set apart, walls and towers were built around and gardens were set up.
After
this realistic description, the poem goes to present the mystery of the chasm –
a gap in the ground. A fountain springs up from here, and a sacred river flows
out through hidden courses till it ends up in the ocean. Amidst all the sounds thus
heard around, Kubla Khan heard from far ancestral voices prophesying war. The
pleasure dome itself is a mystery: a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice.
The poem
is self-reflexive. It speaks of the inspiration required, through which the
poet can recreate anything through his imagination. The closing lines present
the poet as a strange being to look at, when he is haunted by some
extraordinary, overwhelming power.
The poet
had already built, out of words, the pleasure dome, at the start of the poem.
But he longs for a stronger power of imagination to unify the materials, to
melt and remould them, into a harmonious whole.
Prepared by Jacob Eapen Kunnath
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