The Period of Enlightenment - Essay Example

?The Eighteenth century is also called a period of Enlightenment. This age observed political U turn of the restoration itself and marched few changes in the literature, the drama took a new took a new lease of life, prose and fiction turned into a novel proper, poetry became more witty, the period is therefore labeled some times as the age of reason or Augustus Age as several writers drew parallel between their own age and that of King Augustus Caesar. The Restoration and the eighteenth century brought vast changes in the island of Great Britain that became single Nation after 1707.The Restoration of Monarchy brought hope to the divided nation but the religious issues needed to be resolved and the jails were filled with the preachers like John Bunyan who refused to accede to the Government. As “the government has re imposed the Anglican Book of Common prayers and has debarred the Non Conformists from holding religious meetings outside the established Church .A series of religion-fuelled crises forced Charles to dissolve Parliament, and led to the division of the country between two new political parties: Tories, who supported the king, and the Whigs, the king’s opponents.…”(Norton Anthology Of English Literature).Everything including Science went through development ,Time and Space were explored, development of Microscope and telescope opened new sense of vision, the authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy was broken and a new concepts were explored .The writers of this reign called this period Augustan as they believed that the English life has reached to the culminating period of civilization which existed in Rome under the rule of King Augustus. The art was formalized and there was little appreciation of Nature or beauty. The men of this age exalted the reason and regularity. They carried dislike for the emotions, enthusiasm and strong individuality as exhibited in the previous generation literature they sought for a conventional uniformity in manners, speech, and in everything else, and were uneasy if they deviated far from the approved, respectable standards of the body of their fellows. Great poetic imagination hardly exists among them. The poetry was full of abstract expressions and was intended to secure the elegance it often found substitute in superficiality instead of significant meanings. In the pursuit of highest possible perfection in the literature, as the ancients have achieved, their work resulted in shallow formal smoothness. Their strong tendency of moralising was also not free from conventionality and superficiality. In contrast to this was a period of Romanticism that saw the end of dominance of the Renaissance tradition. It observed the “fragmentation of consciousness away from the cultural authority of Rome” (Claire Lamont, 274); there was rediscovery of local cultures and vernacular literature. Romantic Literature is strong in many vernaculars of Rome as suggested by Claire Lamont in The Oxford Illustrated history Of English literature. The Romantic period saw the change in philosophy, politics and religion. It observed change in the art such as painting, music and literature. The Romanticism was a direct reaction to the rationalism of the Eighteenth century; it was a reaction to the physical world dominated by the science and the mental world dominated by the theories of Locke. The romantic poets rebelled against the ‘emphases’ on the commonsense and material as dominated by the preceding age. As the Romantic period coincided with the French Revolution there is much enactment of revolutionary ideas in the work of some of the poets. There are two generation of poets that represent the Romantic period, William Blake, Wordswoth and Coleridge are the elder generation of poets, and they were fired with revolutionary ideas. William Blake, one of the elder generation of poets was an engraver by profession and he was a great painter, he supplemented his training as painter and engraver by wide reading of the works of Dante, Shakespeare and Milton. The first collection of poems by him was Poetical Sketches in 1783, with its odes to the four seasons it was more or less an imitation of Spenser, historical prologues and songs. His most loved collections were next, the paired Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), both published as handmade illuminated books. After the upheaval of the French Revolution his work became more political and allegorical, protesting and satirizing war and tyranny in books like America, a Prophecy (1793), Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793) and Europe, a Prophecy (1794).Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience produces contrast in the innocent, vulnerable world of the child in contrast with the adult world of corruption. The song of innocence brings forth the innocent hopes of the child and traces the transformation when the child attains his adulthood. Most of the poems are written from the perspective of children where poet draws reader’s attention towards the positive human values and the innocence of the children and the other poems written on children are from the adult perspective. “The Songs of Experience work via parallels and contrasts to lament the ways in which the harsh experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating the weaknesses of the innocent perspective”. Claire Lamont further writes, The Song of Innocence is an evocation of that paradise which Milton has declared lost. Blake was the first poet to locate innocence not in the race’s childhood but in the individual’s childhood, and his book is the collection of short poems influenced in style by children’s songs, ballads and hymns. In the Chimney Sweepers, Blake faces one of the social outrages of the day, the little boys working as chimney sweepers. “When my mother died I was very young And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep weep weep, So yours chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”(Chimney Sweepers) The little chimney sweeper is not complaining at his situation what has interested him is a dream in which ‘by came an angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them free.’ The Tyger accounts for the real negative feelings present in the universe. “Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forest of the Night What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry” (The Tyger) In the poem The Lamb, Blake distinguishes between the distant creator God, Variously at odds with his creation, whom he came to call Urizen, and the divine figure in The Lamb. In this poem, the speaker, a child, asks, “Little Lamb who made thee?” Blake frequently employs the familiar meters of ballads, nursery rhymes, and hymns, applying them to his own, often unorthodox conceptions. This combination of the traditional with the unfamiliar is consonant with Blake’s ongoing interest in reassessing and reframing the assumptions of human thought and social behavior. Blake’s poems are characterized by its dark overbearing tones, it is the glimpse of England’s history during poverty and war, Blake uses personification and expresses great human thoughts and beliefs. John Donne and Andrew Marvel are called The Metaphysical Poets. The Metaphysical poets are characterized by a style of writing that employs farfetched images, unusual similes and metaphors. The term Metaphysical poets were coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson, these poets were not formally affiliated but it was inspired by changing times, new sciences and developments. (John Donne, Google Search) Marvell’s poetry is often witty and full of elaborate conceits. Many poems were inspired by events of the time, public or personal. Others were written in the pastoral style of the classical Roman authors. Marvell tends to place a particular picture before us. In The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn, the nymph weeps for the little animal as it dies, and tells us how it consoled her for her betrayal in love. His pastoral poems, including Upon Appleton House achieve originality and a unique tone through his reworking and subversion of the pastoral genre. His poetry is characterized by allusiveness; it is intellectual and rich in metaphors. His work incorporates many of the elements associated with the metaphysical school, the tension of opposing values, metaphorical complexities, logical and linguistic subtleties, and un-expected twists of thought and argument. John Donne's style is characterized by abrupt openings, numerous paradoxes, ironies, dislocations. His frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax, and his tough eloquence were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry. Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two vastly different ideas into a single idea, often using imagery. An example of this is his equation of lovers with saints in The Canonization. Unlike the conceits found in other Elizabethan poetry, most notably Petrarch an conceits, which formed cliched comparisons between more closely related objects (such as a rose and love), metaphysical conceits go to a greater depth in comparing two completely unlike objects. One of the most famous of Donne's conceits is found in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning where he compares two lovers who are separated to the two legs of a compass. Donne's works are also witty, employing paradoxes, puns, and subtle yet remarkable analogies. His pieces are often ironic and cynical, especially regarding love and human motives. Common subjects of Donne's poems are love (especially in his early life), death (especially after his wife's death), and religion. John Donne's poetry represented a shift from classical forms to more personal poetry. Donne is noted for his poetic meter, which was structured with changing and jagged rhythms that closely resemble casual speech. Women occupy notably an important place in the works of John Donne and Andrew Marvell, Donne presents a notion of female intelligence in his poem, “Love’s Alchemy”, warning readers to “Hope not for mind in women”. The women in both writers’ works are generally resistant and coy when faced with the loss of their virginity. Thus, the purpose of the poetry is to present a convincing argument to the woman so that she will drop her defences and give in. The language of seduction in Donne’s The Flea, and Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress undercut the statement “hope not for mind in women” by presenting examples of intelligent women who are not easy to convince. Different seduction strategies work for different female characters. A highly emotional woman is likely to be swayed by a sentimental, expressive plea. A superficial woman remains unimpressed by emotions and could be pleased only by gifts and allurements. The poem Sick Rose, William Blake uses imagery and similes to describe the destruction of a woman because of sexual affair. He uses simile rose to describe the women health that is sick and is lying in the bed, she is suffering because of disease that she has acquired out of matrimony and therefore has to suffer. The worm in the poem is the disease. In Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake examines the status of women and slaves. The Daughters of Albion represent women in the 18th century. They are stereotyped, oppressed, and generally given no respect. In Plate one of the poem, Blake gives us his opinion on the rights of women. Women in Blake’s poems do not find much prominent place but the status of women during Romantic era went through a great change and there were various women writers during this era. They were equal participants in all walks of life with men. There were various active women authors ,Miss Burney ,became popular with her feminine novels of manners, She was an unassuming daughter of a talented and much-esteemed musician, She got acquainted in her own home with many persons of distinction, such as Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, she started writing since her girlhood to the private writing of stories and of a since famous Diary, Miss Burney composed her ‘Evelina’ in leisure intervals during a number of years, and published it when she was twenty-five, in 1778. 'Evelina' was received with great applause and Miss Burney wrote other books, but they are without importance. Her success won her the friendship of Dr. Johnson and the position of one of the Queen's waiting women, a sort of gilded slavery which she endured for five years. She was married in middle-age to a French emigrant officer, Monsieur D'Arblay, and lived in France and England until the age of nearly ninety, latterly an inactive but much respected figure among the writers of a younger generation. Miss Edgeworth and Jane Austen are the famous figures of the Romantic periods. Jane Austen’s understanding of character is almost perfect, her sense for structure and dramatic scenes (quiet ones) equally good, and her quiet and delightful humour and irony all-pervasive. (Robert Hutchinson Fletcher, A History of English literature, 1918) According to Shannon Reynolds, prior to Romanticism, the position of women in the society was solely the role of breeders and they were confined to the narrow boundaries of their family units. They did the outside work but were taking the drudgery of both the areas on their shoulders. By the end of the Romantic Era the mid-1800s, the position of women in society had greatly changed. Previously regarded only for their ability to bear and raise children, women throughout the Romantic Era and the Industrial Revolution began to be valued for their ability to work, both inside and outside a home setting, as both factory workers and service industry workers. Although within the home, women's rights were still curtailed and, upon marrying, were almost immediately surrendered to their husbands women outside the home were able to assert their rights to equal pay and equal work for the first time. Works Cited Norton Anthology of English literature, ‘The Romantic Period: Topics’, Web May 2011. Reynolds Shannon, ‘Gender Equality and Ideas in Romantic Era’, Web15 May 2011. John Donne, Google Search Results, Web 15 May 2011. Fletcher Hutchinson, Robert, ‘A History of English Literature. The Eighteenth Century, Pseudo-Classicism and the Beginnings of Modern Romanticism’, Web 15May2011 Lamont Claire, ‘ The Romantic Period (1780-1830)’, The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, Ed. Pat Rogers, Oxford University Press, New York,1987.274-279,Print. Read More