Neoclassicism

"The Neo-classic Period" of English literature spans the 140 years or so after the Restoration.  (1660-1798)

Neoclassic PeriodThe Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1660-1798)

• 1660: Charles II restored to throne.• 1668: The Glorious Revolution.• 1776: The American colonies united for freedom.• 1789: The French Revolution begin.

What is classicism?

Features of Neoclassicism

Neoclassic authors manifested traditionalism and distrusted innovation, in respect for classical writers.

The neoclassic ideal was the craftsman's ideal: literature

should be an "art" which must be perfected by long

study and practice. The neoclassic writer strove for

correctness, observed "decorum", and respected

"the rules of poetry" established by classical

works.

Ars Poetica

PoetaPoet as a maker

Neoclassicism pursued "art for humanity's sake".  Its primary subject matter was human beings as an integrated part of a society. Poetry (=literature) was held to be an imitation of human life, which is designed to give both instruction and pleasure (dulce et utile) to the people who read it.

A prime aim of poetry was to give new and perfect expression to the general nature and shared values of humanity. Poetry needed to balance the typical

and the familiar with the qualities of novelty, particularity, and invention.

An individual was viewed as a limited being who ought to

undertake accessible goals. Human beings

needed to accept their restricted positions in the natural order, or a

natural hierarchy, which was called Great Chain of Being at that

time.

Alexander Pope(1688-1744)

“True wit is . . . what oft was

thought but ne’er so well expressed.”

Jonathan Swift(1667-1745)

Romanticism"The Romantic Period" extends from the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 through the first three decades of the nineteenth century. (1798-1832)

The Romantic Period (1798-1832)

• 1798: Lyrical Ballads published.• 1842: The Reform Bill carried in Parliament.

Features of Romanticism

The romantic writer favored innovation

instead of traditionalism in

materials, forms, and style of literature.

Wordsworth denounced the poetic diction of neoclassicism and proposed to deal with materials from "common life" in a "selection of language really used by men."

Coleridge and Keats explored the realm of the supernatural and of "the far away and the long ago".

Many romantic poets assumed the persona of a poet-prophet who writes visionary mode of poetry.

VatesPoet as a seer

Wordsworth described good poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". To him, the essential element of poetry was the poet's own feelings, and the process of composition was "spontaneous", not unforced, and free of "artificial" rules.

A persistent subject of romantic poetry was external nature, though most of it was ultimately concerned with human problems.

Much of romantic poetry and prose was

about the poets and writers themselves, or

solitary individuals, often social outcasts

who are engaged in a long quest.

Romantic writers, influenced by the spirit of the French Revolution, believed in human possibility. They viewed a human being as endowed with limitless aspiration toward the infinite good envisioned by imagination.

Important Romantic Poets (1)

William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Important Romantic Poets (2)

George Gordon Lord Byron Percy Bysshe Shelley John Keats

Sir Walter Scott(1771-1832)

Thomas de Quincey(1785-1859)

(1821)

"The American Romantic Period" is available for the era of 1830-1865.

Romanticism in the United States

Important Romantic Poets (USA)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Edgar Allan Poe

Walt Whitman

Washington Irving(1783-1859)

(1820)

Herman Melville(1819-1891)

(1851)

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalists asserted the existence of an ideal

spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and

scientific and is knowable through intuition.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Margaret Fuller

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)