History of English Literature

Its Background and Development

Introduction
English Literature is one of richest literatures of the world. Being the literature of a great nation
which, though inhabiting a small island off the west coast of Europe, has made its mark in the world on
account of her spirit of adventure, perseverance and tenacity, it reflects these characteristics of a great
people.
It has vitality, rich variety and continuity. As literature is the reflection of society, the various changes
which have come about in English society, from the earliest to the modern time, have left their stamp on
English literature. Thus in order to appreciate properly the various phases of English literature, knowledge
of English Social and Political History is essential. For example, we cannot form a just estimate of
Chaucer without taking into account the characteristics of the period in which he was living, or of
Shakespeare without taking proper notice of the great events which were taking place during the reign
of Elizabeth. The same is the case with other great figures and important movements in English literature.

When we study the history of English literature from the earliest to modern times, we find that it has
passed through certain definite phases, each having marked characteristics. These phases may be termed
as ‘Ages’ or ‘Periods’, which are named after the central literary figures or the important rulers
of England. Thus we have the ‘Ages’ of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Johnson.
Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hardy; and, on the other hand, the Elizabethan Age, the Jacobean Period, the Age
of Queen Anne, the Victorian Age, the Georgian Period. Some of these phases are named after certain
literary movements, as the Classical Age, the Romantic Age; while others after certain important historial
eras, as the Medieval Period, Anglo-Saxon Period, Anglo-Norman Period. These literary phases are also
named by some literary historians after the centuries, as the Seventeenth Century Literature, Eighteenth
Century Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Twentieth Century Literature. These ‘Ages’ and
‘Periods’ naturally overlap each other, and they are not to be followed strictly, but it is essential to keep
them in mind in order to follow the growth of English literature, and its salient and distinctive
characteristics during the various periods of its development.
Now let us have a critical survey of the background and development of English literature from the
earliest times upto the present age.
The Anglo-Saxon Or Old-English Period (670-1100)

The earliest phase of English literature started with Anglo-Saxon literature of the Angles and Saxons
(the ancestors of the English race) much before they occupied Britain. English was the common name and
tongue of these tribes. Before they occupied Britain they lived along the coasts of Sweden and Denmark,
and the land which they occupied was called Engle-land. These tribes were fearless, adventurous and
brave, and during the later years of Roman occupation of Britain, they kept the British coast in terror. Like
other nations they sang at their feasts about battles, gods and their ancestral heroes, and some of their
chiefs were also bards. It was in these songs of religion, wars and agriculture, that English poetry began in
the ancient Engle-land while Britain was still a Roman province.
Though much of this Anglo-Saxon poetry is lost, there are still some fragments left. For
example, Widsith describes continental courts visited in imagination by a far-wandering
poet; Waldhere tells how Walter of Aquitaine withstood a host of foes in the passes of the Vosges; the
splendid fragment called The Fight at Finnesburg deals with the same favourite theme of battle against
fearful odds; and Complaint of Deor describes the disappointment of a lover. The most important poem of
this period is Beowulf. It is a tale of adventures of Beowulf, the hero, who is an champion an slayer of
monsters; the incidents in it are such as may be found in hundreds of other stories, but what makes it
really interesting and different from later romances, is that is full of all sorts of references and allusions to
great events, to the fortunes of kings and nations. There is thus an historical background.
After the Anglo-Saxons embraced Christianity, the poets took up religious themes as the
subject-matter of their poetry. In fact, a major portion of Anglo-Saxon poetry is religious. The two
important religious poets of the Anglo-Saxon period were Caedmon and Cynewulf. Caedmon sang in
series the whole story of the fate of man, from the Creation and the Fall to the Redemption and the Last
Judgment, and within this large framework, the Scripture history. Cynewulf’s most important poem is the
Crist, a metrical narrative of leading events of Christ’s ministry upon earth, including his return to
judgment, which is treated with much grandeur.
Anglo-Saxon poetry is markedly different from the poetry of the next period—Middle English or
Anglo-Norman period—for it deals with the traditions of an older world, and expresses another
temperament and way of living; it breathes the influence of the wind and storm. It is the poetry of a stern
and passionate people, concerned with the primal things of life, moody, melancholy and fierce, yet with
great capacity for endurance and fidelity.
The Anglo-Saxon period was also marked by the beginning of English prose. Through the
Chronicles, which probably began in King Alfred’s time, and through Alfred’s translations from the Latin
a common available prose was established, which had all sorts of possibilities in it. In fact, unlike poetry,
there was no break in prose of Anglo-Saxon period and the Middle English period, and even the later
prose in England was continuation of Anglo-Saxon prose. The tendency of the Anglo-Saxon prose is
towards observance of the rules of ordinary speech, that is why, though one has to make a considerable
effort in order to read verse of the Anglo-Saxons, it is comparatively easy to understand their prose. The
great success of Anglo-Saxon prose is in religious instructions, and the two great pioneers of English
prose were Alfred the Great, the glorious king of Wessex, who translated a number of Latin Chronicles in
English, and Aelfric, a priest, who wrote sermons in a sort of poetic prose.
The Angles and Saxons first landed in England in the middle of the fifth century, and by 670 A.D.
they had occupied almost the whole of the country. Unlike the Romans who came as conquerors, these
tribes settled in England and made her their permanent home. They became, therefore, the ancestors of the
English race. The Anglo-Saxon kings, of whom Alfred the Great was the most prominent, ruled till 1066,
when Harold, the last of Saxon kings, was defeated at the Battle of Hastings by William the Conqueror of
Normandy, France. The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Period in English literature, therefore, extends
roughly from 670 A.D. to 1100 A.D.
As it has been made clear in the First Part of this book that the literature of any country in any period
is the reflection of the life lived by the people of that country in that particular period, we find that this
applies to the literature of this period. The Angles and Saxons combined in themselves opposing traits of
character—savagery and sentiment, rough living and deep feeling, splendid courage and deep melancholy
resulting from thinking about the unanswered problem of death. Thus they lived a rich external as well as
internal life, and it is especially the latter which is the basis of their rich literature. To these brave and
fearless fighters, love of untarnished glory, and happy domestic life and virtues, made great appeal. They
followed in their life five great principles—love of personal freedom, responsiveness to nature, religion,
love for womanhood, and struggle for glory. All these principles are reflected in their literature. They were
full of emotions and aspirations, and loved music and songs. Thus we read in Beowulf:
Music and song where the heroes sat—
The glee—wood rang, a song uprose
When Hrothgar’s scop gave the hall good cheer.
The Anglo Saxon language is only a branch of the great Aryan or Indo-European family of
languages. It has the same root words for father and mother, for God and man, for the common needs and
the common relations of life, as we find in Sanskrit, Iranian, Greek and Latin. And it is this old vigorous
Anglo-Saxon language which forms the basis of modern English.
Middle-English Or Anglo-Norman Period (1100-1500)

The Normans, who were residing in Normandy (France) defeated the Anglo-Saxon King at the Battle
of Hastings (1066) and conquered England.
The Norman Conquest inaugurated a distinctly new epoch in the literary as well as political history
of England. The Anglo-Saxon authors were then as suddenly and permanently displaced as the
Anglo-Saxon king.
The literature afterwards read and written by Englishmen was thereby as completely transformed as the
sentiments and tastes of English rulers. The foreign types of literature introduced after the Norman
Conquest first found favour with the monarchs and courtiers, and were deliberately fostered by them, to
the disregard of native forms. No effective protest was possible by the Anglo-Saxons, and English thought
for centuries to come was largely fashioned in the manner of the French. Throughout the whole period,
which we call the Middle English period (as belonging to the Middle Ages or Medieval times in the
History of Britain) or the Anglo-Norman period, in forms of artistic expression as well as of religious
service, the English openly acknowledged a Latin control.

It is true that before the Norman Conquest the Anglo-Saxons had a body of native literature distinctly
superior to any European vernacular. But one cannot deny that the Normans came to their land when they
greatly needed an external stimulus. The Conquest effected a wholesome awakening of national life. The
people were suddenly inspired by a new vision of a greater future. They became united in a common hope.
In course of time the Anglo-Saxons lost their initial hostility to the new comers, and all became part and
parcel of one nation. The Normans not only brought with them soldiers and artisans and traders, they also
imported scholars to revive knowledge, chroniclers to record memorable events, minstrels to celebrate
victories, or sing of adventure and love.
The great difference between the two periods—Anglo-Saxon period and Anglo-Norman period, is
marked by the disappearance of the old English poetry. There is nothing during the Anglo-Norman period
like Beowulf or Fall of the Angels. The later religious poetry has little in it to recall the finished art of
Cynewulf. Anglo-Saxon poetry, whether derived from heathendom or from the Church, has ideas and
manners of its own; it comes to perfection, and then it dies away. It seems that Anglo-Saxon poetry grows
to rich maturity, and then disappears, as with the new forms of language and under new influences, the
poetical education started again, and so the poetry of the Anglo-Norman period has nothing in common
the Anglo-Saxon poetry.
The most obvious change in literary expression appears in the vehicle employed. For centuries Latin
had been more or less spoken or written by the clergy in England. The Conquest which led to the
reinvigoration of the monasteries and the tightening of the ties with Rome, determined its more extensive
use. Still more important, as a result of foreign sentiment in court and castle, it caused writings in the
English vernacular to be disregarded, and established French as the natural speech of the cultivated and
the high-born. The clergy insisted on the use of Latin, the nobility on the use of French; no one of
influence saw the utility of English as a means of perpetuating thought, and for nearly three centuries very
few works appeared in the native tongue.
In spite of the English language having been thrown into the background, some works were
composed in it, though they echoed in the main the sentiments and tastes of the French writers, as French
then was the supreme arbiter of European literary style. Another striking characteristic of medieval
literature is its general anonymity. Of the many who wrote the names of but few are recorded, and of the
history of these few we have only the most meagre details. It was because originality was deplored as a
fault, and independence of treatment was a heinous offence in their eyes.
(a)  The Romances
The most popular form of literature during the Middle English period was the romances. No literary
productions of the Middle Ages are so characteristic, none so perennially attractive as those that treat
romantically of heroes and heroines of by-gone days. These romances are notable for their stories rather
than their poetry, and they, like the drama afterwards, furnished the chief mental recreation of time for the
great body of the people. These romances were mostly borrowed from Latin and French sources. They
deal with the stories of King Arthur, The War of Troy, the mythical doings of Charlemagne and of
Alexander the Great.
(b)  The Miracle and Morality Plays
In the Middle English period Miracle plays became very popular. From the growth and development
of the Bible story, scene by scene, carried to its logical conclusion, this drama—developed to an enormous
cycle of sacred history, beginning with the creation of man, his fall and banishment from the Garden of
Eden and extending through the more important matters of the Old Testament and life of Christ in the
New to the summoning of the quick and the dead on the day of final judgment. This kind of drama is
called the miracle play—sometimes less correctly the mystery play—and it flourished
throughout England from the reign of Henry II to that of Elizabeth (1154-1603).
Another form of drama which flourished during the Middle Ages was the Morality plays. In these
plays the uniform theme is the struggle between the powers of good and evil for the mastery of the soul of
man. The personages were abstract virtues, or vices, each acting and speaking in accordance with his
name; and the plot was built upon their contrasts and influences on human nature, with the intent to teach
right living and uphold religion. In a word, allegory is the distinguishing mark of the moral plays. In these
moral plays the protagonist is always an abstraction; he is Mankind, the Human Race, the Pride of Life,
and there is an attempt to compass the whole scope of man’s experience and temptations in life, as there
had been a corresponding effort in the Miracle plays to embrace the complete range of sacred history, the
life of Christ, and the redemption of the world.
(c)  William Langland (1332 ?…?)
One of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages was William Langland, and his poem, A Vision of Piers
the Plowman holds an important place in English literature. In spite of its archaic style, it is a classic work
in English literature. This poem, which is a satire on the corrupt religious practices, throws light on the
ethical problems of the day. The character assumed by Langland is that of the prophet, denouncing the
sins of society and encouraging men to aspire to a higher life. He represents the dissatisfaction of the
lower and the more thinking classes of English society, as Chaucer represents the content of the
aristocracy and the prosperous middle class. Although Langland is essentially a satiric poet, he has
decided views on political and social questions. The feudal system is his ideal; he desires no change in the
institution of his days, and he thinks that all would be well if the different orders of society would do their
duty. Like Dante and Bunyan, he ennobles his satire by arraying it in a garb of allegory; and he is
intensely real.
(d)  John Gower (1325?—1408)
Gower occupies an important place in the development of English poetry. Though it was Chaucer
who played the most important role in this direction, Gower’s contribution cannot be ignored. Gower
represents the English culmination of that courtly medieval poetry which had its rise in France two or
three hundred years before. He is a great stylist, and he proved that English might compete with the other
languages which had most distinguished themselves in poetry. Gower is mainly a narrative poet and his
most important work is Confession Amantis, which is in the form of conversation between the poet and a
divine interpreter. It is an encyclopaedia of the art of love, and satirises the vanities of the current time.
Throughout the collection of stories which forms the major portion of Confession Amantis, Gower
presents himself as a moralist. Though Gower was inferior to Chaucer, it is sufficient that they were
certainly fellow pioneers, fellow schoolmasters, in the task of bringing England to literature. Up to their
time, the literary production of England had been exceedingly rudimentary and limited. Gower, like
Chaucer, performed the function of establishing the form of English as a thoroughly equipped medium of
literature.
(e)  Chaucer (1340?…1400)
It was, in fact, Chaucer who was the real founder of English poetry, and he is rightly called the
‘Father of English Poetry’. Unlike the poetry of his predecessors and contemporaries, which is read by
few except professed scholars, Chaucer’s poetry has been read and enjoyed continuously from his own
day to this, and the greatest of his successors, from Spenser and Milton to Tennyson and William Morris,
have joined in praising it. Chaucer, in fact, made a fresh beginning in English literature. He disregarded
altogether the old English tradition. His education as a poet was two-fold. Part of it came from French and
Italian literatures, but part of it came from life. He was not a mere bookman, nor was he in the least a
visionary. Like Shakespeare and Milton, he was, on the contrary, a man of the world and of affairs.
The most famous and characteristic work of Chaucer is the Canterbury Tales, which is a collection of
stories related by the pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. These pilgrims
represent different sections of contemporary English society, and in the description of the most prominent
of these people in the Prologue Chaucer’s powers are shown at their very highest. All these characters are
individualized, yet their thoroughly typical quality gives unique value to Chaucer’s picture of men and
manners in the England of his time.
The Canterbury Tales is a landmark in the history of English poetry because here Chaucer enriched
the English language and metre to such an extent, that now it could be conveniently used for any purpose.
Moreover, by introducing a variety of highly-finished characters into a single action, and engaging them
in an animated dialogue, Chaucer fulfilled every requirement of the dramatist, short of bringing his plays
on the stage. Also, by drawing finished and various portraits in verse, he showed the way to the novelists
to portray characters.
Chaucer’s works fall into three periods. During the first period he imitated French models,
particularly the famous and very long poem Le Roman de la Rose of which he made a
translation—Romaunt of the Rose. This poem which gives an intimate introduction to the medieval
French romances and allegories of courtly love, is the embryo out of which all Chaucer’s poetry grows.
During this period he also wrote the Book of the Duchess, an elegy, which in its form and nature is like
the Romaunt of the Rose; Complaint unto Pity, a shorter poem and ABC, a series of stanzas religious in
tone, in which each opens with a letter of the alphabet in order.
The poems of the second period (1373-84) show the influence of Italian literature, especially of
Dante’s Divine Comedy and Boccaccio’s poems. In this period he wrote The Parliament of Fowls, which
contains very dramatic and satiric dialogues between the assembled birds; Troilus and Criseyde, which
narrates the story of the Trojan prince Troilus and his love for a damsel, Creseida; The Story of
Griselda, in which is given a pitiful picture of womanhood; and The House of Fame, which is a
masterpiece of comic fantasy, with a graver undertone of contemplation of human folly.
Chaucer’s third period (1384-90) may be called the English period, because in it he threw off foreign
influences and showed native originality. In the Legend of Good Woman he employed for the first time the
heroic couplet. It was during this period that he wrote The Canterbury Tales, his greatest poetic
achievement, which places us in the heart of London. Here we find his gentle, kindly humour, which is
Chaucer’s greatest quality, at its very best.
Chaucer’s importance in the development of English literature is very great because he removed
poetry from the region of Metaphysics and Theology, and made it hold as “twere the mirror up to nature”.
He thus brought back the old classical principle of the direct imitation of nature.
The Age of Chaucer

Introduction:
For a profound and comprehensive study of an author’s literary work is required, among other
things, a thorough understanding of the age which produced and nurtured him. Without acquaintance with
the historical context our evaluation and apprehension of literature is bound to be lop-sided, if not
altogether warped and garbled. Every man is a child of his age. He is influenced by it though, if he is a
great man, he may influence it also. A great writer like Shakespeare or Chaucer is generally said to be “not
of an age, but of all ages.” But, in spite of his universal appeal, the fact remains that even he could not
have escaped “the spirit of the age” in which he lived and moved and had his being.

So, for understanding him and his works in their fullness it is imperative to familiarize ourselves with the
influential currents of thought and feeling and sensibility (not to speak of the socio-politico-economic
conditions) obtaining in the times in which he flourished. Probably the Reverse of it is also true: we may
acquire some understanding of these tendencies and currents, the ethos of the age, through the
writerliimself. Emphasizing this point, W. H. Hudson says: “Every man belongs to his race and age; no
 matter how marked his personality, the spirit of his race and age finds expression through him” The same
critic cogently expresses the relationship between history and literature. “Ordinary English history’ he
says, “is our nation’s biography, its literature is its autobiography; in the’one we read the story of its
actions and practical achievements; in the other the story df its intellectual and moral development.”
Though Chaucer transcends the limits of his generation and creates something which is of interest to the
future generation too, yet he represents much of what his age stands for. And therein lies his greatness.

Chaucer’s Age-Both Medieval and Modern:

Chaucer’s age-like most historical ages-was an age of transition. This transition implies a shift
from the medieval to the modern times, the emergence of the English nation from the “dark ages” to the
age of enlightenment. Though some elements associated with modernity were coming into
prominence,-yet mostly and essentially the age was medieval-unscientific, superstitious, chivalrous,
religious-minded, and “backward” in most respects. The fourteenth century, as J. M. Manly puts it in The
Cambridge History of English Literature, was “a dark epoch fn the history of England“. However, the
silver lining of modernity did”succeed in piercing, here and there, the thick darkness of ignorance and
superstition. In fact, the age of Chaucer was not stagnant: it was inching its way steadily and surely to the
dawn of the Renaissance and the Reformation, which were yet a couple of centuries ahead. We cannot
agree with Kitteredge who calls Chaucer’s age “a singularly modern time”. For that matter, not to speak of
the fourteenth, even the eighteenth century was not “modern” in numerous respects. What we notice in the
fourteenth century is the start of the movement towards the modern times, and not the accomplishment of
that movement, which was going to be a march of marathon nature. Robert Dudely French observes: “It
was an age of restlessness, amid the ferment”of new life, that Chaucer lived and wrote. Old things and
new appear side by sideiipon his pages, and in his poetry we can study the essential spirit, both of the age
that was passing and of the age that was to come.” What are these “old things and new:’ and what made
the age restless? The answer will be provided if we discuss the chief events and features of the age.
“The Hundred Years’ War”:
The period between 1337 and 1453 is marked by a long succession of skirmishes between France
and England, which are collectively known as the “Hundred Years War”. Under the able and warlike
guidance of King Edward III (1327-1377) England won a number of glorious victories, particularly at
Crecy, Poietiers, and Agincourt. The French might crumbled and Edward was once acknowledged even
the king of France. But later, after his demise and with the succession of the incompetent Richard II, the
English might waned and the French were able to secure tangible gains. The war influenced fie English
character in the following two ways:
(i)         the fostering of nationalistic sentiment; and
(ii)        the demolition of some social barriers between different classes of society.
It was obviously natural for the conflict to have engendered among the English a strong feeling of
national solidarity and patriotic fervour. But, as Compton-Rickett reminds us, “the fight is memorable not
merely for stimulating the pride of English men.” It is important, too, for the second reason given above.
It was not the aristocracy alone which secured the victory for England. The aristocracy was vitally
supported by the lowly archers whose feats with the bow were a force to reckon with. Froissart, the French
chronicler, referring to the English archers says: “They, let fly their arrows so wholly together and so thick
that it seemed snow”. The recognition of the services of the humble archers brought in a note of
democratisation in the country, and the age-old “iron curtain” between the nobility and the proletariat
developed a few chinks. This was an advance from medievalism to modernism.
The Age of Chivalry:
Nevertheless, the dawn of the modern era was yet far away. Compton-Rickett
observes:”Chaucer’s England is ‘Still characteristically medieval, and nowhere is the conservative feeling
more strongly marked than in the persistence of chivalry. This strange amalgam of love, war, and religion
so far from exhibiting any signs of decay, reached perhaps its fullest development at this time. More than
two centuries were to elapse before it was finally killed-by the satirical pen of Cervantes.” The Knight in
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is typical of his kind. Even the tale he narrates concerns the adventures of two
true knights-Arcite and Palamon.
The Black Death, Peasants’ Revolt, and Labour Unrest:
In the age of Chaucer most people were victims of poverty, squalor, and pestilence. Even
well-educated nobles eyed soap with suspicion, and learned physicians often forbade bathing as harmful
for health! That is why England was often visited by epidemics, especially plague. The severest attack of
this dread epidemic came in 1348. It was called “the Black Death” because black, knotty boils appeared
on the bodies of the hopeless victims. It is estimated that about a million human beings were swept away
by this epidemic. That roughly makes one-third of the total population of England at that time.
One immediate consequence of this pestilence was the acute shortage of working hands. The
socio-economic system of England lay hopelessly paralysed. Labourers and villains who happened to
survive started demanding much higher wages. But neither their employers nor the king nor Parliament
was ready to meet these demands. A number of severe regulations were passed asking workers to work at
the old rates of payment. This occasioned a great deal of resentment which culminated in the Peasants’
Revolt in 1381 duringthe reign of Richard II. The peasants groaning under the weight of injustice and
undue official severity were led to London by the Kentish priest John Ball. He preached the dignity of
labour and asked the nobles:
When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?
The king, overawed by the mass of peasantry armed with such weapons as hatchets, spades, and
pitchforks, promised reform but later shelved his promise. The “Peasants’ Revolt” is, according to
Compton-Rickett, “a dim foreshadowing of those industrial troubles that lay in the distant future.”
Chaucer in his Nun’s Priest’s Tale refers in the following lines to Jack Straw who with Wat Tylar raised
the banner of revolt:
Certes, he Jakke Straw and his meyne
Ne made nevere shoutes half so shrille,
When that they wolden any Flemyng kille
As thilke day was mad upon the fox.
R. K. Root thus sums up the significance of this uprising: “This revolt, suppressed by the courage and
good judgment of the boy King, Richard II, though barren of any direct and immediate result, exerted a
lasting influence on the temper of the lower classes, fostering in them a spirit of independence which
made them no longer a negligible quantity in the life of the nation”. This was another line of progress
towards modernism.
The Church:
In the age of Chaucer, the Church became a hotbed of profligacy, corruption, and materialism.
The overlord of the Church, namely, the Pope of Rome, himself had ambitions and aptitudes otherthan
spiritual. W. H. Hudson maintains in this connection: “Of spiritual zeal and energy very little was now left
in the country. The greater prelates heaped up wealth, and lived in a godless and worldly way; the rank
and file of the clergy were ignorant and careless; the mendicant friars were notorious for their greed and
profligacy.” John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer, whom he calls “moral Gower” (on account of his
didactic tendency) thus pictures the condition of the Church in his Prologue to Confessio Amantis:
Lo, thus ye-broke is cristes Folde:
Whereof the flock without guide
Devoured is on every side,
In lacks of hem that been urrware In chepherdes, which her wit beware
Upon the world in other halve.
Another contemporary has to say this about the priests  “Our priests are now become blind, dark and
beclouded. There is neither shaven crown on their head, nor modesty in their words, nor temperance in
their food, nor even chastity in their deeds.” If this was the condition of the ecclesiasts, we can easily
imagine that of the laity. Well does Chaucer say in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales: “If gold rust,
what shall iron do?” Chaucer himself was indifferent to any reform, but his character-sketches of the
ecclesiastical figures in The Canterbury Tales leave no uncertainty regarding the corruption which had
crept into the ecclesiastical rank and file. The round-bellied epicurean monk, the merry and
devil-may-care friar, and the unscrupulous pardoner are fairly typical of his age.
This widespread and deep-rooted corruption had already begun to provoke the attention of some
reformists the most prominent of whom was John Wyclif (13207-84) who has been called “the morning
star of the Reformation.” He started what is called the Lollards’s Movement. His aim was to eradicate the
evil and corruption which had become a part and parcel of the Church. He sent his “poor priests” to all
parts of the country for spreading his message of simplicity, purity, and austerity. His self-appointed task
was to take Christianity back to its original purity and spirituality. He exhorted people not to have
anything to do with the corrupt ministers of the Pope and to have faith only in the Word of God as
enshrined in the Bible, To make the teaching of the Bible accessible to the common masses he with the
help of some of his disciples translated the Bible from Latin into the native tongue. He also wrote a
number of tracts embodying his teaching. His translation of the Bible was, in the words of W. H. Hudson,
“the first translation of the scriptures into any modern vernacular tongue.” That Chaucer was sympathetic
to the Lollards’ Movement is evident from the element of idealization which characterizes his portrait of
the “Poor Parson” in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The movement launched by Wyclif and his
followers in the age of Chaucer was an adumbration of the Reformation which was to come in the
sixteenth century to wean England from the papal influence.
Literary and Intellectual Tendencies:
Latin and French were the dominant languages in fourteenth-century England. However, in the
later half of the century English came to its own, thanks to the sterling work done by Chaucer and some
others like Langland, Gower, and Waclif who wrote in English and wrote well. The English language
itself was in a fluid state of being, and was divided into a number of dialects. The Universities of
 Cambridge and Oxford employed Latin as the medium of instruction. Latin was also the language of the
fashionable who cultivated it as a social necessity. We recall here Chaucer’s Summoner who “wolde speke
no word but Latyn” after having drunk “well”! The contribution of Chaucer towards the standardization
and popularization of the English language cannot be over-estimated. As regards his contribution to
English poetry, he has well been characterised as the father of English poetry. No doubt there were other
poets contemporaneous with him Langland, Gower, and a few more, but Chaucer is as head and shoulders
among them as Shakespeare is among the Elizabethan dramatists. He stands like a majestic oak in a
shrubbery. The English prose, too, was coming to itself. Mandeville’s travelogues and Wyclif s
reformative pamphlets give one a feeling that the English prose was on its way to standardization and
popular acclamation. As E. Albert puts it, “Earlier specimens have been experimental or purely imitative;
how, in the works of Mandeville and MaJo/y, we have prose that is both original and individual
The English prose is now ripe for a prose style.”
In another way, too, the age of Chaucer stands between the medieval and the modern life. There
was in this age some sort of a minor Renaissance. The dawn of the real Renaissance in England was yet
about two centuries ahead, yet in the age of Chaucer there are signs of growing influence of the ancients
on native literature. Chaucer1 own poetry was influenced by the Italian writer Boccaccio (1313-75) and to
a lesser extent, Petrarch (1304-74). The frameworks of Boccaccio’s Decameron and of Chaucer’s The
Canterbury Tales are almost similar. However, it is somewhat doubtful if Chaucer had read the Italian
writer. It was through the work of the two above-named Italian writers that humanism made its way
into-English intellectual culture. Well does Compton-Rickett observe: “Chaucer’s world is medieval; but
beneath his medievalism the leaven of the Renaissance is already at work.”
Posted onDecember 27, 2010CategoriesLiterary and Critical Essays1 Commenton The Age of Chaucer
Chaucer as the chronicler of the society of his time

Introduction:
Well does Compton-Rickett observe: “Chaucer symbolises, as no other writer does, the Middle
Ages. He stands in much the same relation to the life of his time as Pope does to the earlier phases of the
eighteenth century, and Tennyson to the Victorian era; and his place in English literature is even more
important than theirs….”
Now what is the character of the relation which Pope and Tennyson have with their respective
ages? It is a truism of literary criticism that of all writers these two are the perfect exponents and
representatives of their respective ages. Their importance is twofold:
(i)         Their views and “philosophy of life” are, more or less, characteristic of their respective ages.
(ii)        Their works build up a picture of their contemporary life.
These two points are more tenable in the case of Chaucer than either Pope or Tennyson.
Pope:                                                 
So far as religious belief is concerned, Pope was not a representative of his age. He was a Roman
Catholic whereas the majority of Englishmen were Protestants, with a fair sprinkling of Puritans among
them. However, Pope never asserts his religion anywhere in his work. His compositions among
themselves build up a fairly authentic picture of the social, literary, and intellectual life of the early
eighteenth century which he dominated so effectively. His chief works, namely, The Essay on Criticism,
The Essay on Man, The Rape of the Lock, and The Dunciad are imbued with the spirit of the age. The
Essay on Criticism is a body of critical principles borrowed from Horace and Boileau, which were
recognized as infallible in his age, set forth in memorable verse. The Essay on Man is, likewise, an
attempt to present the philosophical and intellectual principles of the times. Much of what Pope gives is
borrowed from others, which makes his work all the more representative of the age. In The Rape of
the Locfche satirically portrays the frivolous pursuits and affected life of the upper-class ladies of his age
in the person and activities of Belinda. As a critic says, “the artificial tone of the age, the frivolous aspect
of femininty is nowhere more exquisitely pictured than in The Rape of the Lock.”
Apart from Pope’s indulgence in personalities, The Dunciad, as John Butt emphasizes, is a satire
on the falling standards of literature. It pictures how the literary scene in the age of Pope was crowded
with hacks who were denizens of the ill-famed Grub Street.
Tennyson:
Lord Tennyson was as representative of the early Victorian era as Pope was of the early eighteenth
century. It stands to reason (Compton-Rickett perhaps assumes it does not) whether Tennyson as a poet
was greater than Browning and Matthew Arnold who were his well-known contemporaries. Modern
critical opinion is inclined to place Browning and even Arnold above Tennyson. But whether or not
Tennyson was greater than Browning and Arnold, it is indisputable that he was much more representative
of his age than they. Let us quote a critic: “It is doubtful whether any other writer of that century [the
nineteenth] has reflected so clearly and broadly in his verse or prose the characteristics of that period. The
dreams and aspirations, the conflicts and disappointments, the aesthetic ideals and scientific discoveries,
its doubts in religion and its dogmatism in private life, its social enthusiasm and zeal for education, its
 curious learning and its ethical earnestness, its enthusiasm for peace and commerce and its ardour for
military conquests and imperialism-may all be found mirrored in Tennyson’s poetry.” Let us consider
some of his major works as regards their representative value. In Locksley Hall of 1842 Tennyson
effectively presents the optimistic belief of the age in the idea of progress and the potentiality of science in
ushering in a brilliant future. In The Palace of Art he concerns himself with the burning question of the
day whether art was for the sake of art or life. He rejected the philosophy of new aestheticism which
glorified the worship of beauty at the cost of even morality. As for Maud, it gives, as a critic observes, “a
dramatic rendering of the revolt of a cultured mind against the hypocrisy and corruption of a society
degraded by the worship of Mammon”. In his Idylls of the King, as Sir Ifor Evans observes, “Tennyson
has reduced the plan of the Arthurian stories to the necessities of Victorian morality.” InMemoriam, which
is perhaps Tennyson’s noblest work, had for its overt purpose the lamentation of the early demise of his
dear friend, Arthur Hailam; but there is more of Tennyson’s age than Hailam in the poem. As a poetic
statement of the religious doubts of the time it exercised a powerful hold over Tennyson’s generation.
In The Princess he associated himself with the suffragist movement of his time and made a plea for the
education and better placement of women in society. All this shows, to quote G. H. Mair that “Tennyson
represents more fully than any other poet this essential spirit of the age.”
Chaucer’s Importance:
What Pope and Tennyson were to do for their respective ages, Chaucer did for his own. Chaucer
hated insularism. All his life he was in the thick of men and affairs. He lived in no ivory tower of his own.
He saw much of life. He was well acquainted with all classes and conditions of men. He also travelled
abroad. All this trained him for “a poet of man” as he appeared eventually in The Canterbury Tales. His
earlier works are too bookish being modelled upon Italian and French works; but in The
CanlerburyTales he fixed up the spirit of his age for future generations to observe and appreciate. He was
as truly the unofficial chronicler of England in the fourteenth century as Froissart was the official French
chronicler of the military events of the same time. Other poets of the same age reveal it in a few of its
many aspects. It is the singular achievement of Chaucer that he captures his age almost in its totality, more
effectively than even Pope and Tennyson did theirs. Comparing him with his contemporaries Legouis
remarks:
“All the writers of this time reveal some aspect of contemporary life and of prevailing feeling and
thought. The author of Pearl shows us the mysticism of refined minds, Langland the anger which was
threatening the abuse of governments and the vices of the clergy, Wyclif the ardour for religious reform
which already might amount to Protestantism, Gower the fear aroused in the wealthier class by the
Peasant Rising. Barbour the break between the literature of Scotland and of England and the advent of
patriotic Scottish poetry. Each had his own plan, his dominant and. on the whole, narrow passion, a
character which was local and of his time         His [Chaucer’s] work reflects his century not in fragments,
but completely.”
Two Limitations:
Chaucer’s work has almost a documentary value for whoever desires to reconstruct the actual life
of fourteenth-century England. But there are two major “limitations” to Chaucer’s work as a delineator
ofthe contemporary life and manners:
(I)        Chaucer is almost silent about the very stirring and historic events of his age such as:
(a)        The Anglo-French conflicts commonly known collectively as the Hundred Years War, which began in
1338.
(b)        The Black Death or the terrible plague of 1348-49.
(c)        The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
(d)        The Lollards’ Movement started by John Wyclif in 1377 for the reformation ofthe Church.
(e)        The struggle ofthe House of Lancaster against Richard II ending in his deposition and succession by Henry
IV in 1399.
Chaucer does of course casually referto someofthese events, but there is no full-length treatment
of any of them. The Peasants’ Revolt is referred to in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. The battles of Crecy and
Poietiers are glanced at elsewhere. The allusion to the Black Death comes in Chaucer’s character-sketch
ofthe Doctor of Physic in the Prologue to The Canterbwy Tales:
He kepte that he wan in pestilence.
There is then a latent reference to Lollardism in the delineation ofthe “Poor Parson” who like a
Lollard (one of Wyclif s disciples) believed in simple living and high thinking. But all these references are
inexpressive, being almost casual. All this makes William Vaughan Moody assert: “The peasant rebellion
and the Lollard agitation give us glimpses of an England which Chaucer, in spite of the many-sidedness of
his work, did not reveal. The Canterbury Tales contains few references to the plague, only one to the
peasant uprising, and only one to Lollardy, and these references are casual or jesting. Chaucer wrote for
the court and cultivated classes to whom the sufferings ofthe poor were a matter of utmost indifference.” It
is indeed true that Chaucer like Shakespeare had a rather undemocratic distrust of the proletariat, and
 especially the mob. His avoidance ofthe treatment of the popular movements ofthe times has, however,
another reason too. Let us quote here Muriel Bowden’s words: “The most important reason for Chaucer’s
silence about political affairs-and national events undoubtedly lies in the very-mature of his genius : trie
poet’s magnificent Human Comedy is the more hiiman-it is’drenched in life,’ as John Livingstone Lowes
has said-in that it is without the immediate, and is concerned with the universal and the timeless.” Herein
lies the crux of the matter. Before impeaching Chaucer for his neglect of the important events of his age
we must understand the difference between the poet and the historian. Whereas the latter is concerned
with the events and movements which can be dated, the former deals with the dateless and universal
aspects of human nature wliich lie at the core of these events and movements. Chaucer was no topical
versifier. If he were, like a chronicler, to versify the events and movements-however important—of his
times he would better have been forgotten by us. What we read The Canterbury Tales for is the authentic
and panoramic vision it gives us of the social life of the age of Chaucer, not for an account of the topical
events which happened to befall in that age.
(II)       The second “limitation” of Chaucer in portraying his age is, if viewed differently, a positive asset. It is his
avoidance of literalism (exact and unimaginative rendering of reality). Chaucer’s is no Kodak-camera
realism. What he gives us in The Canterbury Tales is, of course, very much near reality though ‘it is not
perfect reality. There is some exaggeration here and some extenuation there. For instance there is an
obvious element of idealism in his characterization of the Knight, the Plowman, and the poor Parson.
These characters are too good to be literally possible and, naturally enough, they are exeriipted from those
naughty strokes of irony which we find levelled against all their fellow-pilgrims. They are, according to
David Daiches, “nostalgic portraits” of the people who were non-existent, but who were desired by
Chaucer to exist. For the rest, however. Chaucer records as he finds, not mechanically, however, but with
the additional advantage of his fresh and sly commentary of which his irony is the soul and the spice. In a
word, though Chaucer is a realist yet he is not a literal transcriber of reality.
Medieval Chivalry:
Chaucer’s England was predominantly medieval in spirit. And the most outstanding feature of the
Middle Ages was chivalry. Chaucer’s Knight is a true representative of the spirit of medieval chivalry
which was a blend of love, religion, and bravery. He has been a champion of not fewer than fifteen battles
in the defence of Christianity. Even the tale that he tells is, like him, imbued with the spirit of medieval
chivalry-though nominally it has the ancient Greece for its setting and has for its two important characters
the two Greek heroes who’are said-to have flourished in an unspecified ” period of history. Chaucer
almost completely medievalizes this story to enable us to have a taste of the chivalry of his age.
We must, however, point out here that the spirit of true chivalry was breathing its last in the age of
Chaucer. The Knight, in fact, is a representative of an order which was losing its ground. The true
representative of the new order is his young son, the Squire, who has as much taste for revelry as for
chivalry. He is “a lover and a lusty bachelor.” He is singing and fluting all the day and love-struck as he is,
he sleeps “no more than a nightingale.” However, we justly wonder if he could have proved himself
another Arcite or another Palamon. At any rate, he truly represents the marked change in the world of
chivalry which was fast coming over the age of Chaucer.
A Cross-section of Society:
The Canterbury Tales gives us a fairly authentic and equally extensive picture of the
socio-political conditions prevailing in England in the age of Chaucer. Each of the thirty pilgrims hails
from a different walk of life, and among themselves they build up an epitome of their age. Each of them is
a representative of a section of society as well as an individual. Even though the chief events of the age are
not dealt with exhaustively by Chaucer, the thirty pilgrims provide us with the taste of life in the England
of Chaucer. Chaucer was not a reformer but a delineator of reality. Legouis remarks  “What he has given is
a direct transcription of daily life, taken in the very act,” as it were, and in its most familiar aspects.
Chaucer’s work is the most precious document for whoever wishes to evoke a picture of life as it then
was….”
Trade, Commerce, and Craft:
For the first time in history the trading and artisan sections of society were coming to their own in
the age of Chaucer. With the fast expansion in trade and commerce merchants had become prosperous and
so had the craftsmen whose goods they traded in. We are told by Chaucer that the Haberdasher, the
Carpenter, the Weaver, the Dyer, and the Tapicer were well clothed and equipped. Their weapons were not
cheaply trimmed with brass, but all with silver. They were so respectable-looking that
Well seined each of them a fair burgeus
 To sitten in a yeldhalle, on a days.
They were no longer despised by the nobility. The Merchant is a typical representative of his class, and the
forefather of Sir Andrew Freeport, the merchant who is a member of the Spectator Club as delineated by
Addison and Steele in the eighteenth century. His character-sketch as done by Chaucer exudes prosperity.
He is always talking about the increase in his income and knows well how to make money in the market
place. The countrymen and merchants have always made the two most common objects of humour and
satire. But Chaucer lets the Merchant go without much of satire, perhaps in recognition of the importance
that his class had gained in his age.
Medicine:
Chaucer’s portrait of the Doctor of Physic is fairly representative of the theory and practice of
medicine in his age. The knowledge of astronomy (rather astrology) was a must for a physician as all the
physical ailments were supposed to be the consequences of the peculiar configurations of stars and
planets. That is why the Doctor, too, was, “grounded in astronomy.” However, ”his study was but little on
the Bible” perhaps because he had not much time to spare from his professional studies. He had amassed a
fortune in the year of the great plague and was keen to keep it with him:
He fcepte that he wan in pestilence.
For gold in phisik is a cordial,
Therefore he lovede gold in special.
Gold in the form of a colloidal solution was administered as a tonic fay physicians. However, Chaucer has
a sly dig at the Doctor in his reference to his gold-loving nature.
The Church:
Through the ecclesiastical characters in The Canterbury Tales Chaucer constructs a representative
picture of the condition of the Church and her ministers in his age. The Church had then become a hotbed
of profligacy, corruption, and rank materialism. The Monk, the Friar, the Summoner, the Pardoner, and the
Prioress are all corrupt, pleasure-loving, and materialistic in outlook. They forget their primary duty of
guiding and edifying the masses and shepherding them to the Promised Land. The Monk is a fat. sporting
fellow averse to study and penance. The Friar is a jolly beggar who employs his tongue to carve out his
living. The Prioress bothers more about modish etiquette than austerity. The Pardoner is a despicable
parasite trading in letters of pardon with the sinners who could ensure a seat in heaven by paying hard
cash. The Summoner is, likewise, a depraved fellow. These characters fully signify the decadence that had
crept into the Church. The only exception is the “Poor Parson’ apparently a follower of Wyclif who
revolted against the corruption of the Church.
The New Learning:
Though Chaucer’s age was essentially medieval, yet some sort of a minor Renaissance was
evident. The French and Italian contemporary writers influenced considerably the course of English
literature and thought. Petrarch arid Boccaccio, the two Italian writers, in particular, exerted this influence.
The seeds of humanistic culture of the ancient Greeks, too, can be identified in this age. The “Clerk of
Oxenford” represents the “new” intellectual culture which had percolated .into fourteenth-century England
long before the Renaissance. He is an austere scholar who prefers twenty books of Aristotle’s philosophy
on his bed’s head to gay clothes and musical instruments.
Posted onDecember 27, 2010CategoriesLiterary and Critical EssaysLeave a commenton Chaucer as the
chronicler of the society of his time
Chaucer as A Realist

Introduction:
Legouis in his History of English Literature (written by him in collaboration with Cazamian) pays
a high, but just, tribute to Chaucer’s realism and his self-effacement in his observation and recording of
the life of his age. That he has effectively captured for us the body and soul of his age has been universally
recognized. One reason why his work is so authentic and impressive is that he has a tendency to efface
himself. Were he more obtrusive and more self-centred, or more didactic and reform-minded, his work
would have been proportionally less realistic, less interesting, and less convincing.
Chaucer’s Chosen Field:
The vivid and authentic portrayal of the life and manners of his age was Chaucer’s chosen field
for which nature and experience had equipped him so exquisitely. But Chaucer came to this field after a
long journey in the dim valleys of allegory and dream poetry based on his contemporary French and
Italian models. It was orily when he was about fifty that he realized that his real field lay elsewhere.
With The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s aim and practice as a poet underwent a sea change. He
descended from the ethereal regions of romance and allegory and the dream-world of conventional
literature, and planted his feet firmly on the ground. Here, to quote an opinion, “the fantastic world of
romance and allegory melts away; Troy and Thebes, palaces made of glass and temples of brass,,
allegorical gardens and marvellous fountains evaporate, and in their place we see the whole stream of
English society in the fourteenth century.” In The Canterbury Tales Nature herself became Chaucer’s
model. He saw what was, and painted that he saw.
No Complete Self-effacement:
Chaucer could have claimed like Fielding that he gave “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.” He was decidedly the first realist in English literature. Much of his realism is indebted to his
tendency towards self-effacement which is necessary for a dramatist and very desirable for a novelist. The
dramatist himself does not appear on the stage. He reveals his characters through what they say and do and
does not offer to interpret for the reader or the spectator their words and deeds. The novelist does likewise,
though he is much freer than the dramatist. Chaucer has well been called the first novelist even before the
appearance of the novel, as also the first dramatist before the appearance of the drama in England.
Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that so far as The Canterbury Tales is concerned, Chaucer
does not efface himself completely, though he does see what is and does paint it as he sees it. It is
particularly true of the Prologue where he himself seems to be very much present like the guide in a
picture gallery, nudging the spectator with his elbow and directing his attention to this or that feature of
one portrait or the other. In the tales proper, however, the writer disappears completely and presents
himself only as a reporter of the words and -deeds of the pilgrims on the road, who go jostling and
story-telling and raising a cloud of dust behind them. Thus, whereas in the Prologue Chaucer adopts the
static mode of characterization, in the tales he adopts the dramatic mode. In the Prologue it is he who is
supposed to be enlightening us about the dress, appearance, habits, and salient traits of the pilgrims; in the
tales he lets them do it for themselves.
The Prologue:
Irrespective of the question whether Chaucer effaces himself for not the Prologue, it is commonly
conceded tha| the characters he draws are thoroughly realistic. All of them seem to have been, drawn from
life. His portraits show how penetratingly observant an eye he possessed. His record of the minutest
details of the appearance,, dress, and behaviour of the pilgrims makes their portraits disarmingly
convincing. Consider, for instance, the description of the Miller:
is herd as any sowe or fox was rede,
and thereto brode, as though it wer a spade.
“What makes these portraits all the more realistic is the seeming spontaneity with which Chaucer draws
them. When Chaucer is telling us something about a pilgrim it seems that he or she is standing right
before him and he is looking at what is and painting what he is looking at. Chaucer uses that greatest of
arts which lies in concealing all semblance of art. “No small part of the realism of these portraits,” says W.
H: Clawson, “is their informality, their lack of regular order.” The details about the pilgrims seem to be
coming from him without any method or design, and that is exactly what induces in the reader a strong
feeling of the actuality of the characters who are being so described.
Another relevant point to be kept in view is Chaucer’s broadmindedness, his lack of prejudice,
and his real sympathy with all classes and conditions of people. Irrespective of the feet whether he is
dealing with a rascal or a saint, an angel or a devil, he shows no trace of either anger and bitterness or
excessive reverence. He rejects nothing but likes all. He leaves the task of improving the world to his
contemporaries such as Langland, Wyclif, and the “moral Gower.” As for himself, he accepts the world as
he finds it. He paints many rascals indeed .(most of the pilgrims are in fact rascals), without pillorying or
strongly indicting any one of them. He is too indulgent and tolerant for that. His all-embracing human
sympathy prevents him from standing between the portrait and the spectator. Let the spectator himself
judge and arraign, if he likes, the characters whose portraits he has drawn; the painter’s work is over. We
may also notice the happy absence of idealization from Chaucer’s character-portrayal. The characters of
the Knight, the Plowman, and the poor Parson are the only exceptions.
On the whole, the characters are so lifelike that some critics have suggested that Chaucer might
have painted from real life. J. M. Manly, for instance, opines that Chaucer had in mind some “definite
persons” while portraying the pilgrims in the Prologue. It will be an ideal pastime to contest issues with
this critic. We should not approach literature with the attitude of a detective to search into the raw material
which a creative artist employs. It is enough for us to recognize the fact that Chaucer’s characters are very
lifelike. His characters, in the words of Palgrave, are
Seen in his mind soyividly, that we
Know them, more’dearly than the men we see.
What we should insist on is not the “actuality” of a writer’s work, but its verisimilitude. What a writer
gives may not (and should not) be a literal transcription of reality, but only a semblance of it. Aristotle
considers poetry more philosophical and more real than history, and he is quite right. To say that Chaucer
copied real characters from life will be underrating his literary genius. His is not a mechanic art. Well does
A. C. Ward remark : “It would of course be foolish to suppose that everything in the Prologue is ‘from the
life.’ Chaucer was too good an artist and had too lively an imagination to be a mere copyist, even of life
itself. Life was only his raw material, to which he could on occasion give a more convincing and
satisfying shape than Nature’s own. So we can only guess at how far Chaucer drew upon imparted
information and how far upon his own sense of probability.”
The Tales:
Unlike in the Prologue, in the tales proper Chaucer effaces himself completely like a perfect
dramatist. He is there, of course, and he is one of the pilgrims, too; but he is there as a spectator and an
authentic reporter. In the tales the portraits walk out of their frames, as it were, and reveal themselves
through the tales they narrate, the comments which they make on each other’s tales, and their mutual
exchanges and even skirmishes. It is in the tales that the author disappears completely. Right in the
beginning of the Prologue Chaucer takes pains to emphasize his role as a mere reporter. He feigns even to
have reproduced the very words spoken by the pilgrims in the narration of their tales
For this ye knowen also wel as I,
Who-so shall tell a tale aftere a man,
He moot reherce, as ny as evere he can,
Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudelie and large;
Or elles moot tells, his tale untrewe,
Orfeyne things orjynde -words newe.
So the author bows out of the scene and assumes the role of a spectator and reporter. Each story is
intended to reveal its narrator. Legouis maintains: “It then behoves the author to conceal himself, to
sacrifice his own literary talent and sense of proportion, and give place to another, who may be ignorant,
garrulous, clumsy, foolish, or coarse, or moved by enthusiasms and prejudicesTinshared by his creator.”
And what a sacrifice! Says the same critic: “The Canterbury Tales the element of the poet’s personality
has been subdued, superseded, by pleasure in observing and understanding. Hitherto this degree of
peaceful, impartial spectatorship had never been reached by poets.”
It is interesting to note how the tale of each pilgrim is in comformity with his or her character a
glimpse of which is provided by the poet in the Prologue. In many a case the story gives finishing touches
to the portrait of the. narrator as initially set forth in the Prologue. Chaucer here seems to have followed
the classical principle of decorum without being aware of it. And it is not only the content of each story
but also its diction which reveals its narrator. The Prioress, being an ecclesiastic, tells, appropriately
enough, the story of a Christian saint murdered by the “cursed Jews”. The Knight comes out with a tale of
chivalry. The merry, sporting Monk, on being exhorted by the Host to tell a “merry” tale, revengefully
narrates a long melancholy tale of the fall of Lucifer, Adam, Samson, Hercules, and many more, but he is
shut up mid way by the fervent words of the Host:
Sire Monk, no moore of this, so Godyow blesse!
Your tale anoyeth al this compaignye.
He asks the Monk to narrate instead a story of hunting, but the latter does not oblige, and retires sullenly.
The tipsy Miller offers to tell a bawdy story of the seduction of a carpenter’s wife by a clerk. The Reeve
(who does the work of a carpenter also) protests at the Miller’s “lewed dronken harlotrye”:
It is a synne and eek a greet folye
To apeyren any man, or hym defame,
And eek to bryngen wyves in swichfame
Thou maystynogh of other thynges seyn.
But the Miller ignores his protest and tells his ribald story. The Reeve in retaliation narrates trie story of
the seduction of a miller’s wife and daughter by two Cambridge scholars. The Friar tells the story of a
roguish summoner who is carried by the Devil to hell. The Summoner in reply comes out with the story of
a greedy friar who is humbled on account of his greed. The Nun tells a story of miracles. Chaucer himself
comes out with perhaps the dullest of talesT His boring narrative is cut short by the Host after he has
proceeded to the extent of some thirty stanzas:
“Namoore of this, for Coddes dignitee,”
Quod owe Hooste, “for thou makest me
So wery of thy verray lewednesse
That, also wisly God my soule bless,
Myne eres aken of thy drasty speche… “
Chaucer’s choice of the dullest tale for himself is a refreshing example of self-directed irony. Only a great
humorist can laugh at himself; and Chaucer is.certainly among the greatest humorists. He is really
delightful in his laughter at his own expense. How can we believe that he was the least skilled of all the
narrators?
As a man, Chaucer depicts himself, in the words of the Host, as ashy, unobtrusive, self-effacing,
and shoe-contemplating person. This is the Host addresses him:
And sayde thus, “What man artow?” quod he:
“Thou lookest as thou woldestfynde an hare,
For ever upon the ground I se thee stare.”
On being asked to come out with a “tale of mirth” by the Host he pleads his ignorance very politely:
“Hoostee”, quod I, “ne beth natyvele apayd,
For other tale certes kan I noone.
But of a rhym I lerned long agoone. “
Conclusion:
 Whether or not Chaucer was as unobtrusive a man as he presents himself in The Canterbury
Tales, it is true that as an artist he followed the principle of least interference with his material. The degree
of his self-effacement is really surprising. He does not project the tint of his likes and dislikes, fads and
fetishes, views and prejudices on what he paints. He is no moralist either. “Like Shakespeare”, says
Compton-Rickett, “he makes it his business, in The Canterbury Tales, to paint life as he sees it, and leaves
others to draw the moral.” Thus, to conclude, “Chaucer sees what is and paints it as he sees it.” And what
is more, “he effaces himself in order to look at it better.”
Posted onDecember 27, 2010CategoriesLiterary and Critical EssaysLeave a commenton Chaucer as
A Realist
Chaucer and the Common People

Introduction:
That Chaucer wrote for a coterie and not for the commonalty is essentially correct. He catered to
the taste of the court and the aristocracy and not that of the common masses. He had only a selected circle
of readers. Hudson observes: “He was a court poet who wrote for cultured readers and a refined society.”
All this is fairly true. It is also true that to his readers -“the court and cultivated classes” —”the sufferings
of the poor were a matter of the utmost indifference.” But it would be extremely unfair to maintain that
Chaucer himself remained indifferent to the sufferings of the poor. In fact, Chaucer’s human sympathy
and cordiality are all-embracing. He is responsive with the same alacrity to the Knight as to the Plowman
or the Parson. The one characteristic of Chaucer which endears him so readily to every reader is the
extensive nature of his understanding and fellow-feeling in which he is seldom found wanting. Therein he
comes close to Shakespeare himself. Chaucer is not, admittedly, “a poet of the masses” (which means,
commonly, in modern parlance, an exponent of communism or some form of radica Fsocialism). But nor.
is Shakespeare “a dramatist of the masses”. Each uses for his raw material life itself in all its
manifestations. Chaucer is a poet of humanity though not a poet of the masses. He is not only of his age
but of all ages. He is an exponent of not a narrow view of things, but of the permanent values of life. He
makes a pleanot for the ascendency of one class of society over the others, but of truth and justice. He
views life not in bitspbut as a whole, and he has abundant sympathy with all kinds and conditions
ofhumanity.

 If Chaucer wrote for the elite, so did all his contemporaries. He wrote at a time when literacy was
limited to a few. Even the art of printing in England was yet decades ahead. Books were all read and
circulated as manuscripts. Necessarily enough, the circle of readers was very narrow. Why should then
Chaucer alone be singled out as a writer who catered to the tastes of “the court and cultivated classes”?
Contemporary Upheavals:
Nevertheless, what strikes one so forcefully about Chaucer is his aloofness from.the popular
movements and upheavals of his times. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 led by Jack Straw and Wat Tylar
posed substantial danger to the English feudal system and terrified a number of people. The plague
epidemic of 1348-49 (commonly known as “The Black Death”) wiped away almost one-third of the total
population of the country. With the consequent decrease in. the number of working hands, the workers
started a widespread agitation for an increase in their wages. The agitation was put down with a heavy
hand by the authorities, but the resentment of the labourers could not be dispelled. At the same time John
Wyclif, “the morning star of the Reformation”, and his followers, called the Lollards, raised a powerful
voice against the corruptions of the Church officials, which incidentally implied a protest against the
financial exploitation of the poor and superstitious masses by the hirelings of the Pope. It must be clear
that Chaucer’s age. was an age of turrhoii and agitation. The common people. long exploited by feudal
overlords and Popish agents, had reached the end of their patience and could not but let out their unrest
through a chain of movements and agitations against the ruling and influential classes. Evidently enough
all was not well with the world. It would have really been astonishing if a writer could have shut his eyes
sojfirmly on the contemporary scene. But that is what Chaucer seems to have done~at least, to some
critics. Let us quote Hudson again: “The great vital issues of the day never inspired his verse. He made his
appeal to an audience composed of the favoured few, who wanted to be amused by comedy, or touched by
pathos, or moved by romantic sentiment but who did not wish to be disturbed by painful reminders of
plague, famines, and popular discontent. Thus, though he holds the mirror up to the life of his time, the
dark underside of it is nowhere reflected by him”.
Comparison with Langland and Cower:
The comparison of Chaucer with his contemporaries in this connection will be substantially
rewarding. Langland and Gower were the most eminent of the poets contemporaneous with Chaucer. Both
of them exhibit in their important works much wider and intenser awareness of the burning questions of
the day. Hudson calls William Langland (13307-1400) “essentially a poet of the people.” His most
important work The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman (commonly known as Piers the
Plowman) displays the poets’ wide and intimate contact with the people, their miseries, privations, their
exploitation and tyrannization by the ruling classes, and their seething discontent with the feudal junta and
even the royalty. Rather than their splendour and glamour, the enormous poem acquaints us with the
seamy sides of medieval England-its “rents, rags and uncleanliness.” Whereas Chaucer represents in The
Canterbury Tales the “merry England” of the fourteenth century, Langland’s scene is very melancholy,
disturbed, and bedevilled by a thousand ailments. According to Kenneth Sisam, Piers Plowman “stands
alone as a revelation of the ignorance and misery of the lower classes whose multiplied grievances cameto
a head in the Peasants Revolt of 1381”. “It is’to this Vision”, points out Hudson, “that we have to turn if
we would complete Chaucer’s picture of fourteenth century England by putting in the dark shadows.” And
Legouis exclaims: “How national it is! How near the people! It must be borne in mind that Langland did
not appeal to one particular class of people. He did not, for instance urge the masses to rise against the
ruling class and the utterly depraved ecclesiastics. Even if he was a poet of the people, he appealed to all
the classes of society alike and tried to take stock of the prevailing situation and to mend it.
Unlike Langland, John Gower (13257-1408) did not champion the cause of the people but, even
then, he expressed a keen awareness of the popular feelings and their possible repercussions on the society
of his time. One of his three most important poetical works Vox Clamantis-a Latin poem of some ten
thousand lines-was most probably written immediately after the Peasants’ Revolt of 13 81 of which it
gives a vivid account. In general the poem deals with the evils of entire society-the clergy, knighthood,
and peasantry. Gower himself was a wealthy landlord and was terrified by the rising of the workers against
their masters. He lived in Kent where the rebellion broke out. He is a conservative and supports “reform
within the established order.” He is critical of even the Lollards’ Movement. He is didactic, too (he was
addressed as “moral Gower” by his friend Chaucer in his dedication of Troilus and Cryseyde) in his other
two important poems Mirowdel ‘Omme (French) and Confessio Amantis (English) though in these works
there are not many direct references to contemporary events.
Chaucer’s “Indifference”:
In contrast to the practice of Langland and Gower, Chaucer leaves the agitating questions of the
day untouched. He obviously lacks the scorching earnestness of Langland and the didactic tendency of
Gower. In spite of his awareness of the distress and grinding poverty of the masses he seems to believe
complacently that:
Gods’s in His Heaven— All’s right with the world!
He welcomes things as they are, and almost desires them to be no better. In Jhis works there are very few
direct references to the contemporary upheavals and the deplorable plight of the commonalty. Says
Moody:”The peasant rebellion and the Lollard agitation give us glimpses of an England which Chaucer, in
spite of the many-sidedness of his work, does not reveal. The Canterbury Tales contains few references to
the plague, only one to the peasant uprising, and only one to Lollardry, and these references are casual or
jesting”. Moody continues with the words which form the body of the question we are endeavouring to
answer at present. Chaucer’s only reference to the Peasants’ Revolt is in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale written
perhaps about ten years after the rising. Chaucer makes a less than complimentary allusion to Jack Straw,
one of the leaders of the Revolt:
Certes, he Jakkes Straw and his meynee
Ne made nevere shoutes half so shrille
When that they wolden any Flemyng kille,
As thilke days was mad upon the fox.
In the Clerk’s Tale Chaucer indicts the unthinking mob:
O stormy people! unsad and even untrewe As undiscreet and changing as a vave.
Elsewhere, too, Chaucer expresses his anti-mob sentiment-not only through the mouths of the pilgrims,
but personally and directly.
Chaucer’s Broad Human Sympathy:
But in his anti-rabble sentiments Chaucer is not being more undemocratic than Shakespeare. The
fickle mob, the “unthinking Hydra”, has earned the wise contempt of most English writers. In spite of his
too palpable indifference to the sufferings of the poor and the downtrodden, Chaucer is never-failing in
showing sympathy for all human beings irrespective of their social standing. He recognizes few barriers in
this respect. He has malice towards none. Among all the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales if some do
escape his naughty irony, they are, along with the Knight, “the poor Parson” and the still poorer Plowman.
In Piers the Plowman the poor Plowman is employed by Langland as a symbol of Christ himself. But
then Chaucer’s Plowman, too, is Christ-like in his “poverty”, his honesty, and his fellow-feeling. This
shepherd worries much about the sheep, and not at all about their “‘fleece”. Evidently enough, the Parson
is a Wyclifite, and through him Chaucer indirectly expresses his sympathy for the Lollards’ Movement. In
the Parson’s Tale Chaucer gives voice to almost egalitarianistic sentiments:
“Of swich seeds as cherles spryngen of swich seed spryngen lordes. As wel may the cherl be
saved as the lordI rede thee, certes, that thou, lord werke in swich wise with thy cherles that they rather
love thee than drede…”
Is it not startlingly radical to have suggested the demolition of the well-recognized medieval
barrier between “churls” and “lords”? Further, we may refer to the well-known passage against tyrants
inxthe preface to the Legend of Good Women in which the king is urged to be compassionate towards his
poor subjects.
Why Indifference to Contemporary Events?:
After all is said and done, it remains to be explained as to why Chaucer remained indifferent to the
upheavals of his age-at least in his literary works. A critic defends Chaucer quite trenchantly. According to
him, “to be bold in one’s utterance in the Middle Ages was to gamble with death, and Chaucer’s
temperament was not a martyr’s.” But we may relevantly ask: “What about Gower and Langland? Both of
them were “bold” enough in their “utterances” though they championed mutually opposite sides. The
reason lies else where Chaucer was not a journalist, a pamphleteer, or an occasional versifier.
He wrote not for his age, but for all ages. He was sure that the burning topics of his day would
become the dead topics of the next. Had he busied himself with the topical and the ephemeral his poetry
would have had little appeal for the succeeding generations. He delved deep from the topical to the
universal. He gives us not the trappings but the body and soul of fourteenth-century England, superadded
with universal connotations. We admire and appreciate Langland and Gower less partly because they are
more concerned with the issues of their day. Muriel Bowden observes: “The most important reason for
Chaucer’s silence about political affairs and national events undoubtedly lies in the very nature of his
genius. The poet’s magnificent human comedy is the more human in that it is without the immediate, and
is concerned with the universal and the timeless.”             
Posted onDecember 27, 2010CategoriesLiterary and Critical EssaysLeave a commenton Chaucer and the
Common People
Chaucer’s Contribution to English Language and Literature

Introduction:
Father of verse! who m immortal song
First taught the Muse to speak the English tongue.
It is somewhat idle to talk of “fathers” in the history of literature, for it is questionable if a particular
person can be wholly credited with in the founding of a new literary genre.
Literature is generally subject to the ‘law of evolutionary development. And though a man may do more
than others by way of contributing to this development we should be chary of inferring upon him the
medal of fatherhood. When it is said that Chaucer is the father of English poetry, and even the father of
English literature we broadly mean that his contribution to the evolution of English poetry or literature is
much more significant than that of his contemporaries and predecessors, and to be similarly rated is his
introduction of so many novel features into it.

That Chaucer was a pioneer in many respects should be readily granted. “With him is born our
real poetry,” says Matthew Arnojd. He has been acclaimed as the first realist, the first humorist, the first
narrative artist the first great character-painter, and the first great metrical artist in English literature.
Further, he has been credited not only with the “fatherhood” of English poetry but has also been hailed as
the father of English drama before the drama was bom, and the father of English novel before the novel
was born. And, what is more, his importance is not due to precedence alone, but due to excellence. He is
not only the first English poet, but a great poet in his own right. Justly has he been called “the
fountain-source of the vast stream of English literature.”
Contribution to Language:
Well does Lowell say that “Chaucer found his English a dialect and left it a language.” Borrowing
Saintsbury’s words about the transformation which Dryden effected in English poetry, we may justly say
that Chaucer found the English language brick and left it marble. When Chaucer started his literary career,
the English speech, and still less, the English of writing was confusingly fluid and unsettled. The English
language was divided into a number of dialects which were employed in different parts of the country. The
four of them vastly more prominent than the others were:
(i)         The Southern
(ii)        The Midland
(iii)       The Northern or Northumbrian
(iv)       The Kentish
Out of these four, the Midland or the East Midland dialect, which was spoken in London and its
surrounding area, was the simplest in grammar and syntax. Moreover, it was the one patronised by the
aristocratic and literary circles of the country. Gower used this dialect for his poem Confessio Amantis and
Wyclif for his translation of the Bible. But this dialect was not the vehicle of all literary work. Other
dialects had their votaries too. Langland in his Piers Plowman, to quote an instance, used a mixture of the
Southern and Midland dialects. Chaucer employed in his work the East midland dialect, and by casting the
enormous weight of his genius balance decided once for all which dialect was going to be the standard
 literary language of the whole of the country for all times to come. None after him thought of using any
dialect other than the East Midland for any literary work of consequence. It is certain that if Chaucer had
adopted some other dialect the emergence of the standard language of literature would have been
considerably delayed. All the great writers of England succeeding Chaucer are, in the words of John
Speirs, “masters of the language of which Chaucer is, before them, the great master.”
Not only was Chaucer’s selection of one dialect out of the four a happy one, but so was his
selection of one of the three languages which were reigning supreme in England at that time-Latin,
French, and English. In fact. Latin and French were more fashionable than the poor “vernacular” English.
Latin was considered “the universal language” and was patronised at the expense of English by the
Church as well as the learned. Before Wyclif translated it into the “vulgar tongue”, the Bible was read in
its Latin version called the Vulgate. French was the language of the court and was used for keeping the
accounts of the royal household till as late as 1365. Perplexed by the variety of languages offering
themselves for use, Chaucer’s friend and contemporary Gower could not decide which one of them to
adopt. He wrote his Mirour del’Omme in French, Vox Clamantis in Latin, and Confessio Amantis in
English, perhaps because he was not quite sure which of the three languages was going to survive. But
Chaucer had few doubts abputthe issue. He chose English which was a despised language, and asjthe
legendary king did to the beggar maid, raised her from the dust, draped her in royal robes, and conducted
her coronation. That queen is ruling even now.
Contribution to Versification:
Chaucer’s contribution to English versification is no less striking than to the English language.
Again, it is an instance of a happy choice. He sounded the death-knell of the old Saxon alliterative
measure and firmly established the modern one. Even in the fourteenth century the old alliterative measure
had been employed by such a considerable poet as Langland for his Piers khe Plowman, and the writer
of Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight. Let us give the important features of the old measure which
Chaucer so categorically disowned:
(i)         There is no regularity in the number of syllables in each line. One line may have as few as six syllables
and another as many as fourteen.
(ii)        The use of alliteration as the chief ornamental device and as the lone structural principle. All the
alliterative syllables are stressed.
(iii)       The absence 01 end-rimes; and
(iv)       Frequent repetition to express vehemence and intensity of emotion.
Chaucer had no patience with the “rum, ram, ruf’ of the alliterative measure. So does he maintain in
the Parson’s Tale:
But trusteth wel, I am a southern man,
I cannot geste-rum, ram, ruf,-by lettere,
Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettere.
For that old-fashioned measure he substituted the regular line with end-rime, which he borrowed from
France. The new measure has the following characteristics:
(i)         All lines have the same number of syllables,
(ii)        End-rime,
(iii)       Absence of alliteration and frequent repetition.
After Chaucer, no important poet ever thought of reverting to the old measure. Thus, Chaucer may
be designated “the father of modern English versification.” Chaucer employs three principal metres in his
works. In The Canterbury Tales he mostly uses lines of ten syllables each (with generally five accents);
and the lines run into couplets; that is, each couple of lines has its end-syllables rhyming with each other.
For example:
His eyes twinkled in his heed aright
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.
In Troilus and Cryseyde he -uses the seven-line stanza of decasyllabic lines with five accents each having
the rhyme-scheme a b abb c c. This measure was borrowed by him from the French and is called the
rhyme-royal or Chaucerian stanza. The third principal metre employed by him is the octosyllabic couplet
with four accents and end-rime. In The Book of the Duchesse this measure is used. The measures  thus
adopted by Chaucer were seized upon by his successors. The decasyllabic couplet known as the heroic
couplet, was to be chiselled and invigorated to perfection three centuries later by Dryden and Pope. Apart
from those three principal measures Chaucer also employed for the first time a number of other stanzaic
forms in his shorter poems.
Not only this, Chaucer seems to be the first Englishman who realised and brought out the latent
music of his language. “To read Chaucer’s verse,” observes a critic, “is like listening to a clear stream, in a
meadow full of sunshine, rippling over its bed of pebbles.” The following is the tribute of a worthy
successor of his:
The morning star of song, who made
His music heard below,
Don Chaucer, the first -warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts thatfiU”,
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still
He made English a pliant and vigorous medium of poetic utterance. His astonishingly easy mastery of the
language is indeed remarkable. With one step the writings of Chaucer carry us into a new era in which the
language appears endowed with ease, dignity, and copiousness of expression and clothed in the hues of the
imagination.
The Content of Poetry:
Chaucer was a pioneer not only in the linguistic and prosodic fields, but was one in the strictly
poetic field also. Not only the form of poetry, but its content, too, is highly indebted to him. Not only did
he give English poetry a new dress, but a new body and a new soul. His major contribution towards the
content of poetry is in his advocacy of and strict adherence to realism. His Canterbury Tales embodies a
new effort in the history of literature, as it strictly deals with real men, manners, and life. In the beginning
of his literary career Chaucer followed his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and wrote
allegorical and dream poetry which in its content was as remote from life as a dream is from reality. But at
the age of about fifty he realised that literature should deal first-hand with life and not look at it through
the spectacles of books or the hazy hues of dreams and cumbersome allegory. He realised, to adopt Pope’s
famous couplet (with a little change) :
Know then thyself: presume not dreams to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
And the product of this realisation was The Canterbury Tales. This poem, as it were, holds a mirror to the
life of Chaucer’s age and shows its manners and morals completely, “not in fragments.” Chaucer replaces
effectively the shadowy delineations of the old romantic and allegorical school with the vivid and
pulsating pictures of contemporary life.
And Chaucer does not forget the universal beneath the particular, the dateless beneath the dated.
The portraits of the pilgrims in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales constitute not only an epitome of
the society of fourteenth-century England, but the epitome of human nature in all climes and all ages.
Grierson and Smith observe about Chaucer’s pilgrims: “They are all with us today, though some of them
have changed their names. The knight now commands a line regiment, the squire is in the guards, the
shipman was a rum-runner while prohibition lasted and is active now in the black market, the friar is a
jolly sporting publican, the pardoner vends quack medicines or holds seances, and the prioress is the
headmistress of a fashionable girls’ school. Some of them have reappeared in a later literature. The poor
parson was reincarnated in the Vicar of Wakefield, the knight in Colonel Newcome and the Monk
nrArchdeacon Grantly.”
His Geniality, Tolerance, Humour, and Freshness:
Chaucer’s tone as a poet is wonderfully instinct with geniality, tolerance, humour, and freshness
which are absent from that of his contemporaries and predecessors who are too dreamy or too serious to be
interesting. In spite of his awareness of the corruption and unrest in the society of his age Chaucer is never
upset or upsetting. He experiences what the French cally’oz’e de vivre, and communicates it to his is iders.
No one can read Chaucer without feeling that it is good to be alive in this world however imperfect may it
be in numerous respects. He is a chronic optimist. He is never harsh, rancorous, bitter, or indignant, and
never falls out with his fellow men for their failings. He leaves didacticism to Langland and “moral
Gower” and himself peacefully coexists with all human imperfections. It does not mean that he is not
sarcastic or satirical, but his satire and sarcasm are always seasoned with lively humour. In fact his forte is
irony rather than satire. Aldous Huxley observes: “Where Langland cries aloud in anger threatening the
world with hell fire, Chaucer looks on and smiles.” The great English humorists like Shakespeare and
Fielding share with Chaucer the same broad human sympathy which he first introduced into literature and
which has bestowed upon his Canterbury Tales that character of perennial,-vernal freshness which appears
so abundantly on its every page,
Contribution to the Novel:
The novel is one of the latest courses in the banquet of English literature. But in his narrative skill,
his gift of vivid characterization, his aptitude for plot-construction, and his inventive skill Chaucer
appears as a worthy precursor of the race of novelists who come centuries afterwards. If Chaucer is the
father of English poetry he is certainly, to use G. K. Chesterton’s phrase, “the grandTafher of&ie English
novel.” His Tales are replete with intense human interest, and though he borrows his materials from
numerous sundry sources, his narrative skill is all his own. That could not have been borrowed. His
narration is lively and direct, if we make exception for the numerous digressions and philosophical and
pseudo-philosophical animadversions having little to do with the tales proper, introduced after the
contemporary fashion. It is difficult to find him flagging or growing dull and monotonous. It is perhaps
only Burns who in Tom O’ Shanter excels Chaucer in the telling of “merry tales.'”
Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales has been rightly called “the prologue to modern
fiction.” It has characters if not plot, and vivid characterization is one of the primary jobs of a novelist. A
novel, according to Meredith, should be “a summary of actual life.” So is, indeed, the Prologue. Several
of the tales, too, are novels in miniature and hold the attention of the reader from the beginning to the end,
which, alas! very few novels of today do.
As regards Chaucer’s Troilus and Cryseyde, it has been well called “a novel in verse.” And it has
all the salient features of a novel. It has plot, character, unravelling action, conflict, rising action, and
denouement-every thing. Though the background of the action is the legendary Trojan war, and though
some elements have been borrowed from the Italian writer Boccaccio, yet it is all very modern and close
to life. It is not devoid even of psychological interest which is a major characteristic of the modern novel.
“Its heroine,” as a critic observes, “is the subtlest piece of psychological analysis in medieval fiction: and
the shrewd and practical Pandarus is a character whose presence of itself brings the story down from the
heights of romance to the plains of real life.” S. D. Neill opines that “had Chaucer written in prose, it is
possible that his Troilus and Cryseyde and not Richardson’s Pamela would have been celebrated as the
first English novel.” A. W. Pollard facetiously~observes that Chaucer was a compound of “thirty per cent
of Goldsmith, fifty of Fielding, and twenty of Walter Scott.” This means, in other words, that as a
story-teller Chaucer had some of the sweetness of Goldsmith, the genial ironic attitude and realism of
Fielding, and the high chivalrous tone of Sir Walter Scott. But, after al 1 is said and done. Chaucer is
Chaucer himself and himself alone.
Contribution to the Drama:
Chaucer wrote at a time when, like the novel, secular drama had not been born, and yet his works
have some dramatic elements which are altogether missing in the poetry before him. His mode of
characterisation in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is, no doubt, static or descriptive, but in the tales
proper it is dynamic or dramatic. There the characters reveal themselves, without the intervention of the.
author, through what they say and what they do. Even the tales they narrate, in most cases, are in keeping
with their respective characters, avocations, temperaments, etc. In this way Chaucer is clearly ahead of his
“model” Boccaccjo, who in his Decameron allots various tales to his ladies and gentlemen
indiscriminately, irrespective of their conformity or otherwise to their respective characters. The stories
in The Decameron could without violence be re-distributed-among the characters. But not in The
Canterbury Tales where they-serve as a dramatic device of characterisation: and in the drama,
pace Aristotle, character is all-important. In their disputations and discussions and comments upon each
other’s tales and their general behaviour, too, the pilgrims are^made by Chaucer to reveal themselves and
to provide finishing touches to the character-portraits already statically (or non-dramatically) set forth
in the Prologue. Chaucer is abundantly showing here the essential gift of a dramatist. A critic goes so far
as to assert that Chaucer is “a dramatist in all but the fact”, and again : “If the drama had been known in
Chaucer’s time as a branch of living literature, he might have attained as high an excellence in comedy as
any English or Continental writer.”
Chaucer’s Limitations:
Let us round off our discussion by briefly referring to some of Chaucer’s limitations or what as
“the father of English poetry” he could not give to it. Matthew Arnold feels in Chaucer’s work the
absence of “high seriousness” which is the characteristic of all great poetry. Then, Chaucer has, unlike
Dante, no burning message to give. Again as Hudson avers, he is not the poet of the people. Moody and
Loyett maintain that “Chaucer wrote for the court and cultivated classes to whom the sufferings of the
poor were a matter of the utmost indifference.” Still another critic finds missing from Chaucer’s poetry
those “mysterious significances” which are characteristics of all great poetry. All this is, in a measure,
true. But those who charge Chaucer with the absence of pathos may well read the following passage
from The-Knight’s Tale in which ‘Arcite laments his separation, consequent upon his death, from his
lady-love:
Alas the woe! alas the paines strong
That I for you have suffered, and so long!
Alas the death: alas, mine Emilie!
Alas, departing of our company!
Alas, mine hertes queen! alas my wife!
Mine hertes lady, ender of my life.
WJiat is this world? What asken men to have?
Now with his love; now in his colde grave,
Alone, withouten any company!
Farewell my sweet! farewell mine Emilie!
And softe take me in your armes rwey,
Fore love of God and heakeneth what I say.
(f)  Chaucer’s Successors
After Chaucer there was a decline in English poetry for about one hundred years. The years from
1400 to the Renaissance were a period bereft of literature. There were only a few minor poets, the
imitators and successors of Chaucer, who are called the English and Scottish Chaucerians who wrote
during this period. The main cause of the decline of literature during this period was that no writer of
genius was born during those long years. Chaucer’s successors were Occieeve, Lydgate, Hawes, Skelton
Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas. They all did little but copy him, and they represent on era of mediocrity
in English literature that continues up to the time of the Renaissance.
Fifteenth-Century English Poetry

Introduction:
The fifteenth century was a period of singular barrenness as regards literary production,
particularly poetry. No poet of the century comes anywhere near Chaucer who dominated the previous
century like a colossus.

We have in the fifteenth century a number of “sons of Geoffrey”, or, what we call the Chaucerian who
professedly frmlaietf the great master. Imitation in its broader implications is not .a bad or despicable
activity; but we find that the Chaucerians of the fifteenth century imitated Chaucer too slavishly and
mechanically so that their imitations could capture only the trappings and not the vigorous body or the
subtle soul of Chaucer’s poetry. Moreover, very few of these Chaucerians thought of imitating the best
work of Chaucer, namely The Canterbury Tales. They restricted their attention to his allegorical and
dream poetry which is far below his best.

As regards “drama” and prose the age was not so unproductive, however. Sir Thomas Malory and
Caxton, in particular, contributed not meanly to the development and fixation of English prose. A sense of
style also came in. Caxton is an important figure in the history of English literature as it was he who
initiated the art of printing in England. In his prefaces to his publications he wrote a refreshing, natural
and personal style which has earned for him a secure place in the history of English prose. The
introduction of the art of printing in England made books available at cheap prices to the commonalty.
Literacy also increased considerably and literature, hitherto a privileged pursuit of the elite, became more
“popular” in the true sense of the word. Let us discuss the salient features and trends of the poetry of the
fifteenth century.
Allegorical and Dream Poetry:
As we have mentioned above, most of the imitators of Chaucer set their sights on imitating his
minor work and not the neplus ultra of his poetic art, namely. The Canterbury Tales. The works of
Chaucer which most readily came in for imitation were the following three:
(i)         The Parliament of Fowls;
(ii)        The Book of the Duchess; and
(iii)       The House of Fame.
All these works are but mediocre in quality and were written by Chaucer obviously in imitation of
the well-known tradition of dream and allegory so popular with the medieval English poets. None of them
displays any direct, first-hand contact with life or reality as The Canterbury Tales so abundantly and so
superbly does. The work of Chaucer’s imitators is. naturally enough, remote from reality. The lesson
of The Canterbury Tales and the “fresh woods and pastures new” opened up by Chaucer seem to have
held no attraction for the Chaucerians. For the most part entrenched in the medieval tradition, they fail to
capture the real-life freshness of Chaucer’s poetry. The poet usually found himself dreaming and taken to
a garden, and there involved in some stock incidents in which figured such stock characters as the
Goddess of Love and various Virtues and Vices in personified forms. William Dunbafs The Golden
Targe and Lydgate’s Temple ofGlas are poems of this kind. In the former the poet falls asleep on a May
morning in a garden and dreams of a ship full of a hundred allegorical ladies of King Cupid’s court.
Reason with his golden targe (shield) tries unsuccessfully to protect the poet from the arrows of Love.
Stephen Hawes in his Example of Virtue relates the-story of a youth who led by Reason succeeds finally in
marrying Purity, the daughter of the King of Lpve. His Past time of Pleasure and Dunbar’s The Thistle
and the Rose provide some more examples of the allegorical dream-poetry. Some of these poems might
have provided Spenser with some germinal hints. It was only Hoccleve, perhaps, who to some extent
continued the tradition of English city life as it was sketched in The Canterbury Tales. His picture of
London in La Male Regie is not uninteresting.
Satire and Didacticism:
Fifteenth-century poets followed Langland and “moral Gower”, too, in their practice of satire and
didacticism. Chaucer had nothing of the reformer or the preacher in him, and his forte was not satire but
naughty irony. But Langland in Piers the Plowman and Gower in all his major works aimed at different
effects. Their lead is more particularly accepted by John Skelton, the rugged satirist of the fifteenth
century. He hits very crudely, indeed, though he hits very hard. He is well known for his satires on the
clergy, but is best known for the boldness with which he attacked the all-powerful Wolsey. William
Dunbar continued the satiric tradition in a major part of his poetic output. His satire is generally of the
nature of jovial invective but sometimes takes up the colour of Rebelaisian grotesquery as. for instance, in
his Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins.
The Eclogue:
The fifteenth century is known for the appearance of the Virgilian eclogue as a new genre in
English literature. An eclogue is, generally, a short poem, especially a pastoral dialogue (generally
between shepherds and shepherdesses), written in the manner of Virgil and Theocritus. The man who
introduced the eclogue in England was Alexander Barclay, the translator of the famous work of the
German poet Sebastian Brant, entitled by him The Ship of Fools. His eclogues ‘were mainly modelled
upon tjiose of the Italian poet Mantuanus and have elements of satire which we find absent from those of
Virgil. Barclay’s forte is his mastery of detail and his very effective handling of the dialogue between his
shepherds. Further his work contains plentiful references to current English affairs.
Ballads:
The ballad is another gift of the fifteenth century to English literature. Ballads constituted a
considerable parti of English folk literature. Thev were’transmitted orallv from one generation to the next.
Most of the ballads in England remain anonymous, and according to the older critical opinion as
represented by F. B. Gummere in The Beginnings ofPoetiy (1901) they had a communal origin: that is,
they were authored not by individuals but by the community as a whole. Modern critical opinion,
however, is inclined against the communal theory of the origin of the ballad.’
The ballad originally existed as some song accompanying a folk dance. But later it came to
signify a short narrative poem told impersonally with some dramatic interest in more or less a traditional
metrical form. Most-commonly, the stanza employed by it consists of four lines, the second and fourth
rhyming together. The first and the third lines contain four stresses, and the other two, three each. See for
instance, the opening verse of Sir Patric Spens.[1]

” The king sits in Dumferling toune,

Drinking the blude-red wine:
“O whar will I get a guid sailor,
To sail this ship of mine? “
The themes of most of the ballads are love, domestic tragedy, war, history, and the supernatural. The
popular ballads (some thirty in number) concerning Robin Hood and his “merry men” are a class by
themselves. Robin Hood is, in Albert C. Baugh’s words, “the people’s counterpart of aristocratic heroes
like Sir Gawain”. He is honest and God-fearing but bosses over and robs the cruel rich to mitigate the
penury of the poor. The most popular ballads dating from the fifteenth century are The Nutbrown
Maid and Chevy Chase. The former is of the nature of a “true love” poem and the latter concerns itself
with the heroic fight between the English Sir Percy and the Scottish Sir Douglas. Even in the “cultured”
eighteenth century these ballads were acclaimed as wonderful literature. Prior based his Henry and
Emma upon The Nut-brown Maid, and Addison in his Spectator brought out the beauties of Chevy Chase.
Chevy Chase is couched in the traditional ballad metre referred to above, but The Nut-brown Maid is
written in stanzas of twelve lines each. Along with the ballads in the fifteenth century there was a great
outpouring of lyric verse dealing with both religious and secular themes.
Versification:
As regards versification, all the poets of the fifteenth century looked back to Chaucer for
guidance. Very few new prosodic forms were adopted by them. In fact, instead of advancement, the
prosodic part of English poetry showed signs of retrogression, if not outright decadence. Very few poets
seem to have had an ear for music. Chaucer was perhaps the first English poet who instinctively grasped
the hidden music of English words, but fifteenth-century Chaucerians did not benefit from the shining
example before them. Much confusion and disharmony were created when the finale was dropped in the
fifteenth century. That put before the poets a garbled version of Chaucer’s poetry, which, inaccurately
read, started jarring upon the ear. His followers misread and mis-copied Chaucer. Their own poetry shows
a lamentable neglect, if not ignorance, of all the basic laws of prosody. Lydgate was the most egregious
offender in this respect, and was frank enough to admit: “I took none heed neither of short nor long.”
Skelton and Hawes were other notable offenders. The former, indeed, admitted that his “rime” was
“ragged” and “jagged”. In his contempt of all verbal music he might have given a cue to Donne and his
fellow-metaphysicals. All the three principal metres employed by Chaucer, namely, the heroic couplet, the
octosyllabic couplet with four stresses in each line, and the Chaucerian stanza were widely employed by
the poets of the fifteenth century but none of them exhibited in his handling of these measures the easy
facility and unforced mastery of Chaucer.
Let us now discuss briefly the work of the more important English and Scottish Chaucerians of
the fifteenth century.
 ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS
(1)        Thomas Occleve or Hoccleve (1370-1450):
A consistent follower of Chaucer, he represented himself as “the stupid scholar of an excellent
master.”
My’ dere maister-God his soule quyte— And fader Chaucer, fayne wold have me taught,
But I was dulle, and lerned lyte or naught.
Occleve was a satirist and moralist, but his most refreshing contribution to English poetry is the addition
of the autobiographical touch. A. C. Ward calls him “one of England’s earliest biographers”. His main
autobiographical work is La Male Regie de T. Occleve which is of the nature of a confession. The poet
describes how debauched he was as a young man when he used to visit the taverns in Westminster. He
gives some vivid pictures of the London of those times. His chief work as a poet, however, is his verse
translation (in Chaucer’s rhyme-royal) of Aegidius’s De Regimine Principum (Regimen of Princes)
written for the guidance of Prince Henry who later became King Henry V. In his tone of earnest
didacticism Occleve is nearer “moral Gower” than his acknowledged master, Chaucer.
(2)        John Lydgate (1370-1449):
He is the dullest and the most voluminous of English Chaucerians. Compton-Rickett suggests that
Occleve’s confessional -A-ords, “But I was dulle” could have been uttered by Lydgate also and, we may
suggest, with greater appropriateness. He follows mostly the tradition of allegorical and dream poetry we
have already referred to. His poetic work extant runs to more than 30,000 lines! We wonder %vhy he was
not included by Pope among his dullards in The Dunciad! He has no ear for music and violates
egregiously even the basic principles of prosody. Nor does he have the spirit or the magic touch which
Chaucer brought to bear upon his work. However, in their heyday, his principal works, The Troy Book,
The Story of Thebes, The Fall of Princes and The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (something like The
Pilgrim’s Progress) pleased numerous readers. His Complaint of the Black Knight was once ascribed to
Chaucer. His most lively and the least dull work is his London Lackpenny which describes the woes of a
poor man in the streets of London. Modern investigators have, however, come to the conclusion that this
work was in fact written by some one else. Lydgate was a Benedictine monk of no mean learning; but
learning is no substitute for real poetry. Legouis pertinently questions “whether this Benedictine ever had
time to lift his eyes from his books and papers and look at nature.”
(3)        Stephen Hawes (1475-1525):
He belongs to a later generation than Lydgate and Occleve. A. C. Ward observes about him : “He
looked upon himself as a follower of Chaucer, though he was in fact a belated medievalist using verse as a
medium for sermonical allegories uneasily wedded to chivalrous romance.” He had a wonderful memory
and could recite the works of many poets. He admired Lydgate, too, and referred to him as “my^ master’.
His most important work was The Passtyme of Pleasure, or The History of Graunde Amoure and La Belle
Pucel which appeared at the end of the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth, century. It is
Chaucerian more in prosody than in spirit or content. Hawes uses, no doubt, rhyme royal and decasyllabic
couplets, but his avowed intention is the training of a perfect knight and lover with the help of the
narration of his allegorical struggles with giants and monsters. Spenser, as Ward avers, was definitely
indebted to Stephen Hawes, “for it is evident that The Faerie Queene does perfectly what Hawes had tried
but ponderously failed to do; on the other hand it is no longer seriously held that Hawes’ Passtyme of
Pleasure was vitally influential in the making of Spenser’s masterpiece.”
(4)        Alexander Barclay/ (1474-1552):
He is best known for his translation of the work of the German poet Sebastian Brant, which he
entitled The Ship of Fools. The translation was not direct, but through the medium of a Latin and a French
translation. He describes the various personified vices which make voyage in a ship. He satirises the vices
of the clergy and the layman alike, but his keenest satire is reserved for the vice of usury. Barclay’s name
is also notable in the history of English literature for his introduction of a new genere-the eclogue. He
wrote some five eclogues, but he followed not Virgil but Mantuanus. As Legouis observes, his eclogues
“have nothing of the idyll, but are moral satires.”
(5)        John Skelton (14607-1529):
He is best known for his coarse and pungent satires which put one in mind more of Langland than
Chaucer. His verses are rough, unchiselled, and unmusical. He himself wrote:
Though my rime be ragged,
Tatter’d and jagged,
Rudely rain-beaten,
Rusty and moth-eaten,
If ye taken wel therewith,
It hath in it some pith.
This “pith” is generally very lively and mordant satire which has for its target, very often, the clergy. He is
perhaps the only Chaucerian who experimented with new prosodic measures. He was a great scholar but
had, like Samuel Butler, a keen taste for grotesqueries. In Colin Clout he lashed the vices of the clergy.
In Why come ye not to Court he displayed grit enough to attack the all-powerful Wolsey. The Bouge of
Court is an allegorical satire of the kind of The Ship of Fools. It is couched in rhyme royal of Chaucer’s
invention.
SCOTTISH   CHAUCERIANS
It is a pleasure passing from the English to the Scottish poetry of the fifteenth century. In fact, the
fifteenth century is the most glorious period of old Scottish poetry. Scottish Chaucerians captured more
effectively the spirit of Chaucer’s poetry than their English counterparts and what is still more creditable,
they exhibited a keener sense of originality in their works. Their poetry is not retrogressive but
progressive. Let us consider briefly the work of the most eminent Scottish Chaucerians.
(1)        James I of Scotland (1394-1437):
He is known for his Kings Quair (“King’s Book”) which he wrote while in the captivity of the
English. It commemorates a romantic incident of his own life. It was at the age of eleven that the king was
captured by the English to remain a prisoner in England for more than eighteen years. During his captivity
he once happened to have through his window a glimpse of the stunning beauty of Joan Beaufort,
daughter of the Earl of Somerset. On his release in 1424 he was married to her. In his poem he narrates the
story of his love sincerely no doubt, but not with the dramatic realism of Chaucer. He mixes much
allegory with reality. And then there is the dream (after Chaucer’s Hous of Fame) in which he is wafted to
the palace of Venus and counselled by Minerva. James uses the pentameter stanza of seven lines with the
rhyme-scheme a b abbe c which Chaucer first employed in his Troilus andCryseyde. As James I (a king)
had also used it, it came to be known as “rhyme-royal”.
(2)        Robert Henryson (1425-1500):
He is best known for his Testament ofCresseid in which he recast the conclusion of
Chaucer’s Troilus and Ciyseyde. In Chaucer’s poem Cresseid betrays Troilus for Diomede, and Troilus
dies heartbroken. Henryson keeps Troilus alive and makes Diomede betray the inconstant Cresseid who is
struck by leprosy and goes about begging. Troilus accidentally comes across her and without recognising
her gives her alms. But Cresseid knows who he is, and after he is gone, falls to the ground, but before
dying writes her will bequeathing a ring to Troilus who later erects a “tomb of marble grey” above her
grave. Henryson’s poem is written in the same measure (rhyme-royal) as Chaucer’s and shows the same
correctness and musical quality as Chaucer’s poem. His other important work comprises some thirteen
Aesopean fables and a version of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.
(3)        William Dunbar (1465-1530):
He is a more arresting figure than even Henryson. He is sometimes called “the Chaucer of
Scotland”, and not unjustly. He is the greatest British poet between Chaucer and Spenser. His poems are
usually short. Many of them, as Legouis observes, are cast in medieval frames. He lacks the observation
of Chaucer and Henryson. “But he has to a rare degree-one never reached before him and seldom since-
virtuosity of style and versification…He dazzles the eyes and ravishes the ears.” Dunbar” s work falls into
three categories as follows. 
(i)         formal allegorv;
(ii)        comic and satirical ver.se; and
(iii)       religious poetry.
The. Golden Targe is the best work of the first category and has been already referred to. Other
such works are The Thrisseiandihe Rois celebrating the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor, sister
of Henry VII of England; and Bewty and the Prisoner. Among the poems’of the second category the most
prominent and most characteristic of Dunbar is The Drfnce of the Seven Deidly Synns. The poem is more
full of grotesquery and macabre buffoonery than religious edification. It is indeed a weird extravaganza
Thirdly, there are many hymns written by him,
(4)        Gavin Douglas (1475?-1522?):
He is well known for his two allegorical poems The Police of Honour and King Hart and his
verse translation of Virgil. The former is written in intricate nine-line stanzas and too obviously imitates
Chaucer’s Hous of Fame. The latter uses the eight-line stanza of The Monk’s Tale. The only novelty of
Douglas is his mixing of humour and pathos in his allegory. His translation of Virgil’sAeneid is in heroic
couplets, but he is little worried about correctness or music. His verses jar upon the ear very rudely. His
translation seems to be more of the nature of a parody than a translation.

The Renaissance Period (1500-1600)

The Renaissance Period in English literature is also called the Elizabethan Period or the Age of

Shakespeare. The middle Ages in Europe were followed by the Renaissance. Renaissance means the
Revival of Learning, and it denotes in its broadest sense the gradual enlightenment of the human mind
after the darkness of the Middle Ages.
With the fall of Constantinople in 1453 A.D. by the invasion of the Turks, the Greek scholars who were
residing there, spread all over Europe, and brought with them invaluable Greek manuscripts. The
discovery of these classical models resulted in the Revival of Learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. The essence of this movement was that “man discovered himself and the universe”, and that
“man, so long blinded had suddenly opened his eyes and seen”. The flood of Greek literature which the
new art of printing carried swiftly to every school in Europe revealed a new world of poetry and
philosophy. Along with the Revival of Learning, new discoveries took place in several other fields.
Vascoda Gama circumnavigated the earth; Columbus discovered America; Copernicus discovered the
Solar System and prepared the way for Galileo. Books were printed, and philosophy, science, and art were
systematised. The Middle Ages were past, and the old world had become new. Scholars flocked to the
universities, as adventurers to the new world of America, and there the old authority received a death
blow. Truth only was authority; to search for truth everywhere, as men sought for new lands and gold and
the Fountain of Youth—that was the new spirit, which awoke in Europe with the Revival of Learning.

The chief characteristic of the Renaissance was its emphasis on Humanism, which means man’s
concern with himself as an object of contemplation. This movement was started in Italy by Dante,
Petrarch and Baccaccio in the fourteenth century, and from there it spread to other countries of Europe.
In England it became popular during the Elizabethan period. This movement which focused its interest on
‘the proper study of mankind’ had a number of subordinate trends. The first in importance was the
rediscovery of classical antiquity, and particularly of ancient Greece. During the medieval period, the
tradition-bound Europe had forgotten the liberal tone of old Greek world and its spirit of democracy and
human dignity. With the revival of interest in Greek Classical Antiquity, the new spirit of Humanism
made its impact on the Western world. The first Englishman who wrote under the influence of Greek
studies was Sir Thomas More. His Utopia, written in Latin, was suggested by Plato’s Republic. Sir Philip
Sidney in his Defence of Poesie accepted and advocated the critical rules of the ancient Greeks.
The second important aspect of Humanism was the discovery of the external universe, and its
significance for man. But more important than this was that the writers directed their gaze inward, and
became deeply interested in the problems of human personality. In the medieval morality plays, the
characters are mostly personifications: Friendship, Charity, Sloth, Wickedness and the like. But now
during the Elizabethan period, under the influence of Humanism, the emphasis was laid on the qualities
which distinguish one human being from another, and give an individuality and uniqueness. Moreover, the
revealing of the writer’s own mind became full of interest. This tendency led to the rise of a new literary
form—the Essay, which was used successfully by Bacon. In drama Marlowe probed down into the deep
recesses of the human passion. His heroes, Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus and Barabas, the Jew of Malta, are
possessed of uncontrolled ambitions. Shakespeare, a more consummate artist, carried Humanism to
perfection. His genius, fed by the spirit of the Renaissance, enabled him to see life whole, and to present it
in all its aspects.
It was this new interest in human personality, the passion for life, which was responsible for the
exquisite lyrical poetry of the Elizabethan Age, dealing with the problems of death, decay, transitoriness
of life etc.
Another aspect of Humanism was the enhanced sensitiveness to formal beauty, and the cultivation of
the aesthetic sense. It showed itself in a new ideal of social conduct, that of the courtier. An Italian
diplomat and man of letters, Castiglione, wrote a treatise entitled Il Cortigiano (The Courtier) where he
sketched the pattern of gentlemanly behaviour and manners upon which the conduct of such men as Sir
Phillip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh was modelled. This cult of elegance in prose writing produced the
ornate style called Euphuism by Lyly. Though it suffered from exaggeration and pedantry, yet it
introduced order and balance in English prose, and gave it pithiness and harmony.
Another aspect of Humanism was that men came to be regarded as responsible for their own actions,
as Casius says to Brutus in Julius Caesar:
The Fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Instead of looking up to some higher authority, as was done in The Middle Ages, during the
Renaissance Period guidance was to be found from within. Lyly wrote his romance of Euphues not merely
as an exercise in a new kind of prose, but with the serious purpose of inculcating righteousness of living,
based on self-control. Sidney wrote his Arcadia in the form of fiction in order to expound an ideal of
moral excellence. Spenser wrote his Faerie Queene, with a view “to fashion a gentleman or noble person
in virtuous and gentle disposition”. Though we do not look for direct moral teaching in Shakespeare,
nevertheless, we find underlying his work the same profoundly moral attitude.
The Influence of the Renaissance on English Literature

Introduction:
It is difficult to date or define the Renaissance. Etymologically the term, which was first used
 in England only as late as the nineteenth century, means’ “re-birth”. Broadly speaking, the Renaissance
implies that re-awakening of learning which came to Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The Renaissance was not only an English but a European phenomenon; and basically considered, it
signalised a thorough substitution of the medieval habits of thought by new attitudes. The dawn of the
Renaissance came first to Italy and a little later to France. To England it came much later, roughly about
the beginning of the sixteenth century. As we have said at the outset, it is difficult to date the Renaissance;
however, it may be mentioned that in Italy the impact of Greek learning was first felt when after the
Turkish conquest of Constantinople the Greek scholars fled and took refuge in Italy carrying with them a
vast treasure of ancient Greek literature in manuscript. The study of this literature fired the soul and
imagination of the Italy of that time and created a new kind of intellectual and aesthetic culture quite
different from that of the Middle Ages. The light of the Renaissance came very slowly to the isolated
island of England, so that when it did come in all its brilliance in the sixteenth century, the Renaissance in
Italy had already become a spent force.

It is difficult to define the Renaissance, but its broad implications in England do not defy
discussion. Michelet exaggeratedly calls the Renaissance “discovery by mankind of himself and of the
world.” This is, indeed, too sweeping. More correctly we can say that the following are the implications of
the Renaissance in England :
(a)                 First, the Renaissance meant the death of mediaeval
scholasticism which had for long been keeping human thought in bondage. The schoolmen got themselves
entangled in useless controversies and tried to apply the principles of Aristotelean . philosophy to the
doctrines of Christianity, thus giving birth to a vast literature characterised by polemics, casuistry, and
sophistry which did not advance man in any way.
(b)                 Secondly, it signalised a revolt against spiritual authority-the authority of the Pope. The
Reformation, though not part of the revival of learning, was yet a companion movement in England. This
defiance of spiritual authority went hand in hand with that of intellectual authority. Renaissance
intellectuals distinguished themselves by their flagrant anti-authoritarianism.
(c)                 Thirdly, the Renaissance implied a greater perception of beauty and polish in the Greek and Latin
scholars. This beauty and this polish were sought by Renaissance men of letters to be incorporated in their
native literature. Further, it meant the birth of a kind of imitative
tendency implied in the term “classicism.”
(d)        Lastly, the Renaissance marked a change from the theocentric to the homocentric conception of the
universe. Human life, pursuits, and even body came to be glorified. “Human life”, as G. H. Mair observes,
“which the mediaeval Church had taught them [the people] to regard but as a threshold and stepping-stone
to eternity, acquired suddenly a new momentousness and value.”.The “otherworldliness” gave place to
“this-worldliness”. Human values came to be recognised as permanent values, and they were sought to be
enriched and illumined by the heritage of antiquity. This bred a new kind of paganism and marked the rise
of humanism as also, by implication, materialism.
Let us now consider the impact of the Renaissance on the various departments of English literature.
Non-creative Literature:
Naturally enough, the first impact of the Renaissance in England was registered by the
universities, being the repositories of all learning. Some English scholars, becoming aware of the revival
of learning in Italy, went to that country to benefit by it and to examine personally the manuscripts
brought there by the fleeing Greek scholars of Constantinople. Prominent among these scholars were
William Grocyn (14467-1519), Thomas Linacre (1460-1524), and John Colet (14677-1519). After
returning from Italy they organised the teaching of Greek in Oxford. They were such learned and reputed
scholars of Greek that Erasmus came all the way from Holland to learn Greek from them. Apart from
scholars, the impact of the Renaissance is also; in a measure, to be seen on the work of the educationists of
the age. Sir Thomas Elyot (14907-1546) wrote the Governour (1531) which is a treatise on moral
philosophy modelled on Italian works and full of the spirit of Roman antiquity. Other educationists were
Sir John Cheke (1514-57), Sir Thomas Wilson (1525-81), and Sir Roger Ascham (1515-68). Out of all the
educationists the last named is the most important, on account of his Scholemaster published two years
after his death. Therein he puts forward his views on the teaching of the classics. His own style is too
obviously based upon the ancient Roman writers. “By turns”, remarks Legouis, “he imitates Cicero‘s
periods and Seneca’s nervous conciseness”. In addition to these well-known educationists must be
mentioned the sizable number of now obscure ones—”those many unacknowledged, unknown guides
who, in school and University, were teaching men to admire and imitate the masterpieces of antiquity”
(Legouis).
Prose:
The most important prose writers who exhibit well the influence of the Renaissance on English
prose are Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, Lyly, and Sidney. The first named was a Dutchman who, as we have
already said, came to Oxford to learn Greek. His chief work was The Praise of Folly which is the English
translation of his most important work-written in England. It is, according to Tucker Brook, “the best
expression in literature of the attack that the Oxford reformers were making upon the medieval system.”
Erasmus wrote this work in 1510 at the house of his friend Sir Thomas More who was executed at the
bidding of Henry VIII for his refusal to give up his allegiance to the ‘ Pope. More’s famous prose
romance Utopia was, in the words of Legouis, “true prologue to the Renaissance.'” It was the first book
written by an Englishman which achieved European fame; but it was written in Latin (1516) and only later
(1555) was translated into English. Curiously enough, the next work by an English man again to acquire
European fame-Bacon’s Novum Organwn-was also written originally in Latin. The word “Utopia” is from
Greek “ou topos” meaning “no place”. More’s Utopia is an imaginary island which is the habitat of an
ideal republic. By the picture of the ideal state is implied a kind of social criticism of contemporary
England. More’s indebtedness to Plato’s Republic is quite obvious. However, More seems also to be
indebted to the then recent discoveries of the explorers and navigators-like Columbus and Vasco da Gama
who were mostly of Spanish and Portuguese nationalities. In Utopia, More discredits mediaevalism in all
its implications and exalts the ancient Greek culture. Legouis observes about this work : “The Utopians
are in revolt against the spirit of chivalry : they hate warfare and despise soldiers. Communism is the law
of the land; all are workers for only a limited number of hours. Life should be pleasant for all; asceticism
is condemned. More relies on the goodness of human nature, and intones a hymn to the glory of the senses
which reveal nature’s wonders. In Utopia all religions are authorized, and tolerance is the law.
Scholasticism is scoffed at, and Greek philosophy preferred to that of Rome. From one end to the other of
the book More reverses medieval beliefs.” More’s Utopia created a new genre in which can be classed
such works as Bacon’s The New Atlantis (1626), Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), W. H. Mallock’s The
New Republic (1877), Richard Jefferies’ After London (1885), W. H. Hudson’s The Crystal Age (1887),
William Morris” News from Nowhere, and H. G. Well’s A Modern Utopia (1905).
Passing on to the prose writers of the Elizabethan age-the age of the flowering of the
Renaissance-we find them markedly influenced both in their style and thought-content by the revival of
the antique classical learning. Sidney  in Arcadia, Lyly in Euphues, and Hooker in The Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity write an English which is away from the language of common speech, and is either
too heavily laden—as in the case of Sidney and Lyly-with bits of classical finery, or modelled on Latin
syntax, as in the case of Hooker. Cicero ?eemed to these writers a verv obvious and respectable model.
Bacon, however, in his sententiousness and cogency comes near Tacitus and turns away from the prolixity,
diffuseness, and ornamentation associated with Ciceronian prose. Further, in his own career and
his Essays, Bacon stands as a representative of the materialistic, Machiavellian facet of the Renaissance,
particularly of Renaissance Italy. He combines in himself the dispassionate pursuit of truth and the keen
desire for material advance.
Poetry:
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) and the Earl of Surrey (15177-47) were pioneers of the new poetry
in England. After Chaucer the spirit of English poetry had slumbered for upward of a century. The change
in pronunciation in the fifteenth century had created a lot of confusion in prosody which in the practice of
such important poets as Lydgate and Skelton had been reduced to a mockery. “The revival”, as Legoius
says, “was an uphill task; verse had to be drawn from the languor to which it had sunk in Stephen Hawes,
and from the disorder in which a Skelton had plunged it; all had to be done anew”. It was Wyatt and
Surrey who came forward to do it.
As Mair puts it, it is with “these two courtiers that the modern English poetry begins.” Though
they wrote much earlier, it was only in 1557, a year before Elizabeth’s coronation, that their work was
published in Tottel’s Miscellany which is, according to G. H. Mair, “one of the landmarks of English
literature.” Of the two, Wyatt had travelled extensively in Italy and France and had come under the spell of
Italian Renaissance. It must be remembered that the work of Wyatt and Surrey does not reflect the impact
of the Rome of antiquity alone,. but also that of modern Italy. So far as versification is concerned, Wyatt
and Surrey imported into England various new Italian metrical patterns. Moreover, they gave English
poetry a new sense of grace, dignity, delicacy, and harmony which was found by them lacking iil the
works of Chaucer and the Chaucerians alike. Further, they Were highly influenced by the love poetry of
Petrarch and they did their best to imitate it. Petrarch’s love poetry is of the courtly kind, in which the
pining lover is shown as a “servant” of his mistress with his heart tempest-tossed by her neglect and his
mood varying according to her absence or presence. There is much of idealism, if not downright
artificiality, in this kind of love poetry.
It goes to the credit of Wyatt to have introduced the sonnet into English literature, and of Surrey to
have first written blank verse. Both the sonnet and blank verse were later to be practised by a vast number
of the best English poets. According to David Daiches.
“Wyatt’s sonnets represent one of the most interesting movements toward metrical discipline to
be found in English literary history.” Though in his sonnets he did not employ regular iambic pentameters
yet he created a sense of discipline among the poets of his times who had forgotten the lesson and example
of Chaucer and, like Skelton, were writing “ragged” and “jagged” lines which jarred so unpleasantly upon
the ear. As Tillyard puts it, Wyatt “let the Renaissance into English verse” by importing Italian and French
patterns of sentiment as well as versification. He wrote in all thirty-two sonnets out of which seventeen are
adaptations of Petrarch. Most of them (twenty-eight) have the rhyme-scheme of Petarch’s sonnets; that is,
each has the octave a bbaabba and twenty-six out of these twenty-eight have the c d d c e e sestet. Only in
the last three he comes near what is called the Shakespearean formula, that is, three quatrains and a
couplet. In the thirtieth sonnet he exactly produced it; this sonnet rhymes a b a b, a b a b, a b a b, c
c. Surrey wrote about fifteen or sixteen sonnets out of which ten use the Shakespearean formula which
was. to enjoy the greatest popularity among the sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Surrey’s work is
characterised by .exquisite grace and tenderness which we find missing from that of Wyatt. Moreover, he
is a better craftsman and gives greater harmony to his poetry. Surrey employed blank verse in his
translation of the fourth book of The Aeneid, the work which was first translated into English verse by
Gavin Douglas a generation earlier, but in heroic couplets.
Drama:
The revival of ancient classical learning scored its first clear impact on English drama in the
middle of the sixteenth century. Previous to this impact there had been a pretty vigorous native tradition of
drama, particularly comedy. This tradition had its origin in the liturgical drama and had progressed
through the miracle and the mystery, and later the morality, to the interlude. John Heywood had written
quite a few vigorous interludes, but they were altogether different in tone, spirit, and purpose from the
Greek and Roman drama of antiquity. The first English regular tragedy Gorboduc (written by Sackville
and Norton, and first acted in 1562) and comedy Ralph Roister Doister (written about 1550 by Nicholas
Udall) were very much imitations of classical tragedy and comedy. It is interesting to note that English
dramatists came not under the spell of the ancient Greek dramatists “(Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides, the tragedy writers, and Aristophanes, the comedy writer) but the Roman dramatists (Seneca,
the tragedy writer, and Plautus and. Terence! the comedv writers). It was indeed unfortunate, as Greek
drama is vastly superior to Roman drama. Gpfboduc is a s’avish imitation of Senecan tragedy and has all
its features without much of its life. Like Senecan tragedy it has revenge as the tragic —otive, has most of
its important incidents (mostly murders) narrated on the -stage by messengers, has much of rhetoric and
verbose declamation, has a ghost among its dramatis personae, and so forth. ‘.”. is indeed a good
instance of the “blood and thunder” kind’ of tragedy. Ralph Roister Doister is modelled upon Plautus and
Terence. It is based on the stupid endeavours of the hero for winning the love of a married woman. There
is the cunning, merry slave-Matthew Merrygreek-a descendant of the Plautine slave who serves as the
motive power which keeps the play going.
Later on, the “University Wits” struck a note of independence in their dramatic work. They
refused to copy Roman drama as slavishly as the writers of Gorboduc and Roister Doister. Even so, their
plays are not free from the impact of the Renaissance; rather they show it as amply, though not in the same
way. In their imagination they were all fired by the new literature which showed them new dimensions of
human capability. They were humanists through and through. All of them—Lyly, Greene, Peele, Nashe,
Lodge, Marlowe, and Kyd-show in their dramatic work not, of course, a slavish tendency to ape the
ancients but a chemical action of Renaissance learning on the native genius fired by the enthusiasm of
discovery and aspiration so typical of the Elizabethan age. In this respect Marlowe stands in the fore-front
of the University Wits. Rightly has he been called “the true child of the Renaissance”.
The English Drama before Marlowe

The Origin and Liturgical Plays:

Briefly stated, the drama in England developed from the liturgical play to the miracle play to
morality, from the morality play to the interlude, and from that to the “regular’ drama of the Elizabethan
age. The story of this development is, however, not so simple as it may wrongly appear. There are
overlappings, aberrations, and missing links.
As in Greece and many other countries, the drama in England had a religious origin. It sprang
from church service as the ancient Greek tragedy had sprung out of the ceremonial worship of Dionysus.
As a critic well puts it, the “attitude of religion and drama towards each other has been strikingly varied.
Sometimes it has been one of intimate alliance, sometimes of active hostility, but never of indifference.”
In England the church was, in the beginning, actively hostile to drama and all along during the Dark Ages
(the 6th century to the 10th) there is missing any record of dramatic activity. Only in the ninth century
there were tropes or additional texts to ecclesiastical music. These tropes sometimes assumed a dialogue
form. They were, like church service, couched in Latin. They were later detached from the regular service
and presented by themselves on religious festivals such as”Easter and Christmas. By and by they took the
form of “liturgical plays” after becoming somewhat more complex. They were dramatisations of the major
events of Christ’s life, such as the Birth and the Resurrection, and were enacted by priests right in the
church. These plays enjoyed a vast popularity. Thus, as Sir Ifor Evans observes, “while at the beginning of
the Dark Ages the church attempted to suppress the drama, at the beginning of the Middle Ages
something very much like the drama was instituted in the church itself.”
The Miracle and Mystery Plays:
The next stage of development comes with miracle and mystery plays. The early liturgical drama
assumed the more developed form of the miracle and mystery plays sometime in the fourteenth century,
though, of course, there is evidence that the first representation of a miracle play took place in Dunstable
as early as 1119. In England the “miracle plays” and “mystery plays” are often considered svnonvmous.
but technicallv there is a difference between the two. The miracle plays dealt with the lives of saints
(non-scriptural matter), whereas the mystery plays handled incidents from the Bible (scriptural themes).
The miracle and mystery plays differ from the early liturgical drama in their slightly more developed sense
of drama and better dialogue. They were both written and enacted by ecclesiastics and had for their
obvious object the instruction of the people in scripture history. They treated of such themes from the
Bible as the Creation, the Flood, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of the Saviour. But they had an
element of entertainment too. in the form of crude grotesqueries which may appear to the modern reader
as outright profanities.
With the development of the early liturgical play into the miracle and mystery, there were
significant changes of locale and players. The place of performance shifted from the inside of the church
to the churchyard, and from the churchyard to the market-place, because vast crowds, especially at the
time of fairs, had to be accommodated. The clergy could not go to the market-place to perform and in
1210 there was a papal edict forbidding their appearance on the stage. The performance therefore fell in
the hands of laymen who were amateurs. With the change of the locale and the performers, the strictly
religious nature of the performances underwent a shift towards secularization. It was in the thirteenth
century that professional troupes took over the job of performing and, consequently, there was a marked
improvement in stage techniques and overall performance. There are four “cycles” of miracle plays extant
today. These are  York, Towneley, Chester, and Coventry cycles. Each of these cycles embraces the main
events of biblical history from the Fall of Satan to the Day of Judgement.
The Morality Plays:
The next stage in the secularization of drama comes with the morality plays which developed out
of the miracle and mystery plays. The morality play, as David Daiches observes, “has more direct links
with Elizabethan drama.” The difference between the miracle and mystery plays on the one hand and the
morality plays on the other is that whereas the former deal with, as we have pointed out above, biblical
events or the lives of saints, the latter have characters of an allegorical or symbolic nature, such as the
personifications of various vices and virtues or other abstract qualities like Science, Perseverance,
Gluttony, Sloth. Despair and Everyman (symbolising mankind). The personified vices and virtues are
generally shown as fighting among themselves for man’s soul. The moralities intended to
convey moral lessons for the better conduct of human life. The writer of the morality play enjoyed a
greater freedom than that of the miracle of mystery play, as he was not bound by a particular chain of
events presented by the Bible or popular legend which he had to adhere to. It may be pointed out that
personified abstractions had already appeared along with scriptural figures in some miracle plays. The
function of the morality play was to detach these abstractions from their religious setting and employ them
in a new kind of drama. The best known among the morality play are The Castle of
Perseverance and Everyman. In the former, allegory is almost identical with that of the second book
of The Faerie Oueene where the castle of Alma is besieged by the Passions. It also reminds one of The
Pilgrim’s Progress as regards its central significance. Everyman appeared at the end of the fiteenth
century and enjoyed vast popularity right till the end of the sixteenth. Its story is given by David Daiches
as follows:
“Everyman is summoned by Death to a long journey from which there is no return. Unprepared,
and unable to gain a respite, he looks for friends to accompany him, but neither Fellowship nor Goods nor
Kindred will go; Good Deeds is willing to act as guide and companion, but Everyman’s sins have
rendered her too weak to stand. She recommends him to her sister Knowledge, who leads Everyman to
Conffession.and after he has done penance Good Deeds grows strong enough to accompany him, together
with Strength, Discretion, Five Wits and Beauty. But as the time comes for Everyman to creep into his
grave, all the companions except Good Deeds decline to go with him. Knowledge stands by to report the
outcome while Everyman enters the grave with Good Deeds. An Angel announces the entry of
Everyman’s soul into the heavenly sphere, and a ‘Doctor’ concludes by pointing the moral.”
Of all the stock characters employed in the morality plays the most amusing were Vice and the
Devil. The former, arrayed in grotesque costume and armed with a wooden sword or dagger, was the
prototype of the Fool of Shakespearean drama, and seeriis chiefly to have been employed for belabouring
the Devil who appeared generally with horns, a lona beard, and a hairy chest.
Interludes:
The interlude signifies the important transition from symbolism to realism. It appeared towards
the end of the fifteenth century but it could not displace the morality which continued enjoying popularity,
as we have pointed out above, till the end of the sixteenth century. It dispensed with the allegorical figures
of the morality play almost completely and effected a complete break with the religious type of drama,
even though retaining some of its didactic character. It was purely secular and fairly realistic, though quite
crude and somewhat grotesque. The most notable writer of interludes was John Heywood (14977-1580?)
whose interludes are of the nature of light playlets in which, as David Daiches observes, “the emphasis is
more on amusement than instruction.” In his The Four P’s, for instance, he light-heartedly satirises
shrews and impatient women. The four P’s are a Pardoner, a Palmer, a Pothycary, and a Pedlar who
engage themselves in a kind of lying competition in which the most flagrant Her is to be awarded the
palm. The Palmer wins the prize by saying that out of half a million women that he has met so far, not one
was seen by him to be out of patience! In The Play of Weather Jupiter is presented as listening to the
complaints of the people regarding weather, and confused by conflicting opinions and demands he decides
to give the mortals all kinds of weather. Most of Heywood’s other interludes are farcical playlets which
are, however, full of wit and humour and very realistic portrayal of men and manners.
Another well-known interlude writer was John Rastell whose interlude The Four Elements is of
the nature of a Humanist morality play. Various allegorical figures are represented as teaching Humanity
science and geography, and “Sensual Appetite” is shown as obstructing the efforts of “Studious
Desire.” The Four Elements is typical of a class of plays which are quite near the morality but have been
classed as interludes. However, strictly speaking, an interlude signifies, in the words of W. H. Hudson,
“any short dramatic piece of a satiric rather than of a dkectly religious or ethical character, and in tone and
purpose far less serious than the morality proper.”
The Beginning of Regular Tragedy:
In between 1530 and 1580 the drama in England underwent a “dramatic” change. With the dawn
of the Renaissance in this period English dramatists started looking back to the ancient “Greek and Roman
dramatists. It is interesting to note that they were more influenced and impressed by the work of Roman
dramatists (who were themselves imitators of the Greek dramatists before them) than that of the Greek.
The tragedies of Aeschylus. Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes influenced them
less than the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Plautus and Terence. The tragedies of Seneca are
“closet-tragedies”, that is, they are meant to be read only, not to be acted. All of them (some ten in
number) have revenge as their leitmotif. Further, they are characterised by excessive bloodshed, long
rhetorical speeches, and the inclusion of the Ghost as an inevitable member of the dramatis
personae. Instead of the element of fear or terror as in the Greek tragedy, we have a superabundance of
horror in Senecan tragedy.
The first English tragedy based evidently,and rather unthinkingly, on the Senecan model
was Gorboduc (or, later, Ferrex andPorrex) written by Thomas Sackville (1536-1608) and Thomas
Norton (1531-84). It was acted in 1561-62 before Queen Elizabeth at White-hall. We have in it the same
excessive bloodshed, the device of narration by some characters, long rhetorical speechification, the
revenge motive, and the chorus between the acts which characterised Seneca’s tragedies. The plot of the
play reminds one of that ofKing Lear. Gorboduc is the king of England who in his lifetime divides his
kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex. One brother murders the other, and in revenge is killed
by his mother. But the people rise and murder both the king and the queen. The nobles assemble and kill
the assassins, but then a civil war ensues between the nobles themselves and the whole of the country is
ruined. One important feature of Gorboduc is its employment of blank verse which makes it the first
English play to use that measure. Further, the play is divided, after the Roman model, into five acts—a
practice which became from then onwards universal for tragedy.
Some other Senecan tragedies which followed Gorboduc were Thomas Hughes’ The Misfortunes
of Arthur (Gray’s Inn, 1588), Robert Wilmot’s Tragedie ofTancred and Gismund (Inner Temple,
1567-68), and George Gascoigne’s Jocasta (Gray’s Inn, 1566).
The Beginning of Regular Comedy:
Plautus and Terence influenced English comedy to a lesser extent than Seneca the English
tragedy, for the reason that English comedy had a well-rooted native tradition. The first regular English
comedy was Ralph Roister Doister written about 1550 by Nicholas Udall, head-master of Eton. It
combined well the native comic tradition with the Roman comedy of Plautus and Terence. It is written in
rhyming couplets and divided into acts and scenes after the Latin plays. The plot is laid in London, and
with some humorous dialogue and a tolerable variety of character, affords a representation of the manners
and ideas of the middle classes of the time. The hero of the comedy Ralph Roister is a vainglorious fellow
of the nature of Plautus’s Miles Gloriasis. He imagines a merchant’s wife to be in love with him and is
confirmed in his stupid belief by the pranks of Matthew Marrygreek. After many misadventures and
follies he comes to his senses and recognises the harsh reality. Broadly speaking, the comedy of the play
turns on the same pivot as that of The Merry! Wives of Windsor. The play has the merits of racy dialogue
and delightful unfolding of comedy, but its versification lacks the vigour of Hevwood’s metre in The Four
P ‘s.
Greatly inferior to Roister Doister is the comedy Gammer Gurton’s Needle dated about 1553, and
generally ascribed to John Still. It is a crude presentation of low country life. It does not have a
well-organised plot, which turns on a single incident-the loss of her needle by the country housewife
Gammer Gurton. In search of her needle she disturbs the peace of the entire village. Peace comes back
when she discovers her missing needle stuck in the breeches of Hodge, her farm-servant. The whole thing
is crudely farcical. There is nothing Plautine about the play except its Latin structure. What recommends
the play to us today is, in the words of Ifor Evans, “a rough, native realism.”
Conclusion:
From such works as Gorboduc, Ralph Roister Doister, and Gammer Gurton’s Needle it is evident
how far the drama has advanced from its state of the liturgical play. We find in the progress of the drama,
especially comedy, a gradual gravitation towards the realities of the life of the day. What is lacking still is
 not arresting vitality but literary power and grace. These qualities were to be supplied later by “the
University Wits”.
The University Wits

Introduction:
The second period of Elizabethan drama was dominated by the “University Wits”, a professional set
of literary men. Of this little constellations, Marlowe was the central sun, and round him revolved as
minor stars, Lyly, Greene, Peele, Lodge and Nash.

The University Wits were a group of well-educated scholars-cum-men of letters who wrote in the
closing years of the sixteenth century. All of them were actively associated with the theatre and the plays
written by them mark a pronounced stage of development over the drama which existed before them. With
their dramatic work they paved the way for the great Shakespeare who was indebted to them in numerous
ways. Given below are the names of these University Wits:

(l)         JohnLyly
(2)                 Robert Greene
(3)                 George Peele
(4)                 Thomas Lodge
(5)                 Thomas Nashe
(6)                 Thomas Kyd
 (7)       Christopher Marlowe
They were called University Wits because they had training at one or other of the two
Universities-Oxford and Cambridge. The only exception, and that a doubtful one, was Thomas Kyd.
Apart from academic training (in most cases, an M. A. degree) they had numerous characteristics in
common. They were members of learned societies and rather liberal in their views concerning God and
morality. They were all reckless Bohemians and had their lives cut short by excessive debauchery or a
violent death. Marlowe was killed in a street brawl, perhaps over bought kisses, and Greene, after a career
of unfettered self-dissipation, died friendless and penniless and in a very touchingly repentant frame of
mind. Further, in their intellectualism they were true embodiments of the impact of the Renaissance on
English culture and sensibility. Then, all of them had fairly good relations with one another and were wont
freely to lend a hand to one another in the writing or completing of dramatic works.
Their Contribution to the Drama:
Whatever may be said against their reproachable careers as human beings, it will have to be
admitted that, to quote Allardyce Nicoll,”they laid.a sure basis for the English theatre.” For understanding
appropriately the contribution of the University Wits in this respect we should first acquaint ourselves
with the state of the English drama before them. Now, when the University Wits started writing there were
two fairly distinct traditions of the dramatic art before them. One was the native tradition (especially of.
comedy) which was vigorous, no doubt’, but devoid of the artistic discipline of he classical Greek and
Roman drama. The other was the tradition set by the imitators of ancient Roman drama. Such works as
Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc (tragedy) and Ralph Roister Doister (comedy) are instances of this
tradition. These plays, though they exhibit ample awareness of the classical form and control, are devoid
of the vigour of the purely native plays. Differentiating between the popular and classical tradition,
Allardyce Nicoll observes: “The classicists had form but no fire; the popular dramatists had interest, but
little sense of form.” The function of the University Wits was to combine the form with the fire. They had
plenty of “fire” in them, all being reckless hedonists, but they had also the sense of form acquired by them
from training in classical learning. While retaining in their dramatic works the vigour of the popular
native tradition, they gave them that literary grace and power which offered Shakespeare “a viable and
fitting medium for the expression of his genius.”
One thing which needs to be amply emphasised is that though the University Wits looked to the
classical drama and incorporated its general respect of form in their own productions, they never imitated
it slavishly. They retained for themselves sufficient freedom, sometimes even that of violating its
well-recognised principles such as the strict separation of the species (comedy and tragedy, for instance),
the observance of “the three unities” (those of time, place, and action), and the reporting of the major
incidents to the audience through the dialogue of the dramatis personae or the agency of the messenger.
What they established upon the English stage was not a pale copy of the ancient Greek or roman drama,
but a kind of romantic drama which was to be later adopted by Shakespeare himself. Lyly, Greene, and
Peele contributed much towards the establishment of the romantic comedy, and Kyd and Marlowe,
 Elizabethan tragedy. Besides, Marlowe in his Edward II set an example of the historical play for
Shakespeare and others.
Further, the University Wits set about the work of reforming the language of the drama. They
made the medium of dramatic utterance extremely pliant and responsive to all the various moods
endeavoured to be conveyed through it. Lyly lenfthe language of comedy, especially the prose, a
wonderfully sophisticated touch, Peele gave it a rare sweetness, and Greene, considerable geniality and
openness. As regards the language of tragedy, Kyd did not do much except .introducing exaggerative
bombast (which is not always without vigour), but Marlowe breathed into it that consuming intensity
coupled with virtuosic brilliance which thrilled his contemporaries and thrills us even today. Blank verse
became Mariowe’s “mighty line.”
Now let us consider the individual contribution of the various University Wits to the development
of English drama.
(1) John Lyly (1554-1606):

The author of Euphues, wrote a number of plays, the best known of them
are Compaspe (1581), Sapho and Phao (1584), Endymion (1591), and Midas (1592), These plays are
mythological and pastoral and are nearer to the Masque (court spectacles intended to satisfy the love of
glitter and novelty) rather than to the narrative drama of Marlowe. They are written in prose intermingled
with verse. Though the verse is simple and charming prose is marred by exaggeration, a characteristic
of Euphuism.
Lyly is better known for his prose romance Euphues than his dramatic productions. It must be
remembered that he himself was a courtier and wrote for the discerning courtiers. He had no intention to
charm the eyes and ears of the masses or to win their acclamation. His plays are rather of the nature of
masques which were very popular with the queen and the court. He gave comedy a touch of sophistication
and an intellectual tone lacking in the native comedy which was predominantly of the nature of
rough-and-tumble farce. Lyly wrote eight plays in all out of which Compaspe,
Endunion, and Gallathea are the best and the best known. And though all the eight are, broadly speaking,
comedies, yet they can be roughly divided, afterNicoll, into three groups as follows:
(i)         those which are allegorical and mythical in tone;
(ii)        those which display realistic features ; and
(iii)       those which mark the introduction of more or less historical features.
Lyly’s plays are the production of scholarship united to an elegant fancy and a somewhat fantastic
wit, but not of a writer capable of moving the passions or of depicting character by subtle and felicitous
touches. Broadly speaking, Lyly’s achievement is to have synthesised many mutually antagonistic
elements which had till then lain unreconciled. His was a Renaissance mind working synthetically on the
native material before him. For instance we have frequently in his plays a courtly main plot (in which such
characters as kings, queens, princes, princesses, knigh ts, fairies, pagan and Greek and Roman deities
figure) supported by a sub-plot setting forth the blunders of villagers. Lyly strangely amalgamates humour
and romantic imagination and in this way paves the way for Shakespeare who does likewise in many of
his comedies.
In his plays Lyly used a mixture of verse and prose. This mixing of the two is suggestive of his
mixing of the world of reality and the world of romance. “The same fusion”, observes Nicoll. “is to be
discovered in As You Like It”. Lyly found a suitable blank verse for comedy as Marlowe did for tragedy.
Whereas Marlowe’s blank verse is characterized by consuming intensity and mouth-filling bombast,
Lyly’s is by its lightness of touch suitable for comedy. The prose that Lyly used in his comedies is
sometimes mannered after the style of his Euphues; it is full of puns, far-fetched conceits, and verbal
pyrotechnics which Shakespeare incorporated in his early comedies uch as Love’s Labour Lost and A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Robert Greene (1558-92):

He lived a most dissolute life, and died in distress and debt. His plays comprise Orlando Furioso,
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Alphonsus King of Aragon and George a Greene. His most effective play
is Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which deals partly with the tricks of the Friar, and partly with a simple
love story between two men with one maid. Its variety of interest and comic, relief and to the
entertainment of the audience. But the chief merit of the play lies in the lively method of presenting the
story. Greene also achieves distinction by the vigorous humanity of his characterisation.

Greene wrote some five plays in all. They are : (i)         The Comical History ofAlphonsus King
ofAragon
(ii)        A Looking Glass for London and England (written jointly with Lodge)
(iii)       The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
(iv)       The History of Orlando Furioso
(v)        The Scottish History of James, the Fourth.
Out of them the most important and interesting is Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. With this play and
James IV, Greene contributed substantially towards the establishment of the romantic comedy. He effects
two kinds of fusion:
(a)                 The fusion of various plots and sub-plots; and
(b)                 the fusion of various moods and worlds in one and the ame play.
In Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, for instance, there are, in the words of Nicoll, “three distinct
worlds mingled together-the world of magic, the world of aristocratic life, and the world of the country.
These, by his art, Greene has woven together into a single harmony, showing the way to Shakespeare
when the latter came to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” As regards characterisation, Nicoll gives
Greene the credit of being “the first to draw the Rosalinds and Celias of Elizabethan times.” Dorothea, the
heroine of his comedy James IV which has romantic love for its theme, is the best known of all the female
characters in Elizabethan drama excluding Shakespeare’s works. Further, as regards Greene’s handling of
blank verse which he used as the medium of his comedies, it may be observed that he gave it more
flexibility than the imitators of the classical models allowed it.
(2) George Peele (1558-97):
Formed, along with Marlowe, Greene and Nash, one of that band of dissolute young men
endeavouring to earn a livelihood by literary work. He was an actor as well as writer of
plays. He wrote some half dozen plays, which are richer in beauty than any of his group
except Marlowe. His earnest work is The Arraignment of Paris, (1584); his most famous
is David and Bathsheba (1599). The Arraignment of Paris, which contains an elaborate
eulogy of Queen Elizabeth, is really a court play of the Masque order. David and
Bathsheba contains many beautiful lines. Like Marlowe, Peele was responsible for giving
the blank verse musical quality, which later attained perfection in the deft hands of
Shakespeare.

The five plays of Peele extant today are:

(i)          The Arraignment of Paris (a pastoral play)
(ii)         The Battle of Alcazar (a romantic tragedy)
(iii)        The Famous Chronicle of King Edward, the First (a chronicle history)
(iv)        The Love of King David and Fair Bathsheba (a kind of mvsterv piav. for it has a biblical theme) ‘
(v)         The Old Wives’ Tale (a romantic satire on the current dramatic taste)
The list shows Peele’s versatility as a dramatist. However, his plays are not marked by any
technical brilliance. What is of interest to us is his excellence as a poet. “Certainly”, observes
Compton-Rickett, “he shares with Marlowe the honour of informing blank verse with musical ability that,
in the later hand of Shakespeare, was to be one of its most important characteristics.” But it is Peele’s fault
that “he allows poetry to enter into scenes from which it ought to be excluded” (Nicoll). For instance,
when Absalom in David and Bathsheba finds his own hair about to hang him to death, he bursts into a
poetic utterance:
What angry angel sitting in these shades,
Hath laid his cruel hands upon my hair   .
And holds my body thus twixt heaven and earth?
(4)                 Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) and
(5)                 Thomas Nashe (1567-1601):
Their dramatic work is inconsiderable. Lodge who was, according to Gosson, “little better than a
vagrant, looser than liberty, lighter than vanity itself,” was, in Nicoll’s words, “the least of the University
Wits “,for he “gave practically nothing to the theatre.” He has left only one play, The Wounds of Civil
War. Both Nashe and he are much more important for their fiction than dramatic art.
(6)        Thomas Kyd (1557-97):
Achieved great popularity with his first work, The Spanish Tragedy, which was translated in many
European languages. He introduced the ‘blood and thunder’ element in drama, which proved one of the
attractive features of the pre-Shakespearean drama. Though he is always violent and extravagant, yet he
was responsible for breaking away from the lifeless monotony of Gorboduc.
 His only play The Spanish Tragedy is modelled on Seneca’s revenge tragedies which before Kyd
had been imitated by some scholars like Sackville and Norton, the writers ofGorboduc. But
whereas Gorboduc was rather slavishly and strictly based on Seneca, Kyd is much more flexible in his
attempt. Of course there are murders and bloodshed, suicides and horrifying incidents (like the biting off
of a man’s tongue by himself and the running amuck of a respectable lady), the ghost and many other
Senecan features, yet The Spanish Tragedy breaks away from the Senecan tradition on various points. For
example, there is much of action on the stage itself (and not reported, as in Seneca). Moreover, though,
after Seneca, it has for its leitmotifrevenge (Heironimo’s revenge for the murder of his son) yet there is
strong external action. The Elizabethan audiences had a craving for watching sensational, even horrifying
action. Kyd was obliging enough. Nicoll aptly describes The Spanish Tragedy as “a Senecan play adapted
to popular requirements.”
Kyd’s contribution to English tragedy is twofold. First, he gave a new kind of tragic hero who was
neither a royal personage nor a superman but an ordinary person. Secondly, he introduced the element of
introspection in the hero. Along with the external conflict in the play, we are conscious of a kind of
introspective self-analysis within Heironimo himself. In this; respect Kyd was paving the way for
Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Kyd’s blank verse was ridiculed for its pomposity and exaggeration even by his
contemporaries-who had an ear for high-sounding words. Like Seneca’s tragic style, Kyd’s also has the
element of rhetoric in it. Kyd’s extravagance is sometimes annoying but we must remember
Compton-Rickett’s words that “even extravagance is better than lifelessness.”
(7)        Christopher Marlowe (1564-93):
He is, in Nicoll’s words, “the most talented of pre-Shakespeareans.” His plays are:
(i)         Tamburlaine, the Great;
(ii)        Doctor Faustus;
(iii)       he Jew of Malta;
(iv)       Edward, the Second; and
(v)        Parts of The Massacre at Paris and Dido Queen oj Carthage.
Marlowe’s contribution to English tragedy is very vital and manifold. He himself seems to be
aware of having scored an advance over the previous drama. In the prologue to his first play he sets his
manifesto in these lines :
From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We will lead you to the stately tent of war.
Marlowe promises that his play is going to be different from the conventional plays in both its
language and subject. And he, indeed, keeps his promise.
First of all, Marlowe exalted and varied the subject-matter of tragedy. For the Senecan motive of
revenge he substituted the more interesting theme of ambition—ambition for power as
in Tamburlaine, ambition for infinite knowledge as in Doctor Faustus, and ambition for gold as in The
Jew of Malta.
Secondly, he put forward a new kind of the tragic hero. The medieval concept of tragedy was the
fall of a great man. See, for instance, the words of the Monk in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Tragedie is to seyn a certyne storie,
As old bokes maken us memorie,
Of hym who stood in great prosperitie
And is y-fallen out of high degree
Into miserie and endeth wretchedly.
Marlowe revived the Aristotelean conception of the tragic hero in so far as he introduced a certain
flaw or flaws in his character. His heroes are air supermen whose major flaw is always an over-weening
ambition. Their love is the love of the impossible; but with a singular intensity and concentration of
purpose, they make headway towards their destination though they perish by forces beyond their control.
Thus, there is a dramatic conflict between their ambition and the antagonistic forces of life which stand in
its way. But along with this outer conflict, there is, at least in Doctor Faustus, a struggle in the mind of the
chief character also. This was something new for English tragedy.
Next, he gave a greater unity to the drama. This he did in Edward II. The rest of his plays are
weak in structure, being loose strings of scenes and episodes. But as he matured he acquired a greater
technical and constructive skill.
One of Marlowe’s chief merits is his reformation of the chronicle plays of his time. They were
formless and poor in characterisation. Marlawe humanised the puppets of these plays and introduced
motives in them. Also he gave shape and internal development to his plots. He handled the crude
historical material judiciously and artistically, selecting some, rejecting some, and modifying some, so as
to suit his dramatic purpose. Out of the formlessness of old chronicle Marlowe produced a play which is a
genuine tragedy and the model for Shakespeare’s RichardII.
Last but not the least is Marlowe’s establishment of blank verse as an effective and pliant medium
of tragic utterance. His blank verse is immensely superior to the blank verse of Gorboduc, the first tragedy
which employed this measure. He found it wooden, mechanical, and lifeless and breathed into it a
scarifying intensity ‘of passion which electrified it into something living^and throbbing with energy. He
substituted the end-stopped lines of Gorboduc with run-on lines forming verse paragraphs. True, some
element of bombast is perceptible in Marlowe’s earlier works, but in Edward II his style becomes quite
subdued and answers more readily to the whole gamut of varying moods sought to be conveyed through
it. He made blank verse a great dramatic medium acknowledged by all his successors as the metre
indispensable for any serious drama. With Marlowe, indeed, begins a new era in the history of-English
drama.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
The dramatic work of Lodge and Nash is not of much importance. Of all the members of the group
Marlowe is the greatest. In 1587 his first play Tamburlaine was produced and it took the public by storm
on account of its impetuous force, its splendid command of blank verse, and its sensitiveness to beauty, In
this play Marlowe dramatised the exploits of the Scythian shepherd who rose to be “the terror of the
world”, and “the scourge of God”. Tamburlain was succeeded by The Tragical History of Doctor
Faustus, in which Marlowe gave an old medieval legend a romantic setting. The story of the scholar who
sells his soul to the Devil for worldly enjoyment and unlimited power, is presented in a most fascinating
manner. Marlowe’s Faustus is the genuine incarnation of the Renaissance spirit. The Jew of Malta, the
third tragedy of Marlowe, is not so fine as Doctor Faustus, though it has a glorious opening. His last
play, Edward II, is his best from the technical point of view. Though it lacks the force and rhythmic
beauty of the earlier plays, it is superior to them on account of its rare skill of construction and admirable
characterisation.
Marlowe’s contributions to the Elizabethan drama were great. He raised the subject-matter of drama
to a higher level. He introduced heroes who were men of great strength and vitality, possessing the
Renaissance characteristic of insatiable spirit of adventure. He gave life and reality to the characters, and
introduced passion on the stage. He made the blank verse supple and flexible to suit the drama, and thus
made the work of Shakespeare in this respect easy. He gave coherence and unity to the drama, which it
was formerly lacking. He also gave beauty and dignity and poetic glow to the drama. In fact, he did the
pioneering work on which Shakespeare built the grand edifice. Thus he has been rightly called “the Father
of English Dramatic Poetry.”

(a)  Elizabethan Drama

During the Renaissance Period or the Elizabethan Period, as it is popularly called, the most
memorable achievement in literature was in the field of drama. One of the results of the humanist teaching
in the schools and universities had been a great development of the study of Latin drama and the growth of
the practice of acting Latin plays by Terence, Plautus and Seneca, and also of contemporary works both in
Latin and in English. These performances were the work of amateur actors, school boys or students of the
Universities and the Inns of Court, and were often given in honour of the visits of royal persons or
ambassadors. Their significance lies in the fact that they brought the educated classes into touch with a
much more highly developed kind of drama, than the older English play. About the middle of the
sixteenth century some academic writers made attempts to write original plays in English on the Latin
model. The three important plays of this type are Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister, John Still’s
Grummar Gurton’s Needle, and Thomas Sackville’s Gorbuduc or Ferrex and Porrex—the first two are
comedies and last one a tragedy. All these plays are monotonous and do not possess much literary merit.
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
The greatest of all Elizabethan dramatists was Shakespeare in whose hands the Romantic drama
reached its climax. As we do not know much about his life, and it is certain that he did not have proper
training and education as other dramatists of the period had, his stupendous achievements are an enigma
to all scholars up to the present day. It is still a mystery how a country boy, poor and uneducated, who
came to London in search of odd jobs to scrape a living, could reach such heights in dramatic literature.
Endowed with a marvellous imaginative and creative mind, he could put new life into old familiar stories
and make them glow with deepest thoughts and tenderest feelings.
There is no doubt that Shakespeare was a highly gifted person, but without proper training he could
not have scaled such heights. In spite of the meagre material we have got about his life, we can surmise
that he must have undergone proper training first as an actor, second as a reviser of old plays, and the last
as an independent dramatist. He worked with other dramatists and learned the secrets of their trade. He
must have studied deeply and observed minutely the people he came in contact with. His dramatic output
must, therefore, have been the result of his natural genius as well as of hard work and industry.
 Besides none—dramatic poetry consisting of two narrative poems, Venice and Adonis and The Rape
of Lucrece, and 154 sonnets, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays. His work as a dramatist extended over some 24
years, beginning about 1588 and ending about 1612. This work is generally divided into four periods.
(i)         1577-93
This was the period of early experimental work. To this period belong the revision of old plays as the
three parts of Henry VI and Titus Andronicus; his first comedies—Love’s Labour Lost, The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; his first chronicle
play—Richard III; a youthful tragedy—Romeo and Juliet.
(ii)        1594-1600
To the second period belong Shakespeare’s great comedies and chronicle plays – Richard II, King
John, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Part I and II, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry
Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. These plays reveal
Shakespeare’s great development as a thinker and technician. They show the maturity of his mind and art.
(iii)       1601-1608 
To the third period belong Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies and sombre or bitter comedies. This is his
peak period characterised by the highest development of his thought and expression. He is more
concerned with the darker side of human experience and its destructive passions. Even in comedies, the
tone is grave and there is a greater emphasis on evil. The plays of this period are—Julius Caesar, Hamlet,
All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure; Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth,
Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens.
(iv)       1608-1612 
To the fourth period belong the later comedies or dramatic romances. Here the clouds seem to have
been lifted and Shakespeare is in a changed mood. Though the tragic passions still play their part as in the
third period, the evil is now controlled and conquered by good. The tone of the plays is gracious and
tender, and there is a decline in the power of expression and thought. The plays written during this period
are—Cymbeline, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, which were completely written in collaboration with
some other dramatist.
The plays of Shakespeare are so full of contradictory thoughts expressed so convincingly in different
contexts, that it is not possible to formulate a system of philosophy out of them. Each of his
characters—from the king to the clown, from the most highly intellectual to the simpleton—judges life
from his own angle, and utters something which is so profound and appropriate, that one is astonished at
the playwrigt’s versatility of genius. His style and versification are of the highest order. He was not only
the greatest dramatist of the age, but also the first poet of the day, and one of the greatest of all times. His
plays are full of a large number of exquisite songs, and his sonnets glowing with passion and sensitiveness
to beauty reach the high water mark of poetic excellence in English literature. In his plays there is a fine
commingling of dramatic and lyric elements. Words and images seem to flow from his brain
spontaneously and they are clothed in a style which can be called perfect.
Though Shakespeare belonged to the Elizabethan Age, on account of his universality he belongs to
all times. Even after the lapse of three centuries his importance, instead of decreasing, has considerably
increased. Every time we read him, we become more conscious of his greatness, like the charm of
Cleopatra,
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.
the appeal of Shakespeare is perennial. His plays and poetry are like a great river of life and beauty.
Shakespeare’s Greatness

Introduction:
…………………… Soul of the age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!
…………………………………………………………
Triumph, my Britain! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe,
He was not of an age, but for all time.
This was the glowing tribute which Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s worthy rival and sometimes harsh
critic, paid to him. Since Ben Jonson’s age an unbroken line of critics ranging over four centuries has done
the same. It will be tedious to recount the glowing . panegyrics which have gone to the bard of Stratford.
If one were to believe all of them, one would be led to understand that Shakespeare was not a man but a
phenomenon unamenable to any critical test whatever. Thus Pope, for instance, asserted that Shakespeare
was not an imitator but an instrument of Nature. He did not speak for Nature, rather it was Nature who
spoke through him.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy ‘d to wear the dressing of his lines.
That is subscribing to the claim made in the inscription under Shakespeare’s bust in Stratford church
which reads : “Shakespeare, with whom quick Nature died.” Otherwise quite sane a critic as Matthew
Arnold sentimentally and quite simply wrote:
Others abide our question, Thou art free,
We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge………..
……………………………………………………
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-schooled, self-scann’d. self-honour’d, self-secure.
Did tread on earth unguess ‘d at…
In the Victorian age the vogue of the “family Shakespeare” helped in nurturing a sentimental
approach to Shakespeare. Fortunately, the critics of today have come to dissociate themselves from such
lachrymosic panegyrisation, and much of the cloud of incense which collects around a deity has been laid,
enabling us to approach the real Shakespeare clearly and correctly. Shakespeare did out-top his
contemporaries, but he did not “out-top knowledge”.-as Matthew Arnold would have it. This is in no way
degrading Shakespeare who is ever fresh, and will surely last as long as books last. Dr. Johnson’s words
are very true: “The stream of time, which is continually washing dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes
without injury by’ the adamant of Shakespeare.” Shakespeare, in his perpetual charm, does answer well
the words of Enobarbus about Cleopatra:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
Shakespeare’s Comprehensiveness:
What primarily distinguishes Shakespeare from the host of his contemporaries is that, unlike
them, he does not have only a narrow, limited range within which his genius operates. What Shakespeare
deals with is the entire length and breadth of human life and character in all its complexity and variety.
Which element of human experience and which segment of human sensibility has Shakespeare left
untouched? “He”, as a critic avers, “sweeps with the hand of a master the varied experiences of human
life, from the lowest note to the very top of its compass, from the sportive childish treble of Mimilius and
the pleading boyish tones of Prince Arthur up to the sceptre-haunted terrors of Macbeth, the tropical
passion of Othello, the agonised sense and tortured spirit of Hamlet, the sustaining and sustained titanic
force and tragical pathos of King Lear.” With a rare critical acumen Dryden pointed out that Shakespeare
“was the man, who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive
soul.” Shakespeare’s comprehensiveness has another manifestation too-his possession of varied dramatic
gifts which we do not find concentrated in any of his contemporary dramatists many of whom are indeed
masters of one or other of them, and perhaps better masters than Shakespeare. What is there in
Shakespeare to match the architectonic skill displayed by Ben Jonson in The Alchemist, the
heart-wringing, terrifying pathos of the last scene of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the starkly touching
quality of death-scene of the King in Marlowe’s Edward II or thai of The Duchess in Webster’s The
Duchess of Malfi, the skilful virtuosity of Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedy The Knight of the Burning
Pestle or the ecstatic utterance of Dr. Faustus on his vision of Helen? Even then we have to admit that
Shakespeare is superior to any of his contemporaries in that he combines all the gifts. Therein lies
“comprehensiveness” and, consequently, the secret of his continued appeal.
Shakespeare’s Plot-construction:
Shakespeare’s plot-construction is more often mentioned to be condemned than commended. As
regards the “three unities,” he was a serious offender. Even the most important of the unities-the unity of
action-was very often altogether disregarded by him, much to the chagrin of Ben Jonson. However, in his
violation of the unities Shakespeare was one with his most contemporaries. Shakespeare seems to have
bothered more about the artistic unity of effect than any mechanical observance of any one of the three
unities, or even that of all of them put together. Speaking strictly from the architectonic point of view
alone, Shakespeare’s plays suffer in compare ison with those of Ben Jonson who made much fuss about
classical rules. We are told in the Prologue to his Volpone (about Ben Jonson himself)
The rules of time, place, persons he observeth:
From no needful rule he swerveth.
Correspondingly, in the-Prologue to Everyman in His Humour, Ben Jonson’s first comedy, there
is a caustic attack on those (like’ Shakespeare) who violate the basic rules of dramatic construction. We
have to admit that Shakespeare has a rather poor skill of architectonics (though it is less disappointing
than that of Marlowe and some others), but his mastery of individual scenes is beyond question. We have
a much larger number of memorable scenes in the plays of Shakespeare than in those of any other
dramatist. Some of the scenes of this nature are the storm scene in King Lear, the sleep walking scene
in Macbeth, the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice, the scene in Othello showing the last encounter
between Othello and Desdemona, the deposition scene in Richard II, the Falstaff scenes in Henry IV, Part
I. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s exploitation of the technique of suspense is also remarkable.
Shakespeare’s Characterisation:
According to Compton-Rickett, one of the two qualities which establish Shakespeare’s superiority
over his contemporaries is his “insight into human nature.” Now, without this quality the work of a
dramatist can neither be interesting nor great. And this is the quality in which Shakespeare is far richer
than his contemporaries. It gives his characters an abundance of psychological realism making them very
convincing. We know his characters better than we do our aunts and uncles. They are all intensely human,
not the wooden personified “humours” of Ben Jonson’s comedies or the superhuman heroes of Marlowe’s
tragedies. Shakespeare was, to use the words of Shelley in the description of Coleridge, “a subtle-souled
psychologist”. “Shakespeare”, writes a critic, “was above all a master of human psychology although the
word itself was not known in his day….It is his universal humanity, his all-embracing understanding of
every human emotion and instinct, which has made Shakespeare what he is-the greatest philosopher of the
human heart ever known.He is famous all time because the scholar, equally with the man in the street,
realizes at a glance his true valuation and faithful portrayal of the deep springs of human action to be
found in the subtle workings of the mind. His power of piercing to the hidden centres of character, of
touching the issues of life and of evolving these issues dramatically with flawless strength subtlety and
truth, is superb.” Goethe compares Shakespeare’s characters to watches with transparent dials-you can see
the time, that is what is on the surface, but you can also see the working of their mind too. What
Compton-Rickett calls Shakespeare’s “profound and searching knowledge of human nature” comes to the
fore when you study any of his characters. Macbeth’s ambition, Falstaff s light-hearted villainy, Lear’s
simplicity, Desdemona’s naive devotion, Shylocks greed and revengefulness, Portia’s intellectuality,
Imogen’s fidelity, and lago’s malignity have all a ring of superb veracity. But these characters are by no
means simple or endowed with single-track minds. They are complex-as complex as living individuals
whose conduct cannot always be so easily explained. According to Legouis, one of the “most important”
characteristics which distinguish Shakespeare “from his English rivals” is “the complexity of his
characters, which as a rule are not represented only within the short span of a crisis. Shakespeare took
advantage of the wide allowance of space under his dramatic system, the twenty or so scenes into which
each of his plays is, on the average, divided, and showed his heroes at various moments of their lives, in
changing situations and in colloquy with different persons. They are not obliged to sustain one attitude,
but have time to move and alter. No simple principle accounts for them. They have life and life’s
indefiniteness, and therefore they are not always fully intelligible but are mysteries.” Shakespeare exhibits
stage by stage the organic development of his characters from the beginning to the end. The senile Lear of
the end of King Lear is much different from the tempestuous Lear of the first scene. He has undergone a
transformation amounting to redemption. What a change! But it is entirely convincing. Shakespeare’s
characters are, to adopt the distinction drawn by E. M. Forster, “round” rather than “flaf’-they are “capable
of surprising us in a convincing way”. On the other hand, Ben Jonson’s humours and Marlowe’s
characters such as Tamburlaine, Barabas, and Mortimer do not change much if they do change at all. A
word about Shakespeare’s mastery of the female psychology in which we find his contemporaries so
deficient. As Compton-Rickett observes, “Portia, Rosalind, Beatrice, Cleopatra, Juliet are startlingly
modern. Placed beside the women of Sheridan or Goldsmith, and you realise how the latter are dated and
how alive and fresh are the former. Beside them even the women of Dickens and Thackeray seem
old-fashioned. And the reason is that Shakespeare’s women have the primal qualities of womanhood
common to every age, and therefore can never be dated. And there is subtlety no less than actuality.”
Shakespeare’s Philosophy and Humanity:
Let us now come to a point on which Shakespeare has provoked a lot of criticism-his alleged
philosophy of life or the message intended to be delivered by him. What is his philosophy of life? This
question as Compton-Rickett humorously suggests, could be tackled after the manner of the person who
on the subject of “Snakes in Iceland” only wrote : “There are no snakes in Iceland.” We could say likewise
: “There is no philosophy of life in Shakespeare.” And we would be right too. Many have strained their
intellect to extract an intelligible code out of the chaos of dramatic utterances in the dramas of
Shakespeare. As Compton-Rickett rightly says, “Shakespeare was an artist and concerned primarily not
with postulating theories of life, but with the stuff of life itself. You have a dozen different points of view,
but no definite conclusion. “What are these attitudes? We have to quote Compton-Rickett again, “the
fatalism of Kent, the meliorism of Edmund, the despairing cry of Macbeth where life is, ‘atale told by an
idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing’; the serene melancholy of Prospero to whom ‘we are such
stuff as dreams are made of, cynical Jaques and idealistic Brutus; each has his value as a human document,
each perhaps falls in with some mood of its creator, but none are to be taken as other than the expression
of one content to live life to the full, in place of weaving theories about life.” The rich complexity of
views and points of view which we often find crisscrossing each other in Shakespeare’s plays will
frustrate the working of any codifying intelligence. Nor can we think of Shakespeare as a moral preacher.
He egregiously lacks the didactic and satiric fervour of Ben Jonson. He has a prodigious fund of human
sympathy and tolerance which sometimes makes his attitude look almost amoral. F. W. Robertson
maintains : “I believe this to be one of Shakespeare’s most wondrous qualities-the humanity of his nature
and heart. There is a spirit of sunny endeavour about him and acquiesence in the things as they are…”
Shakespeare’s Poetic Power:
Compton-Rickett considers Shakespeare’s “incomparable poetry” as one of the two characteristics
 which have rendered his work of universal interest. Shakespeare was a richer and more imaginative poet
than any of his contemporaries. “He is”, says Compton-Rickett, “the supreme poet in an age of great
poetry, because his poetry is wider in range and deeper in feeling than that of his contemporaries. He
touches every mood of graceful sentiment, as in the romantic comedies; of delicate fantasy, as in the fairy
plays; of philosophic meditation, as in the tragedies of the mid-period; and of poignant passion, as in the
later tragedies. In the verse that bodies forth such primal things as love, hate, hope, despair, courage,
endurance, Shakespeare towers above his fellows. When we think of Lear in his desolation, of Othello in
his last anguish, Macbeth in his soul’s agony, and the despair of Cleopatra-we think of English literature
at its grandest. “Hazlitt talks about Shakespeare’s “magic power over words.” They indeed come at his
bidding and occupy the right places. Shakespeare has an almost instinctive knowledge of all the nuances
of meaning and the art of their most effective arrangement. His interchanging of verse and prose for
dramatic utterance too bespeaks his wonderful artistry and a kind of fidelity to nature. Romeo, a romantic
lover, talks invariably in verse; Falstaff, an anti-romantic fellow, always talks in prose. The same character
may talk sometimes in Verse and sometimes in prose, depending upon the mood. Othello, when moved by
bestial thoughts, talks in prose even though normally he does in verse. Rosalind talks in prose when she is
talking light-heartedly in a holiday humour.
Conclusion:
Shakespeare’s plays are of universal significance and highly superior to those of his
contemporaries on account of his wonderful poetry.-his sympathetic humanity and broad-mindedness, his
superb mastery of his medium, and his masterful insight into human nature which ever remains the same.
Human beings come and go but human nature remains the same. “A poet”, said Ralph Waldo Emerson,
“speaks from a heart in unison with his time and country.” Shakespeare’s heart beats in unison with all
times and all countries. Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare “was not of an age but for all time.” We could
also say, as Legouis suggests, that he was not of a land but of all lands. Let us conclude by referring to an
actual incident. A Japanese student, on being asked if he could understand and sympathise with the
characters in As You Like It, replied, “Why not? They are all Japanese!”
Posted onDecember 27, 2010CategoriesLiterary and Critical EssaysLeave a commenton Shakespeare’s
Greatness
Shakespearean Comedy

Introduction:
It is customary to apply the two inadequate terms “classical” and “romantic” to comedy as. to
many other literary genres. Shakespeare’s comedies, at least most of them, are broadly speaking of the
romantic kind, as opposed to the traditional classical kind more or less exemplified by the comic plays of
Shakespeare’s worthy contemporary and rival, Ben Jonson. The salient characteristics of classical comedy
are its
(i)         realism:
(ii)        satiric and didactic purpose; and
(iii)       its adherence to the classical rules (such as those of decorum, the separation of the species, and even the
“three unities”) as expounded and practised by the writers and critics of antiquity.
Contrariwise romantic comedy does not bother to be realistic at least mechanically realistic-nor
has it a very articulate didactic aim, nor even does it bother much about fettering the fertility of the
imagination by subjecting it to rules. Romantic comedy generally has love for its theme, for what can be
more romantic than love?
Now most of Shakespeare’s comedies are of the romantic type. There are a few, like The Comedy
of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, which are not as romantic or as
purely romantic as the best of his comedies-As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much
Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream-a\\ of which are the most characteristic of his
comic genius. Let us now consider the most important features of Shakespearean comedy.
The Romantic World:
Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are all conceived in an imaginative setting far away from the
dull and dreary world of everyday life. Their characters are also different from us as they are denizens of
not our humdrum world but the imaginary, colourful world of their own. Allardyce Nicoll well observes in
his British Drama: “Characters and scenes alike are viewed through magic casements which transform
reality.” Some of the settings of Shakespeare’s comedy are Thebes, Arden, Illyria. Ephesus, and Venice.
All these places are bathed in the light of fancy and romantic splendour which makes them recede still
further from the dreary world of ours. Venice for instance is not the real, historical Venice but an ancient
town of enchanting beauty in which loans could be obtained by offering the flesh of one’s heart as
security. What is true of settings is also true of the characters inhabiting them-they too are “romantic” and
remote from the ordinary people of flesh and blood. They are somewhat unearthly. They go about making
love, dancing, feasting, engaging themselves in battles of wit with one another, singing, and making
merry. Life for them is very often one long spring. They seem to be eating their bread not in the sweat of
 their face but by some more pleasant, but unknown, method. The “fever and the fret” of life which is
abundantly obvious iaShakespeare’s tragedies is conspicuous by its absence in his comedies. Let us quote
Thorndike here: “There are only three industries in this land [that of Shakespearean comedy], making
love, making songs, and making jests. And they make them all to perfectionIt is well to interrupt the
love-making with a little joking and the joking with a little music and perchance some cakes and ale, and
then back to love again.”‘ Another critic quips that “hardly anybody goes to business in these
Shakespearean latitudes.
Not Altogether Unrealistic:
However romantic and fanciful may Shakespeare’s comic world and its denizens be, it will be
rash to conclude that they are altogether unrealistic, having nothing to do with the world of reality and the
people living therein. Shakespearean comedy is not altogether escapist in nature. It is, in its own oblique
manner, what Arnold expected all good literature to be, “a criticism of life.” there are some very concrete
links which join this world with the actual world. These links come into being when Shakespeare has a
recourse to the following methods:
(i)         Shakespeare imports some features of the real world into the world of his comedy. Take, for instance,
the Forest of Arden which provides the setting for As You Like It. The Forest, indeed, is quite romantic
and fanciful. But still it has certain features which render it an understandable part of our own concrete
world. It is, as Charlton points out, “no conventional Arcadia”. Its inhabitants are not exempt from the
penalty of Adam-winter, rough weather, the seasons’ differences. The icy fang and churlish chiding of the
winter’s wind invade Arden as often as they invade this hemisphere of ours. Nor does manna fall to it
from heaven. One may come by sufficient sustenance of flesh, if one has the weapons and the impulse to
make a breach in the conventionality of idyllic Nature by killing its own creatures, the deer, to whom the
forest is the assigned and native dwelling place.” This is a clear instance of special pleading. A few
similarities with the world of reality cannot adequately disprove the essentially unrealistic and romantic
nature of the Forest of Arden. Nevertheless, we can agree justly with this critic when he says that though
the ultimate world of Shakespeare’s comedy is romantic, poetic, and imaginative, it is by no means
“unsubstantial and fantastic.”
(ii)        Secondly, even when many of the characters in his comedies are romantic and remote from the world of
reality. Shakespeare has the knack of adding to their world some very realistic and earthly characters who
do not share their ways of life, attitudes, sports, and amoro’is fun. The addition of such characters exerts a
concretizing influence upon the world of his comedy as a whole. Let us quote Allardyce Nicoll in this
connexion: “There are contemporary figures and contemporary fashions in Love’s Labour Lost; Bottom
and his companions mingle with the fairies; Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are companions
of Viola’and Olivia, Dogberry and Verges of Hero and Beatrice. This is the cardinal characteristic of
Shakespeare’s romantic world-the union of realism and fantasy.”
Comedies of Love:
Most of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are built around the theme of love which provides the
chief motive force for starting, regulating, and sustaining the machinery of the play. In this particular
respect romantic comedy strikes a note of diametrical variance with classical comedy in which love
seldom plays a major part. If love does come in. it comes in the form of just physical lust giving rise to
some complicated amorous intrigues. There may be sex in classical comedy, but there is not much of love.
Intrigues of all sorts, including amorous ones, are alien to the nature of romantic comedy, though they are
quite popular with the comedy of the classical kind, especially the one based on the plays of the Roman
comedians Terence and Plautus. Love in all its manifestations and in all its kinds is, indeed, the soul of
Shakespearean comedy. Referring to As You Like It, Stopford Brooke remarks : “In this play love lives in
many forms : in Orlando and Rosalind, Celia and Oliver, Silvius and Phoebe, Touchstone and Audrey. We
also see other forms of love, the love of two girls for each other, of Adam for his master and his master for
him, of Touchstone for Celia and Rosalind. Even a few touches are given to us of a daughter’s affection
for her father. But these kinds of love, outside the passion of youthful love, are but side issues, due to the
love of Shakespeare for lovingness.”
Shakespeare’s comedies are then, mostly love comedies. He deals with love rather conventionally,
in so far as a comedy with him generally ends in a marriage. However, to use Shakespeare’s own words,
“the course of true love did never run smooth.” There are complications galore. The young lovers have to
undergo some sort of discipline before they reach the sweet fruition of their amours. Ferdinand in The
Tempest has to carry logs of wood for Miranda. Viola does not return Olivia’s ros love. Benedick and
Beatrice are poles apart in the beginning. But in the end love makes all obstacles evaporate in thin air, the
pipes are brought and there is a marriage. The heroes and heroines in Shakespeare’s comedies are
invariably young, and love-making with them is a whole-time profession. The spirit of youth finds
appropriate expression in amorous (but not lustful) activity. Naturally enough, there are plentiful songs
and dances to irradiate the youthful atmosphere of these comedies. The heroes and heroines are youthful
men and women before their marriage; on the other hand, in most of Shakespeare’s tragedies we find the
protagonists past their prime and already married.
Love, the leitmotif of Shakespearean comedy, is doubtlessly of the romantic kind, but
Shakespeare seldom exalts it to the Platonic or Petrarchan level. Nor does it smack of carnality too much;
it is not the entirely culpable sexual lust which figures in classical comedy; rather it has a certain elevated
and elevating power. J. W. Lever in Elizabethan Love Sonnets observes: “In Shakespearean comedy love
is the means of all human fulfilment. This orientation comes about without a spiritualizing of love’s
physical basis. Shakespeare’s heroines are lacking in the saintly qualities of the Petrachan mistress. Far
from raising their lovers’ thought above ‘base desires’ Rosalind teaches Orland how to woo and Juliet
reciprocates Romeo’s ardour so frankly that he promptly forgets the chaste attractions of his former lady.”
Sometimes we can hear the sadder notes underlying the romantic sentiment.
What is love? Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth has present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure
Women in Shakespearean Comedy:
Women in Shakespearean comedy constitute its very soul. Shakespeare’s tragedies and history
plays are dominated by their heroes, the ups and downs of whose fortunes constitute what is mainly of
interest in them. The tragic heroines simply pale into insignificance by the side of the grand heroes. But in
his comedies, the reverse is true. A critic rather sweepingly, but not altogether unjustly, remarks that in
Shakespeare’s comedies there are no heroes at all; there are only heroines. George Gordon observes : “All,
lectures on Shakespeare’s comedies tend to become lectures on Shakespeares “women, for in the
comedies they have the front of the stage”. In Shakespeare’s comedies-, to quote the same critic, we meet
with “women, of all ranks and ages-from the queen to the dairy maid-and from fifty to fifteen…From
Cleopatra to Miranda…he is equally at home and has the whole range of femininity at h’is command.”
Shakespeare’s comic heroines are much more sparkling and interesting than their male counterparts. We
have the vivacious and intelligent Portia, the witty Beau in the constant Viola and the charming Rosalind.
Bassanio does not come to the level of Portia, Benedick pales in wit beside Beatrice, the Duke has no
comparison with Viola, and Orlando with the charming Rosalind. Though all these heroines in their
character do not have the same pattern, yet they have in common one important characteristic-their
quintessential womanhood. This quality makes them look surprisingly modem. The women in Restoration
comedy and even the women in the novels of the Victorian age appear to be dated, but Shakespeare’s
comic heroines are dateless, though they were conceived much earlier.
It is understandable why Shakespeare in his comedies should give such importance to women. As
we have already said, these comedies are comedies of love; and love for a man is just a part of his life and
life’s activity, but for a woman it is her whole life arid its activity.
Humour:
A very attractive feature of Shakespeare’s comedies is their humour. It is as it should be, because
if comedy has a purpose it is to arouse laughter at the foibles and follies of man with a genial and
corrective aim. But the kind of humour we meet with in the comedies of Shakespeare is entirely different
from the kind we have in the classical comedy of Rome and its representation in Ben Jbnson. The kind of
humour to be found in a literary work is governed by the general attitude of the writer towards his
fellow-beings as also his moral standing. Ben Jonson’s humour is sarcastic, satirical, and not a little
cynical. He is impatient of the follies of human beings, which he views from a superior moral level. He is
always didactic and corrective. His aim is to lash and hurt, not to tolerate and be amused. He earnestly
declares:
I will strip the ragged jollies of the time,
Naked, as at their birth,
And with a whip of steel,
Print -wounding lashes in their iron ribs.
Shakespeare on the other hand, does not brandish such a whip of steel. His attitude towards his fellow
being is acceptive and genial, riot rejective and cynical. Sometimes (as in The Comedy of Errors) he does
fall at the manners of his times, but such a job is essentially alien to his nature. He delights and does not
teach. Dowden in The Mind and Art of Shakespeare observes : “The genial laughter of Shakespeare at
human absurdity is free from even the amiable cynicism which gives to the humour of Jane Austen a
certain piquant flavour: it is like the play of summer lightning, which hurts no living creature, but
surprises, illuminates and charms.” Moreover, Shakespeare’s comic humour is not invariably of the same
kind or intensity. It is multi-faceted though it is characterised by the same quality of geniality and
light-heartedness which issues not from adolescent flippacy but the maturest wisdom and insight into at
least one aspect of human life.
Shakespearean Tragedy

Introduction:
Shakespeare wrote a number of tragedies, the greatest among which are Macbeth, Othello, King
Lear, and Hamlet. Can the tragic experience as conveyed by Shakespeare in his tragedies be
conceptualized into an intellectually coherent system? To generalize, said Blake, was to be a fool.
Moreover, Shakespeare himself, as A. C. Bradley observes, had only “a sense for tragedy”, not a
“philosophy” of it. Nevertheless, we certainly can arrive at a few factors which are shared, more or less,
by all the great tragedies of Shakespeare. We can, as Bradley says, be able “to descend on certain
well-built principles which underlie almost every Shakespearean tragedy.” Let us examine what these
common factors are.

The Story of One Man:

A Shakespearean tragedy is invariably built around one pivotal figure-the hero, who stands as a
colossus beside the many other characters of the play. It must be remembered that a Shakespearean
tragedy does bring before us a very large number of dramatis personae. Their number is indeed much
larger than that of the characters in an ancient Greek tragedy, excluding, of course, the chorus: however
the stage-lights always remain focussed on the hero. Other characters also experience ups and downs of
fortune like the hero, but their careers remain in the background. It is only in the love tragedies, Romeo
and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra, that some importance is given to the heroine also : her name is also
a part of the title of the tragedy. Elsewhere she is just one of the numerous “minor” characters. In none of
his tragedies does Shakespeare pre-eminently concern himself with more than two persons. Forces of the
overruling fates, gods, or whatever extra-terrestrial powers that be. Shakespearean tragedy is much less
fatalistic in conception. It does not echo the idea expressed in the following well-known lines:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods:
They kill us for their sport.
Shakespearean tragic hero is good, but he is not perfect. Nor is he a superman like a Marlovian
hero. Nor still is he a villain. His character is a mixed fabric, but with strains of good much more
numerous than those of evil. There is in him a certain flaw of character (which Aristotle
termed hamartid) which provides the ground for the calamity which eventually overwhelms him. All his
goodness of character is of no avail. His action which issues from his slightly flawed character is what
results in suffering and death. But for this flaw of character the tragedy would have been averted. Bradley
observes: “Lear’s tragedy is the tragedy of dotage and shortsightedness, Othello’s that of credulity,
Hamlet’s that of indecision, Macbeth’s that of ambition, Antony’s that of neglect of duty and so on.” If
Hamlet were there in place of Macbeth, and vice versa, both of them could have averted the catastrophe.
In short, the dictum “character is destiny” is fairly true of Shakespearean tragedy.
Contributing Factors:
But apart from the fatal flaw some other factors beyond the ken and power of the tragic hero are
also responsible for the catastrophe. They are mainly two:–
(i)         the supernatural; and
(ii)        chance happenings.
These extraneous factors do exert some influence on the hero’s destiny, even though basically it is
his own character which is to blame. The supernatural beings, such as the ghost in Hamlet and the three
witches in Macbeth, prompt the hero in each case to do what will be harmful for’him. To quote Bradley,
the supernatural “though it does not contribute to the action directly, yet has an intensifying effect on the
thoughts and emotions of the hero.” In the words of Moulton, “it has no power except to accentuate what
already exists.” The witches, for instance, do not .compel Macbeth to murder Duncan in order to seize the
throne. They only exploit that ambition which is already a part of his character. They only precipitate the
doom by drawing out that flawed part of the hero’s personality which holds within it the seed of tragedy.
In the ancient Greek tragedy we meet with gods and goddesses who actively participate in human affairs
and turn the tide against one man or another. In other words, the downfall of the hero depends completely,
or in a major part, on the malignance of the supernatural forces. But in Shakespeare the supernatural
forces stand aloof from the arena of human activity. They are spectators, though they may at times
precipitate the doom which mainly arises from the action of the hero issuing directly from his personal
character.
The same is true of the numerous chance happenings. In Romeo and Juliet it is by chance that the
hero does not get the Friar’s message about the potion, and the heroine does not awake from her long sleep
a little earlier. In King Lear it was by chance that Edgar could not reach the prison earlier than the hanging
of Cordelia. It was by sheer accident in Othello that Desdemona dropped her handkerchief at a crucial
moment. In Hamlet it was a chance that Hamlet’s ship was attacked by the pirates so that he was back in
Denmark. So the element of chance is there in Shakespearean tragedy, but it is not so strong as to
overshadow the responsibility of the hero in bringing about his own doom. Shakespeare uses it quite
judiciously. “Neither does he employ it,” to quote Bradley “too frequently to be credible, not too rarely to
be altogether unnatural.”
The Conflict in Shakespearean Tragedy:
 The conflict in Shakespearean tragedy is the essence of the whole drama. It may be justly said :
“No conflict, no drama,” This conflict is of two kinds, both of which generally go on simultaneously..
They are:
(i)         the external conflict, in which the hero and his party are pitted against their antagonists;
(ii)        the internal conflict which goes on in the mind and soul of the hero. This conflict is between attitudes,
loyalties, conceptions or passions. Antony’s mind is torn between the opposite-pulls of love and duty;
Macbeth’s between those of ambition and duty; and so on.
The hero ultimately gives way under the strain of these conflicts. He suffers both externally and
internally. The progress of Shakespeare as a tragedy writer is characterised by his gradual shifting of the
site of the tragic conflict from without to within. In Romeo and Juliet and Richard II the conflict is almost
entirely external. In Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear it is both external and internal. In Othello it is
predominantly internal. In Coriolanus it is almost completely internal. It is in his internalization of the
tragic conflict that Shakespeare registered a big advance over his contemporaries and immediate
predecessors
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings.
Henry V’s words before Harfieur are of the same nature;
And you good Yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture : let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not:
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
Such passages as these would have certainly increased the patriotic fervour of the audience. These history
plays were, thus, not only a product of the patriotic spirit; they were also calculated to infuse patriotic
spirit into others. They made a special plea for national unity by showing that foreign aggression was
always helped whenever there was internal dissension in the country.
Now those her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
‘And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.
                                                                        (from King John)
A “Mirror for Kings”:
If Shakespeare is moved by patriotic impulses it does not mean that he represents each and every
English king as a hero of impeccable character. In fact, as Dowden suggests, Shakespeare’s kings can be
divided into two classes. King John, Richard II, and Henry VI embody the weakness of English Kings,
whereas Henry IV, Henry V and Richard II are studies of kingly strength. Among themselves these weak
and strong kings constitute practical studies of king and kingship. Dowden sums up the point well: “John
is the royal criminal, weak in his criminality. Henry VI is the royal saint, weak in his saintliness. The
feebleness of Richard II cannot be characterised in a word, he is a graceful sentimental monarch. Richard
III, in the other group, is a royal criminal strong in his crime. Henry IV, the usurping Bolingbroke, is
strong by a fine craft in dealing with events, by resolution and policy, by equal caution and daring. The
strength of Henry V is that of plain heroic magnitude thoroughly sound and substantial, founded upon the
eternal verities. Here, then we may recognize the one dominant subject of the histories, viz. how a man
may fail and how a man may succeed yi attaining a practical mastery of the -world. “Shakespeare’s
history plays are thus, to borrow the words of Schlegel, a “Mirror for Kings”‘. This “Mirror’ wii! enable
anv English kins to discover his real identity and to correct himself in those respects in which he finds
himself lacking in comparison with the past English kings who figure in these plays. Though in an
evidently different manner, Shakespeare instructs the English king as Machiavelli had done in his
work The Prince. And what can be wiser and more incontrovertible than lesson of history?
Their Lesson:
Shakespeare’s history plays are in a class apart from his tragedies and comedies, though
sometimes there appears to be a link between them. In Shakespeare’s own times tragedies and history
plays were often confused together, but it is clear that the latter, unlike the former, do not fathom the final
problems of life and death and the nature of evil. Meredith said that life is a comedy for those who think
and a tragedy for those who feel. But Shakespeare’s history plays deal neither with much thought, nor
with feelings; their study is action or the absence of it, and the consequences which flow therefrom.
Dowden observes in this connexion: “The characters in the historical plays are conceived chiefly with
reference to action. The world represented in these plays is not so much the world of feeling or thoughts,
as the limited world of the practicable…The histories, like the tragedies, are for the reader a school of
discipline; but the issues with which they deal are not the infinite issues of life and the feeling which they
leave us is that of a wholesome, mundane pity and terror, or a sane and strong mundane satisfaction. ” The
lessons of Richard II can easily be perceived to be : “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. ”
Sometimes such a lesson as “The sins of fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth
generations” is obvious. Mainly however, the histories emphasise the evil consequences of crime, folly,
error, and inaction on the part of the king which plunge the country into ruin. Shakespeare’s obvious hero
among the English kings is Henry V who is distinguished alike by his valour as by his moral equipoise.
His is the philosophy of action-righteous and meaningful action-which leads to prosperity for himself and
for his nation.
Essays on Kingly Prerogatives:
Shakespeare’s history plays are, broadly speaking, so many essays on kingly prerogatives. The
king is vested with near divine privileges, but he is also saddled with an onerous responsibility which he is
called upon to perform for indicating himself. All along, from King John to Henry VIII, we find kingship
fraught with temptations, dangers, and insecurity (the, insecurity of life also). Sometimes this kingship is
euologised to the extent reminiscent of the doctrine of the Divine Rights of Kings which envisaged a king
to be the deputy of God on earth.
Sonnet in the Elizabethan age

Introduction:
Like many another literary genres the sonnet in England was imported from abroad. It most
probably originated in Italy with Dante who wrote a number of sonnets to his beloved named Beatrice.
But the flowering of the sonnet came with Petrarch (1304-74), a generation later. It was Wyatt who
introduced the sonnet in England.

Though he wrote much earlier, it was in 1557, a year before Elizabeth was coronated (and some fifteen
years after his death), that his sonnets were published in Tottle’s Miscellany. Wyatt’s lead was accepted by
Surrey whose sonnets were likewise published after his death, in the Miscellany. Wyatt was much under
the spell of his model Petrarch, and out of his thirty-two sonnets, seventeen are but adaptations of
Petrarch’s. Moreover, most of them follow the Patrarchan pattern; that is, each has two parts-an octave
(eight lines) followed by a sestet (six lines). In between the octave and the sestet there is a marked pause
indicated on paper by some blank space. With the ninth line comes the volta or the turn of thought. The
thought in a Petrarchan sonnet may be compared to a wave which goes on rising and reaches its highest
altitude with the eighth line and then starts petering out till it dies at the end. The octave in a Petrarchan
sonnet always has the rhyme-scheme abbaabba, though the sestet may have one of the various patterns
such zscdcdcdorcddcee. Whereas Wyatt mostly adhered to the Petrarchan pattern, Surrey invented a new
one for his sonnets, which later was to be adopted by most Elizabethan sonneteers the most prominent of
whom was Shakespeare. This pattern came to be termed the Shakespearean pattern. The feature of the
Surreyesque pattern is the division of the fourteen lines into four units-three quatrains (four lines) and the
ending couplet (two lines). The rhyme-scheme followed is a b a b, a b a b, a b a b, c c. Both Wyatt and
Surrey imitated in their sonnets the conventional thoughts of Petrarch, which rendered them somewhat
artificial and insincere. Surrey’s sonnets have a tenderness and grace, occasional lyrical melody, and
genuine-looking sentiments which are absent from Wyatt’s. Moreover, he is easily the better craftsman of
the two. However, Wyatt also displays now and then some masculine vigour and disarming simplicity so
characteristic of him. All told, his sonnets are, however, much the clumsier.

Thomas Watson:
For many years after the publication of TottePs Miscellany the sonnet seems to have failed to
attract the attention of poets. It was only in the fifteen-nineties that the vogue of the sonnet got itself
established in England, so much so that not even one man of any poetic pretension could do without the
production of a “sonnet sequence” addressed to his mistress, real or imaginary (and, as Donne put it, many
of them had “no mistress, but their Muse!”). After Tottel the name of the sonnet came also to be applied to
some other types of short lyric which were not necessarily fourteen-liners. It was left for Marlowe’s friend
Thomas Watson (15577-92) to recall first the attention of the readers to the sonnet after Wyatt and Surrey.
His Hecatompathia was published in 1582, at the time when Sidney was composing his own sequence
entitled Astrophel and Stella which was later published in 1591. It is with Sidney’s work that the popular
vogue of the sonnet began. The vogue remained in full swing till the end of the sixteenth century. How
many thousand sonnets were written between 1591 and 1600 is anybody’s guess, for about two thousand
are extant even today. The most prominent among the “followers” of Sidney were Spenser and
Shakespeare. In those years a fresh sonneteering impulse came from France. Wyatt and Surrey .had looked
towards Petrarch but with Elizabethan sonneteers the Petrarchan influence had since died down. Instead,
they drew inspiration from the works of the French sonneteers,such as Ronsard (1524-85), Du Bellay
(1525-60), and Desportes (1546-1606) who appeared to them as more “modern'” and effective than
Petrarch.
Sidney:
 Sidney’s (1554-86) most important work was his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella which
appeared in 1591. It comprised one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs. In it Sidney told the story
of his unrequited love for Penelope, just as Petrarch in his own sonnets had told the story of his
unsuccessful love-affair with “Laura” Penelope is Stella (=a star), and Sidney himself Astrophel (= star
eighty-eight sonnets in which he narrates the story of his wooing of Elizabeth Boyle, his initial frustration,
and his final success culminating in their marriage, which is exquisitely celebrated in his wedding
hymn. Epithalamion.  The Amoreiti sonnets show a consistent level of craftsmanship though the profound
and stirring intensity of Drayton’s “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part” and Sidney’s “Leave
me, O love which reachest but to dust” is absent from them. However, the sonnets are quite
autobiographical in nature and based more or less on the actual experiences of the poet. The element of
convention is, however, also quite obvious. Many of the lovers (Spenser’s) sigh are of the Patarchan
brand, and the proud and disdainful attitude of the cruel mistress is a pretty traditional feature. And then
there are the traditional conceits and extravagances of imagery so dear even to Sidney. Nevertheless,
the Amoretti sonnets constitute the only major work of Spenser in which he gives utterance to his personal
sentiments without having a recourse to the “dark conceif’-allegory. With respect to the content, Spenser’s
sonnet sequence can be divided into two unequal parts:
(i)         Sonnets 1-62 deal with the unrequited love of the poet who “sighing like a furnace” writes mostly in the
traditional manner.
(ii)        Sonnets 63-84 deal with the lover’s happiness. The maidenly bashfulness of the mistress is gone and she
surrenders herself happily to the ardent lover. In no. 64 he records the first kiss and in no. 67 describes
himself as a hunter who after a toilsome pursuit has succeeded in securing his quarry, which is, of course,
the mistress herself who at the approach of the hunter
Sought not to fly but fearless still did bide,
Till I in hand her yet half trembling took,
And with her own good will her firmly tied;
Strange thing, me seem’d to see a beast so-wild
So goodly won, with her own will beguil’d.
The usual, though not invariable, rhyme-scheme of Spenser’s sonnets isabab, be be, edcd, e
e which came to be known later as the Spenserian pattern. It will be seen that the three quatrains are very
deftly interlinked through rhyme. The last rhyme of the first quatrain is used in the first line of the second
and the last rhyme of second quatrain is likewise used in the first line of the third. The result is a
complicated rhyme-pattern with a harmonious orchestral effect which is so characteristic of Spenser’s
poetry, an exquisite metrical artist as he is.
Shakespeare:
Shakespeare’s sonnets have proved an attractive bone for the generation after generation of critics
to gnaw at. These sonnets, some one hundred and fifty-four in number, were first published in a body in
1609: though there is clear evidence that they were in circulation as early as 1598 and were written most
probably in 1595-96. The first one hundred and twenty-six sonnets are addressed to a young and
handsome man who has been variously interpreted as the Earl of Southampton and William Herbert, Earl
of Pembroke. The next twenty-six sonnets are addressed to a “dark” and wanton lady who betrays the poet
for the young man. Albert C. Baugh in A Literary History of England observes: “Of all the Elizabethan
sonnet sequences Shakespeare’s is the least typical. It celebrates not the idealized love of an idealized
mistress but the affection of an older man for a gilded and wayward youth.” In his sonnets Shakespeare
frequently bewails his anguish and misfortunes. He feels to be an outcast, the young patron starts liking a
rival poet, and the poet’s mistress deserts him for the young man. In expressing his anguish Shakespeare
lends his verses a rare glow of lyrical melody and meditative energy which strike one as coming from a
heart which really feels what it articulates. Shakespeare is very exasperatingly impersonal in his dramatic
works, but in the sonnets, he, to use the words of Wordsworth, “unlocked his heart”. There seems to be
more of genuineness and less of convention in his sonnets. Even then, we cannot accept Wordsworth’s
sweeping statement. “Some of the sonnets are,” to quote Albert C. Baugh. “obstinately private and
elusive, and some are conceits, exercises in reaching old conclusions by new ways. But the happiest of
them reach the old conclusions through series of metaphors of incomparable suggestive power. The
style…is largely free from the ingenuities of the early plays and from the dense figtirativeness of the
later”. In spite of the agonised tone and the rather lugubrious atmosphere of the sonnets, they end on an
optimistic note, for there is the triumphant affirmation of the transcendence of love (the poet’s love for his
patron). Thus even in the sonnets, as elsewhere, we are convinced of Shakespeare’s insistent sanity of
outlook.
Formally, Shakespeare’s sonnets follow the rhyme-scheme aba b,cdcd, efefg g, which was first
used by Surrey and which was the most popular among Elizabethan sonneteers. One characteristic of
Shakespeare’s sonnets is that the final couplet, far from coming as the .crescendo, comes with the
feebleness of almost on afterthought or a parenthetic remark-generally affirming his love for the young
man.
 Ben Jonson (1573-1637)
Ben Jonson a contemporary of Shakespeare, and a prominent dramatist of his times, was just the
opposite of Shakespeare. Jonson was a classicist, a moralist, and a reformer of drama. In his comedies he
tried to present the true picture of the contemporary society. He also made an attempt to have the ‘unities’
of time, place and action in his plays. Unlike Shakespeare who remained hidden behind his works, Jonson
impressed upon the audience the excellence of his works and the object of his plays. He also made his
plays realistic rather than romantic, and introduced ‘humours’ which mean some peculiar traits in
character, which obsess an individual and govern all this faculties.
Jonson was mainly a writer of comedies, and of these the four which attained outstanding success
are Volpone; The Silent Woman; The Alchemist; and Bartholomew Fair. Two other important comedies of
his, which illustrate his theory of ‘humour’ are—Every Man in His Humour and Every Man Out of
Humour. The Alchemist, which is the most perfect in structure, is also the most brilliant realistic
Elizabethan comedy. Volpone is a satirical study of avarice on the heroic scale. Bartholomew
Fair presents a true picture of Elizabethan ‘low life’. The Silent Woman, which is written in a lighter
mood, approaches the comedy of manners. Ben Jonson wrote two tragic plays. Sejanus and Cataline on
the classical model, but they were not successful.
Ben Jonson was a profound classical scholar who wanted to reform the Elizabethan drama, and
introduce form and method in it. He resolved to fight against cheap romantic effects, and limit his art
within the bounds of reason and common sense. He was an intellectual and satirical writer unlike
Shakespeare who was imaginative and sympathetic. His chief contribution to dramatic theory was his
practice to construct plays based on ‘humour’, or some master passion. In this way he created a new type
of comedy having its own methods, scope and purpose. Though he drew his principles from the ancients,
he depicted the contemporary life in his plays in a most realistic manner. In this way Jonson broke from
the Romantic tendency of Elizabethan drama.
Ben Jonson’s Contribution to English Comedy

Introduction:
Ben Jonson’s importance in the history of English drama is mainly due to his envisagement of a
new kind of comedy of which he gave excellent examples. He was a vigorous crusader for good sense and
rectitude. From the very beginning of his dramatic career (the closing years of the sixteenth century) he
undertook, what he thought, the reform of Elizabethan drama, and particularly comedy.
He appeared at a time when the University Wits such as Marlowe, Lyly, Greene, Kyd, and Nashe were
establishing upon the stage what is called “romantic drama.” To those like Ben Jonson who had any
respect for classical drama and its canons, as also moderation, sanity, and the moral and intellectual
well-being of man, the romantic comedies and histories offered much that was abominably absurd and
lawless. He was critical of romantic extravagance and the egregious lack of realism as well as the general
ignorance, or defiance, of the classical rules sanctified by the theories and practice of the ancient Greeks
and Romans. Frequent changes of place, long duration of the time represented, absence of a unified plan
or coherent structure, mingling of farce and tragedy, of clowns and kings, lack of definite aesthetic or
ethical aims, and, in short an easy disregard of precision and discipline appeared to Jonson as indefensible
errors. The themes treated were as objectionable as the treatment. The romantic plays told simply
impossible stories and did not imitate life or nature. They dealt with idealised heroes, far-flung places,
unbelievable adventures and vicissitudes, and flamboyant situations. The drama before Ben Jonson was
romantic insofar as

(i)         it did not adhere to the theory and practice of the ancients and
(ii)        it did not attempt a representation of actuality.
Ben Jonson’s reformation of drama meant, in fact, his correction of these twin romantic
tendencies. He tried to establish, instead, a comic form and a tragic form based on the classical practice
and to bring drama nearer life. In the field of tragedy he had no tangible success (he wrote only two
tragedies), but in that of comedy he succeeded in making himself the greatest figure of his age.
Jonson’s Classicism:
We will consider Jonson’s achievement and contribution in the field of comedy with respect to his
following three tendencies:
(i)         Classicism
(ii)        Realism
(iii)       Moralism
They are not so well defined, nor are they capable of being accurately differentiated from one
another. But they are all in fundamental opposition to “romanticism.”
Ben Jonson had great deference for the classical antiquity, and he often referred to the great Greek
 and Roman dramatists with unqualified adoration. In spite of the fact that he could not sport a University
degree-unlike the University Wits-he was well-read in the classics. His protest against romantic drama,
says Thorndike, was similar in its essentials to Matthew Arnold’s protest against the romantic school of
poetry. He wanted, observed this critic, that the drama should-“rest on right appreciation of the
classics^and a rationalised study of the present.” Jonson wished to take the drama, as -far as possible, to
the purposes and methods of the Greeks and Romans. For this purpose it was required of him to obey
certain set rules which critics had derived from the classical practice. These rules were:
(a)                 The so-called “three unities”-those of place, time, and action. The first requires the scene of the play
to be restricted to the same town. The second, requires the action of the play not to be extended over a
period of more than twenty-four hours. The third requires the play to represent one single and
well-constructed plot, without structurally superfluous episodes, sub-plots, or by-plots.
(b)                 The laws of decorum which require:
(i)         The separation of the species.Tragedy and comedy are to be set apart and not allowed to mingle with each
other.
(ii)        A certain propriety in characterisation. Characterisation should not’be capricious and confused, but should
be based on an accurate analysis of life. Every character should be a representative as well as an
individual. Any king, for example, should represent kings in general; a jealous husband should exhibit the
typical traits of jealousy, and neither person should lapse into mere individual whimsy.
Only by adherence to such sane principles, Ben Jonson believed, could the flagrant and dangerous
departure from artistic standards and classical discipline be arrested. Ben Jonson’s classicism earns for
him the remark of David Daiches that “he is the one great example in English of the Renaissance humanist
(in the narrowest sense of that term) turned dramatist and poet.” But it must be pointed out that Ben
Jonson was not a slavish imitator of the classical dramatists. He treated them more as guides than as
masters. He was less rigid in practice than in theory, and even in theory he admitted the need of “some
place for digression and art.” He does not, for example, always observe the unitfes. In the Prologue to his
greatest comedy Volpone he claimed about himself:
The laws of time, place, persons he observeth. 
From no needful rule he swerveth.
But in practice he did “swerve” from many “needful” rules which he tenaciously championed in theory. In
the very play just mentioned the strict unity of action is violated by the admittance of a sub-plot.
In Bartholomew Fair, again, the action is episodic rather than architectonically perfect. In Every Man out
of His Humour, the characters sleep one night in the country and return to the town the next morning, thus
violating the unity of time. In the tragedy Catiline, the hero flies to join his army in Tuscany, thus
violating the unity of place. These instances show that Jonson did not allow the classical rules to
straitjacket his artistic liberty or to arm-twist his native tendencies. What he fell foul of was the heady
licence to go to improbable length in these matters
Jonson s Realism:
Ben Jonson’s chief contribution to English comedy lies in his effort to- bring it much nearer
reality. He was a champion of all-round realism and was quick to dissociate himself from the romantic
extravagances, grotesqueries, and, in a word, a wanton disregard of unvarnished actuality. In his very first
play Every Man in His Humour he was decisively articulate about the intention of his kind of comedy. He
proposed as theme and vehicle of his comedy
Deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
He felt that comedy, as distinguished from tragedy (in which the remote or the ideal does not hinder, and
may even help, the dramatist’s purpose), had lost its touch with life in romantic extravagance. Reaction
had alreadv set in against this as for example, in the work of his friend Chapman : in his All Fools the
continuity of the story is broken up into more or less elaborate studies of characters or “humours” in some
respects suggestive of Jonsonian characters. The change imperceptible in Middleton and Marston, too.
But Jonson, if not the first, to express this change, was the first to define it and to supply the appropriate
canons thereof. He was the first to propound .realism in comedy in critical and well-defined terms. As T.
S. Eliot in his critical study of Ben Jonson in The Sacred Wood observes, “the interest in the depiction and
criticism of the actual life of the day-an interest essential to vitality in the literature of any age—had its
chief exponent iuJonsen.” He was as intimately acquainted with the life and manners of the Londoners of
his age as the author of The Canterbury Tales. Lamb, Smollett, and Dickens were with those of the
Londoners of their respective ages. His comedies bring to the fore all types of people from nobles to
beggars, and landlords to water-carriers. Most of them have for the scene of action not the romantic Forest
of Arden, nor the enchanted island of The Tempest, nor the idyllic land of Illyria, but the real London with
its panorama of humanity, its brightness, and squalor. Jonson cannot be justly dismissed as a grim and
pedantic classicist as, to use the words of Daiches, he was also “a rugged Englishman with a sardonic
relish for the varied and colourful London life of his day…”
Ben Jonson’s comedy is also called the “comedy of humours” as he analysed society into
“humours” or dominant characteristics. These humours are types maintaining throughout the play “certain
well-defined attributes.” This sometimes makes them look static, or, to use the term put into vogue by E.
M. Forster, “flat”. But here again Jonson is no slave of his rules. He makes his types look lively and
realistic by strongly individualising them with certain auxiliary characteristics. T. S. Eliot maintains that
Ben Jonson’s “comic characterisation remains among the greatest achievements of the English drama
because of its clearness and certainty, its richness of humour and its dramatic veracity.”
Jonson’s Moralism:
Jonson’s intention to show the image of the times was not an end in itself, but only a means to his
end, which was to reform the society of his age by ridding it of all follies and aberrations. He fervently
announced:
I’ll strip the ragged follies-of the time
Naked as at their birth;
And with a whip of steel
Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs.
His “whip of steel” was his very powerful satire. The element of satire is quite dominant in Ben Jonson’s
comedies. In fact, he characterised some of his comedies as “comic satires.” According to him, comedy
was expected not to pander to rude and thrill-hungry crowds by transporting them to unrealistic regions
created by the poet’s fancy, but to perform a seriously ethical purpose. It had to mock at baseness and folly
in their lesser degrees by sporting “with human follies, not with crimes.” He tells the Universities in the
Dedication of Volpone that his “special aim” is “to put the snaffle in their mouths that cry out, we never
punish vice in our interludes.” In his preoccupation with ethical considerations he went so far as to assert
“the impossibility of any man’s being the good poet, without first being a good man.” Again, in the
Prologue to Every Man out of His Humour he proclaims:
I will scourge those apes
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror
As large as is the stage whereon we act,
Where they shall see the time’s deformity
Anatomized in every nerve and sinew
With constant courage and contempt of fear.
In Volpone (where the scene is not London but Venice) Jonson satirises greed, lust, cruelty, treachery, and
lewdness. In The Alchemist, likewise, the evils of greed and trickery are exposed and satirised. In The
Staple of News he lashes the crude taste for newsmongering. In Bartholomew Fair hypocritical Puritans
are made the butt of ridicule. In The Silent Woman people with a pathological hatred of gaiety and noise
(as exemplified by Morose) are attacked. In Every Man in His Humour the attack is levelled alike at the
boasting but cowardly soldiers, jealous husbands, and town and country gulls. Thus in practically all of
his comedies we meet with a satiric and didactic aim. This aim sometimes does violence to the true
dramatic art. He was a dramatic artist. His sense of crisp dialogue, his uncanny mastery of situation and
suspense, his masculine vigour and anti-sentimentalism, his distrust of tear-jerking devices, his adeptness
at plot-construction, his keen study of actualmen and manners, and above all, his genuine poetic impulse,
particularly his lyrical strain, sustain his comedies at a very high artistic level and do not allow them to be
bogged down by their pronounced purposiveness.
“The School of Ben”:
Jonsonian comedy attracted the attention of a very large number of his contemporaries and excited
emulation among the numerous assembly of playwrights known as “the sons of Ben.” Unfortunately most
of them copied their “father'” too slavishly, without the equipment of equally excellent dramatic of poetic
gifts. Thus what was true of the followers of Chaucer (the Chaucerians) and those of Shakespeare was also
true of Ben Jonson. Shadwell was his very close follower. The works of such dramatists as Sir Robert
Howard, brother-in-law of Dryden, and even Sheridan exhibit some influences of the comedy of humours.
Even while in the Restoration age a new kind of comedy— the comedy of manners-came to be
established, “Jonson” says Allardyce Nicoll, “still held his position as chief of comic dramatists/’Dryden
in his Essay of JDranratie Poesy placed him alongside Shakespeare, “In the latter part of his career”, avers
David Daiches, “he was the leader of an important literary group and indeed something of a literary
dictator, the first significant example of that species in English literature.” It was not for nothmgrthat his
epitaph in Westminster Abbey carried the words:
“O rare Ben Jonson.”
Posted onDecember 27, 2010CategoriesLiterary and Critical EssaysLeave a commenton Ben Jonson’s
Contribution to English Comedy
Ben Jonson’s Comedy of Humours

The Word “Humour”:

 The term “humour” comes from the ancient Greek physicians and, later, from the medieval
system of medicine. This system envisaged four major humours corresponding with the four elements
(fire, air, earth, and water) and possessing the quality respectively of heat, cold, dryness, and moisture.
The “complexion,” “temperament,” or constitution of a man depended on the proportionate alliance of the
four humours or subtle juices in his body. The predominance of the moist humour caused a man to grow
sanguine, of the hot to grow choleric, and so on. The prevailing idea with the physiologist was that in a
healthy body there was a natural balance of all the four humours and that a disturbance of the balance was
dangerous and needed to be checked. “In Elizabethan times”, says Ifor Evans in A Short History of
English Drama, “this medieval physiology was not treated with complete seriousness, but its vocabulary
became a popular fashion in sophisticated conversation and this again Jonson exploited.”

Elizabethan Interpretation:
“Humour”, apart from its currency in the medieval profession, was also a catchword when Ben
Jonson began to write. But his contemporaries used the word for any passing mood, whim, fancy, or
caprice and not, as Ben Jonson did, for a more a less permanent and predominant peculiarity of
disposition. Shakespeare, like the rest, used the word in the sense of mood or fancy. For instance, in the
Richard III we have:
Was ever -woman in this-humour wooed?
Was ever -woman in this humour won?
Again, in The Merchant of Venice, when Shylock is asked why he prefers a pound of the flesh of
Bassanio’s heart to the sum of three thousand ducats, he replies:
It is my humour
Jonson’s Interpretation:
Ben Jonson dissociated himself from this degenerate meaning of the word “humour”, took it back
to its original physiological sense and fitted it into the context of his concept of the nature and function of
comedy. Just as a man has in his physique a dominant humour, similarly he has in his psyche a dominant
passion. Under the influence of this dominant passion a man may become, as the case may be, greedy,
jealous, cowardly, deceptible, foolhardy, and so forth. As Jonson clarified in the Prologue to Every Man
out of His Humour, he was taking the word “humour” from medicine and was using it as a metaphor for
the general disposition of a man—that is, his psychological set-up. He explains that
When some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way;
This may truly be said to be a humour.
The Purpose of Comedy:
Ben Jonson’s comedy is called the comedy of humours as it aimed primarily at the representation
of such characters as were motivated mainly or entirely by their peculiar, dominant passions or humours.
Jonson felt that, in the words of a critic, “the purpose of comedy is to note those elements in human
character which are either naturally and permanently dominant in each man, or which on occasion, in the
hazard of life, overflow and exceed their limits at the expense of the other contributing elements to
represent a number of characters differently humoured; and in the clash of contrasts to paint with pleasant
laughter, the moral of these disorders. A man whom we call avaricious because avarice to us is his most
striking characteristic and to him his most absorbing humour may either preserve the established
proportion of his dominating quality in all his dealings, or under stress of living in a peculiar set of
circumstances, let it grow at he expense of other qualities. In the first case, he may be said to be’ in his
humour’ and in the second, to be ‘out of his humour.’ Both are excellent material for comic dramatisation
and the question is one of degree. The latter is the more tempting to the playwright not merely because
excess gives him more striking stage effects, but because it serves his ethical purpose better because of the
enormity of its magnitude.” The comedy of humours had a highly didactic aim which was sought to be
realised through satire levelled at various humours. Volpone is a satire on cupidity and depravity of human
character. The Alchemist on greed, Bartholomew Fair on hypocritical Puritans, The Silent Woman on
jittery melancholiacs afraid of noise, The Staple of News on irresponsible newsmongering and the
uncultured craving for thrills, and so on. It was not without reason that Ben Jonson characterised more
than one of his comedies as “comical satires.”
Is Jonson an Imitator?:
We have not so far referred to Jonson’s indebtedness to classical dramatists in arriving at his
concept of the comedy of humours. It was partly his classical instruction andxtaste which led him to this
concept. But it is a popular misrepresentation to assert than Jonson was a mechanical imitator of the
Roman comic dramatists-Plautus and Terence. “There is no doubt that in Latin comedy,” to quote Ifor
Evans, “each character belonged to a recognizable type, and maintained throughout certain well-defined
 attributes.” However, as a critic observes, “it is really a strange critical error to hold that the Jonsonian
conception of the dramatic humour is only an English copy of Plautine and Terentian types and that his
braggarts and gulls and misers were but Romans in doublet and ruff…” Jonson was no transcriber. He
acknowledged “no man” his “master.” His dramatic art came not from the study of literature but the study
of life. His insistence that comedy should be real and English comedy should be English and real was
meant partly to dispel the charge that his comic art was merely literary, far removed from life and only a
scholar’s affair. His native vigour and originality save him from being treated as a mechanical transcriber.
He was a redoubtable scholar, but, what is more important, “he was”, in the words of David Daiches in A
Critical History of English Literature, “also a rugged Englishman with a sardonic relish for the varied and
colourful London life of his day…he showed enormous and impressive originality even when most
closely following classical models or applying rules from classical theory or practice.” Take an-example.
Most of the humours in his first important comedy Every Man in His Humour have their prototypes in the
classical comedy of Plautus and Terence. But all of them are Londoners, not Romans,.and are drawn not
from books but observation. The jealous husband, the timid father, the corrupt son, the cunning slave or
parasite, the simple gull, and the boasting but cowardly soldier of Plautus and Terence have suggested Ben
Jonson’s Kitely the merchant, the elder Knowell, the younger Knowell (he is not corrupt indeed but it
is.supposed by his father to be so), Brainworm, Matthew and Stephen (the town and the country gull
respectively), and Bobadill. All of them are no mere copies but represent a lively cross-section of London
society of the age of Ben Jonson. A critic observes regarding these characters : “No more genuine sketches
of London character are to be found in the annals of the drama.” They are children of Jonson’s own
observation; and as an observer, he had, save Shakespeare, few rivals among his contemporaries.
Advantages of the Humour Technique:
There were some obvious advantages Jonson derived from the adoption of the humour technique.
The chief among them are given below:
(i)         First, it allowed him to dispense with the traditional clown or jester. The farcical laughter arising from the
grotesque and slapstick farce of clownery could be substituted by the clash of humours.
(ii)        Secondly, it provided a meeting-ground between classical theory and modern life.
(iii) Thirdly, as the introduction of humours put the dramatic emphasis on character at the cost of incident,
it threw out of favour, once and for all, the comedy of mere intrigue.
(iv)       Lastly, it rendered it possible for the master of satiric comedy, the doughty champion of classicism, and
the most powerful of Elizabethan realists to be united in the same man. Jonson threw the massive weight
of his dramatic genius against the current of popular taste and succeeded in pruning the romantic excesses
of Elizabethan comedy.
The Disadvantages:
A very grave danger inherent in the envisagement and representation of humours was the
possibility of a falsification of human nature. The characters were apt to grow wooden and monotonous.
Gregory Smith observes in this connexion : “In the first place, the presentation of certain selected
humours throughout a long play involves the playwright, as it does novelists like Dickens, in one .offfte
two risks: either of making the characters too rigid or uniform in habit, puppet-like after the fashion of the
personages in the old Morality, and dramatically unreal or in the consciousness of this danger, of striving
to escape from it by exaggeration…In the second place…characters thus fixed tend to become too simple.
Even when the humour is not plain study of a single folly, but a complex impression of several with one
only slightly overtopping the rest, it is hard to sustain the combination throughout the action.” Jonson
does manage, thanks to his vigour and originality, to negotiate these dangers pretty safely. It cannot be
said that his characters are only wooden figures, representatives of types and embodiments of specific
traits as are the characters of the morality plays of the Middle Ages. He does manage to breathe into them
a life of their own. As T. S. Eliot maintains, rather partially, in The Sacred Wood, Shakespeare’s characters
are “no more alive than are the characters of Jonson.”
In spite of their realism and vividness Ben Jonson’s humours are open to the charge of being
psychologically too simple. It-is’often said that he was not acquainted with man in his fulness and that he
built on the surface and built but a single storey. The complexities of human psyche find no expression.
“There is,”-says a critic, “no light and shade, the cross-play of motives is apt to be neglected; and above
all, he misses the- inconsistency which is so powerful an element in the nature of us all.” “He,” says
another critic, “chooses a general idea-cunning, folly, severity, Itlst-and makes a person out of it. He takes
an abstract quality, and putting together all the acts to which it may give rise, trots it out on the stage in a
man’s dress. Now it is a vice selected from the catalogue of moral philosophy sensuality thirsting for gold:
the perverse double inclination becomes a personage, Sir Epicure Mammon; before the alchemist, before
his friend, before his mistress, In public or alone, all his words denote a greed of pleasure and of gold, and
they express nothing more. Now it is a piece of madness gathered from the old sophists, a tremendous
horror of noise; this form of mental pathology becomes a personage, Morose.” To have a humour is
almost a whole-time profession. It is to some extent, an over-simplification of human nature amounting to
its falsification. Ben Jonson’s characters are, to adopt R. M. Forster’s phraseology in his Aspects of the
Novel, flat and not round characters. They are all predictable and are “‘not capable of surprising us in a
convincing way.” They do not have the unpredictability of life, though they are lively and arresting.

(b)  Elizabethan Poetry

Poetry in the Renaissance period took a new trend. It was the poetry of the new age of discovery,
enthusiasm and excitement. Under the impact of the Renaissance, the people of England were infused
with freshness and vigour, and these qualities are clearly reflected in poetry of that age.
The poetry of the Elizabethan age opens with publications of a volume known as Tottel’s
Miscellany (1577). This book which contained the verse of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?-1542) and the Earl
of Surrey, (1577?-1547) marks the first English poetry of the Renaissance. Wyatt and Surrey wrote a
number of songs, especially sonnets which adhered to the Petrarcan model, and which was later adopted
by Shakespeare. They also attempted the blank verse which was improved upon by Marlowe and then
perfected by Shakespeare. They also experimented a great variety of metres which influenced Spenser.
Thus Wyatt and Surrey stand in the same relation to the glory of Elizabethan poetry dominated by Spenser
and Shakespeare, as Thomson and Collins do to Romantic poetry dominated by Wordsworth and Shelley.
Another original writer belonging to the early Elizabethan group of poets who were mostly courtiers,
was Thomas Sackville (1536-1608). In his Mirror for Magistrates he has given a powerful picture of the
underworld where the poet describes his meetings with some famous Englishmen who had been the
victims of misfortunes. Sackville, unlike Wyatt and Surrey, is not a cheerful writer, but he is superior to
them in poetic technique.
The greatest of these early Elizabethan poets was Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586). He was a
many-sided person and a versatile genius—soldier, courtier and poet—and distinguished himself in all
these capacities. Like Dr. Johnson and Byron he stood in symbolic relation to his times. He may be called
the ideal Elizabethan, representing in himself the great qualities of that great age in English history and
literature. Queen Elizabeth called him one of the jewels of her crown, and at the age of twenty-three he
was considered ‘one of the ripest statesmen of the age’.
As a literary figure, Sidney made his mark in prose as well as in poetry. His prose works
are Arcadia and the Apologie for Poetrie (1595). With Arcadia begins a new kind of imaginative writing.
Though written in prose it is strewn with love songs and sonnets. The Apologie for Poetrie is first of the
series of rare and very useful commentaries which some English poets have written about their art. His
greatest work, of course, is in poetry—the sequence of sonnets entitled Astrophel and Stella, in which
Sidney celebrated the history of his love for Penelope Devereax, sister of the Earl of Essex,- a love which
came to a sad end through the intervention of Queen Elizabeth with whom Sidney had quarrelled. As an
example of lyrical poetry expressing directly in the most sincere manner an intimate and personal
experience of love in its deepest passion, this sonnet sequence marks an epoch. Their greatest merit is
their sincerity. The sequence of the poet’s feelings is analysed with such vividness and minuteness that we
are convinced of their truth and sincerity. Here we find the fruit of experience, dearly bought:
Desire; desire; I have too dearly bought
With price of mangled mind. Thy worthless ware.
Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought,
Who should my mind to higher prepare.
Besides these personal and sincere touches, sometimes the poet gives a loose reign to his
imagination, and gives us fantastic imagery which was a characteristic of Elizabethan poetry.
Spenser (1552-1599)
The greatest name in non-dramatic Elizabethan poetry is that of Spenser, who may be called the poet
of chivalry and Medieval allegory. The Elizabethan Age was the age of transition, when the
time-honoured institutions of chivalry, closely allied to Catholic ritual were being attacked by the zeal of
the Protestant reformer and the enthusiasm for latters of the European humanists. As Spenser was in
sympathy with both the old and the new, he tried to reconcile these divergent elements in his greatest
poetic work—The Faerie Queene. Written in the form of an allegory, though on the surface it appears to
be dealing with the petty intrigues, corrupt dealings and clever manipulations of politicians in the court of
Elizabeth, yet when seen from a higher point of view, it brings before us the glory of the medieval times
clothed in an atmosphere of romance. We forget the harsh realities of life, and lifted into a fairy land
where we see the knights performing chivalric deeds for the sake of the honour Queen Gloriana. We meet
with shepherds, sylvan nymphs and satyrs, and breathe the air of romance, phantasy and chivalry.
Though Spenser’s fame rests mainly on The Faerie Queene, he also wrote some other poems of great
merit. His Shepherd’s Calendar (1579) is a pastoral poem written in an artificial classical style which had
become popular in Europe on account of the revival of learning. Consisting of twelve parts, each devoted
to a month of the year, here the poet gives expression to his unfruitful love for a certain unknown
Rosalind, through the mouth of shepherds talking and singing. It also deals with various moral questions
and the contemporary religious issues. The same type of conventional pastoral imagery was used by
Spenser in Astrophel (1586), an elegy which he wrote on the death of Sidney to whom he had dedicated
the Calendar. Four Hymns which are characteried by melodious verse were written by Spenser in honour
of love and beauty. His Amoretti, consisting of 88 sonnets, written in the Petrarcan manner which had
become very popular in those days under the influence of Italian literature, describes beautifully the
progress of his love for Elizabeth Boyle whom he married in 1594. His Epithalamion is the most beautiful
marriage hymn in the English language.
The greatness of Spenser as a poet rests on his artistic excellence. Though his poetry is surcharged
with noble ideas and lofty ideals, he occupies an honoured place in the front rank of English poets as the
poet of beauty, music and harmony, through which he brought about a reconciliation between the
medieval and the modern world. There is no harsh note in all his poetry. He composed his poems in the
spirit of a great painter, a great musician. Above all, he was the poet of imagination, who, by means of his
art, gave an enduring to the offsprings of his imagination. As a metrist his greatest contribution to English
poetry is the Spenserian stanza which is admirably suited to descriptive or reflective poetry. It is used by
Thomson in The Castle of Indolence, by Keats in The Eve of St. Agnes, by Shelley in The Revolt of
Islam and by Byron in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. On account of all these factors, Spenser has been a
potent influence on the English poets of all ages, and there is no exaggeration in the remark made by
Charles Lamb that “Spenser is the poets’ poet.”
Spenser – The Poets’ Poet

Introduction:
Spenser’s tombstone proclaims him to be “the Prince of Poets in his Time.” The truth will not be
violated if we proclaim him to be “the Prince of Poets of all Times.” The prince of essayists, Charles
Lamb, .appropriately designated the prince of poets, Edmund Spenser, “the poets’ poet.”

In spite of what some modern Zoiluses may say, Spenser’s work strikes us as an exquisite embodiment of
the ultimate in poetic excellence which has been the rather mirage-like goal of all poetical endeavour,
beckoning all the generations of English poets after Spenser as an example and ideal. Whatever may be
the other faults of Spenser, there is no gainsaying the fact that there is no dearth of the poetic in him. And
the poetic faculty transforms, like the Philosopher’s Stone or a magic wand, all the dross that it touches
into the pure gold of genuine poetry. How intensely he influenced the succeeding poets and how widely he
excited imitation are common knowledge for a student of English literary history.

Spenser through the Ages:

That Spenser’s contemporaries hailed him as the greatest of the poets of their age, we have
mentioned above. He was often enthusiastically called “the New Poet.” His eclogues (in Tlte Shepherd’s
Calender) and his epic The Faerie Queene earned him the very proud title of “the English Virgil.” The
reputation that he gained among his contemporary poets was perpetuated over the ages after him by a very
large number of poets who acknowledge him as their master and model. Spenser’s poetic works provided
the poets of all schools practical lessons in the writing of excellent poetry. In no age was Spenser out of
vogue. Donne’s reputation suffered a complete eclipse in theeighteenth century, the century of Pope, and
Pope’s own reputation fell in the nineteenth, but Spenser’s reputation has remained constant like the
lodestar which twinkles but does not fade. Of course, in the early eighteenth century, “the age of prose and
reason,” Spenser went somewhat put of vogue, but towards the middle of the century he became a source
of inspiration for the poets like Croxhall and many others. The great Dr. Johnson looked with dismay and
disapproval at the contemporary cult of imitating Spenser, but he could do nothing to stem the popular
tide in spite of his being the arbiter of contemporary taste. Spenser was, indeed, as James Reeves says, “at
no time out of fashion.” He was, to quote the same critic, “a copious source of inspiration to other poets
for three centuries.”
It must be noted that, unlike Chaucer’s influence on his immediate successors, Spenser’s
influence on his immediate successors was not so marked. Chaucer inspired a large number of
“Chaucerians”-both in England and Scotiand-whose cherished aim was to write like their master or, even,
“father” (as Lydgate called him). Spenser, “the second father of English poetry,” did not generate such a
tremendously imitative tendency. The reason for it was the rise and extreme popularization of the drama in
the Elizabethan age. Most of the literary geniuses up to about twenty years after the death of Spenser tried
their hand at the writing of the drama-the most popular and “paying” literary genre of their age. But later
on, even a poet of Milton‘s stature acknowledged him to be his original, and in  Penseroso he referred
tohim quite reverently as a poet who sang
Of tourneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Wliere more is meant than meets the ear.
Further, in Areopagitica he extolled him as “our sage and serious Spenser.” Cowley tells us how by
reading a copy of Spenser lying in his mother’s parlour he became a poet at the age of tw%lve. Dryden
proclaimed him as one of his two models-the other one being the “smooth Waller.” Even in the eighteenth
century we find the great Pope himself praising Spenser and acknowledging his debt to The Shepherd’s
Calendar in the writing of his own Pastorals. Addison, however, in his Account of the Greatest English
Poets dismissed The Faerie Queene as a “mystic tale” which
Can charm an understanding age no more.
But it must be remembered that Addison’s judgement of Spenser was as wanting in maturity as his
summary dismissal of Chaucer as a rude barbarian,
Who tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Addison wrote this critical—in fact, “uncritical”—poem when he was a callow youth, and he was sensible
enough in his years of maturity to dissociate himself from his patently irresponsible judgements. Steele
‘knew better when he observed in a Spectator that Spenser’s “numbers” were “exquisite.” In the later
years of the eighteenth century, with the birth of a more imaginative spirit, Spenser came to be appreciated
with a far keener sensitivity. Thomson and Shenstone not only caught a spark of the Spenserian flame but
also used the Spenserian stanza to register a prosodic break with the heroic couplet of the Popean
school—the former in his Castle of Indolence and the latter in his Schoolmistress. To discuss the
influence of Spenser on the early nineteenth-century poets-Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge arc Keats-will
require a sizable volume. Keats in The Eve of St. Agrxs. Scott in the Vision of Don Roderick, Shelley
in The Revolt oflslarr^ and Byron in his Childe Harold prolonged the Spenserian note, though the last
named was alien to the Spenserian spirit, and once remarked: “I can make nothing of him.” Later, in the
Victorian age we find Spenser exerting a profound influence on Tennyson, becoming the idol of Charles
Doughty, and even being re-echoed in the “Spenserian” cadences of the poems of Robert Bridges. Among
modern poets W. B. Yeats comes nearestto him.
Spenser’s Equipment as a Poet:
Why and how Spenser inspired and influenced such a large number of poets can be explained by
pointing out that he had what every poet aspires to have~a fertile, teeming imagination wedded to
exquisite craftsmanship. Some poets have too powerful an imagination but a poor degree^of
craftsmanship to mould it into artistic patterns of poetry. Blake is a representative example of such a poet
whose imagination runs away unbridled by artistic control. Some other poets have a ratheY unproductive
imagination even though they are .wonderful craftsmen. Spenser is one of the ideal poets like Homer,
Virgil, Shakespeare, and Milton who have a fertile imagination which is perfectly moulded into poetry by
their uncanny sense of pattern and architectonics, in addition to their mastery of the poetic idiom with all
its suggestiveness. Spenser was fully equipped as a poet. He was as learned as Milton. As a “child” of the
Renaissance, he was well read into the classics which were in his age beginning to exercise a hold on
scholars and men of letters. He was an M. A. from Cambridge University and well grounded in the
traditions of Greek and Latin poetry as also the poetry of Renaissance Italy and France. Homer, Virgil, and
Ovid on the one hand, and Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, Ronsard, and du Bellay on the other, were at his
finger-tips. In his poetic works he freely drew upon them with the result that there grew a number of
similarities, stylistic as well as thematic, between his own works and the works of the above named
masters before him. And that is not all. Spenser was well-versed even in the philosophers-Plato and
Aristotle-out of whom the former exercised a strong hold upon his mind. In his Four Hymns and
elsewhere, he effectively and unmistakably gives expression to”his Platonism which believes that we
should ascend from a specific embodiment of beauty to the idea of beauty itself. This idea of beauty is
divine, and its contemplation something religious in nature. Nor was Spenser ignorant of the medieval
lore. Though he disapproved medieval patterns of thought yet he loved to breathe the medieval air with all
its fairv-land tints of chivalry, knight errantry, religious fervour plus all its superstitions and
backwardness. He captured this air exquisitely in The Faerie Queene. Then he was greatly influenced by
the Reformation, too, and in his work we are not unconscious of his puritanic temper. Thus he exhibited a
rarely synthesizing temper and mind which is the hall mark of every poet who aspires for universal fame.
With all his poetic equipment it was natural for him to be the envy of all poets. He wrote for the cultivated
and the initiated, and not what in Europe and America are called “the common people” and in India “the
masses.” He was the poets’ poet and not the people’s poet, in any sense, Marxian or otherwise.
Spenser s Poetic Genius:
But all of Spenser’s learning and scholarly equipment would have been of no avail if he did not
have the all-important poetic impulse which was necessary to electrify it into poetry. Even a huge dump of
fuel fails to give heat without the all-important spark. Spenser had this spark. Even captious Addison
admitted that Spenser was “warm’d with poetic rage.” This poetic rage, genius, or impulse is hard to
define, but it unmistakably shows itself in every page and every line of Spenser’s works. Spenser may be a
prodigiously learned man, but what matters most is his poetic genius. “The Faerie Queene”, says W. P.
Ker, “is the truest sort of poetry in which the poetic genius declares–itself most truly, as distinct from
other kinds of genius.” Leigh Hunt likewise observes: “Take him in short for what he is, whether greater
or less than his fellows, the poetic faculty is so abundantly and beautifully predominant in him above
every other.” W. L. Renwick appropriately remarks: “Beyond question, what moved Spenser to write was
a genuine poetic impulse   He sang because he must; not only because people listened….He sang not
because he was learned….or an intense votary of the Reformation-or the Renaissance, but because his
imagination longed for outward embodiment, because it must give birth to its divine conceptions, because
it insisted on relief and deliverance. In other words, Spenser’s poetry is a true incarnation of a poetical
spirit, not the elaborate effort of a partisan, literary, political, religious. ” As is said about Shelley, Spenser
exhales verses as a flower exhales fragrance. He cannot help it.’
W. L. Renwick further points out that even when Spenser sometimes uses material which is
prosaic enough he transforms it into true poetry. He refers in this connexion to the description of the
House of Alma in Book II of The Faerie Queene and the versification of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History
of the Britons in the following canto and observes that whatever be the difficulties in Spenser’s path, “he
never ceases to be a poet.” He alwavs flies and never creeps or even walks. Nobody has ever posed the
question-as was done too openly and too repeatedly in the case of Pope-whether he is a poet or not. He is
not only a poet, a great poet, but the poets’ poet. “Of all the poets”, observes Hazlitt, “he is the most
poetical.” He offers in his work the quintessence of poetic lushness.
Spenser’s Deft Craftsmanship:
Add to Spenser’s vigorous poetic impulse his virtuosity and sureness of touch as a craftsman. He
has a perfect mastery over his medium-words. He does whatever he likes with words and makes them
responsive to all sorts of moods and feelings. His poetry has a rare pictorial quality which was sought to
be imitated by poets like Keats, Swinburne, Tennyson, and many more. He was, as Legouis so well puts
it. a painter who never held a brush. With equal justice we may remark that he was a musician who never
wielded a musical instrument. The English language, tattered and jagged as it had become by the awkward
handling of the fifteenth-century poets like Lydgate and Skelton, in Spenser’s hands not only regained the
harmony of Chaucer’s numbers, but vastly added to its musical quality, in which it was previously much
below Italian and French. “He seemed able,” writes Legouis, “to tune English verse which had been so
long rebellious, to the natural tones of his voice. For him language ceased to be refractory.” It may be true
that, as Ben Jonson complained, Spenser wrote no language. But whatever he wrote bespeaks a highly
poetic spirit subjected to the process of exquisite craftsmanship which has always remained with the poets
of all ages a thing of professional interest and emulation. It is in this sense, too, that Spenser can be called
the poets’ poet.
Spensers Importance:
Spenser appears as a source of inspiration for the succeeding poets because through his example
he amply showed that the heights were within reach of English poetry, and he did actually make his poetry
reach them. In his age-the age of the Renaissance–before he started writing, England had to show nothing
to compare with the poetry of the Italian Renaissance poets such as Ariosto, Tasso, and Petrach, and the
French Renaissance poets like Ronsard and du Bellay. By his poetic effort Spenser proved that, to quote
Renwick, “modern England was capable of poetry as great as that of any other age and that she had her
share of poetic power, of art and learning.” In his pastoralism (The Shepherd’s Calendar) he challenges
comparison with the ancient Theocritus and Virgil, in his sonneteering with Petrarch and Ronsard, in his
epic-writing Tasso and Ariosto and in his imaginative fertility and craftsmanship with any poet ancient or
modern. He taught his countrymen once and for all not to look for poetic gems to Italy or France but to
their own country, for it had come after all to have a great poet, the poets’ poet!
The Influence of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Middle Ages On spenser

Introduction:
What Chaucer was to the England of the late fourteenth century, Spenser was to that of the late
sixteenth century. In his work he has completely and effectively captured the spirit of the age. The late
sixteenth century was a period known appropriately as that of the efflorescence of the Renaissance in
England. Simultaneously, it was the age when England came under the full impact of the Reformation
which had started in the early part of the sixteenth century.
In the age of Spenser the spirit of the Renaissance as also the Reformation was abroad, and nobody could
keep himself untinctured by it. Spenser’s works are imbued with this twjn spirit. But though Spenser kept
pace with the changing times he sometimes also shows evidence of looking to the past-the fairyland of the
Middle Ages. Consequently, we find him not only faithfully recording the impact of the Renaissance and
the Reformation but also allowing a gust of the medieval wind to blow across his pages. He is at once a
child of the Renaissance and the Reformation even triough there are some touches of medievalism in his
poetry as well as temper: Let us now try to bring out, one after the other, the elements peculiar to the
Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Middle Ages in the work of Spenser. Let us start with the
Renaissance.

THE RENAISSANCE
The Spirit of the Age:
The Renaissance (etymologically, re-birth) which started in Italy (and somewhat later, in France)
as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries came to have its full impact on England only sometime in
the middle of the sixteenth. Basically, the arrival of the Renaissance signalised a revival of interest in
ancient Greek and Roman literature and learning, but as the Renaissance arrived in England via Italy (and
to some extent, France), it came after acquiring a particular complexion associated with the Italy of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Not only were the ancient Greek and Roman men of letters and
philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Homer, arid Virgil hailed as guides and models by the English but also
the Italian poets and philosophers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, like Ariosto, Petrarch, Tasso,
and Machiavelli who themselves had written under tfie impact of the ancient masters. By the time the
dawn of the Renaissance arrived in England, it had already become a decadent, if not an altogether
defunct, force in Italy. Nevertheless, the Renaissance meant in England not only the revival of interest in
the Greek and Roman antiquity but also a great deal of respect for the values of Renaissance Italy which
was characterised, along with an avid love of learning, by such features as a reckless spirit of adventure, a
taste for pomp and splendour, a keen appreciation of beauty (generally of the physical kind), a kind of
“Machiavellian” egocentricism, and a general love of luxury. Spenser’s work very well captures the spirit
of the Italian Renaissance which stirred the life of his age in all its aspects except the sordid
Machiavellianism which held such £ sinister interest for some of, his contemporaries, like the University
Wits arid Baron as well as a vast brood of gilded courtiers. The Renaissance elements in Spenser are1
tempered by the Reformation ideals.
Writers:
Spenser, an M. A. of Cambridge University, was well read in much of the ancient classical
literature which had then begun to be commonly known. He borrowed a good deal from the vast treasure
of that literature and came to be intimately influenced by a number of ancient poets and philosophers and
the writers of Renaissance Italy who themselves had been influenced by these poets and philosophers. He
modelled his most important work The Faerie Queene upon the epics of the Greek Homer, the Roman
Virgil, and the Italian Ariosto and Tasso. Theocritus and Virgil prompted him to try his hand at the
pastoral {The Shepherd’s Calendar). The first English writer of the eclogue was Barclay (of the Ship of
Fools fame) who flourished in the fifteenth century; but he had based his five eclogues on the work of the
Italian poet Mantuanus rather than the great Virgil and Theocritus. Spenser went back to Virgil and wrote
what stands in comparison with his eclogues. Then, Spenser looked to Petrarch and his French followers
while composing his sonnet sequence Amoretti. Thus in his selection of the literary genres for his use
Spenser clearly displays his debt to the ancient Greek and Roman and the modern Italian writers.
Moreover, there are some specific echoes of these writers in his works. For instance, we have a number of
Virgilian phrases which, like a good writer, Spenser does not allow to stand out, but submerges into the
context. In The Faerie Queene Sir Guyon’s voyage to the Bower of’ Bliss (where his arch enemy Acrasy
is living) is suggested most probably by a similar voyage in Homer’s Odyssey; but Spenser means by this
voyage what Homer did not. Then the descent of the false Duessa to Hades is suggested by the sixth book
of Virgil’‘s Aeneid. Tasso’? Armida gave Spenser some obvious hints for his description of Acrasy and
her terrible powers. Ariosto, the writer of the first romantic epic in the history ofworld
literature (Orlando Furioso),  set before Spenser a living example of the romantic love of adventure and
unbounded activity which he was to imitate in The Faerie Queene.
Plato and Aristotle:
The, great Greek philosophers, Plato and his disciple Aristotle, exerted a strong hold on Spenser’s
intellectual and moral temper. In his Four Hymns Spenser gives a poetic utterance to the Platonic
conception of Love and Beauty. Plato taught that all material beauty (such as the beauty of the human
body) is a shadow as well as a symbol” of the Ideal Beauty which is divine. A specific embodiment of
beauty should be used for ascending to the contemplatiotrdf the abstract Idea of Beauty. The abstract Idea
is divine, and the contemplation of the Idea is a religious activity. Echoing the true Platonic spirit, Spenser
observes in the Hymn in Honour of Beauty that “a comely corpse, with beauty fair endowed” is the house
of a ‘beauteous soul.”
Fit to receive the seed of virtue strewed:
For all thatjair is, is by nature good.
Spenser well became a spokesman of the neo-PIatonism of the Renaissance.
Aristotle, too, was a philosopher of abiding interest for Spenser. He seems to have effectively
taught Spenser the doctrine of the golden mean which finds an effective embodiment in Guyon who stands
for Temperance. The very groundplan of The Faerie Queene, which is to celebrate twelve cardinal virtues,
is perhaps suggested by Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. If it is not Aristotle himself, it must have been
some of his very numerous commentators who seems to have enumerated the twelve virtues each of which
was to be dealt with in one of the twelve projected books of The Fairie Queene. Spenser’s Prince Arthur
is described as “the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle
hath devised.” writes a critic,” Spenser follows the great formative work of Elizabethan and later English
culture, the Nichomachean Ethics.”
Classical Mythology:
Another Renaissance feature of Spenser’s work is his employment of classical mythology for
ornament and illustration. Being a devout Christian he did not believe at all in the multiplicity of
pagan-deities, but, like Shakespeare, Marlowe, Lyly, and almost all the rest of his contemporaries, he was
attracted by classical mythology which he freely drew upon in his works. Very like Milton he uses his
profound and vast knowledge of this mythology even when his sincere aim is to drive home a Christian
moral. At any rate, the frequent references to classical mythology give the language a veneer of richness
and exoticism which was so much sought after by the English writers of the Renaissance.
Emphasis on Self-culture:
A new creed of humanism arrived with the Renaissance in England. It taught that the universe
was not, as the Middle Ages had believed, theocentric (that is, centred in God), but homocentric (that is,
centred in man). Much emphasis came to be laid upon man, human life, the material world, and man’s
activity in this world. Such things had hitherto been despised, for man was taughtto concern himself with
his welfare in the next world. The new humanistic thinking, which put human interests paramount, gave
special importance to self-culture which did not mean simply the cultivation of the well-known Christian
virtues but implied a harmonious development of the human personality on all planes-thought, feelings,
and action. More concretely, it meant the cultivation of “the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath
devised.” In The Faerie Queens Spenser celebrates not only Holiness but also other virtues, like justice
and Temperance, which are more of secular and humanistic than of Christian nature. Spenser’s aim in his
great poem is not just to teach people to submit passively before the Divine Will, or to seek for divine
Grace, but in the manner of a Renaissance humanist (as for example, the Italian Castiglione) “to fashion”,
as he himself writes, “a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.”
Some Other Renaissance Features:
The age of the Renaissance in England was, as has been often said, “a young age.” It was marked
by unprecedented ebullience and adolescent impatience of all fetters—intellectual, religious, and even
moral. It also developed a craving for sensuous thrills. Renaissance Italy had burst forth into hectic
activity in the field of arts like painting, music, and sculpture which in the Middle Ages were looked down
upon as too mundane. England in the late sixteenth century produced a number of great musicians such as
Byrd, but she remained devoid of the plastic arts. However, in the poetry of the age” we often find the
sensuous touches of a painter. Spenser’s poetry is well known for its sensuous and more specifically,
pictorial quality. He was in the words of Legouis, “a painter who never held a brush.” But, what is more,
Spenser—with all his Platonism and puritanism notwithstanding— seems too frequently to indulge in the
pleasures of the senses for their own sake. His paradise seems to be as earthly as that of Omar Khayyam
himself. He spends all his art while describing the beauty of the nude female figure, which he does quite
voluptuously and with untiring zeal, dwelling on each and every part with great patience and a greater joy.
He is, no doubt, uncontaminated by the virus of the Italian pornographic eroticism which is evident in
works like Marston’s Pigmalionand even in Marlowe’s Hero and.Leander arid Shakespeare’s Venus and
Adonis, but his taste for the delights of the senses is quite apparent. For instance, see the following sonnet:
Coming to kiss her lips (such grace I found),
Me seem ‘d I smelt a garden of sweet flow’rs,
That dainty odours from them threw around,.
For damsels fit to deck their lovers, ‘bow ‘rs.
Her lips did smell like unto gilliflowers,
Her ruddy cheeks like unto roses red,
Her snowy brows like budded betlamoures,
Her lovely eyes like pinks but newly spread,
Her goodly bosom like a strawberry bed.
Her neck like to a bunch ofcullambines.
Her breast like lilies ere their leaves be shed,
Her nipples like young blossom ‘d jessamines;
Such fragrant flow ‘ers do give most odorous smell,
But her sweet odour did them all excel.
THE REFORMATION
Introduction:
The very important movement called the Reformation was started in Europe by the German
clergyman named Martin Luther sometime in the early sixteenth century. This movement was intended
against the growing corruptions of the Pope of Rome and his deputies and had for its aim the taking of
Christianity back to the original religion of Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible. A permanent cleavage came
to separate Roman Catholicism and the new “religion” termed Protestantism. Most of the Englishmen
under Henry VIII and later his daughtei, Queen Elizabeth, embraced the new religion which recommended
simplicity amounting to abstemiousness as against the luxury and pageantry of the Popish religion.
Spenser was much influenced by the spirit of the Reformation which he, however, tried to reconcile with
that of the Renaissance. He was a devout Christian and, as such, adored the Bible. The thought-content of
the Four Hymns is a compromise between Christianity and neo-Platonism to which we have already
referred. As regards his sincerity as a Christian, there can be no doubt, even though his Christianity puts a
few hurdles in the path of his voluptuous enjoyment and his sensitive appreciation and assimilation of the
Greek and Roman antiquity.
Illustration:
‘Spenser is not only a Christian but a Protestant. As such, he is extremely and zealously critical of
Roman Catholicism which the Reformation was sweeping off the English land. The first book of The
Faerie Queene, read on a particular plane of symbolism, is a representation of the conflict
between–Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, ending in a decisive victory for the former. It is the work
of a zealous partisan who loads the dice too obviously in favour of his own religion. Una may be justly
considered to be representative of Protestantism. Her champion is the Red Cross Knight representing
Holiness. Duessa, who represents Roman Catholicism, is false, deceitful, and corrupt and is supported by
the arch-trickster . \Ajchi-ma-gq: Orgoglio. the horrible monster, symbolises the itiultifarious corruptions
of the Roman Catholic Church. The evil designs of Archimago and Duessa to create a schism between the
forces of holiness and Protestantism are shown by Spenser to be frustrated with the help of Prince Arthur.
To which side Spenser’s sympathies lie is crystal clear. He powerfully, though indirectly, lashes at the
follies and corruptions of the papists and satisfies his fervour by showing them put to rout by the forces
unleashed by the Reformation.
Odd Synthesis:
The synthesis of the elements of the Renaissance with the features of the Reformation appears to
be odd. But Spenser was a child of his age which itself effected such a synthesis. About that age Lytton
Strachey observes: “It is, above all, the contradictions of the age that baffle our imagination and perplex
our intelligence; the inconsistency of the Elizabethans exceeds the limits permitted to man.” “To Spenser”,
says another critic, “as to his contemporaries, the best of all three worlds, the ancient, the medieval, and
the Christian Renaissance, were almost on one plane,” And Spenser moved quite glibly on this “one
plane.” He was at once a Hellenist, a humanist, a Christian, and a medievalist. Let us now consider him in
his last-mentioned manifestation.

(c)  Elizabethan Prose

The Elizabethan period was also the period of the origin of modern English prose. During the reign of
Elizabeth prose began to be used as a vehicle of various forms of amusement and information, and its
popularity increased on account of the increased facility provided by the printing press. Books on history,
travel, adventures, and translations of Italian stories appeared in a large number. Though there were a large
number of prose-writers, there were only two-Sidney and Lyly who were conscious of their art, and who
made solid contributions to the English prose style when it was in its infancy. The Elizabethan people
were intoxicated with the use of the English language which was being enriched by borrowings from
ancient authors. They took delight in the use of flowery words and graceful ,grandiloquent phrases. With
the new wave of patriotism and national prestige the English language which had been previously eclipsed
by Latin, and relegated to a lower position, now came to its own, and it was fully exploited. The
Elizabethans loved decorative modes of expression and flowery style. Introduction:
The Elizabethan age has well been called a “young” age. It was full of boundless vigour,
re-awakened intellectual earnestness, and unfettered, soaring imagination. The best fruits of the age are
enshrined in poetry in which all these elements can be befittingly contained. In poetry there are
restrictions of versification which exerted some check on the youthful imagination and vigour of the
Elizabethans. Consequently, Elizabethan poetry is very great. But prose does not admit of any restrictions,
and the result is that Elizabethan prose is as one run amuck. Too much of liberty has taken away much of
its merit.

During the fifteenth century, Latin was the medium of expression, and almost all the important
prose works were written in that language. It was in the sixteenth century, particularly in its later half, that
the English language came to its own. With the arrival of cheap mass printing English prose became the
popular medium for works aiming both at amusement and instruction. The books which date from this
period cover many departments of learning. We have the Chronicles of such writers as Stowe and
Holinshed recapturing the history of England, though mixed with legends and myths. Writers like
Harrison and Stubbs took upon themselves the task of describing the England not of the past but of their
own age. Many writers, most of them anonymous, wrote accounts of their voyages which had carried
them to many hitherto unknown lands in and across the Western Seas. Then, there are so many “novelists”
who translated Italian stories and wrote stories of their own after the Italian models. There are also quite a
few writers who wrote on religion. And last of all there is a host of pamphleteers who dealt with issues of
temporary interest.
Though the prose used by these numerous writers is not exactly similar, yet we come across a
basic characteristic common to the works of all: that is, the nearness of their prose to poetry. “The age,”
says G. H. Mair, “was intoxicated with language. It went mad of a mere delight in words. Its writers were
using a new tongue, for English was enriched beyond all recognition with borrowings from the ancient
authors, and like all artists who become possessed of a new medium, they used it to excess. The early
Elizabethans’ use of the new prose was very like the use some educated Indians make of English. It was
rich, gaudy and overflowing, though, in the main, correct.” A. C. Ward observes in Illustrated History of
English Literature, Vol. I: “Our modern view of prose is strictly and perhaps-too narrowly practical and
utilitarian or functional. Prose, we hold, has ajob to do and should do it without fuss, nonsense, or
aesthetic capers. It should say what it has to say in the shortest and most time-saving manner, and there
finish.” But we find Elizabethan prose far from this commonly accepted principle. It is colourful, blazing,
rhythmic, indirect, prolix, and convoluted. Rarely does an Elizabethan prose writer call a spade a spade.
The-prose works of the Elizabethan age fall into two categories:
(i)         Fiction
(ii)        Non-Fiction.
Let us consider them one by one.
FICTION
The fiction of the age of Elizabeth is generally “romantic” in nature in the sense that it is of the
kind of romance. Many forms of fiction were practised in the age. Some important forms and their
practitioners are as follows :
(i)         The romances of Lyly-, Greene, and Lodge
(ii)        The pastoral romance of Sir Philip Sidney
(iii)       The picaresque novel of Nashe
(iv)       The realistic novel of Delony.
Robert Greene (1560-92):
Greene was a patent imitator of Lyly, and later that of Sidney, after he came to know of
his Arcadia. Though in his actual life he was a debauchee of the worst kind yet in his works he was quite
didactic. His several “novels” include Pandosto (1588) which very obviously furnished the plot for
Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. His other important works are Menophon (1519), Mamilia (1583),
and The Card of Fancy which was published within a decade of Euphues and, as A. C. Ward says,
“reproduces its mannerisms of style, its elaborately artificial and voluble conversations, its classical
embellishments, its images and comparisons from natural history (for Greene, like Lyly, drew upon
Pliny), its frequent and lengthy soliloquies.” The frequency of letters may have furnished Richardson with
a model of epistolary novel. In his Life and Death of Ned Brown, a notorious pick-pocket, Greene
provides hints for the low-life scenes we meet with in the novels of Smollett and Defoe.
Thomas Lodge (1558-1625):
He was another writer of Euphuistic novels the best of which is Roslynde, Euphues Golden
Legacie (1590). In his tricks of style Lodge imitates Lyly, but his matter is derived from Greek pastoral
romance. The work is significant because it furnished Shakespeare with the plot of As You Like It. Further,
it includes, like Greene’s Menophon, some very charming lyrics.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86):
Like Lyly, Sidney also prompted a number of imitators. His Arcadia (1590) is the first pastoral
romance in English prose, just as Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar is the first verse pastoral romance.
All the happenings of the story are envisaged in an imaginary land of idyllic beauty with shepherds,
shepherdesses, running brooks, and lush scenery. It tells the story of Basilius, king of Arcadia, who settles
in a village with his wife and two daughters named Pamela and Philoclea. Two princes from abroad come
to Arcadia and start courting the two girls. One disguises himself as a shepherd and the other as an
Amazon. Complications start when both Basilius and his wife fall in love with the “Amazon”, the former
taking him to be a real Amazon and the latter, after discovering his real identity. Everything is finally
unravelled by Euarchus, king of Macedonia and father 6f one of the princes. Everything ends happily.
This was the first version of the Arcadia, known as the Old Arcadia. In the revised version Sidney
included many complications and also added’much symbolism and didacticism which rendered it almost
of the nature of The Faerie Queene. In the Arcadia, observes Daiches, “Ideal love, ideal friendship, and
the ideal ruler are, directly and indirectly, discussed, suggested, and embodied.”
The style of the Arcadia is as artificial and attitudinised as that of Euphues. It is, to quote Daiches
again, “highly ‘conceited’, full of elaborate analogies, balanced parenthetical asides, pathetic fallacies,
symmetrically answering clauses and other devices of an immature prose entering suddenly into the world
of conscious literary artifice. “One of Sidney’s constant devices is to take a word and, somewhat like
Shakespeare, toss it about till its meaning is sucked dry. AS an example of pathetic fallacy consider his
reference to the cool wine which seems “to laugh for joy” as it nears a lady’s lips. Similarly the water
drops that slip down the bodies of dainty ladies seem to weep for sorrow. The name that a beautiful lady
utters is perfumed by the scent of her breath. When the princesses put on their clothes, the clothes are
described as “glad.” And so forth.
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601):
Nashe had a taste for buffoonery, satire, reckless savagism, and effrontery. He is best known for
his vigorous pamphlets. He also wrote the first English picaresque novel The Unfortunate
Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594) which is a tale of the adventures of a page named Wilton in
the reign of Henry VIII. It was perhaps suggested by the Spanish Lozarillo de Thormes. It has also been
called the first English historical novel as it introduces as characters suc’h known figures of yore as
Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and the Earl of Surrey. But Nashe jumbles up all the historical details with
reckless abandon and irresponsibility without minding gross inaccuracies and anachronisms. The
adventures of Jack Wilton take him through half of Europe which (particularly Italy) is described with all
its sordidness, crime, culture, and beauty. The novel has no form. It is made up of, to quote
Compton-Rickett, “a series of episodes lightly strung together.” -It is hopelessly incoherent at times. In his
prose style Nashe follows neither Lyly nor Greene nor Sidney. His sentences are short and striking, but
sometimes he is carried away by a flood of words. “Nashe,” says A. C. Ward, “was drunk with words,
even besotted by them.” Anyway, his strength was acknowledged by his contemporaries, and he had many
imitators’.
Thomas Deloney (1543-1600):
Deloney, a silk-weaver by profession, exhibited even weaker sense of form and structure than
Kashe. His three tales Jack ofNewbwy, The Gentle Craft, and Thomas of Reading (all 1590) show him as a
story teller of the bourgeois craftsmen. In the second named he glorifies the craft of Shoemakers.
Deloney’s style is quite homely, and he was,read and appreciated by a vast number of people, particularly
craftsmen, whom he had tried to flatter. In spite of his gifts of description he does not manage to give
pattern, unity of action, or even unity of tone or mood to his stories.
NON-FICTION
Richard Hooker (15547-1600):
Hooker’s masterly work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Policy is the greatest of the non-fictional
prose works of the Elizabethan age. It began appearing volume by volume in 1594 and continued till the
author’s death. It was the first book in England which used English for a serious philosophic discussion.
Hooker was a Protestant who combined the piety of a saint with the simplicity of a child. His purpose in
writing the book was to defend the Church of England and to support certain principles of Church
government. Hardin Craig in A History of English Literature edited by himself maintains :
“As originally written the eight books were already on a very high level of theological and legal
argument. The first book is Hooker’s famous general treatise on law. The second argues that divine law or
scripture is not the only law that ought to serve for our direction in things ecclesiastical. The effect of the
third is to make of the Church an independent and self-directing social institution within the State. The
fourth claims for the Church the right to adjust its position, free, on the one side, of Rome and, on the
other, of Geneva. The fifth book…deals with the established practices of the Church of England. The
fragmentary sixth is largely on penitence…The seventh treats the power and position of bishops, and the
eighth is a most significant treatise on the relation of the Church to the secular government. Hooker
admits the right of the secular government to establish and control the Church, but declares that the
powers of the Crown are derived from the consent of the governed a expressed in a parliament of the
people.”
Hooker modelled his style on Cicero. Though his diction is simple yet the syntax is highly
Latinized, but not without much harmony and studied flow. The style is as much removed from vulgarity
as from pedantry. Ruskin was later to seize upon this style and use it in his earlier works,
particularly Modern Painters.
Bacon (1561-1626):
Exactly opposite to Hooker’s Ciceronian style was Bacon’s English prose style which has been
called style coupe or anti-Ciceronian style. Much of what Bacon wrote appeared in the age of James I.
However, the first edition of his Essays appeared in 1597. that is, within the age of Elizabeth. Bacon
borrowed the term and the conception of the essay from the French writer Montaigne whose Essais first
appeared in 1580. In spite of the fact that Bacon took them lightly, his essays make pretty heavy reading.
They are full of memorable aphorisms which have passed into everyday speech. The scope of his essays is
vast, and they embrace all kinds of issues, but, mostly, those of practical life. By writing his essays Bacon
became “the father of the English essay.” Even though his essays differ from the kind which was later
established in England, he is a worthy predecessor of the line of essayists ranging from his own times up
to ours.

John Lyly (1554-1606)

Lyly in his romance displays all the peculiarities of Elizabethan prose which we have mentioned
above. At the age of twenty-four he came out with his Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit (1578) which took
 England by storm. This work which may only very roughly be termed the “first English prose novel” was
an agglomeration of a thousand elements many of them alien to the nature of the novel proper. The “plot”
of the work is the simplest imaginable. Euphues is a man of learning and culture belonging to Athens
(which evidently stands for Oxford). He goes to Naples (which stands for London) to lead a life of
pleasure. There he-becomes intimate friends with a young man Philautus who introduces him to his
fiancee, Lucilla. Euphues attracts Lucilla’s love, and the two friends exchange taunting letters. But Lucilla
plays him false and elopes with a stranger. Euphues, heart-broken, returns to Athens, and he and Philautus
become friends again. The plot is simple but very long essays on such topics as love and the education of
children, with many rhetorical letters and lengthy dialogues, are grafted on to the thin’Stem of the storv. In
1580 Lvlv came out with, a sequel. Euphues and His England, in which is narrated the arrival of Philautus
and Euphues in England, and Philautus’ unsuccessful courtship of Camilla, a maid of honour to Queen
Elizabeth. This volume pays a glowing tribute to the English nobility, particularly the courtiers. “Lyly
was,” to quote Tucker Brooke, “most careful to depict them, not as they were, but as they would have
liked to have themselves regarded.” To quote the same critic, “in the last fifteen pages a portrait of Queen
Elizabeth [is] probably the most elaborately flattering that much flattered sovereign ever received.”
What is remarkable about Lyly’s work is not its matter but its terribly manneristic prose style
which has come to be dubbed as “Euphuism.” It came to be parodied and derided by a long chain of
writers from Shakespeare to Scott, though it also excited imitation in a very large number of writers now
justly forgotten. The cool Drayton declared that Lyly taught his countrymeiilo speak and write “all like
mere lunatics.” Nevertheless, if Lyly was a lunatic there was method in his madness. He did employ a
well-thought-out plan which has the following characteristics:
(i)         The first is the principle of symmetry and equipoise obtained generally by the employment of alliteration,
balance, and antithesis. See, for instance, such an expression as “hot liver of a heedless lover”, or the
description of Euphues as “a young gallant of more wit than wealth, yet of more wealth than wisdom.”
(ii)        Secondly, there are the very numerous references to the classical authorities, even for very well-known
facts.
(iii)       Thirdly, there is the mass of allusions to natural history, generally of the fabulous kind.
All these devices are used for the purpose of decoration. But our complaint is that the style is
over-decorated, to the point of being monotonous and insipid, even though it affects poetic beauties. To
quote Compton-Rickett, Lyly’s style “suffers from the serious defect of ignoring the distinction between
prose and verse. It is the prose of an age that found its most effective medium in verse.”

The first author who wrote prose in the manner that the Elizabethans wanted, was Lyly,
whose Euphues, popularized a highly artificial and decorative style. It was read and copied by everybody.
Its maxims and phrases were freely quoted in the court and the market-place, and the word ‘Euphuism’
became a common description of an artificial and flamboyant style.
The style of Euphues has three main characteristics. In the first place, the structure of the sentence is
based on antithesis and alliteration. In other words, it consists of two equal parts which are similar in
sound but with a different sense. For example, Euphues is described as a young man “of more wit than
wealth, yet of more wealth than wisdom”. The second characteristic of this style is that no fact is stated
without reference to some classical authority. For example, when the author makes a mention of
friendship, he quotes the friendship that existed between David and Jonathan. Besides these classical
allusions, there is also an abundance of allusion to natural history, mostly of a fabulous kind, which is its
third characteristic. For example, “The bull being tied to the fig tree loseth his tale; the whole herd of dear
stand at gaze if they smell sweet apple.”
The purpose of writing Euphues was to instruct the courtiers and gentlemen how to live, and so it is
full of grave reflections and weighty morals. In it there is also criticism of contemporary society,
especially its extravagant fashions. Though Puritanic in tone, it inculcates, on the whole, a liberal and
humane outlook.
Sidney’s Arcadia is the first English example of prose pastoral romance, which was imitated by
various English authors for about two hundred years. The story related in Arcadia in the midst of pastoral
surrounding where everything is possible, is long enough to cover twenty modern novels, but its main
attraction lies in its style which is highly poetical and exhaustive. One word is used again and again in
different senses until its all meanings are exhausted. It is also full of pathetic fallacy which means
establishing the connection between the appearance of nature with the mood of the artist. On the
whole, Arcadia goes one degree beyond Euphues in the direction of Sfreedom and poetry.
Two other important writers who, among others, influenced Elizabethan prose were: Malory and
Hakluyt. Malory wrote a great prose romance Morte de Arthur dealing with the romantic treasures of the
Middle Ages. It was by virtue of the simple directness of the language, that it proved an admirable model
to the prose story-tellers of the Renaissance England. Richard Hakluyt’s Voyages and other such books
describing sea adventures were written in simple and unaffected directness. The writer was conscious of
only that he had something to tell that was worth telling.
The Puritan Age (1600-1660)
 The Literature of the Seventeenth Century may be divided into two periods—The Puritan Age or
the Age of Milton (1600-1660), which is further divided into the Jacobean and Caroline periods after the
names of the ruled James I and Charles I, who rules from 1603 to 1625 and 1625 to 1649 respectively; and
the Restoration Period or the Age of Dryden (1660-1700).
The Seventeenth Century was marked by the decline of the Renaissance spirit, and the writers either
imitated the great masters of Elizabethan period or followed new paths. We no longer find great
imaginative writers of the stature of Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney. There is a marked change in
temperament which may be called essentially modern. Though during the Elizabethan period, the new
spirit of the Renaissance had broken away with the medieval times, and started a new modern
development, in fact it was in the seventeenth century that this task of breaking away with the past was
completely accomplished, and the modern spirit, in the fullest sense of the term, came into being. This
spirit may be defined as the spirit of observation and of preoccupation with details, and a systematic
analysis of facts, feelings and ideas. In other words, it was the spirit of science popularized by such great
men as Newton, Bacon and Descartes. In the field of literature this spirit manifested itself in the form of
criticism, which in England is the creation of the Seventeenth Century. During the Sixteenth Century
England expanded in all directions; in the Seventeenth Century people took stock of what had been
acquired. They also analysed, classified and systematised it. For the first time the writers began using the
English language as a vehicle for storing and conveying facts.

One very important and significant feature of this new spirit of observation and analysis was the
popularisation of the art of biography which was unknown during the Sixteenth Century. Thus whereas we
have no recorded information about the life of such an eminent dramatist as Shakespeare, in the
seventeenth century many authors like Fuller and Aubrey laboriously collected and chronicled the
smallest facts about the great men of their own day, or of the immediate past. Autobiography also came in
the wake of biography, and later on keeping of diaries and writing of journals became popular, for
example Pepy’s Diary and Fox’s Journal. All these new literary developments were meant to meet the
growing demand for analysis of the feelings and the intimate thoughts and sensations of real men and
women. This newly awakened taste in realism manifested itself also in the ‘Character’, which was a brief
descriptive essay on a contemporary type like a tobacco-seller, or an old shoe-maker. In drama the
portrayal of the foibles of the fashionable contemporary society took a prominent place. In satire, it were
not the common faults of the people which were ridiculed, but actual men belonging to opposite political
and religious groups. The readers who also had become critical demanded facts from the authors, so that
they might judge and take sides in controversial matters.
The Seventeenth Century upto 1660 was dominated by Puritanism and it may be called the Puritan
Age or the Age of Milton who was the noblest representative of the Puritan spirit. Broadly speaking, the
Puritan movement in literature may be considered as the second and greater Renaissance, marked by the
rebirth of the moral nature of man which followed the intellectual awakening of Europe in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. Though the Renaissance brought with it culture, it was mostly sensuous and
pagan, and it needed some sort of moral sobriety and profundity which were contributed by the Puritan
movement. Moreover, during the Renaissance period despotism was still the order of the day, and in
politics and religion unscrupulousness and fanaticism were rampant. The Puritan movement stood for
liberty of the people from the shackles of the despotic ruler as well as the introduction of morality and
high ideals in politics. Thus it had two objects—personal righteousness and civil and religious liberty. In
other words, it aimed at making men honest and free.
Though during the Restoration period the Puritans began to be looked down upon as narrow-minded,
gloomy dogmatists, who were against all sorts of recreations and amusements, in fact they were not so.
Moreover, though they were profoundly religious, they did not form a separate religious sect. It would be
a grave travesty of facts if we call Milton and Cromwell, who fought for liberty of the people against the
tyrannical rule of Charles I, as narrow-minded fanatics. They were the real champions of liberty and stood
for toleration.
The name Puritan was at first given to those who advocated certain changes in the form of worship of
the reformed English Church under Elizabeth. As King Charles I and his councillors, as well as some of
the clergymen with Bishop Laud as their leader, were opposed to this movement, Puritanism in course of
time became a national movement against the tyrannical rule of the King, and stood for the liberty of the
people. Of course the extremists among Puritans were fanatics and stern, and the long, protracted struggle
against despotism made even the milder ones hard and narrow. So when Charles I was defeated and
beheaded in 1649 and Puritanism came out triumphant with the establishment of the Commonwealth
under Cromwell, severe laws passed. Many simple modes of recreation and amusement were banned, and
an austere standard of living was imposed on an unwilling people. But when we criticize the Puritan for
his restrictions on simple and innocent pleasures of life, we should not forget that it was the same very
Puritan who fought for liberty and justice, and who through self-discipline and austere way of living
overthrew despotism and made the life and property of the people of England safe from the tyranny of
rulers.
In literature of the Puritan Age we find the same confusion as we find in religion and politics. The
medieval standards of chivalry, the impossible loves and romances which we find in Spenser and Sidney,
have completely disappeared. As there were no fixed literary standards, imitations of older poets and
exaggeration of the ‘metaphysical’ poets replaced the original, dignified and highly imaginative
compositions of the Elizabethan writers. The literary achievements of this so-called gloomy age are not of
a high order, but it had the honour of producing one solitary master of verse whose work would shed lustre
on any age or people—John Milton, who was the noblest and indomitable representative of the Puritan
spirit to which he gave a most lofty and enduring expression.
(a)  Puritan Poetry
The Puritan poetry, also called the Jacobean and Caroline Poetry during the reigns of James I and
Charles I respectively, can be divided into three parts –(i) Poetry of the School of Spenser; (ii) Poetry of
the Metaphysical School; (iii) Poetry of the Cavalier Poets.
(i)  The School of Spenser
The Spenserians were the followers of Spenser. In spite of the changing conditions and literary tastes
which resulted in a reaction against the diffuse, flamboyant, Italianate poetry which Spenser and Sidney
had made fashionable during the sixteenth century, they preferred to follow Spenser and considered him as
their master.
The most thorough-going disciples of Spenser during the reign of James I were Phineas Fletcher
(1582-1648) and Giles Fletcher (1583-1623). They were both priests and Fellows of Cambridge
University. Phineas Fletcher wrote a number of Spenserian pastorals and allegories. His most ambitious
poem The Purple Island, portrays in a minutely detailed allegory the physical and mental constitution of
man, the struggle between Temperance and his foes, the will of man and Satan. Though the poem follows
the allegorical pattern of the Faerie Queene, it does not lift us to the realm of pure romance as does
Spenser’s masterpiece, and at times the strain of the allegory becomes to unbearable.
Giles Fletcher was more lyrical and mystical than his brother, and he also made a happier choice of
subjects. His Christ’s Victorie and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death (1610), which is an
allegorical narrative describing in a lyrical strain the Atonement, Temptation, Crucifixion, and
Resurrection of Christ, is a link between the religious poetry of Spenser and Milton. It is written in a
flamboyant, diffuse style of Spenser, but its ethical aspect is in keeping with the seventeenth century
theology which considered man as a puny creature in the divine scheme of salvation.
Other poets who wrote under the influence of Spenser were William Browne (1590-1645). George
Wither (1588-1667) and William Drummond (1585-1649).
Browne’s important poetical work is Britannia’s Pastorals which shows all the characteristics of
Elizabethan pastoral poetry. It is obviously inspired by Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Sidney’s Arcadia as
it combines allegory with satire. It is a story of wooing and adventure, of the nymphs who change into
streams and flowers. It also sings the praise of virtue and of poets and dead and living.
The same didactic tone and lyrical strain are noticed in the poetry of George Wither. His best-known
poems are The Shepherd’s Hunting a series of personal eulogues; Fidella an heroic epistle of over twelve
hundred lines; and Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, a sustained and detailed lyrical eulogy of an
ideal woman. Most of Wither’s poetry is pastoral which is used by him to convey his personal experience.
He writes in an easy, and homely style free from conceits. He often dwells on the charms of nature and
consolation provided by songs. In his later years Wither wrote didactic and satirical verse, which earned
for him the title of “our English Juvenal”.
Drummond who was a Scottish poet, wrote a number of pastorals, sonnets, songs, elegies and
religious poems. His poetry is the product of a scholar of refined nature, high imaginative faculty, and
musical ear. His indebtedness to Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare in the matter of fine phraseology is
quite obvious. The greatest and original quality of all his poetry is the sweetness and musical evolution in
which he has few rivals even among the Elizabethan lyricists. His well-known poems are Tears on the
Death of Maliades (an elegy), Sonnets, Flowers of Sion and Pastorals.
(ii)       The Poets of the Metaphysical School
The metaphysical poets were John Donne, Herrick, Thomas Carew, Richard Crashaw, Henry
Vaughan, George Herbet and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. The leader of this school was Donne. They are
called the metaphysical poets not because they are highly philosophical, but because their poetry is full of
conceits, exaggerations, quibbling about the meanings of words, display of learning and far-fetched
similes and metaphors. It was Dr. Johnson who in his essay on Abraham Cowley in his Lives of the
Poets used the term ‘metaphysical’. There he wrote:
“About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the
metaphysical poets. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their
whole endeavour: but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote
verses and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation
was so imperfect that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables.”
Though Dr. Johnson was prejudiced against the Metaphysical school of poets, and the above
statement is full of exaggeration, yet he pointed out the salient characteristics of this school. One
important feature of metaphysical school which Dr. Johnson mentioned was their “discovery of occult
resemblances in things apparently unlike.” Moreover, he was absolutely right when he further remarked
that the Metaphysical poets were perversely strange and strained: ‘The most heterogeneous ideas are
yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions…
Their wish was only to say what had never been said before”.
Dr. Johnson, however, did not fail to notice that beneath the superficial novelty of the metaphysical
poets lay a fundamental originality:
“If they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out
unexpected truth; if the conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their
plan, it was at least necessary to read and think, No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume to
dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by
traditional imagery, and volubility of syllables.”
The metaphysical poets were honest, original thinkers. They tried to analyse their feelings and
experience—even the experience of love. They were also aware of the life, and were concerned with
death, burial descent into hell etc. Though they hoped for immortality, they were obsessed by the
consciousness of mortality which was often expressed in a mood of mawkish disgust.
John Donne (1537-1631), the leader of the Metaphysical school of poets, had a very chequered career
until be became the Dean of St. Paul. Though his main work was to deliver religious sermons, he wrote
poetry of a very high order. His best-known works are The Progress of the Soul; An Anatomy of the World,
an elegy; and Epithalamium.  His poetry can be divided into three parts: (1) Amorous (2) Metaphysical (3)
Satirical. In his amorous lyrics which include his earliest work, he broke away from the Petrarcan model
so popular among the Elizabethan poets, and expressed the experience of love in a realistic manner. His
metaphysical and satirical works which from a major portion of his poetry, were written in later years. The
Progress of the Soul and Metempsychosis, in which Donne pursues the passage of the soul through various
transmigrations, including those of a bird and fish, is a fine illustration of his metaphysical poetry. A good
illustration of his satire is his fourth satire describing the character of a bore. They were written in rhymed
couplet, and influenced both Dryden and Pope.
Donne has often been compared to Browning on account of his metrical roughness, obscurity, ardent
imagination, taste for metaphysics and unexpected divergence into sweet and delightful music. But there
is one important difference between Donne and Browning. Donne is a poet of wit while Browning is a
poet of ardent passion. Donne deliberately broke away from the Elizabethan tradition of smooth sweetness
of verse, and introduced a harsh and stuccato method. His influence on the contemporary poets was far
from being desirable, because whereas they imitated his harshness, they could not come up to the level of
his original thought and sharp wit. Like Browning, Donne has no sympathy for the reader who cannot
follow his keen and incisive thought, while his poetry is most difficult to understand because of its
careless versification and excessive terseness.
Thus with Donne, the Elizabethan poetry with its mellifluousness, and richly observant imagination,
came to an end, and the Caroline poetry with its harshness and deeply reflective imagination began.
Though Shakespeare and Spenser still exerted some influence on the poets, yet Donne’s influence was
more dominant.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) wrote amorous as well as religious verse, but it is on account of the
poems of the former type—love poems, for which he is famous. He has much in common with the
Elizabethan song writers, but on account of his pensive fantasy, and a meditative strain especially in his
religious verse, Herrick is included in the metaphysical school of Donne.
Thomas Carew (1598-1639), on whom the influence of Donne was stronger, was the finest lyric
writer of his age. Though he lacks the spontaneity and freshness of Herrick, he is superior to him in fine
workmanship. Moreover, though possessing the strength and vitality of Donne’s verse, Carew’s verse is
neither rugged nor obscure as that of the master. His Persuasions of Love is a fine piece of rhythmic
cadence and harmony.
Richard Crashaw (1613?-1649) possessed a temperament different from that of Herrick or Carew. He
was a fundamentally religious poet, and his best work is The Flaming Heart. Though less imaginative
than Herrick, and intellectually inferior to Carew, at times Crashaw reaches the heights of rare excellence
in his poetry.
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695), though a mystic like Crashaw, was equally at home in sacred as well as
secular verse. Though lacking the vigour of Crashaw, Vaughan is more uniform and clear, tranquil and
deep.
George Herbert (1593-1633) is the most widely read of all the poets belonging to the metaphysical
school, except, of course, Donne. This is due to the clarity of his expression and the transparency of his
conceits. In his religious verse there is simplicity as well as natural earnestness. Mixed with the didactic
strain there is also a current of quaint humour in his poetry.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury is inferior as a verse writer to his brother George Herbert, but he is best
remembered as the author of an autobiography. Moreover, he was the first poet to use the metre which was
made famous by Tennyson in In Memoriam.
Other poets who are also included in the group of Metaphysicals are Abrahanm Cowley (1618-1667),
Andrew Marvel (1621-1672) and Edmund Waller (1606-1687). Cowley is famous for his ‘Pindaric Odes’,
which influenced English poetry throughout the eighteenth century. Marvel is famous for his loyal
friendship with Milton, and because his poetry shows the conflict between the two schools of Spenser and
Donne. Waller was the first to use the ‘closed’ couplet which dominated English poetry for the next
century.
The Metaphysical poets show the spiritual and moral fervour of the Puritans as well as the frank
amorous tendency of the Elizabethans. Sometimes like the Elizabethans they sing of making the best of
life as it lasts—Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may; and at other times they seek more permanent comfort in
the delight of spiritual experience.
(iii)  The Cavalier Poets
Whereas the metaphysical poets followed the lead of Donne, the cavalier poets followed Ben Jonson.
Jonson followed the classical method in his poetry as in his drama. He imitated Horace by writing, like
him, satires, elegies, epistles and complimentary verses. But though his verse possess classical dignity and
good sense, it does not have its grace and ease. His lyrics and songs also differ from those of Shakespeare.
Whereas Shakespeare’s songs are pastoral, popular and ‘artless’, Jonson’s are sophisticated,
particularised, and have intellectual and emotional rationality.
Like the ‘metaphysical’, the label ‘Cavalier’ is not correct, because a ‘Cavalier’ means a
royalist—one who fought on the side of the king during the Civil War. The followers of Ben Jonson were
not all royalists, but this label once used has stuck to them. Moreover, there is not much difference
between the Cavalier and Metaphysical poets. Some Cavalier poets like Carew, Suckling and Lovelace
were also disciples of Donne. Even some typical poems, of Donne and Ben Jonson are very much alike.
These are, therefore, not two distinct schools, but they represented two groups of poets who followed two
different masters—Donne and Ben Jonson. Poets of both the schools, of course, turned away from the
long, Old-fashioned works of the Spenserians, and concentrated their efforts on short poems and lyrics
dealing with the themes of love of woman and the love or fear of God. The Cavalier poets normally wrote
about trivial subjects, while the Metaphysical poets wrote generally about serious subjects.
The important Cavalier poets were Herrick, Lovelace, Suckling and Carew. Though they wrote
generally in a lighter vein, yet they could not completely escape the tremendous seriousness of
Puritanism. We have already dealt with Carew and Herrick among the metaphysical group of poets. Sir
John Suckling (1609-1642), a courtier of Charles I, wrote poetry because it was considered a gentleman’s
accomplishment in those days. Most of his poems are trivial; written in doggerel verse. Sir Richard
Lovelace (1618-1658) was another follower of King Charles I. His volume of love lyrics—Lucasta—are
on a higher plane than Suckling’s work, and some of his poems like “To Lucasta’, and “To Althea, from
Prison’, have won a secure place in English poetry.
(iv)  John Milton (1608-1674)
Milton was the greatest poet of the Puritan age, and he stands head and shoulders above all his
contemporaries. Though he completely identified himself with Puritanism, he possessed such a strong
personality that he cannot be taken to represent any one but himself. Paying a just tribute to the
dominating personality of Milton, Wordsworth wrote the famous line:
     They soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.
Though Milton praised Spenser, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson as poets, he was different from them
all. We do not find the exuberance of Spenser in his poetry. Unlike Shakespeare Milton is superbly
egoistic. In his verse, which is harmonious and musical, we find no trace of the harshness of Ben Jonson.
In all his poetry, Milton sings about himself and his own lofty soul. Being a deeply religious man and also
endowed with artistic merit of a high degree, he combined in himself the spirits of the Renaissance and the
Reformation. In fact no other English poet was so profoundly religious and so much an artist.
Milton was a great scholar of classical as well as Hebrew literature. He was also a child of the
Renaissance, and a great humanist. As an artist he may be called the last Elizabethan. From his young
days he began to look upon poetry as a serious business of life; and he made up his mind to dedicate
himself to it, and, in course of time, write a poem “which the world would not let die.”
Milton’s early poetry is lyrical. The important poems of the early period are: The Hymn on the
Nativity (1629); L’Allegro, Il Penseroso (1632); Lycidas (1637); and Comus (1934). The Hymn, written
when Milton was only twenty-one, shows that his lyrical genius was already highly developed. The
complementary poems, L’Allego and Il Penseroso, are full of very pleasing descriptions of rural scenes
and recreations in Spring and Autumn. L’Allegro represents the poet in a gay and merry mood and it
paints an idealised picture of rustic life from dawn to dusk. Il Penseroso is written in serious and
meditative strain. In it the poet praises the passive joys of the contemplative life. The poet extols the
pensive thoughts of a recluse who spends his days contemplating the calmer beauties of nature. In these
two poems, the lyrical genius of Milton is at its best.
 Lycidas is a pastoral elegy and it is the greatest of its type in English literature. It was written to
mourn the death of Milton’s friend, Edward King, but it is also contains serious criticism of contemporary
religion and politics.
Comus marks the development of the Milton’s mind from the merely pastoral and idyllic to the more
serious and purposive tendency. The Puritanic element antagonistic to the prevailing looseness in religion
and politics becomes more prominent. But in spite of its serious and didactic strain, it retains the lyrical
tone which is so characteristic of Milton’s early poetry.
Besides these poems a few great sonnets such as When the Assault was intended to the City, also
belong to Milton’s early period. Full of deeply-felt emotions, these sonnets are among the noblest in the
English language, and they bridge the gulf between the lyrical tone of Milton’s early poetry, and the
deeply moral and didactic tone of his later poetry.
When the Civil War broke out in 1642, Milton threw himself heart and soul into the struggle against
King Charles I. He devoted the best years of his life, when his poetical powers were at their peak, to this
national movement. Finding himself unfit to fight as a soldier he became the Latin Secretary to Cromwell.
This work he continued to do till 1649, when Charles I was defeated and Common wealth was proclaimed
under Cromwell. But when he returned to poetry to accomplish the ideal he had in his mind, Milton found
himself completely blind. Moreover, after the death of Cromwell and the coming of Charles II to the
throne, Milton became friendless. His own wife and daughters turned against him. But undaunted by all
these misfortunes, Milton girded up his loins and wrote his greatest poetical
works—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.
“The subject-matter of Paradise Lost consists of the casting out from Heaven of the fallen angels,
their planning of revenge in Hell, Satan’s flight, Man’s temptation and fall from grace, and the promise of
redemption. Against this vast background Milton projects his own philosophy of the purposes of human
existence, and attempts “to justify the ways of God to men.” On account of the richness and profusion of
its imagery, descriptions of strange lands and seas, and the use of strange geographical, names, Paradise
Lost is called the last great Elizabethan poem. But its perfectly organized design, its firm outlines and
Latinised diction make it essentially a product of the neo—classical or the Augustan period in English
Literature. In Paradise Lost the most prominent is the figure of Satan who possesses the qualities of
Milton himself, and who represents the indomitable heroism of the Puritans against Charles I.
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield
And what is else, not to be overcome.
It is written in blank verse of the Elizabethan dramatist, but it is hardened and strengthened to suit the
requirements of an epic poet.
Paradise Regained which deals with subject of Temptation in the Wilderness is written,
unlike Paradise Lost, in the form of discussion and not action. Not so sublime as Paradise Lost, It has a
quieter atmosphere, but it does not betray a decline in poetic power. The mood of the poet has become
different. The central figure is Christ, having the Puritanic austere and stoic qualities rather than the
tenderness which is generally associated with him.
In Samson Agonistes Milton deals with an ancient Hebrew legend of Samson, the mighty champion
of Israel, now blind and scorned, working as a slave among Philistines. This tragedy, which is written on
the Greek model, is charged with the tremendous personality of Milton himself, who in the character of
the blind giant, Samson, surrounded by enemies, projects his own unfortunate experience in the reign of
Charles II.
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves.
The magnificent lyrics in this tragedy, which express the heroic faith of the long suffering Puritans,
represent the summit of technical excellence achieved by Milton.
(b)  Jacobean and Caroline Drama
After Shakespeare the drama in England suffered and a decline during the reigns of James I and Charles I.
The heights reached by Shakespeare could not be kept by later dramatists, and drama in the hands of
Beaumont and Fletcher and others became, what may be called, ‘decadent’. In other words, the real spirit
of the Elizabethan drama disappeared, and only the outward show and trappings remained. For example,
sentiment took the place of character; eloquent and moving speeches, instead of being subservient to the
revelation of the fine shades of character, became important in themselves; dreadful deeds were described
not with a view to throwing light on the working of the human heart as was done by Shakespeare, but to
produce rhetorical effect on the audience. Moreover, instead of fortitude and courage, and sterner qualities,
which were held in high esteem by the Elizabethan dramatists, resignation to fate expressed in the form of
broken accents of pathos and woe, became the main characteristics of the hero. Whereas Shakespeare and
other Elizabethan dramatists took delight in action and the emotions associated with it, the Jacobean and
Caroline dramatists gave expression to passive suffering and lack of mental and physical vigour.
 Moreover, whereas the Elizabethan dramatists were sometimes, coarse and showed bad taste, these later
dramatists were positively and deliberately indecent. Instead of devoting all their capacity to fully
illuminating the subject in hand, they made it as an instrument of exercising their own power of rhetoric
and pedantry. Thus in the hands of these dramatists of the inferior type the romantic drama which had
achieved great heights during the Elizabethan period, suffered a terrible decline, and when the Puritans
closed the theatres in 1642, it died a natural death.

Jacobean Drama

Introduction:
Jacobean drama (that is, the drama of the age of James 1-1603-1625) was a decadent form of the
drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The Elizabethan age was the golden age of English drama.
But with the turn of the century the drama in England also took a turn. It does not mean that there were no
dramatists left. There certainly was a large number of them, but none of them could come anywhere near
Shakespeare.
Just as after Chaucer poetry in England suffered a decline, similarly after Shakespeare had given his best
(that is, after the sixteenth century) drama also suffered a decline. With the passage of time it grew more
and more decadent, till with Shirley in the age of Charles I the old kind of drama expired and even theatres
were closed (in 1642). “It was inevitable”, says Long “that drama should decline after Shakespeare, for
the simple reason that there was no other great enough to fill his place.”

The dramatists of the Jacobean age can be divided into two classes as follows:
(i)         The dramatists of the old school-Dekker, Heywood, Webster, Beaumont, and Fletcher.
(ii)        The satiric group-Chapman, Jonson, Marston, Middleton, and Tourneur.
The Change of Patrons:
One of the reason for the decadence in Jacobean drama was its loss of national spirit and
patronage. In the age of Elizabeth, drama was trulv national, as ‘it was patronised alike bv the queen, the
nobles the courtiers, and groundlings. But in the age of James I, it lost contact with common people and
came to be patronised by, to quote Hardin Craig, “the courtly classes, their hangers-on, and the socially
irresponsible parts of the population.” Consequently, to quote the same critic “the stage spoke not to all
men, but to men with somewhat specialized interests” Dramatists had to cater to the somewhat decadent
courtly taste with tales of intrigue, cruelty, and immorality couched in a high-flown, “polished” style.
Marked Foreign Influence:
The drama of the age of James shows, unlike that of the age of Elizabeth, a very marked foreign
influence, for more ill than good. In this connexion Hardin Craig observes: “The older dramatists and their
audiences had been satisfied with such intrigue as was afforded by the Italian short story. Their patriotism
had sent them to Holjnshed, who had rifled Geoffrey of Monmouth… But in the new age foreign
influences of increased potency made themselves felt. Dramatists borrowed the declamatory themes and
exaggerated sentiments of Spanish drama, and discovered rew ranges of intrigue, crime, and
licentiousness in Italy and Italian subjects. Specifically they revived the drama of revenge and, driving it
to the extreme, converted it into a drama of horror.”
Plot-construction:
In spite of the overall inferiority of Jacobean dramatists to Elizabethan dramatists, some credit
must be given to them for their gift of plot-construction. Elizabethan dramatists, including Shakespeare,
did not show any skill at architectonics. Moreover, they were generally too lazy to invent plots for
themselves and were content to borrow them rather too frequently. It does not mean, however, that they
were plagiarists pure and simple. Shakespeare borrowed the plots of most of his plays, but by virtue of his
imagination, dramatic skill, poetic gift, and psychological insight transformed them into altogether new
entities. But the fact remains that he was a borrower. “The Jacobean dramatists”, observes Hardin Craig,
“seem for the first time to have begun to invent plots to suit their own tastes and ends.” This is particularly
true of the comic dramatists like Marston and Ben Jonson. Secondly, Jacobean dramatists show a greater
skill in the construction and development of their plots. In many of them the various threads of the action
are carefully interwoven into a wonderful harmony of texture seldom to be met with in Elizabethan plays.
Jonson, Middleton, and Fletcher were particularly endowed with the gift of plot-construction.
Ben Jonson’s Alchemist is, according to Coleridge, one of the three literary works of the world (the two
others being Sophocles. Oedipus the King and Fielding’s novel Tom Jones’) which have perfectly
constructed plots. But what applies to the above-named dramatists does not apply to all Jacobean
dramatists. Many of them, such as Dekker, are agregious offenders in this respect. As Jenet Spens points
out in Elizabethan Drama, “the lack of connexion between plot and sub-plot was one of the most marked
vices of the post-Shakespearean dramatists, and Dekker happens to offer the most absurd instance of it.
There is unity in Dekker’s better plays, but it is the unity of the novel rather than that of the drama.”
New Experiments:
 In addition to their overall better plot-construction Jacobean dramatists may be credited with
setting up some new patterns of drama. It was they who gave us the following kinds of drama, till then
unattempted, or indifferently attempted, in England:
(i)         Domestic drama : such as Heywood’s/4 Woman Killed with Kindness.
(ii)        Drama glorifying a particular profession : such as Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday (which came,
however, in 1599).
(iii)       Drama showing the life and manners of the people of London: such as many of Ben Jonson’s comedies.
(iv)       Drama dealing with social problems, mostly prostitution: such as Dekker’s The Honest Whore. This kind
of drama later came to be practised by no less a distinguished dramatist than George Bernard Shaw.
Moral Laxity:
A-fter giving Jacobean drama its due, let us discuss some elements of decadence which appear in
it. One of these elements is its moral laxity. As we have already said, Jacobean drama was patronised
mostly by the courtly classes which were known for their lack of moral discipline. James I himself was, to
use the words of Hardin Craig, “a moralist without character.” The same is true of most of the dramatists
of his age. Some of them made fairly sincere attempts to preach morality, and none of them commended,
or even condoned, sin or vice. But that does not absolve them of the charge of-showing an almost morbid
interest in sexual immorality even though for the purpose of condemning it. Play after play was written on
the theme of immoral love. The White Devil, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and The Duchess ofMalfi are
all tragedies of illicit love. A King and No King is a tragedy of incestuous love. Later, in the Caroline age,
Ford produced his very shocking play ‘Tis Pity She Is a Whore in which he openly dealt with the
incestuous passion of a brother and sister which ends in disaster for both. Prostitutes appeared as heroines
in many a play, such as Dekker’s The Honest Whore and Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan. Abject
debauchees figured prominently in numerous plays. It was only Heywood and Webster who abstained
from licentious themes. Heywood looked to the past and, in the words of Irvin Ribner in his Jacobean
Tragedy, “doggedly continued to assert the moral values of an earlier age in a new world in which they no
longer had great meaning.” As regards Webster, the same critic observes that his plays “are an agonised
search for moral order in the uncertain and chaotic world of Jacobean scepticism.”
Gloom and Pessimism:
This scepticism led the Jacobean age to spiritual vacuity and despair. The courtiers, in particular,
became voluptuous .cynics. But this voluptuousness was not without the agonising sense of melancholy
arising chiefly from the prospect of human mortality without any Christian consolation regarding the
future. Themes of death, time, and mutability engaged the attention of most writers and the tragedies of
the Jacobean period, too, are exhibitive of what Ribner calls a “spirit of negation and disillusion, depair
and spiritual no-confidence.” Shakespearean tragedy does give rise to the feelings of pity and fear, and
even awe, but it does not create any pessimistic feeling. There are death and destruction no doubt, but the
human spirit rises phoenix-like from the pyre with a new, resplendent glory. But this kind of reassuring
feeling is absent from Jacobean tragedy. All that happens in it is quite earthly, lacking the spiritual
dimension of Hamlet, and still less, the much vaster, cosmic dimension of Lear. The scepticism, gloom,
despair, and pessimism of the age are thus reflected by its tragedy also.
Melodramatic Sensationalism:
The English have always had, in spite of the long line of critics from Sidney to Dryden to
Addison to Dr. Johnson, a taste for crude and melodramatic sensationalism generally of the kind of
physical violence and bloodshed. Even Elizabethan dramatists including Shakespeare could not do
without catering to the popular taste by introducing into their tragedies a large number of murders and
scenes of violence. They might have been partly influenced by the tradition of Senecan revenge tragedy,
but the popular taste for “blood and thunder” was also a dictating factor. Considered from the point of
view of story alone, such plays as Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and The Jew of
Malta, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy are all melodramas. But their
melodramatic nature does not force itself on the eye or the ear, thanks to the rare poetic power which
sustains them in a higher region. But the same is not true of the Jacobean mel’odramatic tragedies. With
the departure or decay of the poetic power they have not much left to recommend themselves to us. Most
of the tragedies of the age only succeed in covering the stage in the last act with a virtual rivulet of blood
so revolting to the refined eye.
Sentimentalism:
On the other side of the scale to this artless and unthinking bloodshed was the Jacobean tendency
towards sentimentalism. To quote Allardyce Nicoll, “there is apparent in the audience of the seventeenth
century an increasing love of pathos and of what may be called sentimentalism.” The pathos sought to be
created by Jacobean dramatists is generally of the artificial kind. But some plays, such as
Heywood’s Woman Killed with Kindness, contain some really pathetic scenes. The death scene of the
duchess in Webster’s The Duchess ofMalfi is one of the superb examples of pathos in the whole range of
English literature. But such scenes are more of the nature of an exception than a rule. The pathos of Lear’s
or Cordelia’s or Edward II’s death is seldom captured by a Jacobean dramatist. Allardyce, Nicoll observes
about these dramatists : “The dramatists employ every means, illegitimate as well as legitimate, to stir the
emotions of the spectators and to present before them something of novelty.”
Satire and Realism:
The Jacobean age brought into vogue a new kind of realistic and satiric comedy aimed at the
exposure of London life and manners and the vices and follies of the times. The exposure was effected for
the purpose of correction through satire and ridicule. We find comedy writers like Ben Jonson and
Marston holding the mirror to their age and lashing the follies of the Londoners. Their plays are quite
realistic with real London as their background. They do not transport us to the fairyland atmosphere of the
romantic comedies such as As You Like It or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What they give us is a much
more direct criticism of life. Ben Jonson was quite articulate about his aim.
I’ll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked, as at their birth;
And with a whip of steel
Print wounding lashes in their ir6n ribs.
Marston and Ben Jonson were engaged in what is known as “the War of Theatres” and wrote stinging
satires against each other: The humour of Jacobean comedy was no longer the genial, puckish, fresh and
refreshing humour of Shakespeare’s comedies, but the bitter and satirical humour which always arises
from
Poor Characterisation:
Jacobean drama suffered decadence in the all-important field of characterisation. It could not
boast of a character of the stature and psychological compexity of Shakespeare’s Lear or Hamlet, or even
Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Jacobean dramatists relied for dramatic effect more on the situation than on the
character. In the field of comedy, the Jacobean age presents conventional and wooden types, as, for
instance, Ben Jonson’s ‘humours.” In the field of tragedy, we have again some highly conventional and
recurring characters such as, to use the words of Nicoll, the “Headstrong monarch”, the “lustful tyrant,” “a
predetermined hero, often a husband, and with him the inevitable heroine either sinning or sinned
against.” Then there is the “faithful friend” of the hero. “Again, there are,” says Nicoll, “sudden and
wholly unpsychological revolutions of character which mar the majority of these dramas and we realize
that there could be no possible delving into the depths of personality such as we find in Shakespeare.”
Poor Poetry:
Poetically, Jacobean drama is much less rich than Elizabethan drama. The passionate lyricism of
Shakespeare and the grandeur of Marlowe’s mighty line became things of the past. Rhetorical devices
took the place of true poetry. In Ben Jonson’s tragedies, Catiline and Sejanus, there is more of oratory
than poetry. Playwrights such as Dekker, Heywood, and Tourneur handled blank verse quite loosely, nor
could they breathe into it that pulsating life and poetic beauty which constitute an overwhelming
proportion of the pleasure we derive from Elizabethan drama. 

The greatest dramatist of the Jacobean period was Ben Jonson who has already been dealt with in the
Renaissance Period, as much of his work belongs to it. The other dramatists of the Jacobean and Caroline
periods are John Marston (1575-1634); Thomas Dekker (1570-1632); Thomas Heywood (1575-1650);
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627); Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626); John Webster (1575-1625?); John Fletcher
(1579-1625); Francis Beaumont (1584-1616); Philip Massinger (1583-1640); John Ford (1586-1639); and
James Shirley (1596-1666).
John Marston wrote in a violent and extravagant style. His melodramas Antonia and Mellida and
Antonia’s Revenge are full of forceful and impressive passages. In The Malcontent, The Dutch Courtezan,
and Parasitaster, or Fawne, Marston criticised the society in an ironic and lyrical manner. His best play
is Eastward Hoe, an admirable comedy of manners, which portrays realistically the life of a tradesman,
the inner life of a middle class household, the simple honesty of some and the vanity of others.
Thomas Dekker, unlike Marston, was gentle and free from coarseness and cynicism. Some of his
plays possess grace and freshness which are not to be found even in the plays of Ben Jonson. He is more
of a popular dramatist than any of his contemporaries, and he is at his best when portraying scenes from
life, and describing living people with an irresistible touch of romanticism. The gayest of his comedies
is The Shoemaker’s Holiday, in which the hero, Simon Eyre, a jovial London shoemaker, and his shrewish
wife are vividly described. In Old Fortunates Dekker’s poetical powers are seen at their best. The scene in
which the goddess Fortune appears with her train of crowned beggars and kings in chains, is full of
grandeur. His best-known work, however, is The Honest Whore, in which the character of an honest
courtesan is beautifully portrayed. The most original character in the play is her old father, Orlando
Friscoboldo, a rough diamond. This play is characterised by liveliness, pure sentiments and poetry.
Thomas Heywood resembles very much Dekker in his gentleness and good temper. He wrote a large
number of plays—two hundred and twenty—of which only twenty-four are extant. Most of his plays deal
with the life of the cities. In The Foure Prentices of London, with the Conquest of Jerusalem, he flatters
the citizens of London. The same note appears in his Edward VI, The Troubles of Queene Elizabeth and
The Fair Maid of the Exchange. In the Fair Maid of the West, which is written in a patriotic vein, sea
adventures and the life of an English port are described in a lively fashion. His best known play is A
Woman Kilde with Kindness, a domestic tragedy written in a simple form, in which he gives us a gentle
picture of a happy home destroyed by the wife’s treachery, the husband’s suffering and his banishment of
his wife, her remose and agony, and death at the moment when the husband has forgiven her. Instead of
the spirit of vengeance as generally prevails in such domestic plays, it is free from any harshness and
vindictiveness. In The English Traveller we find the same generosity and kindliness. On account of his
instinctive goodness and wide piety, Heywood was called by Lamb as a “sort of prose Shakespeare.”
Thomas Middleton, like Dekker and Heywood, wrote about the city of London. But instead flattering
the citizens, he criticised and ridiculed their follies like Ben Jonson. He is mainly the writer of comedies
dealing the seamy side of London life, and the best-known of them are: Michaelmas Terms; A Trick to
Catch the Old One, A Mad World, My Masters, Your Five Gallants, A Chaste Mayd in Cheapside. They
are full of swindlers and dupes. The dramatist shows a keen observation of real life and admirable
dexterity in presenting it. In his later years Middleton turned to tragedy. Women beware Women deals with
the scandalous crimes of the Italian courtesan Bianca Capello. Some tragedies or romantic dramas as A
Faire Quarrel, The Changeling and The Spanish Gipsie, were written by Middleton in collaboration with
the actor William Rowley.
Cyril Tourneur wrote mostly melodramas full of crimes and torture. His two gloomy dramas are: The
Revenge Tragedies, and The Atheist’s Tragedie, which, written in a clear and rapid style, have an intense
dramatic effect.
John Webster wrote a number of plays, some in collaboration with others. His best-known plays
are The White Devil or Vittoria Corombona and the Duchess of Malfi which are full of physical horrors. In
the former play the crimes of the Italian beauty Cittoria Accorambona are described in a most fascinating
manner. The Duchess of Malfi is the tragedy of the young widowed duchess who is driven to madness and
death by her two brothers because she has married her steward Antonio. The play is full of pathos and
touches of fine poetry. Though a melodrama full of horror and unbearable suffering, it has been raised to a
lofty plane by the truly poetic gift of the dramatist who has a knack of coining unforgettable phrases.
John Fletcher wrote a few plays which made him famous. He then exploited his reputation to the
fullest extent by organising a kind of workshop in which he wrote plays more rapidly in collaboration with
other dramatists in order to meet the growing demand. The plays which he wrote in collaboration with
Francis Beaumont are the comedies such as The Scornful Ladie and The Knight of the Burning
Pestle; tragi-comedies like Philaster; pure tragedies such as The Maides Tragedy and A King and no
King. The Knight of the Burning Pestle is the gayest and liveliest comedy of that time and it has such
freshness that it seems to have been written only yesterday. Philaster and The Maides Tragedy are written
in Shakespearean style, but they have more outward charm than real merit.
Fletcher alone wrote a number of plays of which the best known are The Tragedies of Vanentinian,
The Tragedie of Bonduca, The Loyal Subject, The Humorous Lieutenant. His Monsieur Thomas and The
Wild Goose Chase are fine comedies.
Philip Massinger wrote tragedies as Thierry and Theodoret and The False One; comedies as The
Little French Lawyer, The Spanish Curate and The Beggar’s Bush, in collaboration with Fletcher.
Massinger combined his intellectualism with Fletcher’s lively ease. It was Massinger who dominated the
stage after Fletcher. He wrote thirty seven plays of which eighteen are extant. In his comedies we find the
exaggerations or eccentricities which are the characteristics of Ben Jonson. In his tragedies we notice the
romanticism of Fletcher. But the most individual quality of Massinger’s plays is that they are plays of
ideas, and he loves to stage oratorical debates and long pleadings before tribunals. His best comedies are A
New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Guardian; his important serious plays are The
Fatal Dowry, The Duke of Millaine, The Unnatural Combat. The Main of Honour, The Bond-Man, The
Renegado, The Roman Actor, and The Picture. Of all these A New Way to Pay Old Debts is his most
successful play, in which the chief character, the usurer, Sir Charles Overreach reminds us of Ben Jonson’s
Volpone. All the plays of Massinger show careful workmanship, though a great deterioration had crept in
the art of drama at the time when he was writing. When not inspired he becomes monotonous, but he is
always a conscientious writer.
John Ford, who was the contemporary of Massinger, collaborated with various dramatists. He was a
true poet, but a fatalist, melancholy and gloomy person. Besides the historical play, Perkin Warbeck, he
wrote The Lover’s Melancholy, ‘Tis Pity Shee’s a Whore, The Broken Heart and Love’s Sacrifice, all of
which show a skilful handling of emotions and grace of style. His decadent attitude is seen in the delight
he takes in depicting suffering, but he occupies a high place as an artist.
James Shirley, who as Lamb called him, ‘the last of a great race’, though a prolific writer, shows no
originality. His best comedies are The Traytor, The Cardinall, The Wedding, Changes, Hyde Park, The
Gamester and The Lady of Pleasure, which realistically represent the contemporary manners, modes and
literary styles. He also wrote tragi-comedies or romantic comedies, such as Young Admirall, The
Opportunitie, and The Imposture. In all these Shirley continued the tradition formed by Fletcher, Tourneur
and Webster, but he broke no new ground.
 Besides these there were a number of minor dramatists, but the drama suffered a serious setback
when the theatres were closed in 1642 by the order of the Parliament controlled by the Puritans. They
were opened only after eighteen years later at the Restoration.
(c)  Jacobean and Caroline Prose
This period was rich in prose. The great prose writers were Bacon, Burton, Milton, Sir Thomas
Browne, Jeremy Tayler and Clarendon. English prose which had been formed into a harmonious and
pliable instrument by the Elizabethans, began to be used in various ways, as narrative as well as a vehicle
for philosophical speculation and scientific knowledge. For the first time the great scholars began to write
in English rather than Latin. The greatest single influence which enriched the English prose was the
Authorised Version of the Bible (English translation of the Bible), which was the result of the efforts of
scholars who wrote in a forceful, simple and pure Anglo-Saxon tongue avoiding all that was rough,
foreign and affected. So the Bible became the supreme example of earlier English prose-style—simple,
plain and natural. As it was read by the people in general, its influence was all-pervasive.
Francis Bacon (1561-1628). Bacon belongs both to the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. He was a
lawyer possessing great intellectual gifts. Ben Jonson wrote of him, ‘no man ever coughed or turned aside
from him without a loss”. As a prose-writer he is the master of the aphoristic style. He has the knack of
compressing his wisdom in epigrams which contain the quintessence of his rich experience of life in a
most concentrated form. His style is clear, lucid but terse and that is why one has to make an effort to
understand his meaning. It lacks spaciousness, ease and rhythm. The reader has always to be alert because
each sentence is packed with meaning.
Bacon is best-known for his Essays, in which he has given his views about the art of managing men
and getting on successfully in life. They may be considered as a kind of manual for statesmen and princes.
The tone of the essay is that of a worldly man who wants to secure material success and prosperity. That is
why their moral standard is not high.
Besides the Essays, Bacon wrote Henry VII the first piece of scientific history in the English
language; and The Advancement of Learning which is a brilliant popular exposition of the cause of
scientific investigation. Though Bacon himself did not make any great scientific discovery, he popularized
science through his writings. On account of his being the intellectual giant of his time, he is credited with
the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare.
Robert Burton (1577-1640) is known for his The Anatomy of Melancholy, which is a book of its own
type in the English language. In it he has analysed human melancholy, described its effect and prescribed
its cure. But more than that the book deals with all the ills that flesh is heir to, and the author draws his
material from writers, ancient as well as modern. It is written in a straightforward, simple and vigorous
style, which at times is marked with rhythm and beauty.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) belonged entirely to a different category. With him the manner of
writing is more important than the substance. He is, therefore, the first deliberate stylist in the English
language, the forerunner of Charles Lamb and Stevenson. Being a physician with a flair for writing, he
wrote Religio Medici in which he set down his beliefs and thoughts, the religion of the medical man. In
this book, which is written in an amusing, personal style, the conflict between the author’s intellect and
his religious beliefs, gives it a peculiar charm. Every sentence has the stamp of Browne’s individuality.
His other important prose work is Hydriotaphia or The Urn Burial, in which meditating on time and
antiquity Browne reaches the heights of rhetorical splendour. He is greater as an artist than a thinker, and
his prose is highly complex in its structure and almost poetic in richness of language.
Other writers of his period, who were, like Browne, the masters of rhetorical prose, were Milton,
Jeremy Taylor and Clarendon. Most of Milton’s prose writings are concerned with the questions at issue
between the Parliament and the King. Being the champion of freedom in every form, he wrote a forceful
tract On the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in which he strongly advocated the right to divorce. His
most famous prose work is Areopagitica which was occasioned by a parliamentary order for submitting
the press to censorship. Here Milton vehemently criticised the bureaucratic control over genius. Though
as a pamphleteer Milton at times indulges in downright abuse, and he lacks humour and lightness of
touch, yet there is that inherent sublimity in his prose writings, which we associate with him as a poet and
man. When he touches a noble thought, the wings of his imagination lift him to majestic heights.
Opposed to Milton, the greatest writer in the parliamentary struggle was the Earl of Clarendon
(1609-1674). His prose is stately, and he always writes with a bias which is rather offensive, as we find in
his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England.
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), a bishop, made himself famous by his literary sermons. On account of
the gentle charm of his language, the richness of his images, and his profoundly human
imagination, Taylor is considered as one of the masters of English eloquence. His best prose famous book
of devotion among English men and women.
Thus during this period we find English prose developing into a grandiloquent and rich instrument
capable of expressing all types of ideas—scientific, religious, philosophic, poetic, and personal.
The Restoration Period (1660-1700)
 After the Restoration in 1660, when Charles II came to the throne, there was a complete repudiation
of the Puritan ideals and way of living. In English literature the period from 1660 to 1700 is called the
period of Restoration, because monarchy was restored in England, and Charles II, the son of Charles I
who had been defeated and beheaded, came back to England from his exile in France and became the
King.
It is called the Age of Dryden, because Dryden was the dominating and most representative literary figure
of the Age. As the Puritans who were previously controlling the country, and were supervising her literary
and moral and social standards, were finally defeated, a reaction was launched against whatever they held
sacred. All restraints and discipline were thrown to the winds, and a wave of licentiousness and frivolity
swept the country. Charles II and his followers who had enjoyed a gay life in France during their exile, did
their best to introduce that type of foppery and looseness in England also. They renounced old ideals and
demanded that English poetry and drama should follow the style to which they had become accustomed in
the gaiety of Paris. Instead of having Shakespeare and the Elizabethans as their models, the poets and
dramatists of the Restoration period began to imitate French writers and especially their vices.

The result was that the old Elizabethan spirit with its patriotism, its love of adventure and romance,
its creative vigour, and the Puritan spirit with its moral discipline and love of liberty, became things of the
past. For a time in poetry, drama and prose nothing was produced which could compare satisfactorily with
the great achievements of the Elizabethans, of Milton, and even of minor writers of the Puritan age. But
then the writers of the period began to evolve something that was characteristic of the times and they
made two important contributions to English literature in the form of realism and a tendency to
preciseness.
In the beginning realism took an ugly shape, because the writers painted the real pictures of the
corrupt society and court. They were more concerned with vices rather than with virtues. The result was a
coarse and inferior type of literature. Later this tendency to realism became more wholesome, and the
writers tried to portray realistically human life as they found it—its good as well as bad side, its internal as
well as external shape.
The tendency to preciseness which ultimately became the chief characteristic of the Restoration
period, made a lasting contribution to English literature. It emphasised directness and simplicity of
expression, and counteracted the tendency of exaggeration and extravagance which was encouraged
during the Elizabethan and the Puritan ages. Instead of using grandiloquent phrases, involved sentences
full of Latin quotations and classical allusions, the Restoration writers, under the influence of French
writers, gave emphasis to reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and evolved an exact, precise way of
writing, consisting of short, clear-cut sentences without any unnecessary word. The Royal Society, which
was established during this period enjoined on all its members to use ‘a close, naked, natural way of
speaking and writing, as near the mathematical plainness as they can”. Dryden accepted this rule for his
prose, and for his poetry adopted the easiest type of verse-form—the heroic couplet. Under his guidance,
the English writers evolved a style—precise, formal and elegant—which is called the classical style, and
which dominated English literature for more than a century.
(a)  Restoration Poetry
John Dryden (1631-1700). The Restoration poetry was mostly satirical, realistic and written in the
heroic couplet, of which Dryden was the supreme master. He was the dominating figure of the Restoration
period, and he made his mark in the fields of poetry, drama and prose. In the field of poetry he was, in
fact, the only poet worth mentioning. In his youth he came under the influence of Cowley, and his early
poetry has the characteristic conceits and exaggerations of the metaphysical school. But in his later years
he emancipated himself from the false taste and artificial style of the metaphysical writers, and wrote in a
clear and forceful style which laid the foundation of the classical school of poetry in England.
The poetry of Dryden can be conveniently divided under three heads—Political Satires, Doctrinal
Poems and The Fables. Of his political satires, Absolem and Achitophel and The Medal are well-known.
In Absolem and Achitophel, which is one of the greatest political satires in the English language, Dryden
defended the King against the Earl of Shaftesbury who is represented as Achitophel. It contains powerful
character studies of Shaftesbury and of the Duke of Buckingham who is represented as Zimri. The
Medal is another satirical poem full of invective against Shaftesbury and MacFlecknoe. It also contains a
scathing personal attack on Thomas Shadwell who was once a friend of Dryden.
The two great doctrinal poems of Dryden are Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther. These
poems are neither religious nor devotional, but theological and controversial. The first was written when
Dryden was a Protestant, and it defends the Anglican Church. The second written when Dryden had
become a Catholic, vehemently defends Catholicism. They, therefore, show Dryden’s power and skill of
defending any position he took up, and his mastery in presenting an argument in verse.
The Fables, which were written during the last years of Dryden’s life, show no decrease in his poetic
power. Written in the form of a narrative, they entitle Dryden to rank among the best story-tellers in verse
in England. The Palamon and Arcite, which is based on Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, gives us an opportunity
of comparing the method and art of a fourteenth century poet with one belonging to the seventeenth
century. Of the many miscellaneous poems of Dryden, Annus Mirabilis is a fine example of his sustained
narrative power. His Alexander’s Feast is one of the best odes in the English language.
The poetry of Dryden possess all the characteristics of the Restoration period and is therefore
thoroughly representative of that age. It does not have the poetic glow, the spiritual fervour, the moral
loftiness and philosophical depth which were sadly lacking in the Restoration period. But it has the
formalism, the intellectual precision, the argumentative skill and realism which were the main
characteristics of that age. Though Dryden does not reach great poetic heights, yet here and there he gives
us passages of wonderful strength and eloquence. His reputation lies in his being great as a satirist and
reasoner in verse. In fact in these two capacities he is still the greatest master in English literature.
Dryden’s greatest contribution to English poetry was his skilful use of the heroic couplet, which became
the accepted measure of serious English poetry for many years.
(b)  Restoration Drama
In 1642 the theatres were closed by the authority of the parliament which was dominated by Puritans
and so no good plays were written from 1642 till the Restoration (coming back of monarchy
in England with the accession of Charles II to the throne) in 1660 when the theatres were re-opened. The
drama in England after 1660, called the Restoration drama, showed entirely new trends on account of the
long break with the past. Moreover, it was greatly affected by the spirit of the new age which was deficient
in poetic feeling, imagination and emotional approach to life, but laid emphasis on prose as the medium of
expression, and intellectual, realistic and critical approach to life and its problems. As the common people
still under the influence of Puritanism had no love for the theatres, the dramatists had to cater to the taste
of the aristocratic class which was highly fashionable, frivolous, cynical and sophisticated. The result was
that unlike the Elizabethan drama which had a mass appeal, had its roots in the life of the common people
and could be legitimately called the national drama, the Restoration drama had none of these
characteristics. Its appeal was confined to the upper strata of society whose taste was aristocratic, and
among which the prevailing fashions and etiquettes were foreign and extravagant.
As imagination and poetic feelings were regarded as ‘vulgar enthusiasm’ by the dictators of the social
life. But as ‘actual life’ meant the life of the aristocratic class only, the plays of this period do not give us a
picture of the whole nation. The most popular form of drama was the Comedy of Manners which
portrayed the sophisticated life of the dominant class of society—its gaiety, foppery, insolence and
intrigue. Thus the basis of the Restoration drama was very narrow. The general tone of this drama was
most aptly described by Shelley:
Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds humour; we laugh from self-complacency and
triumph; instead of pleasure, malignity, sarcasm and contempt, succeed to sympathetic merriment; we
hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty of life,
becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting; it is a monster for which the
corruption of society for ever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.
These new trends in comedy are seen in Dryden’s Wild Gallant (1663), Etheredge’s (1635-1691) The
Comical Revenge or Love in a Tub (1664), Wycherley’s The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer, and the
plays of Vanbrugh and Farquhar. But the most gifted among all the Restoration dramatist was William
Congreve (1670-1720) who wrote all his best plays he was thirty years of age. He well-known comedies
are Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700).
It is mainly on account of his remarkable style that Congreve is put at the head of the Restoration
drama. No English dramatist has even written such fine prose for the stage as Congreve did. He balances,
polishes and sharpens his sentences until they shine like chiselled instruments for an electrical experiment,
through which passes the current in the shape of his incisive and scintillating wit. As the plays of
Congreve reflect the fashions and foibles of the upper classes whose moral standards had become lax, they
do not have a universal appeal, but as social documents their value is very great. Moreover, though these
comedies were subjected to a very severe criticism by the Romantics like Shelley and Lamb, they are now
again in great demand and there is a revival of interest in Restoration comedy.
In tragedy, the Restoration period specialised in Heroic Tragedy, which dealt with themes of epic
magnitude. The heroes and heroines possessed superhuman qualities. The purpose of this tragedy was
didactic—to inculcate virtues in the shape of bravery and conjugal love. It was written in the ‘heroic
couplet’ in accordance with the heroic convention derived from France that ‘heroic metre’ should be used
in such plays. In it declamation took the place of natural dialogue. Moreover, it was characterised by
bombast, exaggeration and sensational effects wherever possible. As it was not based on the observations
of life, there was no realistic characterisation, and it inevitably ended happily, and virtue was always
rewarded.
The chief protagonist and writer of heroic tragedy was Dryden. Under his leadership the heroic
tragedy dominated the stage from 1660 to 1678. His first experiment in this type of drama was his
play Tyrannic love, and in The Conquest of Granada he brought it to its culminating point. But then a
severe condemnation of this grand manner of writing tragedy was started by certain critics and
playwrights, of which Dryden was the main target. It has its effect on Dryden who in his next
play Aurangzeb exercised greater restraint and decorum, and in the Prologue to this play he admitted the
superiority of Shakespeare’s method, and his own weariness of using the heroic couplet which is unfit to
describe human passions adequately: He confesses that he:
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress Rhyme,
Passions too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground;
What verse can do, he has performed in this
Which he presumes the most correct of his;
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare’s sacred name.
Dryden’s altered attitude is seen more clearly in his next play All for Love (1678). Thus he writes in
the preface: “In my style I have professed to imitate Shakespeare; which that I might perform more freely,
I have disencumbered myself from rhyme.” He shifts his ground from the typical heroic tragedy in this
play, drops rhyme and questions the validity of the unities of time, place and action in the conditions of
the English stage. He also gives up the literary rules observed by French dramatists and follows the laws
of drama formulated by the great dramatists of England. Another important way in which Dryden turns
himself away from the conventions of the heroic tragedy, is that he does not give a happy ending to this
play.
(c) Restoration Prose
The Restoration period was deficient in poetry and drama, but in prose it holds its head much higher.
Of course, it cannot be said that the Restoration prose enjoys absolute supremacy in English literature,
because on account of the fall of poetic power, lack of inspiration, preference of the merely practical and
prosaic subjects and approach to life, it could not reach those heights which it attained in the preceding
period in the hands of Milton and Browne, or in the succeeding ages in the hands of Lamb, Hazlitt, Ruskin
and Carlyle. But it has to be admitted that it was during the Restoration period that English prose was
developed as a medium for expressing clearly and precisely average ideas and feelings about
miscellaneous matters for which prose is really meant. For the first time a prose style was evolved which
could be used for plain narrative, argumentative exposition of intricate subjects, and the handling of
practical business. The elaborate Elizabethan prose was unsuited to telling a plain story. The epigrammatic
style of Bacon, the grandiloquent prose of Milton and the dreamy harmonies of Browne could not be
adapted to scientific, historical, political and philosophical writings, and, above all, to novel-writing. Thus
with the change in the temper of the people, a new type of prose, as was developed in the Restoration
period, was essential.
As in the fields of poetry and drama, Dryden was the chief leader and practitioner of the new prose.
In his greatest critical work Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden presented a model of the new prose, which
was completely different from the prose of Bacon, Milton and Browne. He wrote in a plain, simple and
exact style, free from all exaggerations. His Fables and the Preface to them are fine examples of the prose
style which Dryden was introducing. This style is, in fact, the most admirably suited to strictly prosaic
purposes—correct but not tame, easy but not slipshod, forcible but not unnatural, eloquent but not
declamatory, graceful but not lacking in vigour. Of course, it does not have charm and an atmosphere
which we associate with imaginative writing, but Dryden never professed to provide that also. On the
whole, for general purposes, for which prose medium is required, the style of Dryden is the most suitable.
Other writers, of the period, who came under the influence of Dryden, and wrote in a plain, simple
but precise style, were Sir William Temple, John Tillotson and George Saville better known as Viscount
Halifax. Another famous writer of the period was Thomas Sprat who is better known for the distinctness
with which he put the demand for new prose than for his own writings. Being a man of science himself he
published his History of the Royal Society (1667) in which he expressed the public demand for a
popularised style free from “this vicious abundance of phrase, this trick of metaphors, this volubility of
tongue.” The Society expected from all its members “a close, natural way of speaking—positive
expressions, clear senses, a native  easiness bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they
can, and preferring the language of artisans, country men and merchants before that of wits and scholars.”
Though these writers wrote under the influence of Dryden, they also, to a certain extent, helped in the
evolution of the new prose style by their own individual approach. That is why the prose of the
Restoration period is free from monotony.
John Bunyan (1628-1688). Next to Dryden, Bunyan was the greatest prose-writer of the period.
Like Milton, he was imbued with the spirit of Puritanism, and in fact, if Milton is the greatest poet of
Puritanism, Bunyan is its greatest story-teller. To him also goes the credit of being the precursor of the
English novel. His greatest work is The Pilgrim’s Progress. Just as Milton wrote his Paradise Lost “to
justify the ways to God to men”, Bunyan’s aim in The Pilgrim’s Progress was” “to lead men and women
into God’s way, the way of salvation, through a simple parable with homely characters and exciting
events”. Like Milton, Bunyan was endowed with a highly developed imaginative faculty and artistic
instinct. Both were deeply religious, and both, though they distrusted fiction, were the masters of
fiction. Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim’s Progress have still survived among thousands of equally fervent
religious works of the seventeenth century because both of them are masterpieces of literary art, which
instruct as well please even those who have no faith in those instructions.
 In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan has described the pilgrimage of the Christian to the Heavenly
City, the trials, tribulations and temptations which he meets in the way in the form of events and
characters, who abstract and help him, and his ultimately reaching the goal. It is written in the form of
allegory. The style is terse, simple and vivid, and it appeals to the cultured as well as to the unlettered. As
Dr. Johnson remarked: “This is the great merit of the book, that the most cultivated man cannot find
anything to praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing.” The Pilgrim’s Progress has
all the basic requirements of the traditional type of English novel. It has a good story; the characters are
interesting and possess individuality and freshness; the conversation is arresting; the descriptions are
vivid; the narrative continuously moves towards a definite end, above all, it has a literary style through
which the writer’s personality clearly emanates. The Pilgrim’s Progress is a work of superb literary
genius, and it is unsurpassed as an example of plain English.
Bunyan’s other works are: Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), a kind of spiritual
autobiography; The Holy War, which like The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory, but the characters are less
alive, and there is less variety; The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680) written in the form of a realistic
novel, gives a picture of low life, and it is second in value and literary significance to The Pilgrim’s
Progress.
The prose of Bunyan shows clearly the influence of the English translation of the Bible (The
Authorized Version). He was neither a scholar, nor did he belong to any literary school; all that he knew
and learned was derived straight from the English Bible. He was an unlettered country tinker believing in
righteousness and in disgust with the corruption and degradation that prevailed all around him. What he
wrote came straight from his heart, and he wrote in the language which came natural to him. Thus his
works born of moral earnestness and extreme sincerity have acquired true literary significance and wide
and enduring popularity. It is quite true to call him the pioneer of the modern novel, because he had the
qualities of the great story-teller, deep insight into character, humour, pathos, and the visualising
imagination of a dramatic artist.
Eighteenth-Century Literature

The Eighteenth Century in England is called the Classical Age or the Augustan Age in literature. It is
also called the Age of Good Sense or the Age of Reason. Though Dryden belonged to the seventeenth
century, he is also included in the Classical or Augustan Age, as during his time the characteristics of his
age had manifested themselves and he himself represented them to a great extent. Other great literary
figures who dominated this age successively were Pope and Dr. Johnson, and so the Classical Age is
divided into three distinct periods—the Ages of Dryden, Pope and Dr. Johnson. In this chapter which is
devoted to the eighteenth-century literature in England, we will deal with the Ages of Pope and Johnson.
The Age of Dryden has already been dealt with in the preceding chapter, entitled “The Restoration
Period.”
The Eighteenth Century is called the Classical Age in English literature on account of three reasons.
In the first place, the term ‘classic’, refers in general, applies to writers of the highest rank in any nation.
This term was first applied to the works of the great Greek and Roman writers, like Homer and Virgil. As
the writers of the eighteenth century in England tried to follow the simple and noble methods of the great
ancient writers, they began to be called Classical writers. In the second place, in every national literature
there is a period when a large number of writers produce works of great merit; such a period is often called
the Classical Period or Age. For example, the reign of Augustus is called the Classical Age of Rome; and
the Age of Dante is called the Classical Age of Italian literature. As during the eighteenth century
in England there was an abundance of literary productions, the critics named it the Classical Age in
English literature. In the third place, during this period the English writers rebelled against the
exaggerated and fantastic style of writing prevalent during the Elizabethan and Puritan ages, and they
demanded that poetry, drama and prose should follow exact rules. In this they were influenced by French
writers, especially by Boileau and Rapin, who insisted on precise methods of writing poetry, and who
professed to have discovered their rules in the classics of Horace and Aristotle. The eighteenth century is
called the Classical Age, because the writers followed the ‘classicism’ of the ancient writers, which was
taken in a narrow sense to imply fine polish and external elegance. But as the eighteenth century writers
in England followed the ancient classical writers only in their external performance, and lacked their
sublimity and grandeur, their classicism is called pseudo-classicism i.,e., a false or sham classicism.
As the term Classical Age is, therefore, too dignified for writers of the eighteenth century in England,
who imitated only the outward trapping of the ancient classical writers, and could not get at their inner
spirit, this age is preferably called the Augustan Age. This term was chosen by the writers of the
eighteenth century themselves, who saw in Pope, Addison, Swift, Johnson and Burke the modern parallels
to Horace, Virgil, Cicero, and other brilliant writers who made Roman literature famous during the reign
of Emperor Augustus. Of course, to term this as the Augustan Age is also not justified because the writers
of this period could not compare favourable with those of the Augustan Age in Latin literature. But these
terms—the Classical Age and the Augustan Age-have become current, and so this age is generally called
by these terms.
The eighteenth century is also called the Age of Reason or the Age of Good Sense, because the
people thought that they could stand on their own legs and be guided in the conduct of their affairs by the
light of their own reason unclouded by respect for Ancient precedent. They began to think that undue
respect for authority of the Ancients was a great source of error, and therefore in every matter man should
apply his own reason and commonsense. Even in literature where the prespect for classical art forms and
the rules for writing in those forms gave the defenders of the Ancients a decided advantages, critics could
declare that the validity of the rules of art was derived from Reason rather than from Ancient Authority.
Though in the seventeenth century Sir Thomas Browne who stood against Ancient Authority in secular
matters, declared that in religion “haggard and unreclaimed Reason must stoop unto the lure of Faith”.
John Locke, the great philosopher, had opined that there was no war between Faith and Reason. He
declared in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (1690), “Faith is nothing but a firm assent of
the mind; which if it be regulated as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything but upon good reason; and
so cannot be opposite to it.”
It was widely assumed during the eighteenth century that since every man is competent to decide, by
reference to his own reason, on any point of natural or moral philosophy, every man becomes his own
philosopher. So the need of the expert or specialist vanishes. Moreover, as all men were assumed to be
equally endowed with the power of reasoning, it followed that when they reasoned on any given premises
they must reach the same conclusion. That conclusion was believed to have universal value and direct
appeal to everyone belonging to any race or age. Moreover, it should be the conclusion reached by earlier
generation since reason must work the same way in every period of history. When Pope said of wit that it
is “Nature to advantage dress’d, what oft was thought but n’er so well express’d,” and when Dr. Johnson
remarked about Gray’s Elegy that “it abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with
sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo”, they were simply giving the literary application of this
belief that the highest type of art is that which can be understood immediately, which has the widest
appeal, which is free from the expression of personal idiosyncrasy, and which deals with what is general
and universal rather than with what is individual and particular.
This was the temper of the eighteenth century. If it is called The Age of Reason or The Age of Good
Sense, it is because in this age it was assumed that in reasoning power all men are and have always been
equal. It was an age which took a legitimate pride in modern discoveries based upon observation and
reason, and which delighted to reflect that those discoveries had confirmed the ancient beliefs that there is
an order and harmony in the universe, that it is worked on rational principles, that each created thing has
its allowed position and moved in its appointed spheres. It was, in short, an age which implicitly believed
in the Biblical saying: “God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.”
Now let us consider the literary characteristics of this age. In the previous ages which we have dealt
with, it were the poetical works which were given prominence. Now, for the first time in the history of
English literature, prose occupies the front position. As it was the age of social, political religious and
literary controversies in which the prominent writers took an active part, and a large number of pamphlets,
journals and magazines were brought out in order to cater to the growing need of the masses who had
begun to read and take interest in these controversial matters, poetry was considered inadequate for such a
task, and hence there was a rapid development of prose. In fact the prose writers of this age excel the poets
in every respect. The graceful and elegant prose of Addison’s essays, the terse style of Swift’s satires, the
artistic perfection of Fielding’s novels, the sonorous eloquence of Gibbon’s history, and the oratorical
style of Burke, have no equal in the poetical works of the age. In fact, poetry also had become prosaic,
because it was no longer used for lofty and sublime purposes, but, like prose, its subject-matter had
become criticism, satire, controversy and it was also written in the form of the essay which was the
common literary from: Poetry became polished, witty and artificial, but it lacked fire, fine feelings,
enthusiasm, the poetic glow of Elizabethan Age and the moral earnestness of Puritanism. In fact, it
became more interested in the portrayal of actual life, and distrusted inspiration and imagination. The
chief literary glory of the age was, therefore, not poetry, but prose which in the hands of great writers
developed into an excellent medium capable of expressing clearly every human interest and emotion.
The two main characteristics of the Restoration period—Realism and Precision—were carried to
further perfection during the eighteenth century. They are found in their excellent form in the poetry of
Pope, who perfected the heroic couplet, and in the prose of Addison who developed it into a clear, precise
and elegant form of expression. The third characteristic of this age was the development of satire as a form
of literature, which resulted from the unfortunate union of politics with literature. The wings and the
Tories—members of two important political parties which were constantly contending to control the
government of the country—used and rewarded the writers for satirising their enemies and undermining
their reputation. Moreover, as a satire is concerned mainly with finding fault with the opponents, and is
destructive in its intention, it cannot reach the great literary heights. Thus the literature of the age, which is
mainly satirical cannot be favourably compared with great literature. One feels that these writers could
have done better if they had kept themselves clear of the topical controversies, and had devoted their
energies to matters of universal import.
Another important feature of this age was the origin and development of the novel. This new literary
form, which gained great popularity in the succeeding ages, and which at present holds the prominent
place, was fed and nourished by great masters like Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet and others who
laid its secure foundations. The realism of the age and the development of an excellent prose style greatly
helped in the evolution of the novel during the eighteenth century.
 The eighteenth century was deficient in drama, because the old Puritanic prejudice against the theatre
continued, and the court also withdrew its patronage. Goldsmith and Sheridan were the only writers who
produced plays having literary merit.
Another important thing which is to be considered with regard to the eighteenth century literature is
that it was only during the early part of it—the Age of Pope, that the classical rules and ideals reigned
supreme. In the later part of it—the Age of Johnson—cracks began to appear in the edifice of classicism,
in the form of revolts against its ideals, and a revival of the Romantic tendency which was characteristic of
the Elizabethan period.
As the eighteenth century is a long period, it will be dealt with in different chapters entitled—The
Age of Pope, The Age of Johnson, Eighteenth Century Novel and Eighteenth Century Drama.
The Age of Pope (1700-1744)

The earlier part of the eighteenth century or the Augustan Age in English literature is called the Age
of Pope, because Pope was the dominating figure in that period. Though there were a number of other
important writers like Addison and Swift, but Pope was the only one who devoted himself completely to
literature. Moreover, he represented in himself all the main characteristics of his age, and his poetry served
as a model to others.
(a)  Poetry
It was the Classical school of poetry which dominated the poetry of the Age of Pope. During this age
the people were disgusted with the profligacy and frivolity of the Restoration period, and they insisted
upon those elementary decencies of life and conduct which were looked at with contempt by the preceding
generation. Moreover, they had no sympathy for the fanaticism and religious zeal of the Puritans who
were out to ban even the most innocent means of recreation. So they wanted to follow the middle path in
everything and steer clear of the emotional as well as moral excesses. They insisted on the role of
intelligence in everything. The poets of this period are deficient on the side of emotion and imagination.
Dominated by intellect, poetry of this age is commonly didactic and satirical, a poetry of argument and
criticism, of politics and personalities.
In the second place, the poets of this age are more interested in the town, and the ‘cultural’ society.
They have no sympathy for the humbler aspects of life—the life of the villagers, the shepherds; and no
love for nature, the beautiful flowers, the songs of birds, and landscape as we find in the poets of the
Romantic period. Though they preached a virtuous life, they would not display any feeling which
smacked of enthusiasm and earnestness. Naturally they had no regard for the great poets of the human
heart—Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. They had no attachment for the Middle Ages and their tales of
chivalry, adventure and visionary idealism. Spenser, therefore, did not find favour with them.
In the poetry of this age, form became more important than substance. This love of superficial polish
led to the establishment of a highly artificial and conventional style. The closed couplet became the only
possible form for serious work in verse. Naturally poetry became monotonous, because the couplet was
too narrow and inflexible to be made the vehicle of high passion and strong imagination. Moreover, as
great emphasis was laid on the imitation of ancient writers, originality was discouraged, and poetry lost
touch with the real life of the people.
Prose being the prominent medium of expression, the rules of exactness, precision and clarity, which
were insisted in the writing of prose, also began to be applied to poetry. It was demanded of the poet to say
all that he had to say in a plain simple and clear language. The result was that the quality of
suggestiveness which adds so much to the beauty and worth of poetry was sadly lacking in the poetry of
this age. The meaning of poetry was all on the surface, and there was nothing which required deep study
and varied interpretation.
Alexandar Pope (1688-1744). Pope is considered as the greatest poet of the Classical period. He is
‘prince of classicism’ as Prof. Etton calls him. He was an invalid, of small sature and delicate constitution,
whose bad nerves and cruel headaches made his life, in his own phrase, a ‘long disease’. Moreover, being
a Catholic he had to labour under various restrictions. But the wonder is that in spite of his manifold
handicaps, this small, ugly man has left a permanent mark on the literature of his age. He was highly
intellectual, extremely ambitious and capable of tremendous industry. These qualities brought him to the
front rank of men of letters, and during his lifetime he was looked upon as a model poet.
The main quality of Pope’s poetry is its correctness. It was at the age of twenty-three that he
published his Essay on Criticism (1711) and since then till the end of his life he enjoyed progidious
reputation. In this essay Pope insists on following the rules discovered by the Ancients, because they are
in harmony with Nature:
Those rules of old discovered, not devised
Are Nature still, but Nature methodised.
Pope’s next work, The Rape of the Lock, is in some ways his masterpiece. It is ‘mock heroic’ poem
in which he celebrated the theme of the stealth, by Lord Petre of lock of hair from the head of Miss
Arabella. Though the poem is written in a jest and deals with a very insignificant event, it is given the
form of an epic, investing this frivolous event with mock seriousness and dignity.
By this time Pope had perfected the heroic couplet, and he made use of his technical skill in
translating Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey which meant eleven years’ very hard work. The reputation which
Pope now enjoyed created a host of jealous rivals whom he severely criticised and ridiculed in The
Dunciad. This is Pope’s greatest satire in which he attacked all sorts of literary incompetence. It is full of
cruel and insulting couplets on his enemies. His next great poem was The Essay on Man (1732-34), which
is full of brilliant oft-quoted passages and lines. His later works—Imitations of Horace and Epistle—are
also satires and contain biting attacks on his enemies.
Though Pope enjoyed a tremendous reputation during his lifetime and for some decades after his
death, he was so bitterly attacked during the nineteenth century that it was doubted whether Pope was a
poet at all. But in the twentieth century this reaction subsided, and now it is admitted by great critics that
though much that Pope wrote is prosaic, not of a very high order, yet a part of his poetry is undoubtedly
indestructible. He is the supreme master of the epigrammatic style, of condensing an idea into a line or
couplet. Of course, the thoughts in his poetry are commonplace, but they are given the most appropriate
and perfect expression. The result is that many of them have become proverbial sayings in the English
language. For example:
Who shall decide when doctors disagree?
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be, blest.
Minor Poets of the Age of Pope. During his age Pope was by far the greatest of all poets. There were
a few minor poets—Matthew Prior, John Gay, Edward Young, Thomas Pernell and Lady Winchelsea.
Matthew Prior (1664-1721), who was a diplomat and active politician wrote two long
poems: Solomon on the Vanity of The World and Alma or the Progress of the Mind. These are serious
poems, but the reputation of Prior rests on ‘light verse’ dealing with trifling matters. He is not merely a
light-hearted jester, but a true humanist, with sense of tears as well as laughter as is seen in the “Lines
written in the beginning of Mezeraly’s History of France’.
John Gay (1685-1732) is the master of vivid description or rural scenes as well of the delights of the
town. Like Prior he is full of humour and good temper. As a writer of lyrics, and in the handling of the
couplet, he shows considerable technical skill. His best-known works are: —Rural Sports; Trivia, or the
Art of Walking the Streets of London; Black-Eyed Susan and some Fables.
Prior and Gay were the followers of Pope, and after Pope, they are the two excellent guides to the life
of eighteenth century London. The other minor poets, Edward Young, Thomas Parnell and Lady
Winchelsea, belonged more to the new Romantic spirit than to the classical spirit in their treatment of
external nature, though they were unconscious of it.
Edward Young (1683-1765) is his Universal Passions showed himself as skilful a satirist as Pope.
His best-known work is The Night Thoughts which, written in blank verse, shows considerable technical
skill and deep thought.
Thomas Parnell (1679-1718) excelled in translations. His best known works are the The Night-Piece
on Death and Hymn to Contentment, which have a freshness of outlook and metrical skill.
Lady Winchelsea (1660-1725), though a follower of Pope, showed more sincerity and genuine
feeling for nature than any other poet of that age. Her Nocturnal Reverie may be considered as the pioneer
of the nature poetry of the new Romantic age.
To sum up, the poetry of the age of Pope is not of a high order, but it has distinct merits—the finished
art of its satires; the creation of a technically beautiful verse; and the clarity and succinctness of its
expression.
(b)  Prose of the Age of Pope
The great prose writers of the Age of Pope were Defoe, Addison, Steele and Swift. The prose of this
period exhibits the Classical qualities—clearness, vigour and direct statement.
Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) is the earliest literary journalist in the English language. He wrote on all
sorts of subjects—social, political, literary, and brought out about 250 publications. He owes his
importance, in literature, however, mainly to his works of fiction which were simply the offshoots of his
general journalistic enterprises. As a journalist he was fond of writing about the lives of famous people
who had just died, and of notorious adventurers and criminals. At the age of sixty he turned his attention
to the writing of prose fiction, and published his first novel—Robinson Cruso—the book by which he is
universally known. It was followed by other works of fiction—The Memoirs of a Cavalier, Captain
Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, Roxana and Journal of the Plague Year.
In these works of fiction Defoe gave his stories an air of reality and convinced his readers of their
authenticity. That is why they are appropriately called by Sir Leslie Stephen as ‘Fictitious biographies’ or
“History minus the Facts’. All Defoe’s fictions are written in the biographical form. They follow no
system and are narrated in a haphazard manner which give them a semblance of reality and truth. His
stories, told in the plain, matter-of-fact, business-like way, appropriate to stories of actual life, hence they
possess extraordinary minute realism which is their distinct feature. Here his homely and colloquial style
came to his help. On account of all these qualities Defoe is credited with being the originator of the
English novel. As a writer of prose his gift of narrative and description is masterly. As he never wrote with
any deliberate artistic intention, he developed a natural style which made him one of the masters of
English prose.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was the most powerful and original genius of his age. He was highly
intellectual but on account of some radical disorder in his system and the repeated failures which he had to
face in the realisation of his ambition to rise in public life, made him a bitter, melancholy and sardonic
figure. He took delight in flouting conventions, and undermining the reputation of his apponents. His
best-known work, Gulliver’s Travels, which is a very popular children’s book, is also a bitter attack on
contemporary political and social life in particular, and on the meanness and littleness of man in
general. The Tale of a Tub which, like Gulliver’s Travels, is written in the form of an allegory, and
exposes the weakness of the main religious beliefs opposed to Protestant religion, is also a satire upon all
science and philosophy. His Journal to Stella which was written to Esther Johnson whom Swift loved, is
not only an excellent commentary on contemporary characters and political events, by one of the most
powerful and original minds of the age, but in love passages, and purely personal descriptions, it reveals
the real tenderness which lay concealed in the depths of his fierce and domineering nature.
Swift was a profound pessimist. He was essentially a man of his time in his want of spiritual quality,
in his distrust of the visionary and the extravagant, and in his thoroughly materialistic view of life. As a
master of prose-style, which is simple, direct and colloquial, and free from the ornate and rhetorical
elements, Swift has few rivals in the whole range of English literature. As a satirist his greatest and most
effective weapon is irony. Though apparently supporting a cause which he is really apposing, he pours
ridicule upon ridicule on it until its very foundations are shaken. The finest example, of irony is to be
found in his pamphlet—The Battle of Books, in which he championed the cause of the Ancients against
the Moderns. The mock heroic description of the great battle in the King’s Library between the rival hosts
is a masterpiece of its kind.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) who worked in collaboration, were
the originators of the periodical essay. Steele who was more original led the way by founding The
Tatler, the first of the long line of eighteenth century periodical essays. This was followed by the most
famous of them The Spectator, is which Addison, who had formerly contributed to Steele’s Tatler, now
became the chief partner. It began on March 1, 1711, and ran till December 20, 1714 with a break of about
eighteen months. In its complete form it contains 635 essays. Of these Addison wrote 274 and Steele 240;
the remaining 121 were contributed by various friends.
The Characters of Steele and Addison were curiously contrasted. Steele was an emotional,
full-blooded kind of man, reckless and dissipated but fundamentally honest and good-hearted. What there
is of pathos and sentiment, and most of what there is of humour in the Tatler and the Spectator are
his. Addison, on the other hand, was an urbane, polished gentleman of exquisite refinement of taste. He
was shy, austere, pious and righteous. He was a quiet and accurate observer of manners of fashions in life
and conversation.
The purpose of the writings of Steele and Addison was ethical. They tried to reform society through
the medium of the periodical essay. They set themselves as moralistic to break down two opposed
influences—that of the profligate Restoration tradition of loose living and loose thinking on the one hand,
and that of Puritan fanaticism and bigotry on the other. They performed this work in a gentle,
good-humoured manner, and not by bitter invective. They made the people laugh at their own follies and
thus get rid of them. So they were, to a great extent, responsible for reforming the conduct of their
contemporaries in social and domestic fields. Their aim was moral as well as educational. Thus they
discussed in a light-hearted and attractive manner art, philosophy, drama, poetry, and in so doing guided
and developed the taste of the people. For example, it was by his series of eighteen articles on Paradise
Lost, that Addison helped the English readers have a better appreciation of Milton and his work.
In another direction the work of Addison and Steele proved of much use. Their character studies in
the shape of the members of the Spectator Club—Sir Roger de Coverley and others—presented actual
men moving amid real scenes and taking part in various incidents and this helped in the development of
genuine novel.
Both Steele and Addison were great masters of prose. Their essays are remarkable as showing the
growing perfection of the English language. Of the two, Addison was a greater master of the language. He
cultivated a highly cultured and graceful style—a style which can serve as a model. Dr. Johnson very aptly
remarked: “Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not
ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.” And again he said: “Give nights
and days, Sir, to the study of Addison if you mean to be a good writer, or what is more worth, an honest
man.”
The Age of Johnson (1744-1784)

The later half of the eighteenth century, which was dominated by Dr. Samuel Johnson, is called
the Age of Johnson. Johnson died in 1784, and from that time the Classical spirit in English literature
began to give place to the Romantic spirit, though officially the Romantic Age started from the year 1798
when Wordsworth and Coleridge published the famous Lyrical Ballads. Even during the Age of Johnson,
which was predominantly classical, cracks had begun to appear in the solid wall of classicism and there
were clear signs of revolt in favour of the Romantic spirit. This was specially noticeable in the field of
poetry. Most of the poets belonging to the Age of Johnson may be termed as the precursors of the
Romantic Revival. That is why the Age of Johnson is also called the Age of Transition in English
literature.
(a)  Poets of the Age of Johnson
As has already been pointed out, the Age of Johnson in English poetry is an age of transition and
experiment which ultimately led to the Romantic Revival. Its history is the history of the struggle between
the old and the new, and of the gradual triumph of the new. The greatest protagonist of classicism during
this period was Dr. Johnson himself, and he was supported by Goldsmith. In the midst of change these
two held fast to the classical ideals, and the creative work of both of them in the field of poetry was
imbued with the classical spirit. As Macaulay said, “Dr. Johnson took it for granted that the kind of poetry
which flourished in his own time and which he had been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood,
was the best kind of poetry, and he not only upheld its claims by direct advocacy of its canons, but also
consistently opposed every experiment in which, as in the ballad revival, he detected signs of revolt
against it.” Johnson’s two chief poems, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, are classical on account
of their didacticism, their formal, rhetorical style, and their adherence to the closed couplet.
Goldsmith was equally convinced that the classical standards of writing poetry were the best and that
they had attained perfection during the Augustan Age. All that was required of the poets was to imitate
those standards. According to him “Pope was the limit of classical literature.” In his opposition to the
blank verse, Goldsmith showed himself fundamentally hostile to change. His two important poems, The
Traveller and The Deserted Village, which are versified pamphlets on political economy, are classical in
spirit and form. They are written in the closed couplet, are didactic, and have pompous phraseology. These
poems may be described as the last great work of the outgoing, artificial eighteenth century school, though
even in them, if we study them minutely, we perceive the subtle touches of the new age of Romanticism
especially in their treatment of nature and rural life.
Before we consider the poets of the Age of Johnson, who broke from the classical tradition and
followed the new Romantic trends, let us first examine what Romanticism stood for. Romanticism was
opposed to Classicism on all vital points. For instance, the main characteristics of classical poetry were:
(i) it was mainly the product of intelligence and was especially deficient in emotion and imagination; (ii)
it was chiefly the town poetry; (iii) it had no love for the mysterious, the supernatural, or what belonged to
the dim past; (iv) its style was formal and artificial; (v) it was written in the closed couplet; (vi) it was
fundamentally didactic; (vii) it insisted on the writer to follow the prescribed rules and imitate the
standard models of good writing. The new poetry which showed romantic leanings was opposed to all
these points. For instance, its chief characteristics were: (i) it encouraged emotion, passion and
imagination in place of dry intellectuality; (ii) it was more interested in nature and rustic life rather than in
town life; (iii) it revived the romantic spirit—love of the mysterious, the supernatural, the dim past; (iv) it
opposed the artificial and formal style, and insisted on simple and natural forms of expression; (v) it
attacked the supremacy of the closed couplet and encouraged all sorts of metrical experiments; (vi) its
object was not didactic but the expression of the writer’s experience for its own sake; (vii) it believed in
the liberty of the poet to choose the theme and the manner of his writing.
The poets who showed romantic leanings, during the Age of Johnson, and who may be described as
the precursors or harbingers of the Romantic Revival were James Thomson, Thomas Gray, William
Collins, James Macpherson, William Blake, Robert Burns, William Cowper and George Crabbe.
James Thomson (1700-1748) was the earliest eighteenth century poet who showed romantic tendency
in his work. The main romantic characteristic in his poetry is his minute observation of nature. In The
Seasons he gives fine sympathetic descriptions of the fields, the woods, the streams, the shy and wild
creatures. Instead of the closed couplet, he follows the Miltonic tradition of using the blank verse. In The
Castle of Indolence, which is written in form of dream allegory so popular in medieval literature,
Thomson uses the Spenserian stanza. Unlike the didactic poetry of the Augustans, this poem is full of dim
suggestions.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is famous as the author of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, “the
best-known in the English language.” Unlike classical poetry which was characterised by restraint on
personal feelings and emotions, this poem is the manifestation of deep feelings of the poet. It is suffused
with the melancholy spirit which is a characteristic romantic trait. It contains deep reflections of the poet
on the universal theme of death which spare no one. Other important poems of Gray are The Progress of
Poesy and The Bard. Of these The Bard is more original and romantic. It emphasises the independence of
the poet, which became the chief characteristic of romantic poetry. All these poems of Gray follow the
classical model so far as form is concerned, but in spirit they are romantic.
William Collins (1721-1759). Like the poetry of Gray, Collin’s poetry exhibits deep feelings of
melancholy. His first poem, Oriental Eclogues is romantic in feeling, but is written in the closed couplet.
His best-known poems are the odes To Simplicity, To Fear, To the Passions, the small lyric How Sleep The
Brave, and the beautiful “Ode to Evening”. In all these poems the poet values the solitude and quietude
because they afford opportunity for contemplative life. Collins in his poetry advocates return to nature and
simple and unsophisticated life, which became the fundamental creeds of the Romantic Revival.
James Macpherson (1736-1796) became the most famous poet during his time by the publication of
Ossianic poems, called the Works of Ossian, which were translations of Gaelic folk literature, though the
originals were never produced, and so he was considered by some critics as a forger. In spite of this
Macpherson exerted a considerable influence on contemporary poets like Blake and Burns by his poetry
which was impregnated with moonlight melancholy and ghostly romantic suggestions.
William Blake (1757-1827). In the poetry of Blake we find a complete break from classical poetry. In
some of his works as Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience which contain the famous
poems—Little Lamb who made thee? and Tiger, Tiger burning bright, we are impressed by their lyrical
quality. In other poems such as The Book of Thel, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, it is the prophetic voice
of Blake which appeals to the reader. In the words of Swinburne, Blake was the only poet of “supreme and
simple poetic genius” of the eighteenth century, “the one man of that age fit, on all accounts, to rank with
the old great masters”. Some of his lyrics are, no doubt, the most perfect and the most original songs in
the English language.
Robert Burns (1759-96), who is the greatest song writer in the English language, had great love for
nature, and a firm belief in human dignity and quality, both of which are characteristic of romanticism. He
has summed up his poetic creed in the following stanza:
Give me a spark of Nature’s fire,
That is all the learning I desire;
Then, though I trudge through dub and mire
At plough or cart,
My Muse, though homely in attire,
May touch the heart.
The fresh, inspired songs of Burns as The Cotter’s Saturday Night, To a Mouse, To a Mountain
Daisy, Man was Made to Mourne went straight to the heart, and they seemed to be the songs of the birds
in spring time after the cold and formal poetry for about a century. Most of his songs have the Elizabethan
touch about them.
William Cowper (1731-1800), who lived a tortured life and was driven to the verge of madness, had a
genial and kind soul. His poetry, much of which is of autobiographical interest, describes the homely
scenes and pleasures and pains of simple humanity—the two important characteristics of romanticism.
His longest poem, The Task, written in blank verse, comes as a relief after reading the rhymed essays and
the artificial couplets of the Age of Johnson. It is replete with description of homely scenes, of woods and
brooks of ploughmen and shepherds. Cowper’s most laborious work is the translation of Homer in blank
verse, but he is better known for his small, lovely lyrics like On the Receipt of My Mother’s
Picture, beginning with the famous line, Oh, that those lips had language’, and Alexander
Selkirk, beginning with the oft-quoted line, ‘I am monarch of all I survey’.
George Crabbe (1754-1832) stood midway between the Augustans and the Romantics. In form he
was classical, but in the temper of his mind he was romantic. Most of his poems are written in the heroic
couplet, but they depict an attitude to nature which  is Wordsworthian. To him nature is a “presence, a
motion and a spirit,” and he realizes the intimate union of nature with man. His well-known poem. The
Village, is without a rival as a picture of the working men of his age. He shows that the lives of the
common villager and labourers are full of romantic interest. His later poems, The Parish Register, The
Borough, Tales in Verse, and Tales of the Hall are all written in the same strain.
Another poet who may also be considered as the precursor of the Romantic Revival was Thomas
Chatterton (1752-70), the Bristol boy, whose The Rowley Poems, written in pseudo-Chaucerian English
made a strong appeal of medievalism. The publication of Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry in
1765 also made great contribution to the romantic mood reviving interest in ballad literature.
(b)  Prose of the Age of Johnson
In the Age of Johnson the tradition established by prose writers of the earlier part of the eighteenth
century—Addison, Steele and Swift—was carried further. The eighteenth century is called the age of
aristocracy. This aristocracy was no less in the sphere of the intellect than in that of politics and society.
The intellectual and literary class formed itself into a group, which observed certain rules of behaviour,
speech and writing. In the field of prose the leaders of this group established a literary style which was
founded on the principles of logical and lucid thought. It was opposed to what was slipshod, inaccurate,
and trivial. It avoided all impetuous enthusiasm and maintained an attitude of aloofness and detachment
that contributed much to its mood of cynical humour. The great prose writers, the pillars of the Age of
Johnson, who represented in themselves, the highest achievements of English prose, were Johnson, Burke
and Gibbon.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was the literary dictator of his age, though he was not its greatest
writer. He was a man who struggled heroically against poverty and ill-health; who was ready to take up
cudgels against anyone however high he might be placed, but who was very kind and helpful to the poor
and the wretched. He was an intellectual giant, and a man of sterling character, on account of all these
qualities he was honoured and loved by all, and in his poor house gathered the foremost artists, scholars,
actors, and literary men of London, who looked upon him as their leader.
Johnson’s best-known works are his Dictionary and Lives of Poets. He contributed a number of
articles in the periodicals, The Rambler, The Idler and Rasselas. In them his style is ponderous and
verbose, but in Lives of Poets, which are very readable critical biographies of English poets, his style is
simple and at time charming. Though in the preceding generations Dryden, Addison, Steele and Swift
wrote elegant, lucid and effective prose, none of them set up any definite standard to be followed by
others. What was necessary in the generation when Johnson wrote, was some commanding authority that
might set standard of prose style, lay down definite rules and compel others to follow them. This is what
was actually done by Johnson. He set a model of prose style which had rhythm, balance and lucidity, and
which could be imitiated with profit. In doing so he preserved the English prose style from degenerating
into triviality and feebleness, which would have been the inevitable result of slavishly imitating the prose
style of great writers like Addison by ordinary writers who had not the secret of Addison’s genius. The
model was set by Johnson.
Though Johnson’s own style is often condemned as ponderous and verbose, he could write in an easy
and direct style when he chose. This is clear from Lives of Poets where the formal dignity of his manner
and the ceremonial stateliness of his phraseology are mixed with touches of playful humour and stinging
sarcasm couched in very simple and lucid prose. The chief characteristic of Johnson’s prose-style is that it
grew out of his conversational habit, and therefore it is always clear, forceful and frank. We may not some
time agree to the views he expresses in the Lives, but we cannot but be impressed by his boldness, his wit,
wide range and brilliancy of his style.
Burke (1729-1797) was the most important member of Johnson’s circle. He was a member of the
Parliament for thirty years and as such he made his mark as the most forceful and effective orator of his
times. A man of vast knowledge, he was the greatest political philosopher that ever spoke in the English
Parliament.
Burke’s chief contributions to literature are the speeches and writings of his public career. The
earliest of them were Thoughts on the Present Discontent (1770). In this work Burke advocated the
principle of limited monarchy which had been established in England since the Glorious Revolution in
1688, when James II was made to quit the throne, and William of Orange was invited by the Parliament to
become the king of England with limited powers. When the American colonies revolted against England,
and the English government was trying to suppress that revolt, Burke vehemently advocated the cause of
American independence. In that connection he delivered two famous speeches in Parliament. On
American Taxation (1774) and on Conciliation with America, in which are embodied true statesmanship
and political wisdom. The greatest speeches of Burke were, however, delivered in connection with the
French Revolution, which were published as The Reflections on the French Revolution (1790). Here
Burke shows himself as prejudiced against the ideals of the Revolution, and at time he becomes
immoderate and indulges in exaggerations. But from the point of view of style and literary merit
the Reflections stand higher, because they brought out the poetry of Burke’s nature. His last speeches
delivered in connection with the impeachment of Warren Hastings for the atrocities he committed in India,
show Burke as the champion of justice and a determined foe of corruption, high-handedness and cruelty.
The political speeches and writings of Burke belong to the sphere of literature of a high order because
of their universality. Though he dealt in them with events which happened during his day, he gave
expression to ideas and impulses which were true not for one age but for all times. In the second place
they occupy an honourable place in English literature on account of excellence of their style. The prose of
Burke is full of fire and enthusiasm, yet supremely logical; eloquent and yet restrained; fearless and yet
orderly; steered by every popular movement and yet dealing with fundamental principles of politics and
philosophy. Burke’s style, in short, is restrained, philosophical, dignified, obedient to law and order, free
from exaggeration and pedantry as well as from vulgarity and superficiality.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was the first historian of England who wrote in a literary manner. His
greatest historical work—The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is an authoritative and
well-documented history, can pass successfully the test of modern research and scholarship. But its
importance in literature is on account of its prose style which is the very climax of classicism. It is
finished, elegant, elaborate and exhaustive. Though his style is sometimes marred by affectations and
undue elaboration, yet on account of his massive intellect, and unfailing sense of literary proportion, he
towers above all competitors as the model historian.
The Eighteenth Century Novel

The chief literary contribution of the eighteenth century was the discovery of the modern novel,
which at present is the most widely read and influential type of literature. The novel in its elementary form
as a work of fiction written in prose was at first established in England by two authors—Bunyan and
Defoe, who took advantage of the public interest in autobiography. The books of Bunyan, whether they
are told in the first person or not, were meant to be autobiographical and their interest is subjective.
Bunyan endeavours to interest his readers not in the character of some other person he had imagined or
observed, but in himself, and his treatment of it is characteristic of the awakening talent for fiction in his
time. The Pilgrim’s Progress is begun as an allegory, but in course of time the author is so much taken up
with the telling of the story, that he forgets about the allegory, and it is this fact which makes Bunyan the
pioneer of the modern novel.
But it was Defoe who was the real creator of autobiographical fiction as a work of art. He was the
first to create psychological interest in the character of the narrator. Moreover, he was the first to introduce
realism or verisimilitude by observing in his writing a scrupulous and realistic fidelity and appropriateness
to the conditions in which the story was told. For example, the reader is told about Cruso’s island as
gradually as Cruso himself comes to know of it. Besides introducing the elements of autobiography and
realism, Defoe also fixed the peculiar form of the historical novel—the narrative of an imaginary person in
a historical setting as in his Memories of a Cavalier. On account of all these reasons Defoe is rightly
termed the originator of the modern novel.
In spite of this, it can be safely said that until the publication of Richardson’s Pamela in 1740, no
true novel had appeared in English literature. By a true novel we mean simply a work of fictions which
relates the story of a plain human life, under stress of emotions, and the interest of which does not depend
on incident or adventure, but on its truth to nature. During the eighteenth century a number of English
novelists—Goldsmith, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne—all developed simultaneously the form of
the novel as presenting life, as it really is, in the form of a story. The new middle class which was rising
and getting into power demanded a new type of literature, which must express the new ideal of the
eighteenth century, that is, the value and the importance of individual life. Moreover, on account of the
spread of education and the appearance of newspapers and magazines there was an immense increase in
the reading public to whom the novelist could directly appeal without caring for the patronage of the
aristocratic class which was losing power. It was under these circumstances that the novel was born in the
eighteenth century expressing the same ideals of personality and of the dignity of command life which
became the chief themes of the poets of the Romantic Revival, and which were proclaimed later by the
American and French Revolutions. The novelists of the eighteenth century told the common people not
about the grand lives of knights, princes and heroes, but about their own plain and simple lives, their
ordinary thoughts and feelings, and their day-to-day actions and their effects on them and others. The
result was that such works were eagerly read by the common people, and the novel became a popular form
of literature appealing to the masses, because it belonged to them and reflected their lives.
Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) was, as has already been pointed out, the originator of the novel, though
none of his works can be placed under the category of novel in the modern sense of the term. In Robinson
Cruso, Defoe, has described the experiences of Alexander Selkirk who spent five years in solitude in
the island of Juan Fernandez. Though the whole story is fictitious, it has been described most realistically
with the minute accuracy of an eyewitness. From that point of view we can say that in Robinson
Cruso Defoe brought the realistic adventure story to a very high stage of its development, better than in
his other works of fiction Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders and Roxana which are just like picaresque
stories (current at that time, about the adventures of rogues) to which were added unnatural moralising and
repentance. But we cannot call Robinson Cruso, strictly speaking, a novel, because here the author has not
produced the effect of subordinating incident to the faithful portrayal of human life and character, which is
the criterion of the real novel.
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) is credited with the writing of the first modern novel—Pamela or
Virtue Rewarded. It tells the trials, tribulations and the final happy marriage of a young girl. Written in the
form of ‘Familiar Letters, on how to think and act justly and prudently, in the common concerns of
Human Life’, it is sentimental and boring on account of its wearisome details. But the merit of it lies in
the fact that it was the first book which told in a realistic manner the inner life of a young girl. Its
psychological approach made it the first modern novel in England. Richardson here gave too much
importance to physical chastity, and ‘prudence’ which was the key to the middle class way of life during
the eighteenth century. It enjoyed tremendous popularity on account of being in tune with the
contemporary standards of morality.
Richardson’s second novel, Clarissa or The History of a Young Lady, is also written in the form of
letters and is as sentimental as Pamela. In the heroine of this novel, Clarissa, Richardson has painted a
real woman, portraying truthfully her doubts, scruples, griefs and humiliations. In his next novel, Sir
Charles Grandison, which is also written in the form of letters, Richardson told the story of an aristocrat
of ideal manners and virtues.
In all his novels Richardson’s purpose was didactic, but he achieved something more. He probed into
the inner working of the human mind. It was this achievement that made Dr. Johnson say
of Richardson that he “enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the
command of virtue”. Of Clarissa he said that “it was the first book in the world for the knowledge it
displays of the human heart.” Richardson’s main contribution to the English novel was that for the first
time he told stories of human life from within, depending for their interest not on incidents or adventures
but on their truth to human nature.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was the greatest of the eighteenth century novelists. He wrote his first
great novel Joseph Andrews in order to satirise and parody the false sentimentality and conventional
virtues of Richardson’s heroine, Pamela. The hero of this novel is a supposed brother of Pamela, a
domestic servant, who has vowed to follow the example of his sister. He is also exposed to the same kinds
of temptations, but instead of being rewarded for his virtues, he is dismissed from service by his mistress.
The satiric purpose of Fielding ends here, because then he describes the adventures of Joseph with his
companion Parson Adams, and tells the story of a vagabond life, with a view “to laugh men out of their
follies”. Instead of the sentimentality and feminine niceties of Richardson, in Fielding’s novel we find a
coarse, vigorous, hilarious and even vulgar approach to life. The result is broad realism not in the
portrayal of inner life but of outer behaviour and manners. The characters in the novels are drawn from all
classes of society, and they throb with life.
Fielding’s next novel, Jonathan Wild, is a typical picaresque novel, narrating the story of a rogue. His
greatest novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Founding (1746-1749), has epic as well as dramatic qualities.
It consists of a large number of involved adventures, which are very skillfully brought towards their
climax by the hand of a dramatist. Behind all chance happenings, improbabilities and incogruities there
exists a definite pattern which gives the complicated plot of Tom Jones a unity which we find nowhere in
English novel or drama except in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemists. Without making a deliberate effort at
moralising like Richardson Fielding suggests a deeper moral lesson that one should do good not for
reward but for the satisfaction of doing so. It is the generous impulses, rooted in unselfishness and respect
for others, which are the best guarantee of virtue.
Fieldings’ last novel, Amelia (1751), which is the story of a good wife in contrast with an unworthy
husband, is written in a milder tone. Here instead of showing a detached and coarse attitude to life,
Fielding becomes soft-hearted and champions the cause of the innocent and the helpless. It is also written
in a homely and simple narrative.
Fielding’s great contribution to the English novel is that he put it on a stable footing. It became free
from its slavery to fact, conscious of its power and possibilities, and firmly established as an independent
literary form. He is called the Father of the English novel, because he was the first to give genuine pictures
of men and women of his age, without moralising over their vices and virtues. It was through his efforts
that the novel became immensely popular with the reading public, and a large number of novels poured
from the press.
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) followed the example of Fielding in writing picaresque novels, which
are full of intrigue and adventure. But he lacks the genius of Fielding, for his novels are just a jumble of
adventures and incidents without any artistic unity. Instead of Fielding’s broad humour and his inherent
kindness, we find horrors and brutalities in the novels of Smollett, which are mistaken for realism.
Smollett’s best-known novels are Roderick Random (1748) in which the hero relates a series of
adventures: Peregrine Pickle (1751) in which are related the worst experiences at sea; and Humphrey
Clinker (1771) in which is related the journey of a Welsh family through England and Scotland. In all
these novels Smollet excites continuous laughter by farcical situations and exaggeration in portraying
human eccentricities. Unlike the realistic and pure comedy which Fielding presents in his novels, Smollet
is the originator of the funny novel, which was brought to a climax by Dickens in his satirical and hearty
caricatures.
Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) was the opposite of Smollet in the sense that whereas we find horrors
and brutalities in the novels of Smollett, in Sterne’s we find whims, vagaries and sentimental tears. His
best-known novels are Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. The former
was started in 1760; its nineth volume appeared in 1767, but the book was never finished. In it are
recorded in a most digressive and aimless manner the experiences of the eccentric Shandy family. The
main achievements of this book lie in the brilliancy of its style and the creation of eccentric characters like
Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. The Sentimental Journey, which is a strange mixture of fiction,
descriptions of travel, and a number of essays on all sorts of subjects, is also written in a brilliant style,
and is stamped with Sterne’s false and sentimental attitude to life.
These novels are written in the first person, and while Sterne speaks of one thing, it reminds him of
another, with which it has no apparent, logical connection. So he is forced into digression, and in this
manner he follows the wayward movements of his mind. This method is very much like that of the Stream
of Consciousness novelists, though there is a difference, because the hero in Sterne’s novels is Sterne
himself. Another peculiarity of Sterne is his power of sentimentality, which along with his humour and
indecency, is part and parcel of his way of interpreting life. Whenever he makes us smile, he hopes that
there will be a suspicion of a tear as well. In fact the main contribution of Sterne to the English novel was
his discovery of the delights of sensibility, the pleasures of the feeling heart, which opened up a vast field
of experience, and which was followed by many eighteenth century writers.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) wrote only one novel—The Vicar of Wakefield. This is the best novel
in the English language, in which domestic life has been given an enduring romantic interest. It is free
from that vulgarity and coarseness which we find in the novels of Smollett and Sterne. In it domestic
virtues and purity of character are elevated. It is the story of Dr. Primrose, a simple English clergyman,
who passes through various misfortunes, but ultimately comes out triumphant, with his faith in God and
man reaffirmed. Without introducing romantic passion, intrigue and adventure which were freely used by
other novelists, Goldsmith by relating a simple story in a simple manner has presented in The Vicar of
Wakefield the best example of the novel, the new literary form which was becoming immensely popular.
Summing up the development of the English novel during the eighteenth century, we can say that the
novel from a humble beginning evolved into a fully developed form. Defoe gave it the realistic
touch; Richardson introduced analysis of the human heart; Fielding made it full of vitality and animal
vigour; Smollett introduced exaggerated and eccentric characters; Sterne contributed sentimentality and
brilliancy of style; and Goldsmith emphasised high principles and purity of domestic life. In the hands of
these early masters the novel took a definite shape and came to be recognised as an important literary form
with vast possibilities of further development.
The Eighteenth Century Drama

The dramatic literature of the eighteenth century was not of a high order. In fact there was a gradual
deterioration and during the last quarter of the century drama was moving towards its lowest ebb. One of
the reasons of the decline of drama during the eighteenth century was the Licensing Act of 1737 which
curtailed the freedom of expression of dramatists. The result was that a number of writers like Fielding,
who could make their marks as dramatists, left the theatre and turned towards the novel. Moreover, the
new commercial middle classes which were coming into prominence imposed their own dull and stupid
views on the themes that would be acceptable to the theatre. Naturally this was not liked by first-rate
writers who wanted to write independently.
In the field of tragedy two opposing traditions—Romantic and Classical—exercised their influence
on the dramatists. The Romantic tradition was the Elizabethan way of writing tragedy. Those who
followed this tradition made use of intricate plots and admitted horror and violence on the open stage. The
Classical tradition which was mainly the French tradition of writing tragedy was characterised by the
unfolding of a single action without any sub-plot, and long declamatory speeches delivered by the actors.
The traditional English pattern of drama was exemplified by Otway’s Venice Preserved, while the
Classical tradition was strictly upheld in Addison’s Cato (1713), which is written in an unemotional but
correct style, and has a pronounced moralising tone. Other tragedies which were written according to the
Classical pattern were James Thomson’s Sophonisba (1729) and Dr. Johnson’s Irene (1749). But none of
these tragedies, whether following the Romantic or the Classical tradition came up to a respectable
dramatic standard, because the creative impulse seems to have spent itself. Though a very large number of
tragedies were written during the eighteenth century, they had literary, but no dramatic value. Mostly there
were revivals of old plays, which were adapted by writers who were not dramatists in the real sense of the
term.
In the field of comedy, the same process of disintegration was noticeable. Comedy was deteriorating
into farce. Moreover, sentimentality which was opposed to the authority of reason, came to occupy an
important place in comedy. This ‘sentimental’ comedy which gained in popularity was criticised by
Goldsmith thus:
“A new species of dramatic composition has been introduced under the name of sentimental comedy, in
which the virtues of private life are exhibited, rather than the vices exposed; and the distresses rather than
the faults of mankind make our interest in the pieces. These comedies have had of late great success,
perhaps from their novelty, and also from their flattering every man in his favourite foible. In these plays
almost all the characters are good and exceedingly generous; they are lavish enough of their tin money on
the stage; and though they want humour, have abundance of sentiment and feeling. If they happen to have
faults or foibles, the spectator is taught, not only to pardon, but to applaud them, in consideration of the
goodness of their hearts; so that folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended, and the comedy aims at
touching our passions without the power of being truly pathetic.
Steele was the first exponent of the sentimental comedy in the eighteenth century. In his plays, such
as The Funeral, The Lying Lover, The Tender Husband, The Conscious Lovers, Steele extolled the
domestic virtues. His object was didactic, and he tried to prove that morality and sharpness of intelligence
can go together. In his plays in which tears of pity and emotion flowed profusely, Steele held that
Simplicity of mind, Good nature, Friendship and Honour were the guiding principles of conduct.
Other dramatists who wrote sentimental comedies were Colley Cibber, Hugh Kelley and Richard
Cumberland. In their hands comedy was so much drenched in emotions and sentiments that the genuine
human issues were completely submerged in them. Thus there was a need to rescue the drama from such
depths to which it had fallen.
The two great dramatists of the eighteenth century, who led the revolt against sentimental comedy
were Oliver Goldsmith (1730-74) and Richard Sheridan (1751-1861). Though in his novel, The Vicar of
Wakefield, and in his poem, The Deserted Village, Goldsmith showed clear marks of a sentimental attitude
to life, in his Good-Natured Man he covers it with ridicule by portraying the character of Honeywood as
unadulterated ‘good-nature’. Though the play is a feeble one, his intentions of mocking the excess of false
charity are obvious. His next play, She Stoops to Conquer (1773), which is his masterpiece, was an
immediate success. It has always remained one of the half-dozen most popular comedies in the English
language. In spite of the obvious improbabilities of the plot, the play moves naturally in a homely
atmosphere, full of genuine humour which provokes unrestrained laughter. Here there is no artificiality of
sentimental comedy. The main characters—Hardcastle and Tony Lumpkin are very clearly delineated.
They are at once types and individuals. They are the images of their age, and yet recognizable as human
figures. She Stoops to Conquer went a long way in restoring comedy to its own province of mirth and
laughter and rescuing it from too much sentimentality.
Richard Brinsely Sheridan is best known for his two comedies—The Rivals (1775) and The School
for Scandal (1777). Sheridan brought back the brilliance of the witty and elegant Restoration comedy,
purged of its impurities and narrowness. He created, instead, a more genial and romantic atmosphere
associated with the comedies of Shakespeare. His characters are as clearly drawn as those of Ben Jonson,
but they move in a gayer atmosphere. The only defect that we find in these comedies of Sheridan is that
there is all gaiety, but no depth, no new interpretation of human nature.
The intrigue in The Rivals, though not original, is skilfully conducted. The audience heartily laugh at
humours of Mrs. Malaprop, Sir Anthony, and Bab Acres. In The School for Scandal Sheridan showed
himself as a mature dramatist. Here the dialogue has the exquisite Congreve-like precision, and wit reigns
supreme. Even the stupid characters, the servants, are witty. Though the main characters, the quarrelsome
couple and the plotting brothers; the ‘scandal-club’ of Lady Sneerwell; and the intrigue leading inevitably
to the thrilling resolution in the famous screen scene, are all familiar, and can be found in many other
plays, yet they are invested with novelty. In both these plays Sheridan reversed the trend of
sentimentalism by introducing realism tinged with the geniality of romance. He had no message to
convey, except that the most admirable way of living is to be generous and open-hearted.
The Romantic Age (1798-1824)

The Romantic period is the most fruitful period in the history of English literature. The revolt against
the Classical school which had been started by writers like Chatterton, Collins, Gray, Burne, Cowper etc.
reached its climax during this period, and some of the greatest and most popular English poets like
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats belong to this period.
This period starts from 1798 with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge,
and the famous Preface which Wordsworth wrote as a manifesto of the new form of poetry which he and
Coleridge introduced in opposition to the poetry of the Classical school. In the Preface to the First Edition
Wordsworth did not touch upon any other characteristic of Romantic poetry except the simplicity and
naturalness of its diction. “The majority of the following poems”, he writes “are to be considered as
experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertaining how far the language of conversation
in the middle and lower classes of society is adopted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.” In the longer
preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, where Wordsworth explains his theories of poetic
imagination, he again returns to the problem of the proper language of poetry. “The language too, of these
men (that is those in humble and rustic life) has been adopted because from their intercourse, being less
under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple, unelaborated
expression.”

Wordsworth chose the language of the common people as the vehicle of his poetry, because it is the
most sincere expression of the deepest and rarest passions and feelings. This was the first point of attack
of the artificial and formal style of Classical school of poetry. The other point at which Wordsworth
attacked the old school was its insistence on the town and the artificial way of life which prevailed there.
He wanted the poet to breathe fresh air of the hills and beautiful natural scenes and become interested in
rural life and the simple folk living in the lap of nature. A longing to be rid of the precision and order of
everyday life drove him to the mountains, where, as he describes in his Lines written above Tintern Abbey.
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite.
By attacking the supremacy of the heroic couplet as the only form of writing poetry, and substituting
it by simple and natural diction; by diverting the attention of the poet from the artificial town life to the
life in the woods, mountains and villages inhabited by simple folk; and by asserting the inevitable role of
imagination and emotions in poetry as against dry intellectualism which was the chief characteristic of the
Classical school, Wordsworth not only emancipated the poet from the tyranny of literary rules and
conventions which circumscribed his freedom of expression, but he also opened up before him vast
regions of experience which in the eighteenth century had been closed to him. His revolt against the
Classical school was in keeping with the political and social revolutions of the time as the French
Revolution and the American War of Independence which broke away with the tyranny of social and
political domination, and which proclaimed the liberty of the individual or nation to be the master of its
own destiny. Just as liberty of the individual was the watchword of the French Revolution, liberty of a
nation from foreign domination was the watchword of the American War of Independence; in the same
manner liberty of the poet from the tyranny of the literary rules and conventions was the watchword of the
new literary movement which we call by the name of Romantic movement. It is also termed as the
Romantic Revival, because all these characteristics—the liberty of the writer to choose the theme and
form of his literary production, the importance given to imagination and human emotions, and a broad and
catholic outlook on life in all its manifestations in towns, villages, mountains, rivers etc. belonged to the
literature of the Elizabethan Age which can be called as the first Romantic age in English literature. But
there was a difference between the Elizabethan Age and the Romantic Age, because in the latter the
Romantic spirit was considered as discovery of something which once was, but had been lost. The poets
of the Romantic periods, therefore, always looked back to the Elizabethan masters—Shakespeare, Spenser
and other —and got inspiration from them. They were under the haunting influence of feelings which had
already been experienced, and a certain type of free moral life which had already been lived, and so they
wanted to recapture the memory and rescue it from fading away completely.
In the poems which were contributed in the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth dealt with events of
everyday life, by preference in its humblest form. He tried to prove that the commonplace things of life,
the simple and insignificant aspects of nature, if treated in the right manner, could be as interesting and
absorbing as the grand and imposing aspects of life and nature. To the share of Coleridge fell such subjects
as were supernatural, which he was “to inform with that semblance of truth sufficient to procure for those
shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic
faith.” Wordsworth’s naturalism and Coleridge’s supernaturalism thus became the two important
spearheads of the Romantic Movement.
Wordsworth’s naturalism included love for nature as well for man living in simple and natural
surroundings. Thus he speaks for the love that is in homes where poor men live, the daily teaching that is
in:
Woods and rills;
The silence that is in the starry sky;
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
Coleridge’s supernaturalism, on the other hand, established the connection between the visible world
and the other world which is unseen. He treated the supernatural in his masterly poem, The Ancient
Mariner, in such a manner that it looked quite natural.
Associated with Wordsworth and Coleridge in the exploration of the less known aspects of humanity
was Southey who makes up with them the trail of the so-called Lake Poets. He devoted himself to the
exhibition of “all the more prominent and poetical forms of mythology which have at any time obtained
among mankind.” Walter Scott, though he was not intimately associated with the Lake poets, contributed
his love for the past which also became one of the important characteristics of the Romantic Revival.
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Scott belong to the first romantic generation. Though they were
in their youth filled with great enthusiasm by the outburst of the French Revolution which held high hope
for mankind, they became conservatives and gave up their juvenile ideas when
the French Republic converted itself into a military empire resulting in Napoleonic wars
against England and other European countries. The revolutionary ardour, therefore, faded away, and these
poets instead of championing the cause of the oppressed section of mankind, turned to mysticism, the
glory of the past, love of natural phenomena, and the noble simplicity of the peasant race attached to the
soil and still sticking to traditional virtues and values. Thus these poets of the first romantic generation
were not in conflict with the society of which they were a part. They sang about the feelings and emotions
which were shared by a majority of their countrymen.
The second generation of Romantic writers—Byron, Shelley, Keats, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt and
others—who came to the forefront after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, revolted from the
reactionary spirit which was prevailing at that time in England against the ideals of the French Revolution.
The result was that the second generation came in conflict with the social environment with which their
predecessors were in moral harmony. Moreover, the victorious struggle with the French empire had
left England impoverished, and the political and social agitations which had subsided on account of
foreign danger, again raised their head. The result was that there was a lot of turmoil and perturbation
among the rank and file, which was being suppressed by those who were in power. In such an atmosphere
the younger romantic generation renewed the revolutionary ardour and attacked the established social
order. Thus Romanticism in the second stage became a literature of social conflict. Both Byron and
Shelley rebelled against society and had to leave England.
But basically the poets of the two generations of Romanticism shared the same literary beliefs and
ideals. They were all innovators in the forms well as in the substance of their poetry. All, except, Byron,
turned in disgust from the pseudo-classical models and condemned in theory and practice the “poetical
diction” prevalent throughout the eighteenth century. They rebelled against the tyranny of the couplet,
which they only used with Elizabethan freedom, without caring for the mechanical way in which it was
used by Pope. To it they usually preferred either blank verse or stanzas, or a variety of shorter lyrical
measures inspired by popular poetry are truly original.
 The prose-writers of the Romantic Revival also broke with their immediate predecessors, and
discarded the shorter and lighter style of the eighteenth century. They reverted to the ponderous, flowery
and poetical prose of the Renaissance and of Sir Thomas Browne, as we find in the works of Lamb, and
De Quincey. Much of the prose of the Romantic period was devoted to the critical study of literature, its
theory and practice. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt and De Quincey opened
up new avenues in the study of literature, and gradually prepared the way for the understanding of the new
type of literature which was being produced.
As the Romantic Age was characterised by excess of emotions, it produced a new type of novel,
which seems rather hysterical, now, but which was immensely popular among the multitude of readers,
whose nerves were somewhat excited, and who revelled in extravagant stories of supernatural terror. Mrs.
Anne Radcliffe was one of the most successful writers of the school of exaggerated romances. Sir Walter
Scott regaled the readers by his historical romances. Jane Austen, however, presents a marked contrast to
these extravagant stories by her enduring work in which we find charming descriptions of everyday life as
in the poetry of Wordsworth.
Whereas the Classical age was the age of prose, the Romantic age was the age of poetry, which was
the proper medium for the expression of emotions and imaginative sensibility of the artist. The mind of
the artist came in contact with the sensuous world and the world of thought at countless points, as it had
become more alert and alive. The human spirit began to derive new richness from outward objects and
philosophical ideas. The poets began to draw inspiration from several sources—mountains and lakes, the
dignity of the peasant, the terror of the supernatural, medieval chivalry and literature, the arts and
mythology of Greece, the prophecy of the golden age. All these produced a sense of wonder which had the
be properly conveyed in literary form. That is why some critics call the Romantic Revival as the
Renaissance of Wonder. Instead of living a dull, routine life in the town, and spending all his time and
energy in to midst of artificiality and complexity of the cities, the poets called upon man to adopt a
healthier way of living in the natural world in which providence has planted him of old, and which is full
of significance for his soul. The greatest poets of the romantic revival strove to capture and convey the
influence of nature on the mind and of the mind on nature interpenetrating one another.
The essence of Romanticism was that literature must reflect all that is spontaneous and unaffected in
nature and in man, and be free to follow its own fancy in its own way. They result was that during the
Romantic period the young enthusiasts turned as naturally to poetry as a happy man to singing. The glory
of the age is the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley and Keats. In fact, poetry was so
popular that Southey had to write in verse in order to earn money, what he otherwise would have written
in prose.
Summing up the chief characteristics of Romanticism as opposed to Classicism, we can say that
Classicism laid stress upon the impersonal aspects of the life of the mind; the new literature, on the other
hand, openly shifts the centre of art, bringing it back towards what is most proper and particular in each
individual. It is the product of the fusion of two faculties of the artist—his sensibility and imagination.
The Romantic spirit can be defined as an accentuated predominance of emotional life, and Romantic
literature was fed by intense emotion coupled with the intense desire to display that emotion through
appropriate imagery. Thus Romantic literature is a genuinely creative literature calling into play the
highest creative faculty of man.
Romantic Poetry
Romantic poetry which was the antithesis of Classical poetry had many complexities. Unlike
Classical poets who agreed on the nature and form of poetry, and the role that the poet is called upon to
play, the Romantic poets held different views on all these subjects. The artistic and philosophic principles
of neo-classical poetry were completely summarised by Pope, and they could be applied to the whole of
Augustan poetry. But it is difficult to find a common denominator which links such poets as Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The reason of this was that there was abundance and variety
of genius. No age in English literature produced such great giants in the field of poetry. Moreover, it was
the age of revolutionary change, not only in the view of the character and function of poetry but in the
whole conception of the nature of man and of the world in which he found himself. The evenness,
equanimity and uniformity of the Classical age was broken, and it was replaced by strong currents of
change flowing in various directions. One poet reacted to a particular current more strongly or
sympathetically than the other poet. Thus each poet of the Romantic period stands for himself, and has his
own well-defined individuality. The only common characteristic that we find in them is their intense faith
in imagination, which could not be controlled by any rules and regulations.
In fact the most distinctive mark which distinguished the Romantic poets from the Classical poets
was the emphasis which the former laid on imagination. In the eighteenth century imagination was not a
cardinal point in poetical theory. For Pope, Johnson and Dryden the poet was more an interpreter than a
creator, more concerned with showing the attractions of what we already know than with expeditions into
the unfamiliar and the unseen. They were less interested in the mysteries of life than in its familiar
appearances, and they thought that their task was to display this with as much charm and truth as they
could command. But for the Romantics imagination was fundamental, because they thought that without
that poetry was impossible. They were conscious of a wonderful capacity to create imaginary worlds, and
they could not believe that this was idle or false. On the contrary, they thought that to curb it was to deny
something vitally necessary to the whole being.
Whereas the Classical poets were more interested in the visible world, the Romantic poets obeyed an
inner call to explore more fully the world of the spirit. They endeavoured to explore the mysteries of life,
and thus understand it better. It was this search for the unseen world that awoke the inspiration of the
Romantics and made poets of them. They appealed not to the logical mind, but to the complete self, in the
whole range of intellectual faculties, senses and emotions.
Though all the Romantic poets believed in an ulterior reality and based their poetry on it, they
founded it in different ways and made different uses of it. They varied in the degree of importance which
they attached to the visible world and in their interpretation of it. Coleridge conceived of the world of
facts as an “inanimate cold world”, in which “object, as objects, are essentially fixed and dead”. It was the
task of the poet to transform it by his power of imagination, to bring the dead world back to life. When we
turn to The Ancient Mariner and Christable it seems clear that Coleridge thought that the task of poetry is
to convey the mystery of life by the power of imagination. He was fascinated by the notion of unearthly
powers at work in the world, and it was this influence which he sought to catch. The imagination of the
poet is his creative, shaping spirit, and it resembles the creative power of God. Just as God creates this
universe, the poet also creates a universe of his own by his imagination.
Wordsworth also thought with Coleridge that the imagination was the most important gift that the
poet can have. He agreed with Coleridge that this activity resembles that of God. But according to
Wordsworth imagination is a comprehensive faculty comprising many faculties. So he explains that the
imagination:
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
Wordsworth differs from Coleridge in his conception of the external world. For him the world is not
dead but living and has its own soul. Man’s task is to enter into communion with this soul. Nature was the
source of his inspiration, and he could not deny to it an existence at least as powerful as man’s. But since
nature lifted him out of himself, he sought for a higher state in which the soul of nature and the soul of
man could be united in a single harmony.
Shelley was no less attached to the imagination and gave it no less a place in his theory of poetry. He
saw that the task of reason is simply to analyse a given thing and to act as an instrument of the
imagination, which uses its conclusions to create a synthetic and harmonious whole. He called poetry “the
Expression of the Imagination”, because in it diverse things are brought together in harmony instead of
being separated through analysis. Shelley tried to grasp the whole of things in its essential unity, to show
is real and what is merely phenomenal, and by doing this to display how the phenomenal depends on the
real. For him the ultimate reality is the eternal mind, and this holds the universe together. In thought and
feeling, in consciousness and spirit, Shelley found reality. He believed that the task of the imagination is
to create shapes by which this reality can be revealed.
Keats had passionate love for the visible world and at times his approach was highly sensuous. But
he had a conviction that the ultimate reality is to be found only in the imagination. What is meant to him
can be seen from some lines in Sleep and Poetry, in which he asks why imagination has lost its power and
scope:
Is there so small a range
In the present strength of manhood, that the high
Imagination cannot freely fly
As she was wont of old? prepare her steeds
Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds
Upon the clouds? Has she not shown us all?
From the clear space of ether, to the small
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning
Of Jove’s eyebrow, to the tender greening
Of April meadows.
Through the imagination Keats sought an ultimate reality to which a door was opened by his
appreciation of beauty through the senses. For him imagination is that absorbing and exalting faculty
which opens the way to an unseen spiritual order.
Thus the great Romantic poets agreed that their task was to find through the imagination some
transcendental order, some inner and ultimate reality which explains the outward appearance of things in
the visible world and the effect which they produce on us. Each one gave his own interpretation of the
universe, the relation of God, the connection between the visible and the invisible, nature and man, as he
saw it through the power of his imagination. Each set forth his own vision through the power of his
imagination. Each set forth his own vision through the richness of his poetry, and gave it a concrete
individual shape. They refused to accept the ideas of other men on trust or to sacrifice imagination to
argument. By means of their creative art they tried to awaken the imagination of the reader to the reality
that lies behind and in familiar things, to rouse him from the dead and dull routine of custom, and make
him conscious of the unfathomable mysteries of life. They tried to show that mere reason is not sufficient
to understand the fundamental problems of life; what is required is inspired intuition. Thus their view of
life and poetry was much wider and deeper than that of their predecessors in the eighteenth century,
because they appealed to the whole spiritual nature of man and not merely to his reason and common
sense whose scope is limited.
Poets of the Romantic Age

The poets of the Romantic age can be classified into three groups— (i) The Lake School, consisting
of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey; (ii) The Scott group including Campbell and Moore; and (iii) The
group comprising Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The first two groups were distinctly earlier than the third, so
we have two eight years flood periods of supremely great poetry, namely 1798-1806 and 1816-1824,
separated by a middle period when by comparison creative energy had ebbed.
(a)  The Lake Poets
The Lake Poets formed a ‘school’ in the sense that they worked in close cooperation, and their lives
were spent partly in the Lake district. Only Wordsworth was born there, but all the three lived there for a
shorter or longer period. Linked together by friendship, they were still further united by the mutual ardour
of their revolutionary ideas in youth, and by the common reaction which followed in their riper years.
They held many of the poetic beliefs in common. Wordsworth and Coleridge lived together for a long
time and produced the Lyrical Ballads by joint effort in 1798. They had original genius and what they
achieved in the realm of poetry was supported by Southey who himself did not possess much creative
imagination. The literary revolution which is associated with their name was accomplished in 1800, when
in the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Coleridge explained further their critical
doctrines.
Describing the genesis of the poems contained the Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge wrote later in his
greatest critical work—Biographia Literaria (1817):
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversation turned frequently on
two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to
the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of
imagination…The thought suggested itself that a series of poems may be composed of two sorts. In the
one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to
consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally
accompany such situations, supposing them real…For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from
ordinary life; the characters and incidents, were to be such as will be found in every village and its
vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they
present themselves. In this idea originated the plan of Lyrical Ballads, in which it was agreed that my
endeavour should be directed to persons and characters supernatural…Mr. Wordsworth, on the other
hand, was to give charm of novelty to things of every day.
This was the framework of the Lyrical Ballads. Regarding the style, Wordsworth explained in the
famous preface:
The poems were published which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain how far, by fitting to metrical
arrangement, a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure
and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet may rationally endeavour to impart…Low
and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a
better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more
emphatic language.
Wordsworth thus registered a protest against the artificial ‘poetic diction’ of the classical school,
which was separated from common speech. He declared emphatically: “There is, nor can be, any essential
difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.” Thus it was in the spirit of a crusader
that Wordsworth entered upon his poetic career. His aim was to lift poetry from its depraved state and
restore to it its rightful position.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was the greatest poet of the Romantic period. The credit of
originating the Romantic movement goes to him. He refused to abide by any poetic convention and rules,
and forged his own way in the realm of poetry. He stood against many generations of great poets and
critics, like Dryden, Pope and Johnson, and made way for a new type of poetry. He declared: “A poet is a
man endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge
of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind.” The
truth of this statement struck down the ideal of literary conventions based on reason and rationality, which
had been blindly worshipped for so long. By defining poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feeling” he revolted against the dry intellectuality of his predecessors. By giving his ideas about the poetic
language as simple and natural, he opposed the “gaudiness and inane phraseology” of the affected
classical style.
Wordsworth wrote a large number and variety of lyrics, in which he can stir the deepest emotions by
the simplest means. There we find the aptness of phrase and an absolute naturalness which make a poem
once read as a familiar friend. Language can scarcely be at once more simple and more full of feeling than
in the following stanza from one of the ‘Lucy poems’:
Thus Nature spoke—The work was done,
How soon my Lucy’s race was run.
She died, and left to me
This health, this calm, and quiet scene,
The memory of what has been,
And never more will be.
Besides lyrics Wordsworth wrote a number of sonnets of rare merit
like To Milton, Westminster Bridge, The World is too much with us, in which there is a fine combination
of the dignity of thought and language. In his odes, as Ode to Duty and Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality, he gives expression to his high ideals and philosophy of life. In the Immortality
Ode, Wordsworth celebrates one of his most cherished beliefs that our earliest intuitions are the truest, and
that those are really happy who even in their mature years keep themselves in touch with their childhood:
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither.
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling ever more.
But Wordsworth was not merely a lyrical poet; he justly claims to be the poet of Man of Nature, and
of Human Life. Though in his youth he came under the influence of the ideals of the French Revolution,
he was soon disillusioned on account of its excesses, and came to the conclusion that the emancipation of
man cannot be effected by poetical upheavals, but by his living a simple, natural life. In the simple pieties
of rustic life he began to find a surer foundation for faith in mankind than in the dazzling hopes created by
the French Revolution. Moreover, he discovered that there is an innate harmony between Nature
and Man. It is when man lives in the lap of nature that he lives the right type of life. She has an ennobling
effect on him, and even the simplest things in nature can touch a responsive cord in man’s heart:
To me the meanest flower that blooms can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
According to Wordsworth man is a part of Nature. In his poem Resolution and Independence the old
man and the surroundings make a single picture:
Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,
Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood;
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace
Upon the margin of that moorish flood,
Motionless like a cloud the old man stood
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth all together, if it move at all.
Besides the harmony between Man and Nature, the harmony of Wordsworth’s own spirit with the
universe is the theme of Wordsworth’s greatest Nature poems: Lines composed a few miles above Tintern
Abbey, Yew Trees and The Simplton Pass.
Wordsworth is famous for his lyrics, sonnets, odes and short descriptive poems. His longer poems
contain much that is prosy and uninteresting. The greater part of his work, including The Prelude and The
Excursion was intended for a place in a single great poem, to be called The Recluse, which should treat of
nature, man and society. The Prelude, treating of the growth of poets’ mind, was to introduce this
work. The Excursion (1814) is the second book of The Recluse; and the third was never completed. In his
later years, Wordsworth wrote much poetry which is dull and unimaginative. But there is not a single line
in his poetry which has not got the dignity and high moral value which we associate with Wordsworth
who, according to Tennyson, “uttered nothing base.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). The genius of Coleridge was complementary to that of
Wordsworth. While Wordsworth dealt with naturalism which was an important aspect of the Romantic
movement, Coleridge made the supernatural his special domain, which was an equally important aspect.
In his youth Coleridge came under the spell of French Revolution and the high hope which it held out for
the emancipation of the oppressed section of mankind. He gave poetic expression to his political
aspiration in Religious Musings, Destiny of Nations and Ode to the Departing Year (1796). But like
Wordsworth, he also began to think differently after the excesses of the Revolution. This change of
thought is shown in his beautiful poem France: an Ode (1798) which he himself called his ‘recantation’.
After that he, like Wordsworth, began to support the conservative cause.
Coleridge was a man of gigantic genius, but his lack of will power and addiction to opium prevented
him from occomplishing much in the realm of poetry. Whatever he has written, though of high quality, is
fragmentary. It was, however, in the fields of theology, philosophy and literary criticism that he exercised
a tremendous and lasting influence. His two best-known poems are The Ancient
Mariner and Christabel,  which represent the high watermark of supernaturalism as some of the best
poems of Wordsworth represent the triumph of naturalism, in English poetry. In these two poems
Coleridge saved supernaturalism from the coarse sensationalism then in vogue by linking it with
psychological truth. He had absorbed the spells of medievalism within himself and in these poems they
appeared rarely distilled and inextricably blinded with poets’ exquisite perception of the mysteries that
surround the commonplace things of everyday life.
In the Ancient Mariner, which is a poetic masterpiece, Coleridge introduced the reader to a
supernatural realm, with a phantom ship, a crew of dead men, the overwhelming curse of the albatross, the
polar spirit, the magic breeze, and a number of other supernatural things and happenings, but he manages
to create a sense of absolute reality concerning these manifest absurdities. With that supreme art which
ever seems artless, Coleridge gives us glimpses from time to time of the wedding feast to which the
mariner has been invited. The whole poem is wrought with the colour and glamour of the Middle Ages
and yet Coleridge makes no slavish attempt to reproduce the past in a mechanical manner. The whole
poem is the baseless fabric of a vision; a fine product of the ethereal and subtle fancy of a great poet. But
in spite of its wildness, its medieval superstitions and irresponsible happening, The Ancient Mariner is
made actual and vital to our imagination by its faithful pictures of Nature, its psychological insight and
simple humanity. In it the poet deals in a superb manner with the primal emotions of love, hate, pain,
remorse and hope. He prayeth best who loveth best is not an artificial ending of the poem in the form of a
popular saying, but it is a fine summing up in a few lines of the spirit which underlies the entire poem. Its
simple, ballad form, its exquisite imagery, the sweet harmony of its verse, and the aptness of its
phraseology, all woven together in an artistic whole, make this poem the most representative of the
romantic school of poetry.
Christabel, which is a fragment, seems to have been planned as the story of a pure young girl who
fell under the spell of a sorcer in the shape of the woman Gerldine. Though it has strange melody and
many passages of exquisite poetry, and in sheer artistic power it is scarcely inferior to The Ancient
Mariner, it has supernatural terrors of the popular hysterical novels. The whole poem is suffused in
medieval atmosphere and everything is vague and indefinite. Like The Ancient Mariner it is written in a
homely and simple diction and in a style which is spontaneous and effortless.
Kubla Khan is another fragment in which the poet has painted a gorgeous Oriental dream picture.
The whole poem came to Coleridge in a dream one morning when he had fallen asleep, and upon
awakening he began to write hastily, but he was interrupted after fifty-four lines were written, and it was
never finished.
Though Coleridge wrote a number of other poems—Love, The Dark Ladie, Youth and Age,
Dejection: an Ode, which have grace, tenderness and touches of personal emotion, and a number of
poems full of very minute description of natural scenes, yet his strength lay in his marvellous dream
faculty, and his reputation as a poet rest on The Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan where he
touched the heights of romantic poetry.
Robert Southey (1774-1843) was the third poet of the group of Lake Poets. Unlike Wordsworth and
Coleridge he lacked higher qualities of poetry, and his achievement as a poet is not much. He was a
voracious reader and voluminous writer. His most ambitious poems Thalaba, The Curse of Kehama,
Madoc and Roderick are based on mythology of different nations. He also wrote a number of ballads and
short poems, of which the best known is about his love for books (My days among the Dead are past.) But
he wrote far better prose than poetry, and his admirable Life of Nelson remains a classic. He was made
the Poet Laureate in 1813, and after his death in 1843 Wordsworth held this title.
(b)       The Scott Group
The romantic poets belonging to the Scott group are Sir Walter Scott, Campbell and Thomas
Moore. They bridged the years which preceded the second outburst of high creative activity in the
Romantic period.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was the first to make romantic poetry popular among the masses.
His Marmion and Lady of the Lake gained greater popularity than the poems of Wordsworth and
Coleridge which were read by a select few. But in his poetry we do not find the deeply imaginative and
suggestive quality which is at the root of poetic excellence. It is the story element, the narrative power,
which absorbs the reader’s attention. That is why they are more popular with young readers. Moreover,
Scott’s poetry appeals on account of its vigour, youthful abandon, vivid pictures, heroic characters, rapid
action and succession of adventures. His best known poems are The Lady of the Last Ministrel, Marmion,
The Lady of the Lake, Rokeby, The Lord of the Isles. All of them recapture the atmosphere of the Middle
Ages, and breathe an air of supernaturalism and superstitions. After 1815 Scott wrote little poetry and
turned to prose romance in the form of the historical novel in which field he earned great and enduring
fame.
Thomas Campbell (1774-1844) and Thomas Moore (1779-1852) were prominent among a host of
minor poets who following the vogue of Scott wrote versified romance. Campbell wrote Gertrude of
Wyoming (1809) in the Spenserian stanza, which does not hold so much interest today as his patriotic war
songs—Ye Mariners of England, Hohenlinden, The Battle of the Baltic, and ballads such as Lord Ullin’s
Daughter.  The poems of Moore are now old-fashioned and have little interest for the modern reader. He
wrote a long series of Irish Melodies, which are musical poems, vivacious and sentimental. His Lalla
Rookh is a collection of Oriental tales in which he employs lucious imagery. Though Moore enjoyed
immense popularity during his time, he is now considered as a minor poet of the Romantic Age.
(c)       The Younger Group
To the younger group of romantic poets belong Byron, Shelley and Keats. They represent the second
Flowering of English Romanticism, the first being represented by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey.
Though the younger group was in many ways indebted to the older group and was in many ways akin to
it, yet the poets of the younger group show some sharp differences with the poets of older group, it was
because the revolutionary ideals which at first attracted Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey and then
repelled them, had passed into the blood of Byron and Shelley. They were the children of the revolution
and their humanitarian ardour affected even Keats who was more of an artist. Moreover, compared to the
poets of the older group, the poets of the younger group were not only less national, but they were also
against the historic and social traditions of England. It is not without significance that Byron and Shelley
lived their best years, and produced their best poetry in Italy; and Keats was more interested in Greek
mythology than in the life around him. Incidentally, these three poets of second generation of
Romanticism died young—Byron at the age of thirty-six, Shelley thirty, and Keats twenty-five. So the
spirit of youthful freshness is associated with their poetry.
(i)  Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)
During his time Byron was the most popular of all Romantic poets, and he was the only one who
made an impact on the continent both in his own day and for a long time afterwards. This was mainly due
to the force of his personality and the glamour of his career, but as his poetry does not possess the high
excellence that we find in Shelley’s and Keats’, now he is accorded a lower positions in the hierarchy of
Romantic poets. He is the only Romantic poet who showed regard for the poets of the eighteenth century,
and ridiculed his own contemporaries in his early satirical poem, English Bards and Scottish
Reviewers (1809). That is why, he is called the ‘Romantic Paradox’.
Byron who had travelled widely captured the imagination of his readers by the publications of the
first two Cantos of Childe Harold Pilgrimage (1812). This work made him instantly famous. As he said
himself, “I woke one morning and found myself famous.” In it he described the adventures of a glamorous
but sinister hero through strange lands. He also gave an air of authenticity to these adventures and a
suggestion that he himself had indulged in such exploits. Such a hero, called the Byronic hero, became
very popular among the readers and there was greater and greater demand for such romances dealing with
his exploits. Under the pressure of the popular demand Byron wrote a number of romances which began
with The Giaor (1813), and in all of them he dealt with the exploits of the Byronic hero. But whereas
these romances made his reputation not in England alone but throughout Europe, the pruder section of the
English society began to look upon him with suspicion, and considered him a dangerous, sinister man.
The result was that when his wife left him in 1816, a year after his marriage, there was such a turn in the
tide of public opinion against him that he left England under a cloud of distrust and disappointment and
never returned.
It was during the years of his exile in Italy that the best part of his poetry was written by him. The
third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold (1816-1818) have more sincerity, and are in every way better
expressions of Byron’s genius. He also wrote two sombre and self-conscious tragedies—Manfred and
Cain. But the greatness of Byron as a poet lies, however, not in these poems and tragedies, but in the
satires which begin with Beppo (1818) and include The Vision of Judgment (1822) and Don
Juan (1819-24). Of these Don Juan, which is a scathing criticism of the contemporary European society,
is one of the greatest poems in the English language. In it humour, sentiment, adventure and pathos are
thrown together in a haphazard manner as in real life. It is written in a conversational style which subtly
produces comic as well as satirical effect.
Of all the romantic poets Byron was the most egoistical. In all his poems his personality obtrudes
itself, and he attaches the greatest importance to it. Of the romantic traits, he represents the revolutionary
iconoclasm at its worst, and that is why he came in open conflict with the world around him. His last great
act, dying on his way to take part in the Greek War of Independence, was a truly heroic act; and it
vindicated his position for all times and made him a martyr in the cause of freedom.
Byron does not enjoy a high reputation as a poet because of his slipshod and careless style. He was
too much in a hurry to revise what he had written, and so there is much in his poetry which is artistically
imperfect. Moreover his rhetorical style, which was admirably suited to convey the force and fire of his
personality, often becomes dull and boring.
(ii)       Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Whereas Byron was the greatest interpreter of revolutionary iconoclasm, Shelley was the
revolutionary idealist, a prophet of hope and faith. He was a visionary who dreamed of the Golden Age.
Unlike Byron’s genius which was destructive, Shelley’s was constructive and he incarnated that aspect of
the French Revolution which aimed at building up a new and beautiful edifice on the ruins of the old and
the ugly. Whereas Byron’s motive impulse was pride, Shelley’s was love.
In his early days Shelley came under the influence of William Godwin’s Political Justice. He saw
that all established institutions, kings and priests were diverse forms of evil and obstacles to happiness and
progress. So he began to imagine the new world which would come into existence when all these forms of
error and hatred had disappeared. The essence of all his poetical works is his prophecy of the new-born
age. In his first long poem, Queen Mab, which he wrote when he was eighteen, he condemns kings,
governments, church, property, marriage and Christianity. The Revolt of Islam which followed in 1817,
and is a sort of transfigured picture of the French Revolution is charged with the young poet’s hopes for
the future regeneration of the world. In 1820 appeared Prometheus Unbound, the hymn of human revolt
triumphing over the oppression of false gods. In this superb lyrical drama we find the fullest and finest
expression of Shelley’s faith and hope. Here Prometheus stands forth as the prototype of mankind in its
long struggle against the forces of despotism, symbolised by love. At last Prometheus is united to Asia,
the spirit of love and goodness in nature, and everything gives promise that they shall live together happy
ever afterwards.
Shelley’s other great poems are Alastor (1816), in which he describes his pursuit of an unattainable
ideal of beauty; Julian and Meddalo (1818) in which he draws his own portrait contrasted with last of
Byron; The Cenci, a poetic drama which deals with the terrible story of Beatrice who, the victim of
father’s lust, takes his life in revenge; the lyrical drama Hallas in which he sings of the rise of Greece
against the Ottoman yoke; Epipsychidion in which he celebrates his Platonic love for a beautiful young
Italian girl: Adonais, the best-known of Shelley’s longer poems, which is an elegy dedicated to the poet
Keats, and holds its place with Milton’s Lycidas and Tennyson’s In Memoriam as one of the three greatest
elegies in the English language; and the unfinished masterpiece, The Triumph of Life.
Shelley’s reputation as a poet lies mainly in his lyrical power. He is in fact the greatest lyrical poet
of England. In all these poems mentioned above, it is their lyrical rapture which in unique. In the whole of
English poetry there is no utterance as spontaneous as Shelley’s and nowhere does the thought flow with
such irresistable melody. Besides these longer poems Shelley wrote a number of small lyrics of exquisite
beauty, such as “To Constantia Singing’, the ‘Ozymandias’ sonnet, the “Lines written among the
Euganean Hills’, the ‘Stanzas written in Dejection’, the ‘Ode to the West Wind’, ‘Cloud’, ‘Skylark’; ‘O
World! O life! O time’. It is in fact on the foundation of these beautiful lyrics, which are absolutely
consummate and unsurpassed the whole range of English lyrical poetry, that Shelley’s real reputation as a
poet lies.
As the poet of Nature, Shelley was inspired by the spirit of love which was not limited to mankind
but extended to every living creature—to animals and flowers, to elements, to the whole Nature. He is not
content, like Wordsworth, merely to love and revere Nature; his very being is fused and blended with her.
He, therefore, holds passionate communion with the universe, and becomes one with the lark (To a
Skylark), with the cloud (The Cloud), and west wind (Ode to the West Wind) to which he utters forth this
passionate, lyrical appeal:
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one.
(iii)     John Keats (1795-21)
Of all the romantic poets, Keats was the pure poet. He was not only the last but the most perfect of
the Romanticists. He was devoted to poetry and had no other interest. Unlike Wordsworth who was
interested in reforming poetry and upholding the moral law; unlike Shelley who advocated impossible
reforms and phrophesied about the golden age; and unlike Byron who made his poetry a vehicle of his
strongly egoistical nature and political discontents of the time; unlike Coleridge who was a
metaphysician, and Scott who relished in story-telling, Keats did not take much notice of the social,
political and literary turmoils, but devoted himself entirely to the worship of beauty, and writing poetry as
it suited his temperament. He was, about all things, a poet, and nothing else. His nature was entirely and
essentially poetical and the whole of his vital energy went into art.
Unlike Byron who was a lord, and Shelley who belonged to an aristocratic family, Keats came of a
poor family, and at an early age he had to work as a doctor’s assistant. But his medical studies did not
stand in the way of his passion for writing poetry which was roused by his reading of Spenser’s The
Faerie Queene, which revealed to him the vast world of poetry. He also became interested in the beauty of
nature. His first volume of poems appeared in 1817 and his first long poem Endymion in 1818, which
opened with the following memorable lines:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us; and sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and healthy, and quiet breathing.
This poem was severely criticised by contemporary critics, which must have shocked Keats. Besides
this a number of other calamities engulfed him. He had lost his father when he was only nine; his mother
and brother died of tuberculosis, and he himself was suffering from this deadly disease. All these
misfortunes were intensified by his disappointment in love for Fanny Brawne whom Keats loved
passionately. But he remained undaunted, and under the shadow of death and in midst of most
excruciating sufferings Keats brought out his last volume of poems in the year 1820 (which is called the
‘Living Year’ in his life.) The Poems of 1820 are Keats’ enduring monument. They include the three
narratives, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Lamia: the unfinished epic Hyperion; the Odes, La Belle
Dame Sans Merci, and a few sonnets.
In Isabella Keats made an attempt to turn a somewhat repellent and tragic love story of Isabella and
Lorenzo, who was murdered by Isabella’s brothers, into a thing of beauty by means of fine narrative skill
and beautiful phraseology. In Lamia Keats narrated the story of a beautiful enchantress, who turns from a
serpent into a glorious woman and fills every human sense with delight, until as the result of the foolish
philosophy of old Apollonius, she vanishes for ever from her lover’s sight. The Eve of St. Agnes, which is
the most perfect of Keat’s medieval poems, is surpassingly beautiful in its descriptions. Hyperion which is
a magnificent fragment deals with the overthrow of the Titans by the young sun-god Apollo. This poem
shows the influence of Milton as Endymion of Spenser. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which captures the
spirit of the Middle Ages, has a haunting melody. Though small, it is a most perfect work of art.
Of the odes, those To a Nightingale, On a Grecian Urn and To Autumn stand out above the rest, and
are among the masterpieces of poetic art. In Ode to a Nightingale we find a love of sensuous beauty, and a
touch of pessimism. In Ode on a Grecian Urn we see Keats’s love for Greek mythology and art. It is this
Ode which ends with the following most memorable lines in the whole of Keats’s poetry.
‘Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty’,–that is all
Yea know on earth, and all ye need to know.
The Ode to Autumn, in which Keats has glorified Nature, is a poem which for richness and colour
has never been surpassed. Though Keats died young, when he had attained barely the age of twenty-five,
and had only a few years in which he could effectively write poetry, his achievement in the field of poetry
is so great, that we wonder what he might have accomplished if he had lived longer. For a long time his
poetry was considered merely as sensuous having no depth of thought. But with the help of his letters
critics have reinterpreted his poems, and now it has been discovered that they are based on mature
thinking, and that there is a regular line of development from the point of thought and art. He was not an
escapist who tried to run away from the stark realities of life, but he faced life bravely, and came to the
conclusion that sufferings play an important part in the development of the human personality. As a
worshipper of beauty, though his first approach was sensuous, his attitude suddenly became philosophic,
and he discovered that there is beauty in everything, and that Beauty and Truth are one. As an artist there
are few English poets who come near him. As a poet he had very high ideals before him. He wanted to
become the poet of the human heart, one with Shakespeare. For him the proper role of poetry is ‘to be a
friend to sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of men”, and the real poet is that “to whom the miseries of
the world are misery, and will not let him rest.”
And Keats sincerely and persistently lived up to these high ideals. Taking into account all these
factors and the very short span of life that was given to him by the Providence, it is no exaggeration to say
that of all the English poets he comes nearest to Shakespeare.
Posted onDecember 16, 2010CategoriesHistory of English LiteratureLeave a commenton Poets of the
Romantic Age
Prose-Writers of the Romantic Age

Though the Romantic period specialised in poetry, there also appeared a few prose-writers-Lamb,
Hazlitt and De Quincey who rank very high. There was no revolt of the prose-writers against the
eighteenth century comparable to that of the poets, but a change had taken place in the prose-style also.
Whereas many eighteenth century prose-writers depended on assumptions about the suitability of various
prose styles for various purposes which they shared with their relatively small but sophisticated public;
writers in the Romantic period were rather more concerned with subject matter and emotional expression
than with appropriate style. They wrote for an ever-increasing audience which was less homogeneous in
its interest and education than that of their predecessors. There was also an indication of a growing distrust
of the sharp distinction between matter and manner which was made in the eighteenth century, and of a
Romantic preference for spontaneity rather than formality and contrivance. There was a decline of the
‘grand’ style and of most forms of contrived architectural prose written for what may be called public or
didactic purposes. Though some Romantic poets—Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron—wrote excellent
prose in their critical writings, letters and journals, and some of the novelists like Scott and Jane Austen
were masters of prose-style, those who wrote prose for its own sake in the form of the essays and attained
excellence in the art of prose-writing were Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey.
(i)        Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
Charles Lamb is one of the most lovable personalities in English literature. He lived a very humble,
honest, and most self-sacrificing life. He never married, but devoted himself to the care of his sister Mary,
ten years his senior, who was subject to mental fits, in one of which she had fatally wounded her mother.
In his Essays of Elia (1823) and Last Essays (1833), in which is revealed his own personality, he talks
intimately to the readers about himself, his quaint whims and experiences, and the cheerful and heroic
struggle which he made against misfortunes. Unlike Wordsworth who was interested in natural
surroundings and shunned society, Lamb who was born and lived in the midst of London street, was
deeply interested in the city crowd, its pleasures and occupations, its endless comedies and tragedies, and
in his essays he interpreted with great insight and human sympathy that crowded human life of joys and
sorrows.
Lamb belongs to the category of intimate and self-revealing essayists, of whom Montaigne is the
original, and Cowley the first exponent in England. To the informality of Cowley he adds the solemn
confessional manner of Sir Thomas Browne. He writes always in a gentle, humorous way about the
sentiments and trifles of everyday. The sentimental, smiling figure of ‘Elia’ in his essays is only a cloak
with which Lamb hides himself from the world. Though in his essays he plays with trivialities, as Walter
Pater has said, “We know that beneath this blithe surface there is something of the domestic horror, of the
beautiful heroism, and devotedness too, of the old Greek tragedy.”
The style of Lamb is described as ‘quaint’, because it has the strangeness which we associate with
something old-fashioned. One can easily trace in his English the imitations of the 16th and 17th century
writers he most loved—Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, Fuller, Burton, Issac Walton. According to the
subject he is treating, he makes use of the rhythms and vocabularies of these writers. That is why, in every
essay Lamb’s style changes. This is the secret of the charm of his style and it also prevents him from ever
becoming monotonous or tiresome. His style is also full of surprises because his mood continually varies,
creating or suggesting its own style, and calling into play some recollection of this or that writer of the
older world.
Lamb is the most lovable of all English essayists, and in his hand the Essay reached its perfection.
His essays are true to Johnson’s definition; ‘a loose sally of the mind.’ Though his essays are all criticisms
or appreciations of the life of his age and literature, they are all intensely personal. They, therefore, give us
an excellent picture of Lamb and of humanity. Though he often starts with some purely personal mood or
experience he gently leads the reader to see life as he saw it, without ever being vain or self-assertive. It is
this wonderful combination of personal and universal interest together with his rare old style and quaint
humour, which have given his essays his perennial charm, and earned for him the covetable title of “The
Prince among English Essayists”.
(ii)       William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
As a personality Hazlitt was just the opposite of Lamb. He was a man of violent temper, with strong
likes and dislikes. In his judgment of others he was always downright and frank, and never cared for its
effect on them. During the time when England was engaged in a bitter struggle against Napoleon, Hazlitt
worshipped him as a hero, and so he came in conflict with the government. His friends left him one by one
on account of his aggressive nature, and at the time of his death only Lamb stood by him.
Hazlitt wrote many volumes of essays, of which the most effective is The Spirit of the Age (1825) in
which he gives critical portraits of a number of his famous contemporaries. This was a work which only
Hazlitt could undertake because he was outspoken and fearless in the expression of his opinion. Though at
times he is misled by his prejudices, yet taking his criticism of art and literature as a whole there is not the
least doubt that there is great merit in it. He has the capacity to see the whole of his author most clearly,
and he can place him most exactly in relation to other authors. In his interpretation of life in the general
and proper sense, he shows an acute and accurate power of observation and often goes to the very
foundation of things. Underneath his light and easy style there always flows an undercurrent of deep
thought and feeling.
The style of Hazlitt has force, brightness and individuality. Here and there we find passages of
solemn and stately music. It is the reflection of Hazlitt’s personality—outspoken, straightforward and
frank. As he had read widely, and his mind was filled with great store of learning, his writings are
interspersed with sentences and phrases from other writers and there are also echoes of their style. Above
all, it vibrates with the vitality and force of his personality, and so never lapses into dullness.
(iii)     Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859)
De Quincey is famous as the writer of ‘impassioned prose’. He shared the reaction of his day against
the severer classicism of the eighteenth century, preferring rather the ornate manner of Jeremy Taylor, Sir
Thomas Browne and their contemporaries. The specialty of his style consists in describing incidents of
purely personal interest in language suited to their magnitude as they appear in the eyes of the writer. The
reader is irresistibly attracted by the splendour of his style which combines the best elements of prose and
poetry. In fact his prose works are more imaginative and melodious than many poetical works. There is
revealed in them the beauty of the English language. The defects of his style are that he digresses too
much, and often stops in the midst of the fine paragraph to talk about some trivial thing by way of jest.
But in spite of these defects his prose is still among the few supreme examples of style in the English
language.
De Quincey was a highly intellectual writer and his interests were very wide. Mostly he wrote in the
form of articles for journals and he dealt with all sorts of subjects—about himself and his friends, life in
general, art, literature, philosophy and religion. Of his autobiographical sketches the best-known is
his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, in which he has given us, in a most interesting manner,
glimpses of his own life under the influence of opium. He wrote fine biographies of a number of classical,
historical and literary personages, of which the most ambitious attempt is The Caerars. His most perfect
historical essay is on Joan of Arc. His essays on principle of literature are original and penetrating. The
best of this type is the one where he gives the distinction between the literature of knowledge and of
power. On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth is the most brilliant. He also wrote very scholarly articles
on Goethe, Pope, Schiller and Shakespeare. Besides these he wrote a number of essays on science and
theology.
In all his writings De Quincey asserts his personal point of view, and as he is a man of strong
prejudices, likes and dislikes, he often gives undue emphasis on certain points. The result is that we
cannot rely on his judgment entirely. But there is no doubt that his approach is always original and
brilliant which straightway captures the attention of the reader. Moreover, the splendour of his ‘poetic
prose’ which is elaborate and sonorous in its effects, casts its own special spell. The result is that De
Quincey is still one of the most fascinating prose-writers of England.
Posted onDecember 16, 2010CategoriesHistory of English LiteratureLeave a commenton Prose-Writers of
the Romantic Age
Novelists of The Romantic Age

The great novelists of the Romantic period are Jane Austen and Scott, but before them there appeared
some novelists who came under the spell of medievalism and wrote novels of ‘terror’ or the ‘Gothic
novels’. The origin of this type of fiction can be ascribed to Horace Walpole’s (1717-97) The Castle of
Otranto (1746). Here the story in set in medieval Italy and it includes a gigantic helmet that can strike
dead its victims, tyrants, supernatural intrusions, mysteries and secrets. There were a number of imitators
of such a type of novel during the eighteenth century as well as in the Romantic period.
(i)        The Gothic Novel
The most popular of the writers of the ‘terror’ or ‘Gothic’ novel during the Romantic age was Mrs.
Ann Radciffe (1764-1823), of whose five novels the best-known are The Mysteries of Udolpho and
the Italian. She initiated the mechanism of the ‘terror’ tale as practiced by Horace Walpole and his
followers, but combined it with sentimental but effective description of scenery. The Mysteries of
Udolpho relates the story of an innocent and sensitive girl who falls in the hands of a heartless villain
named Montoni. He keeps her in a grim and isolated castle full of mystery and terror. The novels of Mrs.
Radcliffe became very popular, and they influenced some of the great writers like Byron and Shelley.
Later they influenced the Bronte sisters whose imagination was stimulated by these strange stories.
Though Mrs. Radcliffe was the prominent writer of ‘Gothic’ novels, there were a few other novelists
who earned popularity by writing such novels. They were Mathew Gregory (‘Monk’) Lewis (1775-1818).
Who wrote The Monk, Tales of Terror and Tales of Wonder; and Charles Robert Maturin whose Melmoth
the Wanderer exerted great influence in France. But the most popular of all ‘terror’ tales
was Frankestein (1817) written by Mrs. Shelley. It is the story of a mechanical monster with human
powers capable of performing terrifying deeds. Of all the ‘Gothic’ novels it is the only one which is
popular even today.
(ii)       Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Jane Austen brought good sense and balance to the English novel which during the Romantic age had
become too emotional and undisciplined. Giving a loose rein to their imagination the novelist of the
period carried themselves away from the world around them into a romantic past or into a romantic future.
The novel, which in the hands of Richardson and Fielding had been a faithful record of real life and of the
working of heart and imagination, became in the closing years of the eighteenth century the literature of
crime, insanity and terror. It, therefore, needed castigation and reform which were provided by Jane
Austen. Living a quiet life she published her six novels anonymously, which have now placed her among
the front rank of English novelists. She did for the English novel precisely what the Lake poets did for
English poetry—she refined and simplified it, making it a true reflection of English life. As Wordsworth
made a deliberate effort to make poetry natural and truthful, Jane Austen also from the time she started
writing her first novel—Pride and Prejudice, had in her mind the idea of presenting English country
society exactly as it was, in opposition to the romantic extravagance of Mrs. Radcliffe and her school.
During the time of great turmoil and revolution in various fields, she quietly went on with her work,
making no great effort to get a publisher, and, when a publisher was got, contenting herself with meagre
remuneration and never permitting her name to appear on a title page. She is one of the sincerest examples
in English literature of art for art’s sake.
In all Jane Austen wrote six novels—Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility,
Emma, Mansefield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Of these Pride and Prejudice is the best and
most widely read of her novels. Sense and Sensibility, Emma and Mansefield are now placed among the
front rank of English novels. From purely literary point of view Northanger Abbey gets the first place on
account of the subtle humour and delicate satire it contains against the grotesque but popular ‘Gothic’
novels.
As a novelist Jane Austen worked in a narrow field. She was the daughter of a humble clergyman
living in a little village. Except for short visits to neighbouring places, she lived a static life but she had
such a keen power of observation that the simple country people became the characters of her novels. The
chief duties of these people were of the household, their chief pleasures were in country gatherings and
their chief interest was in matrimony. It is the small, quiet world of these people, free from the mighty
interests, passions, ambitious and tragic struggles of life, that Jane Austin depicts in her novels. But in
spite of these limitations she has achieved wonderful perfection in that narrow field on account of her
acute power of observation, her fine impartiality and self-detachment, and her quiet, delicate and ironical
humour. Her circumstances helped her to give that finish and delicacy to her work, which have made them
artistically prefect. Novel-writing was a part of her everyday life, to be placed aside should a visitor come,
to be resumed when he left, to be purused unostentatiously and tranquilly in the midst of the family circle.
She knew precisely what she wanted to do, and she did it in the way that suited her best. Though in her
day she did not receive the appreciation she deserved, posterity has given her reward by placing this
modest, unassuming woman who died in her forties, as one of the greatest of English novelists.
Among her contemporaries only Scott, realised the greatness and permanent worth of her work, and
most aptly remarked: “That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and
characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bowbow strain I
can do myself, like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things
and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me, What a pity
such a gifted creature died so early!”
(iii)     Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Walter Scott’s qualities as a novelist were vastly different form those of Jane Austen. Whereas she
painted domestic miniatures, Scott depicted pageantry of history on broader canvases. Jane Austen is
precise and exact in whatever she writes; Scott is diffusive and digressive. Jane Austen deals with the
quiet intimacies of English rural life free from high passions, struggles and great actions; Scott, on the
other hand, deals with the chivalric, exciting, romantic and adventurous life of the Highlanders—people
living on the border of England and Scotland, among whom he spent much of his youth, or with glorious
scenes of past history.
During his first five or six years of novel-writing Scott confined himself to familiar scenes and
characters. The novels which have a local colour and are based on personal observations are Guy
Mannering, The Antiquary, Old Mortality and The Heart of Midlothian.  His first attempt at a historical
novel was Ivanhoe (1819) followed by Kenilworth (1821), Quentin Durward (1823), and The
Talisman (1825). He returned to Scottish antiquity from time to time as in The Monastery (1820) and St.
Ronan’s Well (1823).
In all these novels Scott reveals himself as a consummate storyteller. His leisurely unfolding of the
story allows of digression particularly in the descriptions of natural scenes or of interiors. Without being
historical in the strict sense he conveys a sense of the past age by means of a wealth of colourful
descriptions, boundless vitality and with much humour and sympathy. The historical characters which he
has so beautifully portrayed that they challenge comparison with the characters of Shakespeare, include
Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scott. Besides these he has given us a number of imperishable
portraits of the creatures of his imagination. He is a superb master of the dialogue which is invariably true
to character.
The novels of Scott betray the same imaginative joy in the recreation of the past as his poetry, but the
novel offered him a more adaptable and wider field than the narrative poem. It gave him a better
opportunity for the display of his varied gifts, his antiquarian knowledge, his observation of life and
character, his delight in popular as well as courtly scenes, and his rich humour.
Scott is the first English writer of the historical novel, and he made very enduring contributions to its
development in England as well as in Europe. He was by temperament and training perfectly suited to the
accomplishment of this task. In the first place he had acquired a profound knowledge of history by his
copious reading since his earliest youth. He had the zest of the story-teller, and a natural heartiness which
made him love life in all its manifestations. He had an innate sense of the picturesque, developed by his
passion for antiquarianism. His conservative temper which turned him away from the contemporary
revolutionary enthusiasm, gave him a natural sympathy for the days of chivalry. In the Romantic age,
Scott was romantic only in his love of the picturesque and his interest in the Middle Ages.
Scott was the first novelist in Europe who made the scene an essential element in action. He
knew Scotland, and loved it, and there is hardly an event in any of his Scottish novels in which we do not
breathe the very atmosphere of the place, and feel the presence of its moors and mountains. He chooses
the place so well and describes it so perfectly, that the action seems almost to be result of natural
environment.
Though the style of Scott is often inartistic, heavy and dragging; the love interest in his novels is apt
to be insipid and monotonous; he often sketches a character roughly and plunges him into the midst of
stirring incidents; and he has no inclinations for tracing the logical consequences of human action—all
these objections and criticisms are swept away in the end by the broad, powerful current of his narrative
genius. Moreover, Scott’s chief claim to greatness lies in the fact that he was the first novelist to recreate
the past in such a manner that the men and women of the bygone ages, and the old scenes became actually
living, and throbbing with life. Carlyle very pertinently remarked about Scott’s novels: “These historical
novels have taught this truth unknown to the writers of history, that the bygone ages of the world were
actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies, and abstractions of men.”
The Victorian Age (1832-1900)

The Victorian Age in English literature began in second quarter of the nineteenth century and ended
by 1900. Though strictly speaking, the Victorian age ought to correspond with the reign of
Queen Victoria, which extended from 1837 to 1901, yet literary movements rarely coincide with the exact
year of royal accession or death. From the year 1798 with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads till the
year 1820 there was the heyday of Romanticism in England, but after that year there was a sudden decline.
Wordsworth who after his early effusion of revolutionary principles had relapsed into conservatism and
positive opposition to social and political reforms, produced nothing of importance after the publication of
his White Doe of Rylstone in 1815, though he lived till 1850. Coleridge wrote no poem of merit after
1817. Scott was still writing after 1820, but his work lacked the fire and originality of his early years. The
Romantic poets of the younger generation unfortunately all died young—Keats in 1820, Shelley in 1822,
and Byron in 1824.

Though the Romantic Age in the real sense of the term ended in 1820, the Victorian Age started from
1832 with the passing of the first Reform Act, 1832. The years 1820-1832 were the years of suspended
animation in politics. It was a fact that England was fast turning from an agricultural into a manufacturing
country, but it was only after the reform of the Constitution which gave right of vote to the new
manufacturing centres, and gave power to the middle classes, that the way was opened for new
experiments in constructive politics. The first Reform Act of 1832 was followed by the Repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1846 which gave an immense advantage to the manufacturing interests, and the Second Reform
Act of 1867. In the field of literature also the years 1820-1832 were singularly barren. As has already been
pointed out, there was sudden decline of Romantic literature from the year 1820, but the new literature
of England, called the Victorian literature, started from 1832 when Tennyson’s first important
volume, Poems, appeared. The following year saw Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, and Dickens’ earliest
work, Sketches by Boz. The literary career of Thackeray began about 1837, and Browning published
his Dramatic Lyrics in 1842. Thus the Victorian period in literature officially starts from 1832, though the
Romantic period ended in 1820, and Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837.
The Victorian Age is so long and complicated and the great writers who flourished in it are so many,
that for the sake of convenience it is often divided into two periods—Early Victorian Period and Later
Victorian Period. The earlier period which was the period of middle class supremacy, the age of
‘laissez-faire’ or free trade, and of unrestricted competition, extended from 1832 to 1870. The great
writers of this period were Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, Ruskin, Dickens and
Thackeray. All these poets, novelists and prose-writers form, a certain homogenous group, because in
spite of individual differences they exhibit the same approach to the contemporary problems and the same
literary, moral and social values. But the later Victorian writers who came into prominence after
1870—Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, George Eliot, Meredith, Hardy, Newman and Pater seem to belong to
a different age. In poetry Rossetti, Swinburne and Morris were the protagonists of new movement called
the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, which was followed by the Aesthetic Movement. In the field of novel,
George Eliot is the pioneer of what is called the modern psychological novel, followed by Meredith and
Hardy. In prose Newman tried to revolutionise Victorian thought by turning it back to Catholicism, and
Pater came out with his purely aesthetic doctrine of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’, which was directly opposed to
the fundamentally moral approach of the prose-writers of the earlier period—Carlyle Arnold and Ruskin.
Thus we see a clear demarcation between the two periods of Victorian literature—the early Victorian
period (1832-1870) and the later Victorian period (1870-1900).
But the difference between the writers of the two periods is more apparent than real. Fundamentally
they belong to one group. They were all the children of the new age of democracy, of individualism, of
rapid industrial development and material expansion, the age of doubt and pessimism, following the new
conceptions of man which was formulated by science under the name of Evolution. All of them were men
and women of marked originality in outlook and character or style. All of them were the critics of their
age, and instead of being in sympathy with its spirit, were its very severe critics. All of them were in
search of some sort of balance, stability, a rational understanding, in the midst of the rapidly changing
times. Most of them favoured the return to precision in form, to beauty within the limits of reason, and to
values which had received the stamp of universal approval. It was in fact their insistence on the rational
elements of thought, which gave a distinctive character to the writings of the great Victorians, and which
made them akin, to a certain extent, to the great writers of the neo-Classical school. All the great writers of
the Victorian Age were actuated by a definite moral purpose. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle,
Ruskin, Arnold wrote with a superb faith in their message, and with the conscious moral purpose to uplift
and to instruct. Even the novel broke away from Scott’s romantic influence. Dickens, Thackeray, George
Eliot wrote with a definite purpose to sweep away error and reveal the underlying truth of humanity. For
this reason the Victorian Age was fundamentally an age of realism rather than of romance.
But from another point of view, the Victorian Age in English literature was a continuation of the
Romantic Age, because the Romantic Age came to a sudden and unnatural and mainly on account of the
premature deaths of Byron, Shelley and Keats. If they had lived longer, the Age of Romanticism would
have extended further. But after their death the coherent inspiration of romanticism disintegrated into
separate lines of development, just as in the seventeenth century the single inspiration of the Renaissance
broke into different schools. The result was that the spirit of Romanticism continued to influence the
innermost consciousness of Victorian Age. Its influence is clearly visible on Tennyson, Browning,
Arnold, Dickens, Thackeray, Ruskin, Meredith, Swinburne, Rossetti and others. Even its adversaries, and
those who would escape its spell, were impregnated with it. While denouncing it, Carlyle does so in a
style which is intensely charged with emotional fire and visionary colouring. In fact after 1870 we find
that the romantic inspiration was again in the ascendent in the shape of the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic
movements.
There was also another reason of the continuation of Romanticism in the Victorian Age. There is no
doubt that the Reform Act set at rest the political disturbances by satisfying the impatient demand of the
middle classes, and seemed to inaugurate an age of stability. After the crisis which followed the struggle
against the French Revolution and Napoleon, England set about organizing herself with a view to internal
prosperity and progress. Moreover, with the advent to power of a middle class largely imbued with the
spirit of Puritanism, and the accession of a queen to the throne, an era of self-restraint and discipline
started. The English society accepted as its standard a stricter conventional morality which was voiced by
writers like Carlyle. But no sooner had the political disturbances subsided and a certain measure of
stability and balance had been achieved then there was fresh and serious outbreak in the economic world.
The result was that the Victorian period, quiet as it was, began to throb with the feverish tremors of
anxiety and trouble, and the whole order of the nation was threatened with an upheaval. From 1840 to
1850 in particular, England seemed to be on the verge of a social revolution, and its disturbed spirit was
reflected, especially in the novel with a purpose. This special form of Romanticism which was fed by the
emotional unrest in the social sphere, therefore, derived a renewed vitality from these sources. The
combined effect of all these causes was the survival and prolongation of Romanticism in the Victorian
Age which was otherwise opposed to it.
Moreover, Romanticism not only continued during the Victorian Age, but it appeared in new forms.
The very exercise of reason and the pursuit of scientific studies which promoted the spirit of classicism,
stirred up a desire for compensation and led to a reassertion of the imagination and the heart. The
representatives of the growing civilization of the day—economists, masters of industry,
businessmen—were considered as the enemies of nobility and beauty and the artisans of hopeless and
joyless materialism. This fear obsessed the minds of those writers of the Victorian Age, to whom feelings
and imagination were essentials of life itself. Thus the rationalistic age was rudely shaken by impassioned
protestations of writers like Newman, Carlyle and Ruskin who were in conflict with the spirit of their
time.
The Victorian Age, therefore, exhibits a very interesting and complex mixture of two opposing
elements—Classicism and Romanticism. Basically it was inclined towards classicism on account of its
rational approach to the problems of life, a search for balance and stability, and a deeply moral attitude;
but on account of its close proximity to the Romantic Revival which had not completely exhausted itself,
but had come to a sudden end on account of the premature deaths of Byron, Shelley and Keats, the social
and economic unrest, the disillusionment caused by industrialization and material prosperity, the spirit of
Romanticism also survived and produced counter currents.
Poets of the Early Victorian Period

The most important poets during the early Victorian period were Tennyson and Browning,
with Arnold occupying a somewhat lower position. After the passing away of Keats, Shelley and Byron in
the early eighteen twenties, for about fifteen years the fine frenzy of the high romantics subsided and a
quieter mood ensued. With the abatement of the revolutionary fervour, Wordsworth’s inspiration had
deserted him and all that he wrote in his later years was dull and insipid.

There appeared a host of writers of moderate talent like John Clare, Thomas Love Peacock, Walter Savage
Landor and Thomas Hood. The result was that from 1820 till the publication of Tennyson’s first important
work in 1833 English poetry had fallen into the hands of mediocrities. It was in fact by the publication of
his two volumes in 1842 that Tennyson’s position was assured as, in Wordsworth’s language, “decidedly
the greatest of our living poets.” Browning’s recognition by the public came about the same time, with the
appearance of Dramatic Lyrics (1842), although Paracelsus and Sordello had already been published. The
early Victorian poetry which started in 1833, therefore, came to its own, in the year 1842.
 The early poetry of both Tennyson and Browning was imbued with the spirit of romanticism, but it
was romanticism with a difference. Tennyson recognised an affinity with Byron and Keats; Browning
with Shelley, but their romanticism no longer implied an attitude of revolt against conventional modes. It
had itself become a convention. The revolutionary fervour which inspired the poetry of the great Romantic
poets had now given place to an evolutionary conception of progress propagated by the writings of
Darwin, Bentham and their followers. Though the writers of the new age still persisted in deriving
inspiration from the past ages, yet under the spell of the marvels of science, they looked forward rather
than backward. The dominant note of the early Victorian period was therefore, contained in Browning’s
memorable lines: “The best is yet to be.” Tennyson found spiritual consolation in contemplating the
One far off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
Faith in the reality of progress was thus the main characteristic of the early Victorian Age. Doubt,
scepticism and questioning became the main characteristic of the later Victorian Age.
(a)       Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
Tennyson is the most representative poet of the Victorian Age. His poetry is a record of the
intellectual and spiritual life of the time. Being a careful student of science and philosophy he was deeply
impressed by the new discoveries and speculations which were undermining the orthodox religion and
giving rise to all sorts of doubts and difficulties. Darwin’s theory of Evolution which believed in the
“struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest” specially upset and shook the foundations of
religious faith. Thus there was a conflict between science and religion, doubt and faith, materialism and
spirituality. These two voices of the Victorian age are perpetually heard in Tennyson’s work. In In
Memoriam, more than in any other contemporary literary work, we read of the great conflict between faith
and doubt. Though he is greatly disturbed by the constant struggle going on in Nature which is “red in
tooth and claw”, his belief in evolution steadies and encourages him, and helps him to look beyond the
struggle towards the “one far off divine event to which the whole creation moves.”
Tennyson’s poetry is so much representative of his age that a chronological study of it can help us to
write its history. Thus his Lockslay Hall of 1842 reflects the restless spirit of ‘young England’ and its faith
in science, commerce and the progress of mankind. In Lockslay Hall Sixty Years After (1866) the poet
gives expression to the feeling of revulsion aroused against the new scientific discoveries which
threatened the very foundations of religion, and against commerce and industry which had given rise of
some very ugly problems as a result of the sordid greed of gain. In The Princess, Tennyson dealt with an
important problem of the day—that of the higher education of women and their place in the fast changing
conditions of modern society. In Maud, he gave expression to the patriotic passion aroused on account of
the Crimean War. In Idylls of Kings, in spite of its medieval machinery, contemporary problems were dealt
with by the poet. Thus in all these poems the changing moods of the Victorian Age are successively
represented—doubts, misgivings, hopefulness etc.
Taking Tennyson’s poetry as a whole, we find that in spite of varieties of moods, it is an exposition
of the cautions spirit of Victorian liberalism. He was essentially the poet of law and order as well as of
progress. He was a great admirer of English traditions, and though he believed in divine evolution of
things:
The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world,
he was, like a true Englishman, against anything that smacked of revolution.
But the real greatness of Tennyson as a poet lies in his being a supreme artist. The ideas contained in
his poems are often condemned by his critics as commonplace, and he is berated as a shallow thinker. But
no one can deny his greatness as an artist. He is, perhaps, after Milton, the most conscientious and
accomplished poetic artist in English literature. He is noteworthy for the even perfection of his style and
his wonderful mastery of language which is at once simple and ornate. Moreover, there is an exquisite and
varied music in his verse. In poetic style he has shown a uniform mastery which is not surpassed by any
other English poet except Shakespeare. As an artist, Tennyson has an imagination less dramatic than
lyrical, and he is usually at his best when he is kindled by personal emotion, personal experience. It is his
fine talent for lyric which gives him a high place among the masters of English verse. Some of his shorter
pieces, such as Break, break, break; Tear,idle tears; Crossing the Bar are among the finest English songs
on account of their distinction of music and imagery.
Tennyson is a master of imaginative description, which is seen at its best in The Lotos Eaters. Words
can hardly be more beautiful or more expressive than in such a stanza as this:
A land of stream! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping, veils of thinnest lawn did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumberous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land; for off, three mountain tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset flush’d and dew’d with showery drops.
Up clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
During his lifetime Tennyson was considered as the greatest poet of his age, but after his death a
reaction started against him, and he was given a much lower rank among the English poets. But with the
passage of time Tennyson’s poetry regained its lost position, and at present his place as one of the greatest
poets of England is secure mainly on account of the artistic perfection of his verse.
(b)       Robert Browning (1812-1889)
During his lifetime Browning was not considered as great a poet as Tennyson, but after that the
opinion of the critics has changed in favour of Browning, who, on account of his depth and originality of
thoughts, is ranked superior to Tennyson. Browning and Tennyson were contemporaries and their poetic
careers ran almost parallel to each other, but as poets they presented a glaring contrast. Whereas Tennyson
is first the artist and then the teacher, with Browning the message is always the important thing, and he is
very careless of the form in which it is expressed. Tennyson always writes about subjects which are dainty
and comely; Browning, on the other hand, deals with subjects which are rough and ugly, and he aims to
show that truth lies hidden in both the evil and the good. In their respective messages the two poets
differed widely. Tennyson’s message reflects the growing order of the age, and is summed up in the word
‘law’. He believes in disciplining the individual will and subordinating it to the universal law. There is a
note of resignation struck in his poetry, which amounts to fatalism. Browning, on the other hand,
advocates the triumph of the individual will over the obstacles. In his opinion self is not subordinate but
supreme. There is a robust optimism reflected in all his poetry. It is in fact because of his invincible will
and optimism that Browning is given preference over Tennyson whose poetry betrays weakness and
helpless pessimism. Browning’s boundless energy, his cheerful courage, his faith in life and in the
development that awaits beyond the portals of death, give a strange vitality to his poetry. It is his firm
belief in the immortality of the soul which forms the basis of his generous optimism, beautifully
expressed in the following lines of Pippa Passes:
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill side’s dew pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snails on the thorn,
God’s in his heaven—
All’s right with the world.
Thus is an age when the minds of men were assailed by doubt, Browning spoke the strongest words
of hope and faith:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be.
The last of life, for which the first was made.
(Rabbi Ben Ezra)
In another way also Browning presents a contrast to Tennyson. Whereas Tennyson’s genius is mainly
lyrical. Browning’s is predominantly dramatic, and his greatest poems are written in the form of the
dramatic monologue. Being chiefly interested in the study of the human soul, he discusses in poem after
poem, in the form of monologue or dialogue, the problems of life and conscience. And in all of them
Browning himself is the central character, and he uses the hero as his own mouthpiece. His first
poem Pauline (1833) which is a monologue addressed to Pauline, on “the incidents in the development of
a soul’, is autobiographical—a fragment of personal confession under a thin dramatic disguise.
His Paracelsus (1835) which is in form a drama with four characters, is also a story of ‘incidents in the
development of a soul’, of a Renaissance physician in whom true science and charlatanism’ were
combined. Paracelsus has the ambition of attaining truth and transforming the life of man. For this
purpose he discards emotion and love, and fails on account of this mistake. Browning in this poem also
uses the hero as a mouthpiece of his own ideas and aspiration. Paracelsus was followed
by Sordello, (1840) which is again ‘the study of a soul’. It narrates in heroic verse the life of a little-known
Italian poet. On account of its involved expression its obscurity has become proverbial. In Pipa
Passes (1841) Browning produced a drama partly lyrical and consisting of isolated scenes. Here he
imagined the effect of the songs of a little working girl, strolling about during a holiday, on the destiny of
the very different persons who hear them in turn.
It was with the publication of a series of collections of disconnected studies, chiefly monologues, that
Browning’s reputation as a great poet was firmly established. These volumes were—Dramatic
Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), Men and Women (1855), Dramatis
Personae (1864), Dramatic Idylls (1879-80). The dramatic lyrics in these collections were a poetry of a
new kind in England. In them Browning brings the most varied personages to make their confessions to
us. Some of them are historical, while others are the product of Browning’s imagination, but all of them
while unravelling the tangled web of their emotions and thoughts give expression to the optimistic
philosophy of the poet. Some of the important dramatic lyrics are Bishop Blougram’s Apology, Two in a
Gondola, Porphyria’s Lover, Fra Lippo Lippi, The last Ride Together,Childe Roland to a Dark Tower
Came, A Grammarian’s Funeral, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Prospice and My Last Duchess. All of them have won
for Browning the applause of readers who value “thought” in poetry. In (1868-69) Browning brought out
four successive volumes of The Ring and the Book, which is his masterpiece. Here different persons
concerned in a peculiarly brutal set of murders, and many witnesses give their own versions of the same
events, varying them according to their different interests and prejudices. The lawyers also have their say,
and at the end the Pope sums up the case. The ten long successive monologues contain the finest
psychological studies of characters ever attempted by a poet.
During the last twenty years of his life Browning wrote a number of poems. Though they do not have
much poetic merit, yet they all give expression to his resolute courage and faith. In fact Browning is
mainly remembered for the astonishing vigour and hope that characterise all his work. He is the poet of
love, of life, and of the will to live, here and beyond the grave, as he says in the song of David in his
poem Soul:
How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy.
The chief fault of Browning’s poetry is obscurity. This is mainly due to the fact that his thought is
often so obscure or subtle that language cannot express it perfectly. Being interested in the study of the
individual soul, never exactly alike in any two men, he seeks to express the hidden motives and principles
which govern individual action. Thus in order to understand his poems, the reader has always to be
mentally alret; otherwise he fails to understand his fine shades of psychological study. To a certain extent,
Browning himself is to be blamed for his obscurity, because he is careless as an artist. But in spite of his
obscurity, Browning is the most stimulating poet, in the English language. His influence on the reader
who is prepared to sit up, and think and remain alert when he reads his poetry, is positive and tremendous.
His strength, his joy of life, his robust faith and his invincible optimism enter into the life of a serious
reader of his poetry, and make him a different man. That is why, after thirty years of continuous work, his
merit was finally recognised, and he was placed beside Tennyson and even considered greater. In the
opinion of some critics he is the greatest poet in English literature since Shakespeare.
(c)       Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
Another great poet of the early Victorian period is Matthew Arnold, though he is not so great as
Tennyson and Browning. Unlike Tennyson and Browning who came under the influence of Romantic
poets, Arnold, though a great admirer of Wordsworth, reacted against the ornate and fluent Romanticism
of Shelley and Keats. He strove to set up a neo-classical ideal as against the Romantic. He gave emphasis
on ‘correctness’ in poetry, which meant a scheme of literature which picks and chooses according to
standards, precedents and systems, as against one which gives preference to an abundant stream of
original music and representation. Besides being a poet, Arnold was a great critic of poetry, perhaps the
greatest critics during the Victorian period, and he belongs to that rare category of the critic who is a poet
also.
Though Arnold’s poetry does not possess the merit of the poetry of Tennyson and Browning, when it
is at its best, it has wonderful charm. This is especially the case with his early poetry when his thought and
style had not become stereotyped. Among his early poems the sonnet on Shakespeare deserves the highest
place. It is the most magnificent epigraph and introduction to the works of Shakespeare. Another poem of
great charm and beauty is Requiescat, which is an exquisite dirge. In his longer poems—Strayed Reveller,
Empedocles on Etna, Sohrab and Rustum, The Scholar Gipsy, Thyrsis (an elegy on Clough, which is
considered of the same rank as Milton’s Lycidas and Shelley’s Adonais)—it is the lyrical strain into
which the poet breaks now and then, which gives them a peculiar charm. It is the same lyrical note in the
poems—The Forsaken Morman, which is a piece of exquisite and restrained but melodious passionate
music; Dover Beach which gives expression to Arnold’s peculiar religious attitude in an age of doubt; the
fine Summer Night, the Memorial Verses which immediately appeals to the reader.
Most of the poetry of Arnold gives expression to the conflict of the age—between spontaneity and
discipline, emotion and reason, faith and scepticism. Being distressed by the unfaith, disintegration,
complexity and melancholy of his times, Arnold longed for primitive faith, wholeness, simplicity, and
happiness. This melancholy note is present throughout his poetry. Even in his nature poems, though he
was influenced by the ‘healing power’ of Wordsworth, in his sterner moods he looks upon Nature as a
cosmic force indifferent to, or as a lawless and insidious foe of man’s integrity. In his most characteristic
poem Empedocles on Etna Arnold deals with the life of a philosopher who is driven to suicide because he
cannot achieve unity and wholeness; his sceptical intellect has dried up the springs of simple, natural
feeling. His attitude to life is very much in contrast with the positive optimism of Browning whose Ben
Ezra grows old on the belief that “The best is yet to be!”
As a critic Arnold wants poetry to be plain, and severe. Though poetry is an art which must give
aesthetic pleasure, according to Arnold, it is also a criticism of life. He looks for ‘high seriousness’ in
poetry, which means the combination of the finest art with the fullest and deepest insight, such as is found
in the poetry of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. Arnold’s own poetry was greatly affected by his critical
theories, and we find that whereas Tennyson’s poetry is ornate and Browning’s grotesque, Arnold’s poetry
on the whole is plain and prosaic. In setting forth his spiritual troubles Arnold seeks first of all to achieve
a true and adequate statement, devoid of all non-essential decorations. The reader gets the impression that
the writing is neither inspired nor spontaneous. It is the result of intellectual effort and hard labour. But
there are occasions in the course of his otherwise prosaic poems, when Arnold suddenly rises from the
ground of analysis and diagnosis into sensuous emotion and intuitions, and then language, imagery, and
rhythm fuse into something which has an incomparable charm and beauty.
(d)       Some Minor Poets
Besides Tennyson, Browning and Arnold there were a number of minor poets during the early
Victorian period. Of these Mrs. Browning and Clough are well-known. Elizabeth Berrett (1806-61)
became Mrs. Browning in 1846. Before her marriage she had won fame by writing poems about the
Middle Ages in imitation of Coleridge. She also gave voice to sensitive pity in Cowper’s Grave and to
passionate indignation in The Cry of Children which is an eloquent protest against the employment of
children in factories. But she produced her best work after she came in contact with Browning.
Her Sonnets from the Portuguese, which were written before her marriage with Browning, tell in a most
delicate and tender manner her deep love for, and passionate gratitude to Browning who brought her, who
was sick and lonely, back to health of life. The rigid limit of the sonnet form helped her to keep the
exuberance of her passion under the discipline of art. Her other great work, Aurora Leigh (1857), is
written in the form of an epic on a romantic theme. Written in blank verse which is of unequal quality, the
poem is full of long stretches of dry, uninteresting verse, but here and there it contains passages of rare
beauty, where sentiment and style are alike admirable.
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), a friend of Arnold, came under the influence of Wordsworth in his
early years, but later he cut himself off from Wordsworthian narrow piety, and moved towards a religious
faith free from all dogma. He searched for a moral law which was in consonance with the intellectual
development of the age. In his Dipsychus, ‘the double-sould’ (1850), he attempted to reconcile the special
and the idealistic tendencies of the soul. His best known work, however, is The Bothie of Toberna
Vuolich, in which he has given a lively account of an excursion of Oxford students in the Highlands. Here
he, like Wordsworth, emphasises the spiritualising and purifying power of Nature. The importance of
Clough as a poet lies mainly in the quality of his thought and the frank nobility of his character which is
beautifully expressed in the following memorable lines:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll:
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul!
Novelists of the Early Victorian Period

In the early Victorian period the novel made a rapid progress. Novel-reading was one of the chief
occupations of the educated public, and material had to be found for every taste. The result was that the
scope of the novel, which during the eighteenth century dealt mainly with contemporary life and manners,
was considerably enlarged. A number of brilliant novelists showed that it was possible to adapt the novel
to almost all purposes of literature whatsoever. In fact, if we want to understand this intellectual life of the
period.

We need hardly go outside the sphere of fiction. The novels produced during the period took various
shapes—sermons, political pamphlets, philosophical discourses, social essays, autobiographies and poems
in prose. The theatre which could rival fiction had fallen on evil days, and it did not revive till the later
half of the nineteenth century. So the early Victorian period saw the heyday of the English novel.

The two most outstanding novelists of the period were Dickens and Thackeray. Besides them there
were a number of minor novelists, among whom the important ones were Disraeli, Bronte Sisters, Mrs.
Gaskell, Charles Kingsley, Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins and Trollope. All these novelists had a number
of points of similarity. In the first place, they identified themselves with their age, and were its
spokesmen, whereas the novelists of the latter Victorian period were critical, and even hostile to its
dominant assumptions. This sense of identity with their time is of cardinal importance in any
consideration of the early Victorian novelists. It was the source alike of their strengths and their
weaknesses, and it distinguished them from their successors. It is not that these novelists were uncritical
of their country and age, but their criticisms are much less radical than those of Meredith and Hardy. They
accepted the society in which they criticised it as many of their readers were doing in a light hearted
manner. They voiced the doubts and fears of the public, but they also shared their general assumptions.
Now let us examine these general assumptions of the early Victorians which these novelists shared.
In the first place, in spite of the fact that they were conscious of the havoc caused by the industrial
revolution, the presence of mass poverty, and accumulation of riches in a few hands, yet they believed like
the common Victorians that these evils would prove to be temporary, that on the whole England was
growing prosperous, which was evident from the enormous increase in material wealth and the physical
amenities of civilization, and that there was no reason why this progress should not continue indefinitely.
Another important view which these novelists shared with the public was the acceptance of the idea
of respectability, which attached great importance to superficial morality in business as well as in
domestic and sexual relations. ‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘Nothing for nothing’ were the dictums which
the Victorians honoured in their business relations. Their attitude to sex had undergone a great change.
Frank recognition and expression of sex had become tabooed. Fielding’s Tom Jones was kept out of way
of women and children, and in 1818 Thomas Bowlder published his Family Shakespeare which contained
the original text of Shakespeare’s plays from which were omitted those expression which could not be
with propriety read aloud in a family. The novelists were not far behind in propagating the Victorian ideal.
Trollop wrote in his Autobiography:
The writer of stories must please, or he will he nothing. And he must teach whether he wish to teach
or not. How shall he teach lessons of virtue and at the same time make himself a delight to his readers?
But the novelist, if he have a conscience, must preach his sermons with the same purpose as the
clergymen, and must have his own system of ethics. If he can do this efficiently, if he can do this
efficiently, if he can make virtue alluring and vice ugly, while he charms his readers instead of wearying
them, then I think Mr. Carlyle need not call him distressed…
I think that many have done so; so many that we English novelists may boast as a class that such has
been the general result of our own work…I find such to have been the teaching of Thackeray, of Dickens
and of George Eliot. Can anyone by search through the works of the great English novelists I have named,
find a scene, a passage or a word that would teach a girl to be immodest, or a man to be dishonest? When
men in their pages have been described as dishonest and women as immodest, have they not ever been
punished?
The reading public of the early Victorian period was composed of ‘respectable’ people, and it was for
them that the novelists wrote. As the novelist themselves shared the same views of ‘respectability’ with
the public, it gave them great strength and confidence. As they were artists as well as public entertainers,
they enjoyed great power and authority. Moreover, as they shared the pre-occupations and obsessions of
their time, they produced literature which may be termed as truly national.
(a)       Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Dickens is the chief among the early Victorian novelists and is in fact the most popular of all English
novelists so far. It was at the age of twenty-five with the publication of Pickwick Papers that Dickens
suddenly sprang into fame, and came to be regarded as the most popular of English novelists. In his early
novels, Pickwick (1837) and Nickolas Nickleby for instance, Dickens followed the tradition of Smollett.
Like Smollett’s novels they are mere bundles of adventure connected by means of character who figure in
them. In his Martin Chuzzlewit (1843), Domby and Son (1846-48), and David Copperfield (1849-50) he
made some effort towards unifications but even here the plots are loose. It was in Bleak House (1852-53)
that he succeeded in gathering up all the diverse threads of the story in a systematic and coherent plot. His
later novels—Dorrit (1855-57), A Tale of Two Cities (1864-65), and the unfinished Edwin Drood—were
also like Bleak House systematically planned. But, on the whole Dickens was not every successful in
building up his plots, and there is in all of them a great deal of mere episodical material.
During the early Victorian period there was a swing from romance or a coldly picturesque treatment
of life to depicting the heart had the affections. The novels which during the Romantic period and passed
through a phase of adventure, reverted in the hands of Dickens to the literature of feeling. Too much
emphasis on feelings often led Dickens to sentimentalism as it happened in the case of Richardson. His
novels are full of pathos, and there are many passages of studied and extravagant sentiment. But Dicken’s
sentimentalism, for which he is often blamed, is a phase of his idealism. Like a true idealist Dickens seeks
to embody in his art the inner life of man with a direct or implied moral purpose. His theme is the worth of
man’s thought, imaginings, affections, and religious instincts, the need of a trust in his fellowmen, a faith
in the final outcome of human endeavour and a belief in immortality. He values qualities like honour,
fidelity, courage magnanimity. The best example of Dickens’s idealism is found in A Tale of Two
Cities, where he preaches a sermon on the sublime text: “Greater love path no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends.”
Another phase of Dickens’s idealism was his implicit belief that this is the best of all possible worlds.
In spite of pain, dirt and sin with which his novels are full, they leave an impression on the reader of the
unwavering optimism and buoyant temper of Dickens. He shared to the full, the sanguine spirit of his age,
and despite the hardness of heart and the selfishness of those in high places, their greed and hypocrisy, and
the class prejudices which had divided man from man, Dickens believed that the world was still a very
good world to live in. He had faith in the better element of human beings who live and struggle for a
period, and then fall unremembered to give place to other. All his characters come out of the pit of
suffering and distress as better men, uncontaminated and purer than before.
But the most delightful manifestation of the idealism of Dickens is his humour, which is almost
irresistible. It is clearly manifest in his first novel, Pickwick, and in the succeeding novels it broadened
and deepended. Dickens has the knack of uniting humour with pathos in a sort of tragic-comedy, which is
especially noticeable in certain sections of Old curiosity shop and Martin Chuzzlewit.  The best examples
of Dickens pure comedy are the Peggotty and Barkis episodes in David Copperfield.
It is especially in the delineations of characters that the humour of Dickens is supreme. Like Smollett
he was on the lookout for some oddity which for his purpose he made more odd than it was. All his
characters are humours highly idealised and yet retaining so much of the real that we recognise in them
some disposition of ourselves and of the men and women we met. The number of these humorous types
that Dickens contributed to fiction runs into thousands. In fact there is no other writer in English literature,
except only Shakespeare, who has created so many characters that have become permanent elements of
the humorous tradition of the English race.
Besides being an idealist, Dickens was also a realist. He began his literary career as a reporter, and his
short Sketches by Boz have the air of the eighteenth century quiet observer and news writer. This same
reportorial air is about his long novels, which are groups of incidents. The main difference is that, while in
his sketches he writes down his observation fresh from experience, in his novels he draws upon his
memory. It is his personal experiences which underlie the novels of Dickens, not only novels like David
Copperfield where it is so obvious, but also Hard Times where one would least expect to find them. One
very important aspect of Dickens’s realism is this richness of descriptive detail, based upon what Dickens
had actually seen.
It was Dickens’s realism which came as a check to medievalism which was very popular during the
Romantic period. He awakened the interest of the public in the social conditions of England. The novels
of Dickens were full of personal experiences, anecdotes, stories from friends, and statistics to show that
they were founded upon facts. The result was that after Dickens began writing, knights and ladies and
tournaments became rarer in the English novel. They were replaced by agricultural labourers, miners,
tailors and paupers.
The novels of Dickens were also the most important product and expression in fiction of the
humanitarian movement of the Victorian era. From first to last he was a novelist with a purpose. He was a
staunch champion of the weak, the outcast and the oppressed, and in almost all his novels he attacked one
abuse or the other in the existing system of things. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that
humanitarianism is the key-note of his work, and on account of the tremendous popularity that he enjoyed
as a novelist, Dickens may justly be regarded as one of the foremost reformers of his age.
(b)       William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Thackeray who was Dickens’s contemporary and great rival for popular favour, lacked his
weaknesses and his genius. He was more interested in the manners and morals of the aristocracy than in
the great upheavals of the age. Unlike Dickens who came of a poor family and had to struggle hard in his
boyhood, Thackeray was born of rich parents, inherited a comfortable fortune, and spent his young days in
comfort. But whereas Dickens, in spite of his bitter experiences retained a buoyant temperament and a
cheerful outlook on life, Thackeray, in spite of his comfortable and easy life, turned cynical towards the
world which used him so well, and found shames, deceptions, vanities everywhere because he looked for
them. Dickens was more interested in plain, common people; Thackeray, on the other hand, was more
concerned with high society. The main reason of this fundamental difference between the two was not,
however, of environment, but of temperament. Whereas Dickens was romantic and emotional and
interpreted the world largely through his imagination; Thackeray was the realist and moralist and judged
solely by observation and reflection. Thus if we take the novels of both together, they give us a true
picture of all classes of English society in the early Victorian period.
Thackeray is, first of all, a realist, who paints life as he sees it. As he says of himself, “I have no
brains above my eyes; I describe what I see.” He gives in his novels accurate and true picture especially of
the vicious elements of society. As he possesses an excessive sensibility, and a capacity for fine feelings
and emotions like Dickens, he is readily offended by shams, falsehood and hypocrisy in society. The result
is that he satirises them. But his satire is always tempered by kindness and humour. Moreover, besides
being a realist and satirist, Thackeray is also a moralist. In all his novels he definitely aims at creating a
moral impression and he often behaves in an inartistic manner by explaining and emphasising the moral
significance of his work. The beauty of virtue and the ugliness of vice in his character is so obvious on
every page that we do not have to consult our conscience over their actions. As a writer of pure, simple
and charming prose Thackeray the reader by his natural, easy and refined style. But the quality of which
Thackeray is most remembered as a novelist is the creation of living characters. In this respect he stands
supreme among English novelists. It is not merely that he holds up the mirror to life, he presents life itself.
It was with the publication of Vanity Fair in 1846 that the English reading public began to understand
what a star had risen in English letters. Vanity Fair was succeeded in 1849 by Pendennis which, as an
autobiography, holds the same place among his works as David Copperfield does among those of
Dickens. In 1852 appeared the marvellous historical novel of Henry Esmond which is the greatest novel in
its own special kind ever written. In it Thackeray depicted the true picture of the Queen Anne period and
showed his remarkable grasp of character and story. In his next novel Newcomes (1853-8) he returned to
modern times, and displayed his great skill in painting contemporary manners. By some
critics Newcomes is considered to be his best novel. His next novel, The Virginians, which is a sequal
of Esmond, deals with the third quarter of the eighteenth century. In all these novels Thackeray has
presented life in a most realistic manner. Every act, every scene, every person in his novels is real with a
reality which has been idealised up to, and not beyond, the necessities of literature. Whatever the acts, the
scenes and the personages may be in his novels, we are always face to face with real life, and it is there
that the greatness of Thackeray as a novelist lies.
(c)       Minor Novelists
Among the minor novelists of the early Victorian period, Benjamin Disraeli, the Brontes, Mrs.
Gaskell, Charles Kingsley, Charles Reede, Wilkie Collins and Trollope are well known.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) wrote his first novel Vivian Grey (1826-27), in which he gave the
portrait of a dandy, a young, intelligent adventurer without scruples. In the succeeding
novels Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845) and Tancred (1847) Disraeli was among the first to point out that
the amelioration of the wretched lot of the working class was a social duty of the aristocracy. Being a
politician who became the Prime Minister of England, he has given us the finest study of the movements
of English politics under Queen Victoria. All his novels are written with a purpose, and as the characters
in them are created with a view to the thesis, they retain a certain air of unreality.
The Bronte Sisters who made their mark as novelists were Charlotte Bronte (1816-55) and Emily
Bronte (1818-48). Charlotte Bronte depicted in her novels those strong romantic passions which were
generally avoided by Dickens and Thackeray. She brought lyrical warmth and the play of strong feeling
into the novel. In her masterpiece, Jane Eyre (1847), her dreams and resentments kindle every page. Her
other novels are The Professor, Villette and Shirley. In all of them we find her as a mistress of wit, irony,
accurate observation, and a style full of impassioned eloquence.
Emily Bronte was more original than her sister. Though she died at the age of thirty, she wrote a
strange novel, Wuthering Heights, which contains so many of the troubled, tumultuous and rebellious
elements of romanticism. It is a tragedy of love at once fantastic and powerful, savage and moving, which
is considered now as one of the masterpieces of world fiction.
Mrs. Gaskell (1810-65) as a novelist dealt with social problems. She had first-hand knowledge of the
evils of industrialisation, having lived in Manchester for many years. Her novels Mary Barton (1848)
and North and South (1855) give us concrete details of the miserable plight of the working class.
In Ruth (1853) Mrs. Gaskell shows the same sympathy for unfortunate girls. In Cranford (1853) she gave
a delicate picture of the society of a small provincial town, which reminds us of Jane Austen.
Charles Kingsley (1819-75) who was the founder of the Christian Socialists, and actively interested
in the co-operative movement, embodied his generous ideas of reform in the novels Yeast (1848)
and Alton Locke (1850). As a historical novelist he returned to the earliest days of Christianity
in Hypatia (1853). In Westward Ho! (1855) he commemorated the adventurous spirit of the Elizabethan
navigators, and in Hereward the Wake (1865) of the descendants of the Vikings.
Charles Reade (1814-84) wrote novels with a social purpose. It is Never too Late to Mend (1853) is a
picture of the horrors of prison life; Hard Cash (1863) depicts the abuses to which lunatic, asylums gave
rise; Put Yourself in his place is directed against trade unions. His A Terrible Temptation is a famous
historical novel. His The Cloister and the Hearth (1867) shows the transition from the Middle Ages to the
Renaissance.
Wilkie Collins (1824-89) excelled in arousing the sense of terror and in keeping in suspense the
explanation of a mystery of the revelation of crime. His best-known novels are The Woman in White and
The Moonstone in which he shows his great mastery in the mechanical art of plot construction.
Anthony Trollope (1815-88) wrote a number of novels, in which he presented real life without
distorting or idealising it. His important novels are The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857) and The
Last Chronicle of Barset (1867) in which he has given many truthful scenes of provincial life, without
poetical feeling, but not without humour. Trollope has great skill as a story-teller and his characters are
lifelike and shrewdly drawn. His novels present a true picture of middle class life, and there is neither
heroism nor villainy there. His style is easy, regular, uniform and almost impersonal.
Prose-Writers of the Early Victorian Period

The early Victorian prose is in keeping with the energetic temperament of the time. An expansive
energy seems to be characteristic of the whole period, displaying itself as freely in literature as in the
development of science, geographical exploration and the rapidity of economic change.
This energetic mood prescribes the inventiveness and fertility of the prose-writers of the period and
explains the vitality of so many of their works. Carlyle’s The French Revolution, Ruskin’s Modern
Painters and Arnold’s Essays in Criticism are not modest and light-hearted compositions, but they
represent the aesthetic equivalent of self-assertion and an urgent ‘will to survive’ which was characteristic
of the early Victorians. Their prose is not, as a rule, flawless in diction and rhythm, or easily related to a
central standard of correctness or polished to a uniform high finish, but it is a prose which is vigorous,
intricate and ample, and is more conscious of vocabulary and imagery than of balance and rhythm. The
dominant impression of zestful and workmanlike prose.
 As the number of prose-writers during the period is quite large, there is a greater variety of style
among them than to be found in any other period. In the absence any well-defined tradition of
prose-writing, each writer cherishes his oddities and idiosyncrasies and is not prepared to sacrifice his
peculiarities in deference to a received tradition. Victorian individualism, the ‘Doing As One Likes’,
censured by Matthew Arnold, reverberates in prose style.
Taking the Victorian prose as a whole, we can say that it is Romantic prose. Though Romanticism
gave a new direction to English poetry between 1780 and 1830, its full effects on prose were delayed until
the eighteen-thirties when all the major Romantic poets were either dead or moribund. That is why, early
Victorian prose is, properly speaking, Romantic prose, and Carlyle is the best example of a Romantic
prose-artist. In fact it were the romantic elements—unevenness, seriousness of tone, concreteness and
particularity—which constitute the underlying unity of the prose of the early Victorian period. All the
great prose writers of period—Carlyle, Ruskin, Macaulay and Matthew Arnold have these qualities in
common.
(a)       Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Carlyle was the dominant figure of the Victorian period. He made his influence felt in every
department of Victorian life. In the general prose literature of his age he was incomparably the greatest
figure, and one of the greatest moral forces. In his youth he suffered from doubts which assailed him
during the many dark years in which he wandered in the ‘howling wilderness of infidelity,’ striving vainly
to recover his lost belief in God. Then suddenly there came a moment of mystical illumination, or
‘spiritual new birth’, which brought him back to the mood of courage and faith. The history of these years
of struggle and conflict and the ultimate triumph of his spirit is written with great power in the second
book of Sartor Restartus which is his most characteristic literary production, and one of the most
remarkable and vital books in the English language. His other works are: French Revolution (1837); his
lectures on Heroes and Hero-Worship; Past and Present (1843); the Letters and Speeches of Oliver
Cromwell (1845); Latter-day Pamphlets (1850); the Life of John Sterling (1851); the History of Frederick
the Great (1858-65).
Basically Carlyle was a Puritan, and in him the strenuous and uncompromising spirit of the
seventeenth century Puritanism found its last great exponent. Always passionately in earnest and
unyielding in temper, he could not tolerate any moral weakness or social evil. He wanted people to be
sincere and he hated conventions and unrealities. In the spheres of religion, society and politics he sought
reality and criticised all sham and falsehood. To him history was the revelation of God’s righteous
dealings with men and he applied the lessons derived from the past to the present. He had no faith in
democracy. He believed in the ‘hero’ under whose guidance and leadership the masses can march to glory.
This is the theme of his lectures on Heroes and Hero-Worship. He proclaimed a spiritual standard of life
to a generation which had started worshipping the ‘mud-gods of modern civilisation’. He denounced
scientific materialism and utilitarianism in Past and Present. He preached to his contemporaries in a most
forceful manner that spiritual freedom was the only life-giving truth. Carlyle could not turn back the
currents of his age, but he exerted a tremendous influence.
Carlyle’s style is the reflection of his personality. In fact in hardly any English writer are personal and
literary characters more closely and strongly blended. He twists the language to suit his needs. In order to
achieve this he makes use of strange ‘tricks’—the use of capital initials, the dropping of conjunctions,
pronouns, verbs, the quaint conversion of any noun into a verb, free use of foreign words or literal English
translations of foreign words. Thus his language is like a mercenary army formed of all sorts of
incongruous and exotic elements. His personifications and abstractions sometimes become irritating and
even tiresome. At times he deliberately avoids simplicity, directness, proportion and form. He is in fact
the most irregular and erratic of English writers. But in spite of all these faults, it is impossible to read him
at his best without the sentiment of enthusiasm. In his mastery of vivid and telling phraseology he is
unrivalled and his powers of description and characterisation are remarkable. His style with its enormous
wealth of vocabulary, its strangely constructed sentences, its breaks, abrupt turns, apostrophes and
exclamations, is unique in English prose literature, and there is no doubt that he is one of the greatest
literary artists in the English language.
(b)       John Ruskin (1819-1900)
In the general prose literature of the early Victorian period Ruskin is ranked next to Carlyle. Of all the
Victorian writers who were conscious of the defeats in contemporary life, he expressed himself most
voluminously. Being one of the greatest masters of English he became interested in art and wrote Modern
Painters (1843-1860) in five volumes in order to vindicate the position of Turner as a great artist. Being a
man of deeply religious and pious nature he could not separate Beauty from Religion, and he endeavoured
to prove that ‘all great art is praise’. Examination of the principles of art gradually led Ruskin to the study
of social ethics. He found that architecture, even more than painting, indicated the state of a nation’s
health. In his The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851-53) he tried to
prove that the best type of architecture can be produced only in those ages which are morally superior.
The year 1860 when Ruskin published Unto this Last marks a great change in him. From this time
onward he wrote little on art and devoted himself to the discussing of the ills of society. In this book he
attacked the prevalent system of political economy, and protested against unrestricted competition, the law
of ‘Devil-take-the-hindmost’, as Ruskin called it. In his later books—Sesame and Lilies (1865) and The
Crown of Wild Olive (1866), Ruskin showed himself as a popular educator, clear in argument and skilful
in illustration. His last work, an autobiography called Praterita, is full of interesting reminiscences.
Ruskin was a great and good man who himself is more inspiring than any of his books. In the face of
drudgery and poverty of the competitive system he wrote: “I will endure it no longer quietly; but
henceforward, with any few or many who will help, do my best to abate this misery.” It was with this
object that leaving the field of art criticism, where he was the acknowledged leader, he began to write of
labour and justice. Though as a stylist he is one of the masters of English prose, he is generally studied not
as a literary man but as an ethical teacher, and every line that he wrote, bears the stamp of his sincerity. He
is both a great artist as well as a great ethical teacher. We admire him for his richly ornate style, and for his
message to humanity.
The prose of Ruskin has a rhythmic, melodious quality which makes it almost equal to poetry. Being
highly sensitive to beauty in every form, he helps the reader to see and appreciate the beauty of the world
around us. In his economic essays he tried to mitigate the evils of the competitive system; to bring the
employer and the employed together in mutual trust and helpfulness; to seek beauty, truth, goodness as the
chief ends of life. There is no doubt that he was the prophet in an age of rank materialism, utilitarianism
and competition, and pointed out the solution to the grave problems which were confronting his age.
(c)    Thomas Babington Lord Macaulay (1800-59)
Though Carlyle and Ruskin are now considered to be the great prose-writers of the Victorian period,
contemporary opinion gave the first place to Macaulay, who in popularity far exceeded both of them. He
was a voracious reader, and he remembered everything he read. He could repeat from memory all the
twelve books of Paradise Lost.  At the age of twenty-five he wrote his essay on poetry in general and
on Milton as poet, man and politician in particular, which brought him immediate popularity as
Byron’s Childe Harold had done. Besides biographical and critical essays which won for him great fame
and popularity, Macaulay, like Carlyle; wrote historical essays as well as History of England. As early as
1828, he wrote, ‘a perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his
narrative affecting and picturesque.” That power of imagination he possessed and exercised so delightfully
that his History was at once purchased more eagerly than a poem of romance.
Macaulay was the representative of the popular sentiments and prejudices of the common English
man of the first half of the nineteenth century. But his popularity was based mainly on the energy and
capacity of his mind, and the eloquence with which he enlivened whatever he wrote. By the resources and
the quickness of his memory, by his wide learning which was always at his command, he rose to the high
rank as the exponent of the matter of history, and as a critic of opinions.
The chief quality which makes Macaulay distinct from the other prose writers of the period is the
variety and brilliance of details in his writings. There is a fondness for particulars in his descriptions
which distinguished the poems and novels of the new age from the more generalised and abstract
compositions of the old school. Though he may be more extravagant and profuse in his variety of details
than is consistent with the ‘dignity’ of history, this variety is always supported by a structure of great
plainness. The only fault of his style is that at times it becomes too rhetorical and so the continuity of the
narrative is sacrificed. His short sentences, and his description of particular interference with the flow of
the narrative, and so the cumulative effect of the story is not always secured. Besides this weakness of
style, Macaulay is now given a rank lower than that of Carlyle, Ruskin and Arnold on account of his lack
of originality and depth as a thinker. But on the whole he still remains as one of the most enjoyable of all
Victorian prose-writers.
(d)       Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
Besides being a poet, Matthew Arnold was a prose-writer of a high order. He was also a great literary
as well as social critic. Like Carlyle and Ruskin, he was vehement critic of his age. According to him, the
Englishmen needed classical qualities in order to attain harmonious perfection in morals and in literature.
It was not to the Hebrews or the Germans (as suggested by Carlyle), or to the men of the Middle Age (as
suggested by Ruskin) that England could with advantage look for teaching, but to the Greeks or to that
people which among the moderns had imbibed most of Hellenic culture, the French.
In literature Arnold strove to rehabilitate and to propagate the classical spirit in his
country. England had reason to be proud of the literary splendour of the Elizabethan period, or of the
glories of her Romantic movement, but according to Arnold, she had to long condemned or disdained the
“indispensable eighteenth century.” From 1855 onwards Arnold wrote incessantly in order to raise the
intellectual and cultural level of his countrymen. All his prose works are directed to this end: On
Translating Homer (1861), The Study of Celtic Literature (1867), Essays in Criticism (1865 and 1888)
and Culture and Anarchy (1869) in which he declared that “culture is the minister of the sweetness and
light essential to the perfect character”. Being a poet himself, he looked upon poetry as “a criticism of
life”, and laid great emphasis on the part it played in the formation of character and the guidance of
conduct. He always attacked “the Philistines”, by whom he meant the middle class indifferent to the
disinterested joys of pure intelligence. Arnold also attempted to eliminate the dogmatic element from
Christianity in order to preserve its true spirit and bring it into the line with the discoveries of science and
the progress of liberal thought.
Unlike the teachings of Carlyle and Ruskin, which appealed to the masses, Arnold’s teaching
appealed mainly to the educated classes. As a writer of prose he is simply superb. His style is brilliant and
polished to a nicety, possessing’ the virtues of quietness and proportion which we associate with no other
English writer except Dryden. As his object was to bring home to his countrymen certain fundamental
principles of cultured and intellectual life, he has the habit of repeating the same word and phrase with a
sort of refrain effect. It was no wonder that critics first and the public afterwards, were attracted, irritated,
amused or charmed by his writings. His loud praise of ‘sweetness’ and ‘culture’, his denunciation of the
‘Philistine’, the ‘Barbarian’, and so forth, were ridiculed by some unkind critics. But rightly considered
we find that there is something of justice in all that he wrote, and on every line there is the stamp of his
sincerity.
When Arnold returned from religion and politics to his natural sphere of literature, then the substance
of his criticism is admirably sound and its expression always delightful and distinguished. In spite of its
extreme mannerism and the apparently obvious tricks by which that mannerism is reached, the style
of Arnold is not easy to imitate. It is almost perfectly clear with a clearness rather French than English. It
sparkles with wit which seldom diverts or distracts the attention. Such a style was eminently fitted for the
purposes of criticism. As a writer of essays he had no superior among the writers of his time, and he can
probably never be surpassed by any one in a certain mild ironic handling of a subject which he
disapproves. He may not be considered as one of the strongest writers of English prose, but he must
always hold a high rank in it for grace, for elegance, and for an elaborate and calculated charm.
Poets of the Later Victorian Period

(a)       Pre-Raphaelite Poets

In the later Victorian period a movement took place in English poetry, which resembled something
like a new Romantic Revival. It was called the Pre-Raphaelite Movement and was dominated by a new set
of poets-Rossetti, Swinburne and Morris, who were interested simply in beauty. They were quite satisfied
with the beauty of diction, beauty of rhythm, and the beauty of imagery in poetry.
They were not interested in the contemporary movements of thought which formed the substance
of Arnold’s poetry, and had influenced Tennyson a good deal. They made use of the legends of the Middle
Ages not as a vehicle for moral teaching or as allegories of modern life, as Tennyson had done, but simply
as stories, the intrinsic beauty of which was their sufficient justification. There was no conscious theory
underlying their work as there was in the case of Arnold’s poetry.

It was in 1847 that a young artist named Holman Hunt came under the influence of Ruskin’s first
volume of Modern Painters. He along with his friends, Millais and D.G. Rossetti, who were also painters,
determined to find a club or brotherhood which should be styled Pre-Raphaelite, and whose members
should bind themselves to study Nature attentively with the object of expressing genuine ideas in an
unconventional manner, in sympathy with what was ‘direct and serious and heart-felt’ in early Italian
painting before the artificial style of Raphael. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood lasted for a very short
time, but its effect upon the plastic arts was far-reaching and revolutionary. D.G. Rossetti who was a
painter as well as poet, introduced these principles in the field of poetry also. As early as 1848, in his
twentieth year, Rossetti began to write the sonnets long afterwards collected as The House of Life, in the
opening of which he urges the poets not to be satisfied with a repetition of the worn-out forms of current
literature, but to turn back to the earliest masters:
Unto the lights of the great-past, new-lit
Fair for the Future’s track.
Rossetti displayed in those earliest pieces the passion for material beauty, and the love of rich
language, magnificent even in simplicity, which were always to characterise his poetry. He also showed a
complete detachment from ethical curiosity, from that desire to mend the world, which occupied almost
all his Victorian contemporaries, and was to obsess his successors. Being a painter he was able to express
his poetic genius more exclusively concentrated on the hues and forms of phenomena, than any other
English poet. He withdrew poetry from its wide field, and concentrated it on the intensity of passion, and
the richness of light on an isolated object. His earliest volume of Poems (1870), which spread thrills of
aesthetic excitement far and wide, attracted a number of young enthusiasts, in spite of some faint protests
by the older generation against the ‘Fleshly School’ of English poetry. Other poets who followed him and
belong to the Pre-Raphaelite group of poets are—Christiana Rossetti, William Morris, and Swinburne.
The Pre-Raphaelite school of poetry did not regard poetry as being prophetic, or as being mainly
philosophical. Their poetry did not concern itself with intellectual complications after the manner of
Browning, nor with social conditions. Thus it divided itself sharply from the great writers of the
time—Tennyson, Browning and Arnold. It was not an intellectual movement at all, but it brought back the
idea that poetry deals with modes of thought and feeling that cannot be expressed in prose. Moreover, it
gave greater importance to personal feeling over thought. It also introduced symbolism which was so far
rare in English poetry, and insisted on simplicity of expression and directness of sensation. The fleshly
images used by the Pre-Raphaelite poets were full of mysticism, but the Victorians who considered them
as merely sensuous were shocked by them.
(i)        Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Rossetti was the chief force behind the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He was the son of Gabriel
Rossetti, an Italian refugee, who was a poet himself and a man of sterling character. D.G. Rossetti studied
drawing, and as a young man became one of the most enthusiastic members of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, which was at the middle of the century to convert England from conventional art. His own
form of painting never admitted reconciliation with convention, and possessed far greater charm than that
of the other members of pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—Millais and Holman Hunt. Though his drawings
were severely criticised, no one with eyes could doubt the magnificence of his colour. The same pictorial
quality became the chief characteristic of his poetry, which lies apart from the main current of
contemporary verse, both in its highly specialised quality of thought and language and in the condition
and circumstances of its production, Rossetti openly followed the profession of a painter, pursuing poetry,
for the most past, as a recreative rather than a principal study.
In his poetry Rossetti assumes for ever the reality and immanence of spiritual and moral world. But
he is not a consciously didactic poet. On the other hand, the form and substance of his utterance are so
perfected in truth and virility of thought, in majesty and grace of speech, that the reader is unconsciously
affected by them. Rossetti’s poetry can be roughly divided into two groups—the personal and the
impersonal poems. In the House of Life sonnets, Dante at Verona, The Streams Secret, The Portrait, and
many of the shorter lyrics, the personal note of love or grief, of memory or hope, is wholly dominant. The
poet’s soul is absorbed with its individual being, and sees in all the life around him the illustration and
interpretation of his own. In the second group, in the great romantic ballads, in Rose Mary, and The
Blessed Damozel, in The White Ship and The King’s Tragedy, in The Bride’s Pleasure and Sister
Helen, the imagination takes a higher and larger range. Here the art becomes impersonal in this sense only
that the thought of self is merged in the full and immense life of humanity laying hold of the universal
consciousness through its own experience.
Rossetti was a supreme master of rhythm and music. He cast his great historical lyrics in the highest
narrative—that is to say, the ballad from; and chose the sonnet—the most chastened and exclusive vehicle
for the meditative and yet sensuous, self-delineative love poetry. But whether written in the form of ballad
or sonnet, Rossetti’s verse remains fully charged with the very essence of romance. As a poet, he is neither
less nor more pre-Raphaelite than as painter. The vivid and intense simplicity of his diction, the verbal
flashes of his ballad style, seem to correspond with the tone and method of his water-colour painting, and
the more laboured splendour of the sonnets with the qualities of his oil paintings.
(ii)       Christiana Rossetti
Though Christiana Rossetti naturally displayed a temperament akin to her brother’s and sometimes
undoubtedly wrote to some extent under his inspiration, large parts, and some of the best parts, of her
poetical accomplishments, are quite distinct from anything of his. Her sonnet sequences have the same
Italian form and the same characteristics of colour, music, and meditation, as those of Rossetti, because
the sonnet form exercised its strong restraint. But her a lyrics have lighter, more bird-like movement and
voice than the stately lyrics of Rossetti. Her range was distinctly wide. She had, unlike Mrs. Browning,
and perhaps unlike the majority of her sex, a very distinct sense of humour. Moreover, her pathos has
never been surpassed except in the great single strokes of Shakespeare. But her most characteristic strain
is where this pathos blends with or passes into, the utterance of religious awe, unstained and un-weakened
by any fear. The great devotional poets of the seventeenth century, Crashaw, Vaughan, Herbert are more
artificial than she is in their expression of this.
Christiana Rossetti began with Goblin Market and Other Poems in 1861, followed it with another
volume, The Prince’s Progress in 1866 and after a much longer interval with A Pageant and Other
Poems in 1881. Later her verse was collected more than once, and it was supplemented by a posthumous
volume after her death. But a good deal of it remains in two books of devotion, entitled Time Flies (1885)
and The Face of the Deep (1892).
(iii)     William Morris (1834-96)
William Morris who was an eminent designer and decorator besides being a poet, was chiefly
interested in the Middle Ages. His first volume of poems—The Defence of Guenevere and Other
Poems (1858)—gives expression to his enthusiasm for the Middle Ages. His object of writing poetry was
to revive the true Gothic spirit, and these poems interpreted ardours and mysteries of the Middle Ages
which the Victorians had forgotten. Though Tennyson also drew inspiration for his ‘Idylls’ from medieval
sources, he used medieval stories as a vehicle for contemporary moralising. Morris, on the other hand
tried to bring back to life the true spirit of the Middle Ages.
For nine years after The Defence of Guenevere, Morris did not write anything, as Rossetti under
whose influence he had come, wanted him to be a painter. When he did resume his literary work, his style
had entirely changed. The Life and Death of Jason is the first of a long series of narrative poems which
forms the bulk of his contribution to literature. In it he followed Chaucer whom he knew and loved best.
In 1868-1870 were published the greatest collection of his stories in Earthly Paradise.  These stories
which are in Medieval setting, are written in an easy and simple style, and their diction is always graceful
and suited to the subject.
In the later parts of Earthly Paradise there is an indication of a change in Morris’s interests and
methods. Tales such as the ‘Lover of Gudrun’ which are derived from the mythologies of
northern Europe are treated in a different manner. This new interest was intensified by his visits
to Iceland in 1871 and 1873, and the greater part of Morris’s subsequent work is based on the study of the
sagas, and has a spirit of Epic poetry. He translated the ‘Grettis and Volsunga’ Sagas; but the new spirit is
found at its best in the poems Sigured the Volsung.
Morris is a pre-Raphaelite in the sense that he wrote poetry mainly with the object of creating beauty.
He is a past master in producing languorous effects bathed in an atmosphere of serenity and majesty. He,
therefore, belongs to the lineage of Spenser in combining virile strength with the greatest refinement of
touch. His poems have a harmonious and musical flow, the variety and suppleness of which recall at once
the styles of Chaucer and Spenser. In whatever form he writes—blank verse, rhymed verse, the
complicated or the simple stanza—he can produce exquisite music which casts its fascinating spell on the
readers. In all his poetry the love of adventure, the attraction of an imaginary world, where beautiful
human lives bloom out in open nature and unrestricted liberty, where unhappiness, suffering and death
have themselves a dignity unknown in the real world made ugly by industrialisation, inspired Morris. The
charm of his poems lies mainly in their indefiniteness and their remote atmosphere which soothe the
aching of a mind disturbed and tortured by the tyranny of a vulgar present. His poetry is the result of the
reaction of a wounded sensibility against the sordidness and ugliness of the real world.
(iv)      Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
Besides Rossetti and Morris, Swinburne was another Victorian poet who is reckoned with the
pre-Raphaelites, though his association with them was personal rather than literary, and he belonged to the
later styles of the movement. Unlike the other members of the group, Swinburne was a musician rather
than a painter. The poetry of Rossetti and Morris, however musical it may be, is primarily pictorial.
Swinburne’s poetry lacks the firms contours and sure outlines of the poetry of Rossetti and Morris, but it
has the sonority of the rhymes which links the verses together. From his youth Swinburne displayed an
extraordinary skill in versification and a gift of imitating widely different rhythms, not only those of
English poets, but also those of the Latin, the Greeks, and the French. It is in fact in the music of verse that
Swinburne is pre-eminent. When once asked at an Oxford gathering, which English poet had the best ear,
he answered, “Shakespeare, without doubt; then Milton;’ then Shelley; then, I do not know what other
people would do, but ‘I should put myself.” This claim, though made in all simplicity, is quite justified,
and there is no doubt that Swinburne is one of the great masters in metrical technique. He handled the
familiar forms, of verse with such freedom that he revealed their latent melody for the first time.
Swinburne’s poetry deals with great romantic themes—like Shelley’s revolt against society, the
hatred of kings and priests and the struggle against conventional morality. He was also inspired by the
French romantics, Victor Hugo and Baudelaire. The appearance of his Poems and Ballads in 1866 created
great excitement. The Victorians who had accepted Tennyson as the great poet of the age, resented the
audacity of this upstart who, though possessing high technical skill, cared nothing for restraint and
dignity. Arnold found many of his lines meaningless, and called him “a young pseudo-Shelly”. Serious
persons were perturbed by his downright heterodoxy. His violent paganism was the first far-heard signal
of revolt that was to become general till a generation later. The young, however, were carried away by the
passion of his verse, his intoxicating rhythms, and the new prospects of beauty which seemed to be
opening in English poetry.
Swinburne first became known by his Atalanta in Calydon (1865), a poetic drama, distinguished by
some great choruses, especially the one that opens, ‘Before the beginning of the years’. Swinburne was
essentially lyrical even when he attempted drama, and the success of Atalanta in Calydon was due to the
choral passages possessing great lyrical quality. Dramatic movement and the creation of characters were
outside Swinburne’s range. He wrote other dramas—Bothwell (1874), and Mary Stuart (1881) both on a
period of history in which he was passionately interested. But, above all, Swinburne is a lyrical poet and
he never surpassed or equalled the Poems and Ballads, (1886). In his later poems—Laus Veneris,
The Garden of Proserpine, The Tymn to Proserpine, The Triumph of Time, Ltylus and Dolores, there is a
repetition of images and ideas already familiar. These songs of love were succeeded by poems dedicated
to national liberty, especially that of Italy, for Swinburne was an ardent admirer of Mazzini. In A Song of
Italy (1867) and Songs before Sunrise (1871) he gave lyrical expression to his passion for freedom. Two
other volumes of Poems and Ballads appeared in 1878 and 1889. His later poems—Studies in
Song (1880). A Century of Roundels (1883) and Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) show more of metrical skill
than lyrical power.
Though much of Swinburne’s poetry, especially that of his later years, seems unsubstantial and
almost empty of meaning, he is not merely a technician in verse. His love of liberty, hatred of tyranny in
all forms and voluptuous paganism were quite genuine impulses which inspired much of his poetry. At his
best, when he sings in Hertha of the birth and destiny of man, no one can deny him the title of a
great-poet.
(b)       The Decadent or Aesthetic Movement
 The Pre-Raphaelite Movement in English poetry was followed by Decadent or Aesthetic Movement,
though it is not so well defined. In the later part of the nineteenth century (1890-1900) there was a
tendency among the literary artists to lay greater emphasis on the idea of Art for Art’s sake. They were
obviously influenced by Walter Pater and the French authors like Baudelaire and Verlaine, who tried to
break with conventional values. They believed that all themes must be excluded from poetry except the
record of the few deeply moving movements of passion or sadness of emotional exaltation or distress.
They sought themes from pleasures which the virtuous forbid, and inflicted agonies upon themselves to
achieve perfection of form. These they conveyed for their own sake with exquisite brevity. They found
this conception not only in the study of French models but in the critical work of Walter Pater, and their
adherence to these self-imposed limitations separates them from earlier English romanticism and from
pre-Raphaelite verse. Swinburne had already been subjected to similar influence, but he had wider
interests—enthusiasm for medieval legends, for Elizabethan drama and his love of liberty and hatred for
tyranny. The Decadents, on the other hand, were not interested in any great subject, theme or idea. They
showed anxiety about the right word and were fussy about vowel and consonant patterns. Moreover, they
emphasised the passion rather than the intellect. Pater, in his essay on the pre-Raphaelites, and above all in
his Conclusions to Studies in the Renaissance, had given a double suggestion which greatly affected this
group of poets. First, there accompanies life an inevitable mortality, “the undefinable taint of death is upon
all things”; and, secondly, “out of life may be seized some few moments of deep passion or high
intellectual endeavour.” The poets belonging to the Aesthetic Movement attempted to express in a most
beautiful manner such evanescent moods of pleasure and pain for their own sake without any extraneous
motive of conveying any moral. In fact they were pitted against all conventional morality and rebelled
against established social and moral laws. They knew neither philosophy nor religion but were the
worshippers of Beauty for its own sake. Their object was to afford the readers merely aesthetic pleasure.
(i)        Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
Oscar Wilde was the first to come under the influence of Walter Pater. Though in his early poems he
had dealt with religious and spiritual experiences, in New Helen he declared himself as the votary of
Beauty.
Of heaven or hell I have no thought or fear
Seeing I know no other god but thee.
In The Garden of Eros he reaffirmed his belief that the pursuit of beauty is the only desirable form of
human activity. Like the pre-Raphaelites he also pointed out that modern civilisation opposes this ideal:
Spirit of beauty, tarry yet awhile
Although the cheating merchants of the mart
With iron rods profane our lovely isle,
And break on whirling wheels the limbs of art.
In the short poem, Panthea, Wilde almost gives a paraphrase of Pater’s aesthetic creed:
Nay, let us walk from fire to fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight.
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought to see and oracle made no reply.
(ii)       Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)
Ernest Dowson symbolises in his work the Aesthetic Movement of the eighteen nineties. He came
under the influence of Rossetti, Swinburne and the French romanticists who believed in the doctrine of
Art for Art’s sake. Following Pater’s artistic principles the recorded in his poetry moments of sensations
to the utter exclusion of all moral and philosophical comment. He dealt mainly with the theme of the
brevity of life and the fading of things that once were beautiful:
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portions in us after we pass the gate.
Dowson possessed a love of words for their very shape and appearance on the page, apart from their
values of sound and association. He also possessed an unusual prosodic skill. His Cynara holds a
pre-eminent place in his work mainly on account of the sweet melody of its verse. His central poetic
theme is most profoundly treated in Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration knowing that the ‘world is wild and
passionate; and that the rose of the world would fade’, the poet views with sad admiration those whose
ascetism allows them to stand aside and make their nights and days, ‘Into a long returning rosary’:
Calm, sad, secure; behind high convent walls,
These watch the sacred lamp, these watch and pray;
And it is one with them when evening falls,
And one with them the cold return of day.
(iii)     Lionel Pigot Johnson (1867-1902)
 Lionel Johnson was an associate of Oscar Wilde and Dowson who created the aesthetic poetry of the
eighteen nineties. Though he was greatly influenced by old Christianity and wrote a good deal of religious
verse, yet along with passages of religious enthusiasm can be found paragraphs marked by aestheticism.
(iv)      Arthur Symons
Next to Dowson the most consistent follower of the Aesthetic Movement was Arthur Symons.
Though he did not possess the unfaltering artistic perfection of Dowson’s poetry where the images burn
clearly and steadily, yet his poetic range was wider, and he was a great critic.
(c)  Other Important Poets
Other important poets of the Later Victorian Period were Patmore, Meredith and Hardy, though the
last two are better known as novelists. Coventry Patmore was a pre-Raphaelite in the sense that he
believed in ‘the simplicity of art’ theory, but much of his poetry expresses his own individuality rather
than any literary or aesthetic doctrine. His most popular poem is The Angel in the House which contains
some very fine things. His great Odes covered by the title The Unknown Eros convey in beautiful,
controlled free verse, the mysticism of love combined with an intense religious feeling as no other poems
in the English language do.
Though Geroge Meredith was associated with Rossetti and Swinburne, as a poet he had nothing in
common with the pre-Raphaelite group except his belief that art should not be the handmaid of morality.
He looked upon life as glorious, increasingly exciting and always worth while. The tremendous vigour
and metrical skill of his long lyrics—The Lark Ascending and Love in the Valley remind one of
Swinburne. His greatest poetical work, Modern Love written in sonnets of sixteen lines, is a novel in
verse, and is of its own kind in English literature. It is no doubt the most successful long poem written
during the later Victorian period.
Thomas Hardy, though a novelist, expressed himself, like Meredith, in verse also. His greatest
work, The Dynasts, is written in the form of an epic in which the immense Napoleonic struggle unrolls
itself as drama, novel, tragedy, and comedy. In his verse sometimes he is as prosaic as Wordsworth in his
later poetry, but at times his poems like ‘Only a man harrowing clods’ he gives expression to his
pessimistic philosophy, but in others he gives a true picture of human experience with a queer sense of
super reality. Moments of Vision, the title of one of his volume, in an apt description of his poems as a
whole, because most of them give us visions of emotional moments charged with the inheritance of past
ages of emotions, combined with irrational half-conscious feelings which are recognized by the
contemplative mind as being part of every-day experience.
Novelists of the Later Victorian Period

The novel in the later Victorian period took a new trend, and the novels written during this period
may be called ‘modern’ novels. George Eliot was the first to write novels in the modern style. Other
important novelists of the period were Meredith and Hardy. The year 1859 saw the publication not only of
George Eliot’s Adam Bede but also of Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feveral. Though they are vastly
different from each other, they stand in sharp contrast to the works of established novelists that appeared
the same year—as Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and  Thackeray’s Virginians.
The novelists of the early Victorian period—Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope and others—had followed
the tradition of English novel established by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Their conception of
themselves was modest, and their conscious aim nothing much more elevated than Wilkie Collins’s
“make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.” Set against this innocent notion of the novelist’s
function, the new novelists of England as well of other countries of Europe, began to have high ambitions
of making the novel as serious as poetry. The Russian novelists—Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and
the French novelists like Flaubert, all began to look upon the novel as a medium of conveying profound
thoughts. Flaubert especially arrogated to himself the rights and privileges of the poet, and he talked about
his talent and medium as seriously as poets do theirs. He stated his ambition as a novelist thus: “To desire
to give verse rhythm to prose, yet to leave it prose and very much prose, and to write about ordinary life as
histories and epics are written, yet without falsifying the subject. It is perhaps an absurd idea. But it may
also be a great experiment and very original”. These words of Flaubert show that the European novelists
in the middle of the nineteenth century were making the same claims about their vocation as the Romantic
poets in England did in the beginning of the century. The seriousness of these European novelists was
both moral and aesthetic, and it came to English fiction with George Eliot and Meredith. Both of them
were intellectuals and philosophers and had associates among such class of people. On the other hand,
their predecessors, Dickens and Thackeray, had association with journalists, artists and actors, and they
themselves belonged to their group. George Eliot lived in a much larger world of ideas. These ideas
conditioned her views of fiction, determined the shape of her novels and the imagery of her prose.
Meredith who was partly educated in Germany and was influenced by French writers, developed a highly
critical view of England and its literature. Thus specially equipped, these two novelists—George Eliot and
Meredith—gave a new trend to the English novel, and made it ‘modern’. They were followed by Hardy
who extended the scope of the novel still further.
(a)       George Eliot (1819-1880)
The real name of George Eliot was Mary Ann Evans. For a long time her writings was exclusively
critical and philosophic in character, and it was when she was thirty-eight that her first work of
fiction Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) appeared. It was followed by Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the
Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), and Middlemarch (1871-72).
George Eliot was born in Warwickshire, where she lived till her father’s death in 1849. It was her
Warwickshire experience—the life of an English village before the railway came to disturb it, which
provided the substance of most of her novels. Gifted with a wonderful faculty of observation, she could
reproduce faithfully the mannerism of rustic habit and speech. Having a thorough knowledge of the
countryside and the country people, their hierarchies and standards of value, she could give a complete
picture of their life. Moreover, she could beautifully portray the humour and pathos of these simple folk as
no English novelist had done before. Just as we look to Dickens for pictures of the city streets and to
Thackeray for the vanities of society, we look to George Eliot for the reflection of the country life
in England.
In George Eliot the novel took its modern form. Every story derives its unity from its plot. The
different episodes are all related to one another and subordinated to the main story. The chief appeal to the
emotions of the reader is made by the inevitable catastrophe towards which the whole action moves. This
unity of plot construction was lacking in the English novel before George Eliot appeared on the scene.
This was a singular contribution of hers to the development of the English novel. Another important
feature of George Eliot’s novels is that they reflect more clearly than any other Victorian novels the
movement of contemporary thought. They specially appeal to the mind which is troubled by religious and
ethical difficulties. The mood of much of her work is like that of Matthew Arnold’s poems. She shares
also with him his melancholy and depressing mood.
In her novels George Eliot takes upon herself the role of a preacher and moraliser. Though
profoundly religious at heart, she was greatly affected by the scientific spirit of the age; and finding no
religious creed or political system satisfactory, she fell back upon duty as the supreme law of life. In all
her novels she shows in individuals the play of universal moral forces, and establishes the moral law as
the basis of human society. The principle of law which was in the air during the Victorian era and which
deeply influenced Tennyson, is with George Eliot like fate. It is to her as inevitable and automatic as
gravitation and it overwhelms personal freedom and inclination.
All the novels of George Eliot are examples of psychological realism. She represents in them, like
Browning in his poetry, the inner struggle of a soul, and reveals the motives, impulses and hereditary
influences which govern human action. But unlike Browning who generally stops short when he tells a
story, and either lets the reader draw his own conclusion or gives his in a few striking lines, George Eliot
is not content until she has minutely explained the motives of her characters and the moral lessons to be
learned from them. Moreover, the characters in her novels, unlike in the novels of Dickens, develop
gradually as we came to know them. They go from weakness to strength, or from strength to weakness,
according to the works that they do and the thoughts that they cherish. For instance, in Romola we find
that Tito degenerates steadily because he follows selfish impulses, while Romola grows into beauty and
strength with every act of self-renunciation.
(b)       George Meredith (1829-1909)
Another great figure not only in fiction, but in the general field of literature during the later Victorian
period, was Meredith who, though a poet at heart expressed himself in the medium of the novel, which
was becoming more and more popular. The work of Meredith as a novelist stands apart from fiction of the
century. He did not follow any established tradition, nor did he found a school. In fact he was more of a
poet and philosopher than a novelist. He confined himself principally to the upper classes of society, and
his attitude to life is that of the thinker and poet. In his novels, he cared little for incident or plot on their
account, but used them principally to illustrate the activity of the ‘Comic Spirit’. Comedy he conceives of
as a Muse watching the actions of men and women, detecting and pointing out their inconsistencies with a
view to their moral improvement. She never laughs loud, she only smiles at most; and the smile is of the
intellect, for she is the handmaid of philosophy. Meredith loves to trace the calamities which befall those
who provoke Nature by obstinately running counter to her laws. A certain balance and sanity, a fine health
of body and soul are, in his view, the means prescribed by Nature for the happiness of man.
The Ordeal of Richard Feveral, which is one of the earliest of Meredith’s novels, is also one of his
best. Its theme is the ill-advised bringing up of an only son, Richard Feveral, by his well-meaning and
officious father, Sir Austen Feveral. In spite of his best intentions, the father adopts such methods as are
unsuited to the nature of the boy, with the result that he himself becomes the worst enemy of his son, and
thus an object of ridicule by the Comic Spirit. Besides containing Meredith’s philosophy of natural and
healthy development of the human personality the novel also has some fines passages of great poetic
beauty. Evan Harrington (1861) is full of humorous situations which arise out of the social snobbery of
the Harrington family. Rhoda Fleming (1865), Sandra Belloni (1864), Harry Richmond (1871)
and Beauchamp’s Career (1876) all contain the best qualities of Meredith’s art—intellectual brilliance, a
ruthless exposure of social weaknesses, and an occasional poetic intensity of style. In all of them Meredith
shows himself as the enemy of sentimentality. In The Egoists which is the most perfect illustration of
what he meant by ‘comedy’, Meredith reached the climax of his art. The complete discomfiture of Sir
Willoughby Patterne, the egoist, is one of the neatest things in English literature. This novel also contains
Meredith’s some of the best drawn characters—the Egoist himself, Clara Middleton, Laetitia Dale, and
Crossjay Patterne.
Like George Eliot, Meredith is a psychologist. He tries to unravel the mystery of the human
personality and probe the hidden springs there. Being at heart a poet, he introduced in his earlier novels
passages of unsurpassable poetic beauty. A master of colour and melody when he wills, Meredith belongs
to the company of Sterne, Carlyle and Browning who have whimsically used the English language. He
seldom speaks directly, frequently uses maxims and aphorisms in which are concentrated his criticism of
contemporary life. Like Browning, Meredith preaches an optimistic and positive attitude to life.
Influenced by the theory of Evolution, he believes that the human race is evolving towards perfection.
This process can be accelerated by individual men and women by living a sane balanced and healthy life.
They should follow the golden mean and steer clear of ‘the ascetic rocks and sensual whirlpools’. On
account of this bracing and refreshing philosophy, the novels of Meredith, though written in a difficult
style, have a special message for the modern man who finds himself enveloped in a depressing
atmosphere.
(c)       Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
The greatest novelist of the later Victorian period was Thomas Hardy. Like Meredith, he was at heart
a poet, and expressed himself also in verse. But unlike Meredith whose attitude to life is optimistic, and
who has written comedies, Hardy’s attitude to life is rather pessimistic and he has written tragedies. Hardy
thinks that there is some malignant power which controls this universe, and which is out to thwart and
defeat man in all his plans. It is especially hostile to those who try to assert themselves and have their own
way. Thus his novels and poems are, throughout, the work of a man painfully dissatisfied with the age in
which he lived. He yearned for England’s past, and he distrusted modern civilisation because he suspected
that its effect was frequently to decivilise and weaken those to whom Nature and old custom had given
stout hearts, clear heads and an enduring spirit. In his books, ancient and modern are constantly at war,
and none is happy who has been touched by ‘modern’ education and culture. Hardy also resists the
infiltration of aggressive modernity in the quiet village surroundings.
Hardy passed the major portion of his life near Dorchester, and his personal experiences were bound
up with the people and customs, the monuments and institutions of Dorest and the contiguous countries of
south-western England, which he placed permanently on the literary map by the ancient name “Wessex’.
Thus Hardy has left a body of fiction unique in its uniformity. No other novelist in England has celebrated
a region so comprehensively as Hardy has done. Though he has dealt with a limited world, he has created
hundreds of characters, many of whom are mere choral voices as in Greek drama.
On account of Hardy’s philosophy of a malignant power ruling the universe which thwarts and
defeats man at every step, his novels are full of coincidences. In fact, chance plays too large a part in them.
For this Hardy has been blamed by some critics who believe that he deliberately introduces coincidences
which always upset the plans of his characters. In real life chance sometimes helps a man also, but in
Hardy’s novel chance always comes as an upsetting force.
The great novels of Hardy are The Woodlanders, The Return of the Native, Far From the Madding
Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Though most of
Hardy’s novels are tragedies, yet the role of tragedy becomes intensified in The Return of the Native, Tess
and Jude. The last chapter of Tess outraged the religious conscience of 1891; to-day it offends the
aesthetic conscience by its violation of our critical sense of order and imaginative sufficiency. Hardy had
said enough in Tess before the beginning of the last chapter. As it stands, the novel is a masterpiece, but it
is scarred by an unhappy final stroke, the novel is a masterpiece, but it is scarred by an unhappy final
stroke. Jude the Obscure, though a very powerful novel is spoiled by Hardy’s ruthlessness. At no time are
Sue and Jude permitted to escape the shadowing hand of malignant destiny. They are completely defeated
and broken.
As a writer of tragedies Hardy can stand comparison with the great figures in world literature, but he
falls short of their stature because he is inclined to pursue his afflicted characters beyond the limits of both
art and nature. In the use of pathos Hardy is a past master. As for Hardy’s style, his prose is that of a poet
in close contact with things. In his evocation of scenes and persons, his senses bring into play a verbal
incantation that relates him to the pre-Raphaelites. He describes characters and scenes in such a manner
that they get imprinted on the memory.
The main contribution of Hardy to the history of the English novel was that he made it as serious a
medium as poetry, which could deal with the fundamental problems of life. His novels can be favourably
compared to great poetic tragedies, and the characters therein rise to great tragic heights. His greatest
quality as a writer is his sincerity and his innate sympathy for the poor and the down-trodden. If at times
he transgressed the limits of art, it was mainly on account of his deep compassion for mankind, especially
those belonging to the lower stratum.
(d)       Some Other Novelists
Besides George Eliot, Meredith and Hardy there were a number of other Victorian novelists during
the later Victorian period. Of these Stevenson and Gissing are quite well-known.
(i)        Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)
 Stevenson was a great story-teller and romancer. He took advantage of the reader’s demand for
shorter novels. His first romance entitled Treasure Island became very popular. It was followed by New
Arabian Nights, Kidnapped, The Black Arrow, which contain romances and mystery stories. In Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde he departed from his usual manner to write a modern allegory of the good and evil in the
human personality. In The Master of Ballantre Stevenson described the story of a soul condemned to evil.
At his death he was working on unfinished novel, Weir of Hermiston, which is considered by some critics
as the most finished product of his whole work. In it he dramatised the conflict between father and
son—the Lord Justice-Clerk, the hanging judge, and his son Archie who has the courage to face him.
The contribution of Stevenson to the English novel is that he introduced into it romantic adventure.
His rediscovery of the art of narrative, of conscious and clever calculation in telling a story so that the
maximum effect of clarity and suspense is achieved, meant the birth of the novel of action. He gave a
wholly new literary dignity and impetus to light fiction whose main aim is entertainment.
(ii)       George Gissing (1857-1903)
Gissing has never been a popular novelist, yet no one in English fiction faced the defects of his times
with such a frank realism. Like Dickens he paints generally the sordid side of life, but he lacks Dickens’s
gusto and humour and Dickens’s belief that evil can be conquered. Working under the influence of French
realists and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, he sees the world full of ignoble and foolish creatures. He
considers the problem of poverty as insoluble; the oppressed lower classes cannot revolt successfully and
the rich will not voluntarily surrender their power. Under such circumstances it is the intellectuals who
suffer the most, because they are more conscious of the misery around them. This is the moral of all
Gissing’s novels, chief among which are Worker in the Dawn (1880), The
Unclassed (1884), Domes (1886), The Emancipated (1889), New Grub Street (1891), Born in
Exile (1892). One can guess the subjects treated in them from their titles.
All Gissing’s novels bear unmistakable traces of his many years of struggle against poverty,
obstruction and depreciation. He drew his inspiration from Dickens, but he made the mistake of omitting
altogether that which is present in Dickens even to excess-the romance and poetry of poverty. He saw the
privations of the poor, but unlike Dickens, he was blind and deaf to their joyousness. In his later years he
discovered his mistake, and in 1903 he brought out The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, a great
autobiographic fiction, which is written in a most delightful manner revealing his inner life.
Prose-Writers of the Later Victorian Period

In the later Victorian period there were two great prose-writers—Newman and Pater. Newman was
the central figure of the Oxford Movement, while Pater was an aesthete, who inspired the leaders of the
Aesthetic Movement in English poetry.
(a)       Newman and the Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was an attempt to recover a lost tradition. England had become a Protestant
country in the 16th century under the reign of Elizabeth, and had her own Church, called the Anglican
Church, which became independent of the control of the Pope at Rome. Before that England was a
Catholic country. The Anglican Church insisted on simplicity, and did not encourage elaborate
ceremonies. In fact it became too much rational having no faith in rituals and old traditions. Especially in
the eighteenth century in England religion began to be ruthlessly attacked by philosophers as well as
scientists. The protagonists of the Oxford Movement tried to show that the Middle Ages had qualities and
capacities which the moderns lacked. They wished to recover the connection with the continent and with
its own past which the English Church had lost at the Reformation in the sixteenth century. They
recognised in the medieval and early Church a habit of piety and genius of public worship which had both
disappeared. They, therefore, made an attempt to restore those virtues by turning the attention of the
people to the history of the Middle Ages, and by trying to recover the rituals and art of the medieval
Church.
From another point of view the Oxford Movement was an attempt to meet the rationalist attack by
emphasising the importance of tradition, authority, and the emotional element in religion. It sought to
revive the ancient rites, with all their pomp and symbolism. It exalted the principle of authority the
hierarchy and dogmatic teaching. Instead of being inspired by the doctrines of liberalism which were
being preached in the Victorian period, it resumed its connection with the medieval tradition. It was
favourable to mystery and miracles and appealed to the sensibility and imagination which during the
eighteenth century had been crushed by the supremacy of intellect.
The aesthetic aspect of the Oxford Movement, or the Catholic Reaction, had a much wider appeal.
Even those who were not convinced by the arguments advanced by the supporters of the Movement, were
in sympathy with its aesthetic side. The lofty cathedrals aglow with the colours of painting, stately
processions in gorgeous robes , and all the pomp and circumstance of a ceremonial religion, attract even
such puritanic minds as Milton’s and are almost the only attraction to the multitudes whose God must take
a visible shape and be not too far removed from humanity. Thus many who were only alienated by the
arguments in favour of the Catholic Reaction, were in sympathy with this aspect of the reaction, with the
bringing back of colour and beauty into religious life, with the appeal to the imagination and the feelings.
 The germ of the Oxford Movement is to be found in 1822 in Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical
Sketches. Although Wordsworth here showed himself a follower Catholic past which survived there. He
regretted the suppressions of the ritual, lamented the dissolution of the monasteries, the end of the worship
of saints and the virgin, the disappearance of the ancient abbeys, and admired the splendours of the old
Cathedrals. It was one of Wordsworth’s disciples, John Kelile, professor of poetry at Oxford, who some
years later started the Oxford Movement. The first impulse towards reaction was given by his sermon on
‘national apostasy’ in 1833. In this movement which Keble heralded there were two phases. The first was
the High Church revival within the framework of the Anglican Church. The second was reverting to
Roman Catholicism. But both laid emphasis on ceremonies, dogmatism and attachment to the past.
Others who took up this movement were E. B. Pusey and John Henry Newman, both belonging
to Oxford. (In fact this movement was called the Oxford Movement, because its main supports came
from Oxford.) To explain their point of view they wrote pamphlets called Tracts for the Times (1833-41)
whence the movement got its name the ‘Tractarian Movement’ E.B. Pusey (1800-82) who was a colleague
of Keble originated ‘Puseyism’, the form of Anglicanism which came nearest to Rome without being
merged into Romanism.
John Henry Newman (1801-90) who joined later, became soon the moving force in the movement.
He was, in fact, the once great man, the one genius, of Oxford Movement. Froude calls him the ‘indicating
number’, all the rest but as ciphers. This judgment is quite sound. It was he who went to the length of
breaking completely with Protestantism and returning to the bosom of the Roman Church. Newman, the
most important personality of the movement, is also its most conspicuous writer. He dreamt of a free and
powerful Church, and aspired to a return to the spirit of the Middle Ages. At first he believed that this
reform could be accomplished by Anglicanism, but he was distressed to find lack of catholicity in the
Anglican Church. Universality and the principle of authority he could find only in Rome. So after a period
of hesitation he was converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845. In 1879 he was made a Cardinal.
Newman was great writer of prose and verse. His greatest contribution to English prose is
his Apologia, in which he set forth the reasons for his conversion. This fascinating book is the great prose
document of the Oxford Movement, and it is eminently and emphatically literature. From first to last it is
written in pure, flawless and refined prose. His style is a clear reflection of his character. Refinement,
severity, strength, sweetness, all of these words are truly descriptive of the style as well as of the character
of Newman. Another special characteristic of Newman’s style is its wide range. He can express himself in
any manner he pleases, and that most naturally and almost unconsciously. In his writings sarcasm, biting
irony glowing passion are seen side by side, and he can change from one to the other without effort. His
art of prose writing is, therefore, most natural and perfectly concealed.
(b)  Walter Pater (1839 – 1894)
Pater belongs to the group of great Victorian critics like Ruskin and Arnold, though he followed a
new line of criticism, and was more akin to Ruskin than to Arnold. He was also the leader of the Aesthetes
and Decadents of the later part of the nineteenth century. Like Ruskin, Pater was an Epicurean, a
worshipper of beauty, but he did not attach much importance to the moral and ethical side of it as Ruskin
did. He was curiously interested in the phases of history; and chiefly in those, like the Renaissance and the
beginnings of Christianity, in which men’s minds were driven by a powerful eagerness, or stirred by proud
conflicts. He thus tried to trace the history of man through picturesque surroundings as his life developed,
and he laid great stress on artistic value. From these studies – Studies in the History of the
Renaissance (1873), Greek Studies and others – it becomes clear that Pater considered that the secret
principle of existence that actually possesses and rules itself is to gather as many occasions of psychial
intensity which life offers to the knowing, and to taste them all at their highest pitch, so that the flame of
consciousness should burn with its full ardour. Far from giving itself away, it shall suck in the whole
world and absorb it for its own good. Pater’s most ambitious and, on the whole, his greatest work, Marius
the Epicurean, the novel in which most of his philosophy is to be found also spiritualises the search for
pleasure. Pater’s aestheticism was thus spent in tasting and intensifying the joys to be reaped from the
knowledge of the past and the understanding of the human soul.
As a critic Pater stands eminent. His method is that impressionism which Hazlitt and Lamb had
brilliantly illustrated. His approach is always intuitional and personal, and, therefore, in his case one has
to make a liberal allowance for the ‘personal equation’. His studies are short ‘appreciations’ rather than
judgments. But few writers have written more wisely upon style, and the sentence in which he
concentrates the essence of his doctrine is unimpeachable: “Say what you have to say, what you have a
will to say, in the simplest, the most direct and exact manner possible, and with no surplusage; there is the
justification of the sentence so fortunately born, entire, smooth and round, that it needs no punctuation,
and also (that is the point) of the most elaborate period, if it be right in its elaboration.” Few again have
more wisely discriminated between the romantic and classical elements in literature. According to him the
essential elements of the romantic spirit are “curiosity and the love of beauty,” that of the classical spirit –
“a comely order”. He believes that “all good art was romantic in its day”, and his love for and affinity to
the romantic spirit is obvious. But he attempts to make romantic more classical, to superimpose the
“comely order” upon beauty, so that its strangeness may be reduced. His point of view, therefore, is
similar to that of Arnold, but he lacks Arnold’s breadth of outlook, and his attitude is more of a recluse
who has no part to play in the world.
 As a writer of prose, Pater is of the first rank, but he does not belong to the category of the greatest,
because there is such an excess of refinement in his style that the creative strength is impoverished.
Moreover, he does not possess the capacity of producing the impression of wholeness in his work. His
chief merit, however, lies in details, in the perfection of single pages, though occasionally some chapters
or essays are throughout remarkable for the robustness of ideas. Like a true romanticist Pater gives
flexibility to his prose which beautifully corresponds to his keen sensitive perception and vivid
imagination. He is capable of producing more intense and acute effects in his poetic prose than other great
masters of this art – Sir Thomas Browne, De Quincey and Ruskin. And more than any other prose-writer
he brushed aside the superficial barrier between prose and poetical effects and he clothed his ideas in the
richly significant garb of the most harmonious and many-hued language.
Modern Literature (1900-1961)

The Modern Age in English Literature started from the beginning of the twentieth century, and it
followed the Victorian Age. The most important characteristic of Modern Literature is that it is opposed to
the general attitude to life and its problems adopted by the Victorian writers and the public, which may be
termed ‘Victorian’. The young people during the fist decade of the present century regarded the Victorian
age as hypocritical, and the Victorian ideals as mean, superficial and stupid.

This rebellious mood affected modern literature, which was directed by mental attitudes moral ideals and
spiritual values diametrically opposed to those of the Victorians. Nothing was considered as certain;
everything was questioned. In the field of literary technique also some fundamental changes took place.
Standards of artistic workmanship and of aesthetic appreciations also underwent radical changes.

What the Victorians had considered as honourable and beautiful, their children and grandchildren
considered as mean and ugly. The Victorians accepted the Voice of Authority, and acknowledged the rule
of the Expert in religion, in politics, in literature and family life. They had the innate desire to affirm and
confirm rather than to reject or question the opinions of the experts in their respective fields. They showed
readiness to accept their words at face value without critical examinations. This was their attitude to
religion and science. They believed in the truths revealed in the Bible, and accepted the new scientific
theories as propounded by Darwin and others. On the other hand, the twentieth century minds did not take
anything for granted; they questioned everything.
Another characteristic of Victorianism was an implicit faith in the permanence of nineteenth century
institutions, both secular and spiritual. The Victorians believed that their family life, their Constitution,
the British Empire and the Christian religion were based on sound footings, and that they would last for
ever. This Victorian idea of the Permanence of Institutions was replaced among the early twentieth century
writers by the sense that nothing is fixed and final in this world. H. G. Wells spoke of the flow of things
and of “all this world of ours being no more than the prelude to the real civilisation”. The simple faith of
the Victorians was replaced by the modern man’s desire to prob and question, Bernard Shaw, foremost
among the rebels, attacked not only the ‘old’ superstitions of religion, but also the ‘new’ superstitions of
science. The watchwords of his creed were: Question! Examine! Test! He challenged the Voice of
Authority and the rule of the Expert. He was responsible for producing the interrogative habit of the mind
in all spheres of life. He made the people question the basic conceptions of religion and morality. Andrew
Undershift declares in Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara: “That is what is wrong with the world at present.
It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won’t scrap its old prejudices and its old
moralities and its old religions and its old political institutions”. Such a radical proclamation invigorated
some whereas others were completely shaken, as Barbara herself: “I stood on the rock I thought eternal;
and without a word it reeled and crumbled under me.”
The modern mind was outraged by the Victorian self-complacency. The social and religious
reformers at first raised this complaint, and they were followed by men of letters, because they echo the
voice around them. Of course, the accusation of self-complacency cannot be rightly levelled against many
of the Victorian writers, especially the authors of Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, Maud, Past and Present,
Bishop Blouhram, Culture and Anarchy, Richard Feveral and Tess. But there was felt the need of a change
in the sphere of literature also because the idiom, the manner of presentment, the play of imagination, and
the rhythm and structure of the verse, of the Victorian writers were becoming stale, and seemed gradually
to be losing the old magic. Their words failed to evoke the spirit.
Thus a reaction was even otherwise overdue in the field of literature, because art has to be renewed in
order to revitalise it. The Victorian literature had lost its freshness and it lacked in the element of surprise
which is its very soul. It had relapsed into life of the common day, and could not give the reader a shock of
novelty. At the end of the Victorian era it was felt that the ideas, experiences, moods and attitudes had
changed, and so the freshness which was lacking in literature had to be supplied on another level.
Besides the modern reaction against the attitude of self-complacency of the Victorians, there was also
failure or disintegration of values in the twentieth century. The young men who were being taught by their
elders to prize ‘the things of the spirit’ above worldly prosperity, found in actual experience that nothing
could be attained without money. Material prosperity had become the basis of social standing. Whereas in
1777 Dr. Johnson affirmed that ‘opulence excludes but one evil Poverty’, in 1863, Samuel Butler who was
much ahead of his time, voiced the experience of the twentieth century, when he wrote: “Money is like
antennae; without it the human insect loses touch with its environment. He who would acquire scholarship
or gentility must first acquire cash. In order to make the best of himself, the average youth must first make
money. He would have to sacrifice to possessiveness the qualities which should render possession
worthwhile.”
Besides the immense importance which began to be attached to money in the twentieth century, there
was also a more acute and pressing consciousness of the social life. Whereas some of the Victorians could
satisfy themselves with the contemplation of cosmic order, identification with some Divine Intelligence or
Superhuman plan which absorbs and purifies our petty egoisms, and with the merging of our will in a
higher will, their successors in the twentieth century could not do so. They realised every day that man
was more of a social being than a spiritual being, and that industrial problems were already menacing the
peace of Europe. Instead of believing in the cult of self-perfection as the Victorians did, they were ready to
accept the duty of working for others. A number of twentieth century writers began to study and ponder
seriously over the writings of Karl Marx, Engels, Ruskin, Morris, and some of them like Henry James,
discussed practical suggestions for the reconstruction of society.
The Victorians believed in the sanctity of home life, but in the twentieth century the sentiments for
the family circle declined. Young men and women who realised the prospect of financial independence
refused to submit to parental authority, and considered domestic life as too narrow. Moreover, young
people who began early to earn their living got greater opportunity of mixing with each other, and to them
sex no longer remained a mystery. So love became much less of a romance and much more of an
experience.
These are some of the examples of the disintegration of values in the twentieth century. The result
was that the modern writers could no longer write in the old manner. If they played on such sentiments as
the contempt for money, divine love, natural beauty, the sentiments of home and life, classical
scholarship, and communication with the spirit of the past, they were running the risk of striking a false
note. Even if they treated the same themes, they had to do it in a different manner, and evoke different
thoughts and emotions from what were normally associated with them. The modern writer had, therefore,
to cultivate a fresh point of view, and also a fresh technique.
The impact of scientific thought was mainly responsible for this attitude of interrogations and
disintegration of old values. The scientific truths which were previously the proud possessions of the
privileged few, were now equally intelligible to all. In an age of mass education, they began to appeal to
the masses. The physical and biological conclusions of great scientists like Darwin, Lyell and Huxley,
created the impression on the new generation that the universe looks like a colossal blunder, that human
life on our inhospitable globe is an accident due to unknown causes, and that this accident had led to
untold misery. They began to look upon Nature not as a system planned by Divine Architect, but as a
powerful, but blind, pitiless and wasteful force. These impressions filled the people of the twentieth
century with overwhelming pity, despair or stoicism. A number of writers bred and brought up in such an
atmosphere began to voice these ideas in their writings.
The twentieth century has become the age of machine. Machinery has, no doubt, dominated every
aspect of modern life, and it has produced mixed response from the readers and writers. Some of them
have been alarmed at the materialism which machinery has brought in its wake, and they seek consolation
and self-expression in the bygone unmechanised and pre-mechanical ages. Others, however, being
impressed by the spectacle of mechanical power producing a sense of mathematical adjustment and
simplicity of design, and conferring untold blessings on mankind, find a certain rhythm and beauty in it.
But there is no doubt, that whereas machinery has reduced drudgery, accelerated production and raised the
standard of living, it has given rise to several distressing complications. The various scientific appliances
confer freedom and enslavement, efficiency and embarrassment. The modern man has now to live by the
clock applying his energies not according to mood and impulse, but according to the time scheme. All
these ideas are found expressed in modern literature, because the twentieth century author has to reflect
this atmosphere, and he finds little help from the nineteenth century.
Another important factor which influenced modern literature was the large number of people of the
poor classes who were educated by the State. In order to meet their demand for reading the publishers of
the early twentieth century began whole series of cheaply reprinted classics. This was supplemented by
the issue of anthologies of Victorian literature, which illustrated a stable society fit for a governing class
which had established itself on the economic laws of wealth, the truth of Christianity and the legality of
the English Constitution. But these failed to appeal to the new cheaply educated reading public who had
no share in the inheritance of those ideals, who wanted redistribution of wealth, and had their own
peculiar codes of moral and sexual freedom. Even those who were impressed by the wit and wisdom of
the past could not shut their eyes to the change that had come about on account of the use of machinery,
scientific development, and the general atmosphere of instability and flux in which they lived. So they
demanded a literature which suited the new atmosphere. The modern writers found in these readers a
source of power and income, if they could only appeal to them, and give them what they wanted. The
temptation to do so was great and it was fraught with great dangers, because the new reading public were
uncertain of their ideologies, detached from their background, but desperately anxious to be impressed.
They wanted to be led and shown the way. The result was that some of the twentieth century authors
exploited their enthusiasm and tried to lead their innocent readers in the quickest, easiest way, by playing
on their susceptibilities. In some cases the clever writer might end as a prophet of a school in which he did
not believe. Such was the power wielded by the reading public.
One great disadvantage under which the modern writers labour is that there is no common ground on
which they and their readers meet. This was not so during the Victorian period, where the authors and the
reading public understood each other, and had the common outlook on and attitude to life and its
problems. In the atmosphere of disillusionment, discontent and doubt, different authors show different
approaches to life. Some lament the passing of old values, and express a sense of nostalgia. Some show an
utter despair of the future; while others recommend reverting to an artificial primitivism. Some
concentrate on sentiment, style or diction in order to recover what has been lost. Thus among the twentieth
century writers are sometimes found aggressive attempts to retain or revitalise old values in a new setting
or, if it is not possible, to create new values to take their place.
The twentieth century literature which is the product of this tension is, therefore, unique. It is
extremely fascinating and, at the same time, very difficult to evaluate, because, to a certain extent, it is a
record of uncoordinated efforts. It is not easy to divide it into school and types. It is full of adventures and
experiments peculiar to the modern age which is an age of transition and discovery. But there is an
undercurrent in it which runs parallel to the turbulent current of ideas which flows with great impetuosity.
Though it started as a reaction against ‘Victorianism’ in the beginning of the twentieth century, it is
closely bound up with the new ideas which are agitating the mind of the modern man.
Modern Poetry

Modern poetry, of which T. S. Eliot is the chief representative, has followed entirely a different
tradition from the Romantic and Victorian tradition of poetry. Every age has certain ideas about poetry,
especially regarding the essentially poetical subjects, the poetical materials and the poetical modes.
These preconceptions about poetry during the nineteenth century were mainly those which were
established by great Romantic poets—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. According to
them the sublime and the pathetic were the two chief nerves of all genuine poetry. That is why Spenser,
Shakespeare and Milton were given a higher place as poets than Dryden and Pope, who were merely men
of wit and good sense, and had nothing of the transcendentally sublime or pathetic in them. During the
Victorian Age, Matthew Arnold, summing up these very assumptions about poetry stated:

Though they may write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be masters of the art of
versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are classics of our prose.
The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden and Pope and all their school is
briefly this; their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits; genuine poetry is conceived and
composed in the soul.
Arnold shared with the age the prejudice in favour of poetry which in Milton’s phrase was “simple,
sensuous and passionate.” It was generally assumed that poetry must be the direct expression of the
simple, tender, exalted, poignant and sympathetic emotions. Wit, play of intellect and verbal jugglery
were considered as hinderances which prevented the readers from being “moved”.
Besides these preconceptions, a study of the nineteenth century poetry reveals the fact that its main
characteristic was preoccupation with a dream world, as we find in Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans
Merci, Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott and Rossetti’s The Blessed Damozel. O’ Shaughnessy’s following
lines express the popular conception of the poet during the nineteenth century:
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers
On whom the pale moon shines.
Such conceptions of the poet and his art prevailed during the Victorian period not because they were
right, but because they suited the age, and moreover they had the prestige of the Romantic achievement
behind them. But they could not find favour with the poets and critics of the twentieth century on account
of the radical changes that had taken place. Under the stress and strain of new conditions they could not
take the dream habit seriously. Though during the Victorian period Tennyson was aware of the new
problems which were creeping in on account of scientific and technical discoveries, yet under the impact
of the popular conception of poetry, and also because of his own lack of intellectual vigour, he expressed
in his poems more of a spirit of withdrawal and escape, rather than of facing squarely the problems
confronting his age. This is illustrated by his The Palace of Art.  The explicit moral of the poem is that an
escape from worldly problem is of no avail; but instead of effectively conveying this moral, the poem
stands for withdrawal and escape. In the songs of Swinburne about Liberty and Revolution we do not find
the preciseness and genuineness of Shelley’s ideals.
 The Victorian poetry was obviously other-worldly. Its cause was stated by Arnold when he referred
to:
………this strange disease of modern life
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts……
(A Summer Night)
But in spite of the fact that Arnold among all the Victorian poets was the most frank in his expression
of the ‘disease’ of his age, his response to it was not fundamentally unlike that of the other poets of his
age. For him the past was out of date, the future was not yet born, and not much could be done. He studied
Wordsworth and the Greek poets mainly with the purpose of escaping to the freshness of the early world.
In his own poems like A Summer Night, where he refers to the disease of modern life, he slips away from
‘this uncongenial place, this human life’ into the beautiful moon-lit region, and forgets the iron time in the
midst of melodious sentiments.
Arnold, therefore, was not qualified to give a new direction to poetry. Browning on the other hand,
though a greater poet, was unaware of the disharmonies of his time. He was too optimistic to face the
realities of life and new problems which had crept in. He was a poet of simple emotions and sentiments,
and though he could understand psychologically the past ages, he had no aptitude to understand the
complexities of modern life. He was also, therefore, not in a position to provide the impulse to bring back
poetry to the proper and adequate grappling with the new problems which had arisen.
William Morris, though a practical socialist, reserved poetry for his day-dreams. Moreover, some of
the distinguished authors like Meredith and Hardy turned to the novel, and during the early part of the
twentieth century it was left to the minor poets like Houseman and Rupert Brooke to write in the poetic
medium. Thus there was the greatest need for some great poets to make poetry adequate to modern life,
and escape from the atmosphere which the established habits had created. For generations owing to the
reaction of aesthetes against the new scientific, industrial and largely materialistic world, the people in
England had become accustomed to the idea that certain things are ‘not poetical,’ that a poet can mention
a rose and not the steam engine, that poetry is an escape from life and not an attack on life, and that a poet
is sensitive to only certain beautiful aspects of life, and not the whole life. So the twentieth century needed
poets who were fully alive to what was happening around them, and who had the courage and technique to
express it.
The great poetical problem in the beginning of the twentieth century was, therefore, to invent
technique that would be adequate to the ways of feeling, or modes of experience of the modern adult
sensitive mind. The importance of T. S. Eliot lies in the fact that, gifted with a mind of rare distinction, he
has solved his own problem as a poet. Moreover, being a poet as well as a critic his poetical theories are
re-inforced by his own poetry, and thus he has exerted a tremendous influence on modern poetry.  It is
mainly due to him that all serious modern poets and critics have realised that English poetry must develop
along some other line than that running from the Romantics to Tennyson, Swinburne and Rupert Brooke.
Of the other important poets of the twentieth century Robert Bridges belonged to the transitional
period. He was an expert literary technician, and it was his “inexhaustible satisfaction of form” which led
him to poetry. His metrical innovations were directed to the breaking down of the domination of the
syllabic system of versification, overruling it by a stress prosody wherein natural speech rhythms should
find their proper values. He was convinced that it was only through the revival of the principle of
quantitative stress that any advances in English versification could be expected. A. E. Houseman a
classical scholar like Robert Bridges, rejected the ecstasles of romantic poetry, and in his expression of the
mood of philosophic despair, used a style characterised by Purity, Simplicity, restraint and absence of all
ornamentation. W. B. Yeats, the founder of the Celtic movement in poetry and drama, a phase of
romanticism which had not been much exploited hitherto, gave expression to the intellectual mood of his
age.
The twentieth century poets who were in revolt against Victorianism and especially against the
didactic tendency of poets like Tennyson, Browning, Arnold and even Swinburne and Meredith, felt that
the poet’s business was to be uniquely himself, and to project his personality through the medium of his
art. Poetry to them was not a medium for philosophy and other extraneous matters; nor was it singing for
its own sake. It was a method first of discovering one’s self, and then a means of projecting this discovery.
Thus the problem before each of them was how to arrive at a completely individual expression of oneself
in poetry. Naturally it could not be solved by using the common or universally accepted language of
poetry. On account of the change in the conceptions of the function of poetry, it was essential that a new
technique of communicating meaning be discovered. It was this necessity which brought about the
movements known as imagism and symbolism in modern poetry.
Symbolism was first started in France in the nineteenth century. The business of the symbolist poet is
to express his individual sensations and perceptions in language which seems best adapted to convey his
essential quality without caring for the conventional metres and sentence structures. He aims at inducing
certain states of mind in the reader rather than communicating logical meaning. The imagists, on the other
hand, aim at clarity of expression through hard, accurate, and definite images. They believe that it is not
the elaborate similes of Milton or extended metaphors of Shakespeare which can express the soul of
poetry. This purpose of poetry can be best served by images which by their rapid impingement on the
consciousness, set up in the mind fleeting complexes of thought and feeling. In poetry which is capable of
capturing such instantaneous state of mind, there is no scope for Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in
tranquillity”. In it suggestion plays the paramount part and there is no room for patient, objective
descriptions.
The symbolist poetry in England came into prominence with the appearance of T. S.
Eliot’s The Waste Land. But it had actually started right during the Victorian Age, which is evident from
the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), a Jesuit priest whose poems were published thirty years
after his death. It was the poetry of Hopkins and T. S. Eliot which exerted the greatest influence on
English poetry between the two wars.
The technique of the symbolist is impressionistic and not representational. In order to prevent any
obstruction in the way of emotive suggestion by any direct statement of experience, he gives a covering of
obscurity to his meaning. There is also in symbolist poetry a strong element of charm or incantation
woven by the music of words. Repetition is often resorted to by the symbolist poets as we find in
Tennyson’s The Marriage of Geraint:
Forgetful of his promise to the king
Forgetful of the falcon and the hunt,
Forgetful of the tilt and tournament,
Forgetful of his glory and his name
Forgetful of the princedom and its cares.
But the repetitive rhythms which the symbolists use have in them a hypnotic quality. They also recall
the texture of dreams of the subconscious states of mind, and because of absence of punctuation they can
express the continuous “stream of consciousness”.
The symbolists also give more importance to the subjective vision of an object or situation rather
than the object or the situation itself. Moreover, unlike the Romantics who create beauty out of things
which are conventionally beautiful, like natural objects, works of art etc., the symbolists find beauty in
every detail of normal day-to-day life. Naturally to accomplish that and create beauty out of such prosaic
material requires a higher quality of art and a more sensitive approach to life. Moreover, besides including
all sorts of objects and situations in the poetical fold, the symbolist has broken fresh grounds in language
also. He considers that every word in the language has a potentiality for being used in poetry as well in
prose. For him the language of poetry is not different from that of prose. As he uses all sorts of words
which were never used in poetry by the Romantics, the symbolist has to invent a new prosody to
accommodate such words as were banned previously from the domain of poetry. Thus the symbolist does
not consider any particular topic, diction or rhythm specially privileged to be used in poetry.
Modern Poets

1.  Robert Bridges (1840-1930)

Robert Bridges, though a twentieth century poet, may be considered as the last of the Great
Victorians as he carried on the Victorian tradition. He is not a poet of the modern crisis except for his
metrical innovations. Belonging to the aristocracy his work is also concerned with the leisured and highly
cultivated aristocratic class of society.

In his poetry we find beautiful descriptions of English landscapes, clear streams, gardens, songs of birds.
The world that he depicts is haunted by memories of the classics, of music and poetry and decorous love
making. He carries on the tradition of Milton, Wordsworth and Tennyson, against which the young men of
his times were in open revolt. We do not find in his poetry any bold attempt to face the critical problems
facing his generation. Even his greatest poem, The Testament of Beauty, does not contain any consistent
treatment of deep philosophy. That is why Yeats remarked that there is emptiness everywhere in the poetry
of Bridges.

The importance of Bridges in modern poetry, however, is in his metrical innovations. He was lover of
old English music and many of his early lyrics are obviously influenced by the Elizabethan lyricists,
especially Thomas Campion. He was a remarkable prosodist, the first English poet who had a grasp of
phonetic theory. He was tireless experimenter in verse form. He himself admitted: “What led me to poetry
was the inexhaustible satisfaction of form, the magic of speech, lying as it seemed to be in the masterly
control of the material.” Working under the influence of his friend, Hopkins, to whom he dedicated the
second book of shorter poems, Bridges wrote his poems following the rules of new prosody. The best of
Bridges’ metrical experiment is the sprung rhythm, a kind of versification which is not, as usual, based on
speech rhythm, but on “the hidden emotional pattern that makes poetry.” And it was a definite
contribution to the development of English verse.
The lyrics of Bridges like A Passer-By, London Snow, The Downs, are marked by an Elizabethan
simplicity. In the sonnets of The Growth of Love, we find the calm, the mediative strain of Victorian love
poetry. A believer in Platonic love, he exalts the ethical and intellectual principle of beauty. In his greatest
poem, The Testament of Beauty, he has given beautiful expression to his love for ‘the mighty abstract idea
of beauty in all things’ which he received from Keats. Here he has also sought to ‘reconcile Passion with
peace and show desire at rest.’ In his poetry Bridges thus transcended rather than solved the modern
problems by his faith in idealism and the evolutionary spirit. He has no sympathy for the down-trodden
and less fortunate members of humanity, and so whenever he deals with a simple human theme, as in the
poem The Villager, he reflects the mind of the upper class which has lost touch with common humanity.
Bridges is, therefore, rightly called the last Great Victorian, and his greatest poem, The Testament of
Beauty, the final flower of the Victorian Spirit.
2.  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Hopkins who died in 1889, but whose poems were not issued during his lifetime, and who only
became widely known after his friend Robert Bridges edited the collection in 1918, exerted a great
influence on modern English poetry. The poems of Hopkins were so eccentric in style that Bridges dared
not publish them till thirty years after his death. Hopkins had tried to revive the ‘sprung rhythm’, the
accentual and alliterative measure of Langland and Skelton, which had dropped out of use since the
sixteenth century. In this rhythm there are two currents, the undercurrent and the overcurrent, which are
intertwined. This effect is produced by inducing the metre to run back on itself, sometimes making a
second line reverse the movement of one before; sometimes in the same line confronting a metric foot by
its opposite, for instance, an iambic followed by a trochee. As these variations produce the momentary
effect of a break or split, Hopkins called this device sprung rhythm. This rhythm follows the system of
beats and stresses unlike the quantitive metres where every syllable is counted. As in conversation we
stress significant words and syllables with so much emphasis that accompanying syllables and words are
left to take care of themselves, the ‘sprung’ rhythm is nearer to natural speech. That is why it has appealed
to the modern poets who in their poetry attempt to convey the everyday experience of modern life and its
multifarious problem in a most natural manner. The ‘sprung’ rhythm of Hopkins, therefore, is his greatest
contribution to modern poetry. Of course he was not the first to invent it; there are examples of it in the
poetry of all great poets, especially Milton. But Hopkins revived it and laid special emphasis on it, and
exerted a great influence because the twentieth century needed it.
Hopkins, like Keats, was endowed with a highly sensuous temperament, but being a deeply religious
man having an abiding faith in God, he refined his faculty and offered it to God. He avoided all outward
and sensuous experiences, but enjoyed them in a deeply religious mood as intimations of the Divine
Presence. He could perceive God in every object, and tried to find its distinctive virtue of design of pattern
the inner kernel of its being, or its very soul which was expressed by its outer form. This peculiarity or the
immanent quality in each thing which is the manifestation of Beauty was called by Hopkins as inscape’, a
term which he borrowed from Don Scotus. For example, the inscape of the flower called ‘blue bell’,
according to Hopkins, is mixed strength and grace. Thus to him not only trees, grass, flower, but each
human spirit had its personal inscape, a mystic, creative force which shapes the mind. This ‘inscape
Hopkisn expressed in a style also which was peculiar to himself, because he could not be satisfied with the
conventional rhythms and metres which were incapable of conveying what came straight from his heart.
The poems of Hopkins are about God, Nature and Man, and all of them are pervaded with the
immanence of God. His greatest poem is The Wreck of Deutschland, which is full of storm and agony
revealing the mystery of God’s way to men. All his poetry is symbolic, and he means more than he says.
Some of his lyrics are sublime, but the majority of his poems are obscure. It is mainly on account of his
theory—sprung rhythm, and inscape, that he has exerted such a tremendous influence on modern poets.
3.  A. E. Houseman (1859-1936)
Alfred Edward Houseman was a great classical scholar. He wrote much of his poetry about
Shorpshrie, which like Hardy’s Wessex, is a part of England, full of historic memories and still
comparatively free from the taint of materialism. Out of his memories of this place, Houseman created a
dream world, a type of arcadia. His most celebrated poem, Shorpshire Lad, which is a pseudo-pastoral
fancy, deals with the life of the Shorpshire lad who lives a vigorous, care-fee life.
Housemen was disgusted with the dismal picture which the modern world presented to him, but he
did not possess a sufficiently acute intellect to solve its problems. However, in some of his poems he gives
an effective and powerful expression to the division in the modern consciousness caused by the contrast
between the development of the moral sense and the dehumanised world picture provided by scientific
discoveries. In one of his poems based on his memories of Shorpshrie, he has achieved tragic dignity:
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang and I was never sorry;
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born
Housemen also wrote a few poems expressing the horrible destruction caused by modern wars, and
their utter futility and inhumanity. But he was on the whole a minor poet who could not attain the stature
of T. S. Eliot or W. B. Yeats.
4.  The “Georgian” Poets
 Besides Bridges and Houseman, who did not belong to any group, there was in the first quarter of the
twentieth century a group of poets called the “George Group:” These poets flourished in the reign of
George V (1911-1936). They possessed various characteristics and were not conscious of belonging to a
particular group. In reality they were imitators of the parts, who shut their eyes against the contemporary
problems. But they were presumptuous enough to think of themselves as the heralds of a new age. Robert
Graves who first claimed to belong to this group, and subsequently broke away with it, wrote about the
Georgian poets. “The Georgians’ general recommendations were the discarding of archaistic diction such
as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘flower’d’ and ‘when’er’, and of poetical construction such as ‘winter clear’ and
‘host on armed host’ and of pomposities generally… In reaction to Victorianism their verse should avoid
all formally religious, philosophic or improving themes; and all sad, wrecked cafe-table themes in reaction
to the ninetees. Georgian poets were to be English but not aggressively imperialistic, pantheistic rather
than atheistic; and as simple as a child’s reading book. Their subjects were to be Nature, love, leisure, old
age, childhood, animals, sleep… unemotional subject.”
This is rather a severe account of the Georgian poets but it is not wholly unjustified. Though the
quantity of work produced by the Georgian poets is great, the quality is not of a high order. The poets
generally attributed to this group are roughly those whose work was published in the five volumes
of Georgian Poetry, dated respectively 1911-12, 1913-15, 1916-17, 1918-19 and 1920-22. The important
poets who contributed to these volumes were Lascelles Aberchrombie, Gordon Bottomley, Rupert
Brooke, G. K. Chesterton, W. H. Davis; Walter De La Mare, John Masefield, J. E. Flecker, W. W. Gibson;
D. H. Lawrence, John Drinkwater, Sturge Moore, Laurence Binyon, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.
Among these the poets whose work has some lasting value are Walter De la Mare, W. H. Davis,
Laurence Binyon and John Masefield. The greatest of them is Walter De La Mare (1873-1957) who writes
in a simple, pure, lyrical style about beautiful sights and sounds of the country, about children and old
people but there is always in his poetry a strange enchantment produced by the apprehension of another
world existing side by with the everyday world. His poetry has the atmosphere of dreamland, as he
himself says in his introduction to Behold, This Dreamer: “Every imaginative poem resembles in its onset
and its effect the experience of dreaming.” He has the faculty of bridging the gulf between waking and
dreaming, between reality and fantasy. Besides this he has great skill in the management of metre, and
successfully welding the grotesque with the profoundly pathetic.
William Henry Davies (1871-1940) is one of the natural singers in the English language. Being
immensely interested in Nature, the experiences which he describes about natural objects and scenes are
authentic. His lyrics remind us of the melodies of Herrick and Blake. Though living in the twentieth
century, he remained wholly unsophisticated, and composing his poems without much conscious effort, he
could not give them polish and finish. But inspite of this he has left quite a number of lyrics which on
account of their lively music have an enduring appeal to sensitive ears.
Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), a scholar and poet who translated Dante into English had a sense of
just word and its sound. Generally he wrote about classical themes. The most notable of such poems is
his Attila, a dramatic poem which is a well-constructed play. Its vehement blank verse and speed of action
remind the readers of Shakespeare. The First World War stirred him to profound feelings and he wrote
some very moving poems, for example, the one beginning with the unforgettable line—
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.
The Second World War had a great saddening effect on him, and in his last years he wrote poems in
which he contrasted old pleasures and dreams with the horrible war oppressed present. They were
posthumously published in 1944 under the title The Burning of the Leaves and other Poems. Though
these poems were written under the shadow of war and they deal with the transient nature of things and
their tendency to decay, yet they express the hope, like Browning’s poetry, that nothing that is past is
ultimately gone.
John Masefield (born 1878) who has been Poet Laureate since 1930, has been composing poems for
the last forty years, but he has not attained real greatness as a poet. As a young man he was a sailor, and so
most of his early poetry deals with life at sea and the various adventures that one meets there. The poems
which give expression to this experience are contained in the volumes Salt Water Ballads (1902)
and Ballads (1906). In 1909 he produced his best poetic tragedy—The Tragedy of Nan. After that he gave
up writing on imaginative themes, and produced poems dealing with the graver aspects of modern life in a
realistic manner, e.g. The Everlasting Mercy (1911), The Widow in the Bye-Street Dauber (1913), The
Daffodil Fields (1913). All these poems narrate a stirring story with an excellent moral. Now he is looked
upon as one of the ‘prophets’ of modern England.
5.  The Imagists
The first revolt against the Victorian Romantic poetic tradition came from a group of poets called the
Imagists. Their activities extended for about ten years—from 1912 to 1922. They realized that the poetry
of the Georgians did not introduce any new vitality in English poetry. At its best it displayed both power
and individuality, but it did not alter the fact that each of the Georgian poets was content to delimit or
modify the poetic inheritance of the nineteenth century rather than abandon it in favour of a radically
different approach. Neither Masefield, whose poetry is realistic in subject and vocabulary, no De la Mare,
 who is the last of the true romantic poets of England, pointed to the new paths in English poetry.
The poetic revolution engineered by the Imagists, which began in the years immediately preceding
the First World War, and which was both produced and further encouraged by T. S. Eliot’s The Waste
Land, preferred the older tradition in English poetry to the Victorian Romantic tradition. The Romantic
and the Victorian poets tried to express their personalities in their poems. For them poetry was a means of
self-expression and they appealed to the cultivated sensibility of their reader. They treated of themes
dealing with their personal hopes and fears and often indulged in the emotions of nostalgia and self-pity.
That is why the Victorian poetry especially had a tendency of running to elegy. The Imagists believed that
the function of poetry is not self-expression, but the proper fusion of meaning in language. According to
them poems are works of art and not pieces of emotional autobiography or rhetorical prophecy. As the
purpose of poetry is the exploration of experience, the poet must strive after a kind of poetic statement,
which is both precise and passionate, profoundly felt and desperately accurate, even if it means the
twisting of the language into a new shape. There must be the fusion of thought and emotion which is
found among the Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century. The Imagists did not look upon the poet
as the sweet singer whose function was to render in sweet verse and conventional imagery some personal
emotions, but he was the explorer of experience. Therefore, he must use the language in order to build up
rich patterns of meaning which required very close attention before they were communicated. The rebels
were conscious of the fact that the poetry of their own time represented the final ebb of the Victorian
Romantic tradition, and that the time was ripe to give a new direction to English poetry.
The new movement began with a revolt against every kind of sweet verbal impression and romantic
egotism which persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Its originator, T. E. Hulme, who was killed in
war in 1917, in an article which he wrote in 1909, declared his preference for precise and disciplined
classicism to sloppy romanticism. He advocated hardness and precision of imagery “in order to get the
exact curve of the thing” together with subtler and more flexible rhythms. He with the help of Ezra Pound,
who had come from America, founded the movement called Imagism. Defining the Imagists, Pound wrote
in 1912: “They are in opposition to the numerous and unassembled writers who busy themselves with dull
and interminable effusions, and who seem to think that a man can write a good long poem before he learns
to write a good short one, or even before he learns to produce a good single line.” Giving a fuller
statement of the aims of the Imagist movement, F. S. Flint pointed out in 1913 that three rules the Imagists
observed were—(a) “direct treatment of the “thing”, (b) “to use absolutely no word that did not contribute
to the presentation”, and (c) “to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a
metronome.” Pound emphasised that the Imagists should “use no superfluous word, no adjective, which
does not reveal something”, and that they should avoid abstraction. The Imagist movement spread
in England and America, and it was helped by the seventeenth century metaphysical poetry and the
nineteenth century symbolists, who contributed their techniques and attitudes to the revolution.
The leader of the Imagists was Ezra Pound. Other poets who were included in this group were F. S.
Flint, Richard Aldington, F. M. Hueffer, James Joyce, Allan Upward, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Amy
Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Instead of imitating the English romantics like the Georgians, the
Imagists attempted to reproduce the qualities of Ancient Greek and Chinese poetry. They aimed at hard,
clear, brilliant effects instead of the soft, dreamy vagueness of the English nineteenth century. Their aims
which were expressed in the introduction to Some Imagist Poets (1915), can be summarised as follows:
(1)                  To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly exact,
nor the merely decorative word.
(2)                  To produce poetry that is hard and clear, and not deal in vague generalities, however, magnificent
and sonorous.
(3)                  To create new rhythms and not to copy old rhythms which merely echo old ones.
The Imagists were greatly influenced by the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, which appeared in
1918, thirty years after the death of the poet. It was the complete absence of any sign of laxness
in Hopkins’ poetry, the clear signs of words and rhythms which were perfectly controlled by the poet to
produce the desired effect, with no dependence at all on the general poetic feeling, which made an
immediate appeal to the new poets.
Regarding the subject matter of poetry, the Imagists, believing that there was no longer a general
public of poetry lovers, concentrated on expressing the modern consciousness for their own satisfaction
and that of their friends. They gave up the old pretence that humanity was steadily progressing towards a
millennium. Instead they recognised that in the new dark age of barbarism and vulgarity, it is the duty of
the enlightened few to protect culture and escape the spiritual degradation of a commercialised world.
This attitude seems to be similar to that of the aesthetes of the last decade of the nineteenth century, but it
is not so. Whereas the aesthetes hating the vulgarity of the contemporary world tried to lose themselves
among beautiful fantasies by withdrawing into an ivory tower, the Imagists, on the contrary, faced the new
problems and tried to create a very precise and concentrated expression, a new sort of consciousness
because the traditional poetic techniques were inadequate for that purpose. Opposed to the romantic view
of man as “an infinite reservoir of possibilities”, they looked upon him as a very imperfect creature
“intrinsically limited but disciplined by order.” Unlike the romantics who regarded the world as a glorious
place with which man was naturally in harmony, the Imagists regarded it “as landscape with occasional
oasis…But mainly deserts of dirt, ash-pits of cosmos, grass on ashpits”. They did believe in the words of
Hulme, in “no universal ego, but a few definite persons gradually built up”. In his essay on Romanticism
and Classicism, he predicted that “a period of dry, hard, classical verse is coming” and expressed the
opinion that “there is an increasing proportion of people who simply can’t stand Swinburne.”
The Imagists could not adequately tackle the contemporary problems, because they lived too much
among books, were rather irresponsible in their conduct, did not possess sharp intellect, and were not in
close contact with actualities. The result is that their poetry is as nerveless and artificial as the
neo-romantic poetry of the Georgians. But they certainly deserve the credit of showing that English poetry
needed a new technique, and that unnecessary rules and a burdensome mass of dead associations must be
removed.
The poets belonging to the Imagist group did not produce great poetry on account of the reasons
stated above. Ezra Pound is a poet of real originality, but his too much and rather undigested learning
which he tries to introduce in his poems, makes them difficult to understand, and also gives them an air of
pedantry. His greatest contribution to modern poetry is his development of an unrhymed ‘free verse’, and
other metrical experiments which influenced T. S. Eliot.
The most important writer, who in spite of his being not a regular member of their group, was
directly connected with the Imagists, was David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930). He contributed both to
Georgian poetry and the Imagist anthologies. Most of his mature poetry deals with the theme of duel of
sex, a conflict of love and hate between man and wife, and expresses an annihilation of the ego and a sort
of mystical rebirth or regeneration. His most remarkable poem Manifesto ends with a beautiful description
of universe where all human beings have completely realised their individualities, where
All men detach themselves and become unique;
Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled,
Every movement will be direct
Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces when we think of it,
Lest our faces betray us to some untimely end.
The poems which he wrote in the last year of his life when he was dying of consumption, deal with
the themes of death and eternity. Lawrence did a lot in rebuilding English poetry, and as a critic he set
before the English poets the following ideal, which has greatly influenced the modern English poets.
“The essence of poetry with us in this age of stark unlovely actualities is a stark directness, without a
shadow of a lie, or a shadow of deflection anywhere. Everything can go, but this stark, bare, rocky
directness of statement, this alone makes poetry to-day.”
6.  Trench Poets
The First World War (1914-18) gave rise to war poetry, and the poets who wrote about the war and its
horrors especially in the trenches are called the War Poets, or the “Trench Poets.” The war poetry was in
continuation of Georgian poetry, and displayed its major characteristics, namely, an escape from actuality.
For example, E. W. Tennant describes the soldiers in Home Thoughts in Laventie, as
Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered town.
Away upon the Downs.
Instead of facing squarely the horrors of war, these poets looked upon the terrible present as a mere
dream and the world of imagination the only reality. Following the Georgian tradition with its fanciful
revolution from the drabness of urban life and its impressionistic description of the commonplace in a low
emotional tone, a number of poets who wrote about the war, described incidents of war and the ardours
and pathos of simple men caught in the catastrophe. Their method was descriptive and impressionistic,
and on account of lack of any intense, sincere and realistic approach, they failed to arouse the desired
emotions in the readers.
Out of a number of these war poets, only two—Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen – attained some
poetic standard. Though Sassoon in his early period belonged to the Georgian group, his predominant
mood was not lyrical but satiric, not ‘escapist’ but rebellious, because he felt that the soldier was being
sacrificed for a false idealism. He looked upon him as
a decent chap
Who did his work and hadn’t much to say
(A Working Party)
In his Suicide in Trenches he described the horrors of trench warfare. In Song Books of the War he
dwelt on the short memory of the public who forget those who suffered and died for them during the war.
Sassoon, who is still living, wrote some poems between the two great wars, in which he attacked the
shallow complacency of his contemporaries, and gave voice to the disillusionment.
Wilfred Owen wrote war poems under the influence of Sassoon. He admired Sassoon because the
latter expressed in  a harsh manner the truth about war. Speaking about his own poetry he remarked,
“Above all, I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is War and the poetry of War. The poetry is in the
pity … all a poet can do today is to warn. That is why the true poets must be truthful.” Though in his
poems we find the mood of disillusioned irony, yet, unlike Sassoon, he does not completely lose his hope
for man. His poems are free from bitterness and he rejoices in the exultation of battle as well as in the
fellowship of comrades. Whereas in Sassoon’s poetry we find a mood of indignation and satire, in Owen’s
poetry the mood is of reconciliation and elegy. The following remarkable lines in his poem Strange
Meeting reveal Owen’s typical approach to War.
I am the enemy you killed, my fried…
Let us sleep now.
As an experimenter in metre Owen’s contribution to modern English poetry is great. Against the
Georgian laxity, he introduced accumulative use of balance and parallelism. And above all, he brought a
new dignity to war poetry.
7.  W. B. Yeats (1865 – 1939)
William Butler Yeats was one of the most important of modern poets, who exerted a great influence
on his contemporaries as well as successors. He was an Irish, and could never reconcile himself to the
English habits and way of thinking. By temperament he was a dreamer, a visionary, who fell under the
spell of the folk-lore and the superstitions of the Irish peasantry. Like them he believed in fairies, gnomes,
and demons, in the truth of dreams, and in personal immortality. Naturally with such a type of
temperament, Yeats felt himself a stranger in the world dominated by science, technology and rationalism.
Being convinced that modern civilisation effaces our fundamental consciousness of ourselves, Yeats
trusted in the faculty of imagination, and admired those ages when imagination reigned supreme. Thus he
went deeper and farther in the range of folk-lore and mythology. He discovered the primitive and
perennial throb of life in passions and beliefs of ancient times, and he wanted to revive it, because he felt
that modern civilisation has tamed it by its insistence on dry logic and cold reason.
Yeats was anti-rationalist. He believed in magic, occult influences and hypnotism. He thus led the
‘revolt of the soul against the intellect’, in the hope to acquire ‘a more conscious exercise of the human
faculties’. He also believed in the magic of words, the phrases and terms which appeal to common
humanity. Therefore, he tried to rediscover those symbols which had a popular appeal in ancient days, and
which can even now touch man’s hidden selves and awaken in him his deepest and oldest consciousness
of love and death, or his impulse towards adventure and self-fulfillment. Being disillusioned by lack of
harmony and strength in modern culture, he tried to revive the ancient spells and incantations to bring
about unity and a spirit of integration in modern civilisation which was torn by conflicts and dissensions.
All these factors inclined Yeats towards symbolism. Believing in the existence of a universal ‘great
mind’, and a ‘great memory’ which could be ‘evoked by symbols’, he came to regard that both imagery
and rhythm can work as incantations to rouse universal emotions. He liked Shelley’s poetry because of the
symbolism inherent in the recurrent images of leaves, boats, stars, caves, the moon. He found that Blake
invented his own symbols, but his own task was easier because he could draw freely on Irish mythology
for the symbols he required. Coming under the influence of French Symbolists like Verlaine, Macterlinck,
he tried to substitute the wavering, meditative and organic rhythms, which are the embodiment of
imagination, for those energetic rhythms as of a running man which are not suited to serious poetry.
As a symbolist poet Yeats’ aim was to evoke a complex of emotions not by a direct statement but by
a multitude of indirect strokes. The result is that sometimes the symbols used by him are not clear as they
have been derived from certain obscure sources. For example, the symbols used in the following lines
from The Poet Pleads with the Elemental powers demand a commentary:
Do you not hear me calling white deer with no horns?
I have been changed to a hound with one red ear!
I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the west
And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky
And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.
In most of his poems, however, the symbols used by Yeats are obvious. One very common symbol in
his poetry is ‘the moon’, which stands for life’s mystery.
Yeats, therefore, tried to reform poetry not by breaking with the Past, but with the Present.
According  to him, the true poet is he who tells the most ancient story in a manner which applies to the
people today. His early poems, like The Wanderings of Oisin (1889), express Yeats’ deepest idealism in
the simple outlines of primitive tales. The same attempt, though more effective and mature, was made
in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) and The Shadowy Waters (1900). But up to this time Yeats had not
found himself; he was groping in the dreamland for wisdom and illumination.
The First World War (1914-18) and the Irish disturbances during those eventful years gave to Yeats a
more realistic direction. These conflicts, of course, did not completely efface his dreams, but they turned
his eyes from mythology to his own soul which was divided between earthly passions and unearthly
visions. Yeats realised that the highest type of poetry is produced by the fusion of both—“the synthesis of
the Self and Anti-self” as he called It. The Anti-self is our soaring spirit which tries to rise above the
bondage of our mental habits and associations. Yeats’ lyrics which give the most effective expression to
these views are The Wild Swan at Coole (1917), The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1929). Here he
gave a very satisfying presentation of the wholeness of man—his Self and Anti-self.
In his later poetry Yeats reached a maturity of vision and style which may be described as hard,
athletic and having a metallic glint. Instead of serving as symbols and having certain indefinite
associations, his last poems expressed ‘Cold passion’ in images which are chastened and well-defined.
That is why, it is no exaggeration to say that Yeats was influenced by the Imagists, and influenced them in
return. A Thought from Propertius is in every respect an Imagist poem.
In his last years Yeats retired to the solitude of his own mind, and he wrote poems dealing with his
early interests—love of dreams (Presences), admiration of simple joy of youth and old civilisations, but
the disintegration of modern civilisation under the impact of war pained Yeats, and he believed that a
revolutionary change is in the offing. In Second Coming he describes what lies at the root of the malady;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
For about half a century Yeats exerted a tremendous influence on modern poetry on account of his
utter sincerity and extraordinary personality and genius. He recognised no external law, but like a true and
great artist, he was a law unto himself.
8.         T. S. Eliot (1888)
Thomas Stearns Eliot is the greatest among the modern English poets, and he has influenced modern
poetry more than any other poet of the twentieth century. He combines in himself strange and opposing
characteristics. He is a great poet as well a great critic; he is a traditionalist rooted in classicism as well as
an innovator of a new style of poetry; he is a stern realist acutely conscious of modern civilisation with its
manifold problems as well as a visionary who looks at life beyond the limits of time and space.
T. S. Eliot was born in 1888 in the U.S.A. He was educated at Harvard University. After that he
received education at Paris and Oxford, and settled in England which he has made his literary home. He
came into prominence as a poet in the decade following the First World War i.e., between 1920 and 1930,
during which period he wrote the poems for which he is best known. There was at that time in England a
tendency in favour of classicism which directly influenced Eliot. Being himself a great classical scholar,
and finding around him petty poets of the Georgian group, he set himself to establish principles of a sound
classicism. To him classicism stands for order. It is a tradition not established by the authority of Aristotle
or any other ancient critic, but by the whole body of great writers who have contributed to it in the course
of centuries. He conceives of literature as a continuous process in which the present contains the past. The
modern poet, according to Eliot, should carry on that process, follow the permanent spirit of that tradition,
and thus create fresh literature by expressing the present on a new and modified manner. Thus Eliot is
different from the neo-classicists of the eighteenth century who insisted on implicitly following the
narrowly defined rules of writing. To him classicism means a sort of training for order, poise and right
reason. In order to achieve that the modern writer should not defy the permanent spirit of tradition, and
must have “a framework of accepted and traditional ideas.”
But the surprising thing about Eliot is that in spite of his being a professed classicist and an
uncompromising upholder of tradition, he was the man who led the attack on the writing of “traditional’
poetry, and come out as the foremost innovator of modern times. He thought that the literary language
which had served its purpose in the past was not suited for modern use. So he rejected it outright.
According to him, the modern writer while carrying on the literary tradition of ‘poise, order and right
reason’ need not follow the old and obsolete idiom of his predecessors, but should invent entirely a new
medium which is capable of digesting and expressing new objects and new feelings, new ideas, and new
aspects of modern life. The language used by the modern poet must be different from the language of the
past because modern life dominated by science and technology is radically different from the life of the
past ages characterised by slow and steady development.
In his attempt to find a new medium for poetry Eliot became interested in the experiments of Ezra
Pound, the leader of the Imagists. Like Pound, Eliot also sought to extend the range of poetic language by
introducing words used in common speech but commonly regarded as inappropriate in literature. But Eliot
is different from Pound in this respect that having a profound knowledge of classical literature he can,
whenever he likes, borrow phrases from well-known poets and thus create an astonishing effect. Thus in
his poem one find colloquial words expressing precisely and exactly the meaning which he wants to
convey, along with archaic and foreign words used by ancient poets, philosophers and prophets, which
sound like voice far away beyond a mountain.
Eliot is acutely aware of the present and the baffling problems which face mankind in the modern
times. The poems of his early period as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917) express the
disillusion, irony and disgust at the contemplation of the modern world which is trivial, sordid and empty.
In his greatest poem, The Waste Land, the poet surveys the desolate scene of the world with a searching
gaze. He relentlessly uncovers its baffling contrasts and looks in vain for a meaning where there is only
A heap of broken images, where the sun heats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
The same attitude is expressed in the Hollow Men (1925):
We are the hollow men,
We are stuffed men,
Leaning together,
He Headpiece filled with straw.
But it is not merely the present with which Eliot is preoccupied. He is a mystic who has a profound
sense of the past and he looks into the future. His aim is to look beyond the instant, pressing moment, and
think of himself as belonging to what was best in the past and may be prolonged into the future. For him
the spirit exists in one eternal Now, in which Past, Present and Future are blended. In order to experience
it one should surrender one’s ego and relax in a mood of humble receptivity. Only then one can absorb the
fleeting moment in such a way that the scheme of existence purged of all one’s personal prejudices,
narrowness and resentment is felt all around one’s self. It is in this mood that his later poems published
together in Four Quartets, consisting of Burnt Norton (1936), East Coker (1940), The Dry
Salvages (1941), and Little Gidding (1942) are written. In the last mentioned poem the poet lets his
thoughts go free amid the ruined chapel at Little Gidding from which all recollection of conflict and effort
has vanished, but where the intensity of spiritual prayer can still be left.
Burnt Norton begins with the significant lines
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
Thus T. S. Eliot who is a force in modern English literature, is a many-sided personality. He is a
classicist, innovator, critic, poet, social philosopher and mystic—all combined into one. He makes the
reader aware not merely of the problems of modern life but also of mankind as a whole. The soul of man
finds itself in horror and loneliness in the Waste Land unless it is redeemed by courage and faith. Though
a great and acute thinker, he has a spiritual approach to life, which is rare in the twentieth century
dominated by science and materialism. And he has expressed his ideas and feelings in a language which is
devoid of all superfluous ornamentation and is capable of conveying the bewildering and terrifying
aspects of modern life. Of all the living English poets he has done most to make his age conscious of
itself, and aware of the dangers inherent in modern civilisation.
9.  Poets after T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot dominated the English poetic scene till 1930; after that a new school of English poets
came to the forefront. It is headed by W. H. Auden, and the other leading poets of this group are Stephen
Spender and Cecil Day Lewis. They follow the example of Hopkins and make use of the technical
achievements of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. These poets are conscious of the bareness of modern
civilisation and strive to find a way out of the Waste Land. Their ideal is the creation of a society in which
the real and living contact between man and man may again become possible.
The most original and the most poetically exciting among the modern poets is W. H. Auden who
settled in America shortly before the Second World War. He also considers the Waste Land as symbolic of
modern civilisation, but whereas to T. S. Eliot it is a symbol of a state of spiritual dryness, to Auden it is a
symbol of the depressing physical and psychological condition in the English social life. He is greatly
distressed by the upper and lower classes. It is the sense of imminent crisis which pervades his early
poetry.
In his later poetry Auden has given up the psychological-economic diagnosis of the troubles of the
times, and developed a more sober, contemplative and religious approach to life. But he is also capable of
writing light verse full of puns and ironic overtone. But whatever he writes is full of symbols and images
derived not from mythology as in the case of Yeats and Eliot, but from the multifarious of everyday life.
Stephen Spender who began writing under the influence of Auden composed lyrics in which he
expressed sympathy for the working classes:
Oh young men, oh young comrades,
It is too late now to stay in those houses
Your fathers built where they built you to breed money on money.
But in his later poetry he has developed his own quiet, autobiographical style, which is unlike the
style of any modern poet.
What I expected was
Thunder, fighting.
Long struggle with men
And climbing,
After continual straining
I should grow strong;
Then the rocks would shake
And I should rest long.
What I had not foreseen
Was the gradual day
Weakening the will
Leaking the brightness away,
The lack of good to touch
The fading of body and soul
Like smoke before wind
Corrupt, unsubstantial.
Cecil Day Lewis also wrote his early poetry under the influence of Auden. But his later poetry has
become more and more reflective and reminiscent. Moreover, he has adopted the Victorian diction. On
account of his profound knowledge of technique he may be called the academic poet of the present age. In
his poems the imagery is primarily rural and his tone is elegiac. These characteristics associate him with
the Georgians.
Other important English poets of the present age are Louis Mac Niece, Edith Sitwell, Robert Graves,
Roy Campbell, Geoffrey Grigson, George Barker and Dylan Thomas. Though they do not form any
definite group, yet there is a tendency among them to Romanticism in English poetry which had become
metaphysical and classical under the influence of Hopkins, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and the Auden group
of poets. They do not give so much importance to ‘dry, hard’ images, and being visionary rather than
speculative, their presiding genius is Blake rather than Donne. Dylan Thomas who is the most popular of
the young poets finds unity of man with nature, of the generations with each other, of the divine with the
human, of life with death. Death does not mean destruction, but a guarantee of immortality, of perpetual
life in cosmic eternity:
And death shall have no dominion
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not,
And death shall have no dominion.
But in spite of this tendency towards Romanticism in the poetry of the present age in England, Eliot,
and his school of poetry which is akin to classicism, still hold the field. All modern poetry possesses
intellectual toughness and there is no attempt to return to the melodious diction of Tennyson and
Swinburne or to the imaginative flights of Shelley. Of course, the tension that we find in Eliot’s poetry has
ceased and the trend is towards Wordsworthian quietness.
Modern Drama

After the death of Shakespeare and his contemporaries drama in England suffered a decline for about
two centuries. Even Congreve in the seventeenth, and Sheridan and Goldsmith in the eighteenth, could not
restore drama to the position it held during the Elizabethan Age. It was revived, however, in the last
decade of the nineteenth century, and then there appeared dramatists who have now given it a respectable
place in English literature.
Two important factors were responsible for the revival of drama in 1890’s. One was the influence of
Ibsen, the great Norwegian dramatist, under which the English dramatists like Bernard Shaw claimed the
right to discuss serious social and moral problems in a calm, sensible way. The second was the cynical
atmosphere prevailing at that time, which allowed men like Oscar Wilde to treat the moral assumptions of
the great Victorian age with frivolity and make polite fun of their conventionality, prudishness or
smugness. The first factor gave rise to the Comedy of Ideas or Purpose, while the second revived the
Comedy of Manners or the Artificial Comedy.
Under the influence of Ibsen the serious drama in England from 1890 onward ceased to deal with
themes remote in time and place. He had taught men that the real drama must deal with human emotions,
with things which are near and dear to ordinary men and women. The new dramatists thus gave up the
melodramatic romanticism and pseudo-classical remoteness of their predecessors, and began to treat in
their plays the actual English life, first of the aristocratic class, then of the middle class and finally of the
labouring class. This treatment of actual life made the drama more and more a drama of ideas, which were
for the most part, revolutionary, directed against past literary models, current social conventions and the
prevailing morality of Victorian England. The new dramatists dealt mainly with the problems of sex, of
labour and of youth, fighting against romantic love, capitalism and parental authority which were the
characteristic features of Victorianism. The characters in their plays are constantly questioning, restless
and dissatisfied. Youngmen struggle to throw off the trammels of Victorian prejudice. Following the
example of Nora, the heroine in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, who leaves her dull domineering husband who
seeks to crush her personality and keep her permanently in a childlike, irresponsible state, the young
women in these plays join eagerly the Feminist movement and glory in a new-found liberty. Influenced by
the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the psychological investigations of Freud, the new dramatists no
longer held love or the relation between the sexes as something sacred or romantic as their forefathers did.
They looked upon it as a biological phenomenon directed by Nature, or the ‘life force’ as Bernard Shaw
calls it. Thus these dramatists introduced Nature and Life in drama, and loved to make them play their
great parts on the stage.
In the new drama of ideas, where a number of theories had to be propounded and explained, action
became slow and frequently interrupted. Moreover, inner conflict was substituted for outer conflict, with
the result that drama became quieter than the romantic drama of the previous years. The new researches in
the field of psychology helped the dramatist in the study of the ‘soul’, for the expression of which they
had to resort to symbols. By means of symbolism the dramatist could raise the dark and even sordid
themes to artistic levels. The emphasis on the inner conflict led some of the modern dramatists to make
their protagonists not men but unseen forces, thereby making wider and larger the sphere of drama.
In the field of non-serious comedy there was a revival, in the twentieth century, of the Comedy of
Manners. The modern period, to a great extent, is like the Augustan period, because of the return of the
witty, satirical comedy which reached its climax in the hands of Congreve in 1700. Though this new
comedy of manners is often purely fanciful and dependent for its effect upon pure wit, at times it becomes
cynical and bitter when dealing with social problems. Mainly it is satirical because with the advancement
of civilisation modern life has become artificial, and satire flourishes in a society which becomes
over-civilised and loses touch with elemental conditions and primitive impulses.
The two important dramatists who took a predominant part in the revival of drama in the last decade
of the nineteenth century were Geroge Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, both Irishmen. Shaw was the
greatest practitioner of the Comedy of Idea, while Wilde that of the new Comedy of Manners.  Shaw, who
was a great thinker, represented the Puritan side of the Anglo-Irish tradition. Wilde, on the other hand,
lived a life of luxury and frivolity, was not a deep thinker as Shaw was; and his attitude to life was
essentially a playful one.
The success of Oscar Wilde as a writer of artificial comedy or the comedy of manners was mainly
due to his being a social entertainer, and it is mainly as ‘entertainments’ that his plays have survived.
Wilde may be considered, therefore, as the father of the comedy of pure entertainment as Shaw is the
father of the Comedy of Ideas. Other modern writers who have followed Wilde directly are Somerset
Maugham and Noel Coward. But the artificial comedy of the last fifty years in England does not compare
well with the artificial comedy of the Restoration. The reason is that in the twentieth century there is a lot
of confusion and scepticism about social values, and for the production of a really successful artificial
comedy the recognition and establishment of some high and genuine code of behaviour, which most
people find it too hard to live up to, is essential. Moreover, social manners change so rapidly in the
modern time, that the comedy of manners grows out of date more rapidly than any other type of drama.
The same is the case with the modes of speech and attitudes to life which also undergo change in a decade.
The result is that the appeal of such plays is not lasting, and many of them are no longer appreciated now
though in their own day they were immensely successful and powerful.
This is not the case with the comedy of ideas or social comedy. George Bernard Shaw, the father of
the comedy of ideas, was a genius. His intellectual equipment was far greater than that of any of his
contemporaries. He alone had understood the greatness of Ibsen, and he decided that like Ibsen’s his plays
would also be the vehicles of ideas. But unlike Ibsen’s grim and serious temperament, Shaw’s was
characterised by jest and verbal wit. He also had a genuine artistic gift for form, and he could not tolerate
any clumsiness in construction. For this purpose he had studied every detail of theatrical workmanship. In
each of his plays he presented a certain problem connected with modern life, and his characters discuss it
thoroughly. In order to make his ideas still more explicit he added prefaces to his plays, in which he
explored the theme more fully. The main burden of his plays is that the civilised man must either develop
or perish. If he goes on with his cruelty, corruption and ineffectuality, ‘The Life Force’ or God would wipe
him out of existence. Shaw laughed at and ridiculed even things which others respected or held sacred.
What saved him from persecution as a rebel was his innate sense of humour which helped him to give a
frivolous cover to whatever he said or wrote. Other modern dramatists who following the example of
Bernard Shaw wrote comedies of ideas were Granville Barker, Galsworthy, James Birdie, Priestley, Sir
James Barrie and John Masefield, but none of them attained the standard reached by Shaw.
Besides the artificial comedy and the comedy of ideas, another type of drama was developed
in England under the influence of the Irish Dramatic Movement whose originators were Lady Gregory and
W. B. Yeats. The two important dramatists belonging to this movement are J. M. Synge and Sean
O’Casey. There has been the revival of the Poetic Drama in the Twentieth century, whose most important
practitioner is T. S. Eliot. Other modern dramatists who have also written poetic plays are Christopher Fry,
Stephen Philips and Stephen Spender. Most of the poetic plays written in modern times have a religious
theme, and they attempt to preach the doctrines of Christianity.
Modern Dramatists

1.  George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)

The greatest among the modern dramatists was George Bernard Shaw. He was born and brought up
in Ireland, but at the age of twenty in 1876 he left Ireland for good, and went to London to make his
fortune. At first he tried his hand at the novel, but he did not get any encouragement. Then he began to
take part in debates of all sorts, and made his name as the greatest debator in England. He read Karl Marx,
became a Socialist, and in 1884 joined the Fabian Society which was responsible for creating the British
Labour Party.
He was also a voracious reader, and came under the influence of Samuel Butler whom he described as the
greatest writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Shaw was specially impressed by Butler’s
dissatisfaction with the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection. According to Butler, Darwin had banished
mind from the universe by banishing purpose from natural history. Shaw came to believe in the Force
which Butler had described as ‘the mysterious drive towards greater power over our circumstances and
deeper understanding of Nature.’ Shakespeare had described it as ‘divinity that shapes our ends’. Shaw
termed it the Life Force.

Two other writers who provoked the critical mind of Shaw during his formative period were Ibsen, a
Norwegian dramatist; and Friedrish Nietzche, a German philosopher. From Nietzche Shaw took his
admiration for the intellectually strong, the aristocrats of the human species, the supermen who know their
own minds, pursue their own purpose, win the battle of life and extract from it what is worth having. Ibsen
whose doctrine, ‘Be Thyself,’ which was very much like Nietzche’s theory of the Superman who says
‘Yea to Life’, gave a dramatic presentation of it by picturing in his plays the life of the middle class people
with relentless realism. In his plays Ibsen had exposed sentimentality, romanticism and hypocrisy. He
showed men and women in society as they really are, and evoked the tragedy that may be inherent in
ordinary, humdrum life.
Working under the influence of Butler, Nietzche and Ibsen, Shaw who up to the age of forty was
mainly concerned in learning, in propagating ideas, in debating, and persuading people to accept his views
about society and morals decided to bring the world round to his opinion through the medium of the
theatre. With that end in view he studied the stage through and through, and came out with his plays
which were theatrically perfect and bubbling with his irrepressible wit. The result was that he immediately
attracted attention and became the most popular and influential dramatist of his time.
Shaw wrote his plays with the deliberate purpose of propaganda. He himself said, “My reputation has
been gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals.” He prepared the minds
of the audience by written prefaces to his plays which are far more convincing than the plays themselves.
That is why plays were more successful when they were produced a second or third time when the
audience had read them in their published forms.
In most of his plays, Shaw himself is the chief character appearing in different disguises. Other
characters represent types which Shaw had studied thoroughly. The only exceptions are Candida, Saint
Joan and Captain Shotover in Heartbreak House. But mostly the characters in his plays are mere puppets
in his hands taking part in the conflict of ideas. In all his plays he is a propagandist or prophet. He
criticises mental servitude, moral slavery, superstition, sentimentalism, selfishness and all rotten and
irrational ideas. As his plays are concerned with ideas, and he is a staunch enemy of sentimentalism, he
passes by the subtler, finer elements in the individual, and fails to arouse emotions. But in spite of his
being the severest critic of contemporary society, his inherent sense of humour, joviality and generous
temperament produced no bitterness. His frankness and sincerity compelled the people to listen to him
even when he provoked, exasperated and shocked many of them.
All the plays of Shaw deal with some problem concerning modern society. In Mrs. Warren’s
Profession Shaw showed that for the evils of prostitution the society, and not the procuress, was the
blame. In Widower’s House he again put the blame on society, and not on the individual landlord for
creating abuses of the right to property. In Man and Superman Shaw dealt with his favourtie theme that it
is the Life Force which compels woman to hunt out man, capture and marry him for the continuation of
the race. In Getting Married he showed the unnaturalness of the home-life as at present constituted. In The
Doctor’s Dilemma he exposed the superstition that doctors are infalliable. In John Bull’s other Island, the
hero talks exactly like Shaw, and the Englishman represents the worst traits in English character. Caesar
and Cleopatra has no particular theme, and that is why it comes nearer to being a play than most of
Shaw’s works. In The Apple Cart Shaw ridiculed the working of democratic form of government and
hinted that it needed a superman to set things right. In Back to Methuselah he goes to the very beginning
of things and forward as far as thought can reach in order to show the nature of the Life Force and its
effect on the destiny of Man. It was in St. Joan that Shaw reached the highest level of his dramatic art by
dealing in a tragic manner a universal theme involving grand emotions.
2.  Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
Another dramatist who took an important part in the revival of drama in the later part of the
nineteenth century was Oscar Wilde. It was only during the last five years of his life that he turned his
attention to writing for the stage. During his lifetime his plays became very popular, and they were
thought to represent a high mark in English drama. But their important was exaggerated, because they are
merely the work of a skilled craftsman. It was mainly on account of their style—epigramtic, graceful,
polished and full of wit—that they appealed to the audience. Oscar Wilde had the tact of discovering the
passing mood of the time and expressing it gracefully. Otherwise, his plays are all superficial, and none of
them adds to our knowledge or understanding of life. The situations he presents in his plays are
hackneyed, and borrowed from French plays of intrigue.
Lady Windermer’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and
The Importance of Being Earnest are the four important comedies o Wilde. The first three plays are built
on the model of the conventional social melodramas of the time. They are given sparkle and literary
interest by the flashing wit of the dialogue. The Importance of Being Earnest, on the other hand, is built
on the model of the popular farce of the time. Wilde calls this a trival comdedy for serious people. It is
successful because of its detachment from all meaning ad models. In fact this play proved to Wilde that
the graceful foolery of farce was the from which was best suited to the expression of his dramatic genius.
The playfulness of the farce helped Wilde to comment admirably on frivolous society. Encouraged by the
success of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde would have written more such plays and perfected this
form of artificial comedy, but for the premature closing of his literary career by his imprisonment in 1895.
3.  John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Galsworthy was a great dramatist of modern times, who besides being a novelist of the first rank,
made his mark also in the field of drama. He believed in the naturalistic technique both in the novel and
drama. According to him, “Naturalistic art is like a steady lamp, held up from time to time, in whose light
things will be seen for a space clearly in due proportion, freed from the mists of prejudice and
partisanship.” Galsworthy desired to reproduce, both upon the stage and in his books, the natural spectacle
of life, presented with detachment. Of course his delicate sympathies for the poor and unprivileged classes
make his heart melt for them, and he takes sides with them.
The important plays of Galsworthy are Strife (1909), Justice (1910). The Skin Game (1920), and The
Silver Box. All these plays deal with social and ethical problems. Strife deals with the problem of strikes,
which are not only futile but do immense harm to both the parties. The Skin Game presents the conflict
between the old-established landed aristocracy and the ambitious noisy, new rich manufacturing
class. Justice is a severe criticism of the prison administration of that period. The Silver Box deals with the
old proverb that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.
Though the plays of Galsworthy are important on account of the ideas which they convey, they are no
less remarkable for their technical efficiency. He effects in all of them a strict economy of style and
characterisation and they are denuded of all superfluity. But sometimes he carries simplicity of aim and
singleness of purpose too far and the result is that his plays lack human warmth and richness which are
essential elements in literature.
4.  Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946)
Granville-Barker belonged to that group of dramatists like Galsworthy who dealt with Domestic
Tragedy and Problem Plays. Though he wrote a number of plays of different sorts in collaboration with
other playwrights, he occupies his place in modern drama mainly as a writer of four “realistic’ plays—The
Marrying of Anne Leete (1899), The Voysey Inheritance (1905), Waste (1907) and The Madras
House (1910). Each of these plays deals with a dominant problem of social life.
The Marrying of Anne deals with the Life Force, and attacks the convention and hypocrisy
surrounding the social culture of the time The Voysey Inheritance deals, like Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s
Profession, with the problem of prostitution. In Waste, Granville-Barker again deals with the problem of
sex. It is the tragedy of a woman with no motherly instinct. The hero, Trebell, who suffers on account of
his wife’s misdoings, possesses tragic majesty of Shakespeare’s heroes. The Madras House deals with
social forces which play havoc in the lives of individuals who try to oppose them.
The importance of Granville-Barker in the twentieth century drama lies in his fine delineation of
character and realistic style. His plays seem to be excerpt of real life to a greater extent than even those of
Galsworthy. The dialogue is very natural and near to ordinary conversation. The life presented in these
plays is the narrow and petty life lived by the upper-middle class in England in his days.
5.  John Masefield (1878-1967)
Another dramatist belonging to the same school as Galsworthy and Granville-Barker is Masefield.
He passionate enthusiasm and cold logic, fantasy and realism. Though he clings to the natural world and
is a confirmed realist, he is wrapped in the spirit of mysticism. All these conflicting qualities are seen in
his greatest play—The Tragedy of Nan, which is the best modern example of the form of domestic
tragedy. The social forces do not play any significant part in it. The sufferings of Nan who becomes a
veritable outcast on account of her father having been hanged for stealing a sheep, and her connection with
the half-mad old Gaffer, have been raised to tragic heights by the playwright’s imaginative passion which
is given an appropriate poetic expression. But in spite of the supernatural and imaginative cast of the play,
the story is one of unflinching realism.
Other plays of Masefield are the The Daffodil Fields, Reynard the Fox, Melloney Holtspur, Esther
and Berenice, The Campden Wonder and Mrs. Harrison. In Melloney Holtspur Masefield has introduced
spirit forces, but not quite successfully. The Campden Wonder and Mrs. Harrison, are also domestic
tragedies, but they do not come to the high standard of The Tragedy of Nan, which is undoubtedly
Masefield’s masterpiece.
6.  J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)
J. M. Barrie did not belong to any school of dramatists. The best of his work is marked by
imaginative fantasy, humour and tender pathos. His most characteristic and original play is The Admirable
Crichton (1902), a drawing-room comedy in which the family butler is the hero. As Barrie did not find
himself at peace with himself and the society, he was fond of capturing and treasuring a child’s dream of
what life ought to be. This is exactly what we find in this play. From day-to-day life of London we are
wafted to a world of romance, of innocence, which is a so refreshing after the sordid picture of real life.
Three other plays Peter Pan, The Golden Bird and The Golden Age have the children story-book
characters in them, who are brought to life by the writer’s skill.
Barrie also wrote A Kiss for Cinderella, a fantasy; Dear Brutus which tries to prove that character is
destiny. In all these plays Barrie shows himself as a pastmaster in prolonging our sense of expectancy till
the end of the last act. Moreover, no one since the Elizabethan era, has so effectively suggested the close
proximity of the fairyland with the visible world.
Barrie’s last and most ambitious drama was The Boy David (1936) in which he has given a fine
picture of the candid soul of boyhood. As the play deals with a story from the Bible, which is
well-known, Barrie could not here effectively make use of the element of surprise, which is his strongest
point in other plays.
On the whole, Barrie is a skilled technician. The episodes in his plays grow out of each other with
refreshing unexpectedness, giving rise to crisp dialogue and contrast of character. He discovered that in an
age of affectations and pretensions, the theatre-goers needed the sincerity and innocence of childhood, and
he earned his popularity by giving them what they needed.
7.         The Irish Dramatic Revival
One of the important dramatic movement of modern times was the Irish Dramatic Revival. This was
a reaction against the new realistic drama of Shaw and Wilde. The protagonists of this new
movement—Lady Gregory, W. B. Yeats, and J. M. Synge, were all Irish dramatists who wanted to
introduce flavour richness and poetry into drama. Being dissatisfied with the intellectual drama where
everything proceeded logically, they thought that especially in Ireland where the people were highly
imaginative and the language was rich and living, it was possible to produce plays rich and copious in
words and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and
natural form. According to them, such plays dealing with the profound and common interests of life and
full of poetic speeches would be different from the intellectual plays of Ibsen and Shaw, which dealt with
the realities of life, only of the urban population, in a dry and joyless manner. They tried to exploit in their
plays the richness of peasant culture of Ireland and appeal to the popular imagination of their countrymen
as against the intellectual plays of Shaw and others, which, they thought, had failed on account of their
being too rational and dealing with urban complexities.
The leader of the new movement was William Butler Yeats. He was born in Dublin, and in his youth
he became interested in the Gaelic League which had been formed to revive popular interest in the old
fairy stories and folk-lore of the Irish people. Under the inspiration of the Gaelic movement, Yeats was
convinced that through a wide dissemination of these Celtic myths, not alone Ireland but the whole world
might be stimulated. As at that time drama was the most popular literary medium for moving a large
number of audience, Yeats, who was primarily a lyrical poet, turned to drama. But as commercial theatre
with its elaborately decorated stage and other technical devices was unsuited to his simple, poetical and
symbolical plays, he, with the help of Lady Gregory, established the Irish Literary Theatre. This theatre
gave performances of Yeats plays, and in course of time it became so important that out of it grew the Irish
National Theatre Society, which constructed the famous Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Here the play was the
main thing, and the stage setting comparatively unimportant.
Though Yeats wrote about thirty plays, the most important and widely known ones are The Countess
Cathleen (1892) and The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894). But the popularity of these plays depended more
upon poetic charm and strangeness than upon dramatic power. Yeats’ plays are defective in their organic
constructions, and they do not maintain the proper balance between poetry, action and characterisation.
The poetic element obtrudes too much and prevents the creation of the illusion of possible people
behaving credibly and using an appropriate speech medium. As the characters have to speak long passages
in verse, they look artificial, arrogating to themselves an exaggerated importance. The fact is that Yeats
was essentially as romantic lyric poet and, therefore he did not handle the dramatic form with ease.
Lady Gregory (1852-1932) made several experiments in her dramatic work. Like Yeats she drew
much of her material from the folk-lore of her country, and also wrote Irish historical plays. Her best
known pieces are the Seven Short Plays (1909). The characters in her plays, who are mostly peasants, are
more human than in the plays of Yeats or Synge, and the audience get a thrill of joy on account of the
sweet savour of the dialogue.
John Millington Synge (1871-1909), who graduated from Dublin, spent a number of years among the
peasants of Ireland. With them he lived like a peasant, using their language, learning their tales, and
observing closely their customs and characters, until he started writing his plays which, in the opinion of
some critics, are second only to Shakespeare’s.
Synge exercises strictest economy in his plays, and he rarely admits a superfluous word. The result is
that sometimes his humour becomes too grim and his tragedy bitterly painful. He has not got the generous
superfluity of Shakespeare which gives us an impression of the superabundance of life. His Riders to the
Sea (1909), which is one of the greatest tragedies written in the twentieth century, is considered by some
critics as too harrowing and ruthless. His comedy, The Shadow of the Glen, aroused much protest because
in it the heroine, an Irish woman, is shown as proving unfaithful to her husband. The people of Ireland
could not tolerate this as they thought that Irish women were more virtuous than English women.
Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, in which he gave an impression that Irishmen were capable of
glorifying as murderers, provoked riots. But it proved to be very popular because it gives an impressive
representation of Irish peasant phrases which the author had heard on the roads, or among beggar women
and ballad-singers around Dublin.
Yeats, Synge, and Lady Gregory were the leading figures of the older generation of dramatists in the
modern Irish theatre. In the younger generation the most prominent dramatist is Sean O’Casey. It was his
play Juno and the Paycock (1925) which placed him, along with Synge, at the head of the Abbey Theatre
dramatists. Mostly he draws material for his plays, in which there is a mixture of tragedy and comedy,
from the grim slum-dwellings and the recent history of Ireland. The reason why he mixes tragedy and
comedy in plays as in The Plough and the Stars, is that they are symbolic of the condition of Ireland,
where virtue and vice, heroism and cowardice, beauty and foulness, poetry and profanity, were
inextricably mingled. These plays are written in the language of the slums, but it is full of beauty. The
only faults of O’Casey are those of indisciplined power and exhuberance. He is at his best in the portrayal
of women. His later plays The Silver Tassie (1928) and Within the Gates (1933) are full of satire on
modern society, especially its injustice to the under-privileged.
8.  Poetic Drama
In the twentieth century there has been a revival of the poetic drama, and some of the great poets as
Yeats and Eliot have written poetic plays. This was a reaction against the prose plays of Shaw and others,
which showed a certain loss of emotional touch with the moral issues of the age. Yeats did not like the
harsh criticism of the liberal ideas of the nineteenth century at the hands of revolutionary dramatists like
Shaw. He felt that in the past people had a higher tradition of civilisation than in our own time. The drama
of ideas was thus failing to grasp the realities of the age. On the other hand, the drama of entertainment, or
the artificial comedy, was becoming dry and uninteresting. Thus the tradition of realistic drama needed an
injection of fresh blood.
It was under these circumstances that some modern writers who had made reputation as poets made
the attempt in the 1930’s and 1940’s to revive the tradition of the poetic drama which had been dead since
the Restorations. This revival of the poetic drama took various forms, and it is significant that the new
attempts at poetic drama had a much closer connection with the deeper religious beliefs or social attitudes
of their authors than had most of the prose drama of the time.
T. S. Eliot commenced his career as a practical dramatist by writing a pageant play called, The
Rock, to encourage the collection of funds for the building of new London churches. His second
play, Murder in the Cathedral, however, is a proper play. It was written to be performed in Canterbury
Cathedral at the yearly Canterbury Festival, commemorating the death of St. Thomas
Backet, Canterbury’s famous martyr, who had been murdered in the very Cathedral where Eliot’s play
was first performed. Obviously the impulse behind this play was also religious rather than a properly
theatrical one, as in the case of The Rock. But Murder in the Cathedral is closer to being a drama than The
Rock is. Here T. S. Eliot has made a very effective use of the chorus which is made up of the women
of Canterbury, who are presented very realistically. St. Thomas, though a dignified and impressive
character, is more of a symbol than a person. Other characters in the play are also personifications of
various simple, abstract attitudes. The most important ‘action’ in the play is St. Thomas’ triumphing over
various temptations, which takes place in his mind. Thus Murder in the Cathedral is strictly ‘interior’, and
the outward value of the play is rather that of a spectacle and a commemorative ritual.
Whereas The Rock and Murder in the Cathedral belong to the special religious occasions rather than
to the wider world of the theatre, and one has to approach them in a religious frame of mind, T. S. Eliot’s
next play, The Family Reunion, is not a religious play. Its primary aim is not edification or
commemoration. It deals with the return of a young nobleman, Harry, Lord Monchensey to his ancestral
home, where his widowed mother, Amy, wants him to settle as the head of the aristocratic country-house.
But Harry feels restless as he is obsessed with the ideas of having killed his wife, and on account of that
he is pestered by Furies. This is nothing but hallucination produced from the inherited, unconscious
memory of his father’s desire to kill his mother, because he (the father) was in love with his wife’s
(Amy’s) sister Agatha. This fact is revealed to Harry by his aunt Agatha. Herry believes that the Furies are
not instruments of blind revenge, but rather of purification, and so he decides to leave his ancestral home,
and sets out again on his travels. His mother is so much shocked by Harry’s decision that she dies.
The Family Reunion does not contain so many memorable and eloquent passages as Murder in the
Cathedral, because here T. S. Eliot tried to catch the tones, idioms, and rhythms of contemporary speech.
But on account of this The Family Reunion conveys the illusion of reality. There are also more minor
characters in this play than in the previous plays. Moreover, T. S. Eliot has deliberately written it in a plain
manner in order to convince his audience of the reality of what they are listening to.
T. S. Eliot’s latest play, The Cocktail Party, deals with a more profound and serious theme, that of the
various kind of self-deceptions in which even cultivated and pleasant and well-meaning people tend to
indulge. The play begins with a cocktail party which has been arranged by the wife, and the husband does
not know all the guests. The disappearance of the wife adds to the embarrassment of the husband. When
the party is over, one of the guests, who is psychiatrist, stays behind. He knows the secret. The husband
does not love his wife, and has a mistress. The wife, on the other hand, has been having her own love
affair with a youngman, who is secretly in love with her husband’s mistress. The psychiatrist solves the
tangle by advising the husband and wife that they should not expect too much from each other. Instead of
yearning for a romantic drama, they should honestly realise their limitations, and accept a moral basis for
successful marriage. So they are reconciled to each other. The husband’s mistress becomes a missionary
and after a short time becomes a martyr in a primitive country. The yongman who has been in love with
her as well as with the wife joins film industry in Hollywood.
In The Cocktail Party, T. S. Eliot has dealt with a typical problem of ordinary behaviour in modern
time. Moreover, he has managed to write a play which at once keeps us continually amused and expectant.
Of course, it does not have the poetic richness of Murder in The Cathedral, though it does have a few
eloquent passages. On the whole, The Cocktail Party is the most successful of T. S. Eliot’s plays from the
theatrical point of view.
Another great modern poet who has written poetic plays is Stephen Spender. His most important play
is The Trail of a Judge. The judge, the hero of the play, tries to administer justice impartially between the
Fascists and Communists. But the Fascists who are in power, charge him with Communistic leanings, and
he is disgraced, imprisoned and killed. The judge who stands for abstract justice is a dignified figure. He
embodies in himself permanent human values. The rhetorical tendency of Spender’s poetry helps him in
conveying the emotional tone of the character speaking under stress of strong feeling. On account of these
reason The Trial of a Judge is one of the most effective pieces of poetic drama in the modern age.
W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood have also written verse and prose plays—Auden
contributing the verse chorus and Isherwood crisp and neat prose dialogue. One of their important plays
is The Dog Beneath the Skin—a gay, satirical farce. On the other hand, The Ascent of F6 and Across the
Frontier are serious plays dealing with modern problems through symbolism.
Besides these, another poet who has written poetic plays is Christopher Fry. He has mainly written
verse comedies, e.g., A Phoenix too Frequent, The Lady’s Not for Burning and Venus Observed. In his
plays there is a fantastic wealth of language which reminds us of young Shakespeare of Love’s Labour’s
Lost. But he does not have a coherent conception of his play as a whole, and therefore his plays often
betray an air of wonderfully clever improvisations.
9.  Historical and Imaginative Plays.
The latest movement in drama in England is the rapid development of the historical play. The
exploitation of historical themes is the result of a deliberate endeavour to escape from the trammels of
naturalism and to bring back something of the poetic expression to the theatre. The close association
between the poetic school and historical school is well exemplified by John Drinkwater and Clifford Bax.
Drinkwater’s Abraham Lincoln (1918) was such a great success that it made the author internationally
famous. He wrote several other historical plays, as Mary Stuart (1921) Oliver Cromwell (1922)
and Robert E. Lee (1923). In all these plays Drinkwater has built the action round a particular
theme. Lincoln pursues war against the Southern States resolutely but not vindictively. His aim is not the
crushing of the enemy, but the raising of a new understanding born out of the turmoil of the conflict.
In Oliver Cromwell and Robert E. Lee the author gives greater importance to the political and social
problems than to the presentation of history. In Mary Stuart, he gives us a subtle study of a woman who
cannot find any one man great enough to satisfy her soul’s love.
Clifford Bax has written several poetic plays, of which the important ones are Socrates (1930), The
Venetian (1932). The Immortal Lady (1931), and The Rose Without the Thorn (1932). They are all lyrical
and philosophical plays, and the characters in them are developed within a pattern, based on historic facts,
but shaped by his imagination.
Besides Drinkwater and Bax, other dramatists who have written historical and imaginative plays, are
Ashley Dukes and Rudolf Besier. The most popular plays of Ashley Duke are The Man with a Load of
Mischief (1924), The Fountain Head (1928) and Tyle Ulenspiegel (1930), Rudolf Besier’s The Barretts of
Wimpole Street in which he deals with the courtship of Browning and Miss Elizabeth Barrett (Mrs.
Browning), their elopement and marriage, is the most successful of all the historical plays produced in the
twentieth century.
The modern drama in England is in a transitional stage, and it is difficult to understood where it
stands. The naturalistic method of Shaw still makes an appeal; there are dramatists like Somerset
Maugham who have written very successful comedies of manners; and at the same time the new
experiments in non-realistic and imaginative drama also excite the audience. In fact all these tendencies
are found in modern drama, and no one in particular holds the predominant place at present.
The Modern Novel

This is the most important and popular literary medium in the modern times. It is the only literary
form which can compete for popularity with the film and the radio, and it is in this form that a great deal
of distinguished work is being produced. The publication of a new novel by a great novelist is received
now with the same enthusiastic response as a new comedy by Dryden or Congreve was received in the
Restoration period, and a new volume of poems by Tennyson during the Victorian period. Poetry which
had for many centuries held the supreme place in the realm of literature, has lost that position. Its appeal
to the general public is now negligible, and it has been obviously superseded by fiction.
The main reason for this change is that the novel is the only literary form which meets the needs of
the modern world. The great merit of poetry is that it has the capacity to convey more than one meaning at
a time. It provides compression of meaning through metaphorical expression. It manages to distil into a
brief expression a whole range of meanings, appealing to both intellect and emotion. But this compression
of metaphor is dependent upon a certain compression in the society. In other words, the metaphor used in
poetry must be based on certain assumptions or public truths held in common by both the poet and the
audience. For example the word ‘home’ stood for a settled peaceful life with wife and children, during the
Victorian home. So if this word was used as a metaphor in poetry its meaning to the poet as well to the
audience was the same. But in the twentieth century when on account of so many divorces and domestic
disturbances, home has lost its sanctity, in English society, the word ‘home’ cannot be used by the poet in
that sense because it will convey to different readers different meanings according to their individual
experiences.
For poetry to be popular with the public there must exist a basis in the individuals of some common
pattern of psychological reaction which has been set up by a consistency in the childhood environment.
The metaphors or ‘ambiguities’ which lend subtlety to poetic expression, are dependent on a basis of
common stimulus and response which are definite and consistent. This is possible only in a society which
in spite of its eternal disorder on the surface, is dynamically functioning on the basis of certain
fundamentally accepted value.
The modern period in England is obviously not such a period when society is functioning on the
basis of certain fundamental values. This is the age of disintegration and interrogations. Old values have
been discarded and they have not been replaced by new values. What Arnold said of the Victorian period
applies more truly to the modern period—‘Caught between two worlds, one dying, the other seeking to be
born’. It is the conflict between the two that the common basis of poetry has disappeared. In England of
today the society is no longer homogenous; it is divided in different groups who speak different
languages. Meanings that are taken for granted in one group are not understood in another. The western
man is swayed by conflicting intentions, and is therefore erratic and inconsistent in his behaviour. It is
difficult for him to choose between communism and capitalism, between belief in God and scepticism,
confidence in science and fear of the atomic bomb, because every belief is riddled with doubts. In no
department of life do we find postulates which can be accepted at their face values. In the absence of any
common values compression of meaning is impossible. The poets of today find themselves isolated from
society, and so they write in a language which cannot be understood by all. Sometimes the isolation of the
poet is so extreme that his writing cannot be understood by anyone but himself. That is why poetry has
lost its popularity in the modern time. But the very reasons which make the writing of poetry difficult
have offered opportunity to fiction to flourish. In prose the ambiguity can be clarified. Those things which
are no longer assumed can be easily explained in a novel.
But it is not merely on account of the loss of common pattern of psychological response, and the
absence of common basis of values, that the novel has come into ascendancy. Science, which is playing a
predominant role today, and which insists on the analytical approach, has also helped the novel to gain
more popularity, because the method of the novel is also analytical as opposed to the synthetical. The
modern man also under the influence of science, is not particularly interested in metaphorical expression
which is characteristic of poetry. He prefers the novel form because here the things are properly explained
and clarified. Moreover the development of psychology in the twentieth century has made men so curious
about the motivation of their conduct, that they feel intellectually fascinated when a writer exposes the
inner working of the mind of a character. This is possible only in the novel form.
After discussing the various reasons which have made the novel the most popular literary form today,
let us consider the main characteristics of the modern novel. In the first place, we can say that it
is realistic as opposed to idealistic. The ‘realistic’ writer is one who thinks that truth to observed
facts—facts about the outer world, or facts about his own feelings—is the great thing, while the
‘idealistic’ writer wants rather to create a pleasant and edifying picture. The modern novelist is ‘realistic’
in this sense and not in the sense of an elaborate documentation of fact, dealing often with the rather more
sordid side of contemporary life, as we find in the novels of Zola. He is ‘realistic’ in the wider sense, and
tries to include within the limits of the novel almost everything—the mixed, average human nature—and
not merely one-sided view of it. Tolstoy’s War and Peace and George Eliot’s Middle March had proved
that the texture of the novel can be made as supple and various as life itself. The modern novelists have
continued this experiment still further, and are trying to make the novel more elegant and flexible. Under
the influence of Flaubert and Turgeniev, some modern novelists like Henry James have taken great interest
in refining the construction of the novel so that there will be nothing superfluous, no phrase, paragraph, or
sentence which will not contribute to the total effect. They have also tried to avoid all that militates
against plausibility, as Thackeray’s unwise technique of addressing in his own person, and confessing that
it is all a story. They have introduced into the novel subtle points of view, reserved and refined characters,
and intangible delicacies, of motive which had never been attempted before by any English novelist.
In the second place, the modern novel is psychological. The psychological problem concerns the
nature of consciousness and its relation to time. Modern psychology has made it very difficult for the
novelist to think of consciousness, as moving in a straight chronological line from one point to the next.
He tends rather to see it as altogether fluid, existing simultaneously at several different levels. To the
modern novelists and readers who look at consciousness in this way, the presentation of a story in a
straight chronological line becomes unsatisfactory and unreal. People are what they are because of what
they have been. We are memories, and to describe as truthfully at any given moment means to say
everything about our past. This method to describe this consciousness in operation is called the ‘stream of
consciousness’ method. The novelist claims complete omniscience and moves at once right inside the
characters’ minds. In this kind of a novel a character’s change in mood, marked externally by a sigh or a
flicker of an eyelid, or perhaps not perceived at all, may mean more than his outward acts, like his
decision to marry or the loss of a fortune. Moreover, in such a novel the main characters are not brought
through a series of testing circumstances in order to reveal their potentialities. Everything about the
character is always there, at some level of his consciousness, and it can be revealed by the author by
probing depthwise rather than proceeding lengthwise.
Since the ‘stream of consciousness’ novelists, like Virginia Woolf, believe that the individual’s
reaction to any given situation is determined by the sum of his past experience, it follows that everyone is
in some sense a prisoner of his own individuality. It therefore means that ‘reality’ itself is a matter of
personal impression rather than public systematisation, and thus real communication between individuals
is impossible. In such a world of loneliness, there is no scope for love, because each personality, being
determined by past history, is unique. This idea is further strengthened on account of disintegration of
modern society in which there is no common basis of values. That is why the modern novelist regards
love as a form of selfishness or at least as something much more complicated and problematical than
simple affection between two persons. D. H. Lawrence believes that true love begins with the lover’s
recognition of each others’ true separateness. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway rejected Peter Welsh, the
man she really loved, because of the fear that his possessive love would destroy her own personality.
It is in the technique of characterisation that the ‘stream of consciousness’ novelist is responsible for
an important development. Previously two different methods were adopted by the novelists in the
delineation of character. Either the personalities of characters in fiction emerge from a chronological
account of a group of events and the character’s reaction to it; or we are given a descriptive portrait of the
character first, so that we know what to expect, and the resulting actions and reactions of characters fill in
and elaborate that picture. The first method we see in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, where in the
beginning there is no hint of Michael’s real nature or personality. That emerges from the story itself. The
second method is seen in Trollope’s Barchester Towers, where in the early chapter we get general sketches
of the characters of Dr. Proudie and Mrs. Proudie, and in the later chapter we see the application to
particular events of the general principle already enunciated. Some time both these methods are adopted as
in the case of Emma Woodhouse by Jane Austen. Though the methods adopted in all these cases are
different, we find that consistent character-portrait emerges. The ‘stream of consciousness’ novelist, on the
other hand, is dissatisfied with these traditional methods. He has realised that it is impossible to give a
psychologically accurate account of what a man is at any given moment, either by static description of his
character, or by describing a group of chronologically arranged reactions to a series of circumstances. He
is interested in those aspects of consciousness which are essentially dynamic rather than static in nature
and are independent of the given moment. For him the present moment is sufficiently specious, because it
denotes the ever fluid passing of the ‘already’ into the ‘not yet’. It not merely gives him the reaction of the
person to a particular experience at the moment, but also his previous as well as future reactions. His
technique, therefore, is a means of escape from the tyranny of the time dimension. By it the author is able
to kill two birds with one stone; he can indicate the precise nature of the present experience of his
character, and give, incidentally, facts about the character’s life previous to this moment, and thus in a
limited time, one day for example, he gives us a complete picture of the character both historically and
psychologically.
This ‘stream of consciousness’ technique not only helps to reveal the character completely,
historically as well as psychologically, it also presents development in character, which is in itself very
difficult. Thus James Joyce in Ulysses is not only able, while confining his chronological framework to
the events of a single day, to relate so much more than merely the events of that single day, and to make
his hero a complete and rounded character, but by the time the book closes, he had made the reader see the
germ of the future in the present without looking beyond the present. Similarly Virginia Woolf in Mrs.
Dalloway by relating the story of one day in the life of a middle-aged woman, and following her ‘stream
of consciousness’ up and down in the past and the present, has not only given complete picture of Mrs.
Dalloway’s character, but also she has made the reader feel by the end of the book that he knows not only
what Mrs. Dalloway is, and has been, but what she might have been—he knows all the unfulfilled
possibilities in her character. Thus what the traditional method achieves by extension, the ‘stream of
consciousness’ method achieves by depth. It is a method by which a character can be presented outside
time and place. It first separates the presentation of consciousness from the chronological sequence of
events, and then investigates a given state of mind so completely, by pursuing to their end the remote
mental associations and suggestions, that there is no need to wait for time in order to make the potential
qualities in the character take the form of activity.
Besides being psychological and realistic, the novelist is also frank especially about sexual matters.
This was rather an inevitable result of the acceptance of the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. Some
time a striking sexual frankness is used by writers like D. H. Lawrence to evade social and moral
problems. An elaborate technique for catching the flavour of every moment helps to avoid coming into
grips with acute problems facing the society.
Moreover, on account of the disintegration of society, and an absence of a common basis of values,
the modern novelist cannot believe that his impressions hold good for others. The result is that whereas
the earlier English novel generally dealt with the theme of relation between gentility and morality, the
modern novel deals with the relation between loneliness and love. So whereas Fielding, Dickens,
Thackeray wrote for the general public, the modern novelist considers it as an enemy, and writes for a
small group of people who share his individual sensibilities and are opposed to the society at large. E. M.
Forster calls it the ‘little society’ as opposed to the ‘great society’. D. H. Lawrence was concerned with
how individuals could fully realise themselves as individuals as a preliminary to making true contact with
the ‘otherness of other individuals’. He deals with social problems as individual problems. Virginia
Woolf, who was particularly sensitive to the disintegration of the public background of belief, was
concerned with rendering experience in terms of private sensibility. Thus the novel in the hands of James
Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, Dorothy Richardson or Katherine Mansfield, borrowed some
of the technique of lyrical poetry on account of emphasis on personal experience. There are such fine
delicacies of description and narrative in modern novels, that they remind us of the works of great English
poets.
Modern Novelists

1.  The Ancestors

The immediate ancestors of the modern English novel, who dominated the earlier part of the
twentieth century, were Wells, Bennet, Conard, Kipling and Forster.
(i)  H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Among the writers of twentieth century Herbert George Wells was the greatest revolutionary, and like
Barnard Shaw, he exerted a tremendous influence on the minds of his contemporaries. Wells was the first
English novelist who had a predominantly scientific training, and who was profoundly antagonistic to the
classics. He insisted that classical humanism should be discarded in favour of science, and that Biology
and World History should take the place of Latin and Greek.

Moreover, he had no respect for accepted conventions which he criticised most ruthlessly. He was
untouched by sentiment and had no loyalty to the past, with the result that he rejected what was hitherto
considered sacred and part of the English cultural inheritance.

The novels of Wells fall into three divisions. First he wrote the scientific romances; next he tried his
hand on the domestic novel, with its emphasis on character and humour; and then when he had gained
sufficient fame as a writer, he wrote a series of sociological novels in which he showed his concern with
the fate of humanity as a whole.
As a writer of scientific romances, Wells stands unrivalled; they are masterpieces of imaginative
power. He looks at life on earth from a higher level by projecting himself to a distant standpoint, to the
moon, the future, the air, or another planet. In these romances Wells has shown an extraordinary ability to
took into the future, and many of his predictions have proved to be true. His first scientific romance
was The Time Machine (1895), in which the hero invents a ‘time machine’, which enables him to
accelerate the time consciousness and project himself into the future. Here is also described in a most
vivid manner the grim picture of the earth divided between a master race and their resentful serfs, the
Marlocks, belonging the sub-race. His next work, The War of the Worlds (1898), deals with the theme of
the invasion of the earth by the people living on the planet Mars. They spread destruction by the use of a
death-ray, but they are ultimately defeated on account of their lack of immunity from bacteria. In this way
the earth is saved. The other scientific romances written by Wells were The Island of Dr.
Moreau (1896), When the Sleeper Wakes (1899), The First Man in the Moon (1901) and The Food of the
Gods (1904). These were the most exciting scientific thrillers which ever appeared in English fiction, and
in them Wells anticipated various forms of warfare including the atom bomb.
From fantastic romances, Wells then turned to domestic fiction. He was thoroughly familiar with the
life in London suburbs, which he described with enthusiasm in Kipps (1905), a comedy of class instincts.
The hero Kipps, rises from the position of a draper’s assistant to a man of fortune. The high society
accepts him and trains him in its culture, but Kipps feels relived only when he loses his fortune, and
relapses to the lower class from where he rose. This novel is full of satire and humour typical of Wells.
In Tono Bungay (1909), Wells gives a most remarkable picture of the disintegration of English society in
the later nineteenth century and the advent of the new rich class. In Anna Veronica (1909) which is the
full-length study of a modern young woman. There is the first attempt in English fiction at a frank and
open treatment of sex relationship. In Love and Mrs. Lewisham (1910), and The History of Mr.
Polly (1910), Wells gives us realistic, humorous and sympathetic studies of the lower middle class life,
with which he was quite familiar.
By this time Wells had gained great reputation as a writer. He then started a series of novels dealing
with great social problems confronting the men of his time. This series includes The New
Machiavelli (1911), which is a study of political and sociological creeds in the guise of a biography; Mr.
Britling sees it Through (1916), a study of the reaction of the people to the First World War; The Undying
Fire (1919) which is a religious and satiric fantasy; Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928) and The
Autocracy of Mr. Parham (1930), an attack on capitalism.
Wells believed that human civilisation can survive only if people discipline their instincts by means
of reason. He also visualised a Words State to which nations must owe allegiance. He was looked upon by
the post-war world as teacher, prophet and guide. His greatest weakness was that being too much scientific
minded, he lacked spiritual wisdom. He was undoubtedly the most intellectual of the ancestors of the
modern novel.
(ii)       Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
Unlike Wells, Bennett was more concerned with the craft of fiction and was not disposed to preach in
his novels. That is why, during his time he was the most popular novelist. He looked at the world as a
spectacle and recorded in his novels his impressions with complete detachment. Following the example of
French novelists, Maupassant, Flaubert and Balzac, he aimed at recording life—its delights, indignities
and distresses—without conscious intrusion of his own personality between the record and the reader. He
was a copyist of life, and only indirectly did he play the role of a commentator, an interpreter, or an
apologist. On account of these qualities, Bennett may be called the ‘naturalistic’ novelist, though this term
can be applied to him only partially. The reason is that the purpose of a purely ‘naturalistic’ novelist is to
be as dispassionate and detached as a camera, but Bennet even while desisting from utilizing his novels as
an instrument of moral and social reforms was compelled to select certain things as relevant and
significant, and reject certain others as irrelevant and insignificant, in order to determine the nature of his
picture of life. Moreover, though intellectually he was ‘naturalistic’ temperamentally he was not so. No
doubt, he looked at life as a spectacle, but sometimes that spectacle became for him so wonderful thrilling
and awesome that he could no longer remain detached as a mere spectator.
The spectacle of life, which Bennett presents in his novels, is not drab or diseased. On the other hand
he interprets it romantically as ‘sweet, exquisite, blissful, melancholy. He never regrets that life has lost its
glamour and pines for the past glory of Greece and Rome. On the contrary, he finds sufficient grandeur in
the modern everyday life of the Five Towns, his native district, which he has made as famous in English
fiction as Hardy’s Wessex.
Bennett wrote three most popular novels—The Old Wives Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910)
and Riceyman Steps (1923) which place him high among English novelists. His other novels are Buried
Alive (1908), and The Card (1911), which are first-rate humorous character novels; and The Grand
Babylon Hotel (1902), which provides good entertainment. In all these novels, the characters spend most
of their time in the small area of the Five Towns—the Stafordshire pottery towns. The readers become
familiar not only with the principal streets and buildings and landmarks, but also with the men and women
who walked the streets. By an accumulation of carefully chosen details, Bennett gives a life-like quality to
his novels. Though ugliness and coarseness are also presented in that otherwise pleasant picture, they,
however make it more true to real life.
Though Bennett confines himself to a small area—The Five Towns, he sketches in these novels the
social and historical background with considerable skill. Moreover, he illumines his books with a sense of
beauty and universal sympathy which are indispensable to creative artist. Above all, he writes in a style
which is simply delightful. No doubt, Bennett won the hearts of his readers and became the most popular
novelist of his time.
(iii)     Henry James (1843-1916)
Henry James, one of the important of elder novelists, was an American naturalised in England. It
was, perhaps, because of his foreign origin, that Henry James was untouched by the pessimism of the age,
whereas almost all his contemporaries who tried to investigate the human mind showed unmistakable
signs of depression. Moreover, his characters have no background, and they move from country to
country. The emphasis is more on their mental and emotional reactions.
In his earlier novels such as The Europeans (1879), Henry James is chiefly concerned with the clash
between the American and European mind. In his next important novel, What Masie Knew (1897), he
gives us an exquisitely delightful picture of the young American girls brought up in the sentimental
Victorian surroundings, and introduced to a modern society entirely devoid of sentiment. His later novels
also deal with similar simple situations, pregnant with the most complex psychological effects. The
Golden Bowl (1905) for instance, deals with the interactions of five characters—the American millionaire
and his daughter, the Italian noble whom she marries, her penniless friend who has a love-affair with the
Italian, and an elderly friend of both girls. It is the psychological complications both before and after the
wedding, of the friends and the father, which provide the whole material of the story. Everything is
narrated in a quiet undertone, and it is the nobility and decency which all the characters preserve in their
behaviour, which gives a unity to the novel. The love for antique, beautiful things which the American
millionaire exhibits in his character, is the theme of Henry James, two other novels—The Spoils of
Poynton and The Sense of the Past.
The main contribution of Henry James to the technique of the novel is his use of narrative at second
hand. Through this method the story unfolds itself completely in the mental plane. The reader is permitted
only vague glimpses even of what the character thinks. Thus James transferred to the psychological novel
the methods of the detective novel. As a stylist, James aims at expressing the exact shade of emotion or
apprehension which he wishes to convey. The later psychological novelists like Virginia Woolf, James
Joyce, were greatly influenced by Henry James’ style as well as the indirect technique of narration.
(iv)      Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Chief among those who used the technique of Henry James was Conrad, a Pole, who wrote exquisite
English. He was gifted with great love for his fellow creatures, and through it he acquired an unusual
insight in all that was going on around him. Being a sailor he spent twenty years of strenuous life in the
ship or the port. All this experience revealed to him one central problem of human nature, that is, the
tension between our higher and lower selves. As his own sailor’s life provided him with the memory of
mistakes, humiliations and corrections under authority, he took a sort of morbid interest in people whose
souls are harassed and tormented by other. Moreover, as a sailor learns the histories of people at second
hand, in hotels, clubs etc. Conrad developed the plots of his novels through  a third person as if in
conversation, in which the voice and personality of the narrator becomes extremely suggestive quite apart
from the story he is telling.
Conrad was influenced by Henry James’ artistic rectitude and psychological subtlety. He learned the
attitude of detachment and an acute observation of environment from the French novelists, Flaubert and
Maupassant. From Turgenev and Dostoevsky, Conrad imbided a cosmopolitan outlook, and also a love for
portraying characters who are in conflict with themselves, who are frustrated by their own passions and
impulses, and who on account of having missed their life purpose become introverts and find their only
outlet in crime. But unlike these great novelists, Conrad had neither the experience nor the opportunity to
examine such characters as social types or psychological puzzles. His imagination thrived on glimpses
which suggested a mystery. For example, Lord Jim, hero of the novel of same name, seems to feel himself
always under a cloud.
The themes of Conrad’s novels transcend temporary and material interests. Unlike some of the
contemporary novelists he scorned to expose social abuses, or laugh at social prejudices. He lived on his
past, which on account of the lapse of years invoked in him nobler qualities, especially his capacity for
intellectual sympathy and single-heartedness. He was thus always true to himself and to the characters he
created.
The masterpieces of Conrad are The Nigger of the Narcissus (1898), Lord
Jim (1900), Typhoon (1902), Nostromo (1904). These series cover an immense range of human activity.
We have in them man’s conflict with the internal sea, his avarice for fabulous wealth in a mine, and the
tribal wars between savages. The characters in them are not refined or fashionable people; they become
slaves to their peculiar idiosyncrasies. They have tormented souls, and often border on tragedy. Conrad’s
greatest merit in these novels lies in his descriptive power by which he, like Milton, can make us see the
unseen as he can see it. The result is that the readers get an impression that the seenes are described by one
who knows how things happen in the modern world, and this gives a touch of realism to the stories.
Moreover, Conrad in all his novels exhibits the great ideals of impartiality, practical wisdom, sense of
fitness and freedom sentimentality, which earned for him the admiration of his English readers.
(v)       Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Kipling’s view of life and his range of subjects were rather similar to Conrad’s. Like Conrad, he very
much admired the strong, brave, silent man, but unlike Conrad’s his is the slightly wistful admiration of
the intellectual, who has wanted very much to be a man of action, and never succeeded in becoming one.
He was born in India and after being educated in England he returned to India at the age of seventeen and
became the editor of an Anglo-Indian paper. He derived the material for his early stories—Plain Tales
from the Hills, Under the Deodars. Soldiers Three from his experiences in India. Of his novels, the
important are The Light that Failed (1890), The Naulakha (1892), Captain Courageous (1897),
and Kim (1901). The Light that Failed is supposed to be the story of an artist who goes blind and loses his
love. The Naulakha deals with the life of a medical missionary in India, and its moral is that woman’s
place is in the home. Captain Courageous relates the story of a miserable dull boy who is swept
overboard a ship, and is then picked by a fishing schooner and restored to his parents. Kim is a long story
in which a well-defined central character travels through circumstances towards a goal.
 Though Kipling wrote about India in his tales and novels, yet he never got very deep into India. His
knowledge is very superficial and he looks at everything from the point of the view of British rulers. His
main importance as a writer lies in his rich vocabulary and technical excellence. Like Defoe, he borrowed
from all great writers, and his opening sentences are the most wonderful in literature.
(vi)      John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Besides being a dramatist, Galsworthy belonged to the front rank of the novelists of his time. He was
exactly the contemporary of Arnold Bennet, but unlike him Galsworthy belonged to the upper class, and
was most at his ease describing the life of the country gentry or people of inherited wealth living
in London. Moreover, unlike Bennet Galsworthy always wrote with a purpose and the reformer in him
sometimes got the better of the artist.
Galsworthy found in English society that majority of people clung to old established traditions, while
a small minority wanted change. In his novels he tried to hold the balance between opposed ideas or
between characters with opposite tendencies. In his preface to The Island Pharisees, Galsworthy contrasts
these opposite elements in society. His novels which are collectively called The Forsyte Saga, all deal
with the same theme. In the first novel of this group, The Man of Property (1906), he holds the balance
between the mechanical mind of Soames Forsyte and the impulsive Irene; in The Country House (1907),
which is the most attractive of all his novels, between the unimaginative Squire and his perceptive,
compassionate wife; in Fraternity (1909) and in The Patrician (1919) between the tolerant and the
advocates of ‘an eye for an eye’. In these early novels, Galsworthy stands on the ‘middle line’, but he
enlists the sympathy of the readers for the young in mind, the generous, the rash and the wilful, and on the
other hand, he exposes those who are tradition-ridden, and survivors of an old and outworn order.
But the First World War effected a change in the attitude of Galsworthy. He began to regard with
respect and even tenderness those elder men who having formed habits stuck to them rigidly. On the other
hand, he lost sympathy with the young, restless troublous spirits in whose life he found no aim. This
changed attitude is reflected in his later novels—In Chancery (1920), To Let (1921), The White
Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1930). In these novels it appears that Galsworthy the pioneer and
humanist has been replaced by Galsworthy the moralist and disciplinarian. He himself became a pillar of
the institutions he himself criticised in his earlier days. But in spite of this change in his attitude, he gets
the credit of awakening the Edwardian England from intellectual lethargy. Moreover, he was a true artist,
and a man of generous impulses, who believed that literature has also a social function to fulfil, that is, to
reform society.
(vii)     E. M. Forster (1879-1970)
Forster belonged to the group of elder novelists of the twentieth century and occupied an exceptional
place in the history of the modern novel. Unlike his contemporaries, Forster had never tried to impose on
his readers a new creed or astonish him by some technical novelty. Though he was the most popular of all
living novelists, yet his production had been small. His last novel—A Passage to India, was published in
1924, and after that he did not write any new novel except a few volumes of short stories.
Forster’s earliest novel Where Angles Feared to Tread appeared in 1905. It was followed by The
Longest Journey in 1907, and A Room with a View in (1908). By this time Forster’s reputation had been
firmly established. In 1910 appeared Howards End, a novel of great power and beauty, which attracted
great attention. His last great novel, A Passage to India, appeared in 1924.
Forster belonged to the tradition of cultural liberalism at its best. In his early years he admired the
liberal tradition of Western civilisation, which had given opportunities for leisure and personal relations.
But as time passed, he became more and more aware of the darker side of the picture, and his attitude
became gravely reflective. When after the First World War, Fascism and Communism came to the
forefront in many European countries, he saw that the way of life which he had favoured might be an oasis
rather than an enduring possibility. So he put his weight on the side of Parliamentary democracy, which
seemed to him to be the only hope in the modern world of stress and strain.
In all Forster’s novels there is a conflict between good and evil, between what is cruel, philistine and
unperceiving, and the good which is lively, entertaining and sensitive. He wants a harmonious
development of man in which there is combination of body and spirit, reason and emotion, work and play,
architecture and scenery, laughter and seriousness. He believes that the aim of the civilised life is to
enhance the quality of personal relation. This can be achieved not by pomp and power and aggressiveness
in the personality, but by gentle and quiescent qualities. Feeling that Europe was degenerating to
barbarism. Forster became attracted to the Eastern and especially Indian conception of personality, which
is free from aggressive possessiveness.
In all the novels of Forster we find an extraordinary lightness of touch, and a sensitive spirit, but he is
never weak or sentimental. Death comes suddenly and unexpectedly to the characters of Forster, because
his philosophy is that the contemplation of the idea of death is necessary to the good life. Death destroys a
man; the idea of Death saves him. Thus Forster, in spite of his great brilliance of incident and dialogue,
basically remains a moralist. But his morality is individual, and his philosophy has a mystical
background. He insists on the distinction between the civilised and the barbarous, between those ‘who
have a room with a view and those who have not.’
 Forster possessed gift of rhythmic prose, rarely possessed by a novelist and an ironic spirit which he
exercised with the skill of Meredith. As a story-teller he was very powerful. This became clear from his
first novel—Where Angels Fear to Tread. Here his theme is the contrast of two cultures—the English and
the Italian, with further complications dealing with the contrast of two Italian cultures—idealistic and
practical. In The Longest Journey (1907) contrast appears again. It is the novel of friendship, and of a
bitterly unhappy marriage, of falsehood and shams, and of the good life. In A Room with a View (1908)
Forster reached his full maturity. It was written in the form of a morality play, and deals with the theme of
contrast between those who understand themselves and those who are caught in self-deception.
In Howard’s End (1910) Forster reached his highest achievement as a novelist. It shows the contrast
between those who live in a civilised world and those who do not. This novel, which has a great variety in
incident and character, is made by Forster as symbol of his plea that it is the people gifted with insight and
understanding on whom civilisation really depends. His last great novel—A Passage to India (1924) is
not technically superior to Howard’s End, but here Forster has appealed to a very much larger audience,
and has given a genuine picture of Indians and of the English during the British rule. Here he emphasised
on personal relations, which had been his theme in all his previous novels. The atmosphere of the story is
highly fascinating, and here Forster had presented a fine study of those who seek the good life by
removing the barriers of civilisation, of race creed and caste.
In all his novels Forster had expressed and strongly affirmed his faith in the individual, and it is this
fundamental element in his philosophy which has given him a place of exceptional honour among the
modern English novelists.
2.  The Transitionalists
From the beginning of the First Word War new experiments were made in the field of literature on
account of the new forces which resulted from the war, and which broke the old tradition. In fiction James
Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Adlous Huxley and Somerset Maugham played the prominent part.
(i)  James Joyce (1822-1941)
James Joyce was a novelist of unique and extraordinary genius. He was born in Dublin, but he
left Ireland in 1904 to become a European cosmopolitan. Most of his life was spent in retirement in Paris.
He was a highly gifted man and was acutely responsive to observed details. By temperament he was an
artist and symbolist. He found around him an atmosphere of frustration, aimlessness and disintegration,
and thus in order to express himself as a novelist he had to create for himself a different medium. He leant
from the psychologists and biologists of his day that our speech occupies the dominant ‘association area’
in the brain. It is like a telegraph exchange which verbalise what we experience and hope or fear to
experience. Himself a born linguist, Joyce looked upon language as a sixth sense, that machinery through
which the human organism reveals its inner processes, an instinctive and therefore truthful comment on
experience. He, therefore, thought that to explore the unconscious record of our psychic and psychological
adjustments, would be a fascinating study if taken up by a novelist. As it was an unexplored field, and
offered a new world for the artist to conquer, Joyce who was in search of a new medium, took it up, and
did the pioneering work in the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique.
The important novels of Joyce are The Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man (1916), Exiles (1918) and Ulysses. Of these Ulysses is his masterpiece. In all these novels, Joyce
makes a study of the artist who frees himself from various shackles and ultimately comes to the realisation
of his own true personality. In Ulysses the artist is shown at one with humanity through insight into the
psychology of speech, our most intimate faculty, in which all men share and have shared. This book is
presented as an epic, the counterpart of Homer’s Odyssey. But whereas Homer dwells on the adventures,
and has very little to say about reactions of the adventurer, Joyce lays emphasis on the speeches of the
hero, because according to him, speech, not action, is the token of humanity. Our nature reveals itself
through our speech, and in order to demonstrate it fully twenty-four hourse are quite sufficient, and there
is no need of any change of scene.
Unlike great novels, Ulysses does not present truth to life. In that way it may be considered as a
failure, though a magnificent one, because Joyce here has introduced a new technique, which exercises
great intellectual appeal to the thoughtful readers. His is a pioneering work, because here he showed to the
novelists to explore a new field—‘the stream of consciousness’, which was so far hidden from their view.
Thus Ulysses holds an important place in the history of modern novel.
(ii)       Virgina Woolf (1882-1941)
Virginia Woolf, who was the most distinguished woman writer of her generation, made a far more
exciting use of the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique than James Joyce. She was greatly impressed
by Ulysses, in which Joyce had found an alternative to the well-made plot and external characterisation.
She found that this conception of the inner drama of the mind was fraught with tremendous possibilities,
and she decided to exploit it to the fullest extent. This method suited her admirably because having a
purely literary background, much of her experience had come from books rather than from actual life.
Moreover, like Joyce, she had a fine sense of language, and was gifted with a poetic temperament.
Working under the influence of Joyce, and of the French novelist, Proust, who conceived personality
as a continued process of decantation from state to state, Virginia Woolf ignored the outer personality
regarding it simply as the ‘semi-transparent envelope’, through which she could study the ‘reality’,
namely, the thoughts, feelings and impressions as they quickened into life. She herself pointed out, “It’s
life that matters, nothing but life, the process of discovering the everlasting and perpetual process.” She
depicts in her novels the stuff of life—the thought, feelings, impressions—steeped in the richest dyes of
her imagination and turned into images by her poetic sensibility.
In her first novel—The Voyage Out (1913), Virginia Woolf followed the traditional pattern of
story—telling. Here she relates the story of a young and inexperienced girl who comes to learn something
of life and the relations between the sexes, falls in love and dies of tropical fever before she can realise
herself. But the real interest in the novel centres on a vogue awareness that there is a meaning in life. Her
second novel, Night and Day (1919), offers an elaborate long drawn-out study of Katherine Hilberry, an
intelligent young woman of the middle class and her relation with her mother and four friends. But the
main interest lies not on the theme of love, but on the conversations and introspections in which the chief
characters are engaged and which gradually reveal their doubts and hesitations as they face the reality of
experience.
Her next novel, Jacob’s Room (1922), represents her first serious experiment in the stream of
consciousness’ technique. Here she makes an attempt to construct pictorially the personality of a young
Englishman from his infancy to the age of twenty-six, when he is killed in the war. Here the sunlit streams
of youth are overshadowed by time. Frustration and death, and fires of love are quenched by human
faithlessness. In this novel, Virginia Woolf’s quest for the meaning of human experience goes on but the
mystery is not yet solved. In Mrs. Dalloway (1925) she explores and recreates the personality of a
middle-aged woman, Mrs. Dalloway. Here she sets down the incidents of a day in her life accompanied by
visual, mental and emotional impressions. The day in her life is expressed in terms of a long interior
monologue, the smooth flowing of the stream of consciousness, which is interrupted by the striking hours
of the clock.
Virginia Woolf’s most successful novel in the new ‘stream of consciousness’ method is To the
Lighthouse (1927). Here the scene is set on an unnamed island, and the Lighthouse symbolize in some
queer way the ‘reality’ which is never experienced. Her next novel. Orlando, which is liveliest of all,
relates in a series of vivid scenes and dramatic climaxes the mental experiences of a poet while writing a
prize poem. In The Years (1937) Virginia Woolf returned to a much simpler form of fiction. It is the novel
of the generations in which the fortunes of a middle-class family from 1880 to the present time are rather
sketchily represented. Her last novel Between the Acts (1941), is filled with a sense of her personal failure
to wrest meaning from experiences, and the spectacle of the world at war deepens the despair.
(iii)     Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
As a novelist Aldous Huxley is concerned with the search for a workable faith in the bewildering
world of today, and being pre-eminently an intellectual, whatever faith he finally accepts must be one
justifiable by logical argument, not merely by appeals to feeling or tradition. In order to understand the
generation that came to maturity between the First and Second World Wars, the writings of Huxley are the
best guide. Though he lacks the imaginative power of Lawrence, and the poetic sensitivity of Virginia
Woolf, he is better intellectually equipped than either. He represents the small percentage of the people of
his generation who have ideas.
In his early novels Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923) and Those Barren Leaves (1925), Huxley
presented the dangerously attractive doctrine of hedonism, that is, pleasure is the greatest thing in life. The
style of these novels has a seductive charm, and here the author fully exploits his scientific and literary
vocabulary. The characters in these novels include middle-aged cultured voluptuaries who ask little more
of life than readable books, amusing conversation, art and quiet comfortable life. Of these three
novels, Crome Yellow, which is touched with lyricism possesses the greatest charm. Antic Hay which is
the liveliest of the three, is a rollicking satire on the life-worshippers. Those Barren Leaves has a number
of finely-drawn characters, who are easy-going pagans. They take it for granted that the universe has no
meaning and therefore the only thing to do is to enjoy oneself and take no thought for the marrow. But
there is one exception—Calamy, who takes a serious view of life and believes that there is an inner life
within him which should be properly understood.
In his next novel, Point Counter Point, Huxley studies the frustration brought about by the conflict
between passion and reason. Here he shows that man’s foolish attempt to deny the validity of the sense
and pretend that he is a spiritual being, has condemned him to wretchedness and self-destruction. There is
thus a self-division in human personality. The romantics find that passion divorced from reason makes life
a mockery. The rational intellectual with his analytic reason destroys spontaneity and the power to feel
and sympathise. Thus there is no escape. The total effect of Point Counter Point is one of bitter
disillusionment with society.
In Brave New World (1923) Huxley accomplishes the combination of scientific materialism and
hedonism. Here he searches for a new faith in spiritualism and Eastern philosophy. After presenting a
future state dominated by science which has discovered how to produce life in the laboratory, Huxley
points out that from such a life emotion has been eliminated, and there is no art, culture, religion, love,
ideals, loyalty or personality. Into such a world Huxley introduces the Savage John, who represents the
old world of religion and cultural values. He asks the people to revolt against spiritual slavery, but they do
not understand him, and he is driven to suicide.
In Brave New World, Huxley is clearly on the side of the angels of death so long as he can have the
assurance of the reality of the spirit. This respect for the spirit is further developed in his next
novel—Eyless in Gaza (1939). Here he reveals a deeper concern for the quality of human personality. In
the latter part of this book there is a long sermon on non-attachment and the oneness of life. Huxley
derived these mainly from Hindu philosophy with its emphasis on non-attachment and universal pity.
This new philosophy is further developed in Huxley’s succeeding novels—Ends and Means (1938)
and Grey Eminence (1940). Here he accepts the existence of supramundane reality. He also believes that
we are bound to this world of illusion through desire, which springs from self-hood. These ideas are very
much akin to the philosophy of the Bhagwad Gita. Huxley’s last novel—After Many a Summer, deals
with the contrast between two conceptions of time, that of the mystic and that of the scientist. The
biologist believes that eternity is a mere extension of physical life. The mystic, on the other hand, believes
that it is through expansion and intensification of consciousness which is a spiritual activity, that mystic
eternity can be experienced here and now.
Huxley did not make any notable contribution to the technique of the novel. His novels in fact are
essays and conversations strung together on a slender thread of a plot. But he did for the novel what Shaw
did for the drama; that is, he made the novel a form capable of propagating great ideas and thus making an
appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions of the reader. He turned fiction into an image of the
dynamic world of ideas that underlies the changing outward society.
(iv)      D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Lawrence was a great and original writer who brought a new kind of poetic imagination to English
fiction. To the man in the street Lawrence is still a great ‘sex novelist’. But he himself said, “I, who loathe
sexuality so deeply am considered a lurid sexuality specialist’ Lawrence was a passionate Puritan, and his
sexual idea was high and lofty. He believed that there can be no satisfying union on the physical plane
alone. “Once a man establishes a full dynamic communication at the deeper and the higher centres, with a
woman, this can never by broken…very often not even death can break it.” “If man makes sex itself his
goal, he drives on towards anarchy and despair, and his living purpose collapses. Sex is the door. Beyond
lies an ultimate, impersonal relationship, free of all emotional complications. Beyond lies the service of
God.”
If we study the novels of D. H. Lawrence from this point of view, our attitude towards them would be
different. His first novel, The White Peacock (1911) struck the lyrical note of much of his best work; his
second The Trespasser (1912), was more melodramatic. With Sons and Lovers Lawrence came to his
own. In this novel, in which he describes the boy’s life in the miner’s househood and his wonderful
relationship with his mother, has been recognised as one of the great pieces of English autobiographical
fiction. His next novel The Rainbow (1915) starts in much the same way, but there is far more poetry and
beauty in it than in Sons and Lovers. His next novel, Woman in Love (1921), is rather obscene. In The
Lost Girl (1920) Lawrence’s feeling for nature appears at its best. In Aeron’s Rod (1922) he discusses the
theme of male comradeship and leadership, which is continued in the Australian novels, Kangaroo (1923)
and The Bay in the Bush (1924). In Plumed Serpent (1926) Lawrence turns his back on everything that
man has achieved since he began his long climb out of dust. In his last great novel. Lady Chatterley’s
Lover (1928), Lawrence returned to the sex theme.
Regarding the relation between the sexes, Lawrence resents man’s subjection to woman, not
woman’s subjection to man. He believes that it is the modern woman’s rebellion against man which lies at
the heart of the disease that is killing civilisation. Unless man is supreme, the relation that he develops
with the woman is a filial relation, which amounts to incest.
Regarding the modern civilisation, Lawrence believes that man has cut himself off from the living
cosmos, which is God. Without the restoration of that contact society will perish. But this cannot be
brought about by the mind, which is at the centre of all this mischief. We should have more trust in our
flesh and blood rather than in intellect. Man must “let his will lapse back into his unconscious self”, and
arrive at “mindlessness” which is akin to the state of Smadhi as explained in Hindu scriptures.
Lawrence was a rebel, and he continued, and perhaps, won the fight for freedom which began with
Hardy.
3.  The Moderns
Among the moderns the most important novelist is Somerset Maugham (1874), who is equally
famous as a dramatist and short story writer. He believes in working in a narrow life and his method is
‘naturalistic’ as that of Maupassant. His important novels are Liza of Lambath (1897), Of Human
Bondage (1915), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Rozor’s Edge. Liza of Lambath is the completest
specimen of Naturalistic novel in English. Here he gives us a picture of life which has long ceased to be,
but in spite of this the novel remains remarkably fresh. In Of Human Bondage, Maugham plays the role of
the impartial spectator as a boy and Youngman. Though the views expressed by him in it are outdated, yet
it has got its value because here the author expressed his honest, unflinching acceptance of his belief in the
meaninglessness of life. It is an autobiographical novel, and contains one of the most moving accounts of
 loneliness in English fiction. Cakes and Ale which is a witty, malicious, satirical comedy, is highly
entertaining. In The Razor’s Edge, Maugham seeks the meaning of life, like Aldous Huxley, in Hindu
philosophy with its emphasis on detachment and renunciation.
J. B. Priestley (1894) is another important novelist, who revived the sane and vital telling of a story
in The Good Companions, which in spite of its having the defect of being too sentimental, is a great novel
in the English tradition. His other novels are Let the People Sing, Daylight on Saturday and Bright Day.
Though there are a large number of minor modern novelists, the well-known among them are the
followings;
(a)       Charles Morgan, who is philosophical in his approach. His important novels are Portrait in Mirror, The
Fountain, Sparkenbroke, The Vayage, The Judge’s Story;
(b)       Clive Staples Lewis, who presents in his novels his ethical and philosophical views. Chief among his
books are Problem of Pain, The Screwtapa Letters, The Great Divorce and Miracles;
(c)       Herbert Ernest Bates, who has evolved a use of English which will be effective in the development of
prose style. His important novels are A House of Women, Spella Ho, Fair Stood the Wind for France, The
Cruise of the Bread Winner, The Purple Plain;
(d)      Frederick Lawrence Greene who shows in his novels the inevitability of the power of human emotions
which twist men round the designs they play for their own lives. Behind this is a pattern of life on a
structure of religion against which human life is thrown in relief. All Greene’s important novels are
related to a life after death, and his views about both the worlds are firm. His well-known novels are On
the Night of the Fire, The Sound of Winter, a Fragment of Glass, Mist on the Waters;
(e)       In Graham Greene’s novels ‘culture’ is a living force. He believes that man is essentially good, but flamed
by evil. His important novels are The Man Within, Stamboul Train, England Made Me, Brighton Rock,
The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter;
(f)       Frank Swinnerton, who gives in his novels a detached but amiable appreciation of people, and whose
treatment of life and its significance are quite satisfying. His well-known novels are Nocturne, The
Georgian House and The Doctor’s Wife Comes to Stay;
(g)      Richard Church, who has been mainly concerned with contemporary life. His important novels are High
Summer, The Porch, The Room Within, The Sampler and The Other Side.
Post-Modern Literature

Understanding Post-modernism
Until the 1920’s, the term “modern” used to mean new or contemporary, but thereafter it came to be
used for a particular period, the one between the two World Wars (1914-1945). Then came up after about
half a century the, magic term, “post-modern,” meaning the period after the modern.
Now, this sort of naming is certainly problematic. For how many “post” will have to be used for the
further periods of literary history to follow? Since our purpose here is limited to writing the “history” of
literature, we shall not go on with the issue, leaving the matter for the more qualified critics to give it a
thought. Even as it is, there is a problem about the naming of the period between 1945 to 1965, during
which period there was no consciousness of what is now called “post-modern”. The period of the
“post-modern” is said to date from the mid-sixties – some critics push it even further to the nineteen
eighties. Dealing with the contemporary is always, of course, a little ticklish, because closer we stand to
an object, more details we see of the picture. Once removed by some distance, the outline comes out
clearly. As of today, critics have seen historical changes in literary styles from decade to decade, from
even author to author. Perhaps we shall have to wait another half a century or so to be able to make greater
generalizations about the later half of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, let us accept what has become
almost conventional in the historical writing of English literature.

In his essay “The Post-Modern Condition,” Krishan Kumar has clarified some confusion about the
meaning of post-modernism:
Most theories claim that contemporary societies show a new or heightened degree of fragmentation,
pluralism, and individualism…. It can also be linked to the decline of the nation-state and dominant
national cultures. Political, economic, and cultural life is now strongly influenced by developments at the
global level. This has as one of its effects, unexpectedly, the renewed importance of the local, and a
tendency to stimulate sub-national and regional cultures….
Post-modernism proclaims multi-cultural and multi-ethnic societies. It promotes the politics of difference!
Identity is not unitary or essential, it is fluid and shifting, fed by multiple sources and taking multiple
forms (there is no such thing as ‘woman’ or ‘black’).’
The debate about contemporary society being “post-industrial,” “post-modern,” “post-structuralist,”
“post-colonial,” “pluralistic,” “multi-cultural,” “fragmented,” etc., goes on, with select pieces of literature
used for illustration. The fact of the matter is that the theoretical discussion of the subject has been
self-generative, proliferating all over the space, pushing literature to the periphery, leaving not much space
for actual human narratives in the privileged domain. As such, it has not proved of much help to the
historian of literature who would much rather record the literary happenings than discuss literary theories
(unless, of course, the latter has been an integral part of the former). Until the time of the Modernists like
Pound and Eliot, literary theory came from the leading literary writers. During the Post-modern period,
however, it has come from the non-literary thinkers. Hence the problem of its meaningful application to
literary works.
One quickly turns to Frederic Jameson, who seems to have aptly articulated the reader’s dilemma
about “post-modernism”:
I occasionally get just as tired of the slogan ‘post-modern’ as anyone else, but when I am tempted to regret
my complicity with it, to deplore its misuses and its notoriety, and to conclude with some reluctance that it
raises more problems than it solves, I find myself pausing to wonder whether any other concept can
dramatize the issues in quite so effective and economical a fashion.
In the absence of a more useful concept, therefore, as also because now the concept of
post-modernism has come to stay, we have no choice but to go on with it, leaving the problems it has
raised to time for whatever solution will become possible tomorrow. But we must know at the same time
how and why the term ‘postmodernism’ has come about and what it has accumulated around itself as a
description of certain distinctive characteristics of the post-War period, which is still going on.
The growth of post-modernism, in the words of Charles Jencks, a major theorist of architecture and
the originator of the term, has been “a sinuous, even tortuous, path. Twisting to the left and then to the
right, branching down the middle, it resembles the natural form of a spreading root, or a meandering river
that divides, changes course, doubles back on itself and takes off in a new direction.” (What is
Post-Modernism? London: Academy Editions, 1986, p.2). We may cite and examine any number of
definitions (out of the innumerable available to us), post-modernism proves slippery like a snake whose
twists and twirls are impossible to pin down. From the very inception of the term in Arnold Toynbee’s A
Study of History (1947), the term has accumulated a lot of meanings many of which are mutually
contradictory. How then do we go about understanding the term, making sense of all that it has
accumulated? As Tim Woods has rightly observed:
The prefix ‘post’ suggests that any post-modernism is inextricably bound up with modernism, either as a
replacement of modernism or as chronologically after modernism. Indeed
with post-modernism, post-feminism, post-colonialism and post-industrialism, that ‘post’ can be seen to
suggest a critical engagement with modernism, rather than claiming the end of modernism to survive, or it
can be seen that modernism has been overturned, superseded or replaced. The relationship is something
more akin to a continuous engagement, which implies that post-modernism needs modernism to survive,
so that they exist in something more like a host-parasite relationship. Therefore, it is quite crucial to
realize that any definition of post-modernism will depend upon one’s prior definition of modernism.
(Beginning post-modernism. Manchester University Press, 1999, p.6)
Seen from the viewpoint suggested above, one can see how post-modernism is a sort
of knowing modernism, or a self-reflective modernism. In one sense, post-modernism is a modernism
which does not agonise itself; it, in fact, does all that modernism does, but only in a mood of celebration,
not in a mood of repentance. Rather than lament the loss of the past, the fragmentation of life, and the
collapse of civilization as well as selfhood, postmodernism embraces these phenomena as a new form of
social existence and behaviour. Thus, the difference between the two is best understood as difference
in mood or attitude, rather than a chronological difference or as different institutions of aesthetic practices.
One core issue of this debate between postmodernism and modernism is the extent to which the
Enlightenment values are still valuable. The Romantic philosophers, such as Rousseau, Kant and Hegel,
had placed great faith in man’s ability to reason as a means of securing our freedom. The modernist
philosophers later raised doubts about man’s ability to do so. This questioning of the Romantic
philosopher’s faith is mainly associated with the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard, for whom
postmodernism is best understood as an attack on reason. As Sabina Lovibond has observed:
The Enlightenment pictured the human race as engaged in an effort towards universal moral and
intellectual self-realization, and so as the subject of a universal historical experience; it also postulated a
universal human reason in terms of which social and political tendencies could be assessed as
‘progressive’ or otherwise…. Postmodernism rejects this picture: that is to say, it rejects the doctrine of
the unity of reason. It refuses to conceive of humanity as a unitary subject striving towards the goal of
perfect coherence (in its common stock of beliefs) or of perfect cohesion and stability (in its political
practice). (“Feminism and Postmodernism”,  New Left Review, 178 (1989):6)
As against the universality of modernism and the long-standing conception of the human self as a
subject with a single, unified reason. Postmodernism has pitted reasons in the plural, that is fragmented
and incommensurable. Post-modern theory is suspicious of the notion that man possesses an undivided
and coherent self which acts as the standard of rationality. It no longer believes that reasoning subjects can
act as vehicles for historically progressive change. Here, we must also understand the difference
between post-modernism and post-modernity. Post-modernity is used to describe the socio-economic,
political and cultural condition of the present-day West; where people are living in post-industrial,
‘service-oriented’ economies; where human dealings like shopping are mediated through the computer
interface, where communication is done through e-mail, voice-mail, fax, teleconference on video-link;
where the wider world is accessed via the net; where the choice of entertainment falls on high-speed image
bombardment of the pop video, etc. Such conditions of living are often described as
“post-modernity”. Postmodernism on the other hand describes only the aesthetic and intellectual beliefs
and attitudes often presented in the form of theory.
The term postmodernism, in use roughly since the 1960’s, designates cultural forms that display
certain characteristics, which include (i) the denial of an all-encompassing rationality; (ii) the distrust of
meta-narratives; (iii) challenge to totalizing discourses; in other words, suspicion of discursive attempts to
offer a universal account of existence; (iv) a rejection of modernism. Thus, rejecting belief in the infinite
progress of knowledge; in infinite moral and social advancement; in rigorous definition of the standards of
intelligibility, coherence and legitimacy; postmodernism seeks local or provisional, rather than universal
and absolute, forms of legitimation.
INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND
Jean-Francois Lyotard (1724-98)
Extensive and varied debates about postmodernism in philosophy and cultural theory
notwithstanding, we can concentrate upon the key theorists whose ideas have shaped these debates about
the philosophical effects and theoretical impact of the movement after modernism. The philosopher who is
said to have put the first post-modern cat among the modernist pigeons was Jean-Francois Lyotard,
whose The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) occupies a special place among a set
of books which launched an attack on modernity. His argument is for a rejection of the search for logically
consistent, self-evidently “true” grounds for philosophical discourse. Instead, he would wish to
substitute ad hoc tactical manoeuvres as justification for what are generally considered eccentricities.
Ultimately, he is suspicious of all claims to proof or truth. As he puts it, “Scientists, technicians, and
instruments are purchased not to find truth, but to augment power,” (Postmodern Condition, p.46). In his
considered view, beneath the facade of objectivity there always is a hidden and dominant discourse
of realpolitik: “The exercise of terror” (p.64). Thus, any kind of legitimation is nothing but an issue of
power. He believes that there is a connection, an intimate one, between power and the rhetoric of truth or
value.
Lyotard identifies “an equation between wealth, efficiency, and truth,” and contends that it
continually remains a question of: “No money, no proof—and that means no verification of statements
and no truth. The games of scientific language become the games of the rich, in which whoever is
wealthiest has the best chance of being right” (Postmodern Condition, p.45). He also demonstrates how
utilatarianism is predominant in institutions:
The question (overt or implied) now asked by the professionalist student, the State, or institutions of
higher education is no longer ‘Is it true?’ but ‘What use is it?’ In the context of the mercantilization of
knowledge, more often than not this question is equivalent to: ‘Is it saleable?’
And in the context of power-growth: ‘Is it efficient?’… What ho longer makes the grade is competence as
defined by other criteria true/false, just/unjust, etc. (Postmodern Condition, p.51).
From these ideas Lyotard develops a narrative of the difference between modernist and postmodernist
aesthetics which does not conform to an historical period. In his argument, Modernism is:
an aesthetic of the sublime, though a nostalgic one. It allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as
the missing contents; but the form, because of its recognizable consistency, continues to offer to the reader
or viewer matter for solace or pleasure….
The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself,
that which denies itself the solace of good forms…that which searches for new presentations, not in order
to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable.
Thus, to sum up Lyotard’s view of Postmodernism, it is, first of all, a distrust of all metanarratives; it
is also anti-foundational. Secondly, when it presents the unpresentable, it does not do so with a sense of
nostalgia, nor does it offer any solace in so doing. Thirdly, it does not seek to present reality but to invent
illusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented. Fourthly, it actively seeks heterogeneity,
pluralism, and constant innovation. Lastly, it challenges the legitimation of positivist science.
Jean Baudrillard (1929—)
Next to Lyotard, the founder of Postmodernism, comes Jean Baudrillard, another French intellectual
who can be called the high priest of Postmodernism. According to Baudrillard, postmodernity is also
characterized by “simulations” and new forms of technology of communication. His argument is that
whereas earlier cultures depended on either face-to-face communication or, later, print, contemporary
culture is dominated by images from the electronic mass media. Our lives today are increasingly being
shaped by simulated events and opportunities on television, computer shopping at “virtual stores,” etc.
Simulation is in which the images or ‘manufactured’ reality become more real than the real. In his view,
the demarcation between simulation and reality implodes; and along with this collapse of distinction
between image and reality, the very experience of the real world is lost. Hyper-reality, according to
Baudrillard, is the state where distinctions between objects and their representations are dissolved. In that
case, we are left with only simulacra. Media messages are prime examples that illustrate this phenomenon.
In these messages, self-referential signs lose contact with the things they signify, leaving us witness to an
unprecedented destruction of meaning. Advertisements present manipulated images to float a dream world
only to trap the viewer for the sale of consumer goods. The manipulated simulation, manufacturing
motivated reality, ignores or overlooks the harsh or unpleasant aspects associated with an
image—say New York or New Delhi. Consequently, the images of sparkle and light casually erase the
urgent socio-economic problems. His conclusion is that TV is the principal embodiment of these aesthetic
transformations, where the implosion of meaning and the media result in “the dissolution of TV into life,
the dissolution of life into TV” (Simulations, New York, 1983, p.55). Baudrillard was the one who
contributed to the Guardian of 11 January, 1991, the well-known article “The Gulf War Did Not Take
Place.”
Jacquis Derrida (1930-2004)
Perhaps the most influential person among the Postmodernist intellectuals has been Jacquis Derrida,
who remains the principal theorist of Deconstruction. The publication of the three of his books in 1967,
namely Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, and Of Speech and Phenomena, laid the foundation of
the theory of Deconstruction. Derrida has his precursors in Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1939), Martin
Heidegger (1889-1976), and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who questioned the fundamental philosophical
concepts such as “knowledge”, “truth”, and “identity” as well as the traditional concepts of a coherent
individual consciousness and a unitary self. Although notoriously difficult and elusive, Derrida’s views
can be summarised as under:
He insists that all Western philosophies and theories of knowledge, of language and its uses, of
culture, are LOGOCENTRIC. What he means is that they are centred or grounded on a “logo” (which in
Greek signified both “word” and “rationality.”). Using a phrase from Heidegger, he says that they rely on
“the metaphysics of presence.” According to him, these philosophies and theories are logocentric in part
because they are PHONOCENTRIC; that they, in other words, grant, implicitly or explicitly, logical
“priority”, or “privilege”, to speech over writing as the model for analysing all discourse.
Derrida’s explanation for “logo” or “presence” is that it is an “ultimate referent”, a self-certifying and
self-sufficient ground, or foundation, which is available to us totally outside the play of language itself. In
other words, it is directly present to our awareness and serves to “centre” (that is to anchor, organise and
guarantee) the structure of the linguistic system. As a result, it suffices to fix the bounds, coherence, and
determinate meanings of any spoken or written utterance within the foundation in God as the guarantor of
its validity. Another is Platonic form of the true reference of a general term. Still another is Hegelian
“telos” or goal toward which all process strives. Intention, too, is an instance, which signifies something
determinate that is directly present to the awareness of the person who initiates an utterance. Derrida
questions these philosophies and shows how untenable these premises are. His alternative conception is
that the play of linguistic meanings is “undecidable” in terms derived from Saussure’s view that in a
sign-system (which is language), both the “signifiers” and the “signifides” owe their seeming identities,
not to their own inherent or “positive” features, but to their differences from other speech sounds, written
marks, or conceptual significations.
Derrida’s most influential concept has been that of DIFFERANCE. His explanation for substituting
‘a’ for ‘e’ is that he has done it to indicate a fusion of two senses of the French verb “differer,” which are
(I) to be different, and to defer. Thus, meanings of words are relational (in relation to other words). They
are also contextual. In any case, there are no absolute meanings, nor are the meanings of words stable, as
words always defer their meanings. Any utterance, therefore, oral or written, can be subjected to any
number of interpretations, depending upon the reader’s ability to “play” with the various possible
meanings each word is capable of yielding. This view of language and meaning has had great impact on
both literary criticism as well as literary writing. Postmodernist texts as well as interpretations decentre
and subvert the conventional or settled meanings and values of any given story or situation, concept or
construction, system or structure.
Some of Derrida’s sceptical procedures have been quite influential in deconstructive literary criticism
as well as in feminist, postcolonial, and poststructuralist creative compositions. One of these is to subvert
the innumerable binary oppositions—such as man/woman, soul/body, right/wrong, white/black,
culture/nature, etc.—which are essential structural elements in logocentric language. In Derrida’s view, as
he shows, there is a tacit hierarchy implied in these binaries, in which the term that comes first is
privileged and superior, while the one that comes second is derivative and inferior. What Derrida does is
to invert the hierarchy, by showing that the secondary term can be made out to be derivitative from, or a
special case of the primary term. He does not, however, stop at that; rather, he goes on to destablise both
hierarchies, leaving them in a state of undecidability.
Derrida had not thought of Deconstruction as a mode of literary criticism. He had only suggested a
way of reading all kinds of utterances so as to reveal and subvert the presuppositions of Western
Metaphysics. But more than any other discipline of knowledge it is literary criticism which has adopted
his theory of Deconstruction as a critical tool of literary analysis. His most ardent followers have,
however, been in America, not in England. The most influential of these has been Paul de Man
whose Allegories of Reading (1979) was the earliest application of Derrida’s concepts and procedures.
Then came Barbara Johnson, a student of de Man, whose work, The Critical Difference (1980), carried the
task of appropriating Derrida to literary criticism still further. Later, J. Hillis Miller, once a leading
American critic of the Geneva School, converted to Deconstruction and contributed to the theory’s
practical application his Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels (1982), The Linguistic Movement:
From Wordsworth to Stevens (1985), and Theory Then and Now (199l).
Michael Foucault (1926-84)
As he himself described, Foucault was a “specialist in history of systems of thought”, although we
often call him a French philosopher and historian. Even though he wrote on a variety of subjects ranging
from science to literature, his works that have influenced the course of Postmodern literature and literary
criticism include The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), The Order of Things (1966), Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), History of Sexuality (1976), Power/Knowledge  (1980), “What is
an Author?” (1977), and Madness and Civilization  (1961). In the book listed last, Foucault explores how
madness is socially constructed by a wide variety of DISCOURSES that give rise to collective attitudes or
mentalities defining insanity. Its basic thesis is that, like the lepers of the Middle Ages, the mad are
excluded in a gesture that helps to construct modern society and its image of reason. Foucault’s major
works examine the question why, in any given period, it is necessary to think in certain terms about
madness, illness, sexuality or prisons. By clear implication he seems to ask if it is possible to think about
those topics in different ways. The effect of Foucault has been to view with distrust all that has been
passing in the name of essentials, universals, or natural, and take all these as social constructs reflecting
the values of different cultures and societies.
In the history of philosophy, Foucault’s work falls within the tradition established by Nietzsche, from
whom he adopts the technique of “Genealogy” and the insight that the search for knowledge is also an
expression of a will to power over others. For Foucault knowledge is always a form of power. He takes
even psychiatry and mental health as new technologies that categorize certain forms of social and sexual
behaviour as deviant in order to control them. The modern psychiatrist assumes the role of medieval
priest, seeking confessions, imposing the values of the empowered. His thesis is that power is not
something that one seizes, holds, or loses, but a network of forces in which power always meets with
resistance. These views have led to the challenging of all sorts of political, social, and gender constructs,
taken as networks of power to repress the weak, the individual, the disadvantaged, the female, etc.
Although Foucault’s name was associated with structuralism and the controversial theme of Barthe’s
catchy title, DEATH OF THE AUTHOR (1968) and DEATH OF MAN (1966), his true concern remained
with the formation and limitations of systems of thought. Although made an icon of QUEER THEORY,
Foucault’s contribution has been valuable to all the Postmodern critical approaches including the
Feminist, Postcolonial, Poststructuralist, etc.
Roland Barthes (1915-80)
A French literary critic and theorist Barthes has been quite influential among the Postmodernist
writers and critics. His principal concern, despite his varied writings, remains with the relationship
between language and society, and with the literary forms that mediate between the two. The idea is that
no literary composition can be studied in isolation, being one of the practices of a culture, an expression of
society’s ruling discourse. Hence, study of a text will be useful if it is done in relation to other
contemporary practices of the same culture—even fashions of dress, cigarette smoking, or styles of
wrestling. Cultural Studies, one of the aspects of Postmodernist critical theory, although founded by
Richard Hoggart (The Uses of Literary, 1957) and Raymond Williams (Culture and Society
1780-1950, 1958), owes a good deal to the writings of Barthes as well.
Barthes’s famous work Mythologies (1957), as well as his very first essay on writing in 1953,
demonstrates that no form or style of writing is a free expression of an author’s subjectivity, that writing is
always marked by social and ideological values, that language is never innocent. A sense of the need for a
critique of forms of writing that mask the historical-political features of the social world by making it
appear ‘natural’, or inevitable, provides the impulse behind the analysis of Mythologies. Barthes’s other
books include Elements of Semiology (1964), Writing Degree Zero (1953), The Pleasure of the
Text (1975), and “The Death of the Author” (1968), later included in Image-Music-Text (1977) ed. By
Stephen Heath. In his essay mentioned last, Barthes pleads for abandoning the conventional
author-and-works approach in favour of an anthropological and psycho-analytical reading of canonical
texts. His insistence is that literature as well as literary criticism, as well as language itself, is never
neutral, and that the specificity of literature can be examined only within the context of a semiology or a
general theory of signs. His ideas about language and author and their relation with social world promoted
cultural studies as well as reader-response theory.
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
A French psychoanalyst, also most controversial since Freud, Lacan has had an immense influence
on the literary theory of our time, as well as on philosophy, feminism and psychoanalysis. Most of his
important writings are included in his Ecrils (1966). His writings, full of allusion to Surrealism, contend
that the unconscious is structured like a language. His notion of the Fragmented Body clearly shows his
debt to surrealism. He elaborates an immensely broad synthetic vision in which psychoanalysis
appropriates the findings of philosophy, the structural anthropology of Levistrauss, and the linguistics of
Saussure. He also heavily relies on Jackbson’s work of Phoneme analysis and Metaphor/Metonymy. He
defines language as a synchronic system of signs which generates meaning through their interaction. In
other words, meaning insists in and through a chain of signifiers, and does not reside in any one element.
For him there is never any direct correspondence between signifier and signified, and meaning is therefore
always in danger of sliding or slipping out of control.
Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)
A Russian literary theorist, Bakhtin has been a great influence on the contemporary theory of
Discourse analysis. He is best known by his works named The Dialogic Imagination (1981), Speech
Genres and Other Late Essays (1986), Rabelais and his World (1968), and Problems of Dostoevski’s
Poetics (1984). In these studies, there is a critique of Russian Formalism and an outline of his
characteristic theme of “dialogism.” He criticizes Formalism for its abstraction, for its failure to analyse
the content of literary works, and for the difficulty it finds in analysing linguistic and ideological changes.
This critique is then extended to linguistics, especially the Saussurean. In his view, the purely linguistic
approach to both language and literature is highly limited in scope. It tends to isolate linguistic units or
literary texts from their social context, having no analysis to offer of the relations that exist between both
individual speakers and texts.
Bakhtin’s proposal is for a historical poetics or a “translinguistics” which can show how all social
intercourse is generated from verbal communication and interaction, and that linguistic signs are
conditioned by the social organization of the participants. In his later work, Bakhtin develops his
historical poetics into a theory of “speech genres” or “typical forms of utterances.” He claims that the
weakness of Saussure’s linguistics is that it focuses solely on individual utterances and is unable to
analyse how they are combined into relatively stable types of utterance. Although his speech theory
remains incomplete, Bakhtin was ambitious to apply it to everything from proverbs to long novels by
analysing their common verbal nature.
With these major intellectual influences in the background, the Postmodern literature in the second
half of the twentieth century grew to show greater impact of the new ideas on the continent and in
America, with comparatively much less impact on the literature of the British islands. Mostly used as a
periodising concept to mark literature in the later half of the twentieth century, Postmodernism is also
used, as we have earlier discussed, as a description of literary and formal characteristics such as linguistic
play, new modes of narrational self-reflexivity, and referential frames within frames. Going
chronologically and genrewise, we shall try to explore the nature and extent of Postmodernism the
literature in Britain absorbed and reflected during the period beginning with the 1950’s.
Post-War Novel
After Hitler’s devastation of Britain, the country was literally in ruins, torn apart by years of
bombardment. “The landscape of ruins must also be recognized as forming an integral part of much of the
literature of the late 1940’s and the early 1950’s. It was a landscape which provided a metaphor for broken
lives and spirits.” One of the best expressions in fiction of this ruin and its implications is a novel, The
World My Wilderness (1950), by a female novelist of the post-War period, named Rose Macaulay
(1881-1958). The novel’s London is not only post-War but also post-Eliotic: “Here you belong; you
cannot get away, you do not wish to get away, for this the maquis that lies about the margins of the
wrecked world, and here your feet are set… ‘Where are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of
this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say, or guess….’ But you can say, you can guess, that it is you
yourself, your own roots, that clutch the stony rubbish, the branches of your own being that grow from it
and nowhere else.” Macaulay was, of course, not the only one to view the post-War period as one
requiring the reassemblage of fragments of life and meaning. Another female novelist of the period,
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), also gave powerful expression to the post-War experience in her The
Death of the Heart (1938), Look at all those Roses (1941), The Demon Lover (1945), The Heat of the
Day (1949), and The Little Girls (1964). Equally important among the post-War novelists was another
female writer, Rebecca West (the pen name of Cecily Isabel Fairfield, 1892-1983), whose The Fountain
Overflows (1956) and The Birds Fall Down (1966) depict the same devastated world. With her pen-name
derived from an Ibsen play, and actively involved in the feminist cause, West wrote on political climate of
the cold-war era.
Graham Greene
A major novelist of the postmodern or contemporary period was Graham Greene (1904-1991), who
frequently gave direct expression to his pessimism, such as “For a writer, success is always temporary,” or
“Success is only a delayed failure,” which he made in his autobiographical memoir A Sort of Life (1977).
He emerged a popular writer with his very first novel, The Comedians (1965). He was a staunch
anti-imperialist who resented the rising imperialism of America and despised the crumbling empire
of Britain. He remained a Roman Catholic since 1926 when he was admitted to the Roman Church.
Almost all of his work is haunted by the themes of a wounded world of the European colonies in Africa or
the American imperialism in Latin America, a gloomy sense of sin and moral failure, and a commitment
to “others” and rebels. Although Greene produced as many as twenty six novels, those necessary to know
are The Power and the Glory (1940), focused on the character of a Whisky-priest in anti-clerical
Mexico; The Ministry of Fear (1943) and The End of the Affair (1951) both of which are located in the
twilit, blitzed London; The Heart of the Matter (1948), focused on the flyblown, rat-infested, and
war-blitzed West-African colony; The Quiet American (1955), set in Vietnam, and Our Man in
Havana (1955), set in Cuba, both expose the American imperialism. All of these novels present a grim
picture of the world that emerged in the post-War period.
Anthony Powell
Another notable novelist of the period was Anthony Powell, whose sequence of 12 novels
collectively named A Dance to the Music of Time “is neither a fictionalized war memoir, nor a prose elegy
for the decline and fall of a ruling class. However, as a chronicle of British upper-middle-class life, set
between the 1920’s and 1950’s, it necessarily takes the disasters, disillusions, inconveniences, and
changes of a society and its war in its leisurely and measured stride.”
NOVELISTS OF THE 1950’S

Samuel Beckett
The most important writer who emerged in mid-50’s was Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), who was an
Irish by birth but remained in Paris and wrote in French much of his dramatic and fictional work.
Although better known as dramatist, because of his radical innovations, his contribution to the English
novel is no less significant.
His famous trilogy was published in London in 1959, whose English titles are Molloy, Malone
Dies, and The Unnamable. The trilogy proved to be the most innovative fiction of the fifties. Another, and
early, notable work of Beckett was a volume of interconnected short stories put together under the
title More Pricks than Kicks (1934), in which he had already presented the typical, unconventional,
absurdist hero. His novels, as well as plays, have been described by several readers of repute as
illustrations of Sartre’s Existentialism. For a summing up of Beckett’s concerns in his work, an excerpt
from Martin Esslin would do more justice to the novelist than any fresh attempt:

The search for man’s own identity—not the finding of the true nature of self which for Beckett will
remain ever elusive, but the raising of the problem of identity itself, the confrontation of the audience with
the existence of its own problematical and mysterious condition; this fundamentally is the theme of
Beckett’s plays, novels, prose, sketches, and poems.
Such a quest, despairing and nihilistic as it may appear (for at the center of being there is a void,
nothingness) is nevertheless a very lofty enterprise — for it is totally fearless, dedicated and
uncompromising; it is, in the last resort, a religious quest in that it seeks to confront the ultimate reality.
Hawrence Durrell
True to the spirit of Postmodernism, Beckett’s novels could not be interpreted as ‘representations’ of
real life’. In his work the text is maintained as an object of questioning, the working of codes, rather than a
series of situations and allusions to a subtext which the reader or audience ought to feel. One can feel an
infinite openness (about his texts) to significance and a space for perpetual deferment of any conclusive
meaning. Beckett’s experiments with the technique of the novel, and with the dis-integration of its
conventions, were followed, though not as ruthlessly, by some of the writers of popular fiction, such as
Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990). Durrell, incidentally, was born in India of families who had been on the
subcontinent for several generations. He is best known by what is called “Alexandria Quartet”
– Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960).
William Golding
A novelist better known than Durrell was William Golding (1911-1993), who came into prominence
with the publication of his Lord of the Flies (1954). Deriving his title indirectly from Milton (Beelzibub,
one of the fallen angels in Paradise Lost, is called the lord of the flies), Golding sets his novel on a desert
island. Here lands on the island a marooned party of boys from an English cathedral choir-school. They
gradually deteriorate from their genteel tradition which shaped them into barbarism ending with murder.
The novel is actually a moral allegory, making a systematic undoing of R.M. Ballantyne’s adventure
story, The Coral Island (1857). Golding reverses the Victorian tale of optimism into a post-Darwinian
pessimism. In a sort of deconstruction of the Victorian novel, an interrogation of the conventional values
and attitudes, Golding’s novel reflects the spirit and mood of Postmodernism. It measures up to John
Barth’s conception of the contemporary ‘literature of exhaustion’. Golding’s other novels include The
Inheritors (1964), Pincher Martin (1956), Free Fall (1959), The Spire (1964), and The Pyramid
(1967) His Darkness Visible (1979) is once again dependent for its title on Milton’s Paradise Lost, where
the blind epic poet uses the expression for Hell. The novels that followed in Golding’s later life
include Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987), Fire Down Below (1989), and The Paper
Men (1984). Of these Rights of Passage has been most successful. Its hero, Edmund Talbot, faces the
problems of “too much understanding” and tries to comprehend “all that is monstrous under the sun.” In a
sense, the central concern in Golding’s fiction remains what T.S. Eliot puts down in his Gerontion: “After
such knowledge what forgiveness.” There is, thus, in the post-War novel an exploration of the darker
regions of human psyche and the nothingness of human existence, pessimism being the keynote in the
fiction of the fifties.
Angus Wilson
While there has been a continuation of modernist experimentation with the narrative technique and
novel’s form among the writers of the fifties, there has also been a reaction, rather strong, against
experimentalism. A leading practitioner of this reaction was Angus Wilson (1913-1991), who deliberately
tried to restore the traditional Victorian narrative style. Adopting the realism of Zola and comic sense of
Dickens, he produced a large body of fiction, including The Wrong Set (1949), which is a collection of
short stories, and Such Darling Dodos (1950), yet another volume of stories. Among his novels, the
better-known are Hemlock and After (1952), Setting the World on Fire (1980), The Middle Age of Mrs.
Eliot (1958), Last Call (1964), Old Men at the Zoo (1961) and As If By Magic (1973). His best-known
novels, however, remain Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) and No Laughing Matter (1967). Anglo-Saxon
Attitudes has become a sort of classic. Panoramic like a Victorian novel, it is focused on an archaeological
fraud whose ramifications ruin the ageing historian, Gerald Middleton.
WOMEN NOVELISTS
Iris Murdoch
The most philosophic among the novelists of the fifties was, of course, Iris Murdoch (1919-1999),
although she followed the conventional novel form. Starting with her study of Sartre, Sartre, Romantic
Rationalist (1953), she produced a large number of novels, which clearly reflect her stance of
anti-empirical view of mankind. Her moral philosophy is best illustrated by her The Sovereignty of
Good (1970) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). Samuel Beckett’s Murphy has been one of
the influences on her, to which she pays homage in her own early novels Under the Net (1954)
and Bruno’s Dream (1969). Her other novels include They Flight from the Enchanter (1955), The
Sea (1978), The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983), The Bell (1958), A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970), The
Black Prince (1973), The Time of the Angels (1966), The Sand Castle (1957), A Severed Head (1961), An
Unofficial Rose (1962), The Unicom (1963), The Italian Girl (1964), The Red and The Green (1965), The
Nice and The Good (1968), An Accidental Man (1971).
Murdoch’s article, “Against Dryness,” argues that we are living in an age (the post-modern) in which
“we are left with far too shallow and flimsy an idea of human personality,” in which the relation between
art and morality has dwindled “because we are losing our sense of form and structure in the moral world
itself.” Like the modernists, she seems firmly to believe in the salvaging power of art. As she argues
in The Sovereignty of Good,
Good art, unlike bad art, unlike ‘happenings,’ is something pre-eminently outside us and resistant to our
consciousness. We surrender ourselves to its authority with a love which is unpossessive and unselfish.
Art shows us the only sense in which the permanent and incorruptible is compatible with the transient;
and whether representational or not it reveals to us aspects of our world which our ordinary dull
dream—consciousness is unable to see. Art pierces the veil and gives sense to the notion of a reality
which lies beyond appearance; it exhibits virtue in its true guise in the context of death and chance.
This view of art and life, of man and age, is reflected in all her fictional work, although not equally
powerfully in each. Her The Time of the Angels is still rated by some as her best, although there is no
critical unanimity in her case.
Muril Spark
Another female novelist of the fifties, this prolific decade, was Muriel Spark (b. 1918), who also
shares with Murdoch and Golding, a firm commitment to moral issues in relation to fictional form. One of
her early novels is The Comforters (1957), which focuses on the life of a neurotic woman writer, who is
working on a project, Form in the Modern Novel, having difficulty with her chapter on realism. This
writer, Caroline Rose, is determined to write a novel about writing a novel. Spark also did her biography
entitled Curriculum Vitae (1992). She not only made a critical study of Mary Shelly (Child of Light), but
also wrote some novels in the Gothic style, namely Memento Mori (1959), The Ballad of Lekham
Rye (1960), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). However, the novel that made her famous is The
Driver’s Seat (1970), which deals with the first-person account of a woman with a death-wish, who goes
to the extreme of plotting circumstances of her own violent murder. Among her later novels figure Not To
Disturb (1971), which has its opening quotation from The Duchess of Malfi, and The Abbess of
Crewe (1974), making an investigative study of a convent, but avoiding all Gotihc temptations. All in all,
the focus in her novels, too, remains, just as in the novels of her many a contemporary, on the irrational
and darker side of human nature, reflecting the mood and spirit of postmodernism.
A not-so-well-known novelist of the 1950’s was Leslie Poles Hartley (1895-1972). Besides a trilogy
called Eustace and Hilda (1944-1947), she has left behind some novels with catchy titles, such as The
Hireling (1957), focused on class conflict, and The Go-Between (1953), where the novelist’s
discomforting feeling about contemporary society becomes manifest.
ANGRY YOUNG MEN
 The novelists of the 1950’s that we have discussed so far did not constitute any group or movement.
They might have had broad similarities among them shared by most post-War or post-modern writers, but
they did not have any common manifesto or ideology to bind them into a homogeneous group. There was,
however, during the same prolific fifties, a definite group of writers who consciously and deliberately
followed an agenda in their novels (in some cases, also plays). This group got the brand-name of Angry
Young Men of the 50’s. It was John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (performed in 1956, published in
1957) which supplied the tone and title for the movement. This group of writers, mostly novelists,
represented the typical mood and flavour of the decade. These “angry young men” belonged to the middle
or lower-middle sections of society, educated not in Oxford or Cambridge, but in what are called
Red-brick universities. They had not experienced the War, and were not bitten by the bug of absurdism.
Their anger was directed against the old establishment, the liberal-human, largely upper-middle
class, Bloomsbury intelligentia (Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey) symbolized
by Horizen. The movement was part social, part cultural. However, the anger they displayed in their
novels (and plays) was not of a very serious order. It was not the kind of anger we associate with D.H.
Lawrence or Wyndhan Lewis, which emanated from a firm commitment to an ideology or morality. The
anger or protest of these young men of the 50’s was rather of a lower order, closer to an ordinary
disgruntlement. Actually, what they demanded was social and cultural accommodation among the
privileged, an extension of upper-class comforts in privileged jobs, etc. Once that was extended to them,
the anger was soon subsided. No wonder the movement did not last beyond the decade of the 1950’s.
Kingsley Amis
Among these “angries” Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) is considered the leading novelist. His Lucky
Jim (1954) provides not only a catchy title but also an effective metaphor for the protesting young men. It
is also a campus novel, which exposes the academic racket in the British universities, their social
pretentions and pseudoculture that so often accompany it. Amis went on exploring further the various
dimensions of the aesthetic cant and snobbery in his subsequent novels, such as I Like It Here (1958)
and The Uncertain Feeling (1955), One Fat Englishman (1963). Jim Dixon, the hero of Lucky
Jim, remains a representative angry young man of the 1950’s.
John Wain
Another “angry” novelist of the decade was John (Barrington) Wain (1925–), whose Hurry On
Down (1953) constructs a more careful portrait of the Angry Young Man. Like other protagonists of the
1950’s, this one is actually an anti-hero, who wishes to opt out of the society he despises and yet stays in
it without any commitments. In the categorization made by Raymond Williams (in his The Long
Revolution; 1961) of the forms of protest, the Angry Young Man is a tramp who only wishes his
individual rights and freedom without responsibilities. As Charles Lumbey, the protagonist of Hurry on
Down, reflects at the end of the novel, “Neutrality; he had found it at last. The running fight between
himself and society had ended in a draw.” The novels by Wain include The Contenders (1952), A
Travelling Woman (1959), Strike the Father Dead(1962), and the short stories Nuncle (1960) – the Fool
in King Lear calls Lear ‘nuncle’.
John Braine
Still another “angry” novelist of the group is John Braine (b. 1922), who produced, in the most
productive decade, his popular Room at the Top (1957), with Joe Lampton as its hero, and Life at the
Top (1962), both of which expose the emptiness of upper-class life. Depicting the no-holds-bar race for
material prosperity and social status, these novels show that when one has made it to the top, he only finds
himself trapped and lonely, conscious of the social contempt he has earned. The same theme is elaborated
in his Stay With Me Till Morning (1970), depicting again the desperate quest of the rich for excitement in
sensuous pleasures of sex and social gatherings or business deals. Similarly, the need of such a lot for
pretending eternal youth and reassure oneself by promiscuity is at the heart of his The Crying
Game (1968), The Queen of a Distant Country (1972), and Waiting for Sheila (1976).
Alan Sillitoe
Another significant novelist of the period is Alan Sillitoe (b. 1928), whose plots are generally placed
in Nottingham. He depicts the working-class characters, still haunted by the Great Depression of the
1930’s. He is best known by his Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), The Loneliness of the
Long-Distant Runner (1959), The Death of William Posters (1966), A Start in Life (1970), and The
Widower’s Son (1976).
Anthony Burgess
Yet another notable writer of this terrific decade – perhaps, no other decade in the history of the
English novel can claim such a huge crop of fiction – was Anthony Burgess (1917-1993). Making use of
his long stay in Malaysia, he produced his Malayan Triology (1956-1959), which, like A Passage to
India or The Raj Quartet, depicts life in that country at the end of the colonial regime with emphasis on
relationships between different races. What made him famous, however, were his later novels, namely A
Clockwork Orange (1962), The Wanting Seed (1962), and The Clock-work Testament (1974). His novels
are full of teenage violence and horror, with farcical humour – an example of dark comedy. There is in all
the narratives a hovering sense of doom and nothingness (nadsat). Thus, this group of writers, though not
quite homogeneous, shared some of their antipathies and a few of their sympathies with each other; they
certainly shared a common sensibility which established itself as a new voice of the post-war literary
world. Their little narratives and dark humour reflect the typical mood and spirit of Postmodernism.
WOMEN NOVELISTS IN LATER DECADES
Doris Lessing
The broadening of opportunities for women paved way for some of the radical social changes in the
later decades of the twentieth century. A “New Morality” emerged to challenge the established values and
perceptions of gender, sexuality, marriage, etc. “New patterns of women employment, especially in the
professional sector, made a rapid stride after the War was over in 1945. One of the most inspiring books in
the feminist movement came from Germaine Creer (b. 1939), namely The Female Eunuch (1970), which
is, in her own words, a part of the second wave in which “ungenteel middle-class women are calling for
revolution.” One of the male characters in Doris Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook (1962) echoes the
phrase Creer has used here: “The Russian revolution, the Chinese Revolution – they’re nothing at all. The
real revolution is women against men.” For both of these women writers that revolution was to be
perceived in the female sensitivity to the unfair or highly limited roles of women, to their restricted
representation in society and its literature.
Lessing’s career as writer had begun in East Africa with the novels she had written about the growth
of political awareness among black people and the white settlers. She had experienced the colonial
situation in that part of Africa. Her monumental work in five volumes, Children of Violence (1952-69),
focuses on the growing political involvement, and the subsequent disillusion, of Martha Quest. This
English woman in East Africa is shown growing from childhood to youth to age, experiencing the acute
and complex problems of race and class. It is an epic sequence covering, in a sense, the entire history of
the twentieth-century world. Lessing calls her fiction, and its type, “inner space fiction,” by which she
means a fiction that has methodically moved in a different direction from conventional
realism. The Four-Gated City  (1969), the last of the sequence, is an illustration of the type. The
significance of her central work, The Golden Notebook, lies in relating her concept of mental
fragmentation to the disintegration of fictional form. Here woman’s creativity is to act as instrument of
freedom for the fair sex. As the novel’s heroine, Anna Wulf, reflects, “women’s emotions are all still fitted
for a kind of society that no longer exists.”
Angela Carter
Another notable woman novelist of the period was Angela Carter (1940-1992), whose
unconventional essay on pornography, The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979),
pleads that even pornographic fantasy could be legitimized in literature if it could be pressed into the
service of women and if women could cease to be considered as mere commodities. She is best known by
her novel The Passion of New Eve (1977) and the two volumes of Gothic tales, Fireworks (1974) and The
Bloody Chamber (1979). Her novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), as the title
itself suggests, has a male protagonist. Her later work includes two major theatrical novels, Nights at the
Circus (1984) and Wise Children (1991).
Margaret Drabble
Perhaps the most representative of the later twentieth century novelists in England is Margaret
Drabble (b. 1939), whose very first novel, A Summer Bird-Cage (1963) registered a new presence. It deals
with two sisters of the “new” consciousness, who are gossipy, sexually emancipated, university educated,
fond of parties. Still better than her first novel is Jerusalem the Golden (1967), which, too, focuses on the
same themes, but comes out more assured and less jerky. Her most artful novel of the 1970’s is,
however, The Ice Age (1977), which brings out a sharper picture of contemporary English society. Her
favourite themes include corruption, IRA bombs, broken marriages, alienations of upward social mobility,
etc. The feminist crusade of these women writers is in tune with the theory of Postmodernism.
OTHER NOVELISTS IN LATER DECADES

John Fowles
Perhaps the last of the well-known novelists of the twentieth century is John Fowles (1917-1993),
who made a mark with his first novel, The Collector (1963), which is a sort of post-Freudian fantasy. The
narrator, protagonist is a rather repressed, butterfly collecting clerk, an anti-hero. His kidnapping an
art-student expresses his repression, making the release of sexual energy as a form of liberation. A similar
theme of psychic and sexual liberation is also dealt with in his next novel, Mantissa (1982).
The Magus (1966, revised in 1977) is also on the same theme. His most popular novel, and most admired,
has been The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), where again juxtaposition of repression and release is
set up. The pair of central characters defy all taboos and conventions of social morality. We can see
reflected in his work the influence of Lacanian psychology, which is post-Freudian.

Fraser And Farrell

 There are some novelists whose work is of special interest to the Indian readers, because it relates the
Indian situation during the British Raj. George Macdonald Fraser (b. 1925) and James Gordon Farrell
(1935-1979) are among these writers. The Victorian India has been of great interest to many of these
English novelists who had the opportunity to experience life on the Indian sub-continent. Fraser has to his
credit ten volumes of the so-called “Flashman Paper,” dealing with the imagined career of the ex-villain
of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. These volumes appeared between 1969 and 1994. The various themes in
these volumes concern the Afgan war of 1842, the British acquisition of Punjab, and the Indian Mutiny of
1857. Less provocative than Fraser’s work is Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), which deals with
the Indian Mutiny or Sepoy Rebellion, as the British named it from their side. On our side, the event is
called the first War of Independence. The perspective brought upon the events is, of course, that of the
colonial outfit. If does, however raise questions about the British imperial mission in the colonies. Fraser
and Farrell do not compare, in terms of art, with E.M. Forster, whose novel on India is not impaired by
any narrow outlook. Here, there is lack of depth of understanding of characters as well as the situation.
FarreU’s unfinished novel about Shimla, The Hill Station (1981), is the poorest of his work.
Paul Scott
Of all the British novelists who wrote about India, Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet” offers the most
comprehensive treatment of the subject. Paul Scott (1920-1978) wrote his quartet (a sequence of four
novels) between 1966 and 1975. Collectively called the Raj Quartet, the sequence consists of The Jewel
in the Crown (1966), A Day of the Scorpion (1968), The Towers of Silence (1971), and A Division of the
Spoils (1975). The period the quartet covers relates to World War II years and the subsequent phase
leading to India’s Independence. Scott’s last novel, Staying On (1977), also deals with India, covering the
post-Independence period. It shows how those who chose to stay on found themselves misfits in the
changed scenario. Scott may not be as great as Forster, but he is decidedly superior to Fraser and Farrell.
As a consequence of the Postcolonial critical theory, the work of these novelists, along with the work of
similar writers, such as Forster and Kipling, has now been interpreted from the Postmodernist perspective.
POST-WAR POETRY
Surrealism
Between the Auden group of poets of the 1930’s and the Movement poets of the 1950’s, there are
some poets of the forties who do not constitute any group or movement. One thing common between them
is that they do not continue with the experimental poetry of the 1920’s, nor the Poetry of Commitment of
the 1930’s, the decade of Depression. In the later years of 1930’s there emerged the movement of
Surrealism in Europe,—including England. Primarily related to painting, Surrealism influenced the art of
poetry also. One way of defining Surrealism is to see it in relation to Romanticism. One can say that
Romanticism intensified becomes Surrealism. Another way to define it is to relate it to Realism. In that
case Surrealism is seen as Super-Realism. For, after all, dreams, nightmares, daydreams, emotionalism,
irrationalism are also a part of “real” life that we live, and it is these very aspects of life that constitute the
stuff of Surrealism. In England, it was introduced in poetry by David Gascoyne (b. 1916), who also
wrote A Short Survey of Surrealism (1935).
Dylan Thomas
A prominent poet associated with Surrealism was the Anglo-Welsh Dylan Thoman (1914-1953),
although some decline to do that. Andrew Sanders is one such critic. His contention is: “As his ambitious
and uneven first volume,  Poems (1934), suggests, Thoma had begun to mould an extravagant and
pulsatingly rhetorical style before he became aware of the imported innovations of international Surrealist
writing. He was, however, decidedly a poet who thought in images. If there is a kinship evident in
Thomas’s verse it is with the ‘difficulty,’ the emotionalism, the lyric intensity, and the metaphysical
speculation (though not the intellectual vigour) of the school of Donne.” One of the popularly known
poems of Thomas is “The Force that through the Green Fuse drives the Flower,” considered an example of
his pantheism and mysticism; also an example of Blakean symbolism, such as the following:
And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb 
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Another well-known poem of his is “Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines,” which is typical of his
“obscurity” because his symbolism tends to be personal and private, such as the following:
Light breakes on secret lots,
On time of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.
Thomas and other poets of the forties are called neo-romantics, having greater affinity with Blake,
Yeats, Lawrence, etc., than with Eliot or Auden. Some other poems of Thomas to remember are “The
Hunchback in the Park,” “After the Funeral,” “Over Sir John’s Hill,” “Fern Hill,” and “Do not go gentle
into that good night.”
As Karl Shapiro has said, “Thomas is in somewhat the same relation to modern poetry
that Hopkins was to Tennyson and the Victorians; this is a relation of anti-magnetism. Thomas resisted the
literary traditionalism of the Eliot school; he wanted no part of it. Poetry to him was not a civilizing
manoeuvre, a replanting of the gardens; it was a holocaust, a sowing of the wind.” Thomas is also known
for his catchy, parodic, title Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), his book of autobiographical
short stories. Unfortunately, he had died of drinking, just as Marlowe died in a drunken brawl. His best
known volume of poems remains Deaths and Entrances (1946). In its Surrealistic revolt against all
restraints on free creativity, including logical reason, standard morality, social norms, Thomas’s work
reflects one facet of Postmodernism which finds more mature expression later in the literature of the
1960’s.
The Movement Poets
A parallel crusade in poetry to the effort of Angry Young Men in fiction during the decade of the
1950’s was that of the Movement Poets. This, too, was conscious and deliberate just as its counterpart
movement was in fiction. In 1955, a number of verse manifestoes found publication from the members of
the group known as the Movement. These manifestoes were published in D.J. Enright’s anthology, Poets
of the 1950’s, which included Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, etc. Amis made the
following announcement:
Nobody wants any more poems about philosophers or paintings or novelists or art galleries or mythology
or foreign cities or other poems. At least I hope nobody wants them. Larkin’s reaction to “Modernism” is
no less violent: I have no belief in “tradition” or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to
other poems or poets…. To me the whole of the ancient world, the whole of classical and biblical
mythology meant very little, and I think that using them today not only fills poems full of dead spots but
dodges the writer’s duty to be original.
As Robert Conquest contended, the Movement was “empirical in its attitude to all the cosmos.” On
the one hand, it was a reaction against the mythical new classicism of the 1920’s, on the other, it was
opposed to the neo-romanticism of the 1940’s. It was, one could surmise, a sort of realism, which aimed at
consciously narrow concerns of here and now, addressing the world of everyday engagements, closing all
windows on the outside world both in time and space. The Movement poets shut their eyes to whatever
lurked beyond the tangible present and the mundane multitude. The very dull and drab, morbid and
monotonous life of the uneventful men and matters were chosen as the subject-matter of poetry. After the
War, which was between the European nations primarily, the reaction to Continentalism of the Modernists
sounded perhaps unpatriotic. So, there is, for sure, this nationalist aspect also to the Movement philosophy
of new aesthetics. As Calvin Bedient puts it, “The English poetic ‘Movement’ of the Fifties (the very
name suggesting an excess of dull plainness) did much to fix the image of contemporary British poetry as
deliberately deficient, moderate with a will. This image is gradually frayed and will probably give way
altogether, for the truth is that, however deliberate — and after a faltering start — postwar poetry in
Britain and Ireland has proved increasingly robust, varied, responsive to the times, felicitous, enjoyable.”
Thus, the anti-modernism of Larkin and his fellow poets reflected the Postmodernist spirit of
problematising Modernism. Their postmodernism involves a going beyond modernism.
Philip Larkin
The poet chosen by common consent as the most significant of the Movement poets is Philip Larkin
(1922-1985). He still remains the best known of the group. His poetic works include The North
Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964), and High Windows (1974). It has
been rightly remarked that “English poetry has never been so persistently out of the cold as it is with
Philip Larkin.” The following extract from his “Wild Oats” will illustrate the remark at once:
About twenty years ago
Two girls came in where I worked –
A bosomy English rose
And her friend in specs I could talk to.
Faces in those days sparked
The whole shooting-match off, and 1 doubt
If ever one had like her:
But it was the friend I took out,
This shows a good deal of Larkin—plain and bare as wood, matter-of-fact, not entirely a mind of
winter, with a slight sense of homour. Larkin represents the post-War mood of depression. As he says in
his novel Jill (1946), “events cut us ruthlessly down to size.” His other novel is A Girl in Winter (1947).
Larkin has something of both Frost and Hardy in him, writing small poems on small affairs of life,
sharing their scepticism, even nihilism at times, but always reassuring in his love for the very ordinary
things of life. Note, for instance, the following:
‘This was Mr. Bleaney’s room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,
Such small things, studded with care on the small canvas, came out with a certain care for the small
and the underdog. His lyricism and lucidity are never lost in the dense detail of his little descriptions.
These two qualities always come out:
I was sleeping, and you woke me
To walk on the chilled shore
Of a night with no memory
Till your voice forsook my ear
Till your two hands withdrew
And I was empty of tears,
On the edge of a bricked and streeted sea
And a cold bill of stars.
Thus, Larkin served his generation of the post-War with the soothing balm of little concerns,
focusing on the immediate so that the disturbing outside world could be kept subsided at the back of one’s
mind. His poetry, no wonder, became the truly representative of the post-War outlook on life and cosmos.
Larkin’s tirade against the metanarratives of modernism is one form of Postmodernism that emerged in
the 1950’s.
Donald Davie
Another “Movement” poet, Donald Davie (b. 1922), came out with his own brand of “commonality”
(if realism has historically an old ring), quite different from Larkin’s. He lays a good deal of emphasis on
“unbanity,” which Larkin rather repudiated. Davie wants reality to appear in his work, not “in some new
form,” but in its most familiar form, its morally guaranteed form—in fact, as “moral commonplace.”
However, as Calvin Bendient has observed, “But the truth is that reality does not appear in his work at all.
Seen from ‘the center,’ reality falls into the blind spot in the middle of the eye. No longer Appearance, it
becomes a storehouse of signs, of which the meanings are moral abstractions.” Davie has a very
pronounced, as well as announced, polemical “urbane” poetic programme, very much like (his most
admired) the Augustans. As he argues, linguistic urbanity lies in “the perfection of a common language.”
Using Arnold’s phrase, Davie insists, that the object of urbanity is to voice “the tone and spirit of the
center.” No wonder that he wrote his critical book Purity of Diction in English Verse (1952).
Davie’s attempt, therefore, is to have a style as transparent as water, but also as pure. Decidedly, to
achieve that goal a lot of “ore” of reality will have to be removed from the pure metal, and so Davie does.
Note, for instance, the following, from “Tunstall Forest”:
…the tense
Stillness did not come, 
The deer did not, although they fed
Perhaps nearby that day, 
The liquid eye and elegant head 
No more than a mile away.
Some other notable poems of Davie include “The Cypress Avenue,” “After an Accident.” A critical
book, Articulate Energy, pleads for a “story sense” in poetry, which again is an Arnoldian emphasis. An
interesting poem of Davie (recalling Joyce and Thomas) is “Portrait of the Artist as a Farmyard Fowl,”
where the monologue proceeds on such a pace as the following:
A conscious carriage must become a strut;
Fastidiousness can only stalk
And seem at last not even tasteful but
A ruffled hen too apt to squawk.
Davie’s notable works include Six Epistles to Eva Hesse (1970), The Forests of Lithuania (1959), A
Winter Talent (1957) and Events and Wisdoms (1964): while some more notable poems include “Creon
Mouse,” “North Dublin,” “Cherry Ripe,” “A Meeting of Cultures,” “New York in August,” “In
California,” “The Prolific Spell,” “Viper Man,” etc. His attempt always remained to sing and to keep his
song lean, devoid of all history and mythology because that was the “character” of the post-War era. But
there is, for sure, an integrity in his leanness which, the more one reads his poetry, the more one learns to
admire. His work finally, slowly and steadily, that is, has become broader, but without sacrificing its
innate purity.
Robert Conquest and D.J. Enright
Still another of the group of poets covered under the term “Movement” is Robert Conquest (b. 1917),
whose poetry is largely devoted to the depiction of landscape; of course, with man, as in Wordsworth, as
an integral part of nature. The subject-matter, in the true spirit of the “Movement,” remains reality, that is,
the commonplace, but his approach is rather intellectual. Some of his notable verse appears in his volumes
entitled Poems (1955), Between Mars and Venus (1962), and Arias for a Love Opera (1969). One more of
the core group, so to say, of the “Movement,” is J.D. Enright (b. 1920), who is known, not so much by his
own poems as by his edited work, Poets of the 50‘s (1955). His own poems are included in his Language
Hyena (1953), Some Men are Brothers (1960), and The Old Adam (1965). His poetry has for its subject
the individual man, just as in Larkin, in all his conditions, treating his suffering with sympathy, also with
indignation. But he always upholds individual dignity, reiterates strong faith in it. His language, also like
Larkin’s, is derived from colloquial speech, stripped of all elaborations. His is a style marked by ironical
disgust of hypocrisy and cruelty.
Charles Tomlinson
A notable poet of the post-War period, perhaps the most considerable British poet, is Charles
Tomlinson (b. 1927). Like the other poets of the period he, too, is committed to some sort of realism, the
world of empirical realities. However, each of these poets have their individual versions of reality. In
Tomlinson’s case, he can be called a poet of exteriority and its human correspondences. His outwardness,
however, need not be confused with superficiality. His principal theme, in his own words, is “the fineness
of relationships.” One can see something of Wordsworth in him, his wise passivity, his reflections within
the bounds of reality. The power of message and healing of his poetry remains central in most of his
compositions. Note, for instance, the following from “The Gossamers”:
Autumn. A haze is gold 
By definition. This one lit
The thread of gossamers
That webbed across it
Out of shadow and again
Through rocking spaces which the sun
Claimed in the leafage. Now
I saw for what they were
These glitterings in grass, on air,
Of certainties that ride and plot
The currents in their tenuous stride
And, as they flow, must touch
Each blade and, touching, know
Its green resistance. Undefined
The haze of autumn in the mind
Is gold, is glaze.
Clearly, mind is light, and like the light it is a wealth, but also like the wealth, it makes wealth of
objects that it reflects upon. His poetry consists of several volumes that came out at different dates,
namely, Relations and Contraries (1951), The Necklace (1955), Seeing is Believing (1958), A Peopled
Landscape (1962), American Scenes (1966), The Way of the World (1969), Written on Water (1972), The
Way In and Other Poems (1974), The Flood (1981), The Return (1987), The Door m the Wall (1992)
and Jubilation (1995). In Tomlinson’s case, contemplation seems to be the fulfilment of being, just as it
does in the case of Wallace Stevens. Like the other poets of the Movement Group, he, too, recalls us to the
life of the moment conceived as an end in itself. Here, the Movement gains the meaning of flux, reality
that is marked by movement, by change.
R.S. Thomas
A notable Welsh poet after Dylan Thomas is Ronald Stuart Thomas (b. 1913), although not as
well-known and established as his senior compatriot. His poetry is both sensual as well as sensitive, which
quickly engages both eye and emotion equally intensely. Note, for instance, the following from “Ninetieth
Birthday”:
And there at the top that old woman,
Born almost a century back
In that stone farm, awaits your coming;
Waits for the news of the lost village.
She thinks she knows, a place that exists
In her memory only.
One feels tempted to cite Calvin Bendient’s comment on the poem, which has a charm of its own:
“How direct, naked, human, and sociable this is. Has Thomas not heard of ‘modern’ poetry and its
difficulty? Has he no embarrassment before the primary emotions? Never mind; nothing vital is missing
from such a poem. Reading Thomas one learns to endure the glare of emotion; one learns again a kind of
innocence.” Thomas, evidently, shares with the poets of the 1950’s their key emphases on simple, clean,
and clear diction; direct and straight syntax; no use of mythology or tradition; no reliance on ambiguity or
paradox.
Thomas has to his credit several volumes of poems, including The Stones of the Field (1946), Not
That He Brought Flowers (1969), Song at the Year’s Turning (1955), The Bread of
Truth, and Pieta (1966), Laboratories of the Spirit (1975), The Echoes Return
Show (1988), Counterpoint (1990) and Mass for Hard Times (1992). His poetry is strongly marked as
much by moral quality as by aesthetic. The theme may be love or anger, his poem is invariably directed at
an entire people. There is, in that sense, something of Whitman in Thomas, without, of course, the
former’s bombastic optimism. He is rather hardened and narrowed Whitman, although not without broad
sympathy, especially for the peasants. Note, for instance, the following:
I am the farmer, stripped of love
And thought and grace by the land’s hardness;
But what I am saying over the fields’
Desolate acres, rough with dew,
Is, Listen, listen, I am a man like you…
Some of the memorable poems of Thomas include “Green Categories,” “The Gap in the Hedge,” “A
Peasant,” “The Airy Tomb,” “Death of a Peasant,” “Portrait,” “Absolution,” and “Walter Llywarch.”
Writing about the repressed and marginalized (peasants have been one such class) is in keeping with the
philosophy of Postmodernism.
THE NON-MOVEMENT POETS

Ted Hughes
Famous for his animal poetry, Ted Hughes (1930-1998) earned the reputation of being the first
English poet of the “will to live.” His choice of animals as the themes of his poems is, of course, not
without the reverse side of his choice. The reverse side is as much of a disenchantment with the world of
mankind as there is an enchantment with the world of animal kind. He was highly influenced by the
German philosopher, Schopenhauer, the only one, he says, he “ever really read.” The philosopher in
question believed, “the whole and every individual bears the stamp of a forced condition.”
Ted Hughes can be appropriately said to be the poet of that condition, and in that role, he is rather a
hangman than a priest. Hughes once revealed, “My interest in animals began when I began. My memory
goes back pretty clearly to my third year, and by then I had so many of the toy lead animals you could buy
in shops that they went right round our flat-topped fireplace fender, nose to tail….” Later, he had live
experience with them in the fields, feeling them crawling under the lining of his coat.

In his poetry, animals are presented, not as playthings, but as lords of life and death. They assume the
status of mythical gods. They are presented superior to men, with their lack of self-consciousness, and
sickness of the mind. They are found free from inhibitions, hesitations, fears; and full of courage and
concentration. With their focused life, with all the innocence of man’s corruptions, they emerge, like
Adam and Eve in Paradise, in a state before the Fall. His very first volume of poems, The Hawk in the
Rain (1957), illustrated all these ideas, and made him famous as a poet. Note, how man is placed below
the animal in the hierarchy Hughes builds up in his poems:
I drown in the drumming ploughland. I drag up Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth’s mouth,
From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle With the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk
Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye…
His other volumes of poems include Wodwo (1967), Crow (1970), Crow Wakes (1971), Eat
Crow (1972), Cave Birds (1975), Season
Songs (1976), Moortowm (1979), Wolf-watching (1989), Shakespeare and the Goddess of Being (1992) –
a prose work, Tales from Ovid (1997), and Birthday Letters (1998). The last, published just a short while
before his death, is a sequence of poems about his bitter-sweet relations with his wife, Sylvia Plath, who
committed suicide in 1963. Although composed much earlier, he chose to make them public near his own
end.
Tom Gunn
Although he had been included in the Movement authologies along with Larkin, Tom Gunn (b. 1929)
sharply departed from the group and took his individual course. He had resolved rather early in his career
to seek out the heroic in the experience of nihilism. He writes about various forms of driving power which
characterize our cities, as also about self-destructive violence. No doubt, he views human existence as full
of pain and suffering, lovelessness and meaninglessness, but he still finds solace in the tenderness of
man’s essentially animal nature. His very first volume of poems, Fighting Terms (1954), startled the
readers. One notices in these poems his love and admiration for a certain masculinity, a type of manly
energy, which is rather aggressive. His situations measure up to the existentialist or Sartrean dimensions.
His other volumes of poetry include The Sense of Movement (1957), My Sad
Captains (1961), Touch (1967), Moly (1971), Jack Straw’s Castle (1976), The Passages of Joy (1982)
and The Man With Night Sweats (1992). Those more sympathetic to him have compared him, because of
his logical and economical style, studded with startling imagery, with John Donne. But there are others
less sympathetic who find him often committed to a kind of nihilistic glamour for which, it is alleged, he
is not able to convincingly apologise. The most unsympathetic of the better known critics is Vyor Winters
who observes that “as a rule, he has a dead ear, and the fact makes much of his work either mechanical or
lax in its movement.” Both Ted Hughes and Tom Gunn, by glorifying animals or animal-energy in man,
with sardonic humour spared for mankind, reflect the Postmodernist inglorious conception of human
nature.
Seamus Heaney
An Irish by birth, and acutely conscious of his country’s long history of hostility towards England,
Seamus Heaney (1939-2000) counted himself among the “colonials.” But he was fully conscious of his
divided inheritance: “I speak and write in English,” he writes in an article (dated 1972), “but do no
altogether share the preoccupations and perspectives of an Englishman…and the English tradition is not
ultimately home. I live off another hump as well.” That other “hump,” we know, is no other but Ireland, or
more precisely the rural Ulster, which, like the Wessex of Thomas Hardy, occupies a central place in his
poetry. Heaney’s poetic volumes include Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door into the
Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), North (1975), Field Work (1979), Preoccupations (1980), Station
Island (I984), The Haw Lantern (1987), Seeing Things (1991), Sweeney’s Flight (1992) and The Spirit
Level (1996). Heaney has been known as a peasant as well as a patriotic poet of Ireland. He depicts both
farm activities as well as the colonial imperial effects on his countrymen. In a poem called “At a Potato
Digging,” for instance, he writes:
Flint-white, purple, they lie scattered
like inflated pebbles. Native
to the black hutch of clay
where the halved seed hot and clothed
these knobbled and slit-eyed tubers seem
the petrified hearts of drills. Split
by the spade, they show white as cream.
Similarly, in “North,” he depicts, with a backward glance, the buried sorrows and treasures of the
Irish people as well as of their language, concluding with an advice:
‘Lie down
in the word-board, burrow
in the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.
Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.
Keep your eye clear
As the bleb of the icicle,
Trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known.
Thus, poetry of the post-War, post-modern, or contemporary period, born out of the aftermath of the
war devastation caused to cities and psychies alike, remained rather tame, compared to the highbrow
modernist poetry. It deliberately chose to remain level, everyday, matter of fact, narrow, and, like the
poetry of Hardy and Frost, solid and specific, serious and cynical. It contented itself with the micro rather
than macro narratives, minute rather than meta concerns, national rather than international scenes, simple
rather than difficult style, direct rather than indirect address.
Postmodern Drama (The New Theatre)

Drama of the post-war period shares, in some ways, the dominant spirit of the age we have witnessed in
novel and poetry from the 1950’s onward. One thing that seems common to all the three is their concern
with life at the elemental level—with life bare and bony, wholly demystified and demythologized, and
with questions raised at the existential plane, and without any attempt to seek soothing escape or magic
solution to the problems of existence.
The central stance in all the literary forms seems to be to face the stark realities of life, to take suffering as
it comes, and to learn to accept the unheroic status man seems to have been assigned in the absurd
universe in which he is condemned to live. Drama of the post-modern period brings a still sharper focus
on all these aspects than do its counterpart forms of poetry and novel. And to do that, drama of this period
has been more daring than the other two; it has been more innovative in technique, more shocking in
defying social and moral conventions.

John Osborne
When John Osborne’s (1929-94) Look Back in Anger was opened at the Royal Court Theatre on May
8, 1956, it at once made an impression that a dramatic revolution was afoot in England. The play was
published in 1957. The early audiences did, however, feel shocked, as well as its more sensitive critics,
into deeper response. The play shook the middle-class values of the “well-made play” founded by Ibsen
and practiced in England by Shaw and Galsworthy. The audiences saw in Osborne’s play a new kind of
drama which addressed “the issues of the day.” What was new about this drama was neither its politics,
nor its technique so much as its alarm in rancour, language, and setting. The New Theatre ended the reign
of country drawing-room setting with its moral cant and its sherry. It introduced instead the provincial
bed-sitter with its abusive noises and its ironing-board. The conventional theatrical illusion of neat and
stratified society was replaced by dramatic scenes of untidy and antagonistic social groups, grating upon
one another’s nerves. There may not have been any change in the social class of these characters, but there
had, decidedly, come about a change in their assumptions and conversations. Other plays by Osborne
include Epitaph for George Dillon (1957; pub. 1958), The
Entertainer (1957), Luther (1961), Inadmissible Evidence (1964), A Party for Me (1965), West of
Suez (1971), A Sense of Detachment (1972) and Watch It Come Down (1976). His autobiographies A
Better Class of Person (1981) and Almost a Gentleman (1991), and a miscellany of reviews and
letters, Damn You, England (1994), too, make interesting reading.
Samuel Beckett
Although considered a foreign influence (because Waiting for Godot reached England via France),
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was, in fact, the real pioneer of the New Theatre in Europe,
including England. His much more radical drama than Osborne’s had been launched quite a few years
earlier than Osborne’s. His Waiting for Godot was staged in Paris in 1953, and then in London (at the
small Arts Theatre) in 1955, and had created sensations all over Europe, which must have influenced the
composition of Osborne’s play as weli. Beckett was an Irish by birth, but from 1937 onward permanently
resided in Paris, wrote his drama as well as fiction in French, only later to be translated in English. Earlier,
he had worked with his fellow Irish writer James Joyce and his Parisian circle, becoming a part of the
polyglot and polyphonic world of literary innovation. Beckett’s plays include, besides Waiting for
Godot (1955), Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1960), and Happy days (1962). His Come and
Go (1967) is a stark ‘dramaticale’ with three female characters and a text of 121 words. Then there is the
even more minimal Breath (1969), a 30 second play consisting only of a pile of rubbish, a breath, and a
cry. There is also a play called Not I (1973), a brief, fragmented, disembodied monologue by an actor of
indeterminate sex of whom only the ‘Mouth’ is illuminated. All these plays are revolutionary in different
ways.
Beckett’s interest in the functioning and malfunctioning of the human mind, reflected by gaps,
jumps, and lurches, remains at the centre of his fiction as well as drama. We see in his plays an
overlapping of minds, ideas, images and phrases. We see voices both interrupting and inheriting trains of
thought begun elsewhere or nowhere. We also see separated consciousnesses both impeding and
impressing themselves on one another. Beckett’s dialogue, for which his Waiting for Godot is especially
remarkable, remains the most energetic. It is densely woven but equally supple. His settings are bare, just
as his language is bald. In Waiting for Godot, for instance, there is only a country road and a tree, both, in
fact, incomplete even as road and tree. The tree gets only four leaves in the second act. In the first, it
remains without leaves. As for characters, there are only two pairs who occupy the stage by turns all
through the play. The dialogue also runs into repetitive phrases and sentences and subjects leading to no
conclusions or results. Beckett uses blindness and other disadvantages, as he does in
both Endgame and Waiting for Godot, suggesting that one kind of deprivation may sharpen the other
organs of perception in a character.
Beckett’s concept of time in his plays is the most radical of his innovations. He presents the time
present as broken, inconsistent and inconsequential. He also allows within that time present the intrusion
of time past. It is, of course, never a flashback. Rather, it is oppressively enriching in the private histories
of characters as well as in the general perception of life. He also shares with his mentor, Proust, an
antipathy to literature that describes. Hence there are no descriptions in his plays. As Beckett affirms,
again echoing the mentor, “there is no escape from yesterday because yesterday has deformed us, or been
deformed by us.” As Sanders remarks, Beckett’s “dramatic repetitions and iterations, his persistent echoes
and footfalls, emerge not from a negative view of human existence, but from an acceptance of ’dull
inviolability’ as a positive, if minimally progressive, force. As his inviolable and unsentimental Krapp
also seems to have discovered, a path forward lay in exploring the resonances of the circumambient
darkness.” Thus, Beckett remains the most radical among the Postmodernist playwrights in England, in
fact, in the entire Europe.
While Beckett remained in popular perception a ‘foreign’ influence, Osborne emerged as a rebel
within Britain’s own established tradition. Also, while Beckett remained a representative of French
symbolic and philosophically-based drama. Osborne responded to the native social and moral issues of his
time, and without the burden of philosophy and symbolism. His Look Back in Anger came to be
considered an epoch-making play. It became the launcher of the movement called “Angry Young Men.”
The play, of course, presented the noisiest of the lot of “angries.” Jimmy Porter, the play’s hero, is a young
man of 25, presented as “a disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice, of tenderness and
freebooting; restless, importunate, full of pride, a combination which alienates the sensitive and
insensitive alike.” Porter is not an idealist. He is said to be “born out of his time.” He is described as a
revolutionary without a revolution, or a rebel without a cause. He loudly and bitterly protests against the
establishment values, against his wife’s middle-class ex-Indian army parents; against his Member of
Parliament brother-in-law; against bishops and church bells; against Sunday newspapers, English music,
and English literature including Shakespeare, Eliot, and “Auntie Wordsworth.” He is a new type of
protagonist, classless, aimless, restless, although placed in a conventional social context.
Osborne’s Luther (1961), which too has for its title character an “angry young man,” who makes a
strong assertion of his identity when he says, “Here I stand; God help me; I can do no more.
Amen”; Inadmissible Evidence (1964), in which Osborne provides for a location “where a dream takes
place, a site of helplessness, of oppression and polemic.” Osborne also wrote his autobiography, A Better
Class of Person (1981), which is both pungently observant and spiteful. His characters and their anger and
rebellion seem to have been an extension of his perception of himself. Thus, in a way, Beckett and
Osborne complemented each other: while the former innovated new technique, the latter exploded
conventional social norms.
POST-50’s PLAYWRIGHTS

John Arden
Among the post-50’s playwrights, John Arden (b. 1930) emerged in the 60’s as a representative of
the new generation of writers who were provocative, argumentative and Anglo-Brechtian. These
dramatists, namely Arden, Wesker, Pinter, Orton, and Stoppard, were launched by the Royal Court theatre
in London.
Arden’s first play, Live Like Pigs (1958), presents the plight of gypsies, explores their anti-social
behaviour, and seems to suggest that “respectability” and its guardians, the police, ultimately prove far
more damaging to a society’s health than the unconventional style of living of the gypsies. His most
popular and punchy play, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959) deals with an anti-militaristic theme, using a
dramatic combination of Brechtian exposition and music-hall routines of dance, song, and monologue.
His other plays include Left-Handed Liberty (1965), The Hero Rises Up (1968), and The Island of the
Mighty (1972). In his later plays, Arden’s rigorous scepticism seems to have mellowed.

Arnold Wesker
Another playwright of the period is Arnold Wesker (b. 1932), whose first play, Chips with
Everything, was acted at the Royal Court in 1962. It is largely based on the playwright’s own experience
in Royal Airforce Service. His other plays include The Kitchen (1959), in which both camp and kitchen
are used as metaphors for an unfair and stratified society (class-based), in which the disadvantaged, like
drop-outs, have to fend for themselves. And when it comes to doing that, they have nothing to fall back
upon but their proletarian vigour and innate emotional richness; and his famous trilogy—Chicken Soup
and Barley (1958), Roots (1959), I’m Talking About Jerusalem (1960), which brings to fore his sympathy
for the working-class, his socialism, his inclination for the Jewish cause, etc. His effort to combine art
with socialist agenda in setting up “Centre 42” did not succeed, leaving him rather disheartented.
Harold Pinter
A more popular dramatist who emerged during the period was Harold Pinter (b. 1930), who shared
with Wesker his Jewish background, but who was an actor by profession rather than an activist like
Wesker. Unlike Wesker, he does not directly address the political issues of the time in his plays. “They
open up instead,” as Sanders remarks, “a world of seeming inconsequentiality, tangential communication,
dislocated relationships, and undefined threats.” Pinter started as dramatist with a bang, producing three
plays in the same year – The Room, The Dumb Waiter,The Birthday Party – in 1957. The last of these
three has been a favourite of the readers. Then came out in 1959 his The Caretaker, which was performed
the following year. His plays show an influence of Beckett as well as Kafka. They also show, in their
dialogue, the influence of Eliot. The Birthday Party remains his most polyphonic, in which incongruous
cliches intrude quite often.
One notices a definite change in Pinter’s art with the performance of his The Homecoming (1964) at
the Royal Shakespeare company. It is generally taken as a turning point in his career. Rather indefinite and
unspecific in situations and characters, it dramatizes several sides of social tensions woven in the lives of a
large family (presumably Jewish). The play leaves behind an impression of sourness and negativity. It was
followed by Old Times (1971), No Man’s Land (1975), and Betrayal (1978), all marking an extension in
themes handled in The Homecoming. As John Russell Brown sums up, “the new playwright is then the
portrayer of character, new in the shortness of his plays, their small casts and the replacement of
conventional plot development by strange and often menacing events. His plays are half character studies
and half fantasy or imitation of parts of an early Hitchcock film.”
Joe Orton
Another dramatist of the post-War era, less known in India than Pinter, or Osborne, or Beckett, was
Joe Orton (1933-1967), whose dramatized protest against state oppression is more direct and powerful
than in Pinter. A character in his play Loot (1966), named Inspector Truscott, underlines the dramatist’s
attitude to the subject of state repression of common citizens: “If I ever hear you accuse the police of using
violence on a prisoner in custody again, I’ll take you down to the station and beat the eyes out of your
head.” Orton earned notoriety because of his active and promiscuous homosexuality (his predecessor, we
know, was Oscar Wilde) at a time when it was still a criminal offence in England. Orton wrote four major
comedies, besides Loot, namely, Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964), The Ruffian on the Stair (1967), The
Erpingham Camp (1967), and What the Butler Saw (1969), all calculated to outrage. His comedies
attempted to expose the folly of the fool, the hypocrisy of the hypocrite, the incoherence of the
incoherents. They also attempted beyond this task to upset the status-quo. As for the form of comedy, he
does not just exploit the traditional forms, but also transforms them into something dangerously different.
Tom Stoppard
In comparison to Orton’s explosive and untidy comedy, the comedy of Tom Stoppard (b. 1937), a
Czechoslovakian by birth, is implosive and tidy. His plays are meticulously designed, which logically find
their endings in their beginnings. The play that has made him famous (partly because of the title derived
from Shakespeare’s Hamlet) is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967). According to the play’s
stage direction, the play opens with “two ELIZABETHANS passing the time in a place without any
visible character.” The play, as a matter of fact, is a re-reading of Hamlet from the viewpoints of
Einsteinian laws, Eliotic negatives, and Beckettian principles. Everything is presented relatively.
Perspective changes, time is fragmented, the Prince is marginalized, or decentred. The two coin-spinning
attendant lords are made to take on the weight of a tragedy which is both beyond their comprehension as
well as above their status. Although on surface it is a farcical comedy, it carries beneath the surface a
lurking sense of doom or death, which the audiences are never allowed to forget. The play’s contemporary
relevance lies in the present-day consciousness of the two leading characters, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, who in their Elizabethan costumes, language, and setting, feel out of place, with their
twentieth-century awareness of convergence, concurrence, and consequence: “Wheels have been set in
motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are…condemned. Each move is dictated by the
previous one – that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it’ll just be a shambles.” The
message is that life may look arbitrary, there is logic in life which is inescapable, just as the pattern of
Shakespeare’s play determines that Rosencrantz’s and Guildenstern’s strutting and fretting must come to
an end with death, just as human life on earth does.
Stoppard’s other plays include The Real Inspector Hound (1968), which is a parody of an English
detective story; Jumpers (1972), which ridicules intellectual gymnastics, in which intellectuals do
jumping exercises, raising unstable philosophic structures; Travesties (1974), which is considered his
most witty and inventive play, and includes the cast of historical figures such as Joyce, Lenin, Tristan,
Tzara, etc.; Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977), which is on a direct political theme;
and Arcadia (1994), in which locations alternate between Byron’s England and Stoppard’s England,
attempting a fusion of complementary oppositions. This is considered Stoppard’s most allusive and subtle
play.
Edward Bond
Still another notable playwright of the period is Edward Bond (b. 1934), who has faithfully followed
the didactic German tradition, although he later disclaimed that he was working as a sort of disciple of
Brecht. His point of departure, in his view, was to necessarily “disturb an audience emotionally” through
various means to make what he called the “aggro-effect” more complete. His early plays include The
Pope’s Wedding (1962) and Saved (1965), both of which deal with the inherited lexical and emotional
deficiencies of the working class life. This life, he believes, perforce finds expression in violence. His
analysis is that violence is a logical consequence of the brutalization of the working class. And
brutalization, in his view, results from the uncaring treatment meted out to them by the stratified,
industrial society. In his subsequent plays, Narrow Road to the Deep
North (1968), Lear (1971), Bingo (1974), and The Fool (1976), he presents anger and violence not merely
as means of self-expression but also as instruments of social change. In his Lear, he drastically changes
the story of Shakespeare’s play, making it a twentieth century tale of violence and repression, where love
always remains something that might-have-been.
Caryl Churchill
Very much like Bond, Caryl Churchill (b. 1938) has been greatly opposed to a social system based on
exploitation. She, however, relates exploitation and repression to the subjection of women. In her view,
there is a direct correspondence between the traditional power of the capitalists and the subjection of
women. She always presents her women characters as victims of a culture which regards them as mere
commodities, or which has imposed conditions of inequality on them, brought up to subject to the
masculine social conventions. Her plays include Owners (1972), which draws parallel between colonial
and sexual oppression; Cloud Nine (1979), which creates farce through the shifts of gender and racial
roles; Top Girls (1982), which exposes the superficial nature of women’s liberation (so-called) in the
1980’s. Her later work includes Serious Money (1987), which is topical and apocalyptic presenting the
effects of stock-market deregulation in the city of London; Mad Forest: A Play from Romania (1990),
which makes a searching study of competing truths and half truths; and the two inter-related short
plays, Blue Heart (1997), the first of which carries the title of Heart’s Desire, the second of Blue
Kettle, which focus on lexical problems and failure of communication. We need to include here, as a sort
of late entry, Robert Oxton Bolt (b. 1924) whose A Man For All Seasons (1960), based on Thomas More’s
life, deals with power politics and the clash of ambitions. His first play, Flowering Cherry (1957), deals
with self-deception striving to disguise failure.
POST-MODERN CRITICISM

Until the time of the modernist period of English literature, literary criticism was a “literary” activity, with
leading (call them policy) documents written by the leaders of the literary movements. We know how
from Dryden and Pope and Johnson to Wordsworth and Coleridge and Keats to Arnold and Rossetti and
Swinburne to Eliot and Auden and Spender, English poetics was theorised by the leading English poets.
But in the post-modern period there is no such thing as literary theory, nor any of the dominant theoretic
 documents of today’s activity of criticism has come from any man-of-letters. It is mostly the philosophers,
sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, etc., who have propounded all kinds of dismantling
orders, which are being applied, by their followers, in the field of literature. Today, the activity called
“theory,” is related to, not any particular subject, but to all subjects. No wonder the literary criticism today
has become cultural studies, feminism, postcolonialism, etc., which use literary texts for making political,
sociological, or psychological case studies. As Jonathan Culler has attempted to explain the nature of
THEORY:
Theory in literary studies is not an account of the nature of literature or methods for its study…. It is a
body of thinking and writing whose limits are exceedingly hard to define….a new kind of writing has
developed which is neither the evaluation of the relative merits of literary productions, nor intellectual
history, nor moral philosophy, nor social prophesy, but all of these mingled together in a new genre. The
most convenient designation of this miscellaneous genre is simply the nickname theory, which has come
to designate works that succeed in challenging and reorienting thinking in fields other than those to which
they apparently belong. This is the simplest explanation of what makes something count as theory. Works
regarded as theory have effects beyond their original field.
Thus, the main effect of theory is disputing all that we have been considering “common sense.” It
questions all the concepts and beliefs we have held about literature, author, reader, text, meaning, etc. It
questions as well the non-literary concepts of philosophy, sociology, linguistics, etc. Theory challenges
the conception of the author’s intention, that the meaning of work or speaker is what he “had in mind.” It
also challenges that literature is a representation of “life”, whose truth is outside of itself, in history, or
biography, etc. It further challenges the very notion of reality as something present at a given moment. In
this all-round critique of common sense, theory insists that all that passes in the name of natural or
essential or universal is nothing but a construction of social practices, a production of a certain discourse.
Broadly, Culler makes the following four points to sum up the activity called theory:
a.         It is interdisciplinary, always deriving ideas or leaving effects outside an original discipline.
b.         It is analytical and speculative, always working out what is involved or implied in a text, or language, or
meaning, or subject, etc.
c.          It is a critique of common sense, always questioning whatever is considered a given or natural or essential
or universal.
d.         It is thinking about thought, always enquiring into categories and concepts we use in making sense of
things, such as what is woman or man or meaning or text, etc.          (Culler, p. 15)
Critics like Terry Eagleton (a well known British Marxist critic) may find in theory an expression of
democratic impulse, and a liberation “from the stranglehold of a civilized sensibility,” the fact of the
matter is that it has seriously subverted the value of literature in various ways, such as the following:
1.                    It has made criticism a jargon-ridden writing, inaccessible to the common reader. As such, it is
anti-democratic.
2.                    It has reduced literature to the status of a speech, any speech, political, pornographic, stray writing,
etc. As such, it deprives art and literature of their humane and ennobling effect.
3.                    It has reduced literary criticism to dividing people into regions, races, tribes, cultures, colonizers,
colonized, etc. As such, it is divisive, not unifying.
4.                    It has also made criticism a negative activity, which is meant to trace faultlines, lapses, absences,
what the text does not say or has failed to say.
Thus, theory has given birth to a set of approaches in criticism, which transforms the activity of
understanding, appreciating, and evaluating a literary work into (largely) an activity of self-reflection. It
tends to marginalize artists and their art-works.
THEORY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

Reading through the vast variety of contemporary critical theories and textual interpretations under the
various brand names, such as structuralism and post-structuralism, deconstruction and new historicism,
cultural studies and feminism, minority discourse and post-colonialism, one is left wondering where the
discipline of literary criticism has arrived in our time. The alien idioms one encounters, the gigantic
critical apparatuses one confronts, the mind-boggling systems one has to comprehend, all quickly
combine to create a climate utterly discomforting, making one unstable even for a ‘temporary stay against
confusion.’

Terrorized by the teasing games of the dreadful discourses, the common reader instinctively terminates his
journey through the dense forestry and returns to his own common-sense reading of the literary works. Of
course, after his abortive journey through the verbal forest he does not return the same man; he comes
back sadder’ but not wiser. What leaves him completely nonplussed are the oracular declarations, such as
the ‘death of God’, the ‘death of the author’, the ‘death of the subject’, etc. Mortally afraid of encountering
more of such declarations, he decides never to seek any critical company for his future journeys into the
‘cities of words.’
In such a situation it has become imperative for all those who value literature and literary criticism as
instruments of education, essential for preserving and promoting the humanity of human societies, to
understand and analyse the factors responsible for effecting this unprecedented change in the nature of
literary criticism in our time. Until the end of the nineteenth century literary criticism had remained
committed to elucidating for the common reader the social and moral significance of literary works, and
was always written in a literary style as readable as literature itself. Note, for example, the following from
S.T. Coleridge:
The characters of the dramatis personae, like those in real life, are to be inferred by the reader—they are
not told to him. And it is well worth remarking that Shakespeare’s characters, like those in real life, are
very commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood by different persons in different ways. The
causes are the same in either case. If you take only what the friends of the character say, you may be
deceived, and still more so, if that which his enemies say; nay, even the character himself sees himself
through the medium of his character, and not exactly as he is. Take all together, not omitting a shrewd hint
from the clown or the fool, and perhaps your impression will be right; and you may know whether you
have in fact discovered the poet’s own idea, by all the speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its
reality by reflecting it.
The very first thing one notices here is the use of an idiom readily available to the common reader.
One also notices that the analogy used for explaining the critical method is taken from everyday human
dealings, which implies that literature is a representation of life. One notices, too, how in a very simple
manner the issue of the author’s intention has been explained, which makes clear that it is available within
the text itself, and that one does not need to look for it anywhere else, including the author as a historical
personage.
A drastic change in the nature of criticism began to become noticeable in the early years of the
twentieth century. Those who brought about this change include I.A. Richards, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot,
and the New Critics. With them literary criticism changed from art to science. Perhaps it had to change
with the increasing influence of science in the modern age. As W.T. Stace has observed, ‘The positive
stage is the stage of science which, when fully attained, abolishes both metaphysics and theology. In the
golden age of the future which the triumph of science is to usher in, nothing will be considered knowledge
unless it is science.’ Read, for example, the following from Ezra Pound: ‘The Proper METHOD for
studying poetry and good letters is the method of contemporary biologists, that is, careful first-hand
examination of the matter, and continual COMPARISON of one “slide” or specimen with another.” Thus
was adopted by Pound, as well as by those ‘new’ poets and critics who faithfully followed the dictates of
this poet’s poet and the critic’s critic, the method of science in poetry and criticism. A similar thrust in the
direction of science was given by I.A. Richards, who in his Science and Poetry pleaded, once again, for
the scientific method of analyzing the working of the poem as well as the poet’s mind. Note, for example,
the following:
To understand what an interest is we should picture the mind as a system of very delicately poised
balances, a system which so long as we are in health is constantly growing. Every situation we come into
disturbs some of these balances to some degree. The ways in which they swing back to a new equipoise
are the impulses with which we respond to the situation. And the chief balances in the system are our chief
interests. Suppose that we carry a magnetic compass about in the neighbourhood of power magnets….
Suppose that instead of a single compass we carry an arrangement of many magnetic needles, large and
small, swing so that they influence one another…
The mind is not unlike such a system if we imagine it to be incredibly complex. The needles are our
interests….    
Thus, from Pound’s scientific ‘method’ we move to Richard’s scientific ‘system.’ In the convention
of criticism from Aristotle to Arnold, there used to be approaches to literature based on the social and
ethical goals of human society. They considered literature as an instrument of education. Now with the
High Modernists it got reduced to the status of the material productions of science and industry. The most
influential of these high priests of scientism, T.S. Eliot, carried this task with greater force than even
Pound and Richards. Note, for instance, the following:
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in
this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite
you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated
platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.
Here the poet’s mind becomes the gas chamber in which various experiences combine like different
chemicals to form a new compound. The chemical reaction is used to explain the process of composition
of a poem or any other literary text. No doubt, this conversion of literary criticism into a study of systems
and structures, principles and processes, involved in the making of literature, is effected under the express
influence of science. In the same vein, the New Critics, namely John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks,
W.K. Wimsatt, Monroe Beardsley, and William Emerson, viewed a poem as a structure of words,
reducing the function of criticism to explicating the functioning of various verbal devices such as
metaphor, ambiguity, paradox, irony, image, etc., in the working of the structure called poem. In this New
Critical effort, while literature changed from being one of the beautiful arts into one of the functional
sciences, literary criticism changed from being an educational source into a scientific method.
In its attempt to introduce scientism in literature and literary criticism, the modernist criticism in the
early twentieth century also made the author invisible, for like the filament of platinum he does not go
into the compound called poem; he just stays behind. It also made the business of criticism a specialist’s
job. It became inaccessible to the common reader who would not have the benefit of knowing various
sciences and their principles and processes, systems and structures. The very language of literary criticism
acquired a special ring, becoming far removed from the language of everyday conversation. The macro
commentaries of earlier criticism were replaced by the micro explications of verbal devices used in the
making of a poem. The writing called criticism became arduous. W.B. Yeats, who called himself one ‘the
last romantics’, soon realized this arduousness of modern poetry and of modern criticism. In a letter to
Dorothy Wellesley, he separated himself from the high modernists:
The difficult work which is being written everywhere now has the substance of philosophy and is a delight
to the poet with his professional pattern; but it is not your road or mine & ours is the main road, the road
of naturalness and swiftness and we have thirty centuries upon our side. We alone can think like a wise
man, yet express ourselves like the common people. These new men are goldsmiths working with a glass
screwed into one eye, whereas we stride ahead of the crowd, its swordsmen, its jugglers, looking to right
and left. ‘To right and left’ by which I mean what we need like Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, vast
sentiments, generalizations supported by tradition.
Yeats is obviously drawing a contrast between the popular literary writers and the writers as
specialist. We know how the writings of Eliot and Pound, Joyce and Woolf, became special readings,
based as they were on philosophies and theories drawn from extra-literary sources. We also know how the
critical writings of the New Critics acquired the nature of scientific investigations, seeking relations
between the parts and the whole, the components and the structure, modelled on the functioning of a
chemical process or biological system. Thus, literary criticism became one of the specialities in the
corporation of knowledge disciplines.
The New Critics also changed the nature of literary criticism from a moral source of life to an amoral
tool of investigation. Wimsatt and Beardsley came out with their famous (or notorious?) articles on
‘intentional fallacy’ and ‘affective fallacy’, with explicit implication of disinfecting literary criticism of
moral as well as social significance. Like any physical or biological phenomenon, like any chemical or
industrial process, a literary work came to be viewed as only a product of words. Naturally, then, the
nature of literary criticism also became amoral, like any discipline of science, having nothing to do
beyond the functions of various parts, or the workings of various structures or systems. While the
‘intentional fallacy’ took away the living voice of the author, the ‘affective fallacy’ took away the living
response of the reader. Both reiterated the scientific study of literature, restricting its activity to the
explication of verbal devices, their interrelational functions, and their functions in relation to the working
of the structure of which they are internal components.
The Modernists paved the way for the Post-Modernists, who carried further the activity of making
literary criticism a super-speciality, subjecting it to scientific empiricism. While ‘invisibility’ of the author
was pushed further to declare the ‘death of the author’, the ‘intentional fallacy’ gave way to the
‘reader-oriented theories’. The language of the super-speciality made literary criticism far, far removed
from the access of the common reader. Even those in the business of teaching literature were forced to
choose their micro areas of specialization, for it was impossible for any individual scholar to keep pace
with the fast developing specialities in all the areas. In an era of mass production ushered in by
multinationals, literary theories could not have remained otherwise. There came in the literary market
numerous brand products of the Post-Modern multinationals. Read, for example, the following from
Roland Barthes to have a feel of the special language evolved by one such brand:
In an author’s lexicon, will there not always be a word-as-mana, a word whose ardent, complex, ineffable,
a somehow sacred signification gives the illusion that by this word one might answer for everything?
Such a word is neither eccentric nor central; it is motionless and carried, floating,
never pigeonholed, always atopic (escaping any topic), at once remainder and supplement, a signifier
taking up the place of every signified. The word has gradually appeared in his work; at first it was masked
by the instance of Truth (that of history), then by that of validity (that of systems and structures); now it
blossoms, it flourishes, this word-as-mana is the work ‘body.’
One can add to this sample a small list of words to show how incomprehensible the language of
criticism has become in our time. We frequently come across today in the writings of the Post-Modernist
critics words such as dialogic, discourse, enthymeme, exotopy, heteroglossia; agonaporia, difference,
deconstruction, grammatology, logo-centrism, phallogocentrism; genotext, phenotext, multivalent,
slippage, dispositif, episteme; androcentric, androgyny, biocriticism, biologism, gynocritic, pornoglossia,
sexism; actualization, cratylism, idiolect, lang, parole, paradigm, diaspora; fetishism, flaneur, homology,
ideologeme, etc., etc. Specialism forces the scholars to evolve their special languages known only to those
who have acquired the required efficiency in the super speciality. The special voices cannot co-exist in any
common space. They must perforce remain alien to each other, each becoming a code communication,
leaving no scope for general conversation.
 Another bane of scientific spirit, notwithstanding its various virtues, is that, ultimately, it leads to the
dehumanization of the human material. One could trace the course of scientific spirit from its early
demystification of the universe to later despiritualization of society to further mechanization of human life
to, finally, dehumanization of mankind. Literature and literary criticism have always opposed science on
this very ground, fighting all along the fast increasing forces of science and technology, industry and
commerce. They have always stood for the preservation and promotion of humanism across national
boundaries, racial reservations, or cultural constraints. It is a sad phenomenon today that the
Post-Modernist critical approaches have adopted the scientific spirit of enquiry, making a casualty of the
human concerns to which literature and literary criticism have always been closely related. The manner in
which some of the brand products of Post-Modernism have chosen to champion the cultural, ethnic, or
genderic causes, has in fact made the remedy worse than the disease. In the name of voicing the concerns
of the hitherto repressed, colonized, marginalized, etc., discourses have been developed based solely on
the differentiating features of ‘cultural’, ‘ethnic’ or ‘genderic’ life, promoting a new form of tribalism. In
these discourses, mankind is viewed as an aggregation of cultural islands, suspicious of each other,
clashing on the ‘darkling plain’, accusing each other of having encroached upon their special rights. One
is reminded of Plato’s caves inhabited by tribes with horizons of the mind measuring the narrow holes of
their respective caves, utterly unable to comprehend the open universe.
If literature and literary criticism are to perform their destined and true function, then they will have
to return to the original path of the humanities, leaving the adopted path of sciences (including social
sciences) which have deflected them from their prime duty to mankind. Today, what have become more
important for criticism are, not the human concerns, but the purely non-human enquiries into the nature of
things—a study of principles and processes, systems and structures. As for human concerns, they are
conceived, if at all, only in terms of narrow, sectarian rights of groups divided by all sorts of ‘spaces.’ If
we look at the titles of leading books and articles in the field of criticism today, the nature it has acquired,
adopted, and imbibed becomes quite clear. The direction of its drift with the dominant current of science
and technology becomes quite apparent. Here is a sample list of some of the titles from the vast verbal
forest that has grown over the years. The Semiotic Challenge (Roland Barthes), Of
Grammatology (Jacques Derrida), Writing and Difference (Derrida), The Theory of Semiotics (Umberto
Eco), The Archaeology of Knowledge (Michael Foucault), What is an Author? (Foucault), Logic and
Conversation (H.P. Grice), Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics (Roman Jakobson), A Theory of
Literary Production (Pierre Macherey), The System and the Speaking Subject (Julia Kristeva), The Theory
of Reading (David Morse), Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (Richard Rorty), The Theory
of Reading (Frank Gloversmity), Meaning and Truth in the Arts (John Harpers), etc., etc. This list shows
how criticism in our time has turned heavily theoretical and, finally, philosophical, focusing on either
theorizing about how meaning is produced, or enquiring into the meaning of meaning, working of
language, or the behaviour of words. In sum, the nature of criticism has acquired the character of science
in all respects, turning away from the humanities, and has become a philosophico-scientific discipline
called theory, which mixes literature with non-literary writings and the pseudo-literary films or
journalism, and confines itself to the study of sociological behaviour of literary texts, their political
overtones, their psychological suggestions, their anthropological patterns, their historical narrations, their
linguistic structures, etc. The Post-Modernist criticism has done to literature what science had done to life;
it has demystified its creation, despiritualized its contents, and dehumanized its interpretation.
Criticism today has been taken over by the disciplines of philosophy and psychology, sociology and
anthropology, entirely changing the parameters of reading literary works. We no longer look for aesthetic
or moral grounds for the appreciation of an art work. We look for the sub-texts and sub-structures, for
faultlines and fictographs, using the apparatus borrowed from one of the disciplines just mentioned. The
reason why this has happened is convincingly stated by Northrop Frye in the following:
It is clear that the absence of systematic criticism has created a power vacuum, and all the neighbouring
disciplines have moved in hence the prominence of Archimedes fallacy…the notion that if we plant our
feet solidly enough in Christian or democratic or Marxist values we shall be able to lift the whole of
criticism at once with a dialectic crowbar. But if the varied interests of critics could be related to a central
expanding pattern of systematic comprehension, this undertow would disappear, and they would be seen
as converging on criticism instead of running away from it.
Since Frye made this observation in 1957 much water has flown through the Thames. The critical
activity has changed beyond recognition. All aspects of a literary work are talked about in the name of
criticism except the aspect of its humanity. What we have, in fact, is not literary criticism but only critical
attitude drawn from various disciplines that have claimed the vacancy the failure of criticism has created.
No doubt, the discussion of art, particularly literature, cannot confine itself to the formal aspect of art
considered in utter isolation. It must consider as well the participation of the literary work in the human
vision of the goal of social effort, “the idea of complete and classless civilization. This idea of complete
civilization is also the implicit moral standard to which ethical criticism always refers, something very
different from any system of morals.’ Unfortunately, the current craze in criticism for the idea of
‘pluralism’ and ‘amoralism’ has left the critical effort devoid of all moral and humane concerns. Its ‘grand
flourish of negativised rhetoric’, comprising such impressive keywords as ‘discontinuity, disruption,
dislocation, decentring, indeterminacy, and antitotalization’, does hypnotise some intellectuals, but it
leaves highly dissatisfied the steady explorer of ultimate meanings in literature as well as life. If pluralism
means an assembly of mass individual or group opinions, if questioning means challenging one and all
who have attained any respectability in society, then one might compare the Post-Modernist critical effort
to a jungle of high-pitched voices raised in closed corridors. The goal of criticism must remain, as Frye
insists: ‘…the ability to look at contemporary social values with the detachment of one who is able to
compare them in some degree with the infinite vision of possibilities presented by culture. One who
possesses such a standard of transvaluation is in a state of intellectual freedom.’’
The current critical effort refuses to decide upon any goal of literature or literary criticism beyond the
contingent. It is high time that resistance was put up to the confusing critical cries of our time, paving the
way for the restoration of the every-abiding goal of literature and literary criticism.