英国文学 第二章新古典主义时期

The Neoclassical Period

I. John Bunyan

novelist.

His masterpiece is The pilgrim’s Progress. As a stout Puritan , he had made a conscientious study of the Bible and firmly believe in salvation through spiritual struggle.

The Pilgrim’s Progress is the most successful religious allegory in the English language. Its purpose is to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weakness and kinds of social evils.

II. Alexander Pope

poet.

Pope made his name as a great poet with the publication of An Essay on Criticism in 1711. The next year, he published The Rape of the Lock, a finest mock epic.

For him the supreme value was order---cosmic order , political order, social order, aesthetic order , and this emphasis on order found expression in all of his works.

He strongly advocated neoclassicism, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classical rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum.

III. Daniel Defoe

a novelist.

Robinson Crusoe, an adventure story very much in the spirit of the time, is universally considered his masterpiece. He wrote four other novels:Captain Singleton , Moll Flanders,Colonel Jack and Roxana, those novels deal with the personal history of some hero or heroine, usually a whore, a pirate, a pickpocket, a rogue or some other criminal.

In most of his works, he gave his praise to the hard-working, sturdy middle class and showed his sympathy for the downtrodden, unfortunate poor.

Defoe was a very good story-teller.

The realistic account of the successful struggle of Robinson single-handedly against the hostile nature forms the best part of the novel. Robinson is here a real hero: a typical eighteenth-century English middle-class man, the pioneer colonist.

IV. Jonathan Swift

a prose writer and a master satirist.

A Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books established his name as a satirist.

His A Modest Proposal is generally taken as a perfect model.

His other works are: The Drapier’s Letters , Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels: Swift’s best fictional work, the book contains four parts. Its social significance is great and its exploration into human nature profound.

In his writings, although he intends not to condemn but to reform and improve human

nature and human institutions.

He defined a good style as “proper words in proper places.”

Clear, simple, concrete diction, uncomplicated sentence structure, economy and conciseness of language mark all his writings----essays, poems and novels.

V. Henry Fielding

a novelist.

Fielding has been regarded by some as “Father of the English novel”, for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.

His masterpiece is The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.

During his career as a dramatist Fielding had attempted a considerable number of forms of play.

Of all his plays, the best known are The Coffee-House Politician, The Tragedy of Tragedies, Pasquin, and The Historical Register for the year 1736.

Tom Jones brings its author the name of the “Prose Home”. The panoramic view it provides of the 18th-century English country.

Tome Jones, the novel consist of 18 books. Tom, the titular hero of the story, he became a national hero, he---honest, kind-hearted, high-spirited, loyal and brave, but impulsive, wanting prudence and full of animal spirits.

He was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a “comic epic in prose,” the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.

VI. Samuel Johnson

a poet, lexicographer.

Johnson was an energetic and versatile writer, He had a hand in all the different branches of literary activities.

As a lexicographer, Johnson distinguished himself as the author of the first English dictionary by an Englishman---A Dictionary of the English language, a gigantic task which Johnson undertook single-handedly and finished in over seven years.

He was very much concerned with the theme of the vanity of human wishes. He was the last great neoclassical enlightener in the later eighteenth century.

VII. Richard Brinsley Sheridan

a playwright.

His masterpiece : The School for Scandal and The Rivals.

In his plays, morality is the constant theme.

In the Rivals, a comedy of manners, he is satirizing the traditional practice of the parents to arrange marriages for their children without considering the latter’s opinion.

In The School for Scandal, the satire becomes even sharper as the characters are exposed scene by scene to their defenseless nakedness.

His plots are well organized, his characters, either major or minor, are all sharply drawn, and his manipulation of such devices as disguise, mistaken identity and dramatic irony is masterly. Witty dialogues and neat and language also make a