Assignment on Enlightenment philosophy by Yasir Siddeeque

Age of Enlightenment

“Mankind’s final coming of age, the emancipation of human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error.”

                                    -Immanuel Kant (1784)

The Age of enlightenment is the age where Western Europe witnessed cultural and intellectual development and mankind was emerging from centuries of ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and respect for humanity. It began during seventeenth century and reached to its height in the eighteen century. Philosophy, art, religion, literature and political theory all had tendencies towards intellectual rise. This era is also referred as the age of reason because its emphasis on rational, secular and scientific world views.

The Enlightenment followed the Medieval era. The Medieval era was characterized by staunch religious fervor and the authority of Church. It was era of superstition and irrationality. By the 1500s the Scientific Revolution had begun. It was the time when curiosity spread around the world which lead to innovations. Initially even the church encouraged the such curiosity, out of belief that studying the world was a form of piety and admiring the God’s work. It was seen only as a tool of goodness and appreciation of God’s creation. People who questioned faith or religious practices were brutally punished.

Thinkers of the Enlightenment convinced that human reason could discover the natural laws of the universe and bring scientific progress and they believed scientific and industrial advancement heralded a new era of egalitarianism and progress of human kind.  Scientific progress brought industrial revolution, people began to travel more and witness the various cultures of the world.  People began to doubt and question the established institutions. Particularly Church faced sharp criticism as it stands as a stumbling block which restrains the forward march of human reason.

 Enlightenment intellectuals tore down the flawed set of beliefs set by ancients and maintained by the church. Many intellectuals began to practice variety of deism, which rejects the organized and conventional religion in favor of more personal and spiritual kind of faith.  Trust in universal and scientific rules relying on the human reason resulted in rapidly dissipating the darkness of superstition, prejudice, and barbarity. Intellectual and scientific progress was freeing humanity from its earlier reliance on unexamined traditions and mere authority and opened a prospect of progress towards making this world a better place to live.  For the first time in western history, the hegemony of political and religious leaders was weakened that people began to openly criticize their authority and express their views publicly. Criticism and argumentation was the new models of conversation. As the people began to give importance to the individuality it paved way to many revolutions in 18^th and 19^th century.

            There were many variations in the concepts of enlightenment thinkers. Their outlook was different. The only similarity was their emphasis on importance to rationality and individualism. Their efforts were to build a better world free from religious intolerance, irrational beliefs, prejudices, superstitions. The enlightenment ideals were the inspiration behind American and French revolutions. They paved way to the major literary movement of 19^th century Romanticism.

Enlightenment was actually celebration of ideas. They began to see these ideas applied to every segment of life and society, with huge ramifications for citizens and rulers alike. Many enlightenment ideas were political in nature. They began to consider freedom and democracy as the fundamental rights of people, not as a gift by monarchies. Egalitarianism was the keyword behind all the movements.  Citizens began to see leaders as subjected to shortcomings and criticism. Experiments with elected representatives began to practice. Believed that combined rationality of a society would lead to the best choice and whole problems can be solved in that way.  The American and French revolutions were directly inspired by the enlightenment ideas.

One of the most beneficial effects of Industrial revolution was the surge in amount of reading material available to general public and available of leisure time. Consequently, the cost of reading materials decreased to the point that literature was no longer the sole purview of aristocrats and wealthy merchants. Literacy rates have risen dramatically during the eighteenth century. New libraries began to establish and people started to argue and discuss about the current affairs. The day were  literature was considered as a sacred and open to only few were gone days and books began to access to every nook and corner.

Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes and Benedict Spinoza were considered as the pioneer of Enlightenment thoughts. Bacon composed philosophical treatises which would form the basis of the modern scientific method. He was a logician, pointing out the false pathways down which human reason often strays. Bacon worked in the realm of ideas and language whereas Isaac Newton was a pure scientist in the modern sense. Newton relied on Observation and Testing to prove his theories. Newton’s Principia, completed in 1687, is the foundation of the entire science of physics. This mechanistic view of the universe, a universe governed by a set of unchanging laws, raised the ire of the Church fathers. However, the mode of inquiry which Bacon and Newton had pioneered became the much more influential than church’s teachings. 

The Enlightenment movement was most prevalent in European nations like England, France, and Germany. In England the enlightenment thought is usually traced from Bacon through John Locke to the 18^th century thinkers such as William Godwin. Rene Descartes, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Denis Diderot were the major enlightenment figures of French enlightenment. In Germany Leibniz, Immanuel Kant and John, in America Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson influenced the Enlightenment ideas and shaped the American constitution.

Key Thinkers

Bacon: was an English philosopher and spokesperson who developed the inductive method or Bacanian method of scientific investigation. It was a more effective path to knowledge than the medieval reliance on deduction, whose premises were handed down by the authority of tradition. Bacon’s major works were The Advancement of Learning (1605) and The New Organon (1620), in which he formulated the method of inductive method which stresses observation and reasoning as a means for coming to general conclusions.. He advocated that the method of induction is a more authentic method than the method of deduction which was followed during the medieval age. Denying early methods Bacon asserts that we must begin anew alternative foundation. He warns that human mind has been misled by “idols” or false notions.

René Descartes: called as father of modern philosophy often challenged the basic medieval philosophy.  He revolutionized algebra and geometry and made the famous philosophical statement “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes developed a deductive approach to philosophy using math and logic that still remains a standard for problem solving. He was skeptical in his work Discourse on method aboout everything, even the senses. He doubted the reliability of senses and imagined the entire world might be a delusion. Descartes made distinction between the mind and the body. He defines that the mind is something which can think, whereas the body belongs to the material world.

Baruch Spinoza: was a prominent Dutch enlightenment figure who had closely studied the works of Descrates. His views were rational and unorthodox which lead to expulsion from his own Jew community in 1656. He also criticized Christian beliefs and Bible too through his unorthodox views. He believed Descartes’s Deductive mode and had a mechanistic view on universe. He contrasted with Descartes in the view about mind and matter. He also argued that the universe is composed of a single substance, which he viewed as God. In his work, the Ethics (1677), he urged that the highest good consists in the rational mastery over one’s own passions and ultimately in the acceptance of the order and harmony in nature.

            These three figures, Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza from different parts of the world initiated the idea of enlightenment. Empiricism and rationalism was buzzword of these philosophers and which is considered as the hallmark of Enlightenment philosophy. Bacon stressed in experience and observation on the world, whereas Descartes emphasized in the use of reason to arrive at the clear notions about the world.

            Another stream of Enlightenment thought was the Materialism mostly found in the theories of the Thomas Hobbes. He was an English philosopher best known for his work Leviathan. He initiated the political philosophy in Enlightenment thoughts. His works tries to explore the human nature. . He proposed a materialistic view of the universe, even that of the mind. Hobbes argued that sensation is caused by the impact and interaction of small particles. In his work, he justifies the absolutist rule. To explain his stand, he says that human nature is essentially bad. Hobbes’s theory is that all humans are inherently self-driven and evil and that the best form of government is thus a single, all-powerful monarch to keep everything in order. He argues that human nature is inherently bad and that humans will remain in a constant a state of war, fighting for power and material resources, unless awed by a single great power.

John Locke is a one of the most influential British political Enlightenment philosopher. He is often considered as the ‘Father of Classical Liberalism’. He is also one of the first of the British empiricists who followed the tradition of Bacon. Thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. were influenced by his ideals in his Essays An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises on Civil Government both published in 1690, Locke denied Descartes’ view that the mind has “innate ideas,” or ideas that it is simply born with. Rather, the he consider mind like a blank slate upon which our experience of the world is written thus man can subsequently learn and improve through conscious effort. All of our knowledge must come from experience of the physical world, through sensory perception. Locke’s chief argument against innate ideas is that if there is such ideas existed, they would be universal in all men. However, he argues, there is not one single idea that is universally inherent in all.

David Hume was an empiricist along with the Locke. He further developed Locke’s empiricist notion towards more radical and Skeptical conclusions. He was a Scottish philosopher. A Treatise on Human Nature published in 1739 is his most important work. Hume argued that we only know the ideas, not the external world where Locke’s argument was that through ideas our mind knows the external world. Hume believes that there are no innate ideas or capacities within us, but that everything is acquired through experience, including our capacity to reason and hold ideas. Both Locke and Hume denied the Aristotelian concept of “substance” as the underlying substratum of reality. Hume argues that there are no essences actually in the world.  Hence he questioned the entire notion of human identity itself.

Samuel Johnson was an English critic, poet, essayist and moralist. He is best known for the dictionary he has compiled Dictionary of the English Language. It was the first comprehensive dictionary in English. Lives of the English Poets is another famous work of Dr Johnson. His most famous poem is The Vanity of Human Wishes. He is also known for his essays The Rambler, The Idler etc. Johnson affirmed to the classical notions of literature based on reason and truth. He was also adamant on the moral function of literature.

Giambattista Vico was an Italian Enlightenment political philosopher and historian. He criticized the progress of modern rationalism and was an advocate of classical antiquity. He is best known his work the New Science. He was an advocate of rhetoric and humanism. Opposed to Cartesian analysis Vico was a predecessor of systemic and complexity thinking. He was a counter Enlightenment thinker.  He claims himself as influenced by the Bacon and Malebranche. Vico wrote many works emphasising the importance of Rhetoric.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher of the 18^th century France. Rousseau was an important figure of the Enlightenment era. His political philosophy had influenced Enlightenment in Europe especially France. He was against all sorts of powers and conventions that govern human beings and believed in the individuality. A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality are his two major philosophical works. Through his works, he proposed that human beings are inherently good and that they are corrupted by the complex historical events.  . Rousseau was a strong advocate for social reform of all kinds. He fostered the French Enlightenment philosophy. Later philosophers like Immanuel Kant were much influenced by Rousseau.

Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert were the other major figures of the Enlightenment in France. Voltaire popularised the theories of Newton and Locke among the public. He was a Enlightenment satirist who criticized the religion and major philosophical tendencies of his time.  His major philosophical work Candide mocked the determinism, optimism and rationalism of the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who believed in a pre-established harmony in the world. He says in Candide that to know the world one must travel and experience. Voltaire criticises the rational justifications of the war, intolerance of the religions, madness of the masses, greed which undermines the contentment and all the institutions of inequality. Voltaire was a champion of self expression among the enlightenment philosophers.

Diderot and d’Akembert were the other leading members of the French enlightenment. Diderot was a French philosopher, critic and a writer. He is best known today as the editor and contributor to Encyclopedie along with Jean d’Alembert. In Germany Gotthold Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn were the flag holders of the Enlightenment philosophy. Both of them propounded philosophies of religious tolerance.

            Immanuel Kant was a German skeptic philosopher.  He was influenced by the David Hume’s theories and brought the school of thought into a higher level. He argues that everyone born with his own innate idea and the perceptions of the world.  Reality is in the eyes of person and we can never know which is “real” and which our “perception” is. So Kant refuses to accept the validity of “reasoning” on the argument that ‘No one actually knows what other people is thinking about’. Kant combined the empiricist philosophy of Britain and rationalist philosophy of Europe.  Kant’s continued to influence German philosophers long after his death. Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche all significantly borrow from Kant’s concept of thinking.

Edmund Burke was a political activist and philosopher. His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) was a scathing attack on numerous aspects of the French Revolution of 1789. He wrote many political and philosophical essays.  He follows Hume and Addison and adopts an empiricist perspective.

 Marry Wollstonecraft

Often known as the first Feminist writer, was an advocate of women’s rights and philosopher. . Her best known work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman  is considered as the foundational text of western feminism. . Her other famous work Vindication of the Rights of Men was a reply to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Being as an enlightened thinker Mary Wollstonecraft asserts the equality between men and women. She argues that if women appear to be inferior it is only because of lack of education.

 While she did not directly write on literature, she explored issues such as the nature of women, their innate abilities and their characteristics as arising from social and economic circumstances, and their capacity for education. She disregards the power of heredity. And has the view that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and treated equally.

Conclusion:

Enlightenment is a philosophical movement which dominated the Intellectual arena of Europe in 18^th century. Empiricism and rationalism was the characteristics of this age. Egalitarianism and Individualism were the keywords. Every field had the tendencies towards Enlightenment rise. Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes and Benedict Spinoza were considered as the pioneer of Enlightenment thoughts. People began to hold secular views and think rationally and scientifically. People began to question the age old established institutions including religion and monarchy. Enlightenment was actually celebration of ideas. They began to see these ideas applied to every segment of life and society. Hence this era is also referred as the age of reason. The major part of the neoclassical movement coincided with the 18^th century Age of Enlightenment. Although many thinkers advocated this philosophy, they did not think uniformly. They only shared the idea of thinking based on the reason.

Citizens began to see leaders as subjected to shortcomings and criticism. Argumentation and criticism developed as the new mode of communication. The American and French revolutions were directly inspired by the enlightenment ideas. The Enlightenment ideals continued till early 19^th century and paved way for the Romanticism.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Wadsworth: Cengage, 2012. Print

Albert, Edward. History of English Literature. New Delhi: Oxford University     Press, 1979. Print.

Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. New          Delhi: Blackwell, 2006. Print

  Gay,Peter(1996), The Enlightenment: An Interpretation,      W.W.Norton&Company,ISBN0-393-00870-3

 Narayanan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and Theory; An Introduction History,           Hyderabad:    Orient Blackswan, 2008.

Nayar K Pramod. A Short History of English Literature.  New Delhi: Cambridge           University Press, 2009. Print.

ASSIGNMENT

Enlightenment philosophy

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                                                                28/10/2015

ASSIGNMENT



Enlightenment philosophy














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Dr.Shalini                                                                                                        Muhd. Uvais 
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The Philosophy  of  Enlightenment

“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage”
                                                                                    -          Kant.                                                                           The enlightenment has been called as an  intellectual tendency, philosophy,literature, language, art, religion, and a political theory which is said to have started since 1680 and ended on the last days of  Eighteenth century. It was not only an intellectual movement but created a cultural ambiance of trust in universal and uniform human reason which would help the human kind to discover the truth and  solution for their crucial problems. The so called age come to get rid of whole kind  of superstitions, prejudices and barbarity  and was liberating the human kind from the reliance on mere authority and unexamined tradition. With the idea of progress, namely , the notion that by virtue of the development and exploitation of  art, science, and technology with the application of  human rationality would definitely represent an overall improvement in the life, morality, and happiness of human beings from old dark age to the present day of civilization, they created two kinds of model for the “reason” as it is called an ‘age of reason’ :
                    1)      The perfect procedure of science which results by reasoning from the particular facts of experiences to universal laws.
                   2)      The pure geometrical, namely, the conclusion of the particular truths from a clear cut and distinct ideas which are universal and called intuitively by the “light of reason” ( it was followed by especially Descartes and his followers).
In England, from Francis Bacon, John Lock, and William Godwin were the theorists of the Enlightenment while in France, Descartes, Voltaire and  Diderot did highly reputed contributions for the same. At the same time, Leibniz and Immanuel Kant were doing their work  for it’s growth and development in  Germany when Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson established a well foundation stone for the Enlightenment theories. Truly speaking, it has grown and developed throughout the world with in years and number of people get encouraged with new-arrived think tank’s   established notions.
                 “The Enlightenment category of universal, which was central to eighteenth century thinkers who sought to transcend national, linguistic, or other divisions, has been both praised as an indispensable tool of a radical social critique and derogated as the conceptual means by which local differences such as race, sex, ethnicity, and class are elided in the name of dubious morality”   - M H Abrams
                 These representations of the Enlightenment, and  especially  the authority and objectivity of  “ reason”, have been challenged from many ways: initially, by actual  figures usually involved  within the circle  of Enlightenment thought, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who advocated for the importance of emotion and instinct, and David Hume, whose skepticism  sticked on  even the capability and existence  of reason;  by Theodor Adorno,  Max Horkheimer and many others such as Roland Barthes, who have developed the critique, originally profounded  by Marx and Engels, of the “empire of reason” as a  basic foundation of  bourgeois ideology;  by an alternative,  the ever challenging and mysterious  tradition of philosophy arriving  from Schopenhauer,  Nietzsche, and  Bergson to Derrida which has stressed  the  “intrinsic connection of reason with ideological and pragmatic interests and physical survival” ;  by the psychoanalytic interpretations  generated from  Freud and  Jung, which have stressed  the inferior standing  of human behavior is accounted for by reason;  by feminisms which have rewritten reason as a predominant and superior notion  in male constructions of the world and as internally constrained by the complex analysis  of the body structure ; and by various types  of poststructuralist and postcolonial theory, which have situated reason as a peculiarly European constructed  phenomenon intrinsically  and internally tied to class interests and the projects of imperial hegemony, which is too a belief of orientalists.
Generally speaking, the very discussion of the Enlightenment seems introverted to the debate of what is ultimately the ‘reason’ as whether it is opposing emotion or religion or tradition while many of us still  believe that they should go hand in hand. At its very heart, reason was from the beginning ideologically created and partialsed, on many levels. Hence, all of these claims and tendencies have challenged the notion  of reason to neutrality, impartiality, objectivity, and universality.
Though many of those people were highly traditional and obedient to religious theories, they were too mentally contradicted with the very universal practical and highly truthful scientific theories mainly after the incident of  Copperniccus. These stage of contradiction may lead them to the deliberate and forced acceptance of the so called  new thought and it may encouraged the profounder to think about it, either.
           “Notwithstanding these critiques, which have variously claimed the  force since the early twentieth century, the main streams of the Enlightenment continue to have a profound effect on our world. Much Enlightenment thought was underlain by a new scientific vision of the universe inspired by the work of the English mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727): this conception of a mechanical universe ordered by laws which were scientifically ascertainable eventually displaced the view of the universe as ordered and historically directed by a benevolent divine providence.”     -M A R Habib
                               The very notion of reason proclaimed  a profound challenge and authority to previous  traditions of  thought and institutional and cultural  practice as well as belief. Though reliance and dependence on reason was in itself nothing new; nonetheless, the classical philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle had presented and discovered  reason as the human power and source  through which we could gain access to ultimate and universal truths that were  verily certain. Quite frankly,  Medieval Christian philosophy and belief proclaimed and  acknowledged that reason was an inevitable and  necessary  factor of a proper spiritual disposition and mental standing, but it was only one condition that it should be balanced by faith and revelation. In other words, reason was limited and  constrained within a wide and  broader pattern of human abilities  and its limitations were stressed: reason alone could not gain access to God or salvation, nor could it discover the ultimate mysteries and truths  of  the universe.
The strange thing to the Enlightenment was its insistence on reason as the primary      notion and faculty through which we could acquire knowledge, and on its potentially limitless practice and application. The findings and inventions  of reason need no longer be  limited and  constrained by the requirements of faith or the dictates of divine revelation. More above , the holiness and exaltation of reason, of man’s individual capacity for reasoning, effectively   and independently undermined reliance on any form of authority, whether it be the authority of the  God, the Church, the state, of tradition, convention, or of any powerful individual.  It’s successful practice has been seen in Syria and it’s neighbour countries mainly after the Jasmin revolution. This is flourished in modern democracies even today: as Alexis de Tocqueville noted about America, people in general prefer to rely and depend  on their own insight (though universal) rather than obey to the authority or orders  of others, even of experts.
 Three distinguishing monuments of Enlightenment thought were the English thinker Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the French rationalist philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), and the Dutch rationalist thinker Benedict (or Baruch) Spinoza (1632–1677). Bacon’s major philosophical works were  The Advancement of Learning (1605) and  The New Organon (1620), in which he propounds the method of induction  and analysis  whereby we generalize on the basis of actual observation of a number of particular occurrences. He proposed that induction, as the method of modern science, was a more effective path
to knowledge than the medieval reliance on religious and traditional  reasoning.
“ In The New Organon Bacon insisted that knowledge can arise only from actual observation of nature; the elements of logic, such as the syllogism, which underlie much medieval philosophy, he says, may form a coherent structure within itself but is not necessarily tied to actual fact. A syllogism, for example, could be valid inasmuch as its propositions flow logically,but these propositions could nonetheless be untrue. The only secure way to arrive atknowledge, then, is by a “true induction,” whereby reason is applied to observed facts;only in this way can ideas and axioms be generated”.
Even though certain systems of thought have followed by centuries,Bacon asserts that we must begin anew from this alternative foundation. Up until now,he warns, the human mind has been misled by what he calls “idols” or false notions. He divides these idols into four classes. The first type are “Idols of the Tribe,” which refer to the natural happenings  of nature caused by the ignorance or deficiencies of sense and understanding common to all human beings. The next are “Idols of the Cave”: each man, he says, has a private cave or den, through which or from which he sees the world. The cave is a metaphor for  an individual’s nature and upbringing: his view of the world will be refracted and distorted by his subjective experiences. The third kind of idols are those of the “marketplace,” again a metaphor
for “the commerce and consort of men”: when men enter into social bonds, a social
discourse is created which gives a sense of  “vulgar” in its vagueness and intellectual
insufficiency. Finally, there are “Idols of the Theatre”: these are the systems of philosophers
and learned men which are “merely stage plays” because they represent “worlds
of their own creation” rather than the actual world. The upholders of these previous
systems urge us to view the world through those fictions rather than experiencing it
directly for ourselves.
                                                                                                                                                                                                   René Descartes is known as the “father” of modern philosophy. Like Bacon,
Descartes challenged the basic principles of medieval philosophy. In his Discourse on Method  he began his thinking in a skeptical mode, doubting all things, including his own senses, understanding, and the reality of the external world, until he could find a
secure and certain foundation on which to build his own system of thought. Descartes
resolved to  reject as absolutely false everything as to which he could imagine the least
ground of doub  in order to see if any kind of certain knowledge remained. He first
doubted the responding power and  deliverances of our sense, since they often deceive us; he then doubted the process of reasoning; he imagined that the entire world might be a delusion. “But, in assuming everything to be false, Descartes concluded: “it was absolutely essential that the ‘I’ who thought this should be somewhat [something], and remarking that this
truth ‘I think, therefore I am’ was so certain and so assured . . . I came to the conclusion
that  I could receive it . . . as the first principle of the Philosophy for which I was seeking.” Descartes came to identify his essential nature or self with the process of thinking, calling himself a “thinking being,” independent of any place or any material circumstances and every happenings. In this way, he discovered  his famous dualism or distinction between the mind and the body. “The mind is a thinking substance, whereas the body belongs to the world of space, time, and material extension”. In this way, Descartes propounded  a mechanistic view of the world. Descartes inferred from his earlier process of doubt that he could take it as a general rule that the things which we conceive very “clearly and very distinctly” are all true. Descartes took mathematics as his model of knowledge given that its ideas were clear and distinct and that its truths were certain.
 Spinoza, was a Jew born in Amsterdam, who had studied interpreted  Descartes’ works closely. His own rationalist and unorthodox views led to his expulsion from the Jewish community in 1656 for heresy. He also offended Christian theologians by his unorthodox views of the Bible. Like Descartes, he believed in the primacy of deduction and in a mechanistic view of the universe; however, he did not adopt Cartesian dualism, arguing instead that the universe is composed of a single substance, which he viewed as God, and which is represented differently in the attributes of mind and matter. “In his major work, the Ethics (1677), he urged that the highest good consists in the rational mastery over one’s passions and ultimately in the acceptance of the order and harmony in nature, which is an expression of the divine nature”.
            Further emerging  Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and David Hume in Britain, Voltaire, Diderot, and d’Alembert in France, as well as Gotthold Lessing in Germany, stood for encouraged more skeptical, rational, and tolerant approaches to religion. “The most common approach was “deism,” which saw divine laws as natural and rational, and dismissed all superstition, miracles, and sacraments”. Bacon and Descartes say  what were to become two important strands of  Enlightenment thought, empiricism and rationalism respectively. Bacon’s empiricism stated emphasis on our experience and observation of the world; Descartes stressed the use of our reason to arrive at certainc and distinct notions of the world. Another face of Enlightenment thought was materialism, which marks the thought of  Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Hobbes theorised  a materialistic view of even the mind, regarding sensation as caused by the impact and interaction of small particles.
In political terms, the Enlightenment produced what should be an ideal state. “Several Enlightenment philosophers made a theory of the “social contract,” or the contract that might be agreed upon by citizens of a state so that social life would be governed by laws and that the ruler’s power and his relation to his people  in terms of rights and duties would be defined. Many of these thinkers what men would be like in a state of nature, just before of the idea of nature. Hobbes’ view of this state, as expressed in his Leviathan (1651), he suggests that, without any pure  laws or contract, men would be in a actual  state of war”. His ‘reasoning is that nature has basically made men equal; from this equality proceeds “diffidence” (by which Hobbes means hostility or aggressiveness), since men, whose principal purpose is self-preservtion, would be competing for the same things. Eventually, war would result, since in order to secure themselves as fully as possible, men would attempt to gain power over as many other people as they could. A third act of quarrel would be the ‘desire for glory and reputation’. In this condition of war, says Hobbes, an world like ‘utopia’ ,there would be no trade or industry, no culture, no arts, letters, or science. There would be   “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In this state of nature, there would be no rules, no morality, no justice, and no law: these institutions, says Hobbes  belong to man as he lives in society, not in solitude. Even after a social contract is established between persons of a given state, says Hobbes, one state will nonetheless be in a posture of war against other states; this condition, however, unlike that of a war of individuals, may actually promote industry and happiness. One of the major empiricist thinkers of the Enlightenment, and the most important philosopher in the formulation of political liberalism, was John Locke, whose most influential works were An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises on Civil Government, both published in 1690. In the Essay Locke denied Descartes’ view that the mind has “innate ideas,” or ideas that it is simply born with. Rather, the mind is initially a tabula rasa or blank slate upon which our experience of the world is written. Locke argues that all our ideas come from experience, either through sensation or through reflection. We receive distinct ideas of the objects in the external world through our senses, such as the ideas of yellow, white, hard, cold, or soft; we also receive ideas through reflection on the internal operation of our own minds; these ideas include perception, thinking, doubting, reasoning, and believing. These two operations, he says, are “the fountains of knowledge” and there is no other source of knowledge or ideas. Where Locke does agree with Descartes is in his insistence on clear and distinct ideas; as we shall see, like some modern philosophers of language, Locke blamed the misuse or abuse of language for many of our misconceptions about the world, and proposed that language should be made more precise. The Scottish philosopher David Hume developed some of Locke’s empiricist notions toward more radical, skeptical, conclusions. Where Locke had urged that our minds know the external world through ideas, Hume argued that we know only ideas, not the external world itself. We can know external objects only by the “perceptions they occasion,” and we can infer their existence only from “the coherence of our perceptions,” whether they indeed are real or merely “illusions of the senses.” In fact, Locke himself acknowledged that even simple ideas, which were the very core of experience, cannot be proved to correspond with reality, and he admitted that the real essence of things is unknowable (Essay, 271–273, 287, 303). Both Locke and Hume rejected the Aristotelian concept of “substance” as the underlying substratum of reality. Hume develops the skepticism implicit in Locke’s rejection of substance: there are no essences actually in the world, whether we are talking of external objects such as a table, or human identity, or moral concepts such as goodness. All of these are ultimately constructions of our minds, informed largely by custom and habit. Indeed, in Hume’s view, even the human self was not a fixed datum but a construction through a “succession of perceptions”. Hence the very notion of human identity is called into question by Hume. Moreover, in Hume’s eyes, the law of causality, on which the entire thrust of modern science was based and which was hailed as the “ultimate principle” of the universe, has merely a conventional validity, based on nothing more than the authority of custom. What we perceive in the world is not the operation of causality but mere “constant conjunction,” in other words, our own long habit of associating two phenomena.
Hail it as the source of everything that is progressive about the modern world. For them, it stands for freedom of thought, rational inquiry, critical thinking, religious tolerance, political liberty, scientific achievement, the pursuit of happiness, and hope for the future. However,  enemies accuse it of 'shallow' rationalism, naïve optimism, unrealistic universalism, and moral darkness."
In short, the enlightenment philosophy changed the mode of the world both systematically and socially. Due to it’s successful domination, different countries enjoyed it results according to their social and political standings like enlightenment absolutism.



Bibliography :
... Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College, 1999. Print.
         .... Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.
        .... Habib, M.A.R. Modern Literary Criticism and Theory; 2005.

A-3 ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHY

 ASSIGNMENT - ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHY

MANJU P

LCL051511 

ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHY

NEOCLASSICISM

Neoclassicism points to a tendency in art and literature enduring from the early seventeenth century until around 1750. Neoclassicism comprised a coming back to the classical models, literary styles, and values of ancient Greek and Roman authors. In this, the neoclassicists to some extent were the heirs of the Renaissance humanists.

Many medieval and Renaissance writers, like Dante, Milton, Spenser, Ariosto, and More, had peopled their writings with fantastic and mythical beings. Sidney and some others had even proposed, in an idealizing Neo-Platonist strain, that the task of the poet was to create an ideal world that is superior to the world of nature. The neoclassicist who reacted against this idealistic tendency in Renaissance poetics, was considered as heirs to other tendency in Renaissance poetics, which was Aristotelian.

Two major concepts central to neoclassical literary theory and practice which were intimately related were imitation and nature. In one sense, imitation – of the external world and of human action – was a reaffirmation of the ideals of objectivity and impersonality, as opposed to the increasingly sophisticated individualism and exploration of subjectivity found in Renaissance writers. Another integral notion was imitation of classical models, especially Homer and Vergil. And these two aspects of imitation were identified by Pope. This identification was mostly based on concept of nature and this concept also referred to human nature: to what was central, timeless, and universal in human experience.

The neoclassicists cannot be considered as the slavish imitators of the classicists. The neoclassicists took an effort to develop and refine Aristotle’s explanation of the emotions evoked by tragedy in audience, and an important part of their attempt to imitate nature consisted in portraying the human passions. The neoclassicists viewed literature as subject to a system of rules, and literary composition as a rational process, subject to the faculty of judgement. Neoclassicism is a reaction contrary to the optimistic, spirited, and enthusiastic Renaissance view of man as a being essentially good and possessed of an infinite potential for spiritual and intellectual growth. Neoclassical theorists, by contrast viewed man as an imperfect being, naturally sinful, whose potential was limited. These people replaced the Renaissance emphasis on the imagination, on invention and experimentation, and on mysticism with an emphasis on order and reason, on restraint, on common sense, and on religious, political, economic and philosophical conservatism. Some of the major critics of the neoclassical age are Corneille, Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux in France, Dryden, Pope, Aphra Ben and Johnson in England.

FRENCH NEOCLASSICISM

Neoclassical literary criticism took root in France then its influence spread to other parts of Europe, especially England.  Jean Chapelain was the one who introduced the ideas of the Italian Aristotelian commentators Castelvetro and Scaliger into France. During the reign of Louis XIV the French court was a center of patronage for many poets and dramatists. After the religious wars of the sixteenth century, the political conditions of relative peace, prosperity, and national unity together with the growth of educated elites in the clergy and court aristocracy, proved ripe for the emergence of the French Academy in 1635. The objective of the Academy, headed by Cardinal Richelieu, was partly to standardize language through the creation of a dictionary and grammar, as well as work on rhetoric and poetics, in pursuit of what Hugh M. Davidson has called the “rhetorical ideal,” an eloquence perceived as vital to the development of civil

Society. The results were the emergence of a rhetorical context for the speculations of the various French theorists and the relatively uniform and systematic nature of French neoclassical theory. The major figures of French neoclassicism were Corneille, Racine, Moliere, and La Fontaine and the prominent theorists were Dominique Bouhours, Rene Rapin, and Nicolas Boileau.

·        PIERRE CORNEILLE (1606-1684)

Corneille was one of the leading French tragedian of the mid-seventeenth century, that is an age when France was becoming the center of fashion and culture in Europe. Corneille was considered by most critics to be the father of French tragedy, although six of his first eight plays were comedies. He was born in Normandy town of Rouen, France and was basically a playwright. The most important text of his literary criticism, Trois Discours sur le poème dramatique (Three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry, 1660), was produced in response to the controversies he had kindled, to explain and justify his own dramatic practice. These controversies had their origin in his famous play, Le Cid, which appeared in 1637. The play had great popularity with audiences and also was attacked bycritics as well as by French literary and political establishment. The attack was primarily based on the play’s failure to observe the rules of classical theater as laid down by Aristotle and Horace. Most critics claimed that his play violated the classical unities – of action, time, and place – as well as the Aristotelian precepts of probability and necessity; and in doing so, they argued, it undermined the morally didactic function of drama. Corneille countered these charges by writing further plays exhibiting his mastery of classical conventions and by producing his Three Discourses. His text of Discourses advocates his concern to revise classical precepts to modern requirements of the stage and to provide a broader and more liberal interpretation of those precepts. In his third Discourse, entitled “Of the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place,” Corneille makes an effort to explain the rationale behind his plays. Corneille views the problems of dramatic theory from the practical point of view of a playwright, and this leads him to take a more liberal attitude than other critics. 

Therefore Corneille aspires to “make ancient rules agree with modern pleasures”. His text is an example of ancient authority tempered not only by examples of the subversion of that authority by ancient writers themselves, but also above all by an appeal to experience and theatrical practice.

·        NICOLAS BOILEAU-DESPREAUX (1636–1711)

Boileau was a French poet, satirist, and critic. He had an influence not only on French letters but also on English and German poets and critics. His L’Art Poétique (The Art of Poetry), was first published in 1674 and it was translated into English by John Dryden. Boileau’s text includes a formal statement of the principles of French classicism and perhaps the most direct expression of neoclassical ideals anywhere. Like Pope’s Essay on Criticism, Boileau’s Art of Poetry represents some of the great intellectual and political changes that were have started to sweep over Europe. And like Pope’s Essay, Boileau’s text is written in the form of a poem, in the tradition of Horace’s Ars poetica, and it provides advice to the poet in various genres such as tragedy, comedy, epic, and ode, as well as summaries of various aspects of literary history. The principle of reason is at the heart of Boileau’s text, it receives an emphasis well beyond that in Horace’s text and even greater than that in Pope’s text. Boileau is skillful in depicting the widely varied complications of the reliance on reason. Like Horace, Boileau gives a great deal of emphasis on pleasing the reader, he reminds the poet that he is not writing for present glory but for “immortal fame”.

NEOCLASSICISM IN ENGLAND

The main streams of English neoclassical criticism were inspired by the French example. French influence in England was aggravated by the Restoration of 1660, whereby Charles II, exiled in France after the English Civil War, returned with his court to England .As mentioned that the France of Louis XIV had embarked upon a neoclassical program of national proportions, neoclassical criticism in England was not very systematic.. Many saw the adoption of neoclassical ideals as necessary to give rise to a stable and ordered political state. Dryden and others denounced the servility and enslavement of French critics to the royal court. John Dennis, recognized that literature must change with varying religion and culture, and they even glorified Milton above the ancients. The classical norms being adapted to developments in England underwent some shifts in meaning. And from history we comes to know that Dryden and Johnson were the exponents of neoclassicism in England, attempting to mediate between the merits of ancients and moderns. In general, the critics ranging from Jonson to Dryden effectively advanced the notion of a viable English literary tradition.

·        JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

John Dryden occupies an influential place in English critical history. Samuel Johnson addresses him as “the father of English criticism,” and declared of his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) that “modern English prose begins here.” Dryden’s critical work was very lengthy, treating of various genres such as epic, tragedy, comedy and dramatic theory, satire, the relative virtues of ancient and modern writers, as well as the nature of poetry and translation. Dryden was also a gifted poet, dramatist, and translator. His poetic output reflects his shifting religious and political allegiances. Dryden's judgments are considered solid and sensible. According to him "a man should have a reasonable, philosophical, and in some measure mathematical head to be a complete and excellent poet, and besides this should have experience in all sorts of  humours and manners of men; should be thoroughly skilled in conversation and should have a great knowledge of mankind in general." Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy is written as a debate on drama conducted by four speakers, Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander. These personae have conventionally been identified with four of Dryden’s contemporaries - Eugenius (meaning “well-born”) may be Charles Sackville, who was Lord Buckhurst, a patron of Dryden and a poet himself, Crites (Greek for “judge” or “critic”) perhaps represents Sir Robert Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law, Lisideius refers to Sir Charles Sedley, and Neander (“new man”) is Dryden himself. In a note to the reader prefacing the Essay, Dryden suggests that the prime objective of his text is “to vindicate the honour of our English writers, from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French”. Yet the scope of the Essay extends far beyond these two topics, effectively ranging over a number of crucial debates concerning the nature and composition of drama. He is a leader in the distinguished line of England's poet-critics that begins with Sidney and includes

Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Arnold, and Eliot.

·       ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

Alexander Pope’s anonymously published An Essay on Criticism in 1711, is perhaps the clearest statement of neoclassical principles in any language. In its broad outlines, it presents a worldview which synthesizes elements of a Roman Catholic outlook with classical aesthetic principles and with deism. Pope was born in London in 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution, when the Catholic King James II was deposed in favor of Protestant William III and Mary II.  Pope’s An Essay on Criticism follows the tradition of Horace’s Ars Poetica. An Essay on Criticism according to him was an endeavor to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and critic. He defines classical values in terms of “nature” and “wit”. According to him “Nature” and “wit” both are necessary for poetry and criticism. The work explains the standard rules that govern poetry by which a critic passes judgment. He discusses the laws to which a critic should maintain while critiquing poetry, and points out that critics serve a significant function in assisting poets with their works, as opposed to the practice of attacking them. 

·       APHRA BEHN (1640-1689)

Aphra Behn was a pioneer in many respects. She was a woman who was obliged to support herself as a writer because of the circumstances of her family and her husband’s death infact the first woman to do so. She is considered as one of the founders of the English novel. Her experience as a female playwright exposed her to the excessive restrictions faced by a woman in this profession, resulting in her highly unorthodox and contentious views about drama. In A Room of One's Own, (1929), Virginia Woolf writes that, "AIl women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn,... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” Behn is regarded as the first Englishwoman to earn a living as a writer. As such, she became the model for the commercial woman writer operating outside, the narrow circle of mainstream propriety while trying to gain a place within it. In her critical writing, she explains the obstacles faced by a woman striving to earn a living in profession dominated by men. She describes her isolation from the society that would underwrite and support her plays, as well as the different standards applied to her as a woman. Perhaps because of her sex, her literary  criticism embodies the everyday difficulties faced by practicing dramatists than do the writings of any literary critic of the time.

·       SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)

Samuel Johnson was an essayist and literary historian who was a major figure in 18th century England. He is mainly remembered for his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Lives of the English Poets (1783) and his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare (1765). He wrote drama and a fictional work as well as numerous essays in periodicals. An integral dimension of Johnson’s literary output and personality was his literary criticism, which was to have a huge impact on English letters. His critical insights were witty, sharp, provocative, sometimes radical, and always grounded on his enormous range of reading. Johnson followed the path of Plato, Aristotle, and others in viewing reason as the pathway to truth, it is important that what is opposed to reason here is not passion or emotion but imagination elevated to the status of a mental faculty or disposition. His classical commitment to reason, probability, and truth was complemented by his equally classical insistence on the moral function of literature.

For modern readers, Johnson's style and point of view may require some getting accustomed to. But as Mathew Arnold concluded in “Johnson's Lives”(1878) in a formulation still pertinent today: “The more we study Johnson, the higher will be our esteem for the power of his mind, the width of his interests, the largeness of his knowledge, the freshness, fearlessness, and strength of his judgments.”

ENLIGHTENMENT

Enlightenment was a movement that took shape in the 17^th and 18^th centuries in Europe and America giving rise to the “age of reason” not only for Western civilization, but for humanity as a whole. It was thus one of the first movements to pursue a global vision by increasing the entrepreneurial, self-relying and free world citizen or cosmopolitan as the basic ideal to aspire to in order to create wealth, peace and liberty for the largest possible number of people and to overcome religious disputes.

In the seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution had offered a new model for how problems could be solved through rational thought and experimentation, rather than on the authority of religion or the ancients.The Scientific Revolution had in fact begun in the mid-16th century with Copernicus. New theory of the sun as the center of the universe, replacing Ptolemy’s earth-centered model, accepted since antiquity. This revolution ended up in the seventeenth century with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1687, in which a thoroughly mechanical universe was explained through universal laws of motion. In fact the French philosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes had seen man’s ability to reason as the very proof of his existence, declaring Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), in his Discourse on Method in 1637. Descartes rejected all forms of intellectual authority except the conclusions of his own thought, which he then used to prove the existence of God. Newton, like Descartes, presented a vision of the universe whose most basic workings could be calculated and understood rationally, but which was also the work of a Creator. No Enlightenment thinkers were uniform in their outlooks, but in generally they saw themselves as initiating an era of humanitarian, intellectual, and social progress, underlain by the increasing ability of human reason to subjugate analytically both the external world of nature and the human self.

The Enlightenment produced numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The most famous definition of Enlightenment is that of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of reason, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own understanding!’— that is the motto of enlightenment”.

Enlightenment thinkers believed that the development of science and industry announced a new age of egalitarianism and progress for humankind. More goods were being produced for less amount of money, people were traveling more, and the chances for the upwardly mobile to actually change their station in life were incomparably improving. Some of the prominent  political Enlightenment figures were Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau. In Europe, Voltaire and Rousseau were the torch bearers of enlightenment literature and philosophy.

·       JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

John Locke is one of the most famous philosophers and political theorists of the 17^th century.  He is considered as the founder of the school of thought known as British Empiricism, and he made foundational contributions to modern theories of limited, liberal government. Locke’s philosophy has been surviving and widespread in its influence. The implications of Locke’s empiricism are still prevalent: many ideological forces still encourage man to look at the world as an assemblage of particular facts, yielding sensations which his mind then process in arriving at abstract ideas and general truths. Locke’s primary aim is to show how closely language is connected with the process of thought and therefore to urge the need to use language in the most precise way so as to avoid unnecessary confusion in our concepts. In his philosophy of language, as in his general advocacy of empiricism, Locke fluctuates uneasily between a view of the human mind constructing the world with which it engages, and the mind “receiving” this world from without.

In politics, Locke is best known as the exponent of limited government. He uses theory of natural rights to argue that governments have responsibilities to their citizens, have only limited powers over their citizens, and can ultimately be overthrown by citizens under certain circumstances. He also brought out powerful arguments in favor of religious toleration.

·       JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

Although Joseph Addison is known as an essayist, and indeed he contributed much to the development of the essay form, which, like the literary form of the letter, flourished in the eighteenth century, he is also known a poet and a dramatist. He is the best co-author with Richard Steele of an influential series of periodical essays, published in  The Tatler and The Spectator . The views of Addison and Steele express an interesting combination of neoclassical values with dispositions that, in their more sustained treatment by later writers, will be articulated into elements of a Romantic vision of the world and the

human self. Addison was an important cultural and literary figure especially for middle class readers. He always wished to bring philosophical, political, and literary discussion within the reach of the middle classes. He was a good politician as well as a writer, holding positions of undersecretary of state, lord lieutenant, and then chief secretary for Ireland, as well as being a member of the Whig or Liberal Party from 1708 until his death.

·       GIAMBATTISTA VICO (1668-1744)

The Italian philosopher Vico brought out in his writings a historical view of the progress of human thought, language, and culture that assumes the evolutionary perspectives of Hegel, Marx, and others. He is noted for his intuitions into the origins and development of language and culture. Vico was educated in rhetoric and medieval philosophy, and had great interests, extending from philology and poetry to sociology, theology, and law. In his early life he was connected with a group of radical intellectuals who reacted against the central tenets of medieval philosophy and whose vision expressed the rationalist and empiricist values of the Enlightenment, being based on the works of such people as Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Descartes. His major work was his Scienza Nuova (New Science), published in 1725, with subsequent editions in 1730 and 1744. Vico explains that the objective of his New Science is to study “the common nature of nations in the light of divine providence.”  He points out that the “world of civil society” – which encompasses human social, political, and legal institutions – “has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind”. His thought reflects his relation with the early stages of Enlightenment thinking: providence and human agency are brought into an uneasy equivalence; human agency is now admitted into the scheme, making for a precarious balance between human and divine operations. Vico had made so many speeches on humanistic education. Vico attributes two important historical functions to poetry, or “poetic wisdom” -  on it was founded the religious and civil institutions of the first peoples, and it provided the embryonic basis for all further learning.

·       DAVID HUME (1711- 1776)

David  Hume was a Scottish philosopher and one of the prominent figures of the Enlightenment.  As Locke and Berkeley believed, Hume was an empiricist and believed that our knowledge derives from experience, and he pushed the empiricism of his predecessors toward a controversial skepticism as regards our knowledge of the external world, our subjective identities, and our religious beliefs. But he moved beyond them toward a position of

Radical skepticism, denying the possibility of certain knowledge and maintaining that

the mind itself is a bundle of sensations. Indeed, Hume reached the conclusion that

we cannot derive and prove a theory of reality at all; we can only experience

and must base our beliefs upon it. Hume is skeptical, but he is also intellectually inquisitive, clear in his prose; and convincing and complicated in his thought; he is sometimes confusing and contradictory, but never obscure, in argument. His major philosophical works were

A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), reproduced in a more accessible version in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). His works are generally regarded as the manifesto of Enlightenment.

·       MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797)

Mary Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the first feminist writers of the modern times. She was a radical thinker whose central notions were framed by the debates and issues that arose directly out of the French Revolution of 1789. Wollstonecraft has rightly been characterized as an Enlightenment thinker, propounding arguments in favor of reason, against hereditary privilege and the entire inequitable apparatus of feudalism. Her famous work Vindication of the Rights of Man was actually a reply to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. She is best known for her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). She through her works proposed the equality of women with men. Unlike other middle-class women, whose husbands, fathers; wealth, or connections veiled their legal powerlessness; Mary Wollstonecraft clearly saw the damage caused by sexual inequality. She was socialized for but she never experienced a life of respectable dependency.

CONCLUSION

Enlightenment therefore was a philosophical movement that influenced Europe during the 18^th century. The neoclassical period gave way to the era of enlightenment. The Enlightenment philosophers gave importance to reason, individualism and liberty and believed that truth can be realized through experimentation. The age of enlightenment is also known as the ‘age of reasoning’. The concept of enlightenment changed from philosopher to philosopher. No Enlightenment thinkers followed a uniform pattern. Thus the age of reason gave way to the 19^th century Romanticism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

· Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. New Delhi:    Blackwell.2006.Print

· Legouis, Emile. History of English Literature. New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers India Ltd.1981. Print.

· Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Wadsworth: Cengage, 2012. Print

· Nayar K Pramod. A Short History of English Literature.  New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.

· Narayanan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and Theory; An Introduction History. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2008.