ASSIGNMENT
ON
ENLIGHTENMENT
PHILOSOPHY
KRISHNAVENI
U
LCL051507
INTRODUCTION
As
many of our own institutions are descended from the early modern period,
our
literary criticism is indeed the very notion of criticism as a relatively
autonomous domain, derives from medieval age. Neoclassicism was also such
literary criticism which later paved the way towards Enlightenment. Various
changes had occurred during these ages in literary and other fields also.
Enlightenment
is an intellectual movement and cultural ambiance which developed in Western
Europe during the seventeenth century and reached its height in the Eighteenth
century. The common concern was a trust in universal and uniform human response
as adequate to solve the important problems and to establish the essential
norms in life. Enlightenment is the period in the history of Western thought
and culture; characterized by dramatic revolution in sciences, philosophy,
society and politics; these revolution swept away the medieval world view and
ushered in our modern Western world.
The important personalities of Age of Enlightenment
were David Hume, John Locke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Giambattista Vico etc. Locke
was the starter of Enlightenment movement, Hume challenged the classical period.
Wollstonecraft critical text was considered as the fundamental text for western
Feminism. Vico in his “New Science” says about the three periods God, heroes
and human which is similar to the concept of Hegel.
Before going to detailed concepts of
Enlightenment era, it is important to know about the neoclassical age and its
contribution to literary criticism. Neoclassicism refers to a broad field in
literature and art enduring from the early 17th century until around
1750. Most fundamentally, neoclassicism comprised a return to the classical
models, literary styles and values of ancient Greek and Roman authors.
The Neo-classicists reacted sharply against the existing stylistic excess,
superfluous ormentation and linguistic over sophistication of some renaissance
writers, they also rejected the lavishness of Gothic and Baroque styles. It
might seem that the neoclassical writers shared with Enlightenment thinker’s
belief in power of reason. Two of the concepts central were imitation and
nature which were related.
Neoclassical
literary criticism first took root in France from where its influence spread to
other parts of Europe, notably England. The main features of French
neoclassicism were Corneille, Racine, Moliere and La Fontaine. Corneille talked
about the necessity of using classical mode. There is a need for flexibility.
He explains of how one can use classical rule to modern one. Boileau perhaps
the most influential French neoclassical critic, argue for retaining the strict
division between classical and verse forms.
Main concerns or influence of Neoclassical Age
were the classical models. They draw their focus on them whereas the
enlightenment philosopher thought differently.
They emphasized on reason, and it was the main concern. Romanticism came
after Enlightenment which represented entirely different kind of concept. Inner
beauty, individual, progressive were emphasized responding to preceding era.
NEOCLASSICAL
AGE
Neoclassical
age was an age that followed the models of classics. The precursors of neoclassicism
in England were Samuel Johnson, John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Aphra Behn.
English classicism was in general flexible enough to accommodate within
tradition authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne and Milton, who did not
fit a rigid classical paradigm. Dryden and Johnson were the most flexible
exponents of neoclassicism in England attempting to mediate between merits of
ancients and moderns.
Dryden
opined that there is a need to appreciate the contemporary nationalism through
language and literature. He moved away from French dramatic mode. Aphra Behn
was just commercial woman writer who wrote in her own name. Addison was known
for his character description especially the “Spectator” magazine. Pope wrote
during the end of neoclassic period.
Neoclassical
age itself is not a systematic age. It had three phases; first one was the
restoration period in which Dryden was an important figure, who was a poet,
critic and also dramatist. Aphra Behn was also one of the most inventive and
versatile author of that time. Second phase is the Augustan Age where Pope and
Jonathan Swift were celebrated as the important figures. The third phase was
the Age of Sensibility which was also called as the Age of Johnson, stresses
the dominant position of Samuel Johnson and his literary and intellectual
circles. These authors represented a culmination of the literary and critical
modes of Neoclassicism and Enlightenment. Let us look at some of critics of
neoclassicism and their contribution to literary criticism.
Pierre Corneille:
Corneille
launched into a controversial career in the theater. The most important text of
Corneille literary criticism, Trois Discours sur le poème dramatique (Three
Discourses on Dramatic Poetry, 1660), was produced in response to the
controversies he had ignited, to explain and justify his own dramatic practice. Critics claimed that the 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 responded to these
charges both by writing further plays displaying his mastery of classical
conventions and by producing his Three Discourses. While he is
conventionally regarded as a champion of neoclassical virtues, the actual texts
of his Discourses suggest that he is concerned to adapt classical
precepts to modern requirements of the stage and to provide a broader and more
liberal interpretation of those precepts. Corneille’s overall aim, as he
suggests, is to make ancient rules agree with modern pleasures.
John
Dryden:
John
Dryden occupies an important place in English critical history. Samuel Johnson
called
him “the father of English criticism,” and affirmed of his Essay of Dramatic
Poesy that “modern English prose begins here.” Dryden’s Essay is skilfully
wrought in terms of its own dramatic structure. He criticised the romance.
Elevated style of the epic is mock especially Latin and Greek. Dryden perfected
the heroic couplet. He opined that feeling is more important than vision. He favored Shakespeare and in the neo classical time Shakespeare was criticised
for not following the three unities. Dryden dismisses the unities of time,
space and action. He gave all space to his contemporaries.
Alexander Pope:
More
than any other it is name of Pope that is associated with the epoch known as
the Augustan Age. The literature of this period confronted to Pope’s aesthetic
principles. In verse heroic couplet was common and in prose. Essay and satires
were common forms during this period. The literary circle around Pope
considered Homer pre dominant among ancient poets in his description of nature
and concluded a circuitous feat of logic that the writer who imitates, Homer is
also describing nature. From this follows the rule inductively based on
classics
that
Pope articulated in essay on criticism. In his verse and satires epistles Pope
adopts the Roman poet’s informal candor and conversational tone, and applying
the standards of origin Augustan Age to his own time. Pope suggests in many
portions of the Essay that criticism itself is an art and must be governed
by the same rules that apply to literature itself.
Samuel Johnson:
Samuel
Johnson is perhaps best remembered for his two-volume Dictionary of the
English Language, first published in 1755. He edited Shakespeare’s work in
eight volumes. His critical insights were witty, acerbic, provocative,
sometimes radical, and always grounded on his enormous rage of reading. His
works were foundation for the later criticism. He wrote in the late neo
classical and beginning age of Enlightenment.
Johnson and his fellow writers gave great emphasis
on Enlightenment values which stressed the important of using knowledge, not
faith and led to the expansion of many social, economic and cultural are as
including astronomy, politics etc. One of the most lasting legacies is the
English dictionary. One of Johnson’s most fervently held beliefs were that the
language of people should use in literature and that writers should avoid
grammar and vocabulary that did not appeal to the common reader. The Age of
Sensibility is marked by works that focus more directly on anti- classical
features.
Aphra
Behn:
Aphra
Behn was an important figure in many aspects. Because of her family
circumstances, she was obliged to support herself as a writer – the first woman
to do so. She is one of the founders of the English novel; her extended stay in Suriname inspired her to write Oroonoko (1688), the first novel against
slavery. And her experience as a female playwright exposed her to the numerous
difficulties faced by a woman in this profession, resulting in her highly
unorthodox and controversial views about drama. Aphra Behn’s appeal to
experience which was to specifically female experience was far more radical. She
elevates to a newly important status the per formative dimensions of drama, such
as the ability and integrity of the actors. She was politically conservative, a
consistent supporter of the royalists as against the English Parliament. She
does not see herself as someone outside the male literary tradition, and indeed,
tries to be included in it. Her originality, surely, lies as much in the way
she speaks as in what she speaks: her texts adopt a tone and a style
unprecedented in the history of literary criticism.
ENLIGHTENMENT
The
Enlightenment was a movement, spanning philosophy, literature, language, art,
religion, and political theory, which lasted from around 1680 until the end of
the eighteenth century. Enlightenment thought culminates historically in the
political upheaval of French revolution, in which the traditional hierarchical,
political and social orders were violently destroyed and replaced by political and
social order informed by the Enlightenment, ideas of freedom and equality for
all, founded upon principles of human reason.
The Enlightenment begins with the
scientific revolution of sixteenth and seventeenth century. Enlightenment was
called as the Age of reason and the Enlightenment thinkers in general saw
themselves as initiating an era of humanitarian, intellectual and social
progress, by the increasing ability of human reason to subjugate analytically
both the external world of nature and the human self. The power and objectivity
of reason have been challenged from many direction, which were the images of
Enlightenment: initially by certain figures usually included within the orbit
of Enlightenment thought, such as Jean – Jacques Rousseau, who stressed the
importance of emotion and instinct, and David Hume, who Skepticism embraced even the abilities of
reason.
The main streams of the
Enlightenment continue to have a profound effect on our world. The very concept
of reason issued a profound challenge to centuries old traditions of thought
and institutional practice. What was new to the Enlightenment was its
insistence on reason as a primary faculty through which we can acquire
knowledge. The findings of reason need no longer be constrained by the
requirements of faith or dictates of revelation.
Three seminal precursors of
Enlightenment thought were the English thinkers Francis Bacon, the French rationalist
philosopher Rene Descartes and the Dutch rationalist thinker Benedict Sponza. The historical and intellectual
developments associated with the Enlightenment had far-reaching effects on
literary criticism in terms of discussions of the language of poetry, notions
of taste, and faculties such as wit, judgment, and imagination. There were many
important personalities during this period which has been mentioned above. Let us
discuss about some of them major figures.
John
Locke:
Locke laid the foundations of classical British
empiricism, and his thought is often characterized as marked by tolerance,
moderation, and common sense. Locke’s views of language are particularly
interesting since they not only provided the starting point for subsequent theories
of language in the eighteenth century but also anticipate a great deal of
modern literary thinking about language. Locke’s fundamental endeavor is to
show how closely language is connected with the process of thought and to urge
the need to use language in the most precise way so as to avoid unnecessary
confusion in our concepts. Locke makes distinction between wit and judgement.
Locke
effectively revives the age-old antagonism between philosophy, on the one side,
and poetry and rhetoric, on the other. Locke urges that figurative speech
comprises one of the abuses of language. Locke effectively acknowledges a
skeptical position that what our minds know is not the world itself but the
ideas we have of it. In his philosophy of language, as in his general advocacy
of empiricism, Locke give a view of the human mind constructing the world with
which it engages, and the mind accepting this world from without. His immediate
wish for linguistic clarity is perhaps reaction to the failing system of
Joseph
Addison:
Joseph Addison is best
known as an essayist. Together with his friend and colleague Richard Steele, he
authored a series of articles in the periodicals the Tatler (1709–1711)
and the Spectator (1711–1714). He thought to bring philosophical,
political, and literary discussion within the reach of the middle classes. He
was a politician as well as a writer. Most of the valuable literary criticism
is contained in the pages of the Spectator, which had included extended
series of essays on more serious issues, including philosophy and literature,
in an attempt and refines the critical tastes of its readership. While Addison
and Steele assume a neoclassical style in invoking absolute standards rather
than public opinion, they do in later essays somewhat anticipate the more
modern tendency to appeal to the collective taste of a community of readers.
Addison states that although in poetry the unities
of time, place, and action, as well as other classical precepts, are necessary he
also insists that “there is still something more essential to the Art, who can
elevate and astonish the Fancy, and can give a Greatness of Mind to the Reader.
Like Kant, Addison situates imagination somewhere between sense and
understanding; it is higher than sense but lower than understanding. 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.
Giambattista
Vico:
Vico is an Italian Philosopher who expressed
in his writings a historical view of the progress of human thought, language,
and culture that provides the evolutionary perspectives of Hegel, Marx, and
others. He views human nature not as timeless and unchanging but as produced by
specific social, religious, and economic circumstances. Vico was a member of a group
of thinkers, the Palatine Academy, which was also committed to Enlightenment
and the liberation of philosophy and science from theology.
Vico explains that the purpose of his New Science
is to study “the common nature of nations in the light of divine
providence. Vico’s thought reflects his affiliation 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 also sees this progression of wisdom
or knowledge as moving from the senses through reason to revelation. Vico attributes
important historical functions to poetry (poetic wisdom) on it were founded the
religious and civil institutions of the first peoples; and it provided the
embryonic basis for all further learning.
David
Hume:
David Hume is a major Enlightenment philosopher. He
is an empiricist writer and opposed rational belief. Hume’s essay “Of the
Standard of Taste” was published in his volume entitled Four Dissertations in
1757. The other three essays were on history of religion, the passions, and
tragedy. According to Hume taste varies from individual to individual and there
is a need for standardization of taste.
He stress on poetry. For him to seek real beauty is
not easy to find and real beauty is found one self based on experience. Critic should have experience from which he
can criticise a work and should not have any prejudices. Art should be confined
to rules but not strictly follow the rules that may ruin the work. The author
should be able to put his thoughts in the work following certain rules.
Mary Wollstonecraft:
One
of the first feminist writers of modern times, Mary Wollstonecraft was a
radical thinker whose central notions were framed by the debates and issues
that arose directly out of the French Revolution of 1789.Her Vindication of
the Rights of Men was a defence of the Revolution against the
scornful attacks expressed in Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in
France. Wollstonecraft has rightly been characterized as an Enlightenment
thinker in favour of reason, against hereditary privilege and the apparatus of
feudalism. Wollstonecraft added to these conventional Enlightenment elements an
important dimension: a concern for the economic and educational rights of
women, as expressed in the work for which she is best known, A Vindication
of the women.
Wollstonecraft attempts to undermine prevailing views
of the character of women, views resting on political and economic
circumstances as well as on a history of male writing about women. Most male
writers effectively render women as useless members of society. The most
important is that women are unable to act as genuine moral agents: without the
power of reason, they cannot make moral choices and are disposed to blind
obedience of whatever power structure can claim authority over them. It is
ultimately on political and economic premises that Wollstonecraft sees the
possibility of a more effective education resting. Social equality would be the
basis of educational equality. Wollstonecraft seeks to extend to women the
Enlightenment principles of basing both knowledge and morality upon reason,
which itself presupposes access to the right kinds of information, to a
nurturing of coherent thinking, and, above all, freedom in the sense of being
allowed to judge and think for themselves.
CONCLUSION
Neoclassicism is emerged with
enlightenment philosophy. Enlightenment was a philosophical movement in Europe.
The enlightenment was a broad movement so many new thoughts. It gave stress on reason
over than to tradition. Enlightenment thinkers believed that reason and
secularism were necessary for political, economic and social progress. Enlightenment
ideas have been especially influential in politics. From an emphasis to rationalism and other
objective analysis, the enlightenment period give way to highly imaginative and
subjective period, a period of transition. Enlightenment critics gave
importance to reason. Empiricism and rationalism were two main features
Enlightenment.
Enlightenment paved the way towards the Romanticism. Enlightenment
is followed by Romanticism. Romanticism emphasised on emotion, feeling and nature
and on a return to nature. When enlightenment gave importance to empiricism and
fact, Romanticism focused on feelings and emotions. The romantic age wrote on
imagination, nostalgic experiences etc. It
was in the fields of philosophy and literature that Romanticism as a broad
response to Enlightenment, Neoclassical and French Revolutionary ideals, which
had its roots. In all we can say that Neoclassicism paved way to Enlightenment
and t was followed by Romanticism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present.
New Delhi:
Blackwell.2006.Print
Habib, M. A. R. Literary Criticism
from Plato to the Present: AN INTRODUCTION.
Singapore: Blackwell, 2011.Print
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of
Literary Terms. Wadsworth: Cengage, 2012. Print
Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum,
2006. Print.
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