Literary Criticism Introduction to Neoclassical Literary Criticism, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn & Samuel Johnson
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Introduction to Neoclassical Literary Criticism
We know that Renaissance insisted on going back to classics. In that way, neo-classicism can be seen as an extension of the Renaissance from the early seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, but they discontinued the over ornamentalization and sophistication in language found in the Renaissance writers.
Unlike Milton and others, they did not believe in creating mythical figures. Sydney once had argued that to create the ideal world was the function of the poets—something that neo-classicists did not accept.
The major focus of neo-classicists was the recreation of the classic writers of Rome and Greece, but they were also not up to use classics the way Renaissance writers did and were against such kind of idealism.
Objectivity, rationality, impersonality, decorum, balance, harmony, etc. were the words they picked to work with from the classics in their own times. They were Aristotle of their time who were reacting to Plato’s idealism.
Hence, the word, neo, which literary translates to ‘revival’, in neo-classicism. Like most of the literary movements, this was also not limited to England but was present all over Europe.
In their approaches to art, while the Renaissance writers believed in creativity and invention, the neo-classicists focused on technique and worked by the rule book. When Renaissance writers were experimenting with the genres of art like mixing prose and poetry, the neo-classicists wanted to keep them separated and pure in their own form.
Alexandrine in France and a heroic couplet in England were the form of poetry that the neo-classicists majorly wrote in. While Renaissance writers pursued a world of infinite human possibility, the neo-classicists moved with the ambit of finitude.
Imitation and Nature were two major concepts through which the neo-classical writers approached the production of art. Imitation has its roots in Aristotle, meant to be suggesting that art, which would be imitative in nature, will be objective and impersonal.
The Renaissance subjectivity, where art was the product of imagination, not of objective technique, were reacted against. Nature is not understood in Romantics’ sense by them.
Nature here refers to the human nature and when neo-classical writers concern themselves with it, they wish to guide humans about what is permissible and not because, in their view, the human nature has already been understood by the great old bees like Homer and Virgil.
Therefore, just following the classics by imitating them would help modern writers to understand and best express the external world and human nature. However, they were not blind followers of the classics. All of them have different ways of approaching the classics. They were basically thinking around the concepts articulated by Aristotle.
The beginning of the eighteenth-century saw the emergence of debates between the moderns and ancients. Johnathan Swift perhaps would have the idea from such debates for his book The Battle of Books.
John Dryden
John Dryden was a major essayist of the English literary tradition. His works are so praiseworthy that Samuel Johnson, a contemporary of Dryden and himself a major critic, called him ‘the father of English criticism” along with commenting that English prose starts with Dryden’s Essay on Dramatic Poesy.
Along with his wide-ranging criticism of epic, poetry, plays, etc., he also wrote plays, prefaces, prologues. His contribution to the field of criticism influenced writers like Pope, Johnson, Mathew Arnold, T. S. Eliot, etc.
And he is mostly famous for his poetic works like “Mac Flecknoe”, Absalom and Achitophel, etc., and his dramatic works like All for Love, Aurang-zebe, and Marriage a la Mode.
Dryden’s Essay on Dramatic Poesy explicitly states in the begin that its aim is to have our English writers to stay away from those who prefer French over English. The essay is a debate on the use of rhyme in the drama that took place originally between Sir Robert Howard and John Dryden.
However, there are four characters in the essay: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander, which are originally identified as Charles Sackville, who was a patron of Dryden and poet himself, Sir Robert Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law, Sir Charles Sedley, and Neander, Dryden himself, respectively.
Of the various that this debate concerns itself, one the typical issue of ancients and moderns. In neoclassical times, supporters of ancients believed that modern society has corrupted the man and society, and looked for answers in the old texts.
Moderns, on the other hand, were breaking away or abandoning the old ideals completely. They saw the modern world as the development of human nature because of Renaissance ideals. Other issues that the essay deals with are the classical model of ‘unities of time, place and action’, the classical distinction of genres such as tragedy and comedy, etc.
The essay shows a shift in the definition of drama from classical to modern with Lisideius defining it. A mention of delight, humour and representation of human nature are found missing in the classical definition of drama. So, a movement towards a modern kind of drama is evident.
On the other hand, Crites argues that everything / every rule that we know about drama is told to us by Aristotle, Horace and others. He believes that we have nothing new to offer except calling our wit to be superior. In his opinion, modern plays are failures.
By calling moderns to be the ones who don’t indulge in mere imitation of the ancients, Eugenius becomes the first to defend the moderns. Modern do not follow ancients in order to create something, they have nature and humans to draw inspirations from. He believes that with the wisdom of the ancients, we also have our own experiences of the world to understand it.
On the point of French versus English, Lisideius prefers French and Neander (Dryden) defend the English. Lisideius argues that French drama follows all the unities, provides a variety of emotions, He argues that French has the right way of dividing the time among narration, action, dialogue.
Dryden, in his support of English drama, doesn’t refute any claim made by Lisideius in favour of the French; on the other hand, argues that all that is considered erroneous in the English drama is actually a virtue that surpasses traditional techniques.
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism is an attempt to balance theology and aesthetics. Pope in his essay follows the tradition of Horace’s Ars Poetica. His essay concerns with good literary criticism and poetry, and how they stay in harmony.
To harmonize them, he shows a relation between the classical notion of nature and wit, both being essential to poetry as well as criticism. He is of the view that both poetry and criticism are linked to nature and wit, and the best of both are divinely inspired.
Pope regards not only poetry but also criticism as an art. To him, both are based on the same literary principles. Though, there are some specific rules that he ascribes to criticism. The critic, he says, must examine an author as not being familiar with his own capacities but being aware of all aspects of the author.
In addition, he says that a critic has the advantage of knowing work in its totality; therefore, his criticism should not be based on few parts such as author’s use of devices, and ornamental language.
The critics must be biased because of the author’s reputation in critiquing his works. He further suggests that criticism must have a moral sensibility, modesty and caution. Pope warns critics that they avoid bookish knowledge as it results in extravagant language.
Pope’s idea of criticism is one not only to be applied to pieces of art but also it itself is an art. Poetry and criticism, he suggests, are two branches of art. He keeps them in moral and theological domain too.
He also suggests that a poet ought to have critical faculties too so that the creative process is carried out in a balanced and controlled way. His emphasis is on the following nature, the act that relates to wit and judgment which has an overlapping relation as do poetry and criticism.
His advice is that nature should be the standard to be followed before one makes a judgment. However, his idea of the following nature doesn’t connect with Romanticism (the physical appearance of nature) but with the medieval idea of order, and harmony.
He suggests, like all neo-classical critics and writers that nature should become the inspiration to create art. Pope further sets forth the tasks of a poet that’s to convey natural insight and universal truth. It is pride that causes subjectivity, leads to individualism, and mass balance of wit and judgment.
Pope, consequently, attempts to synthesize classical literary traditions with nature. He says that criticism in the ancient Greece one achieved a high status which now has declined. A critic task was then to judge the art meticulously, to appreciate, but now that has been replaced by attacks on poets.
He advises both critic and poet to refrain from any biases and to follow ancient rules. Pope praises Horace as a supreme critic in the literary tradition. Others who are praiseworthy to Pope are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Petronius, Quintilian, and Longinus. He considers them true representatives of the classical tradition.
Referring to the historical processes that shaped art, Pope regards Renaissance as the “Golden Days” that helped the arts and criticism bloom in Europe. He himself sets forth his ideas as a descendant of Renaissance thinkers who looked back to the classical writers as their ideals.
What Pope, as a critic and poet, endeavours in his essay is to trace the background of true criticism, to show its overlapping relation with poetry, while both being based on the standard of nature and wit.
Aphra Behn
Aphra Ben is one amongst the founders of the English novel, also, as the first woman novelist, she wrote Oroonoko (1688) which became the first novel to oppose slavery. Her views about drama are very unorthodox and controversial. She expressed her views in the prefaces to her various plays.
She rejects the classical rules of drama, the three unities of time, place and action. She further maintains that “if they meant anything, they are enough intelligible, and as practicable by a woman.”
She further opines that women will equate men in all capacities if they receive as much education as men, and they have the capacity to attain the heights achieved by men. She concludes her epistle in such a way as if it were an outburst of emotions: “Now, Reader, I have eas’d my mind of all I had to say.“
Her preface to The Lucky Chance opposes disapprovals of her comedy. She considers those disapprovals the success of her play. She says that the disapprovals that are thrown upon her play is old and doesn’t fit on ladies.
She attacks the injustice of those works of poetry that indecently dealt with the subject of women. She believes that critics have been o unaccepting towards her because of her gender.
Defying critics, she says, “I make a challenge to any Person of common sense and reason … to read any of my Comedies and compare them with others of this Age, and if they find one word that can offend the chaste ear”, she will submit to the criticism” She further claims that there have been works with indecency, though, her works encompass no indecency and obscenity.
Ben’s effort here is to enable a way of thinking beyond that of male-established literary tradition. She opposes all biases against women and denies that women are devoid of common sense and reason.
Her advocacy for women seems obscure as she herself demands to be included in male-established literary tradition: “All I ask, is the Privilege for my Masculine Part the Poet in me … to tread in those successful paths my predecessor have so long thriv’d in, to take those measures that both the Ancient and Modern writers have set me.”
However, her demand to be included in that male literary tradition is justified since there was no such female literary tradition at that time. She considered herself a part of that tradition, at the same time, she adopted a defiant and unapologetic tone against that, that’s what makes her stand outside the male establishment of the tradition.
Samuel Johnson
Of all the writings that Samuel Johnson has done, his preface to the edition of Shakespeare’s plays, his Dictionary of English Language, his Lives of English Poets, his explanation of what is metaphysical, etc. remain the significant ones till today. The History of Rasselas is the fictional work in the form of drama written by him.
Johnson in his Lives of English Poets writes that the yoking of two heterogeneous ideas together is the characteristic of metaphysical poetry. So, in the poems of John Donne and others one witness the fusion of two contradictory ideas.
For instance, in the poem “Kubla Khan” by Coleridge, an instance where the poet writes: ‘A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!’. Coming together of ‘sunny pleasure dome’ and ‘caves of ice’ is what makes it the metaphysical poem.
The metaphysical poetry was not accepted and praised but when T.S. Eliot calls it the superior kind of poetry by building on the explanation given by Jonson, poets like John Donne became the canonical poets.
In his preface to Shakespeare’s plays, Johnson picks three major issues: the question of establishing poet’s status, the relationship between a poet and nature, and the question of nature and experience against criticism and set conventions.
He appreciates Shakespeare that he (Shakespeare) “the poet of nature: the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life”. In other Johnson argues that Shakespeare reflects the truth of his times to society.
According to Johnson, a poet that constructs a mirror in the form of art to reflect the social conditions of that times is a poet of superior status. Johnson thinks that other poets write the character as individual beings but Shakespeare’s characters are ‘commonly a species’.
In other words, Shakespeare is a writer who concerns himself with universal issues than individual ones; hence, he holds higher status. The other point he makes in favour of Shakespeare is that his characters are not superheroes but common men and Shakespeare writes in common language about common events and people. So, literary artists who depict common life, people and events are, in Johnson’s opinion, better artists than others.
Some critics like John Dennis have criticized Shakespeare for not being sufficiently able to write a character who accurately reflect their age; for instance, if a character is a moor, he is not written appropriately to reflect a moor.
In his defence of Shakespeare and as a reply to this criticism, Johnson argues that he (Shakespeare) has “always makes nature predominate over accident; and . . . he preserves the essential character.”
So, according to Johnson, reflection in a true sense of the word is not necessary till the point keeps the essence of that culture, character or times and it should be nature of the character that guides the story, not a mere accident.
Literary Criticism Introduction to Neoclassical Literary Criticism, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn & Samuel Johnson