Neo Classical Age background

Definition:-

                 Neo classical literature was written between 1660 and 1798. This time period is broken down into three parts: the Restoration period ,the Augustan Period, the Age of Johnson.

          

                Writers of the Neoclassical period tried to imitate the style of the Romans and Greeks. Thus, the combination of the terms 'neo', which means 'new' and 'classical', as in the day of the roman and Greek classics. This was also the era of The Enlightenment, which emphasized  logic and reason. It was preceded by The Renaissance and followed by the Romantic era. In fact, the Neo classical period ended in 1798 when Wordsworth published the Romantic 'Lyrical Ballads'.

Major writers of the age:-

1) Daniel Defoe (c. 1660 - 1731)

2) Jonathan Swift ( 1631 - 1700)

3) Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

4) Moliere (1622 - 1673)

5) Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

1) Daniel Defoe (1660 -1731)

      Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660 to a family of Presbyterian Dissenters, and educated at a dissenting academy in Newington Green. He became a merchant, dealing in different commodities including hosiery. In 1684 he married Mary Tuffley; six of their eight children lived into adulthood.

    After expanding into the import-export business for goods such as tobacco and alcohol, Defoe made some unwise investments and in 1692 declared bankruptcy. He was twice briefly impersoned for his debts, negotiating his freedom with the aid of recognisants and becoming an accountant and investment advisor to the government and private business owners.

    During this time he began writing political pamphlates (1700), a satirical comment on the literary criticism of the age. The True - Born Englishman (1701) defends king William 3, who was Dutch , against xenophobia with the reminder that there was no such thing as a purely English person: 'from a mixture of all kinds bagan/ That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman'.

works:-

• An Essay Upon Projects
• A Journal of the Plague Year
• Mall Flanders
• Robinson Crusoe
• Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress

2) Jonathan Swift:-

  Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30, 1667. The son of an English Lawyer, he grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the age of fourteen, where he stayed for seve years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary for Sir William Temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took religious orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country person. He then spent further time in the service of Temple before returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the Earl of Berkeley. Meanwhile, he had begun to write satires on the political and religious corruption surrounding him, working on A Tale Of a Tub, which supports the position of the Anglican Church against its critics on the left and the right, and The Battle of the Books, which argues for the supremacy of the classics against modern thought and literature. He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in favour of the Whig party. In 1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but as unsuccessful. After some conflicts with the Whig party, mostly because of Swift's strong allegiance to the church, he became a member of the more conservative Tory party in 1710.

Works:-

• Gulliver's Travels
• A Modest Proposal
• A Tale of Tub
• "An Arguments Against Abolishing Christianity" (Essay)

3)  Samuel Johnson:-

       

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [ 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English Literatuure as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicogrpher. He was a devout An Anglican and a generous philanthropist. Politically, he was a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National  Biography, describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell 's The life of samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature"

Works:-

• A Voyage to Abyssinia
• London: A Poem
• A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the stage
• The life of Admiral Blake
•  The Fountains: A Fairy Tale
• The Patriot

4) Moliere:-

        Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (who used the stage name Moliere), born January 15th, 1622, is considered one of France’s greatest playwrights, if not the greatest. His amalgamation of humor and intellect, his ability to exquisitely capture the hypocrisy of 17th century French society, and his sparkling and lucid prose have made his works immensely popular around the world both in universities and, of course, on the stage. He was described by Voltaire as “the painter of France,” as his works held a mirror up to his country’s vices and virtues.

Works:-

•  The Misanthrope and other Plays
• The schol for wives
• Tatuffe

5) Alexander Pope:-

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was born on May 21, 1688 in London. His father was a linen-draper of Plough Court, Lombard Street. Despite his family’s Catholic faith, which barred him from attending university, Pope learned Greek and Latin under the tutelage of a local priest and, later, at Catholic school. In 1700, Pope’s family moved to Binfield in Winsor Forest, where Pope undertook a regime of rigorous self-education once his formal education was complete. He read, studied, and translated, sometimes teaching himself languages through the act of translation. It was at Binfield that the sixteen-year-old Pope composed his Pastorals (published 1709). Around this same time, Pope contracted some form of tuberculosis, probably Pott’s Disease, which weakened his spine, stunted his growth, and permanently damaged his health. 

Works:-

• Pastorals
• An Essay on Criticism
• The Critical Specimen
• Messiah
• The Rape of the Lock 
• Windsor Foret
• Contribution to the Guardian
• The Illiad of Homer,tr.
• Ode on Solitude
• The Odyssey of Hommer,tr.
• The Dunciad
• An Essay on Man

          The neo classical age is the reaction of its previous age and the characteristics of this age influenced by the social and political conditions. Political movement supported in making of literature. The life was represented by the writers of this age as it is.