Shakespeare’s s Contribution to the World Literature
Write general information about Shakespeare.
How many periods were there in his creativity?
What are Shakespeare’s genres?
Compare the spirit and characteristic features in Shakespeare’s plays of the 1st , 2nd and 3rd periods.
Why is it difficult to read Shakespeare nowadays? Give examples.
Give examples of Shakespeare’s metaphors.
Give examples of the words made up by Shakespeare.
Give examples of phrases introduced by Shakespeare that are used today.
What Renaissance ideas are expressed by Shakespeare in his plays?
What were the themes of Shakespeare?
What was the tragedy of King Lear?
What is the main theme of the comedy by Shakespeare you’ve read?
Lesson 41
| Enlightenment (German: Aufklärung): a period of intellectual progress in the 18th century, when it was hoped that Reason would clear away the superstition of darker ages |
The Enlightenment is a name given by historians of ideas to a phase succeeding the Renaissance and followed (though not ended) by Romanticism. The Enlightenment believed in the universal authority of Reason, and in its ability to understand and explain, as in Pope’s line: ‘God said, Let Newton be, and all was light.’ It favoured toleration and moderation in religion, and was hopeful about the rational perfectibility of man. Among English writers, kepticism rarely reached to the Deism of anticlericals such as the Frenchman Voltaire and the virtual atheism of the Scot David Hume: ‘Enlightenment’ is a term which fits France and Scotland better than England. Edward Gibbon (1737-94) is one of the few English writers who are wholly of the Enlightenment, though by the time of the French Revolution (1789) the term fits political thinkers such as William Godwin and Tom Paine, and writers such as Maria Edgeworth. When Horace Walpole, himself indifferent to religion, went to France in 1765, he found its rational godlessness uncomfortable. Early in the century, the third Earl of Shaftesbury advocated enlightened self-interest, holding that multiple self-interest would work together to the good – a benign view scorned by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), for whom Christianity was a necessary curb to human unreason. The realist Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) held that self-interest leads to competition, not co-operation.
The Enlightenment in the USA
Lesson 42-43
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Chief works:
|
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), born of English parents in Dublin after his father's death, had a career as frustrating as Addison’s was successful.
Educated alongside William Congreve at Kilkenny and at Trinity College, Dublin, Swift came to England and was secretary to Sir William Temple, statesman, author and proponent of naturalness in garden design. Lacking preferment, Swift was ordained in Ireland, but visited London from Dublin. He left the Whigs over their failure to support the Church against Dissent. In 1713 he became Dean of Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral - not, as he would have preferred, a bishop in England. He lived in Dublin in indignant opposition to the Whig government in London, defending Ireland and the (Anglican) Church. He gave one-third of his income to the - usually Catholic - poor.
In 1704 Swift held up to satirical review the claims of ancient and modern authors in The Battle of the Books, and the claims of Rome, Canterbury, Geneva and the sects in the more complex A Tale of a Tub. His usually anonymous controversial works could be straightforward, as in the Drapier’s Letters, which successfully prevented an English currency fraud in Ireland. But his lasting works argue from an absurd premise, as in An Argmnent to Prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not produce those many good effects proposed thereby. Swift believed that ‘we need religion as we need our dinner, wickedness makes Christianity indispensable and there’s an end of it.’ But here he writes from a different point of view:
The system of the Gospel, after the fate of other systems, is generally antiquated and exploded; and the mass or body of the common people, among whom it seems to have had its latest credit, are now grown as much ashamed of it as their betters ... I hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence of real Christianity, such as used in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages) to have an influence upon men’s belief and actions ... Every candid reader will easily understand my discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal Christianity, the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent as utterly inconsistent with all other present schemes of wealth and power.
Likewise, A Modest Proposal, for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public proposes that surplus children be eaten.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males. ... That the remaining hundred thousand may at a year old be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune throughout the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
After enumerating the moral as well as economic advantages of his scheme, Swift ends disinterestedly: ‘I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past childbearing.’ The proposal is prophetic of the 19th-century economist who, on hearing of the number who had died in the Irish Potato Famine, remarked sadly that it was not enough.
Swift exposes the inhumanity of emerging forms of rational simplification by simplifying them even further. His Modest Proposal solves a human problem by an economic calculus which ignores human love and treats the poor as cattle. Gulliver’s Travels (1726) also takes new perspectives to logical conclusions. Captain Gulliver records his voyages to the lands of the tiny people, of the giants, of experimental scientists and of horses. Gulliver expects the little people of Lilliput to be delicate and the giants of Brobdignag to be gross; they are not. These first two voyages are often retold for children; the simply-told wonder-tale delights both readers who guess at Swift’s purposes and readers who don’t. Gulliver draws on the True History of Lucian of Samosata (c.125-200), an account of a voyage to the moon, straight-faced but entirely untrue. Gulliver refers to ‘Cousin Dampier’ (William Dampier’s Voyage round the World and Voyage to New Holland were much read), and gives Lilliput a map-reference, placing it in New Holland (that is, Australia).
Gulliver is, like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, one of the practical self-reliant seamen through whom Britannia had begun to rule the waves. As with Crusoe, the reader can identify with the hero, whose common sense gets him through his adventures. Our identification with the ‘I’ who tells the story is Swift’s secret weapon. Late in Book II, Gulliver boasts of the triumphs of British civilization to the king of Brobdignag, who has treated him kindly. The king says that the advances Gulliver has recounted make him think of his countrymen as ‘the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the earth’. Shocked, Gulliver tries to impress him with the invention of gunpowder and the wonderful effects of artillery.
The King was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. He was amazed how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all by the scenes of blood and desolation, which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines, whereof, he said, some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that although few
things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret, which he commanded me, as I valued my life, never to mention any more. A strange effect of narrow principles and short views!
Greater surprises await Gulliver in Book IV in the land of the Houyhnhnms, noble horses endowed with reason. These humane enlightened creatures rule over the Yahoos, a savage man-like race remarkable for lust, greed and filth. The Houyhnhnms have no word for lying, and are shocked by Gulliver’s accounts of civilization. He adopts the ways of these equine philosophers, but they expel him. Picked up by a Portuguese ship, he returns to London, but he so recoils from the Yahoo-like smell of humans that he prefers the stable to the marital home.
We find that we have been rationally tricked into disowning our own natures: like Gulliver, we have been truly gullible (‘gull’: fool). In each of the books Swift alters one dimension of life, beginning with magnitude. In Book 3 he removes death: the Struldbruggs are granted immortality - but without youth. As they age, they grow less and less happy. In Book 4 he reverses the traditional image of reason guiding the body as a man rides a horse. Should we prefer the society of rational horses to stinking Yahoos?
Swift defined Man not as rational animal but as an animal capable of reason. He had a keen sense of our capacity for selfdelusion, folly and vice. His telescope gives perspectives, at first comic, then horrific, which confront us with unpleasant facets of human life, silently recommending proportion, humility and fellow-feeling. Swift misleads the complacent reader into the same traps as Gulliver. His reductio ad absurdum intensifies the paradoxes of existence, offending humanists from Johnson to Macaulay to F. R. Leavis. His is the intellectual ferocity of the 17th century, of Rochefoucauld or Pascal, not the cheerful brutality of the 18th century. He enjoyed spoiling men’s romantic delusions about women, as in his line ‘Celia, Celia, Celia
sh s’. His poems to Stella show that he was no misogynist. Those who have suggested that he was misanthropic have
misunderstood his irony; he did not believe in eating children. But he was anti-romantic, hating false hearts and false ideals. A passionate English churchman, he showed integrity, courage and cunning in defending Catholic Ireland against English exploitation.
Swift was also very funny. In his Academy of Projectors, for instance, a scientist tries to extract moonbeams out of cucumbers. And his Verses on the Death of Dr Swift is a masterpiece of comic realism:
... Here shift the scene, to represent
How those I love, my death lament.
Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay A week, and Arbuthnot a day.
| Bolingbroke |
The rest will give a shrug, and cry ‘I’m sorry, but we all must die.’ . ..
My female friends, whose tender hearts Have better learned to play their parts,
Receive the news in doleful dumps,
| Dean Swift in cards, a strong bid (in cards) |
The Lord have mercy on his soul.
(Ladies, I’ll venture for the vole.)
Six deans, they say must bear the pall.
(I wish I knew what king to call.)
“Madam, your husband will attend The funeral of so good a friend?” ...
He loved the Dean. (I lead a heart.)
But dearest Friends, they say, must part.
His time was come, he ran his race;
We hope he’s in a better place.’
Why do we grieve that friends should die?
No loss more easy to supply.
One year is past; a different scene;
No further mention of the Dean;
Who now, alas, no more is missed Than if he never did exist.
Swift ends the poem with a defence of his record.
Lesson 44-45
The novel Daniel Defoe
A London butcher called Foe had a son who called himself Defoe. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was expert in acceptable truths. He had travelled much, failed as a retail hosier, welcomed William III to London, been to prison and worked as a spy before becoming a ‘voyage writer’, a writer who makes you see.
‘Crusoe saving his Goods out of the Wreck of the Ship’:
an illustration from a 1726 edition of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe,
first published in 1711.
Daniel Defoe (English pronunciation: /dænjəl dɨfoʊ/; 1659–1661 to 24 April 1731), born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents [prə’ pəunənt] (защитник, поборник)of the novel and is among the founders of the English novel. He wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism
Early life
Daniel Foe was his original name. Defoe later added the aristocratic-sounding "De" to his name. The date and the place of his birth are uncertain, the date of his birth is uncertain too. Different sources give different dates: from 1659 to 1661. His father James Foe, was a (chandler – свечной фабрикант). In
His parents were dissenters; he was educated in a dissenting academy James Foe wanted his son to be a priest, but Daniel Defoe preferred other things. When he was about 18, he left school.
Business career
Defoe entered the world of business as a general merchant, dealing at different times in woolen goods and wine. Though his ambitions were great and he bought both a country estate and a ship, he was rarely out of debt. In 1684, Defoe married Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a London merchant. With his debts and political trouble, their marriage was most likely a difficult one. It lasted 50 years, however, and together they had eight children, six of whom survived.
Pamphleteering and prison
In 1702 the king was replaced by Queen Anne, who immediately began her offensive against Nonconformists. A natural target, Defoe's pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on 31 July 1703, principally on account of a pamphlet entitled The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Defoe was arrested. According to legend, the publication of his poem Hymn to the Pillory caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful objects and to drink to his health.
"Wherever God erects a house of prayer
the Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 't will be found, upon examination,
the latter has the largest congregation."
Late writing and novels
Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) tells of a man's shipwreck on a deserted island and his subsequent adventures. The author based part of his narrative on the story of the Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years stranded on the island of Juan Fernandez.
The novel has been variously read as an allegory for the development of civilisation, as a manifesto of economic individualism and as an expression of European colonial desires but it also shows the importance of repentance and illustrates the strength of Defoe's religious convictions. It is also considered by many to be the first novel written in English.
Death
Daniel Defoe died on 24 April 1731, probably while in hiding from his creditors. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, London, where his grave can still be visited.
Defoe is known to have used at least 198 pen names.
The credibility of this castaway’s adventures (based on the account of Alexander Selkirk) seems to be guaranteed by his everyday pockets full of factual biscuit. Defoe ‘had not time to lose’ as he told his story full of things: a saw, planks, a knife, ropes, a raft, a cabin, how to grow crops. We experience these things; we see a footprint in the sand; and with the arrival of Man Friday, we realize with Crusoe that Man does not live by ship’s biscuit alone, and that it is Providence which has saved him.
first I found that all the ship’s provisions were dry and untouched by the water, and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread-room and filled my pockets with biscuit, and ate it as I went about other things, for I had not time to lose; I also found some rum in the great cabin, of which I took a large dram, and which I had indeed need enough of to spirit me for what was before me.
I had alas! no divine knowledge; what I had received by the good instruction of my father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series, for 8 years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation with nothing but such as were like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree: I do not remember that I had in all that time one thought that so much as tended either to looking upwards toward God, or inwards towards a reflection upon my own ways: but a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me ...
This is not Augustine’s Confessions nor Pilgrim’s Progress, but the passage ends: ‘I cried out, Lord be my help, for I am in great distress. This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, that I had made for many years ...’. Although Crusoe stresses his wickedness, his story is only fleetingly spiritual. Rather, he survives by his own effort, which he
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Chief publications:____
|
sees as God’s guidance. He is a modern type: godfearing within reason, enterprising, self-reliant. Compared with Gulliver, his romance of adventure is naive. Its mythic quality has allowed it to be seen as a modern fable of various kinds, as by JeanJacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. On its Protestant side, it compares with the life story of John Newton, who went to sea as a boy, worked in the slave trade, and had an evangelical conversion and became a minister. Newton, the author of ‘Amazing Grace’, had a great effect on the poet William Cowper (1731-1800).
Earlier, in The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Defoe had advocated the contrary of his own views. This was misunderstood, and the Dissenting author put in prison and the pillory. Thereafter he put his views and his irony in his back pocket. A Whig, he worked underground for the Tory Lord Oxford, then wrote for the Whigs. Having discovered the effect of autobiographical perspective on gullible readers, he used the journalist’s commonplace detail to make believable the reactions of ordinary people to extraordinary situations. His later romances of adventure introduced the picaresque into English fiction. In his roguish fiction, opportunists survive the bruises on their consciences. They are not studies in religious self-deception: Providence helps those who help themselves.
| Britain changes to the Gregorian Calendar. | |
| William Pitt becomes Prime Minister. The Seven Years' War with France begins. | |
| Accession of George III. | |
| The Boston Tea Party. | |
| American War of Independence begins. | |
| American Declaration of Independence. | |
| Britain recognizes American independence. Pitt the Younger becomes Prime Minister. | |
| French Revolution. |
Lesson 46. Test