British: Restoration Poetry And Prose Flashcards
Restoration Poetry and Prose
Joseph Addison & Richard Steel
Joseph Addison & Richard Steel
Together they began and ran the periodical The Spectator and its predecessor, The Tatler. The Spectator was published between March of 1711 and December of 1712, and was a pioneering innovation of its times. Each issue consisted of one long essay. The Spectator was one of the first literary endeavors to make a deliberate effort to appeal to a female readership.
Addison and Steele might appear on the exam, but you will not need to be able to identify a passage of theirs. They are notable mostly for their historical significance.
Overview
The Restoration
The Restoration has a number of artists with whom you may need to familiarize yourself. Most prominent in this section are Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and Jonathan Swift – all of whom will be on your exam. I have also included John Milton in this section, though he does not represent many of the characteristics that are typical of the Restoration. Timewise, he is difficult to classify because he is neither of the Renaissance nor typically of the Restoration. But Milton’s Paradise Lost is one of the most tested works on the GRE, and his other poems also commonly appear, so do not neglect Milton.
For historical background on the Restoration, check out this page.
Addison and Steele
- Alexander Pope
Anne Finch
Aphra Behn
John Bunyan
- John Dryden
John Wilmot
- Jonathan Swift
Samuel Butler
The Scriblerus Club
- John Milton
Restoration Poetry and Prose
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) Pope is one of the major figures of the Restoration, and his poem "The Rape of the Lock" will almost certainly be on your exam. Apart from "The Rape of the Lock," Pope has a number of works that have a high probability of showing up.
Note that Pope wrote almost exclusively in heroic couplets, like many Restoration poets. Noting that a poem is written in heroic couplets is a good step toward identifying a work of Pope’s
“The Rape of the Lock”
“The Rape of the Lock” is not a terribly long poem, and given that it is very likely to appear on your exam, take the time to read it.
“The Rape of the Lock” is a mock-heroic poem, first published in 1712 in two cantos, and then reissued in 1714 in a much-expanded 5-canto version.
The poem is based on an incident involving friends of Pope. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre were both from aristocratic Catholic families at a time, in England, when Catholicism was legally proscribed. Petre, wooing Arabella, had cut off a lock of her hair without permission, and the resulting argument had created a breach between the two families. Pope wrote the poem at the request of a friend in order to “laugh the two together”. Pope refigures Arabella as Belinda and introduces an entire system of “sylphs”, or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodic version of the gods and goddess of conventional epic. Pope satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods.
Pope is criticizing the over-reaction of contemporary society to trivial things.
What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things
— Canto I
The humour of the poem comes from the position of this tempest in a teapot of vanity with the elaborate, formal verbal structure of an epic poem. When the Bar, for example, goes to snip the lock of hair, Pope says,
The Peer now spreads the glittering Forfex wide,
T’ inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.
Ev’n then, before the fatal Engine clos’d,
A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos’d;
Fate urged the Sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,
(But Airy Substance soon unites again)
The meeting Points the sacred Hair dissever
From the fair Head, for ever and for ever!
— Canto III
Pope used epic battle imagery to describe a small pair of ladies’ scissors, hence satirizing the ridiculous nature of the whole situation. The useless and transient nature of the sylphs is seen here. One, cut in half by the “fatal engine” is unharmed.
*“Essay on Criticism”
The poem is the nearest thing in eighteenth-century, English writing to what might be called a neo-classical manifesto, although it is never as categorically expounded as the term implies. It comes closer, perhaps, to being a handbook, or guide, to the critic’s and poet’s art, very much in the style of Horace’s Ars Poetica, or, to take the English models with which the young Pope was especially familiar, the Earl of Roscommon’s translation of Horace, The Art Of Poetry, (1680), and John Sheffield’s (the Duke of Buckingham’s) Essay On Poetry, (1682). It is accordingly of great value to us today in understanding what Pope and many of his contemporaries saw as the main functions and justifications of criticism in early, eighteenth-century England.
The poem is articulated through a more consciously epigrammatic style than anything found elsewhere in Pope’s poetry. It is built upon a series of maxims, or pithy apothegms, such as “To Err is Humane; to forgive, Divine,” (525), or “For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.” (625). Pope’s ability to sum up an idea tersely and memorably in a phrase, line, or couplet, of packed, imaginative clarity is a hallmark of An Essay on Criticism. Few other poems in the language contain so many formulations that have gone on to achieve an independent, proverbial existence in our culture. The polished couplets encapsulate points that reverberate in the manner of conversational repartee.
“Essay on Man”
“The Essay on Man” is a philosophical poem, written, characteristically, in heroic couplets, and published between 1732 and 1734. Pope intended it as the centerpiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form: it is in fact a fragment of a larger work which Pope planned but did not live to complete. It is an attempt to justify, as Milton had attempted to vindicate, the ways of God to Man, and a warning that man himself is not, as, in his pride, he seems to believe, the center of all things. Though not explicitly Christian, the Essay makes the implicit assumption that man is fallen and unregenerate, and that he must seek his own salvation.
The “Essay” consists of four epistles, addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, and derived, to some extent, from some of Bolingbroke’s own fragmentary philosophical writings, as well as from ideas expressed by the deistic third Earl of Shaftsbury. Pope sets out to demonstrate that no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable, and disturbingly full of evil the Universe may appear to be, it does function in a rational fashion, according to natural laws; and is, in fact, considered as a whole, a perfect work of God. It appears imperfect to us only because our perceptions are limited by our feeble moral and intellectual capacity. His conclusion is that we must learn to accept our position in the Great Chain of Being–a “middle state,” below that of the angels but above that of the beasts–in which we can, at least potentially, lead happy and virtuous lives.
The Dunciad
The Dunciad expresses Pope’s deep dismay concerning the feared loss of Britain’s literary, cultural and ethical inheritance. Pope takes this idea, of the personified goddess of Dulness being at war with reason, darkness at war with light, and extends it to a full Aeneid parody. His poem celebrates a war, rather than a mere victory, and a process of ignorance, and Pope picks as his champion of all things insipid Lewis Theobald and Colley Cibber. (Theobald was Pope’s nemesis in editing Shakespeare. Cibber was Pope’s poetic nemesis who because laureate over Pope.)
The poem was loosely modelled on Dryden’s MacFlecknoe, but where Dryden’s poem was a lampoon of 217 lines attacking a single person, Thomas Shadwell, Pope’s was a more fully developed satirical anti-epic, attacking all those who had slandered him over many years, in a poem more than four times the length.
“Eloisa to Abelard”
It is an Ovidian heroic epistle inspired by the 12th century story of Eloisa’s (Heloise’s) illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Pierre Abélard, perhaps the most popular teacher and philosopher in Paris, and the brutal vengeance her family exacts when they castrate him, not realizing that the lovers had married.
It is from this poem that the title for the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes.
“To a Lady”
Although the target of the satire appears at first to be aristocratic and wealthy women, the venom that Pope expends upon them clearly spreads to encompass women as a sex. For readers today Pope’s text, like Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, presents serious problems of interpretation. Whereas in his other satires Pope targets either particular vices, or particular individuals, in An Epistle To A Lady he attacks the entire female sex. Paradoxically his misogyny weakens rather than strengthens his satire.
The “Lady” to whom it is addressed, and whom it praises so glowingly at the end, was Pope’s closest female friend, Martha Blount
Epistle II begins:
NOTHING so true as what you once let fall,
“Most Women have no Characters at all.”
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish’d by black, brown, or fair.
Restoration Poetry and Prose
Anne Finch
Anne Finch (1661-1720) I don't have any background info on Anne Finch, but this poem seems to come up on the exam from time to time.
“Adam Pos’d”
Cou’d our First Father, at his toilsome Plough,
Thorns in his Path, and Labour on his Brow,
Cloath’d only in a rude, unpolish’d Skin,
Cou’d he a vain Fantastick Nymph have seen,
In all her Airs, in all her antick Graces,
Her various Fashions, and more various Faces;
How had it pos’d that Skill, which late assign’d
Just Appellations to Each several Kind!
A right Idea of the Sight to frame;
T’have guest from what New Element she came;
T’have hit the wav’ring Form, or giv’n this Thing a Name.
Restoration Poetry and Prose
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) Aphra Behn stars in the canon of English literature as the first known English woman to earn her living by the pen. She is famous for her prose work Oroonoko (1688) and for her comic Restoration dramas such as The Rover (1681) and The Lucky Chance (1686). As well as plays and prose she wrote poetry and translated works from French and Latin.
From what we know of her life she had a colourful childhood and adolescence, some of which was spent in Dutch Guiana in the West Indies (providing material for Oroonoko).
The Forc’d Marriage, her first play, was produced in 1671, and its witty and vivacious style was typical of her work. The Rover, produced in two parts, was a highly successful depiction of the adventures of a small group of English Cavaliers in Madrid and Naples during the exile of Charles II. Oroonoko is the story of an enslaved African prince and is now considered a foundation stone in the development of the English novel. Among her sources was the Italian commedia dell’ arte (improvised comedy).
In her time she was a popular celebrity who caused something of a stir due to her independence as a professional writer and her concern for equality between the sexes.
She often published under her spy code-name, Astrea
Restoration Poetry and Prose
John Bunyan
John Bunyan
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a work of prose. It is a major work of the Restoration.
John Bunyan was a passionately religious man, imprisoned in 1660 for preaching without a license, and spending most of the next twelve years in jail. It was after his release and during his second imprisonment in 1676 that he seems to have written his most famous and influential work, The Pilgrim’s Progress. It is an allegory told by a dreamer, much like certain medieval poems (Pearl is the clearest example). Its full title is The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to that which is to come and is was published in two parts, in 1678 and 1684. The dreamer sees a man, Christian, clothed in rags, with a burden on his back, leaving his house behind in the knowledge that it will burn down. The book he holds in his hands has told him so. He has to flee his family who think he has gone mad and escape the City of Destruction. On the advice of Evangelist he begins a journey through a series of allegorical places: the Slough of Despond, the House Beautiful, the Valley of Humiliation, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle and so on to the Celestial City that he seeks. Each character and place in the dream is given an appropriate name: so Christian meets the goodly Hopeful and Faithful, the cheating Mr Legality and the evil Giant Despair. The format is not unlike that of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in this sense and in that of a divinely inspired journey. The second part concerns the Christiana, Christian’s wife, who is inspired to follow on a similar pilgrimage.
The Pilgrim’s Progress is the source for the name of Thackery’s Vanity Fair.
The Author’s Apology for His Book (begins Pilgrim’s Progress, first stanza)
When at the first I took my pen in hand Thus for to write, I did not understand That I at all should make a little book In such a mode; nay, I had undertook To make another; which, when almost done, Before I was aware, I this begun.
Beginning of Part 1:
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept, and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?
Restoration Poetry and Prose
John Dryden
John Dryden
With Pope, Dryden is a celebrity of the Restoration. For the sake of the GRE, you need to know his poem “MacFlecknoe.” His “Epigram to Milton” also shows up with regularity, thought there are numerous poems that the GRE could choose to test over.
*“Mac Flecknoe”
Like Pope’s “Rape of the Lock,” Dryden’s “Mac Flecknoe” is a relatively short poem that is worth reading. And like “The Rape,” it is a mock epic. In it, Dryden attacks his contemporary, Thomas Shadwell in heroic couplets. The mock epic is characterized by grandiose language describing mundane, trivial things.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/dryden1.html
“Absalom and Achitophel”
A political allegory that uses biblical figures and events to stand in for a political crisis current in Dryden’s time
o Note the names: Absalom, Achitophel, and King David
o Written in heroic couplets
All For Love
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6773
All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1677), Dryden’s tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, represents a turning point in his career as a dramatist. Abandoning his practice of composing his plays in rhymed couplets (a method he had earlier encouraged in his Essay of Dramatic Poesie)(1668), Dryden shows here the mastery of an artist at the height of his powers. The play is especially impressive in creating genuine emotion and dramatic tension within the rigorous strictures of the neoclassical theatre; the unities of time, place, and action are strictly observed, but the story loses none of its power as a result. The work has obviously suffered in its inevitable comparison to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra—when read, Dryden’s play is usually offered as an illustration of the inadequacies of Restoration tragedy when compared to that of the English Renaissance—but such comparison is fundamentally misguided, as it ignores the vastly different conditions of performance and composition between the two eras. A masterpiece in its own right, All for Love is a product of its time, and cannot be judged according to Shakespearean standards. Indeed, a comparison of the two plays might cede Dryden the victory in certain areas. While Shakespeare’s play ranges widely over time and place, creating an epic but often awkwardly meandering sense of scope, Dryden’s tightly focused composition allows a greater degree of emotional intensity and insight—without the ability to show battles, multiple settings, or the sweeping changes of time, Dryden manages nevertheless to create a work of genuinely tragic pathos. If Dryden’s meek Cleopatra is no match for what is perhaps Shakespeare’s most brilliantly rendered female character, his Antony is a startlingly astute portrait of a great man in crisis. Most importantly, though the two authors tell the same tale, their versions are driven by quite different artistic visions: if Shakespeare’s art is motivated primarily by the passion of history’s most famous lovers, Dryden’s interest lies in the clash between the personal and the political—the dramatic clash in the play is not between the lovers and the world that seeks to divide them, but between Antony’s duties as a statesman and a Roman, and his passionate desire for the woman he loves.
“Epigram on Milton”
Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go.
To make a third, she joined the former two.
“A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”
it begins:
From harmony, from Heav'nly harmony This universal frame began. When Nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, Arise ye more than dead. Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, In order to their stations leap, And music's pow'r obey.
Restoration Poetry and Prose
John Wilmot
John Wilmot
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is noted for his shockingly graphic sexual poems. He is considered a good example of the “court wits” that surrounded Charles II, as well as an indicator of the decadence of the Restoration. His major work is the poem “Upon Nothing.”
Rochester is famous for having, in Johnson’s words, “blazed out his youth and healt in lavish voluptuousness”. In his early thirties he became very ill, and died when he was only thirty-three year-old. He was exiled from the court by the king in a number of occasions for his libelous poetry. Johnny Depp recently portrayed Rochester in film, the name of which I cannot recall.
“Upon Nothing”
Rochester wrote most are heroic couplets (rhyming iambic pentameter), but “Upon Nothing” is composed of three-line stanzas, two pentameter lines and a hexameter, rhyming aaa (!!!).
Characters: Various allegorical characters (“Upon Nothing”) are mixed with court and town types (the Debauchee, the Postboy, the courtiers and pimps, “courtesans” and open prostitutes) who made the Restoration court a famous and notorious place. His more ribald poems openly name members of the court known to have engaged in licentious sexual conduct, but not always naming them in an un-admiring fashion.
This poem mocks both Milton (PL, Book II) and Genesis with audacity and skill. He points out the paradoxical notion of a creation ex nihlo (“from nothing”) which makes “Nothing” our progenitor, the “great united What” (6). At line 37, the poem turns to direct satire of the court, itself, especially Charles II and his inner circle, whose reign is characterized by such a strange powerless-power as a result of the Restoration’s founding in Parliament’s grudging compromise. He has his throne, but he has no authority, just the outward showing of it.
“Upon Nothing”
Nothing, thou elder brother even to shade,
That hadst a being ere the world was made,
And (well fixed) art alone of ending not afraid.
Ere time and place were, time and place were not,
When primitive Nothing Something straight begot,
Then all proceeded from the great united–What?
Something, the general attribute of all,
Severed from thee, its sole original,
Into thy boundless self must undistinguished fall.
Yet Something did thy mighty power command,
And from thy fruitful emptiness’s hand,
Snatched men, beasts, birds, fire, air, and land.
Matter, the wickedest offspring of thy race,
By Form assisted, flew from thy embrace,
And rebel Light obscured thy reverend dusky face.
With Form and Matter, Time and Place did join,
Body, thy foe, with these did leagues combine
To spoil thy peaceful realm, and ruin all thy line.
But turncoat Time assists the foe in vain,
And, bribed by thee, assists thy short-lived reign,
And to thy hungry womb drives back thy slaves again.
Though mysteries are barred from laic eyes,
And the Divine alone with warrant pries
Into thy bosom, where thy truth in private lies,
Yet this of thee the wise may freely say,
Thou from the virtuous nothing takest away,
And to be part of thee the wicked wisely pray.
Great Negative, how vainly would the wise
Inquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise?
Didst thou not stand to point their dull philosophies.
Is, or is not, the two great ends of Fate,
And true or false, the subject of debate,
That perfects, or destroys, the vast designs of Fate,
When they have racked the politician’s breast,
Within thy bosom most securely rest,
And, when reduced to thee, are least unsafe and best.
But Nothing, why does Something still permit
That sacred monarchs should at council sit
With persons highly thought at best for nothing fit?
Whist weighty Something modestly abstains
From princes’ coffers, and from statesmen’s brains,
And Nothing there like stately Nothing reigns,
Nothing, who dwellest with fools in grave disguise,
For whom they reverend shapes and forms devise,
Lawn sleeves, and furs, and gowns, when they like thee look wise.
French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy,
Hibernian learning, Scotch civility,
Spaniard’s dispatch, Dane’s wit are mainly seen in thee.
The great man’s gratitude to his best friend,
King’s promises, whore’s vows, towards thee they bend,
Flow swiftly to thee, and in thee never end.
Restoration Poetry and Prose
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Swift is considered the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is also well known for his poetry and essays. Gulliver’s Travels will appear on your exam, and A Modest Proposal is highly likely, as are some of Swift's poems.
*Gulliver’s Travels
Acing questions on Gulliver’s Travels is easy if you simply memorize the names of the different people and nations that Gulliver meets.
The book presents itself as a simple traveller’s narrative with the disingenuous title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, its authorship assigned only to “Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain of several ships”.
Gulliver’s Travels has been called a lot of things from Mennipean Satire to a children’s story, from proto-Science Fiction to a forerunner of the modern novel. Possibly one of the reasons for the book’s classic status is that it can be seen as many things to many people. It is even funny. Broadly the book has three themes:
~a satirical view of the state of European government
~an inquiry into whether man is inherently corrupt or whether men are corrupted
~a restatement of the older “ancients v. moderns” controversy previously addressed by Swift in the Battle of the Books.
**Names to remember Lilliputians: the very small Brobdignags: the very large Houyhnhnms: very smart horses who rule over the human Yahoos. They have cancelled all feeling in favor of reason. Yahoos: brutish subhumans Laputa: a flying island The Struldburgs: unhappy immortals who would like to die Blefuscu – rival country of Lilliput
A Modest Proposal
A Modest Proposal may account for a question or two on your exam, but the sheer ridiculousness of the argument should tip you off to Swift’s satire.
The author (who is not to be confused with Swift himself, but is merely a persona) argues, through economic reasoning as well as a self-righteous moral stance, for a way to turn the problem of squalor among the Catholics in Ireland into its own solution. His proposal is to fatten up the undernourished children and feed them to Ireland’s rich land-owners. Children of the poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one thus combating overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families the expense of child-bearing while providing them with a little extra income, improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and contributing to the overall economic well-being of the nation.
He offers statistical support for his assertions and gives specific data about the number of children to be sold, their weight and price, and the projected consumption patterns. He suggests some recipes for preparing this delicious new meat, and he feels sure that innovative cooks will be quick to generate more. He also anticipates that the practice of selling and eating children will have positive effects on family morality: husbands will treat their wives with more respect, and parents will value their children in ways hitherto unknown. His conclusion is that the implementation of this project will do more to solve Ireland’s complex social, political, and economic problems than any other measure that has been proposed.
This is widely believed to be the greatest example of sustained irony in the history of the English language.
A Tale of a Tub
A Tale of a Tub is divided between various forms of digression and sections of a “tale.” The “tale,” or narrative, is an allegory that concerns the adventures of three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, as they attempt to make their way in the world. Each of the brothers represents one of the primary branches of Christianity in the west. This part of the book is a pun on “tub,” which Alexander Pope says was a common term for a pulpit, and a reference to Swift’s own position as a clergyman. Peter (named for Saint Peter) stands in for the Roman Catholic Church. Jack (who Swift connects to “Jack of Leyden”) represents the various dissenting Protestant churches whose modern descendants would include the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Mennonites, and the assorted Charismatic churches. The third brother, middle born and middle standing, is Martin (named for Martin Luther), who Swift uses to represent the ‘via media’ of the Church of England. The brothers have inherited three wonderfully satisfactory coats (representing religious practice) by their father (representing God), and they have his will (representing the Bible) to guide them. Although the will says that the brothers are forbidden from making any changes to their coats, they do nearly nothing but alter their coats from the start. Inasmuch as the will represents the Bible and the coat represents the practice of Christianity, the allegory of the narrative is supposed to be an apology for the British church’s refusal to alter its practice in accordance with Puritan demands and its continued resistance to alliance with the Roman church.
A Tale of a Tub is an enormous parody with a number of smaller parodies within it.
“A Description of a City Shower”
Careful observers may foretell the hour
(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower:
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o’er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.
If you be wise, then go not far to dine,
You spend in coach-hire more than save in wine.
A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage.
Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen;
He damns the climate, and complains of spleen.
Mean while the South rising with dabbled wings,
A sable cloud a-thwart the welkin flings,
That swilled more liquor than it could contain,
And like a drunkard gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is born aslope,
Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean.
You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop
To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet, the dust had shunned the unequal strife,
But aided by the wind, fought still for life;
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
‘Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust.
Ah! where must needy poet seek for Aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade;
Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain,
Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain.
Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen Goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout’s a-broach,
Stays till ‘tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oiled umbrella’s sides.
Here various kinds by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o’er the roof by fits;
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds, he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through.)
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.
Now from all Parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their Trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell
What streets they sailed from, by the sight and smell.
They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid force
From Smithfield, or St. Pulchre’s shape their course,
And in huge confluent join at Snow-Hill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn-Bridge.
Sweepings from butchers stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats and turnips-tops come tumbling down the flood.
Restoration Poetry and Prose
Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler
Butler is notable for Hudibras, from the terms Hudibrastic verse comes. Don’t concern yourself too much with the plot of Hudibras, as ETS really values the style.
Hudibrastic – A term derived from Samuel Butler’s Hudibras. It refers specifically to the couplets of rhymed terameter lines which Butler used in Hudibras, or generally to any deliberate, humorous, ill-rhymed couplets. All lines have 8 syllables, and are iambic tetrameter couplets. This was Swift’s chosen poetic style:
We grant, although he had much wit He was very shy of using it As being loathe to wear it out And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holidays, or so As men their best apparel do. Beside, tis’ known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak.
Hudibras
Hudibras is a mock heroic poem from the 17th century written by Samuel Butler. The title comes from Spenser’s Faerie Queene.
The work is a satirical polemic upon Roundheads, Puritans, Presbyterians and many of the other factions involved in the English Civil War. The work was written in three parts in 1663, 1664 and 1678 although an unauthorised edition came out in 1662.
Published only four years after Charles II had been restored to the throne and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell being completely over the poem found an appreciative audience. The satire is not balanced as Butler was fiercely royalist and only the parliamentarian side are singled out for ridicule. Butler also uses the work to parody some of the dreadful poetry of the time.
The epic tells the story of Sir Hudibras, a knight errant who is described dramatically and with laudatory praise that is so thickly applied to be absurd and the conceited and arrogant person is visible beneath. He is praised for his knowledge of logic despite appearing stupid throughout, but it his religious fervour which is mainly attacked:
For his Religion, it was fit To match his learning and his wit; 'Twas Presbyterian true blue; For he was of that stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant To be the true Church Militant; Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun; Decide all controversies by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks; Call fire and sword and desolation, A godly thorough reformation, Which always must be carried on, And still be doing, never done; As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended.
His squire, Ralpho, is of a similar stamp but makes no claim to great learning knowing all there is to know from his religion or “new-light” as he calls it. Butler satirises the competing factions at the time of the protectorship by the constant bickering of these two principle characters whose religious opinions should unite them.
These are fawning but barbed portraits and are thought to represent personalities of the times but the actual analogues are, now as then, debateable. “A Key to Hudibras” printed with one of the work’s editions and ascribed to Roger L’Estrange names Sir Samuel Luke as the model for Hudibras. Certainly, the mention of Mamaluke in the poem makes this possible although Butler suggests Hudibras is from the West Country making Henry Rosewell a candidate. The witchfinder, Matthew Hopkins, John Desborough parliamentarian general and William Prynne lawyer all make and appearance and the character of Sidrophel is variously seen as either William Lilly or Paul Neale.
Butler is clearly influenced by Rabelais and particularly Cervantes’ Don Quixote. But whereas in Cervantes, although being mocked, the readers sympathies are obviously supposed to be with the noble knight, Hudibras is offered nothing but derision.
The title comes from the name of a knight in Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queene who is described as “not so good of deeds as great of name” and “more huge in strength then wise in work”. Spencer in turn probably got the name from the legendary English king Rud Hud Hudibras.
Hudibras was written in an iambic tetrameter in closed couplets, with surprising feminine rhymes. The dramatic meter portends tales of dramatic deeds but the subject matter and the unusual rhymes undercut its importance. This verse form is now referred to as Hudibrastic.
Plot
The knight and his squire sally forth and come upon some people bear-baiting. After deciding that this is anti-Christian they attack the baiters and capture one after defeating the bear. The defeated group of bear-baiters then rallies and renews the attack capturing the knight and his squire. While in the stock the pair argue on religion.
Part two describes how the knight’s imprisoned condition is reported by Fame to a widow Hudibras has been wooing and she comes to see him. With a captive audience, she complains that he does not really love her and he ends up promising to flagellate himself if she frees him. Once free he regrets his promise and debates with Ralpho how to avoid his fate with Ralpho suggesting that oath breaking is next to saintliness:
For breaking of an oath, and lying, Is but a kind of self-denying; A Saint-like virtue: and from hence Some have broke oaths by Providence Some, to the glory of the Lord, Perjur'd themselves, and broke their word;
Hudibras then tries to convince Rapho of the nobility of accepting the beating in his stead but he declines the offer. They are interrupted by a skimmington, a procession where women are celebrated and men made fools. After haranguing the crowd for their lewdness, the knight is pelted with rotten eggs and chased away.
He decides to visit an astrologer, Sidrophel, to ask him how he should woo the widow but they get into an argument and after a fight the knight and squire run off in different directions believing they have killed Sidrophel.
The third part was published 14 years after the first two and considerably different to the first parts. It picks up from where the second left off with Hudibras going to the widow’s house to explain the details of the whipping he had promised to give himself but Ralpho had got there first and told her what had actually happened. Suddenly a group rushes in and gives him a beating and supposing them to be spirits from Sidrophel, rather then hired by the widow, confesses his sins and by extension the sins of the Puritans. Hudibras then visits a lawyer—the profession Butler trained in and one he is well able to satirise—who convinces him to write a letter to the widow. The poem ends with their exchange of letters in which the knight’s arguments are rebuffed by the widow
Before the visit to the lawyer there is a digression of an entire canto in which much fun is had at the events after Oliver Cromwell’s death. The succession of his son Richard Cromwell and the squabbles of factions such as the Fifth Monarchists are told with no veil of fiction and no mention of Sir Hudibras.
Restoration Poetry and Prose
The Scriblerus Club
The Scriblerus Club
The Scriblerus Club was an informal group of friends that included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, and Thomas Parnell. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer occasionally joined the club for meetings, though he is not known to have contributed to any of their literary work. The club began as a project of satirizing the abuses of learning wherever they might be found, which led to The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. The second edition of Pope’s The Dunciad also contains work attributed to Martinus Scriblerus.
Restoration Poetry And Prose
John Milton
John Milton
Milton wrote a lot of stuff that you will need to know apart from Paradise Lost, which is, according to some, the most commonly occurring work on the exam. There’s plenty of short poetry (including sonnets), long poetical works, and philosophical work to study. Here I have given the short poetry first, followed by the non-poetic work. On the topic of Paradise Lost, I have not included any information. Since it appears as often as it does, spending time to read at least the first book of the poem is worth your while. The real trick with Paradise Lost is not to know the plot, but to get as sense of the cadence and the syntax. ETS really wants you to be able to identify the parts of speech in a Miltonic sentence – what’s the subject, what does X adjective modify, etc. Spending time reading the poem is the best way to prepare for those types of questions which will more than likely constitute at least four or five questions.
I have also listed Milton as a Restoration poet, which is really rather arbitrary. Milton does not really fit in with Restoration poets, but he’s a bit late to be considered a Renaissance poet.
“How Soon Hath Time”
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th.
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of
Heaven;
All is: if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.
“On Shakespeare”
My personal feeling is that it’s worth knowing poems by poets about other poets. Ben Johnson also wrote about Shakespeare, and Andrew Marvell wrote about Milton. It’s a good idea to keep these things in mind because ETS wants you to be able to place such poets in a meaningful constellation of influences.
What needs my Shakespear for his honour’d Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid
Under a Star- ypointing Pyramid ?
Dear son of memory , great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th’ shame of slow- endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu’d Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving ;
And so Sepulcher’d in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
“On the Late Massacre in Piedmont”
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O’er all th’ Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (also sometimes called “On his blindness”)
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask; But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Aeropagitica
Areopagitica is John Milton’s impassioned (if not initially successful) protest against censorship and obstruction of the press. While the work did not produce immediate results and seems rather conservative to modern tastes, it grew to have great significance to later generations and was instrumental in forming many modern defenses of literary freedom.
Throughout the piece, Milton makes numerous religious and classical allusions (to the point of tedium). He considered the political freedom of ancient Greece to have been an ideal situation and attempts to link the greatness of Greece with the greatness of England. In addition, the Protestant Milton got a tremendous mileage out of continually evoking the frightening and hated visage of the Catholic Church, which had created in 1559 the infamous “Index of Prohibited Books”.
Milton brings up three central points in his attack of censorship. Firstly, books are not the sole purveyors of evil or destructive information, so attempts to halt the flow of evil or destructive information by regulating book publishing would necessarily be ineffective. Secondly, you would need inhumanly perfect individuals to serve as judges, or personal biases and misunderstanding would creep into the system and damage the chances that “good” books had of publication. Thirdly, even “bad” books can serve a constructive purpose by strengthening an individual’s resistance to faulty or evil ideas - if a person can be exposed to poisonous thoughts and triumph, their spirit will be the stronger for the contest.
“For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us’d, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
*Comus
Comus is a masque about the attempted seduction of a young girl by Comus, a supernatural being. The Lady stands firm, secure in the sanctity of her virginity, and eventually her brothers (along with an attendant spirit or two) come to her rescue.
Comus is of interest due to being a very early example of John Milton’s work (certain elements of Lucifer of Paradise Lost can be seen in Comus). Additionally, Comus is dedicated to the Earl of Bridgewater and features his children in the primary roles. Debate still rages about whether or not Milton intended the masque to address an unpleasant situation involving the Earl’s sister-in-law and niece, where both women were raped repeatedly by members of their household. Comus is very much absorbed in the mental and spiritual aspects of chastity and could be viewed as a defense of the victims of sexual assault (who still have their spiritual chastity “intact”), if read with the family history in mind.
From Comus:
"Love virtue, she alone is free; She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime: Or, if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her."
Of Education
Of Education is Milton’s contribution to contemporary debate about methods of education, which in turn was part of a larger discussion about how the Church should be organized and how the State should be governed. In substance, Milton’s tractate generally agrees with the humanistic theory of education that grew up in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the impulse of the Revival of Learning. This theory is marked by two or three outstanding characteristics, all of which are prominent in Milton’s treatise. One of these is a clearer consciousness, among teachers and students, of education as a discipline for active life. A second is an insistence upon the more extensive reading of ancient writers, both classical and Christian, as the principal means of securing this discipline. A third characteristic is an attitude of severe and often hostile criticism toward medieval education and culture.
Samson Agonistes
In this play he re-tells the story of the Hebrew hero Samson from the Book of Judges in the Bible. The play concentrates on Samson after he had been betrayed by his wife Delilah, was blinded and held prisoner by the Philistines, the enemies of the Hebrews. Samson resists the temptation to become despondent and, having re-gained his strength by allowing his hair to grow after the Philistines had cut it, destroyed the leadership of the Philistines by pulling a large building down on them and himself.
This play takes on a special poignancy when one understands that Milton, like Samson, had devoted his life to his country. Milton temporarily gave up his poetry and worked for Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth government after Charles I was deposed. He continued this service even though his eyesight was failing and he knew that he was hastening his own blindness. After the Restoration in1660, Milton saw all his efforts come to nothing, for the monarchy was restored with Charles II. One can imagine Milton wishing that he could perform some heroic feat as Samson did. And in some sense Milton was successful, for his beloved England, along with much of the world, enjoys many of the freedoms he fought for. The tyranny the monarchy represented to him has disappeared from England.
Lycidas
“Lycidas” is a poem by John Milton, written in 1637 as a pastoral elegy, dedicated to the memory of Edward King, a collegemate of Milton’s at Cambridge who had been drowned when his ship sank in the Irish Sea off the coast of Wales. The poem is 193 lines in length, and is irregularly rhymed.
The topic of the poem is a shepherd who mourns his drowned friend, Lycidas, first alluding to the immortal fame of a poet. Then, the metaphor of “shepherd” for priests is explored. King and Milton were both preparing to become ministers, and the death of one good shepherd mourned as a severe loss to the flock, i.e. the salvation of the faithful (108–131):
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake,
Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain,
(The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)
He shook his Miter’d locks, and stern bespake,
How well could I have spar’d for thee young swain,
Anow of such as for their bellies sake,
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck’ning make,
Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A Sheep-hook, or have learn’d ought els the least
That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
The phrase “blind mouths” describes the corrupt clergy who “creep, intrude and climb into the fold”, i.e. who acquire their position with dishonest means, referring to their greed, and uselessness as guardians. The “Wolf” has been interpreted as an allegory for the Catholic Church, and the “two-handed engine at the door” may refer to Judgement Day, although the precise metaphor intended is uncertain, and the lines are among the most discussed in English literature. An “engine” in Milton’s day needed not be a mechanical machine, but could also refer to a simpler device or weapon, such as a two handed sword used for execution.
The final lines of the poem:
And now the Sun had stretch’d out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch’d his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.
