欧洲文化论文
吉林华桥外国语学院
期末论文
(2008 级)
The Influences of the Enlightenment upon English
Literature
启蒙运动对英国文学的影响
姓 名:王维维
班 级:翻译T0806
二〇一〇年十二月
Abstract
There were a lot of influential things happened in the 18th century. The most
influential movement is the Enlightenment. The thought that the world was an object of study and that people could understand and control the world by means of reason and empirical research. The bourgeoisie gradually won their power. Their need for the changes of cultural life increased. The special need of the bourgeoisie and the influences of the Enlightenment exerted great influences on the literature of many countries. In this article, we mainly talk about the influences on the English literature. Influenced by the Enlightenment, the English literature changed a lot. there are two aspects of the changes-changes on the literature forms and changes on the characteristics of the literature. On the aspects of the literature forms, new forms came into being, such as political writing, newspapers and journals. On the aspect of the characteristics, the English literature had undergone a lot of changes such as: neo-classicism became dominant feature of the English literature. the modern English novel, namely the realistic novel, rose and flourished. The Gothic novel flowered in the 18th century. And satire became a main feature in the writing in the period. We will talk about the influences in detail in the following passage. Key Words:
Enlightenment, literature, neo-classicism, sentimentality, Gothic novels, satire.
The influences of the Enlightenment upon English
Literature
A lot of constant change of events happened in the 18th century. New thoughts and new awareness continuously sprung up. The most influential movement is the Enlightenment movement which have exerted great influences not only in the European countries, but also in other countries such as China.
The Enlightenment refers to a progressive intellectual movement throughout Western Europe that spans approximately on hundred years from the 1680s to 1789. It is originated in France. When we talk about why the Enlightenment could come into being at that time, we should date back to the origin of the word Enlighten. The leaders of the Enlightenment thought that they lived in a world of enlightenment. They regarded the previous times as a superstitious and unenlightened world and not until their period, human beings moved from darkness into light. Due to the Enlightenment, the condition of human beings would gradually become better and better so that the condition of a new generation would become better than the previous generation. But how could they maintain this kind of progress? The answer is very easy and convincing: through the rational powers of human beings. In other
words, the thought of reason became the most important in the Enlightenment. Thus, the 18th century is called the Age of Reason.
Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau believed that the world was an object of study and that people could understand and control the world by means of reason and empirical research. Central to this Enlightenment thought were the use and the celebration of reason, the power by which man understands the universe and improves his own condition. When reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities an social relations, superstition, injustice, privilege and oppression were to yield place to “eternal truth,” “eternal justice,” and “natural equality” or inalienable rights of men. Thus, the 18th century enlighteners began to question why nations should be ruled by monarchs who came to power through an accident of birth. With a new belief that society could be grounded on rational foundations determined by human, not arbitrary foundations determined by God, they claimed that the individual was the basic unit of social analysis, and that the society should emerge and develop as the result of a social contract among the individuals.
Holding the common faith in human rationality, the enlighteners also waged war on their common enemies. At the same time, they advocated universal education. In their opinion, human beings were limited, dualistic, imperfect, and yet capable of rationality and perfection through education. If the masses were better educated, they thought, there would be greater chance for a democratic and equal human society. As a matter of fact, literature at the same time, heavily didactic and moralizing, became a very popular means of public education.
Inspired by the spirit of the Enlightenment, more schools were set up throughout the country so as to provide a better education for the middle-class people. As more people had now more money and more leisure time, and became better educated, a widely distributed reading public grew, especially among the well-to-do middle class women. This demanded more reading materials that would be of interest and satisfy their need for a rational and moral life. Outside regular school, literary works of all kinds played a decisive role in popularization of general education. The Copyright Act o 1709 made, for the first time in English history, literary creation an honorable and independent profession.
The Enlightenment exerted influences upon English literature on two aspects: the literature form and the contents of literature works.
The first aspect in on the literature forms.
The publishing flourished as the need of the bourgeoisie. With the ascent of the bourgeoisie cultural life had undergone remarkable changes. Some forms of publication
appeared at that time. The first one is political writing. The rise of the political parties and their rivalry called forth writers and literary men willing to work for either party in order to help either of them win more votes. From now on writing became an independent job. The second is newspapers and journals. For the middle class demanded entertainment and education. They also demanded a means by which they could express their opinions on political and moral problems. So in the 18th century newspapers and journals flourished and with them prose became for a time the predominant genre of the writing.
The second aspect is on the characteristics of literature works.
In literature, what coincided with the Enlightenment was the Age of Reason. In the development of literature in the Age of Reason can be roughly summarized as(the following can also be regarded as the influences on the characteristics of the literature): the predominance of neo-classical poetry and prose from the last decades of the seventeenth century to the early decades of the 18th century; the rise and flourish of modern realistic novel in the middle years of the century; and the appearance of Gothic novel and the sentimental and pre-romantic poetry and fiction in the last few decades of the century.
The neo-classicism refers to the classical tendency that dominated the literature of the early period. Classicism was firstly influenced by French culture. It was a trend first originated in France during the reign of Louis ⅪⅤ when France was the leading power of the western world Boileau’s Poetique (1674) was a declaration of classicism, which propounded that dramatists should follow the rules set down by Roman writers. For example, in drama, a dramatist should observe the three unities of action, place, and time. In literature, most writers of the time had a great respect for the classic writers, and especially for Romans such as Horace and Ovid. Both of these two person lived and wrote during the reign of Emperor Augustus when Rome was enjoying peace and prosperity. The characteristics of culture at that time were: harmony, decorum, and proportion. They believed that the Roman writers had established the perfect art and rules of art for future generations to follow. Those rules could best be learned from close study of their work and by careful imitation of them.
The characteristics of the neo-classicism can be summed up as follows:
“1, people emphasized reason rather than emotion, form rather than
content. Writers strove to repress emotions and enthusiasm as found in the works of Elizabethan writers and to use precise and elegant methods of expression. 2, As reason was stressed, most of the writings of the age were didactic and satirical. 3, As elegance, correctness, appropriateness and restrains were preferred, the poet found closed couplet the only possible verse form for serious work. 4, It is almost exclusively a “town” poetry,
catering to the interests of the “society” in great cities. The humbler aspect of life are neglected and it shows no love of nature, landscape, or country things and people. 5, It is entirely wanting in all those elements that are related with the “romantic”. It is unsympathetic toward the “rule” masters of old literature- towards Chaucer, Spenser, and even Shakespeare, and it is especially hostile towards everything that belonged to the Middle Ages with its chivalrous extravagance, visionary idealism and strong religious faith.”1
The rise and flourish of modern English novel is another important phenomenon of the 18th century English literature. In the Medieval or the Renaissance period, the literature only served for the feudal aristocratic class. Almost all the literary works were about kings, queens, princes feudal lords and their way of life. Romance was the typical literary form intended to delight and entertain the aristocrats. But, after the Enlightenment, the bourgeoisie gained power and the middle-class people were ready to cast away the aristocratic romance and to create a new and realistic literature of their own to express their ideas and serve their interests. Instead of the life of kings and feudal lords, the whole life in its ordinary aspects of the middle class became the major source of interest in literature. This change of subject matter was most obvious in the form of realistic novel. There are many famous novelists at that time such as Chaucer, Fielding, Sterne and so on. These novelists combined the allegorical tradition of the moral fables with the picaresque tradition of the lower-caste stories, they achieved in their works both realism and moral touching.
The Gothic novel is the third characteristics of the literature in that period. The English novel flowered in the middle part of the century. But, in the last few decades, however, it gradually gave way to Gothic novel or Gothic romance. The term “Gothic” derived from the frequent setting of the tales in the ruined, moss-covered castles of the Middle Ages. But, gradually it extended to any novel that exploits the possibilities of mystery and terror in gloomy, decaying mansions with dark dungeons and secret passages. 2All kinds of things could be the central stories. The persecution of a beautiful maiden by an obsessed and haggard villain would often be the central story. Instruments of torture, ghostly visitations, ghostly music or voices, ancient drapes and tapestries, behind which lurks no one knows what would be the usual devices used in Gothic novels. The Gothic novels have the following characteristics: rebelling against the increasing commercialism 罗经国. 《新编英国文学选读(第二版)》 北京:北京大学出版社 1996
2 Zhang Boxiang. A Course Book of English Literature. 2004 1
and rationalism, opening up to later fiction the dark, irrational side of human nature-the savage egoism, the perverse impulses, and the nightmarish terror that lie beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the conscious mind. The originator of English Gothic novel was Horace Walpole.
The sentimentality is the fourth characteristics of the literature in that period. Poetry and fiction of sentimentality didn’t start all of a sudden in the 18th century, because it was not often found earlier than that. To some degree, we can say that the sentimentality have appeared hand in hand with the rise English novel. In fiction, it was found in Pamela which was written by Samuel Richardson. Richardson concentrated on the distresses of the unfortunate and virtuous people and he demonstrated that effusive emotions were ecidence of kindness and goodness. Social morality and ethics had changed as a ready sympathy and an inward pain for the misery of others have been accepted. The susceptibility to tender feelings became a sigh of good breeding and good manners. Besides, sensibility also could be found in other places such as in the wildness of nature, in the lawlessness of the exotic, and in the sensational indulgence of fear and awe before the mysterious or the inexplicable. While, some sentimental works worsened into mere self-indulgent postures of grief and pain and tears were shed too profusely just for “the luxury of grief”. In poetry, there are also some representative works which not mention the various odes of sensibility which flourished in the later half of the century.
Satire is another typical feature of this period’s writing. Formally defined, satire is “A composition in verse or prose holding up vice or folly to ridicule or lampooning individuals. The use of ridicule, irony, sarcasm, etc., in speech or writing for the ostensible purpose of exposing and discourage vice or folly.” In other words, satire is a particular use of humor or overtly moral purposes. It seeks to use laughter, not just to remind us of our common, often ridiculous humanity, but rather to expose those moral excesses, those corrigible sorts of behavior which transgress what the writer sees as the limits of acceptable moral behavior. So, it answered well the purpose of the Enlightenment, which aimed a t public education in moral, social as well as cultural life. It also proved to be an effective weapon for arguments of all kinds and verbal attacks on enemies of both the party’s and the personal. The best satires of the age are not noted for their wittiness of remark and adeptness of technique. So it became the fashion for all forms of writing at the time. There are also representatives of the satire writers such as Pope and Swift.
The influences of the Enlightenment are much more than what we have talked about previously. It is a movement that influenced almost the whole world in many areas. It is a very meaningful movement in the human history. We should probe for as many as useful
ideas and thoughts from the movement and apply them to our society life and try best to make our life better and let our lifestyle become beneficial to the next few generations.
Bibliography
[1]Zhang Boxiang. A Course Book of English Literature. 2004
[2]Stavrianos, L.S. A Global History. 2006
[3]Wang Zuoliang etc. European Culture. An Introduction. 1992
[4]罗经国. 《新编英国文学选读(第二版)》 北京:北京大学出版社 1996 [5][美]威尔·杜兰.《世界文明史》(上)东方出版社 1999年