Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome largely thanks to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, at the time of the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but its popularity spread all over Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals.[1][2] The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th and up to the 21st century.
3. write on 18th century women poets.
This major study offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions.
Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms.
Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women's poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important canonical and popular verse forms, she gives particular attention to such topics as women's use of religious poetry to express candid ideas about patriarchy and rape; the continuing evolution and important role of the supposedly antiquarian genre of the friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet.
4. portrayal of humans in neo-classical novels. (for background information refer to the concept of man from slides)
Neoclassicism in English literature refers to a movement which flourished between 1660 and 1798. The term refers to a style that is based on, but different from, the classic structures of the Roman and Greek writers of old. ''Neo'' means ''new,'' so the term literally means the ''old classic.'' However, neoclassicism was a unique style with its own themes and works.
If renaissance was an outburst or interest towards classical literature and subjects surrounding the same; neoclassical literature is its succeeding brother with a primary concern on structure, rules and correctness of form regarding the same subjects or themes. The main characteristics of the period are enhancement of reasoning, focussing man in the society, following Greek and Roman style of presentation and use of the style to works of the age. Another important aspect of neoclassical period is that man is never considered to be fundamentally good [as seen in Renaissance period]; instead, neoclassic writers emphasized on the imperfections of human beings individually and as a part of the society.
Neoclassical literature can be observed from 1600 – 1785 spanning across three periods of English literature namely,
The Restoration Period – 1660 – 1700
The Augustan Period – 1700 – 1745
The Age of Sensibility – 1745 -1785
The general focus on man as a social being with imperfectness resulted in the focus on philosophies like empiricism and materialism.
> Neoclassical age concentrated more on the concepts of man such as pride, envy, defects and individual disability to break the ego to realize that not everyone is a “natural genius” or has limitless knowledge about the universe. The neoclassical literature focussed on the limitations of man and mirrored human nature as it is.
Neoclassical era was a time of comfortableness in England. People would meet at coffee houses to chat about politics, among other topics, and sometimes drink a new, warm beverage made of chocolate! It was also the beginning of the British tradition of drinking afternoon tea. And it was the starting point of the middle class, and because of that, more people were literate.
People were very interested in appearances, but not necessarily in being genuine. Men and women commonly wore wigs, and being clever and witty was in vogue. Having good manners and doing the right thing, particularly in public, was essential. It was a time, too, of British political upheaval as eight monarchs took the throne.
5. write in brief about your favourite major/minor - writer/poet of the age.
Alexander Pope was born on May 21, 1688, London, England and died on May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London. He was poet and satirist of the English Augustan period and the acknowledged master of the heroic couplet and one of the primary tastemakers of the Augustan age. British writer Alexander Pope was a central figure in the Neoclassical movement of the early 18th century.He is one of the most epigrammatic of all English authors.
He is known for having perfected the rhymed couplet form of his idol, John Dryden, and turned it to satiric and philosophical purposes. His mock epic The Rape of the Lock (1714) derides elite society, while An Essay on Criticism (1711) and An Essay on Man (1733–34) articulate many of the central tenets of 18th-century aesthetic and moral philosophy. Pope was noted for his involvement in public feuds with the writers and publishers of low-end Grub Street, which led him to write The Dunciad (1728), a scathing account of England’s cultural decline, and, at the end of his life, a series of related verse essays and Horatian satires that articulated and protested this decline.
Alexander Pope was bright, precocious, and determined and, by his teens, was writing accomplished verse. His rise to fame was swift. Publisher Jacob Tonson included Pope’s Pastorals, a quartet of early poems in the Virgilian style, in his Poetical Miscellanies (1709), and Pope published his first major work, An Essay on Criticism, at the age of 23. He was clearly influenced by The Spectator’s policy of correcting public morals by witty admonishment, and in this vein he wrote the first version of his mock epic, The Rape of the Lock.
Pope managed also to suggest what genuine attractions existed amid the foppery. It is a glittering poem about a glittering world.The art of allusion is an element of much of Pope’s poetry.Pope borrowed the form of Ovid’s “heroic epistle” and showed imaginative skill in conveying the struggle between sexual passion and dedication to a life of celibacy.
Alexander Pope was the first English poet to enjoy contemporary fame in France and Italy and throughout the European continent and to see translations of his poems into modern as well as ancient languages.
very good. Keep Improving!
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