NIVEL AVANZADO: Romantic Poets

SECCIÓN A, NIVEL AVANZADO

Other romantic poets:

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY     (1792-1822)

English romantic poet; b. Sussex, st. U College, Oxford; rebellious student, eccentric, vegetarian, radical and freethinker; expelled from college, eloped with Harriet Westbrook, m. 1811, travels, radical activist, 2 children. An improvident husband, he abandoned his family; he eloped abroad with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Claire Clairmont; wife committed suicide 1816, Shelley married Mary W. Godwin, thereafter Mary Shelley; back to England, lost custody of his children. Friend of Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Keats, Hazlitt; pursued by creditors, travels in Italy 1818-, daughter and son by Mary Shelley died there, Pisa 1820-21, friend of Byron, in love with young Maria Viviani; moved with Mary Shelley to Lerici 1822, drowned in his boat there. Shelley was a radical idealist, the poet of passion, cosmic ambition and despair, much given to self-pitying excesses of emotion and dejection.

_____.  "Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem." 1813, pub. 1816.
_____. The Necessity of Atheism. Essay. With T. J. Hogg.
_____. "Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude." Poem. 1815, pub. 1816.
_____. "Mont Blanc." Poem. 1816, pub. 1817.
_____. "Stanzas Written in Dejection—December 1818, near Naples." 1818, pub. 1824.
_____. "England in 1819." 1819,
_____. "Ode to the West Wind." 1819, pub. 1820 in Prometheus Unbound.
_____. Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts. Written 1819, pub. 1820.
_____. "Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc." 1821, pub. 1829.
_____. A Defence of Poetry. 1821, pub. 1840.
_____. "The Triumph of Life." Poem. 1822, pub. in Posthumous Poems. 1824.
_____. Poetical Works. Ed. Mary Shelley. 1839.




SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE     (1772-1834)

_____. Poems on Various Subjects. 1796.
_____. Poems. 1797.
_____. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Poem, w. 1797. In Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads. 1798.
_____. "Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment." Poem. c. 1797-98, pub. 1816.
_____. Christabel. Poem. 1816.
_____. Biographia Literaria : Or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. 1817.
_____. The Friend. 3rd. ed. London, 1837.
_____. Shakspeare Lectures. 1818, etc.




THE ROMANTICS - Audios from In Our Time (BBC).
    http://vanityfea.blogspot.com.es/2015/01/the-romantics.html



Byron, Shelley, and Keats - notes from The Short Oxford History of English Literature.

Keats: Nivel avanzado

Podéis intentar ver una excelente película sobre Keats: Bright Star, de Jane Campion.

 

Una panorámica sobre la vida y obra de Keats (OXFORD COMPANION)


Un audio en français sur la vie et l'œuvre de Keats: 

Scott and other romantic novelists (NIVEL AVANZADO)

from Louis Cazamian, A History of English Literature

The Romantic Period, I. The first generation of poets; 5: The Poetry of Scott. II: The Novel. 1. Walter Scott

The Poetry of Scott.—

At first glance one might be led into thinking that a similar fate had befallen the poems of Southey and those of Scott (1). The latter were very popular from the moment they appeared, being eclipsed only by Byron in the public favour: their immediate and complete success marks the first official triumph of the new school. Neglected, however, after 1815, by their author himself, who had found a vaster field of activity in the novel, and overshadowed by the daring efforts of the second generation of poets, they knew a gradual decline. At the present day the general reader leaves them aside. But with unobtrusive modesty, they continue to live; and as this test of a whole century is probably decisive, everything points to a discreet survival.

They assuredly embody the intentions and influences of Romanticism; but they do not originate, as is the case with Southey's epics, in an intellectual and theoretical source: countless are the natural bonds linking them up with the Scottish soil, with a national past, with a wealth of memories and sentiments which the poet shares with his immediate compatriots, and which a spontaneous sympathy renders accessible to all British readers. The feudalism and medieval customs revived by Scott are part of a not very distant past; the clan spirit, the rich local life of a people steeped in traditions still retain something of that age; therefore the effort of imagination demanded of the reader is neither so great nor so artificial as with other writers. The Lay of the Last Minstrel is definitively placed at the end of that belated transition which joins up the Middle Ages with modern times. The atmosphere of the poem is thus created by a direct intuition in which art and archaeology commingle, blended by the fervour of a warm literary patriotism.

There is nothing, however, as yet of the atmosphere which belongs to the historical novels of Scott, with their humour, their colouring applied with a touch at once lavish and sure. The past is evoked in a spirit romantic before it is human. The choice of descriptive traits, the development of action, and the characterization are a trifle conventional. A secret complacency on the part of the author tends to incline everything towards picturesqueness, pathos, mystery, and even terror, as Scott indeed retains a trace of his youthful enthusiasm for the thrill of the German ballads and for the school of the supernatural. His Romanticism is a synthesis of all the elements which two generations have set free: imaginative emotion, the lure of the past, the taste for chivalry, a sentimental respect for warlike and religious customs, the love of nature, all of which with Scott are strongly individualized through his close familiarity with the Scottish landscape and social life. 

However, the dominant characteristic of these poems is to be found in their sobriety of tone. They are subservient to an essential discipline and measure. The descriptive vein is always strongly controlled; the pictures of nature, whether charming, delicate, or powerful, are never luxuriant; tragedy with Scott never reaches the stage of horror, nor is the fanciful element ever developed at the expense of an implicit logic. A faint suggestion of irony hovers at times like a smile over the narrative. The style, with its ease and liquied movement, has remarkable clarity and a striking economy of means. The verse, supple and modelled on the undulating flow of the sentiment, is of a very rhythmic quality. Scott recognized his indebtedness to the model of fluid freedom offered by the Christabel of Coleridge; but he had too sure a touch not to be a born poet. Through all these traits, the indefinable atmosphere of simplicity, wholesomeness, and truth which permeates these flights of the imagination, saving them from any extravagance, one can feel the presence of a very shrewd intellectuality. Scott is one of those semi-classicists by temperament who leave room for the continuity of tradition at the very heart of Romanticism. He is too conservative by instinct to be a thorough revolutionary in any sphere whatsoever.

The persisting charm of his chivalric epics, their lasting hold upon us, thus arise from the fact that below what is but a passing fashion they link up with a balanced, normal art, which a fresh inspiration has revivified. Yet the close proximity of the novels will always do them harm, since they are too inferior to Scott's prose in the study and development of characters. Beside them, on the other hand, one must not forget the shorter poems—whose form is often that of the ballad—in which Scott has shown a more intense, at times outstanding, gift of lyricism. (2).

Chapter II- The Novel -

1. Walter Scott.—

The poems of Scott belonged to the first generation of Romanticists. His novels (3), in the order of chronology, belonged to the second; but the spirit animating them is still that of the first. There is no indication of their author having been influenced by the change in matters political and intellectual about 1815; he retains his opinions, his temperament, and the natural bent of his imagination. His personality is henceforth too firmly moulded to alter, but develops with greater freedom in a field of wider horizon. While the poetry of this age enlists a great number of the most brilliant talents, Scott's supremacy in the novel is sovereign. For nearly twenty years, everything is eclipsed by his work. His pages have kept an incomparable charm and youthfulness. Neither fashions nor the changes in taste have had any serious effect upon them. Whether appraised or not by enlightened opinion among the critics, they have remained truly popular, and seem almost entirely to have become part of the treasure of permanent literature, and been added to the fund itself of the national heritage.

It would be vain, however, to deny that the years have encroached upon his work. It is not all of an equal quality or resisting power; and it was not given the careful labour which alone assures perfection. It has no doubt, the happy touch, the divine facility, the wealth of a creation of genius. One feels that it wells up from a natural source; it is the outcome of a full inspiration, that has been already prepared by the assimilative play of memory, the activity of thought, the continual exercising of the imagination during half a lifetime. Scott was intimately acquainted with the past of Scotland, which he had explored in documents, history, and legend; he had lived through it again by calling it up in its original setting, and had given it the reality of concrete form by discovering its latent presence in the manners, traditions, and language, in all the existing originality of a people. This unconscious preparation had been so long and full that from the day when the novelist and not the poet laid it under contribution for pictures of a more ample scope, it appeared to be inexhaustible. In it lies the deep value of these reconstructions of history, and by investing them with the gift of life, which it has rendered possible, it supplies them with the atmosphere of a full-flavoured humanity. But Scott certainly allowed himself to be led away too much by the ease of rapid invention; and probably it is to this cause that must be traced, along with the few lapses in form, some more internal flaws which time has brought into prominence.

These are nearly all reducible to certain insufficiencies of the writer's art, to devices which are too facile. In the century which has followed, both the technique of the novel and the requirements of the reader have come to be modified; over and above the theories of the moment, a substantial agreement has been reached concerning some demands which might prove to be of a lasting character. We require sober truth, an objective outlook upon things, or if the writer's fancy and sensibility become a law unto themselves, we are loath to let them have the benefit of an optimism which savours too much of banal convention to be interesting. Fiction plays too important a part in the novel of Scott, and especially the fiction which does not wish to be treated as such. No one save the specialist suffers from the liberties he takes with historical details. The conception of truth, with him, has not yet acquired the scrupulous exactitude which the whole activity of thought in the nineteenth century will impart to it. But the cordial good-naturedness which lends so much winning charm to his work cannot excuse the too easy complacency of his critical sense or artistic conscience. The author is too frequently butting in upon the story; the monologues of the characters, the set conversations of those who rise above the ordinary rank, lose all semblance of reality. The creation of atmosphere in the novels is brought about by a series of conjunctures which too obviously reveal a common end. An aesthetic and moral Providence carries on the story, leading it towards a conclusion which flatters a sentimental and moral preconception no doubt quite worthy in itself, but from which it would seem that a more severe taste has gradually receded. The conventional treatment of love themes, as of the characterization of young heroes and heroines, is in keeping with the fanciful tone of the plots, at least in some of their parts. There is in this whole series of effects a perspective such as that of the theatre, allowable, no doubt, as long as the treatment of truth is only summarily and superficially faithful, but here at variance with the deep and exacting spirit of accuracy that in every other respect animates the realistic imagination of Scott.

It must be recognized, however, that he benefits by the quality of his fault; his art has about it a genuine simplicity, an unpretentiousness, that are restful after the strained objectivity of recent schools. And such blemishes are of slight import; they set a date upon the art of Scott, without ageing it. The only consequence is that the reader must more clearly and more consciously accept the part played by artifice, by one main fiction and by some derived postulates, in the production of an illusion which can in fact never be complete.

The essential point is that this illusion, in far the majority of cases, and if nothing intervenes to impair the normal elasticity of our sense of the real, is a wonderful success. Scott makes us live again in past centuries, and makes innumerable human beings of his invention visible, familiar, and akin to ourselves; whether he entirely creates them, or re-creates their souls and borrows their names from history. His work is one of the happiest attempts ever made to evoke what is no longer extant; it owes its triumph to the imaginative intuition which Romanticism had stimulated, but also to a psychological truth that is sufficiently deep, and to a grasp of man's nature that is broad enough, to satisfy the needs of our minds more constant than a taste for purely historical truth.

The novels form unequal groups according to their themes, varyng in number as in value. Scott loses his force as he wanders from the solid ground of contemporary reality, and from those features of it which are of a durable enough nature to be looked upon as ancient; it is thorugh the present that he interprets and reconstructs the past. Therefore, the periods he chooses by preference are not very remote; his favourite domain stretches from the Reformation to the last civil struggles of the eighteenth century. He organizes his subjects round the great religious or political conflicts which during these two hundred years most seriously impaired the moral unity of the Scottish people; and as the Romanticism of feeling and imagination is above all attracted by lost causes, it is to Puritanism and to the allegiance of the Jacobites that through the force of the tale the involuntary sympathies of the reader are often drawn; a solid proof of the remarkable impartiality of Scott, who as a Tory and a friend of order retained some kindly feelings for the Stuarts, but who reproved fanaticism without reserve. It was his desire to keep the scales even, to grant to all parties and men the same kindly interest, and here he was almost always successful.

The novels which transport us to England or the Continent, and abandon the opening years of the modern era for the Middle Ages, betray this effort more distinctly; they reach their aim less completely: yet they accomplish some very fine feats; although historians do not spare certain aspects of Ivanhoe, they praise the atmosphere of the work, while it is generally agreed that the light shed upon Louis XI and his time by Quentin Durward is not to be disparaged. But still, when all is considered, there are no achievements in this kind which can come up to the scenes enacted in those lowland districts of Scotland, so beloved and cherished by Scott; and for example, to the episodes whose setting is the capital (The Heart of Midlothian, etc.). In the same way, the landscape is evoked with a poetic freshness, which is devoid of all impassioned ardour of exuberance; the description of nature, within these limits, is more widely treated in Scott's prose than in his verse; but the stretches of heath, the peat-lands, the wild valleys of Scotland are more accurately, more forcefully depicted than the vast forests of feudal England.

Set thus in a framework of events largely fictitious, which, however, our sense of truth approves, and standing out against a background of nature and manners which are sufficiently rich in detail to be convincing, picturesque enought to be attractive, and the authority of which is chiefly derived from a national and intimate feeling of sympathetic familiarity, Scott's personages win our full approbation; there is no resisting their vitality. They offer a complete range of characterization, from the most rapid sketches to the most carefully executed portraits; their abundance and diversity astonish us. Their physical being, and the salient peculiarities of their moral being, are what always determine them. At times the analysis goes further, probing to the depths, and aiming at the most individual shades; but Scott is not preoccupied with the psychology that penetrates; he does not seek for complicated tangles of the soul, and consequently hardly comes upon any; on occasion he will be easily satisfied indeed. In certain cases he has desired to make a more searching analysis of a character, and has done so; but as a rule he sums up at one stroke the personality which interests him, grasps it with a vigorous hold, and draws its physiognomy with a broad, firm touch; and having once animated it, he leaves it to radiate the life thus given it to the very end. In this way his characters do not change.

His most unforgettable creations are those of episodic or simple personages, who are devoid of all mystery, and who reveal themselves wholly to us in one flash. Despite the attraction of some impressive figures of rebels, ruined noblemen, and chieftains, it is the ordinary people, such as peasants, shopkeepers, housewives, and servants, who constitute, by virtue of the artisitic relief and intensity of touch with which they are painted, his richest and most attractive gallery of portraits.

And this is because the humbler classes can best voice the humour of Scott. higher up in the social scale, moral dignity imposes a restraint upon the freedom implied in the expression of that humour. It implies a realism of method, an openness in the display of originality, a conscious and discreet revelation of oneself, an art of apparent naïveté and secret roguishness, which scarcely harmonize with the circumspection and reserve of refined manners. In its very essence it savours of the people. It has its roots in a full sense of life, in the experience of all the illogicality which its complexity conceals, in an alert attention to all the perceptible elements through which the solution of his problems reveals itself, in a spontaneously concrete appreciation of the qualities and paradoxes of things.

This deep fertilizing force of the Scottish mind makes its presence felt in all Scott's creations; it is the sole support of whole scenes, episodes, and characters, and is more or less intermingles with nearly all the other sources of interest. His pathos itself is rarely without an after-taste of it. Even the poet's thought elaborates and refines it, and makes it the spiritual aroma of his philosophy. This is the element which imparts to his work an all-pervading spirit of kingliness and light irony, and which tempers the satire with indulgence, the sympathy with amusement. At this degree of superior concentration, humour acts as a kind of twofold wisdom, blending, correcting, and especially relieving the one by means of the other, the bitterness of clear discernment and the sweetness of charity. This suppleness of a judgment which is ever conscious of what is relative becomes reflected in an expression intentionally transposed, which chooses indirect ways because the hearer derives an added pleasure from unravelling them, and because they better comply with the essential scepticism of a soul that refuses to be dogmatically absorbed in one set mode of feeling. Scott's humour has a ring of Scottish shrewdness and kindliness about it. This note is to be heard throughout his work, and lends a character of unity to the vast comedy of existence; it assumes a different key according to the environment, the age, and the sex of the persons who are shown to us; but a stronger affinity gives all its clearness and charm in the language of simple folks; and the dialect of Scotland, in various degrees of raciness and purity, is intimately associated with it in its effects of full-flavoured and sly rusticity.

The passages in which this dialect predominates offer special difficulty to the uninitiated reader; but this is easily overcome; and at once, one comes to prefer them. Here it is that the language of Scott enjoys all its advantages. Its easy manner harmonizes with a familiar form of speech. In other places, it has great merits, and lends itself freely to lively or sustained narration, to description, to pathos, to reflections of a moralizing nature; but it does not keep up all these tones with an equal felicity, or rather there are some among these tones which are not happy in themselves.The edifying reflections, and interventions on the part of the author, imply at times a slightly artificial dignity; one finds there, as it were, a vein of phraseology still permeated with the spirit of the eighteenth century, which impairs the otherwise sound quality of a simple, direct style.

On the whole, the superficial flaws in form do not detract in any way from the deep merits of the work. Scott has the genius of the narrator; but he has the corresponding talent no less, and his tale is carried on by a very supple and very steady art, which sets up, develops, and works out to a final close, through a very varied series of moments, a symphonic composition of sovereing bredth. Incidents, pauses, picturesque evocations, and dialogues are interwoven with an instinctive, sure sense of measure; and the semblance of reality which characterizes the various exchanges of talk, especially in the popular scenes, nearly always succeeds in at once convincing us.

The novel of Scott represents a triumph of Romanticism in the imaginative recreation of the past, associated with all the diverse emotions which the tragic or comic drama of life can awaken. It therefore takes the place of the theatre, in which the literature of this period has produced no masterpieces. Certain of the inner tendencies of Romanticism are here exploited to the limit, such as the liking for bygone ages, the luring of the reader's interest away from the present, the dramatic vision of life; it has even its touch of the supernatural and the mysterious (The Bride of Lammermoor, Redgauntlet, etc.). But by virtue of its humour, its sense of balance, the mental calm and self-posssession it implies, it can also claim kinship with the psychological characteristics of classicism. By bringing Romanticism so near to the real and complete life of every day as to confound the one with the other, even if that life be a vanished and miraculously restored one, Scott has given Romanticism an average and normal value, a soundness, an immunity from any feverishness, that it does not possess even in the poetry of a Wordsworth.


2. Realism; Adventure and Terror in the Novel.—

Despite the illusion created by its superiority, Scott's work in the novel is not isolated, cut off from that of his contemporaries. He recognized his indebtedness to the Irish scenes of Miss Edgeworth (4). Amongst his numerous and mediocre imitators, one should make mention of Galt (5), who in the course of an uncertain career had himself conceived before Scott the idea of exploiting the picturesqueness of Scottish life, but to whom the Waverley novels came as an encouragement and exmple. His best studies are confined to ordinary and familiar ascpects of life; and by feeing this new form of literature from all the historical elements of Romanticism, they turn it in the direction of a minute, humorous, and tenderly inspired realism.

Among the diverse elements brought together in the work of Scott, it is indeed the realism which undoubtedly, after the history, proves the greatest force of attraction. Even in the success of imaginative fiction, literture retains its appreciation of concrete reality; and the distinctive feature of the Romantic novel, as a whole, lies in the boldness with which it adds new provinces to reality. The popularity of Hook (6) is due to the fact that he resolutely brings a democratic and modern spirit to bear upon his atmosphere and subject-matter. Marryat (7) revives the tradition of Sterne and Smollett; to the lively interest of his tale he adds a rich vein of humour, and by his painting of seafaring folks and theif life he has conquered a field in which he remains one of the masters. Miss Mitford (8), in her charming studies of village customs, her landscape descriptions, as exact as they are poetic, foreshadows both the Cranford of Mrs. Gaskell and the work of Richard Jefferies. Lastly, the psychological realism of Jane Austen is handled with a much less delicate touch, and with some worldliness, but not without force, by Mrs. Gore (9).

Meanwhile, the most characteristic, though not the most brilliant, type of Romantic novel, the model of which had been supplied by Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis, continues to prosper. The supernatural with all its terror is still popular. This branch of literature, very fertile in itself but poor artistically, reaches one of the culminating points in its development with the Melmoth of Maturin (10), a work of striking intensity. The Frankenstein of Mrs. Shelley (11) rises above the mere search after the common thrill of fear; here terror is idealized by being fused with the scientific and philosophical anguish of thought. Through this intermediary we understand the link which exists between this ardour of sensitive imagination and the cult of the emotions, common to the great lyrical poets of the period. Just as Southey, Coleridge, and Scott had all contributed to the collective stimulation which gave us the Tales of Terror by Lewis (1801), we find in Mrs. Shelley's fiction the passionate curiosity as to what lies beyond, the preoccupied interest in the marvellous and the morbid, which entered into Byron and Shelley's daily life during their sojourn in Switzerland (1816).





Notes


(1). Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh in 1771, the son of a lawyer, had his imagination fired from the earliest years by the traditions of southern Scotland. He studied at the university of his native town and prepared for the Bar; but his literary vocation was revealed to him in the course of the rambles taken to collect legends and ballads. He learned German, translated the Lenore of Bürger (1795), the Goetz of Goethe (1799), collaborated in the Tales of Wonder of Lewis (1801): published a collection of popular poetry. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802-3; then original poems: The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805; Marmion, 1808; The Lady of the Lake, 1810; The Vision of Don Roderick, 1811; Rokeby, 1813; The Bridal of Triermain, 1813; The Lord of the Isles, 1815; Harold the Dauntless, 1817. After the publication of Waverley, 1814, he devoted his chief attention to the novel; but he still composed numerous short poems (Miscellaneous Poems, 1820; Poetry contained in the Novels, etc., of the Author of Waverley, 1822, etc.). For the rest of his work see below, Chap. II. Poetical Works, ed. by Robertson, 1904; ed. by Lang, 1905; Selections, ed. by A. H. Thompson, 1922. See Veitch, Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry, 1887, vol. ii; Morgan, Scott and His Poetry, 1913; Franke, Der Stil in den epischen Dichtungen Scotts, 1909; Sarrazin, Poètes modernes d'Angleterre, 1884; Margraf, Der Einfluss der deutschen Litteratur auf die englische, etc., 1901.

(2). With this generation must be connected the delicate, intimate effusions of Charles Lamb, who was closely associated with the enthusiasm, theories, and projects of Coleridge and his group. His best poems, with their nostalgic emotion, their penetrating simplicity, recall Blake and Wordsworth, but possess, at the same time, an original note. (For the prose work of Lamb, see below, Chap. V). The Works in Prose and Verxe of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. by Hutchinson, 1908. And among poets of less personal significance, such as Charles Lloyd, there is a more distinct figure, Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) whose early death at 21 took on a symbolic value for this Romantic age. Remains, ed. by Southey, 1807-22; Poems, etc., ed. by Drinkwater, 1908.

(3). The prose work of Sir Walter Scott comprises novels: Waverley, 1814; Guy Mannering, 1815; The Antiquary, 1816; Tales of my Landlord (Old Mortality, 1816; The Heart of Midlothian, 1818; The Bride of Lammermoor, 1819); Rob Roy, 1818; Ivanhoe, 1820; The Monastery, 1820; The Abbot, 1820; Kenilworth, 1821; The Pirate, 1822; The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822; Peveril of the Peak, 1822; Quentin Durward, 1823; St. Ronan's Well, 1824; Redgauntlet, 1824; Tales of the Crusades, 1825; Woodstock, 1826; Chronicles of the Canongate, 1827-28; Anne of Geierstein, 1829; Tales of My Landlord (4th series), 1832. These remained anonymous until almost the last of the series had been published, although the author's identity had been surmised. Their success made Scott a wealthy man, and he led a princely existence in his luxurious abode at Abbotsford; but owing to the failure of a publisher, he had to consecrate the last ten years of his life to exhausting labours. He died in 1832, leaving among other writings: The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland, 1814-17, and Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, 1819-26; Lives of the Novelists (Ballantyne's Novelists' Library), 1821-4; Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, 1827; Tales of a Grandfather, 1828-31; History of Scotland, 1829-30. He edited numerous texts, notably, The Works of Dryden, 1808; The Works of Swift, 1814. His Journal (1825-32) was published by Douglas, 1890; Familiar Letters, 1894. The Waverley Novels, Border Edition, A. Lang, 1892-4. Oxford Edition, 1912. Most of the novels have been edited (with notes, etc.) separately. See the numerous biographies (by Lockhart, 1837-8; Hutton, 1878; Yonge, 1888; Norgate, 1906, etc.). Studies by Saintsbury, 1897; Maigron (Le Roman historique, etc., essai sur l'influence de Walter Scott), 1898; Cross (Development of the English Novel, 1899); Hudson, 1901; Lang, 1906; Wyndham, 1908; Elton (Survey of English Literature), 1920; Stalker (The Intimate Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1921); The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. by H. J. C. Grierson, 1932, etc.

(4). See above, Book IV, Chap VI, sect. 2; and the preface to the Waverley novels, edition of 1829.

(5). John Galt, 1779-1839, born in the south-west of Scotland, led an eventflul life and produced a very large number of diverse works. The Annals of the Parish was written before Waverley, but remained unpublished until 1821. See also The Ayrshire Legatees, 1821; The Entail, 1823. Similarly Susan Ferrier (1782-1854) wrote her first novel before reading those fo Scott, but was one of the latter's literary followers (Marriage, 1818; The Inheritance, 1824; Destiny, 1831). With Croly, James, Ainsworth, Scott's influence is continued after 1830.

(6). Theodore Hook, 1788-1841, dramatist, improvisator, etc., published nine volums of short stories, Sayings and Doings, 1824-8; numerous novels, including Jack Brag, 1837.

(7). Frederick Marryat, 1792-1848, after a career as a naval officer, began with Frank Mildmay (1829) a long series of sea novels, including Peter Simple, 1834; Midshipman Easy, 1836, etc. See Life and Letters, 1872; study by Hannay, 1889.

(8). Mary Russell Mitford, 1787-1855, wrote for the stage with creditable success; but it is to her simple, fresh sketches of provincial life (Our Village, Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery, 1819-32) that she owes her privileged place in English hearts. In her descriptions of nature there is a strong local colouring, and the current of regional literature in the nineteenth century has one of its sources in her work, as in that of Scott or Galt. See her Recollections of a Literary Life, 1852; the study by C. Hill (Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings), 1920; Mary Russell Mitford, her Circle, etc., by M. Astin, 1931.

(9). C. G. F. Gore, 1799-1861; Mothers and Daughters, 1831; Mrs. Armytage, 1836.

(10). Charles Robert Maturin, 1782-1824; The Fatal Revenge, 1807; Melmoth the Wanderer, 1820. For his influence in France, see Ch. Bonnier, Milieux d'Art, 1910; A. M. Millen, Le Roman terrifiant, etc. 1915; and study by N. Idman, 1924.

(11). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, daughter of Godwin, 1797-1851; Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, 1817; The Last Man, 1826.




To be consulted:

Birkhead, The Tale of Terror, 1921, Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. XI, Chap XIII, vol. xii, Chaps. I and XVI; Cross, Development of the English Novel, 1899; Elton, Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, 1920; Killen, Le Roman terrifiant, etc., 1915; Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir W. Scott, etc., new edition, 1903; Maigron, Le Roman historique à l'époque romantique, 1898; Olcott, The Country of Sir Walter Scott, 1913; Scarborough, The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction, 1917; Veitch, History and Poetry of the Scottish Border, 2nd edition, 1893.

La novela histórica: Parámetros para su definición

 

—oOo—

Walter Scott

From The Short Oxford History of English Literature, by Andrew Sanders (1994)

In the Preface to Castle Rackrent [1800] Edgeworth had recognized the fluid relationship between her fiction and the writing of history. In a way that prefigures Thackeray's suspicion of the elevation of fancy-dress heroes by historians, she states her preference for a history which looks beyond the 'splendid characters playing their parts on the great theatre of the world' and which begs to be admitted behind the scenes 'that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses'.

It was Edgeworth's ability to puncture the pretensions of conventional historians and to establish a 'behind the scenes' picture of society in a state of flux which seems to have inspired Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) to return to the unfinished and abandoned manuscript of Waverley in 1813. Her Irish novels, he later maintained, 'had gone so far to make the English familiar with the characters of their gay and kind-hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may truly be said to have done more towards completing the Union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up'. It is an ambitious claim, but no more so than Scott's own professed hope 'that something might be attempted for my own country, of the same kind with that which Misss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland—something which might introduce her natives to those of her sister kingdom in a more favourable light than they had been placed hitherto'. What Scott managed to achieve for Scotland was a far broader popular understanding of the distinctive nature of Scottish history and culture, its divisions and contradictions as much as its vitality. If he can at times be accused of having sanitized much in the Scottish tradition of dissent from English norms of government and civilization, he did manage to explore and to explain swathes of northern history ignored by English cultural imperialists and Scottish social progressives alike. In choosing to eschew the Scots dialect, both as a poet and as a novelist, he rendered his work acceptable to a wide audience likely to be alienated by a merely parochial self-assurance. By varying, examining, and imagining vital aspects of national history he also managed to present an analysis of a historical process at work. In drawing on, and adapting for the purposes of prose fiction, something of the method perfected by Shakespeare in his two Henry IV plays, and by intermixing politics and comedy with the fictional and the historical. Scott also shaped aspects of Scottish nationhood to suit his own Unionist and basically Tory ends. He both invented tradition and used it, and if he can be blamed on the one hand with exploiting an overtly romantic view of Scotland's past, he must also be allowed to have moved the British novel towards a new seriousness and a new critical respect. In developing the form beyond the fantastic excesses of the Gothic and beyond the embryonic shape moulded by Maria Edgeworth, Scott effectively created the nineteenth-century historical novel. His creation, fostered by the universal popularity of his work, was to have vast influence over European and American literature.

When he published Waverley anonymously in 1814 Scott already possessed a high reputation as the best-selling new poet of his age. Drawing on private research, on his considerable learning, and on memories of this youth spent in the Scottish Borders, he had published the influential collection of ballads, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3). The Minstrelsy, which went through five editions by 1812, interspersed previously uncollected folk-poetry with verse by the editor himself. Scott may have rigorously over-edited some of the original pieces, but his collection was a triumph of enterprise matched in importance only by Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). His antiquarian enthusiasms marked his entire career as a writer and a collector, but his early translations of Goethe and of German ballads, and an attachment to the history of the Borders, served to stimulate a narrative poetry of his own. The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) recounts the story of a family feud in the sixteenth century, replete with sorcery, alchemy, and metaphysical intervention. Scott's energetic, rushing metre, his varying line-length and wandering stress within the lines, and his highly effective introduction of shorter lyrics or songs into the narrative also mark three further long and involved verse tales: Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), and Rokeby (1813). These poems achieved an immediate celebrity and retained the high esteem of succeeding Victorian generations, even, despite their length, being learnt by heart. Their glamour has now faded and, despite occasional patches of still vivid colour, the passage of time has exposed them as threadbare in terms of their subjects and their style.

Scott's novels, an epoch-making phenomenon in their won time, retain more of their original impact on readers despite a relative decline in their critical and popular esteem. His initial, highly successful, impulse to concern himself with Scottish affairs, and yet always to include the observation and experience of a pragmatic outsider (often an English man), links his first nine novels together. The shape and theme of Waverley, which is concerned with the gradual, often unwitting, involvement of a commonsensical English gentleman in the Jacobite rising of 1745 and his exposure to the thrillingly alien culture of the Highland clans, are subtly repeated, with significant variation, in Guy Mannering (1815), Old Mortality (1816), and Rob Roy (1817). It is cleverly reversed in The Heart of Midlothian (1818), a tale set in Edinburgh in the period of anti-government Porteous riots of 1736, by the device of Jeanie Deans's epic walk to London to plead for her sister's life and by the contrast drawn between the somewhat narrow puritanism of Jeanie and the sophisticated but worldly nature of the Hanoverian court. In all these novels Scott exposes his protagonists to conflicting ways of seeing, thinking, and acting; his Scotland is variously divided by factions—by Jacobites and Unionists, Covenanters and Episcopalians, Highland clansmen and urban Lowlanders—and in each he suggests an evolutionary clash of opposites, the gradual convergence of which opens up a progressive future. The fissures of Scottish history are allowed to point the way to a present in which Scotland's fortunes are inexorably bound up with those of liberal, duller, more homogeneous, shop-keeping England. The dialectic established by the narrative offers some kind of movement away from a mere nostalgia for the past and for past manners or factions. As Scott stresses in chapter 72 of Waverley, no European nation had changed so much between 1715 and 1815: 'The effects of the insurrection of 1745 . . . commenced this innovation. The gradual influx of wealth, and extension of commerce, have since united to render the present people of Scotland a class of beings as different from their grandfathers, as the existing English are from those of Queen Elizabeth's time.' In order to suggest the nature and the implications of change to his readers, Scott opens up the past by carefully establishing a picture of men and women moving naturally in a historic environment his characters are no longer represented in the fancy dress of Gothic fiction; they are shown at ease with the objects, furniture, and attitudes of their proper times. Fictional heroes encounter historical ones and are allowed to find them wanting, both being subject to the narrator's own imaginative and ideological interpretation of their development. Equally significantly, the novels present character as being shaped and determined by environment, an environment which is as much local as it is temporal, and as subject to geography as it is to history. If Scott's real sympathies lie in recording the steady triumphalism of the dominant culture, he is still a tolerant and often persuasive memorializer of lost causes and lost tribes, of dissent and of the alternative perceptions of minorities marginalized by those who hold political and intellectual sway.

In 1820, with the publication of Ivanhoe, Scott's fiction took a fresh, but not always happy, direction in moving abruptly away from Scotland and from recent, even remembered, history. Ivanhoe and two further, and far weaker, stories set in the time of the Crusades, The Talisman and The Betrothed (both 1825), form a continuous discourse which questions the origins and usefulness of the medieval code of chivalry and military honour and distantly reflects on the survival of both into the age of the French Revolution. All three novels, however, require turgidly lengthy explications of historical detail and resort to an often highly artificial dialogue in order to establish the authenticity of their twelfth-century settings. It is a fustian dialogue which contrasts vividly with the far easier evocations of home-spun, local speech which enliven the scottish fiction. Similar faults mar the otherwise lively pictures of Elizabethan England in Kenilworth (1821) and of the period of the Commonwealth in Woodstock (1826). The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) and Quentin Durward (1823) concerned respectively with the adventures of exiled Scottish knights at the courts of James I of England and Louis XI of France, are both vigorous variations on the idea of the upright innocent abroad making his way through mazes of corruption, but the finest of Scott's later works is probably Redgauntlet (1824), an investigation of the dying flame of Scottish Jacobitism seen from the divided perspective of two heroes, the phlegmatic Alan Fairford and the romantic Darsie Latimer. Sadly, illness and financial disaster overshadowed the novelist's last years and his still phenomenal output bears the marks of the strain, declining as it does into rambling, but often highly charged, experiments with material which even the polymathic Scott had not properly assimilated.

Despite the anonymity of the 'author of Waverley', a ruse which was maintained on the title-page of all of Waverley's fictional successors, the 'secret' of Scott's authorship was a thoroughly open one. In January 1821 Byron, and unstinted admirer, claimed, without a glimmer of doubt at their authorship, to have read 'all W. Scott's novels at least fifty times'. Scott was, he noted in his journal, the 'Scotch Fielding, as well as a great English poet', and he characteristically added, '—wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him'. It was Byron, properly George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), who alone managed to eclipse Scott's primacy as the best-selling poet of the second decade of the nineteenth century, but he never attempted to rival him as a novelist.

—oOo—

Austen & Scott (NIVEL AVANZADO)

NIVEL AVANZADO:  

- Jane Austen  /  Sir Walter Scott
Un audio de la BBC sobre EMMA, de Jane Austen, del programa "In Our Time").


- JANE AUSTEN COUNTRY - Un documental sobre la Inglaterra de Jane Austen y su vida.



- And another documentary: Jane Austen Country: The Life and Times of Jane Austen.

Excursos sobre Jane Austen

 

 __________

 

- Walter Scott: Un audio en français:






NIVEL AVANZADO: Walter Scott and Other Romantic Novelists.



 

Harold Pinter (NIVEL AVANZADO, Sección B)

SECCIÓN B, NIVEL AVANZADO: Harold Pinter




Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter. Video. YouTube (Svenna Jensen) 9 Nov. 2011.*
    http://youtu.be/PH96tuRA3L0

—Un texto que traduje: Art, Truth and Politics de Harold Pinter.

__________________________

Sección B, NIVEL AVANZADO - Samuel Beckett

Un libro mío sobre Samuel Beckett y la narración reflexiva: http://www.unizar.es/departamentos/filologia_inglesa/garciala/publicaciones/SBNR.html




sigue NIVEL AVANZADO: Una charla-debate sobre Beckett, para practicar inglés de Nueva York:

NIVEL AVANZADO: Gray y sus coetáneos

NIVEL AVANZADO:

Una guía de lectura de la "Elegy" de Gray: http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/ThoGray.html

—y una conferencia sobre este poema: https://youtu.be/VKrvov9zijs

Y una lectura de la "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College": http://garciala.blogia.com/2007/081002-i-sit-and-watch-the-children-play.php


Otros poetas importantes del XVIII, asociados a veces al "prerromanticismo", fueron:

- James Thomson (The Seasons)

- William Collins (Ode to Evening)

- Oliver Goldsmith (The Vicar of Wakefield, The Traveller, The Abandoned Village)

- William Cowper (The Task)

- Edward Young (Night Thoughts)

- Christopher Smart (Jubilate Agno)

- James Macpherson (The Poems of Ossian, fake ancient Celtic poems)

- Thomas Chatterton (author of fake medieval poems)





Y otros prosistas de la época de Johnson que dejamos sin estudiar son

- George Berkeley - filósofo idealista, teorizador del "inmaterialismo".
- David Hume - Aquí un programa de Fernando Savater sobre este Ilustrado, uno de los más grandes filósofos británicos: David Hume, la aventura del pensamiento.
- Adam Smith - Creador de la economía política en The Wealth of Nations (1776), y de una teoría de las emociones humanas.
- Edmund Burke - Pensador político contrarrevolucionario, teorizador de la tradición de las instituciones.
- Edward Gibbon - Autor de la Historia del declive y caída del Imperio Romano, gran obra histórica.
- James Boswell - Biógrafo, autor de la Vida de Samuel Johnson.



Un documental de la BBC sobre Samuel Johnson y su diccionario:


 

Borges sobre Joyce

Sección B, NIVEL AVANZADO: Huxley y Orwell

Dos obras claves de la ciencia ficción política tenéis que conocer:

-  Brave New World de Aldous Huxley (1932) (Un mundo feliz).



- y  Nineteen-Eighty Four de George Orwell (1949).  De quien también es importante hoy Animal Farm, una fábula sobre el comunismo totalitario.

Constantemente se vuelven de mayor y mayor actualidad, con cuestiones como la tecnología del cuerpo y la eugenesia, el control de la opinión pública con los medios de comunicación de masas, o la invasión y control de la privacidad con el progreso tecnológico.

Aquí una entrevista sobre la vida y obra de Orwell.


Un documental: ORWELL, A LIFE IN PICTURES.



Y un programa de radio, en francés sobre Huxley:


Une Vie, une Œuvre - Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
 https://youtu.be/er8twccFbMY

Henry Fielding

Fielding, Henry (1707-54), the son of a lieutenant (who later became lieutenant general), born at Sharpham Park, the house of his maternal grandfather in Somerset. His mother died when he was 11, and when his father remarried Henry was sent to Eton. There he was happy, enjoyed his studies, and made lifelong friends of *Lyttelton, who was to become a generous future patron, and of *Pitt the elder. At 19 he attempted to elope with a beautiful heiress, but failing in this settled in London, determined to earn his living as a dramatist. Lady M. W. *Montagu, a distant cousin, encouraged him, and in 1728 at Drury Lane his play Love in Several Masques was successfully performed. In the same year he became a student of letters at Leiden, where he remained about 18 months, greatly enlarging his knowledge of classical literature. On his return to London he continued his energetic but precarious life as a dramatist, and between 1729 and 1737 wrote some 25 assorted  dramas, largely in the form of farce and satire, and including two adaptations of Molière, The Mock Doctor and The Miser. In 1730 three of his plays were performed: The Author's Farce, Rape upon Rape, a savage satire on the practices of the law, embodied in Justice Squeezum; and the most successful of all his dramas, *Tom Thumb (which was published in a revised form the following year as The Tragedy of Tragedies, or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great), one of several extravagant burlesques modelled on Buckingham's *The Rehearsal, of the turgid fashionable tragedies of the day. *Hogarth designed the frontispiece, and a long and close friendship began. Don Quixote, a satire which is in part a tribute to *Cervantes, appeared in 1734. In the same year Fielding married Charlotte Cradock, who became his model for Sophia in *Tom Jones and for the heroine of Amelia, and with whom he enjoyed ten years of great happiness until her death. His improvidence led to long periods of considerable poverty, but he was greatly assisted at various periods of his life by his close and wealthy friend R. *Allen, who became, with Lyttleton, the model for Allworthy in Tom Jones. In 1736 Fielding took over the management of the New Theatre, for the opening of which he wrote the hightly successful satirical comedy Pasquin, which aimed at various religious and political targets, including electioneering abuses. But The Historical Register for 1736 was fiercer political satire than *Walpole's government would tolerate, and the Licensing Act of 1737, introducing censorship by the lord chamberlain, brought Fielding's career in the theatre to an end.

He entered the Middle Temple and began to read for the bar. In 1739-40 he wrote most of the columns of the *Champion, a satirical and anti-Jacobite journal. In 1740 he was called to the bar but his health began to fail and he suffered acutely from gout. In the same year Richardson's Pamela appeared and enjoyed tremendous popular success. In 1741 Fielding expressed his contempt in his pseudonymous parody An Apology for the Life of Mrs *Shamela Andrews. Meanwhile, because of increasing illness, he was unable to pursue his legal career with any consistency. Instead, in 1742, he produced The Adventures of *Joseph Andrews and His Friend, Mr Abraham Adams, for which he received from his publisher £185 11s. In 1743 his old friend *Garrick put on Fielding's The Wedding Day, and in the same year Fielding published three volumes of Miscellanies, which included *A Journey from This World to the Next and a ferocious satire, The Life and Death of *Jonathan Wild the Great. In 1744 he suffered a terrible blow in the death of his wife, and for a year or so he wrote little except a preface to his sister Sarah's novel *David Simple, and some journalism, particularly the True Patriot and the Jacobite's Journal. In 1746 he probably began The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, and in 1747 caused some scandal by marrying his wife's maid and friend Mary Daniel. With the aid of Lyttelton, he was appointed JP for Westminster in 1747 and once again joined battle, now from the inside, with legal corruption and the 'trading justices' who imposed and embezzled fines. In 1749 Tom Jones was enthusiastically received by the general public, if not by *Richardson, *Smollett, Dr *Johnson, and other literary figures. In the same year his legal jurisdiction was extended to the whole county of Middlesex, and he was made chairman of the quarter sessions of Westminster. From his court in Bow Street he continued his struggle against corruption and lawlessness and, with his blind half-brother and fellow magistrate Sir John Fielding, strove to establish new standards of honesty and competence on the bench. He wrote various influential legal enquiries and pamphlets, including a proposal for the abolition of public hangings. In 1751 he published Amelia, which sold the best of all his novels. He returned to journalism in 1752 with the *Covent Garden Journal, and published in 1753 a Provision for the Poor. He organized and saw successfully implemented a plan for breaking up the criminal gangs who were then flourishing in London. But his gout, asthma, and other afflictions were now so far advanced that he had to use crutches, and in 1754, in hope of improvement, he set off with his wife and one of his daughters for Portugal. *The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, published poshumously in 1755, describes in unsparing detail the departure and journey. He had prepared it for the press ('a novel without a Plot') before he died in Lisbon in October.

Fielding is generally agreed to be an innovating master of the highest originality. He himself believed he was 'the founder of a new province of writing,' and Sir Walter *Scott commended him for his 'high notions of the dignity of an art which he may be considered as having founded'. His three acknowledged masters were *Lucian, *Swift, and Cervantes. In breaking away from the epistolary method of his contemporary Richardson, and others, he devised what he described as 'comic epics in prose', which may be characterized as the first modern novels in English, leading straight to the works of *Dickens and *Thackeray. The standard biography is M. C. Battestin, Henry Fielding (1989). The standard edition is the Wesleyan Edition (1967- ) with 11 volumes printed as of 1997.

—oOo—

Tom Thumb,  a Tragedy, a farce by Henry Fielding, performed and published 1730, and published in in a different version in 1731 under the title of The Tragedy of Tragedies, or, The Life and Death of Tom Thum the Great.
    The most successful of Fielding's many plays, this is an exuberant farce in the mock-heroic manner, ridiculing the 'Bombastic Greatness' of the fashionable grandiose tragedies of authors such as Nathaniel *Lee and James *Thomson, and similar in form to Buckingham's *The Rehearsal. It was published with a heavy apparatus of absurd scholarly notes, and a frontispiece by *Hogarth. *Swift declared that he had laughed only twice in his life, once at a Merry-Andrew and once at a performance of Tom Thumb.


A Journey from This World to The Next, the second volume of Miscellanies, by Henry *Fielding, published 1743.
    The author purports to have found an almost indecipherable manuscript, consisting of a series of 'Epistles', which was left in an attic by someone now departed to the West Indies. The soul leaves the body in its lodgings in Cheapside and finds itself, guided by Mercury, in a stage-coach with other departing souls. They pass through the City of Diseases and past the black marble Palace of Death, on to the Wheel of Fortune. At the door of Elysium Minos dictates who shall be permitted to enter; the generous and the honest are favoured, whatever their station, while the cruel and hypocritical are rejected. In the Elysian Fields heroes and writers of antiquity converse animatedly with Shakespeare, *Milton, *Dryden, *Addison, Fielding's own *Tom  Thumb, and many others. The spirit of Julian the Apostate appears and, for the major part of the book, discourses in several guises as slave, Jew, courtier, and statesman. The tale (the last part of which, about Anne Boleyn, may have been by Sarah *Fielding) comes to a somewhat haphazard end with the excuse that the rest of the 'manuscript' has been unfortunately burned. It was edited by C. Rawson, 1973; the best text is found in Miscellanies, by Henry Fielding, ed. Hugh Amory and Bertrand A. Goldgar (vol. ii, 1993).


Covent-Garden Journal, a periodical issued twice a week during 1752 by Henry Fielding containing some of the best work of his journalistic career. Under the name of Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Censor of Great Britain, Fielding attacks political abuses, scandal, hypocrisy, meanness, sexual morality, fashion, and many other targets. It contained an attack on Smollett's *Peregrine Pickle and *Roderick Random, to which that author replied in a slanderous pamphlet, A Faithful Narrative of . . . *Habbakuk Hilding, Justice, Dealer, and Chapman.

A Digression on Vanity

Samuel Richardson

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

Richardson, Samuel (1689-1761), the son of a joiner, born near Derby, where his parents lived briefly before returning to London. Little is known of his boyhood, but because of his father's comparative poverty he appears to have received (in his own words) 'only common School-learning'. The tradition that he attended either Merchant Taylors' or *Christ's Hospital cannot be substantiated. As a boy he read widely, told stories to his friends, and by the age of 13 was employed writing letters for young lovers. In 1706 he was apprenticed to a printer (as his father could not afford to enter him to the Church), and in 1715 he was admitted a freeman of the *Stationers' Company. He set up in business on his own in 1721, in which year he married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his former master. All his working life he was extremely industrious, and his business prospered and expanded steadily. Like all printers of his time, he combined printing and publishing, producing books, journals, advertisement posters, and much miscellaneous work. In 1723 he took over the printing of an influential Tory journal, the True Briton, and by 1727 was sufficiently established in his profession to be appointed renter warden of the Stationers' Company. In the 1720s and early 1730s he suffered the early deaths of all his six children, and in 1731 that of his wife. He attributed the nervous disorders of his later life to the shock of these deaths. In 1733 he married Elizabeth Leake, the daughter of a fellow printer, and four of the daughters of their marriage survived. In the same year he published his The Apprentice's Vade Mecum, a book of advice on morals and conduct. In 1738 he purchased in Fulham a weekend 'country' house, which he always referred to as 'North End' , and which later became famous for his readings and literary parties. He published in 1739 his own version, pointedly moral, of Aesop's Fables, and more importantly, he began Pamela.

Inspiration for the novel initially came from a series of 'familiar letters' which fellow printers had encouraged him to write on the problems and concerns of everyday life. While these eventually grew into Pamela, they were also published separately as Letters . . . to and for Particular Friends (1741). Pamela was written in two months, between November 1739 and January 1740, and was published later that year, to very considerable acclaim. The morality and realism of the work were particularly praised, as Richardson had hoped. However, complaints of its impropriety persuaded him to revise his second edition considerably. The work had a great vogue abroad, and was soon adapted for the stage in France. Imitations and forged 'continuations' persuaded Richardson to go on with the story, and volumes iii and iv (Pamela II) were published in 1741. In that year, there appeared a stinging parody called An Apology for the Life of Mrs *Shamela Andrews, which Richardson believed to be by Fielding (as it almost certainly was) and which he never forgave. Fielding's *Joseph Andrews, which begins as a parody of Pamela, was published in 1742 but did not affect the popularity of Pamela II.

Richardson's business continued to prosper, although his health was beginning to cause him great concern, and he extended his publications in religion, history, biography, and literature. In 1733 he had begun printing for the House of Commons and in 1742 he secured the lucrative post of printer of its journals. His circle of friends had by now vastly increased, and included many admiring young ladies, known as his 'songbirds' or 'honorary daughters'.

During the writing of *Clarissa, which was probably begun in 1744, he endlessly asked his friends for comment and advice, and read passages aloud to them in his 'grotto' (or summer house) at Norht End. The first two volumes of Clarissa appeared in 1747 and were very favourably received. After heavy revision, and determined efforts to prune, a further five volumes appeared in 1748. Correspondents and the circle of friends continued to grow and now included the *Bluestocking ladies Mrs *Delany, Mrs *Carter, and later Mrs *Chapone. Clarissa was an undoubted success but there were complaints about both its length and its indecency, and it was not reprinted as often as Pamela. However, it also became very popular abroad and was translated into French, Dutch, and German.

Urged by friends, Richardson began thinking, in about 1750, of the portrayal of a 'Good Man'. He asked for the views of his extensive acquaintance and began experimenting with the 'letters' of Harriet, who was to become one of the heroines of his next novels. His illnesses and general malaise, which appear to have included a form of Parkinson's disease, increased steadily but he persevered strenuously both with his business and his writing. His authors in the 1750s included Charlotte *Lennox, Sarah *Fielding, Edward *Young and George *Lyttelton. He had now become friendly with Dr *Johnson, to whose *Rambler he contributed in 1750 and whom he helped with money in 1751. In 1752 Johnson (together with many of Richardson's other friends) read the draft of Sir Charles *Grandison, and Richardson printed the fourth volume of the Rambler. In 1753 he travelled to Bath and Cheltenham, which was as far as he had ever gone, and in 1753-4 he published the seven volumes of Sir Charles Grandison. The book sold well and rapidly became fashionable, but was assailed in various critical pamphlets for length, tedium, and doubtful morality.

In 1754-5 Richardson was master of the Stationers' Company. He published in 1755 A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments . . . in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison, a book which he considered contained the pith of all his work.  In the same year Dr Johnson published the Dictionary, which contained 97 citations from Clarissa. In 1756  Richardson was asked by *Blackstone for adevice on the reform of the *Oxford University Press. Towards the end of his life Richarson wrote a few 'letters' to, from, and about Mrs Beaumont, a minor character from Sir Charles Grandison, who had been someone of mysterious importance in his early life. He continued to revise his novels heavily, and remained active in his business until his death.

Richarson is generally agreed to be one of the chief founders of the modern novel. All his novels were *epistolary, a form he took from earlier works in English and French, which he appreciated for its immediacy ('writing to the moment' as he called it), and which he reaised to a level not attained by any of his predecessors. The 'letters', of which his novels consist, contain many long transcriptions of conversations, and the kinship with drama seems very strong. He was acutely aware of the problems of prolixity ('Length, is my principle Disgust') and worked hard to prune his original drafts, but his interest in minute analysis led inevitably to an expansive style.

A selection of his letters (6 vols, 1804) was edited by Mrs *Barbauld: see also Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson, ed. J. Carroll (1964). There is a life by T. C. D. Eaves and B. D. Kimpel (1971); see also M. Kinkead-Weekes, Samuel Richardson, Dramatic Novelist (1973); M. A. Doody, A Natural Passion (1974). 






Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, a novel by Samuel *Richardson, published 1740-1.

The first of Richardson's three novels, Pamela consists, like them, entirely of letters and journals, of which Richardson presents himself as the 'editor'. He believed he had hit upon 'a new species of writing' but he was not the inventor of the *epistolary novel, several of which already existed in English and French. He did however raise the form to a level hitherto unknown, and transformed it to display his own particular skills.

There are six correspondents in Pamela, most with their own particular style and point of view, but Pamela herself provides most of the letters and journals, with the 'her', Mr B., having only two. Pamela Andrews is a hansome, intelligent girl of 15 when her kind employer Lady B. dies. Penniless and without protection, Pamela is pursued by Mr B., Lady B.'s son, but she repulses him and remains determined to retain her chastity and unsullied conscience. Letters reveal Mr B.'s cruel dominance and pride, but also Pamela's half-acknowledged tenderness for him, as well as her vanity, prudence, and calculation. Angrily Mr B. separates her from her friends, Mrs Jervis the housekeeper and Mr Longman the steward, and dispatches her to B— Hall, his remote house in Lincolnshire, where she is imprisoned, guarded, and threatened by the cruel Mrs. Jewkes.  Only the chaplain, Mr Williams, is her friend, but he is powerless to help. For 40 days, allowed no visits or correspondence, she keeps a detailed journal, analysing her situation and her feelings, and at the same time revealing her faults of prudence and pride. She despairs, and begins to think of suicide. Mr B., supposing her spirit must now be broken, arrives at B— Hall, and, thinking himself generous, offers to make her his mistress and keep her in style. She refuses indignantly, and he later attempts to rape her and then to arrange a mock-marriage. Two scenes by the pond mark a turning point in their relationship. Both begin to be aware of their faults, and of the genuine nature of their affection. However, Pamela again retreats and refuses his proposal of marriage. She is sent away from B— Hall, but a message gives her a last chance. Overcoming her pride and caution, she decides to trust him, accepts his offer, and they are married. In the remaining third of the book Pamela's goodness wins over even Lady Davers, Mr B.'s supercilious sister, and becomes a model of virtue to her circle of admiring friends; but (as in Pamela, Part II) the author's creative drive becomes overwhelmed by his urge to moralize.

The book was highly successful and fashionable, and further editions were soon called for. Richardson felt obliged to continue his story, not only because of the success of Pamela but because of the number of forged continuations that began to appear. Pamela, Part II appeared in 1741. Here Pamela is exhibited, through various small and separate instances, as the perfect wife, patiently leading her profligate husband to reform; a mother who adores (and breastfeeds) her children; and a friend who is at the disposal of all, and who brings about the penitence of the wicked. Much space is given over to discussion of moral, domestic, and general subjects. 

*Shamela (1741, almost certainly by *Fielding) vigorously mocked what the author regarded as the hypocritical morality of Pamela; and Fielding's *Joseph Andrews, which begins as a parody of Pamela, appeared in 1742.




Clarissa: or The History of a Young Lady, an *epistolary novel by Samuel *Richardson, published 1748 (for 1747)-1749, in eight volumes. About one-third of the work (which is in all over a million words) consists of the letters of Clarissa and Lovelace, mainly written to Anna Howe and John Belford respectively, but there are over 20 correspondents in all, displaying many points of view and variations in style. 


Lovelace, a handsome, dashing rake, is courting Arabella Harlowe, the elder sister of Clarissa. The Harlowes are an acquisitive, ambitious, 'narrow-souled' family, and when Lovelace transfers his affections to Clarissa they decide he is not good enough and that Clarissa must marry the wealthy but ugly Solmes, whom she detests. When she refuses she is locked up and humiliated. Lovelace, cleverly representing himself as her deliverer, plays on her fears, convinces her that he is forwarding her reconciliation with her family, and persuades her to escape under his protection to London. There he establishes her in a superior brothel, which she at first supposes to be respectable lodgings. She unwaveringly resists his advances and he, enraged by her intransigence, is also attracted by it and finds his love and respect for her increase. Her emotions are likewise deeply confused; she is fascinated by his charm and wit, but distrusts him and refuses his eventual proposals of marriage. In his growing insistence, Lovelace overreaches himself, interfering with her letters, deceiving her over a supposed emissary from her family, violently assalulting her, and cunningly ensnaring her after he escapes. As she unhappily but stubbornly resists, he becomes more obsessive in his determination to conquer, and makes an attempt to rape her. He claims to believe that her resistance is no more than prudery and that, once subdued, she will turn to him: 'Is not this  the hour of trial—And in her, of the trial of the virtue of her whole Sex, so long premeditated, so long threatened? —Whether her frost be frost indeed? Whether her virtue be principle?' (vol. V, Letter 31). To Clarissa chastity represents identity, and the climax of her tragedy comes when Lovelace, abetted by the women of the house, drugs and rapes her, an event he reports in one of the shortest letters of the work: 'And now, Belford, I can go no farther. The affair is over. Clarissa lives.' (Vol. V, Letter 32). 


Slowly Clarissa loses grip of her reason, and Lovelace realizes that he has lost the very dominance he had hoped to establish. Cut off from family, friends, and even correspondence, Clarissa eventually escapes, only to find herself trapped in a debtor's prison. She is rescued by Belford, who looks after her with affectionate care. Lovelace is overwhelmed by remorse. Clarissa recovers her sanity, but almost ceases to write, and her long decline and Christian preparation for death are reported largely in letters by Belford. After her death her cousin, Colonel Morden, kills Lovelace in a duel. Because of its great length, the novel has been more admired than read, but it has always been held in high critical esteem; the characters of the protagonists are developed with great sutblety, and the irresolvable nature of their conflict takes on an emblematic and tragic quality unique for its author and its period.

Bibliografía sobre Samuel Richardson

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Richardson (NIVEL AVANZADO)

Aquí se puede oír un audio de la BBC sobre Epistolary Fiction in the 18th century
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00775dh



—empezando por Richardson. 

Y un serial televisivo basado en la mejor novela de Richardson:

Clarissa (BBC miniseries. Dir. Robert Bierman. Based on Samuel Richardson's novel. Cast: Saskia Wickham, Sean Bean. Prod. Prod. Kevin Loader. Prod. BBC, 1991) Online at YouTube:











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The Rise of the Novel: Notas sobre un libro de Ian Watt —sobre Defoe, y sobre Richardson y Fielding: http://vanityfea.blogspot.com.es/2014/12/notes-on-ian-watts-rise-of-novel.html


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Daniel Defoe

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

DEFOE, Daniel (1660-1731), born in London, the son of James Foe, a butcher. He changed his name to Defoe from c. 1695. He attended Morton's academy for Dissenters at Newington Green with a view to the ministry, but by the time he married Mary Tuffley in 1683/4  he was established as a hosiery merchant in Cornhill, having travelled in France, Spain, the Low Countries, and possibly Italy and Germany; he was absorbed by travel throughout his life. He took part in Monmouth's rebellion, and in 1688 joined the advancing forces of William III. His first important signed work was An Essay upon Projects (1697), followed by The True-Born Englishman (1701), an immensely popular satirical poem attacking the prejudice against a king of foreign birth and his Dutch friends. In 1702 appeared The Shortest Way with Dissenters, a notorious pamphlet in which Defoe, himself a Dissenter, ironically demanded the total and savage suppression of dissent; for this he was fined, imprisoned (May-Nov. 1703) and pilloried. While in prison he wrote his Hymn to the Pillory, a mock-Pindaric *ode which was sold in the streets to sympathetic crowds. Meanwhile various business projects (the breeding of civet cats, marine insurance, a brick works) had come to grief, and Defoe's fortunes were revived by Harley, the Tory politician, who arranged a pardon and employed him as a secret agent; between 1703 and 1714 Defoe travelled around the country for Harley and Godolphin gathering information and testing the political climate. Defoe wrote many pamphlets for Harley, and in 1704 began the Review; in the same year appeared his pamphlet Giving Alms No Charity and in 1706 True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs Veal, a vivid report of a current ghost story, probably by Defoe. Certain anti-Jacobite pamphlets in 1712-13 led to his prosecution by the Whigs and to a brief imprisonment. He now started a new trade journal, Mercator, in place of the Review. In 1715 he was convicted of libelling Lord Annesley (by implying that he was a Jacobite); he escaped punishment through the intervention of Townshend, the Whig secretary of state.

Defoe was an extremely versatile and prolific writer, and produced some 250 books, pamphlets, and journals, many anonymously or pseudonymously, but the works for which he is best known belong to his later years. *Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719, the Farther Adventures following a few months later. The next five years saw the appearance of his most important works of fiction: Captain *Singleton in 1720, *Moll Flanders, A Journal of the *Plague Year, and *Colonel Jack in 1722; *Roxana, the *Memoirs of a Cavalier (now considered to be certainly by Defoe), his tracts on Jack *Sheppard, and A New Voyage round the World in 1724; The Four Voyages of Capt. George Roberts in 1726. His Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, a guidebook in three volumes (1624-26), is a vivid first-hand account of the state of the country, gleaned from his many travels, the last of which he appears to have taken in 1722. His last principal works were The Complete English Tradesman (1726), Augusta Triumphans (1728), A Plan of the English Commerce (1728) and The Complete English Gentleman, not published until 1890. He died in his lodgings in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, and was buried in what is now Bunhill Fields. Defoe's influence on the evolution of the English novel was enormous, and many regard him as the first true novelist. He was a master of plain prose and powerful narrative, with a journalist's curiosity and love of realistic detail; his peculiar gifts made him one of the greatest reporters of his time, as well as a great imaginative writer who in Robinson Crusoe created one of the most familiar and resonant myths of modern literature. Important work on the Defoe canon by P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens includes The Canonisation of Defoe (1988), Defoe De-Attributions (1994) and A Critical Biography of Daniel Defoe (1998).


The Review,  a periodical started by *Defoe in 1704, under the title of A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France, which after various transformations became A Review of the State of the British Nation in 1707, it lasted until 1713. It was a non-partisan paper, an organ of the commercial interests of the nation: it appeared thrice weekly and was written, practically in its entirety, by Defoe himself, who excpressed in it his opinions on all current political topics, thus initiating the political leading article. It also had lighter articles on love, marriage, gambling, etc.: Defoe's attitude to his readers was that he strove to 'wheedle them in (if it may be allowed that expression) to the knowledge of the world; who, rather than take more pains, would be content with their ignorance, and search into nothing'.

The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a romance by *Defoe, published 1719.

In 1704 Alexander Selkirk, who had run away to sea and joined a privateering expedition under *Dampier, after a quarrel with his captain was put ashore on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernández. He was rescued in 1709 by Woodes *Rogers. Defoe was probably familiar with several versions of this tale, and added many incidents from his own imagination to his account of Crusoe, presenting it as a true story. The extraordinarily convincing account of the shipwrecked Crusoe's successful efforts to make himself a tolerable existence in his solitude first revealed Defoe's genius for vivid fiction; it has a claim to be the first English novel. Defoe was nearly 60 when he wrote it.

The author tells how, with the help of a few stores and utensils saved from the wreck and the exercise of infinite ingenuity, Crusoe built himself a house, domesticated goats, and made himself a boat. He describes his struggle to accept the workings of Providence, the perturbation of his mind caused by a visit of cannibals, his rescue from death of an indigenous native he later names Friday, and finally the coming of an English ship whose crew are in a state of mutiny, the subduing of the mutineers, and Crusoe's rescue.

The book had immediate and permanent success, was translated into many languages, and inspired many imitations, known generically as 'Robinsonades', including *Philip Quarll, *Peter Wilkins, and *The Swiss Family Robinson. Defoe followed it with The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), in which with Friday he revisits his island, is attacked by a fleet of canoes on his departure, and loses Friday in the encounter. Serious Reflections . . . of Robinson Crusoe . . . with His Vision of the Angelick World, which is more a manual of piety than a work of fiction, appeared in 1720, and was never as popular. The influence of Robinson Crusoe has been very great. *Rousseau in Émile recommended  it as the book that should be studied by a growing boy, *Coleridge praised its evocation of 'the universal man', and *Marx in Das Kapital used it to illustrate economic theory in action.

In recent years 'Man (later Girl) Friday' came to describe a lowly assistant performing a multiplicity of tasks.

In The Rise of the Novel (1957) and other essays Ian Watt provides one of the most controversial modern interpretations, relating Crusoe's predicament to the rise of bourgeois individualism, division of labour, and social and spiritual alienation. See David Blewett, The Illustration of Robinson Crusoe, 1719-1920 (1995).


Adventures of Captain Singleton, a romance of adventure by Defoe, published 1720.

Singleton, the first-person narrator, having been kidnapped in his infancy is sent to sea. Having 'no sense of virtue or religion', he takes part in a mutiny and is put ashore in Madagascar with his comrades; he reaches the continent of Africa and crosses it from east to west, encountering many adventures and obtaining much gold, which he dissipates on his return to England. He takes once more to the sea, becomes a pirate, carrying on his depredations in the West Indies, Indian Ocean, and China Seas, acquires great wealth, which he brings home, and finally marries the sister of a shipmate.



The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, a romance by *Defoe, published 1722.

This purports to be the autobiography of the daughter of a woman who had been transported to Virginia for theft soon after her child's birth. The child, abandoned in England, is brought up in the house of the compassionate mayor of Colchester. The story relates her seduction, her subsequent marriages and liaisons, and her visit to Virginia, where she finds her mother and discovers that she has unwittingly married her own brother. After leaving him and returning to England, she is presently reduced to destitution. She becomes an extremely successful pickpocket and thief, but is presently detected and transported to Virginia in company with one of her former husbands, a highwayman. With the funds that each has amassed they set up as planters, and Moll moreover finds that she has inherited a plantation from her mother. She and her husband spend their declining years in an atmosphere of prosperity and ostensible penitence.



A Journal of the Plague Year, a historical fiction by *Defoe, published 1722.

It purports to be the narrative of a resident in London during 1664-5, the year of the Great Plague; the initials 'H.F.' which conclude it have been taken to refer to Defoe's uncle Henry Foe, a saddler, from whom the author may have heard some of the details he describes. It tells of the gradual spread of the plague, the terror of the inhabitants, and the steps taken by the authorities, such as the shutting up of infected houses and the prohibition of public gatherings. The symptoms of the disease, the circulation of the dead-carts, the burials in mass graves, and the terrible scenes witnessed by the supposed narrator are described with extraordinary vividness. The general effects of the epidemic, notably in the closing down of trading and the flight from the city, are also related, and an estimate of the total number of deaths is made. The Journal embodied information from various sources, including official documents; some scenes appear to have been borrowed from *Dekker's The Wonderfull Yeare (1603). Defoe's subject was suggested by fears of another outbreak, following the one in Marseilles in 1721 which occasioned Sir Robert *Walpole's unpopular Quarantine Act. *Hazlitt ascribed to the work 'an epic grandeur, as well as heart-breaking familiarity'.


Colonel Jack, The History and Remarkable Life of Colonel Jacque, Commonly Call'd, a romance of adventure by *Defoe, published 1722.

The supposed narrator, abandoned by his parents in childhood, falls into bad company and becomes a pickpocket. His profession grows distasteful to him, he enlists, and presently deserts to avoid being sent to serve in Flanders. He is kidnapped, sent to Virginia, and sold to a planter. He is promoted to be an overseer, is given his liberty, becomes himself a planter, and acquires much wealth. He returns home and has a series of unfortunate matrimonial adventures, but finally ends in prosperity and repentenace.


Roxana, or The Fortunate Mistress, a novel by *Defoe, published 1724.

This purports to be the autobiography of Mlle Beleau, the beautiful daughter of French Protestant refugees, brought up in England and married to a London brewer, who, having squandered his property, deserts her and her five children. She enters upon a career of prosperous wickedness, passing from one protector to another in England, France, and Holland, amassing much wealth, and receiving the name Roxana by accident, in consequence of a dance that she performs. She is accompanied in her adventures by a faithful maid, Amy, a very human figure. She marries a respectable Dutch merchant in London and subsequently lives as a person of consequence in Holland. When one of her daughters appears on the scene in London, Roxana dares not acknowledge her, fearing that her past life will be revealed to her new spouse and her life of security will be ruined. When Amy says she will murder the girl, if necessary, to silence her inquiries about Roxana's identity, Roxana is filled with horror and relief. Both Amy and the girl disappear, and Roxana, miserable and apprehensive, is tormented by her conscience. Her husband discerns her iniquity and soon thereafter dies, leaving her only a small sum of money. In the company of her alter ego Amy, Roxana descends into debt, poverty, and remorseful penitence.


Memoirs of a Cavalier, a historical romance most probably by Defoe, published 1724.

The pretended author, 'Col. Andrew Newport', a young English gentleman born in 1608, travels on the Continent, starting in 1630 goes to Vienna, and accompanies the army of the emperor, being present at the siege and sack of Magdeburg, which is vividly presented. He then joins the army of Gustavus Adolphus, remaining with it until the death of that king and taking part in a number of engagements which he describes in detail. After his return to England he joins the king's army, first against the Scots, then against the forces of Parliament, being present at the battle of Edgehill, which he fully describes, the relief of York, and the battle of Naseby.

Memoirs of an English Officer

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