Neoclassicism

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Neoclassicism

Definition

Neoclassicism comprised a return to the classical models, literary styles, and values of ancient Greek and Roman authors.
Neoclassicism refers to a broad tendency in literature and art enduring from the early seventeenth century until around 1750.

The Classical values: the neoclassicists emphasis upon the classical values of objectivity, impersonality, rationality, decorum, balance, harmony, proportion, and moderation.

“Unities”:

probability

Nature of Literature: the neoclassical writers reaffirmed literary composition as a rational and rule-bound process, requiring a great deal of craft, labor, and study.

Literary forms: The neoclassicists tended to insist on the separation of poetry and prose, the purity of each genre, and the hierarchy of genres (though, unlike Aristotle, they generally placed the epic above tragedy). The typical verse forms of the neoclassical poets were the alexandrine in France and the heroic couplet in England.

Imitation and Nature: Two of the concepts central to neoclassical literary theory and practice were imitation and nature, which were intimately related.

Imitation The imitation of classical models, especially Homer and Vergil.
Nature the harmonious and hierarchical order of the universe, including the various social and political hierarchies within the world.

“Nature” had a deep moral significance, comprehending the modes of action that were permissible and excluding certain actions as “unnatural”. Clearly, the neoclassical vision of nature was very different from the meanings later given to it by the Romantics.

The neoclassical writers generally saw the ancients such as Homer and Vergil as having already discovered and expressed the fundamental laws of nature. Hence, the external world, including the world of human action, could best be expressed by modern writers if they followed the path of imitation already paved by the ancients. Invention was of course allowed, but only as a modification of past models, not in the form of a rupture.

John Dryden occupies a seminal place in English critical history.
Samuel Johnson called him “the father of English criticism,” and affirmed of his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) that “modern English prose begins here.”

Dryden’s critical work was extensive, treating of various genres such as epic, tragedy, comedy and dramatic theory, satire, the relative virtues of ancient and modern writers, as well as the nature of poetry and translation.

An Essay on Criticism, published anonymously by Alexander Pope in 1711, is perhaps the clearest statement of neoclassical principles in any language.
In its broad outlines, it expresses a worldview which synthesizes elements of a Roman Catholic outlook with classical aesthetic principles and with deism.

Pope specifies two further guidelines for the critic.
The first is to recognize the overall unity of a work, and thereby to avoid falling into partial assessments based on the author’s use of poetic conceits, ornamented language, and meters, as well as those which are biased toward either archaic or modern styles or based on the reputations of given writers.
Finally, a critic needs to possess a moral sensibility, as well as a sense of balance and proportion.

Pope’s final strategy in the Essay is to equate the classical literary and critical traditions with nature, and to sketch a redefined outline of literary history from classical times to his own era. Pope insists that the rules of nature were merely discovered, not invented, by the ancients

Of his numerous achievements, Samuel Johnson is perhaps best remembered for his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1755. Of almost equal renown are his Lives of the English Poets (1783) and his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare (1765).

An integral dimension of Johnson’s literary output and personality was his literary criticism, which was to have a huge impact on English letters.
His famous “Preface” to, and edition of, Shakespeare’s plays played a large part in establishing Shakespeare’s reputation.

his account of the lives of numerous English poets contributed to the forming of the English literary canon and the defining of qualities such as metaphysical wit; his remarks on criticism itself were also to have an enduring impact. His critical insights were witty, acerbic, provocative, sometimes radical, and always grounded on his enormous range of reading.

Johnson’s classical commitment to reason, probability, and truth was complemented by his equally classical insistence on the moral function of literature.
For the unities of time and place, however, Shakespeare had no regard, a point on which Johnson defends Shakespeare by questioning these unities themselves.
Imitations give us pleasure, says Johnson, “not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind”

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