The Neo-Classical Age

In the whole History of English Literature,we introduced Neo-Classical Age by it's three stages,

Neo word presents something new or innovative. In literature, after Elizabethan literature, people wants to go with their ancient ideas or classical literature. They sudden followed their classical styles in present way. This what literary scholar called, "Neo-Classical Age."  

1)Write a brife note on favorite work from the Neo-Classical Age. 

Robinson Crusoe(1719-1720)

The Novel in full,"The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an Account how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself." First published in 1719. It is Defoe's first first long work in Fiction. 

Summary of the Novel.

• Based on real life adventurer of Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk.
• A lasting   literary legacy blending a unique prose style with survival narrative engaging easy to read language. 
• its structure is highly episodic, and Defoe’s uneven narrative pacing and niggling errors.
• the fact that it draws together features of the genres of romance, memoir, fable, allegory.
• Some argues that novel is the only label large enough to describe it. 
• Defoe’s novel was presented as a ‘just History of Fact’, but it exploits the freedoms of fiction.
• Crusoe’s story, a story Samuel Taylor Coleridge called ‘a happy nightmare’

2)Compare the major writer of the age with other major writer from the various age.

Points	John Milton	Alexander Pope
Era	Puritan	Neo-Classical(Augustan period)
Other profession	Served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.	No other profession
Central topic of the poem	Religious flux and political upheaval	Satirical and discursive
Poetic Style	Miltonic verse, Miltonic epic, or Miltonic blank verse	Heroic Couplets
Best work	Epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). Written in blank verse	An Essay on Criticism (1711).Written in heroic couplet.
Characteristics	Sublimity Love of Beauty Classicism Seriousness Spiritual Import Ancient and Modern Art	Heroic Couplets Morality and Virtue Satire and Imitation Critical of Other Poets

 

• Differences between two poems 

Paradise Lost	The Rape of The Lock
Disobedience is in center	spirituality in high society
A very serious poem in which one would contemplate death	Pope mocks society in a very satire way
Heavy tone	light and airy tone
No rhyme structure	Uses masculine rhyme
Words such as“forbidden” and “woe”	“compel”and “A gentle Belle”

 

 

Resources 

Summary of the novel

Differences between poems

Milton's Characteristics

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