Literature of the Neo-classical Period

Class Assignment 

Write a detailed note on the author 'Robert Burns'

                                    

Introduction 

 Robert Burns (born January 25, 1759, Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland—died July 21, 1796,Dumfries, Dumfriesshire) was the national poet of Scotland, who wrote lyrics and songs in Scots and in English. He was also famous for his amours and his rebellion against orthodox religion and morality.

Life

          Burns’s father had come to Ayrshire from Kincardineshire in an endeavor to improve his fortunes, but, though he worked immensely hard first on the farm of Mount Oliphant, which he leased in 1766, and then on that of Lochlea, which he took in 1777, ill luck dogged him, and he died in 1784, worn out and bankrupt. It was watching his father being thus beaten down that helped to make Robert both a rebel against the social order of his day and a bitter satirist of all forms of religious and political thought that condoned or perpetuated inhumanity. He received some formal schooling from a teacher as well as sporadically from other sources. He acquired a superficial reading knowledge of French and a bare smattering of Latin, and he read most of the important 18th-century English writers as well as Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. His

knowledge of Scottish literature was confined in his childhood to orally transmitted folk songs and folk tales together with a modernization of the late 15th-century poem “Wallace.” His religion throughout his adult life seems to have been a humanitarian Deism.

         Proud, restless, and full of a nameless ambition, the young Burns did his share of hard work on the farm. His father’s death made him a tenant of the farm of Mossgiel to which the family moved and freed him to seek male and female companionship where he would. He took sides against the dominant extreme Calvinist wing of the church in Ayrshire and championed a local gentleman, Gavin Hamilton, who had got into trouble with the kirk session (a church court) for Sabbath breaking. He had an affair with a servant girl at the farm, Elizabeth Paton, who in 1785 bore his first child, and on the child’s birth he welcomed it with a lively poem.

Development as a poet

Burns developed rapidly throughout 1784 and 1785 as an “occasional” poet who more and more turned to verse to express his emotions of love, friendship, or amusement or his ironical contemplation of the social scene. But these were not spontaneous effusions by an almost illiterate peasant. Burns was a conscious craftsman; his entries in the commonplace book that he had begun in 1783 reveal that from the beginning he was interested in the technical problems of

versification.

 Though he wrote poetry for his own amusement and that of his friends, Burns remained restless and dissatisfied. He won the reputation of being a dangerous rebel against orthodox religion, and,when in 1786 he fell in love with Jean Armour, her father refused to allow her to marry Burns even though a child was on the way and under Scots law mutual consent followed by consummation constituted a legal marriage. Jean was persuaded by her father to go back on her

promise. Robert, hurt and enraged, took up with another woman, Mary Campbell, who died soon after. On September 3 Jean bore him twins out of wedlock.

Meanwhile, the farm was not prospering, and Burns, harassed by insoluble problems, thought of emigrating. But he first wanted to show his country what he could do. In the midst of his troubles he went ahead with his plans for publishing a volume of his poems at the nearby town of Kilmarnock. It was entitled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect and appeared on July 31,1786. Its success was immediate and overwhelming. Simple country folk and sophisticated Edinburgh critics alike hailed it, and the upshot was that Burns set out for Edinburgh on November 27, 1786, to be lionized, patronized, and showered with well-meant but dangerous advice.

The Kilmarnock volume was a remarkable mixture. It included a handful of first-rate Scots poems: “The Twa Dogs,” “Scotch Drink,” “The Holy Fair,” “An Address to the Deil,” “The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie,” “To a Mouse,” “To a Louse,” and some others,including a number of verse letters addressed to various friends. There were also a few Scots poems in which he was unable to sustain his inspiration or that are spoiled by a confused purpose. In addition, there were six gloomy and histrionic poems in English, four songs, of which only one, “It Was Upon a Lammas Night,” showed promise of his future greatness as a songwriter, and what to contemporary reviewers seemed the stars of the volume, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” and “To a Mountain Daisy.”

Burns selected his Kilmarnock poems with care: he was anxious to impress a genteel Edinburgh audience. In his preface he played up to contemporary sentimental views about the “natural man” and the “noble peasant,” exaggerated his lack of education, pretended to a lack of natural resources, and in general acted a part. The trouble was that he was only half acting. He was uncertain enough about the genteel tradition to accept much of it at its face value, and though, to his ultimate glory, he kept returning to what his own instincts told him was the true path for him to follow, far too many of his poems are marred by a naïve and sentimental moralizing.

After Edinburgh

Edinburgh unsettled Burns, and, after a number of amorous and other adventures there and several trips to other parts of Scotland, he settled in the summer of 1788 at a farm in Ellisland,Dumfriesshire. At Edinburgh, too, he arranged for a new and enlarged edition (1787) of his Poems, but little of significance was added to the Kilmarnock selection. He found farming at Ellisland difficult, though he was helped by Jean Armour, with whom he had been reconciled and whom he finally married in 1788.

In Edinburgh Burns had met James Johnson, a keen collector of Scottish songs who was bringing out a series of volumes of songs with the music and who enlisted Burns’s help in finding, editing,improving, and rewriting items. Burns was enthusiastic and soon became virtual editor of Johnson’s The Scots Musical Museum. Later he became involved with a similar project for George Thomson, but Thomson was a more consciously genteel person than Johnson, and Burns had to fight with him to prevent him from “refining” words and music and so ruining their character. Johnson’s The Scots Musical Museum (1787–1803) and the first five volumes of Thomson’s A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice (1793–1818) contain the bulk of Burns’s songs. Burns spent the latter part of his life in assiduously collecting and writing

songs to provide words for traditional Scottish airs. He regarded his work as service to Scotland and quixotically refused payment. The only poem he wrote after his Edinburgh visit that showed a hitherto unsuspected side of his poetic genius was “Tam o’ Shanter” (1791), a spirited narrative poem in brilliantly handled eight-syllable couplets based on a folk legend.

Meanwhile, Burns corresponded with and visited in terms of equality a great variety of literary and other people who were considerably “above” him socially. He was an admirable letter writer and a brilliant talker, and he could hold his own in any company. At the same time, he was still a struggling tenant farmer, and the attempt to keep himself going in two different social and intellectual capacities was wearing him down. After trying for a long time, he finally obtained a post in the excise service in 1789 and moved to Dumfries in 1791, where he lived until his death.His life at Dumfries was active. He wrote numerous “occasional” poems and did an immense

amount of work for the two song collections, in addition to carrying out his duties as exciseman.The outbreak of the French Revolution excited him, and some indiscreet outbursts nearly lost him his job, but his reputation as a good exciseman and a politic but humiliating recantation saved him.

Legacy of Robert Burns

Burns was a man of great intellectual energy and force of character who, in a class-ridden , never found an environment in which he could fully exercise his personality. It may be argued that Scottish culture in his day was incapable of providing an intellectual background that could replace the Calvinism that Burns rejected, or that Burns’s talent was squandered on an Edinburgh literati that, according to English critics, were second-raters. Yet he lived during the cultural and intellectual tumult known as the Scottish Enlightenment, and the problem was

ultimately more than one of personalities. The only substitute for the rejected Calvinism seemed to be, for Burns, a sentimental Deism, a facile belief in the good heart as all, and this was arguably not a creed rich or complex enough to nourish great poetry. That Burns in spite of this produced so much fine poetry shows the strength of his unique genius, and that he has become the Scottish national poet is a tribute to his hold on the popular imagination.

Burns perhaps exhibited his greatest poetic powers in his satires. There is also a remarkable craftsmanship in his verse letters, which display a most adroit counterpointing of the colloquial and the formal. But it is by his songs that Burns is best known, and it is his songs that have carried his reputation round the world.

Burns wrote all his songs to known tunes, sometimes writing several sets of words to the same air in an endeavor to find the most apt poem for a given melody. Many songs which, it is clear from a variety of evidence, must have been substantially written by Burns he never claimed as his. He never claimed “Auld Lang Syne,” for example, which he described simply as an old fragment he had discovered, but the song we have is almost certainly his, though the chorus and probably the first stanza are old. (Burns wrote it for a simple and moving old air that is not the tune to which it is now sung, as Thomson set it to another tune.) The full extent of Burns’s work on Scottish song will probably never be known.

It is positively miraculous that Burns was able to enter into the spirit of older folk song and re-create, out of an old chorus, such songs as “I’m O’er Young to Marry Yet,” “Green Grow the Rashes, O,” and a host of others. It is this uncanny ability to speak with the great anonymous voice of the Scottish people that explains the special feeling that Burns arouses, feelings that manifest themselves in the “Burns cult.”

The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope is a mock-epic poem first published in 1712 and later expanded in 1714. It satirizes a trivial high-society incident—the cutting of a lock of hair—by treating it with the grandeur and style of classical epic poetry. Through wit and irony, Pope critiques the vanity and superficiality of the aristocracy. The poem blends humor with social commentary, making it a masterpiece of Augustan literature.

Major works

1."To a Mouse" (1785)

– A philosophical poem reflecting on the fragility of life, sparked by the speaker accidentally destroying a mouse's nest while ploughing.

2."A Red, Red Rose" (1794)

– A beautiful lyric poem expressing deep and enduring romantic love, often quoted for its passionate imagery.

3."The Cotter’s Saturday Night" (1785)

– A sentimental depiction of a humble Scottish family's life, blending Christian piety with rural dignity.

Conclusion 

Thus to conclude we can say that Robert Burns was promising writer and made a noteworthy contribution in literary field which has great impact on English literature.

Home Assignment 

Write a detail note on  Thomas Gray.

   Thomas Gray (born Dec. 26, 1716, London—died July 30, 1771, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire,Eng.) was an English poet whose “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” is one of the best known of English lyric poems. Although his literary output was slight, he was the dominant poetic figure in the mid-18th century and a precursor of the Romantic movement.

Born into a prosperous but unhappy home, Gray was the sole survivor of 12 children of a harsh and violent father and a long-suffering mother, who operated a millinery business to educate him. A delicate and studious boy, he was sent to Eton in 1725 at the age of eight. There he formed a “Quadruple Alliance” with three other boys who liked poetry and classics and disliked rowdy sports and the Hogarthian manners of the period. They were Horace Walpole, the son of the prime minister; the precocious poet Richard West, who was closest to Gray; and Thomas Ashton. The style of life Gray developed at Eton, devoted to quiet study, the pleasures of the imagination, and a few understanding friends, was to persist for the rest of his years.

In 1734 he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he began to write Latin verse of considerable merit. He left in 1738 without a degree and set out in 1739 with Walpole on a grand tour of France, Switzerland, and Italy at Sir Robert Walpole’s expense. At first all went well, but in 1741 they quarreled—possibly over Gray’s preferences for museums and scenery to Walpole’s interest in lighter social pursuits—and Gray returned to England. They were reconciled in 1745 on Walpole’s initiative and remained somewhat cooler friends for the rest of their lives.

In 1742 Gray settled at Cambridge. That same year West died, an event that affected him profoundly. Gray had begun to write English poems, among which some of the best were “Ode on the Spring,” “Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West,” “Hymn to Adversity,” and “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” They revealed his maturity, ease and felicity of expression, wistful melancholy, and the ability to phrase truisms in striking, quotable lines, such as “where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise.” The Eton ode was published in 1747 and again in 1748 along with “Ode on the Spring.” They attracted no attention.

It was not until “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” a poem long in the making, was published in 1751 that Gray was recognized. Its success was instantaneous and overwhelming. A. dignified elegy in eloquent classical diction celebrating the graves of humble and unknown villagers was, in itself, a novelty. Its theme that the lives of the rich and poor alike “lead but to the grave” was already familiar, but Gray’s treatment—which had the effect of suggesting that it was not only the “rude forefathers of the village” he was mourning but the death of all men and of the poet himself—gave the poem its universal appeal. Gray’s newfound celebrity did not make the slightest difference in his habits. He remained at Peterhouse until 1756, when, outraged by a prank played on him by students, he moved to Pembroke College.

He wrote two Pindaric odes, “The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard,” published in 1757 by Walpole’s private Strawberry Hill Press. They were criticized, not without reason, for obscurity,and in disappointment, Gray virtually ceased to write. He was offered the laureateship in 1757 but declined it. He buried himself in his studies of Celtic and Scandinavian antiquities and became increasingly retiring and hypochondriacal. In his last years his peace was disrupted by his friendship with a young Swiss nobleman, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, for whom he

conceived a romantic devotion, the most profound emotional experience of his life.

Gray died at 55 and was buried in the country churchyard at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, celebrated in his “Elegy.”

 

Major works

1."Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751) – His most famous poem, meditating on death and the lives of the rural poor.

2."Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" (1747) – Reflects on the innocence of youth and the inevitability of suffering.

3."The Progress of Poesy" (1754) – A Pindaric ode celebrating the power and legacy of poetry.

4."The Bard" (1757) – A dramatic ode rooted in Welsh legend, symbolizing the fall of the poet and the rise of tyranny.

5."Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes" (1748) – A humorous yet moralistic poem based on a real incident.

Conclusion 

      

Thus to conclude we can say that  Thomas Gray was promising writer and made a noteworthy contribution in literary field which has great impact on English literature.

Esaay

Analyse the Alexander Popes poem "The Rape of the Lock"

Introduction 

The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope is a mock-epic poem first published in 1712 and later expanded in 1714. It satirizes a trivial high-society incident—the cutting of a lock of hair—by treating it with the grandeur and style of classical epic poetry. Through wit and irony, Pope critiques the vanity and superficiality of the aristocracy. The poem blends humor with social commentary, making it a masterpiece of Augustan literature.

About the Author 

.                                

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was a renowned English poet of the 18th century, best known for his satirical verse and mastery of the heroic couplet. He gained fame with works like The Rape of the Lock, An Essay on Criticism, and The Dunciad. Despite lifelong health issues, Pope became one of the most influential literary figures of his time. His writings often critiqued society, politics, and literary culture.

Background of the poem

The poem was written by Alexander Pope in the  18th century (first published in 1712,

expanded in 1714).It was based on a real-life incident: A young lord, Lord Petre, secretly cut off a lock of hair from a young lady, Arabella Fermor, without her permission.This small act caused a big quarrel between their two wealthy Catholic families in London society.Pope’s friends asked him to write something that might calm the quarrel and make the whole matter seem less serious.So, the Pope turned this small event into a mock-epic poem.A mock-epic means it uses the grand style of classical epics (like Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid) but applies it to a silly or small event.For example, instead of a real war, Pope describes a “battle” between ladies and gentlemen using fans and powder!Through this humorous style, Pope gently made fun of how high society placed too much importance on beauty, fashion, and gossip.In short: The poem was inspired by a real incident where a lock of hair was cut, and Pope wrote it to make peace between two families—by turning a small quarrel into a funny, grand “epic.”

summary 

The poem begins with Belinda, a beautiful and rich young woman, still asleep. Her guardian spirit, Ariel the sylph, sends her a dream. He explains that sylphs exist to protect young women, but also hints that they sometimes control or mislead people. Ariel feels something bad is about to happen to Belinda, though he doesn’t know what. He warns her to “beware of man.”

Belinda wakes up and gets ready for the day with the help of her maid Betty and many sylphs.She looks stunning when she leaves for Hampton Court by boat. Everyone admires her,especially her two shiny locks of hair. The Baron wanted to take one of Belinda’s beautiful locks of hair. He made up his mind that he would cut it off. Earlier that morning, he prayed to the god of love to help him succeed. As an offering, he burned things from his past romances—like old love letters, ribbons (garters), and small gifts from women he once loved—hoping this sacrifice would bring him good luck.Ariel, still worried, gathers an army of sylphs to protect Belinda. He warns them to guard her hair, her jewelry, her fan, and even her pet dog. His idea of “disaster” seems rather silly—like losing a dress, jewelry, or a pet.

At Hampton Court, Belinda joins a game of ombre (a card game). With the help of sylphs, she wins dramatically against the Baron. After the game, coffee is served, and the Baron remembers his plan. With scissors secretly provided by Clarissa, he moves to cut Belinda’s lock. The tiny spirits (sy lphs) tried to guard Belinda’s hair. But their leader, Ariel, looked into her thoughts and realized that Belinda secretly liked a man. This meant she was not completely “innocent” or “pure” as he thought. Because of this, Ariel gave up protecting her. The Baron then cuts off the lock, and Belinda screams in shock.

Meanwhile, the gnome Umbriel goes to the Cave of Spleen (a place of sadness and bad

moods.He collects bags and vials filled with sighs, tears, and anger. Returning to Belinda, he pours them out on her and her friend Thalestris, who becomes furious. Thalestris pushes her lover Sir Plume to demand the lock back from the Baron. The Baron refuses. Belinda laments her lost lock, blaming herself for ignoring Ariel’s warning.

At the end, Clarissa gives a sensible speech. She says that beauty will not last forever, so women should not rely only on looks. Instead, they should focus on being good and virtuous. But nobody pays attention to her advice.Instead, the men and women start a mock battle. They don’t fight with real weapons but with playful things like fans, shouting, and clouds of face powder.

In the fight, Belinda attacks the Baron. She even throws snuff (powdered tobacco) into his nose to make him sneeze and then threatens him with a hairpin. Belinda demands that he give her lock of hair back. But strangely, the lock has disappeared.At the end of the poem, the stolen lock of Belinda’s hair is said to have floated up into the sky. There, it becomes a star among the heavens.This means her beauty will be remembered forever, because the lock now shines brightly in the sky and will never grow old or fade away.

Themes

•The Triviality of Court Life

In The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope criticizes the shallow and unimportant lifestyle of the 18th-century royal court by telling a humorous story in a very serious, epic style. The poem centers on Belinda, a beautiful young lady, whose lock of hair is secretly cut off by the Baron.This small act of vanity is treated as if it were a major event, leading to quarrels and mock battles among the courtiers. Pope uses heroic couplets, a form usually connected with grand epic poems like Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid, which describe wars, gods, and great struggles. By using this lofty style to describe something as minor as a stolen curl, Pope creates a comic contrast that makes the concerns of court life look ridiculous. He even compares Belinda’s sorrow over her hair to Queen Dido’s tragic grief in Virgil’s Aeneid and imitates lines from Homer’s Iliad—but instead of warriors fighting with shields and spears, the fashionable men at court compete with wigs, ribbons, and carriages. Through these playful exaggerations, Pope shows how the

aristocrats waste their energy on vanity, fashion, and gossip, rather than on anything meaningful. In this way, he mocks the superficiality of court society, proving that their values and worries are trivial when compared to the noble struggles of classical heroes.

•Beauty vs. Poetry

In The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope shows how 18th-century society gave too much importance to beauty and appearance, especially among women. The poem tells the story of Belinda, a beautiful young lady, whose lock of hair is cut off by the Baron. This small act leads to an exaggerated quarrel at court. Pope humorously mocks Belinda’s obsession with her beauty by comparing her morning routine of getting dressed and doing makeup to an epic hero preparing for battle. While epic heroes fight for noble causes like honor, duty, or the safety of their people, Belinda’s “battle” is only to look attractive, which shows how shallow her concerns are.

Through the character Clarissa, Pope adds a moral voice in Canto V. Clarissa reminds everyone that beauty fades with time—hair will turn gray, youth will disappear, and even the most attractive faces will change with age or illness. She says that instead of chasing beauty, women should focus on building inner worth and morality because “charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.” This means beauty may attract people’s eyes for a short while, but true character and virtue win lasting respect.

However, the Pope complicates this message at the end of the poem. The stolen lock of Belinda’s hair rises into the sky and becomes a constellation, suggesting that beauty can achieve a kind of immortality if it inspires poetry and art. Pope even refers to “Berenice’s lock,” a famous story from classical poetry where a lock of hair became a star. By linking Belinda’s lock to this tradition, Pope shows that while ordinary beauty fades, beauty captured in art can live forever.

In the end, the Pope seems to say that everyday vanity and obsession with looks are foolish, but beauty itself still has value when it becomes the source of great poetry. Beauty alone is temporary, but when poetry preserves it, it becomes eternal.

•Gender

In The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope talks about how men and women were treated

differently in the 18th century, often in unfair ways. The story is about Belinda, a beautiful young woman whose lock of hair is cut off by the Baron. At first, Pope makes fun of Belinda for being too focused on her looks, but he also shows sympathy for her because society judges women mainly by their beauty, not by their intelligence or goodness. For example, the poem says that even if Belinda makes mistakes, people forget them as soon as they see her pretty face.

Unlike most poems of that time, which made men the heroes, Pope puts Belinda at the center of the story and makes her the main character, almost like an epic hero. The men, on the other hand,are shown as vain and silly. Pope also explains why Belinda cares so much about her beauty—because in her world, unattractive women are mocked and ignored. So, beauty was her only way to survive in society.Toward the end, Clarissa gives an important speech, saying that beauty will fade with age, but goodness and moral worth last much longer. This shows that women can also be wise and thoughtful, not just beautiful. At the same time, the Pope criticizes the men. The Baron’s act of stealing Belinda’s hair is called a “rape” (meaning theft), showing it

was wrong and unfair. Other men, like “Sir Fopling” and “Dapperwit,” are mocked as foolish and shallow because they only care about their looks.

In the end, the Pope shows both sides—he makes fun of women’s vanity but also feels sympathy for them, since society gave them little choice but to depend on beauty. He also points out that men, who were supposed to be superior, are often just as vain and far less wise than women.

•Religion and Morality

In The Rape of the Lock, Pope shows that people in his time often cared more about beauty and fashion than about true religion or morality. For example, Belinda keeps her Bible on the same table as her makeup and love letters, which makes religion seem less important. Pope even jokes that her dressing table is like an altar where she worships beauty instead of God. He also introduces the magical sylphs, who secretly guide people’s actions. Sometimes they protect women, sometimes they mislead them, which makes it unclear whether people are really in control of their choices. Because of this, the Pope suggests that it is difficult to judge someone as purely good or bad. In the end, the poem points out the hypocrisy of society, where people pretend to be moral and religious but are actually more focused on vanity and material things.

Conclusion 

Thus to conclude we can say that Alexander Pope has successfully described the picture of society during neo classical period by creating this poem.