Textos Literarios Ingleses III

1
Textos Literarios Ingleses III

• Grupos 1 3
• José Carnero González

2
The Rape of the Lock
(Remember)
Key Idea
Appearances / Outward Forms of Society
3
The Rape of the Lock
Fine Young Ladies
Silly, Vain, Ignorant

• Their manner of writing is very peculiar, being
  neither from the left to the write, like the
  Europeans nor from the right to the left, like
  the Arabians nor from up to down, like the
  Chinese but aslant / obliquely, from one corner
  of the paper to the other, like ladies in
  England.
• (Gulliver about the Lilliputians)

4
The Rape of the Lock
Fine Young Ladies The Tatler The Spectator

• However, simply because women were less rational
  than men, they were also, from another point of
  view, more imaginative because more fanciful than
  their male superiors. They were more credulous,
  more superstitious, more given to absurd notions

5
The Rape of the Lock

• For if gentlemen, or wits, were creatures of
  modern enlightenment, women could be regarded as
  belonging to the fabulous dark ages. Women are
  closer than men to the fantastic and fabulous
  world of older poetry, such as that of A
  Midsummer Nights Dream and it is precisely the
  fantastic nature of women that allows Pope to
  create his fantastic, fairy-like being, the
  sylph.
• (Jones)

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The Rape of the Lock
Small Objects
Accessories
Feminine Sensibility
?
Masculine Reason
7
Alexander Pope, 1688-1744

• Member of an elite group
• Although he had some serious obstacles

8
Unable to attend university, Unable
to vote, Unable to hold public office
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• since he was Catholic

10
Tory Conservative GroupScriblerus Club gt false
learning

• The friends proposed to write jointly the
  biography of a learned fool whom they named
  Martinus Scriblerus (Martin the Scribbler, hack),
  whose life and opinions would be a running
  commentary on educated nonsense. . . . The real
  importance of the club, however, is that it
  fostered a satiric temper that would be expressed
  in such mature works of the friends as Gullivers
  Travels, The Beggars Opera, and The Dunciad.
• (Nortons)

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The Scriblerus Club

• had an important retrospective character. In an
  age much given to club activity, this one stands
  out for certain qualities which recall the circle
  of More and Erasmus XVth C not only literary
  cultivation and critical stringency but an almost
  conspiratorial intimacy and high spirits. While
  Gullivers Travels is an example of Utopian
  fiction, Popes praise of Dulness, the Dunciad,
  recalls The Praise of Folly What is more, the
  Dunciad was dedicated to Swift, as The Praise of
  Folly was to More.
• (Jones)

12

• Parodic Forms
• 16Th C. ?
• Late 17th C. ? Early 18th C.
• Mock-Heroic
• Burlesque

13

• Epic / Heroic Poetry
• Highest
• Great Deeds
• Mighty Heroes / Heroines
• Foundation of a Nation
• Special Culture
• Elevated Language
• High Style

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• Mock Poem
• Attacks Something
• Mock Epic / Mock Heroic
• Attacks Daily Conditions far from Heroic Past

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• The Mock-Heroic
• Extended Metaphor
• Instrument for Poetic Thought ? Rational Thought
• Imaginative Space

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The Poet A Wit

• Heroic World of Epic ?? Daily World of Reality
• Laughter

17
The Rape of the Lock The Dunciad
Mock Heroic Poems
Satirical Poems
Epic Sublimity
Extreme Limits
Human Pettiness
18
The Dunciad (1728-1743)
Four Books against Dullness
Great Epics
Influences from
Dante Milton
Perhaps His Masterpiece
19
Chronological Table

• 1688 Pope born (21 May)
• 1709 Pastorals
• 1711 An Essay on Criticism
• 1712 Messiah
• The Rape of the Locke (2 canto version)
• 1713 Windsor Forest
• 1714 The Rape of the Lock (revised 5 canto
  version)
• 1715 Temple of Fame
• Key to the Lock
• Iliad (translation vols. I-VI published
  between 1715-1720)
• 1717 The Rape of the Lock (with Clarissas
  speech in Canto V) and
• Eloisa to Abelard
• 1725 Edition of Shakespeare
• Odyssey (Vols. I-III)
• 1726 Odyssey (Vols. IV-V)
• 1727-8 Pope-Swift Miscellanies
• Peri Bathous

• 1729 Dunciad Variorum
• 1731 Epistle to Burlington (Moral Essay IV)
• 1733 Epistle to Bathurst (Moral Essay III)
• First Imitation of Horace (Others 1734-8)
• An Essay on Man (Epistles I- III)
• 1734 Epistle to Cobham (Moral Essay I)
• Essay on Man (Epistle IV)
• 1735 Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
• Epistle to a Lady (Moral Essay II)
• 1742 New Dunciad (i.e., Book IV)
• 1743 Dunciad (4 books, Cibber as Hero)
• 1744 Pope dies (30 May)

20
The Dunciad
HERO Theobald
1st Ed.
Three Books Against
Critics
Bad Poets
Publishers
Professors
Vulgarization of Taste and Arts
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The Dunciad
Spiritual Intellectual Decay of England
Corruption of Art Nation
Pope
Champion of Traditional Civilization
Right Reason
Humanistic Learning
Good Art Taste
Public Virtue
Western Spiritual Reservoir
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The Dunciad
Hero Colley Cibber
Final Version
Four Books
Anti-Christ of Wit
23
The Dunciad
Theobald Better Dunce
Cibber Ideal Dunce
Divided Opinions
Cibber Standard Dunce
Theobald was an obvious representative of the
Dull, Pedantic man of letters, Cibber hardly
measured up To standard (Macdonald)
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The Dunciad
Grub Street
Poverty
Hunger
Mercenery Writers
Urban Misery
Doleful Existence
Mental Poverty
Physical Need
Of the Writer
25
The Dunciad
Grub Street
For the bad poets mental vacuity, his mental
dulness, is imagined in terms of solid inert
matter, heaviness, retarding friction, torpor,
and so on. . . . Pope is keenly stimulated by
images of solidity and inertnesshe has a
remarkably sensitive insight into
insensitivity.
(Jones)