The Rise Of The Personal Essay
The 18th century writers of the prose ( which is also as romantic period ) were rather more concerned with subject matter and emotional expression than with appropriate style. They wrote for an audience which was less homogeneous in its interest and education that that of their predecessors. The autobiographical exploitation of personality manifests itself in a great variety of ways among writer of late 18th and early 19th century. It is a symptomatic of a significant change in the relation between the writer and the society. The romantic period came after the age of enlightenment which really had a focus on logic, reason, and science and the romantic period was a deviation from that. Thus we see an emphasis on emotions, imaginations, that can defy reason. The neoclassical prose focussed on realism, morality where as romantic prose focussed on connecting with the natural world. They tried to escape from troubles of world and quested for he peace of mind in the nature. Romantic prose had the elements of supernaturalism like romantic poets, the essayists of romantic age, too showed interest in the common man. Romantic age drew inspirations from past and justified their statements by experiences of primitive and medieval ages. Their essays exhibit the idea of revolution and change. Their works showed their interest in elements of melancholy. They had a fundamental belief in the unity of world and God.
The prose writer of this age.
Charles Lamb ( 1775 - 1834 )
Charles Lamb in English essays gave the same kind of turn that Wordsworth gave to English poet unlike Addison and Steele who largely devoted the essay to instruct on social, morals and manners. Lamb concentrated on emotions rather than ideas or morals and manners. His views on life and letters were worked out with almost desperate geniality in order to preserve and develop a relish for the colour and individuality of experience which for him was the only alternative to despair. Lamb was essentially a Londoner. His essays are artfully artless in their personal, conversational tone, show his interest in curious persons and place. His relish of the colour and variety of London life and characters. In these essays he talks intimately to the reader about himself, his own personality, his experiences and cheerful and heroic struggle which he made against misfortune.
His works are :
The Essays Of Elia ( 1823 )
The Last Essays of Elia ( 1833 )
Thomas De Quincey ( 1785 - 1859 )
His numerous essays which initially appeared in periodicals in the lake district, London, and Edinburgh, create a large variety of issues both parochial and international. Britain imperial conflicts in Asia and Northern Africa, criminal violence, theological history, enlightenment philosophy as well as numerous more explicitly literary reviews. De Quincey published essays that sketched personal portraits of other romantic authors ; his interactions with Coleridge and Wordsworth offer largely sympathetic insights into their literary circle. De Quincey is one of the authors whose work is to be rigorously separated.
His autobiographical confessions.
Confessions of An Opium Eater (1821) tells the story of his early life.
Suspiria De Profundis ( 1845 ) was his other autobiographical work which reveals his interest in his own psychology.
De Quincey essay on William Shakespeare ‘On the knocking on the Door in Macbeth’ has received acclaim as an outstanding piece of psychological criticism. His critique of Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads is considered a brilliant analysis of the poet’s creative process.
William Hazlitt ( 1778 - 1830 )
His writing is remarkable for his fearless expression of an honest and individual opinion. While he lacks the learnt critical methods of more modern critics he is unsurpassed in his ability to communicate his own enjoyment and his gift for evoking unnoticed beauties. His judgements are based on his emotional reactions rather than on objectively applied principles. Consequently they are sometimes perplexed by personal biases as in some of the portraits in the spirit of the age. His works are lectures on ‘Characters Of Shakespeare’s Plays’ ( 1817 ). His essay ‘The Round Table’ (1817), ‘Table Talk’ or ‘Original Essays On Men and Manners’ (1821-1822) and ‘The Spirit Of The Age’ or ‘Contemporary Portraits’ (1825).
Other prose writers are :
- Walter Savage Landor ( 1775- 1864 )
- Francis Jiffrey ( 1773 - 1850 )
- John Wilson. ( 1784 - 1854 )
- Sidney Smith ( 1771 - 1845 )
- John G Lockhard ( 1754 - 1834 )
Victorian Prose.
The 60 years, 1830-1890 commonly included under the name of Victorian age present many dissimilar features. Victorian Prose , though chronologically related with and sometimes even overlapping the era of Romantic prose, marks a distinct break both thematically and stylistically. The change is less of conscious purpose than of the difference in temperament and intellectual interest. The familiar essay with its highly personal often whimsical flaunting of the writers taste prejudices and peculiarities, the hallmark of the romance gave way to a distinctively Victorian willingness to engage in moral and intellectual debate. Not only was it a period of ‘Gods plenty’ but also of amazing, the notice diversity and astonishing intellectual passion. Victorian prose was of such diversity as to include the critical writings of Ruskin and Arnold, the social and historical writings of Carlyle and Macaulay, the religious writings of Newman and the philosophical essays of Mill and Spencer.
For more than a generation, Thomas Carlyle ( 1795 - 1881 ) was revered ( respected ) as a teacher and a prophet. By his admirers he was called ‘The sage Of Chelsea’ and he maintained his reputation by means of books, letters, and conversation. He was much concerned with contemporary, social and political affairs as well as with the more personal concerns of religion and private morals. A later generation finds it somewhat difficult to accept Carlyle’s teachings. His writings abound in words and a rather confusing amount of good advice. By its influence Carlyle’s teaching did do an immense amount of good. His strong faith in himself and in the ultimate good of all things was like a tonic in a time of wavering faith and increasing pessimism. ‘Sartar Resartus’ ( 1833 ) a kind of autobiography of an imaginary German professor. ‘The French Revolution’ ( 1837 ) which gave fire and intensity to history, while political tracts of great insight and literary merit appeared in ‘Past and Present’ ( 1843 ) and ‘The Life of John Sterling’ ( 1851 ), The series of lectures he delivered in ( 1837 ) was published as On Heroes, Hero-Warship and the Heroic In History.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Macaulay offers a curious contrast to Carlyle. The later was the preacher, the idealist and the sage. The former was the hard headed man of affairs, taking the world as it came and offering no remedies to cure its evils. In his prose we find no struggle, exhalation and despair such as we find in the prose of Carlyle. Instead, we observe a brisk confidence a clear, vivacious utterance and a selection of picturesque details, the copious vocabulary, the clever variations of the sentences of the sentences and the swiftly moving rhythm.
Before he left for India Macaulay had written 22 essay for “The Edinburgh Review”. He added 3 during his stay in India and finished 11 others after he returned to England. With the 5 biographies that he contributed to “The Encyclopaedia Britannica”, these include all his shorter prose works. His ‘History Of England’ ( 1849 ) was unfinished at his death. It had an enormous popular success which was due to his selection of telling incident, his clear and rapid narrative and clean cut assured manner of statement.
John Ruskin
Ruskin was born of affluent parents, but his views on life were not in keeping with his social position in it. Early in his career he developed subversive opinions upon social questions of all kinds and took to expounding advanced forms of socialism. In art he was equally unconventional. Ruskin was an idealist far in advance of his time. He spent much of money and nearly all his life preaching to people who were largely indifferent to his efforts. He retains his position in literature chiefly as a prose stylist. Features of his prose style are enormous sentence, cunning use of semi colons, strong rhythm. He had another style for his numerous lectures. It had poetical effect but it is intensely simple. Frequently its diction ( words ) is suggestive of ‘The Bible’.
Works of John Ruskin.
His first and longest book ‘Modern Pointers’ ( 1843 - 1860 ) began in 1843 and completed in 1860. It expounded Ruskin’s ideas upon art and life in general. Shorter works on art were ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture’ ( 1849 ) and ‘The Stones Of Venice’ ( 1851- 1858 ). Among his articles and lectures are ‘The Two Paths’ ( 1869 ), ‘The Crown Of Wild Olive’ ( 1864 ) and ‘Sesame and Lilies’ ( 1865 ).
Other prose writers of this age were :
- Ralph Waldo Emerson ( 1803 - 82 )
- John Addington Symonds ( 1840 - 93 )
- Walter Moratio Pater ( 1839 - 94 )
- James Anthony Fraud ( 1818 - 94 )
- Oliver Wendell Holmes ( 1809 - 94 )
Major English Essayists Before World War ||
The 20th century is a great age of journalism and fiction writing but despite the mushroom growth of journalism and unprecedented popularity of the novel, the essay continues to live and thrive ( prosper / to increase ). All manner of topics were dealt with by the modern essayists : Nothing is too low or too high for him. His style is usually informal, even conversational, but at the same time dignified; as a matter of fact his language is made up of a judicial selection from the language of daily use. Brevity, simplicity, lucidity, clarity and flexibility are some other characteristic features of the style of the modern essayists. The number of those who have taken to the essay in the 20th century is very large.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton ( 1874 - 1936 )
He is a writer of versatile genius, originally in thought and approach are the leading characteristics of his essays. He often makes us e of witty paradox which delights and surprises as well as provokes thought. His style is highly brilliant, self conscious and idiosyncratic, replete with alliteration, balance and the thesis and paradox. He constructs his sentences with great ingenuity ( ability ) which offers a constant challenge to the reader and at times have an air of verbal, if not intellectual, puzzle.
“The Uses Of Diversity”, “Tremendous Trifles” etc are among the more popular of his collections of essays.
Joseph Hilaire Pierre Rene Belloc
( 1870 - 1953 )
He is another versatile and prolific essayists of the 20th century. His reputation as an essayists rests securely on several volumes, a few among which are entitled as ‘something, nothing, everything’.
Belloc himself observes and also makes his readers observe novelty in the real and familiar things of everyday life and he also presents the hackneyed problems so concretely and cleverly as to charge them with an altogether new significance. His range of mood, theme, and subject is very wide. He can be playful and garrulous ( talkative ) as in his essay on “cheese” but he can be tenderly even lyrically, amotional as in “The Good Woman” and between these he can play an all possible shades and gradations.
In his prose style, it is his transparent clarity which strikes our attention most immediately . His rapidity of movement from one mood to another in the same essay is remarkable.
A.G. Gardiner ( 1865 - 1946 )
He was a journalist and essayists of the schools on Montaigne And Lamb. He is better known to his readers why his pen name ‘Alpia Of The Plough’ in response to the invitation of the editor of ‘The Star’ to which he contributed a number of his essays.
His works are ‘The Pillars Of Society’, pebbles in the shore, leaves in the wind etc. It brings out the significance of the most trivial things and communicates knowledge and wisdom in an entirely informal, modest, intimate and delightful manner.
Gardiner’s style is easy, clever and flexible. He modulates his prose to his changing moods, reflective, enthusiastic and observant. His vocabulary is drawn from the common everyday speech and his language is dignified and yet mostly within the comprehensive even of the moderately read readers. But when he has to render his impressions of the beauty, mystery and sublimity of nature, his words are clothed with beauty, colour and picturesqueness. His has no mannerism, no trace of any effort to be striking, yet he always selects the precise and vivid word and uses it with the most telling effect. He is one of the greatest stylists in the English Language.
Robert Lynd ( 1879 - 1949 )
Robert Lynd follows in the footsteps of Lamb, Stevenson and Goldsmith. A large range and variety of mood and emotion is possible for him. He may be light hearted, humorous, whimsical, reflective and frankly personal and autobiographical.
His style has all the ease, range and liveliness of conversation. An effortless ease and a natural flow of words are the distinguishing features of his style.
Max Beerbohm ( 1872 - 1956 )
Who won wide popularity by his Zuleika Dobson ( 1911 ) was a delightful essayists and witty parodist who was never tired of exposing the follies and foibles of his great contemporaries. In his observations and his style there ‘nothing too much’ but there is always just enough. He was perfect both in manner and matter.
E.B. Lucas ( 1868 - 1938 )
Among the 20th century essayists Lucas is one who is generally regarded as the true inheriter of the manner of Lamb. He is one of the most prolific essayists of our age. He worked long as a journalists and contributed mostly to The Punch. His most representative and popular collection of essays in entitled ‘The Character And Comedy’ ( 1907 )
Lucas has followed in the footsteps of Lamb. He has Lamb’s humanity, his all embracing sympathy. His humour, confidential tone as well as pensive yearning for the beauty and charm of the old things and personalities. He has the virtues of Lamb without his faults.
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