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English Literature 1590 – 1798

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English Literature 1590 – 1798 UGC MHRD ePGPathshala Subject: English Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee; University of Hyderabad Paper 02: English Literature 1590 – 1798 Paper Coordinator: Dr. Anna Kurian; University of Hyderabad Module No 33: Oliver Goldsmith Content writer: Prof. Mohan G. Ramanan; University of Hyderabad Content Reviewer: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee; University of Hyderabad Language Editor: Dr. Anna Kurian; University of Hyderabad Oliver Goldsmith Lesson Plan: In thislesson we shall first survey his life and get a sense of his opinions on art and life, consider briefly the works in chronological order. Invariably we shall attempt a summary of the work in question, a consideration of its themes and literary qualities and the reception of the work. There will be at the appropriate place, a more detailed consideration of She Stoops to Conquer—a text which is widely read because of its popularity. Section 1: Introduction In this lesson we shall deliberate on the life and opinions of Oliver Goldsmith. He was considered a man who had the ability to turn whatever he touched to either dross or gold.The celebrated author of the Citizen of the World, poems such as, The Travelerand The Deserted Village, Enquiry into the Present State ofPolite Learning in Europe, a novelette, The Vicar of Wakefield,essays and reviews and two well-known plays – The Critic and She Stoops to Conquer. However, he also wrote Histories which are considered unreadable.He was part of a club which countedEdmund Burke (the statesman), Thomas Warton (the scholar), Sir JoshuaReynolds (the painter),Dr. Johnson (the greatCham of Literature)and Sir WilliamChambers (the judge), amongst its members. In this club, where learning was obviously visible, and wit freely displayed, Oliver Goldsmith was often the butt ofchafingat the hands of his compeers who made fun of his envious nature and his craving for attention. He was capable of saying the most outrageous things only to draw attention to himselfandhisenvyofDr. Johnson led him to make unwise remarks. He would attempt to make light of this by sometimes joining in the fun and mocking himself and ‘Nolly’ as he was affectionately called, was seen as a sympathetic character. Hewas sensitive to slights and on occasion crossed swords even with his formidable friend, Dr. Johnson, who quickly made up with his younger colleague.On balance in spite of his drunkenness and foolishness, he comes through as a well-rounded author and a major figure in Eighteenth Century EnglishLiterature. Section 2: Life and Letters of Goldsmith Goldsmith was of Irish stock and was born on November 10, 1728, in Pallas, in the county of Longford, theson of an Anglican clergyman. He studied at the Edgeworthstown School and Trinity College, Dublin, securing a BA. in 1749. He went to study medicine in Edinburgh and thenwanderedaroundEurope, begging for bread by playing the flute or practicing medicine. He understood poverty first hand and this is visible in his literary work. Among his many writings arethefour volume History of England, his eight volume History of the Earth and Animated Nature and his two volume History of Romegenerally regarded as indifferent performances. Even a brief consideration of the letters of Goldsmith where he is seen at his candid and intimate best, demonstrates the human side of Goldsmith which endeared him to his relatives and friends. Againstthe scanty biographical information available on Goldsmith, the letters are a revelation ofhis relationship with his family, particularly his brothers, and on the authenticity of his Fiddleback Adventures, his writing of the mediocre ThrenodiaAugustalis and of the brilliantShe Stoops to Conquer. His letters, edited so ably by Katherine C Balderstone as early as 1928 and reprinted in 1969 by the Folcroft Press, provide a clearer picture of him. Some information on his early life is culled from his letters to his sister, Mrs. Hodgson and the prosaic side of an otherwise colourful life, comes out in his constant demand on people for monetary loans and promises of repayment, his complaints of neglect by friends and relatives and so on. We also learn, crucially, why he could not make it to India as a physician for the East India Company. The French invasion of Madras was partly responsible for his inability to set sail. Section 3: Citizen of the World Goldsmith printed in The Public Ledger in 1760 and 1761 a series of “Chinese Letters” which in 1762 were collected and published as Citizen of the World. In this very interesting narrative, Goldsmith invents a fictional characters called Lien Chi Altangi who is purported to be a native of Hunan in China. Altangi who has met many Englishmen in Canton has learnt English and sends a series of letters from London to his friend Fum Foam, the President of the Ceremonial Academy in Peking. These letters are descriptive of the manners and customsof the English and in writing about these,Altangi exposes the ridiculous customs and characteristics of English people. Here is a witty excerpt from Altangi in Letter ii:“I have known some provinces [in China]where there is not even a name for the ocean. What a strange people therefore am I got amongst, who have founded an empire on this unstable element, who build cities upon billows that rise higher than the mountains of Tipartala,and make the deep more formidable than the wildest tempest”. Using a foreign traveller to make fun of one’s own culture is a time honoured fictional device, tried out by Montesquieu, Horace Walpole, among others. Goldsmith satirizes his country by using this device, and through these letters, fictionalizes his own experiences as a traveller to many parts of the world. The satire becomes even more authentic because Goldsmith takes care to portray Altangi as a reliable and authoritative observer of the English scene. Section 4: The Traveller The Traveller, or, a Prospect of Society was published in 1764, though he had begun writing it in 1755while he was travelling in Switzerland. From the vantage point of the Alps, the narrator speculates on happiness. It is a philosophical poem written in heroic couplets. It reflects on the causes of humanhappiness and sorrow. In this poem, as his dedication tells us, Goldsmith was attempting to show that every nationhas its own degree ofhappiness and believes they have a monopoly over happiness. Goldsmith believes that actually happiness is equally spread across the world, but manifests itself in different ways, depending on the mode of governance of a nation. He goes on to reflect on Italy, Switzerland, France, Holland and, of course, Britain. In Britain a free constitution has led to the rich oppressing the poor, and those who fled this tyranny and went to America, have found the land dangerous and harsh. True happiness, the poem concludes is to be found within oneself: “How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or Kings can cause or cure. Still to ourselves in every place consign’d, Our own felicity we make or find.” The poem, in a way, made Goldsmith’s reputation and it had the commendation of Johnson, the most influential critic of the age. It is, like The Deserted Village, a poem which has a conservative bias and is against speculation and crass capitalism and commerce. The poem has been praised for its sentiments, its elegant imagery and its sublimity. Goldsmith, on this basis, has been considered a great Augustan poet. Section 5: The Deserted Village This poem was published in 1770 and is, like The Traveller, a work of social commentary and satire. While there has been much speculation as to the original of the Village - with some identifying it with Lissoy in Ireland, others with Nuneham Courtenay - the village of the poem could actually exemplify in general, England’s rural economy shattered by depopulation, with people migrating to the urban cities or to America. Its innocence strikes a contrast with the moral degradation of the cities. Through the lives and annals of the Village,Goldsmith criticizes consumerism, capitalism and the effects of the industrial revolution, enclosure of the common land in rural parts, the vogue for landscape gardening at the expense of original landscape,andingeneral the commercial and money mindedness of the people. It is a Tory poem and is therefore profoundly political. The poem opens with a description of “Sweet Auburn”, the ideal Village of Goldsmith’s conception where health and plenty abound, the swains labour cheerfully and where spring brings plenitude. This is how Auburn was but now everything is ruined because of the depopulation of the village. Then follow two beautiful and justly famous portraits (Chaucer’s influence is clearly visible) of the Village Parson and the Village School master and a poignant description of the bonhomie which existed in the ale house at one time. Goldsmith attacks the corruptions of the day, the manner in which a village girl goes to the city and loses her innocenceand how those from Auburn who have migrated to America are hardly better off in a land of blazing suns and horrid shores. His famous remark “ill fares the land which expels its peasantry, because a village community once gone can never be replaced” and “when wealth accumulates men decay”, are justly proverbial. The poem is 430 lines long and written in heroic-couplets, with an AABBCC rhyme scheme. The consistent iambic pentameter lines and thecareful choice of diction andapt handling of syntax makes this a supreme example of Augustan satire. The pastoral tradition to which this poembelongs ,imitates classical writers such as Pliny and Juvenal, who bemoaned in their poems the displacement of the rural poor by the rich. In the manner of Virgil, who in his Georgics attributes the corruption of Rome and the Roman Empire to luxury and pride, Goldsmith warns Britain of the same danger to it.
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