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The Opposition to Neo-Classicism in England Between 1660 and 1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Paul Spencer Wood*
Affiliation:
Trinity College

Extract

The victory of neo-classicism in England was won only after a struggle against forces which are sometimes called romantic but which are more accurately described as anti-classical. These forces were partly survivals of the past and partly tendencies that pointed forward to nineteenth century romanticism. The latter, so far as they were merely germinal, fall outside the scope of the present discussion, which deals with actual obstacles interfering with the complete dominance of the neo-classical movement after 1660.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 1928 , pp. 182 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

1 Mémoires et Observations Faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre, article “Bedlam,” p. 29.

2 Voyage en Angleterre, p. 79.

3 Lettres sur les Anglais, pp. 58-59.

4 The Humourist, vol. 2, pp. 235-36.

5 Cf. Edmund Freeman, “A Proposal for an English Academy in 1660,” Mod. Lang. Rev., xix, 291-300.

6 Vol 5, p. 904.

7 Quoted by Gosse, From Shakespeare to Pope, p. 32.

8 Hamelius, Die Kritik in der Eng. Lit., pp. 50-51.

9 One wonders if there is here a reminiscence of the great folio Shakespeare, editio princeps, which Scott in Woodstock represents as lying on the reading desk in the sitting apartment of Sir Henry Lee. That Scott should have endowed his characters with his own literary and bibliophilic interests is not surprising; but Scott distinguished sharply between romance and serious criticism

10 Shadwell, Dedication of A True Widow.

11 London Spy, Part XI, p. 260.

12 Cf. Soame and Dryden's adaptation of Boileau's Art of Poetry, closing lines of canto III.

13 Of Heroic Plays, Ker, I, 148-49. Dryden is here speaking of rime, but the principle that he invokes is of wide application.

14 See his unpublished Harvard dissertation, Rymer and Aristotelian Formalism, passim and especially pp 205-206.

15 Spingarn, Crit. Essays of the Seventeenth Century, III, 176. Cf. Dennis' remarks, in his own person, in the Third Letter “On the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare,” Smith, Eighteenth Century Essays en Shakespeare, p. 45.

16 Die Kritik in der Eng. Lit., p. 48; cf. Routh, The Rise of Classical Eng. Criticism, p. 22.

17 Spingarn, Crit. Essays, II, 106-07.

18 Pointed out by Spingarn, Ibid., II, 336.

19 Routh, op. cit., p. 22.

20 Op. cit., II, 278 ff.

21 No other writer of the period has been so frequently hailed as a brother romanticist—in part or at times—as Dryden. (See Hamelius; Routh; Bohn, PMLA, XXII, 56 ff.; Elton, The Augustan Ages, p. 195; etc.) Since I am discussing Dryden's criticism at some length in another article, it will be sufficient to suggest here that Dryden's case does not materially alter the present conclusions.

22 Op. cit., pp. 74-77. In the original, Tasso is the hero of the story

23 This word is taken directly from the Italian with a favorable connotation rare in the English use of the period.

24 J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, III, 313, in a note on Gerald Langbaine's Essay on Dryden, speaks of Ragg. 28 as being “often cited by seventeenth century opponents of the Rules.” The evidence of Spingarn's own collection is the other way. But two passages in the three volumes make serious reference to Boccalini's criticism, and only the essay by Langbaine, previously referred to, quotes Ragg. 28, or indeed connects him in any way with an attack on the rules. Dryden mentions Boccalini but once in the essays included in Ker's collection (II, 193) and then the reference is to an unnamed imitator merely. During the seventeenth century, there were many imitations of Boccalini's form. (For an incomplete list of these imitations see the article by R. Brotanek, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, CXI (1903), 409-414.) But these imitations did not necessarily or usually involve an attack upon the rules.

25 Œuvres Mélées, II, 329.

26 De la Tragédie Ancienne et Moderne and Sur nos Comédies.

27 See Miller, The Historical Point of View in Eng. Crit., p. 72. Cf. also Odell Shepard's review of C. Rinaker's Thos. Warton in JEGP, XVI, 133, for many other references.