Give the evaluation of D. Defoe, J. Swift, H. Fielding, John Bunyan, Dryden contribution to the English novel of 18th century.
D. Defoe
DANIEL DE FOE is considered the pioneer of the modern novel and the first novelist in the English literature as well as the first journalist(his The Review is considered the first newspaper). He interpreted the likes and interests of the emerging middle class and depicted the 18th century world. De Foe’s characters are common men and women with whom his middle-class readers could identify themselves. All characters of his novel narrate their individual struggles for survival in a difficult world, from Moll Flanders, a prostitute, thief and incestuous wife to Robinson Crusoe, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton and Roxana.
His novel The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner is regarded as the first English novel. The novel is a true realistic novel: it is based on the real story of a Scotch sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who had lived alone for four years on the Isle of Juan Fernandez in the Pacific after a shipwreck. The story is told in the first person singular in the form of a diary.
Robinson Crusoe is the first narrative in which the character is not a hero, but an average man. De Foe went on with the puritan ideas that had survived even after the collapsing of the Puritan Republic of the Commonwealth. Robinson, a shipwrecked merchant who remained on a desert island for about 28 years, is considered the true puritan man: he showed industry, colonizing spirit, courage and initiative and was seen by the readers as the personification of their own qualities: practical-minded, resourceful, religious. He organized his life on the island and succeeded through hard labour in surviving in a difficult situation exploiting all what the place offered. Further , he not only made the native man Friday to accept him as master but also made him use his language and converted him to Christianity . Many critics charged this novel with being an imperialistic novel because it contained an affirmation of capitalism and saw man as an economic animal. Robinson was considered by those critics as the first capitalist hero in English literature, because he looked at everything in economic terms: produced more than he needed, kept from the ship a lot of things, expanded his power on the whole island and eventually became rich. They pointed out that when Robinson managed to go on board the ship which had been carried within a reaching distance, he also kept some money which, of course, was of no use on a desert island.
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J. Swift
JONATHAN SWIFT was the greatest satirist of his age. Using irony and satire he tried to change his own society and attacked it at all levels. Together with Alexander Popeand others, he established the Scriblerus Club, an association of witty writers who satirized their contemporaries. People of his own time failed to see the irony and, sometime, they cried shame. An Anglican priest, he was appointed Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, where he was buried.
Swift is remembered for his Gulliver’s Travels , a novel that, like Robinson Crusoe, is nowadays regarded as a book for children and as an anticipation of the modern fantasy novel. Actually the book was intended to be a bitter satire of his own country.Swift himself wrote to Pope that it “was intended to vex the world rather than divert it”. The novel satirizes the follies and the vices of politicians and scholars and is a very serious comment on politics, on learning and on all Mankind. It shows Swift’s bad opinion on people. He is very intolerant of people in general and once he wrote to Pope: “ I heartily hate and detest that animal called man”. He maintains that man is not a reasonable animal but an animal endowed with reason, which he is not always able to use in the right way. Gulliver’s Travels tells the various imaginary voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon on a ship, to various strange lands where he meets several man-like creatures. The philosophical basis of the whole novel is in the contrast between rationality and animality.
H. Fielding
Fielding’s first notable novel Joseph Andrew, published in 1742, was supposed to ridicule Richardson’s Pamela. The situation, he contrived here is quite original and reverse to what is found in Pamela. Instead of the virtuous maidservant, Fielding presents Joseph, an honest servant, who resists reduction from his mistress Lady Bobby and her woman Mrs. Slipslop. He is ultimately thrown out of employment for resisting them. At this moment in the story, Fielding became so engrossed in his own narrative, and the exercise of his own comic gift that Richardson is almost forgotten. There follows a series of adventures on the road, where Joseph is accompanied by Parson Adams, who becomes the source of endless fun and comedy. Fielding is direct, vigorous, hilarious, ad coarse to the point of vulgarity. He is full of animal spirits, and he tells the story of a vagabond life, not for the sake of moralizing, like Richardson, but simply because it interests him, and his only concern is “to laugh men out of their follies”. So his story, though it abounds in unpleasant incidents, generally leaves the reader with the strong impression of reality.
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Fielding’s most illustrious work is Tom Jones. Nothing in his work compares with this great novel. It is so carefully planned and executed that though the main theme follows Tom Jone’s life from childhood onwards, the reader is kept in suspense until the close as to the final resolution of the action. The story itself is elaborate, with most diverse social elements. In Tom Jones he had draw one of the great human characters of English literature.
Fielding’s last novel Amelia,published in 1751, marks his resourcefulness as a story-teller. He idealizes the main woman character and this leads to an excess of pathos. He had established in it one of the most notable forms, middle class realism.
John Bunyan
The chief literary contribution of the eighteenth century was the discovery of the modern novel, which at present is the most widely read and influential type of literature. The novel in its elementary form as a work of fiction written in prose was at first established in England by two authors—Bunyan and Defoe, who took advantage of the public interest in autobiography. The books of Bunyan, whether they are told in the first person or not, were meant to be autobiographical and their interest is subjective. Bunyan endeavours to interest his readers not in the character of some other person he had imagined or observed, but in himself, and his treatment of it is characteristic of the awakening talent for fiction in his time. The Pilgrim’s Progress is begun as an allegory, but in course of time the author is so much taken up with the telling of the story, that he forgets about the allegory, and it is this fact which makes Bunyan the pioneer of the modern novel.
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Dryden
John Dryden was made improvements to the diction of the Elizabethan prose by introducing a stripped-down English minus the flowery and exaggeration. His earlier days as a playwright was not much impressive, yet he went on to become the greatest literary figure of the Restoration Period and the succeeding age of Classicism was greatly influenced by him. His translation works earned him this place. John Dryden was "the leading man of his age and the age knew it, and looked up to him". The first political recognition of his work came to him when he was asked to accept the appointments of Poet Laureate and Histographer Royal in 1670.
Dryden remains the Greatest literary figure of the Restoration Period and he earned this place due to his great influence on the succeeding age of Classicism. This maybe summed up by noting the three new elements which he introduced into literature. These are, the establishment of the Heroic Couplet as the fashion for satiric, didactic and descriptive poetry; his development of a direct and serviceable prose diction and inculcation of his brand into the works of Latin Writers, thereby giving a whole new flavour to early Classical works.
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