Neoclassicism: Major Ideas

The following are major ideas held by conservative writers and thinkers of Neoclassicism, e.g. Dryden, Pope, Swift, Johnson, Gay, Butler, Rochester, Gibbon, Mandeville, Burlte, Reynolds, and Smollet.

1. Man’s nature is fallen, corrupted, marred in Christian terms by original sin. Men are not inherently benevolent, nor rational. In Swift’s words, man is not the “rational animal,” but only “rationis capax,” i.e., capable of reason.
2. Because man’s nature is flawed, restraint is important. Man should be distrustful of his inner impulses. Self-knowledge of man’s frailty is the beginning of wisdom.
3. Because of man’s defects, human problems (political and economic injustice, e.g.) are insoluble, and will always be with us no matter what the governmental form.
4. Because of man’s defects, strong, authoritarian governmental forms, strong monarchy e.g., centralized church, are essential to help restrain human nature and provide it guidance. Anti-democratic beliefs.
5. Because of human frailty, there is no progress possible in a moral sphere. Roads may improve, medical facilities may improve as man learns to control his environment. This kind of progress, physical progress, should not be confused with moral progress: love of man for man, justice of man to man.
6. Because progress is impossible, there is distrust on the part of the conservative for innovations, reforms in human affairs which promise better things. Instead, there is reverence for the practices of the past which have been tested and have worked.
7. Although human nature is essentially fallen, all men are not equal. Some men are better than others, and as there is a hierarchy in the universe, so there is a hierarchy among men. This is another anti-democratic belief.
8. Although man is fallen, he is also capable—through God’s mercy—of redemption, of moral improvement.
9. Because man is fallen yet capable of improvement, his chief concern in life should be moral improvement (not physical comfort). Such improvement is essential in fact because Hell’s fires await those who do not repent.
10. The function of literature is moral rather than aesthetic, because man needs moral instruction. An aesthetic purpose to literature presupposes a benevolent conception of human nature.
11. The universe itself is part divine, part physical. Science may give us knowledge of the physical, unimportant part, but not the divine, or important part. Only the Bible, God’s word, can give us limited insight into the divinity of the Universe.
12. Because science is concerned with the unimportant, the material, the conservative distrusts it, especially since science may delude man into thinking its discoveries are of real concern to man.
13. The physical universe is amoral, and hence man does not learn from Nature.
14. Distrust of Reason, especially systematic or speculative, and a distrust of individualism, whether in economic, political, or religious matters.

Some of the aims of neoclassical art are listed below. One should note, however, that these aims are to some degree ideal—aims the poet would advocate more than practice—aims “more honored in the breach than the observance.”

The poem will be in one of the genres or kinds: epic, tragedy, comedy, ode, satire, elegy, pastoral, burlesque, epistle, mock heroic, essay (for additional genres see Polonius’s catalogue in Hamlet). The poet will abide by the rules and laws of that genre. One must remember, however, that satire is by far the most important neoclassical genre, and in satire, anything that bites is effective, and hence apropos that genre. Neoclassic satire is thus characterized by great freedom and inventiveness.

The subject of the poem will be of concern to all men in all places at all times. The emphasis is on the general rather than the particular. A poem should transcend local boundaries to say something central about human experience.

The poem will attempt to give expression to those thoughts and values which have stood the test of time; “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed,” as Pope puts it. If truth is based on reason, and men have always possessed some pitance of reason, then what we call truth has already been discovered. The neoclassic is hence wary and skeptical of new insights—of new systems, and new ways of looking at things. Originality is, therefore, not the poet’s primary aim. It follows that since the subjects of poetry are old, then there must be a premium on expression. The poets must give better expression to what has already been expressed; he must express the eternal in the appropriate language of his day.

The primary purpose of the poet is not to express his own unique personality. Rather he is a rational man speaking to other rational people. He is expressing accepted values; he is utilizing the language of civilized man. He is writing to an implied audience of listeners. They are reasonable men—civilized; they know the classics, and they share his values and beliefs. We feel their presence in the poem, in its overt social nature, with its emphasis on clear communication. The poet and his audience are of aristocratic sympathies: “The 18th-century poet is not so much a man speaking to men like himself. His standards, his values, his emotion and intellectual interests, his mode of expressing himself, are often characteristic of the upper class. The presence of the audience helps to explain the emphasis on communication, the ‘spoken’ rather than ‘poetic’ quality of 18th-century poetry.”

Because the neoclassical writer believes human nature is unchanging, the same now as in the past, he believes that the present tends to repeat the past; hence, the neoclassicist will make numerous allusions to past literature and history. The literature of this period is, in Shakespeare’s words, “a remembrance of things past.” As Dryden put it, “History helps us to judge of what will happen, by showing us the like revolutions of former times. For mankind being the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions, and moved to action by the same interests, nothing can come to pass but some precedent of the like nature has already been produced, so that having the causes before our eyes, we cannot easily be deceived in the effects, if we have the judgment enough but to draw the parallel.”

The poem will make numerous classical, and less frequent biblical, allusions to the literature and mythology. Allusion in Neoclassical poetry has various functions: allusion provides a contrast between the virtues of the past and the insanity of the present; allusion enriches the meaning and the texture of the poem; and allusion suggests a universality: people are not as different as they might believe being separated by time and space. Dryden believed that history repeated itself, “For mankind being the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions, and moved to action by the same interests,” and he used allusion to illustrate that belief in Absalom and Achitophel, while Swift believed that locality had nothing to do with satire—“the same vices and the same follies reign everywhere.” While Neoclassical allusion drew heavily from the Bible, the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Odyssey, Milton’s Paradise Lost expressed and typified the beliefs of the Neoclassicists, especially the view that man is a fallen creature and the consequences of that fall; therefore, Paradise Lost’s importance is paramount and it is the source of considerable allusion. While the comprehending of the allusion is not essential for an accurate interpretation of Neoclassical poetry, it certainly augments the the tenor, suggestiveness, and the overall aesthetic quality of their poetry.

The poem will often be satirical. Given the aristocratic nature of the poet and his audience, and their shared values, and given the obvious fact that most Englishmen were not aristocrats and did not share their values—the middle class—there was a strong temptation to satire. It was a temptation seldom resisted.

Most neoclassical art, at least the greatest, is darkly pessimistic. Rather than being a period of stability, as we are told, the period is one of marked change as the middle class emerges as the dominant power group in England. The great neoclassical writers, Dryden, Pope, Swift, and Johnson, represented older views. They saw change, were frightened by it (perhaps misunderstood it), and attacked it, advocating instead a return to the values of the past. The world about them was in their eyes absurd, chaotic, and, with men willfully exchanging that of value for that which was valueless (a modern world, in short). They portray this world in their satire, and the hope for a better one. Their art focuses, however, not on the virtues of the past, but on the insanity of the present. Their art is not one of panegyric, but of attack.

An early commentator on Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels wrote of its universality and timelessness in these words—words that pretty well summarize the aims of neoclassical art:

We may concede that the taste is the same everywhere that there are people of wit, of judgment, and of learning. If, then, the writings of Gulliver were intended only for the people of the British Isles, that traveler must be considered a very comtemptible author. The same vices and the same follies reign everywhere; at least in all the civilized countries of Europe. And the author who writes only for a city, a province, a kingdom, or even an age, warrants so little to be translated, that he deserves even not to be read. The partisans of Gulliver—they number a good many among us—maintain that this book will endure as long as our language, because it draws its merit not from certain modes or manners of thought and speaking, but from a series of observations on the imperfections, the follies, and the vices of man.

So wrote Jonathan Swift to the French translator of Gulliver’s Travels, who wished to excise certain passages, and amend others, in order that the book might be palatable to French tastes.

According to the current cliché, neoclassical art is clear, balanced, structured, rational, cold, and lifeless, and, although this last is not stated aloud, probably dull. Neoclassical art has suffered bad press relations. The opposite is, in fact, true. The greatest neoclassical works are characterized by striking originality and inventiveness, exuberance, vitality, and lasting appeal. One has only to consider such boundless works of the human imagination as Gulliver’s Travels, and “A Tale of the Tub,” Pope’s Dunciad and The Rape of the Lock, Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Handel’s Messiah, Van Brugh’s Blenheim Palace, to see how misleading, even false, are the usual generalizations about neoclassical art. The clichés may fit the the second rate, minor stuff of the period, but they are wholly inadequate to characterize its greatest works.

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