Brit Lit: Age of Reason--18th Century Quiz

Answer: Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope lived from 1688 to 1744. Because of his Catholic faith, he was prevented from attending university, holding public office, and voting. Thus, he determined to make a living as a writer, which he so succeeded at doing that he became the first English writer to make a living solely by his writing.

He suffered a spinal infection as a child which stunted his growth and so disfigured him that other writers frequently belittled him; however, he soon became feared by these writers as his insults were often more stinging than those they could throw at him.

He jokingly once wrote: ". . . I must be proud to see / Men not afraid of God, afraid of me". He is now one of the most frequently quoted writers in English. The quotation in the question comes from "An Essay on Criticism", which he published when he was but twenty-three.

However, consider some of the other quotations that come from just that poem alone: "Be not the first by whom the new are tried, / Nor yet the last to lay the old aside" or "We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; / Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so" or "'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none / Go just alike, yet each believes his own" or "Good nature and good sense must ever join; / To err is human, to forgive divine". Pope considered writing both of his "Essays" in prose originally, but decided against it for two reasons: first, he felt that writing in verse would curb his verbosity, and, second, he admired the heroic couplet, which when written correctly, created short epigramatic statements admirable for their wit and their ease of memorization (consider those listed in the "interesting information" here).

Answer: Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe was born around 1660 and died in 1731. Defoe is, of course, widely remembered for his first novel "Robinson Crusoe"; however, he obviously wrote much more than this. Many readers are also familiar with "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders", a story of a woman who spends many years as a prostitute and a thief, marries five times (once to her own brother), and is shipped to the colony of Virginia in North America as a convict. Defoe had been a pamphleteer before he tried his hand at fiction. One of his most notable writings in this vein is "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters", a satirical defense of Anglican oppression, which caused him to be pilloried three times and jailed.

He was obviously a highly political individual; he served as a spy for Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and used his "Review", which he founded and edited, as a platform for Harley's policies.

His novels are important for their thorough descriptions and details, their conversational prose created by a psychologically revealing first-person point of view, and their bourgeois theme of the human will to transform an obstinately bleak and uncaring environment to one of survival and profit.

Answer: Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson lived from 1709 to 1784. He spent his childhood in poverty, and despite marrying a well-to-do widow, struggled in his career until 1755--the year he published "A Dictionary of the English Language", which solidified his fame as a writer. Before Johnson, no standard dictionary of English existed, so he embarked, mostly by himself, on a task that took him nine years to complete.

The "Preface" to his "Dictionary" explains his frustration at the failure of any attempts to preserve a language and prevent its changing, and his definitions are often tainted with personal opinion, sometimes comically--such as his explanation of "lexicographer--a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge . . . " He was also an excellent satirist. His poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and his prose fable "Rasselas" expose and admonish humanity for its stubborn preference for an unrealistic view of the world.

In "Rasselas", Johnson speaks of "the hunger of imagination, which preys upon life". Typical of the writers of the Age of Reason, Johnson favored an emphasis on rational thinking and logic instead of imaginative and fantastical thinking.

These writers also adhered to tradition and celebrated the ideas and forms of the classical writers long before them; however, Johnson demonstrates the eventual clash of reason and tradition when in his "Preface" to "Shakespeare" he praises Shakespeare for his creative abandonment of Aristotle's "Unities" when writing drama.

Answer: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne lived from 1713 to 1768 and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1738. He wrote a few other pieces, but "Tristram Shandy" is certainly his greatest work by far. At the time of its publication and for a little while after, many English critics dismissed it as an oddity, but around the rest of Europe it was a tremendous sensation.

Its influence has also crossed the distance of time as is made evident by the works of many postmodern and avant garde writers of the late twentieth century, including Thomas Pynchon.

The novel begins with Shandy describing the moment of his conception, but then he digresses for two whole volumes of several chapters each and does not get to a discussion of his birth until Volume III. Thus, the novel is not so much about a story of someone's life but rather a satirical commentary on how stories are told. Sterne leaves behind the conventional method of telling a story according to linear time based on Earth's days and such in favor of telling the story according to psychological time.

The character of Tristram Shandy seems to create reality as he tells his story rather than having his story dictate to him the terms of reality. Sterne was obviously ages ahead of his time. The book also includes several absurdities, bawdy jokes, and double entendres, which only add to the overall comic effect of reading it.

Answer: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Henry Fielding lived from 1707 to 1754 and is famous not only as a humorous and witty writer of satirical novels and plays but also as a magistrate who created, along with a relative, what was probably London's first police force. "Tom Jones" is Fielding's most well-known and critically acclaimed work.

It interestingly incorporates two of fiction's most popular narrative strategies: the bildungsroman (a coming-of-age story that follows the hero from childhood to adulthood) and the picaresque (a story that relies on a roguish commoner who relies on his wit to get the better of corrupt or unlikeable characters who are of a higher social class). Tom Jones is discovered as an infant by Mr. Allworthy, who despite the criticism of his peers, decides to foster Jones as a son of his own. Allworthy, as his name so conveniently suggests, is the only truly benevolent character of the higher classed characters of the novel.

However, he is also quite naive and is blind to the machinations and selfish motives of the other characters, those who wish nothing but ill on Jones. Jones' primary antagonist is Master Blifil, who is jealous of Allworthy's affection for Jones and attempts to undermine Jones' chances for happiness, even by stooping to steal Jones' love interest Sophia Western, a woman Bifil has no affection or attraction for whatsoever. To make matters worse, Jones' tutors--like Mr. Thwackum--fall for Blifil's false piety and constantly belittle or even beat Jones. Furthermore, Jones is quite promiscuous and is involved in many sexual affairs so that he comes across as a Don Juan-like character until his love for the pure Sophia causes him to mature.

Answer: She Stoops to Conquer

Oliver Goldsmith was born around 1730 and died in 1774. He was born in Ireland the son of a poor Anglican clergyman and was able to earn a degree at Trinity College in Dublin only as a sizar, a student who did menial work for other students who were wealthy. Goldsmith was a most talented writer who wrote significant pieces in many different genres besides drama; his novel "The Vicar of Wakefield" and his poem "The Deserted Village" remain quite famous, and his essays are still admired for their penetrating observations of both character and scene. "She Stoops to Conquer" is still performed on stage today, and a couple of films have been made of it as well.

The characters find themselves in some of the most outrageous situations. Marlow and a friend set out to visit the Hardcastles because of a previously arranged meeting.

However, they are eventually deceived into believing that the Hardcastle residence is an inn. The Hardcastles, who are expecting Marlow, treat him royally because they are hoping to arrange a marriage between Marlow and their daughter Kate; however, Marlow, who believes them to be common hotel staff, treats them disdainfully. Add to all of this confusion Kate Hardcastle's trick of pretending to be a maid to get Marlow's attention, and hilarious chaos ensues.

Answer: James Boswell

James Boswell lived from 1740 to 1795. He was born into the life of a gentleman, belonged to elite circles of men in both Edinburgh and London, attended university at both Edinburgh and Glasgow, studied law in Holland, held both Roussea and Voltaire spellbound with his conversation in Switzerland, and persuaded Samuel Johnson to travel with him through the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides.

His "Life of Samuel Johnson" established the genre of biography as something more than historical writing, for Boswell possessed a gift for the dramatic and his "Life" often reads as a work of fiction would except that it has living people as his characters. Long after his death, a vast number of his personal papers and journals were found (i.e. "The London Journal") and further established him as a most remarkable observer and recorder of detail, not just of the world around him but of his own personality--so much so that reading some of his writings allows the reader to feel as if he or she knows Boswell as much as he or she knows him or herself.

Answer: Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray lived from 1716 to 1771, and his most well-known and well-loved poem is "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", a poem that in a most romantic fashion uplifts the lives of the commoners buried in a rural cemetery while the speaker imagines what their lives might have been had they been born to different circumstances. Samuel Johnson himself wrote of the poem the following: "Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him".

The poem in the question--"Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat"--was written at the request of Horace Walpole, an English writer and historian who at one time was a close friend of Gray's. Walpole's cat Selima had fallen into a pool of goldfish while trying to catch one and then drowned. Gray playfully creates a mocking poem that elevates the cat and her adventures to heroic standards. Consider not only the lines quoted in the question, but the following ones as well: "Presumptuous maid! with looks intent / Again she stretched, again she bent, / Nor knew the gulf between. / (Malignant Fate sat by and smiled) / The slippery verge her feet beguiled, / She tumbled headlong in".

Answer: A Tale of a Tub

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Ireland to English parents. He is known for his satirical fiction and essays like those mentioned in the question, but he also wrote poems and political pamphlets. Furthermore, he was a priest who became Dean of the St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. "A Tale of a Tub" was published in 1704, but Swift more than likely composed it in the previous decade.

It is much more than a satire of religion and theology, for it also parodies the politics, literature, and science of Swift's time.

Unfortunately, this work was most likely the main obstacle to Swift's advancement in the Anglican Church. Several scholars and religious figures condemned the book as profane while others completely misunderstood its intent. Queen Anne herself despised it. Nevertheless, it remains today one of Swift's greatest satirical pieces and one of the English language's greatest allegories.

Answer: The Rape of the Lock

Pope originally published the mock heroic epic "The Rape of the Lock" in 1712. The poem was inspired by a real event involving a feud that existed between two aristocratic families after Lord Petre from one of the families cut off a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor, a woman from the other family. Fermor was known as a great beauty and was furious that she had been violated in such a manner. Thus, Pope is making fun of the whole affair by satirically comparing the trivial event to a major catastrophe or a great war, something that would have traditionally been written of in an epic poem.

He compares a card table to a battlefield, the game of cards to a battle, Belinda's hair to an artifact or treasure, the Baron's scissors to a sword, and the cutting of Belinda's hair to a rape.

The very title of the poem itself relies on a literary technique referred to as "zeugma", or the equation of one thing to another as if both possessed the same value or meaning, when they most certainly do not.