GRE Literature in English (REA) (4 page)

This period is notable for its stage comedies and for its great works of satire. The major figures are John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson, but we also mention a few other notable writers who have surfaced on past administrations of the Subject Test.

 

 

WYCHERLY AND CONGREVE

 

Exemplars of the Restoration comedy, William Wycherly and William Congreve produced comedies of manners and witty language use, highly charged with sexual and scatological innuendo. Wycherly is best known for
The Country-Wife
, and Congreve for
The Way of the World
. You should familiarize yourself with one of these to enable you to recognize the tone of these plays, as well as the type of character name that is often a give-away of this genre. Examples include Mrs. Pinchwife in
The Country-Wife
and Mincing in
The Way of the World.

 

 

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER

 

Although he wrote on a number of subjects, Rochester is best known for his sexual poems that are shockingly explicit even by today's standards. It is unlikely that ETS would actually quote from him because of this, but he is significant as an example of the “court wits” that surrounded Charles II, and as an indicator of the decadence that characterizes much of the lore about the Restoration period.

 

 

JOHN DRYDEN

 

Dryden was a prolific writer, but ETS is mainly concerned with his poem “Absalom and Achitophel.” Look over this poem to get a feel for its verse style and its content. It is a complex political allegory that uses biblical figures and events to stand in for a political crisis current in Dryden's time. His other work popular with ETS is “Mac Flecknoe,” a mock epic that attacks Dryden's contemporary, the poet Thomas Shadwell. You should be able to identify the mock epic as a form, and be able to recognize this poem in particular. The mock epic (employed by Pope for ‘The Rape of the Lock,“) is characterized by use of elaborate and grandiose language typical of the epic to describe mundane things and trivial events.

 

 

JONATHAN SWIFT

 

Swift is best known for two works: the satirical tract
A Modest Proposal
, and his longer work,
Gulliver's Travels
.
A Modest Proposal
is easy to recognize; in a precise and confident tone, it advocates the wholesale slaughter and consumption of poor children in Ireland.
Gulliver's Travels
is best remembered in association with these key names: the Lilliputians, who are very small; the Brobdignags, who are very large; the Houyhnhnms, very smart horses; and the Yahoos, brutish subhumans. It would be wise to look over at least the first two books of
Gulliver's Travels
to get a feel for Swift's incomparably witty prose style.

 

 

ALEXANDER POPE

 

Pope is one of the finest craftsmen in English poetics. His verses are polished and painstakingly wrought, and his wit rivals that of Swift. He writes almost exclusively in heroic couplets, so his work is often easy to spot. Read his “Essay On Man” to get a sense of his style, but spend the most time reviewing “The Rape of the Lock,” the most famous mock epic in English. The story concerns an unappreciated haircut given to a lady by a lord at a high-society gathering and the chaos that ensues. Pope carefully follows the accepted epic conventions, and the result is a comedic and artistic achievement that stands out as one of the best-known works of the period.

 

 

ADDISON AND STEELE

 

Joseph Addison had a major hit with his tragedy
Cato
, but he is probably still best known in conjunction with Richard Steele and their periodical
The Spectator
. Addison and Steele's journalistic endeavors are important in the history of periodical publication and in the emerging category of the public intellectual in the eighteenth century. Looking over excerpts from
The Spectator
probably isn't worth the time and trouble, but you should know who these men are and be able to place them in this period.

 

JOHNSON AND BOSWELL

 

Although he authored a few poems, most notably “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” produced a famous edition of Shakespeare's works, and is responsible for the first comprehensive English language dictionary, Samuel Johnson is best known to us through the work of his biographer, James Boswell. It is in Boswell's
Life of Samuel Johnson
and in his
Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides
that we get a taste of Johnson's enormous intellect, wit and eccentricity, fixing Johnson as one of the great minds in English literary history.

 

 

THE EARLY NOVELISTS: DEFOE, RICHARDSON, AND FIELDING

 

The novel has a long and complex history that involves developments in European and Classical literature, but generally speaking the English novel emerged in the beginning of the eighteenth century with the works of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Richardson. You should be familiar with their positions as the first English novelists and with the themes and stylistic conventions that mark their respective works.

 

 

Daniel Defoe

 

Defoe is best known for
Robinson Crusoe
, although
Moll Flanders
has been known to appear on the Subject Test.
Robinson Crusoe
, of course, is the story of a man's solitary existence on an island following a shipwreck, the world he builds for himself there, and the native he eventually enlists as his servant, Friday. Defoe is known for his plain prose style and his journalistic style of reporting realistic details.

 

 

Samuel Richardson

 

Richardson's expansive works
Pamela
and
Clarissa
are landmarks of the early novel. They both concern the moral life of young women in England. In
Pamela
, as the subtitle tells us, virtue is rewarded when the young heroine, after a long resistance to the lascivious advances of her employer, Mr. B., is rewarded by his reformation and his sincere love. In contrast,
Clarissa
is a tragedy in which the morally upright heroine is raped by the rakish Lovelace and eventually slips into madness and death. Both novels take as a theme the importance of female chastity and virtue as a guiding force of morality in the face of rampant sexual vice. Richardson's novels are all epistolary in form, meaning that they are written as a series of letters to, from, and about the major characters involved. His writing is marked by attention to precise details of transcribed conversations and a sometimes intimidating length.

 

 

Henry Fielding

 

Fielding is best known for
Tom Jones
, a rollicking story about a man of mysterious origins who gets involved with various love affairs, fights, and controversies in pursuit of his true love, Sophia. Fielding and Richardson were bitter rivals and critics of each other's work. Fielding's style is marked by his conscious attempt to break away from Richardson's model of writing. Fielding does not write in the epistolary form, but instead creates a vigorous prose that is as ironic and skeptical as Richardson's work is pious and naive.
Shamela: Joseph Andrews
is Henry Fielding's parody of Richardson's
Pamela
, which he published one year after the original was released. In Fielding's version, Shamela is not as virtuous as she seems and the story of assailed virtue is changed to one of calculation.

Drill Questions

Mrs. Millamant: O, aye, letters—I had letters—I am persecuted with letters—I hate letters.—Nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has 'em, one does not know why.—They serve to pin up one's hair.

Witwoud: Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies.

Mrs. Millamant: Only with those in verse, Mr. Witwoud. I never pin up my hair with prose. I think I tried once, Mincing.

Mincing: O mem, I shall never forget it.

1. The passage appears in
   
   1. The Way of the World.
      
   2. Love for Love.
      
   3. The Importance of Being Earnest.
      
   4. A Midsummer Night's Dream.
      
   5. The Country-Wife.
      
2. Which of the following authors is known for producing epistolary novels?
   
   1. John Dryden
      
   2. Jonathon Swift
      
   3. Daniel Defoe
      
   4. Henry Fielding
      
   5. Samuel Richardson
      

Poems from the Romantic Era are popular among educators for their imaginative quality and for the invitation for close reading and interpretation that they offer. Many of the poems we list here make frequent appearances on Identification portions of the Subject Test, so you should take the time to familiarize yourself with them. The Romantic Era is usually said to cover roughly 1800 to 1830 or so, although the first major Romanticist, Blake, is a bit earlier. The period is characterized by a strong interest in nature, folk traditions, and the poetic rendering of interior, subjective emotions. There is also a strong undercurrent of political sentiment mainly pertaining to the French Revolution of 1792 and its aftershocks.

 

 

WILLIAM BLAKE

 

Blake is an extraordinary and unusual poet. His more complex works, such as
Milton
and
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
will most likely not be on the Subject Test, but you should take the time to look through his
Songs of Innocence and Experience
, paying special attention to “Tyger.” In his poem “Jerusalem,” Blake writes, “I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's,” a fitting epigram for his career. His writing is characterized by his deeply personal theology and his unique philosophy, which is fairly consistent throughout his works. He protested against conservative theology and promoted a radical interpretation of Christianity that emphasized Christ's radical stance on social issues and his rebellious nature, and believed in embracing sexuality as ennobling and uplifting.

 

 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

 

Wordsworth is probably the preeminent figure of this period. His
Lyrical Ballads
should be studied closely, particularly because of his interest in rural settings and simple people.
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
outlines the essential elements of Romantic poetry. ETS also likes to extract famous passages from his enormous epic
The Prelude
, in which he traces the development of his poetic sensibility. This work is much too long and complicated to read for the test, but in addition to looking over several shorter pieces in
Lyrical Ballads,
you should be sure to look at the following excerpts from
The Prelude
: in Book First, read the passage that begins “One summer evening” and describes a childhood adventure in a small boat; from Book Sixth, look at the passage that describes crossing the Alps and the stanzas immediately following that begin “Imagination-here the powers so called.” Finally, spend a little time skimming through most of Book Eighth, in which Wordsworth reviews his first 21 years as a way to understand his intellectual and emotional development.

 

 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

 

Coleridge, Wordsworth's close friend and sometime collaborator, is best known for his
Biographia Literaria
, a collection of his aesthetic principles and lectures on literature, and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” his mystical, allegorical poem of sin and redemption. Glance over a few sections of the
Biographia
just to get a sense of the tone and style—excerpts will often appear in identification sections. Read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and be able to identify its key symbols, particularly the albatross.

 

 

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

 

Byron has a strong style and a distinctive aesthetic charisma that will become familiar to you through consultation with a few key works.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
follows the course of the traveler Harold as he moves from a libertine existence of sin and pleasure to the revelations and realizations, both personal and universal, that he gains through his wanderings in Europe. Harold is important as an example of the “Byronic” hero, a figure characterized by contempt for conventional morality and a general sense of defiance coupled with a capacity for deep and strong emotional attachments.
Don Juan
, a very long, unfinished epic satire, is probably Byron's most famous work. Read excerpts in order to be able to recognize its form (ottava rima) and to familiarize yourself with the biting humor that saturates this work. Famous episodes include a shipwreck that leads to an incident of cannibalism, and the sale of the hero into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.

 

 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

 

Shelley's poetry is highly political and like many Romantic poets, deeply influenced by German philosophy. His great works include
Alastor, Prometheus Unbound
, and
The Triumph of Life.
Shelley's poetry is extremely dense and difficult to master in brief surveys. The best strategy is to look at excerpts from
Alastor
to familiarize yourself with his pithy verse style, and to read a few of his shorter pieces, including “The Cloud” and “To A Skylark.” For a taste of his political radicalism, see the brief, acerbic “England in 1819.”

 

 

JOHN KEATS

 

Keats' “Odes” have been widely influential and are perennial favorites with ETS for identification questions: “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on Melancholy,” and the most famous, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which includes the oft-quoted closing lines “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty' - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The poems are short and worth a careful examination.

 

 

MARY SHELLEY

 

Mary Shelley is best known for her gothic novel
Frankenstein
, which explores the Faustian theme of human inquiry that infringes on divine prerogatives. The novel is saturated with Romantic themes, particularly in its long descriptions of the Swiss Alps and surrounding countryside, and is rich in allusions, particularly to Milton's
Paradise Lost
. It is a short book and a good example of both certain forms of the Gothic novel and the Romantic sensibility, and worth reading in preparation for the Subject Test.

Drill Questions

• 1. The albatross is a major figure in which of the following Romantic poems?
  
  1. Coleridge's “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
     
  2. Byron's
     Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
     
  3. Shelley's “The Cloud”
     
  4. Keats' “Ode to a Nightingale”
     
  5. Blake's “Tyger”
     

  O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
  With forest branches and the trodden weed;
  Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
  As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
  When old age shall this generation waste,
  Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st
  “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
  

• 2. This stanza addresses
  
  1. men and maidens.
     
  2. Pastoral.
     
  3. youth.
     
  4. old age.
     
  5. a grecian urn.