Literature 95

THE CHARACTER OF FRANCIS BACON Long is of the view that, in Bacon we see; “One of those complex and contradictory natures which are the despair of the biographer” Bacon had a dual personality. He was mental giant but a moral dwarf. It was this very complexity of Bacon’s character which pope stressed in his usual neat, epigrammatic manner, when he wrote, “If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, The Wisest, Brightest, Meanest of mankind” The facts of Bacon’s life amply bear out that he was the brightest of mankind. Though he was born with the silver spoon in his mouth, he was left unprovided and friendless at the threshold of his career. His father died and there was no one to help him to get settled in life. In those days of intrigues and cunning party politics, nobody could hope to make his mark unless he enjoyed the patronage of the influential. Despite such handicaps, Bacon’s rise to eminence was meteoric. As a lawyer he became immediately successful. His knowledge of

Bacon's Prose style Francis Bacon is generally recognized as the first great writer of English philosophy although he had no great respect for the English language. It is a known fact that Bacon is influenced by Montaigne. Bacon’s style is most remarkable for its terseness. Bacon displays a great talent for condensation. Every sentence in his essays is pregnant with meaning and is capable of being expanded into several sentences. Many of his sentences appear to be proverbial sayings or apophthegms by virtue of their gems of thoughts expressed in a pithy manner. He can say that most in the fewest words. His essays combine wisdom in thought with extreme brevity. The short, pithy sayings in his essays have become popular mottoes and household expressions. An aphoristic style means a compact, condensed and epigrammatic style of writing. An aphorism is a short sentence expressing a truth in the fewest possible words. An aphorism is like a proverb which has a quotable quality. Bacon

NINETEENTH CENTURY PROSE ROMANTIC PROSE Poetry dominated the literary scene of the first half of 19 th  century more popularly known as the Romantic period. Due to the presence of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats the literary limelight was focussed on poetry. Jane Austen and Walter Scott were the prominent names in Novel. Hence prose was at the third rank in the stature of literary popularity. However the prose of this period was no mean genre and we have essayists like Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt enlarging the horizon of English literature through their contributions. Apart from these two we have Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Shelley and Keats also writing some substantial prose works. It is a fact that the age did not produce a pamphleteer of the first rank but the productivity of the age is marked in the immense productivity of the political writers. Apart from a steep rise in periodicals the age witnessed the beginning of daily journals which ar

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PROSE THE FIRST HALF OF THE 18 TH  CENTURY The 18 th  Century was doubtlessly an age of great prose. Matthew Arnold calls it a century of prose and suggests that even the poetry of the period was prosaic or versified prose. The period has only one great poet Alexander Pope while it produced prose writers of very high quality like Addison, Steele, Swift, Defoe and Johnson. Daniel Defoe (1659-1731) was a journalist and pamphleteer who wrote with extra ordinary felicity and effect on an infinite variety of subjects. His prose work is in amazing bulk and variety. Like most of the prose writers of the period Defoe turned out a mass of political tracts and pamphlets. He issued his own journal  The Review  in 1704 which was in several ways the forerunner of  The Tatler  and  The Spectator . His best known work was  The True Born Englishman  (1701). His  The Shortest Way with the Dissenters  (1702) invited official wrath. His novels like  Robinson Crusoe

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PROSE The development of English prose in the 17 th  century can be divided into two periods:  1) prose in the age of  Milton   2) prose during Restoration. During the mid 17 th  century or rather the Age of Milton th e development of prose carried on from the previous age. In spite of the hampering effects of the civil strife, the prose output was copious and excellent in kind. There was a notable advance in the sermon writing; pamphlets were abundant; and history, politics, philosophy and miscellaneous kinds were well represented. There was a remarkable advance in prose style. The prose of this age was cultivated in a style very different from the Elizabethan and Sixteenth century prose. The prose writers used a grand style which Bacon and Hooker never anticipated. It was loose in structure, over coloured, elaborate and way ward. The writers indulged too freely in the use of Latinised words of classical construction. Despite some drawbac

SIXTEENTH CENTURY/ELIZABETHAN PROSE The Elizabethan Age has well been called as a young age. It was full of boundless vigour, reawakened intellectual esteem and soaring imagination. The best of the age is found in drama and next in poetry. As prose, unlike verse, does not admit any substantial restriction hence Elizabethan prose developed substantially. For the first time prose had risen to a position of first rate importance. The dead weight of the Latin tradition was passing away and English prose was acquiring a tradition and a universal application. During the 15 th  century Latin dominated as the medium of expression while English came to its own in the 16 th  century. With the arrival of mass printing, English prose became the popular medium for works aiming both at amusement and instruction. The books which date from this period covered many departments of learning. The early Elizabethan use of prose was rich, gaudy and overflowing. It is far from commonly accepted pr