Skip to main content

Witten assignment Paper 102

 

  • Name : Anjali Madhavjibhai Rathod

  • Enrollment No. : 4069206420220024

  • Roll No. : 2

  • Batch : M.A. Sem. 1 (2022-24)

  • Subject Code & Paper No. :  22393 - Paper 102 - Literature of the Neoclassical Period  

  • Email Address : rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com

  • Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English - Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University - Bhavnagar - 364001

 

              

                 

             A detailed note on Samuel Richardson & Known as First Modern English Novelist

            

                                            

 

                        Samuel Richardson was born on  Aug. 19, 1689, Mackworth, near Derby, Derbyshire, England. And died on July 4, 1761, Parson’s Green, near London), English novelist who expanded the dramatic possibilities of the novel by his invention and use of the letter form (“epistolary novel”). His major novels were Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747–48).


                Richardson was 50 years old when he wrote Pamela, but of his first 50 years little is known. His ancestors were of yeoman stock. His father, also Samuel, and his mother’s father, Stephen Hall, became London tradesmen, and his father, after the death of his first wife, married Stephen’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1682.

               

                Richardson was the son of a joiner. As a son Samuel did not get sound education but he had been gifted with  talent. For example, writing letters. Thus, he was very much popular among working girls as he used to write love letters for them . This practice gave him the knowledge of understanding uneducated but sentimental ladies which helped him a lot in his journey of writing.


                         Samuel Richardson is important because he invented the epistolary novel. Richardson's works influenced 19th century English novelists like Jane Austen and other authors who used the English gentry as their subjects. His first epistolary novel, Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded is considered by some to be the first English novel. 


                    Though not educated well, Richardson was a hardworking boy and established himself at a particular height in his profession and became a master-printer and printer to the king also. He continued his occupation till his death. Apart from it, he had a deep sense of observation of mannears that expressed in his works so tactbully that the redders are automatically attracted towards his works.


  •  His Life  

         

         In his professional life Richardson was hardworking and successful. With the growth in prominence of his press went his steady increase in prestige as a member, an officer, and later master, of the Stationers’ Company (the guild for those in the book trade).

               During the 1730s his press became known as one of the three best in London, and with prosperity he moved to a more spacious London house and leased the first of three country houses in which he entertained a circle of friends that included Dr. Johnson, the painter William Hogarth, the actors Colley Cibber and David Garrick, Edward Young, and Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, whose influence in 1733 helped to secure for Richardson lucrative contracts for government printing that later included the journals of the House.(Britannica) 


                  The author resolved the conflicts of both characters too easily, perhaps, because he was firmly committed to the plot of the true story he had remembered. When the instantaneous popularity of Pamela led to a spurious continuation of her story, he wrote his own sequel, Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1742), a two-volume work that did little to enhance his reputation.


                 

  •  His literary Works   

            As a writer, Richardson started his literary journey with a series of ‘Familiar Letters’. He decided to tell the story of a girl’s inner life in the midst of English neighbours. This approach marked an epoch in the history of English literature.


                       As a modern novelist, Richardson has certainly contributed concrete literature. At the age of thirteen he started writing practice through love letters that ultimately led him towards the writing of novels. 


                                       

                Richardson's best-known works are:

  • Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). A wild commercial success, this first epistolary novel tells the redemptive story of a housemaid who maintains her virtue and is rewarded by her successful marriage to a wealthy man who becomes virtuous following her lead.

  • Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1742). This sequel received negative reviews from critics and praise from readers. It pursues similar themes as the first novel as it follows the life of the now-married Pamela.

  • Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (published in volumes, 1747–48). This novel paints a more complex picture of its characters. Using correspondence between the main characters and their confidants, Clarissa gives the reader a deeper view into character motivation as the characters navigate lust, romance, and the prospect of marriage.

  • The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). Written in response to calls for a moral and upstanding male protagonist, in contrast to the villains of Pamela and Clarissa, this novel tells the story of a heroic protagonist who rescues a woman in distress.

                      His works, long and often didactic, do not possess the timelessness of such novelists as Sterne or Defoe. Nonetheless, Richardson is one of the most important authors of his period; his influence on subsequent novelists such as Jane Austen was immense, and virtually no author of fiction in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century could escape Richardson's lengthy shadow.



        * As a novelist , Richardson’s novels carry certain outstanding features which are as here:


  • Moral or Didactic  Purpose


                             Richardson emphasizes on moral purpose. He always focuses on utilitarian virtues which result in material  prosperity. Richardson’s novels have moral purposes. These are didactic and serious and imply the contrast between virtue and villainy, between innocence and incest, between love and lust. For example, Pamela’s Marriage , her struggle and ultimately her reward. 


                      He manipulates the moral ideals through these contrasting features in human nature and behaviour. The excessive ethical views and tragic bearing have rather sentimental effects.  But this sort of sentimentality was the fashion of the time.


  •  Psychological study   

         

             The most remarkable characteristic of Richardson’s novel is his art of psychological study. He is a master of understanding women's hearts, his psychological study of human motives and feelings are rare to observe in other writers. He portrays the lower middle class with great observation.  He has great art to use psychology in his novels. 

       

                                         

  • Epistolary Method

                             

                           Epistolary format is part of Richardson's revolutionary contribution to the development of the novel in English, for the first-person narration of events, in nearly real-time, allows the novelist to explore, quite naturally, the depths and nuances of his character’s psyche. 


                       Richardson’s novels are very long because of its epistolary method and series of letters. Their plot is  mostly simple and growly developed. Thus, it seems that the novels have no shape. Richardson's greatest contribution was his introduction of character insight to the novel. Richardson introduced "the deliberate and detailed analysis of conduct, motive, action and reaction which was essential for further progress".

                 

               An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used.

 

  • Art of Characterization


                           Another remarkable characteristic of Richardson’s novel is his Art of Characterization.  The greatness of Richardson’s is related to his characterization. We know that the success of any writer depends upon his characters. Richardson’s characters are full of life, not like a puppet show.  His master of understanding women's hearts, his psychological study of human motives and feelings are rare to observe in other writers. He portrays the lower middle class with great observation. 

         

                          

                           

  • Unique Sentimental  appeal


                             Richardson was sensitive to the criticism and ridicule, and it influenced his many revisions of the novel. In particular, in subsequent editions of the novel he elevates Pamela’s style of writing and speaking, progressively eliminating rusticisms, regionalisms, and other markers of her lower-class status.


                     The appeal of Richardson’s novels is certainly sentimental to the heart. His style is simple but serves the purpose. It may be his limit. Hence, his purpose of writing novels was to inculcate virtue and good deeds. He has given something unique to the literary world. Hence, his purpose of writing novels was to instruct virtue and good department. 

                  

  •       Styles and Themes of Samuel Richardson

         

            Samuel Richardson wrote his novels using the epistolary novel style, in which all the books are made up of letters. These letters are meant to be written during the time that the stories take place by the main character. They either described a scene or dialogue within the scene. The stories used the themes of female dominance over the emotions of a man, and male dominance over the physicality of a woman. Also, many women in his stories are put under a great amount of distress, which takes up most of the plot of the novel .

          

                               Richardson was an apprentice to a London printer, John Wilde. Sometime after completing his apprenticeship he became associated with the Leakes, a printing family whose presses he eventually took over when he set up in business for himself in 1721 and married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his master. Elizabeth Leake, the sister of a prosperous bookseller of Bath, became his second wife in 1733, two years after Martha’s death. 

                 

                His domestic life was marked by tragedy. All six of the children from his first marriage died in infancy or childhood. By his second wife he had four daughters who survived him, but two other children died in infancy. These and other bereavements contributed to the nervous ailments of his later life.

                                                      

 To Sum Up


         We can Say that Richardson is the father of English Novels. He has given a very remarkable contribution to English Novels.   Richardson who had disciples when he died. Some of them show the influence of Clarissa, which seems to have been most responsible for the cult of Richardson that arose on the European continent. It was Grandison, however, that set the tone of most of Richardson’s English followers and for Jane Austen, who was said to have remembered “every circumstance” in this novel, everything “that was ever said or done.” 


                       By the end of the 18th century, Richardson’s reputation was on the wane both in England and abroad. However, it was reborn in the late 20th century, when Clarissa was rediscovered as one of the great psychological novels of European literature.  


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting for Godot

             Thinking Activity       Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett       Hello! Here I am going to write another blog. The blog spot is about Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. This Blog is also a part of Thinking Activity. This task was assigned by Dr. Dilip Bard sir , Dept of English, MK, Bhavnagar University.  In this Particular blog, I will try to explain some questions regarding the play, Waiting for Godot. In this Particular blog I am going to share my understanding of the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.                                          Waiting For Godot :                            "Waiting for Godot" is a play by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in 1952 and is often considered a masterpiece of 20th-century theatre. The play is a tragic-comedy in two acts, that follows two characters, Vladimir(Didi) and Estragon(Gogo) , as they wait endlessly for the arrival of a character named Godot, who never appears.

Thinking Activity on 'The Rape of the Lock'

  Thinking activity                 The Rape Of  the Lock                                 By                                              Alexander Pope         This Blogspot is in response to the thinking activity on ‘ The Rape of the Lock’. This thinking activity task is assigned by Vaidehi Ma'am. I am going to write down a BlogSpot on Alexander pope's mock heroic poem , " The Rape of the lock. "                                                                                   ‘The Rape of the Lock’         ‘The Rape of the Lock’ written by a well known writer and Critic Alexander Pope, who was born in London, England. ‘The Rape of the Lock’ is a mock heroic narrative poem. The first version of this poem  published in 1712 , it has only two cantos. In this version the Alexander Pope chiefly emphasizes the quarrel between Belinda and The Baron. The second version of this poem was published in 1714 , It has five Cantos in this poem. In this Poem  Alexander Pope used

Petals of Blood by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

  Petals of Blood                by           Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Hello Readers! This blog is a part of Thinking Activity. It was assigned by Megha Ma'am, Department of English, MKBU. In this blog I am going to write about some of the ideas about Petals of Blood by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.                                                Author : Ngugi Wa Thiong’o   Ngugi wa Thiong'o was a famous writer from Kenya. He was born on January 5, 1938, in Limuru, Kenya. He wrote many important books, and one of his most famous ones is called "Weep Not, Child," which came out in 1964. It was a big deal because it was the first important novel in English written by someone from East Africa. As Ngugi learned more about how colonialism affected Africa, he became more aware and changed his name to his traditional one. He also started writing in the language of the Kikuyu people, who are from Kenya. Ngugi wa Thiong'o was a well known writer from Kenya who wrote important books and made