Introduction

Of all the periods of literary history, the one that spans the years 1660 to 1800 is most commonly identified with the classical tradition. The chief literary movement in France at this time is termed ‘‘classicism’’ and its English cousin ‘‘neoclassicism’’ - and with good reason. The writers of the age consciously adopted the genres and conventions of ancient literature and applied ideas and techniques derived from the classics to their own literary practice. These authors, though, were not simple, backward-looking admirers of ancient glory; they were in fact intent on creating the most compelling works of art in the most up-to-date style. Paradoxical though it may seem, to learn from the past and to renovate its forms was for these artists the height of sophistication; indeed, the neoclassical style was the true modern style.

The development of neoclassicism was a gradual process that can be traced back to early seventeenth-century France. Francois de Malherbe, disapproving of various kinds of Renaissance exuberance, sought to ‘‘reform’’ French verse by tightening its structure. There was in fact nothing inherently ‘‘classical’’ in Malherbe’s reforms, but by mid-century they had become established guides to poetic technique, and the disciples of Malherbe had come to see in them a parallel to the refined poetic style that Vergil and Horace had introduced in the age of Augustus.

The parallel was not wholly without basis. In his satires and epistles, Horace had offered a desultory history of Roman literature. The early Italians, he tells us, had written a primitive sort of verse, the Saturnian (Epistles 2.1.158). Then Ennius introduced Greek prosody, and the long road towards literary sophistication began. Progress, though, was slow. Lucilius’ verse was muddy (Satires 1.4.7-13), and Plautus was inelegant and crude (Ars poetica 270-4). It was not until the modern age (the age of Augustus) that Roman poetry achieved perfection of form. This version of literary history, clearly tendentious and often unfair, is the founding myth of neoclassicism. French and English authors of the late seventeenth century

Used it as a template to redraw the histories of their own national literatures. In L’Art poetique (The art of poetry, 1674) Nicolas Boileau tells a similar story: Villon and Marot had established the basic verse forms; Ronsard then tried to bring order to art, but through pride and pedantry had failed. Finally Malherbe came (‘‘Enfin Malherbe vint,’’ line 131) to teach Frenchmen how to write. A tour of Dryden’s criticism finds the same myth of literary progress being worked out on English soil. In the Defence of the Epilogue to the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada (1672), Dryden surveys the playwrights of the previous age, including Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and finds them wanting. Like Horace’s Plautus, they were brilliant but crude. The current age, Dryden argues, demands a new literature befitting its greater refinement.

In all three versions of this story, literary progress is directly tied to a certain kind of societal progress, a move away from the crudity of earlier times and towards refinement and sophistication. Such a movement had been under way in aristocratic circles in France throughout the seventeenth century, beginning in the precieux culture of the Parisian salons and culminating in the elegance and splendor of the court of Louis XIV. Charles II had spent the Interregnum in France and brought back to England many of the same prejudices that had characterized French society; and although the English still boasted of their greater native vigor, they nevertheless emulated the elegance of their French neighbors. Neither court, it bears saying, displayed an exemplary level of morals, but in manners each appeared to surpass its predecessors. The poets flattered both Louis and Charles as the new Augustus, and they began to wonder aloud whether they were not living in a new Augustan age. In England, the literature resulting from this interplay between aesthetic and social forces came to be called ‘‘polite letters’’ - a polished form of writing that appealed to a cultured and discriminating audience - and it is by this name that neoclassicism was known in its own day. (To a later age of critics, the movement was often called ‘‘Augustanism.’’)

Finally, by the middle of the seventeenth century, a consensus had formed among French authors concerning a true ‘‘classical’’ style. The principles of this new doctrine were on the whole derived from Aristotle and Horace, but they showed the influence of Malherbe as well. The new style was one of restraint and careful craftsmanship; it relied on the imagination, but kept it under tight rein. Exuberance was its enemy. And since the seventeenth century was a century of intellectual systems, critics like Rene Rapin and Dominic Bouhours reduced classical theory to a coherent set of principles.