its author? independent of situation and government, bliss centres in the mind. What effect had the success of the "Traveller" on What sort of work had G. always to undertake to make both ends meet? What was the chief characteristic feature in his nature? improvidence, carelessness and compassion. What was the consequence of his generosity and improvident habits? How old was he when he died? What does the charm of his style lie in? What must we still like his "Vicar of Wakefield" for? What sort of man is the vicar? gentle and hopeful: cheerful in the midst of a life of privations and misfortunes; generous, kind, and always ready to help people in need; a lover of humanity knowing and pardoning its frailties and follies. - Give the contents of the tale. By whom was Goldsmith's novel first announced to the world? What did Goethe call this simple life set in the midst of cornfields? Where did he imitate it? What is his opinion of the novel? quite moral and Christian without a trace of hypocrisy or pedantry. sane philosophy? What does he say of his Of Goldsmith's other works I want to mention "The Deserted Village", a humanitarian poem, in which the poet prophesies the downfall of a country that reckons its wealth in gold instead of in men. "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay." The poem refers to a rich stranger who has purchased a large tract of land round an Irish village, and in order to lay out his park, had removed and disloged many of the cottagers, some of whom departed to foreign lands. You remember that about the middle of the 18th century Ireland became poor and desolate as her trade had cruelly been suppressed by the English1). Further, I must mention his charming essays which prove our author a witty critic of his fellow-countrymen. As Montesquieu had written his "Lettres persanes", in which writers professing to be Persians said what they thought about French manners, Goldsmith wrote his "Chinese Letters", which described English life as seen by an Oriental. And lastly, I must mention his comedy, She Stoops to Conquer, which is still acted nowadays with great success. I saw it performed by 1) Scherping, Engl. Unterricht auf der Oberstufe. Elwert, Marburg a, L. 1926. S. 23 ff. Miss Horniman and her company1), well-known to London playgoers and found that this comedy with its Shakespearean humour proved to be still young and effective to healthyminded people. Summary: Oliver Goldsmith is still one of the most beloved of English writers. His literary fame rests on his unaffected and tender descriptions of rural and domestic life. After passing his boyhood in happy idleness at an Irish village, he studied at Dublin, where he took his degree of B. A. As he failed in his clerical examination, he tried for medicine at Edinburgh. Driven by a restless desire to see the great world, he travelled on foot through France, Switzerland, and Italy, supporting his life by playing the flute. Getting back to London in rags, he took up various callings, till at last he drifted into literature. His extravagant and careless way of living and his generosity, which kept him always in debt, compelled him to do much literary hackwork. As he was a great artist, he became the friend of the prominent men of his day and a favourite member of Dr. Johnson's celebrated literary club. Ruined by a feverish activity, he died at forty-five. Goldsmith's fame began with "The Traveller", a poem in Pope's manner, and his story of "The Vicar of Wakefield" made him a force in European literature. This simple story of a righteous Protestant country parson, whose domestic happiness is cruelly spoilt by a dissolute young squire and is at length restored by the latter's benevolent uncle, deeply impressed Goethe through its superior humour and grace which raise it above the narrow sphere of middle class life into the freer air of the world at large. Goethe imitated this "Prose-Idyll" in the setting he gave to the Friederike Episode. As a writer of comedies (She Stoops to Conquer) and essays on English life (The Chinese Letters) Goldsmith was also eminent. You had to sum up the passage from the Vicar of W., which is contained in Herrig Foerster. What does it describe? - A Country Parsonage. Read your summary, X. Dr. Primrose and his family were given a friendly reception by the farmers who still retained the primeval simplicity of manners. The parson's habitation was nicely situated amidst meadows and 1) "One speaks of a Circus troupe, but it is rather an indignified word for a reputable company of actors." fields. His house consisting of only one story contained three rooms besides the kitchen which served them for a parlour. Getting up at sunrise, they began work after the morning service, the parson and his son labouring in the fields, his wife and daughters employing themselves in the house. At sunset the family gathered round the dining-table. They were never without guests, who would taste their goose-berry wine and sing or talk with them after supper. On the first Sunday, seeing his wife and daughters trimmed up for church in all their former splendour, the parson reproved them for their vanity. They changed their dress, and, on the next day made their gowns into others of a plainer cut better fitting people who wanted the means of decency (korrigiert). What Lessing did for the reform of the drama was done for the development of the novel by Goldsmith choosing as its hero a simple village parson at a time when this honour was given only to kings or princes. I have told you that down to the middle of the 18th century the novel was under the spell of the influence of the gallantry of the French court at Versailles. The French novel of chivalry, I said, with its subject taken from antiquity and trimmed up with political satire, was imitated all over Europe. In England, for the first time, this tradition or fashion was put a stop to and the foundation laid for the modern novel, You remember, Daniel Defoe created the Novel of adventure (Reiseroman) by writing his Robinson Crusoe, Richardson wrote the first Novel of Sentimental Analysis in "Clarissa Harlowe", Sterne became the creator of the Humorous Novel, and Fielding was the first to write the Novel of Character, Oliver Goldsmith went his own way by composing the first domestic novel (Familienroman) in English literature. His Vicar of Wakefield had the charm of novelty or originality1), and it was the great merit of its author to have shown writers of fiction a new way, along which many have followed him. 1) The V. of W. is an epic of English country life, "and this fact is only an illustration of the profound truth that all the great epics of the world are local epics. From the Iliad to Don Quixote they were all generated in a small society, and took on their universality by virtue of the genius that enabled each of their authors to see a world in his particular grain of sand. It is almost possible to say that an epic needs for its creation the all-inclusive self-. consciousness of a small community". Times Lit. Suppl. No. 1, 321. IV. The Precursors of Romanticism. 1. James Thomson. 1. Stunde: In a former lesson I told you that Pope was the leader of the literary fashion until he died in 1744. Pope was, as you know, the chief representative poet of classicism in England. For his polished metre and wit he was surnamed the Prince of Rhyme. Pope's poetry was satire or reasoning in verse. His mock-heroic epic of The Rape of the Lock reflected the doings of the polite world, court and town life. The poets of the classicist school had no eye for Nature. But even when their power was at its height, a reaction set in against their mechanical perfection and epigrammatic ingenuity: skill. Though the age of George II. was essentially prosaic and highly artificial, it produced some true poets whose verse betrays pure and fervid imagination and sincere feeling, and is marked by love of beauty and love of nature. James Thomson, a Scotchman, stood at the head of these poets, who broke away from Pope, but who, as they were poets of a transition period, still used the affected classical style with its Latinisms and learned words and farfetched periphrasis: round-about way of putting it, which was then known as "poetic diction". Thomson, who while young had come up to London from Edinburgh, the romantic capital of the North, looked on nature with a lover's eye and described her varied beauties with a lover's passion. His fame rests on a great blank-verse poem, called The Seasons, which describes rural scenery and life in the different periods of the year. This poem, with its glowing descriptions of landscape, marks a new era in English poetry. It was the first that revealed the "Truth" of nature to people living in the town and liking only the pleasures of the town. Its "Spring" showed them daisied meadows, and they smelt the sweet odour of the blossoms without number. Its "Summer" made them feel all the sultry warmth and green luxuriance: profusion of growth, rich verdure of June in the landscape. Its "Autumn" conjured up harvest fields and orchards with their fruits hanging their heavy heads and embrowning in the sun. Its "Winter" made them see and hear the driving of snows as if the air around them was in confusion with their uproar. Behind the natural phenomena they were to realize a soul, a divine power whose efficiency had of late been discovered by Newton in the law of gravitation. I'll read to you the passage which describes a Sunrise in Summer: Sanftäugig glänzt, den nahen Tag verkündend, die weißen Wolken brechen. Schnelleren Schrittes blau durchs Gedämmer dampft und blinkt der Strom, der Damhirsch zieht und scheuen Blickes oft und strahlet ringsum aus des Tages Licht auf Felsen, Hügel, Türme und auf Ströme, du erstes, bestes aller Körperwesen, Du Gottheitsausfluß, strahlendes Gewand |