Epic Tradition in Restoration and 18th-Century Literature
The Epic Tradition in Restoration and 18th-Century Literature
The aim of this essay is to identify and relate the epic elements found in 18th-century literary production and the Restoration period.
During the Restoration, the literary ideal was characterized by an effort to bring a new refinement to English literature according to sound critical principles of what is fitting and right, with a strong sense of decorum. There was a huge influence from the classics. The ideal in literature was that of elegant simplicity expressive of a new restraint, clarity, regularity, and good sense. There was a preference for using the heroic couplet and blank verse. Also, classical figures such as Ovid, Horace, and Virgil were once again present in literature, as were classical genres such as tragedy, comedy, pastoral, satire, ode, and, finally, epic.
As an illustration, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667-1674) exhibits traits of the epic tradition. Milton wanted to follow the Aeneid structure because he wanted to create an epic poem, which was a more convenient vision. The poem was written in the context of the Restoration and the rise of Charles II. Milton, a republican, was trying to make people think about the need to decide, characterizing the royals as bad people. Milton consciously places himself in the tradition of prior epic writers: the ancients Homer and Virgil and the Medieval and Renaissance poets Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, and Spenser. By doing this, he raises specific sets of expectations both for himself and for readers.
Formally, Paradise Lost contains many classical and Renaissance epic conceits: it begins in medias res. Milton places Satan at the very beginning of the poem. It concerns heavenly and earthly beings and the interactions between them. It uses conventions such as epic similes, catalogues of people and places, and invocations to a muse. It contains themes common to epics, such as war, nationalism, empire, and stories of origin. He takes all that from the conventional epic poem and transfers them onto the biblical context.
However, Milton also introduces certain variations to the epic form. Unlike classics such as the Iliad and the Aeneid, Paradise Lost has no easily identified hero. With regard to the content of the work, from line 1 to line 26 of book 1, Milton introduces the theme (the disobedience and sin of Adam and Eve) and invokes his muse, identified as the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, line 19 shows him praising his muse to fill his mind with divine knowledge so that he can share his knowledge with his readers. In line 23 we see how he urges his muse (the Holy Spirit) to guide him along the way without error or disrespect. Thus, it can be said that Milton is in a way trying to resemble the procedure carried out by the classics.
As a matter of fact, the epic was once again to some extent reflected in a number of works by different authors. However, the use of epic was different, as it had a different tone from traditional epic. A clear example of this is Alexander Pope, who in his works, one of the main ones being The Rape of the Lock, contains the most characteristic traits of 18th-century English literature. It’s inspired by classical models but in a satirical way, being one of the representatives of the mock-epic tradition (it deflates the epic themes, the Baron; uses an unusual divine apparatus, divine machinery; and uses epic formulas and grandiose language to speak of ordinary events). The poem abounds in parodies and echoes of the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost. The familiar devices of epic are observed, but the incidents or characters are proportioned to the scale of mock epic. The Rape of the Lock tells of war, but it is the drawing-room war between the sexes; it has its heroes and heroines, but they are beaux and belles; it has its supernatural characters (“machinery”) but they are Sylphs or the Gnome Umbriel; it has its epic game, played on the “velvet plain” of the card table, its feasting heroes, who sip coffee and gossip, its battle, fought with the clichés of compliment and conceits, with frown and angry glances; it has the traditional epic journey to the underworld – here the Cave of Spleen. However, these are not the only epic elements observed in this poem. First, in Canto I, lines 1-12, the speaker begins the poem with an invocation to the gods and muses: “Muse!” (line 3, Canto I). This was very common in the classical world, since the Greeks considered poets to be divinely inspired beings. The most important element we need to have in mind is thinking about what Pope is doing in this poem is using a series of mock epic strategies, basically he is creating a kind of a disconnection between the epic form that is meant to describe heroic deeds, he uses that form to speak to the trivial matter.
For instance, in Canto III, it is possible to observe the way Pope creates scenes that evoke the Iliad, thus relating the battles that appear in the Iliad to the Ombre card game played by Belinda and the Baron. Thus, lines 37-44 present the king’s cards as if they were the commanders of armies such as the Greeks and Trojans; lines 46-64 recount the exploits of the ace of spades and the two of spades (“Spadillio” and “Manillio”) as if they were Hector and Achilles; and the remaining lines recount the tricks taken as if the cards were soldiers killed and wounded in battle.
Finally, Henry Fielding’s adaptation of epic themes into his work is remarkable. In Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) he describes Joseph Andrews as a parody of Pamela but also in epic terms because the title of the novel is: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams. We can observe new themes and concepts that make it a highly experimental novel. First, Fielding describes his novel as a comic epic poem in prose. Normally, in an epic poem, a number of almost fixed elements stand out: a hero, a great theme, a journey to the underworld, wars, seriousness, and a moral lesson. In this comic epic, however, what we find is an ordinary hero, a journey from one place to another, digressions in the form of three interpolated tales (Lenora’s, Wilson’s, and Leonard and Paul’s stories), mock wars, humor, and a lofty moral. Thus, in Henry Fielding we see another kind of adaptation of the epic that can also be seen in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605) and the place where we can find the influence of Don Quixote is in his use of Interpolated tales.
In conclusion, the influence of the epic tradition on literature has been vital to its development. Nevertheless, it has been proven that there has been a transformation in the way authors treat epic; each of them includes a type of variation, and this is what characterizes the epic tradition of Restoration and 18th-century literature and differentiates it from the kind of epic found in previous periods.