 Hello dear learners, welcome to today's program. I am Dr. Pallavi Guwai of Krishna Kanta Handic State Open University. Today, I shall take up a unit from the program of MA English Semester 1 course titled English, Social and Cultural History, Block 3 Literature, Medieval to Neoclassical. The name of the unit is The Neoclassical Age, Intellectual Context. First, I shall begin with a table of content starting with the learning objectives, introduction, intellectual context, questions to check your progress and the references. Coming to the learning objectives, after going through this unit, you will be able to discuss the general tendencies of the Neoclassical Age and also you will be able to explain the intellectual context of the Neoclassical Age. To provide you a brief introduction, the Neoclassical Age in England spans the 140 years or so after the restoration, others in 1660. Historians have often tried to define the term Neoclassicism, as though it denoted a single essential feature which was shared by all the major writings of the age to varying degrees. However, the course of literary events during the age and the varied definitions of Neoclassicism that are available are either to vague or to specific in addressing the great range and variety of this literary phenomena. A useful way that one can adopt is to specify the salient attributes of literary theory and practice used and shared by a number of important Neoclassical writers which also serve to distinguish them from many outstanding writers of the Romantic period. To provide you a brief idea in the intellectual context of the age, the term Neoclassical refers to following the literary traditions of the great authors of antiquity, notably the poets and dramatists as a matter of aesthetic principle. It also refers to the acceptance of the critical precepts that emerged to guide such imitation during later times. Medieval writers often used classical works for models. However, it was Petra in the 14th century who was the first to do so as he considered it the only way to produce great literature. Literary genres like epic, eclog, elegy, ode, satire, tragedy, comedy, epigram, etc. of ancient times started becoming extensively popular. At the beginning of the 16th century, the recovery of the previously ignored Aristotle's poetics led to an attempt in establishing rules for the use of the ancient genres. The Italian theoretician Ludvico Castellvetro and French scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger imprisoned the notion of imitation with a rigid framework of rules following which the flexibility of ancient practice offered little precedent. The most famous of their inventions was the observance of the traumatic unities of time, place and action that won great support in France where a new generation of playwrights in the 1620s and 1630s were eager to attract a more educated public. Up to the last quarter of the 17th century, new classicism had little influence in England. The imitation of classical models was less common then on the continent and except for Dr. Samuel Johnson, none of the painter writers paid strict attention to the rules that the humanist critics had formulated. John Dryden produced Awful Love and Joseph Addison His Keto which has been called the only correct new classical tragedy in English. However, the trend was somewhat seen as absolute or outdated. The usual excuse with regard to the rules was that they helped writers to be true to nature. Alexander Pope famously wrote, quote-unquote, those rules of old discovered not devised are nature still but nature methodised. Implicit in his view was the assumption that nature consisted in what was generally true. However, this assumption advanced first by Scheliger and echoed by Johnson later had never commanded unquestioning support. What was natural came to be seen as no longer an absolute but as historically conditioned. You should note that the changing views of the goal of literary creation provided by Bueleu's translation of 1674 of Longinus's Tritais titled On the Sublime, a very important work, finally undermined new classicism most decisively in the context of the 18th century. It is interesting to note that the cult of sublimity which is mostly seen as the preference of the greatness of emotion finally replaced the wish to produce a just representation of general reality. This tendency also marks the beginning of romanticism. Here are the questions to check your progress. Starting with question number one, how have historians defined the new classical age? Question number two, what does the term new classicism refer to? Question number three, which work of John Dryden was considered the only correct new classical tragedy in English? Question number four, name the famous Tritais that had undermined new classicism in the context of the 18th century. And question number five, what is considered to have marked the beginnings of the romantic age? You are advised to go through the reference to the SLM, a main English semester one titled English Social and Cultural History. Thank you, dear learners.