For a long time, my favourite century has been the 19th century. British novels were glorious: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Vanity Fair, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Wilkie Collins, the Sherlock Holmes stories, etc. Romantic and Victorian poetry had many great names: John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, John Clare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, etc.
Russian literature had its Golden
Age in the 19th century: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev,
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Leskov, Chekhov, etc. (the only one here I haven’t read
is Pushkin—humiliating, I know).
American literature didn’t peak
till the 20th century—I think you would agree—but Moby Dick is one
of my favourite novels.
As for French literature, I haven’t
read much—two Flaubert novels, one Balzac, one Zola—but they had those three
novelists, plus Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, Jules Verne, George
Sand, Guy de Maupassant…
Vietnam’s most important literary
work, Truyện Kiều, is also from the 19th century.
When I first got into serious
literature, in my teens, many of my favourite writers were from the 20th
century—Kafka, Nabokov, Salinger, Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Marquez, and so on—but
over the years, the writers who have had lasting impact and come to mean the
most to me are mostly 19th century British and Russian writers. It
feels like my period, so to speak.
Most of my favourite painters, as
it happens, are also from the 19th century: Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne,
William Turner, John Singer Sargent, etc.
Anyway, today I was at the National
Gallery in London again—this year is the 200th anniversary of the
gallery—and on my way to the Rembrandt paintings, I found myself in the room of
the Spanish Golden Age—so far something of indifference but now a subject of
interest, thanks to Don Quixote. And then I thought, how glorious the 17th
century was! English theatre at the turn of the 17th century was
largely defined by Shakespeare, but there were also John Webster, Ben Jonson,
Beaumont and Fletcher, etc. English poetry at this time had John Milton, John
Donne, George Herbert, John Dryden, etc. Francis Bacon and Samuel Pepys are two
other important figures, and The Pilgrim’s Progress is also from the 17th
century, which I recently discovered had been translated into even more languages
than The Communist Manifesto, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Don
Quixote.
The 17th century was also a magnificent
period in Spain, part of the Golden Age: especially with Cervantes in literature,
creating “the first modern novel”; Lope de Vega and Calderón in theatre; Velázquez, Zurbarán,
and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in painting, etc. Apparently it was also a great
period for Spanish sculpture, architecture, and music, though I don’t know much
about these.
The same century was the Golden
Age for Dutch painting—my favourites are Rembrandt and Vermeer—they also had
Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Aert de Gelder, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Ambrosius
Bosschaert, Willem van Aelst, Jan Weenix, etc. Flemish art had Peter Paul
Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, etc.
What else? 17th
century in France was called Grand Siècle, though I’m a pleb—I only know about Molière,
Racine, Madame de La Fayette, and Descartes. Italy had Bernini and Caravaggio (I saw “The Last Caravaggio” exhibition at the National Gallery
today). Japan had Basho and Chikamatsu Monzaemon. What else did I miss?
The 17th century increasingly
fascinates me, especially now that I’m a fan of Shakespeare and Cervantes.
What are your favourite centuries? And why?
Update: My friend Himadri's blog post in response.
The only contender I can even think of is 5th century BCE. The great classical tragedians, Aristophanes, the architecture, sculptors like Phidias.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about that period. Nor anything before the 17th century, to be fair, except the Heian period in Japan.
DeleteProbably still the 19th century for me, both music and literature. But I absolutely love the 18th century for music too, and yes, the 16th-17th century because they have Shakespeare, and also because of the gorgeous Renaissance polyphony in music.
ReplyDeleteYeah, my favourite is still the 19th century.
DeleteIt helps that there are also lots of films and series about that time too. Not many about the 17th century, I think?
Yes, this is how people become medievalists or early modernists or what have you. A glorious artistic century, the 17th, for the English and French and Spanish and Dutch. The English were even still making good music. Bad times for central and eastern Europe (Thirty Years' War).
ReplyDeleteThe French century is even more amazing given that its great burst of energy was only twenty years long. Note that in the post after that one I write about the 17th century French literature no one reads any more.
Very much worth reading deeply in the century's literature, I can testify to that.
The prose fiction of Ihara Saikaku would be a good addition to the Japanese list.
20 years? Amazing.
DeleteOh yeah, "the floating world". I'm going to have to read him at some point, when I return to Japanese literature, I guess.
We live in the wake of the long 19th century (Fr. Rev.-WWI) and I consider it a golden age in literature, music, and the visual arts, but arguably more diverse in styles than previous golden ages. In addition to British and Russian literature, I have recently been enjoying Iberian literature of the era: Emilia Pardo Bazán, "The House of Ulloa"; Benito Pérez Galdós, "Tristana"; and, Jose Maria Eça de Queiróz, "The Illustrious House of Ramires" and "The City and the Mountains" (with "The Maias" on the shelf).
ReplyDeleteRob
Yeah, I have to expand my 19th century reading to other countries.
DeleteFavourite? Probably have to say the 18th, even while I recognize the 17th is greater. Along with all the writers & artists you mention, we can throw into the 17th Moliere & the philosophers Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, & if we have to, Locke, as well as Restoration Comedy, for what it's worth, & most of the Metaphysical & Cavalier poets, including some of Donne, & Marvell & Rochester. And of course separate from these, Milton & I think most of Dryden. So yeah.
ReplyDeleteBut the 18th C has its high points too, particularly when it comes to non-fictional English prose. There's the greatest biography (Boswell), the greatest history (Gibbon), the greatest oratory (Burke), the greatest essays (Johnson), the greatest satire (Swift), as well as the greatest philosopher (Hume) & the founder of modern economics (Smith). There are some of the finest novels - Tom Jones, Moll Flanders, Gulliver, Clarissa, early Jane Austen - & in poetry, one of the very finest in Pope, along with much of Blake & the early works of Wordsworth & Coleridge, including The Ancient Mariner.
Moving outside the British Isles you've got Voltaire, Diderot, and co - not to mention Les Liaisons Dangereuses - in France & Goethe & Schiller & Lessing in Germany, Franklin in America, and in music, Bach & Mozart, for starters, as well as Immanuel Kant, widely regarded as the most important modern philosopher, as well as Leibnitz, who isn't far behind & is rather more readable. I know nothing about art, but I do love what I've seen of both Goya & Canaletto (bizarre combination I know), & they were both active in the 18th.
Objectively, I have to admit the 18th C is way behind the 17th in drama & poetry & way behind the 19th in fiction, but in non-fiction prose, particularly in English, it's hard to find a better period.
I've just realised you'd already mentioned half those 17th-Century people. 🤦♂️
ReplyDeleteOld man, lol.
ReplyDeleteThose are very good arguments for the 18th century, because I was saying to HImadri and a few other friends that the 17th and 19th centuries seemed more interesting than the 18th.
19th century beats out the 18th by a hair. (Though I remember something that Randall Jarrell said - "Soon we will know everything that the 18th century didn't know, and nothing that it did, and it will go very hard with us."
ReplyDeleteHaha I've barely read anything from the 18th century.
DeleteMy favourite 18th century novel is a Chinese one.
I love the great 18th century English picaresque writers - Fielding and Smollett. You like Don Quixote so much, you should give them a try. They worshipped Cervantes and you see his influence in everything they wrote.
DeleteThe French had a strong Cervantean strain, too, visible in Voltaire and Diderot.
DeleteWhat about The Female Quixote? That one is also 18th century.
DeleteThe Female Quixote is really quite good. Unjustly neglected, I think. Presages Jane Austen in many ways.
ReplyDeleteI think the 18th Century suffers a bit in that its main strength, non-fictional prose, is considered "inaccessible". I mean, for example, and even I as an 18th-Century aficionado have only read ABOUT it, rather than actually reading it, but that Encyclopedia thing mainly written by Diderot and Condorcet I think - by all accounts that is a monumental achievement, and must surely be one of the greatest works of prose ever produced. But does ANYBODY read it now? I understand much of the factual content will have long been superseded, but I wonder if that blinds people to the quality of the writing and argumentation, which I would guess is of permanent value. But perhaps I have to read some of it first.
I forgot Rousseau, by the way. Also 18th Century. A colossal bell-end, but a very fine writer and supremely influential. Arguably the single biggest influence on Romanticism. I'd also put in a word for Caleb Williams by William Godwin. Not often talked about, but one of the greatest English novels, I would say. Oh, and the philosopher Bishop Berkeley. By some distance the third in importance of the 3 great British empiricists, after Hume and Locke, but in terms of prose style he's superior to Hume and right up there with Hobbes.
I guess another knock against the 18th Century - I'm just throwing out random thoughts here - is the confidence many of its writers seem to have in their own world-view. Today I think we tend to believe doubts are a necessary condition for complexity or subtlety. Well maybe they are, but conquering your doubts, 18th-C-style, doesn't mean you never had them.
I think the thing is that when people think about the arts, they generally don't think about non-fiction writings.
DeleteTrue. I wonder if that's because so few people are classically trained these days. The great prose writers of the ancient "Western" world were Plato, Cicero, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Tacitus, Aristotle, et al - every single one of them non-fiction. I suspect the same is true of China, India, Persia, and for example the authors of the Bible, which might not be TRUE - I mean, hell, a lot of Plato, Aristotle, and Herodotus isn't "true" - but isn't, exactly, fiction.
DeleteAristotle is maybe a bit of a cheat there, since in his extant writings he is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a model of style, but all the others were considered exemplars of well-written prose.
I guess so.
DeleteI haven't read them myself.
I might agree with you about the 17th and 19th centuries. The 17th is fascinating...
ReplyDelete“…the sixteenth and the earlier seventeenth century – an unusually hag-ridden period.”
C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, p. 125
“I began to regard the seventeenth century now as the Golden Age in English history. It was a time of violent conflict when all the forces which were to shape modern history were coming into being, but it was also a time when the traditional order of life was still preserved. The conflict in religion between the Established Church and Non-Conformity, in politics between the King and Parliament, in economic life between the new merchant class and the old aristocracy, in thought between the new science and philosophy and the ancient tradition, was the fire in which all these different elements had to be welded into English life. But the battle was fought out within the framework of the ancient tradition and the continuity of tradition was preserved. As a result, the culture of the seventeenth century was of supreme beauty. It had the rich vitality of an ancient culture receiving new life from new ways of life and thought. This could be seen in the prose of Clarendon as in that of Donne and Jeremy Taylor, of Milton and Sir Thomas Browne. There was a grandeur and a dignity in men’s lives as well as their thoughts, and yet it was combined with the homely simplicity which one found in Walton’s Lives of Hooker and George Herbert.” – Bede Griffiths, The Golden String, p. 75
I myself am a Christian believer, but I appreciate John Carey's candor:
“…I came to feel that studying seventeenth century English Literature was really the same as studying Christianity. That was all they seriously cared about, and they cared enough, at a pinch, to kill or to be killed for their own particular brand of it. I was excited by this. As a lapsed Christian I felt I could imagine – just – how it would be to believe as they believed. At heart I knew this was a delusion. I was simply substituting aesthetic admiration for belief, and a real believer would probably tell me there was a special department in hell reserved for people who did that. All the same, it was the nearest I could get. When I read Henry Vaughan, for example, describing his experience of God:
“O joys! Infinite sweetness! With what flowers
And shoots of glory my soul breaks and buds!”
“it seemed to me that no one in the post-God era ever feels joy like that. The death of God has meant the death of joy – if joy means absolute certainty of eternal life. If a modern poet wrote those lines they would be about having sex, which doesn’t seem a very adequate substitute.” – John Carey, The Unexpected Professor, pp. 123ff
So six years ago I drew up a list of books for e 17th Century reading project, which I've added to occasionally. I've learned a lot.
As for the 19th century, well, Coleridge, Dickens, Austen, and more -- also George MacDonald, William Morris &c., and the art of Samuel Palmer.
Dale Nelson
"hag-ridden period"???
DeleteAs in witches?
Yes, there was the fear of witchcraft, but also fear of assassination, treachery, revolution, etc. -- and the century of the Thirty Years' War (and Grimmelshausen's novel about it). C. V. Wedgwood is a notable historian for the period.
DeleteRose Macaulay's novel They Were Defeated seemed excellent to me. Poet Robert Herrick is one of the main characters. As for the 17th century in a North American setting, I enjoyed Marly Youmans's Charis in the World of Wonders. John Buchan's novel Witch Wood is set then. This is also the century of Browning's long poem The Ring and the Book. Shusaku Endo's novels Silence and The Samurai take us to Japan in that century -- and indeed The Samurai takes us on a global journey. This is the century in which The Scarlet Letter is set, of course.
Oh, right.
DeleteAnyway, my next blog post will talk a bit about the 17th century.
For literature from a particular century, I pick the 19th century. For starters, there's Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, George Eliot and Dickens. Four favorites. And countless more. For music, the 18th century is my favorite. The great compositions of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn and more. All supremely great.
ReplyDeleteYeah.
DeleteIt's just interesting to me that so many people I like in different fields of arts are from the 19th century. And now I'm starting to notice the 17th.