Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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based on middle-class characters, rather than aris-
tocratic ones. His novels include La Religieuse (The
Nun), in which he subtlely criticizes the entire no-
tion of nunneries; Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau’s
Nephew), a continuing dialogue with the composer
Rameau’s nephew, which Diderot wrote and
rewrote for 20 years; and Jacques le fataliste et son
maître (Jacques the Fatalist and His Master), in
which Diderot includes elements of his philosophy.
Diderot’s unorthodox views on religion and
government got him into serious trouble with the
authorities. The Encyclopedia was placed on the
Catholic Church’s list of forbidden books and was
publicly burned. In 1749 Diderot was imprisoned
for his anti-Christian beliefs.
In 1773 he traveled to Russia, having been in-
vited there by CATHERINE THE GREAT. The empress
had corresponded with Diderot and was very fond
of him. She continued to support him financially
until his death.
Although Diderot is not as well remembered
as other figures of the Enlightenment, particu-
larly Voltaire and Rousseau, he was one of the
most important writers and thinkers of the time.
His quest to continue publishing his ideas, despite
the authorities’ persecution and threats, repre-
sented a courageous resistance to censorship. By
collecting the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers
and publishing them in the Encyclopedia, as well
as by making crucial contributions of his own,
Diderot greatly influenced Western intellectual
thought.
English Versions of Works by Denis Diderot
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master. Translated by
David Coward. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999.
Denis Diderot’s The Encyclopedia; Selections. Edited
and translated by Stephen J. Gendzier. New York:
Harper and Row, 1967.
Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works. Translated by
Jacques Barzun and Ralph H. Bowen. Indianapo-
lis, Ind.: Hackett, 2001.
Selected Philosophical Writings. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1953.
Works about Denis Diderot
Fellows, Otis. Diderot. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Wilson, Arthur M. Diderot. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1972.
Dmitriev, Ivan Ivanovich (1760–1837)
fable writer, poet
Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev was born on his family’s
estate. His father was a wealthy Russian nobleman,
and Dmitriev received a good education and, as
was customary for Russian nobles at the time,
joined the military in 1775. Dmitriev had a bril-
liant career: he became a senator, a member of the
state council, and the minister of justice (1810).
Throughout his career, he remained devoted to lit-
erature and used his satirical talents to highlight
weaknesses in official measures.
Dmitriev’s early literary taste was influenced by
French, Greek, and Roman classics. The decisive
influence in Dmitriev’s life, however, was
Karamzin, in whose house Dmitriev met all the
important figures of the Russian literary world.
In 1791 a collection of Dmitriev’s works ap-
peared in the Moscow Journal, published by
Karamzin. The critics received his debut warmly,
praising his fairy tale Fashionable Wife and his
song “Little Dove.” The latter was immediately
set to music and became highly popular.
Dmitriev later published other works in the lit-
erary journals Aglaia and Aonid. In 1795 he re-
leased his first collection of poems under the
title And My Little Things, followed by a popular
songbook, Pocket Songbook, or a Collection of
Best Secular and Folk Songs. His Fables, Fairy
Tales, and Apologues went through numerous
editions during and after his life, and both his
poetry and prose brought a romantic spirit to
Russian literature.
Dmitriev’s fairy tales and fables are favored for
their light and elegant language and the musical
flow of verse. While Dmitriev borrowed most of
his themes from French literature, his use of satire
makes his works unique. He aimed his well-
known satire, Alien Talk, at the current fashion of
Dmitriev, Ivan Ivanovich 77
writing pseudo-classical odes, which were often
stiff in language and devoid of meaning. Because
Alien Talk helped exterminate outdated literary
forms and introduced a new approach to poetry,
Dmitriev is counted among the great reformists of
Russian literature.
English Versions of Works by Ivan
Ivanovich Dmitriev
Bowring, John, ed. Specimens of the Russian Poets, 2
vols. Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1822.
Pushkin, Alexander. The Bakchesarian Fountain.
Translated by W. D. Lewis. New York: Ardis Pub-
lishers, 1987.
Works about Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev
Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg
and the Rise of Modern Russia. New York: Basic
Books, 2002.
Volkov, Solomon. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky:
A Poet’s Journey through the Twentieth Century.
New York: Free Press, 2002.
Donne, John (1572–1631) poet, preacher
John Donne was born in London into a family with
strong Catholic roots. His mother was related to
Thomas MORE, famously beheaded by Henry VIII.
Donne’s uncle was executed in 1594 for performing
Masses, and his brother died while in prison for
harboring a priest. Donne studied at both Cam-
bridge and Oxford, and later acquired a promising
post as secretary to Lord Keeper Sir Thomas Edger-
ton. Then, in 1601, he abruptly ruined his career
by eloping with Edgerton’s niece, Anne More. He
spent much of his life away from London, helping
raise his 12 children. During this period he read vo-
luminously; wrote but did not publish a treatise on
suicide, Biathanatos; and published two anti-
Catholic tracts, Pseudo-martyr (1610) and Ignatius
His Conclave (1611). In 1611 and 1612 he com-
memorated the death of Anne Drury, his patron’s
14-year-old daughter, with Anniversaries, two
lengthy and enigmatic poems about the decay of
the world and the progress of the soul.
Pseudo-martyr earned the admiration of King
James, who urged Donne to enter the ministry.
Donne took orders in 1615 and began a very suc-
cessful ecclesiastical career. In the last decade of his
life, as dean of St. Paul’s in London, he was the
most famous preacher of his age.
In 1624 he published Devotions, a series of 24
prayerful meditations upon his near-fatal illness.
Death was a frequent subject in his later meditations.
He was said to have preached his own funeral ser-
mon in Death’s Duel (1630), and near the very end
he posed for his monument in his funeral sheets.
Soon after his death, the poems on which much of
his later fame rests were published as a book, accom-
panied by elegies penned by such poets as Ben JON-
SON and Thomas Carew. Donne’s elegies are rhymed
erotic poems that address a lover, describe an
amorous situation, or develop a philosophy of love.
In “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” the speaker of the
poem urges his beloved to undress, describes the
process in ingenious images, and compares caressing
her to the excitement of global exploration. Con-
templating exploration in conjunction with caress-
ing a woman’s body provokes thoughts of conquest
and rule, sexual dominance, ideas of New World
treasure, and finally expectations of honor.
Donne’s art is one of radical compression. In
one of his great religious SONNETS, he summarizes
all the possible modes of death in two lines:
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain. . . .
His logic, reaching out to extremely diverse areas
of experience, asks the reader to pay attention,
hold possibilities in suspension, and finally draw
conclusions without explicit statement.
If Donne’s concise, compressed lyric poems are
like miniature dramas so self-involved as to sug-
gest someone acting in front of a mirror, then the
sermons are lengthy performances that offer in-
struction and spiritual solace. For instance, trying
to conceive of the angelic wisdom that the saved
shall experience on Judgment Day, Donne argues.
“There our curiosity shall have this noble satis-
78 Donne, John
faction.” He then reviews at some length the human
ways of knowing (school, books, experience) and
uses a metaphor in which the world is a library. De-
spite the greatness of this library, however, it is
nothing compared to the knowledge of God’s glory.
Despite a revival of interest in Donne’s work,
spearheaded by the critic T. S. Eliot in the early part
of the 20th century, Donne’s popularity has waned
in the last few decades. One reason is the loss of in-
terest in the lyric form of poetry in the current age.
Another is Donne’s mode of masculine self-asser-
tion, which some may equate with misogyny. Nev-
ertheless, Donne remains a striking artist who left
a work charged with intellectual energy. Through
self-dramatization, he fashioned a persona, earthly
and spiritual, that came alive through his works.
Other Works by John Donne
John Donne: The Complete English Poems. New York:
Penguin, 1971.
John Donne’s Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels: With
a Selection of Prayers and Meditations. Edited by
Evelyn M. Simpson. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2003.
The Sermons of John Donne. Edited by George R. Pot-
ter and Evelyn Simpson. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984.
Works about John Donne
Corthell, Ronald. Ideology and Desire in Renaissance
Poetry: The Subject of Donne. Detroit, Mich.:
Wayne State University Press, 1997.
Edwards, David L. John Donne: Man of Flesh and
Spirit. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans,
2002.
Papazia, Mary Arshagouni, and Ronald Corthell, eds.
John Donne and the Protestant Reformation: New
Perspectives. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State Univer-
sity Press, 2003.
Dwight, Timothy (1752–1817) clergyman,
poet, teacher
Timothy Dwight, grandson of the famous the-
ologian Jonathan EDWARDS, displayed an early
inclination for learning. He entered Yale College
at age 13 and graduated with highest honors at
age 17. Dwight worked as principal of a gram-
mar school before returning to Yale to teach as a
tutor and to complete a master’s degree. In 1777
he entered military service as chaplain of the
Connecticut Continental Brigade, during which
time he wrote patriotic songs, the most memo-
rable of which is “Columbia, Columbia, to Glory
Arise.” After leaving the army, he became active
in politics, farming, education, and church life
in Massachusetts.
In 1783 he was ordained as a pastor in the
parish of Greenfield Hill, Connecticut. His experi-
ences inspired one of his most important works,
Greenfield Hill. Two years later he published The
Conquest of Canaan, considered the first
EPIC poem
produced in America.
In 1795 Dwight was elected president of Yale
College, a position he held for more than 21 years.
As a moralist and professor of theology, he greatly
influenced the students, who wrote about him in
their notebooks.
While Dwight was accepted during his time as
one of the principal men of letters, modern inter-
pretations view his poetry as dated and character-
ized by an artificial elevation of style, common to
other poetry of the time. Nevertheless, his works
are important for their insight into 18th-century
America and for the place they hold in that coun-
try’s literary tradition.
Works by Timothy Dwight
America; or, A Poem on the Settlement of the British
Colonies. New Haven: T. and S. Green, 1780.
Greenfield Hill. New York, Conn.: AMS Press, 1970.
The Conquest of Canaan; A Poem in Eleven Books.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970.
Works about Timothy Dwight
Cunningham, Charles E. Timothy Dwight. New York:
Macmillan, 1942.
Silverman, Kenneth. Timothy Dwight. New York:
Twayne, 1969.
Dwight, Timothy 79
80
E
Edwards, Jonathan (1703–1758)
theologian, philosopher
Jonathan Edwards was born in East Windsor, Con-
necticut, to Reverend Timothy Edwards and Esther
Stoddard, the daughter of Reverend Solomon
Stoddard, who was one of the most influential
ministers in 18th-century New England.
From an early age, Edwards possessed a re-
markable curiosity about the relationship between
the natural world and God. His keen attention to
the details of nature can be discerned in his leg-
endary “Of Insects” (1715); an essay that contains
firsthand descriptions of the way spiders move and
spin their webs and that concludes with observa-
tions about how these “flying insects” provided
him with the perfect occasion to “behold and ad-
mire the wisdom” of God.
Edwards’s interest in nature continued through-
out his life. From 1727 until a few years before his
death, the theologian-philosopher kept a notebook
in which he recorded how “natural things” like the
“waves and billows of the sea in a storm” and the
“blue sky, the green fields and trees, and pleasant
flowers”were “ordered for types of spiritual things.”
The private notebook, eventually entitled Images of
Divine Things (1948), was not published until al-
most 200 years after Edwards’s death.
At age 18, Edwards entered Yale College, where
he studied Latin and Greek grammar, Hebrew,
logic, ethics, religion, arithmetic, and natural phi-
losophy. After receiving his B.A., he spent two years
immersed in theological studies at Yale. In 1726 he
became the colleague of his esteemed grandfather
in Northampton, Massachusetts, and when, in
1729, Stoddard died, he assumed full spiritual
leadership of the congregation. Edwards led a
highly disciplined life in Northampton, rising in
the early hours of the dawn and spending, on aver-
age, 13 hours each day in his study. Nevertheless,
he lived more than the life of the mind. In 1727 he
married Sarah Pierrepont; their union was affec-
tionate and resulted in the birth of 11 children.
In order to appreciate the masterly artistry of
his many sermons, it is essential to understand that
the relationship between the intellect and emo-
tions preoccupied Edwards. In “A Divine and Su-
pernatural Light” (1734), he introduced his
congregation to his notion of the “sense of the
heart.” Those who experience this “sense” simulta-
neously have “light in the understanding as well as
an affected heart.” Edwards insisted that the true
“sense of the heart” was imparted to humans by
God and could not be attained through mere
human effort. A minister could, however, do his
best to foster within unconverted individuals a
longing for God’s grace, and this is precisely what
Edwards did in his most well known sermon,“Sin-
ners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741).
Edwards delivered this sermon during the
height of the Great Awakening (a time when
preachers were making a concerted effort to revive
interest in religion), and it focuses on the in-
evitable damnation of sinners despite their pres-
ent complacency. There is, Edwards announces,
nothing that “keeps wicked men at any one mo-
ment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.”
Edwards, who was greatly influenced by John
Locke’s thesis that knowledge is acquired through
experience, created a rhetorical environment that
forced his listeners to experience—both mentally
and emotionally—the precariousness of their
spiritual condition. His sermon was incredibly ef-
fective. One person in attendance described how
people were “crowding up to the pulpit, crying for
mercy.” He gave his listeners a sensible under-
standing of the argument he was presenting, and
therein lies his artistic genius. He was, as Perry
Miller points out in Jonathan Edwards, an “artist
who happened to work with ideas instead of
poems or novels.”
Despite Edwards’s many successes, his congre-
gation dismissed him in 1750, due to his desire to
impose stricter qualifications for church mem-
bership. In 1751 he settled in Stockbridge, Mass-
achusetts, as local pastor and missionary to a
group of Native Americans. Then, in 1758, he was
elected president of the College of New Jersey
(now Princeton) and died of smallpox shortly
thereafter.
Works by Jonathan Edwards
A Jonathan Edwards Reader. Edited by Harry S. Stout
and Kenneth P. Minkema. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1995.
The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader. Edited
by Wilson H. Kimnach, Kenneth P. Minkema, and
Douglas A. Sweeney. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1999.
Works about Jonathan Edwards
Gallagher, Edward J. “‘Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God’: Some Unfinished Business,” New
England Quarterly: A Historical Review of New
England Life and Letters 73:2 (June 2000):
202–221.
Miller, Perry. Jonathan Edwards. New York: Meridian
Books, 1959.
———. Errand into the Wilderness. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University, 1956.
Eliot, John (1604–1690) teacher, missionary,
linguist
John Eliot was born in Hertfordshire, England, and
studied for the ministry at Jesus College, Cam-
bridge University. He received a bachelor of arts de-
gree in 1622 and taught in a grammar school in
Essex, where he became associated with the Puritan
Separatist Thomas Hooker. When Hooker escaped
to the Netherlands, Eliot decided to immigrate to
New England.
Eliot arrived in Boston in 1631 and served as a
pastor for a short time in Boston before he was as-
signed as a teacher at Roxbury Church in Massa-
chusetts. Eliot served as a teacher until 1641 and
helped found the Roxbury Latin School. He then
assumed a position as sole pastor of the church in
Roxbury and held the position for the remainder
of his life.
Eliot developed a strong interest in converting
the Native Americans to Christianity. Realizing
that language differences created a barrier to the
delivery of Christian sermons and teachings, Eliot
began a study of the local Algonquian language in
1643. He took a Native American boy who knew
English into his home and learned the Algonquian
language through the boy’s pronunciations. In
1647 Eliot delivered his first sermon to the natives
in their own language. To further advance Christ-
ian teachings, Eliot began translating the Bible into
the Algonquian language in 1653. The New Testa-
ment was published in 1661 followed by the Old
Testament in 1663. The completed work has the
Eliot, John 81
distinction of being the first complete Bible to be
printed on the American continent.
In addition, Eliot helped Native Americans set
up independent schools, seminaries, and commu-
nities. By 1674 there were 14 established commu-
nities for the “Praying Indian”; the best known of
these was located at Natick. The outbreak of King
Philip’s War (1675–76) destroyed all of the com-
munities, and the natives who survived were exiled
to Deer Island. Eliot’s final publication, Dying
Speeches & Counsels of such Indians as dyed in the
Lord, contains the dying speeches of eight Indians.
It reveals Eliot’s loss of spirit from both the events
and results of the war and the undoing of his life’s
work. After Eliot’s death, four of the communities
were rebuilt but gradually faded away.
Not only was Eliot a pastor and missionary to the
native populations but he was also a prolific writer.
In addition to his translation of the Bible, he wrote
a number of books in Native American languages as
well as in English. In 1640 a collaborative work, The
Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into
English Metre, was published as a literal translation
of Psalms designed to fit metrically with tunes fa-
miliar to Puritan congregations. It was an attempt to
improve upon the Sternhold-Hopkins psalter that
was popular among the Puritans while they were in
England. Commonly known as The Bay Psalm Book,
the coauthors of this work included John Cutter,
Richard Mather, Thomas Welde, and John Wilson.
Eliot founded the first genuine Native Ameri-
can missions in the American colonies. His work
with the Algonquians and his use of native lan-
guage set the standard that missionaries followed
for the next two centuries.
Works by John Eliot
John Eliot’s Indian Dialogues. Edited by Henry W.
Bowden and James P. Ronda. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1980.
The Bay Psalm Book, a facsimile reprint of the first edi-
tion of 1640. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1956.
The Eliot Tracts. Edited by Michael P. Clark.Westport,
Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2003.
Works about John Eliot
Bross, Kristina. “Dying Saints, Vanishing Savages:
‘Dying Indian Speeches’ in Colonial New England
Literature,” Early American Literature 36:3 (2001):
325–352.
Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. John Eliot, “Apostle to the In-
dians.” Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Encyclopedia (Encyclopédie ou
dictionnaire raisonné des sciences,
des arts et des métiers)
(1751–1772)
During the 18th century, Europe went through an
intellectual transformation, with new ideas on the
rise and old ideas on the decline. This period was
known as the ENLIGHTENMENT. The general theme
of the Enlightenment was the need to subject all
ideas to rigorous criticism and examination. Con-
cepts of religion, politics, art, literature, and social
organization were now being methodically ana-
lyzed on a wide scale. Although the Enlightenment
took place all over Europe, it had its greatest im-
pact in France, where it was heavily opposed by the
church and by social and political conservatives.
Many brilliant and towering intellectual figures
won their fame during the Enlightenment, perhaps
the most famous being VOLTAIRE and Jean-Jacques
ROUSSEAU. There were literally dozens of great
scholars during this era, and they left their mark
on the intellectual history of the Western world.
Aside from the works of Voltaire and Rousseau,
the greatest literary achievement of the Enlighten-
ment was the Encyclopedia, which came into being
when many leading thinkers embarked on the am-
bitious project of collecting the sum total of
human knowledge. Their purpose was to make the
information accessible to the educated public.
The men who compiled the Encyclopedia in-
cluded Denis DIDEROT, Jean Le Rond d’ALEMBERT,
Voltaire, and Rousseau. Diderot, however, domi-
nated the writing, editing, and publication of the
work, with d’Alembert as the next greatest con-
tributor. Voltaire wrote several articles for the proj-
ect and was always willing to help with advice on
various matters. Rousseau wrote a few pieces on
82 Encyclopedia
music theory but eventually became disgusted
with the undertaking and withdrew. Other intel-
lectuals who participated in creating the Encyclo-
pedia included political philosopher Charles
MONTESQUIEU, economist Anne-Robert-Jacques
Turgot, and mathematician Antoine-Nicolas de
Condorcet.
The first volume was published in 1751, and
publication continued for more than 20 years.
The Encyclopedia would eventually amount to 28
volumes, the final one being printed in 1772.
Addendums would continue to be published
until 1780.
While the amount of information and material
contained within the Encyclopedia was immense,
it was far from impartial, for the creators of the
work held very strong opinions on the subjects
about which they wrote. In terms of metaphysics,
Diderot and his allies were strongly committed to
the beliefs of the English philosopher John LOCKE,
dismissing the ideas of those who disagreed with
him. Similarly, the scientific articles held to the
theories of Isaac Newton, rejecting the notions of
opposing scientists. Many articles in the Encyclope-
dia were biased toward democratic and constitu-
tional forms of government, and clearly hostile to
religion, but the work as a whole revealed a philo-
sophical tolerance unusual in its day.
From the beginning, the Encyclopedia encoun-
tered fierce opposition from religious and political
authorities, who attempted to suppress the entire
work. Most European states had well-funded gov-
ernment departments whose job it was to prevent
works considered harmful or dangerous from
reaching the public. This was particularly true in
France, where the Encyclopedia was published.
Religious authorities despised the creators of
the Encyclopedia because of their critical evalua-
tion of religious ideas, unflinching defense of the
scientific method, and questioning of the church’s
role in social and political spheres. Political au-
thorities opposed the Encyclopedia because it ques-
tioned the validity of absolute monarchy and
called for a less cruel and severe legal system. In
short, the authorities disliked and distrusted the
Encyclopedia because it challenged the status quo
and tried to tell the people that the way things were
was not the way they had to be.
The first official reaction came in 1752, after the
publication of the first two volumes. The censors
decreed that the volumes be banned; nevertheless,
publication continued. In 1759 the French author-
ities decreed that the Encyclopedia as a whole was
banned, and all sale and publication of it were for-
bidden. Despite this, Diderot and his allies bravely
carried on with the work in secret. They contin-
ued to write the articles and print the volumes,
working clandestinely and trying to hide their ac-
tivities from the censors. The efforts of the French
government to repress the work only added to its
popularity.
The Encyclopedia was one of the great achieve-
ments of the 18th century. Diderot and his col-
laborators had created a masterly work, immense
in its scope and radical in its implications. They
did so in the face of difficult and dangerous ob-
stacles, giving the people of Europe a great gift of
knowledge. In summary, the work of the ency-
clopedists was a monument to the Enlightenment
itself.
English Versions of Works from the
Encyclopedia
Alembert, Jean le Rond d’. Preliminary Discourse to the
Encyclopedia of Diderot. Translated by Richard N.
Schwab. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.
Diderot, Denis. A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of
Trades and Industry. Edited by Charles C. Gillispie.
Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1994.
Russell, Terence M., and Ann-Marie Thornton, eds.
Gardens and Landscapes in the Encyclopédie of
Diderot and d’Alembert: The Letterpress Articles
and Selected Engravings. Aldershot, Hampshire,
U.K.: Ashgate Publishing, 1999.
Works about the Encyclopedia
Darnton, Robert. The Business of Enlightenment: A
Publishing History of the Encyclopedia, 1775–1800.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1979.
Encyclopedia 83
Lough, John. Essays on the Encyclopedie of Diderot and
D’Alembert. London: Oxford University Press,
1968.
Werner, Stephen. Blueprint: A Study of Diderot and
the “Encyclopédie” Plates. Birmingham, Ala.:
Summa Publications, 1993.
English ballad
The ballad is a narrative song composed and re-
cited by individuals and sung to a melodic accom-
paniment that follows the pattern of the verses. In
England, the first ballads were folk ballads, mean-
ing that they were products of an oral tradition.
Folk ballads were sung before such narratives, or
stories, were written down.
English folk ballads share several characteristics
with ballads from other countries, and many are
based upon songs from other nations. They usually
tell stories of common folk rather than the aristoc-
racy, and they focus upon a central event, situa-
tion, or character; feature a strong, dramatic
element; and display what scholar Gordon Hall
Gerould calls an “impersonal quality.” Although
the events described in the ballad may be terrible
or horrendous (such as the loss of a child or a mur-
der), the action receives little commentary. Other
aspects of ballads include an element of the super-
natural, displays of physical courage, an emphasis
on domestic life, and a motif of love.
Although English folk ballads follow multiple
forms, a traditional form prevails. The standard
ballad stanza is composed of four-line stanzas that
rhyme abcb. The first and third lines of the stanzas
contain four accented syllables, and lines two and
three carry three accented syllables. The amount of
unstressed syllables varies, and the rhyme is not al-
ways perfect. Most ballads contain a refrain, and
many folk ballads use assonance (similar vowel
sounds with differing consonant sounds) rather
than rhyme.
The ballad “The Three Ravens” tells of a dead
knight who is carried away by a deer before three
ravens successfully consume his decaying body.
“Lord Rendal”is a song about a lover who has been
betrayed by his beloved and lies sick and dying.
Not all ballads, however, focus upon death. Other
popular ballads celebrate successes, such as those
recounting stories of Robin Hood and his adven-
tures. In “Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale,” Robin
Hood helps Allen, a soon-to-be loyal servant, by
saving Allen’s beloved from marriage to an old
knight.
Ballads were a major form of literature and en-
tertainment in the Middle Ages. While they re-
mained popular with the advent of printing and
the spread of new forms of literature, by the 18th
century they came to be taken seriously as histori-
cal artifacts. During this time, English ballads were
collected by scholars such as Thomas Percy and
Sir Walter Scott. These collections played a signifi-
cant role in the genesis of English Romantic poetry
and inspired writers such as William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.
Works of Ballads
Child, Francis James. English and Scottish Popular
Ballads. New York: Dover, 1965.
Works about Ballads
Gerould, Gordon Hall. The Ballad of Tradition. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1932.
Percy, Thomas. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 3
vols. London: Routledge, 1996.
Enlightenment, Age of (1700s)
During the 18th century, a dramatic intellectual
movement swept over Europe, particularly the na-
tion of France. The movement set off an explosion
of scholarly and literary achievement equal to any
period of Western history. Generally, the Enlighten-
ment is thought to have lasted from the early years
of the 18th century to sometime before the out-
break of the French Revolution in 1789. During the
Enlightenment, dozens of brilliant thinkers and
writers questioned some of the most basic assump-
tions of Western society. Political, religious, and
84 English ballad
social ideas that had been accepted for centuries
were critically examined, and the consequences had
a tremendous impact on Western society.
At the heart of the Enlightenment was a belief
in the power of RATIONALISM, the ability to arrive
at answers to difficult and complicated questions
through the power of human reason and experi-
ence. Enlightenment thinkers believed that all
questions must be answered rationally, without re-
course to authority or intuition. Furthermore, En-
lightenment thinkers believed that every element
of human society should be open to rigorous ques-
tioning, no matter how sacred others considered it.
These beliefs stemmed from some of the scientific
discoveries occurring at the time, such as those by
Sir Isaac Newton. As a result, some of the most
controversial elements of the Age of Enlighten-
ment involved religion.
The thinkers and writers of the Enlightenment
were known as philosophes. They were not philoso-
phers in the traditional sense, but rather individuals
who sought to spread the ideas of philosophy to the
general public. The philosophes achieved this
through the use of nearly every genre of literature;
Enlightenment ideas were expressed in poetry, nov-
els, dramas, pamphlets,and various reference works.
By far the most famous and influential of the
philosophes was
VOLTAIRE. From the 1720s until his
death in 1778, Voltaire produced a constant stream
of literature in various genres, including plays,
short stories, novels, essays, and pamphlets.
Through his writing, he attacked censorship of the
press, religious intolerance, backward legal sys-
tems, and outdated political ideas. His hugely pop-
ular writings helped spread Enlightenment ideas
throughout the literate populations of Europe and
the United States. His most successful work, Can-
dide, is one of the two great literary works of the
Enlightenment period.
Voltaire was not alone; the Enlightenment pro-
duced a very large number of influential literary
figures. Denis DIDEROT wrote a series of works, both
fiction and nonfiction, expressing Enlightenment
ideas. Jean Le Rond d’ALEMBERT did fundamental
new work in mathematics while pursuing philo-
sophical studies, and Baron de
MONTESQUIEU wrote
the highly influential Spirit of Laws, which greatly
affected 18th-century political thought.
However, not all thinkers and writers of the Age
of Enlightenment were devoted to rationalism.
Many people, including members of the clergy, dis-
trusted the philosophes, because their ideas seemed
to threaten the status of religion in Western soci-
ety. Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU, for instance, taught that
the key to human understanding of the world was
not the power of human reason, but rather in-
volved emotion and intuition. This point of view
resulted in an intense dispute between Rousseau
and Voltaire, which lasted throughout their lives.
Perhaps the greatest literary production of the
Age of Enlightenment was the ENCYCLOPEDIA.
Jointly edited by Diderot and d’Alembert, and fea-
turing contributions from Voltaire and other
philosophes, the Encyclopedia sought to system-
atize human knowledge after examining it with a
thoroughly rational point of view. Government
authorities sought to censor the work and prevent
its publication, as well as harassing and imprison-
ing those who worked on it.
Despite such resistance, Enlightenment ideals
spread far and wide. The intellectual flowering that
took place in Scotland during the latter half of the
18th century owed a great deal to the scholarship
and literature of the Enlightenment. During the
American Revolution, the political ideas that mo-
tivated the American radicals were largely bor-
rowed from the French philosophes. Finally, when
the French Revolution began in 1789, the revolu-
tionaries looked to the ideas of the Enlightenment
for inspiration as they sought to topple the French
monarchy and create a republic in its place.
In a larger sense, the Age of Enlightenment fun-
damentally altered the intellectual environment of
the Western world. The modern, rational insis-
tence on solid evidence when answering difficult
questions, which is at the heart of both the modern
scientific method and the Western legal system, is a
legacy of Enlightenment thought. So, too, are the
Enlightenment, Age of 85
Western traditions of freedom of thought and ex-
pression, which are enshrined in the political sys-
tems of nearly all Western nations.
Works of the Age of Enlightenment
Beccaria, Cesare. On Crimes and Punishments. Trans-
lated by David Young. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett,
1997.
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc. Natural History, Gen-
eral and Particular. Translated by William Smellie.
Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2001.
Helvetius, Claude-Adrien. Claude-Adrien Helvetius:
Philosophical Works. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes
Press, 2000.
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiery. System of Nature, vol. 1.
Translated by H. D. Robinson and edited by Denis
Diderot. Manchester, U.K.: Clinamen Press, 2000.
Hume, David. Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary.
Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis, Ind.: Lib-
erty Fund, 1991.
Works about the Age of Enlightenment
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: The Science of Free-
dom. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
Jacob, Margaret C. Living the Enlightenment: Freema-
sonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Porter, Roy. The Enlightenment. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2001.
epic (n.d.–present)
The term epic generally refers to long, episodic
narrative poems featuring larger-than-life charac-
ters who engage in actions requiring great courage
and strength. Epic heroes hold national or interna-
tional importance and are celebrated as symbols of
national values and embodiments of the heroic
ideal. Such greatness is underscored by the epic’s
elevated, formal style, an objective point of view,
and a vast, expansive setting.
Historically, epics were recited to audiences as
songs by bards. As writing increased in popularity,
however, these long story-songs were written down
and circulated in book form.
Epics typically begin with an invocation (a
prayer) to a muse, whom the narrator asks for in-
spiration to tell a valuable and memorable story.
The epic then begins in the middle of a central ac-
tion or key event, a technique known as in medias
res (Latin for “in the middle of things”). Thus, the
epic’s narrative opens in the middle of a serious
and significant moment, such as a battle. In
Homer’s Iliad, for instance, the drama opens after
the war between the Greek forces and the inhabi-
tants of Troy has been raging for 10 years.
After opening in medias res, the epic’s story un-
folds, and the history of the dramatic action is re-
vealed intermittently. The narrator frequently
digresses from the action’s central plot to tell the
history of a particular character or some other
story, a digression that adds meaning to the main
action and to the epic’s main themes. In Virgil’s
Aeneid, for instance, the narrator departs from the
main story to discuss a highly valuable and sym-
bolic shield that was forged by Vulcan and given
to Aeneas by his mother.
Another common characteristic shared by epics
is an element of supernaturalism. Gods, spirits,
and angels interject themselves in human affairs
and act as supernatural forces influencing the
epic’s characters and actions. In some epics, in fact,
the hero is part divine, as in the Aeneid, where
Venus, the goddess of love, is Aeneas’s mother.
Other key characteristics of epics include exten-
sive cataloging of things and characters (resembling
lists in the Old Testament), elaborate. comparisons
known as epic similes, and long formal speeches.
Epics generally fall into two categories, the folk
epic and the art epic. Folk epics are works of un-
known authorship and are composed by several
individuals. Art epics, on the other hand, are those
thought to be written by a single author. The art
epic is generally more moral in its purpose and
more critical about the events and characters por-
trayed. Additionally, the events of these epics typi-
cally take place further in the past.
Important folk epics include Homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey, the Old English Beowulf, the German
Nibelungenlied, and the East Indian Mahabharata.
86 epic