oliver goldsmith
DESCRIPTION
He contributed to eighteenth century English writing gracefully with his essays, poetry, novel and plays.TRANSCRIPT
B I O G R A P H Y
G L I M P S E O F W O R K
Life Of OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Milestones and times
Chronology of Life:
Born: Ireland Nov.1730
College Dublin 1745-50
Law study: 1752
Medical study: 1752-54
Europe tour: 1755
Writer: 1757
Johnson’s club: 1764
Plays,poems:1762-1774
Died in April 1774
[at age 44]
Happenings: EVENTS:
Covent Garden opera house opens-1732
Pope, Johnson, Boswell-1732-1765
George III accession -1760
Capt. Cook voyage: 1768
American war: 1775
American independence:1776
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Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1730 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet.
He is best known for his novelThe Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natured Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771).
She Stoops to Conquer was first performed in 1773.
He also wrote An History of the Earth and Animated Nature.
He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of the phrase "goody two-shoes".
He was an original member of Dr.
Johnson’s Literary Club.
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Oliver Goldsmith, at the age
of eight, had a severe attack of smallpox
which disfigured him for life.
He received a B.A. degree in February
1749 from Trinity College Dublin,
before he left Ireland in 1752 to study
medicine in Edinburgh. He wandered
through Europe, supporting himself by
begging and by playing the flute, before
settling in London.
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o The family of Oliver‟s father, a pastor, consisted of five
sons and three daughters. Henry, the eldest, was the good
man's pride and hope, and he tasked his slender means to
the utmost in educating him for a learned and
distinguished career.
o Oliver was the second son, and seven years younger
than Henry, who was the guide and protector of his
childhood, and to whom he was most tenderly attached
throughout life.
o The expense for Oliver‟s education was borne mostly by
his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarine.
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o Young Oliver Goldsmith had a thoughtless
generosity extremely captivating to young hearts;
his temper was quick and sensitive, and easily
offended; but his anger was momentary, and it
was impossible for him to harbor resentment.
o He was the leader of all boyish sports and athletic
amusements, especially ball-playing, and he was
foremost in all mischievous pranks. He became a
poet-errant.
o Oliver Goldsmith had a natural indolence and a love of
convivial pleasures. "I was a lover of mirth, good humor,
and even sometimes of fun," said he, "from my childhood.”
o He was notably homely, with a protruding mouth, short
chin, and deep scars from the smallpox that afflicted him at
age seven.
o A graduate but with no distinction, he had a long way to go
before he earned his fame, credit and popularity.
o His graduate degree though gained him a respectable
position in the society; he failed to find a suitable profession
in Church or law.
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o Oliver Goldsmith was conscious of his pitted face,
his brogue, and his ungainly figure and it made
him exceedingly nervous and sensitive in society.
o He was anxious, as such people mostly are, to
cover his shyness by an appearance of ease, if
not even of swagger.
o He occasionally did and said very awkward and
blundering things.
o In 1744 Goldsmith went up to Trinity College, Dublin. His
tutor was Theaker Wilder. Neglecting his studies in
theology and law, he fell to the bottom of his class.
o In 1747, along with four other undergraduates, he was
expelled for a riot in which they attempted to storm the
Marshalsea Prison. He lost his father in the same year.
o He was graduated in 1749 as a Bachelor of Arts, but
without the discipline or distinction that might have
gained him entry to a profession in the church or the law.
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o Oliver Goldsmith was a paradoxical man: on the one
hand, a perennial outcast who suffered misfortune
throughout most of his life, on the other a sublime writer
whose works would withstand the test of time.
o A stammering, clumsy prankster, Goldsmith often willingly
humiliated himself in public, and refused to change his
rural manners or Irish brogue.
o His openness, imagination, self-mockery and scorn for
affectation were noteworthy in the European intellectual
sphere at his time.
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o He lived for a short time with his mother, tried various
professions without success, studied medicine desultorily
at the University of Edinburgh from 1752 to 1755.
o He set out on a walking tour of Flanders, France,
Switzerland and Northern Italy, living by his wits (busking
with his flute).
o His education seemed to have given him mainly a taste
for fine clothes, playing cards, singing Irish airs and
playing the flute.
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o Only when Goldsmith entered the literary world in 1757 did
his life finally take a positive turn.
o He found low quality, poorly paid work, editing for the
Monthly Review and proofreading for a printer. He penned a
successful translation and a series of articles between 1758
and 1759.
o Goldsmith quickly gained recognition, employment, and
friendship with some of the foremost literary minds of his
day.
o He produced, with equal skill, renowned novels, poetry,
dramas, criticism, essays, biographies and histories.
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o In 1759, he came with, „Enquiry into the Present
State of Polite Learning in Europe‟.
o In 1760, he started publishing „The Citizen of the
World‟ in the Public Ledger, a magazine.
o The letters provided a fictional perspective and
moralistically and ironically commented on the
British society and manners. These essays were
initially claimed to be written by a Chinese
philosopher Lien Chi
Goldsmith and Johnson
In 1765, the Traveller was published. Though part of
it was written in Switzerland, it was completed
slowly, polished and pruned. Dr. Samuel Johnson
encouraged him. Its publication changed the image
of Oliver Goldsmith from an essayist to that of a poet
of the age. Very soon after this, The Vicar of the
Wakefield appeared and his reputation established.
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o Oliver Goldsmith was a member of the Literary Club,
formed by Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1763.
o Among other members were James Boswell, Johnson‟s
biographer; Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter; Adam Smith,
the economist; Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the playwright;
David Garrick, the actor; and Edmund Burke, the politician.
o The world that Goldsmith and his contemporaries wrote
about was a world with great mixing of socioeconomic
classes.
o The cutting edge of artistic innovation moved away from
the Court —and toward the public.
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The Club or The Literary Club
Members of the Literary Club. 6/2/2013
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Inspiration for the play ‘She Stoops to Conquer’
At age 17, Goldsmith was traveling in the Irish
countryside, and when night came asked a passerby
to recommend an inn. The passerby, who happened
to be the town‟s joker, directed Goldsmith to the
home of a squire. The squire played along with the
prank, and only when Goldsmith left special
instructions for his breakfast did his host reveal that
the house was not an inn, but a private home.
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With the production of his play, „She Stoops to
Conquer‟ in 1773, Oliver Goldsmith found himself at
the peak of his fame—yet deeply depressed and in
debt. By 1774, he was dead.
Sadly, his own generation did not fully recognize
Goldsmith‟s talents, and it was not until the mid-
twentieth century that he began to receive the full
scholarly and biographical analysis that he
deserves.
E X AM P L E O F H I S W O R K
AN E L E G AN T C O N T R I B U T I O N T O
E N G L I S H L I T E R AT U R E
Oliver Goldsmith
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"A City Night-Piece."
The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper
rises and sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets
the hour in slumber, the laborious and the happy are
at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt,
revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills
the destroying bowl, the robber walks his midnight
round, and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his
own sacred person.
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Let me no longer waste the night over the page of
antiquity or the sallies of contemporary genius, but
pursue the solitary walk, where Vanity, ever
changing, but a few hours past walked before me,
where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a
froward child, seems hushed with her own
importunities.
What a gloom hangs around all!
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The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam; no
sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the
distant watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is
forgotten; an hour like this may well display the
emptiness of human vanity. There will come a
time when this temporary solitude may be made
continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants,
fade away, and leave a desert in its room.
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What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed
existence! Had their victories as great, joy as just and
as Unbounded, and, with short-sighted presumption
promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly
trace the situation of some; the sorrowful traveler
wanders over the lawful ruins of others; and, as he
beholds, he learns wisdom, and feels the transience of
every sublunary possession.
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“Here," he cries, "stood their
citadel, now grown over with,
weeds; there, their senate
house, but now the haunt of
every noxious, reptile; temples
and theatres stood here now
only an undistinguished heap
of ruin. They are fallen:
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for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The
rewards of the state were conferred on amusing and
not on useful members of society. Their opulence
invited the invaders, who, though at first repulsed,
returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at
last swept the defendants into undistinguished
destruction. How few appear in those streets which,
but some few hours ago, were crowded! and those
who appear now no longer wear their daily mask, nor
attempt to hide their lewdness or their misery.
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But who are those who make the streets their couch,
and find a short repose from wretchedness at the
doors of the opulent? These are strangers,
wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are
too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses
are too great even for pity. Their wretchedness rather
excites horror than pity. Some are without the
covering even of rags, and others emaciated with
disease:
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the world has disclaimed them; society turns its back
upon their distress, and has given them up to
nakedness, hunger. These poor shivering females
have once seen happier days. They have been
prostituted to the gay, luxurious villain, and are now
turned out to meet the severity of Winter. Perhaps,
now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to
wretches whose hearts are insensible, to
debauchees who may curse but will not relieve them.
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Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the
sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve! Poor
houseless creatures! The world will give you
reproaches, but will not give you relief. Misfortunes
of the great, the imaginary uneasinesses of the rich,
are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and
held up to engage our attention and sympathetic
sorrow. The poor weep unheeded, persecuted by
every subordinate species of tyranny; and every law,
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which gives others security, becomes an enemy to
them. Why was this heart of mine formed with so
much sensibility! Or why was not my fortune adapted
to its impulse! Tenderness, without a capacity of
relieving, only makes the man who feels it more
wretched than the object which sues for assistance.
Adieu.
-- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74).
Traveller 30
Traveller 31
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The Deserted Village: Goldsmith revisits Auburn, a village of
which he had fond memories, and marks the depopulation
brought about through the emigration of its peasant
community and the influx of monopolizing riches. He mourns
over the state of a society where "wealth accumulates and
men decay".
Using images pertaining to the land in his poem, he gives to
his readers a sense of what it was like to live in the
countryside during modernization and how it has destroyed
the land the former inhabitants worked so hard to maintain.
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The Deserted Village: Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country‟s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied
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Along the lawn, where scatter‟d hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth, and cumbrous pomp repose;
And every want to opulence allied,
And every pang that folly pays to pride.
Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
Those calm desires that ask‟d but little room,
Those healthful sports that grac‟d the peaceful scene,
Liv‟d in each look, and brighten‟d all the green;
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
And rural mirth and manners are no more.
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….The Deserted Village …as it was …before:
Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening‟s close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There, as I pass‟d with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came soften‟d from below;
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung,
The sober herd that low‟d to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o‟er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watchdog‟s voice that bay‟d the whisp‟ring wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind;
He wrote like an angel-talked like poor poll… 36
Citizen of the World 37
Being of Irish birth and having traveled widely
through Europe on tour prior to 1760, he had
acquired the acumen and objectivity to comment
on English society and to compare it with others.
Oliver Goldsmith, who appeared to be the good-natured man and amiable author, was also a social critic in writing these essays.
He was a man who saw injustice and resented it.
He endeavored to unit the world through his travel and writing.
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o Goldsmith refers to Confucius who "observes that it is
the duty of the learned to unite society more closely, and
to persuade men to become citizens of the world."
o The same subject is pursued in in another Letter where
Altangi praises the benevolence of the English in raising
subscriptions for French prisoners.
o A memorable character of The Citizen papers is the
man in black, who is often associated with his creator,
Goldsmith, with a belief in universal benevolence.
o Altangi is moved only by his reason. Both are target of
satire.
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The man in black, has the ostensible purpose of
serving Altangi as a guide, represents an ideal
ethic, universal benevolence.
But it is an impractical ideal in a gross materialistic
world.
The irony of the situation is that the man in black
must violate his human compassion to be
accepted in a world where manipulation and
deception are the codes of the day.
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Like many men of his age. Goldsmith was quite interested
in politics.
A Tory, he believed in the supremacy of the monarchy and
in the existing social order; yet he was wise enough to see
that changes needed to be made within that structure.
He found many faults in the system which needed
alteration — the judicial system, the treatment of soldiers,
and British imperialism among others— but the system
itself he apparently found a workable one that was in need
of no radical change.