III
What then is the cause of literary movements and what stamps the peculiarities of a literary age, if all writers draw on their unconscious? Why does a Pope appear in the age of Queen Anne and a Wordsworth at the end of the reign of George IV? Why didn't Shakespeare write in the Elizabethan age like Charles Dickens in the Victorian period? How account for the warlike character of the Saxon epic Beowulf, for the religious tone of her first poet, Cædmon; for the interest in chivalry and allegory in the Faërie Queen? What made Bunyan so absorbed in salvation, in Pilgrim's Progress, at the time the Restoration dramatists were steeped in exhibitionism and immorality? What are the causes of the notes of moral revolt in Byron and Shelley, of the romanticism of Scott, the realism of George Eliot? If the unconscious is alike in all people, and genius records the ideas and emotions formed by personal repressions, it would seem the works of all geniuses who have had similar repressions should be alike, irrespective of the ages in which they lived.
Literary historians and philosophers have accounted for the various changes in literary taste fairly satisfactorily, although they have often omitted from their investigations the factor of the personal experiences and idiosyncrasies of the author, and have emphasised too strongly the importance of the predominant ideas of the age. Yet no author starts out to express the spirit of his age. He gives vent to his unconscious which he suppresses more or less, and colours, in accordance with the literary fashion prevailing. His unconscious appears in a background of the literary machinery and ideas of the time. Since in our unconscious are present all the emotions man has had, different events may make any of them burst forth.
On account of the recent war, many dormant emotions were reanimated in us and appeared in our literature. People found that Homer's Iliad and other ancient warlike epics appealed to them more than these did in times of peace. Literature in war times becomes more related to primitive literature where the hero is the successful, brave warrior. The military and patriotic spirit had not been extinct, but quiescent.
If Milton had lived in the eighteen nineties he would probably have written problem plays and novels instead of Paradise Lost. He was unhappily married, but the fashion of his age was not to create imaginative works based on justifiable causes for seeking a divorce. He did write on the subject of divorce, however, and his views horrified his contemporaries. He stood alone. Had the tendencies of the time been to make works of the imagination out of situations in which he was personally placed, he would have no doubt done so. In his unconscious he felt about women and divorce much as Strindberg did. He retained during the Restoration his early Puritanism and religious interests, and hence published Paradise Lost. Even here he found an opportunity for expressing special views about women and describing his own forlorn condition.
Again it is likely that Shakespeare in our generation would not have written much differently from Ibsen or Hauptmann. The marriage problem interested him also, for he was unhappily married and loved another. He expressed his bitterness towards woman in his sonnets, in his characterisations of historical characters like Cleopatra and Cressida. But he wrote no special work occupied with the theme of the hard restrictions placed by society upon the lives of some unhappily married people. A work of this kind would have been almost a monstrosity in his age. Shakespeare could not have written exactly as Ibsen did, for though in their unconscious they were alike, each had different traditions and backgrounds to work on. No writer ignores totally prevailing literary fashions or tastes.
It is not my purpose to go into the causes of changes in tastes, traditions, ideas, movements. That subject has been dealt with often. Economic reasons are great factors in developing new literary periods and movements, yet also have much to do with this feeling of reaction against a preceding age. The artificiality of the eighteenth century gave way to the love of nature of the nineteenth. The demand for reason, wit and classicism in literature disappeared gradually, to be replaced by imagination, the utilisation of emotion and romanticism. Wordsworth is a reaction to Pope (even though Wordsworth's nature worship concealed his sex interest). His way was prepared by other writers of nature like Thomson, Collins, Goldsmith, Gray, Cowper, Crabbe, Blake and Burns. The immortality and exhibitionism of Congreve, Wycherly, Farquar, Van Brugh and Dryden in the Restoration period were a reaction to the Puritanism of the age of Cromwell. Bunyan, because of his early training and physical and mental condition, however, still clung to his early puritanism.
Yet Pope and Wordsworth were each men of their ages and wrote in accordance with the rising literary traditions of the time, though they also altered these. For the imitative instinct is powerful and present in the most original writers. Shakespeare's plays are much like those of Marlowe and Fletcher, though greater. His "plagiarisms," like those of Milton, were extensive. It is true that often one man sets the standard for a literary age, but he usually has predecessors. His influence is due to the fact that he strikes responsive chords in the unconscious of many people of his time, and the circle of his admirers and imitators increases, so as to make him an authority.
The realistic novels of George Eliot appeared after England wearied of the fanciful fictions of Walter Scott. A generation passed by before the reaction set in with full force. Both writers wrote as they did, largely in obedience to the tendencies of their times, upon which they reacted and were reacted upon. They wrote because of personal repressions. Their methods of expression were different, because of a desire to comply somewhat with literary traditions. Romanticism was fashionable in 1830, while realism was in the air in 1860.
Those readers who think that these views do not give sufficient credit to writers for originality in literary expression should remember that common literary forms are followed by writers who may nevertheless be original in ideas. Only the student of literary history realises the power of literary imitation.
Take the thousands of pastorals that flooded European literature from Theocrities to Pope; most of them, except Spenser's Astrophel, Milton's Lycidas, and a few others were flat and unprofitable. Note the numerous sonnets written since the form was brought over from Italy by Wyatt and Surrey. The extensive use of the sonnet proves poets are imitative.
Recall the allegories with which mediæval literature abounded. Even the great short stories of Hawthorne, who was much influenced by Bunyan and Spenser, show traces of mediæval forms. Literary tradition is certainly stronger than originality. And the thousands of authors of our day who write novels and short stories, would in mediæval times have written allegories.
The ideas and mode of expression change, and hence makes much of the old literature obsolete. But many emotions remain eternal. We can still feel with Sappho and the Troubadours, whereas we find our intellect insulted by some of the religious ideas versified by Dante and Milton; although the passages describing secular emotions win our admiration.
When we must look for an author's unconscious buried in the literary trappings of his day we weary of the task and dismiss his work. Why can we not read the thousands of pastorals and allegories of the mediæval writers? Is it not largely because of the feeble intellects, and spirit of imitation present, because of the absence of the personal note? The unconscious is buried too deeply in rigmarole. The works have a psychological and historical but not artistic value. The religious and romantic instincts in many of us are buried too deeply in our unconscious, and hence we do not sympathise with those works.
Those poets live who have been most personal. The Roman poets, Horace, Catullus, Titullus, Propertius, Ovid, Lucretius, were personal. Even the Æneid reveals the soul of Virgil in the story of Æneas and Dido.
The unconscious is present in all literature, and the literary movement but colours it and gives occasion for the expression or censorship of certain phases of it. Puritan writers are not in their unconscious any different from the "immoral" ones; only the latter relax the censor and give full play to the unconscious, when a liberal age like that of the Restoration or the Renaissance, permits it.
Hence, though all writers draw on their unconscious and base their work on their personal repressions, authors of one age differ in manner and substance from those of another, not because the unconscious is different (which it is not), but because it is fashionable to express only certain features of it in one age; because writers have an instinctive tendency to comply with the literary fashions of their age; because the time spirit colours and censors those elements of the unconscious which appear in the literary product.