Illustrate Addison's gift of humour and irony from the essay you

Illustrate Addison’s gift of humour and irony from the essay you have studied.

Bring out Addison’s satirical quality with reference to the essay prescribed for you.

Ans.

1. Introduction:- Addison is famous for his gentle humour, mild satire and tolerant irony. His humour is “of a rare order, and essence of his humour is irony.” When he is humorous, Addison is always at his best. Humour in his hands became “a subtler and mere exquisite thing.” He was not a mare wit of coffee-house but people found themselves smiling and laughing with a humourist who, they found and come nearer than anybody else. Because Addison was a well known social reformer and he played a good role in the society of social reform with the help of his spectator paper, so humour, satire and irony were used by Addison as the weapons of social reform. He used very gently and in a very mild tone of his weapons. His satire and irony never became sharp or crush to the people.

2. His Gentle Humour- The aim of Addison in the Spectator papers was to banish vice and ignorance from England and thus improve the general tone and standard of his countrymen. For fulfilling his aim he made constant use of humour irony and satire to make himself more amiable and effective. But his humour is always genial and friendly which is in sharp contrast to that of Swift and Voltaire, the tow other great satirists of the age. The most note worthy quality of Addison’s humour is its simplicity, i.e. his habit of dealing with minor and trivial incidents and things of life. His themes are for the most part homely and familiar. Then, Addison is distinguished from all other humorists of his age in the delicacy of touch while describing the follies of man kind. His morality is no where forced. He only shows evil and good in their true colours and lets his readers choose between the two themselves. It was the aim of Addison to bring philosophy out of closets and libraries, at tea-tables and coffee-houses. He wanted to raise the conduct of morality of the age. In order to achieve this aim he made use of humour which is marked by geniality. Of pure humour, of humour that aims merely at fun without any moral purpose, there is little in Addison, since he writes with a purpose. He is concerned with instruction and reforms instead of pure entertainment. Sir Roger De Coverley essays are abound in various humour. The essay Female Orators is a masterpiece of humorous writing. Roger de Coverley essays also abound in humour. Sir Roger is a whimsical and eccentric fellow. We laugh at him when he dozes off during the sermon, when his pocket has been picked by the gypsies, and when he makes an irrelevant speech at the assizes.

3. His Mild satire- As Addison’s aim was to improve the morals of the society, he make extensive use of satire and irony in his irony in his essays. He wrote two beautiful essays, Dissection of a Beau’s Head and Dissection of a Coquette’s Heart, in which he satirized the hollowness of the brain of the young men and the heart of the young women of his times. In the latter essay he shows the changeable nature of a coquette. The fashionable ladies of his day were mostly flirts: they professed love to many but in reality their hearts remained totally unaffected. However, the satire in Addison’s essays is always mild and never bitter. Addison is one of the great satirists in English literature. He attacked vices, frailties, foibles, vanity and affectation, but his attacks were not in the style of Swift. Indeed, a true satire is always humorous. It produces in the readers an aversion for an objectionable tendency or custom or practice while at the same time it arouses laughter and mirth. Addison’s satire fulfils both these conditions. This we find in a number of his essays such as On Ridicule, Malicious Wit, The Scope of Satire, Coffee House Politicians, and The Trunk-Maker.

4. His Mild Irony- The same mildness is to be seen in his use of y. A very frequent device of Addison’s use of irony is what may be called irony. A feigning sympathy. He seems to be sympathising with the weaknesses and follies of his characters. Another method adopted by Addison is that when he finds any person invincibly wrong, he flatters his opinions by acquiescence and sinks him to absurdity. Those ladies who were very particular about the latest fashions in dress, or about a gossiping visit, or about the articles of toilet, when they read Addison’s essays, were amused by its quaint humour, before they understood that the irony was directed towards none but their own follies. The same mild irony is observed in the description of Sir Roger’s chaplain. Sir Roger asks his chaplain to read out every week from the pulpit one of the published sermons of some recognized masters of pulpit oratory. The writer, however, justifies time views of Sir Roger. He wishes that the other clergymen of his day should follow the example of Sir Roger’s chaplain, instead of com posing worthless sermons of their own. By giving the example of Sr Roger’s chaplain, Addison manages to show the low standard of scholarship and eloquence to be found among the average clergymen of his day without offending anyone. In this way we see that Addison used ridicule without abusing it, and thus without inflicting a wound he effected a great social reform.