Edward Young was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts.
Night Thoughts:
In the preface to the poem Young states that the occasion of the poem was real, and Philander and Narcissa have been rather rashly identified with Mr and Mrs Temple. It has also been suggested that Philander represents Thomas Tickell, an old friend of Young's, who died three months after Lady Elizabeth Young. The infidel Lorenzo was thought by some to be a sketch of Young's own son, but he was only eight years old at the time of publication. The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, was published in 1742, and was followed by other "Nights," the eighth and ninth appearing in 1745. In 1753 his tragedy of The Brothers, written many years before, but suppressed because he was about to enter the Church, was produced at Drury Lane. Night Thoughts had made him famous, but he lived in almost uninterrupted retirement. He was made clerk of the closet to the Princess Dowager, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, in 1761. He never recovered from his wife's death. He fell out with his son, who had apparently criticised the excessive influence exerted by his housekeeper Mrs Hallows. The old man refused to see his son until shortly before he died, but left him everything. A description of him is to be found in the letters of his curate and executor, John Jones, to Dr Thomas Birch (in Brit. Lib. Addit. M/s 4311). He died at Welwyn, reconciled with his spendthrift son: "he expired a little before 11 of the clock at the night of Good Friday last, the 5th instant, and was decently buried yesterday about 6 in the afternoon" (Jones to Birch).
Young is said to have been a brilliant talker. Although Night Thoughts is long and disconnected, it abounds in brilliant isolated passages. Its success was enormous. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Welsh and Magyar. In France it became a classic of the romantic school. Questions as to the "sincerity" of the poet did arise in the 100 years after his death. The publication of fawning letters from Young seeking preferment led many readers to question the poet's sincerity. In a famous essay, Worldliness and Other-Worldliness, George Eliot discussed his "radical insincerity as a poetic artist." If Young did not invent "melancholy and moonlight" in literature, he did much to spread the fashionable taste for them. Madame Klopstock thought the king ought to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, and some German critics preferred him to John Milton. Young's essay, Conjectures on Original Composition, was popular and influential on the continent, especially among Germans, as a testament advocating originality over neoclassical imitation. Young wrote good blank verse, and Samuel Johnson pronounced Night Thoughts to be one of "the few poems" in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The poem was a poetic treatment of sublimity and had a profound influence on the young Edmund Burke, whose philosophic investigations and writings on the Sublime and the Beautiful were a pivotal turn in 18th-century aesthetic theory.
Young's masterpiece Night Thoughts emerged from obscurity by being mentioned in Edmund Blunden's World War One memoir, Undertones of War (1928), as a source of comfort during time in the trenches. This latter work emerged from the darkness of the more recent past thanks to its mention and discussion in Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), which discussed Blunden's reliance on Night Thoughts. Blunden's mention of Young's poem reintroduced an interesting, sometimes bombastic precursor to the early Romantics to students of English literature.
Samuel Richardson in a letter to bookseller Andrew Millar discussed a new edition of Young’s poem, Night Thoughts (1750), which was already very popular, and which would become one of the most frequently-printed poems of the eighteenth century. Millar had purchased the copyright to the second volume of Night Thoughts (parts 7-11) from Young for £63 on 7 April 1749; the edition under discussion was the first in which Millar was involved, and it would be advertised for sale in the General Advertiser on 30 January 1750.
William Hutchinson included a gloss on Night Thoughts in his series of lectures The Spirit of Masonry (1775), underlining the masonic symbolism of the text.
Other works:
Other works by Young are:
FOR MORE CLICK HERE
বাংলা রচনা সমূহ
বাংলা ভাষা ও সাহিত্য
English Essay All
English Grammar All
English Literature All
সাধারণ জ্ঞান বাংলাদেশ বিষয়াবলী
সাধারণ জ্ঞান আন্তর্জাতিক বিষয়াবলী
ভূগোল (বাংলাদেশ ও বিশ্ব), পরিবেশ ও দুর্যোগ ব্যবস্থাপনা
বি সি এস প্রস্তুতি: কম্পিউটার ও তথ্য প্রযুক্তি
বি সি এস প্রস্তুতি: নৈতিকতা, মূল্যবোধ ও সু-শাসন
বি সি এস প্রস্তুতি: সাধারণবিজ্ঞান
বাংলা ভাষার ব্যাকরণ
বাংলাদেশ ও বিশ্ব পরিচয়
ভাবসম্প্রসারণ