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Summary
Euphues is the famous prose work of John Lyly, an Elizabethan writer whose romantic comedy Endymion made a significant contribution to the growth of comedy during the reign of Elizabeth. Lyly's most famous work in prose consists of two volumes - Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and his England which together form the first artistic English novel.
The first part of the story is laid in Naples and turns on the rivalry between Euphues and his friend Philautus for the heart of the maiden, Lucilla who jilts Euphues and involves him in a quarrel with Philautus. In Euphues and his England, the two friends become reconciled and pass into England, where they are entertained at Canterbury. Philautus now falls in love with the lady Commilla while Euphues looks on and gives proper advice. Euphues again quarrels with his friend and eventually after praising the woman of England leaves that country for the mountainous retirement of Silexedra.
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| Euphues: by John Lyly |
Critical Analysis
This novel written by a courtier for the court turns largely on an immemorial theme of romance, the conflict between love and friendship. It discusses many things of fashionable interest - friendship, dress, women, youthful folly and education. Although it is important historically in point of content, it has still greater importance for its style. Lyly's style is contrived in conscious reaction against the simplicity preached and practiced by Ascharn and his school. He arranged his sentences after a scheme of the most carefully planned parallelism or antithesis and heightened the effect by the free use of rhetorical questions and repetitions, alliteration and assonance. He was lavish in his employment of classical allusions. There was often most fantastic and startling use of folklore, magic and popular science. He freely uses similes, puns and word plays. Another of his peculiar characteristics is a fondness for 'non-natural natural history'. His chief source was Pliny's Natural History. Thus Lyly's style is known as euphuism which is associated with extreme elaboration and artifices of style distinguished by excessive use of alliteration and antithesis.
The effect of Euphues was immediate and profound. Its style, though satirized by Nashe and others affected in some degree every contemporary writer of prose and many writers of verse. Shakespeare constantly used its language and figures satirically and otherwise. In point of form, it prepared the way for Donne and Browne. M. Jusserand remarks "With Euphues, commences in England the literature of the drawing room."