BACKGROUND

CAHARAC-

TERISTICS

GENRES

AUGUSTAN

PERIOD ( 1700-1750)

See slide 6

Industrial & Agricultural Revolution made the economy booming. New inventions made manufacturing process quicker. British trade enormously & world-widely grew. Consequently urbanization grew. The prosperity of the middle class grew, and it enabled them to enjoy entertainment and the printed matters.

Queen Anne died in 1714, and the German House of Hannover took over the throne. Charles II’ Catholic son and grandson tried to rebel in 1715 & 1745 but they failed. Aided by the growth of mass media, the Parliament & Prime Minister could form public opinion. Thus, their power grew. American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) grew a new mood of freedom but British society disliked any revolution to threaten its stability.

The name AUGUSTAN refers to Emperor Augustus, not British king or Queen, because English writer of this era aimed to copy the Latin literature produced when Augustus ruled Rome.

Due to the taking of Latin works as models, this era is also called Neo-Classical.

Classicism Vs Romanticism (next slide)

Heroic Couplet became the standard form of poetry.

Scientific Revolution Caused Industrial and Agricultural

Revolution

• Emphasis on experimentation and inductive reasoning

• Scientific Method

• New methods of observation: the microscope and the telescope

• 1662: Charles I chartered the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge.

• New inventions made manufacturing process quicker. British trade enormously & world-widely grew.

The Rise of the Middle Class

• Increased Literacy • Leisure Time • International Trade • Empire Building

Leisure time nurtured

middle class women’s interest in fashion, society, the arts

and even literature.

CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM 1. COPYING & EMULATING THE

PRINCIPLES & CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK & ROMAN LITERATURE

2. EMPHASIZING ON FORM, PRECISION, OBJECTIVITY, RATIONAL THINKING, AND TECHNICAL PERFECTION

3. ACTUALIZING THE BELIEF THAT THE HEAD CONTROLS THE HEART, BECAUSE FEELINGS & IMAGINATIONS ARE DANGEROUS

4. DEALING WITH REALITIES AND PROBLEMS FACED BY THE SOCIETY, E.G. POLITICS, EMANCIPATION, HEROIC DEEDS, CORRUPTION, ETC.

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travel

Dryden’s Heroic Stanza

5. USING LITERAL, PLAIN, SHORT, AND DIRECT LANGUAGE.

1. REJECTING TRADITIONS AND CONVENTIONS, ESPECIALLY THOSE RELATED TO CLASSICAL ARTS

2. EMPHASIZING ON CONTENT, INDIVIDUAL EXPRESSIVENESS, IMAGINATIVE FANTASSY, AND EXPERIMENTATION.

3. ACTUALIZING THE BELIEF THAT THE HEART CONTROLS THE HEAD, BECAUSE REASON & INTELLECT ARE DANGEROUS

4. DEALING WITH THE NATURE, SIMPLE LIFE; OR UNFAMILIAR, REMOTE, MYSTERIOUS, UNNATURAL (EVEN SUPERNATURAL) AND HORRIBLE LIFE. E.G. COUNTRY LIFE, WATERFALL, HORROR STORY, SCIENCE FICTION, ETC.

Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village

Shelley’s Frankenstein

5. USING ARTISTIC EXPRESSIONS.

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE She is the best woman

poet of the era. She was

also a friend, and later an

enemy, of Pope

POETRY

MARY LEAPOR She is also a popular

woman poet who wrote

under Pope’s influence.

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1741) He is the major poet of the era. Like

Dryden he wrote poems as satire. But

unlike Dryden who satirizes the society,

Pope satirizes individual character. That’s

why his satire is called MOCK HEROIC.

His Dunciad, like McFlecnoe, attacks his

literary rivals. His The Rape of the Lock is

his masterpiece. It mocks a family quarrel

triggered by a man’s cutting and stealing

a girl (Belinda)’s hair. He also translated

Homerus’ Illiad and Odyssey.

DRAMA Drama was not prospered, esp.

after the legislation of STAGE

LICENSING ACT in 1737. It intro-

duced censorship for avoiding

controversial political & moral

themes. Approval of plays was

required from the Lord of

Chamberlain, a royal official. See next slide

DANIEL DEFOE

Formerly a journalist, he

published Robinson Crusoe, s

very popular novel written by

using 1st person narrator. His

other notable works are: A Journal of the Plague Year and Moll Flanders.

JONATHAN SWIFT He is the first novelist

writing novels as an

allegory. His best works:

The Battle of the Books,

Gulliver’s Travel, and a

Modest Proposal.

NOVEL

JOURNALISM & CRITICISM

The economic booming caused middle class people have so much leisure time that magazine, journals, and other printed matters are needed.

APHRA BEHN She wrote about 30 novels, including Love Letters Between a Noble Man and His Sisters,an epistolary novel. Her masterpiece is Oroonoko, inspired by her visit to Surinam, and concerns the African Royal Prince Oroonoko who is captured and sent as a slave to the English colony.

MARY DE LA RIVIERE MANLEY

Her novels show the

struggle between women &

men. Her best works: The

Secret History of Queen

Zarah, and The New

Atlantis, a political satire.

P.S. Although THOMAS NASH who wrote the 1st

imaginative prose (The Unfortunate Traveler) in the Renaissance is claimed as the inventor of modern narrative, the novel began to rise in Augustan era.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. He is the major critic of the 18th century. He began writing newspaper, some tragedies, and Dictionary of the English Language (1755). His The Lives of the English Poets is the origin of literary critic.

The Rise of the Novel

• Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) – Epistolary

– Realistic detail

– Morality tale

– Servant resisting seduction by her employer

• Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749) – Picaresque protagonist

– “comic epic in prose”

– Parody of Richardson

– First to acknowledge the novel as pure fiction

– Wide range of social classes

Novels in which the narrative is told in letters by one or more of the characters

Allows author to present feelings and reactions of characters, brings immediacy to the plot, allows multiple points of view

Psychological realism Contemporary epistolary novels:

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple; Nick Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine; Kalisha Buckhanon, Upstate

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Letter Writer

Picaresque Novels • Derives from Spanish picaro: a rogue

• A usually autobiographical chronicle of a rascal’s travels and adventures as s/he makes his/her way through the world more by wits than industry

• Episodic, loose structure

• Highly realistic: detailed description and uninhibited expression

• Satire of social classes

• Contemporary picaresques: Saul Bellow’s Adventures of Augie March; Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

Swift is an exceptional writer of the Augustan age due to his satirical works.

Swift’s The Battle of the Books (written 1697, published 1704), in

which some books put in a book-case discuss whether the Ancients

make space for the newer Modern writers in the library. It actually

describes the differences between the Ancients (the classical writers)

and the Moderns in the literary tastes of the Augustan period.

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a very angry use of satire against what

he saw as being wrong with the world. The novel is in four parts.

In the first part Gulliver travels to Lilliput, where he meets the very

small inhabitants. This parts satirizes England which underestimates

other nations.

In book two, Gulliver arrives at Brobdignag, where the people are

enormous. Religion and politics in particular are satirized

in the third book Gulliver arrives at a place looking like a flying saucer. In this part all the new learning of the Royal Society is the victim. The Royal Society was founded in I662 and 1663 `for the Improving of Natural Knowledge.' It was a centre for science and culture, but, as Swift saw it, all the wisest men have no practical sense of how to live in the real world.

In the fourth book, Gulliver meets the cultured horses, the Houyhnhnms, and compares their ways with the nasty monkey-like Yahoos, who represent humanity. Swift's satire is particularly strong because Gulliver observes another world in which ordinary human actions are criticized when performed by extraordinary characters.

1. The American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the

French Revolution (1789) with the slogan `Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' grew a new mood of freedom in England, but why did British society prefer to keep the monarch?

2. Mention two reasons why women became leading novelists in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

3. Swifts’ Gulliver’s Travels was written in 4 four books. Explain the story of each book and what he satirizes in each it.

4. What does Swift propose in A Modest Proposal, and what does he satirize in it?

5. Laurence Sterne is the inventor of the Stream of Consciousness technique. What is meant by this technique?

6. What are the special characteristics of a Gothic novel? Mention the title of the first Gothic novel in English literature