Age of Sensibility: 1750–1798

AMER MAHMOOD YOUSAF MINHASENGLISH DEPTT.GOVT. ISLAMIA COLLEGE CIVIL LINES LAHORE.

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

sometimes described as the "Age of Johnson“.

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, did lasting contributions as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.

James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).

James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).

Early poems "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749).

Both poems are modelled on Juvenal’s satires.

After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755;

Dr. JOHNSON

An influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays (1765).

the widely read tale Rasselas (1759). His account of journey with Boswell

in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1786).

Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81). A collection of biographies and evaluation of 17th and 18th poets.

LATER HALF OF THE EIGHTEEN CENTURY

three major Irish authors Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774).

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816).

Laurence Sterne (1713–68).

Goldsmith Goldsmith’ work

His novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766),

a pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770)

Two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man 1768

She Stoops to Conquer 1773. The latter was a huge success and is

still regularly revived.

Sheridan’ work

The Rivals 1775, The School for Scandal The Critic. Both Goldsmith and Sheridan

reacted against the sentimental comedy of the 18th-century theatre, writing plays closer to the style of Restoration comedy.

Sterne’s work

His famous novel Tristram Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767.

The SENTIMENTAL NOVEL or the novel of sensibility

Sentimentalism was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction beginning in the eighteenth century in reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age.

Relied on emotional response, both from their readers and characters.

Scenes of distress and tenderness. The plot is arranged to advance emotions rather than

action. A valorization of "fine feeling," displaying the

characters as a model for refined, sensitive emotional effect.

The ability to display feelings was thought to show character and experience, and to shape social life and relations.

Most famous sentimental novels in English

Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740).

Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759–67), Sentimental Journey (1768)

Henry Brooke's The Fool of Quality (1765–70), Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771)

Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800).

First Novel of Manners

In 1778, Frances Burney (1752–1840) wrote Evelina

Social behaviour in public and private settings in Evelina.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Fanny Burney's novels indeed "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen".

The Graveyard Poets

The Romantic movement in English literature of the early 19th century has its roots in 18th-century poetry, the Gothic novel and the novel of sensibility.

A number of pre-Romantic English poets, writing in the 1740s and later, whose works characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality, "skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms" in the context of the graveyard.

The ‘Sublime' and Uncanny

Then a feeling for the 'sublime' and uncanny, and an interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry was added.

They are often considered precursors of the Gothic genre.

The Graveyard Genre.

Thomas Gray (1716–71), Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), "the best known product of this kind of sensibility“

William Cowper (1731–1800). Christopher Smart (1722–71). Thomas Chatterton (1752–70). Robert Blair (1699–1746), The Grave (1743),

"celebrates the horror of death“. Edward Young (1683–1765), The Complaint, or

Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742–45).

PRECURSORS OF ROMANTICISM

The poets James Thomson (1700–48) and James Macpherson (1736–96).

James Macpherson (1736–96) The first Scottish poet to gain an

international reputation. Claiming to have found poetry written

by the ancient bard Ossian, published translations that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics

FINAGAL (1762)

Fingal, in 1762, was speedily translated into many European languages, and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend.

Credited more than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and especially in German literature.

Its influence on Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

It was also popularised in France by figures that included Napoleon.

Ossian cycle.

Actually, not direct translations from the Gaelic.

Rather flowery adaptations made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience.

Both Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian cycle.

Significant Foreign Influences

The Germans Goethe, Schiller and August Wilhelm Schlegel.

French philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78).

Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757).

OTHER INFLUENCES

The changing landscape because of the industrial and agricultural revolutions.

The expansion of the city. Depopulation of the countryside. The poor condition of workers. The new class conflicts. The pollution of the environment, led to a

reaction against urbanism and industrialization.

A new emphasis on the beauty and value of nature.

The Gothic Fiction Genre

Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, combines elements of horror and romance.

The pioneering gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain which developed into the Byronic hero.

The Mysteries of Udolpho 1795, is frequently cited as the archetypal Gothic novel.

Vathek 1786 by William Beckford. The Monk 1796 by Matthew Lewis, were further

notable early works in both the gothic and horror literary genres.

The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative" "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791).