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Augustan Literature:
to 1790
The eighteenth century
*The course of the eighteenth century presents a broad contrast to the disruption and
change of the 17th century: a desire for rational agreement, and an increasing
confidence, mark literary culture for a century after 1688.
*In English literary history, the term Augustan Age is usually applied to the period from
the accession of Queen Ann to the deaths of pope and Swift. They wrote in conscience
emulation of the Romans.
*The Augustan age is also known as
*Neo-classism
*The age of reason
*Enlightenment
The Enlightenment is a name given by historians to a phase succeeding the Renaissance
and followed (though not ended) by Romanticism. The Enlightenment believed in the
universal authority of reason, and in its ability to understand and explain.
*Enlightenment thinking encouraged rational scientific inquiry, humanitarian tolerance,
and the idea of universal human rights.
Jonathan Swift
1-A Modest Proposal solves a human problem by an economic calculus which ignores
human love and treats the poor as cattle. Pg. 187
2-Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver is, like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, one of the practical self-reliant seamen
through whom Britannia had begun to rule the waves.
*Alexander Pope
Pope had found that ‘the life of a wit is a warfare on earth’. He had achieved fame at a
precocious age, and envious enemies attacked him on personal grounds. Pope is the first
professional non-dramatic poet in English, dedicating his life to the art of poetry, and
winning an unprecedented position for it.
*Pope wrote
1-Pastorals
2-A didactic Essay on Criticism
3-A mock-epic in The Rape of the Lock
4-Translations of Homer’s epics
THE NOVEL
*Daniel Defoe was expert in acceptable truths.
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Samuel Richardson wrote sample ‘familiar letters’ for more complex social situations.
From this grew the idea of Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740), a young servant’s
account in letters. This book is different from mere stories of adventure; for it examines
the human heart and shows the effects of human character.
*Henry Fielding
Richardson’s psychology had an effect on the European novel. He deserves credit for
stimulating Henry Fielding into fiction. Fielding wrote Joseph Andrews as a kind of satire
on Pamela.
Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones was considered ‘a comic epic in prose’.
The Emergence of Sensibility
*Thomas Gray: “Elegy written in a country Church Yard”
Graveyard Poets
Gothic Fiction is a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or
monastery. Following the appearance of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the
Gothic novel flourished in Britain from 1790 to the 1820s. The Queen of Gothic is Ann
Radcliffe, whose Mysteries of Udolpho had many imitators.
M. G. Lewis in The Monk made free use of ghosts and demons along with scenes of
cruelty and horror.
William Beckford wrote the oriental Vathek.
The Age of Johnson
*Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84) dominated the world of letters for thirty years. A poet,
biographer, critic, editor, essayist, author of a tragedy and a philosophical tale, of
political and travel books, and prayers. Unmatched as a judge of language and literature,
he made permanent contributions himself in the Dictionary, the Preface to Shakespeare
and the Lives of the Poets.
*The Dictionary
There was no established Dictionary before Johnson, and an authority was needed to
standardize spelling, to distinguish clearly between senses, and to rule on usage.
Poems: “London” and “The Vanity of Human Wishes”.
A philosophical tale, Rasselas.
Non Fiction
Oliver Goldsmith:
She Stoops to Conquer, a fine anti-sentimental comedy.
Richard Sheridan:
The Rivals(1775)
The School for Scandal(1777)