RESTORATION AND 18TH CENTURY LITERATURE

1600-1800

INTRODUCTION• The England to which Charles

Stuart returned in 1660 was a nation divided against itself, exhausted by twenty years of civil wars and revolution. Early in Charles’s reign, the people were visited by two frightful calamities that seemed to the superstitious to be the work of a divine Providence outraged by rebellion and regicide

• the plague of 1665, carried off over seventy thousand souls in London alone, and in September 1666, a fire that raged for four days destroyed a large part of the City (more than thirteen thousand houses), leaving about two-thirds of the population homeless. Yet the nation rose from its ashes, in the century that followed, to become an empire. The Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 established a rule of law, and the Act of Union of 1707, a political alliance, under which England was transformed into Great Britain in fact as well as name—a large country to which people of widely differing backgrounds and origins felt they owed allegiance.

Vocabulary, Language and Style• Comedy of manners —its concern

is to bring the moral and social behavior of its characters to the test of comic laughter. The male hero lives not for military glory but for pleasure and the conquests that he can achieve in his amorous campaigns. The object of his very practical game of sexual intrigue is a beautiful, witty, pleasure-loving, and emancipated lady, every bit his equal in the strategies of love.

•Mock-Heroic/Mock Epic —A poem in Epic form and manner ludicrously elevating some trivial subject to epic grandeur, juxtaposing high/grand style and low/trivial subject, to make fun of somebody or something.

• The Augustan Poets —A special feature of eighteenth-century poetic language is its emphasis on visualizing or personifying. Critics of the time all argued that poets showed their genius best by imagining or seeing what they wrote about (not by facility with words or forms or abstract ideas); and readers were skilled at making pictures from very small hints.

Many scholars think of it as properly three discrete literary eras:• the Restoration (1660-1700),

dominated by Dryden;• the Age of Satire (1700-1745),

dominated by Swift and Pope; • the Age of Johnson (1745-

1790), dominated not only by Johnson but by a new kind of poetry and a major new literary form, the novel.

The era of the Restoration,

•Dryden’s occasional verse, comedy, blank verse tragedy, heroic play, ode, satire, translation, and critical essay and both his example and his precepts had great influence.

The Age of Satire

• the literature is chiefly a literature of wit, concerned with civilization and social relationships, and consequently, it is critical and in some degree moral or satiric. Some of the finest works of this period are mock heroic or humorous burlesques of serious classic or modern modes.

• Literature during this period was often considered a tool for the advancement of knowledge. Writers were often found observing nature in their attempts to express their beliefs. Human nature was considered a constant that observation and reason could be applied to for the advancement of knowledge.

•Satire was the most popular literary tool that was utilized by writers of the time. With the help of satire, writers were better able to educate the public through literature. Its function was to acknowledge a problem in society and attempt to reform the problem in a comical manner while still educating the public.

the Age of Johnson• The modern novel came into

existence in this century. To a large extent, the development of the novel is identical with the attempt to interest the growing number of female readers by shaping their lives into literature

• Its effectiveness can be seen in literary pieces by Jonathan Swift such as A Modest Proposal where he addresses and criticizes the problem of a growing famine in Ireland. Playwrights of the time were also known to incorporate satire in their plays. Through the use of satire, they were able to expose and critique social injustices

•Contamporaneity became a common theme within the novels, writers were more inclined to show the life of the present day versus life as it was in the past. Characters and events were made to be believable, as if to mirror the people and events in the every day world of the time, lending the novels credibility.

AUTHORS that influenced the

RESTORATION AND 18TH CENTURY

LITERATURE

JOHN DRYDEN an English poet and dramatist who would dominate literary efforts of The Restoration, was born on August 19, 1631, in Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, England. He moved to London in 1657 to commence his career as a professional writer.

DRYDEN’S LITERARY WORKS:• His first play, The Wild Gallant

(1663), was a failure when first presented

• The Indian Emperor (1665) and Secret Love (1667) which mixed heroic tragedy with contemporary comedy.

• The young playwright's reputation grew quickly, and in 1668, only ten years after his move to London, Dryden was appointed Poet Laureate of England.

• Tyrannick Love (1669)• The Conquest of Granada by the

Spaniards (1670)• Absalom and Achitophel (POETRY)• The Tempest and All for Love

(1677), a retelling of Antony and Cleopatra. (PLAYS)

• The State of Innocence (1677) (an adaptation of Milton's Paradise Lost) and King Arthur (1691) with music by Purcell.

Alexander Pope• Dryden died May 1, 1701, some days before Pope was twelve: so early must he therefore have felt the power of harmony, and the zeal of genius.

• Pope wrote during what is often called the Augustan Age of English literature.During this time, the nation had recovered from the English Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution, and the regained sense of political stability led to a resurgence of support for the arts. For this reason, many compared the period to the reign of Augustus in Rome, under whom both Virgil and Horace had found support for their work. The prevailing taste of the day was neoclassical, and 18th-century English writers tended to value poetry that was learned and allusive, setting less value on originality than the Romantics would in the next century. This literature also tended to be morally and often politically engaged, privileging satire as its dominant mode.

POPE’S LITERARY WORKS

• Ode on Solitude (1st creation)• Prologue of the Wife of Bath• Epistle of Sappho to Phaon from

Ovid• The Pastorals, which had been for

some time handed about among poets and critic

• Essay on Criticism, a work which displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning

JONATHAN SWIFT• was a man of affairs who became a writer because literature was a way of getting affairs directed. His method was to expose a sham or evil by setting up a more outrageous evil against it, and defending the latter with serious irony.

SWIFT’S LITERARY WORKS• A Tale of a Tub. (1ST major work)• "A Modest Proposal" is a classic

satirical work in which Swift outlines a plan to sell the children of the Irish poor as food for the rich.

• "Drapier's Letters." • most famous work, Gulliver's Travels,

in 1721 and finished it in 1725. Gulliver's Travels was published anonymously in 1726 and was an instant success. Its popularity continues to this day.

Character List of Gulliver’s Travels

• Lemuel Gulliver• ♥ A traveler and an adventurer. • ♥ the protagonist • ♥ an observer of other beings and other

cultures.• Golbasto Momaren Evlame Gurdilo Shefin

Mully Ully Gue • ♥ The Emperor of Lilliput. Swift uses the

Emperor as an example of rulers who must always have some type of support before making a decision.

• Flimnap• ♥  Lord High Treasurer of

Lilliput.• Reldresal • ♥ A Lilliputian councilor,

Principal Secretary of Private Affairs.

• Skyresh Bolgolam• ♥ High admiral of Lilliput, a

counselor of the Emperor.

• Slamecksan and Tramecksan • ♥ Lilliputian political parties. • ♥ The first represents the Low Heels; the

second represents the High Heels.

• Glumdalclitch • ♥ The daughter of Gulliver's master in

Brobdingnag. • ♥ She acts as Gulliver's nurse and protector.

• The King of Laputa • ♥ Leader of Laputa. • ♥ He is preoccupied with mathematics and

music.

Gulliver’s Travels• Introduction:• ♥ Gulliver's Travels consists

of four voyages, each of which involves Gulliver ending up on a distant shore where he encounters its strange and wonderful inhabitants

SAMUEL JOHNSON• Next only to William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson is perhaps the most quoted of English writers. The latter part of the eighteenth century is often (in English-speaking countries, of course) called, simply, the Age of Johnson.

• He began work on a Dictionary of the English Language

• The New English Dictionary (now the Oxford English Dictionary), on which literally thousands of scholars collaborated (not all of them full-time), took seventy years to complete. Johnson, in one room with mostly borrowed books and six copyists, completed his task in nine years.

• Essays for the Rambler about human motives, about self-deception, the "treachery of the human heart," the ways in which we evade the knowledge of what we ought to do, and about some specific duties that we need to be reminded of.

JOHNSON’S LITERARY WORKS• The Young Author, dealing with the

dreams of greatness of someone just starting to write, and the almost certain destruction of those dreams.

• the Parliamentary Debates, the poem London, numerous articles, a few sermons and other speeches for which the speakers took the credit, and the like

• short novel, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. It is the story of a prince who has led a sheltered life, and who goes out to explore the world and learn the meaning of life and the secret of happiness.

• In 1756, just after the completion of the Dictionary, Johnson was encouraged to undertake a new edition of the works of Shakespeare, with (a) explanatory notes, (b) an analysis and commentary on each play, and (c) an attempt at establishing a standard text by comparing the variations in early copies of the plays and determining wherever possible the correct original reading. Johnson agreed to produce the work in eighteen months

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) He wrote a small number of highly finished poems, among which the Elegy was an immediate and immense success, and The Bard, one of his own favorites, was popularly condemned as obscure and rhapsodical.

• Apart from his poetry, Gray is chiefly remembered for his vivid and charming letters.

• Though Gray is sometimes considered a transitional or pre-Romantic poet, he has little in common with Wordsworth, who attacked his Sonnet on West for its supposed artificiality. 

Selected Works of Thomas Gray• Poetical Works 

♥ An Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College  (1747)

• ♥ An Elegy wrote in a Country Churchyard  (1751)

• ♥ Ode on the Spring♥ Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat♥ Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College♥ A Long Story♥ Hymn to Adversity

RESTORATION AND 18TH CENTURY LITERATURE

REPORTED BY:APRYL ROSE MOSENOS

ANALYSIS OF AUTHOR’S LITERARY PIECE

BY:MA. JESSA KRISTINE NEBRES