The Neoclassical Age and the Rise of the

The Neoclassical Age and the Rise of the Novel (1660 -1789) by Anna Lazzari

Outline • 1660 -1700: the Restoration Period (the Age of Dryden) • 1700 -1745: the Augustan Period (the Age of Pope and Swift) • 1745 -1789: the Age of Sensibility (the Age of Dr Johnson) Restoration Period + Augustan Period = the Age of Reason

Restauration • Accession to the throne of Charles II (1660) • All principles of Puritanism were rejected • Theatres were reopened (1660) • Women were allowed to be actresses • Trade continued to grow (importance of ships) • The plague (1665) and the fire of London (1666)

Restauration • Death of Charles II (1688) • His brother James II (Catholic) on the throne • James II’s Protestant daughter, Mary and her husband William invited to rule England, but they must obey parliament’s wishes • James II flees and the divine right to rule is over. • William and Mary sign the Bill of Rights Detail of William and Mary as portrayed on the ceiling of the Painted Hall of the Greenwich Hospital

Restauration – Bill of Right (1689) • Ratified the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 • Ensured that Parliament would now and forever be superior to the monarchy (constitutional monarchy) • King had to call parliament regularly and Parliament controlled spending • No Catholic could sit on the throne • King couldn’t interfere with Parliament or dissolve it • Habeas corpus – nobody could be thrown in jail without being charged with a specific crime (trial by jury and no excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishment)

Restauration – New Literary Genres • Drama • Heroic plays (Dryden, All for Love, 1677) • Comedies of manners (Congreve, The Way of the World, 1700) • New indoor theatres designed by Sir Christopher Wren • Poetry • Heroic couplet (Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1681)

The Augustan Period • Mary died in 1694 • William ruled alone until his death in 1702. • Mary’s younger sister, Anne, became Queen of England, Scotland Ireland (8 th March 1702) • 1 st May 1707, Acts of Union (the kingdoms of England Scotland united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain). • Anne continued to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death (1714). Portrait by Michael Dahl, 1705

The Augustan Period From Augustus, Roman Emperor • Strong interest in tradition (thus the “neo”), distrust of radical innovation • Great respect for classical writers (those of Ancient Greece and Rome) • Literature was one of the arts – as an “art” it required the practice and study of a set of skills and the involvement of the artist in the forms and styles of the “classical” era, the original Augustan Age

The Augustan Period Emergency of the Empire • First prime ministers (Walpole and Pitt) expanded British power and commerce overseas • Britain became colonial power, ruling Canada and India, though in 1776 they lost American colonies. • Slave trade enriched nation; opposition to slavery widespread by both Anglicans and Methodists

The Augustan Period Poetics • Imitation of Classical literature: • Perfect imitations of nature • Craftmanship • Codification of rules in literature • Imitation of nature: • ‘Human nature’ (Pope) • Stressed balance, logic, sophisticated wit, and emotional restraint

The Augustan Period Poetry • Had to express universal truths and not personal emotions • Formal perfection (classical inspiration) • Triumph of the «poetic diction» • Use of elevated and poetical words • Use of Latinate words • Use of the heroic couplet (rhymed iambic pentameters)

The Augustan Period Literature • The Age of Swift, Pope, Addison, Walpole • Expansion of reading public • New journalism • Professional writers and booksellers • Writers, artists, politicians, etc. , gathered in coffeehouses to exchange ideas, conduct business, and gossip

The Augustan Period – New Literary Genres • Sentimental comedy: Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728) • Mock heroic: Swift, Battle of the Books (1704); Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) • Landscape poems: Thomson, Winter (1726) • Satires: Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729) • Novel: Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)

The Augustan Period Antecedents of the Novel • Newspapers: news, gossips, reports • Journals: best writers, didacticism, model for taste, education of middle classes; Steele and Addison, Tatler and Spectator (1709 -11, 1711 -12) • Pamphlets and satires: political, occasional, ridicule • Other: essays, travelogues, biographies, letters

The Augustan Period Characteristics of the Novel • From Italian «novella» (idea of novelty, telling something new) • Aimed at middle class readers (a lot of women too) • Easy to read • Set in a world easily recognizable by middle classes • Interaction between individuals and society • Novelists mainly wanted to reveal, educate and stimulate moral reflection • Novel often published in installments

The Augustan Period Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719 • Defoe, «father» of the English novel • First full-length prose fiction and first English popular novel • Application of journalism (Defoe was also a journalist) • World view of middle classes

The Augustan Period Defoe’s innovations: • Narrative realism (loosely based on Alexander Silkirk’s real story) • Fictitious events against a realistic background • Reportage: keen eye for the detail (descriptions)

Main novelists • Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726) • Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740, epistolary form) • Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (1749) • Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1757 -59) • Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)

The Age of Sensibility - Towards Romanticism… Prose (fiction) • Novels more popular than poems for the first time • Epistolary novels and satires • Gothic novels • Experimental fiction influenced by Cervantes in Spain • Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (first metanovel and antinovel)

The Age of Sensibility - Towards Romanticism… Prose (non fiction) • Essays - literary criticism, biography, philosophy, politics, history, aesthetics, economics (Adam Smith) • E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757 • Concept of Sublime: natural beauty that was not neat and wellordered like a garden but complex, uncontrollable and impressive, leading to feelings of awe. • Memoirs of women created celebrities who let readers into private lives • First dictionaries

The Age of Sensibility - Towards Romanticism… Poetry • Poems were melancholy and lamented loss of poetic age • “Primitives” like Ossian were popular • By, the Scottish poet James Macpherson (from 1760: Fragments of ancient poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language) • Cycle of epic poems translated into poetic prose, with short and simple sentences Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of Fallen French Heroes, Anne-Louis Girodet, 1805