4: Neoclassicism and the Eighteenth Century (1660-1797)
- Page ID
- 470677
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you will be able to:
- Analyze how Parliament limited monarchical power and protected civil rights
- Characterize Georgian rule (George I, II, and III)
- Relate Neoclassical literature to the rise of reason and science
- Analyze the changing relationship of authors to their readers, or audience
- Describe characteristic features of the novel as genre
- Compare the novel as genre to Elizabethan and Seventeenth Century poetry and drama
- Compare Alexander Pope’s mock epic The Rape of the Lock to Milton’s epic Paradise Lost
- 4.1: Introduction
- The novel was only one new kind of writing that developed throughout this century; others included the periodical essay and the mock-heroic/anti-epic. After the Glorious Revolution, certain changes occurred in audience, in the reading public. Writers could now express diverse points of view and opinions independent of high-born and wealthy patrons, and ranging between parties; they could explore individual psychology, consciousness, and conscience.
- 4.2: Aphra Behn
- Aphra Behn was the first commercially successful woman writer in England in the seventeenth century, writing in various genres, including drama, prose, and poetry. She wrote many kinds of prose, including the prose “history” of Oroonoko: Or, The History of the Royal Slave. Like many early novels, this work hybridizes various discourses and forms, including idealism and realism, and the travelogue, romance, and tragedy. Her prose contributed to the development of the novel as genre in English.
- 4.3: Jonathan Swift
- Born in Dublin, Jonathan Swift depended on the generosity of his uncle for both his upbringing and education. He studied at Kilkenny School and then at Trinity College, Dublin, from which he graduated in 1689. His Gulliver’s Travels (1726) vilified humankind for its misdirected pride and various atrocities against humanity. The force, range, and bitterness of this text’s indictment against humans who wrongly assume their own rationality strike home even today.
- 4.4: Alexander Pope
- Alexander Pope was born into a well-to-do Roman Catholic family. Pope started writing very early in his life. Beginning with Pastorals (1709), Pope modeled his work on the classical writers of Rome, particular Horace, Ovid, and Lucretius (99-55 BCE), and wrote in several classical genres, including satire, epic, and epistle. He expressed his views on literary decorum in his important An Essay on Criticism (1711). His other poems included the verse mock-epic The Rape of the Lock.
- 4.5: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
- Mary Wortley Montagu was daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston (1655-1726) and Mary Fielding (cousin of novelist Henry Fielding), who died when Montagu was five. As a female, she was tutored at home but was largely self-educated through reading the books in her father’s library. Despite being classically opaque, Montagu’s poetry contains some autobiographical elements, for instance, in “Saturday. The Smallpox.”
- 4.6: Samuel Johnson
- Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, England to Michael Johnson, a bookseller, and Sarah Ford. During his childhood, he took full advantage of his father’s stock of books and read voraciously. Johnson began his writing career with translations of A Voyage to Abyssinia (1735). Johnson’s writing is characterized by its balanced, classical style. His use of the periodic sentence characterizes this style in his prose; his use of the heroic couplet, his poetry; and his precise diction, in both.