18th Century English Literature: Satire, Novel, and Cultural Elite

Age of Dryden (Restoration) till the Death of Druden (1700)

Satire and drama. Theatres had been closed because of being illegal and immoral by Puritans but they opened thanks to royal support.

The Age of Pope-Swift (Golden Age of Satire) till 1744

They represent satire. Augustan period till the death of Pope and Swift. Satire and the rise of the novel. They tried to kill the novel. The rise was illicit. It was an offensive reading, sexual and physically explicit. They had nothing to do with the rise of the novel, but for the fact that they were anti-novelists, trying to destroy the aesthetic of novels. GT is a book of satire criticizing novels. They represent the cultural elite, not the popular culture.

Age of Johnson

Sensibility or enlightenment. Johnson never wrote a novel but in this period there is a consolidation of the novel. There were not first-rank novelists. The rest of the novelists were women, so it had little reputation. Novels about women. The novel refined. Men complained about its similarity to women stuff like soap operas.

Contexts: Assessments

The century had mixed feelings. Not proud of the 18th century and the corruption but in general the high moral standards behavior of Victorian people had nostalgia for the 18th century. Hogarth representations were very funny. Humor practiced by some writers. Fielding was the model borrowed by Victorian novelists such as Dickens. Immoral times 18th century. Historians; negativity and corruption of ancient regime (absolutism), nostalgia about eccentricity and conservative satirical types. Age of Hogarth, he was a satirist in images, engravings ridiculing the behavior of the English people. He criticizes the low classes drinking gin to stay warm. Figure of John Bull. It was a fictional character invented to criticize traditional behavior of gentlemen in the country without manners. He became a symbol of English pride in WWI and WWII. Historians looked for from high politics to other areas. Not only facts but also opinions. They looked for the true history, the history of the normal people, not the history of politicians. Whigs became fashionable in order to show power and respectability. The writers of the period were important because they criticized the world, the liberals, they were struggling, trying to ridicule each other, imitate each other.

Stability was seen in Europe as an achievement, although Swift disliked his era. When Walpole, the Prime Minister, was in trouble, he bought members of the parliament to vote for him. Nostalgia about eccentricity and conservative satirical types: because they were more tyrannical, less democratic. They had a more tolerant attitude towards human beings, you could be more eccentric.

Contemporary Outsiders

England was considered dynamic and progressive and a model for continental reformers. Developed a political system: mild but effective government reassuring combination of monarchical and republican politics. There was a society encouraging to have business. Aristocracy investment. The state collaborated with traders. Government protecting the economy of entrepreneurs. Industrialism or nation of shopkeepers, meaning prosperity and money. Making for commerce. An army to protect the commercial people around the world. Innovative British thought. Philosophers and scientists became influential, notions of freethinking. People with more freedom.