Augustan Age Literature

Augustan Age (18 cent.)

• According to Hudson the epithet ―Augustan‖
was applied as a term of high praise, because the
Age of Augustus (Roman Emperor) was the
golden age of Latin literature, so the Age of Pope
was the golden age of English literature.

• This epithet serves to bring out the analogy

between the first half of the eighteenth century
and the Latin literature of the days of Virgil and
Horace.
 Neoclassical Writers
• The writers of the reigns of Anne and George I
called their period the Augustan Age, because
they flattered themselves that with them English
life and literature had reached a culminating
period of civilization and elegance corresponding
to that which existed at Rome under the Emperor
Augustus. They believed also that both in the art
of living and in literature they had rediscovered
literary values of classical writers and were
practicing the principles of the best periods of
Greek and Roman life.
 Classical Models
• The poets and critics of this age believed that
the writers of classical antiquity presented the
best models and ultimate standards of literary
taste, and secondly, in a more general way,
that, like these Latin writers, they had little
faith in the promptings and guidance of
individual genius, and much in laws and rules
imposed by the authority of the past.
 This age may be divided into two
periods:
• The first stretching from 1700 to 1750 is the
neoclassic Age.
• The second: spans from 1750 to 1798 is the
transitional period.
• The classical tendencies lost their hold during
the second period and there was a transition
from classicism to romanticism.
 Two Political Parties
• the Whigs and the Tories. Their political opinions and
programs were sharply divided. The Whig party stood
for the pre-eminence of personal freedom
• The Tory party supported the royal Divine Right.

• The periodicals were the mouthpieces of their

respective political opinions. Thus began the age of
journalism and periodical essay. The rise of periodical
writing allowed great scope to the development of the
literary talent of prose writers of the time.
Coffee Houses and Literary Activity
• A number of clubs and coffee houses came into
existence.
• They became the centers of fashionable and public life.
• The Coffee houses were the haunts of prominent
writers, thinkers, artists, intellectuals and politicians.
• The discussions in coffee houses took place in polished,
refined, elegant, easy and lucid style. Thus coffee
houses also contributed to the evolution of prose style
during the eighteenth century.
 Rise of Middle Class
• The rising interest in politics witnessed the
decline of drama.
• This period of literature saw the emergence of a
powerful middle class.
• The middle class writers were greatly influenced
by moral considerations. Moreover, William III
and Queen Anne were staunch supporters of
morality. Addison in an early number of The
Spectator puts the new tone in writing in his own
admirable way: ―I shall endeavor to enliven
morality with wit and wit with morality.
 Age of Pope and Dr. Johnson
• The Spectator (1711): A periodical/Daily
publication founded by Joseph Addison and
Richard Steele (essayist).
• The political and social changes exhibiting the
supremacy of good sense, rationality, sanity and
balance left an imperishable mark on the
literature of the Age of Pope and Dr. Johnson. The
literature of the period bore the hallmark of
intelligence, of wit and of fancy, not a literature of
emotion, passion, or creative energy.
 Age of Prose and Reason
• It is an age of prose, reason, good sense and not
of poetry. A large number of practical interests
arising from the new social and political
conditions demanded expression not simply in
looks, but in pamphlets, magazines and
newspapers. Poetry was inadequate for such a
task. Hence prose developed rapidly and
excellently. Indeed, poetry itself became prosaic,
as it was not used for creative works of
imagination, but for essays, satires and criticism.
 The Enlightenment contrasts with the darkness of irrationality of
the Middle Age.
 Belief in progress, the power of reason.
 For the Enlightenment thinkers all men are equal in respect of
their rationality and the tolerance and individual liberty must be
granted by the law. Enlightenment thinking that tended to atheism
was the bases of French Revolution.
 During the Augustan Age the wealth of the State, based on trade
with the colonies, increased dramatically and Britain’s position as
a world power was confirmed by the victory in the Seven Years’
War against France, for the supremacy in the colonies.

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 GEORGE I (1714-1727)
When Queen Anne died without an heir,
the parliament called the Duke of
Hanover=> his mother was the
granddaughter of king James I
He became King with the title George I
He spoke no English (only German) and
had to rely on the elected MPs to govern.
Most MPs were Whigs=> they were the
most powerful
The Tories instead wanted the descendant
of King James II to govern England. They
were called Jacobites => Jacobus=James
in Latin
(they attempted two rebellions, 1715 and
1745, without success)
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GEORGE II (1727-1760)
His reign was marked by the presence and
influence of Sir Horace Walpole. This one
was a Whig supporter, who became the First
Prime Minister and remained in power for more
than 20 years.
The King gave Walpole the house at 10
Downing Street. Walpole managed to govern
England well and peacefully, but after 1726 his
government was accused of corruption. He lost
the election in 1742 and resigned his office.

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GEORGE III (1760-1801)
His reign was marked by a series of
military conflicts, the American War of
Independence(1776) and the French
Revolution.
He suffered from mental illnesses later in
his life.
During his reign the Pitt family governed as
Prime Ministers: William Pitt the Elder
(1766-68) and William Pitt the Younger
(1783-1801).

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THE SOCIAL SITUATION

 Britain was still a rural country and the life

expectancy was low.

 Middle Class or Middle Sort

 Rise of a new working class as a result of

a series
of Enclosure Acts.

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 LIFE DURING THE AUGUSTAN AGE

A new reading public: the middle class.

Connected to it are:
The rise of Journalism & The rise of
the Novel.

As a consequence of the advent of

coffee from the colonies, clubs and
coffee houses flourished in
towns. They were intellectual and
social centres for debates.

Satire became the major output.

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EARLY NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES

⚫ Daily Courant in 1702, The Tatler (1709)

and The Spectator (1711)
⚫ Daily Courant  also gossips  2 years
only
⚫ The Tatler (=Il chiacchierone)  mainly
essays.
⚫ The Spectator  politics, literature art.
⚫ The editors: Joseph Addison & Richard
Steele.
Aimed at middle class readers!
Circulated mainly in the new coffee-houses
of the big cities. 10
 Poetr
•
y
The poetry of the first half of the eighteenth
century as represented by the works of Pope
and Dr. Johnson is polished and witty-it
interests us as a study of life.
• Age of Satire:
• The predominance of satire is an important
literary characteristic of the age.
• The satires of Pope, place them with our great
literature, which is always constructive in spirit
 Insistence on Rules
• precise rules of writing poetry.
• They professed to have discovered their rules in the
classics of Aristotle and Horace. Dryden, Pope and
Johnson pioneered the revival of classicism which
conformed to rules established by the great writers of
other nations. They preferred only set rules to the
depth and seriousness of subject matter. They ignored
creativity, depth, vigour and freshness of expression.
The true classicist pays equal consideration to the
depth and seriousness of subject matter, and the
perfect and flawless expression.
 Form and substance
• harmonious balance between form and
substance was disturbed in the Age of Pope and
Johnson.
• Pope, Johnson, Addison, Steele etc., though
urban in outlook and temperament, show
remarkable interest in the middle classes and,
thus, broaden the scope of literature. The theme
of literature before them was strictly confined to
fashionable and aristocratic circles. In the works
of middle class writers classicism shows itself
slightly colored by a moralizing intension.
 heroic couplet
• The use heroic couplet was predominant
of during period. The heroic couplet was
this as the only medium forpoetic
recognized
• expression.
correctness and precision
• The common words or ordinary language were
deliberately kept out from poetic literature. The
result was that literature of the Augustan Age
became artificial, rational and intellectual.
 THE AUGUSTAN POETRY
• Augustan poetry was the product of intelligence,
good sense, reason and sanity.
• Polish and elegance of form were of more importance than
subtlety or originality of thought.
• entirely ignores primary human emotions and feelings.
• It is didactic and satiric. It is realistic and unimaginative.
• It is town poetry. It ignores the humbler aspects of life and
the entire countryside. The poetic style is polished, refined
and artificial. It led ―to the establishment of a highly
artificial and conventional style which became stereotyped
into a traditional poetic diction.
• During this period the satiric and narrative forms of
poetry flourished. Heroic couplet dominated in this poetry.
 Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
• Pope is the representative poet of the Augustan Age.
His famous works include Pastorals, An Essay in
Criticism, Windsor Forest, The Rape of the Lock,
translations of lliad and Odyssey, Elegy to the memory
of an Unfortunate Lady and An Essay on Man.
• The three poems in which he is indisputably the
spokesman of his age are The Rape of the Lock,
picturing its frivolities; Dunciad unveiling its squalor;
The Essay on Man, echoing its philosophy.
• He is a representative poet of the age of ―prose and
reason.
 The Rape of the Lock
• In The Rape of the Lock he realistically dealt
with the life of the fashionable upper strata of
London society. He had a meticulous sense of
the exact word in the exact sense.
• His poetic art is the finest specimen of the
neo-classic conception of correctness.
 Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84)
• Johnson‘s two poems London and The Vanity
of Human Wishes belong to the Augustan
school of poetry. Both are written in the
heroic couplet and abound in Personifications
and other devices that belonged to the poetic
diction of the age of neo-classicism. In their
didacticism, their formal, rhetorical style, and
their adherence to the closed couplet they
belong to the neo-classic poetry.
 PROSE OF AUGUSTAN AGE
• The prose is greater in the art of critical exposition and
journalistic realism than in work of creative imagination.
Dryden is the pioneer of modern prose.
• The Periodical Essay was the peculiar product of the
eighteenth century. It was called a ―periodical‖ because it
was not published in book form like other types of essays,
but it was published in magazines and journals which
appeared periodically. It had an inherent social purpose.
It aimed at improving the manners and morals of the
people. Therefore, it is also termed as the ―social essay.

• Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) is a pioneer in the periodical

essay and in the novel.
 Johnathan Swift
• Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was the most
original writer of his time. He was the man of
genius among many men of talent. But his
connection with the periodical essay is very
slight. He wrote a few papers for The Tatler
and The Spectator. His Journal to Stella is an
excellent commentary on contemporary
characters and political events.
 Prose Fiction
• Swift‘s intellect was too massive for the essay and
we look for the real Swift on the larger canvas of
Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of A Tub. The Battle of
Books and A Tale of a Tub rank among the finest
prose satires in English literature. The style of A
Tale of A Tub is verse and has a sustained vigour,
ace and colorfulness. Swift‘s inventive genius, his
fierce satire and his cruel indignation at life were
well depicted in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift was a
great stylist. His prose is convincing and powerful.
 NOVEL DURING AUGUSTAN
• The development of English prose contributed to the
rise of novel during the eighteenth century. Daniel
Defoe‘s Robinson Crusoe, Captain Singleton, Moll
Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year and Roxana are
the forerunners of novel.
• the extraordinary realism which is an important
element in the art of novel writing. His stories are told
so convincingly as if they were stories of real life. He
also knew the art of narrating details effectively. He
had a swift and resolute narrative method and a plain
and matter-of-fact style. To the development of novel
Defoe‘s contribution is remarkable.
 Henry Fielding (1707-54)
• Fielding was the greatest of this new group of
novelists. He is called ―the father of English
novel‖ because he for the first time propounded
the technique of writing novel. He had a deeper
and wider knowledge of life, which he gained
from his own varied and sometimes riotous
experiences. As a magistrate he had an intimate
knowledge of many types of human criminality
which was of much use to him in his novels. His
first novel Joseph Andrews (1742) began as a
burlesque of the false sentimentality and
conventional virtues of Richardson‘s Pamela.
 Other Novelists
• Oliver Goldsmith‘s The Vicar of Wakefield
stands in the first rank of the eighteenth
century novels. Its plot is simple, though
sometimes inconsistent, the characters are
human and attractive and humour and pathos
are deftly mingled together.
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

 The word comes from the Italian “novella” = a long

prose narrative.
 Period of experimentation → no dominant form

I. Defoe and the Realist Novel

II. Swift and the Literature of the Fantastic
III. Richardson and the Sentimental Novel/ Epistolary
Novel
IV. Fielding and the Comic Novel
V. Sterne and the Experimental Novel.

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DEFOE AND THE REALIST NOVEL

 Defoe‟s works are written in the form of fictional

autobiography or diary to make them more
realistic.

 The protagonist must struggle to overcome a

series of misfortunes, using only his/her phisical or
mental resources.

 No psychological development of characters.

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ROBINSON CRUSOE

 Inspired by the real story of Alxander Selkirk

 Divided into 3 sections

 Hero of the middle class → values of hard work,

self improvement, belief in God’s providence.
 Interpreted as a religious allegory → redemption
from sins through hard work
 Economic Allegory of merchant capitalism

 Imperialist allegory (more recently) → of the

British Colonizer who is convinced of hi superiority
over the savage.

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⚫ Samuel Johnson or Dr Johnson (1709 – 1784) 
known as the „literature dictator‟  known from The
Life of Johnson (biography), written by one of his
followers James Boswell.
⚫ Besides his eccentric characteristics, he was also
known as the first compiler of the most complete
English dictionary: A Dictionary of the English
Language (1755)

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