The Restoration th and the 18 Century Literature The Restoration 1660 - 1776 Augustan poetry Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The last classical age The Augustans were convinced that their aesthetic and moral canons were perfect because they conformed to Nature, which they saw as the rational principle guiding the universe, and to classical rules. Nature and the classics were thought to be the same thing and were considered superior to modern ideas and standards. It might be said that the Augustan period was the last truly classical age. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Mock-heroic and satirical poetry The great poets of the Augustan Age used mock-heroic and satirical poetry not just to entertain their readers, but especially to expose the follies and abuses of contemporary society. Mock-heroic is based upon a simple yet effective device: a subject of the least importance is treated as if it were of the greatest importance. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Alexander Pope (1648-1744) was the greatest satirical poet of his age. He gained fame with The Rape of the Lock (1712), a mock-heroic poem in which a trivial accident (a young lord cuts off a lock of a young noble lady’s hair) is sung in epic language and tone. Another great satirical poet was Samuel Johnson (1709-84), who became the arbiter of literary taste in late Augustan England. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Nature and the Classics are considered superior to modern standards. Augustan poetry Mock-heroic and satirical poetry exposes the folly and abuses of modern life: • Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock: mock-heroic poem about mundane events. • Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes: imitation of Juvenal’s satires. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century British drama after Restoration Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Restoration drama The new indoor theatres did not have the Elizabethan platform jutting out into the audience: instead there was a picture frame stage surrounded by a proscenium arch, very much like in modern theatres. Restoration dramatists wrote heroic plays whose characters always behaved and spoke in a noble manner. There was no mixing of comic and tragic scenes, as in Shakespeare. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century John Dryden (1631-1700) was the foremost writer of heroic plays. His plays show a majestic treatment of feats of war, battles and love. Restoration comedy was above all a comedy of manners, that is a parody and a critique of fashionable society. The plays were mostly centred on the relationship between the two sexes. Marriage was seen as a means of making rich social alliances. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Restoration comedy was above all a comedy of manners, that is a parody and a critique of fashionable society. The plays were mostly centred on the relationship between the two sexes. Marriage was seen as a means of making rich social alliances. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The sentimental comedy and the comedy of manners The cynical comedies of the Restoration gave way in the 18th century to moralistic and sentimental comedies, where the action is often interrupted by monologues in which the characters show their goodness of heart. Richard Steele (1672-1729) wrote plays full of overt moralizing. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century A reaction against sentimentalism began in the second half of the century, with the lively comedies of two Irish-born writers. Oliver Goldsmith (1730- 74) is remembered for his brilliant play, She Stoops to Conquer (1773). Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) continued the tradition of the Restoration comedy of manners. His masterpiece is The School for Scandal (1779). Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Farces and satires The best works for the theatre in the first half of the 18th century, however, were parodies and satirical plays. In this field John Gay (16851732) produced what is possibly the only true masterpiece of the age: The Beggar’s Opera (1727). Gay joined with other famous Augustan writers, such as Pope and Swift, in satirizing contemporary public figures and so-called good society. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The Beggar’s Opera is a ballad opera, that is a comic version of the serious Italian opera, then fashionable in England. Though in this play Gay humorously describes low life and criminals, he was really parodying the English establishment. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century More generally, Gay was comparing the crimes of thieves and criminals with the tricks and deceits of professionals and politicians. Gay’s opera is now best known in the 1928 remake by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Indoor theatres with a picture frame stage. British drama Genres: • Heroic plays; • Comedy of manners; • Sentimental comedies; • Farces and satires. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The rise of the novel Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The need of realism 18th-century English novels reflect the modern idea of realism. Consequently, they deal with ordinary people and recognizably contemporary objects, language and situations. Formally, the novel’s main features are: a great stress on contemporary reality; a chronological sequence of events; the abundance of realistic details; the novelty of the stories. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The novel and the middle class The readers of novels mostly came from the commercial and mercantile middle class, whose outlook was mainly practical and who wanted to read original stories about ordinary persons having ordinary experiences. In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Robinson is a middle-class hero, full of enterprise and commercial wisdom. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The novels by Samuel Richardson, on the other hand, show us the respectable, pious side of the middle class. They are filled with enthusiastic praise of virtues such as temperance, economy and modesty, all typically bourgeois. More significantly, women were often the heroines of novels and also avid readers of them. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Time and place With the novel a modern awareness of time enters literature. In Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe records his hero’s experiences from year to year and because of this form of realism that we are led to accept the improbability of the story. Defoe is also the first great writer to be concerned with space as a geographical entity. His sea voyages are measured by latitude and longitude. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Utopian fiction Even utopian fiction was deeply influenced by the realistic trend inaugurated by the novel. A masterpiece like Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift continues the utopian tradition of showing imaginary worlds or nations which are presented as a counterpart to actual imperfect societies. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Gulliver’s fantastic travels, however, include “real” geography (latitude, longitude, names of seas, oceans and countries) and Gulliver, too, recounts his adventures with the same precision and objective details as Robinson Crusoe. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The epistolary novel Epistolary novels were also immensely popular in the 18th century. They included, in their first phase, letters written by one person, often a traveller in a real or imaginary country. A second, more complex phase was inaugurated by Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, which presents an exchange of letters between several correspondents; in this way, the points of view are multiplied. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Space consciousness also enters the novel with the description of interiors. In this field Richardson was the first acknowledged master: he describes the furniture, books and pictures in a room, as well as the clothes worn by people, with great precision. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The picaresque novel The picaresque novel, which deals with the adventures of a young, reckless hero on the road, was very popular in England in the 18th century. It takes its name from the picaro (a Spanish word for ‘rogue and vagabond’), an outsider who manages to survive thanks to his courage and cunning. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century In his adventures on the road he meets people from all ranks of life, and this allows the author to comment on different ways of life. The archetype picaresque novel is the anonymous 16th century Spanish Lazarillo de Tormes. Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605-15) was also highly influential for English writers. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The best writer in this tradition was Henry Fielding (1707-54). With Tom Jones (1749) Fielding greatly improves on the picaresque pattern. On the one hand, he gives it classical proportions by dividing the story into three balanced parts, on the other hand, Tom’s adventures are not casual – as in the typical picaresque novel – but part of a process of growing up. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century The sentimental novel Many novelists chose sentimental themes for their stories and a style of writing that prompted intense emotional reactions. The masterpiece in this tradition is A Sentimental Journey (1768) by Laurence Sterne which is half travel diary and half sentimentalized autobiography. During his journey the protagonist is moved by touching episodes such as a French peasant crying for his dead ass. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century Today, Sterne is especially known for his masterpiece, Tristram Shandy (1760-67). It is an unusual novel, with practically no conventional plot. It is narrated by Tristram Shandy himself, who describes his family’s everyday life and eccentricities through an endless sequence of digressions, asides, long quotations, and flashbacks. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century A new genre: • Realistic characters and situations, taking place in a realistic time and place. • Chronological sequence of events. • Plain, factual language. • Popular with the middle class. The rise of the novel Types of novel: • Utopian novels; • Epistolary novels; • Picaresque novels; • Sentimental novels. Literature - The Restoration and the 18° Century
