The Restoration and the 18th Century

The Restoration and the 18th Century

Literature of the Time

Satirical Voices

Although novels and newspapers pleased the middle-class, their was a new literary style that was aimed for the elite. Neoclassicism emulated the rationality of ancient Greek and Roman writers. It was polished, witty, and formal.

Augustan Age

The Rise of Women Writers

Neoclassical writers stressed balance, order, logic and emotional restraint. They wanted to focus more on society and human intellect and less on personal feelings.

The early 1700s were called the Augustan Age, in reference to the times of Romes emperor Augustus. Rome was prosperous and stable in the reign of Augustus.

The Age of Johnson

Social Observers

Women felt like they had ever right as men to exercise their reason and learning about the world. However, universities were closed to them, so they couldn't explore like men could.

After the War

Neoclassicists often used satire in their writing. They wanted to point out and ridicule the aspects of society that they felt needed to be changed.

After the warfare with France and the disaster of the American Revolution, the middle class grew and prospered. The men and women had more money, leisure, and education than ever before. For authors, this meant a broader audience to buy literature.

However, audiences didn't like the sophisticated language and allusions to classics they had never heard of before.

Rise of Journalism

• Restoration comedies satirized the Stuart court.

They wanted language they could understand and writing that reflected their own concerns and experiences like:

• working hard
• doing the right thing
• gaining respect

Horatian Satire

Juvenalian Satire

Because of this, enterprising women in the mid-1700s decided to bring it to there own homes in the form of French-style private gatherings known as salons. Salons quickly became popular.

Though newspapers had been around since the early 1600s, restrictions from Charles I and Oliver Cromwell kept them from flourishing. Eventually the restrictions eased and the press had more freedoms. This began the daily newspapers such as The Tatler and the The Spectator. These published essays by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele that satisfied the wants by the middle class. Newspapers didn't only report on the current events; they moralized, mocked, and gossiped.

One approach:

• gentle
• playful
• sympathetic

The other:

• dark
• biting

The second half of the 18th century can be referred to as the Johnson Age - a tribute to Samuel Johnson, Britain's most influential man of letters of the day. He was a critic, a poet, a journalist, an essayist, a scholar, and a lexicographer.

Novels

Charlotte Smith

Mary Wollstonecraft

She wrote to support her family. She began with poetry, but eventually turned over to novels. Her works were similar to other works by women of the time.

Most women defied the social norms, but under assumed names. Mary openly challenged the status quo. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, she argued that women should be educated and allowed to join men in the professions.

Robinson Crusoe is considered by many to be the first novel in England. It was written by journalist Daniel Defoe in 1719. He used a familiar realistic style that was found in newspaper articles to account an event to make the story.

Bluestockings

Because these gatherings were informal, women wore everyday blue stockings (now, that would be like wearing jeans to a party) and intellectual women became known as bluestockings.

Many bluestockings began publishing their works. Men had tried writing stories that appealed to women, but now that the women were starting to publish, they had competition.

Fanny Burney

Other writers followed this novel with their own novels modeled on nonfiction forms.

• Letters
• Diaries

She wrote novels that may seem overly sentimental and moralistic to modern readers. However, her understanding of women's concerns and accurate portrayal of society won over an audience in her day.

Samuel Pepys was a prosperous middle-class Londoner. He began a diary in the first year of the Restoration and kept it for nine years. Though it was a personal journal that was never intended for publication, it was later published and is considered a wonderful reference of the major events of the day, including the coronation of Charles II and the Great London Fire.

She is now most famous for her diary that she started when she was 15 and wrote in regularly for 70 years.

Poetry entered a transitional stage in which poets wrote simpler, freer lyrics on subjects close to the human heart.

During this time, nonfiction flourished.

• biographies
• history
• philosophy
• politics
• economics
• literary criticism
• aesthetics
• natural history