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    Augustan Literature

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    The document summarizes the Augustan period in English literature from the 18th century. It began as an imitation of classical Greco-Roman styles and themes seen in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid during the reign of Augustus. Major English Augustan writers included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele who wrote in classical styles. The period also saw developments in genres like the novel, essay, and drama. While some writers strictly followed classical models, others like Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith experimented with styles. By the mid-18th century, writers like William Collins and Thomas Gray began challenging the classical ideal with more romantic themes,

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    Augustan Literature

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    41 views2 pages
    The document summarizes the Augustan period in English literature from the 18th century. It began as an imitation of classical Greco-Roman styles and themes seen in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid during the reign of Augustus. Major English Augustan writers included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele who wrote in classical styles. The period also saw developments in genres like the novel, essay, and drama. While some writers strictly followed classical models, others like Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith experimented with styles. By the mid-18th century, writers like William Collins and Thomas Gray began challenging the classical ideal with more romantic themes,

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    The document summarizes the Augustan period in English literature from the 18th century. It began as an imitation of classical Greco-Roman styles and themes seen in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid during the reign of Augustus. Major English Augustan writers included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele who wrote in classical styles. The period also saw developments in genres like the novel, essay, and drama. While some writers strictly followed classical models, others like Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith experimented with styles. By the mid-18th century, writers like William Collins and Thomas Gray began challenging the classical ideal with more romantic themes,

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    41 views2 pages

    Augustan Literature

    Uploaded by

    tony
    The document summarizes the Augustan period in English literature from the 18th century. It began as an imitation of classical Greco-Roman styles and themes seen in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid during the reign of Augustus. Major English Augustan writers included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele who wrote in classical styles. The period also saw developments in genres like the novel, essay, and drama. While some writers strictly followed classical models, others like Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith experimented with styles. By the mid-18th century, writers like William Collins and Thomas Gray began challenging the classical ideal with more romantic themes,

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    KH Ulm

    The Augustan Age


    Age of the Roman emperor Augustus (31 BC–AD 14), during which art and literature flourished. It is
    also used to characterize the work of 18th-century writers who adopted the style, themes, and structure
    of classical texts.

    The term is used with particular reference to the works of the Augustan poets, Virgil, Horace, and
    Ovid. In 18th-century literature, major Augustan writers include the English poet Alexander Pope,
    Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, English poet, essayist, and dramatist Joseph Addison, and Irish essayist
    and playwright Richard Steele, as well as French writers under Louis XIV. Major writers, and later
    writers, were sceptical and even contemptuous of the term, as was Pope in ‘The Dunciad’ (1728). The
    term is also applied to the culture of the 18th century, as contrasted with the 19th-century Romantic
    age.

    Augustan literature
    The Augustan period in English literature involved the development of both the themes and the
    structure of the classics. The poet Alexander Pope, for example, translated and paraphrased classical
    texts as well as imitating and parodying their style and structure (for example, in The Rape of the Lock,
    1712–14). While some writers in the period were entrenched in classical style, at the same time there
    was a development in English literature. In prose, Richard Steele and Joseph Addison developed the
    satirical essay in Tatler (1709–11). The novel was also developed; Samuel Richardson wrote Pamela
    (1740–41) and Clarissa (1747–48), which were both in the form of the epistolary novel (in letter
    form), and which served to popularize the novel. Henry Fielding both parodied Richardson's
    achievements (Shamela, 1741) and developed the narrative form of the novel via his novels Joseph
    Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749). Tobias Smollett, like Fielding, wrote comic-adventure type
    novels (such as Humphrey Clinker, 1771), and Laurence Sterne, also a novelist of this period,
    experimented with the novel form in his Tristram Shandy (1759–67).
    The neoclassical standards established by the Augustans were maintained by Samuel Johnson and his
    circle of fellow artists, which included Irish politician and writer Edmund Burke, English painter
    Joshua Reynolds, and Irish dramatists Oliver Goldsmith (whose works include She Stoops to Conquer,
    1773), and Richard Sheridan (whose plays include The Rivals, 1775 and School for Scandal, 1777).
    Goldsmith and Sheridan continued the tradition of witty and satirical drama, although Goldsmith was
    also a poet (The Deserted Village, 1770) and a novelist (The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766). Another
    influential literary figure of the period was English writer Daniel Defoe, whose works were
    particularly unconventional, especially Moll Flanders (1722) and Journal of a Plague Year (1722),
    in which he fictionalized the unstructured jottings of a survivor of the Great Plague of 1665. Both
    works are noted for their realistic nature. His most famous work, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
    pretends to be a factual account. Irish satirist Jonathan Swift is noted for his political satire
    Gulliver's Travels (1726), and also for the satirical pamphlet A Modest Proposal (1729), in which he
    suggested that the children of the poor should be eaten. Religious writing in the period was also
    strong, and includes the hymns of Isaac Watts (‘O God, our help in ages past’, ‘How doth the Little
    Busy Bee’, 1715) and the writings of John Wesley, the English founder of Methodism.
    The classical model and ideal was challenged by the themes of Romanticism much earlier than is
    popularly supposed. The English poet William Collins, for example, began writing in the classical
    mode and then adapted the form to increasingly romantic subjects (Ode on the Superstitions of the
    Highlands, 1749). The English poet Thomas Gray, who is regarded as a forerunner of Romanticism,
    wrote Elegy in the Country Churchyard in 1751.
    This article is © Research Machines plc 2009. All rights reserved. Helicon Publishing is a division of Research Machines plc.

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