The Restoration and
the 18th Century
Charles II
r. 1660-1685
Charles II in
Coronation robes
by Wright
© Royal
Collection
James II
r. 1685-88
James II by Sir Peter Lely (1618-1690)
© Royal Collection
The Glorious Revolution: 1689
William III and Mary II
(r. 1689-1702)
(r. 1689-94)
Portrait of Mary II
by Sir Godfrey
Kneller (1646?1723). © Royal
Collection
Portrait of William
III by Sir Godfrey
Kneller (1646?1723)
© Royal
Collection
Queen Anne
r. 1702-1714
last Stuart
monarch
Portrait of Anne by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646?1723).
“Bonnie Prince
Charlie”
House of
Hanover
The House of Hanover
George I
r. 1714-27
George I by Georg Wilhelm Lafontaine
(1680-1745)
© Royal Collection
George II
r.1720-69
George II by Sir Godfrey Kneller
© Royal Collection
George III, r. 1760-1820
George III, portrait by
Johann Zoffany (1733/41810)
© Royal Collection
A CLASS SOCIETY
• The Aristocracy
• Professionals
•
•
•
•
•
•
Scientists
Physicians
Attorneys
Clergy
Literati
Military Officers
• Merchants and Bankers
• Tradespeople
• Working Class
•
•
•
•
Domestic Servants
Hired labor
Apprentices
The Unemployed: debtors,
beggars,thieves
• Peasants
ENLIGHTENMENT
The Scientific
Revolution
A replica of Isaac Newton's telescope of 1672.
• Emphasis on
experimentation and
inductive reasoning
• Scientific Method
• New methods of
observation: the
microscope and the
telescope
• 1662: Charles I chartered
the Royal Society of
London for the
Improving of Natural
Knowledge
• Natural Religion: Deism
A clockwork universe
with a watchmaker God
• Natural theology: Derives the
existence of God from reason and
personal experience rather than
divine revelation or scripture
• Cultural influences:
• Reaction against sectarian
violence in Europe
• Growing knowledge of diverse
religious beliefs both classical
and contemporary
• Textual study of Biblical
scriptures
• Advances in scientific
knowledge – Bible could not be
seen as authoritative for
matters of science
• Skepticism about miracles and
books that report them
• “Watchmaker God”
• Unitarianism
William Blake
Deism
Sir Isaac Newton
1643-1727
Godfrey Kneller's Sir Isaac Newton at 46
• Mathematician, physicist,
astronomer, alchemist, and
natural philosopher
• Developed calculus
contemporaneously but
separately from Liebniz
• Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica:
described universal
gravitation and the three
laws of motion
• Opticks: discovered that
light was composed of
particles
• Master of the Mint: moved
English coinage to the gold
standard
Neo-Classicism
• Greek/Roman influence
• Classical modes or genres – epic, tragedy, comedy, pastoral ,
satire or ode
• Language appropriate to the mode
• Use of rhetorical figures
• Emphasis on Society: urbanity
• Politeness
• Decorum
• Wit – quickness of mind, inventiveness, imagery and
metaphor
• Age of Reason
• Rationality
• Philosophy
Neo-Classical Conception of
NATURE
• Universal and permanent elements in personal
experience
• Subject to human control
• Gardens
• Source of peace and
tranquillity
NATURE and ARTIFICE
J. S. Muller after Samuel Wale, A General Prospect of Vaux Hall Gardens Shewing at one View the
disposition of the whole Gardens
(after 1751).
ARTIFICE
The Augustan Age
• Art as an improvement upon nature
• Neo-classical ideals: balance,
harmony, reason
• Poetry invokes visualization
• Landscape painting
• Rise of literary criticism
• Major poetic forms:
• Heroic couplets: rhymed iambic
pentameter
• Epic and mock epic
• Poetic essay
• Occasional poems
John Dryden
1631-1700
Gainsborough, St James Park
The City of London
Brawling peasants at
Tyburn Gate, London.
The Warder
MORNING
Collection.
city bustle
Large movements of people
from the country to the cities.
Shift from agrarian to urban
lifestyles.
Peddlar hawking tarts. The Warder Collection.
cry of chimney sweep
churchbells
violinist
howling cats
screeching parrot
London
Cries
milkmaid
ballad-monger
sow-gelder
oboist
toddler with rattle
dustman
paver
fish-monger
wailing
infant
knife-grinder
peeing boy
drumming child
barking dog
Engraving
and
etching by
William
Hogarth.
The Art
Institute of
Chicago.
Poverty and
Unemployment
• Displaced agrarian
labor
• No social safety net
• Education only for
the elite
• Child labor
• Cheap gin
Gin Lane (1751). Etching and Engraving by William Hogarth.
The New York Public Library.
The Diary: Witness to an Age
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
• Member of Parliament and
Secretary of the Admiralty:
highly effective
• 1.3 million word Diary kept
1660-1669 in shorthand and
code
• Eyewitness accounts of The
Great Plague, the Second
Dutch War and the Great
Fire of London
• Londoner: government,
business, the Royal Society,
theatre, music, literary circles
Portrait of Samuel Pepys by J. Hayls
Oil on canvas, 1666
Prose Fiction:
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
• Master of plain prose and
powerful narrative
• Reportial: highly
realistic detail
• Robinson Crusoe
• Journal of the Plague
Year
• Moll Flanders
• Roxana
Picaresque Novels
• Derives from Spanish
picaro: a rogue
• A usually autobiographical
chronicle of a rascal’s
travels and adventures as
s/he makes his/her way
through the world more by
wits than industry
• Episodic, loose structure
• Highly realistic: detailed
description and uninhibited
expression
• Satire of social classes
AFTERNOON
Coffee and
News
Periodicals
and Newpapers
Addison and Steele
The Spectator
Periodical Essays
Literary Criticism
Character Sketches
Political Discussion
Philosophical Ideas
A London coffeehouse.
The British Museum
A London coffeehouse. The British Museum
Samuel Johnson
and
James Boswell
Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary
of the English Language illustrated
the words with quotations from the
best English writers.
James Boswell’s 1791 Life of Samuel
Johnson immortalized the man and
advanced the art of biography.
Thomas Rawlinson, 1786
The Royal Exchange. Engraving by Bartolozzi.
The British Library
Commerce
The Rise of the Middle Class
Increased Literacy
Leisure Time
International Trade
Empire Building
Shopping
Leisure time nurtured middle class women’s interest in
fashion, society, the arts and even literature.
London ladies shopping for fabric. From Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts (1800).
Society
Prince of Wales
Samuel Johnson
Oliver
Goldsmith
James Boswell
Hester Thrale
Duchess of Devonshire
Mary “Perdita” Robinson
Vauxhall Gardens (1784). A drawing by Thomas Rowlandson.
Victoria and Albert Royal Museum.
Social Satire
• Alexander Pope
• Mock epic: “The Rape
of the Lock”
• Literary Satire: “The
Dunciad
• Jonathan Swift
• “A Modest Proposal”
• Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift
1667-1745
•
•
•
•
• Essay on Man: poetic and
philosophical essay
• Rape of the Lock: mock
epic
• The Dunciad: satire on his
contemporary poets
• Translations of Homer’s
The Iliad and The Odyssey
Alexander Pope
1688-1744
Anglo Irish satirist, essayist,
political pamphleteer, poet
and cleric
Gulliver’s Travels
“A Modest Proposal”
Dean of St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, Dublin
Thomas Gainsborough,
Heneage Lloyd and his sister, c.1750
Early Feminists
Mary Astell
Mary Wollstonecraft
1666-1731
1759-1797
• A Serious Proposal
to the Ladies, for
the Advancement
of Their True and
Greatest Interest
(1694)
• Some Reflections
on Marriage (1700)
• Advocated equal
education for
women
• Questioned the
value of marriage
for women in a
patriarchal society
• Wrote novels,
journalism,
philosophical
and political
treatises, letters
• A Vindication of
the Rights of
Woman (1792)
• Advocated
equal
education,
egalitarian
marriage, and
full citizenship
for women
Literary Salons
• Intellectual and
literary circles
formed around
women –
bluestockings
• Brought
together
members of
society and
philosophers
and artists
• Emphasis on
conversation
and wit
The Rise of the Novel
• Samuel Richardson’s
Pamela, or Virtue
Rewarded (1740)
•
•
•
•
Epistolary
Realistic detail
Morality tale
Servant resisting
seduction by her employer
• Henry Fielding’s Joseph
Andrews (1742) and Tom
Jones (1749)
• Picaresque protagonist
• “comic epic in prose”
• Parody of Richardson
Epistolary Novels
• Novels in which the narrative is
told in letters by one or more of
the characters
• Allows author to present feelings
and reactions of characters,
brings immediacy to the plot,
allows multiple points of view
• Psychological realism
• Richardson’s Pamela and
Clarissa
• Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker
Jean-Baptiste Greuze,
The Letter Writer
Novels of Sentiment
• Novels in which the characters, and
•
•
•
•
thus the readers, have a heightened
emotional response to events
Experimental forms
Connected to emerging Romantic
movement
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768):
Tristam Shandy (1760-67)
Domestic fiction
• Fanny Burney
• Maria Edgeworth
• Jane Austen
Laurence Sterne by
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Gothic Novels
• Novels characterized by magic,
•
•
•
•
•
mystery and horror
Exotic settings – medieval,
Oriental, etc.
Originated with Horace
Walpole’s Castle of Otranto
(1764)
William Beckford: Vathek, An
Arabian Tale (1786)
Anne Radcliffe: 5 novels (178997) including The Mysteries of
Udolpho
Widely popular genre
throughout Europe and
America: Charles Brockden
Brown’s Wieland (1798)
EVENING
Entertainment
Theatre
Opera
Symphony
The Laughing Audience (1733).
Etching and engraving by William
Hogarth. The New York Public
Library
Restoration and 18th C. Theatre
 Theatres
reopened with
restoration of
Charles II
 French influence:
• Actresses
• Heroic
couplets
• Neoclassical
modes:
• Social
comedies
• Heroic
tragedies
 Comedy of
Manners
• Witty-language
driven
• Satirical of
social
mores
• Risque
• Marriage
and money
 18th C.
Comedy of
Sentiment
Ladies at the opera from Gallery of Fashion (1796).
England’s first
Playwright
professional female author:  The Forced Marriage
(1670)
Aphra Behn
 The Amorous Prince
(1671)
1640?-1689
Novelist
 Abdelazar (1676)
 Venice Preserv'd
 The History of the
Nun
 Love Letters
between a
Nobleman and his
sister (1684)
 The Fair Jilt (1688)
 Oroonoko (c.1688)
 The Unfortunate
Happy Lady: A
True History
 The Rover (1677-81)
 The Feign'd
Curtezans (1679)
 The City Heiress
(1682)
 The Lucky Chance
(1686)
 The Lover's Watch
(1686)
 The Emperor of the
Moon (1687)
 Lycidus (1688)
“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn, for it was she who
earned them the right to speak their minds.” Virginia Woolf
Mary Pix
1666-1709
Charlotte Charke
1713-1760
Eliza Haywood
1693-1756
Hannah More
1745-1833
Painting of the interior of the Drury Lane Theater
Susanna Centlivre
1669-1723
Elizabeth Inchbald
1753-1821
List of Women Dramatists.
A riot mob in Covent Garden (1763).
The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C
Denizens
of the
NIGHT
Night (1738). Etching and engraving
by William Hogarth.