The Restoration and the
Eighteenth Century
1660-1800

• The Restoration took place during this time period 1660-1800.
• Other names for the Restoration Period
Augustan, Neoclassical Period, Enlightenment,
Age of Reason.
• The Restoration is called Augustan and
Neoclassical because of the real and imagined similarities between
England and its literature and Rome and its literature.

Question 4
• Both countries went through a time of war with a monarch restoring peace. Who were these monarchs and what happened that they needed to restore the peace?
– Octavius/Augustus restored peace after Julius
Caesar was assassinated in Rome and England’s
Stuart monarchy after Charles I’s execution in
1649 and England’s civil wars.

Questions 5 & 6
• Neoclassical means new classical. Writing during this time is often called neoclassic because many English writers modeled their works on old Latin
(Roman) classics. (Classics valued because they represent what is permanent and universal in human experience.)
• This time period is also called the Age of Reason or the
Enlightenment. During this time people gradually began changing the way they viewed themselves and the world. How did this change?
Began to be more logical, more scientific, less superstitious.

Questions 7 - 9
• People began to ask how instead of why.
• Scientists, such as Edmund Halley, used
measurable mathematical explanation that showed no connection between nature and
human affairs.
• King Charles II chartered a group of philosophers to find out more about how things worked. This group was called
Royal Society of London for the Promotion of
Natural Knowledge.
– Responsible for the birth of Modern English Prose -writing that is more concise,more exact, less ornate
(flowery)– in other words, more scientific sounding

Questions 10 -12
• Changes in religion occurred. A minority of people began to view God as
– creator of clock-withdrawn from perfect mechanism and let it run by itself. Deism.
• Many philosophers and scientists remained religious. Name two:
– Sir Isaac Newton & John Locke.
• Christianity in its various forms still dominated almost all Europeans.

Questions 13 - 14
• Religion and politics still went together. Charles II restored the Church of England as the official church.
• Charles II attempted to out law various
sects – Puritan & Independent. These groups were greatly persecuted, especially a group named
Quakers. Time when many people left England to go to America because they were tired of being persecuted and wanted to worship freely.

Questions 15 - 17
• Charles II had no proper heirs, so when he died, James II became king. He was
Roman Catholic and many subjects hated him because of this.
• It was widely believed that the Catholics had set fire to London and caused other disasters.
• When James II and his queen had a child, pressure was so great on him that the family fled to France.

Questions 18 - 20
• This abdication of the throne was called the
Bloodless/Glorious Revolution.
• Most writers during the Restoration belonged to the Church of England. Name two main ones: Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson.
• However, two of the greatest poets were
Roman Catholic. Who were these?
John Dryden & Alexander Pope.

Questions 21 - 23
• John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe were a part of a group called dissenters who did not agree with Church of England.
• The Restoration is divided into 3 parts named after the major author of that period.
• Drama during this time was filled with comedies and their content focused on the lives of rich and leisured.

Questions 24 - 25
• When Charles II regained throne, he repealed a ban on play performances imposed by
Puritan lawmakers in 1642. (Puritan-led
Parliament)
• Charles II and James II established patronized companies of actors, and for the first time female parts were played by women. The content of drama began to be more frivolous and full of debauchery (immorality and loose living).

Questions 26 - 27
• Dissenters wrote not for sophisticated & rich but for ordinary readers.
• The Age of Pope and Swift is characterized by these author’s feelings about their times.
They were both appalled by the squalor (dirty) and shoddiness (poor
quality) in art, manners, and morals and either felt smug or satisfied with the world.

Questions 28 - 30
• Pope addressed his works exclusively to the
educated and leisured classes, but also attacked this same group for their immorality & bad taste.
• Pope and Swift deplored the corrupt politics and growing materialism and commercialism of
English people.
• Defoe stood for values we associate with
middle class. These values include four things: thrift (savings), prudence (wisdom), industry
(hard work), and respectability.

Questions 31 - 33
• Defoe had no interest in Augustan values such as polished manners and social poise. He saw himself as a journalist, as a reformer of public manners and morals.
• Swift and Pope looked down their noses at
Defoe because of different values.
• Poetry during this time period has been accused of being “conceived not in the
heart /soul but in the mind/wit.”

Questions 34 - 35
• Pope, Swift and Dryden saw poetry as a
public function rather than private one.
• The structure of the poem was thought of first with its purpose, and precise rhyme scheme and meter fixed before its content. This is where the concept of
genre – “distinct types of literature” came about.

Questions 36 - 38
• Elegies – “mourns loss of someone or something” during this period did not necessarily tell the truth about a person, but it told best things a poet could think of.
• The purpose for satire was to ridicule a person, institution, etc. in order to reform (bring about change).
• The epic was borrowed from the classics of ancient Rome. (classical antiquity).

Questions 39 - 41
• The ode was an ambitious, pompous, poetic utterance expressing public emotion. Long, lyrical poem about a serious subject.
• Pastoral poetry was poetry dealing with
idealized nature.
• The last part of the Restoration was known as the Age of Johnson and was known as much for its fiction as nonfiction.

Questions 42 - 44
• The novel began with either Defoe or this next generation of writers. Robinson Crusoe – 1 st
English Novel.
• Three famous novelists during the Restoration were
Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence
Sterne.
• Each man’s novel tells something of what life at this time was like and each helps us to understand the humor and disappointments of human experience in all ages.

Questions 45 - 46
• This period is named after Johnson for two reasons:
1. Very skilled (spoke with authority) in all genres.
2. Wrote about subjects that mattered to both men and women.
• Toward the end of the 1700’s writers developed a new interest in effect of the natural landscape on the human psyche psychology. How nature affects us psychologically. Beginning of the Romantics.

Questions 47 - 48
• Writers/poets began looking back at the past.
• Literary possibilities opened up to include humble life and trying to get into the minds of poor and simple people.
• Add on 

Add on ……
• 7 Groups in English society (Daniel Defoe).
– The Great – who live profusely
– The Rich, who life plentifully
– The Middle Sort, who live well
– The Working Trades, labor hard, but feel no want.
– The Country People – Farmers etc who fare indifferently
– The poor, that fare hard
– The Miserable, that pinch and suffer want.