The Eighteenth
Century
“The Age of Reason”
Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)
• The foremost English poet of
the period.
• He became well known as a
satirical poet, and a master of
the heroic couplet, notably in
The Rape of the Lock (171214).
• He turned to translation with
the Iliad (1715--20), whose
success enabled him to set
up a home in Twickenham.
• There he wrote his major
poem, The Dunciad (1728,
continued 1742).
Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)
• Clergyman and satirist, born in
Dublin, Ireland.
• He studied at Dublin, then
moved to England.
• During a visit to Ireland, he
was ordained in the Anglican
Church (1695).
• He wrote several poems, then
turned to prose satire, exposing
religious and intellectual
complacency.
• His world-famous satire,
Gulliver's Travels, appeared
(anonymously, like all his
works) in 1726.
Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754)
• English playwright and novelist.
• He began to write theatrical
comedies, becoming
author/manager of the Little
Theatre in the Haymarket (1736).
• On Richardson's publication of
Pamela (1740), he wrote his
famous parody, Joseph Andrews
(1742).
• Several other works followed,
notably The History of Tom Jones,
A Foundling (1749), which
established his reputation as a
founder of the English novel.
Samuel Johnson (known as Dr Johnson)
(1709 – 1784)
• English lexicographer, critic, and
poet.
• He studied at Lichfield and
Oxford, but left before taking a
degree, and became a teacher.
• From 1747 he worked for eight
years on his Dictionary of the
English Language, started the
moralistic periodical, The Rambler
(1750), and wrote his prose tale of
Abyssinia, Rasselas (1759).
• In 1765 he produced his edition of
Shakespeare
• From 1772 engaged in political
pamphleteering.
Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731)
• English writer.
• He was heavily involved in politics,
supporting William III,a king of
foreign origin. Eventually he was
imprisoned for his writings.
• On his release in 1704 he started The
Review, writing it single-handed,
three times a week, until 1713.
• In 1720, he achieved lasting fame
with Robinson Crusoe.
• His other major works include A
Journal of the Plague Year, Moll
Flanders (both 1722), and Roxana
(1724).
• He is considered one of the most
important authors contributing to the
development of the modern novel.
Graveyard poetry
• A kind of poetry that flourished in the first half of the
Eighteenth Century and continued the ground work
which would eventually become the Gothic.
• The Graveyard poets used imagery which later
became staples in Gothic literature: graves and
churchyards, night, ruins, death and ghosts.
• The main goal of the graveyard school was to glory in
the spiritual end that the tomb represented by turning
the trappings of death into objects of aesthetic
appreciation.
• Some Graveyard Poets were William Cowper,
Edward Young, Thomas Gray, Robert Blair &
William Collins.
Thomas Gray (1716 – 1771)
• English Poet.
• He studied at Cambridge,
where in 1768 he became
professor of history and
modern languages.
• In 1742 he wrote his "Ode on
a Distant Prospect of Eton
College', and began his
masterpiece, "Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard'
(1751).
• He then settled in Cambridge,
where he wrote his Pindaric
Odes (1757).
Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)
• Scotland's national poet.
• As a young man Burns developed a
reputation for charm and wit, engaging
in several love affairs that brought him
into conflict with the Presbyterian
Church.
• With the successful publication of his
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,
Burns traveled to Edinburgh, where he
was much admired in literary circles.
• Burns subsequently traveled throughout
the country, collecting over 300 songs,
which were printed in 1787.
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
• English poet, painter, engraver, and
mystic.
• In 1790, Blake and his wife moved
to Lambeth, where Blake began
developing his own symbolic and
literary mythology, which used
highly personal images and
metaphors to convey his
interpretation of history and vision of
the universe.
• This mythology is expressed in such
works as The First Book of Urizen
(1794) and The Song of Los (1795).
• During this time Blake also wrote the
poems included in Songs of
Innocence and of Experience (1794).
The Gothic Novel
In 1764 Horace Walpole published his novel Castle of Otranto, thus giving
birth to a short-lived but influential sub-genre in English Literature: the
Gothic Novel. The novel by Walpole was so popular that it immediately
spawned several imitations of varying quality.
The characteristics of the gothic novel as they appeared in many
subsequent works can be summarised in the following elements:
A castle, inhabited or otherwise.
Foreign (exotic) countries.
Darkness & shadow.
Supernatural events.
Ancient phropecies.
Ancient cathedrals, abbeys or churches.
Medieval manuscripts.
Atmosphere of suspense.
Visions, spirits, ghosts & other portents.
Women in distress, with a tendency to faint.
• Horace Walpole (1717 – 1797): English
Writer. Apart from The Castle of Otranto
(1764) which initiated a vogue for Gothic
romances, his literary reputation rests chiefly
upon his letters, which deal, in the most
vivacious way, with party politics, foreign
affairs, literature, art, and gossip.
Ann Radcliffe (1764 – 1823): English novelist. She
lived a retired life, and became well known for her
Gothic novels, notably The Romance of the Forest
(1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and The
Italian (1797). She greatly influenced the romantic poets
of the beginning of the 19th century.
An illustration by William Blake
The Ancient 1794
The concept of Gothic
• Gothic is a name applied to the architecture that flourished in
Western Europe between the 12th and 16th century.
• The term was first applied, contemptuously, by Giorgio Vasari
during the renassaince to refer to the architecture of the middle ages
that was not inspired by the classical models of Rome and Greece.
• It was a term that was associated with the barbarian germanic tribes
of the Goths, Ostrogoths and Visigoths that invaded Western Europe
during the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries.
• During the 18th century the term was applied, generically, to the
middle ages, as an age of darkness and chaos.
• In England, people like Horace Walpole, began to “rescue” the
middle ages as a romantic age, and used it as its setting for novels.
• By association, the term Gothic was applied to the literature that was
inspired by the middle ages.
Gothic Architecture
Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France
York Minster, York, England
To A Mouse
Wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an chase thee,
Wi murdering pattle!
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
The Novel
• The novel in its modern form was developed in the
18th century. In a short period of time it became
established as the most popular genre within
literature.
• A novel can be described as a work of narrative
fiction, often of considerable length. One of the
characteristic of the novel was the use of a third
person omniscient narrator.
• A novel is also characterized by a careful, consistent
and realistic construction of character, setting and plot