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RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
(1660-1800)
Dr. Michael Austin and Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt
FIVE GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT THE PERIOD:
1. Mechanistic View of God, Nature, and the Universe: Nature and the Universe were considered somewhat as a marvelous machine, organized and run according to precise laws, the orderliness and precision of the universe ("Clock" metaphor) reflecting the mind of God (a rationalistic and deistic view of God).
2. Pre-eminence of Reason and Empirical Knowledge: The ideas of Locke (Essay
Concerning Human Understanding) and other empirical philosophers influenced theories of cognition during the Enlightenment .
3. Appeal to Authority : Social order, conformity to societal norms and institutions were highly valued; conformity to the rules of society and to the rules of literature were the fashion
(hence the importance of the authority exerted by Classical antiquity on the literature and style of the Neoclassical period).
4. Appreciation of Urban Life: The importance of human nature rather than of physical nature was stressed; coffee houses and social groups were in vogue rather than the wonders of the natural world.
5. Moderation and a Distaste for Extremes: Balance, taste, harmony, and order in art, architecture, and life in general were the ideal.
*And yet beyond the veneer of "reasonableness and order" there was a bawdiness and raucousness about the age, especially among the aristocratic classes, that give the period a particularly lusty, lively flavor and make our appreciation of the satire all the more acute (read the novels of Fielding and the plays of Aphra Behn).
AESTHETIC CHARACTERISTICS OF NEOCLASSICAL LITERATURE :
1. Style and form were influenced by Classical antiquity : This was an age of extraordinary translations of Greek and Roman literature; admiration for classical literature evinced itself in the many imitations of classical writers (Pope's Horatian satires and parodies of Homer, Johnson's imitations of Juvenal, etc.).
2. Strict adherence to the rules of good writing : Proportion, grace, unity, harmony were important ideals; obeying Aristotle's "unities" in tragedy and following the conventions of any given genre were the norm. Often, how something was said took precedence over what was said, though the best writers, like Pope, achieved a balance between style and meaning.
3. The most popular verse type was the closed couplet , and lesser poets sought to imitate the poetic diction of the dominant writers like Pope.

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4. Satire (poetic and prose) flourished . Satire always thrives when there is a static element in society, when there is conformity; and a strong didactic flavor in the comedy was the norm.
5. Aside from the comedic tone, no single genre seemed to dominate ; rather a variety of literary types thrived: the mock epic, the essay (this was an age of great periodical writing), drama (comedy overshadowed the somewhat lifeless and static tragedy), the novel, and various poetic types such as odes, pastorals, and imitations of the classical satires.
SIGNIFICANT WRITERS DURING THE PERIOD:
JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)
"Master Genre Craftsman, Father of English Criticism, and First Modern Prose Stylist"
There are two important characteristics about Dryden to remember: 1) he was a superb genre writer in an age of wonderfully versatile writers (Dryden excelled at panegyric, tragedy, comedy, satire, lyric poetry, translation, and prose criticism), and
2) he devised a dialectical approach to literary exposition --what he called his "double view"-that was also reflected in his personal attitudes and experiences.
Important works:
"Annus Mirabilis" - a poem describing the extraordinary events of 1665/66, the year of the plague, the Great Fire, and war with Holland.
" An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" - illustrates Dryden's dialectical approach, where four scholars argue the merits of French and English drama (one of the earliest efforts of literary criticism in British literature). Dryden's ideas about the merits of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and his distinction between "Wit" and "Fancy" are among the important ideas in the piece. Dryden's clear, lucid prose style marks a turning point in British prose as well, a breaking away from convoluted baroque prose in favor of a direct, clean prose style, essentially modern.
"Absalom and Achitophel" - a brilliant piece of satire in the style of Oldham, an attack on
Shaftsbury and other Whigs involved in the Titus Oates debacle.
"MacFlecknoe" - satirical poem aimed at Dryden's literary enemies, chief of whom was the poet Shadwell.
"Religio Laici" - Dryden's defense of the Church of England against Calvinism.
" The Hind and the Panther" - Dryden's defense of Catholicism (after Catholic King
James II's ascension and Dryden's own adoption of Catholicism).
"Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687" - written in honor of the patron saint of music, the poem is one of Dryden's finest examples of lyric verse and demonstrates his ability to blend style and meaning, which Pope so admired.
RESTORATION AND LATER DRAMA
With ascension of Charles II, the theatres opened once more, with Killigrew and his company

3 setting up shop at Drury Lane and Davenant at Lincoln's Inn Field ; by 1682 the two companies merged. The audience was different in a variety of ways. The rabble now went to the
Red Bull to guffaw at the melodrama and buffo comedy, while the upper classes enjoyed
Davenant and Killigrew's productions. Yet even these supposed "sophisticated" audiences were known for their rowdy and boisterous ways.
The major innovations in drama were the proscenium arch to separate the audience from the actors (perhaps a necessity considering the boisterous audiences) and the introduction of actresses to the theatre. Nell Gwyn, Anne Oldfield, Anne Reeve, and Elizabeth Berry were some of the more famous, while Thomas Betterton and Colley Cibber became two of the greatest actor/playwrights. Tragedy was marked by its bombast, exotic settings, complex plots, and use of couplet verse (Dryden's All for Love is perhaps the best example). Comedy was more successful, indeed one of the brightest genres of the age.
Restoration Comedy of Manners (with its fops, giddy girls, naughty married ladies, and crisp, witty dialogue and repartee) evolved from the Elizabethan Comedy of Humours (with its characters frequently representing dominant vices and virtues). The best comedy writers were
Dryden (Marriage a la Mode), Sir George Etherege (Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter and
She Would If She Could), William Wycherley (The Country Wife), William Congreve (The
Way of the World), and Aphra Behn (The Rover and The Feigned Courtesan), who is credited as being the first professional woman of letters.
As the next century commenced, the comedies evinced a growing tendency toward sentimentality.
The work of Colley Cibber (Love's Last Shift), Richard Steele (Conscious
Lovers), and Susanna Centlivre (whose The Busybody far outstripped the success of either the comedies of Wycherley or Congreve and became a staple in David Garrick 's repertoire) revealed a mellowing of the repartee and razor sharp wit of Restoration Comedy. The tamer productions of Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer) and Sheridan (School for Scandal and The
Rivals) better fit the tastes of the growing middle class audiences of the eighteenth century, while the spirited satire in John Gay 's Beggar's Opera exhibited the musical comedy talents of the age
(Gay used London street ballads in order to mock Italian opera, then the rage among the "cultural elite" of London).
JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)
"Master Satirist and Prose Stylist"
One of the foremost Anglo-Irish writers, Swift had two great passions in his life: conservative
Tory politics and the Anglican Church. He aimed his satire at the enemies of both.
Important Works:
"A Tale of a Tub" - Swift's rendition of the Great Schism: the separating of the Church into Catholic, Calvinist, and Lutheran factions, represented in the three brothers; the work also targets and pokes fun at the bevy of London literary wits.
"Battle of the Books" - Swift's critical entry in the argument over who is better, ancient or modern writers.

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Journal to Stella - Swift's observations on London life and politics, written in letter form for the edification and entertainment of Swift's life-long, dear friend Esther Johnson.
Gulliver's Travels - Swift's magnum opus in four parts, a prose satire of British life and society ( Book I features the land of the Lilliputians where some of Swift's best topical political satire can be found and the principal rhetorical tool employed is diminution ; Book II features the land of the Brobdingnags , the giants who magnify contemporary foibles of Swift's society;
Book III features the land of Laputa where science and abstract intellectualism are satirized;
Book IV features the land of the Houyhnhnms , where through the rhetorical tool of ironic inversion man's beastliness is focused on).
"The Drapier Papers" and "A Modest Proposal" - satirical essays critical of British policy toward the Irish , whom Swift championed.
The Examiner - Swift's Tory periodical, in which much of his best poetry and prose satire was featured.
ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)
"Quintessential Neoclassical Poet, or the Wicked Wasp of Twickenham"
Leader of the Scriblerus Club along with Arbuthnot, Gay, St. John and Harley , Pope was a poet of many contradictions, both revered and reviled. One of the great Classical scholars of his day, he was also a superb technician, who took seriously his own advice: "Half the fun of writing is in the polishing!" He became, through his example and authority, poetic arbiter of his age , influencing poetic diction during the whole of the second half of the century. Pope was a master of the couplet , who used a series of techniques to add variety and freshness to the form: chiasm
(a type of balanced line employing inversion), zeugma (a type of antithesis where two ideas--one literal and one metaphoric--are yoked together), montaging (erudite borrowing), puns, enjambment, compressed syntax , etc.
Important Works:
"An Essay on Criticism" - verse literary criticism, closely linked with Swift's "Tale of a
Tub" and "Battle of the Books" in its denigration of the self-sufficiency and pride of the
"False Wits" of English verse. Pope's aesthetic ideals of moderation and the complementation of style and meaning are his most important critical ideas.
"Essay on Man" - Pope's ethical poem which was to serve as introduction to the Moral
Essays. "Essay on Man" reveals the influence of Hesiod, Milton, and such contemporary philosophers as Leibnitz . Abstract reason and pride are denigrated; political and social order are shown as reflections of Universal order.
"Rape of the Lock" - mock epic and occasional poem, written upon the event of Arabella
Fermor's losing her "lock of hair" to Lord Petre . Along with "To a Lady," second of the
Moral Essays, this poem is both playful and slightly misogynistic, a characteristic fairly typical of the age. The technical skill evinced in the poem is of an extraordinary quality.
The Dunciad - in the style of Dyrden's "MacFlecknoe" and highly influenced by Milton and Homer, this is Pope's magnum opus attacking the false wits of his age--specifically in the

5 final revision of the poem Colley Cibber , actor, playwright, and (as Pope was want to call) prince of the "Realm of Dulness" and "Monarch of the Dunces." Containing an abundance of topical satire, The Dunciad was a much reworked and expanded book, polished and refined from its first printing in 1728 to its final printing in 1741.
"Eloisa to Abelard" - an extraordinarily beautiful love poem based on the medieval legend of two ill-fated lovers and inspired by Ovid's Heroides.
SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)
"A Mellowing of Neoclassicism"
The second half of the eighteenth century is somewhat distinctive from the age that precedes it: the growing tendency toward sentimentality , a deepening awareness of nature, and a fascination with melancholy and exotic subjects foreshadow the coming age of Romanticism, as do such influential philosophers of the period as Rousseau and Godwin. The individual who would dominate the second half of the century, Samuel Johnson, is as important a personality as writer. Indeed, his was a personality forever enshrined in literary history by the singular achievement of his biographer James Boswell , who revolutionized the art of biography with his vivid and realistic portrait of Dr. Johnson.
Important Works:
1755 Dictionary - set the standard for the art of dictionary making, a mammoth achievement for a single individual and a few Scottish assistants.
1765 Edition of Shakespeare - a twenty-year project that left English literature with improved texts of the plays, excellent emendations with critical commentary and information on
Shakespeare's sources.
Lives of the Poets - a series of short biographies written to accompany new printings of the poets' works; among the best of the "lives" are biographies of Cowley, Milton, Dryden and
Pope .
Rasselas - written in the same year as Voltaire's Candide (1759) and influenced by the new literary popularity of such oriental tales as The Arabian Nights, Rasselas ostensibly is about a group of young people searching for "the way to happiness," the proverbial philosopher's stone; at the end of their search, the young Abyssinian prince Rasselas and his friends discover, like Candide, they must "tend their own gardens" (find happiness within). In the process of their journey, however, Johnson has occasion to offer some gentle satire on the ideas and institutions of his day.
ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)
"Caledonia's Bard"
Rightful precursor to the Romantic poets of the next century, Burns was one of those literary phenomena who come along at precisely the right moment in history for fertile blossoming. In a time that was increasingly beginning to appreciate both the natural beauty of the physical world and the natural genius of the individual poet, Burns appeared the incarnation of all the Ossians,
Rowleys, and Stephen Duck/"thresher" poets, as he burst upon the literary scene with his

6 homespun Gaelic songs and natural, highly unique Scottish personality. Though he heralds the
Romantics in his individualism, appreciation for nature, and appeal to the common man, Burns roots are firmly planted in Neoclassical soil: specifically in his love of satire, brittle social commentary, and emphasis in human nature rather than physical nature.
Important Works:
"Holy Willie's Prayer" - a dramatic monologue of a religious hypocrite, surpassed only by Browning's "Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister" a century later.
"Tam O'Shanter" - a mock heroic narrative based on a local legend in the vein of
Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
"The Cotter's Saturday Night" - a piece of domestic sentiment illustrating human relationships and rural life.
Lyric poems such as "Banks o' Doon," "Highland Mary," "Red, Red Rose," "Auld Lang
Syne," written in remarkable dialect verse.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL
INTO THE ARTISTRY OF AUSTEN
Though the antecedents of the English novel find roots in the Medieval Romance, the great epics, even the works of Chaucer and Boccaccio, the earliest stories we designate to the novel genre were picaresque (episodic) in structure, rather sprawling works, a far cry from the tight artistry of a Jane Austen. Aphra Behn , also a poet and playwright, is generally given credit for producing the first English novel ( Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave, 1688 ).
Early in the next century Daniel Defoe (Moll Flanders, Roxana, and Robinson Crusoe) revealed his gift for characterization and attempt toward realism in his episodic tales. Toward midcentury Samuel Richardson (Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, Sir Charles Grandison, and Clarissa, the longest novel in the English language) chose the epistolary style in order to achieve an element of realism. Reacting to what he perceived as Richardson's sentimental, morally feigned stories, Henry Fielding (Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Jonathan Wild) attempted to write his stories in such a way that would portray a broad spectrum of English life in a realistic and unsentimental fashion. Fielding also gave us the first critical commentary on the novel in his
Preface to Joseph Andrews , where he defined a novel as a "comic epic in prose ." Later in the century Clara Reeve would also offer critical evaluation of this genre that was attempting to gain literary credibility, and a host of brilliant women writers such as Fanny Burney and Sarah
Fielding would refine the genre and bring it into the lives of middle class readers.
As the eighteenth century progressed, a whole array of types and styles of novel writing found way to the presses: the sea adventures of Tobias Smollett (Roderick Random, Perrigrin Pickle,
Humphry Clinker), the sentimental and experimental novels of Laurence Sterne (A
Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy, which experiments with narrative structure that foreshadows stream-of-consciousness writing more than a century later), the gothic novels of
Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian), Horace Walpole (Castle of
Otranto), Matthew Gregory Lewis (The Monk), Clara Reeve , Charlotte Smith , and Sophia
Lee (who added historical dimensions to her gothic tale The Old Manor House, foreshadowing

7 the historical novel later made popular by Walter Scott), the oriental/gothic tales of William
Beckford (Vathek) and Samuel Johnson (Rasselas), the problem/social novels of Mary
Wollstonecraft (The Wrongs of Woman) and William Godwin (who also added dimensions of the detective story to Caleb Williams), and finally the manners novels of Fanny Burney
(Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla), Maria Edgeworth (Castle Rackrant) and Jane Austen , whose realism, refined satire, and psychological perception continues to make her one of the most admired writers in British literature.
"Jane Austen (1775-1817): the Last Augustan"
Though Jane Austen's work comes in the time frame when "the tide of Romanticism was at the flood," Austen's novels were little touched by Romantic ideas, except as she saw fit to mock them. Her clear wit, bright satire (chauvinistically referred to by Baugh in the Literary History of
England as "femininely Augustan"), and her no-nonsense, common-sense outlook on life make her more in keeping with Neoclassical rather than Romantic sentiment.
Though the dimensions of her creative world were narrow (what she called her "small square two inches of ivory"), like Dickinson and other writers of true genius, Austen found a whole universe of truth within the narrow world of the Augustan gentry and rural folk that populate her novels.
Certainly, as a superb craftsperson, her prose is polished to a perfection that Pope would have admired.
Important Works:
Northanger Abbey - ostensibly a satire on the gothic tradition of Radcliffe and "Monk"
Lewis, this brilliant novel is both within the tradition of the bildungsroman (a young woman's journey, her "becoming") and an attempt at "revisionist myth-making," as heroine Catherine
Morland tries to create a version of her life different from the Romantic/gothic/patriarchal tradition that would frame her story for her (or, as critic Carolyn Heilbrun says, she attempts "to write her own life").
Pride and Prejudice , originally written as First Impressions (1797), a dramatic work coming to terms with the limitations placed on families and women specifically through primogenitor inheritance laws.
Sense and Sensibility , originally written as Elinor and Marianne sometime before 1796, again deals with the confining world of village life and the limited options offered to eighteenthcentury women.
Emma , one of Austen's favorite stories of a strong-willed young woman who encountered the difficulties posed in marital machinations.
In all of Austen's novels, including Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Sandition, there are a world of comic characters , a brilliant use of dialogue , and the fine and sensible wit of a woman who knew well the limitations and possibilities of her society and human nature in general.