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Literature Focus I. Literature of the Time

Social Observers

Despite recurring warfare with France and the disaster of the American Revolution, the Restoration and the 18^th c. were a relatively stable time in Britain. The middle class grew and prospered, and ordinary men and women had more money, leisure, and education than ever before. For writers, that meant a broad new audience eager to read and willing to pay for literature. However, this audience did not have much taste for highbrow poetry full of sophisticated allusions to classics they had never read. Instead, they wanted writing that reflected their own concerns and experiences—working hard, doing right, gaining respectability—and they wanted it written in clear prosethat they could understand.

Social Observers • A growing middle class increased demand for middlebrow literature. • Journalism became popular, providing opinions as well as facts. • Novels were modeled on nonfiction forms. • Pepys’s diary captured Restoration period.

One enormously popular form of “real-life” literature was journalism.Newspapers had been around since the early 1600s, but rigid censorship under both Charles I and Oliver Cromwell had discouraged their growth. As restrictions gradually eased, the press flourished. Daily newspapers appeared, and serials such as The Tatler and The Spectator published essays by Joseph Addisonand Richard Steelethat satisfied the middle-class appetite for instruction and amusement. Journalists did not simply report current events; they moralized, mocked, and gossiped, giving their opinions on everything from social manners to international politics.

Journalist Daniel Defoeused his experience writing nonfiction when creating Robinson Crusoe (1719), considered by many to be England’s first novel.As is typical of early novels, Defoe wrote in the familiar realistic style of a newspaper account, making it seem as if his tale of a shipwrecked man’s survival on a desert island had really happened. Other writers followed with novels of their own, often modeled on nonfiction forms such as letters—for example, Pamela by Samuel Richardson—and diaries.

A real-life diary, although not intended for publication, provides modern readers with one of the best glimpses of life during these times. Samuel Pepys,a prosperous middle-class Londoner, began his diary in the first year of the Restoration and kept it for nine years. In it he tells of the major events of the day, including the coronation of Charles II and the Great London Fire.

Satirical Voices • Neoclassicists emulated the rationality of ancient Greek and Roman writers. • The early 1700s were called the Augustan Age, in reference to the times of Roman emperor Augustus. • Satire pointed out society’s problems; Horatian satire was gentle, Juvenalian was dark. • Restoration comedies satirized the Stuart court.

Satirical VoicesWhile the realism of novels and newspapers pleased middle-class readers, another literary style—polished, witty, and formal—was aimed at the elite. This style was known as neoclassicism(“new classicism”). Neoclassical writers modeled their works on those of ancient Greece and Rome, emulating what they saw as the restraint, rationality, and dignity of classical writing. Indeed, the period in which these writers worked—the first half of the 18^th c.—is sometimes called the Augustan Age, so named because its writers likened their society to that of Rome in the prosperous, stable reign of the emperor Augustus, when the finest Roman literature was produced. Neoclassical writers stressed balance, order, logic, and emotional restraint, focusing on society and the human intellect and avoiding personal feelings.

Neoclassicists often used satire,or ridicule, to point out aspects of society that they felt needed to be changed. In this, too, they followed Roman models, choosing between the gentle, playful, and sympathetic approach of Horace (Horatian satire) and the darker, biting style of Juvenal (Juvenalian satire). Two outstanding writers of the period beautifully illustrate the two modes of satire. One of the writers, Alexander Pope,wrote satiric poetry in the Horatian mode, poking fun at the dandies and ladies of high society and addressing moral, political, and philosophical issues in clever, elegant couplets. Pope’s friend Jonathan Swift,on the other hand, wrote Juvenalian satire. Appalled by the hypocrisy and corruption he saw around him, Swift savagely attacked educators, politicians, churchmen, and any others he saw as corrupt. His masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels, is still a remarkably incisive commentary on human nature.

England’s newly reopened theaters provided another outlet for the period’s most brilliant satirists. Influenced by the French comedies of manners, John Dryden, William Congreve,and other playwrights entertained audiences with Restoration comediesthat satirized the artificial, sophisticated society centered in the Stuart court.

The Age of Johnson

The second half of the 18^th c. is sometimes affectionately referred to as the Age of Johnson—a tribute to Samuel Johnson,Britain’s most influential man of letters of the day. Johnson, a poet, critic, journalist, essayist, scholar, and lexicographer, was also a talker, a brilliant conversationalist who enjoyed holding forth at coffeehouses, clubs, and parties. He was friends with many of the greatest literary and artistic talents of the time and stood at the center of a lively circle of intellectuals that included his biographer James Boswell,the historian Edward Gibbon,the novelist and diarist Fanny Burney,and the comic dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

The 18^th-century concern with real life can be seen in the number, variety, and quality of nonfiction works published during the Age of Johnson. Works of biography, history, philosophy, politics, economics, literary criticism, aesthetics, and natural history all achieved the level of literature. Writers strove for a style not merely clear and accurate but also eloquent and persuasive. Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a superb example of the heights achieved by nonfiction prose during these years. Also notable are the works of philosopher David Hume, the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the economist Adam Smith—and, of course, Johnson himself, who described his notion of good style as “familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious.”

The Age of Johnson • The late 1700s were called the Age of Johnson in tribute to Samuel Johnson, an influential writer. • Nonfiction flourished. • Poetry entered a transitional period. Women Writers • Unable to participate in public intellectual life, women formed salons. • Intellectual women were known as bluestockings. • Women began publishing their work. • Wollstonecraft called for women’s rights.

Johnson wrote A Dictionary of the English Language, a stupendous feat that won him an important place in literary history. His essays remain classic examples of the formal 18th-century prose of which he was the acknowledged master. He also wrote graceful biographies of poets, and critiques of poems and other literary works. Johnson was more than an accomplished writer; he was the literary dictator of London and the undisputed arbiter of taste for his time.

Though Johnson and most of his associates affirmed neoclassical ideals, during this time poetry entered a transitional stage in which poets began writing simpler, freer lyrics on subjects close to the human heart. The reflective poetry of Oliver Goldsmithand Thomas Grayand the lyrical songs of Scotland’s Robert Burnsanticipate the first stirrings of romanticism at the very end of the century.

The Rise of Women Writers Enlightenment ideals weren’t the exclusive property of men; women—especially upper-class women—were equally interested in exercising their reason and learning about the world around them. However, the universities were closed to them, as were the nearly 3,000 coffeehouses that had sprung up in London. Denied access to these places, women missed out on many ideas being discussed by England’s educated class—its writers, artists, politicians, and statesmen.

Unable to go out and participate in the intellectual life of the nation, several enterprising women in the mid-1700s decided to bring it into their own homes in the form of French-style private gatherings known as salons.Salons quickly became a popular form of evening entertainment, taking the place of card games, and were often attended by well-known writers and other public figures, such as Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. Because guests were invited to leave their silk stockings at home and come casually dressed in everyday blue worsted stockings (the 18^th-century equivalent of wearing jeans to a party), the women who frequented salons—and intellectual women in general—became known as bluestockings.

Inspired by the example of pioneers such as Aphra Behn,the first woman in England to earn a living as a professional writer (indeed, she rivaled John Dryden as the most prolific playwright of the Restoration), many talented bluestockings began publishing their own works. For years, male writers had written novels aimed at female audiences, such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, the story of a servant girl who resists her master’s advances and ultimately wins an offer of marriage. Now, the men faced competition from women novelists such as Charlotte Smithand Fanny Burney.

Charlotte Smith wrote to support her family, beginning with poetry but soon turning to novels, which were more lucrative. Her work was similar to that of other women novelists of the day. It was quite radical, however, in its attitude toward morality and its examination of class equality.

Fanny Burney’s novels, on the other hand, may seem overly sentimental and moralistic to modern readers. However, her understanding of women’s concerns and her accurate portrayal of polite society won her a wide following in her day. Although Burney achieved immediate fame through her novels, readers today are more familiar with her diary, which she began when she was 15 and wrote in regularly for 70 years. Since Burney moved in high society, with Samuel Johnson and even the king and queen of England as acquaintances, her diary gives modern readers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the upper class in the Age of Johnson.

While many women, such as Fanny Burney, defied the norms by educating themselves, engaging in salon discussions, and writing for publication (often under assumed names), Mary Wollstonecraftopenly challenged the status quo. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she argued that women should be educated equally with men and allowed to join the professions so that the relationship between men and women could be one of “rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience.” Her views were radical at a time when most women accepted their inferior status, or at least refrained from expressing their discontent. Although Wollstonecraft died shortly following the birth of her daughter Mary, she would surely have been proud to learn that the daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,grew up to become one of the most enduring writers of the next period in England’s literary history—the romantic period.

 

Literature Focus II. Nonfiction of the 18^th Century

A New World of IdeasAt the dawn of the 18^th c. in England, the movement known as the Enlightenment was ushered in by the writings of two major philosophical thinkers, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. Their writings inspired the English people to rethink all aspects of society, question accepted beliefs, and explore new ideas. In this rich environment of ideas, nonfictionbecame a favored literary form.

Though the aristocracy was the primary audience of the Enlightenment writers, the spread of education in the 17^th century had caused the literacy rate in England to soar among the middle and lower classes. The newly literate public’s appetite for information grew, and London became home to a number of periodicals. The practices of modern publishing, such as the use of copyright and royalty fees, began to emerge in London at this time.

The Development of the EssayThe contents of most 18^th-century periodicals consisted of essays. The essayis a short work of nonfiction that offers a writer’s opinion on a particular subject. The essay form became popular after the 16^th-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne published a collection of writings titled Essais, which means “attempts.” In 1597, Francis Bacon became the first prominent English essayist when he published the first edition of his Essays. From then on, the essay became a popular means of expression—a way for English writers to air their views on public matters and to promote social reform. Works labeled “essays” were even written in verse, such as Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism.

Formal essaysare prose compositions in which an author writes as an impersonal, objective authority on a particular subject, with the purpose of instructing or persuading his or her readers. Using the third-person point of view instead of the first-person, the author strikes a serious tone and develops a main idea, or thesis, in a logical, highly organized way. Two 18^th c. writers, Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson, were famous practitioners of the formal essay. Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt continued the formal essay tradition into the 19^th c., as did Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, Matthew Arnold, and John Stuart Mill. In the 20^th c., the formal essay was a mainstay in such fields as history, literature, and the natural and social sciences. In newspapers today, most editorials and many opinion pieces are formal essays.

Informal essaysare essays in which writers express their opinions without adopting a completely serious or formal tone. Informal essays are less structured, and typically include personal details and humor conveyed in a conversational style. Although writers may compose informal essays to instruct or persuade, they often write primarily to entertain their readers. For example, in the 18^th c., Joseph Addison and Richard Steele wrote and published many instructive yet humorously satirical essays in The Tatler and The Spectator on such topics as marriage, education, and the folly and extravagance of the times. 19^th and 20^th-century writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Max Beerbohm, G.K. Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, and George Orwell, contributed brilliantly to the personal essay form. Their essays address subjects ranging from the important to the trivial, in both cases providing fresh insights on life.

The formal essay has changed little since Bacon. The informal essay, however, has changed greatly. Novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick thinks that one reason for this change might be the essayist’s adaptations of fictional techniques, “including revelations, moments of suspense, moments of climax, moments of crescendo,” as well as dialogue and detail. Another reason for the essay’s renewed popularity may be the number and variety of forums for the personal essay in both print and electronic media—most recently in a multitude of blogs on the Internet.