Transcript The Augustan age

The Augustan age and the novel
ANTONIO SAGGIOMO E
VINCENZO CONTALDI (IVB)
The Augustan
age
What does it
mean?
Historical
events
Philosophy and
literature
The novel
What is it?
Causes of
novel`s rise
Effects of
novel`s rise on
the society
What does it mean?
•
The Augustan age was also known as the Enlightenment, a movement based on the faith in human reason
and in the progress and evolution of mankind: reason was considered the instrument to free man from
fears, prejudices and mistakes of the past; reason could light the way of man towards progress . As a
consequence , Augustan writers celebrated man` s reason; man was seen as a rational being, whose
reason had to be severely controlled and whose emotional spiritual part had to be banished from
literature. The worst error for an Augustan writer was to allow is emotion to influence what he wrote
reason was the only guide to good conduct and good taste.
Historical events
•
•
The Restoration period ended with the exclusion crisis and the Glorious Revolution, where Parliament set
up a new rule for succession to the British throne that would always favor Protestantism over sanguinity.
This had brought William and Mary to the throne instead of James II, and was codified in the Act of
Settlement 1701. James had fled to France from where his son James Francis Edward Stuart launched an
attempt to retake the throne in 1715. Another attempt was launched by the latter's son Charles Edward
Stuart in 1745. The attempted invasions are often referred to as "the 15" and "the 45". When William
died, Anne Stuart came to the throne. When Anne died without issue, George I, Elector of Hanover, came
to the throne. George I never bothered to learn the English language, and his isolation from the English
people was instrumental in keeping his power relatively irrelevant. His son, George II, on the other hand,
spoke some English and some more French, and his was the first full Hanoverian rule in England. By that
time, the powers of Parliament had silently expanded, and George II's power was perhaps equal only to
that of Parliament.
In this period middle class people obtained importance; in fact they tried to acquire a proper education in
various ways, especially from the newspapers and magazines, which from the beginning of 18th century
became very popular in Britain. In them writers taught their writhers what to think and how to behave and
talk. Clubs and coffee-houses were also important for the middle class: people went to clubs not only to
drink but to meet, discuss and write.
Philosophy and literature
•
•
The 18th century had a vigorous competition among followers of Locke. Bishop Berkeley extended Locke's
emphasis on perception to argue that perception entirely solves the Cartesian problem of subjective and
objective knowledge by saying "to be is to be perceived." Only, Berkeley argued, those things that are
perceived by a consciousness are real. For Berkeley, the persistence of matter rests in the fact that God
perceives those things that humans are not, that a living and continually aware, attentive, and involved
God is the only rational explanation for the existence of objective matter. In essence, then, Berkeley's
skepticism leads to faith. David Hume, on the other hand, took empiricist skepticism to its extremes, and
he was the most radically empiricist philosopher of the period. He attacked surmise and unexamined
premises wherever he found them, and his skepticism pointed out metaphysics in areas that other
empiricists had assumed were material. Hume doggedly refused to enter into questions of his personal
faith in the divine, but his assault on the logic and assumptions of theodicy and cosmogeny was
devastating, and he concentrated on the provable and empirical in a way that would lead to utilitarianism
and naturalism later.
The literature of the 18th century—particularly the early 18th century, which is what "Augustan" most
commonly indicates—is explicitly political in ways that few others are. Because the professional author
was still not distinguishable from the hack-writer, those who wrote poetry, novels, and plays were
frequently either politically active or politically funded. The best literary form to express the ideas of the
time during the Augustan age had been prose . The Augustan age so in the novel and journalism the better
instruments of knowledge for middle class people; the novel was the cultural expression of the new
leading class, it sang the deeds of the bourgeois hero in order to provide the middle class with models
teaching them how to behave in different situation. In poetry Augustans modelled their work on ancient
writers such as Virgil, Ovid and Horace.
The Novel
What is it?
The most profoundly innovative genre in 18th century literature was the
novel. The novel is a fictitious prose narrative or tale presenting a picture
of real life. The novel`s readers mostly came from the ranks of the
commercial and mercantile middle class, whose outlook was practical and
realistic. It demanded original stories relating ordinary experience. The
modern idea of realism is reflected in the fact that novels deal whit
recognizably contemporary objects, language and situations, and not whit
extraordinary, fantastic or magical events told in highly-refined language.
The language of the novel also reflect this realistic trend: it is plain and
factual.
The characters may be stereotyped or realistic, more like real people.
The Novel
Causes of novel`s rise
There are several reason that cause the novel`s
rise:
•The rise of philosophical rationalism. The
philosophical theories of Rene` Descartes and John
Locke for example, focused on the experience of
the individual who could discover the reality of the
world around him through his senses and
perception. The novel is the form of literature
which most reflects this individualist approach.
•The influence of Puritanism and later Methodism.
Puritanism preached the idea that man must save
himself by living a virtuous life and by own efforts.
Methodism was the application of the Puritanism
to ordinary life.
• The expansion of the reading public. The
increasingly affluent middle class were beginning
to buy more books and newspaper, which also
brought with them the advent of fact-based
journalistic writing on the events of the day. The
new reading public were not interested in
romances or in fantastic tales but they wanted to
read real stories which reflected their own
interests and problems with characters they could
more or less identify with.
The Novel
Effects of novel`s rise on
the society
Novel`s rebirth caused some effects on the society
during the Augustan age but the principal was
people`s life changing. The man has always
needed to improve himself, not only physically, but
specially mentally because life asked him. So
people wanted to read real stories which reflected
their life, their social position because they
searched models to follow. They wished to pursue
the truth, to escape from a caotic life, to became
independent from the tradition of past so they
wished to enrich their own culture reading these
tales. For example women realized this because,
thanks this devotion to read novels, they were free
from the prison of domesticity (and often from the
prison of marriage).