18th century
A golden age
The 18th century in England, known as the “Augustan” era, is seen as a golden age of stability and cultural advancement, similar to a flourishing period in Roman history.
This era featured significant cultural innovation and public discourse, emphasizing a rejection of extremism like superstition and fanaticism.
Values such as politeness, moderation, and rationality became prominent, championed by figures like the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury.
The Spectator, founded by Joseph Addison, played a key role in promoting these ideals through news, literature, and moral instruction.
Civility and moderation
The art of pleasing, that is, civility and moderation, became the 18th-century ideal.
Morality and fashion demanded simplicity and emotional authenticity.
This influenced the emerging of the figure of the gentleman.
However, there was also a counter-culture which developed a taste for manly sports such as boxing, racing and fox-hunting, which became important in rural social life.
There was a growing tendency towards material gain, individual happiness and pleasure as the main objectives of life.
The role of woman
In 18th-century England, women had greater social and cultural engagement than their counterparts on the Continent.
They participated in activities like visiting friends, attending theaters, and frequenting coffee houses, previously inaccessible to them.
Pioneering figures like Aphra Behn became playwrights and novelists, establishing themselves in a male-dominated literary world.
Women significantly influenced the novel, focusing on contemporary, ordinary individuals rather than historical heroes.
The rise of epistolary novels reflected the letter-writing trend from the London Penny Post service established in 1680.
Increased access to literature through circulating libraries, book clubs, and lower book prices further enhanced women’s roles in literary circles.
Explorations
The Enlightenment’s optimism and faith in reason led to explorations, with Captain Cook leading voyages commissioned by the Royal Society.
These journeys resulted in encounters with indigenous cultures untouched by civilization and the mapping of territories such as Australia, New Zealand, and the Hawaiian Islands.
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that sought to free humanity from ignorance and superstition through knowledge and science.
It emphasized reason as a path to happiness, challenging traditional beliefs, particularly religious ones.
Rooted in the scientific revolution and the ideas of thinkers like John Locke and Isaac Newton, the movement criticized established institutions and idealized a “state of nature” as a rational, universal state.
This led to an interest in “noble savage” figures, seen as innocent and living in harmony with nature.
Prose
During the Restoration period, rationalism was evident in the works of philosophers like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, and in the scientific studies of Isaac Newton.
The growing influence of the middle class in politics and society strongly impacted literature, promoting the rise of prose.
Belief in reason and individual abilities was expressed through novels and journalism.
Parody and satire in the works of Swift and Fielding critiqued various aspects of rationality.
Puritan morality remained important to middle-class readers, and authors like Defoe and Richardson combined religious and secular themes.
This fusion was a key trend in 18th-century literature, exemplified by Addison’s The Spectator.
Samuel Johnson was a major figure in literary criticism, with his Dictionary of the English Language being his greatest achievement.
The reading public
The literature of the Augustan Age reflected the period’s economic and intellectual progress, with an increased output and growing interest in reading.
However, literacy levels were generally low, especially among farmers and laborers in rural areas, and limited in towns by few schools and early school leaving.
Books were expensive for the lower classes, who instead turned to cheaper materials like ballads, chapbooks, pamphlets, and serialized novels in newspapers.
Lending libraries helped expand the reading public, especially among middle- and upper-class women, who had the leisure to enjoy reading.
The fathers of the English novel
Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) are often considered the pioneers of the English novel.
Novels of the 18th century typically reflected the concerns of the middle class, focusing on issues that influenced social status.
These works were primarily aimed at a bourgeois audience.
The writer’s aim
Traditional plots based on history, legend, and mythology were abandoned.
Writers shifted their focus to appealing to a broader audience, using simpler language to be accessible to less educated readers.
With booksellers, rather than patrons, rewarding writers, speed and productivity became key economic priorities.
The message of the novel
The novel appealed to practical, self-made tradesmen, reflecting the Puritan ethics of reward and punishment valued by the middle class.
While this moral focus dominated, Defoe’s works also hinted at social justice.
The characters
Writers aimed for realism, portraying different human experiences rather than sticking to one literary style.
Novels focused on the “bourgeois man” and his struggles, making him the central character and the voice of the author.
Characters were divided between those driven by reason, like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and those ruled by passion, like Moll Flanders.
The use of contemporary names enhanced the sense of realism.
The narrative technique
The writer was ever-present, using either an omniscient third-person narrator or a first-person narrator as the main character.
Novelists typically followed a chronological sequence of events, grounding characters in time with references to specific times of the year or day.
The setting
In the new novels, great emphasis was laid on setting, seen as complementary to time.
Unlike earlier vague portraits, detailed references to streets, towns, and interiors made the narrative more realistic, enhancing the sense of place.
Types of novels
The 18th-century novel evolved into several sub-genres:
• Realistic Novel: Focused on accurate descriptions of time and place, exemplified by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
• Utopian Novel: Featured imaginary nations and societies to satirize contemporary English life, as seen in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
• Epistolary Novel: Presented through letters exchanged between characters, such as in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.
• Picaresque Novel: Episodic in structure, following the adventures of a young hero facing tyrannical masters and misfortunes, like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.
• Anti-Novel: Highlighted the disconnection between orderly narratives and the chaotic nature of the human mind, as illustrated by Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.