enlightenment

CONTENTS:
The Enlightenment – as a progressive movement of the 18th century.
Daniel Defoe – a founder of the Robinsonnade genre.
Jonathan Swift – a writer of satire.
Henry Fielding – a founder of the picaresque novel.
Sentimentalism and preromanticism.
Robert Burns – a representative of Non English-language literature.

1. The Enlightenment, main features in literature
Believe in the human power and possibilities;
Ideas can change the world;
Reflection of contradiction in literature – human natural kindness vs. natural sinness;
The great role is assigned to education.

Genres
Classicism
Realism – the brightest
Sentimentalism
Preromanticism

Stages of the English Enlightenment
Early Enlightenment (1688-30s of the 18th century) - classicism – Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, D. Defoe, J. Swift – a pamphlet, a story

Stages of the English Enlightenment
Middle Enlightenment (40-60s of the 18th century) – realism – Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett – a novel; George LIllo, John Gay, Richard Sheridan – drama

Stages of the English Enlightenment
Later Enlightenment (60-80s of the 18th century) – sentimentalism – James Thomson – poetry; Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne – novels; preromanticism – Thomas Chatterton, William Godwin, Robert Burns - poetry

Market of literature
Novels and romances – as market goods;
The integration of prose fiction into the market of histories;
Satirical romances – Cervantes’s “Don Quixote”;
The center - fictions
Delarivier Manley “New Atalantis” – a romance;
Novel – realistic, short and stimulating

Market of literature
Sandras - a private story - a version of d’Artagnan’s story;
New reforms - Jane Barker – the old antiquated romance –”Exilius”;
The poetry of Alexander Pope holds an acknowledged place in the canons of English literature - quotations; witty satires

Market of literature
Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele- the outstanding essayists of the Augustan Age (1700-1750);
Periodicals: “The Tattler” and “The Spectator”;
Samuel Johnson- “Dictionary of the English language”; “The Lives of the English Poets” – literary criticism

2. Daniel Defoe
A pioneer of economic journalism;
A founder of the English novel;
“The True-Born Englishman” – the most successful poem;
“Robinson Crusoe” is based on the true story of the Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk;
a new genre “The Robinsonnade”

3. Jonathan Swift
“A Tale of a Tub” and “The Battle of the Books” – first success;
Martinus Scriblerus Club – with A. Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot (1713);
1726 – an immediate hit of “Gulliver’s Travels”;
“Gulliver’s Travels” – a misanthropic anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass

4. Henry Fielding
The first theoretician of a novel;
The first major novelist to admit that his prose fiction was pure artifact;
A wide range of characters taken from all social classes;
“Tom Jones, a Foundling” – an establishment of a new standard of novel-writing – drama+novel (picaresque)

Novels as literature (1740-1800)
Classics of prose fiction inspired living authors;
Aphra Behn – a celebrated author posthumously;
Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker, Eliza Haywood followed French models – to gain fame with real names instead of their pseudonyms;

Novels as literature (1740-1800)
The second half of the 18th century – literary criticism;
Market division: a low field of popular fictions (Laurence Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”) and a critical literary production (Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded”)

Novels as literature (1740-1800)
New design of title pages – short description of the novel to indicate the discussion by the critical audience – S. Richardson’s novels

Tobias George Smollett
“Roderick Random” and “Peregrine Pickle” – picaresque novels;
Translated Miguel de Cervantes’s “Don Quixote”;
“A Complete History of England” – his major work

5. Sentimentalism - the first wave
Appeared in 30-40s of the 18th century;
A reaction on the rationalism;
The novel is the dominant genre;
The early 18th c. heroine – bold, ready to protect her reputation, secrets and effective intrigues; mid 18th c. descendant – too modest and shy, a feeling of modesty, search for friends and intimacy;

5. Sentimentalism - the first wave
Contradiction of feelings to rationalism and practicism;
Criticism of bourgeois orders;
Feelings and sympathy – idealized;
Depiction of nature, pictures of rural life;
The human being is absorbed by his own thoughts, lonely and melancholic;

Sentimentalism- the second wave
More radical heroes;
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “The Sorrow of Young Werther” – at the forefront of the new movement – a wave of compassion;
A discussion of the nature of the human psyche;
The novel – the medium of an avant garde;
New sciences – sociology and psychology

Laurence Sterne – a representative of sentimentalism
Best known for the novel “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”;
Humour was dismissed in England as being too corrupt;
He inserted sermons, essays and legal documents into the pages of the novel;
He explored the limits of typography and print design – marbled pages and entirely black page within the narrative;
His innovations – highly influential to Modernist writers

Preromanticism
A transition to romanticism;
Emotions are poeticized;
Depiction of everything in a more mysterious and enigmatic way;
Actions take place in remote countries or the past;
Thomas Gray and William Cowper

Drama
Richard Sheridan – an Irish playwright
“The Rivals” - first play – a failure and a smash;
“The School for Scandal” – one of the greatest comedies of manners