The Augustan Age.

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The Great Augustans-London was the biggest city in Europe and England was becoming uncreasingly urbanized. The early part of the century is commonly known as "the Augustan age" meaning that as Latin literature had reached its maximum perfection under Augustus, this could be also seen as a moment of perfection in English literature and life. The great Augustan writers share a belief in reason as capable of imposing some order on an otherwise chaotic world. Such a belief underlies the positions of writers as different as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele or Samuel Johnson. They all believed in the superiority of intelligence and good sense over fancy and impulse. They rather feared unrestrained fancy, for the sake of both individual man and society. To defend their world from the intrusion of fantasy and the supernatural, the Augustans erected a great rational system to include all aspects of society. Rules were laid down, usually in the form of elegant heroic couplets, for almost every aspect of life, from religion and philosophy to arts and sports (as boxing and rugby). From this derives the didactic tone of much Augustan literature. The Augustans were convinced that their aesthetic and moral canons were perfect because they conformed to Nature, which they saw as the rational principle guiding the universe, and to classical rules. Nature and the classics were thought to be the same thing and were considered superior to modern ideas and standards. The debate, usually known as the querelle des anciens et des modernes, was taking place all over Europe. In England, the major writers, Swift, Pope and Johnson, all wrote in favour of the classical authors. The Augustan period was the last true classical age. Augustan writers formed a group of gentlemen who shared an aristocratic idea of society. Whigs and Tories, strict and tolerant rationalists, optimists and pessimists, all met in the same coffeehouses and clubs, were unanimous in criticising Prime Minister Walpole's policy, and usually despised popular writers like novelist Daniel Defoe. The Scriblerus Club was typical: it was a writers' club that included Pope, Swift and others: they wrote several papers ridiculing false learning and modern pretensions, under the pseudonym of "Martin Scriblerus".
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)-Born in London, Pope was the son of a Catholic linean-draper. As a Catholic, he could not enrol in the universities, was subjected to double taxation and excluded from public officies. Pope's sensitive nature strongly resented such discrimination, and his melancholy temper was also aggravated by his poor health; he suffered from curvature of the spine, as well as several other illness. As a boy, Pope was a keen reader and very talented. His first publication, The Pastorals, included works written while he was very young. The pastoral vein was easily mastered by Pope, who had a painter's eye: he was himself an amateur painter, conscious of the beauty of the English countryside. Pope's ideal countryside was conceived of as "Nature methodized", a landscape in which natural beauties would be set to advantage by the work of man. For Pope there was a direct relation between good taste in the arts, architecture and landscape gardening. Union of nature and art was achieved: art enhanced the qualities inherent in nature. The result is a sense of harmony. Pope's reputation was greatly enhanced by the publication of The Rape of the Lock, a mock-heroic poem, in which he described the narrow-mindedness and frivolity of the English aristocracy. In 1717 Pope retired to Twickenham, where he was to stay till his death. There he composed his great satiric, philosophical, ethical and political works. All of these works were filled with irony and humour to varying degrees. He was in open hostility to the Court and the Whig government of Walpole. Pope, as Swift, was a Tory. He was a public poet writing on public themes. This was an age that thought of itself as "classical" and was eager to have models of correctness and behaviour. Pope set out to provide these models in his poems, which exalt the great Augustan writers: order, reason, nature, good taste, common sense. He believed in intellectual poetry and mirrored in his works the frivolous manners and pleasure, seeking life of the aristocracy.
The Rape of the Lock (1712)-This is probably Pope's most famous work. It is an enormous exaggeration intended to be comical. It's a mock-heroic poem based on the story of the cutting off of a lock of hair of a beautiful fashionable young lady, Belinda, by an ardent admirer of hers, called the Baron. Open war then ensues between the two families. Belinda wants the lock back, while the Baron refuses to yield the prize of his "daring feat". As in real epics, the outcome is decided by the intervention of the gods, who raise the curl to heaven where il will be made into a star. Mock-heroic poetry deals with trivial subjects like that described above, yet uses an epic diction: highly refined language, epic similes and metaphors, allusions to mythical history, a host of supernatural beings drawn from Northern epic lore. All these are called upon by Pope to describe a contest which has for its prize just a lock of hair. The ideal instrument for Pope's satirical vein was the heroic couplet. Each couplet is self-contained. In two lines the poet manages to include an amazing amount of information and personal comment. The implication is that, in a contemporary superficial society, void rethoric is the substitute for real feelings. This poem mirrors the attitude of a society which, proud of itself, cared more for appearances than for content.
Belinda's Toilet- Belinda's dressing table is presented as an altar, and Belinda is almost divine: her celestial image is reflected in the mirror; the whole operation of her preparation is described in religious language. Near the toilet-table stands the "inferior priestess", Betty, the chamber-maid, ready to assist her lady. In the passage there is a sense of richness-treasure,jewels-with an Orient touch that adds exoticism to the scene. Belinda, like most members of aristocracy at that time, cared little about religion and was more interested in fashion and love affairs. The Bible adds a touch of realism since it was "de rigueur" among many English ladies' belongings. The Bible also means confusion between wordly and spiritual values.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)-Swift was born in Ireland in 1667 of English parents. He was also educated there, and this Anglo-Irish duality was to continue throughout his life. He lived in both countries, always thought of himself as an English man, yet became a champion of the Irish cause in many crucial moments. He left Dublin for England in 1689 to reside in the household of Sir William Temple, a distant kinsman of his mother and one of the foremost statesman of the day. Swift stayed with him for ten years, during which he benefited from the conversation of Temple's circle of learned and powerful friends. He also took advantage of Temple's library, which was very well furnished with classical texts. One of Swift's first pamphlets was the Battle of the Books, where he imagines a battle between the books written by the ancients and those written by the moderns. Swift awards victory to the ancients, thus siding with Sir william Temple and his friends in the dispute that was raging throughout Europe. It was finally published in 1704. All of Swift's works are characterised by his polemical genius expressed in various literary genres. Specific social and political problems, especially those related to the irish situation, are dealt with in his many pamphlets and satirical works. He spent the last part of his life in Ireland, apart from occasional visits to London. In 1713 he was made Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Swift's satirical vein is clear in his most famous work, Gulliver's travels: in the form of a tale of travel and adventures set in fantastic far-away islands inhabited by strange races-Lilliputians,giants,speaking horses- Swift submits civilised society to a ruthless attack. The book was first published in 1726 in Dublin, anonymously because of the many dangerous allusions to contemporary politics it contained. Swift was often considered a pessimist because of the bitterness of the satire of some of his works that reflects the main values of the age he lived in. Swift belonged to an age in which a rational approach to reality prevailed over an emotional one. Reality and nature of man were analysed in an attempt to make sense of the contradictions that existed at the political and social level. Swift's satire is not only the expression of a personal pessimism but an exposition of the dehumanising effects of human nature when not tempered by rationality.
Gulliver's travels (1726)- Swift started to think of Gulliver's travels in 1720, invited by the Scriblerus Club to write a satire against some vices and follies of his time. So he decide to parody travel literature. On a first level, Gulliver's travels reads like a travel story. The genre was immensely popular (Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe 1719).Even though Swift's work is quite different from Defoe's, they share the same realism. Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator, is an ordinary man, a ship's surgeon, whose background and family we are told about. Over several years, Gulliver makes a series of voyages "into several remote nations of the world", as the original title reads. The book's geography, though imaginary, is made to seem real by Swift. He mixes the fantastic and the real; his imaginary lands are in known oceans or continents. He is very careful about the names of the ships Gulliver sails on, their captains' names, the degrees of latitude and longitude they sail into, and so on. In the first voyage, Gulliver is shipwrecked in the empire of Lilliput, inhabited by a people so small they look like insects compared to Gulliver. At first the Lilliputians make him prisoner but they gradually come to trust him, and even try to use him in their wars against the neighbouring country. In the end Gulliver is allowed to leave the country, which he does on a boat where he has stored the meat of a hundred oxen and three hundred sheep (all of Lilliputian size). On his second voyage Gulliver lands in the country of Brobdingnag. This time he is surrounded by giants; he is used as a toy and has to defend himself from the attacks of rats as big as large dogs. He is treated with great kindness by the Brobdingnagians, who are a highly civilised and tolerant people. Gulliver leaves the country by accident: the house-box in which he is kept is picked up by an eagle which carries it above the open sea and lets it drop. Gulliver is then rescued by an English ship. In his third voyage Gulliver, while fleeing from some pirates, lands in Laputa, a flying island moved by a great magnet. The inhabitants have heads bent to one side and an eye turned inward. They live in badly built houses and their fields are badly worked because they despise all practical occupations; their knowledge is all theoretical, abstract, and therefore faulty. Their Scientific Academy in the town of Lagado, wehre absurd experiments are conducted, is the supreme example of how the Laputians are totally out of touch with realty. Gulliver's final voyage takes him to the country of the intelligent horses, the Houyhnhnms. The country is also inhabited by a race of monstruous creatures, the Yahoos, that closely resemble men. The Houy. are a rational and perfectly just race, whereas the Yahoos are mischievous and filthy. Gulliver is painfully forced to admit that the Yahoos are very much like men, and he decides to stay with the horses for ever. Unfortunately for him, the Houy. cannot tolerate the presence of a Yahoo and he has to leave. On his return to England Gulliver finds he can no longer endure his family, let alone other men. He spends most of his time in the stable, with horses. Swift's is the first work of fiction to make a modern use of what we now call "first-person narrator". By narrator we are not to understand the author himself, as a physical person, but rather the voice that tells the story. First-person narrators tend to be felt as "authoritative" by the reader: they tell us what is happening, they seem to know. It is their point of view that we are given, the whole story is seen through their eyes. The reader has the impression of listening to a first-hand account of things, to a confession: he feels emotionally involved. Stories like the one told by Gulliver are thus quite close to diaries, and not too distant from autobiographies. Gulliver's travels has puzzled countless generations of readers and critics: it has alternately been considered as a children's story, a philosophical tale whose depth still evades us, or an extended metaphor, full of mysterious allusions. In the first book the very small Lilliputians exemplify the meanness and pettiness of our own world; the Lill. are cruel and treacherous, only great in their thirst for power. In the second book proportions are reversed. The relation between Gulliver and the people of Brobdingnag is complex: on the one hand, their gigantic size allows Gulliver to see all the physical imperfections of man, as if seen through a microscope's lens; on the other, they are wise and good and, after hearing Gulliver describe English civilisation, conclude that it is barbarous. The voyage to Laputa is a more direct satire of contemporary England. Swift satirises modern philosophies and science, and their presumptuousness in claiming to be able to solve all mankind's problems. In the last voyage Gulliver is faced with the degraded but recognisable humanity of the Yahoos and at the same time with the superior intelligence of the wise horses. Both are extremes of depravity and goodness. Gulliver, a poor confused ordinary man, is caught in the middle; when the story ends, he no longer knows to which world he belongs. Critics and readers alike have been divided on the issue of Swift's pessimism. Swift eludes definition but it is clear that he is disgusted, or at least shocked, by the human body and its functions, particularly in the case of women. Also, in Gulliver's final retreat from the world, Swift may have intended to show an individual's alienation; Gulliver alienates himself from his fellow beings because he is thoroughly disguested with them.
Politicians playing for power-In the first part of the passage Gulliver tries to win Lilliputians' favour by letting them climb on his body and allowing the children to play hide-and-seek. Playing and having fun is dear to L. who spend a lot of time on entertainments of various kind especially tigh-rope walking. In the second part Swift wants to satirize a permanent aspect of political life that is flattery, a means to gain office and power. He is probably thinking of contemporary English politics under Walpole's government which used to favour bribes and flattery at the expense of honest people.
Beloved horses, hateful men- This is the conclusion of Gulliver's travels and so the climax of Gulliver's adventures. Gulliver is shown as a broken man. He is horrified at the idea of having to spend the rest of his life among the Yahoos. Gulliver is helpless because he has to admit that, however different he may feel from them, he is a Yahoo, as are his family, wife and children. Gulliver's total refusal-indeed physical repulsion-of them shows Swift's disillusionment with man as a rational animal. Gulliver prefers the company of the wise horses to that of men. He loves and respects them for their excelent qualities. When he thinks of his race, men, he is filled with disgust. He imitates the horses in his speech and way of talking. Back home, his family welcome him but he cannot bear the sight of them. He prefers to talk to his horses, which are his best friends.
The Periodicals-The habit of reading has been popular with the British for several centuries now. Newspapers and periodicals have always been important, and as early as 1557 the printers and book-sellers of London were organised in a corporation. Even in the Elizabethan Age journalistic reporting was astonishingly efficient. Journalism came to acquire its modern status with the appearance of two periodicals at the beginning of the eighteenth century, The Tatler and The Spectator. The first came out in April 1709 and ran till January 1711; while the second was brought out in March of the same year, to cease publication in December 1712. The two minds behind the two magazines were Richard Steele, responsible for most of the numbers of The Tatler, and Joseph Addison, who was mostly concerned with The Spectator. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) was born in Dublin but studied at Oxford before entering the army. He then moved to London where in the years 1701-1705 he made a name for himself as a playwright. He became even more successful with his journalism: apart from The Tatler and The Spectator he was involved in other periodicals as a Whig spokesman. Joseph Addison (1672-1719) studied at Oxford, where he became friends with Steele, and later on the Continent. He wrote in several fields: travel literature, poetry, drama and, obviously, prose. His name is associated with periodicals other than The Tatler and The Spectator. Both Addison and Steele were gentlemen of good breeding who were interested in reaching the educated readers of Britain. The idea of polished, elegant conversation is behind the whole enterprise, as appears clear from Steele's essay on The Gentlman, who is by definition a "man of conversation": a frequenter of coffeehouses and clubs rather than of courts and battle fields. The periodicals' "gentlemen", described in the essays, were typically middle class. The Tatler and The Spectator became common ground for the two upper classes, the old aristocracy and the wealthy new bourgeoisie. In particular, it was from the pages of the two periodicals that the middle class derived its social education, learning how to mix with the nobilty without betraying a lack of breeding in practical matters such as letter writing, invitations, using one's fan, talking in public, duelling, what books to buy, and so on. They also contained essays on moral topics such as friendship, honour,...In the periodicals the average reader wishing to improve himself/herself could find the most important current literary,philosophical and scientific theories. They were presented in such a way as to make them intelligible. The importance of women as regards periodicals is significant. They read them, wrote letters to them and women's problems were very much discussed. Both Addison and Steele addressed themselves to gentlemen and gentlewomen alike, and this was totally new. They even wrote some essays and articles under fictitious female names. Addison's idea of wit was founded on the elegance of the parallels proposed by the writer, who was expected to surprise and delight the reader without running into extravagance; verbal excesses were to be avoided. The influence of Addison's own prose, a model of clarity and fluency, can be seen in the British essay and novel well into the nineteenth century.
How to use a fan-The following passage by Addison reflects a lighter side of The Spectator. The gentle irony with which the subject is treated does not mean it is not at all serious; to the early eighteenth century how to use a fan was an important social accomplishment for a wellbred lady. Here the tone verges on the mock-heroic: a fan is seen as a dangerous weapon in the hands of a knowledgeable lady. The military metaphor pervades the whole passage: fans are handled as rifles. The last paragraph explores the "psycology of the use of the fan": fans may indicate either war or total surrender to men.