In the Literary Domain

The principal feature of the new literature was its intellectual ground, coming from the head, not the heart. The past literature was passionate, preoccupied with the relationship between God and man, and between men themselves, from the viewpoint of feeling and imagination. But in the Restoration period, feeling and imagination were suspected because they presupposed strong faith, imagination was compared to the mad, the wild, and the fanatical.

After the uncertain 17^th century, people began to believe that reason and order could settle their problems. England was wealthy, and as a result, people enjoyed more free time, which they could devote to their interests in literature and current affairs.

A swift change of taste came in about 1660, in harmony with a general European cultural movement, particularly in 17^lh-century France. Charles II, an easy going and pleasure loving king, brought back from France an appreciation of French literature, fashion and elegance; and the Restoration was dominated by a fun-loving court, whose lifestyle was reflected in dashing comedies. The movement brought a reaction against the sophistication and extravagance of the ate Renaissance, now greater simplicity, clarity, good sense, and order were welcomed. In England the period of the 1700s to 1750s produced a literature often referred to as neoclassical, Dr Augustan, because the Roman writers during the reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar (27 BC —ADM), exerted a strong influence on the then English literati. The 18^thcentury s also called the Age of Reason, because the leading philosophers stated that the calm reasoning f the human mind could achieve almost anything.

The most important aspect of the Restoration is the increasing challenge of the old religious conventions, leading to philosophic scepticism. Originating in ancient Greece, scepticism flourished on the Continent in the essays of the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), and in England of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). The coffeehouses of London were gaining in reputation as informal literary circles. One could smoke there, drink coffee, read newspapers, write and receive letters, exchange news and opinions. One of the most famous of them was the Scriblerus Club, whose members included Pope, Swift, and John Gay.

The reading public increased throughout the 18^th century, proportionally to the leisure time of the upper-class and the trading middle class. The popular press flourished, producing newspapers, literary periodicals, and the first magazine in the modern sense, the Gentleman's Magazine (1731), to be followed by such successful literary reviews as the Monthly Review (1749) and the Critical Review (1756). The new journalism provided information about politics, science, philosophy, literature, scandal and gossip.

The literary output of the period between the 1660s and 1780s can suitably be divided into three parts of about forty years each. The first lasted to the death of Dryden in 1700, and set out the critical principles of neoclassical literature; the second finished at the death of Pope in 1744 and Swift in 1745, and culminated with the literary movement started by Dryden's generation; the third one came to a close with the death of Samuel Johnson in 1784 and the publication of William Cowper's (1731-1800) The Task in 1785. In this blank-verse work he says that Nature is a great friend and supporter, and town is, in fact, cruel and evil. It contrasts the old principles and new ideas that carried the origins of the further romantic movement.

The first period between 1660 and 1700 was diverse and dynamic. Dryden dominated it, creating in important contemporary genres: occasional verse, comedy, tragedy, heroic play, ode, satire, and critical essay. Being an intellectual age, the Restoration period preferred literary theory. Dryden, the first English Literary critic, gave us opinions on the literary art in his essays, prefaces, dramatic prologues, and epilogues. Dryden's views are clearly stated, particularly in the Essay on Satire and the Essay of Dramatic Poesy: the aim of literature is to provide a truthful picture of Nature. A plain, concise, and practical prose style was found more suitable to the clear communication of scientific truths. Figures of speech, like metaphors or similes were disliked, and were allowable for poetry, but not in rational writing.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1678) is the greatest of the Restoration thinkers with his best work Leviathan (1651). Another philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), published his two treatises on Government in 1690. John Evelyn (1620-1706) and Samuel Pepys (1632- 1704) kept detailed accounts of their daily business, recording history as it influenced their own personalities. A gifted man, John Bunyan (1628-1688), knew well only one book, the Bible, and forged his style and imagery out of it. His Pilgrim's Progress (1678) is a simple story of allegory and personification, a laborious pilgrimage to the afterlife.

In the second part, between the deaths of Dryden and Swift, the literature initiated by Dryden and his contemporaries reached full maturity. The literature of this period is witty, critical, and satiric. It has the early interest in the heroic, but except for Pope's translations of Homer, no writer succeeded in heroic poetry. On the other hand, mock heroic works of the period are well-known, among them Swift's Battle of the Books (1704) and A Description of a City Shower (1710), and Pope's Rape of the Lock j (1712) and The Dunciad (1728). Humorous burlesques and mock-heroic works include John Gay's delightful Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), and The Beggar's Opera (1728). It was also a great age for satire, which flourished with Pope and Swift. They criticized the social and economic changes in England's growth into a world power with commercial economy.

The novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) pioneered the genre and set off the theme of a self-reliant man face to face with unruly nature. In Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724) he painted a detailed picture of contemporary life. Except for Defoe, the major novel contributor was Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). Henry Fielding (1707-1754), another English novelist, also worshiped virtue but considered goodness as spontaneous feeling, not a behavioural code.

The last third of this period might be named as the age of Johnson and the age of prose. There flourished such genres as literary criticism with Johnson; biography with Boswell; philosophy with Hume; politics with Burke; history with Edward Gibbon; aesthetics with Sir Joshua Reynolds; economics with Adam Smith; and natural history with Gilbert White. The prose style of this period is often built on the principles of neoclassical verse: elaborate parallels and antitheses, elegant references to classical literature, rhetorical manner and influential Clarissa (1747), were written in epistolary form. Yet, Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) fashioned the novel into the picaresque sphere. Smollett enjoyed depicting the grotesque side of 18^th century life, with its brutality, vulgar practical jokes, and strong scents in such novels as Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751) and his satirical one, Humphry Clinker (1771). Another novelist, Laurence Sterne I, (1713-68), viewed life as a source of joke in Tristram Shandy (1767). The most remarkable literary invention P of the time was the Gothic romance. Horace Walpole's (1717-1797) The Castle of Otranto (1765), a fantastic tale of terror, created a mode of fiction that has been popular ever since. Poetry turned away from the social unrest of the age to studying nature, which also meant studying the ancients, the great Greek and Roman artists and thinkers. The very word "poet" comes from Greek meaning "maker." As such, poets had to plan their works in one of the literary genres: epic, tragedy, comedy, pastoral, satire, or ode, to choose the appropriate language, the right style and tone, and rhetorical figures.

Among the poets, Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is renowned for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. William Collins (1721-1759), is much more romantic than Gray; his Ode to Evening sincerely communicates the impressions of natural scenes.

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