The Augustan Age : General characteristics of age & Salient Features of the Age

  THE AUGUSTAN AGE : GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AGE & SALIENT FEATURES OF THE AGE

 

1)    Introduction : -

The eighteenth century in English literature has been called the Augustan Age, the Neoclassical Age and the Age of Reason. It is (Neoclassical period) also a period of conscious self – awareness – people looked at themselves and kept asking “Am I playing my role correctly ? ”  Augustan literature is a style of English literature product during the resigns of Queen Anne, king George-I, and George-II in the first half of the 18th century and ending a in the 17405 with the deaths of  Pope and Swift (1744 & 1745). It is a literacy epoch that featured the rapid development of the novel an explosion in Satire, the mutation of drama from political satire into melodrama and an evolution toward poetry of persons exploration. In Philosophy, it was an age increasingly dominated by empiricism while in the writings of political – economy it marked the evolution of mercantilism as a formal Philosophy, the development of capitalism, and the triumph of trade.

 

(2)    Historical context : -

    “Augustan” derives from Gorge I’S wishing to be seem as Augustan Caesar. Alexander pope, who had been imitating Horace, wrote an Epistle to Augustus that was to George-II and seemingly endorsed the motion of his age being like that of Augustus, when Poetry become more mannered, politics and satirical than in the era of Julius Caesar.  Later Voltaire and Oliver Goldsmith used the term “Augustan” to refer to the literature of the 1720s and ‘30s. Outside Poetry, however, the Augustan era is generally know by other names. Partially because of the rise of empiricism and partially  due to the self – conscious naming of the age in terms of ancient Rome,  two imprecise labels have been affixed  to the age. One is that it is the age of neoclassicism. The other is that it is the Age of Reason. Both terms have some usefulness, but both also obscure much.

One of the most critical elements of the 18th century was the increasing availability of printed material, both for readers and authors. Farther more, in this age before copyright, pirate editions thereby encouraged Book sellers to increase their shipments to outlying centers like Dublin, which increased, again, awareness across the whole realm.  All types of literature were spread quickly in all directions. News papers not only began, but they multiplied. Establishment, and independent divines were in point, the constant movement of these works helped defuse any one region’s religious homogeneity and fostered emergent latitudinarianism. The latest books of scholarship had “Keys” and “indexes” and “digests” made of them that could popularize, summarize, and explain them to a wide audience. The positive side of the explosion in information was that the 18th century was mackedly more generally educated than the centuries before. Education was less confined to the upper classes than it had been in prior centuries and consequently contributions to science, philosophy, economics, and literature came from all parts of the newly united kingdom.

    There are mainly two types of Historical context in this age and there are as below :

*    Political and religious context.

*    History and literature.

(3)    Prose : -

The essay, satire, and dialogue (in philosophy and religion) thrived in the age, and the English novel was truly began as a serious art form.

Literacy in the early 18th century passed into the working classes, as well as the middle and upper classes.

Further more, literacy was not consigned to men, though rates of female literacy are very difficult to establish.

For those who were literate, circulating libraries in England began in the Augustan period.

Libraries were open to all, but they were mainly associated with female patronage and novel reading.

    There are mainly five types of propose in this age and they are as following :

*    Essay and Journalism

*    Dictionaries and Lexicons

*    Philosophy and religious writing.

*    The novel

*    Satire.

    In propose type there is one most important type and that is “Satire” and the detailed about Satire are as follow :

*    Satire : -

A single name over shows all others in 18th century prose satire : Jonathan Swift. Swift wrote poetry as well as prose, and his satire range over all topics. Critically, Swift’s satire marked the development of prose parody away from simple satire or barlesaue. On the other hand, other satires would argue against a habit, practice, or policy by making fun of its reach or composition or methods.

What Swift did was to combine parody, with its imitation of form and style of another, and satire in prose. Swift’s works would pretend to speak in the voice of on opponent and imitate the style of the opponent and have the parodic work itself be the satire. Swift’s first major satire was “A Tale of a Tub” (1703 – 1706), which introduced an ancients / moderns division that would serve as adistinction between the old and new conception of value. The “moderns” sought trade, empirical science, the individual’s reason above the society’s, while the “ancients” believed in inherent and immanent value of  birth, and the society over the individual’s determination of the good.In Swift’s satire, the moderns come out looking in same and proud of their insonity,  and dismissive of the value of history.In Swift’s most significant satire, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), out biography, allegorge and philosophy mix together in the travels. Thematically, Gulliver’s Travels is a critique of human varity, of pride. Book four depicts the land of the Houyhmhmm a society of horses ruled by pure reason, where humanity itself is portroyed as a group of “yahoos” covered in filth and dominated by base desires. It shows that, indeed, the very desire for reason  may be undesirable, and humans must struggle to be neither shows what happens when reason is unleashed without any consideration of in orality or utility. (I .e. madness, ruin, and starvation).There were other satirists who worked in a less visulent way, who took o bemused pose and only made lighthearted fun. Tom Brown, Ned ward, and Tom Urfey were all satirists in prose and poetry whose works appeared in the early part of the Augustan age. Tom Brown’s most famous work in this vein was Amusements serious and comical, calculated for the Meridian of London (1700).Ned ward’s most memorable work was The London Spy (1704 – 1706). Tom D’Urfey’s  Wit and  Mirth : or pills to purge Melancholy (1719) was another Satire that attempted to offer entertainment rather than a specific bit of political action, in the form of coarse and catchy songs. Particularly after Swift’s success, parodic satire had an attraction for authors throughout the 18th century. Satire was present in all geares during the Augustan period.

Perhaps primarily, satire was a part of political and religious debate. So Omni present and powerful was satire in the Augustan age that more than one literacy history has referred to it as the “Age of Satire” in literature.

 

(4)    Poetry : -

In the Augustan era, poets wrote in direct counter point and direct expansion of one another, with each poet writing Satire when in opposition.There was a great struggle over the nature and role of the postoral in the early part of the century, reflecting two simultaneous movements : the invention of the subjective self as a worthy topic, with the emergence of a priority on individual psychology, against the insistence on all acts of art being performance and public gesture designed for the benefit of society at large. The development seemingly agreed upon by both sides was a gradual adoptation of all forms of poetry from their older uses. Odes would cease to be encomium, ballods cease to be narratives, elegies cease to be sincere memorials, satires no longer be specific entertainments, parodies no longer be performance pieces without sting song no longer be pointed, and the lyric would become a celebration of the individual rather than a lover’s complaint.These developments can be seen as extension of Protestantism, as Max Weber argued, for they represent a gradual increase in the implications of Martin Lather’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers or they can be seen as a growth of the power and assertiveness of the bourgeois and an each of the displacement of the worker from the home in growing industrialization, as Marxisls such as E.P. Thompson have urged. Whatever the prime cause, a largely conservative set of voices urged for a social person and largely emergent voices.The entire Augustan age’s poetry was dominated by Alexander pope. His lines were repeated often enough to lend quite a few clichés and proverbs to modern English usage.There was a great struggle over the nature and real of the pastoral in the early part of the century.Pope later explained that any depictions of shepherds and their mistresses in the pastoral must not be updated shepherds, that they must be icons of the Golden Age : “We are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived than to have been, when the best of men followed the employment.”Pop’s friend John Gay also adopted the pastoral.

Gay, working at pope’s suggestion, wrote a parody of the updated pastoral in the shepherd’s week.

He also imitated the Satires of Javenol with his Trivia.Even the Beggar’s opera, which is a satire of Robert walpole, portroys its characters with compassion : the Villaims have pothetic songs in their own right and are acting out of the exigency rather than boundless evil.Throughout the Augustan era the “updating” of classical poets was a common place. Alexander pope would manage to refer to the king himself in unflattering tones by “Pormitating” Horace in his Epistle to Augustus. Similarly, Samuel Johnson wrote a poem that falls into the Augustan period in his “imitation of Juvenal.”

When this folk – inspired impulse combined with the solitary and individualistic impulse of the churchyard poets, Romanticisa was nearly invitable.

 

(5)    Drama : -

The “Augustan era” is difficult to define chronologically in prose and poetry, but it is very easy to date its end in drawn.The Augustan era’s draw ended definitively in 1737, with the Licensing Act.

Prior to 1737, however, the English stage was changing rapidly from the Restoration comedy and Restoration drama and their noble subject to the quickly developing melodrama.George Lillo and Richard Steele wrote the trend – setting plays of the early Augustan period. The plots are resolved with Christian forgiveness and repentance. Steel’s the Conscious Lovers (1722) hiarges upon hid young hero avoiding fighting a duel. These play set up a new set of values for the stage.

Instead of amusing the audience or inspiring the audience, they sought to instruct the audience and ennoble it. Further, the plays were popular precisely because they seemed to reflect the audience’s own lives and concerns. Joseph Addition also wrote a play, entitled Cato, in 1713.

Cato concerned the Roman Stateinan. As during the Restoration, economics drove the stage in the Augustan period. Under Charles – II Court patronage meant economic success, and therefore the Restoration stage featured plays that would suit the monorch and/or Court.

Thus, there were quite a few plays that were, in fact, not literary that were staged more often than the literary plays. Additionally, opera made its way to England during this period.

Inasmuch as opera combined singing with acting, it was a mixed geare, and this violated all the strictures of neo-classicism. To add insult to injury, the casts and celebrated stars were foreigners, and, as with Farinelli, Castrati. The Satirists saw in opera the non plus ultra of invidiousness. As pope putting Duncan B : “.Joy to choose ! let Division reign : Chronatic tor tortures Soom shall drive Hemhence Break all their nerves, and fritted all Heir Sense   one Trill shall harmonize Joy, grief, and rage, wake the dull Church, and  lull the ronting stage; To the same notes they says shall have, or srore, and all they yawning daughters cry, encor.” Playwrights were therefore in straits.

On the one hand, the playhouses were doing without plays by turning out hack-written pantomimes.

On the other hand, when a Satirical plays appeared, the whig ministry would suppress it.

The playhouses had little choice but to present old plays and pantomime and plays that had no conceivable political content. In other words, William Shokespeare’s reputation grew enormously as his plays saw a quadrupling of performances, and seutilueutal  comedy and melody drama were the only choices.

 

(6)    Political and Economic Complications : -

This was a time of Civil Profitability and Military unrest. Britain was involved in a series of commercial wars against the Dutch, French, Austrians, Spanish and eventually its own American colonists over the lucrative trade opportunities with the New York and with the South Seas.

The Restoration is the time of the great privateer trade and the celebration of British Naval Supreme.

It is time of party politics : the Tories, representing old lauded wealth, conservatism, and the House of Lords, VS. the Whigs, representing fortunes made in trade, the City, and expansionist beliefs.

It was the age of the Almighty proud. Economics were the Argo – Coribbean Slave trade, Colomialis – expansion into India and eventually Australia and the Far East, and the enclosure of public grozing  lauds and anti-poaching laws in communal forests. It’s in this period that “Rule, Brittania !” becomes both the on them and unofficial motto of the realm. Britain is shifting from a kingdom to an empire, and that shift had its costs. The monarchic succession had one major consequence that is still felt.

Anne was a relatively weak ruler, and she was succeeded by a distant cousin who didn’t even speak English. As a result, the prime minister’s position grew increasingly important. Robert walpole officially received the title in 1721 but had held the position for years before – his attitude it best Salulued up by his quotation about parliament, “all those men have their price.” He was succeeded in the position by a series of notable whigs, including pitt the elder and pitt the younger, who successfully pursued a policy of valorizing the moneyed classes. They attempted to question the moral complacency of the whig age, but with inconsistent success.

 

(7)    Rationality and Faith : -

Some people might believe that an Age of Reason would be all age where religious faith was not important, but this was not the case. Obe of the chief reason for founding the Royal Society was an attempt to we science to explain and glorify the wonders of Divine Creation, according to its chorter.

This is the first great age of scientific instrumentation – accurate clocks, the reckoning of longitude, the refineament of the microscope and the telescope – and all were put to work to explain the marvel of the universe. The New Science was seem as explaining to man for the first time how God worked – one common image was of God as a kind of Divine clockmaker, setting all things in order to run perfectly. This was an age when people were obsessed with how the world worked.

Newton’s work on gravity led them to believe that God’s work could be described in mathematical terms. For the first time, they believed that rational explanations could back up faith. – i.e. that reason supported belief. Mathematics was used to explain many of the workings of the world. A famous comment about being a virtuose is this last time from a letter written by frederick the Great of Prussia, (1740 : “Adieu ! must now write to the king of  France, compose a solo for flute, make up a poem for voltaire, other  same accuracy regulations, and do a thousand things !” That’s what you could call a day’s work !Thhe  Architects like chtistopher area were hired to rebuild churches to make them more fashionable. The church of England dominates but there were Toleratian acts and  Methodism was popular, especially in rural areas and among the poor.

 

(8)    Conclusion : -

The proliferation of the printing press, the cheapness of paper, and the rise of literacy and economic status meant that many more people could participate in reading. Literary forms that appealed to wide range of classes were developed in this period, and we get the beginnings of literacy snobbery. Swift coins the terms high-brow and low-brow to reflect the kinds of reading taste he saw developing, and those prejudiced remain into our day. It is the first great age of literary criticism, where essays on the Virtues  Cond Weaknesses) of authors and biographies of major figures begin to dominate.

So you can see where this is a complex age, a difficult age, but a rewarding one to study. In many ways it shaped the literary tastes and values that we have up to the present day.