The 18th century: Neoclassicism – The Augustan

Age – The Transition/ Pre-romantic Age

 NEOCLASSICISM
• The 18th century is known as The Age of Enlightenment or The
Age of reason, to stress the rational trend of the period and the
attitude according to which reason and judgement should be
the guiding principles for human activities . It saw the birth of a
new literary movement: Neoclassicism or Rationalism. This
movement was greatly influenced by the ideas of John
Locke and Isaac Newton. The importance of Newton is clearly
seen in the epitaph written by Alexander Pope: “Nature and
Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said,’ Let Newton be! ‘And all
was light”. In his Principia Matematica the scientist showed that
the universe was governed by mechanical principles and exact
laws rather than by divine ones as it was believed before.
 Continued
• He left little place for God and we may say that he
destroyed the traditional religious view of the world
making God subject to the laws of science. Newton was
elected President of the Royal Society, an association of
learned man who wanted to promote scientific studies
and to try new methods of experiment. Thanks to the
research, new discoveries that religion seemed unable to
explain, were made and Science became the new
authority. It was believed that science and reason would
have improved man’s condition turning   him into a social
being who would conform to the rules of civilised life.  
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• Reason , the most important man’s ability,
enabled him not only to think but also to act
correctly. Man, the only living creature to have
it, became important for his power of
observation more than for his power of
feelings. Reason became the criterion of
everything: what could be justified by reason
was right  and   what could not be justified or
proved by reason was false and rejected.     
• Every thing was regulated by reason, nature too. People were attracted by a  ‘reasoned Nature‘, as
the one we can find in parks or gardens, a nature that reflected   order and   harmony. To follow
nature meant to represent the world as it was, to obey reason.  Rationalism, stressing out the
importance of reason and observation, started the beginning of the scientific thought and freed
man from ignorance. Enlightenment thinkers mostly tended to atheism. They believed that
principles should only be accepted on the basis of reason and not on the authority of sacred texts
and tradition. In this Age of reason both government  and the king  had to justify themselves
rationally. The belief that the king ruled by Divine Right was questioned. The king and the
government    ruled by the agreement of the people, by contract which they had to respect.
• The importance of reason was also influential in the literature of the time and English literary
standards were reformed. The artistic creation, like science, had to follow exact rules and was to be
based on reason. The writers  modelled much of their works on Classical writers and  referred to
ancient Greece and Rome using subjects from classical mythology and history. All that brought to
 the birth of a new   movement known as Neoclassicism. The reform was helped by the French
writer Nicolas Boileau , who published a book, Art Poetique , which provided the key idea of
neoclassicism: in good art inspiration must be controlled by judgement. He listed the rules of good
writing: writing should be clear, balanced, ordered, elegant and eloquent. Neoclassicism provided
the basis for the Augustan school of writing which dominated the 18th century literature.
 THE AUGUSTANS
• The Augustans were so called because they compared
their period   to that of the Emperor Augustus in ancient
Rome, a period of political stability, splendour and
tranquillity. They wanted this period of stability to last
and attacked everything which threatened to upset it.
They thought  that ancient art was superior to modern
one and often imitated the great Roman classical
authors: Vergil, Ovid, Titus Livius and Horace. The
Augustans believed that their duty was not to try to be
original but to re-express universal truths about
mankind. 
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• Their Age was characterized by the spirit of the
Enlightenment which implied a new way of thinking
characterized by philosophical, scientific and rational spirit. As
to the contents, they mostly used classical subjects 
 and focused on man in society seen, not as an individual, but
as an important piece of a perfect whole, a piece of a perfect
mosaic. The artist was seen as he who had to express his
knowledge of the world in a rational and objective way. He
should not allow his own emotions and prejudices to influence
his writing. In order to achieve objectivity , the writer had to
write clearly and to use a precise and correct language, a
language that all readers had to understand.
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• The language they adopted was the poetic diction, an
artificial language which used uncommon and learned
words, Latinate and periphrasis. Samuel Johnson published
his famous Dictionary and helped to understand the
meaning of words. As far as style the authors were allowed
to use “wit”, that is attractiveness, clever invention and
humour.
• Towards the middle of the century there was a reaction
against rationalism and writers focused their attention on
the individual and on the people’s feelings. This new interest
found its expression in a new prose form, the Novel .
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• As far as poetry, we have to say that Augustan poetry was of
secondary importance and continued the restoration trend
for satire and mock-heroic poems written in heroic couplet  in
which a trivial subject was treated with the seriousness of epic
for comic effect. The most important representative
was Alexander Pope and his finest work was The Rape of the
Lock, telling about a quarrel between two aristocrat  families
because of a trivial incident: Lord Petre had cut a lock of hair of
Miss Arabella Fermor and that action was considered as an
insult. Pope wrote it to ridicule the narcissistic attitude of the
aristocracy.In the second half of the century new trends started
to emerge and the heroic couplet lost its dominant position.
 THE TRANSITION AGE

• The Age of Neoclassicism was followed by a transitional period also known

as Pre-Romanticism. It developed during the last decades of the 18th century.
There was a reaction against classicism and reason and a search for new
models of poetry taken no longer from ancient Rome and Greece but from the
Middle Ages. The period was greatly affected by the French
Revolution, the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.  They
provided literature with new themes which began to develop side by side with
the old ones. First of all there was a new interest towards the poor and the
children, who lived at the margin of society during the Augustan Age. Satire
and realism were respectively replaced by sentimentalism and imagination,
paving the way to the flourishing of Romanticism. The Age preserved its main
features with its emphasis on reason, precision, order, clarity and harmony, but
some other features appeared in opposition to them: interest in country life,
new way of seeing Nature, different role of Art, new themes based on feelings
and so on.
 Continued
• Poetry was no longer concerned with “wit” but with simple feelings and nature.
Poetry was pervaded by a melancholic tone and was often associated with meditation
on Death. This kind of poetry was remembered as Graveyard Poetry. The poets of
the Graveyard Group were melancholic and seek for solitude. Their thoughts were
directed towards Death, or the fear of Death, suicide and graves. The settings of their
poems were often medieval ruins, caverns, coffins and skeletons. The most important
poet of the group was Thomas Gray and his most famous poem was Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard, based on the concept of the levelling power of Death. Other
poets were Edward Young and Robert Blair, both church ministers. The Graveyard
poets influenced the Gothic Novel and the Ossian Poetry which became very popular
literary forms especially among they who were unsatisfied with classical novel and
poetry and looked for Gothicism, a mixture of both medieval features(ruins, ancient
castle and so on) and supernatural. Both poems and novels of this kind were
melodramatic, full of horrors and supernatural and set in a medieval context. The
most famous Gothic Novels were Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Castle of
Otranto by Walpole.