Mr. Cleon M. McLean

• On the heels of the Restoration Period (1660—1700…restoration of the Stuart line with Charles II, ending the Commonwealth era), writers of the Augustan Age drew parallels to times of the Roman emperor, Augustus (27 B.C.—A.D. 14), and classical authors such as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.

• AA writers imitated the A-Roman ideals of moderation, urbanity, and decorum (MUD)

• Economically, England experienced a change from an agrarian society to a mercantile society

NEOCLASSICAL PERIOD (1660—1785)

AUGUSTAN AGE (1700—1745)

• Daniel Defoe (1660—1731) and Samuel Richardson (1689—1761) considered fathers of the modern novel form. Both wrote about and for women

• With rapid literacy came new readership—upper-middle class women who wanted to read about their lives in literature (not as in past, i.e., hero and damsel in distress)

LITERATURE IN THE AUGUSTAN STYLE

• 18th century readers were skilled in translating words into pictures, so the focus for writers was on easy, natural wit

• Swift saw a moral urgency (think about the changing economy) as a struggle between “right reason” and madness—not insanity, but a blindness to anything but one’s own private illusions…a sort of abandonment of practical reality

LITERATURE IN THE AUGUSTAN STYLE

Definition: The human faculty of intelligence, inventiveness, and mental acuity

• 16th and 17th centuries: wit came to be used also for ingenuity in literary invention, esp. for the ability to develop brilliant, surprising, and paradoxical speech

• 18th century: attempts to separate “false wit” whose aims were superficial dazzlement, from “true wit” whose aims are the apt rephrasing of truth attested in the commonplace

WIT

• Grubb Street—where commercial writers went to farm out their (obscene?) work

• Comedy of manners (Restoration Comedy)—high moral sentiment in comedy

• Satire used as weapon against those who deviated from norms of conduct that threatened to undermine traditional and socially approved behavior

• FYI: Swift was a conservative (Tory) in a time when the Whigs dominated in politics

• Tory horror=> change in the economic system=invasion and debasement of “polite world” by barbarians—i.e., middle class

LITERATURE IN THE AUGUSTAN STYLE

• Thematically: Nature as the universal, permanent, and representative elements in human experience

• External nature—i.e., the landscape—is a source of aesthetic pleasure, an object for scientific inquiry, and a place for religious contemplation

• Figurative language: Metaphors, similes, and other rhetorical devices were good in poetry, but not in rational discourse/conversation

LITERATURE IN THE AUGUSTAN STYLE

Picaresque is…pertaining to, characteristic of, or characterized by a form of prose fiction, originally developed in Spain, in which the adventures of an engagingly roguish hero are described in a series of usually humorous or satiric episodes that often depict, in realistic detail, the everyday life of the common people

THE PICARESQUE NOVEL

Concern: No standardized grammar!.

Chaucer ameliorated the language to new heights, but…THERE WAS STILLWORK TO BE DONE!

Dire need for “ascertainment”

CONCERNS ABOUT THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

• The Royal Society (made up very conservative British scholars…anglophiles) set about to put the English language in a polished, rational, and permanent form

• polished=remove supposed defects and introduce improvements

• rational=rules for proper usage

• permanent=Samuel Johnson’s “A Dictionary of the English Language” (1755)

ASCERTAINMENT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Baroque musical composers:1.Antonio Vivaldi (1678—1741)2.Johann Sebastian Bach (1685—1750) my favorite!!3.Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756—1791)

Baroque musical style:1.Showed ornamentation—opulence; highly decorated2.Expressed order: compositions were melodious and structured to reflect the “perfect order” of the universeBaroque musical form:E.g., Concertos/concerti: sonatas, cantatas, and oratariosInstruments: organs, violins, harpsichords and other string instruments

BAROQUE MUSICAL STYLE