THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1660-1785

The Restoration period begins in 1660, the year in which King Charles II (the exiled Stuart king) was restored to the English throne.England, Scotland, and Wales were united as Great Britain by the 1707 Act of Union.The period is one of increasing commercial prosperity and global trade for Britain.Literacy expanded to include the middle classes and even some of the poor.Emerging social ideas included politenessa behavioral standard to which anyone might aspireand new rhetoric of liberty and rights, sentiment and sympathy.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

The monarchical restoration was accompanied by the re-opening of English theatres (closed during Cromwell's Puritan regime) and the restoration of the Church of England as the national church.Church and state continued to be closely intertwined. The Test Act of 1673 required all holders of civil and military offices to take the sacrament in the Anglican Church and deny transubstantiation; those who refused (e.g., Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics) were not allowed to attend university or hold public office.King Charles II, though he outwardly conformed to Anglicanism, had Catholic sympathies that placed him at odds with his strongly anti-Catholic Parliament.Charles had no legitimate heir. His brother James (a Catholic) was next in line to the throne. Parliament tried to force Charles to exclude his brother from the line of succession. Charles ended this "Exclusion Crisis" by dissolving Parliament.The Exclusion Crisis in a sense created modern political parties: the Tories, who supported the king, and the Whigs, who opposed him.Once crowned, King James II quickly suspended the Test Act. In 1688, the birth of James's son so alarmed the country with the prospect of a new succession of Catholic monarchs that secret negotiations began to bring a new Protestant ruler from Europe to oust James.In 1688, William of Orange and his wife Mary (James's daughter) landed in England with a small army and seized poweran event known as the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution.James II fled to exile in France. For over 50 years his supporters (called Jacobites, from the LatinJacobus, for James) mounted unsuccessful attempts to restore the Stuart line of Catholic kings to the British throne.Queen Anne, another of James II's daughters, was the next monarch (1702-1714). Anne's reign was a prosperous time for Britain, as the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) created new trade opportunities.England, Scotland, and Wales were united as Great Britain by the 1707 Act of Union.As Anne, like Mary, had no heirs, the succession was settled upon the royal house of Hanover. A long line of King Georges (I-IV) ensued, which is why the eighteenth century is also known as the Georgian period.We now associate the term "Whig" with liberalism and "Tory" with conservatism, but the principles behind these two parties remained fluid and responsive to political circumstance throughout the period.Robert Walpole, a Whig politician who served under both King George I and George II, held a parliamentary seat from 1701 until 1742. Walpole was the first man to be described as a "prime" minister.During King George III's long rule (1760-1820) Britain became a major colonial power. At home and abroad, George III's subjects engaged with a new rhetoric of liberty and radical reform, as they witnessed and reacted to the revolutions in France and America.

THE CONTEXT OF IDEAS

The court of King Charles II championed the right of England's social elite to pursue pleasure and libertinism.King Charles II authorized two new companies of actors. Women began to appear on stage in female roles.Dogmatism, or the acceptance of received religious beliefs, was widely regarded as dangerous.Charles II approved the Royal Society for London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (1662). The Royal Society revolutionized scientific method and the dispersal of knowledge.The specialized modern "scientist" did not exist; Royal Society members studied natural history (the collection and description of facts of nature), natural philosophy (study of the causes of what happens in nature), and natural religion (study of nature as a book written by God).The major idea of the period (founded on Francis Bacon's earlier work) was that of empiricism.Empiricism is the direct observation of experience, which infers that experience (including experimentation) is a reliable source of knowledge. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume all pursued differing interpretations of empiricism, and the concept itself had a profound impact on society and literature.Writers (including women such as Mary Astell) began to advocate for improved education for women during this period.Around 1750, the word "sentiment" evolved to describe social behavior based in instinctual feeling. Sentiment, and the related notions of sensibility and sympathy, all contributed to a growing sense of the desirability of public philanthropy and social reforms (such as charities for orphans).Increased importance was placed on the private, individual life, as is evident in literary forms such as diaries, letters, and the novel.

CONDITIONS OF LITERARY PRODUCTION

The Stage Licensing Act (1737) established a form of dramatic censorship in which the Lord Chamberlain pre-approved and licensed all plays for performance in London.Censorship of other print material changed radically with the 1710 Statute of Anne, the first British copyright law not tied to government approval of a book's contents.Copyrights were typically held by booksellers.The term "public sphere" refers to the material texts concerning matters of national interest and also to the public venues (including coffeehouses, clubs, taverns, parks, etc.) where readers circulated and discussed these texts.Thanks to greatly increased literacy rates (by 1800, 60-70 percent of adult men could read, versus 25 percent in 1600), the eighteenth century was the first to sustain a large number of professional authors. Genteel writers could benefit from both patronage and the subscription system; "Grub Street" hacks at the lower end of the profession were employed on a piecework basis.Women published widely.Reading material, though it remained unaffordable to the laboring classes, was frequently shared. Circulating libraries began in the 1740s.Capital letters began to be used only at the beginnings of sentences and for proper names, and the use of italics was reduced.

LITERARY PRINCIPLES

Literature from 1660 to 1785 divides into three shorter periods of 40 years each, which can be characterized as shown below.1660-1700 (death of John Dryden): emphasis on "decorum," or critical principles based on what is elegant, fit, and right.1700-1745 (deaths of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope in 1744): emphasis on satire and on a wider public readership. 1745-1784 (death of Samuel Johnson): emphasis on revolutionary ideas.England's Augustan age was modeled on that of Rome, when Augustus Caesar re-established stability after civil war following Julius Caesar's assassination. English writers, following the restoration of King Charles II, felt themselves to be in a similar situation, in which the arts (repressed under Cromwell) could now flourish.English writers endeavored to formulate rules of good writing, modeled on classical works, but with a new appeal to the passions, in simple, often highly visual, language. This embrace of new (neo) aims and old models is called "neoclassicism."Horace's phrase,ut picture poesis(meaning "as in painting, so in poetry") was interpreted to mean that poetry ought to be a visual as well as a verbal art.Augustan poets began the century's focus on nature, by examining the enduring truths of human nature.The classical genres from which Augustan writers sought to learn included epic, tragedy, comedy, pastoral, satire, and ode. Ensuring a good fit between the genre and its style, language, and tone was crucial.Augustan writing celebrates wit, or inventiveness, quickness of thought, and aptness of descriptive images or metaphors.The heroic couplet (two lines of rhymed iambic pentameter) was the most important verse form of Pope's age, for it combined elegance and wit. Poets also continued to use blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter, not closed in couplets).Not just aristocrats and classically educated scholars wrote verse: ordinary people also began to write poetry, often featuring broad humor and burlesque, thereby creating a distinction between high and low verse.

RESTORATION LITERATURE, 1600-1700

Dryden was the most influential writer of the Restoration, for he wrote in every form important to the periodoccasional verse, comedy, tragedy, heroic plays, odes, satires, translations of classical worksand produced influential critical essays concerning how one ought to write these forms.Restoration prose style grew more like witty, urbane conversation and less like the intricate, rhetorical style of previous writers like John Milton and John Donne.Simultaneously, Restoration literature continued to appeal to heroic ideals of love and honor, particularly on stage, in heroic tragedy.The other major dramatic genre was the Restoration comedy of manners, which emphasizes sexual intrigue and satirizes the elite's social behavior with witty dialogue.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE, 1700-1745

The Augustan era of writers like Swift, Defoe, Pope, Addison, and Steele was rich in satire and new prose forms that blended fact and fiction, such as news, criminal biographies, travelogues, political allegories, and romantic tales.Early eighteenth-century drama saw the development of "sentimental comedy" in which goodness and high moral sentiments are emphasized, and the audience is moved not only to laughter, but also to sympathetic tears.The theatre business boomed; celebrity performers flourished; less important were the authors of the plays.James Thomson's poems on the seasons, beginning with "Winter" (1726), carried on the earlier poetic tradition of pastoral retreat and began a new trend of poetry focused on natural description.

THE EMERGENCE OF NEW LITERARY THEMES AND MODES, 1740-1785

Novelists became better known than poets, and intellectual prose forms such as the essay proliferated.The mid-eighteenth century is often referred to as the "Age of Johnson" after the renowned essayist Samuel Johnson, who in 1755 wrote one of the first English dictionaries to define word meanings by employing quotations taken from the best English writers, past and present.By the 1740s the novel rose to dominate the literary marketplace, with writers like Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Laurence Sterne defining the form and its modes of representing the private lives of individuals.The late eighteenth century saw a medieval revival, in which writers venerated and imitated archaic language and forms. One important development of this movement was the Gothic novel, which typically features such forbidden themes as incest, murder, necrophilia, atheism, and sexual desire.Late eighteenth-century poetry tends to emphasize melancholy, isolation, and reflection, in distinction to the intensely social, often satirical verse of earlier in the period.

CONTINUITY AND REVOLUTION

Some critics place the end of the eighteenth century at 1776 (linking it to the American Revolution); others at 1789 (the beginning of the French Revolution); still others at 1798 (the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge'sLyrical Ballads).Later Romantic writers, who valued the idea of originality, also prized the meaning of "revolution" which signified a violent break with the past and often represented their work as offering just such a break with tradition. However, changes to literary forms and content occurred much more gradually than this use of the word "revolution" might suggest.Vic khi phc v XVIII CENTURY, 1660-1785

Thi gian phc hi bt u vo nm 1660, nm m Vua Charles II (cc Stuart vua lu vong) c khi phc ngai vng Anh.England, Scotland v x Wales c thng nht l Great Britain bi o lut nm 1707 ca Lin hip.Thi gian l mt trong nhng tng s thnh vng thng mi v thng mi ton cu ca nc Anh.Bit ch m rng bao gm cc tng lp trung lu v thm ch mt s ngi ngho.ang ni ln tng x hi bao gm lch s-mt tiu chun hnh vi m bt c ai c th khao kht v tu t mi ca t do v cc quyn, tnh cm v s cm thng.

TN GIO V CHNH TR

Vic khi phc ch qun ch c km theo vic ti m ca cc nh ht ting Anh (ng ca trong ch Puritan Cromwell) v s phc hi ca Gio hi Anh l nh th quc gia.Gio Hi v nh nc tip tc c gn b vi nhau cht ch. o lut Kim tra ca nm 1673 yu cu tt c nhng ngi quan dn s v qun s c nhng b tch trong Gio hi Anh gio v chi bin i bn; nhng ngi t chi (v d, Tin lnh bt ng chnh kin v Cng gio La M) khng c php tham d cc trng i hc hoc gi chc v cng.Vua Charles II, mc d ng b ngoi ph hp vi Anh gio, c cm tnh vi ngi Cng gio m t ng mu thun vi mnh m chng Cng Gio Quc hi ca ng.Charles khng c ngi tha k hp php. Anh trai ca ng James (mt ngi Cng gio) l tip theo trong dng ln ngi. Quc hi c gng buc Charles loi tr anh trai mnh t dng k. Charles kt thc ny "tr Crisis" bng cch ha tan Ngh vin.Khng hong tr trong mt cm gic to ra cc ng chnh tr hin i: ng Bo th, nhng ngi ng h nh vua, v cc Whigs, ngi chng i ng.Sau khi ln ngi, vua James II nhanh chng b nh ch o lut Test. Nm 1688, s ra i ca con trai James ca qu hong ht c nc vi cc khch hng tim nng ca mt k mi ca quc vng Cng gio rng cc cuc m phn b mt bt u a mt ngi cai tr Lnh mi t Chu u lt James.Nm 1688, William of Orange v v Mary (con gi ca James) h cnh Anh vi mt i qun nh v nm quyn-mt s kin c gi l Vinh quang hay khng mu cch mng.James II chy sang sng lu vong Php. Trong hn 50 nm qua ng h mnh (gi l Jacobites, t LatinJacobus, cho James) c gn c gng khng thnh cng khi phc li dng Stuart ca vua Cng gio n ngai vng nc Anh.Queen Anne, mt ngi con gi ca James II, l v vua tip theo (1702-1714). Triu i ca Anne l mt thi thnh vng cho nc Anh, nh Chin tranh K v Ty Ban Nha (1702-1713) to ra cc c hi thng mi mi.England, Scotland v x Wales c thng nht l Great Britain bi o lut 1707 ca Lin minh.Nh Anne, nh c Maria, khng c ngi tha k, ngi tha k c gii quyt khi cc nh hong gia ca Hanover. Mt hng di cc vua Georges (I-IV) xy ra sau , l l do ti sao cc th k th mi tm cng c gi l thi k ca Gruzia.By gi chng ta kt hp cc thut ng "Whig" vi ch ngha t do v "Tory" vi s bo th, nhng cc nguyn tc sau hai bn vn nhng cht lng v p ng vi hon cnh chnh tr trong sut thi gian qua.Robert Walpole, mt chnh tr gia Whig ngi phc v di c Vua George I v George II, t chc mt gh quc hi t nm 1701 cho n 1742. Walpole l ngi n ng u tin c m t nh l mt "th" tng.Trong thi k di vua George III ca (1760-1820) Anh tr thnh mt th lc thc dn ln. nh v nc ngoi, i tng George III ca tham gia vi mt tu t mi ca t do v ci cch trit , nh h chng kin v phn ng li vi nhng cuc cch mng Php v M.

BI CNH IDEAS

Cc ta n ca vua Charles II u tranh cho quyn ca tng lp x hi ca nc Anh theo ui nim vui v Ch ngha t do.Vua Charles II php hai cng ty mi ca cc din vin. Ph n bt u xut hin trn sn khu trong vai tr ph n.Ch ngha gio iu, hoc chp nhn cc nim tin tn gio nhn, c coi l nguy him.Charles II c ph duyt ca Hi Hong gia London cho Ci thin kin thc t nhin (1662). The Royal Society cch mng ha phng php khoa hc v s pht tn ca tri thc.Cc chuyn ngnh hin i "nh khoa hc" khng tn ti; Thnh vin Hi Hong gia nghin cu lch s t nhin (cc b su tp v m t cc s kin ca t nhin), trit hc t nhin (nghin cu v nguyn nhn ca nhng g s xy ra trong t nhin), v tn gio t nhin (nghin cu v bn cht l mt cun sch c vit bi c Cha Tri). tng ln ca thi k (thnh lp trn cng trnh trc Francis Bacon) l ca ch ngha kinh nghim.Ch ngha kinh nghim l quan st trc tip ca kinh nghim, nhng suy lun rng kinh nghim (bao gm c th nghim) l mt ngun ng tin cy ca tri thc. John Locke, George Berkeley, v David Hume tt c theo ui cch hiu khc nhau ca ch ngha kinh nghim, v khi nim bn thn c mt tc ng su sc v x hi v vn hc.Nh vn (bao gm c ph n nh Mary Astell) bt u ng h cho ci thin gio dc cho ph n trong thi k ny.Khong nm 1750, t "tnh cm" tin ha m t hnh vi x hi da vo cm gic bn nng. Tm l th trng, v nhng khi nim c lin quan ca s nhy cm v cm thng, gp phn lm nn mt cm gic ngy cng tng ca nhng mong mun ca hot ng t thin cng v ci cch x hi (chng hn nh t chc t thin cho tr em m ci).Tng tm quan trng c t trn, cuc sng c nhn ring t, nh l hin nhin trong cc hnh thc vn hc nh nht k, th, v tiu thuyt.

IU KIN SN XUT VN HC

o lut Stage Licensing (1737) thnh lp mt hnh thc kim duyt kch tnh trong Cha Chamberlain pre-ph duyt v cp php tt c cc v kch cho hiu sut London.Kim duyt cc ti liu in n khc thay i hon ton vi 1710 Thi Anne, lut bn quyn Anh u tin khng gn vi chnh ph ph duyt cc ni dung ca mt cun sch.Bn quyn c thng c t chc bi cc nh bn sch.Thut ng "cu cng chng" ni n nhng vn bn ti liu lin quan n vn li ch quc gia v cng cc a im cng cng (bao gm qun c ph, cu lc b, qun ru, cng vin, vv), ni ngi c lu hnh v tho lun v nhng bn vn ny.Nh tng ln rt nhiu t l bit ch (nm 1800, 60-70 phn trm ca nam gii trng thnh c th c, so vi 25 phn trm vo nm 1600), th k XVIII l ngi u tin duy tr mt s lng ln cc tc gi chuyn nghip. Nh vn nh nhn c th hng li t c s bo tr v cc h thng ng k; "Grub Street" hack vo cui di ca ngh c s dng trn c s v vic.Ph n c cng b rng ri.c ti liu, mc d n vn cn kh nng chi tr cho cc lp chuyn d, v thng xuyn chia s. Th vin lu hnh bt u vo thp nin 1740.Ch vn bt u c s dng ch u cc cu v tn ring, v vic s dng ch in nghing c gim.NGUYN TC VN HC

Vn hc 1660-1785 chia thnh ba giai on ngn ca mi 40 nm, c th c m t nh hnh di y.1660-1700 (ci cht ca John Dryden): nhn mnh vo "ng hong", hay nhng nguyn tc quan trng da trn nhng g l thanh lch, ph hp, v phi.1700-1745 (ci cht ca Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope nm 1744): nhn mnh vo s chm bim v mt lng c gi ng o cng chng.1745-1784 (ci cht ca Samuel Johnson): nhn mnh vo tng cch mng.Augustan tui ca nc Anh c m hnh ha trn ca Rome, khi Augustus Caesar ti lp s n nh sau khi cuc ni chin sau v m st Julius Caesar. Nh vn ting Anh, sau s phc hi ca Vua Charles II, cm thy mnh trong mt tnh hung tng t, trong ngh thut (p di Cromwell) by gi c th pht trin mnh.Nh vn Anh c gng xy dng cc quy nh ca vn bn tt, m phng theo tc phm kinh in, nhng vi mt khng co mi cho nhng am m, n gin, thng rt trc quan, ngn ng. Ym mi (neo) mc tiu v m hnh c c gi l "tn c in".Cm t Horace ca, ut poesis hnh nh (c ngha l "nh trong bc tranh, v vy trong bi th") c gii thch l th m phi l mt hnh nh cng l mt ngh thut bng li ni.Nh th Augustan bt u tp trung vo th k v bn cht, bng cch kim tra cc chn l lu di ca bn cht con ngi.Cc th loi c in m t nh vn Augustan tm cch tm hiu bao gm s thi, bi kch, hi kch, mc v, chm bim, v th ca ngi. m bo mt s ph hp tt gia cc th loi v phong cch ca mnh, ngn ng v ging iu rt quan trng.Vn bn Augustan mng wit, hoc sng to, s nhanh chng ca t tng, v khuynh hng ca hnh nh m t hoc n d.Cc cp anh hng (hai dng vn cu th nm ch th iambus) l hnh thc cu quan trng nht ca thi i Gio Hong ca, cho n kt hp sang trng v hm hnh. Cc nh th cng tip tc s dng cu th khng vn (vn cu th nm ch th iambus, khng ng ca trong cu i).Khng ch l nh qu tc v hc gi c in hc lm th: nhng ngi bnh thng cng bt u vit th, thng c tnh nng hi hc rng v khi hi, do to ra mt s phn bit gia cu cao v thp.

PHC HI TI LIU, 1600-1700

Dryden l nh vn c nh hng nht ca S Phc Hi, cho ng vit trong mi hnh thc quan trng i vi cc dch k thnh thong th, hi kch, bi kch, v kch anh hng, Odes, chm bim, c in ca cng trnh v sn xut tiu lun ph bnh c nh hng lin quan n mt ngi phi lm th no vit cc hnh thc.Phc hi phong cch vn xui ln hn nh d dm, chuyn tao nh v t ging nh cc phc tp, phong cch hng bin ca cc nh vn trc nh John Milton v John Donne.ng thi, vn hc Phc tip tc khng co vi l tng ca anh hng ca tnh yu v danh d, c bit l trn sn khu, trong bi kch anh hng.Cc th loi kch ln khc l b phim hi Restoration ca cch c x, trong nhn mnh nhng m mu v tnh dc satirizes hnh vi x hi ca tng lp thng lu vi i thoi d dm.

Th k XVIII VN HC, 1700-1745

Thi i Augustan ca cc nh vn nh Swift, Defoe, Pope, Addison, v Steele giu chm bim v vn xui mi hnh thc m pha trn tht v h cu, nh tin tc, tiu s hnh s, phim du lch, cu chuyn ng ngn chnh tr, v nhng cu chuyn lng mn.B phim truyn hnh ca th k XVIII chng kin s pht trin ca "b phim hi tnh cm", trong lng nhn hu v tnh cm o c cao c nhn mnh, v khn gi c di chuyn khng ch ci m cn nc mt cm thng.Cc doanh nghip nh ht bng n; biu din ni ting pht trin mnh m; km quan trng l cc tc gi ca nhng v kch.Bi th James Thomson vo ma, bt u vi "Ma ng" (1726), tin v truyn thng th trc ca kha tu mc v v bt u mt xu hng mi ca th tp trung vo m t thin nhin.

S XUT HIN CA VN HC MI V PHNG THC, 1740-1785

Tiu thuyt gia tr thnh tt hn c bit n hn so vi cc nh th, v cc hnh thc vn xui tr tu nh cc bi lun tng ln nhanh chng.Vo gia th k th mi tm thng c gi l "Tui ca Johnson" sau khi cc nh bnh lun ni ting Samuel Johnson, ngi vo nm 1755 vit mt trong cc t in ting Anh u tin xc nh ngha ca t bng cch s dng ngn ly t cc nh vn ting Anh tt nht, qu kh v hin ti .By 1740 cun tiu thuyt tng ln chim lnh th trng vn hc, vi cc nh vn nh Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, v Laurence Sterne xc nh cc hnh thc v phng thc ca n i din cho cuc sng ring t ca cc c nhn.Cui th k XVIII nhn thy mt s hi sinh thi trung c, trong nh vn c tn knh v bt chc ngn ng c xa v hnh thc. Mt pht trin quan trng ca phong tro ny l cun tiu thuyt Gothic, m thng c tnh nng nh vy ch cm nh lon lun, git ngi, xc cht, ch ngha v thn, v ham mun tnh dc.Th cui th k XVIII c xu hng nhn mnh, u su, c lp, v s phn nh, trong s phn bit vi x hi mnh m, cu thng chm bim trc trong giai on ny.

LIN TC V CCH MNG

Mt s nh ph bnh t vo cui th k th mi tm 1776 (lin kt n ti cuc Cch mng M); nhng ngi khc ti 1789 (bt u ca cuc Cch mng Php); vn cn nhng ngi khc ti 1798 (cc n phm ca Wordsworth v Coleridge'sLyrical Ballads).Nh vn lng mn sau , ngi c gi tr tng c o, cng c nh gi cao ngha ca "cuc cch mng" m biu th mt break bo lc vi qu kh v thng i din cho cng vic ca h l cung cp ch nh mt ph v truyn thng. Tuy nhin, thay i hnh thc v ni dung vn hc xy ra nhiu hn so vi vic s dng ny dn dn ca t "cuc cch mng" c th gi .