文档介绍：English Literature
Lecture 6: The Eighteenth Century
ByTiger
Historical Background
The Enlightenment: The Enlightenment is a progressive intellectual movement sweeping over England and other lands in Western Europe in the 18th century. As the industrial revolution accelerated the growth of the economy of the society, the Enlightenment freed and reformed the thinking of man. During the second greatest intellectual movement since Renaissance the enlighteners launched a fierce attack upon the church power and the autocracy of the feudal system, and called on the development of science and technology
and freedom of politics, and academic thinking, having the greatest esteem for reason which, they believed, should be the only basis of one’s thinking and action. That is why the 18th century in England has been called ‘the Age of Reason’. During the reign of reason everything which were found unreasonable under the strict examination of reason were criticized and discarded. Obviously,the reign of reason is the idealized reign of the developing bourgeoisie.
The Development of Literature
The Enlightenment exerted great impact upon the development of the 18th-century English literature. In fact a great number of English enlighteners were literary men, which fell generally into two schools. One was headed by Pope, Defoe, Addison, Steele and Richardson, who preferred a moderate and partial reformation of the society, with a firm belief that reformation would surely lead the society into the channel of rationalism. The other was represented by such writers as Swift, Fielding, Sheridan, Smollet and even
Goldsmith. Different from Pope and his followers, writers of this group were more radical and critical towards the existing social order in England, and the lashing of their acid satire and merciless criticism swept over whatever they thought was unreasonable or immoral or vicious. In between there were still many others, either moving between the two extremes or eulogizin