18THCENTURY:

AUGUSTAN/
NEOCLASSICAL AGE
(1700 – 1800)
LECTURE 17 (A)
BY ASHER ASHKAR GOHAR
1.5 CREDIT HRS.
 INTRODUCTION

 The names given to this period are confusing: Restoration, 18th Century, Neoclassical, Augustan.
Chronologically the period covers from 1660 to around 1800 (usual date is 1798, being the publication date of
Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads that marked the beginning of the Romantic Age).
 This, however, is a period where counterfeiting and façades are very important; in some ways the country was
trying to act like the Interregnum and English Civil Wars had not happened. There is both a willful suppression of
the immediate past and a glorification of the more distant classical Roman past, which is why it is called the
Neoclassical period.
 A term derived from the period of literary eminence under the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar (27 BCE – 14
CE) during which Virgil, Horace, and Ovid flourished. In English literature it refers generally to the early and mid-
18th century writers (such as Pope, Addison, Swift, and Steele) who greatly admired their Roman counterparts,
imitated their works, and themselves frequently drew parallels between the two ages. Hence, they were called
Neo-classical writers as they tried to emulate (if not imitate) the great classic writers.
 It is also a period of conscious self-awareness — people looked at themselves and kept asking "Am I playing my
role correctly?" After the Great Fire of London, too, they had the chance to totally reinvent their capital and did
so in a way that let them mask their past. A student needs to understand the politics, sociology, and economics
of the period in order to understand its literature.
 INTRODUCTION (Cont.)

 The first monarch of the period is Charles II (1630 – 1685). He personifies the fictions and façades of the
age. He professed to support the Church of England but was secretly Roman Catholic. In public he
professed loyalty to his childless queen Henrietta but in public had a series of mistresses, several of whom
bore him bastard children (one of whom Charles would make Duke of Monmouth).
 The façade of saying one thing and doing another was a major challenge in the period. After the
religious Puritan revolution, most Britons were terrified of another religious takeover of government; the
rumors about Charles’ Catholicism, complicated by the Titus Oates plot of 1678, led to fears of a Catholic
conspiracy and eventually to the 1680 Bill of Exclusion and the 1700 Act of Settlement which permanently
prohibited a Catholic from taking the throne of England.
 When James II (1633 – 1701) inherited his brother’s throne and made moves toward imposing Catholic
tolerance and Catholic ministers on England, the government rebelled and imported James’ stolid
Protestant son-in-law, William, from Holland (Netherlands). William and Mary took the throne jointly in the
“Glorious Revolution" of 1688.
 They were succeeded by Mary’s sister Anne, and then eventually by distant German relatives from
Hanover, Germany. George I was actually 52nd in line to the throne by blood, but the closest male
Protestant relative, so he became king on childless Anne’s death.
 AGE OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
COMPLEXITY
 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 World and with the South Seas.
 The Restoration is the time of the great privateer/pirate trade and the celebration of British naval
supremacy. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a time of sudden new wealth
based on the beginnings of the stock exchange, of pyramid investment schemes like the South Sea
Bubble, and all the accompanying commercialism and materialism that accompany new-found
affluence. It is the time of party politics: the Tories, representing old landed wealth, conservatism, and the
House of Lords, vs. the Whigs, representing fortunes made in trade and expansionist beliefs.
 It was the age of the Almighty Pound. Economics were the justification for participating in the Afro-
Caribbean slave trade, colonialist expansion into India and eventually Australia and the Far East, and the
enclosure of public grazing lands and anti-poaching laws in communal forests. It’s in this period that
"Rule, Britannia!" becomes both the anthem and unofficial motto of the realm. Britain is shifting from a
kingdom to an empire, and that shift had its costs.
 AGE OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
COMPLEXITY (Cont.)
The First Prime Minister:
 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 (1676 – 1745) officially received the title in
1721 but had held the position for years before—his attitude is best summed up by his quotation about
Parliament, "All those men have their price.“
 A shrewd manipulator, Walpole was the ultimate Whig politician. The interests of the new wealthy classes
were his chief concern. He actually tried to keep Britain out of wars because it was bad for business—but
when British trade interests were attacked, he mobilized the country for war. 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.
 There were a few voices of social reform in the later parts of the period: John Wilkes, champion of voting
rights for commoners and of abolition; Mary Wollstonecraft, an early advocate of the rights of women;
John Cobbett, a proto-Marxist economic reformer; and John Wesley, supporter of evangelical
Methodism. They attempted to question the moral complacency of the Whig age, but with inconsistent
success.
 THE AGE OF COMPLACENCY

 If there is one word besides ‘façade’ that describes the Neoclassical period, it is ‘complacency.’ This was an
age where comfort was celebrated. The British felt relatively invincible politically, which led to an assumption of
their moral and intellectual supremacy.
 It is the age of the rise of the Middle Class. They were obsessed with proving they had ‘good taste’. Gentlemen
flocked to coffee houses in the City of London to discuss the latest periodicals, while ladies organized elaborate
rituals for drinking that expensive, bitter new imported beverage, “chocolate”. (Taking ‘tea’ in the afternoon
was not introduced until 1840 by Anna, Duchess of Bedford; it was way too expensive to drink every day.)
 It is an age of conspicuous consumption. For the first time periodicals are filled with advertisements for home
decorations, fashions, and furniture. Architecture enters the Baroque period. It becomes very important to wear
clothing by the best designers, to have your hair done by the best hairdressers, and so on, and so forth. People
whose parents were servants now had servants themselves.
 The age of complacency is marked by a significant rise in literacy, because for the first time, the Middle Class
had time for leisure and wanted entertainments to fill it. This is the age of the rise of the newspaper and the
periodical, the return of the public theatre, and the birth of the “novel”.
 People read in reading circles — early book clubs — and men flocked to coffee houses to debate the essays in
that week’s fashionable periodical. Theatres also moved from the slums of Southwark to the fashionable West
End of London, near Covent Garden (where they still remain).
 THE AGE OF WIT

 This is an age where verbal skill and brilliant verbal repartee counted. None of that shouting and lack of
decorum. This was the age of polished debate and clever talking, because people wanted to appear
“sophisticated” just as the classics of ancient Rome.
 One of the key words for the entire period is wit, and you should watch it wherever it pops up because it is
crucial to understanding the period. Not only upper-class courtiers were expected to show this sophistication.
Now everyone with money was supposed to be verbally talented. So you sent your sons on the Grand Tour of
Europe to give them polish, while you taught your daughters just enough French and Italian words to drop into
their conversation to make them seem “cultured”.
 Not coincidentally, this age of wit is also the time when formal study of the English language gains impetus —
it’s the time of grammar books, histories of the language, and above all dictionaries — so you wouldn’t use
words improperly. Grammar rules like “shall/will” and the prohibition of “I” show up in the grammar books for the
first time in this period.
 So pretentious was the analysis that the critics of the past English writers such as John Dryden thought Chaucer
was incompetent because his iambic pentameter lines did not always have 10 syllables. Dryden could not
figure out that the final “e” had been pronounced in Chaucer’s time.
 Such strong was the hold of brainpower upon the public taste that the age is often referred to as “The Age of
Reason”.
 POLITENESS, DECORUM, AND MORAL
INSTRUCTION
 The emphasis on looking right and acting right meant that this was an age of decorum. Great value was
placed on manners, on virtues like self-control and self-governance, and above all on balance — what
Chaucer would have called mesure.
 One was not supposed to rebel or act out or be outrageous; one was supposed to show control. At the
same time, there was a certain guilty pleasure in outbursts; it is common to find the expression "I could not
forebear to…" or "I surrendered to…." in writing. But politeness counts, as does pithy witticism.
 No more enjambment and blank verse; this is the age of the memorable end-stopped heroic couplet.
You’ll be surprised at how many clichés you know come from this period e.g. "To err is human, to forgive
divine".
 So literature takes a decidedly pedantic and pedagogic bent in this period. It meant to show its readers
how to go on, how to think, talk, behave, and interact in the world. Writers viewed themselves as shapers
of taste, and took the responsibility very seriously.
 RATIONALITY AND FAITH

 Some people might believe that an Age of Reason would be an age where religious faith was not important, but this was not
the case. One of the chief reasons for founding the Royal Society was an attempt to use science to explain and glorify the
wonders of Divine creation, according to its charter.
 This is the first great age of scientific instrumentation: accurate clocks, the reckoning of longitude, the refinement of the
microscope and the telescope, all these put to work to explain the marvels of the universe. The New Science was seen 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, that reason supported belief.
 It’s the age of the study of anatomy and of dissection. Autopsies were public spectacles, and medical schools and hospitals
built “operation theaters”, a term that is still used, because they assumed there would be an audience to watch the experts
work.
 Mathematics was used to explain many of the workings of the world. In this age, one of the most celebrated occupations was
to be a virtuoso — not a scholar but a lay person who studied how the world worked, kept interesting items on display in his
house.
 At the same time the façade of piety grew thicker. Going to church became as much a social as pious act. One wanted to
go to the right church. Architects like Christopher Wren were hired to rebuild churches to make them more fashionable.
To be continued in the following Lecture.
Thank You!