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Augustan Literature

The document summarizes the Augustan period in English literature from the 18th century. It began as an imitation of classical Greco-Roman styles and themes seen in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid during the reign of Augustus. Major English Augustan writers included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele who wrote in classical styles. The period also saw developments in genres like the novel, essay, and drama. While some writers strictly followed classical models, others like Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith experimented with styles. By the mid-18th century, writers like William Collins and Thomas Gray began challenging the classical ideal with more romantic themes,

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203 views2 pages

Augustan Literature

The document summarizes the Augustan period in English literature from the 18th century. It began as an imitation of classical Greco-Roman styles and themes seen in the works of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid during the reign of Augustus. Major English Augustan writers included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele who wrote in classical styles. The period also saw developments in genres like the novel, essay, and drama. While some writers strictly followed classical models, others like Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith experimented with styles. By the mid-18th century, writers like William Collins and Thomas Gray began challenging the classical ideal with more romantic themes,

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tony
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KH Ulm

The Augustan Age


Age of the Roman emperor Augustus (31 BC–AD 14), during which art and literature flourished. It is
also used to characterize the work of 18th-century writers who adopted the style, themes, and structure
of classical texts.

The term is used with particular reference to the works of the Augustan poets, Virgil, Horace, and
Ovid. In 18th-century literature, major Augustan writers include the English poet Alexander Pope,
Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, English poet, essayist, and dramatist Joseph Addison, and Irish essayist
and playwright Richard Steele, as well as French writers under Louis XIV. Major writers, and later
writers, were sceptical and even contemptuous of the term, as was Pope in ‘The Dunciad’ (1728). The
term is also applied to the culture of the 18th century, as contrasted with the 19th-century Romantic
age.

Augustan literature
The Augustan period in English literature involved the development of both the themes and the
structure of the classics. The poet Alexander Pope, for example, translated and paraphrased classical
texts as well as imitating and parodying their style and structure (for example, in The Rape of the Lock,
1712–14). While some writers in the period were entrenched in classical style, at the same time there
was a development in English literature. In prose, Richard Steele and Joseph Addison developed the
satirical essay in Tatler (1709–11). The novel was also developed; Samuel Richardson wrote Pamela
(1740–41) and Clarissa (1747–48), which were both in the form of the epistolary novel (in letter
form), and which served to popularize the novel. Henry Fielding both parodied Richardson's
achievements (Shamela, 1741) and developed the narrative form of the novel via his novels Joseph
Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749). Tobias Smollett, like Fielding, wrote comic-adventure type
novels (such as Humphrey Clinker, 1771), and Laurence Sterne, also a novelist of this period,
experimented with the novel form in his Tristram Shandy (1759–67).
The neoclassical standards established by the Augustans were maintained by Samuel Johnson and his
circle of fellow artists, which included Irish politician and writer Edmund Burke, English painter
Joshua Reynolds, and Irish dramatists Oliver Goldsmith (whose works include She Stoops to Conquer,
1773), and Richard Sheridan (whose plays include The Rivals, 1775 and School for Scandal, 1777).
Goldsmith and Sheridan continued the tradition of witty and satirical drama, although Goldsmith was
also a poet (The Deserted Village, 1770) and a novelist (The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766). Another
influential literary figure of the period was English writer Daniel Defoe, whose works were
particularly unconventional, especially Moll Flanders (1722) and Journal of a Plague Year (1722),
in which he fictionalized the unstructured jottings of a survivor of the Great Plague of 1665. Both
works are noted for their realistic nature. His most famous work, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
pretends to be a factual account. Irish satirist Jonathan Swift is noted for his political satire
Gulliver's Travels (1726), and also for the satirical pamphlet A Modest Proposal (1729), in which he
suggested that the children of the poor should be eaten. Religious writing in the period was also
strong, and includes the hymns of Isaac Watts (‘O God, our help in ages past’, ‘How doth the Little
Busy Bee’, 1715) and the writings of John Wesley, the English founder of Methodism.
The classical model and ideal was challenged by the themes of Romanticism much earlier than is
popularly supposed. The English poet William Collins, for example, began writing in the classical
mode and then adapted the form to increasingly romantic subjects (Ode on the Superstitions of the
Highlands, 1749). The English poet Thomas Gray, who is regarded as a forerunner of Romanticism,
wrote Elegy in the Country Churchyard in 1751.
This article is © Research Machines plc 2009. All rights reserved. Helicon Publishing is a division of Research Machines plc.

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