BRITISH LITERATURE
IN THE 18TH CENTURY

 

The 18th century is a century of the Enlightenment, the “Age of Reason”. All branches of science were developed and this resulted in great technical progress. The beginning of the 18th century is marked by classicism continuing in poetry and realism which appears in prose. Classicism sets strict rules on the form and themes of poetry and uses many complicated stylistic figures. Thus, poetry was limited to the educated reader. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is well known for his satirical poem The Rape of the Lock. John Gay's (1685-1732) play The Beggar's Opera met with remarkable success not only in his time but it was also an inspiration for other writers in the following centuries (Bertolt Brecht, Václav Havel, etc.), and it remains popular as a musical even today. It is a musical play as well as a social satire, the characters of the play come from the underworld in London.

 

The 18th century also led to the growing popularity of reading among the middle class and prose was the most accessible form for new readers, so that essays, letters and later novels became prevailing genres. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a sharp and embittered satirist and a critic of British society. His most popular work is a fictional novel, Gulliver's Travels (1726). In the first part, Captain Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked and comes to an island inhabited by six-inch-high Lilliputians.

 

Swift uses their miniature size to ridicule the pomp of the court and useless wars and to satirise the political and religious controversies of contemporary Britain. (e.g. the disputes between Lilliputians who wear high heels and low heels). In the second book, Gulliver appears in Brobdingnag, the land of giants. Here, Swift attacks again the European style of life. In the third book, Gulliver visits Laputa, a flying island, and this offers Swift a chance to satirise contemporary philosophers and scientists.

 

The fourth book describes the country of Houyhnhnms, clever horses whose virtues are superior to those of the Yahoos, beasts resembling humans. While in the first three books, Swift's satire is directed against politics in Britain, corrupt courts and armies, bad politicians and unjust judges, in the last book, he attacks the corruption of the human race in general. Daniel Defoe (1660? - 1731) started his literary career as a journalist and a pamphleteer. Nevertheless, his most popular book, published in 1719, was Robinson Crusoe. It tells the story of a man shipwrecked on a lonely island. Robinson embodied the qualities which the middle class needed in capitalist competition he was energic, hardworking and skilful, and on a deserted island, he created a miniature civilization with his own hands. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was a satirical novelist and playwright and his masterpiece is a novel called The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Samuel Richardson (1789-1761) was the author of epistolary novels (i.e. written in the form of a series of letters), a popular genre, especially for women. He showed his instinctive and deep understanding of women's sensibilities in his Pamela or Virtue Rewarded. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is a dominant personality in British literature of the 18th century mostly because of his central work, Dictionary of the English Language.

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