Page 66 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Jayatee Bhattacharya, Lovely Professional University
Unit 9: The Augustan Age or the Triumph of Neoclassicism (Age of Prose and Reason)

Unit 9: The Augustan Age or the Triumph of Notes

Neoclassicism (Age of Prose and Reason)

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
9.1 Neoclassicism
9.2 The Age of Prose and Reason
9.2.1 Dominance of Reason
9.2.2 Imitation of the Ancients
9.2.3 Rules
9.2.4 Prose
9.3 Summary
9.4 Keywords
9.5 Review Questions
9.6 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
Define dominance of reason.
Explain imitation of the ancients.
Describe rules and prose.

Introduction
The eighteenth century in English literature has been called the Augustan Age, the Neoclassical
Age, and the Age of Reason. The term ‘the Augustan Age’ comes from the self-conscious imitation
of the original Augustan writers, Virgil and Horace, by many of the writers of the period. Specifically,
the Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope (~1690
- 1744). The major writers of the age were Pope and John Dryden in poetry, and Jonathan Swift and
Joseph Addison in prose. Dryden forms the link between Restoration and Augustan literature;
although he wrote ribald comedies in the Restoration vein, his verse satires were highly admired
by the generation of poets who followed him, and his writings on literature were very much in a
neoclassical spirit. But more than any other it is the name of Alexander Pope which is associated
with the epoch known as the Augustan Age, despite the fact that other writers such as Jonathan
Swift and Daniel Defoe had a more lasting influence. This is partly a result of the politics of naming
inherent in literary history: many of the early forms of prose narrative common at this time did
not fit into a literary era which defined itself as neoclassic. The literature of this period which
conformed to Pope’s aesthetic principles (and could thus qualify as being ‘Augustan’) is
distinguished by its striving for harmony and precision, its urbanity, and its imitation of classical
models such as Homer, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, for example in the work of the minor poet
Matthew Prior. In verse, the tight heroic couplet was common, and in prose essay and satire were
the predominant forms. Any facile definition of this period would be misleading, however; as
important as it was, the neoclassicist impulse was only one strain in the literature of the first half
of the eighteenth century. But its representatives were the defining voices in literary circles, and as
a result it is often some aspect of ‘neoclassicism’ which is used to describe the era.

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