Augustan Age

The original Augustan Age was the brilliant literary period of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid under the
Roman emperor Augustus (27 B.c.-A.D. 14). In the eighteenth century and later, however, the
term was frequently applied also to the literary period in England from approximately 1700 to
1745. The leading writers of the time (such as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Joseph
Addison) themselves drew the parallel to the Roman Augustans, and deliberately imitated their
literary forms and subjects, their emphasis on social concerns, and their ideals of moderation,
decorum, and urbanity. (See neoclassicism.) A major representative of popular, rather than
classical, writing in this period was the novelist, journalist, and pamphleteer Daniel Defoe. Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu was a brilliant letterwriter in a great era of letter-writing; she also wrote
poems of wit and candor that violated the conventional moral and intellectual roles assigned to
women in the Augustan era.
The Eighteenth Century is known also as the Augustan Age due to the distinguished literature
produced in this age, similar to the Roman Emperor Augustus age in which Virgil, Ovid and
Horace lived. On the whole, Augustan Age gives the impression of assured elegance and
refinement, decorous social behaviour, propriety and certain rigidity in the arts and literature
characterized by Neoclassicism. However, French Revolution triggered rebellion bringing out
Romanticism at the end of the century as a reaction to the Neo-classical conventions.
Key Points!
A greater precision in word usage and regulation of expression marked the English language of
the age.
1. Significant events of the Eighteenth Century:
There was a big contrast between the higher and lower classes; while the rich enjoyed parties
and dinners, the poor wondered what they would eat the next day.
The frontiers of the British empire extended to America, Africa and Asia,
London became a great urban centre of trade, as the daily life turned into a commercial one
Political power experienced shifting centres,
Middle class started to merge with the landed gentry through intermarriage and common
concerns for wealth and property,
Whig Party was established with the representatives of the rising middle class and gained
great power in the Parliament,
During the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714), Scotland and England were united as Great
Britain (1707) by an Act of Union to be governed under one parliament.
Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs died without an heir in 1714 and Whigs threw
the Tory (conservative party) out of the office and granted the succession of Annes cousin from
German kingdom Hanover, a Protestant (a sign of Catholic monarchys end).
George I (1714-1717) and George II (1717-1760) were the first kings of the House of Hanover
with limited power since the Whig cabinet ministers were strong influences on them, especially
Robert Walpole.
George III came to the throne in 1760 and tried to re-establish the Tory party but he was
unsuccessful and he also tried to assert his power over the parliament insisting on Parliaments
power over the American colonies caused a period of instability in England and a war with
America,
In 1763 British hegemony in India and North America was firmly established and Britain
became the chief power in overseas colonization,
In 1783 at the end of American War of Independence, England lost America as a colony with
the exception of Canada.
Following the loss of America, Great Britain needed to find alternative land for a new British
colony and was chosen for settlement and colonisation began in 1788.

The major problem with America was the high taxes imposed on American colonies and the
geographical distance between Britain and America which triggered the war in 1775.
In 1801 an Act of Union was passed including Ireland in the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland for the next 120 years,
A new vision of mans role in the world started to be questioned.
Puritanism encouraged reading of the bible and religious works, reading public grew,
Women were excluded from public and commercial life, and those who could afford to buy
books began to enjoy reading about the world their fathers and husbands moved in,
Female servants were literate and enjoyed reading their mistresses books creating a new
market,
Newspapers became popular since commerce required up-to-date information,
Coffee houses became an intellectual meeting place for businessman and gentlemen interested
in politics, and literature replacing the court (the centre of intellectual life) of the earlier
centuries,
Key Points!
- Tories were Conservatives and Whigs were Liberals.
- French Revolution and American War of Independence were great influences for Ireland
as politicians sought for a colonial self-government and an armed rising occurred in
1798.
- Signs of Industrial Revolution are seen in this period.
- Women are still not allowed into the public spaces such as coffee houses, the centre of
intellectual life.
- British colonization started in Australia.
4. Satire: Satire has existed since the classical literature of Greece and Rome. The 18th Century
was also called as the age of satires since satirical works achieved a golden age in eighteenth
century England, when poetry, drama, essays, and criticism all took on satiric tone at the hands
of such masters as Dryden, Pope, Addison, Steele, and Swift. To some it was painfully clear that
their society was still as irrational and crude as ever. And thus, in literature, satire became the
dominant form. Satires varied in temperaments of the writers producing them from the mild and
humorous warnings of Joseph Addison to the bitter condemnations of Jonathan Swift.
The period became a war of pamphlets and satire as each of the political parties, Whigs and
Tories, had their own writers. Swift wrote for both parties.
Satire is a verse or prose work in which the vices and follies of a person, a society, or even of
mankind are held up to ridicule. It is a kind of protest which often aims at correction through
ridicule and censure. Horace (1st Century B.C) and Juvenal (late 1st and early 2nd Century
B.C.) are two roman practitioners. Horatian satire is gentle, urbane, smiling and tolerant while
Juvenal is severely critical of the society of his time. Juvenalian satire is bitter, angry and
misanthropic pointing out to the corruption and evil of man and institutions.
18th Century satirist Jonathan Swift is Juvenalian, as his satire is bitter and harsh in A Modest
Proposal and Gullivers Travels.
Satire continues to be an important medium for social commentary in our time. A well-known
modern example is George Orwells Animal Farm.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) the master satirist of the age of satire. He was born in Dublin of
English parents who experienced the British exploitation in Ireland. He then lived in London and
wrote for the Tory party but he failed to obtain government office because he displeased Queen
Anne with A Tale of a Tub (1704). It was a satire of sectarianism, a tale about threes sons,
representing Catholic Church, The Church of England and the Puritans or Dissenters who
quarrel over a coat their father inherited them. He had to return to Ireland where he became a

Protestant dean. In Ireland he experienced the dark realities of the colonial rule and reflected
them in his later writings. He had a keen eye for human vices and social corruption.
Gullivers Travels (1726) is Swifts most famous work, known to millions of children as well as
adults due to the fantastic images, giants, tiny people, floating islands and talking horses. The
sea captain Gulliver recounts his adventures in the land of the tiny Lilliputians, in the land of
giants, on the floating island of the scientists Laputa and in the land where the horses are
civilized and humans, Yahoos are bestial. In Gullivers Travels, Swift reflects the image of Britain
from the eyes of Irish which is completely different from the images seen from the British side.
Gulliver is forced to evaluate himself and his impact on the people around him and sees himself
from the perspective of the Lilliputians as a threat and a burden. Their life and culture is not
different from those of Gullivers nation. Brobdingnags, the kindly giants in the second journey
are appalled at Gullivers report about this nations system of government. Gulliver finds himself
in a paradoxical situation: a supporter of Irish rights, yet a high official of a church in the colony
maintained by the miserably poor peasants. In the third adventure, Swift satirizes the
foolishness, vanity and corruptibility of the learned people in the floating island Laputa. In the
last journey Swift meets with the Houyhnhnms, the rational thinking horses and Yahoos, the
brutish humanlike creatures. He is treated with great courtesy and kindness by the horses and
also enlightened by their conversations. Exposed to the noble culture of Houyhnhnms Gulliver
wants to stay with them but since his physical appearance is closer to brutal Yahoos, who serve
Houyhnhnms, he is banished from their land. Then he takes off and lands in another island
where a Portuguese sailor receives him. Strikingly, all humans from then on look like Yahoos to
him. Although Gulliver questions the idea of colonialism he ends his narrative by stating that
the lands he has visited were the colonies of England.
A Modest Proposal for Preventing Children of the Poor in Ireland from Being Burdensome, and
Making Them Beneficial (1729) is the most extraordinary piece of satire written in English. Swift
wrote the work after witnessing three years of famine and destitution in the mid 1720s. The
proposal presented that the poor should sell their infants as food to their landlords, since they
had nothing else to pay their rents. The message of the text is that a landlord system is criminal,
murderous and cannibalistic since they drive the rural people into starvation. It was painful
writing at the time many people did not get Swifts message.
From A Modest Proposal;
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the
least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young
healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food,
whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a
fricassiee, or a ragout.
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand
children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth
part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is,
that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our
savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred
thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the
kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to
render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment
for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable
dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day,
especially in winter.
I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar
year, if tolerably nursed, increase to 28 pounds.
I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they
have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.
Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little
before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being
a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months

after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish infants,
is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage,
by lessening the number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all
cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags
included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good
fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath
only some particular friend, or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a
good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings neat
profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.
Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flea the carcass; the skin of
which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine
gentlemen.
2. The Rise of the Novel
Novel is extended work of prose fiction containing characters, action and a more or less complex
plot. The term novel is derived from the Italian novella, a short, compact tale popular in the
medieval period represented by the tales in the Decameron. The word roman is the term for
novel in many languages, including Turkish, and it was derived from romance. In a way novel
developed from medieval romances which were first written in verse and then in prose. Until the
18th century in England there is no major advance in novel form. In the 16th Century John
Lylys Euphues (1578-1580) and Sir Philip Sidneys pastoral romance Arcadia (1590) contributed
to the evolution of the extended prose narrative. In the 17th century John Bunyans Pilgrims
Progress (1684) can be classified as allegorical novel.
Novel established itself as a distinct literary type in England in 18th century with Daniel Defoes
Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722), Samuel Richardsons Pamela (1740) and
Clarissa (1748), and Henry Fieldings Shamela (1741), Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones
(1749).
The novel as an art form reached its fullest development in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In
this period, the narrative technique of the novel refined and a deeper interest in human
personality and behaviour was developed.
In 18th century novel was a big shift from the classical search for universal truths to individual
experience. The historical, mythological and legendary plots of the earlier centuries changed into
more personal stories available to a greater reading public compared with the smaller higher
classes who were able to access the earlier works. General human types and universals were
rejected for individual characters with contemporary names and surnames. Original plots were
developed instead of repetitive classical plots. A sense of Realism dominated the new genre with
a detailed depiction of inner and outer spaces. A cause and effect relationship was established in
the course of the events connecting past to present logically. References were made to specific
times and days which were not seen in the previous fiction.
A greater attention was paid to the physical background or setting. The place of action was very
important compared to the vague and fragmented settings of earlier fiction such as Bunyans
Pilgrims Progress. In the new novels specific references to street and city names (Defoes Moll
Flanders) and more detailed descriptions of the objects situated in the interiors (Richardsons
Pamela) helped form a solid idea of setting which rendered the narrative more realistic.
Language of the new novel was far from the rhetorical and figurative language of the earlier
works. The novelists used a more descriptive form of language. Verisimilitude, the aim of
presenting things with an air of authenticity, brought realism to prose which lacked the elegance
that characterized the former literatures of the earlier centuries.
Key Points!
18th Century is also known as Age of Satire, Age of Prose and Age of Novel!

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was a dissenter who turned to writing political verses and pamphlets
and was fined and jailed for a stinging satire on the Church of Englands methods of treating
nonconformists like himself. From a total of more than 250 works, Defoe is best known for those
he wrote in later life, among them Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722) and A Journal of
the Plagues Year (1722). His works are realistic as they look like fact based on true accounts
rather than fiction.
The idea of the shipwreck in Robinson Crusoe comes from the story of an actual adventurer
Alexander Selkirk. However, Defoes imagination adds up to the actual story with a great deal of
fiction. The intricate details related to the geography of the island, location, instruments
Robinson creates in the island, saves from the shipwreck all give the novel great realism. In
addition to the physical details readers also access the inner thoughts and feelings of Robinson.
Unlike Swift and Fielding Defoe did not use classical references which elite class could recognize.
He wrote for everyone from any class of society. The greatness of the novel comes from the fact
that the story appeals to a wide variety of readers. Robinson does not seek salvation like
Bunyans Christian, or knowledge like Faustus but survival. The novel shows that an
Englishman endowed with pragmatic virtues and some luck can prevail against the cruel fate of
solitary confinement and become a self-made man and a slave owner.
Similar to Swift Defoe is critical towards the British Empire and its colonial aspirations as the
relationship between Robinson and Friday reveals. Here Defoe introduces Friday to the readers
in a very famous depiction and then teaches his name to be Master;
He was a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with straight, strong limbs, not too
large; tall, and well-shaped; and, as I reckon, about twenty-six years of age. He had a very good
countenance, not a fierce and surly aspect, but seemed to have something very manly in his
face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance, too,
especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very
high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The colour of his skin
was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the
Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are, but of a bright kind of a dun olivecolour, that had in it something very agreeable, though not very easy to describe. His face was
round and plump; his nose small, not flat, like the negroes; a very good mouth, thin lips, and his
fine teeth well set, and as white as ivory.
After he had slumbered, rather than slept, about half-an-hour, he awoke again, and came out of
the cave to me: for I had been milking my goats which I had in the enclosure just by: when he
espied me he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the
possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a great many antic gestures to show
it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon
his head, as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude,
and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me so long as he lived. I
understood him in many things, and let him know I was very well pleased with him. In a little
time I began to speak to him; and teach him to speak to me: and first, I let him know his name
should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life: I called him so for the memory of the
time. I likewise taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name:
I likewise taught him to say Yes and No and to know the meaning of them. I gave him some milk
in an earthen pot, and let him see me drink it before him, and sop my bread in it; and gave him
a cake of bread to do the like, which he quickly complied with, and made signs that it was very
good for him. I kept there with him all that night; but as soon as it was day I
beckoned to him to come with me, and let him know I would give him some clothes; at which he
seemed very glad, for he was stark naked. As we went by the place where he had buried the two
men, he pointed exactly to the place, and showed me the marks that he had made to find them
again, making signs to me that we should dig them up again and eat them. At this I appeared
very angry, expressed my abhorrence of it, made as if I would vomit at the thoughts of it, and
beckoned with my hand to him to come away, which he did immediately, with great submission.
I then led him up to the top of the hill, to see if his enemies were gone; and pulling out my glass
I looked, and saw plainly the place where they had been, but no appearance of them or their

canoes; so that it was plain they were gone, and had left their two comrades behind them,
without any search after them.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was a lawyer and magistrate who started his literary career as a
playwright. He wrote over 20 plays, mostly satiric in nature. He drew on his daily work as a
material for his comic novels. His duties at court made him familiar with the world of crime, and
produced his masterpiece Tom Jones in 1749 about the adventures of a rogue who manages to
win the wealthy young lady of his dreams. It is a picaresque novel dealing with the adventures of
criminals and rogues.
Almost by accident, in angered response to the success of Richardsons novel Pamela he wrote a
satirical reply to Richardson by Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742) parodies of the
hypocritical moral values of the middle classes depicted in Richardsons Pamela.
Unlike Richardson, Fielding attached less importance to the growth and development of
individual characters. The element of mock heroic diminished Fieldings concern with
psychological depth achieved by Richardsons characterization. However, Fieldings characters
are wider in variety, drawn from all classes of society representing a more genuine panorama of
the 18th century society.
From Tom Jones;
Mr. Allworthy had been absent a full quarter of a year in London, on some very particular
business, though I know not what it was; but judge of its importance by its having detained him
so long from home, whence he had not been absent a month at a time during the space of many
years. He came to his house very late in the evening, and after a short supper with his sister,
retired much fatigued to his chamber. Here, having spent some minutes on his kneesa custom
which he never broke through on any accounthe was preparing to step into bed, when, upon
opening the cloathes, to his great surprize he beheld an infant, wrapt up in some coarse linen, in
a sweet and profound sleep, between his sheets. He stood some time lost in astonishment at this
sight; but, as good nature had always the ascendant in his mind, he soon began to be touched
with sentiments of compassion for the little wretch before him. He then rang his bell, and
ordered an elderly woman-servant to rise immediately, and come to him; and in the meantime
was so eager in contemplating the beauty of innocence, appearing in those lively colours with
which infancy and sleep always display it, that his thoughts were too much engaged to reflect
that he was in his shirt when the matron came in. She had indeed given her master sufficient
time to dress himself; for out of respect to him, and regard to decency, she had spent many
minutes in adjusting her hair at the looking-glass, notwithstanding all the hurry in which she
had been summoned by the servant, and though her master, for aught she knew, lay expiring in
an apoplexy, or in some other fit.
It will not be wondered at that a creature who had so strict a regard to decency in her own
person, should be shocked at the least deviation from it in another. She therefore no sooner
opened the door, and saw her master standing by the bedside in his shirt, with a candle in his
hand, than she started back in a most terrible fright, and might perhaps have swooned away,
had he not now recollected his being undrest, and put an end to her terrors by desiring her to
stay without the door till he had thrown some cloathes over his back, and was become incapable
of shocking the pure eyes of Mrs. Deborah Wilkins, who, though in the fifty-second year of her
age, vowed she had never beheld a man without his coat. Sneerers and prophane wits may
perhaps laugh at her first fright: yet my graver reader, when he considers the time of night, the
summons from her bed, and the situation in which she found her master, will highly justify and
applaud her conduct, unless the prudence which must be supposed to attend maidens at that
period of life at which Mrs. Deborah had arrived, should a little lessen his admiration.
When Mrs. Deborah returned into the room, and was acquainted by her master with the finding
the little infant, her consternation was rather greater than his had been; nor could she refrain

from crying out, with great horror of accent as well as look, My good sir! whats to be done? Mr.
Allworthy answered, she must take care of the child that evening, and in the morning he would
give orders to provide it a nurse. Yes, sir, says she; and I hope your worship will send out your
warrant to take up the hussy its mother, for she must be one of the neighbourhood; and I
should be glad to see her committed to Bridewell, and whipt at the carts tail. Indeed, such
wicked sluts cannot be too severely punished. Ill warrant tis not her first, by her impudence in
laying it to your worship. In laying it to me, Deborah! answered Allworthy: I cant think she
hath any such design. I suppose she hath only taken this method to provide for her child; and
truly I am glad she hath not done worse. I dont know what is worse, cries Deborah, than for
such wicked strumpets to lay their sins at honest mens doors; and though your worship knows
your own innocence, yet the world is censorious; and it hath been many an honest mans hap to
pass for the father of children even he never begot; and if your worship should provide for the
child, it may make the people the apter to believe; besides, why should your worship provide for
what the parish is obliged to maintain? For my own part, if it was an honest mans child,
indeedbut for my own part, it goes against me to touch these misbegotten wretches, whom I
dont look upon as my fellow-creatures. Faugh! how it stinks! It doth not smell like a Christian.
If I might be so bold to give my advice, I would have it put in a basket, and sent out and laid at
the churchwardens door. It is a good night, only a little rainy and windy; and if it was well wrapt
up, and put in a warm basket, it is two to one but it lives till it is found in the morning. But if it
should not, we have discharged our duty in taking proper care of it; and it is, perhaps, better for
such creatures to die in a state of innocence, than to grow up and imitate their mothers; for
nothing better can be expected of them.
Characteristics of the 18th Century-Literature of the Augustan Age:
It is the age of Prose which saw the emergence of essays, journalism and rise of novel as a new
genre,
Poetry and drama took a secondary role and only at the end of the century Romanticism
introduced a more personal and emotional poetry opposed to the rules of Neoclassicism.
Age of Satire; Swifts bitter satires distrust human reason, nature and progress, the lighter
satire of Pope and Addison hints at some misgivings about the unsettled nature of things and
the ideals of reasonable human behaviour.
Dr. Johnsons Dictionary was the first significant attempt to standardize English Language,
Neoclassicism with its insistence on rules and rigidity dominated the age with a revival of
classical taste and style. The major English authors to follow classical rules were Ben Jonson,
John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Addison and Dr. Johnson.
The growing reading public including women and circulating libraries supported the market
for writing and birth of new prose genres,
Newspapers and periodicals became popular and journalism was established as a new profession.
In genre studies, a coming-of-age story is a genre of literature and film that focuses on the growth of
a protagonist from youth to adulthood ("coming of age"). Coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue
or internal monologue over action, and are often set in the past. The subjects of coming-of-age stories are
typically males in their mid teens.