Augustan literature
The chronological boundary points of the era are generally vague, largely since the label's origin in contemporary 18th-century criticism has made it a shorthand designation for a somewhat nebulous age of satire.
[1] The new Augustan period exhibited exceptionally bold political writings in all genres, with the satires of the age marked by an arch, ironic pose, full of nuance and a superficial air of dignified calm that hid sharp criticisms beneath.
Since dissenting, Establishment and Independent divines were in print, the constant movement of these works helped defuse any region's religious homogeneity and fostered emergent latitudinarianism.
The Restoration period ended with the exclusion crisis and the Glorious Revolution, where Parliament set up a new rule for succession to the British throne that would always prefer Protestantism over consanguinity.
That weakness at the throne would lead quickly to the expansion of the powers of the party leader in Parliament and the establishment in all but name of the prime minister office in the form of Robert Walpole.
Increased population also meant that urban discontent was never particularly difficult to find for political opportunists, and London suffered a number of riots, most of them against supposed Roman Catholic provocateurs.
[8] Dissenters (Protestants not conforming to the Church of England) recruited and preached to the poor of the city, and various offshoots of the Puritan and "Independent" (Baptist) movements increased their numbers substantially.
At the same time, an aesthetic of artistic detachment from the everyday world had yet to develop, and the aristocratic ideal of an author so noble as to be above political concerns was largely archaic and irrelevant.
The dispassionate view of the world (the pose of a spectator, rather than participant) was essential for the development of the English essay, as it set out a ground wherein Addison and Steele could comment and meditate upon manners and events.
Samuel Johnson's command of words and his practical wisdom gained a following as he published more than 200 essays offering insights into the follies of human nature and moral perseverance.
The Tory ministry of Robert Harley (1710–1714) reportedly spent over 50,000 pounds sterling on creating and bribing the press (Butt); this figure is known because their successors publicised it, but they (the Walpole government) were suspected of spending even more.
The definitions full of wit and depth of thought supported by passages from beloved poets and philosophers, which a reader could be content spending an evening poring over its pages.
Hume doggedly refused to enter into questions of his personal faith in the divine, but he assaulted the logic and assumptions of theodicy and cosmogeny, and he concentrated on the provable and empirical in a way that would lead to utilitarianism and naturalism later.
Mandeville argued that wastefulness, lust, pride, and all the other "private" vices were good for the society at large, for each led the individual to employ others, to spend freely, and to free capital to flow through the economy.
His own basic good nature blinds him to the wickedness of the world, and the incidents on the road (for most of the novel is a travel story) allow Fielding to satirize conditions for the clergy, rural poverty (and squires), and the viciousness of businessmen.
Instead, it is a highly tragic and affecting account of a young girl whose parents try to force her into an uncongenial marriage, thus pushing her into the arms of a scheming rake named Lovelace.
The novel is a masterpiece of psychological realism and emotional effect, and when Richardson was drawing to a close in the serial publication, even Henry Fielding wrote to him, begging him not to kill Clarissa.
Fielding answers Richardson by featuring a similar plot device (whether a girl can choose her own mate) but showing how family and village can complicate and expedite matches and felicity.
The Augustan era is considered a high point of British satiric writing, and its masterpieces were Swift's Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, Pope's Dunciads, Horatian Imitations, and Moral Essays, Samuel Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes and London, Henry Fielding's Shamela and Jonathan Wild, and John Gay's The Beggar's Opera.
Book four depicts the land of the Houyhnhnms, a society of horses ruled by pure reason, where humanity itself is portrayed as a group of "yahoos" covered in filth and dominated by base desires.
Tom D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719) was another satire that attempted to offer entertainment, rather than a specific bit of political action, in the form of coarse and catchy songs.
There was a great struggle over the nature and role of the pastoral in the early part of the century, reflecting two simultaneous movements: the invention of the subjective self as a worthy topic, with the emergence of a priority on individual psychology, against the insistence on all acts of art being performance and public gesture designed for the benefit of society at large.
These developments can be seen as extensions of Protestantism, as Max Weber argued, for they represent a gradual increase in the implications of Martin Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, or they can be seen as a growth of the power and assertiveness of the bourgeoisie and an echo of the displacement of the worker from the home in growing industrialization, as Marxists such as E.P.
In Trivia, Gay writes as if commiserating with those who live in London and are menaced by falling masonry and bedpan slops, and The Shepherd's Week features great detail of the follies of everyday life and eccentric character.
Even The Beggar's Opera, which is a satire of Robert Walpole, portrays its characters with compassion: the villains have pathetic songs in their own right and are acting out of exigency rather than boundless evil.
Pope applies Virgil's heroic and epic structure to the story of a young woman (Arabella Fermor) having a lock of hair snipped by an amorous baron (Lord Petre).
These hints at the solitary poet were carried into a new realm with Thomas Gray, whose Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard (1750) set off a new craze for poetry of melancholy reflection.
The year of its première was important, with Queen Anne in serious illness at the time, and both the Tory ministry of the day and the Whig opposition (already being led by Robert Walpole) were concerned about the succession.
His Tom Thumb (1730) was a satire on all of the tragedies written before him, with quotations from all the worst plays patched together for absurdity, and the plot concerned the eponymous tiny man attempting to run things.
Very late in the 18th century Oliver Goldsmith attempted to resist the tide of sentimental comedy with She Stoops to Conquer (1773), and Richard Brinsley Sheridan would mount several satirical plays after Robert Walpole's death.
