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the 17thcentury---the 18th century English Department in Hetao University By Song Xiaoqing
I. The Introduction of the Background
Time of the period
Some great historical and political events
Some main conflicts in the period
The economy in England
The industrial revolution
British bourgeoisie and its belief
Time of the Period
Time: from the return of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660 to the assertion of Romanticism marked by the publication of Lyrical Ballads 《抒情诗集》by Wordsworth 华兹华斯and Coleridge科勒律治 in 1789.
Political and Historical Background
The restoration of king Charles II in 1660
The Great Plague: of 1665 ,70,000 people died in it
The Great Fire :in the same year, 2/3 people were homeless.
The Glorious Revolution: king James II replaced by his protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband in 1689.
Some Main Conflicts
Conflict between the monarch and parliament
Conflict between the two big parties :the Tories 托利党and the Whigs 辉格党argued over the control of the parliament and the government.
Conflicts among different religions
Conflict between the rich and the poor
The Economy in England
A golden age
Abroad : a vast expansion of British colonies in North America, India and the West Indies ,and a continuous increase of colonial wealth and trade provided England with a market for which the small-scale hand production methods of the home industry were hardly adequate . This created not only a steady demand for British goods but also standardized goods .
At home : The Acts of Enclosure《圈地法》 ,the wealth under very few rich landowners.
The Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution : The industrial Revolution refers to the mechanization of industry and the consequent changes in social and economic organization in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. 工业革命指的是17世纪末、18世纪初英国工业的机械化，以及因此而导致的社会结构和经济结构的变化。
British Bourgeoisie and Its Belief
The British bourgeois or the middle class grows quickly with the fast development of its economy. It was the major force of the revolution and was mainly composed of the city people: traders, merchants manufacturers , and other adventurers like slave traders and colonists.
18th century middle class believed: self-restraint, self-reliance and hard work. To work, to economize and to accumulate wealth constituted the whole meaning of their life.
II. An Age of Enlightenment or an Age of Reason
The Enlightenment Movement
The humanist views and the rational rule
The result of enlightenment
The result of enlightenment to literature
The Enlightenment Movement
The Enlightenment Movement: a progressive intellectual movement which flourished first in France and swept through the western Europe .It is the furtherance of the Renaissance .It’s purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.
The Humanist Views and the Rational Rules
The enlighteners celebrated
reason or rationality, equality and science. They held that rationality or reason should be the only cause of any human thought and activities. They called for a reference to order, reason and rules. They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and relations, every superstition, injustice and oppression was to yield place to “eternal truth,” “eternal justice,” and “natural equality.” The enlighteners also advocated universal education.
The Result of Enlightenment
This provided theory for the 1776 American War of Independence and 1789 French Revolution.
The Result of Enlightenment to Literature
Neoclassicism: in the field of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism. According to the neoclassicists , all forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers ( Homer, Virgil(维吉尔 ), Horace (负拉), Ovid(奥维德 ) , etc .) and those of the contemporary French ones.
They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic. Restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. This belief led them to seek proportion, unity, harmony and grace in literary expressions, in an effort to delight , instruct and correct human beings, primarily as social animals.
Neoclassicists had some fixed laws and rules for almost every genre of literature.
In the last decades, the neoclassicism was rebelled against or challenged by the sentimentalists and was in due time replaced by Romanticism
Some Famous Writers among the Great Enlighteners in England
John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, the two pioneers of familiar essays, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson. 约翰.德莱顿，亚历山大.蒲柏，约瑟夫.艾迪森与理查.斯蒂尔（这两位是现代散文的先驱），乔纳森.斯威夫特，丹尼尔.迪福，理查.B.谢立丹，亨利.费尔丁和塞缪尔.约翰逊。
III. The Literary Development of the Period
The modern English novel
Other forms of literature
Laws and rules of literary creation
The Modern English Novel
It witnessed the flourish of English poetry in the classical style from Restoration to about the second half of the century .Much attention was given to the wit, form and art of poetry. Mock epic, romance, satire and epigram were popular forms adopted by poets of the time. The mid-century was , however, predominated by a newly rising literary form- the modern English novel, which , contrary to the traditional romance of aristocrats , gives a realistic presentation of life of common English people. It’s a natural product of the Industrial Revolution and a symbol of the growing importance and strength of the English middle class.
Other Literary Forms
from the middle part to the end of the century, Gothic novels and the literature of sentimentalism also prevailed.
Gothic novels: mostly stories of mystery and horror which take place in some haunted or dilapidated Middle Age castles.
Sentimentalism: Graveyard School-eulogizing or lamenting lyrics by nature poets like James Thomson, William Collins and etc.
Romanticism: romantic poems by Scottish peasant poets like Robert Burns and William Blake.
Laws and Rules of Literary Creation
Prose should be precise, direct, smooth and flexible. Poetry should be lyrical ,epical, didactic, satiric or dramatic, and each class should be guided by its own principles. Drama should be written in the Heroic Couplets( iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines ); the three unities of time ,space and action should be strictly observed; regularity in construction should be adhered to , and type characters rather than individuals should be represented.
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