Augustan Age - Appunti riguardo l\'età augustea in Inghilterra PDF

Preview

Summary

Appunti riguardo l'età augustea in Inghilterra...

Description

Augustan age The Augustan Age has ist beginning with the the reign of King George I of Hanover, who came to power after the death of Queen Anne Stuart. The Augustan Age is called so because generally regarded as a golden age, like the period of Roman History which had achieved political stability and power as well a flourishing of the arts. The authors of the Augustan Age were mainly interested in real life. A great importance was give to the reason over imagination and feelings and there is an interest in the classic works and ideals. The works have a didactic tone and pay attention to the rules imposed by Greek and latin works. the enlightment was the expression of the middle class, thanks to the fact that books have a lower price and the reading public was growing up, especially women. The interest of the middle class in literature caused the origin of a new literary form, the journalism, which discussed political, social and cultural issues. Richard Steele gave birth to “The Tattler”, and later Joseph Addison joined Steele and the founded together “The Spectator”, who was printed almost everyday. The journalism didn’t have only the duty to inform, but brought forward also moral and other teachings The sense of reward and punishment was related to the Puritan ethics of the middle class and particularly present in the novels by Defoe. Main authors Jonathan Swift: he was an irish writer famous for his satiric works. for him, man is just an animal endowed with reason, selfish and corrupted. He founded with Pope the Scriblerus Club, an intellectual group in which authors discussed about literature and wrote parodies about their society. His best known works are the novel Gulliver’s Travels, A tale of a tub, A modest proposal. Samuel Johnson: he embodied the figure of the independent literary man and the the middle class’ moralism. He wrote the Dictionary, to explain and defend the pureness of English language, and the periodical The Rambler. Daniel Defoe: Defoe has always been interested in politics, so he worked as journalist, writing political works. In this period The true born English man, a satirical poem defending king William III, who was Dutch-born, from the xenophobic attacks and ridiculing the notion of English purity. Later, Defoe began writing novels and his best known work is Robinson Crusoe, which embodied the figure of the Self-made man. Other famous novels Moll Flanders, Roxana, Colonel Jack. Alexandre Pope: he was a satiric writer and the first who could live working officially as a poet. His poetry was didactic, elegant, neoclassic and characterized by the use of the heroic couplet. His poetry dealt with different themes as satire, philosophy (as in Essay on a man), critic (as in Essay on Criticism) or love elegy (as in Eloisa and Abelard). His most famous work

regarding satire is The Rape of the lock, a mock-heroic poem which is a parody of the epic genre and satirized middleclass society of his time. In fact, the poem satirizes a small incident comparing it to an epic event. The ‘rape of the lock’ to which the poem’s title refers is the seizing, by force of a lock of hair from a young lady named Belinda by her suitor, the dastardly Baron. This is taken from a real life event. a woman named Arabella Fermor had once really had a lock of her hair stolen by a suitor and this episode had inspired Pope.

Metaphysical Poetry The Metaphysical poets, who wrote during the first three quarters of the 17th century were led by John Donne. They reflected the intellectual and spiritual crisis of their age, the difficult transition from the Renaissance to the modern age. The poet was expected to be a man of wit. Wit was the ability to make up unusual metaphors and images and arrange them in an unexpected way to surprise the reader. The unusual feature of Metaphysical poetry is the repeated combination of these “metaphysical elements” with that particular type of metaphor called “conceit”. The conceit: it is a comparison between two objects which at first glance seem to have nothing in common. Also the paradox was an important element of this poetry. The language of Metaphysical poets was rich and varied. Latinisms and words of Anglo Saxon origin were both used and the tone was both solemn and conversational. This kind of poetry regarded both religious matter and love or secular ones. The main exponents were...