18th+Century+British+Literature


 * R**[[image:enragedmusician2.jpg]][[image:EdmundSpenser.jpg]]

---BRITISH POETRY-  //---BRITISH POETRY- //
 * //The Renaissance in England //**
 * //The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509. It is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning Long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the writings of European Renaissance precursors such as Dante. // **
 * //The introduction of movable-block printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a native poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyothelped bring the ideas and attitudes associated with the new learning to an English audience. // **
 * //Three other factors in the establishment of the English Renaissance were the Reformation, Counter Reformation, and the opening of the era of English naval power and overseas exploration and expansion. The establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life. At the same time, long-distance sea voyages helped provide the stimulus and information that underpinned a new understanding of the nature // **
 * //Early Renaissance poetry //**
 * //With a small number of exceptions, the early years of the 16th century are not particularly notable. The Douglas Aeneid was completed in 1513 and John Skelton wrote poems that were transitional between the late Medieval and Renaissance styles. The new king, Henry VIII, was something of a poet himself. The most significant English poet of this period was Thomas Wyatt, who was among the first poets to write sonnets in English. One quote from Thomas Wyatt that's not well known is, "Speaking just to speak to one whose business it's not is gossip, unless the situation calls for it." // **
 * //The Elizabethans //**
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Elizabethan period (1558 to 1603) in poetry is characterized by a number of frequently overlapping developments. The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition, the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Elizabethan Song //**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A wide range of Elizabethan poets wrote songs, including Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Nashe and Robert Southwell There are also a large number of extant anonymous songs from the period. Perhaps the greatest of all the songwriters was Thomas Campion. Campion is also notable because of his experiments with metres based on counting syllables rather than stresses. These quantitative metres were based on classical models and should be viewed as part of the wider Renaissance revival of Greek and Roman artistic methods. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The songs were generally printed either in miscellanies or anthologies such as Richard Tottel's 1557 Songs and Sonnets or in songbooks that included printed music to enable performance. These performances formed an integral par of both public and private entertainment. By the end of the 16th century, a new generation of composers, including John Dowland William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley were helping to bring the art of Elizabethan song to an extremely high musical level. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Courtly poetry //**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">


 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Edmund Spenser // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">With the consolidation of Elizabeth's power, a genuine court sympathetic to poetry and the arts in general emerged. This encouraged the emergence of a poetry aimed at, and often set in, an idealised version of the courtly world. //**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Among the best known examples of this are Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which is effectively an extended hymn of praise to the queen, and Philip Sidney's Arcadia . This courtly trend can also be seen in Spenser's Shepheardes Calender . This poem marks the introduction into an English context of the classical pastoral, a mode of poetry that assumes an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of attitude to the land and peasants. The explorations of love found in the sonnets of William Shakespeare and the poetry of Walter Raleigh and others also implies a courtly audienc // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Elizabethan verse drama //**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Elizabethan verse drama is widely considered to be one of the major achievements of literature in English, and its most famous exponent, William Shakespeare, is revered as the greatest poet in the language. This drama, which served both as courtly masque and popular entertainment, deals with all the major themes of contemporary literature and life. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">There are plays on European, classical, and religious themes reflecting the importance of humanism and the Reformation. There are also a number of plays dealing with English history that may be read as part of an effort to strengthen the British national myth and as artistic underpinnings for Elizabeth's resistance to the Spanish and other foreign threats. A number of the comic works for the stage also use bucolic themes connected with the pastoral genre. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In addition to Shakespeare, other notable dramatists of the period include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Classicism //**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Gavin Douglas' Aeneid, Thomas Campion's metrical experiments, and Spenser's Shepheardes Calender and plays like Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are all examples of the influence of classicism on Elizabethan poetry. It remained common for poets of the period to write on themes from classical mythology; Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and the Christopher Marlowe/George Chapman Hero and Leander are examples of this kind of work. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Translations of classical poetry also became more widespread, with the versions of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1565–67) and George Sandys (1626), and Chapman's translations of Homer's Iliad (1611) and Odyssey (c.1615), among the outstanding examples. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Jacobean and Caroline poetry //**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">English Renaissance poetry after the Elizabethan poetry can be seen as belonging to one of three strains; the Metaphysical poets, the Cavalier poets and the school of Spenser. However, the boundaries between these three groups are not always clear and an individual poet could write in more than one manner. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Metaphysical poets //**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">


 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">John Donne // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The early 17th century saw the emergence of this group of poets who wrote in a witty, complicated style. The most famous of the Metaphysicals is probably John Donne. Others include George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell and Richard Crashaw. John Milton in his Comus falls into this group. The Metaphysical poets went out of favour in the 18th century but began to be read again in the Victorian era. Donne's reputation was finally fully restored by the approbation of T. S. Eliot in the early 20th century. // **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Cavalier poets //**** //<span style="background: silver; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Cavalier poets wrote in a lighter, more elegant and artificial style than the Metaphysical poets. Leading members of the group include Ben Jonson, Richard Lovelace, Robert Herrick, Edmund Waller, Thomas Carew and John Denham. The Cavalier poets can be seen as the forerunners of the major poets of the Augustan era, who admired them greatly. // **

The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry written in England, or poetry written in the English language <span style="background-color: #ff00ff; font-family: Times New Roman; msoansilanguage: ENmso-bidi-font-style;">. The earliest surviving poetry from the area currently known as England was likely transmitted orally and then written down in versions that do not now survive; thus, dating the earliest poetry remains difficult and often controversial. The earliest surviving manuscripts date from the 10th century. Poetry written in Latin, Brythonic (a predecessor language of Welsh and Old Irishsurvives which may date as early as the 6th century. The earliest surviving poetry written in Anglo-Saxon <span style="background-color: #ff00ff; font-family: Times New Roman; msoansilanguage: ENmso-bidi-font-style;">, the most direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the seventh century. With the growth of trade and the British Empire, the English language had been widely used outside England. In the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the world's native English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast population of non-native speakers of English who are capable of writing poetry in the language. A number of major national poetries, including the American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadianand Indian <span style="background-color: #ff00ff; font-family: Times New Roman; msoansilanguage: ENmso-bidi-font-style;"> poetry have emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been increasingly viewed as a separate area of study This article focuses on poetry written in English by poets born or spending a significant part of their lives in England. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to poetry in other languages or poets who are not primarily English where appropriate.

-BRITISH LITERATURE--- Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel best captures a sense of political turmoil, particularly regarding the issue of religion, just after the Restoriation. In the late seventeenth century, a "battle of the books" erupted between champions of ancient and modern learning. Samuel Johnson published the great dictionary. Augustan is given to the English literary period that emulated the Rome of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Nature was most frequently considered a source of pleasure and an object by inquiry by Augustan poets. The Restoration and the eighteenth century brought vast changes to the island of Great Britain, which became a single nation after 1707. The national population nearly doubled in the period, reaching ten million. Change came most dramatically to cities: in London, new theaters, coffeehouses, concert halls, pleasure gardens, picture exhibitions and shopping districts gave life a feeling of bustle and friction. Civil society also linked people to an increasingly global economy, as they shopped for diverse goods from around the world. The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought hope to a divided nation, but no political settlement could be stable until religious issues had been resolved. In the 1660s, parliament reimposed the Anglican //Book of Common Prayer// and barred Nonconformists from holding religious meetings outside of the established church. The jails were filled with preachers like John Bunyan who refused to be silenced. A series of religion-fuelled crises forced Charles to dissolve Parliament, and led to the division of the country between two new political parties: Tories, who supported the king, and the Whigs, the king’s opponents. Neither party proved able to live with the Catholic James II, who came to the throne in 1685 and was soon accused of filling the government and army with his coreligionists. Secret negotiations paved the way for the Dutchman William of Orange, a champion of Protestantism and the husband of James’s Protestant daughter Mary. For more than half a century some loyal Jacobites (from Latin //Jacobus//, James), especially in Scotland, continued to support the deposed James II and his heirs. Nonetheless, the coming of William and Mary in 1688—the so-called Glorious Revolution—came to be seen as the beginning of a stabilized, unified Great Britain. The 1689 Bill of Rights limited the powers of the Crown and reaffirmed the supremacy of Parliament, while the Toleration Act of the same year granted a limited freedom of worship to Dissenters (though not to Catholics or Jews). In the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), England and its allies defeated France and Spain. As these commercial rivals were weakened and war gains including new colonies flowed in, the Whig lords and London merchants supporting the war grew rich. In the eighteenth century, the Whigs generally stood for the new “moneyed interest,” while the Tories stood for tradition, affirming landownership as the proper basis of wealth, power and privilege. The long reign of George III (1760-1820) saw both the emergence of Britain as a colonial power and the cry for a new social order based on liberty and radical reform. The wealth brought to England by industrialism and foreign trade had not spread to the great mass of the poor. New forms of religious devotion sprang up amid Britain’s material success. The campaign to abolish slavery and the slave trade was driven largely by a passion to save souls. Following the Restoration, French and Italian musicians, as well as painters from the Low Countries, migrated to England, contributing to a revolution in aesthetic tastes. The same period witnessed the triumph of the scientific revolution; Charles II chartered the Royal Society for the Improving of Human Knowledge in 1662. Encounters with little known societies in the Far East, Africa, and the Americas enlarged Europeans’ understanding of human norms. The widespread devotion to direct observation of experience established empiricism, as employed by John Locke, as the dominant intellectual attitude of the age. Yet perhaps the most momentous new intellectual movement was a powerful strain of feminism, championed by Mary Astell. The old hierarchical system had tended to subordinate individuals to their social rank or station. By the end of the eighteenth century many issues of politics and the law had come to revolve around rights, rather than traditions. Publishing boomed in eighteenth-century Britain, in part because of a loosening of legal restraints on printing. The rise in literacy was also a factor; by the end of the eighteenth century 60-70 percent of men could read, with a smaller but still significant percentage of women. The literary market began to sustain the first true professional class of authors in British history. Aphra Behn was the first woman to make her living from writing, though she and successors like Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood were denounced for their scandalous works and lives. The literature appearing between 1660 and 1785 divides conveniently into three lesser periods of about forty years each. The first, extending to the death of Dryden in 1700 is characterized by an effort to bring a new refinement to English literature according to sound critical principles of what is fine and right. Poetry and prose come to be characterized by an easy, sociable style, while in the theater comedy is triumphant. The second period, ending with the deaths of Pope in 1744 and Swift in 1745, reaches out to a wider circle of readers, with special satirical attention to what is unfitting and wrong. Deeply conservative but also playful, the finest works of this brilliant generation of writers cast a strange light on modern times by viewing them through the screen of classical myths and forms. The third period, concluding with the death of Johnson in 1784 and the publication of Cowper’s //The Task// in 1785, confronts the old principles with revolutionary ideas that would come to the fore in the Romantic period. A respect for the good judgement of ordinary people, and for standards of taste and behavior independent of social status, marks many writers of the age. Throughout the larger period, what poets most tried to see and represent was //nature//, understood as the universal and permanent elements in human experience.