Bartholomew Dandridge, A Lady reading Belinda

Augustan literature
beside a fountain, 1745, Yale Center for British Art,
New Haven.

1702-1780
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Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton 2018
 Restoration and Augustan literature

1. The Augustan Age

The 18th-century, besides being defined as the “Age of Reason”,
or of “Classicism” or of the “Enlightenment”, is often called
“Augustan Age”, with reference to that period of Roman
history under the Emperor Augustus (27 B.C. – A.D. 14) when
the Roman Empire enjoyed power, prosperity and stability. In
the second half of the century the Industrial Revolution
started to transform England from a rural country into an
industrial and urbanized one. The Augustan Age key
concepts were:

• political stability; optimism; reason and common sense;

• individualism; desire for balance, symmetry, refinement.

• liberal thought and free will;

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 Restoration and Augustan literature

2. The reading public

The increase of the reading public
in the Augustan Age was due to

The growing The individual’s The practice

importance of the trust in his own of reason and
middle class abilities self-analysis

Most readers They used to Coffee-houses

were borrow books allowed the
middle-class from circulating circulation of
women libraries news and
opinions

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 Restoration and Augustan literature

3. The reading public

The interest of middle-class people in literature gave rise
to

journalism the novel

‘The Tatler’and‘The Where the belief in the power of

Spectator’ the first English reason and the individual’s trust
newspapers in his own abilities found
Their style  simple, lively expression
Their aim  didactic

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 Restoration and Augustan literature

4. The novelist
1. The spokesman of the middle class.

2. The fathers of the English novel:

• Daniel Defoe the realistic novel

• Jonathan Swift the utopian novel
• Samuel Richardson the epistolary novel
• Henry Fielding the picaresque novel
• Laurence Sterne the anti-novel novel

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 Restoration and Augustan literature

5. The novelist’s aim

• To be understood widely He wrote in a simple
way.

• Realism not only linked to the life presented,

but to the way it was shown.

• Speed and copiousness His most important

economic virtues since it was the bookseller and not the
patron who rewarded him.

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 Restoration and Augustan literature

6. The characters
A bourgeois, self-made,
The hero
self-reliant man

The mouthpiece of the The reader is expected to

author sympathise with him

have contemporary They struggle

All the names and surnames for survival or
characters Robinson social
Crusoe success

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 Restoration and Augustan literature

7. The narrative technique

1ST-PERSON 3RD-PERSON PATTERN
NARRATOR NARRATOR

Fictional
Daniel Defoe
autobiographies

Letters
Samuel
exchanged
Richardson
between the main
characters

The mock-epic
Henry Fielding
style

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8. The setting
• Chronological sequence of events.
• References to particular times of the year or of the day.

I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York

Robinson Crusoe

• Specific references to names of countries, towns

and streets.
• Detailed descriptions of interiors to make
the narrative more realistic.

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 Restoration and Augustan literature

9. Themes
1. Real life.

2. Everything that could alter a social status.

3. The sense of reward and punishment

linked to the Puritan ethics of the middle class.

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