AUGUSTAN AGE (1689–1740)

Presented to
Miss Maimona Anwar

Presented by
Rushda Saeed- Political and Religious situation
Fazila Fazal Abbas- Social and Economic situation
Zahra Nayab- Poetry
Tayyaba Ahmad- Augustan Drama
Sabia Munawar- Prose and Novel
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS
ISSUES IN AUGUSTAN AGE
 Political condition
 The Restoration period ended with the
exclusion crisis, where Parliament set
up a new rule for succession to the
British throne that favored
Protestantism.
 The parliament brought William and
Mary to the throne instead of James II.
 After their demise, Queen Anne Stuart
came to the throne.
 Queen Anne - - - "when in good
humor, [she] was meekly stupid and,
when in bad humor, was sulkily
stupid."
 King George I of Hanover (the capital
of the federal state of Lower Saxony,
Germany) who inherited the throne
after the death of Queen Anne Stuart,
according to the Act of Settlement
1701.
….Continued
 The Augustan Age is 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.
 During George's reign the powers of the monarchy diminished and
Britain began a transition to the modern system of cabinet
government led by a prime minister.
 George spent much of his time in Hanover, even after gaining the
throne of Britain, and never learned English.
 The political organization was hierarchical, hereditary and
privileged. Thus elections were largely controlled by the powerful
landowners and politicians who were more interested in bribing for
winning their elections than in obtaining the vote of the citizens.
….continued
 Whigs and Tories
 The Tories were the conservatives, who supported the monarchy and
the Church and had a great influence under the Stuarts.
 The Whigs stood for industrial and commercial development, a
vigorous foreign policy and religious toleration. They achieved influence
under the Hanoverians and they met without the king under the guide
of a prime minister.
 The first Prime Minister was Sir Robert Walpole, who managed to keep
England out of foreign conflicts and made trade flourish.
 While the Hanoverian succession was initially popular, George's own
behavior - his lack of speaking English, public preference for Hanover
over England - started to produce some discontent.
 James Francis Edward Stuart launched an attempt to retake the throne
in 1715. Another attempt was launched by the latter's son Charles
Edward Stuart in 1745.
 George I was served by Robert Walpole until his death.
 Religious Aspects
 London's population exploded spectacularly --- The
population pressure lead to the urban discontent.
 Dissenters (those radical Protestants who would not join
with the Church of England) recruited and preached to the
poor of the city.
 The Dissenters saw the Roman Catholic Church as the
Whore of Babylon.
 While Anne was high church, George I came from a far
more Protestant nation than England.
 Anyone too high church was suspected of being a closet
Jacobite- - - Jacobitism was the political movement
dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the
thrones of England, Scotland, and the Kingdom of Ireland
 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC
SITUATION DURING AUGUSTAN
AGE
 Social situation
The age of enlightenment
 Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge arises from evidence
gathered via experience.
 Empiricism: the most eminent feature to make Augustan age , the age of
enlightenment.
 Press made the material easily available for the common people.
 Literature was spread quickly, everybody contributed in producing literature.
 Newspapers not only began but multiplied. Newspapers were compromised as well.
 Literacy rate increased and education was not confined only to aristocracy.
 Because of this literacy increase, literature began to appear from all over the
kingdom.
 18th century was more educated than the centuries before.
 Because of accepted, clear, rational methods as superior to tradition, this age is
called the Age of Reason as well.
 However, there was a darkness to such literacy as well; nonsense and insanity were
also getting more adherent than before.
 The socioeconomic situation of
London
 The population of London was
increasing. In the Restoration
it grew from around 3,50,000
to 600,000, by 18th it had
reached 950,000.
 The Enclosure Acts destroyed
lower class farming in the
countryside and The black act
forced them to migrate to the
big cities.
 The Enclosure Acts were series
of United Kingdom Acts of
Parliament which enclosed
open fields to common people.
….continued
 The countryside was left
empty
 This situation swelled the
ranks of population in the
city.
 Poor and cheap labour
increased for the city
employers.
 This population pressure
led to the proper crimes
in the city.
 Economic situation
Industrial revolution
 Industrial revolution was
stepping in. industrial
revolution was a period
from the 18th to the 19th
century.
 Major changes in
agriculture,
manufacturing, mining
and technology had a
profound effect on the
socioeconomic and the
cultural conditions.
….Continued
 Innovations of industrial revolution
1. Transfer of knowledge
2. More focus on scientific experiments
3. Cheap labour
4. The countryside was left which
provided free land to establish
factories
 Social factors of Industrial revolution
1. Factories and urbanization in the
countryside
2. Environment was polluted
3. Child labour
4. Capitalism
5. Life standard was improved
6. Aristocracy was falling down
7. The study of Political economy was
focused
 POETRY
 In the classical sense, Augustan poetry was written during the reign of Caesar Augustus
and includes poets such as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.
In the English sense (early-to-mid 18th century poetry), it is a neoclassical type of
poetry such as that found in the works of Alexander Pope. During the time period, many
poets focused
 18th century English poetry was political, satirical, and marked by the central
philosophical problem of whether the individual or society took precedence as the
subject of verse.
 Augustan poetry is a branch of Augustan literature, and refers to the poetry of the
eighteenth-century, specifically the first half of the century. The term comes most
originally from a term that George I had used for himself. He saw himself as an
Augustus. Therefore, the British poets picked up that term as a way of referring to their
own endeavors, for it fit in another respect
 In the Augustan era, poets were even more conversant with each other than were
novelists.
 Their works were written as direct counterpoint and direct expansion of one another,
with each poet writing satire when in opposition
 direct counterpoint and direct expansion of one another, with each poet writing satire
when in opposition
….continued
 The other development, one seemingly agreed upon by both sides,
was a gradual expropriation and reinvention of all the Classical forms
of poetry. Every genre of poetry was recast, reconsidered, and used
to serve new functions. Ode, ballad, elegy, satire, parody, song, and
lyric poetry would all be adapted from their older uses.
 Odes would cease to be encomium, ballads cease to be narratives,
elegies cease to be sincere memorials, satires no longer be specific
entertainments, parodies no longer be bravura stylistic
performances, songs no longer be personal lyrics, and the lyric
would become a celebration of the individual rather than a lover's
complaint.
 There are many other plausible and coherent explanations of the
causes of the rise of the subjective self, but whatever the prime
cause, poets showed the strains of the development as a largely
conservative set of voices argued for a social person and largely
emergent voices argued for the individual person.
 Alexander Pope
 Pope began publishing when very young and
continued to the end of his life, his poetry is a
reference point in any discussion of the 1710s,
1720s, 1730s, or even 1740s. Furthermore, Pope's
abilities were recognized early in his career, so
contemporaries acknowledged his superiorit.The
case with figures such as John Dryden or
William Wordsworth, a second generation did not
emerge to eclipse his position.
 Pope and his enemies (often called "the Dunces"
because of Pope's successful satirizing of them in
The Dunciad of 1727 and 1738) fought over central
matters of the proper subject matter for poetry and
the proper pose of the poetic voice, and the
excesses and missteps, as much as the
achievements, of both sides demonstrated the
stakes of the battle.
 The Scribbleran Club (GAY)
 In 1728, his The Beggar's Opera was an enormous
success, running for an unheard-of eighty
performances.
 Old style poetic parody involved imitation of the
style of an author for the purposes of providing
amusement, but not for the purpose of ridicule. The
person imitated was not satirized
AUGUSTAN DRAMA
Augustan drama can refer to the
dramas of Ancient Rome during the
reign of Caesar Augustus, but it
most commonly refers to the
plays of Great Britain in the early
18th century.
In drama, it was an age in
transition between the highly witty
and sexually playful
Restoration comedy, the pathetic
she-tragedy, and any later plots of
middle-class anxiety. The Augustan
stage retreated from the
Restoration's focus on cuckoldry,
marriage for fortune, and a life of
leisure. Instead, Augustan drama
reflected questions the mercantile
class had about itself and what it
meant to be gentry.
 
 PLAY
 The English stage was changing rapidly from Restoration comedy and Restoration drama
and their noble subjects to the quickly developing melodrama.
 George Lillo and Richard Steele wrote the trend-setting plays of the early Augustan period.
Lillo's plays consciously turned from heroes and kings toward shopkeepers and
apprentices. They emphasized drama on a household scale rather than a national scale.
The plots are resolved with Christian forgiveness and repentance. Instead of amusing or
inspiring the audience, they sought to instruct the audience and ennoble it. Further, the
plays were popular precisely because they seemed to reflect the audience's own lives and
concerns.
 Joseph Addison also wrote a play entitled Cato in 1713, but it did not inspire followers.
Cato concerned the Roman statesman who opposed Julius Caesar. The play is unique, for
Queen Anne was seriously ill at the time, and both the Tory ministry of the day and the
Whig opposition (already led by Robert Walpole) were concerned about the succession.
Both groups were in contact with Anne's exiled brother James Francis Edward Stuart.
Londoners sensed this anxiety, for Anne had no surviving children; all of the closest
successors in the Stuart family were Roman Catholic. Therefore, the figure of Cato was a
transparent symbol of Roman integrity.
 SPECTACLE AND PANTOMIME
 As during the Restoration, economic reality drove the stage during the
Augustan period. Under Charles II court patronage meant economic
success, and therefore the Restoration stage featured plays that would suit
the monarch and/or court. Charles II was a philanderer, and so Restoration
comedy featured a highly sexualized set of plays. However, after the reign
of William and Mary, the court and crown stopped taking a great interest in
the playhouse. Theaters had to get their money from the audience of city
dwellers, therefore, and consequently plays that reflected city anxieties and
celebrated the lives of citizens were the ones to draw crowds. The
aristocratic material from the Restoration continued to be mounted, and
adaptations of Tudor plays were made and ran, but the new plays that
were authored and staged were the domestic- and middle-class dramas.
The other dramatic innovation was "spectacle": plays that had little or no
text, but which emphasized novel special effects.
….Continued
 The public attended when they saw their lives represented on the stage, but also
attended when there was a sight that would impress them. If costumes were lavish,
the sets impressive or the actresses alluring, audiences would attend.
 John Rich and Colley Cibber dueled over special theatrical effects. They put on plays
that were actually just spectacles, where the text of the play was almost an
afterthought. Dragons, whirlwinds, thunder, ocean waves, and even actual elephants
were on stage. Battles, explosions, and horses were put on the boards (Cibber).
 Rich specialized in pantomime and was famous as the character "Lun" in harlequin
presentations. The playwrights of these works were hired men, not dramatists.
 A pantomime, after all, required very little in the way of a playwright and much more
in the way of a director.
 The plays put on in this manner are not generally preserved or studied, but their
near monopoly on the theaters, particularly in the 1720s, infuriated established
literary authors.
 Opera
 If vacant, sub literary spectacles were not enough of a threat to dramatists,
opera, which had crossed over to England in the Restoration, experienced an
enormous surge in popularity with Italian grand opera in England in the
1710s and 1720s.
 Opera combined singing with acting, it was a mixed genre, and its violation
of neoclassical strictures had made it a controversial form from the start.
 This type of opera not only took up theatrical rehearsal time and space, it
also took away dramatic subject matter. Playwrights were at a loss.
 High melodies would cover the singers' expressions of grief or joy, conflating
all emotion and sense under a tune that might be entirely unrelated.
 It was not merely the fact that such operas drove out original drama, but
also that the antics and vogue for the singers took away all else, seemingly,
that infuriated English authors.
 LICENSING ACT 1737
 Toward the end of the 1720s, the behavior of opera stars, the absurdity of spectacle
productions, and an escalation of political warfare between the two parties led to a
reclamation of the stage by political dramatists.
 The Licensing Act required all plays to go to a censor before staging, and only those plays
passed by the censor were allowed to be performed. Therefore, plays were judged by
potential criticism of the ministry and not just by reaction or performance.
 Therefore, the playhouses had little choice but to present old plays and pantomime and
plays that had no conceivable political content.
 William Shakespeare's reputation grew enormously as his plays saw a quadrupling of
performances, and sentimental comedy and melodrama were the only "safe" choices for
new drama. Dramatists themselves had to turn to prose or to less obvious forms of criticism.
 In comedy, one effect of the Licensing Act was that playwrights began to develop a comedy
of sentiment. This comedy was critically labeled as "high" comedy, in that it was intended to
be entertaining rather than actually funny, and brought about its entertainment by elevating
the sentiments of the viewer. The plots also relied upon characters being in or out of
sympathy with each other.
 CONCLUSION
 Augustan drama has a reputation as an era of decline.
 There were few dominant figures of the Augustan stage.
 Instead of a single genius, a number of playwrights worked steadily
to find subject matter that would appeal to a new audience.
 When the public did tire of anonymously authored, low-content
plays and a new generation of wits made the stage political and
aggressive again, the Whig ministry stepped in and began official
censorship that put an end to daring and innovative content.
 This conspired with the public's taste for special effects to reduce
theatrical output and promote the novel.
NOVEL AND PROSE
NOVEL
The English novel was truly begun as a
serious artform.
The ground for the novel had been laid by
journalism. It had also been laid by drama
and by satire.
Long prose satires like Swift's Gulliver's
Travels (1726) had a central character who
goes through adventures and may (or may
not) learn lessons. However, the most
important single satirical source for the
writing of novels came from Cervantes's Don
Quixote (1605, 1615). In general, one can
see these three axes, drama, journalism,
and satire, as blending in and giving rise to
three different types of novel.
One of the names usually associated with
the novel is the most prominent in Puritan
writing: Daniel Defoe.
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) was
the first major novel of the new century and
was published in more editions than any
other works besides Gulliver's Travels
(Mullan 252). Defoe had written political and
religious polemics prior to Robinson Crusoe,
and he worked as a journalist during and
after its composition.
….Continued
 Defoe took the actual life and, from that, generated a fictional life.
 In the 1720's, Defoe wrote "Lives" of criminals for Applebee's Journal.
He interviewed famed criminals and produced accounts of their lives.
 here were other novels and novelistic works in the interim, Samuel
Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) is the next landmark
development in the English novel.
 Thematically, Defoe's works are consistently Puritan. They all involve a
fall, a degradation of the spirit, a conversion, and an ecstatic elevation.
This religious structure necessarily involved a bildungsroman, for each
character had to learn a lesson about him or herself and emerge the
wiser.
 Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) is the next
landmark development in the English novel.
 PROSE
 The essay, satire, and dialogue (in philosophy and religion) thrived in the age.
 Literacy in the early 18th century passed into the working classes, as well as the
middle and upper classes (Thompson, Class).
 Literacy was not confined to men, though rates of female literacy are very difficult to
establish.
 Libraries were open to all, but they were mainly associated with female patronage
and novel reading.
 ESSAY/JOURNALISM:
 Periodical literature grew between 1692 and 1712.
 Periodicals were inexpensive to produce, quick to read, and a viable way of
influencing public opinion, and consequently there were many broadsheet periodicals
headed by a single author and staffed by hirelings (so-called "Grub Street" authors).
 One periodical outsold and dominated all others, however, and that was The
Spectator, written by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (with occasional
contributions from their friends).
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS
WRITING
 Philosophy in England was fully dominated by John Locke, the 18th
century had a vigorous competition among followers of Locke.
 Bishop Berkeley extended Locke's emphasis on perception to argue that
perception entirely solves the Cartesian problem of subjective and
objective knowledge by saying "to be is to be perceived." Only, Berkeley
argued, those things that are perceived by a consciousness are real.
 David Hume, on the other hand, took empiricist skepticism to its extremes,
and he was the most radically empiricist philosopher of the period.
 Hume doggedly refused to enter into questions of his personal faith in the
divine, but his assault on the logic and assumptions of theodicy and
cosmogeny was devastating, and he concentrated on the provable and
empirical in a way that would lead to utilitarianism and naturalism later.
THANK YOU