The Augustan Age : A Preface

The term ‘Augustan Age’ corresponds roughly to the 70 years span that stretches from 1680 to 1750. It
is often treated as a corollary of Renaissance ; as it melds the strongly polarized world-views of
Renaissance into a more moderated form of thinking that laid much emphasis on ‘Rationalism’: here the
experience extracted through perception weighs down the writer’s imagination.

The unharnessed imagination of Renaissance artist was put in check as the diction grew in importance
while the content itself comparably declined in worth; consequently, ingenious use of language is the
primary aspect that marks this age.

The ‘Solo’ Man of Renaissance period now identifies himself with a certain class; but this class division
had its limitations as the sophisticated and deliberately complex language restricted its readership only
to upper (middle) class and would even remain unintelligible to many people who fall under the
‘Educated’ spectrum.

Literature of this age is totally dominated by John Dryden (and he was considered the supreme wit of his
time and remained uncontended) and Alexander Pope , with whose death the Augustan age breathes
its last : Therefore It is also referred to as the ‘ Age of Pope and Dryden’.

The Augustan age stands for the ‘Age of Reason’ and the Augustan rationalism acts like a buffer
between the classic Idealism of Renaissance and the down-to-earth Realism of Modern era. The
thoroughly intellectual outlook of life resulted in religious flexibility, which accounts for the startlingly
high number of discoveries made in this period : In fact , Newton laid up the hardpan foundations of
Modern physics by discovering the laws of gravitation while the versatile genius of John Locke made
immense progress in the fields of Philosophy, Ethics and Religion and that employing the sophisticated
Augustan diction.

At one hand , Augustans might be criticized for their complexity of writing but on the other hand, the
very same complexity of language, where a writer took great pains to choose the most precise word
resulted in an accuracy of expression never achieved before ( with the exception of Shakespeare and
Donne).

When the mind is worked to exhaustion , emotional faculties might suffer. This accounts for the absence
of intense emotion in Augustan writings; furthermore ‘intensity’ was considered impolite : And in a
world where vast majority of writers belonged to upper-middle class , proper etiquette would be
followed.

THROUGHOUT AUGUSTAN AGE , PASSION REMAINS SUBSERVIENT TO INTELLECT !