Restoration Criticism, Neo-classicism and the Enlightenment

 The restoration Age (1660-1700) refers to the restoration of the Stuarts

(Charles II) to the throne of England. During this period there was also a
restoration of arts and literature. It is called a ‘second Renaissance’.
 In literary criticism and cultural history in general, it is known as a Neo-
classical period.
 With the influence of French writers (Montaigne, Corneille, Boileau,…)
European culture became centralized in France at that time especially with
the foundation of the French Academy in 1635, the classical ideas were
dominant and classicism became an institutionalized cultural doctrine
throughout Europe.
 In England, after Sidney there wasn’t any important critical voices to assess
the great literary achievements of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. And
it was only with John Dryden that criticism was revived.
 His most important book of criticism is Essay on Dramatic Poesie (1668).
 This period also saw the foundation of the Royal Society in 1662, the re-
openin.g of the theatres and the rebirth of arts and literature more
particularly.
 The main genre of Restoration literature was drama. It was concerned with
general human and social interests and was represented mainly by comedies
and plays designated as ‘comedy of manners’.
 Dryden was a proponent of classical principles during the Restoration
period.
 He defined drama as: ‘a just and lively image of human nature
representing its passions, and humours and the changes of fortune to
which it is subject for the delight and instruction of mankind’.
 The Restoration marked the beginnings of Neo-classicism in English
literature an Dryden’s contribution to it was the most important as he is
commonly viewed as the first of the English Neo-classicists.

 The restoration was followed by the Augustan Age or the Age of Reason in
the first half of the 18th century.
 More generally this period was referred to as the Enlightenment Age which
preceded the rise of Romanticism in the 1780s.

 As a new literary doctrine, Neo-classicism influenced the rise of the novel in

the 18th century, and dominated poetry and drama during the late 17th century
in the work of Dryden and most of the 18th century with the work of
Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson.

 Neo-classicism advocated classical principles of emphasis on reason and

respect of rules derived from the classics, order, clarity, measure, sense of
proportion and good taste.

 18th century literature consisted mainly of Neo-classical satirical and

philosophical poetry and the novel which was influenced by Neo-classical
theory but followed its own process of development.

 The Enlightenment refers to the 18th century in terms of general ideas

marking all areas of culture (philosophy including literature, it includes the
Age of Reason and the Age of Johnson.

 It believed in the power of reason to obtain objective truth about the world.

 Enlightenment thinkers were inspired by the revolution in science (for

example Newton’s discovery of kinematics and gravity). They argued that
the same kind of method could be applied to other fields of human activity.
They believe tht they would lead the world into progress from a long period
of superstition and tradition. It is believed that their work in ethics,
philosophy and political theory prepared the intellectual framework for the
French and American revolutions, and for the rise of democracy, liberalism
and capitalism. Their ideas were widespread in Europe and in America, the
founding fathers were influenced by the Enlightenment ideas.

Enlightenment philosophers: in Germany Emanuel Kant (1724-1804), in

France Descartes ( (his theory of rationalism and the Cogito: the thinking
mind ‘I think therefore I am’), Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778) Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Voltaire (1694-1778),
in England John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-1776).
 Main principles of the Enlightenment: Emphasis on the power of reason,
promotion of empiricism, scientific skepticism, rationality and clarity.

 Influential book: Essay on Human Understanding (1690) by John Locke, the

idea of the human mind as a tabula rasa (= a blank page) filled later through
experience, this theory influenced the writers of Neo-classicism.

 The beginnings of the Enlightenment in British culture started during the

Restoration and concerned all of the Neo-classicism and especially the Age
of reason.