LONDON AND COURTH

THE RESTORATION: FRENCH INFLUENCE

Between the moral idealism of the Puritan Commonwealth and the Stuarts monarchy, there is a
distinct gap.
The court of the Stuarts brought back to France many delicate and refined ways of the French
world and from an artistic point of view, forms of entertainment such as lures for bulls or bears,
masks and dances were very famous.
Rebuilding of London
After the great fire of 1666, London was rebuilt and this represents the starting point of the city
from an architectural and social point of view. London had become the political cultural epicenter
of the country, becoming increasingly important even in the court. The reconstruction of the city
was done by Christopher Wren, a great English Baroque architect
SCIENCE AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY
During the Restoration, science was a research not only in the scientific sphere but also in the
social sphere. In the Royal Society for the Advancement of Learning, there were exponents of
astronomy such as Halley or Newton O, as far as philosophy or literature is concerned, authors
such as Jonathan Swift.
Empiricist philosophy, in this period, occupies a central role in research: empiricist philosophy was
closely linked to direct experience and therefore to the conception of science in that period. A
reference philosopher for empiricist philosophy was John Lock.

THE AUGUSTAN AGE

THE TERM AUGUSTAN
The first half of the 18th century is defined as the "Augustan age", which indicates its classical
vision, under the emperor Augustus. Although the French influence was still important, the British
ruling class considered themselves the true heirs of the Roman Empire. Ancient Roman virtues -
fortitude, perseverance, self-control - were thought to be prerequisites for the true British
gentleman. Neoclassicism became a way of life; it was reflected in poetry, architecture, sculpture,
painting.

RATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES
The great Augustan artists also shared a belief in reason as capable of imposing a certain order in
an otherwise chaotic world. They both criticized the new social order brought about by the rise of
the middle class. They have exposed all of this through their cutting satire.
Empiricism began with Locke, then developed with David Hume and his skepticism. This is a
rational tendency, also evident in the religion of the deists, who rejected revealed religions,
believing in natural religions. They rejected religious knowledge as a source of authority with the
conclusion that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the
existence of a single creator of universe.
This thought was summed up well with George Berkeley who combined religious faith and reason.
He denied the existence of material subastance and manteined the familiar object cannot exist
without being perceived
ROLE OF WOMAN
Women also began to take on the pivotal role in society; they had become an active part in
debates on life issues, they discussed literature and politics, for example in the living rooms. The
new ideas of freedom for men spread in the Enlightenment, guaranteeing freedom for women as
well. The basic assumption of Skepticism was "every philosophy was doubtfull"

RISE OF MIDDLE CLASS

Thanks to the realism of painting and the novel, the middle class was gaining more and more
importance. After the event of the glorious revolution, the middle class was one with the
aristocracy: in fact their interests were the same and they joined forces in commercial or industrial
initiatives, useful for the whole society.
VALUES OF MIDDLE CLASS
The marriage of the two classes also brought about a change in social values; the middle class still
did not have manners like the aristocracy, from which they drew inspiration. precisely because
they had these good manners, They were very strict with Protestant or Puritan morality, with the
religious faith of work and with the importance of the family.
The middle class began to discover true values and true aristocratic manners thanks to
newspapers and magazines, which had become very famous in Britain. Thanks to these, writers
and critics of aristocratic education taught readers how to behave as an aristocrat. Writers and
critics then met in places of discussion, clubs or cafes, which had existed since the Restoration but
which in this period acquired a new identity. many very important newspaper articles were
written in these clubs or cafes such as "The Tatler" or "The Spectator", written in "Will's
Coffeehouse" or "White's Coffeehouse".

THE FIRST ENGLISH DICTIONARY

At the beginning of the eighteenth century many people felt the urge to have an identical
language for everyone, as happened for France and Italy. This arose from the feeling of someone
trying to rationalize all human activities, even language.
This project was started by Chambers with the Cyclopedia, the first model of modern
encyclopedia, and was then continued with the encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Ambert.
In 1746 Samuel Johnson was asked to write a dictionary in the English language. Johnson was at
the time one of the most important and suitable writers for this type of work.
A Dictionary of the English Language, the famous dictionary of Samuel Johnson, published in
London in 1755; its principles dominated English lexicography for more than a century. This two-
volume work surpassed earlier dictionaries not in bulk but in precision of definition.
Its strength lay in two features: the original formulated definitions of the main word stock of the
language; and the copious citation of quotations from the entire range of English literature, which
served in support and illustration and which exemplified the different shades of meaning of a
particular word.
A Dictionary of the English Language included a history of the language, a grammar, and an
extensive list of words representing basic general vocabulary, based on the best conversation of
contemporary London and the normal usage of respected writers. The original was followed in
1756 by an abbreviated one-volume version that was widely used far into the 20th century.

THE RISE OF NOVEL

NEED FOR REALISM
The novel of eighteenth century express the need for realism. novels are interested in common
events, unlike what happened in past centuries. The Romans use objects common to people,
languages and recurring situations and not mythological events. The language, which derives from
the French one, is very refined and reflects well the trend towards which realism aspires: it is
refined and similar to that used by magazines or newspapers so it is easy to understand for
everyone. The main features of the novel are:
-concentration on contemporary reality
-concentration on contemporary reality
- realistic details
-new of the stories
NOVELS AND MIDDLE CLASS
Readers of novels came mainly from the commercial and mercantile middle class as well. The
novel was born to meet the needs of the new middle class whose vision was practical and realistic
and which required original stories relating to ordinary experience. The characters were
recognizable as people who lived in a world they shared with their readers: in Daniel Defoe's novel
Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist Robinson is a middle-class hero, with a lot of resourcefulness
and commercial wisdom. Faith in favor of God is reflected in Defoe's novels, which was a hallmark
of the Protestant, especially Puritans, of the middle class. Samuel Richardson's novels show the
respectable and pious side of the middle class. They are full of enthusiastic praise of virtues such
as temperance, economy, sobriety and modesty, all typically Bourgeois. Women were often
heroines of novels but also avid readers.
TIME AND PLACE
The detailed talism of the novel is mainly deduced from two elements: the time and the place
both undergo a radical change during the eighteenth century. time is no longer an eternal and
immutable power, whose presence made itself felt through death and physical degradation. The
detailed talism of the novel is mainly deduced from two elements: the time and the place both
undergo a radical change during the eighteenth century. time is no longer an eternal and
immutable power, whose presence made itself felt through death and physical degradation.
UTOPIAN FICTION
Utopian fiction in the Renaissance was also influenced by the realistic trend inaugurated by the
novel. thanks to Jonathan Swift's travels of Gulliver, the utopian tradition of narrating imaginary
worlds that are presented as real imperfect societies continues. Gulliver's travels include many
insights into geography such as longitude or latitude And even the protagonist himself recounts his
adventures with objective details of Robinson Crusoe.
very popular in the eighteenth century were epistolary novels which included, in the first phase,
letters written by a person or traveler in a real or imaginary country. Another more complex
phase, the second was inaugurated by Samuel Richardson with the drafting of Pamela, which
presents a correspondence of letters between different characters. Richardson's novelty was to
use the letter as a means of psychological analysis. a complete writer as in his texts there is also
the spatial awareness with the description of the interiors: he describes the clothes, the rooms,
books and furniture and all the scenarios presented in his writings.
PICARESQUE NOVEL
Another type of novel very popular in the eighteenth century was the picaresque novel, which told
the adventures of a young traveling hero Piacaro (vagabond) who manages to survive thanks to his
courage and his intelligence. he is not always a loyal character in fact he often tends to cheat and
not to follow the laws. in his travels he meets people of all kinds and this allows the author to
comment on the different ways of living. The archetype of the picaresque novel and Lazarillo De
Tormes or Don Quixote. the best writer of this tradition was Henri Fielding.
With his work he improves the picaresque novel. On the one hand he gives it a classical influence
by dividing the story into three parts: the adventures of the character Tom which begin in the
countryside, then on the street and finally in London. On the other hand, Tom's adventures are
not accidental but are part of a growth model: at the end of the work, the protagonist has become
responsible and reliable. With his comic style, Tom Jones Fielding celebrates the Christian
aristocratic virtues: courage and benevolence and generosity
The novel has undergone the influence of sentimentality. Many writers used love themes for their
stories and a style of writing that attached great importance to emotion. One of the examples of
this vision of writing is a "sentimental journey" by Laurence Stern which is half a story of a journey
and half a sentimental autobiography. During this trip York, the protagonist, is moved by the
episodes of a French farmer crying for his dead ass. This is a difference between the novel of this
century and the novel of previous centuries in which the protagonist was moved by places for
example.
The author is also known for another novel: Tristan Scandy who does not present a temporal
scheme or a plot, the narrating voice and the protagonist himself who describes his daily life and
his particular family with a sequence of quotes and flash backs. precisely due to the absence of the
plot and the temporal scheme, the novel is an example for the modern works of James Joyce and
Virginia Woolf.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Life and works.
Samuel Richardson was born in 1689 in Derbyshire into a lower middle-class family. When he was
quite young started working as a printer in London. At the age of 51, after becoming one of
London’s most reputable and prosperous printers, he became a novelist and in 1740 published
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded an epistolary novel about a young servant girl who is persecuted by
her master, a young nobleman. Despite its success, the book caused a great debate in England
about the way it represented the relationships between the different social classes. In 1747 he
published a second epistolary novel, called Clarissa.
In his old age Richardson was revered as a great novelist and a public figure. He died in London in
1761.
Richardson’s revolution.
Richardson is remembered as the first writer to dramatize letter-writing. In fact his epistolary
novels combine the urgency and direct speech of drama with an accurate and detailed description
of people, places and objects. For making his letters lively and intensely dramatic, as if they were
really "written to the moment", he uses many devices. For example, a typical letter opens with
Pamela, who for fear of Mr. B, hides the letter she was writing and pretends to embroider.
Such is the dramatic power of Richardson's novels that letters in them seem to have a life of their
own: they are interrupted, hidden, lost, found, stolen, given back and counterfeited.
Richardson’s historical importance. Richardson's historical importance is twofold. Firstly, he
reflected the rise to power of the new mercantile Protestant middle class in his novels, and in this
respect, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded is exemplary, because in the novel, the virtue that is
rewarded is that of a middle-class girl who doesn’t accept her noble master's love, until he marries
her. Instead, from a literary and historical perspective, Pamela anticipates the period of the French
Revolution and of Romanticism.
Richardson’s work represents the birth of the sentimental novel, and more specifically, he
introduced the theme of the persecuted virgin, which would be taken up by the Gothic novel
(second half of the 18th century) and survive well into the later phases of Romanticism and even
into modern fiction and film.

PAMELA, OR VIRTUE REWARDED

The first English bestseller.
Pamela was Samuel Richardson's first work of fiction and represents the first English bestseller. It
is an epistolary novel, in witch, most of the letters are written by Pamela Andrews, a young servant
girl, to her parents. Its publication was the subject of discussion, public debates and letters written
to journals, so much so that the ucountry was divided into "Pamelists" and "anti-Pamelists".
Imitations, sequels and parodies led Richardson to write his own sequel to the novel, in 1741. The
book was immediately popular in all Europe where it was soon translated into all the major
languages and turned into a play (in Italy, Carlo Goldoni wrote two comedies based on
Richardson's novel: Pamela nubile and Pamela maritata).
The debate on ‘virtue rewarded’. The reason for such widespread yet contrasted success was
implicit in the theme of the novel: to may readers Pamela was an heroine and hers was the
triumph of virtue or “virtue rewarded”, in fact she was a poor 15-year-old girl dares to resist her
master's improper sexual advances, and does so with a sense of the moral value of her resistance;
in the end she makes the young nobleman marry her on her own terms: he must aocept to lead a
sober, Christian married life. However, for some reading public, Pamela wasn’t so much a virtuous
girl as a crafty young lady, who tried to climb the social ladder becoming a nobleman's wife.
The triumph of the middle class. Quite aside from the moral question, Pamela was felt by many to
be a socially dangerous book, because she encouraged servant maids to oppose their masters'
wishes. In fact, Pamela, put forward the values of a middle class that prided itself on its rectitude
and morality as opposed to the freer lifestyle of the nobles.
When Pamela says "my soul is of equal importance with the soul of a princess" she is not just
making an obvious Christian statement, but also strongly stating her right to be respected quite
apart from her social status. The romance celebrate the union of England's two most powerful
classes: the aristocracy and the middle class. And, in real history as in the novel, it was the new
middle class that forced the aristocracy into acceptance of their ideals and way of life.
The first psychological novel. To make Pamela the first psychological novel is the ambiguity,
identified both in the presence of sexual violence in all of Richardson's novels, and in the lack of
clarity of the feelings of the heroines about their persecutors.
Richardson treated the study of the characters' feelings and their inner motivations with the
innovative epistolary technique.
The letters are in fact full of incidents, and the dialogues are mostly in direct speech. This
highlights Richardson's idea of letter-wiring, which was that the characters write their thoughts
and feelings immediately after an incident has occurred or an event taken place.

DANIEL DEFOE
Early life and education.
Daniel Defoe was born in 1660 in London into a Puritan family and studied at Newton Green, one
of the best dissenting academies, where he studied practical subjects such as geography,
economics, chemistry and modern languages, as well as more traditional subjects. In adulthood he
can be defined as a part-time writer or part-time businessman, because he frequently changed
jobs and dreamed of projects that would make him rich and respectable.
However, he went bankrupt due to his unfortunate speculations. In 1703 he was fined, pilloried
and imprisoned for satire. He also appeared to serve as a spy for both the Tory and Whig parties,
which changed rapidly according to the hopes of preference and enrichment. All these adventures
and experiences eventually entered his narrative.
The novelist.
In 1719 Defoe inaugurated his career as a novelist with the story of Robinson Crusoe, a
shipwrecked sailor who manages to survive 28 years on a desert island. The book was so
successful that he released four editions in just eight months.
Another great success was Moll Flanders (1722), a poor girl who, thanks to her physical beauty and
her skill, manages to make her way in the world. Other important works by Defoe are: Captain
Singleton (1720), which deals with a young adventurer who represents the romantic figure of the
noble and kind highwayman; then A Journal of the Plague Year is a detailed yet artistically written
report of the terrible plague that struck London in 1665 and finally, Memoirs of a Cavalier, which
recounts a series of adventures that take place during the Puritan Revolution.
The father of modern journalism. Defoe was a prolific writer and wrote almost exclusively in prose,
mainly essays, pamphlets and travel books. He has also written articles for newspapers and
magazines, in fact his role in laying the foundations of modern journalism is significant. In 1704 he
founded The Review, a periodical which lasted until 1713 in two different editions, one in London
and one in Edinburgh. Defoe's final years were a series of commercial and literary speculations
which, however, never made him rich. He died in London in 1731, alone and in debt.

ROBINSON CRUSOE
A modern myth.
Robinson Crusoe is Defoe's first novel and is considered one of the most popular books ever
written in any language, so much so that there were films, plays and comics inspired by it. Defoe
uses a popular theme in the novel and the narrator is Robinson, who tells his story when he was
shipwrecked on a desert island and remained there for 28 years.
Truth and fiction in Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe is considered the first modern novel,
because for the first time the author, through realistic elements, tries to pass fictional fiction as
true. Furthermore, it is a false autobiography, as the story is told in the first person. Adding to his
realism were the details Defoe provided about the protagonist: his name and surname, the part of
England he comes from, who his parents and relatives are and so on. Thus providing us with a
profile of his life.
The places that Robinson Crusoe visits in England and in distant countries are not generic but
carefully described and inserted in their geographical context. Time is accounted for in the most
accurate way. At some point in the story Robinson even begins to write a diary in which he records
everything that happens to him day after day and it is thanks to this that we are made to believe
an otherwise incredible story.
Robinson as a mercantile hero. Robinson Crusoe is a celebration of the British mercantile spirit
because in those years it was colonising the world, turning deserted areas into British settlements
and lucrative trading posts. Robinson is the archetype of the pioneer.
He is armed only with his own strength and intelligence, and a gun, and has the firm belief of a
Puritan that he has God on his side. He has been defined as the new homo æconomicus,
representative of the early 18th century British who established a trading empire in countries as
far away as Canada or India.
Robinson as the archetypal colonist.
Robinson Crusoe is also the archetype of the settler, as we can see especially in the final part of
the novel, after he met Friday. In fact, their relationship perfectly reflects that between settler and
native, or master and slave. Robinson's education of Friday closely mirrors the processes of
modern colonialism, which follow a regular pattern:
• first it is necessary to give the name: Robinson gives Friday a new name, which always aims to
remind the native of his debt to the white man. Friday, on the other hand, must call him "teacher";
• secondly, you need to have new (European) clothes: Robinson covers Friday's nudity by giving
him worn European clothes; Friday was very "pleased to see himself dressed almost as well as his
master";
• It is also important to learn a new (European) language: Robinson does not bother to learn
Friday's language, but teaches him enough English to be able to understand his teacher and follow
his orders;
• A new religion is also needed: Robinson teaches Friday the principles of Christianity; • Finally,
technical superiority is of great importance: Robinson never gives Friday a gun and is also careful
not to let him see how he loads his gun.
In summary, Robinson (the settler) has three great advantages over Friday (the colonised): a
technical advantage, in fact Robinson has more sophisticated weapons and tools, a linguistic
advantage, because they communicate only in Robinson's language and finally a cultural
advantage, in fact Friday is made to admit that the God of his nation is inferior to the Christian
God.
The story.
Robinson Crusoe, born in York and despite his father wanting him to be a middle-class man in his
native land, decides to venture by sea, leading a life both as a sailor and a merchant for several
years. During this time he is taken prisoner by the Moors in Africa, becomes a planter in Brazil and
even a slave trader. On one of his sea voyages, he is shipwrecked on a desert island off the coast of
South America, near the mouth of the Orinoco River. He is the only survivor and manages to
survive thanks to some of the things he saved from the shipwreck, and little by little, with great
effort, he Among the things saved from the ship were paper, pen and ink, with which he writes a
diary of his life on the island and a Bible, which he reads every day. During an exploratory trip to
the other side of the island where he lives, Robinson encounters a group of natives who are about
to kill one of them and using his gun, Robinson scares them and saves the prisoner.
He decides to call it Friday because it was on a Friday that he saved his life. The two live together
on the island, Robinson as master and Friday as his servant. One day, however, a British ship taken
over by a group of mutineers stops near the island. Robinson defeats the mutineers and saves the
legitimate crew, thus returning to England, after 28 years on the island and 35 years away from
England.