Embedded Files
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL. 18TH CENTURY LITERATURE
Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan by Thomas Gainsborough
The 18th century was a time of amazing expansion for England. The nation started to be called Great Britain after an Act of Union in 1707 which joined Scotland to England and Wales. Britain became the empire on which the sun never set... This was the time of the Industrial and the Agricultural Revolution. New inventions improved manufacturing and British trade with the rest of the world grew enormously. There was a fluent movement of people: from the country to the new cities and from the British Isles to the new colonies.
In Literature, the profession of writing became more and more important. Journalism and magazines formed and reflected the opinions of the new middle classes and the novel started to be regarded as a higher form of literary expression, popular among the growing number of middle class readers, many of them women.
http://www.liu.se/isk/amnen/engelska/kurshemsidor/bcs/eighteen_cent.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustan_literature#The_novel
1- Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, followed a little later by Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding are considered the fathers of the English novel. They gave this genre a strong moral position in the 18th century. Match these writers with their most popular novels:
Pamela, Moll Flanders, Joseph Andrews, A Modest Proposal, Robinson Crusoe, Clarissa, Gulliver´s Travels and Tom Jones.
http://www.online-literature.com/defoe/crusoe/
http://www.bartleby.com/65/rc/RchrdsnS.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9380006?query=jonathan%20swift&ct
2- The story of Robinson , told by a first-person narrator, has been interpreted either as a story of survival in praise of the human spirit, or as an example of how the new society brought its values, religion and selfish behaviour to any place it colonized.
Read the beginning of Robinson Crusoe and answer the following question: Who was Robinson and what was his family like?
http://www.online-literature.com/defoe/crusoe/1/
3- Gulliver´s Travels involves strong social criticism and a satire against the human vices of the times. The novel is divided in four parts:
A- A Voyage To Lilliput: where very small inhabitants fight their neighbouring enemies.
What endless rivalry do they represent?
B- A Voyage to Brobdingnag: where the people are enormous and whose king decides that the natives of the English society are “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”
Use the dictionary to translate this quotation.
C- A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubdubdribb, and Luggnagg: where a new target is the object of the writer´s satire.
Which one?
D- A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms: where humans are not the rulers but the most powerless and imperfect living beings.
Who are the most powerful and perfect ones?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels
4- Pamela is a novel which has been considered to have an influence on the new direction the novel would take later, towards psychological analysis and introspection.
What literary form or technique, used by the writer, helped the reader feel this sort of intimacy with the protagonist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela
5- Joseph Andrews is a story told by a third person narrator who often puts in his own ironic point of view. Originally it was intended to be a parody of another important novel of the time, showing the male counterpoint to the female protagonist of the latter.
Which novel are we talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding
6- The most unusual novel of the time was Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne. This is a long comic story which plays with time, plot and character. Sterne was one of the first writers to use what came to be known as the Stream of Consciousness technique, later on masterfully used by notable writers like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf.
Look this term up in the encyclopedia or the dictionary and explain what it consists of.
oplease.com/encyclopedia/http://www.inf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristram_Shandy
7- Towards the end of the 18th century, the novel took a new direction that would go on through the beginning of the 19th century: the fashion for the Gothic started.
Matthew Lewis´s The Monk (1796) is often considered the most completely Gothic 18th century novel, and it was a great success at the time.
Do you know why this kind of horror novels which developed the imaginative range going beyond realism and exploring extreme feelings were called Gothic?
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9037491?query=gothic&ct
8- The English literary period between 1700 and 1760 approximately is sometimes referred to as Augustan literature. The name derives from George I wishing to be seen as Caesar Augustus , who died in AD 14. His period was considered as the high point of Roman culture and they wanted their own age to be similarly important to English culture. Outside of poetry, however, the Augustan era is generally known by other names. One is the age of Neoclassicism. Other is the Age of Reason.
Augustan poets hoped to write in the formal and classical style of the best writers in Latin. Satire became the main form of poetic expression.
Alexander Pope, the master of ironic observation, is a major exponent of this kind of poetry and he is considered Dryden´s successor.
What´s the name of one of his most famous poems, which is a satire about a family quarrel over a bit of hair?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustan_literature
9- During the 18th century there was an increasing demand for the printed word, and writing became a profession. Many famous newspapers and magazines were started at this time, and most of the great writers of the time were also journalists. They were therefore important in expressing ideas and a point of view, setting standards of taste and judgement, and influencing the values of society.
Find out the names of two important politicians and writers of the time who were friends and founded more than one of these popular publications.
10- Read the initial goals of perhaps the most famous early magazine, The Spectator, at the following site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectator_%281711%29
In your opinion, which of the goals mentioned could still be the objectives of nowadays´ newspapers or magazines and which are not?
Google Sites
Report abuse