The long 18th Century

Question 1

Timeline

Answer 1

From the Restoration to the 18th century:
- Charles II: Reign: 1660 – 1685
- c
→ Beginning of the constitutional monarchy: Bill of Rights 1689
→ Development of political party system: Whigs (liberal) and Tories (conservative)

The early 18th Century:
- 1707: Union of Scotland and Ireland: Great Britain

Question 2

Key aspects of 18th Century history

Answer 2

Colonialism & slave trade: political expansionism; colonial goods; Triangular slave trade

Industrial revolution: transition from a primarily agricultural society to manufacturing, mining,
engineering; 1776 steam engine James Watt; rural society → urban society

Question 3

Social changes

Answer 3

• Rise of the bourgeois middle class
• Transformation of the public sphere → rise of democratic ideals; decline of feudal rules
• New forms of serial publications and journals (The Tatler, The Spectator) → new form of
  public discourse → coffee houses (access to media)

Question 4

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

Answer 4

• philosophy of the 18th century (philosophy of reason based on
  Enlightenment) influences (his) literature
• Important works: Essay on Criticism (1711), Essay on Man (1732/34)

Question 5

Satire

Answer 5

political & religious; aiming to reveal the hypocrisies of the contemporary English society
- based on the fundamental
understanding of the age as characterised by general moral, cultural and political decline especially affecting the arts → mocking satire directed against general distaste
- took the position of a critic defending reason, humanistic
learning, good taste and public virtue

Question 6

Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)

Answer 6

• took up Irish themes; often criticises the English and English
  politics
• Gulliver’s Travels (1726): fiction / travel report; important satire; first read/published as a children’s book; overall pessimistic book

Question 7

Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731)

Answer 7

• after 1700: successful career as a writer → novels, political poems,
  pamphlets

Robinson Crusoe:
- 18th century → rise of the bourgeois novel → said to be the first of its genre
- adventure and travel narrative; fictitious but takes travel narratives as a role model
- can be read as propaganda for colonialism and for settling in the new world → pushing and
supporting international slave trade
- life on the island: filled with religious reflections
- novel combines enlightenment details with the narrative of a religious conversion

Question 8

Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754)

Answer 8

• successful playwriter and novelist
• most famous novel: Tom Jones in 1749: picaresque novel about a foundling Tom Jones
• set against the background of the 45 → the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745
  (protestant groups against the Jacobite Catholic army)

Question 9

Laurence Sterne (1713 – 1768)

Answer 9

• born in Ireland → 1748 left Ireland for England
• rise of the middle-class novel → first anti-novel: Tristram Shandy → ridicules all the foundations
  that novels are built on