英国文学Chapter 4 Eighteenth Century English Literature.ppt

Chapter 4 Eighteenth Century English Literature Joyce CONTENTS Introduction to Neoclassicism Background Features Representatives Background Time Span: 1660-1798 Social Turbulence Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 the Great Plague of 1665, 70,000 died in London the Great London Fire, 2/3 homeless the Glorious Revolution in 1689 constant strife in politics: the monarch and the parliament; the Tories and the Whigs - over the control of the parliament and government, between opposing religious sects such as the Roman Catholicism, the Anglican Church and the Dissenters, between the ruling class and the laboring poor, etc. In short, it was age full of conflicts and divergence of values. Economical Background: the work-shop of the world the fast development of England as a nation Abroad, a continuous increase of colonial wealth and trade provided England with a market. And at home in the country, Acts of Enclosure were putting more land into fewer privileged rich landowners and forcing thousands of small farmers and tenants off land to become wage earners in industrial towns. Features (熟悉) 1. The eighteenth-century England is also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Ahteenth-century England is also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. 2. The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 3. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. 4. The enlighteners celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science.They held that rationality or reason should be the only, the final cause of any human thought and activities. Genres and Representatives （熟悉） Poetry: the early stage John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson Novels: the mid-century Daniel Defoe Henry Fielding John Dryden Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Life and Works 1. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), a posthumous child, was born in Dublin, Ireland, of an English family. 2. 1689-16