18世纪背景知识1.pptVIP

The 18th CenturyThe Age of Enlightenment in England Historical Background 1.The Revolution of 1688. 2.Two parties: the liberal Whigs and the conservative Tories came into being. However another party also existed, the Jacobites, who aimed to bring the Stuarts back to the throne. 3. the rapid development of social life The public movement: the Enlightenment The eighteenth-century England is also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive movement which flourished in France and swept through the whole Western Europe at the time. The Enlightenment was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeoisie against feudalism. The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. 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. They called for a reference to order, reason and rules. They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and relations, every superstition, injustice and oppression was to yield place to eternal truth, eternal justice and natural equality. The enlighteners advocated universal education. They believed that human beings were limited, dualistic, imperfect, and yet capable of rationality and perfection through education. the great enlighteners Famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers are: Alexander Pope Joseph Addison Sir Richard Steele Jonathan Swift Samuel Richardson Daniel Defoe Henry Fielding Samuel Johnson Literature It is an age of prose rather than poetry. There are three main divisions: 1. the reign o