The age of Enlightment (启蒙时期的英国文学).pptVIP

After the tempestous events of the 17th century, England entered a period of a comparatively peaceful development. The Revolution of 1688, which banished the last of the Stuart kings and called William of Orange (husband of king James II’ daughter Mary) to the throne, marks the end of the long struggle for political freedom in England.;Hostile parties: the liberal Whigs, the conservative Tories. The rapid development of social life. In the first half of the eighteenth century some three thousand public coffeehouses and a large number of private clubs appeared in London alone; and the sociability of these clubs was typical of all English cities. ;The influence of this social life on literature was inevitable. Nearly all writers frequented the coffeehouses, and the matters discussed there became subjects of literature; hence the enormous amount of eighteen-century writing devoted to transient affairs, to politics, fashions, gossip.;With the advent of the 18th century, in England, as in other European countries, there sprang into life a public movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment on the whole, was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation(停滞), prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They attempted to place all branches of science at the service of mankind by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements of the people.; English enlighteners differed from those of France. While the philosophers and writers of France “cleared the minds of men for the coming revolution,’ the English enlighteners set no revolutionary aims before them.;The first representatives of the English Enlightenment were Joseph Addison(1672-1717), and Richard Steele (1672-1929), the publishers of a moralistic journal of The Spectator, and the poet Alexander Pope(1688-1744).; The Enlightenment European intellectual movement reached its high point in th