The augustian age

THE AUGUSTIAN AGE

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The 18^th century is often referred to by critics and historians as the 'Augustian age'. This is due to similarities with the era of the roman emperor Augustus; under him the Roman empire enjoyed power, prosperity and stability, the very qualities which characterised GB in this century, when

empire was growing;

trade flourished;

parliamentary control over monarchs had been established.

At political level the 18^th century saw the decrease in the power of monarchy in favour of the parliament:

It started with the so-called 'Bloodless' or 'Glorious Revolution' [1688] when James II has removed from the throne in a bloodless revolution to remove the absolutist theory of the divine hereditary right of monarchs.

William of Orange, who had married one of James's daughters, Mary, was invited by the parliament to succeed to the throne, but the new royal couple, before they had accepted the crown, was to sign the 'Bill of rights' [1689] which limited the power of the monarchy: it land down that the monarch could not raise taxes or maintain the army without the consent of the parliament.

The power of the parliament was further extended when the Scottish parliament was united to the English one with the 'Act of Union' [1707]

Consequently the nation had become a constitutional monarchy, a state ruled by a sovereign who had to obey the constitution and the laws of the country. From then on it was impossible for a monarch to rule without parliament. The Crown and the parliament had to collaborate and parliament was the leading partner.

The interests of the land-owning families were represented at court by 2 factions: the 'Whigs' (the term originally referred to Scottish rebels) who represented the emerging industrial and commercial classes and the 'Tories' (it was an Irish term linked to papist outlaws) who preserved the alliance between the crown and the nobility. In this century the first ones improved their power. The Whigs were favoured by the votes of the bourgeoise.

In 1714 Queen Anne (Mary's sister and successor) died after his sons did. The crown passed to George I, a descendant of the House of Hanover. Ha was a German who could not even speak English and was more concerned with what was happening in his native land. With him the monarch's power decrease even further.

The government of the country was handed over to a Prime Minister presiding over a cabinet of Ministers who had to agree on all major points of policy.

One of the chief minister was the Whig Robert Walpole who held office for over 20 years and whose policy was based on mercantile expansion.

The accession of George II made no difference to the dependence of the Crown on the Whigs. Clever politicians acquired more and more importance in the government of the country; they and not the monarch were now the real power.

Britain took part in the European 'War of Succession' at the beginning of the century and again in the 1740's and 1750's.

At home it had to face a series of uprising by the Jacobities (Scottish and Catholic supporters of the male descendants of James II); these revolts culminated in the final defeat at the 'battle of Gulloden' in 1746.

The only great blow to the British power and prestige in this period came with the deterioration of relations with the American colonies and the consequent rebellion.

As a matter of the fact, the British settlers in America were not happy with the rule of their mother country: they resented the taxes, they had to pay and had no representatives in the British parliament to protect their interests. With the slogan 'No taxation without representation' the American Revolution broke out in 1775.

The colonists uprose and proclaimed 'the Declaration of Independence' [1776]

When the treaty of peace with America was signed in 1783, Britain ceded all her territory south of Canada to the 13 American colonies, which set about transforming themselves into the USA with George Washington as their president and their own American constitution.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Britain was the first nation in the world to industrialise, even if the wealthiest country in Europe was France. The conditions and circumstances that favoured Britain were the following:

a capital rapidly increasing through agricultural improvements and commercial expansion and available for industrial investment;

a monopoly of trade thanks to the growing colonies;

a great merchant marine and a powerful fleet;

a good share in the slave trade;

a good canal and road system;

an enterprising and wealthy middle class;

a steady government which favoured the expansion of commerce and agriculture;

the availability of raw materials like cotton and natural resources like coal and iron one coming from the colonies.

In the 18^th century new farming methods were introduced and farming machinery was improved. The old system of open field farming (each peasant farmed rented strips of ground and could graze his animals on the common land) began to be abandoned. Landowners began to hedge off (enclose) their land into areas called enclosures.

The farmers followed the way of the four-course rotation of crops: instead of leaving one third of the land unused every year to allow the soil to recover its fertility, in each field they grow wheat one year, turnips the next, then barley and finally clover. Turnips and clover enriched the soil and provided food for the animals throughout the winter, so that they didn't have to be killed in autumn and their meet preserved. With the enclosure system land animals would no more trample the crops, selective breeding was introduced to produce stronger and healthier animals.

Early in the century Britain had a reputation for its manufactures (for example woollen clothes).

But then the cotton became popular; people in Britain and Europe wanted cotton and the demand grew. First it was manufactured in people's homes: the so called 'domestic system' cottage industry', where most of the energy came from human muscles, but soon new machines were invented to make the process faster.

The first of them was the 'flying shuttle' invented by Kay, followed by Hargreaves's 'Spinning Jenny', Arkwrigh's 'frame' and Cartwright's power loom. These inventions could not be used in people's houses, so factories were built and cotton industry was transformed.

In a factory people worked together in large groups, but the machines were all important: the workers were just a form of power to operate them. No machines had guards or emergency breaks; women and children were employed, and children, being small, were given many of the dangerous jobs to do, like crawling under the machines to clear blockages.

Iron soon replaced wood in making industry products. The growth of the iron industry and the steam engines - which used coal-fired boilers- made the demand for coal higher. Most of the coal came from the mines in north-east England. Britain became the leading iron producer in Europe. The iron production made it possible to build new machinery for other industries; as more machines were built, so too were more factories.

The increasing production of all kinds of good needed cheap and reliable transport. The only good roads were the Roman ones.

But it was no long before industrialists realised that heavy, bulky items could be carried on water more easily; moreover the main advantage of transport by water was that it was cheap, so during this century over 6000 km of new canals were dug. The canal side became the favoured spot for new manufactures just as industrial sites are placed near motorways today.

Then several inventions came together to create the age of railways which speeded the industrialisation of Britain (for example the invention of locomotive) and caused, later, the growth of big cities.

The main source of wealth was trade. By the end of the 18^th century Britain was the most powerful trading nation in the world. It exported textiles, coal, manufactures goods, silver and imported raw cotton, tobacco, sugar from the West Indies, tea, silk and spices from India, silk from China, furs and fish from Canada.

The social effects of the Industrial Revolution were enormous:

it increased the gap between rich and poor;

it caused the growth of a large and wealthy and manufacturing class in the towns and the enrichment of the big landowners in the country.

It is in this period that money started to become an instrument of power which influenced not only social changes but cultural changes as well.

The rising merchant class (the 'middle class') lacked both cultural background and social status. They looked to the aristocracy ad a model of refinement and aimed to improve their manners and language. Their desire to be accepted into the aristocracy increased the demand for greater educational opportunities. Marriage between the rich daughters of the bourgeoisie and aristocrats become common and a further element in social change. As education spread, so did literacy and reading as a form of entertainment. The creation of circulating libraries was a further element in social change as they also helped to spread literacy.

THE PHILOSOPHIC CONTEXT

Calling the 18^th century the 'Age of Reason' highlights the general mood of the time when toleration became the general tendency of the country and 'stability, order, discipline and balance' became its catchwords. The rational approach to experience was considered superior to the emotional response: the head ruled the heart.

The world of philosophy reflected this contemporary attitude; this period saw the publication of Hume's 'Essay concerning human understanding'.

The most influential philosopher of the first half of the 18^th century was John Locke, whose rational, empirical theory of cognition focused on the individual demanding religious and political freedom.

In his 'Essay concerning human understanding' he:

had emphasised reason as the dominant faculty of human beings,

had denied the existence of the innate ideas and stated that all human reactions were the result of worldly experience.

The main source of human knowledge was the individual experience gained through senses. Locke and Newton, whose discoveries explained the universe in logical terms, had put science in the top ranks of learning.

Also the label 'Enlightenment' stress the rational trend of the period which saw remarkable progresses in natural sciences and in the application of the scientific method to other areas of life.

THE LITERARY CONTEXT

The 18^th century was the time when publishing became a profitable business and a capitalist organisation started to develop in the world of letters too owing the spread of literary and of reading as a form of entertainment among the wealthy middle class.

The first professional writers appeared: men of letters no longer supported by a rich patron but earning their living by essays and books.

Journalism flourished and no fewer than 250 periodicals were published. The growing reading public required information to be presented in a simple and interesting way. Consequently a new prose style emerged , aiming at clarity, precision and logical coherent flow and organisation of ideas.

Such a style was used in the 2 most important periodicals of the time: 'The Tatler' and 'The Spectator' . These journals set out to inform and instruct their readers, trying to establish a common language and code of behaviour for the landed gentry and the town traders and manufacturers. They also contributed to the formation of the public cognition.

The new periodical began to circulate in the London coffee-houses. These were fashionable places where gossip and games mingled with talk on economic, politic and scientific speculation. There wealthy traders, literary men and artists used to meet, read or hear the latest news, discuss current affairs and do business deals.

The reading public was changing quite rapidly and taste for reading was spreading. Better educated, with more leisure for themselves, middle-class women began to develop a taste for books. Their increasing presence among the reading public inspired, in the end, new subject matter in some writers and eventually infused a new note of sentimentalism into some of their works.

THE ROMANTIC AGE (1789 - 1830)

Express emotional experience and individual feeling

Imagination gains a primary role in the process of poetic composition (the very existence and shape of the world depended entirely on the vision of the individual imagination ). The eye of the imagination allows the Romantic poets.

a - to see beyond surface reality and apprehend a truth beyond the powers of reason:

b - to re-create and modify the external world of experience.

The role of the poet : he is "a visionary prophet" or "a teacher" whose task are:

a - to mediate between man and nature

b - to point out the evils of society

c - to give voice to the ideals of beauty, truth and freedom.

4 - Poets appreciate the natural world and their works are rich in description of natural elements and landscape. These are seldom describe for their own sake since they mirror the poet's mood and feelings.

The Romantic poets regard Nature "as a living force" and, in a pantheistic vein, as the expression of God in the universe. Nature becomes the main source of inspiration, a stimulus to think, a source of comfort and joy, and a means to convey moral truths.

6 - New individual style through the choice of a language and subject suitable to poetry:

a - more vivid and familiar words begin to replace the artificial circumlocutions of poetic diction

b - syntax make fewer concessions to the demands of rhyme and metre

c - symbol and images lose their decorative function to assume a vital role as the outer, visible vehicles of the inner visionary perceptions

d - as for the verse form there is a return to the past forms such as "the ballad", modified into the literary ballad, the Italian " terza rima" and " ottava rima", " the sonnet", and " blanck verse; the " lyric poems" achieve a freedom, flexibility and intensity rarely equalled.

7 - The great English Romantic poets are usually group into two generation : the first generation, often called " the Lake poets" ( Wordsworth and Coleridge - attempt to theorise about poetry -) and the second generation ( Byron , Shelley and Keats - ideals of French Revolution and they experience political disillusionment -).

8 - Sublime: it is a term describing something that is dignified, grand, fascinating yet materious, frightening, powerfully emotive in literature. The world comes from the classical world, idea and speculations about the sublime were discussed by 18^th century writers

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770 - 1850)

1 - Poet : " is a man speaking to men" . He is not a man in an ivory tower but a man among men, writing about what interest mankind.

2 - Role of poet : poet has the role to make poetry simple and understanding by people. He focus is attention on the response to the object of nature. He becomes a teacher who shows men how to understand their feelings and improve their moral being.

3 - The task of the poet is didactic; he is a link between men and poetry. The poet has the greater sensibility and the ability to penetrate to the heart of things.

4 - Poetry : should deal with everyday situations or incident and with ordinary people, especially humble and rural people. The reason lies in the fact that in low and rustic life man is more direct, nearer to his purer passions. This poetry offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man and nature, of the influences, insights, emotions and sensations which arise from this contact, rather than precise and objective observation of natural phenomena.

5 - Language and objects : the language is simple and the objects mentioned are homely and called by their ordinary names.

6 - Nature and Man : man and nature are inseparable: man exists not outside the natural world but as an active participant in it.

7 - Nature is a moral guide which means :

a - something that includes both inanimate and human nature, each is a part of the same whole. It comforts man in sorrow, it is a source of pleasure and joy, it teaches man to love and to act in a moral way, it is the seat of the spirit of the universe

b - the world of the sense perception. Above all the sensibility of the eye and ear through which poet can perceive both the "beauteos forms" of nature and the sound of the winds water, or the silence of secluded places. Sensations lead to simple thoughts, which later combine into complex and organised ideas.

8 - the three stages of development of the mind correspond to the three ages of man : childhood, youth and adulthood. What the child sees is both more imaginative and more vivid than the perceptions of the adult; and the child's experiences , retained in the memory, provide food for future years thought.

9 - memory : is a major force in the process of growth of the poet's mind and moral character, and it is memory that allows Wordsworth to give poetry its life and power. Through the re-creative power of memory, the emotion is reproduced and purified in poetic forms so that a second emotion, "kindred" to the first one, is generated.

10 - Wordsworth abandons the heroic couplet; he almost always uses blank verse.

DAFFODILS: this poem records the experience of a walk the poet went for with his sister Dorothy, near their home in Lake District. It in he conveys his love for nature. It is only superficially about the flowers that he remember so vividly. What the poem offers in fact is an account of the experience of poetic creation.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ( 1772 - 1834)

1 - Was born in Devonshire. His father was a learned clergyman and a scholar of Maths, Latin , Greek and Oriental Languages. Coleridge soon displays prodigious talents as a natural orator but ha never graduate.

2 - He is heavily influenced by French revolutionary ideals which make him an enthusiastic republican. After the disillusionment with the French Revolution he and the poet Southey plan to establish a utopian community in Pennsylvania under the name of " Pantisocracy" where every economic activity is done in common in order to provide labour and peace and create the best possible environment for everyone.

3 - In 1797 he meet Wordsworth and they start an important collaboration which proves to be crucial in terms of Coleridge's creative output. The most of hi best poetry:

a - The Rime of the ancient Mariner, his masterpiece, is concerned with the supernatural and represents a triumph of the Gothic taste for the Phantoms bred by darkness and fear -Lyrical Ballad -

b - Christabel, an unfinished poem, set in the Middle Ages, about a young girl under a witch's spell

c - Kubla Khan, again unfinished, supposedly composes under the influence of opium, Coleridge describe this dream-like poem as a psychological curiosity.

4 - After his return to Germany his political inclinations become increasingly conservative and led to rejection of republicanism.

5 - He then spend a period of solitude in Malta, after which he return to England and begin a career lecturing on literary concerns and in journalism even though his addiction to opium continues to plague him. He lays the foundations of Shakespearian criticism. He dies in 1834.

6 - Poet's task : is to write about extraordinary events in a credible way. It is in this light that the effort at making extraordinary situations familiar and realistic can be fully appreciate. In fact Coleridge presents each action and each situations in a concrete form in which the details are selected for their appeal to common experience; unnatural these events may be , they originate from natural elements, and for this reason they can be considered real.

7 - Coleridge's poetic output is relatively small because he is insecure and inconstant. In addition to many prose works, including literary criticism, lectures, plays, journalistic articles,, and essays on politics, philosophy and religion, the small number of poems he writes have become an essential part of English literary history.

8 - Imagination : a sovereign creative power. He distinguishes between:

a - PRIMARY IMAGINATION : a fusion of perception and the human individual power to produce images. It is also the power to give chaos a certain order, to give the material of perception a certain shape

b - SECONDARY IMAGINATION : is the poetic faculty, which not only give shape and order to a given world, but build new worlds.

9 - Fancy : which, though on a higher level than mere perception, is based on the power of association of material already provided and subject to the rational law of judgement. Fancy enable poet to blend various " ingredients"into beautiful images. In using the secondary imagination Coleridge believes the poet is free to rise the 18^th-century conventions and the data of experience in order to create something in the true sense of the world, and then awaken the mind from the " lethargy of custom".

10 - Nature : he sees nature and the material world in a sort of neo Platonic interpretation, as a reflection of the perfect world of "Ideals". In other words, the material world is nothing but the projection of the real world of the Ideals on the flux of time.Thus Coleridge believe that natural images carries abstract meanings and he uses them in his most visionary poems..

11 - Setting : exotic and medieval period.

12 - Language : archaic, connected to the old ballads, rich in alliteration, repetition and onomatopea.

GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788 - 1824)

1 - LIFE:

a - Descends from two aristocratic families that are rather undisciplined and violent: his father is a dissolute fortune hunter and his mother has an uncontrollably irritable temper. He is extremely handsome but he was born with a lame foot, a deformity with which he struggles all his life.

b - He set out on a tour of Spain, Portugal, Malta, Albania, Greece and the Middle East, where he gathers experiences originating the first "two cantos". Thus he becomes a literary and social celebrity because his plays suit the public.

c - In 1815 he marries Annabella Milbanke but their marriage collapsed. In 1816 he leaves England never to return. He lives in Geneva where he becomes a friend of Shelley.

d - In 1819 he moves to Milan where he becomes involved in the patriotic plots against Austrian role and eventually he goes to Pisa to join Shelley. After Shelley's death he grows bored with his life and decides to commit himself to the Greek struggle of independence from Turkey. He organises an expedition and devotes himself to training the troops in the town of Missolonghi where he dies in 1824, struck by a severe fever.

2 - The setting: exotic and the Middle East lands.

3 - The Byronic Hero: is a passionate, moody, restless and mysterious man, who hides some horrible sin or secret in his past. He is characterises by proud individualism and rejects the conventional moral rules of society. He is an outsider, isolate and attractive at the same time. He is of  noble birth, but wild and rough in his manners; his looks are hard, but handsome. He has a great sensibility to nature and beauty, but he has grown bored with the excesses and excitements of the world. Women cannot resist him, but he refuses their love; men either admire or envy him.(hidden suffering, rebellion and eroticism).

4 - Style:

a - he continues to refer the 18^th century poetic diction

b - he uses a great variety of metres

c - strong interest in the expressive potentiality of colloquial language ( the conversational style and wide range of topics accommodate an exceptional range of vocabulary.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792 - 1822)

1 - LIFE:

a - he Is the eldest son of a wealthy, authoritarian and conservative Member of Parliament, and heir to a considerable fortune, but his childhood was no happy.

b - he sends to Eton college where he is nicknamed "mad Shelley" because of his eccentricity and his criticism of social tyranny. In 1810 he goes to Oxford from which he is expelled because of his refuting the existence of God on empirical grounds ( The necessity of Atheism).

c - in 1809 he marries Harriet Westbrooke, the daughter of a wealthy tavern-keeper. They have two children and move from place to place ( in Ireland Shelley makes revolutionary propaganda against Catholicism and English rules)

d - he lives in an atmosphere of conservativism which is hostile not only to any radical ideas but even to political moderation. He rebels against existing religion, law and costumes; he becomes a republican, a vegetarian, and an advocate of free love. He I interested in the occult sciences and in scientific experiments

e - returned to England Shelley and his wife understand that their marriage is unsuccesfull and separates. Shelley elopes with Mary WollstonecraftGodwin and they go to Switzerland, where they meet Byron.

f - in 1818 Shelley leaves England for good and goes to live in Italy, in voluntary exile. In 1822 Shelley's intense life is cut short by an accident: while sailing near Livorno he is drowned during a storm.

2 - Themes:

a - restless spirit, refusal of social conventions, political oppression and any form of tyranny, and his faith in a better future.

b - the emotional extemes ( accuses him of immature narcissism)

c - lack of finish

d - principles of freedom and love which he regards as remedies for the short comings and evils of society. Through love he believes man can overcome any political, moral and social conventions

e - Shelley uses the Gothic symbol of wanderer to explain his vision of history and to teach that individual violence is the product of social inequity.

3 - Idealism ( ceaseless search for new ideals):

a - a hope in the moral freedom of man and a religious pantheism (the anarchical egoism is turned into a humanitarian brotherhood)

b - mystical and intellectual belief in a society ruled by ethics and wisdom

c - idea of reality as an illusory image of the true reality of eternity and of an idealistic pantheism

d - it is love and sympathy that create the intimate fusion within the matter, that is, the nature and the human mind

4 - Poetry is the expression of imagination, endows with a moral essence, and understand as revolutionary creativity, seriously meant to change reality.

5 - The role of the poet: the poet is bound to suffer and isolates himself from the rest of the world, projecting himself into a better future and hiding beneath a mask of stubborn hope. The poet is at the same time a prophet and a Titan challenging the cosmos

6 - The poet's task: is to help mankind to reach an ideal world where freedom, love and beauty are delivered from their enemies (such as tyranny, destruction, alienation)

7 - Nature: is a beautiful veil that hides the eternal truth of the Divine Spirit. His approach to nature is also instrumental, since it provides him with images, such as the wind, the clouds, the skylark, and symbols for the creation of his cosmic schemes. Finally nature represents the favourite refuge from the disappointment and injustice of the ordinary world and the interlocutor of his melancholy dreams and of his hopes for a better future.

8 - Style :he is a master of traditional verse forms ( such as the Spenserian stanza)