The xviii century

THE XVIII CENTURY

The XVIII century is called New Classical Age, or The Age of Reason or The Enlightenment.

SOCIETY:

From the political and social point of view, we have two relevant classes: town merchants who spent their time selling and buying; they are shoppers and brokers (cloth trade with Flanders), and country gentry (agriculture and grazing) who is the low aristocracy and, instead of the French aristocracy, they don't live in castles.

These two classes represented the middle classes and they had also the political power in Parliament: town merchants were represented in the House of Commons and they belonged to the Whig party, while country gentry were represented in the House of Lords and they belonged to the Tory party.

There were also some differences in the religion: town merchants belonged to the Low Church while country gentry belonged to the High Church. In the Low Church there were the heirs of the Puritans, also called Methodists or Presbyterians, and they had three ideals: God and Bible (everything was seen through the Bible), Work (the idleness is the worst sin) and Individualism; everything else is sinful. Their art was dedicated to God. The High Church were the Anglican, a church founded by Henry VIII, closer to the Catholic; the only difference between Catholic and Anglicans is that the head of the Anglicans' Church is the queen and not the Pope, but by the theological point of view there are no differences.

On the edges of the society there were also peasants and aristocracy, who was from French origins.

In the XVII century, the middle classes got the political power from the aristocracy by buying aristocratic titles. So the XVIII century is the triumph of the Middle classes. The aristocracy left England to go to France.

The philosophical conception of the society is a chain of being, where every people was a link. Thomas Gray praises the stoical acceptance of their "obscure destiny". No one thought about the rebellion because that meant to commit the sin of pride, that is the worst sin. Shakespeare's tragedies, like Antonio, happen because of someone's rebellion, because someone breaks the chain.

ART

Before this period, there was only an aristocratic art, because of the aristocratic influence in the society; so it is a difficult art, for few people with time, money and culture. But the middle classes spent their time working, so they were not cultured, they could read only the Bible. For this reason, they suffered from an inferiority complex, because they didn't understand the classics, although they made efforts to do that. They needed a new type of art, so their art became the novel. It was easy, so everybody could understand; entertaining, that means interesting; it told about realistic stories, without supernatural things but only ordinary people; and it was long, so the reader had a lot of time to meditate. The artists wrote long novels because now they lived on the books they sold, and their books came out by weekly instalments, so the longer their works were, the more money they made. Each chapter began with a short summary of the previous one.

POSITION OF THE ARTISTS

Before the XVIII century, artists lived on the mecenatism, that means that they were financially protected by aristocracy; now they lived on the money of their books, so they were financially independent.

The most famous novelists are:

D. Defoe: is considered the inventor of the novel, with his work "Robinson Crusoe": the protagonist wasn't an ordinary man because he hadn't any moment of desperation; he was a self-made man and he thought that English civilisation was the best. This novel represents the beginning of the English colonialism. The modern anti-hero is symbolised by Leopold Bloom, a character of Joice's Ulysses. Defoe wrote also "Moll Flanders", the first book whose the main character was a girl, who came from the country; she was beautiful and clever and she used men to take their money, so she took advantages from stupid men. This work is a critic to aristocracy. Another hero is the supernatural one, symbolised by Milton's Lucifer.

J. Swift: his masterpiece is "Gulliver's Travels".

S. Richardson: he was obsessed with the women; he wrote "Pamela", that is the opposite of "Moll Flanders", and "Clarissa", an epistolary novel, so each chapter is a letter.

H. Fielding: he wrote "Tom Jones", a story of an adventurer.

L. Stern: he wrote "Tristram Shandy", that is thought as a modern work, with a very ordered type of society.

William Hoggart, a painter, made a painted that is called "Gin Lane", that represents a street with prostitutes and killers, like a nightmare.