15. Poetry in Age of reason

• 18th century
• age of balance
• in art the spirit of this period was CLASSICAL – classicism
• more important social conventions than individual conventions

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

• the greatest poet in this period
• son of successful merchant, he had money and spare time too
• his work has a middle – class basis
• classical poet
• his works are philosophical, critical and satirical
  
  
• Ode to Solitude
• Pastorals
• Essay on Criticism
• Essay on Man
• The Rape of the Lock – mock – heroic style (absurdly dignified style), where the joke lies in the disparity btw. the trivial subject and the high – flown language.
• Moral Essays
• Epistles and Satires } sharp satire
• Imitations of Horace
• Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Young Lady - here he shows his own weaknesses

16. Prose in the Age of Reason

• Beginnings of the Newspaper
• Interesting literary sideline of the 17 century
• Civil War stimulated a public appetite for news
• Restoration period was interested with man and affairs, information services in the coffee-houses

Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731)
-he was a journalist
-he is a father of the modern periodical

• the Review – progenitor of a long line of “well-informed” magazines
• Shortest Way with the Dissenters – satire, who don’t belong to the Church of England should be hanged, he was imprisoned for this lit. work
• Journal of the Plague Year
  Novels:
• Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Roxana
  Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)

-great humorist and savage satirist, capable of pure fun
-he loved individual person, but not the Man
-he wanted to do good for the poor mainly in Dublin
-he was skilled in verse and also in prose

• Drapier´s Letters
• A Tale of a Tub
• Gulliver’s Travel
• Modest Proposal
  –target of Swift ´s attack was England’s explanation of Ireland
  –the Irish people were problem too, they are lazy, passive, disgraced