THE AUGUSTAN AGE

The Augustan Age The Augustan Age has its beginning with the reign of King George I of Hanover, who came to power after the death of Queen Anne Stuart. George I was unpopular because of the fact that he wasn’t interested in the country he was ruling. The majority of the English lived at this time in rural areas, the only bigger city was London. The Augustan Age is called so because generally regarded as a golden age, like the period of Roman History which had achieved political stability and power as well a flourishing of the arts. The society in this age was a materialist society, which was responsive to economic pressure, but yet its political organisation was hierarchical, hereditary and privileged. Thus elections were largely controlled by the powerful landowners and politicians who were more interested in bribing for winning their elections than in obtaining the vote of the citizens.

On the other hand the Eighteenth-century championed individualism, seizing opportunities in the sectors of economy, which provided scope for enterprise and enrichment. Also the fact that the English Right at the time didn’t tolerate interference with the private property, demonstrates the extraordinary liberty of this age. This freedom was also confirmed by the philosophers and the ideology of the time: John Locke, Joseph Addison and others rejected the strict and pessimistic values of Puritanism and a liberal thought affirmed free-will, salvation for all, goodness of mankind and its capacity in progress. Thus the individuals gained trust in their own powers and capacities, i.e. their reason which made them different from animals. Because of the importance that was given to reason during the Augustan Age, this period is also known as the Age of Reason.

The authors of the Augustan Age were mainly interested in real life, in stories that were referred to the lives of their readers, rather than in substitutes for reality. A great importance was given also to social behaviour such as politeness, common sense and the art of conversation. Literature, first of all the novels, has the goal to entertain the raising classes, and therefore the plots were quite simple and had to appear real. In this way time and place was always precisely set and the full name of the main characters reported. Finally the arts of the Augustan Age are characterised by a desire of balance and harmony and the imitation of nature (also human nature) as well. Besides that, virtue assumed two particular meanings in Augustan Age; firstly benevolence towards oneself e the others, secondly there was a growing emphasis on the culture of heart and sensibility.

When Queen Anne died without an heir, the parliament called the Duke of Hanover=> his mother was the granddaughter of king James I He became King with the title George I He spoke no English (only German) and had to rely on the elected MPs to govern. Most MPs were Whigs=> they were the most powerful The Tories instead wanted the descendant of King James II to govern England. They were called Jacobites => Jacobus=James in Latin (they attempted two rebellions, 1715 and 1745, without success) George I ( )

George II ( ) His reign was marked by the presence and influence of Sir Horace Walpole. This one was a Whig supporter, who became the First Prime Minister and remained in power for more than 20 years. The King gave Walpole the house at 10 Downing Street. Walpole managed to govern England well and peacefully, but after 1726 his government was accused of corruption. He lost the election in 1742 and resigned his office.

George III ( ) His reign was marked by a series of military conflicts, the American War of Independence(1776) and the French Revolution. He suffered from mental illnesses later in his life. During his reign the Pitt family governed as Prime Ministers: William Pitt the Elder ( ) and William Pitt the Younger ( ).

The political situation Whigs and Tories Were the first political parties in Britain. The Tories were the conservatives, who supported the monarchy and the Church and had a great influence under the Stuarts. The Whigs were descendants of the Parliamentarians. They stood for industrial and commercial development, a vigorous foreign policy and religious toleration. They achieved influence under the Hanoverians and they met without the king under the guide of a prime minister. The first Prime Minister was Sir Robert Walpole, who managed to keep England out of foreign conflicts and made trade flourish. When George II came to power, Walpole was given more trust and obtained a flat in 10 Downing St. Under Walpole and later also his opponent Pitt, England became a strong and competitive country with possessions in India, North America and the Caribbeans.

Social life The society was divided basically in three classes: the rich merchants, who supported Walpole, the craftsmen and the poor, who were often farmers who had lost their grounds because of the enclosure act. A big importance had the coffee houses: they were associated with news and gossip, provided entertainment and often had the function of post-offices as well.

Journalism The interest of the middle class in literature caused the origin of a new literary form, the journalism, which discussed political, social and cultural issues. Richard Steele gave birth to “The Tattler”, and later Joseph Addison joined Steele and the founded together “The Spectator”, which was printed almost everyday. The journalism didn’t have only the duty to inform, but brought forward also moral and other teachings, thus “Mr. Spectator”, who stood for the authors themselves, commented upon all the habits and values etc. of the society. This kind of periodicals had great success throughout the 18th century and almost all the novelists of this period started their career as journalists.

AUGUSTAN LITERATURE: THE RISE OF THE NOVEL In the Augustan Age there was a marked progress in economy and science and there was also the rise in the number of people who liked reading. So literature gave life to so many different genres. But there were lots of difficulties for the people who wanted to read: - not all the people could read and write; - there were few schools and they were not attended every day or for so many years, because the children coming from poor families started to work at the age of 6 or 7 so they couldn’t go on studying. - In the country people were completely illiterate, in the towns most of them were semi-literate, few of them were literate.

Another problem was represented by the price of the books: they were very expensive so poor people couldn’t afford buying books. For them there were cheaper things: ballads, pamphlets, old romances or newspaper. Then there was the problem of privacy: the houses of poorer families were really crowded. Very often more than one family lived in the same little house so it was impossible to find a place to concentrate and read in tranquility. As in this period there was the unjust window tax (citizens had to pay for the size and the number of windows they had in their house) most of the new houses had few and very small windows and this made it difficult to have enough natural light to read. But a positive invention for the readers were the circulating libraries: they had all literary genres and they lent books for very little money. As the women of the middle classes had more free time and enough money, they read more than any other people.

The prose genre was deeply influenced by the middle classes because in this period they were dominating the social, political and economic situation. Consequently as the middle classes believed in the power of reason and in the personal abilities of the individuals, these ideas became dominant in the novels and in journalism. Anyhow also in this period the religious aspect was important and dominant: most of the books were religious and also the authors such as Defoe and Richardson, in order to be accepted by a Puritan reading society, had to include in their books, religious elements together with secular ones. An important writer of this period was Samuel Johnson: he wrote a preface to the works of Shakespeare, the lives of important English poets and he also contributed to the composition of the “Dictionary of the English Language”: this work is important because it included all the English words also those from the medical and botanical field (but the technical and vulgar ones) and most of the words included also an etymology.

In the Augustan Age, for many reasons (culture, free time in the life of the middle classes, economic possibilities, lower prices of books, the possibility of borrowing books from the libraries or from travelling ones), there was a considerable growth of the reading public. This fact brought a change in the structure and in the aim of the novel. First of all writers tried to please their public of the middle class : readers weren’t interested in mythology or tradition, but they wanted to read something about themselves. The writer started to write exactly what his public wanted and his points of view, his ideas, were identical to those of his readers. Moreover writers started to have as a source of inspiration and model “reality” so that the novel gradually became a “picture of life” and “realistic” not in “what” it presented, (for instance it wasn’t important that Robinson’s adventure is quite impossible or improbable) but in “how” it was presented.

In the 18Th century “realistic” meant: To use clock time, moments of the day, physical setting, names of roads and towns; To define the qualities of things; To describe the interior settings(rooms) as well as outdoor settings; To use names and surnames typical of that age and to give information about the social status, the economic possibilities of characters; To use a particular hero: practical and self-made man. The novels told the stories of middle-class men and presented their problems and these men were divided into two groups: on one side there were the people who believed in reason and acted according to it; on the other side there were the people whose passions were so strong that they couldn’t control them.