Augustan Age literature

a long period of peace, referred to as Augustan because the stable political climate is similare to the one during the reign of Augustan Caesar

General literary trends

The Rise of the novel

there was a need for realism and concerns of real life

thanks to the rise and expansion of the mercantile middle classes leads to an increase in people who can read, who have money to spend on books and leisure time for reading

Prose

Pamphleteering Journalism Essays Criticism

Poetry

Augustan poets take classical culture as their model and use its aestethic techniques and moral canons, because they conform to Nature and classical rules

Mock-heroic and satirical poetry

Alexander Pope

Theatre

After the restoration , theatres were reopened and were influenced by French production

heroic plays, in which characters behave and speak in a noble manner

John Dryden

comedy of manners, centred on the relationship between the two sexes

William Congreve

moralistic and sentimental comedies

parodies and satirical plays

John Gay

is the greatest satirical poet of the age, famous for is witty satire ( ridiculing characters using heroic terms). His masterpiece is The Rape of the Lock

Realistic novels

Epistolary novels

Picaresque novels

The sentimental novel

novels deal with ordinary people and contemporary objects, language and situations

a modern and more realistic awareness of time enters literature

space becomes a geographical entity