18th century in literature

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Literature of the 18th century refers to world literature produced during the 18th century.

1 European literature in the 18th century

[edit] European literature in the 18th century

European literature of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period, of which Eliza Haywood's 1724 Fantomina is probably the best known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel.

18th Century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism.

[edit] The Enlightenment

The 18th century in Europe was The Age of Enlightenment and literature explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man. Edmund Burke, in his A Vindication of Natural Society (1757), says: "The Fabrick of Superstition has in this our Age and Nation received much ruder Shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the Chinks and Breaches of our Prison, we see such Glimmerings of Light, and feel such refreshing Airs of Liberty, as daily raise our Ardor for more".

[edit] By year

In 1700 William Congreve's play The Way of the World premiered. [1] Although unsuccessful at the time The Way of the World is a good example of the sophistication of theatrical thinking during this period, with complex subplots and characters intended as ironic parodies of common stereotypes.

In 1703 Nicholas Rowe's domestic drama The Fair Penitent, an adaptation of Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, was pronounced by Dr Johnson to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language. Also in 1703 Sir Richard Steele's play The Tender Husband achieved some success.

In 1704 Jonathan Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books [2] and John Dennis published his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. The Battle of the Books begins with a reference to the use of a glass (which, in those days, would mean either a mirror or a magnifying glass) as a comparison to the use of satire. Swift is, in this, very much the child of his age, thinking in terms of science and satire at one and the same time. He was one of the first English novelists and also a political campaigner. His satirical writing springs from a body of liberal thought which produced not only books but also political pamphlets for public distribution. Swift's writing represents the new, the different and the modern attempting to change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. The Battle of the Books is a short writing which demonstrates his position very neatly.

1707 Henry Fielding was born (22 April) and his sister Sarah Fielding was born 3 years later on 8 November 1710. In 1711 Alexander Pope began a career in literature with the publishing of his An Essay on Criticism. In 1712 French philosophical writer Jean Jacques Rousseau born 28 June and his countryman Denis Diderot was born the following year 1713 on the 5th of October. Also in 1712 Pope published The Rape of the Lock and in 1713 Windsor Forest.

Horace Walpole was born on 24 September 1717.

Daniel Defoe was another political pamphleteer turned novelist like Jonathan Swift and was publishing in the early 18th century. In 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, in 1720, Captain Singleton and, in 1722, Moll Flanders.

Other authors publishing in 1722 included Sir Richard Steele, Penelope Aubin and Eliza Haywood.

From 1726 to 1729 Voltaire lived in exile mainly in England.

In 1728 John Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera which has increased in fame ever since. The Beggar's Opera began a new style in Opera, the "ballad opera" which brings the operatic form down to a more popular level and precedes the genre of comic operettas.

In 1729 Jonathan Swift published A Modest Proposal, a satirical suggestion that Irish families should sell their children as food. Swift was, at this time, fully involved in political campaigning for the Irish.

In 1731 George Lillo's play The London Merchant was a success at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane. It was a new kind of play, a domestic tragedy, which approximates to what later came to be called a melodrama.

1749 Henry Fielding published The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.

1751 Thomas Gray wrote Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

1752 a satirical short story by Voltaire, Micromégas featured space travellers visiting earth. It was one of the first stories leaning toward what later became Science fiction. Its publication at this time is indicative of the trend toward scientific thinking prevalent in the age of enlightenment.

1754 Henry Fielding died 8 October.

1759 Voltaire published Candide. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was born 10 November.

1760 - 1767 Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy.

1761 Rousseau published Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse.

1762 Rousseau published Émile.

1764 Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto (initially under a pseudonym and claiming it to be a translation of an Italian work from 1529.) The first gothic novel.

1766 Oliver Goldsmith published The Vicar of Wakefield.

1767 August Wilhelm von Schlegel was born 8 September.

1768 Sarah Fielding died.

1770 April 7 birth of William Wordsworth.

1772 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel was born 10 March.

1773 Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer, a farce, was performed in London.

1774 Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel which approximately marks the beginning of the Romanticism movement in the arts and philosophy. A transition thus began, from the critical, science inspired, enlightenment writing to the romantic yearning for forces beyond the mundane and for foreign times and places to inspire the soul with passion and mystery.

1777 the comedy play The School for Scandal, a comedy of manners, was written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

1778 Death of Voltaire. Death of Jean Jacques Rousseau 2 July.

1783 Washington Irving was born.

1784 Denis Diderot died 31 July. Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot have all died within a period of a few short years and French philosophy had thus lost three of its greatest enlightened free thinkers. Rousseau's thinking on the nobility of life in the wilds, facing nature as a naked savage still had great force to influence the next generation as the romantic movement gained momentum. Beaumarchais wrote The Marriage of Figaro. Maria and Harriet Falconar publish Poems on Slavery. The anti-slavery movement was growing in power and many poems and pamphlets were published on the subject.

1786 Robert Burns published Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The mood of literature was swinging toward more interest in diverse ethnicity. Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) was adapted into a comic opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte.

1789 James Fenimore Cooper was born 15 September in America.

1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley was born (August 4).

1793 Salisbury Plain by William Wordsworth.

1794 Robert Goldsmith was born.

In 1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The two men published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads (1798), which became a central text of Romantic poetry.

1796 Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born. Denis Diderot's Jacques le Fataliste was published posthumously.

1796 Charlotte Smith published her novel Marchmont.

See main article: European Enlightenment Literature