内容

The Enlightenment Period

I. Historical and social background

II. The Enlightenment

A. Characteristics of the Enlighteners

B. Two groups of English Enlighteners

III. English literature in the 18th century

A. Features

B. Three periods of the 18 th century

 1. The early period

  a. Neoclassicism

  b. Alexander Pope

 2. The middle period

 3. The declining period

  a. Sentimentalism

  b. Pre-romanticism

IV. Daniel Defoe

A. Literary contributions

B. Defoe's writing style

C. Robinson Crusoe

V. Jonathan Swift

A. Literary contribution

B. Major works

C. Gulliver's Travels

Module 5-unit 1 The Enlightenment Period PPT 图片来源

1. 启蒙运动

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

2. 激进派

http://www.chnmuseum.cn/tabid/107/InfoID/989/frtid

3. 新古典主义

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace

4. 蒲柏

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Alexander-Pope-and-His-Dog-Bounce-circa-1718-Posters_i1349671_.htm

5. 《批评论》

http://book.douban.com/subject/6189015/

6. 感伤主义

http://www.gettyimages.cn/index/showmid/photoid/1226299.html

7. 弗兰肯斯坦

http://posters.imdb.cn/poster/12694

8. 笛福

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe

9. 《鲁宾逊漂流记》 1

http://coverspy.tumblr.com/post/47294703110. 《鲁宾逊漂流记》 2

http://livros.zura.com.br/livros.html?key=Crusoe&page=9&pageSize=15

11. 《鲁宾逊漂流记》 3

http://www.bookfinder.com/author/n-c-wyeth/

12. 《鲁宾逊漂流记》 4

http://www.crescentblues.com/4_2issue/int_jael.shtml

13. 《鲁宾逊漂流记》 5

http://www.gurubear.com.cn/bologna.php?id=24

14. 斯威夫特

http://www.hertford.ox.ac.uk/alumni-development/our-alumni/hertfords-ancestors/jonathan-swift

15. 《格列佛游记》 1

http://www.alexandrebrito.net.br/verbetes/Entradas/2012/2/12_Jonathan_Swift_-_As_Viagens_de_Gulliver.html

16. 《格列佛游记》 2

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/tengyuantik/20090531/

17. 《格列佛游记》 3

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bc-burnslibrary/8641447866/

讲义

This lecture focuses on the literature in the 18 th century and talks about the Enlightenment and the great writers, Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift .

A series of chief political and social events took place in the 18 th century.

After the Glorious Revolution, England became a constitutional monarchy. The real authority was passed from the monarch to the parliament. Politically speaking, a firm system of capitalism was established in England .

The large-scale enclosure movement drove a great number of farmers out of land, thus partly supplied the labors needed in industries.

The vast expansion of British colonies in Asia, Africa and North America offered a large market and increased the need for manufactured goods.

The invention and development of machinery gradually led to the Industrial Revolution in the 1780' s.

England then became a big industrial and colonial power in the world.

But the rapid growth of the nation and the bourgeoisies brought poverty and misery to the masses of people. The second half of the century witnessed the continual conflicts and uprisings home and abroad. American Revolution broke out in 1775, which ended up with the independence of American people from England . Then in 1789, the French Revolution started, which had a strong effect on England .

All these events caused changes in social life as well as in the realm of ideology. New ideas appeared to enlighten people with the power of reason. Enlightenment became the key notion in this century.

The Enlightenment 启蒙运动 was a progressive intellectual movement throughout Western Europe in the 18th century and in Russia in the 19th century.

England developed its own Enlightenment in the 18 th century, which was known as the Age of Enlightenment (1680s-1789) or the Age of Reason.

It is so called because the enlighteners considered that the chief means for the betterment of society was “enlightenment” or education for the people. The enlighteners also believed in the power of reason, regarding it as the yardstick for the measure of all human activities and social relations.

They celebrated reason, equality, science and people's ability to perfect themselves and the society.

The English enlighteners of the 18 th century fell chiefly into two groups—the moderate group and the radical group.

The moderate group was represented by Pope, Defoe, Addison and Steele, and Richardson.

They supported the principles of the existing social order and preferred a moderate and partial reformation.

By contrast, the radical group criticized the existing social order with bitter satire and struggled for more resolute democratization of the government.

They were represented by Jonathan Swift, Fielding, Smollett, Sheridan and Goldsmith.

The literature in the Enlightenment period gave a full manifestation of the enlighteners' ideas and belief. There was a balance between the old literary forms and the new ones, and between reason and emotion.  

Realism was the main literary stream in this period. The literary tendency moved from the stories about the aristocratic class to the lives of the common people. Most of the writers focused their attentions on the lives of the common people and the social realities.

Prose enjoyed a rapid development in this period.

And novels appeared and flourished as a literary genre.

The literature was critical and satiric. Satire was a typical feature in writing.

New forms of literary writings came into being. Newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, dictionaries and grammar （语法书） were accepted.

According to the development of the Enlightenment, the literature of the 18 th century may be divided into three periods.

The early period (1688-1730)

In this period, neo-classicism prevailed and got well expressed in poetry. The English essay established itself as a literary genre. And the realistic fiction first emerged.

Neo-classicism 新古典主义 was a revival of classicism in literature in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

The neoclassicists admired the Greek and Roman literature and imitated the fixed laws and rules.

Neoclassicists put stress on the classical ideals of order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy.

And Neoclassic poetry ， mainly adopting the form of heroic couplet, was elegant in structure, serious in tone but deficient in imagination.

The representative writers were Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,   Richard Steel, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) surpassed all other poets in this period. So the early period was also called the Age of Pope.

Pope has been seen as one of the most important English poets ever since.

It was he who made popular the neo-classical tradition.

His heroic couplet became the dominant vogue in poetic creation in this period.

He achieved great success in verse translations.

Besides, Pope was one of the first to introduce the spirit of rationalism into English culture.  

His chief works:

Essay on Criticism 《批评论》

The Rape of the Lock 《卷发遇劫记》

The Dunciad 《愚人记》

Essay on Man 《人论》

Moral Essays 《道德论》

Among these works, Essay on Criticism 《批评论》 was the manifesto of the English neo-classicism. Some of the quotations in this work are familiar to us.

To err is human to forgive, divine.  

人非圣贤孰能无过。

A little learning is a dangerous thing.   浅学误人 / 没文化真可怕。

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 智者裹足不前，愚者铤而走险 / 初生牛犊不怕虎。

Pope exerted great influence upon the English literature. His quotations remain instructive and powerful to us until today.  

Pope's death concluded the first period, and then the literature came to the middle period (1740s-1750s) which saw the rise and flourish of modern realistic novels.

Novels, as a new literary form, were mostly didactic, achieving both realism and moral teaching.

The representative writers were Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett .

With the decline of the Enlightenment, literature came to the last period, which was characterized by the appearance of sentimentalism and pre-romanticism.  

Sentimentalism 感伤主义 marked the midway in the transition from neoclassicism to Romanticism.

It represented a release of spontaneous feelings and a relaxation from the rigid rationality.

Indulged in sentiment, it prized feeling over thinking, passion over reason, and personal instinct over social duties.

It was a contrast to classicism. The sentimentalists turned to the countryside for material and found pleasure in the wildness of nature. They showed sincere sympathy for peasants.

The outstanding English sentimentalists were Laurence Sterne and Oliver Goldsmith.

Pre-romanticism 前浪漫主义 was another literary trend in the last period.

It showed the protest against bondage of reason in classicism, the recognition of claims of passion and emotion, and a renewed interest in medieval literature.

It found its best expression in poetry and Gothic romances or novels.

Gothic novels 哥特式小说 are the stories of horror, mystery and supernaturalism 超自然 .

The setting is always in a Gothic architecture or a castle of the Middle Ages.

Gothic elements include horror, mystery, supernatural phenomenon, misfortune, death, haunted houses, and family curses.  

Gothic novels paved the way for the later detective novel and science fiction.

The representative works were Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto

《奥特朗托城堡》 , Anne Ward Radcliff's The Mysteries of Udolpho 《奥多芙的神秘》 , and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein 《弗兰肯斯坦》 .

The 18 th century witnessed the accomplishments of several great writers. Besides Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift were also worth our attention.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was a brilliant journalist, novelist, and social thinker.

He was regarded as the founder of English realistic novel.

He was the first writer devoted to the study of the working class.

And his simple, direct, fact-based style made new standards for the English novel.

Defoe was a prolific writer, writing more than 500 books, pamphlets, and tracts.

But he was remembered chiefly for his novel The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe .

Robinson Crusoe tells about a sailor's adventure on a deserted island. Crusoe was the only survivor of a shipwreck. He was cast on a small island where he struggled against the nature and made a living by himself. Later he saved a victim from cannibals; Crusoe named him Friday and made him his servant. After 24 years of hard life on the island, he was found by a passing ship and finally brought back to England .

The story of the novel was possibly suggested by the real adventures of a real sailor widely known at the time – Alexander Seilkirk.  

Robinson Crusoe is often taken as the first English novel in Western literature and is considered as a Picaresque Novel. ( 流浪汉式小说 )

Picaresque Novel is full-length fictional work, often satirical in nature, in which the principal character is cynical and amoral . It generally consists of a series of incidents or episodes in the life of the principal character arranged in chronological order but not woven into a single, coherent plot.    

Defoe's novels follow one pattern: tracing the personal history of the hero or heroine of a low origin from his or her early unfortunate childhood through many vicissitudes of life, with ups and downs of personal fortune, to final prosperity or death and repentance.

Defoe's novels exemplified realism. His protagonists were common people who narrate their own stories in first person speech.

His novels explored the themes of repentance, self-consciousness and human's mastery over nature.

He adopted the autobiographical form and described in great detail.

His language was plain, colloquial and mostly vernacular.

Robinson Crusoe offers us an excellent example of Defoe's writing features.

An excerpt from Robinson Crusoe .

  (Excerpt)

I was now landed and safe on shore, and began to look up and thank God that my life was sav'd in a case wherein there was some minutes before scarce any room to hope.

我现在既已登上了陆地，平安上岸，便仰脸向天，感谢上帝令我绝处逢生，因为几分钟之前，我还几乎无一线生还的希望。

I walk'd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance, making a thousand gestures and motions which I cannot describe .

我在岸上狂乱地跑来跑去，高举双手，做出千百种古怪的姿势。这时，我全部的身心都在回忆着自己死里逃生的经过，并想到同伴们全都葬身大海，唯我独生，真是不可思议。

This is excerpted from the beginning part of the story. Robinson Crusoe is a classic of all time. The other novelist with equal importance in this period is Jonathan Swift.

Jonathan Swift was considered as one of the greatest writers of English prose. His language was simple but powerful. He used no ornate or rhetorical language.

He was a master satirist and his satire was deadly and eloquent.

He was a political pamphleteer and his democratic ideas were expressed in his works.

His major works are the political pamphlets including The Drapier's Letters 《布商的书信》 and A Modest Proposal 《一个温和的建议》 ; the satirical proses including The Battle of the Book 《书籍之战》 ,   A Tale of a Tub 《一只木桶的故事》 and Gulliver's Travels 《格列佛游记》 .

In A Modest Proposal (1729), Swift ironically suggested that poor Irish children be sold as food to wealthy English, thus turning an economic burden to general profit.

Swift's masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, more popularly titled Gulliver's Travels, met with instant success when published anonymously in 1726.

The book consists of four parts: the isle of Lilliput, the island of Brobdingnagians, the floating island of Laputa and the island of the Houyhnhnms. Each part relates one voyage to one fantastic land Gulliver made in his extraordinary adventure.    

Gulliver's Travels is more than a travel story. It is a satire on the whole English society of the early 18th century, touching upon the political, religious, legal, military, scientific, philosophical as well as literary institutions therein and the men who make their careers there.

Swift ever said, “Proper words in proper places, makes the true definition of a style.” His proper and powerful satire endowed his works with everlasting charm.

An excerpt from Gulliver's Travels

My master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals.

我的主人还是完全不能明白这一帮律师为什么仅仅为了迫害自己的同类而不厌其烦地组织这么一个不义的组织？他们究竟有什么目的呢？

But in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves.

但是，为了满足男人的奢侈无度和女人的虚荣，我们都把绝大部分的必需品送到国外去，而由此换回疾病、愚蠢、罪恶的材料供自己消费。

The powerful satire in Gulliver's Travels is quite impressive. It makes the novel an allegorical attack on human society. It also offers us an excellent example of using satire and irony in writing. 

资源下载 

Module 5  Unit 1  .ppt(下载附件 18.3 MB)

扩展学习

Enlightenment: With the advent of the 18th century, in England , as in other European countries, there sprang into life a public movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment on the whole, was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeois against feudalism. The social inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They attempted to place all branches of science at the service of mankind by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements of the people.

Classicism: A movement or tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome . Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places value on reason, clarity, balance, and order. Classicism, with its concern for reason and universal themes, is traditionally opposed to Romanticism, which is concerned with emotions and personal themes.

Heroic Couplet refers to lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc, and so on. The adjective “heroic” was applied in the later seventeenth century because of the frequent use of such couplets in heroic poems and dramas. This verse form was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. From the age of John Dryden through that of Samuel Johnson, the heroic couplet was the predominant English measure for all the poetic kinds; some poets, including Alexander Pope, used it almost to the exclusion of other meters.