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Satire to Sensibility
Earl of Rochester

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Defined as ‘the libertine’
Satirises the aristocracy
Was an ‘atheist’ of sorts
Many poems were written in court, mocking a woman etc
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Became out of favour with the King as he accidentally showed him a poem which was satirical
view of the King
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Rochester
identified as an atheist
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http://plato
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edu/
Hobbes

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Had unorthodox religious viewed
Rochester key influence
Levithian was his book on philosophy
He considered us al divine within our society
Motion is controlled by either aversion or appetite

Restoration Theatre
Comedy of Manners - that kind of comedy in which the modes and manners of society are
amusingly presented
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These playwrights wouldn’t try and be too politically active as the monarchs became keen on the
theatre again and thus would be watching the play very often
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Plays were often adapted for their women
stars, and the action would have been focused to demonstrate the sex appeal for their new
profession of actresses
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To add to this, they were often taken as lovers for the monarchs
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They engage in battles of wit and intrigue
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The plays were often heckled by the rich members of the audience who sat in the pit
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The libertines were often seen as atheist and non-Christian and this is emphasised by the incident
wherein many libertines entered the streets after being in the theatre and preached blasphemy
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Playwrights of the era were somewhat interested in the philosophical grounding of society and
therefore often wrote about Lucretius etc
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Sexual innuendo was prevalent but within the plays were very wary of the troubles of sexual
desire
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Which being done
Sedley stripped himself naked and with eloquence preached blasphemy to the people
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”
The Life and Times of Anthony Wood
Libertinism is often seen as an attack on ‘the people’
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Sprezzatura - ease of manner; studied carelessness; the appearance of acting or being done
without effort; spec
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Daniel Defoe
Father of the modern novel, a well presented man
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He was famed for being a notorious lier, pamphleteer, and journalist
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In the section A part of the exam you should draw on many text as possible
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He didn’t build on pamphleteering to novelling,
he wrote a wide variety of texts
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However, he was not a successful businessman and went bankrupt
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Dissenter - a member of one of the Protestant groups that separated from the Church of England
after 1662
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However, he was foreign and against the church and so was
heavily criticised
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A Satyr’
where he discusses England as a negative melting pot of many cultures
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He wrote seemingly from the perspective of an enraged Anglican clergyman to
disturb moderate people and so encourage them to defend the dissenters
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After this Defoe became a newspaper writer, however, his enemies used
his past against him; a rival newspaper criticised him as he had a known talent for ‘forging a story
and imposing it on the World for Truth’
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The title pages are reminiscent of the travel narrative genre which was a popular genre during the
era
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This adds to the idea of
maintaining this credible character, which Defoe utilises to sell
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However, his authorship was revealed and he was openly criticised for
narrative errors, which he dogmatically defended
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He was not accredited with authorship until
decades after his death
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Moll Flanders is an alias as is Roxana
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Defoe’s
heroine does not have the family that establishes her class, she is much
like Pamela, except she doesn’t exist
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Her character is somewhat dislikable in her morals, she marries her
own brother and doesn’t leave him when she realises this
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Even at the close of the novel she lies to her child who she has
been recently reunited with about almost everything and even here displays a self interest
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The title ‘Roxana’ is attributed later and is not Defoe’s
title
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There is again a fake editor who notes that
the names have been changed to protect her against people working out who she is
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Chronique scandaleuse [scandal chronicle] - a compilation of gossip, often based on actual court
scandal and falling on the boundary between history and romance
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Like Moll, Roxana races through many identities, but unlike Moll, Roxana
is never alone in her schemes
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Roxana is less successful in escaping her past, her initial family appears
very quickly and she is constantly hounded by gossip and slander
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For Moll, she merely tells her story because it is convenient to at the time
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There are alternative endings throughout publication, but Defoe’s ending is
neither happy or uplifting - so be wary!

Defoe is experimental, is this deliberate or unintentional
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Defoe is notoriously shifter and his
narrator inherit this from their author
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Chronology
[Civil Wars (1642-49) Interregnum (1649-60)]
• Charles II (1660-85)

RESTORATION CULtURE

• James II (1685-88)
• Revolution of 1688-89
• William & Mary (1689-1702)
• Anne (1702-14)

REFORMATION OF MANNER

• George I (1714-27)
• George II (1727-60)

SENSIBILITY

• George III (1760-1820)
“The Restoration represented an era of the triumph of the ‘feminine’” - Margeret Doody
In The Man of Mode and The Country Wife there are many uses of the words ‘man’ and ‘manly’
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The huge petticoats worn by women in the period meant they literally took up more space in a
room and thus were noticeable
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Sensibility plays an important role in the exploration of gender during the era
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She was married but he may have abandoned her/died
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- After her acting career collapsed she became a prolific writer, writing over 8- publications in 6
genders
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- ‘Love in Excess’ was a best selling novel
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impoliteness and immorality
The Literary Marketplace
Male authors like Defoe and Addison and Steele participated in, interacted with and formed the
literary culture of 1710s and 1720s
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- What of female authors?

- Critical neglect of early eighteenth century women writers until recently
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Perhaps
because she was a public character as an actress ‘With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes’
- Lacks modesty in attaching herself to her texts; offers an image of herself as a frontispiece,
instantly recognisable ‘before her works she stands confess’d’
- Conflation of public and private character ‘Two babes of love close clinging to her waste’
Amatory Fictions
- Romance but with a ‘modern’ twist
- Narratives of sexual passion and desire
- Racy, pacy plots
- Often written by women
- Writers were popular but despised for lowering the standards of literature
Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance Through Times, Countries, and Manners (1785)

“The Romance is an heroic fable, which treats of fabulous persons and things
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The Romance in lofty and
elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen
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Romance
- Insignificant compared to the novel

- Made for women

Prostitutes of the Pen?
Ros Ballaster, Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740
“the early woman writer was very far from the modest and amateur lady of letters most histories
would have her be
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Behn, Manley, and Haywood
reveal themselves to be far from subjected by the imposition of an emergent philosophy of
‘separate spheres’ (politics and romance, masculine and feminine, the coffee-house and the
boudoir)
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Their experimental texts dramatise
the seduction of the female reader by amatory fiction, exploring alternatives that offer models for
the female victim to come to ‘mastery’ of or resistance to the fictional text through the figure of the
heroinized female writer
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Samuel Pepys
1633-1703
The ‘Augustan’ period: Writers admire and imitate the literature created under the Roman emperor
Augustus (reigned 31BC to 14AD)
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‘neo-classical’: the literature or art of the eighteenth-century which imitates the literature of ancient
Greece and Rome
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Alexander Pope
As a child he was ill and his growth was stunted, his disabilities were prominent in later life
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Finding
the translation of Homer long and painful, he was in no doubt of Homer’s fundamental value and

completed the lengthy translation
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He was against the concept of ‘wit’ at the time and found it to be ‘dull
and ‘obscene’
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Subjects the classics to parody
Subjects the classics to parody
Sensibility

- New focus on the self, liberty
- About feelings rather than politeness
- An erotic or sensual response



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