The Enlightenment and the First Novels
Table of Contents
Introduction
Age of Enlightenment and how this influenced the novels
Enlightenment ideals
Novels
Characteristics of the Enlightenment literature
Themes of literature in the Enlightenment
The three literature periods of the Enlightenment
Satire as a genre
Works by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift
Daniel Defoe
Jonathan Swift
An analysis of a work by Defoe and Swift
– Age of Enlightenment and how this influenced the novels
– Satire as a genre
– Works by Defoe and Swift
– An analysis of a work by both authors (genre, themes, literary devices)
Introduction
The Enlightenment – also known as – the Age of Reason took place during the 18th century in Western Europe, England, and the American colonies.
It is not very clear when the Enlightenment exactly took place, but roughly from 1650 until the French revolution in 1789.
Enlightenment = "the period in the 18th century in Europe when Enlightenment thinkers taught that science and the use of reason would improve the human condition".
Enlightenment thinkers were split up in two groups. The rationalists and the empiricists. The rationalists assume that thinking is important by determining the truth and the empiricists assume that observation is important by determining the truth.
Examples of this kind of Enlightenment thinkers are Descartes (Rationalism) and Locke (Empiricism). Descartes is best known for his quote ‘’cogito ergo sum” which means I think therefor I am. Locke his philosophy was based on ‘’tabula rasa” which means clean slate. He plead that humans had a clean slate by birth and that their characteristics were shaped during their life by their surroundings.
Age of Enlightenment and how this influenced the novels
The Enlightenment thinkers wanted to liberate humanity from their lack of autonomy. They wanted to put an end to superstition and prejudices. Humanity should use their reason to decide about what was true and false.
People used reason to try and solve problems such as poverty and war. It was believed that the use of reason could achieve 3 goals: knowledge, freedom and happiness.
The world changed constantly during the 18th century. The arrival of new physical inventions and technical and medical developments increased trust in the future. Because of this, enlightened people were optimistic and they believed in a makeable world.
The Enlightenment produced numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals.
Enlightenment ideals
Liberty:
Enlightenment thinkers wanted to liberate humanity from their lack of autonomy. They wanted humans to think about things themselves instead of just taking things for granted. They did not want humanity to be dependent. So liberty was very important during the Enlightenment.
Progress:
Enlightenment thinkers did not want to hold on to old traditions and times, but they wanted change and improvements. They wanted to move on and they believed in a makeable word and future. They considered progress as essential for the Enlightenment.
Tolerance:
Enlightenment thinkers wanted tolerance on many grounds. They wanted people to be tolerant against each other, because everyone was similar. They were against wars.
Fraternity:
Enlightenment thinkers wanted fraternity. They wanted people to be together, because they thought that people could achieve more together.
The importance of reason:
Enlightenment thinkers believed that everything could be explained in a rational way, so by using reason. That is why reason was very important during the Enlightenment.
Constitutional government:
Enlightenment thinkers wanted a government based on laws to prevent the abuse of power. So they wanted a constitutional government (= a government based on laws).
Ending the abuses of church and state:
Before the Enlightenment there were a lot of abuses of church and state. There was no separation between church and state this caused a lot of abuses. The Enlightenment thinkers saw this and wanted to end this abuses of power.
Separation between church and state based on justice and democracy:
Enlightenment thinkers wanted a separation between church and state, because they wanted justice and democracy. This was not possible with a collaboration between church and state. Because church and state only wanted what was best for themselves. So there was no justice and democracy involved.
Tolerance on religious grounds:
Enlightenment thinkers wanted tolerance on religious grounds. They did not want to impose a certain religion like the catholic church did. Every human was free to believe whatever they wanted to believe.
When the Enlightenment had just began, the literature was only available for a small society of important and influential people. This literature represented the outlook and values of this limited society. It did not represent the impressions, hopes or fears of one individual. It was literature that could be read aloud in a drawing-room, enjoyed in a theatre or discussed in a coffee-house. However, soon the situation changed drastically. The middle class, especially its female members started buying and reading books. If they could not afford to buy them, they borrowed them from libraries. This shows that the novel was very popular by 1770s.
Novels
The rise of the novel was in the Enlightenment. The novel was written in prose style.
People wanted to read realistic books about things they could relate to. Novels often had a moral. Authors had a narrative function in the novels.The novel became the leading genre in the Enlightenment.
Characteristics of the Enlightenment literature
The leading genre during the Enlightenment was the novel. Also the political pamphlet and essay flourished. Poetry was replaced by the prose style because the writers wanted to reach a big audience and poetry was to difficult for this, so they used prose. The prose style became dear, graceful and polished.
The hero of the novel was no longer a nobleman, but a representative of the middle class. This was special, because so far the common people had been depicted as comic characters.
Also literature became very instructive. The writers had a teaching function and tried to teach people what was good and bad from their own point of view.
There was an extreme interest for nature during the Enlightenment. Island and travel stories contain a lot of nature.
Also social injustices were confronted in the Enlightenment literature. Because the writers wanted to show that the Enlightenment was not a positive development for everyone. There was a lot of poverty. Often the wealthy people had no idea of this poverty. That is the reason why writers wanted to bring this kind of social injustices to light.
Themes of literature in the Enlightenment
Social upheaval / reversals of personal status:
The middle class became very powerful during the Enlightenment and the nobility lost their power. So the class society changed. Enlightenment writers wrote about this kind of reversals of personal status and social upheaval.
Philosophy:
There were a lot of philosophers during the Enlightenment. The philosophers wanted to write books explaining their ideas to the rest of the world. That is the reason why lots of Enlightenment literature contain philosophy.
Political satire:
Enlightenment thinkers delivered a lot of criticism on politics. This criticism was expressed in a funny way through the genre/theme ‘’political satire”. Also travel/adventure/island stories such as ‘’Robinson crusoe” and ‘’Gulliver’s travel” are a form of political criticism. The writers deliver criticism on their own countries through their books.
Geographical exploration:
People learned a lot about the world during the Enlightenment. Explorers explored a lot of new areas on Earth. So this geographical exploration was a popular theme of Enlightenment writers.
The comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man:
Because writers had a teaching function in the Enlightenment, they wanted to educate people how they should behave themselves. They showed this to the people by making the comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man in their books.
The three literature periods of the Enlightenment
(1688 – 1730) The period of classicism in poetry, the appearance of new prose literature, the essays of Steele and Addison and the first realistic novels by Defoe and Swift. Most of the writers of this time wrote political pamphlets.
(1740 – 1750) The development of the realistic social novel represented by Richardson, Fielding and Smollet. The publication of the Spectator. Magazines as the Spectator explained a scientific subject to the general public.
(the last decades of the 18th century) The appearance of Sentimentalism, the rise of the realistic drama and the revival of poetry. Also the first encyclopedias and dictionaries were written during the Enlightenment.
Satire as a genre
Satire is a genre in literature that has the aim to criticize society, people, governments or corporations. It uses irony, sarcasm and/or exaggeration to reach this goal. Satire is a way to criticise society, people or flaws of people by bringing their actions to light. A text is satirical when it uses either irony, sarcasm or exaggeration, or more of them. Most of the books by Jonathan Swift are satirical.
Satirical texts can be categorized the following three, all three of them with other characteristics:
Horatian Satire: uses humor and gently ridicules society. His target is to ‘heal the situation with smiles’.
Juvenalian: More aggressive than Horatian satire. Heavily criticises society and politicians.
Menippean satire: Attacks ways of thinking instead of people.
Works by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe was an English author, journalist and spy. He is best known for being one of the first people to write a novel. His best known novel is Robinson Crusoe.
Robinson Crusoe is about a man named Robinson Crusoe. He goes abroad and he suffers a shipwreck, which causes him to live his life on a deserted island for multiple years. After a few years he meets a man he names Friday, who he befriends. During his years on the island a lot of things happen to him. Eventually he is able to escape the island with Friday.
Another book by Defoe is called Captain Singleton. Captain Singleton is about an English sailor who becomes a pirate. Captain Singleton visits a lot a countries, where he had a lot of adventures.
The last book of Defoe I am going to write about is called The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, or just Moll Flanders in short. Moll Flanders is about a woman who moves multiple times during her life and who marries a lot of people.
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift is an Irish writer and satirical artist. He is best known for his satirical work “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships”, or ‘Gulliver's Travels’ in short. Gulliver's Travels is about a man who travels to four remote countries in the world, where a lot of things happen.
“A modest proposal” is another of his famous works. It is a satirical essay and it tells that children are a burden for their parents and that they should be sold to rich people as food.
The last work of Swift I am going to write about is called ‘The battle of the Books”. The battle of the Books is part of one of his other works, ‘the tale of the tub’ and tells the story about books in a library that come alive and who have a battle about the Classic and modern literature.
An analysis of a work by Defoe and Swift
Analysis of Robinson Crusoe by Defoe:
Genre: Novel of isolation, adventure story, the importance of self-awareness
Themes: Voyage's, new discoveries, individualism
Literary devices
Type of work: The book is a novel.
Point of view: He narrates in both the first and the third person. He only describes his feelings when they are overwhelming and focusses on the actions and events.
Time: The book is written in the past.
Tone: His tone is mostly objective, detached and meticulous.
The story is about a true story Defoe read in a magazine about Alexander Selkirk. He was a Scottish sailor, who had quarrelled with his captain and was put ashore on a deserted island near South America where he lived quite alone for four years and four months. In 1709 he was picked up by a passing vessel. The story interested Defoe so much that he decided to use it to write a book. He changed the main character to Robinson Crusoe, who has spent 26 years on a desert island.
Robinson Crusoe is an inexperienced youth who develops into a strong-willed man because of his situation. He learns how to fish, cook and makes every tool he needed.
He has confidence in himself and in man, and believes that it is in the power of a man to overcome all difficulties and hardships. Another of Crusoe’s good qualities which saved him, is the ability to put his whole heart into everything he does.
Everything he does and sees, he wrote down in a journal. He is and typically middle-class person. Slavery seems normal to Crusoe and he thinks his race is superior to all other races.
As soon as a man appears on the island, Crusoe makes him his slave. "Master" is the first word he teaches Friday to say. Friday is the other central character of the book. He is very intelligent and brave, and Crusoe teaches him to speak English.
Crusoe overcame his obstacles and makes an inhospitable environment his home. His taming and domestication of wild parrots and goats illustrates his newfound control.
Analysis of Gulliver’s Travels by Swift:
Genre: Adventure story, satire
Themes: Geographical explorations, the individual versus society and the limits of the human understanding.
Literary devices
Type of work: Novel, travel diary of the main character.
Point of view: He speaks in the first person. He describes actions and other characters as they appear to him.
Time: The story is written in the past in the early eighteenth century.
Tone: His tone is naïve and gullible during the first three voyages. In the fourth, his tone turns cynical and bitter.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift satirized the evils of the existing society in the form of imaginary travels. The story is about the adventures of a ship’s surgeon and it is for both children and grown-ups a very amusing story. The story is divided into four parts, which include four voyages.
A voyage to lilliput
In the first part, Gulliver gets safely ashore after being shipwrecked. He finds himself in a strange country, inhabited by a race of people who are about six inches tall. Swift meant to symbolize England of the 18th century with its shallow interests, corrupt laws and evil customs.
A voyage to brobdingnag
The second part, the ship on which Guilliver travels, get’s stuck in a terrible storm and anchors near Brobdingnag, the land of the giants, to take in a supply of water. Gulliver get’s captured by the giants. On the whole, they are good-natured creatures and treat Gulliver kindly, though they are amused by his small size and look upon him as a toy.
Brobdingnag is an expression of Swift's desire to escape from the disgusting world of the Lilliputians and to find the ideal: an agricultural country ruled by an ideal monarch. The author creates such a monarch in the king of Brobdingnag. He is clever, honest, and kind to his people. He hates wars and wants to make his people happy.
A voyage to laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubdubdrib and Japan
The third part describes Gulliver’s voyage to Laputa, which is a flying island. Swift attacks monarchs whose policy brings nothing but suffering to their subjects in this story. The king of Laputa took advantage of his people and never thought about them, except when he had to collect taxes from them. The people have no choice cause they can’t leave the floating Island.
Swift's indignation and the bitterness of his satire reach their climax when he shows the academy of sciences in Lagado, the city of the continent of Balnibarbi. The author touches upon all the existing sciences.
A voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms
The last part is the voyage which brings Gulliver to the ideal country of the Houyhnhnms. There is no sickness and no dishonesty. The human race occupies a position of servility there and a noble race of horses rule the country with reason and justice. Swift made horses the embodiment of wisdom, because the expression "horse sense" is a synonym for "common sense" The horses possess virtues which are superior to those of men Unlike the Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos are ugly, deceitful, greedy and vicious creatures. Having much in common with human beings in appearance, they possess all the evil qualities one can think of.