context shaping the english character

Performer - Culture & LiteratureMarina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,

Margaret Layton © 2012

Shaping the English character

Bartholomew Dandridge,

A Lady reading Belinda beside

a fountain, 1745. Yale Center for

British Art, New Haven


• Queen Anne (1702–1714) had succeeded her brother-in-law, William III, and her sister Mary.

• After her death, her cousin, the Duke of Hanover, became King George I.

During his reign:

1. the powers of the monarchy diminished;

2. Ministers met without the King in the cabinet led by the Prime Minister;

3. the actual power was held by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister.

1. The first Hanoverian king

Performer - Culture&Literature

George I, c. 1714



2. The House of Hanover



The majority of Scots accepted their new role in a kingdom united under the title Great Britain.

A renewal of Scottish nationalism must await the 20th century.

3. 1707: The Act of Union

It abolished the Scottish Parliament

It gave the Scots a proportion of the seats at Westminster

The Act of Union

became official during Queen Anne’s reign



4. The Whigs and the Tories

The Whigs

Descendants ParliamentariansSupported by the wealthy and commercial classesFought for commercial development a vigorous foreign policy religious toleration

The Tories

Descendants RoyalistsSupported by the Church of England the landownersFought for the divine right of the king

The first political parties in Britain



The 18th-century key concepts were:• political stability;

• individualism;

• liberal thought and free will;

• optimism;

• reason and common sense;

• desire for balance, symmetry, refinement.

5. A golden age



6. The reading public

The increase of the reading public in the Augustan Age was due to

The growing importance of the

middle class

The individual’s trust in his own

abilities

The practice of reason and self-analysis

Most readers were

middle-class women

They used to borrow books

from circulating libraries

Coffee-houses allowed the

circulation of news, opinions




Coffee-houses

1. were attended by fashionable and artistic people;

2. became gathering points where people exchanged ideas and gossip;

3. let public opinion and journalism evolve;

4. were exclusively attended by men.




where the belief in the power of reason and the individual’s trust in his own abilities found expression

‘The Tatler’and‘The Spectator’the first English newspapersTheir style simple, livelyTheir aim didactic

The interest of middle-class people in literature gave rise to

journalism the novel



7. The novelist

1. The spokesman of the middle class.

2. The fathers of the English novel:• Daniel Defoe the realistic novel• Samuel Richardson the sentimental novel• Henry Fielding the mock-epic novel• Jonathan Swift the satirical novel



8. The novelist’s aim

• To be understood widely He wrote in a simple way.

• Realism not only linked to the life presented, but to the way it was shown.

• Speed and copiousness His most important economic virtues since it was the bookseller and not the patron who rewarded him.



9. The characters

The heroA bourgeois, self-made,

self-reliant man

The reader is expected to sympathise with him

The mouthpiece of the author

They struggle for survival or

social success

have contemporary names and surnames

RobinsonCrusoe

All the characters



10. The setting

• Chronological sequence of events.• References to particular times of the year or of the day.

‘I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York’

Robinson Crusoe

• Specific references to names of countries, towns and streets.

• Detailed descriptions of interiors to make the narrative more realistic.



11. The narrative technique

1ST-PERSON NARRATOR

3RD-PERSON NARRATOR

PATTERN

Daniel DefoeFictional

autobiographies

Samuel Richardson

Letters exchanged

between the main characters

Henry FieldingThe mock-epic

style



12. Themes

1. Real life.

1. Everything that could alter a social status.

1. The sense of reward and punishment

linked to the Puritan ethics of the middle class.

context shaping the english character

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