Balti state university a. Russo chair of english philology

Literary theory 
The movement produced in France at the beginning of the 18
th
, known as the classical 
literature or enlightenment distinguished the age of Louis XIV. In England this period was 
named “neoclassical”. The central problem of vital importance to the writers of the 18
th
century 
was the study of man and the origin of his good and evil qualities. They considered that human 
nature was virtuous. The life of people was much influenced by the social development of 
events. They met with the survivals of feudalism and with the evils of the newly established 
system of production. They were as yet unable to understand the laws of its development. They 
said: “Vice is due to ignorance”. The writers of the 18
th
century started a public movement for 
enlightening people, by teaching them. The writers of this period rejected church dogmas. 
English literature was greatly influenced by the enlightenment movement that took place in 
French literature, and namely by such writer and thinkers as Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. The 
movement of Enlightenment all over Europe had much in common, and namely: hatred to 
feudalism, education of people, and a revolutionary spirit, though in England the Revolution was 
over long before Enlightenment came forth. 

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This period saw the transition from poetry and the heroic age of Shakespeare to the prosaic 
age of essays. Essay is a composition on any subject written in prose. The period also saw the 
rise of the political pamphlet. Pamphlet is a booklet on problems of current interest. The most 
prominent in this area were D.Defoe and J. Swift. The great essayists of the day were R. Steele 
and J. Addison. 
What poets tried to see and respect was “Nature” – a word with so many meanings. Usually by 
Nature people understood – the universal, permanent and representative elements in human 
experience. External nature – the landscape – as a source of aesthetic pleasure and scientific 
inquiry attracted the people‟s attention. 
The beginning of the 18
th
century was marked by the works of such great writers as: Swift
with A 
Tale of a Tub (1704 – 10), Addison‟s with The Campaign (1705), prior with several Poems on Several 
Occasions, and Pope with Pastorals. On the whole the literature of the period is a literature of “wit”, 
concerned with civilization and social relationship, it is critical and in some way moral or satiric. Some of 
the works of the time were mock-heroic, for instance Swifts‟ A Description of a City Shower and Pope‟s 
Rape of the Lock. Some works were humorous burlesques, for example John Gay‟s The Art of Walking 
the Streets of London. Such literature was addressed to highly sophisticated and cultivated readers. 
Never before, nor since have so many great writers of prose flourished at once. They 
represented different types of writings, which can be grouped into: literary criticism with 
Samuel Johnson; biography – James Boswell; philosophy – David Hume; politics – Edmund 
Burke; history – Edward Gibbon; natural history – Gilbert White. Each of these writers was a 
master stylist, whose effort to express himself clearly and fully created an art difficult to achieve 
for the readers of the age. 
The spirit of prose has driven away poetry. Though some of the distinguished poets still 
persisted. They were William Collins, Thomas Gray, Mark Akenside and the brothers Joseph 
and Thomas Warton. Edward Young (1683 – 1765) wrote an immensely long and popular poem 
in blank verse The Complaint: or the Hight Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742 – 
46), which was a pessimistic poem about a dark view on Christianity based on fear: