- Near the end of the Enlightenment, the Belletristic Movement was in full swing. Works such as Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), by Hugh Blair, and Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), by George Campbell, were published. Both authors embraced the idea of using eloquence, beauty, and emotion to allow one to communicate, with the most advantage, to his or her audience. The word belletristic comes from belles-lettres (French for literature), which is literature that is appreciated not just for its content but for its beauty as well.
STYLE: Satire - Although there are few stylistic consistencies among works of this age, the fiction of the period is almost always satirical. Satire is an indirect way of commenting on social or political issues. Satire reveals how people and things are not what they seem on the surface, and readers can often identify what aspect of society is being ridiculed. Satire allowed the philosophers to get some of their writing past government censors despite its harsh criticism of the status quo. The number of censors increased in France during the Enlightenment because of the radical new ideas being put forth. When writers used satire, however, censors either missed the point of the writing or were unable to make a convincing case for suppressing it.
STYLE: Satire - Satire also served as a witty way to criticize. Enlightenment writers were often clever and sarcastic, and their work tended to attract an intelligent readership. A common satirical technique was to create a character that was a stranger to a country. Because the character is naive and unfamiliar with the local society, the character may be confused by that society or find fault with it. These characters were generally ignorant or silly, making their faultfinding seem equally ignorant or silly. The satiric irony, however, is that the character is the author’s mouthpiece for pointing out the absurd and unjust in his society
- With people generally looking more closely at the part they played in society, the main themes of the Neoclassical period were restraint and order. Each person was expected to do what was “proper” and to show that he or she had good taste, the idea being that, given the flawed nature of mankind, putting some limits on what someone said or did was better than trying and failing at the outrageous. It became very important to prove that someone had a decent level of intelligence. Writers often used their works not only to express rules about etiquette and decorum, but also to demonstrate brilliant skills of wit. Other characteristics of the age include:
- Imitation of classical form
- Artificial and aristocratic society
- Sophisticated behaviour
- Style is polite, urbane, and witty
- Instructive and entertaining
- Restraint in passion and personal expression
- Ideals: order, logic, accuracy, "correctness," decorum
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