Age Of Dryden Critical Analysis

1021 Words5 Pages

Literary historians sometimes break up this era into three periods, the Age of Dryden, from 1660 to John Dryden’s death in 1700, when English neoclassicism was being established; the Age of Pope and Swift, from 1700 to their deaths in 1744-45, when neoclassicism fully flowered; and the Age of Johnson, from 1744-45 until his death in 1784, when neoclassicism began to be more fully challenged by a variety of ideas and attitudes, including the rise of the novel as a popular form, the development of sentimentalism as a literary and philosophical movement, and the increasing optimism of Enlightenment thought.This age was characterized by having a different view of literature. It was a break with a literature of the Renaissance period. The age was reflecting the sprit of …show more content…

The Age of Pope and Swift that followed can be seen as marking a shift in the literary culture from the court to the coffee house, as these important social centers began to become central meeting places for politicians and writers. Many of the great writers of this era were directly engaged with politics, and satire became one of the central features of the age. It was also the age that gave rise to some of the most important journalistic literature in English history, most notably Addison and Steele’s Spectator, which helped to establish a certain moral pose as well as restrained style as the model for the century that would follow. These authors were now writing for a broader audience, in part because patronage from the court and the aristocracy began to disappear and writers increasingly depended on publishers and the marketplace for their livelihood. With the middle of the century, many of these changes led to new and varied literary forms, in particular forms such as the novel that focused more

Open Document