Chapter Sixteen The Eighteen Century: From Rococo to Revolution

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Chapter SixteenThe Eighteen CenturyFrom Rococo
to Revolution

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Age of Diversity

• Unqualified optimism, extreme discontent
• Conscious engagement with social issues
• Revolutionaries and conservatives
• Enlightened despots
• Welfare of citizenry
• Duty and responsibility

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The Late Eighteenth CenturyTime of Revolution

• Technological improvements
• Increased literacy, circulation of ideas
• Governmental abuses
• Louis XV Après moi le déluge
• The Reign of Terror
• Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794)
• Essentiality of constitutional government

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Literature in the Eighteenth CenturyIntellectual
Developments

• Systematic examination of society
• Pessimistic views vs. Optimistic views
• Renewed interest in Classical culture
• Translations, themes, forms, references
• English Augustan movement
• Imitated Roman Augustan poets
• Return to order after English Civil War
• A desire to see divine order in the world

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Literature in the Eighteenth CenturyAlexander
Pope (1688-1744)

• Augustan poet
• Nature of human experience
• Rococo satire
• Tinged with personal hostility
• Christian Humanist teachings
• Revelation of human folly
• Reverence for order, reason

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The Late Eighteenth CenturyTime of Revolution

• American Revolution
• Inspired revolution in France
• Jeffersons Declaration of Independence
• Optimistic view
• Political and social freedom
• Equality and justice
• Universality of man and nature

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The Feminist RevolutionMary Wollstonecraft
(1739-1797)

• Vindication of the Rights of Women
• Similar sentiments to French declaration of
  rights of man and American declaration of
  independence, both of which excluded women
• First statement of womens inherent rights
• Women not subservient objects for men, but free,
  rational beings possessed of strength and dignity
  and deserving of respect

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Literature in the Eighteenth CenturyRational
Humanism The Encyclopedists

• Encyclopédie
• Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
• System for the classification of knowledge
• Compendium of human rationality
• Freedom of conscience and belief

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Bust of Denis Diderot by Jean Antoine Houdon
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Literature in the Eighteenth CenturyRational
Humanism The Encyclopedists

• Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689-1755)
• Distribution of governmental power
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
• Humansgood, societybad
• The noble savage
• Contempt for superficial, artificial
• Belief in human equality

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The critical satirists Voltaire and Swift
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Literature in the Eighteenth CenturyVoltaire
(1694-1778)

• A man engagé
• Importance of freedom of thought
• Ecrasez linfame
• Fanaticism and persecution
• Natural religion, morality
• Candide (1759)
• Folly of unreasonable optimism
• Cruelty and stupidity of the human race

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Literature in the Eighteenth CenturyJonathan
Swift (1667-1745)

• Hatred for human race
• Savage indignation
• Animals capable of reason
• Gullivers Travels
• Satire of human behavior
• A Modest Proposal
• Mans inhumanity to man
• Inevitability of human suffering

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Gottfried von Leibnitzaka Pangloss
Best of all possible worlds Theory of Monads