英国文学史第五讲：18thCliteratureandJohnDryden.ppt

英国文学史第五讲：18thCliteratureandJohnDryden.ppt18th Century literature
Enlightenment
Neoclassicism
Neoclassical Period (1660-1798)
The English society of the neoclassical period was a turbulent one. The Restoration　in 1660the Great Plague in 1665The Great London Fire in 1666The Glorious Revolution in 1688
The 18th century saw the fast development of England as a nation. Abroad, a vast expansion of British colonies.At home, Acts of Enclosure British bourgeois grew rapidly
Enlightenment Movement
The 18th century is also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason.
The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France and swept through the whole Western Europe at the time. The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.
The enlighteners celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. 
△ They held that rationality or reason should be the only, the final cause of any human thought and activities. They called for a reference to order, reason and rules. They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and relations, every superstition, injustice and oppression was to yield place to “eternal truth”, “eternal justice” and “natural equality.”  △ This belief provided theory for the French Revolution and the American Independence.
The enlighteners advocated universal education.
△ They believed that human beings were limited, dualistic, imperfect, and yet capable of rationality and perfection through education. If the masses were well educated, there would be great chance for a democratic and equal human society. △ Literature at the time, heavily didactic and moralizing, became a very popular means of public education.
IN the field of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival o