British Literature: Restoration Period

18th century notable characteristics of London

• Rapid growth, increasing population

• early stirrings of Industrial Revolution

• London at the center of the evolving British Empire

• Birth of new reading w/ focus on middle class life

• Novel genre emerging among women

• Reason and enlightenment

• Religion determined politics

• Extreme class divide: rich had excess, poor had nothing and were forced to work in bad conditions

1665

Plague claims more than 68,000 people in London

1666

Great fire destroys London

1752

Ben Franklin invents

lightening rod

1762

Paving Act helped

improve conditions of the poor

1765

Stamp Act

1773

Boston Tea Party

1775

American Revolution

1795

tax created to generate

income from the rich

1799

Napoleon

Which church was reestablished?

Anglican

Napoleon Bonaparte

French statesman and military leader who rose to

prominence during the French Revolution and led

several successful campaigns during the French

Revolutionary Wars.

Louis XIV of France

“The Sun King”; monarch of the

House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France

from 1643 until his death in 1715.

George Washington

known as the "Father of His Country,"; an American

soldier and statesman who served from 1789 to

1797 as the first President of the United States. He

was commander-in-chief of the Continental Army

during the American Revolutionary War and

presided over the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Marie Antoinette

the last Queen of France before the French Revolution.

Neoclassical works were modeled on…

Old Latin classics

• represented what was permanent and universal

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet, known by

his nom de plume Voltaire, was a French

Enlightenment writer, historian and

philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on

the established Catholic Church and

Christianity as a whole, and his advocacy of

freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and

separation of church and state.

“Mind has no gender.”

“Virtue can only flourish

among equals.”

Mary Wollstonecraft

“Reading is the to the mind

what exercise is to the

body.”

Sir Richard Steele

“Vision is the art of seeing

what is invisible to others.”

Jonathan Swift