Cultural History of Britain Lecture 8 Timeline : Restoration (Baroque and Neo-Classicism, Age of Dryden) : Charles II 1665: Great Plague 1666: Great Fire of London : James II 1688: Glorious Revolution s: Augustan Period (Neo-Classicism, Age of Pope, Age of Hogarth - beginning) 1750s-1798: Age of Sensibility (Age of Johnson, Pre- Romanticism) : George III Overview: a Mixture of Styles and Trends Political culture: the gradual emergence of the modern two-party system Philosophy: Early Enlightenment, religious dissent and gradually emerging religious tolerance Architecture: organic development of Palladian into Baroque and Neo-Classicism Great Fire London rebuilt of stone, hygienic conditions greatly developed, model of modern interior furnishing Music: Baroque Literature: mixture of medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-Classical elements, forerunners of Romanticism Political Culture: the Roots of the Modern Two-Party System RIGHT Time of Civil War: Cavelier (royalists) Restoration: Tories (royalists, Stuart Dynasty, Catholicism) 19th century: Conservative Party After the 1920s: Conservative Party LEFT Roundheads (Puritans, parlamentarists) Whigs (liberals, parliamentary monarchism) Liberal Party Labour Party takes over (Liberal Party remains the 3 rd major political force) Neo-Classicism in Arts and Literature Neo-Classicism=broad tendency in literature and art (Habib, History 273) over the 18 th and 19 th centuries (competing with Romanticism in the latter) Background: new reading audience (Habib, History 275) and market for arts (middle classes) heritage of Renaissance Humanism (Habib, History 273) Coincides with Enlightenment (the Age of Reason) in European thought General tenets and characteristic features: return to the Classics (Habib, History 276) organic continuation of Renaissance objectivity, impersonality, rationality, decorum, balance, harmony, proportion, moderation (Habib, History 273) order, clarity, standardisation (Habib, History 274) composition=rational, rule-bound process rejection of stylistic excess, superfluous ornamentation, oversophistication (Habib, History 273) purity and hierarchy of genres (Habib, History 274) central concerns: imitation and nature (Habib, History 274) natura naturata imitation of the external world (human action) (Habib, History 274) imitation of classical authors (Homer, Virgil) (Habib, History 274) identification of nature and the classics special concept of nature (Habib, History 274) rejection of Baroque and Gothic (Habib, History 273) Architecture: Inigo Joness Followers From Palladian to Baroque Sir Roger Pratt ( ) Hugh May ( ) John Webb ( ) Baroque interior ( ) at Windsor designed by Hugh May Typical temple portico of English country houses (1651) planned by John Webb Baroque Neo-Classicism: Sir Christopher Wren ( ) Oxford education, Professor of Astronomy Turned to architecture in the 1660s Journey to Europe (1665-6) meeting the Baroque master Bernini 1669: appointed Surveyor-General of the Kings Works Supervised the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire Overall plan for rebuilding the city following Roman models discarded for financial reasons Supervision of the reconstructions (52 new City churches) Often centralised plan Domes Steeples added later Saint Pauls Cathedral ( ) 4 great secular buildings outside London St. Stephen Walbrook, London, by Wren Saint Pauls Cathedral, cruciform medieval plan Saint Pauls Cathedral Baroque Music: Henry Purcell ( ) Organist of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal Wrote church music Wrote music for plays, dramatic operas and a chamber opera (Dido and Aeneas) Philosophy of Enlightenment I: Thomas Hobbes ( ) Mathematician Forerunner of empiricism Materialist epistemology Political philosophy Leviathan (1651) Advocator of absolutism Strong state Strong central power Authority Inspired by the devastation and bloodshed of the civil war Popular and respected on the continent (Germans) Rejection in Britain (constitutional monarchy) British Empiricism I: John Locke ( ) Originally a physician Fundamentals of empiricist epistemology Essay on Human Understanding (1690) Rejects Cartesian innate ideas Tabula rasa Also wrote on education, economics, mathematics, theology, Biblical exegesis, medicine, etc. Two Treatises of Government (1690) father of the liberal concept of the state (night-watch man or minimal state) Later to be known as a system of checks and balances Basis for the American Constitution Transitory Figures in Literature: John Bunyan and John Milton John Bunyan ( ) Non-conformist preacher Several imprisonments Pilgrims Progress (1684) Allegory (medieval genre) Baroque elements John Milton ( ) Controversial figure Politics: from royalist to supporter of commonwealth, liberal concerning freedom of speech, the personal interpretation of the Bible and divorce Medieval picture of the world (Paradise Lost, 1667) Protestant (Renaissance) Renaissance Baroque (heroic epic on a religious theme, Divine Providence) Puritan influence rejection of predestination, belief in free individual will Representative of Early Enlightenment Theatre: Restoration Comedy 1660: theatres reopened, their number radically decreased Drury Lane Covent Garden Haymarket (opera) Covered theatres increased costs theatre-going is the privilege of the elite Curtain theatre as illusion of reality Actresses erotic, immorality, love intrigue as exclusive topic Comedy of manners Wit Notable Restoration Comedies John Dryden, Marriage a la Mode (1672) William Wicherly, The Country Wife (1675) William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700) Nell Gwynn, celebrated actress and lover to Charles II Timeline s: Augustan Period (Neo-Classicism, Age of Pope, Age of Hogarth beginning) : William of Orange 1690: Battle of Boyne (Ireland) no Licensing Act (free press) 1701: Act of Settlement, Hanoverian Succession : Queen Anne 1713: Treaty of Utrecht beginning of the First British Empire 1707: Acts of Union (Scotland) : George I 1715: First Jacobite Rebellion (the Old Pretender, Scottish support) : George II : Robert Walpole 1746: Last Jacobite Rebellion (Battle of Culloden, Bonnie Prince Charlie alias the Young Pretender, support of Highland clans) Age of Revolutions Agricultural Revolution Enclosures (earlier open-field system) Sheep, wool First wave of the Industrial Revolution Dramatic developments in textile industry ( ) Flying shuttle Spinning Jenny Water frame Spinning mule Power loom 1769: James Watt, steam-engine Revolution of Transport 18 th century: quick development of waterways and channels (transporting goods) Building roads (John Metcalf and John Macadam) 1829: Stephensons steam-engine French Revolution (1789) New Audience: Culture for Urban Middle-Class Society Expensive forms of arts (architecture, horticulture, sculpture, to some extent painting) remain the privilege of the aristocracy Middle classes Literature Clubs (emergence of new ideas) Caffs (discussion of new ideas) Journals The Tatler ( ) The Spectator ( ) Circulating libraries Education idea of general elementary education emerges Lowest classes: charity and Sunday schools (reading, writing, religion) Secondary schools: grammar schools low level Wealthier layers of society: tutors and governesses Decline of prestigious universities Dissenting academies (exclusion of dissenters from other schools) British Empiricism II: George Berkeley ( ) and David Hume ( ) Archbishop Berkeley Empiricist basis Tries to resolve the controversies inherent in Lockes empiricism subjective idealism A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) to be is to be perceived Denies the existence of material substance Preserves a metaphysical explanation (existence of God) for the existence of order and system Parallel with later phenomenological approaches Theoretising vision David Hume Empiricist basis, but takes its conclusions to the extreme Scepticism Empirical knowledge does not reveal the real nature or things Only impressions Ideas are even fainter impressions Denial of a metaphysical explanation No coherent, stable self bundle of impressions Major influence on German idealism (Kant, Schopenhauer) Literature in the Augustan Age Key aesthetic concepts: Edmund Burke, Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) Neo-Classical norm: beautiful Romantic ideal: sublime Picturesque mostly in the English (landscape) garden Genres and representatives Satire Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Henry Fielding Rise of the novel (as opposed to Romance) Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe Henry Fielding, Tom Jones The Birth of English Painting: The Age of Hogarth William Hogarth ( ) Educated in Baroque painting Conversation pieces Satirical vision of the age Strong moralising sense Series of paintings later mass produced as engravings Forerunner of the English caricature William Hogarth, A Rakes Progress ( ) The Orgy or Tavern Scene William Hogarth, Marriage a la Mode (series: ) Architecture: Neo-Classicism Proper as a Return of the Palladian Style Chiswick House (1723-9) Horticulture: The Aesthetics of the Picturesque and Emergence of the English Landscape Garden First propagators: William Kent and Alexander Pope Outstanding landscape gardeners: Lancelot Capability Brown ( ) Humphry Repton ( ) coined the term Characteristic features: Reaction against the French garden (replaced it on the continent) Represented idealised nature Often inspired by paintings (Claude Lorrain) Lake, lawns, groves of trees, bridges, recreation of classical (later Gothic) architecture Lorrain and Kent Imported Baroque Music: Georg Friedrich Hndel ( ) Baroque composer, writer of polyphonic secular and church music (cantatas, songs, sonatas, concertos, operas, hymns and anthems, etc.) 1714: settling in London (Georg, Elector of Hanover George I) 1727: naturalised British citizen Wanted to popularise Italian opera in London, with little success Water Music Suite (1717) Started to compose oratorios Messiah (1742) major success 1749: Music for the Royal Fireworks Timeline 1750s-1798: Age of Sensibility (Age of Johnson, Pre- Romanticism) : George III 1763: Treaty of Paris end of Seven Years War, France loses all its territories in Canada to Britain : American War of Independence 1783: Treaty of Versailles Britain acknowledges U.S. independence, end of the First British Empire Sir Joshua Reynolds ( ): Grand Style Beginnings of Academism One of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy of Art ( ) Discourses presidential addresses to the students year by year, aesthetic principles ( ) Grand Style/Manner (Discourse III) Originally applied to historical paintings (no defects in a heroic character) Later to portraiture (full-length portraits with props that convey magnitude, nobility and sophistication, nature perfected) Basis of rigid Academic style, later to be rejected by Pre-Raphaelite painters Thomas Gainsborough ( ) Unique Combinations of Genre and Technique Early career Landscape painter Trained on the work of Dutch painters (Ruisdale) Bath period ( ) Fashionable portrait painter Influence of Van Dyck London ( ) Perfection of his style Combination of landscape and portraiture Opaque and transparent colours together Mr and Mrs Andrews ( ) Gainsborough, The Mourning Walk (1785) Cult of Sentiment a Reaction against Neo-Classicism in Neo-Classicism Sentimental comedy Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722) Dominance on stage until 1773 (counter-reaction: Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer) Sentimental novel Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740) Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy ( ) A Sentimental Journey (1768) Neo-Classical vs. Gothic (Romantic) Neo-Classical well-ordered harmonious simple pure set of cultural models Dr Johnson Embodies the spirit of the age, important rather as a personality Mediocre writer and literary critic Critique of Metaphysical Poets New assessment of Shakespeare Disintegration of Neo-Classical norms, especially the three unities and the illusion theatre Gothic chaotic ornate convoluted excess exaggerated wild uncivilised Forerunners: Graveyard School (Thomas Gray, Edward Young) Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764) Ann Radcliffe, Gregory Lewis, Mary Shelley Pre-Romanticism (William Blake, ) Architecture: Georgian, Regency, Sham Gothic Georgian style: more comfortable form of Neo-Classicism available for urban middle- classes, harmony of exterior, interior design and furniture (Robert Adam, ) Regency: form of Neo-Classical style at the turn of the century Neo- or Sham Gothic: return to Gothic forms as a reaction against rigid Neo- Classicism (second half of 18 th century), parallel with Georgian and Regency Works Cited Blamires, Harry. A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, Gaunt, William. English Painting A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson, Gelfert, Hans-Dieter: Nagy-Britannia rvid kultrtrtnete. Corvina, Budapest, Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism and Theory from Plato to the Present. London: Blackwell, Halliday, F. E. An Illustrated Cultural History of England. London: Thames and Hudson, Jenner, Michael. The Architectural Heritage of Britain and Ireland. Penguin: London, Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York, London: W. W. Norton, Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, Tarnas, Richard. A nyugati gondolat stcii. Ford. Lzr A. Pter. Budapest: AduPrint, Watkin, David. English Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992.