•Literature gives order to human experience.

•Literature explores cultural values.

•Literature demands an emotional response from the reader.

•Like a great journey, literature can show you things you have never seen before and will never forget.

Movements in Literature

Neoclassicism:Aesthetic attitudes and principles based on the culture, art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and characterized by emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion, and restrained emotion.

Ancient Architecture

Allusion and History

Classical Greece Augustan Rome also the Bible

Classical References

The Death of Socrates 1787

Subjects public and political concerns social responsibility manners & morals "The proper study of mankind is Man" (Pope) natural

world serves as an image of or analogy for human concerns

The Neoclassical Period

deals with polite, urbane society, upper and middle classes.

Fashion

Elements of Literature decorum, concision restraint balance reason wit

English poet Alexander Pope is known for the brilliant verse and stinging satire he wrote during the early and mid-18th century. Pope emulated the classical style of the poets of antiquity and further developed the poetic form known as the heroic couplet. He first earned fame with the work An Essay on Criticism (1711), in which he wrote the now famous line, "To err is human, to forgive divine.“

Jonathan Swift aimed his witty, imaginative, and often bitter satire at such subjects as politics, literature, and human society. Gulliver's Travels (1726), his masterpiece, is commonly considered a children's story, but it was originally intended as a satire on humankind.

Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622-1673), France's greatest comic dramatist, who produced, directed, and acted in the plays he wrote. Many of his comedies addressed serious themes and pointed the way to modern drama and experimental theater.

François Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778), The French writer and philosopher, is considered one of the central figures of the Age of Enlightenment of the 1700s, a period which emphasized the power of human reason, science, and respect for humanity. Voltaire believed that literature should serve as a vehicle for social change. His biting satires and philosophical writings demonstrated his aversion to Christianity, intolerance, and tyranny. The expression captured in this portrait of Voltaire in 1718 hints at the sharp sense of humor with which he won the favor of 18th-century French society.

Madamoiselle Riviere 1805

Genres satire epistle epic (teaching, ideas, critique of public

values) ode (public) and epigrams

Idea of 'Nature' (Most qualities of poetry and senses of what

constitutes moral life follow upon the age's understanding of Nature.)

Nature is the 'order of things', the "clear, unchanged and universal light" (Pope); it is marked by harmony, rationality and order, expressed descriptively and emotionally as well as intellectually. The 'real' world as we experience and understand it models a divinely sanctioned, hierarchical order.

Richard Mique's Temple of Love, circa 1775. Versailles, France