ENGLISH POETRY
Augustan Poetry
1660 – 1750
General
- Named after Augustus Caesar (63BC – 14AD)
o Augustus (leader of Rome)
▪ Rome was powerful and stable
▪ Arts flourished
• 1700 years later the poets of England set out to create a new Augustan age
▪ Restoration of the monarchy brought new continental ideas to England and three key
thinkers influenced the mood of the age
• Isaac Newton formulated the laws of gravity
• Thomas Hobbes founded sociology
o In Leviathan
▪ Hobbes suggested that nicety was controlled by men rather than by
God
• John Locke
o considered human understanding and realised that we are limited by our
senses
▪ These determine what we can understand
o Idea of perception
o Augustans
▪ valued
• Order
• Reason
• Stability
▪ Their symmetrical classical buildings showed ^^ this
- Dominant form of poetry – satire
o Great English dictionary maker Samuel Johnson defined satire – “a poem in which wickedness or folly
is censured”
Augustan Poetry
1660 – 1750
General
- Named after Augustus Caesar (63BC – 14AD)
o Augustus (leader of Rome)
▪ Rome was powerful and stable
▪ Arts flourished
• 1700 years later the poets of England set out to create a new Augustan age
▪ Restoration of the monarchy brought new continental ideas to England and three key
thinkers influenced the mood of the age
• Isaac Newton formulated the laws of gravity
• Thomas Hobbes founded sociology
o In Leviathan
▪ Hobbes suggested that nicety was controlled by men rather than by
God
• John Locke
o considered human understanding and realised that we are limited by our
senses
▪ These determine what we can understand
o Idea of perception
o Augustans
▪ valued
• Order
• Reason
• Stability
▪ Their symmetrical classical buildings showed ^^ this
- Dominant form of poetry – satire
o Great English dictionary maker Samuel Johnson defined satire – “a poem in which wickedness or folly
is censured”
