2. His influences.
(1) He established the heroic couplet as the fashion for satiric, didactic, and descriptive poetry.(2) He developed a direct and concise prose style.
(3) He developed the art of literary criticism in his essays and in the numerous prefaces to his poems.
  Chapter 5 English Literature of the 18th Century新古典主义时期
I.   Introduction
1. The Historical Background.
2. The literary overview.
(1) The Enlightenment.
(2) The rise of English novels.
When the literary historian seeks to assign to each age its favourite form of literature, he finds no difficulty in dealing with our own time. As the Middle Ages delighted in long romantic narrative poems, the Elizabethans in drama, the Englishman of the reigns of Anne and the early Georges in didactic and satirical verse, so the public of our day is enamored of the novel. Almost all types of literary production continue to appear, but whether we judge from the lists of publishers, the statistics of public libraries, or general conversation, we find abundant evidence of the enormous preponderance of this kind of literary entertainment in popular favour.
(3) Neo-classicism: a revival in the seventeenth agogo of order, balance, and harmony in literature. John Dryden and Alexander Pope were major expogogochool.
(4) Satiric literature.
(5) Sentimentalism感伤主义

II.   Neo-classicism. (a general description)
1. Alexander Pope
(1)        Life:
a.    Catholic family; b.        ill health; c.        taught himself by reading and translating; d.        friend of Addison, Steele and Swift.
(2)        three groups of poems:
e.        An Essay on Criticism (magogom);
f.        The Rape of Lock;
g.        Translation of two epics.
(3)        His contribution:
h.        the heroic couplet—finish, elegance, wit, pointedness;
i.        satire.
(4) weakness: lack of imagination.
2. Addison and Steele
(1) Richard Steele: poet, playwright, essayist, publisher of newspaper.
(2) Joseph Addison: studies at Oxford, secretary of state, created a literary periodical “Spectator” (with Steele, 1711)(3) Spectator Club.(4) The significance of their essays.
a. Their writings in “The Tatler”, and “The Spectator” provide a new code of social morality for the rising bourgeoisie.
b. They give a true picture of the social life of England in the 18th century.
c. In their hands, the English essay completely established itself as a literary genre. Using it as a form of character sketching and story telling, they ushered in the dawn of the modern novel.
3. Samuel Johnson—poet, critic, essayist, lexicographer, editor.
(1)        Life:
a.  studies at Oxford; b.  made a living by writing and translating; c.    the great cham of literature.
(2) works: poem (The Vanity of Human Wishes, London); criticism (The Lives of great Poets); preface.
(3) The champion of neoclassical ideas.
III.         Literature of Satire: Jonathan Swift.
1.        Life:
(1)  born in Ireland; (2)  studies at Trinity College; (3)  worked as a secretary; (4)  the chief editor of The Examiner; (5)  the Dean of St. Patrick’s in Dublin.
2. Works: The Battle of Books, A Tale of a Tub, A Modest Proposal, Gulliver’s Travels.
3. Gulliver’s Travels.
Part I. Satire—the Whig and the Tories, Anglican Church and Catholic Church.
Part II. Satire—the legal system; condemnation of war.
Part III. Satire—ridiculous scientific experiment.
Part IV. Satire—mankind.
IV.                 English Novels of Realistic tradition.
1. The Rise of novels.
(1)  Early forms: folk tale – fables – myths – epic – poetry – romances – fabliaux – novelle - imaginative nature of their material. (imaginative narrative)
(2)        The rise of the novel
a.  picaresque novel in Spain and England (16th century): Of or relating to a genre of prose fiction that originated in Spain and depicts in realistic detail the adventures of a roguish hero, often with satiric or humorous effects.