1. Performer - Culture & Literature
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2012
Shaping the English
character
Bartholomew
Dandridge,
A Lady reading
Belinda beside
a fountain, 1745.
Yale Center for
British Art,
New Haven

2. Shaping the English character
• Queen Anne (1702–1714) had succeeded her brother-
in-law, William III, and her sister Mary.
• After her death, her cousin, the Duke
of Hanover, became King George I.
During his reign:
1. the powers of the monarchy
diminished;
2. Ministers met without the King in the
cabinet led by the Prime Minister;
3. the actual power was held by Sir
Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime
minister.
1. The first Hanoverian king
Performer - Culture&Literature
George I, c. 1714

3. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
2. The House of Hanover

4. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
The majority of Scots accepted their new role in a kingdom
united under the title Great Britain.
A renewal of Scottish nationalism must await the 20th
century.
3. 1707: The Act of Union
It abolished the
Scottish Parliament
It gave the Scots a proportion of
the seats at Westminster
The Act of Union
became official during Queen Anne’s reign

5. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
4. The Whigs and the Tories
The Whigs
Descendants Parliamentarians
Supported by the wealthy and
commercial classes
Fought for  commercial development
 a vigorous foreign policy
 religious toleration
The Tories
Descendants Royalists
Supported by the Church of
England the landowners
Fought for the divine right of
the king
The first
political
parties
in Britain

6. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
The 18th-century key concepts were:
• political stability;
• individualism;
• liberal thought and free will;
• optimism;
• reason and common sense;
• desire for balance, symmetry, refinement.
5. A golden age

7. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
6. The reading public
The increase of the reading public
in the Augustan Age was due to
The growing
importance of the
middle class
The individual’s
trust in his own
abilities
The practice
of reason and
self-analysis
Most readers
were
middle-class
women
They used to
borrow books
from circulating
libraries
Coffee-houses
allowed the
circulation of
news, opinions

8. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
6. The reading public
Coffee-houses
1. were attended by fashionable and artistic people;
2. became gathering points where people
exchanged ideas and gossip;
3. let public opinion and journalism evolve;
4. were exclusively attended by men.

9. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
6. The reading public
where the belief in the power of
reason and the individual’s trust
in his own abilities found
expression
‘The Tatler’and‘The
Spectator’the first English
newspapers
Their style  simple, lively
Their aim  didactic
The interest of middle-class people in literature gave rise to
journalism the novel

10. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
7. The novelist
1. The spokesman of the middle class.
2. The fathers of the English novel:
• Daniel Defoe the realistic novel
• Samuel Richardson the sentimental novel
• Henry Fielding the mock-epic novel
• Jonathan Swift the satirical novel

11. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
8. The novelist’s aim
• To be understood widely He wrote in a simple
way.
• Realism not only linked to the life presented, but to
the way it was shown.
• Speed and copiousness His most important
economic virtues since it was the bookseller and not the
patron who rewarded him.

12. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
9. The characters
The hero
A bourgeois, self-made,
self-reliant man
The reader is expected to
sympathise with him
The mouthpiece of the
author
They struggle
for survival or
social
success
have contemporary
names and surnames
Robinson
Crusoe
All the
characters

13. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
10. The setting
• Chronological sequence of events.
• References to particular times of the year or of the day.
‘I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York’
Robinson Crusoe
• Specific references to names of countries, towns and
streets.
• Detailed descriptions of interiors to make the
narrative more realistic.

14. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
11. The narrative technique
1ST-PERSON
NARRATOR
3RD-PERSON
NARRATOR
PATTERN
Daniel Defoe
Fictional
autobiographies
Samuel
Richardson
Letters
exchanged
between the main
characters
Henry Fielding
The mock-epic
style

15. Shaping the English character
Performer - Culture&Literature
12. Themes
1. Real life.
1. Everything that could alter a social status.
1. The sense of reward and punishment
linked to the Puritan ethics of the middle class.