The Enlightenment Movement

2024年3月25日发(作者：五游精选)

The Enlightenment Movement

The18th-century England is known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of

Enlightenment Movement was a progressive intellectual movement

which flourished in France & swept through the whole Western Europe at the time.

The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the 15th & 16th centuries.

Its purpo was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modem

philosophical & artistic enlighteners considered the chief means for the

betterment of the society was “enlightenment” or “education” for the

Enlightener celebrated reason or ration, equality, science and human

beings’ ability to perfect themlves and their society. They called for a reference

to order, reason & rules & advocated universal education.

In Britain

tion:

The Age of Enlightenment was an anti-feudal and anti-church cultural

movement of intellectuals in 17th and 18th century Europe, which made an mental

preparation for the bourgeois revolution.

ssicism:

In the field of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival

of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism.

According to the neoclassicists, all forms of literature were to be modeled

after the classical works of the ancient Greek & Roman writers (Homer, Virgil, & so

on)& tho of the contemporary French ones.

They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion

& accuracy, & that literature should be judged in terms of its rvice to humanity.

This belief led them to ek proportion, unity, harmony & grace in literary

expressions, in an effort to delight, instruct & correct human beings, primarily as

social animals.

Thus, a polite, urbane, witty, & intellectual art developed.

entalism:

Sentimentalism is one of the important trends in English literature of the

middle and later decades of the 18th century.

Along with a new vision of love, ntimentalism prented a new view of

human nature which prized feeling over thinking, passion over reason, and

personal instincts of "pity, tenderness, and benevolence" over social duties.

Literary work of the ntimentalism, marked by a sincere sympathy for the

poverty-stricken, expropriated（征用） peasants, wrote the "simple annals of the

poor”.Writers of ntimentalism justly criticized the cruelty of the capitalist

relations and the gross social injustices brought about by the bourgeois

they attacked the progressive aspect of this great social change in

order to eliminate it and sighed for the return of the patriarchal times which they

idealized.

Sentimentalism embraces a pessimistic outlook and blames reason and the

Industrial Revolution for the miries and injustices in the aristocratic-bourgeois

society and indulges in ntiment, hence the definite signs of decadence in the

literary works of the ntimental tradition.

Defoe

Robinson Crusoe (1719):Robinson Crou, an adventure story very much in

the spirit of the time, is universally considered his masterpiece.

In the novel, Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a naive & simple youth

into a mature & hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life.

The realistic prentation of the successful struggle of Robinson single-handedly

against the hostile nature proves the best part of the novel.

an Swift

Gulliver’s Travels(1726): a masterpiece of satire not only on all parts of Britain

but also on the vice, folly and weakness of the whole mankind

Part I: voyage to Lilliput, the land of miniature

Part II: voyage to Brobdingnag , the land of giant

Part Ⅲ: voyage to Laputa

Part IV: voyage to the land of Houyhnhnms, a noble breed of thinking, talking,

high-minded hors

filthy inferior creature called Yahoos: the human race

Jonathan’s point of view:

Houyhnhnms: noble and rational yet cold and dull

Yahoos: low yet natural

In American

Revolutionary Period (1775-1783)

18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an

emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of

unquestioning religious dogma, and reprentative government in place of

monarchy.

Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice,

liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.

The colonists who would form a new nation were firm believers in the power

of reason; they were ambitious, inquisitive, optimistic, practical, politically astute,

and lf-reliant.

The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an

emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of

unquestioning religious dogma, and reprentative government in place of

monarchy.

Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice,

liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.

The colonists who would form a new nation were firm believers in the power

of reason; they were ambitious, inquisitive, optimistic, practical, politically astute,

and lf-reliant.

in Franklin: Autobiography