English Augustan Poetry

An important contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of monster studies

The eighteenth century in English literature has been called the Augustan Age the Neoclassical Age, and the Age of Reason. The term 'the Augustan Age' comes from the self-conscious imitation of the original Augustan writers, Virgil and Horace, by many of the writers of the period. Specifically, the Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope (~1690 - 1744). The major writers of the age were Pope and John Dryden in poetry, and Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison in prose. Dryden forms the link between Restoration and Augustan literature; although he wrote ribald comedies in the Restoration vein, his verse satires were highly admired by the generation of poets who followed him, and his writings on literature were very much in a neoclassical spirit. I particularly aimed at interpretation of sociopolitical milieu of Augustan Age, of social change, of literary tendencies of the age, and of prose, novel, poetry and drama of the Augustan Age.

The age of Augustus, commonly dated to 30 BC – AD 14, was a pivotal period in world history. A time of tremendous change in Rome, Italy, and throughout the Mediterranean world, many developments were underway when Augustus took charge and a recurring theme is the role that he played in shaping their direction. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus captures the dynamics and richness of this era by examining important aspects of political and social history, religion, literature, and art and architecture. The sixteen essays, written by distinguished specialists from the United States and Europe, explore the multi-faceted character of the period and the interconnections between social, religious, political, literary, and artistic developments. Introducing the reader to many of the central issues of the Age of Augustus, the essays also break new ground and will stimulate further research and discussion.

Traces the developing attitude of poets of the first century BC, considering why they came to write as they did.

Augustan Poetry and the Roman Republic focuses on the works of the major Augustan poets, Vergil, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, and explores the under-studied aspect of their poetry, namely the way in which they constructed and investigated images of the Roman Republic and the Roman past.

The Daring Muse is a challenging account of the richness and complexity of Augustan poetry. It takes in a broad range of writers from the Restoration to the Regency, from Rochester and Dryden to Cowper and Crabbe, and shows the essential connections between them. Augustan poetry has too often been thought of as uniform, staidly classical, even dull. Margaret Doody explodes this myth once and for all. She shows it to be poetry of great energy and diversity: of extravagant conceits, subversive parody, incessant stylistic and formal experimentation; a self-consciously innovative poetry that sought to express and extend the perpetual, restless activity of the human mind. Both the principles and techniques of the verse are related to similar elements in the novels of the period; the book's numerous illustrations help to show how the poems were presented and interpreted in their own time.

The Triumph of Augustan Poetics offers an important re-evaluation of the transition from Baroque to Augustan in English literature. Starting with Butler's Hudibras, Blanford Parker describes Augustan satire as a movement away from the 'controversial disputation' of the seventeenth century to a general satire which ridicules Protestant, Anglican and Catholic in equal measure, as well as the poetic traditions that supported them. Once the dominant forms of late medieval and Baroque thought - analogical and fideist, a fully symbolic world and an empty wilderness - were erased, a novel space for the imagination was created. Here a 'literalism' new to European thought can be seen to have replaced the general satire, and at this moment Pope and Thomson create a new art of natural and quotidian description, in parallel with the rise of the novel. Parker's account concludes with the ambiguous or hostile reaction to this new mode seen in the works of Samuel Johnson and others.

An anthology containing fresh and rhythmic translations of the great poets from the Augustan period, Golden Verses covers a broad range of verse with introduction, maps, chronology, glossary, bibliography and notes. Alessi's text is designed specifically for the college market, providing students with access to the thought and context at the roots of our culture. Designed to be read in conjunction with major works of the Augustan Age—Ovid's Metamorphosis and Vergil's Aeneid.