Student Question
What are the differences between seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century literary features?
Quick answer:
Differences between seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century literary features include the presence of serious philosophical texts like Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan in the seventeenth century and satire, such as Candide, in the eighteenth. We also notice the prominence of religious poetry, including John Milton's Paradise Lost, in the seventeenth century and a greater focus on human's relative smallness in the eighteenth.
In the seventeenth century, we see writers engaging with serious topics, like how to organize society and how to define truth. In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes puts forward his idea of a commonwealth. In Discourse on the Method, René Descartes delineates how to arrive at truth via doubt.
In the eighteenth century, we see writers more prone to produce satire than compose weighty, philosophical text. Jonathan Swift ridicules empire-building in Gulliver's Travels. He also satirizes society's harsh treatment of the poor in his essayA Modest Proposal. Alexander Pope also published many famous satires, including his poem The Dunciad. In France, Voltaire lampooned the sexism and savagery of society in Candide.
In the seventeenth century, we should note how religious poetry was prominently featured. There was George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne.
There was also John Milton. He published his famous epic poem Paradise Lost
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
Paradise Lost in 1667. What was the aim of Paradise Lost? According to Milton, it was to "assert Eternal Providence, / And justifie the wayes of God to men."
In the eighteenth century, we see less religious poetry and more of a focus on humans and their relatively humble place in the universe. In the seventeenth century, Milton felt powerful enough to raise himself to the level of God's spokesperson. In the eighteenth century, Pope brings humans down quite a few pegs. As Pope says in his poem AnEssay on Man, "Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find, / Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?"
References
What are the differences between 17th-century and 18th-century literary features?
In poems like “The Flea” by John Donne, metaphysical poets used bathos as a way of driving home their point. Bathos can be defined as a sudden change in tone from the sublime to the ridiculous and is a common feature of seventeenth-century poetry.
In “The Flea,” bathos is achieved by the speaker’s comparison of his beloved’s being bitten by a flea with a loss of her maidenhead (i.e., her virginity). The speaker wants to sleep with the object of his affections and tries to persuade her to play ball by arguing that, as the flea has bitten both of them, their blood is already mingled together, clearly a metaphor for the act of sex. Donne’s use of bathos yokes together something important—the speaker’s desire to have sex with his beloved—with something unimportant—being bitten by a flea.
Though a relatively common feature of seventeenth-century poetry, bathos was frowned upon in the following century. Poetry in this era was supposed to deal with elevated themes, expressed in suitably elevated language. There was, of course, a place for satire, as the works of Alexander Pope clearly attest. But even in the most scurrilous satire, there was an underlying sense of seriousness. In The Dunciad, for example, Pope isn’t just settling scores with his critics and certain public figures he detests, he’s also making a serious point about what he regards as the degeneracy of the contemporary literary scene.
As part of his one-man war against the “dunces,” Pope wrote a short essay entitled “Peri Bathous,” in which he expressed his contempt for failed attempts by his rivals at achieving a tone of sublimity in their works. Though the chief targets of Pope’s withering scorn are his contemporaries, his criticism could easily be extended to the metaphysical poets of the seventheenth century for their use of bathos in combining very serious matters with very trivial ones.