Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: The Achievement of Dryden's “Discourse on Satyr”
- CONTEXTS
- 1 The Pattern of Formal Verse Satire in the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
- 2 History, Horace, and Augustus Caesar: Some Implications for Eighteenth-Century Satire
- 3 Masked Men and Satire and Pope: Towards an Historical Basis for the Eighteenth-Century Persona
- TEXTS
- Notes
- Index
2 - History, Horace, and Augustus Caesar: Some Implications for Eighteenth-Century Satire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: The Achievement of Dryden's “Discourse on Satyr”
- CONTEXTS
- 1 The Pattern of Formal Verse Satire in the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
- 2 History, Horace, and Augustus Caesar: Some Implications for Eighteenth-Century Satire
- 3 Masked Men and Satire and Pope: Towards an Historical Basis for the Eighteenth-Century Persona
- TEXTS
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Contemporary literary scholarship has made impressive gains in reclaiming the classical background of eighteenth-century literature. We no longer think of Pope's Dunciad as a plotless ramble, or of his Imitations of Horace as unfortunately derivative; instead, they are carefully wrought poems that include and evaluate the classical past as transmitted by Continental and English commentators. Modern writers who hold this view regard the classics as normative, as one of the eighteenth century's main sources of inspiration, emulation, and imitation. Augustus Caesar, the apparently central Roman model, often lends his name to our period, and we hear the term “Augustan” applied sometimes to all the authors between 1660 and 1800, sometimes to the “orthodox” and “conservative” during those years, and sometimes to those who flourished during a prescribed segment, during, say, the “age” of Swift and Pope. Then as now Augustan implies a variety of excellences, but may be reduced to the omnibus belief that during the reign of Augustus Caesar the throne was a center of value. The exalted character of the monarch induced stable government, the arts of peace, protection by heaven, refinement of style, and patronage of great authors. These characteristics combined to create civilizing forces of permanent achievement for all mankind, and standards against which further achievements should be measured.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Eighteenth-Century SatireEssays on Text and Context from Dryden to Peter Pindar, pp. 21 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988