The Monk :: essays research papers fc

The Monk A ill-affected Offspring of the maturate of Reason Understanding the gothic novel arouse be accomplished by obtaining a familiarity of the Augustan point of view, which helps to draw a reference point for comparing and contrasting the origin of black letter literature. The thinking that was being questioned by the Gothic novel was Augustanism and without some cause of Augustan principles and their role in eighteenth-century thought it is difficult to understand the purposes of the Gothic revival, either in wrong of history or in terms of the way in which it offered a unseasoned conception of the relations between man, nature and a supreme being. David punter describes the political relationship of the Augustan thinker to the literary world, It is tempting to see in Augustanism the doctrine of a small cultural elite holding on to power and lieu under increasing pressure, and that pressure as precisely that exerted by the new reading public on the homogeneity of the old literary asylum (p 31 Punter). This small number of elite would have included, but non limited to, Fielding, Johnson and especially pontiff. However, Fielding and Johnson were slowly stepping outside of the realm of the Augustan limitations. Fielding was undoubtedly Augustan in his beliefs in the stability of brotherly rules and the necessity of a social and psychological compromise, but his mocking side towards literary stipulation represents a more moderate Augustan replication. Johnson, on the other hand, was a firm believer in these literary rules and but it was his Preface to Shakespeare which became the first significant breach in these limitations. Alexander Popes Essay on Man embodies the cosmological, theological and ethical beliefs of the Augustan age charm at the same time exemplifying long-suffering to the rules of literary form. The Augustan approach was intellectual with formal restraint while relying on reason and traditionalism to create literary works. These stipulations were very controlled by their boundaries and could not be exaggerated with out being broken. The Augustan little attitude condemned spontaneity for its chaotic qualities, imagination for its objection to reason and liberalism for its opposite to traditionalism. Gothic prevarication appears as a specific response to the Age of Reasons order. During the late eighteenth-century, several different kinds of new fiction arose to challenge the Augustan tradition leading the way was the Gothic novel. An stake in those things, which cannot be understood, for example religion and the soul, results in an overwhelming intricacy of what is accepted as art in the literary world.