Howard D. Weinbrot

Howard D. Weinbrot challenges the view that the period 1660-1800 is correctly regarded as the "Augustan" age of English literature, a time in which classical Augustan ideals provided a main source of inspiration. Scholars have held that British writers of the Restoration and eighteenth century considered Augustus Caesar to be the model of the wise ruler who enabled political, literary, and moral wisdom to flourish. This book shows on the contrary that classical standards, though often invoked, were often rejected by many informed citizens and writers of the day. Anti-Augustan sentiment consolidated by the 1730s, when both Whig and Tory, court and country, viewed Augustus as the enemy of the mixed and balanced constitution that was responsible for British liberty. Professor Weinbrot focuses in particular on literature and its classical backgrounds, reinterpreting major works by Pope and Gibbon. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Decline of a Classical Norm

Augustus Caesar in Augustan England

Peter J. Schakel

Phillip Harth

Stephen E. Karian

This text offers an array of essays that consider literary, intellectual, political, theological and cultural aspects of the years 1650-1800, in the British Isles and Europe. At the centre of the book is Jonathan Swift; other essays discuss Alexander Pope, 18th-century music and poetry, William Congreve, James Boswell, Samuel Richardson, and women's novels of the 18th century.

Historical Inquiries in Honor of Phillip Harth

Eighteenth-century Contexts

Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660–1780 chronicles changes in contentious politics and religion and their varied representations in British letters from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. An uncertain trend toward tolerance and away from painful discord significantly influenced authors who reflected on and enhanced germane aspects of British literary and intellectual life. The movement was stymied during the painful Gordon Riots in June 1780, from which Britain needed to repair itself. Howard D. Weinbrot's broad-ranging interdisciplinary study considers sermons, satire, political and religious polemic, Anglo-French relations, biblical and theological commentary, Methodism, legal history, and the novel. Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660–1780 analyzes the texts and contexts of several major and minor authors, including Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Olaudah Equiano, Maria De Fleury, Lord George Gordon, Nathaniel Lancaster, Henry Sacheverell, Tobias Smollett, and Edward Synge.

Howard D. Weinbrot

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