The Enlightenment originated in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and

parts, the break seems to fall naturally with the outbreak of the Civil War (1642–
51), marked by a closure of the theatres in 1642, and a new age beginning with the 
restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In France the bitter internecine struggle of the 
Fronde (1648–53) similarly divided the century and preceded possibly the greatest 
period of all French literature—the age of Molière, Racine, Boileau, and La 
Fontaine. In Germany the early part of the century was dominated by the religious 
and political conflicts of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) and thereafter by the 
attempts of German princes to emulate the central power and splendour of Louis 
XIV’s French court at Versailles. The Netherlands was also involved in the first 
part of the century in a struggle for independence from Spain (the Eighty Years’ 
War, 1568–1648) that resulted not only in the achievement of this but also in the 
“Golden Age” of Dutch poetry—that of Henric Spieghel, Daniël Heinsius, and 
Gerbrand Bredero. 
The civil, political, and religious conflicts that dominated the first half of 
the century were in many ways also the characteristic response of the Counter-
Reformation. The pattern of religious conflict was reflected in literary forms and 
preoccupations. One reaction to this—seen particularly in Italy, Germany, and 
Spain but also in France and England—was the development of a style in art and 
literature known as Baroque. This development manifested itself most 
characteristically in the works of Giambattista Marino in Italy, Luis de Góngora in 
Spain, and Martin Opitz in Germany. Long regarded by many critics as decadent, 
Baroque literature is now viewed in a more favourable light and is understood to 
denote a style the chief characteristics of which are elaboration and ornament, the 
use of allegory, rhetoric, and daring artifice. 

---

6 
Enlightenment literature in England 
The Enlightenment originated in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and 
later spread throughout the world. Representatives of this current pay special 
attention to knowledge, they believe that the world can be understood intelligently, 
it should be changed by thinking. The main feature of this stream of literature is 
that it is aimed at rescuing the people from ignorance and backwardness, and calls 
for knowledge and enlightenment. Enlighteners believe that the existing social 
system is imperfect, while man acknowledges that he is a sinful slave.
But they believe in the human mind. Most enlighteners did not deny the 
existence of God. According to them, existence was created by God, but now man 
is given the freedom to control it. That is why they valued human power, its 
creative power. Representatives of this line believe that with intellect and 
knowledge, man is able to lead the world to goodness.
They tried to reconcile ‘sociality’ and ‘naturalness’, ‘nature’ and 
‘civilization’. For this reason, the literature of this period is dominated by such 
topics as the journey to strengthen the material basis of culture and enlightenment, 
the struggle and victory of man with nature, the test of human thinking. 
As interests shifted, the Enlightenment produced more of a focus on the 
arts and sciences. This caused an increase in creativity, therefore many influential 
writers found this to be an opportunity for their writing to emerge and have an 
impact on literature at the time 
The 17th century marked a shift from an age of faith to an age of reason. 
Literature represents the turbulence in society, religion, and the monarchy of this 
period. ... Common themes among these two authors are love, religion, and 
political views. 
The Renaissance - or really, the back end of it. The early 17th century is 
also known as the 'Jacobean era' in England 

---

7 
The 17th century was a period of unceasing disturbance and violent storms, 
no less in literature than in politics and society. The Renaissance had prepared a 
receptive environment essential to the dissemination of the ideas of the new 
science and philosophy. 
If Baroque literature was the characteristic product of Italy and Germany in 
this period, Metaphysical poetry was the most outstanding feature in English verse 
of the first half of the century. This term, first applied by Dryden to John Donne 
and expanded by Dr. Johnson, is now used to denote a range of poets who varied 
greatly in their individual styles but who possessed certain affinities with Baroque 
literature, especially in the case of Richard Crashaw. 
Perhaps the most characteristic of all the disputes of the 17th century was 
that in which the tendency to continue to develop the Renaissance imitation of the 
classics came into conflict with the aspirations and discoveries of new thinkers in 
science and philosophy and new experimenters with literary forms. In France this 
appeared in a struggle between the Ancients and Moderns, between those who 
thought that literary style and subject should be modeled on classical Greek and 
Latin literature and supporters of native tradition. In Spain a similar conflict was 
expressed in a tendency toward ornament, Latinization, and the classics 
(culteranismo) and that toward a more concise, profound, and epigrammatic style 
(conceptismo). This conflict heralded through the Moderns in France and the idea 
of conceptismo in Spain a style of prose writing suitable to the new age of science 
and exploration. The Moderns in France were largely, therefore, followers of 
Descartes. In England a similar tendency was to be found in the work of the Royal 
Society in encouraging a simple language, a closer, naked, natural way of 
speaking, suitable for rational discourse, paralleled by the great achievements in 
prose of John Milton and John Dryden. 
The 17th century was a period of huge political and social upheaval. From 
an age characterised by the Crown's tight control of the state, the century witnessed 
years of war, terror and bloodshed that enveloped the kingdom, as well as the 
execution of Charles I and the introduction of a republic. 

---

8 
The word «enlightenment», in the broadest sense, means to educate the 
people, in the narrow sense, it refers to the intellectual movement of the period 
when the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism was in full swing. 
Perception is the main issue. They highly valued human mental activity and 
human qualities. At the same time, the idea of enlightenment is highly valued. 
(At the head of the state should be an educated, just king).
The Enlightenment originated in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries 
and later spread throughout the world. Representatives of this current pay 
special attention to knowledge, they believe that the world can be understood 
intelligently, it should be changed by thinking.The main feature of this stream 
of literature is that it is aimed at rescuing the people from ignorance and 
backwardness, and calls for knowledge and enlightenment. Enlighteners 
believe that the existing social system is imperfect, while man acknowledges 
that he is a sinful slave. But they believe in the human mind. Most 
enlighteners did not deny the existence of God. According to them, existence 
was created by God, but now man is given the freedom to control it. That is 
why they valued human power, its creative power. Representatives of this line 
believe that with intellect and knowledge, man is able to lead the world to 
goodness. They tried to reconcile ‘sociality’ and ‘naturalness’, ‘nature’ and 
‘civilization’. For this reason, the literature of this period is dominated by such 
topics as the journey to strengthen the material basis of culture and 
enlightenment, the struggle and victory of man with nature, the test of human 
thinking.
In the English writer D. Defoe's «Robinson Crusoe», the man who 
landed on a deserted island reaches the peak of development based on his 
intellect and hard work, the death-defying hero does not bow to nature with 
his boundless love and understanding for life. At the same time, there are 
images in Enlightenment literature that contradict the struggling heroes. They 

---

9 
appear more in the image of non-European heroes. For example, the Uzbek in 
Montesquieu's «Persian Letters», Rick in S. Johnson's «Russell, the Prince of 
Abyssinia» or the savage in Waiter's «Simplicity» - is characterized by 
extreme simplicity, innocence, ignorance of the world. At the same time, there 
are images in Enlightenment literature that contradict the struggling heroes. 
They appear more in the image of non-European heroes. For example, the 
Uzbek in Montesquieu's «Persian Letters», Rick in S. Johnson's «Russell, the 
Prince of Abyssinia» or the savage in Waiter's «Simplicity» - is characterized 
by extreme simplicity, innocence, ignorance of the world. Enlighteners oppose 
conditionality, artificiality, in the literature of classicism, which, unlike the 
representatives of this current, appeals to the lives of ordinary people, paying 
special attention to their daily worries and aspirations. These features of the 
English Enlightenment also influenced European literature. Mesquite drama in 
France (D. Diderot, M.J. Seden) and Germany (G. Lessing et al.) Took the 
form of English drama. 
The new immigrant literature announces and encourages this seismic 
shift; it distinguishes itself from previous paradigms of immigrant narrative 
voice and vision. This fiction reflects a national myth undergoing 
transformation, transmuting the national landscape as it develops. The 
template of the immigrant narrative which has been with us since William 
Bradford and Hector St. Jean de Crevecouer begins with a journey to the New 
World, survives shock, resistance, exploitation, and discrimination, eventually 
experiences assimilation (with its loss of ethnic identity) and usually 
concludes at some mediated moment of reincorporating both American and 
ethnic identity. Here we have the narrative tropes that classically offer the 
greatest satisfaction: accomplished lineal directionality and resolution, or 
closure. A transatlantic passage in steerage from crowded, worn-down places 
across vast geographies to a land of pristine expanses and burgeoning promise. 
Ellis Island, Chicago, a farm (or factory work) and family in the 
Midwest. Obstacle overcome, goal achieved, loose ends reincorporated, 

---

10 
progeny who blend in visibly and linguistically. The literature of immigration 
being written today refuses the linear narrative logic, the closure, the 
teleological reassurances made to homogeneous America. Cyclical rather than 
linear, chaotic rather than ordered, the spatial trajectories of these new 
narratives repeatedly reinscribe a different American landscape, in both 
physical and psychic terms. This remapping is revealed through the signature 
touch of contemporary immigrant literature: an acknowledgement of 
unhomeliness (or flickering, inbetweenness, vacillation) that ranges from 
resignation to exhilaration, influencing character, mood, even style and 
structure. Hector Tobar and Junot Diaz (Dominican American), for instance, 
defiantly remap spatial and linguistic boundaries through their style, mixing in 
regional Spanish, local references, ghetto slang, and Hispanic word order. In a 
single paragraph Junot Diaz will cite Salman Rushdie and Tom Waits and his 
old tia. He switches languages dizzyingly, as in "I won’t describe the lio me 
and the novia got into over that letter," transporting the reader between 
linguistically distant locations that exceed the reader’s competence . 
The America that Diaz’s narrators display to the reader is the place where 
Spanish, street language, and literate English all coexist. In some novels, the 
process of a character’s arrival at this competency drives the narrative, but in 
many, the characters’ recognition that their worlds exceed geographical 
determination forms the background to the events that occur. In other novels, this 
recognition has a structural presence, affecting not the characters so much as the 
shape of the novel.Migrant literature is either written by migrants or tells the 
stories of migrants and their migration. It is a topic of growing interest within 
literary studies since the 1980s. Migrants are people who have left their homes and 
cultural settings and who started a new life in another setting that is, in most cases, 
initially strange to them. 
Immigration debates flood news sources today, but the realities 
experienced by those who flee their homes in search of new opportunities — even 
political asylum — oftentimes end up shoved to the margins. Though mostly 

---

11 
fiction, the following literary works offer up a valuable, varied glimpse into what 
life is like in America for immigrants and their families. Many of them emphasize 
familiar themes regarding balances between old and new, allegiances to family and 
the unique hardships faced once settled. Do not think this list comprehensive. 
Plenty of other excellent books exist out there to educate an open-minded populace 
about the issue from the perspective of those it impacts most. This is merely a 
sampling of some of the most notable examples. European literature of the 18th 
century refers to literature (poetry, drama, satire, and novels) produced in Europe 
during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as 
literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this 
period, of which Daniel Defoe's 1719 Robinson Crusoe is probably the best 
known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, 
the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel. 
18th Century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually 
moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism. 
The 18th century in Europe was The Age of Enlightenment and literature 
explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, 
geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of 
man and the supposed civilized state of man. Edmund Burke, in his A Vindication 
of Natural Society (2000), says: "The Fabrick of Superstition has in this our Age 
and Nation received much ruder Shocks than it had ever felt before; and through 
the Chinks and Breaches of our Prison, we see such Glimmerings of Light, and feel 
such refreshing Airs of Liberty, as daily raise our Ardor for more."research by 
Shema Leon Patrick. 
1700: William Congreve's play The Way of the World premiered.[1] 
Although unsuccessful at the time, The Way of the World is a good example of the 
sophistication of theatrical thinking during this period, with complex subplots and 
characters intended as ironic parodies of common stereotypes. 
1703: Nicholas Rowe's domestic drama The Fair Penitent, an adaptation of 
Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, appeared; it would later be pronounced by Dr 

---

12 
Johnson to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language. Also in 1703 Sir 
Richard Steele's comedy The Tender Husband achieved some success. 
1704: Jonathan Swift (Irish satirist) published A Tale of a Tub and The 
Battle of the Books and John Dennis published his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. 
The Battle of the Books begins with a reference to the use of a glass (which, in 
those days, would mean either a mirror or a magnifying glass) as a comparison to 
the use of satire. Swift is, in this, very much the child of his age, thinking in terms 
of science and satire at one and the same time. Swift often patterned his satire after 
Juvenal, the classical satirist.He was one of the first English novelists and also a 
political campaigner. His satirical writing springs from a body of liberal thought 
which produced not only books but also political pamphlets for public distribution. 
Swift's writing represents the new, the different and the modern attempting to 
change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. The Battle of the Books 
is 
a 
short 
writing 
which 
demonstrates 
his 
position 
very 
neatly. 
1707: Henry Fielding was born on 22 April. 
1708: Simon Ockley published an English translation of Ibn Tufail's Hayy 
ibn Yaqdhan, a 12th-century philosophical novel, as The Improvement of Human 
Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan. This was the first English 
translation directly from the Arabic original.1711: Alexander Pope began a career 
in literature with the publishing of his An Essay on Criticism. 
1712: French philosophical writer Jean Jacques Rousseau was born on 
28 June and his countryman Denis Diderot was born the following year 1713 
on 5 October. Also in 1712 Pope published The Rape of the Lock and in 1713 
Windsor Forest.1709: Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September in 
Lichfield, Staffordshire. The new immigrant literature announces and 
encourages this seismic shift; it distinguishes itself from previous paradigms 
of immigrant narrative voice and vision. This fiction reflects a national myth 
undergoing transformation, transmuting the national landscape as it develops. 
The template of the immigrant narrative which has been with us since William 

---

13 
Bradford and Hector St. Jean de Crevecouer begins with a journey to the New 
World, survives shock, resistance, exploitation, and discrimination, eventually 
experiences assimilation (with its loss of ethnic identity) and usually 
concludes at some mediated moment of reincorporating both American and 
ethnic identity. Here we have the narrative tropes that classically offer the 
greatest satisfaction: accomplished lineal directionality and resolution, or 
closure. A transatlantic passage in steerage from crowded, worn-down places 
across vast geographies to a land of pristine expanses and burgeoning promise. 
Ellis Island, Chicago, a farm (or factory work) and family in the Midwest. 
Obstacle overcome, goal achieved, loose ends reincorporated, progeny who blend 
in visibly and linguistically. The literature of immigration being written today 
refuses the linear narrative logic, the closure, the teleological reassurances made to 
homogeneous America. Cyclical rather than linear, chaotic rather than ordered, the 
spatial trajectories of these new narratives repeatedly reinscribe a different 
American landscape, in both physical and psychic terms. Many of them emphasize 
familiar themes regarding balances between old and new, allegiances to family and 
the unique hardships faced once settled. Do not think this list comprehensive. 
Plenty of other excellent books exist out there to educate an open-minded populace 
about the issue from the perspective of those it impacts most. This is merely a 
sampling of some of the most notable examples. European literature of the 18th 
century refers to literature (poetry, drama, satire, and novels) produced in Europe 
during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as 
literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this 
period, of which Daniel Defoe's 1719 Robinson Crusoe is probably the best 
known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, 
the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel. 
18th Century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually 
moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism. 
The 18th century in Europe was The Age of Enlightenment and literature 
explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, 

---

14 
geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of 
man and the supposed civilized state of man. Edmund Burke, in his A Vindication 
of Natural Society (2000), says: "The Fabrick of Superstition has in this our Age 
and Nation received much ruder Shocks than it had ever felt before; and through 
the Chinks and Breaches of our Prison, we see such Glimmerings of Light, and feel 
such refreshing Airs of Liberty, as daily raise our Ardor for more."research by 
Shema Leon Patrick.
In the English writer D. Defoe's «Robinson Crusoe», the man who landed 
on a deserted island reaches the peak of development based on his intellect and 
hard work, the death-defying hero does not bow to nature with his boundless love 
and understanding for life. At the same time, there are images in Enlightenment 
literature that contradict the struggling heroes. They appear more in the image of 
non-European heroes. For example, the Uzbek in Montesquieu's «Persian Letters», 
Rick in S. Johnson's «Russell, the Prince of Abyssinia» or the savage in Waiter's 
«Simplicity» - is characterized by extreme simplicity, innocence, ignorance of the 
world. At the same time, there are images in Enlightenment literature that 
contradict the struggling heroes. 
They appear more in the image of non-European heroes. For example, the 
Uzbek in Montesquieu's «Persian Letters», Rick in S. Johnson's «Russell, the 
Prince of Abyssinia» or the savage in Waiter's «Simplicity» - is characterized by 
extreme simplicity, innocence, ignorance of the world. Enlighteners oppose 
conditionality, artificiality, in the literature of classicism, which, unlike the 
representatives of this current, appeals to the lives of ordinary people, paying 
special attention to their daily worries and aspirations. These features of the 
English Enlightenment also influenced European literature. Mesquite drama in 
France (D. Diderot, M.J. Seden) and Germany (G. Lessing et al.) Took the form of 
English drama.