LITERARY STUDIES

The late sixteenth to the seventeenth century  in Europe witnessed the Renaissance, which is a scientific, cultural and intellectual movement, considered as the birth of sciences in Europe. The next period in Europe, and England in particular is that of the Enlightenment, often referred to as the Age of Reason (and Modernity), is a consequence of the Renaissance. The birth of sciences enhanced the intellectual life in Europe, many philosophers and thinkers started to write about reason and scientific truth. The spirit of this age centered around science as the only truth man can be sure of, thus any knowledge which is not calculable, or scientifically proven, is not reasonable. Reason thus became synonym to truth, and science becoming a definition of truth.

For Emmanuel Kant, the Enlightenment is “Man’s emergence from one’s own self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self imposed if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of the enlightenment is therefore: Sapere Aude! Have courage to use your own understanding”. (Aufklarung is the German translation of the word Enlightenment)

The Main Writers of the Enlightenment:

There have been many thinkers in the Enlightenment age who spoke and wrote about this movement. The literature of this period was rather rational and intellectual instead of fictional. The first thinkers to define the Enlightenment are French, German, and English philosophers and scientists, who together formed a movement they called  Philosophes.

This movement included Jean Jacques Rousseau (French), Renée Descartes (French), John Voltaire,  Denis Diderot, and others. These philosophers defined the Enlightenment starting from Descartes’ principle (I think therefore I am), thus relating man’s existence to his ability to think for himself (which leads back to Kant’s definition of the Enlightenment)

Other British thinkers like Locke, Isaac Newton, David Hume, related the Enlightenment to science and truth, having Newton’s theory of the Gravity, and his essays about science, as an inspiration leading them to conclude that natural and human laws contribute in making things happen.

Some thinkers approached the Enlightenment from a more spiritual viewpoint, thus meditating about God and creation, without being superstitious. Society was becoming less religious and more rational. English poet Alexander Pope says: “know then thyself presume not god to scan the proper study of mankind is man”.

Principles of the Enlightenment

·          Individualism: Unlike previous ideologies, the enlightenment puts man in the centre of the universe. Knowledge is supposed to serve man and to improve his life. Man is thus the most important creature in the universe

·          Humanitarianism: all human beings should be helpful to each other regardless of their status or class.

·          The separation of the church and the state: Secularism. The enlightenment came as a reaction against the corrupted authority of the church, thus it has put an end to the power of the church in politics and other fields of life.

·          The rational thinking stipulates that human reason can understand the natural laws of the universe and determine the natural rights of mankind.

·          Human beings, based on reason, can provide unending progress in knowledge, technical achievement, and moral values

·          The human self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal.

·          The human self is the only objective form of reasoning.

·          The only knowledge obtained by rational thinking is science.

·          The knowledge produced by science is “truth,” and is eternal.

·          The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection.

·          All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.

·          Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true.

·          If what is rational is true, what is true is also right and indisputable.

The Consequences of the Age of Reason (also factors of the rise of a new literary genre: the novel)

1.    The rise of a new social class, the Bourgeois class, composed of tradesmen of the middle class, with limited education and great wealth

2.    The spread of intellectual cafés which enhanced political and intellectual debates

3.    The invention of the printing machine and the translation of the bible

4.    Higher education rate among the commons

5.    The need of a literature that represents the middle class to entertain them