The Augustan Age or the Enlightenment Age started at the beginning of the 18th Century England. It is also considered as the Age of Pope or Pseudo Classicists. The Augustan poets has their own group named Scriblerus club which consists of Jonathan Swift , Alexander Pope, John Gay , John Arbuthnot , Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell. The group even created a persona named Martinus Scriblerus. The group are satirists wrote many satires dedicated mostly for the upper class society.
The important characteristic of the age was an emphasize on logic and reason. The recent development during the age was Newton’s law of motion and theory on gravity. This led to the stress on logic and reason as the truth can be known through it. The medium to understand any human nature can be known through the use of wits and intellect. Hence, the poets stressed mostly on logical reasoning and used witty languages in their poems.
The literary metre that the poets of the treated was heroic couplet. It was the only special metre which these poets used in their writing. The use of heroic couplets is to show grandiosity of the characters and to evoke mock heroism. Many of the poems are written in mock epic style and heroic filled with sarcastic and ironic humor.
Satire was an important literary style of the age. The Augustan poets wrote many satires which attack the society and urban city life. They depict the social realism of the age and many changes that were taking in the place. The most important depictions was the error and guilt found in human beings and conventional setup for woman. Pope attacks the hypocrisy of the society with his wits and mock heroism in his poems.
The important element in their writing was the development of didactic nature. There is a stress on didactic and moral tone in the poem. Pope’s poems shows the morality of life and the existential judgments and errors that man has in their life. Pope’s famous quoted line was “The proper study of mankind is man”. These lines emphasize on comprehending human nature and one must search it from within. It shows the moral well being in the poem that one can understand the nature of human by knowing it from within.
The poets imitated the Augustan poets from Rome. It includes Virgil, Homer, Ovid , Horace and others. These poets has a great influence on these poets. Hence, the age is also known as the Neo-Classical Age. The poets were unable to imitate them properly and lacked their grandeur style, sublimity and dignity. Hence, the Augustan poets of England was labelled as Pseudo Classicists as the classical elements in their poem lies underneath in their poems as a shadow.
Lastly, the poem of this age believes in order. They believe that the universe is governed by certain laws and theories and hence they strictly adhere to conservative style of writing and emphasize on order. In their poems for instance shows the law of nature and its overall role in our life. The law of nature is the one that binds us all together like the universe which binds all the planets and celestial bodies in their orbits in a specific order.
