The Enlightenment: an Age of Reason

The Enlightenment: When and Where Started and centered in Paris, France—the

philosophes, a group of intellectual deists. Dates from the late 17th to the late 18th centuries.

1670s-1800

Remember that England has just come through a long period of tense political and religious upheaval English Civil War

Historical Context

• Scientific Revolution– 17th-century advances

in science– Copernicus, Galileo,

Kepler, Descartes, Newton

A replica of Newton's 6-inch reflecting telescope of 1672.

Historical Context

• The scientific revolution changed the way people saw their world and their relationship to it.

Copernicus’s model of a heliocentric universe.

What was the Enlightenment?

The main components of Enlightenment thought:

• The universe is fundamentally rational.• Human experience is the foundation of human

understanding of truth.• Truth can be arrived at through empirical

observation and the use of reason.• All human life, both social and individual, can be

understood in the same way the natural world can be understood.

Effects of the Enlightenment

• The redeployment of the human sciences to apply scientific thinking to what were normally interpretive sciences.

• Modern Enlightenment thought.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

• crippled early by tuberculosis, crippled all his life

• first English poet to support himself entirely from the sale of his work

• Because he was Catholic, and therefore an oppressed minority, he could not attend university, vote, or hold public office

An Essay on Man: Study Questions, Part 1 (lines 1-172 of Epistle 1)

1. Line 16 should sound familiar to you: of what earlier work is it an echo? Why is this significant?

2. What does Pope mean in lines 29-32 when he says, “But of this frame the bearings, and the ties, / The strong connections, nice dependencies, / Gradations just, has thy pervading soul / Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?”

3. In Section 1 (lines 17-34), Pope delineates a difference between the way man can understand the universe and the way God can. What is the difference?

4. Pope begins Section 2 by chiding man for something. What is it?

5. Does the imagery in Section 2 suggest that Pope sees the universe as a place of democratic equality? If not, what is his vision of the universe?

An Essay on Man: Study Questions, Part 1 (lines 1-172 of Epistle 1)

6. What does Pope mean when he says, “Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, / All but the page prescribed, their present state?” (lines 77-78)

7. Explain Pope’s metaphor of the lamb in lines 81-84.8. In Section 4, what does Pope claim our principal error

is? What does this error lead us to do?9. Pope begins Section 5 by mocking Man’s tendency to

believe nature was created for him alone. What evidence does Pope give in lines 141-144 to contradict this belief?

10. Why does Pope mention the Borgias and Catiline in line 156? What are they an example of? What problem do they reveal?

Essay on Man Study Questions, Part 2 (lines 173-294 of Epistle ; lines 1- 18 of Epistle 2)

1. In lines 175-6, why is man grieved when he looks downwards?

2. In part 7, Pope describes a number of creatures in “creation’s ample range.” What are these creatures, and what does he mention about them?

3. Why might he list those creatures? What’s his point here?

4. Explain Pope’s Chain of Being metaphor in section 8—what does it mean that the universe is a chain?

5. Explain Pope’s metaphor of the body parts in section 9.

Jonathan Swift

• Born in Dublin, of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents.

• Father died before he was born, so they weren’t that well off.

• Was known for his satire

Modest Proposal

• Like much of Swift’s work, “A Modest Proposal” is a satire: a literary technique which principally ridicules its subject (individuals, organizations, states) as an intended means of provoking change.