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| Home > History of Literature > Literature in Eighteenth Century
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| | Literature in Eighteenth Century
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European Literature in the 18th (Eighteenth) century started The Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. The 18th (Eighteenth) century saw a new genre developing- that of the novel. Eliza Haywood`s Fantomina (1724) is one of the first novels to be popular. Sub genres of the novel - epistolary novel, sentimental novel, histories, gothic novels and libertine novels were also gaining in popularity.
The 18th century novelists were holding up a mirror to the society in their works and exposing the many foibles of the society. There were writers like Jonathan Swift who was one of the first novelists to use satire as a means to change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. The Battle of Books (1704) is a short writing based on this theme.
Daniel Defoe was another political pamphleteer turned novelist like Swift. He wrote Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders etc.
John Gay`s The Beggars Opera began a new style in Opera, the "ballad opera" which brings operatic style down tomore popular level and precedes the genre of comic operettas.
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