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| Home > History of Literature > Literature in Eighteenth Century > Neoclassicism
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| | Neoclassicism
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Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture. These movements were in effect at various times between the 18th and 20th centuries.
The novel
The ground for the novel had been laid by journalism, drama and satire. Long prose satires like Swift`s Gulliver`s Travels (1726) had a central character who goes through adventures and may (or may not) learn lessons. However, the most important single satirical source for the writing of novels came from Cervantes`s Don Quixote (1605, 1615). In general, one can see these three axes, drama, journalism, and satire, as blending in and giving rise to three different types of novel.
Daniel Defoe`s Robinson Crusoe (1719) was the first major novel of the new century.
Satire
A single name overshadows all others in 18th-century prose satire: Jonathan Swift. Swift wrote poetry as well as prose, and his satires range over all topics.. What Swift did was to combine parody, with its imitation of form and style of another, and satire in prose.
During the 18th century the novel adopted features of the old romance and became one of the major literary genres. It is today defined mostly by its ability to become the object of literary criticism demanding artistic merit, a specific `literary` style and a deeper meaning than a true story of the same content could claim to have.
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