Flashcards on Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature
Restoration and 18th Century Literature: Comprehensive Student Guide
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Poplawski - The Restoration and the 18th century
102 cards
Card 1
Question: What challenge does a literary overview of the Restoration and eighteenth century face according to the text?
Answer: It can only provide the barest outlines because the period is rich and complicated, with many titles published that are left out of study (the 'slaugh
Card 2
Question: What tension exists between contemporary popularity and later literary value in this period?
Answer: Works that were popular at the time (e.g., novels, ballads, broadsheets) do not always align with what later literary history regards as valuable, cre
Card 3
Question: Why is it important to consider how early novels engaged other models of writing and knowing?
Answer: Because focusing only on the novel misses central tensions about its novelty; novels emerged alongside and in relation to other genres and short forms
Card 4
Question: Which female novelists are named as among the most popular until 1740?
Answer: Aphra Behn, Delarivière Manley, and Eliza Haywood.
Card 5
Question: How did male novelists' writing reflect perceptions of the novel during the early eighteenth century?
Answer: Many novels written by men showed self-consciousness about the novel as a female-gendered genre.
Card 6
Question: What question arises when considering the period labeled 'The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century'?
Answer: Whether we are looking at one cultural period or two, since periodisation is difficult and history shows gradations, tendencies, shifts, and overlaps.
Card 7
Question: What general observation does the text make about periodisation in cultural and intellectual history?
Answer: It is cumulative rather than broken by clear breaks; more likely to show gradations, tendencies, shifts, and overlaps than distinct separations.
Card 8
Question: How did Restoration court culture differ from eighteenth-century culture in terms of origins and style?
Answer: Restoration court culture, influenced by the Anglo-Scottish Stuarts who had been in exile in France, brought a Bourbon sense of opulence; the eighteen
Card 9
Question: How did the pursuit of pleasure and social taste shift from the Restoration to the eighteenth century?
Answer: The Restoration's pursuit of pleasure at court was replaced in the eighteenth century by a diffusion of taste, politeness, and sociability.
Card 10
Question: Which quotation from Shaftesbury is used to capture an eighteenth-century social ideal, and what does it convey?
Answer: Shaftesbury: 'a public spirit can come only from a social feeling or sense of partnership with humankind' — conveying that public virtue arises from s