Thursday, November 18, 2010

Who were the literary heroes during the Age of Enlightenment? I'm supposed to name two heroes of this time period. As I understand it, Daniel...

Yes, you are absolutely on the right track!


The Age of Enlightenment refers to the time period when literature turned toward the exploration of much different themes than it had previously covered, including that of the natural state of man, the nature of civilization, social upheaval, and shifts in personal status.  


The Enlightenment aimed to celebrate ideas and reasoning, with a surge of writers who used satire to attack the previously held beliefs or institutional practices of the eighteenth century. That is where Jonathan Swift enters the scene (as you mentioned!) with Gulliver's Travel, which took a witty look at the travels of surgeon Lemuel Gulliver and examined themes of the individual versus society, the importance of self-awareness, and the roles that power and moral correctness play in people's social lives. Gulliver's Travels was a product of the Enlightenment (again, as a function of the rise of satire and the novel), even if the writing within it sometimes critiqued aspects of the Enlightenment--particularly the new conception of truth as a series of factual claims. So, yes, in that sense, Gulliver could be seen as an "anti-hero." He is educated, but gullible and lacks a sense of awareness about his own self and the world around him. 


The other character you pointed out--Daniel Defoe's titular character in Robinson Crusoe--is, on the other hand, a perfect representative of Enlightenment ideals. The book is told through a first person perspective, with Crusoe constructing his own world out of the materials available to him in the wild and attempting to civilize the "savages" he encounters. This book is widely considered the first English novel, and was an immediate success. 


So, yes, the answers you intend to give are correct. If you're interested in continuing to research this topic, you might also look into the realistic social novels of Samuel Richardson (particularly his epistolary work, Clarissa) and Tobias Smollett. 

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