Restoration & Augustan
When the monarchy returns in 1660 the theatres reopen, and prose gets sharper and funnier. This is the great age of satire: writers treat reason as the highest human virtue and then use it, mercilessly, on everybody else.
✦Satire and mock-epic
✦The heroic couplet, rhymed and closed
✦The periodical essay and the coffee-house
✦Plain, argumentative prose
John Bunyan
He proved that plain, unstylish English could hold an entire allegorical world.
Andrew Marvell
He turned argument into seduction, and made time audible.
Jonathan Swift
The greatest ironist in English, and the reason we still call irony 'Swiftian'.
Alexander Pope
He brought epic machinery into the drawing room and made mock-heroic a moral instrument.
The Pilgrim's Progress — The Dream
John Bunyan · 1678
A dream in plain prose that half of England once knew by heart.
An Essay on Man
Alexander Pope · 1733
Eighteenth-century philosophy in couplets that close like lids.
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell · 1681
A seduction argument built like a syllogism, with a graveyard in the middle.
A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift · 1729
The most savage joke in English, delivered in the calmest voice.
The Rape of the Lock
Alexander Pope · 1712
An epic about a stolen curl of hair, which is the entire point.