Literature of the 18th century refers to world literature produced during the years 1700–1799.
European literature in the 18th century
European literature of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama, satire,essay and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period, of which Daniel Defoe's 1719 Robinson Crusoe is probably the best known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel.
18th century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism.
The Enlightenment
The 18th century in Europe was the Age of Enlightenment, and literature explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man. Edmund Burke, in his A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), says: "The Fabrick of Superstition has in this our Age and Nation received much ruder Shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the Chinks and Breaches of our Prison, we see such Glimmerings of Light, and feel such refreshing Airs of Liberty, as daily raise our Ardor for more."
Translations
Translations of foreign-language works became ever-more ubiquitous in Europe in the 19th century. Works translated from French to English and vice versa were particularly common, but works written in nearly all major world languages, from Arabic to Greek, likewise proliferated. In 1708, Simon Ockley translated Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan directly from Arabic to English for the first time, while Michael Wodhull was the first to translate all the extant writing of Euripides into English, with his work published in four volumes in 1782.
Translations in the eighteenth century were typically liberal and loose, as it was common for translators to alter the text to appeal more to their intended audience and to add their own original work to it. John Lockman, for example, described his French translations as "versions" to indicate the large changes he'd made to the original text. Unclear labeling further complicated matters, resulting in complicated translation loops. In some cases, works of fiction were translated from French to English and, later, from English back into French, with the second translator being unaware that the work they were translating was not the original.
Notable eighteenth-century translators from Asia included Sugita Genpaku, who translated the Dutch medical work Kaitai Shinsho into Japanese in 1774, making it among the first Western works to be translated in Japan.
English literature in the 18th century by year
1700–1709
1700: William Congreve's play The Way of the World premiered. Although unsuccessful at the time, The Way of the World is a good example of the sophistication of theatrical thinking during this period, with complex subplots and characters intended as ironic parodies of common stereotypes.
1703: Nicholas Rowe's domestic drama The Fair Penitent, an adaptation of Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, appeared; it would later be pronounced by Dr Johnson to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language. Also in 1703 Sir Richard Steele's comedy The Tender Husband achieved some success.
1704: Jonathan Swift (Irish satirist) published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books and John Dennis published his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. The Battle of the Books begins with a reference to the use of a glass (which, in those days, would mean either a mirror or a magnifying glass) as a comparison to the use of satire. Swift is, in this, very much the child of his age, thinking in terms of science and satire at one and the same time. Swift often patterned his satire after Juvenal, the classical satirist. He was one of the first English novelists and also a political campaigner. His satirical writing springs from a body of liberal thought which produced not only books but also political pamphlets for public distribution. Swift's writing represents the new, the different and the modern attempting to change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. The Battle of the Books is a short writing which demonstrates his position very neatly.
1707: Henry Fielding was born on 22 April.
1711: Alexander Pope began a career in literature with the publishing of his An Essay on Criticism.