Other Augustan Prose Writers (NIVEL AVANZADO)

NIVEL AVANZADO:

Other Augustan Prose Writers


JOHN LOCKE     (1632-1704)
English empiricist philosopher and political theorist, b. Wrington, Somersetshire; Lecturer, physician and philosopher; assistant to the First Earl of Shaftesbury, Whig political theorist, exile in Netherlands 1682-88; customs official after revolution; d Oates, Essex; influential theorist of knowledge and economist; proto-liberal, defends political and religious toleration.

_____.  Letters for Toleration. 1690-92.
_____. (Anon.). Two Treatises of Government.  1689.
_____.  An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1689.
_____. Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money. 1691.
_____. Some Thoughts Concerning Education. 1693.
_____. The Reasonableness of Christianity. 1695.

John Locke (Wikipedia).



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1689-1762, née Mary Pierrepont)
_____. Town Eclogues and Court Poems. 1716.
_____. (Anon.). The Nonsense of Common Sense. Periodical. 1737-38.
_____. Letters. 4 vols. 1763-7.

JOHN GAY (1685-1732)
_____. Wine. Poem. 1708.
_____. The Shepherd's Week. Mock pastorals. 1714.
_____. Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London. Mock georgic. 1716.
_____. Acis and Galatea. Libretto for Handel's opera: https://youtu.be/xgausDURFLE
_____. Fables. 1727, 1738.
_____. The Beggar's Opera. Musical. 1728.
_____. Polly. Musical. 1729.

An episode from The Beggar's Opera— Macheath in Newgate prison:







SHAFTESBURY (1671-1713)

Anthony Ashley Cooper, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions , and Times, 1711) gave an influential formulation to many ideas of the Enlightenment. An optimistic theodicy, a defense that evil is necessary for the overall good of the universe (like Pope and Bolingbroke). He defends the notions of the Great Chain of Being and of a full universe. Social morality is derived from innate human benevolence: a belief based on the contemplation of the order of the Universe. He advocates a rational christianity.



JOSEPH BUTLER (1692-1752)
_____. Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. 1736.

Butler was a Bishop of the Church of England. His main work, the Analogy of Religion,  is a defense of Christianity, which tries to justify the necessity of revealed religion from the evidence of order that we find in Nature. Butler is a product of the age of Reason in matters of religion: but he uses reason, or an appearance of reason, to affirm the doctrine of established Christianity.
This was considered by many the definitive proof of divine order against the attacks of skeptical philosophy and science.