Eighteenth Century Criticism

The role of the writer in the 18th century was both creative and critical - few saw the two as separate activities. Far from being a mechanical exercise of the rules of writing inherited from the ancients, neo-classical criticism was a resourceful and imaginative response to the creative texts of the past. The development away from neo-clasicism towards what has come to be known as pre-Romanticism is discernable in these extracts, with a growing emphasis on the importance of subjective feeling, and on the concept of character, associated with the rise of the novel and a new scholarly and critical enthusiasm for Shakespeare. The passages drawn from letters, essays and prefaces which make up the selection illustrate the diversity of critical forms in this period. Writers represented include Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, David Hume, Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson.