Augustan Period

The Augustan Period was a gradual reinvention of all the Classical forms of poetry. Every genre of poetry was recast, reconsidered, and used to serve new functions. For some examples, the ode, ballad, elegy, satire, parody, song, and lyric poetry were all be adapted from their older uses. In philosophy, it was an age increasingly dominated by experimentation. In writings of political-economy it marked mercantilism becoming a formal philosophy, the full development of capitalism, and the triumph of trade over other forms of selling.

Forms used in this period:

-Mock epics

-Elegies

-Historic

-Epics

-Heroic couplets

Elements used in this period:

-Satire and irony

-Iambic pentameter

-Paradoxes

-Plain/ordinary plotlines

-Many allusions to ancient Roman/Greek epic poetry

Themes:

-Human frailty

-Order in the universe

-Mocking of human behavior

Authors:

-John Dryden “The Wild Galant”

-Alexander Pope “The Rape of the Lock”

-Jonathan Swift “Tale of a Tub”