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Age of Reason and Enlightenment

Age of Reason and Enlightenment. Asking How? 1660-1800. What came before?. Renaissance (roughly 1400’s-1600’s) Shakespeare Unusual events (earthquakes, comets, physical ailments) = meaning/warning/punishment Great public disaster – earth and sky gave warnings

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Age of Reason and Enlightenment

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  1. Age of Reason and Enlightenment Asking How? 1660-1800

  2. What came before? • Renaissance (roughly 1400’s-1600’s) • Shakespeare • Unusual events (earthquakes, comets, physical ailments) = meaning/warning/punishment • Great public disaster – earth and sky gave warnings • Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet

  3. Age of Enlightenment • Not WHY, but HOW • Less superstition • Affected religion • God instead like a clockmaker – set the world in motion and left it alone • Deism – religious beliefs based on reason and observation (B. Franklin, T. Jefferson, T. Paine)

  4. Haves and Have Nots • LARGE disparity in living conditions • Think pre-French Revolution • Debtor’s prisons • Window tax • 74% of poor children died before age 5 • Working children • Common belief that the poor were at fault – stupid and unlawful / the other / not like us

  5. Satire • Jonathon Swift • Expose the morally corrupt politics and crass commercialism • Anglo-Irishman • Lived in Ireland but considered himself English • At first, saw living in Ireland a demotion, beneath him

  6. Swift’s Satire • Wanted to improve human conduct and make people more decent and humane • I’m looking at you 18th century England! • Justified pro-Irish writing: “What I do is owing to perfect rage and resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced live.”

  7. Swift’s Epitaph Swift sailed into his rest. Savage indignation cannot lacerate his breast. Go, traveler, and imitate, if you can, one who strove with all his strength to champion liberty.”

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