Module 1: The Enlightenment and Restoration Literature With the Restoration of the crown in 1660, a new era in English literature and politics began. While the Glorious Revolution of 1688 - 1689 firmly established Parliament’s superiority over the monarchy, writers responded to the end of Puritan rule by addressing previously proscribed materials - especially sexuality - often in increasingly secular terms. At the same time, the philosophical and scientific foundation of the Enlightenment - most notably the chartering of the Royal Society in 1662 and the writings of John Locke at the end of the century - appeared. During the century that followed, Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire believed that one could use reason and rational thought to combat the forces of ignorance, tyranny, and repression that had come to be associated with the church and the absolutist monarchic government.

In this unit, you will study the development of neoclassical aesthetics and the renewal of the theater in the Restoration period before exploring the development of Enlightenment philosophy and its relationship to key literary developments of the first half of the 18^th century from political satire to Alexander Pope’s famous mock-epic, The Rape of the Lock.