Shakespeare’s romantic dramas The Tempest.

1609-1612 (The Tempest, the winter’s tale) this period differ from everything Sh wrote before. He still touches upon most important social & moral problems, but now suggests Utopia solutions to them. He introduces romantic & fantastic elements, which have a decisive role in his plays.

The late romances, often simply called the romances, are a grouping of William Shakespeare's last plays, comprising Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; and The Tempest. The Two Noble Kinsmen, of which Shakespeare was co-author, is sometimes also included in the grouping.

Shakespeare's plays cannot be precisely dated, but it is generally agreed that these comedies followed a series of tragedies including Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespeare wrote tragedies because they were successful at the box office, but he returned to comedy towards the end of his career, mixing it with tragic and mystical elements. Shakespeare's late romances were also influenced by the development of tragicomedy and the extreme elaboration of the courtly masque as staged by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. The subjects and style of these plays were also influenced by the preference of the monarch, by Shakespeare's ageing company and by their more upper class audiences.

The romances call for spectacular effects to be shown onstage, including storms at sea, opulent interior and exterior scenery, dream settings and the illusion of time passing. Scholars have argued that the late plays deal with faith and redemption (искупление), and are variations on themes of rewarding virtue over vice.

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone.

The story draws heavily on the tradition of the romance, and it was influenced by tragicomedy. It differs from Shakespeare's other plays in its observation of a stricter, more organised neoclassical style.

ENGLISH ENLIGHTENMENT. THE EARLY ENLIGHTENMENT.D DEFOE.J SWIFT.

The  18^th c. saw GB rapid growing into a capitalist country. It was an age of intensive industrial development. The industrial revolution began: new machinery was invented that turned Britain into the 1^st capitalist power of the world. The 18^th cent was also remarkable for the development of science and culture.

In spite of the progress of industry and culture in England, the majority of the people were still very ignorant. One of the most important problem that faced the country was that of education.

The 17^th and 18^th cent-s are known in the history of European countries as the period of E. the enlighteners defended the interests of the common people. Their criticism was directed against social inequality & religious hypocrisy as well as immorality of aristocracy.

In the period of E the poetic forms of Renaissance were replaced by prose. The didactic novel was born and became the leading genre of the period. Ordinary people, mostly representatives of themiddle class,became the heroes of these novels. The characters, either good or bad, were accordingly either rewarded or punished at the end of the novel. By these means the Enlighteners idealistically hoped to improve the morals of the people and of the society in general.

The E epoch in English literature may be divided into 3 periods:

1) Early E – 1688-1740 – this period saw a flowering of journalism which played an important part in the public life of the country. The Tatler, The Spectator, The Englishman, edited by Joseph Addison & Richard Steele. In their essays – short compositions in short – these 2 writers touched on various problems of political, social and family life. These essays paved the way for the realistic novel which was brought into English literature by D. Defoe and J. Swift.

2) Mature E – 1740-1750 – the didactic social novel was born in this period. It was represented by works of such writers as S. Richardson, H. Fielding, T. Smolett

3) Late E – sentimentalism – 1750-1790 –the writers of this period like the enlighteners of the first 2 expressed the democratic bourgeois tendencies of their time. They also tried to find the way out of the difficulties of the existing order. However, while their predecessors believed in the force of intellect, they considered feelings or sentiments most important. The principal representatives of sentimentalism in the genre of the novel and poetry were O. Goldsmith, L. Sterne, R. Sheridan, R. Burns

The Enlightenment D. Defoe Robinson Crusoe

When Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe in 1719 he had obviously studied the popular story about Alexander Selkirk and his “Cruising Voyage round the World”. Selkirk was stranded on an island for five years, his story was told by the captain of the ship that rescued him, and was published in 1712.

These were the times of tales from distant shores and adventurous travels. Reading about remote and undiscovered places was the entertainment that really went down well with the audience of the early 18th century. It was the time of the Enlightenment, and Defoe’s mission was to enlighten and entertain. The full title of the book goes: “The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe “
The story of Crusoe’s adventures fits brilliantly with the cultural agenda of the Enlightenment. The archetypical enlightenment stories were travelling accounts and diary notes told in a first person narrative where the protagonist had to fight the untamed nature to survive. And that is exactly what Robinson does. With what he can rescue of tools and equipment from the shipwreck, he builds his own little universe, making use of whatever he can find of raw materials on the island. He has to rely on himself entirely, because like he says: “I could not wait for any divine interference to get by.”
And it is not only nature that is wild and untamed. Robinson encounters savage cannibals who come to his island to feast on captives from some other tribe. He rescues one of these captives who is to be eaten by his savage enemies, and he calls him Friday. They end up in a rather peculiar relationship; Friday becomes Robinson’s project. He wants to teach this savage the ways of the civilised world, and convert him to Christianity, the quest of a true English gentleman. In a current perspective this is a somewhat dubious enterprise, but at the time it was only what was expected from a civilized representative of the enlightened world.

Robinson’s progress on the island, as well as with Man Friday is the way man wanted to be seen during the Enlightenment – the conqueror of the primitive and rude, capable of creating a civilized universe around him by a systematic and scientific approach.