The Augustan Age: The Rise of Satire and Reason

The Augustan Age: The Rise of Satire and Reason

The early 18th century, often called the Augustan Age, was a time of literary refinement, wit, and social critique. Named after the Roman Emperor Augustus, whose era was marked by classical stability, this period saw English literature embrace reason, order, and satire. Two towering figures defined the age: Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

Alexander Pope and the Art of Satire

Pope was the master of heroic couplets—pairs of rhymed iambic pentameter lines that gave his poetry a crisp, polished style. His most famous work, The Rape of the Lock (1712), satirized the vanity of high society, turning a trivial quarrel over a stolen lock of hair into a grand mock-epic:

“What dire offence from amorous causes springs,

What mighty contests rise from trivial things.”

Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711) emphasized balance, clarity, and the imitation of classical models. His famous line—

“To err is human, to forgive divine.”

—captures the rational, moral tone of the Augustan Age.

Jonathan Swift and the Power of Satire

While Pope used wit to critique aristocratic manners, Jonathan Swift wielded satire like a weapon. His Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is not just a fantastical adventure but a ruthless critique of human folly. In one passage, Gulliver describes the absurdity of political disputes in Lilliput, where people fight over which end of an egg should be cracked first:

“It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs before we eat them was upon the larger end; but his present Majesty’s grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers.”

Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) took satire to its most shocking extreme, suggesting that the poor could solve their economic woes by selling their children as food:

“A young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.”

The Age of Reason and Literary Precision

Augustan literature was marked by its emphasis on reason, clarity, and classical models. Writers like Pope and Swift shaped English literature with their sharp critiques of society and politics. But as the 18th century progressed, a new movement—one driven by emotion rather than reason—was beginning to take shape: Romanticism.