-
Period: to
Enlightenment Period
According to scholarly opinion, the Enlightenment was preceded by the Age of Reason or by the Renaissance and the Reformation (Frost, Martin. "The Age of Enlightenment.". -
Isaac Newton: A Fact
Hooke became a rival of Newton in the 1670s, when the two men quarreled over their respective theories of light. He later felt that Newton had stolen from him the idea for the mathematics of gravity, and when Newton won fame after the publication of the Principia, Hooke grew bitter and deeply resentful (SparkNotes Editors). -
John Locke: A Fact
As one of the founders of the Whig party, which pushed for constitutional monarchism and stood in opposition to the dominant Tories, Shaftsbury imparted an outlook on rule and government that never left Locke ("John Locke Biography"). -
John Locke: A Fact
Exiled in Holland, Locke composed An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, another ground breaking work of intellectual might that spanned four books and took on the task of examining the nature of human knowledge ("John Locke Biography"). -
John Locke: A Fact
A hero to the Whig party, Locke remained connected to governmental affairs in his advanced years. He helped steer the resurrection of the Board of Trade, which oversaw England's new territories in North America. Locke served as one of the body's key members ("John Locke Biography"). -
Alexander Pope: A Fact
Pope's father, the son of an Anglican vicar, had converted to Catholicism, which caused the family many problems. At the time Catholics suffered from repressive legislation and prejudices - they were not allowed to enter any universities or held public employment. Thus Pope had an uneven education, which was often interrupted. -
Alexander Pope: A Fact
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 his family moved out of London and settled about 1700 at Binfield in Windsor Forest. Pope had little formal schooling, largely educating himself through extensive reading. Sir William Trumbull, a retired statesman of literary interests who lived nearby, did much to encourage the young poet ("Alexander Pope." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004). -
Alexander Pope: A Fact
A sweet-tempered child with a fresh, plump face, Pope contracted a tubercular infection in his later childhood and never grew taller than 4 feet 6 inches. He suffered curvature of the spine (necessitating the wearing of a stiff canvas brace) and constant headaches ("Alexander Pope." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004). -
Isaac Newton: A Fact
A brilliant German mathematician, and a contemporary of Newton. The two men developed a bitter feud in the early 1700s over who had first invented calculus (SparkNotes Editors). -
Isaac Newton: A Fact
Descartes's theories attempted to explain the workings of the solar system by suggesting that space was filled with infinite, miniscule, invisible particles, whose motion created vortices that whirled the planets around the sun. The theory enjoyed popularity in the 17th century but was eventually displaced by Newton's theory of universal gravitation (SparkNotes Editors). -
Joseph Addison: A Fact
In August 1704 London was electrified by the news of the duke of Marlborough’s sweeping victory over the French at Blenheim, and Addison was approached by government leaders to write a poem worthy of the great occasion ("Joseph Addison (English Author)". -
Joseph Addison: A Fact
In 1708 Addison was elected to Parliament for Lostwithiel in Cornwall, and later in the same year he was made secretary to the earl of Wharton, the new lord lieutenant of Ireland. He served as Irish secretary until August 1710. -
Alexander Pope: Book Published
An Essay on Criticism (1711) appeared when he [Alexander Pope] was twenty-three (Liukkonen & Kaupunginkirjasto). -
Alexander Pope: Book Published
In 1712 Pope published an early version of The Rape of the Lock, an elegant satire about the battle between the sexes, and follies of a young woman with her "puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billet-doux" (Liukkonen & Kaupunginkjasto). -
Alexander Pope: Book Published
"Windsor Forest" (1713), written in the tradition of Sir John Denham's "Cooper's Hill, " celebrated the peace confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht. A rich tapestry of historical and poetic allusions, it showed the Stuarts, and especially Queen Anne, in a quasi-mythical light ("Alexander Pope." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004). -
Enlightenment Era: A Fact
In 1714, the political situation worsened with the death of Queen Anne and the disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites, leading to the attempted Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 ("Alexander Pope." PoemHunter.com). -
Joseph Addison: A Fact
In 1715 Addison tried to forestall the success of Pope's translation of the Iliad by encouraging Thomas Tickell to publish a rival version, and this caused Pope a great deal of anxiety until the superiority of his own translation was acclaimed ("Alexander Pope." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004). -
Representative Work: A Fact
Pope had made enemies during the vigorous and often scurrilous literary politics of his time; hence to be able to gain an Essay on Man an unprejudiced reception, its very first publication was anonymous (Seo, Mary). -
Alexander Pope: Representative Work Published
The Essay on Man is a philosophical poem, written in heroic couplets and published between 1732 and 1734. Pope intended this poem to be the centrepiece of a proposed system of ethics that was to be put forth in poetic form ("Alexander Pope". PoemHunter.com). -
Representative Work: A Fact
"An Essay on Man is really a series of four verse epistles by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) addressed towards politician and man of letters Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751) (Seo, Mary). -
Representative Work: A Fact
"When the Essay on Man was published, Voltaire sent a copy to the Norman abbot Du Resnol and may possibly have helped the abbot prepare the first French translation..." "In the edition of Lettres philosophiques published in that year, he [Voltaire, a French Enlightenment leader] wrote: 'The Essay on Man appears to me to be the most beautiful didactic poem, the most useful, the most sublime that has ever been composed in any language ("Alexander Pope's Essay On Man").'" -
Enlightenment Era: A Fact
The struggle was complex and many-sided, with each participant absorbing many of the others' values; but the general trend is clear: individualism, freedom and change replaced community, authority, and tradition as core European values. Religion survived, but weakened and often transformed almost beyond recognition; the monarchy was to dwindle over the course of the hundred years beginning in the mid-18th century to a pale shadow of its former self ("The Enlightenment"). -
Enlightenment Era: A Fact
These new ways of thinking, combined with a financial crisis (the country was literally bankrupt) and poor harvests left many ordinary French people both angry and hungry. In 1789, the French Revolution began. In its first stage, all the revolutionaries ask for is a constitution that would limit the power of the king ("1700-1800 Age of Enlightenment").