Augustan Age

Age of the Roman emperor Augustus (31 BC–AD 14), during which art and literature flourished. It is also used to characterize the work of 18th-century writers who adopted the style, themes, and structure of classical texts. See also English literature.

The term is used with particular reference to the works of the Augustan poets, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. In 18th-century literature, major Augustan writers include the English poet Alexander Pope, Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, English poet, essayist, and dramatist Joseph Addison, and Irish essayist and playwright Richard Steele, as well as French writers under Louis XIV. Major writers, and later writers, were sceptical and even contemptuous of the term, as was Pope in ‘The Dunciad’ (1728). The term is also applied to the culture of the 18th century, as contrasted with the 19th-century Romantic age.