Date of Award

1973

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

English

Abstract

The development of English literature in the eighteenth century was strongly influenced by France and French writers. Lately there has been an attempt to belittle the French influences. It is true that in the past the Gallic influence has been exaggerated, but it really cannot be overlooked.

Historically it is true to treat England and France as one country in respect to their literary activity between the middle of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Roughly, there were about 100 years, between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the execution of Louis XIV in 1793, during which there was a solid block of Franco-British or Anglo-French literary achievement. The Civil War in England gave the English political exiles in Paris a chance to acquire French taste, but this Entente Litteraire was ended when the French Revolution through Trafalgar and Waterloo caused a revulsion from the French example.

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