18th Century in Literature - European Literature in The 18th Century

European Literature in The 18th Century

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European literature of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama and novels) produced in Europe during this period. The 18th century saw the development of the modern novel as literary genre, in fact many candidates for the first novel in English date from this period, of which Daniel Defoe's 1719 Robinson Crusoe is probably the best known. Subgenres of the novel during the 18th century were the epistolary novel, the sentimental novel, histories, the gothic novel and the libertine novel.

18th Century Europe started in the Age of Enlightenment and gradually moved towards Romanticism. In the visual arts, it was the period of Neoclassicism.

Famous quotes containing the words european and/or literature:

“England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)

“No state can build
A literature that shall at once be sound
And sad on a foundation of well-being.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)