c. 1600–1740
Baroque & Neoclassical
Grandeur, wit, and rule. Sacred epic and glittering satire share an age that loves both excess and measure.
The climate of the age
Courts, academies, and coffeehouses become literary theaters. On one side, Baroque intensity—religious sublime, conceit, and cosmic drama. On the other, neoclassical order: couplets, decorum, and the social sting of satire. The period holds Milton and Molière, Swift and Pope, in the same long century.
The age perfects public style. It shows how literature can preach, mock, and legislate taste—and how a sentence can be as architectural as a façade.
- The heroic couplet and satirical polish
- Sacred and political epic
- Comedy of manners and social type
- Wit as a moral instrument
Leading authors
Baroque & Neoclassical
John Milton
1608–1674
Puritan republican and blind epic poet. Paradise Lost restages Genesis as political and psychological drama of the highest grandeur.
Baroque & Neoclassical
Molière
1622–1673
Actor-manager of Louis XIV’s comic stage. He turned hypocrisy, medicine, and marriage into a theater of types that still sting.
Baroque & Neoclassical
Jonathan Swift
1667–1745
Anglo-Irish clergyman whose satires treat reason as a blade that can cut the hand that holds it. His indignation is architectural.