5/ What were the three periods of English Enlightenment in Literature? Who were representatives of each period?
· Early Enlightenment (1688 – 1740): This period saw the flourishing of journalism which played an important part in the country’s public life. The representatives of this period were Joseph Addison and Thomas Steele.
· Mature Enlightenment (1740 – 1750): The social moralizing novel was born in this period. It was represented by the writers as Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett.
· Late Enlightenment (1750 – 1780): The writers of this period like the Enlighteners of the first two period such as Oliver Goldsmith and Lawrence Sterne in the genre of the novel and Richard Sheridan in drama, expressed the democratic bourgeois tendencies of their time.
