This is an attempt to write a history of English literature admittedly with an innovative approach.The traditional as well as the more modern views in the West on literary movements,schools,traditions and influences in the field of English literature and on individual English authors and their major and minor works are here given due respect and serious consideration,but with the reservation sometimes to differ and occasionally to introduce new and totally contrary judgments from the viewpoint of historical materialism i.e.,the writers and their writings are to be given their proper places in each case in accordance with the roles,healthful or otherwise,that they play in the progress of history,social and literary.Of course,whether or how far have I succeeded in these pages in living up to the theory advanced above awaits judgment from my readers.

Chapter Ⅴ EICHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE

 Section Ⅰ The Historical Background: Political and Ideological.

　　　1.Political Background from the Revolution of 1688 to the End of the 18th Century.

　　　2.The Enlightenment in England and Its Effect upon English Literature of the 18th Century.

 Section Ⅱ English Literature in Early 18th Century.

　　　1.Neo-Classicism in English Literature in Early 18th Century: Alexander Pope.

　　　2.Periodical Literature in Early 18th-Century England: Addison and Steele.

　　　3.Daniel Defoe.

　　　4.Jonathan Swift.

 Section Ⅲ English Prose Fiction in the Middle and Last Decades of the 18th Century.

　　　1.Richardson.

　　　2.Fielding.

　　　3.Smollett.

　　　4.Sterne and Goldsmith.

　　　5.Gothic Romances and Other Works of Fiction near the End of the 18th Century.

 Section Ⅳ English Drama in the 18th Century.

　　　1.English Drama in the Early and Middle Decades of the 18th Century.

　　　2.Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

 Section Ⅴ Neo-Classicism and Pre-Romanticism in English Poetry and Prose in the Middle and Last Decades of the 18th Century.

　　　1.Samuel Johnson； James Boswell；Gibbon；Burke.

　　　2.English Poetry in the Middle and Later Decades of the 18th Century.Traditions of Pre-Romanticism and Sentimentalism: Thomson，Young，Gray，Collins，Macpherson，Chatterton，Percy，Cowper，Crabbe.

　　　3.Robert Burns.

　　　4.William Blake.