Satire. Using exaggeration, irony, or comedy to make fun of and expose social and political vices. Example: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Wit. Using words in a clever, inventive way. The Augustans place a very high value on being witty.

Mock Epic. A poetic genre invented by the Augustans. Mock epic takes trivial events and incidents but treats them in the grand poetic style of the epic genre. It's like writing about some squabble over text messages in the cafeteria as if this were a battle in the Trojan War or something.

Neoclassicism. The Augustans have a huge crush on classical literature, so in their own writing, they try to emulate great classical writers like the Latin poet Horace or the Greek poet Homer. It's classical-ish, but it's new, yo.

Novel. You know what a novel is: it's prose fiction, and it's usually pretty long, and it usually depicts events with some degree of realism. Well, the novel as we know it was invented by our friends the Augustans.

Political Critique. Those Augustans loved commenting on the politics of their day. And by commenting, we mean criticizing political and legal policies they didn't agree with. And there was a lot they didn't agree with.

Religious Critique. A few of the Augustans were also religious dissidents. They didn't take such a kindly view of the values of the Church of England, and some of them, like Daniel Defoe, got into whole lot of trouble for it.

Church of England. This was the English national Church during the Augustan age (it still is). The Church of England is the Church that split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 when Henry VIII decided he wanted to divorce his wife—something you just couldn't do in the Catholic Church back then. When the Augustans were writing, it was dangerous to criticize the Church of England.

Print Technology. During the Augustan age, people went crazy printing things. That's because print technology had developed to such a degree that it became much easier to publish pamphlets, tracts, and books by the thousands. This was new technology, and it transformed the literary and publishing landscape.

Journalism. Journalism boomed during the Augustan age: hundreds of periodicals and journals were founded. This is the age when "journalistic" writing—in essay and article form—became a big thing.