Describe the impact and fallout of the Enlightenment on European literature. What will be an ...

Enlightenment thought emphasized social criticism, which naturally took a central place in European literature of the time. A new literary genre, the journalistic essay, was designed to address social issues of the middle-class reading public. These essays would appear in newspapers and magazines, appealing to an audience that was used to debates in salons and cafes.
The novel, too, emerged as a new genre, based in social critique. In early modern novels, with their graphic accounts of the personalities of lower- and middle-class people, the reading public discovered passions and sentiments much like their own. Novels often took on a similar tone to the journalistic essays in their satirical take on social issues.