Augustan literature the theme of fallen women in "" (1724). Thematically, Defoe's works are consistently Puritan. They all involve a fall, a degradation of the spirit, a conversion, and an ecstatic elevation. This religious structure necessarily involved a "bildungsroman", for each character had to learn a lesson about him or herself and emerge the wiser. The sentimental novel, or "novel of sentiment", developed after 1740, and among the most famous examples in English are Samuel Richardson's "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded" (1740), Oliver Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" (1766), Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (1759–67), "Sentimental Journey" (1768), Henry Brooke's "The Fool of Quality" (1765–70),
Denis Diderot Dressing Gown") up to the heady "D'Alembert's Dream" ("Le Rêve de d'Alembert") (composed 1769), a philosophical dialogue in which he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life. "Jacques le fataliste" (written in 1773, but not published until 1792 in German and 1796 in French) is similar to "Tristram Shandy" and "The Sentimental Journey" in its challenge to the conventional novel's structure and content. The dialogue "Rameau's Nephew" (French: "Le Neveu de Rameau") is a "farce-tragedy" reminiscent of the "Satires" of Horace, a favorite classical author of Diderot's whose