The literatures of the Enlightenment grappled with a sea change in the understanding of humans, commodities, the planet, non-human animals, the body, newly-encountered "others," and God. Once called the "Age of Reason," novels, plays, and philosophy from this period in fact plumb passions, emotions, and sentiments through plots about love, exploitation, envy, crime, desire, and ambition. Satirists mocked everything from colonialism to virtue claims to satire itself. Read works that transformed what it meant to love, resist, exploit, and desire. Paradoxically, this "Age of Passions" elevated sympathy in the crucible of capitalism, invented human rights in the context of Empire; and formulated racial categories on the road to abolition and religious toleration. Authors might include Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Bernard Mandeville, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn, William Congreve, Olaudah Equiano, and others.