Puritan Perdiod and Restorarion Age PDF

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Short presentation of the Puritan and Restoration Age (themes, writers, important historical events)...

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The Puritan, Restoration and Augustan Ages (1625-1776) Historical and Social context 1625-1702 Religion: Anglican Protestants; Catholics; Puritans, Presbyterians and Dissenters Rulers:  Charles I (1625-1649) – dissolved Parliament for 11 years until 1940; executed on 30 June 1649  Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth (1649-1658)  Charles II (1660-1685) – Restoration  James II (1685-1688) – Catholic  William III (1689-1702) – Protestant; the Glorious Revolution -> The Bill of Rights (1689) for Parliament (law, taxation, army) Economy and everyday life  80% of the population – frugal living off the land  Colonial expansion improved the quality of life (spices)  Puritans banned all forms of public entertainment but Restoration brought fun back; London became a booming theatrical centre  Major events: the plague (1665), the Great Fire (1666)  By 1700, 10% of the English population lived in London  St. Paul’s Cathedral (started in 1675)  The Bank of England (1694)  The Stock Exchange (1698)  Mercantilism (new colonies -> cheap raw materials)  Migrations to the New World (12 towns=15,000 Puritans by 1640) Literary Background 1625-1702  Poetry  Cavalier vs. Metaphysical poets

 John Donne – father of metaphysical poetry: dramatic use of language; original images (conceits, paradoxes, epigrams, puns)  Major figures: Andrew Marvell & John Milton (Paradise Lost), John Dryden (father of literary criticism, master of the heroic couplet and rhetorical devices: parallelism, antithesis, repetition)  Drama  Theaters opened in 1660; female parts played by women  Two new theatres (Drury Lane, 1674 & Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, 1732)  Heroic tragedy (emulates epic poetry; love & valour; rhyming couplets & elevated style)  Comedy of manners (reflected life at Court; criticised middle classes; sex over feelings; repartee; two new types of characters: the gallant and the fop; female characters with no morals; names reflecting personality (e.g. Scandal; Lady Fidget; Mrs Squeamish)  Influenced by Continental writers: Molière, Calderon de la Barca & the Italian Commedia dell’Arte Prose 1625-1702  Political and religious turmoil – reflected in pamphlets, essays and treatises  Major Puritan writer – John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) = allegory of man’s quest for salvation  The scientific revolution  Empiricism  Thomas Hobbes and John Locke  New literary form: diaries  Samuel Pepys (public life + intimate details) – personal  John Evelyn (places & events, scientific observation) – meant to be read 1702-1776 background  Period of stability

 Rulers: Queen Anne, last of the Stuart dynasty (1702-1714); George I (first of the House of Hanover, 1714-1727), George II (1727-1760), George III (1760-1820)  Agriculture: fenced off farms bought by wealthy farmers à booming clothing industry  Industry: start of the Industrial Revolution (small factories, division of labour, mechanisation, automatic looms (1760s); coal and iron)  Government: constitutional monarchy  Ministers formed a Cabinet – for major political decisions  Sir Robert Walpole – first Prime Minister (1721-1742)  Parties: Tory (aristocracy & Church of England), vs. Whigs (middle classes)  Inner rebellions (Scots defeated at Culloden in 1745)  Major events:  1707 – unification of England and Scotland  1770 – Captain James Cook discovers Australia  1776 – American Declaration of Independence Everyday life  People move to cities  Workhouses are built (work for food)  Children employed together with parents; equal workload  Overcrowded slums  Hospitals  “Rates” = new tax to improve living conditions  Gin and coffee  First coffee house in London in 1652

The Rise of the middle class

 People who became rich thanks to the agricultural and industrial revolutions: farmers, factory owners, merchants  Power = money  Values: initiative, self-reliance, faith, patriotism Augustan literature  Strong influence of classical authors (Virgil, Horace, Ovid) who wrote under the patronage of Emperor Augustus (27BC-AD14)  POETRY  Written for cultured upper-class reading public  Latinate poetic structures  Major poet: Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1714) – mock-heroic poem, satire of Augustan society  DRAMA  1737 – Licensing Act (Lord Chamberlain can censor theatrical performances)  Plays: Shakespeare (changed for the public tastes), melodramas (sentimental pieces with didactic purposes), pantomime (singing, dancing & comedy = ancestor of musicals) AUGUSTAN PROSE  Strong development: journalism, essay writing, political satire and pamphleteering  Journalism:  Richard Steele – The Tatler (1709) – entertain & inform (fashion, taste, gossip, gambling + serious political articles)  R. Steele & Joseph Addison – The Spectator (1711-1714) – middle class  Samuel Johnson – journalist + Dictionary of the English Language (1755) – standardise pronunciation, definitions and meanings of 40,000 English words  The novel – new literary form aimed at the middle classes  Major names:  Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) – first novel in English

 Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) – epistolary novel, appreciated for realism & morality  Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749)  Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – biting satire  Laurence Sterne, Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1761) – modern novel avant la lettre (digressions, unfinished sentences, blank pages, doodling etc.)  Emergence of the Gothic novel (Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, 1764) j. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726)  Book for children  Biting political satire  Book I (Lilliput)  Delusion of grandeur (Britain)  Pomp of the emperor (British monarchy)  War with neighbours across channel (Britain vs. France)  Book II (Brobdingnag)  Mankind = "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."  Book III (flying island Laputa = [Spanish?])  Nobles literally have their heads in the clouds  Pseudoscience: philosophers, scientists and historians = so absorbed in their speculations that they lost contact with reality (e.g. extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, building houses from the roof down)  Book IV (land of Houyhnhnms)  Rationality s bestiality: rational horse-like creatures vs. filthy humanlike Yahoos Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729)  Literature used to make man aware of his own and society’s shortcomings

 Written in response to the worsening living conditions in Ireland (famine & overpopulation)  “A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public”  Satire = ridiculing a subject through laughter & scorn  Satire uses laughter as weapon against a vice  AIM: improve the world satirists live in  Why is Swift’s proposal “modest” (humble)? A Modest Proposal  Major themes:  The Other  Society and class  Morality and ethics  Power  Written in the style of a scientific discourse  Identification of a main and secondary problem to be addressed  Close analysis of the problem, including relevant statistical date and reference to authoritative sources  Proposal of solution and its ramifications  Conclusion  I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is, in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance.  The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders.

 These […] helpless infants, who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to Barbados.  I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food.  I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, […] which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, and swine, and my reason is that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages.  For we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that, fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season.  But I am not in the least pain upon that matter because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.  I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing. To remember  17th c. (1625-1702)  Time of constant religious and political feuding BUT an age that stabilized the relationships between the Church and the state, between Parliament and monarchy  Improved living standards  John Milton  The Comedy of Manners  18th c. (1702-1776)  The rise of the middle classes  Improved quality of life

 Britain = world power  Development of prose-writing and of the novel (Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne)...