Chapter 5

1
Chapter 5 6 John Milton and Restoration Drama
and Prose

• From An Outline of English Literature by Thornley
  and Roberts

2
John MiltonShorter poems at Horton

• Lycidas (1673) p.54
• a sorrowful pastoral on the death by drowning of
  Edward King, a student with Milton at Cambridge

3
John Milton -- Paradise Lost

• Paradise Lost (first printed in 1667) p.56
• 1. setting the whole universe, Heaven and Hell
• 2. written in blank verse
• 3. remarkable thoughts put into musical verse
• Paradise Regained (1671) p.58
• 1. less splendid than Paradise Lost
• 2. occasionally shows the same use of names
• 3. add to the power and beauty of the sound

4
Restoration Drama

• Charles II became King in 1660 (p.63)
• Theatres opened again, new dramatists appeared.
• Tragic drama, mainly heroic plays
• 1. Men are brave, and the women wonderfully
  beautiful
• 2. shouting and nonsense
• 3. written in heroic couplets

5
Restoration Drama

• John Dryden (p.63)
• The Couquest of Granada (1670)
• Auregzebe (1676)
• 1. a struggle for empire in India
• 2. rhymed play and finest speeches
• Also wrote comedy, in blank verse
• 1. Marriage-a-la-Mode (1672)
• 2. All for Love (or The World Well Lost, 1678)

6
Restoration Drama

• William Congreve (p.65)
• 1.The Way of the World (1700)
• 2. A comedy, the drawing of women character is
  good.
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• 1. The School for Scandal (1777)
• 2. introduces three characters whose love of
  scandal is so great that they strike a character
  dead at every word
• 3. contains a famous drinking song (p.66)

7
Restoration Drama

• John Bunyan (p.67) p.67
• The Pilgrims Progress
• 1. allegory of Christians Journey to heaven
  through the evils (all types of people) of the
  world
• 2. influenced by his reading of the Bible,
  preaching
• Christian truths in the forms of allegory
• 3. not a novel but possesses some of the new
  form
• lively dialogue and characterization

8
Restoration Prose

• John Dryden
• 1. Essay on Dramatic Poesie (1668) p.67
• 2.compared English and French Drama, argued that
  the limitations which the French set themselves
  by keeping to the unities of time and place
• 3. defended the use of rhyme in drama, praised
  Shakespeare
• 4. important criticism, better critic led the
  way to a clear reasonable and balanced way of
  writing English

9
Restoration Prose

• John Locke (p.67)
• 1. clear, earnest and without ornament
• 2. Essay on the Human Understanding (1690)
• 3. gave a new direction to thought not only in
  England but in other countries of Europe
• New Opinions are always suspected, and usually
  opposed, without any other reason but because
  they are not already common.