Part V The 17th Century

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Part V The 17th Century

• The Period of Revolution and Restoration

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Historical Background

• It was a period when absolute monarchy impeded
  the further development of capitalism in England
  and the bourgeoisie could no longer bear the sway
  of landed nobility. The contradictions between
  the feudal system and the bourgeoisie had reached
  its peak and resulted in a revolutionary
  outburst.

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• Elizabeth I died in 1603 and James I came to the
  throne, a succession that marks the change from a
  united England to a divided England. The
  government of James I was a despotism based upon
  the theory of the divine right of kings.

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Queen Elizabeth 1
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King James 1
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Historical background

• Against this royal arrogance, the Puritans
  offered another theory of divine right, the
  divine right of the individual conscience. They
  renounced a life of joy in this world, in hope of
  an eternal joy in the would to come.
• Even in Elizabeth 1s time the Puritans were
  persecuted and some of them went to America for
  religious freedom.

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Charles 1

• In the next reign (Charles I succeeded James I in
  1625) the religious tyranny of Archbishop Laud
  was added to the political tyranny of the king.

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• In 1649 Charles I was beheaded and England became
  a commonwealth under the leadership of Oliver
  Cromwell. In 1653 Cromwell imposed a military
  dictatorship on the country.

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Oliver Cromwell
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The statue of Oliver Cromwell
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Historical Background

• After Cromwells death, monarchy was again
  restored in 1660.
• That revolution meant three things 1. the
  supremacy of Parliament. 2. the beginning of
  modern England. 3. the final triumph of the
  principle of political liberty for which the
  Puritan had fought and suffered hardship for a
  hundred years.
• Revolution and Restoration

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II Literary Characteristics

• 1. Medieval standards of chivalry, the impossible
  loves and romances perished no less surely than
  the ideal of a national church.
• 2. A sudden breaking away from old standards,
  just as society broke away from the restraints of
  Puritanism.
• 3. On the return of the former officials, they
  renounced old ideals and demanded the English
  poetry and drama should follow the style to which
  they had become accustomed in the gaiety of
  Paris.
• 4. Restoration created a literature of its own,
  that was often witty and clever, but on the whole
  immoral and cynical. The most popular genre was
  that of comedy whose chief aim was to entertain
  the licentious aristocrats.

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The Metaphysical Poets

• The Metaphysical poets(?????)
• About the beginning of the 17th century, there
  appeared in England a school of poets called
  "Metaphysicals" by Samuel Johnson. With a
  rebellious spirit, the metaphysical poets tried
  to break away from the conventional fashion of
  the Elizabethan love poetry. The diction is
  simple as compared with that of the Elizabethan
  or the Neoclassic periods and echoes the words
  and cadences of common speech. The imagery is
  drawn from the actual life. The form is
  frequently that of an argument with the poet's
  beloved, with God, or with himself. The
  representatives are John Donne and John Dryden

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Famous Literary Men in this Period

• 1. John Donne (15721631)
• 2. John Dryden(16311700)
• 3. John Milton(16081774)
• 4. John Bunyan(16281688)

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John Donne (15721631)

• He was the founder of the Metaphysical school of
  poetry.
• Literary worksDonne wrote a large number of
  poems. The Elegies and Satires , The Songs and
  Sonnets
• Donne is best known by his The Songs and Sonnets.
  It contains most of his early lyrics. Love is the
  basic theme.

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• The life story on Page 132-134. In1615 he entered
  the church and rose rapidly to be Dean of Saint
  Pauls and became the most famous preacher of his
  time. In 1617 his dear wife died, Donne fell
  under the shadow of a terrible spiritual gloom.
• He took such classical forms as satires, elegies,
  and epistles. The first thing to strike the
  reader is Donnes extraordinary frankness and
  penetrating realism. In his serious love-poems,
  he suffuses it with an emotional intensity and
  spiritualized ardor unique in English poetry.

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Song

• Go and catch a falling star, a
• Get with child a mandrake root, b
• Tell me where all past years are, a
• Or who cleft the Devils foot, b
• Teach me to hear mermaids singing, c
• Or to keep off envys stinging, c
• And find
  d
• What wind
  d
• Serves to advance an honest mind. d

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Stanza II of Song

• If thou beest born to strange sights,
• Things invisible to see,
• Ride ten thousand days and nights,
• Till age snow white hairs on thee,
• Thou, when thou returnst, wilt tell me
• All strange wonders that befell thee,
• And swear
• No where
• Lives a woman true, and fair.

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Stanza III of Song

• If thou findst one, let me know,
• Such a pilgrimage were sweet
• Yet do not, I would not go,
• Though at next door we might meet
• Though she were true when you met her,
• And last will you write your letter,
• Yet she
• Will be
• False, ere I come, to two, or three.

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The Holy Sonnets by Donne

• John Donne gave exquisite expression on love and
  death. His meditation on love deserves the
  attention from the critics and his followers in
  the later period.

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Donnes Style

• Style(1) The use of conceitsIn his poetry,
  Donne frequently applies conceits, i.e. extended
  metaphors involving dramatic contrasts. His
  conceits may be divided into two kinds easy ones
  and difficult ones. Easy conceits, found in all
  Elizabethan poetry with images concerning
  mythology and objects, are not a novelty but the
  difficult ones rely largely choice of imagery.
  Donne's images are linked with new resources such
  as law, psychology and philosophy which endow his
  poetry with learning and wit, and which provide
  certain intellectual difficulties. By combining
  the easy conceits with the difficult ones, Donne
  achieves surprisingly good effects in his poetry.

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Donnes Style

• (2) The involvement of a certain kind of
  argumentDonne's poetry involves a certain kind
  of argument, sometimes in rigid syllogistic form.
  He seems to be speaking to an imagined hearer,
  raising the topic and trying to persuade,
  convince or upbraid him. With the brief, simple
  language, the srgument is continuous throughout
  the poem. It begins with a certain idea but ends
  in quite a contrary one. It is not only playful
  but paradoxical it is not only witty, but
  implies different kinds of feelings, which can
  only be interpreted through the rhythms and
  reflections of the verse.

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John Milton(16081774)

• His life story on Page 139-144.
• Main works
• Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained
  (1671),
• Samson Agonistes (1671)

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• Literary Achievements
• (1) Early poetic works Lycidas (1637) composed
  for a collection of elegies dedicated to Edward
  King, a fellow undergraduate of Milton's at
  Cambridge, who was drowned in the Irish Sea. The
  climax of the poem is the blistering attack on
  the clergy, i.e. the "shepherds", who are
  corrupted by self-interest.
• (2) The middle prose pamphletsMilton devoted
  almost twenty years of his best life to the fight
  for political, religious and personal liberty as
  a writer. Areopagitica (1644) is probably his
  most memorable prose work. It is a great plea for
  freedom of the press. The gist of Milton's
  argument is this No censorship could decide what
  was truth and what was error, for truth could
  only be decided by free discussion.
• (3) Later worksAfter the Restoration in 1660,
  when he was blind and suffering, and when he was
  poor and lonely, Milton wrote his three major
  poetical works Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise
  Regained(1671), and Samson Agonistes (1671) .

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The Paradise Lost

• The Paradise Lost is the greatest, indeed the
  only generally acknowledged epic in English
  literature since Beowulf Paradise Lost is
  Milton's masterpiece. The theme is the "Fall of
  Man", i.e. man's disobedience and the loss of
  Paradise, with its prime cause -Satan. His
  purpose was "to justify the ways of God to man"-
  i.e. submission to the Almighty.
• The plot overview (Click).

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The Paradise
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Adam and Eve
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Satan

• Some readers consider Satan to be the hero, or
  protagonist, of the story, because he struggles
  to overcome his own doubts and weaknesses and
  accomplishes his goal of corrupting humankind.

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Satan, the image

• Satan and his fellow rebel angels who are found
  chained to a lake of fire in Hell quickly free
  themselves and fly to land, where they discover
  minerals and construct Pandemonium, which will be
  their meeting place. Inside Pandemonium, the
  rebel angels, who are now devils, debate whether
  they should begin another war with God.

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Satan and God

• The symbol for Satan.

• The God and Satan

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The Theme

• Themes are the fundamental and often universal
  ideas explored in a literary work.
• The Importance of Obedience to God
• The first words of Paradise Lost state that the
  poems main theme will be Mans first
  Disobedience. Milton narrates the story of Adam
  and Eves disobedience, explains how and why it
  happens, and places the story within the larger
  context of Satans rebellion and Jesus
  resurrection. Raphael tells Adam about Satans
  disobedience in an effort to give him a firm
  grasp of the threat that Satan and humankinds
  disobedience poses. In essence, Paradise Lost
  presents two moral paths that one can take after
  disobedience the downward spiral of increasing
  sin and degradation, represented by Satan, and
  the road to redemption, represented by Adam and
  Eve.

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The theme

• While Adam and Eve are the first humans to
  disobey God, Satan is the first of all Gods
  creation to disobey. His decision to rebel comes
  only from himselfhe was not persuaded or
  provoked by others. Also, his decision to
  continue to disobey God after his fall into Hell
  ensures that God will not forgive him. Adam and
  Eve, on the other hand, decide to repent for
  their sins and seek forgiveness. Unlike Satan,
  Adam and Eve understand that their disobedience
  to God does not know that their disobedience will
  be corrected through generations of toil on
  Earth. This path is obviously the correct one to
  take the visions in Books XI and XII demonstrate
  that obedience to God, even after repeated falls,
  can lead to humankinds salvation.

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character analysis

• The character analysis in the Paradise Lost
• Satan
• Adam
• Eve
• God
• The son
• (See details. Click Here)

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Miltons will

• The freedom of the will is the keystone of
  Milton's creed. His poem attempts to convince us
  that the unquestionable truth of Biblical
  revelation means that an all-knowing God was just
  in allowing Adam and Eve to be tempted and , of
  their free will, to choose sin and its inevitable
  punishment. And, thereby, it opens the way for
  the voluntary sacrifice of Christ which showed
  the mercy of God in bring good out of evil. Eve,
  seduced by Satan's rhetoric and her own confused
  ambition - as well as the mere promptong of
  hunger - falls into sin through innocent
  credulity. Adam falls by consciously choosing
  human love rather obeying God. This is the error
  wherein greatness lies.

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• The first 26 lines.
• The essay topics.
• (See Details)

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• The poem is written in blank verse. In Milton's
  hands it became a magnificent organ-music. His
  diction is a combination of plain English and
  classical Latin - stately, sonorous, and yet
  essentially simple. It is the "grand" style.
• Paradise Regained shows how mankind, in the
  person of Christ, withstand the tempter and is
  established once more in the divine favor. Christ
  temptation in the wilderness is the theme, and
  Milton follows the account in the fourth chapter
  of Matthew's gospel.

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Samson Agonistes

• It is a dramatic treatment of the story of
  Samson. Apparently, Samson had a special appeal
  to Milton. Like Milton, he is a dedicated soul.
  Like Milton, he has been embittered by an unwise
  marriage, has suffered blindness, and yet is
  unconquerable. The whole poem strongly suggests
  Milton's passionate longing that he too could
  bring destruction down upon the enemy at the cost
  of his own life.

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Features of Milton's poetry

• When we study Milton, we should first remember
  that Milton the revolutionary is as great as
  Milton the epic poet. He dedicated himself by
  choice to a noble cause political cause, and
  turned poet only because that cause failed.
  Shakespeare commands our wonder and admiration,
  but Milton our respect and awe. Milton is a great
  artist. He is a great master of the blank verse.
  He is the glorious pioneer to introduce blank
  verse into non-dramatic poetry, and has made it
  an admirable tool for the expression of epical
  themes.

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John Bunyan

• John Bunyan (November 30, 1628 - August 31,
  1688), was the most famous of the Puritan writers
  and preachers. He was born at Harrowden (1 mile
  south-east of Bedford), in the Parish of Elstow,
  England. He is most well-know for his book The
  Pilgrim's Progress, one of the most printed
  books in history, which he composed while in
  prison for the crime of preaching the Gospel
  without a license.

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Life story

• John Bunyan had very little schooling. He
  followed his father in the tinker's trade, and he
  served in the parliamentary army from1644 to
  1647). Bunyan married in 1649 and lived in Elstow
  until 1655, when his wife died. He then moved to
  Bedford, and married again in 1659. John Bunyan
  was received into the Baptist church in Bedford
  by immersion in 1653.
• In 1655, Bunyan became a deacon and began
  preaching, with marked success from the start. In
  1658 he was indicted for preaching without a
  license. The authorities were fairly tolerant of
  him for a while, and he did not suffer
  imprisonment until November of 1660, when he was
  taken to the county jail in Silver Street,
  Bedford, and there confined (with the exception
  of a few weeks in 1666) for 12 years until
  January 1672. Bunyan afterward became pastor of
  the Bedford church. In March of 1675 he was again
  imprisoned for preaching publicly without a
  license, this time being held in the Bedford town
  jail. In just six months this time he was freed,
  (no doubt the authorities were growing weary of
  providing Bunyan with free shelter and food) and
  he was not bothered again by the authorities.

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Life story

• Herein is a great controversy. As John Bunyan was
  married with children to support, and he could
  have walked out of the jail a free man at any
  time if he simply promised to stop preaching
  publicly without a license, one must ask if he
  really did the right thing. He was not asked to
  deny Christ or to recant his faith as the
  Protestant martyrs of a century earlier were.
  Indeed, many of those around him were openly
  Christians who shared his faith. Bunyan was
  simply asked to stop preaching without a license,
  or to move on. Should Bunyan have simply agreed
  and walked out of the jail and gone home to
  fulfill his duties before God as a husband and
  father? Or did he do the right thing in making
  those duties secondary to his personal conviction
  that he should be allowed to preach in that city
  without a license? Bunyan was not a martyr, nor
  was he ever violently persecuted, but his
  convictions, whether admirable or misplaced, were
  quite strong and vexed the local authorities who
  viewed him more as a troublemaker than any real
  threat.

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• On a trip to London, John Bunyan caught a severe
  cold, and he died at the house of a friend at
  Snow Hill on August 31, 1688. His grave lies in
  the cemetery at Bunhill Fields in London.

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His Writings

• John Bunyan wrote many other books, including one
  which discussed his inner life and reveals his
  preparation for his appointed work is Grace
  Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). Bunyan
  became a popular preacher as well as a very
  voluminous author, though most of his works
  consist of expanded sermons. In theology he was a
  Puritan, but not a partisan. He was no scholar,
  except of the English Bible, but that he knew
  thoroughly.

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The Pilgrim's Progress

• John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in two
  parts, of which the first appeared at London in
  1678, which he had begun during his imprisonment
  in 1676. The second part appeared in 1684. The
  earliest edition in which the two parts were
  combined in one volume came out in 1728. A third
  part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in
  1693. The Pilgrim's Progress is the most
  successful allegory ever written, and like the
  Bible has been extensively translated into other
  languages. Protestant missionaries commonly
  translated it as the first thing after the Bible.
  It is said that in the days of westward expansion
  in the United States, early settlers often owned
  only two books, one being the Bible, and the
  other being John Bunyans Pilgrims Progress.

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The Pilgrims Progress
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