The 17th and 18th(Neoclassical) Century 1625-1798

1
The 17th and 18th(Neoclassical) Century1625-1798
2
A Turbulent Time Historical Background

• In 1649, the English shocked the world by
  beheading their king and abolishing the monarchy.
• In the decades before the civil wars tore England
  apart, revolutions in science and religion had
  already unsettled peoples worldview.

3
Changes

• The new astronomy had exiled the Earth from the
  center of the universe to the vastness of
  infinite space.
• New religious creeds had altered or abolished the
  traditions of centuries.
• John Donne wrote, with his newfound insecurity,
  Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone.

4
Monarch is Back

• By the 1700s, though, a monarch was back on the
  throne, and a new, competitive society had sprung
  up, with a looser social structure and greater
  freedom in religion and politics.

5
Charles I and Parliament

• Crowned in 1625
• Clashed with Parliament over money
• King Charles needed money for his wars, and
  Parliament refused to fund them.

6
Loans? No Loans?

• The king then extorted loans from his wealthy
  subjects and pressed the poor into service as
  soldiers and sailors.
• Parliament tried to prevent such abuses of power,
  so Charles eventually dissolved Parliament and
  would not call it into session for 11yrs.

7
Religious Controversy

• He insisted the clergymen conform, or observe
  all the ceremonies of the Anglican Church.
• Puritans- Calvanists who wished to purify the
  Church of its Catholic traditions- were enraged
  by some of these requirements.

8
The Civil War

• Charless problem grew worse after he was forced
  to fight Scottish rebels outraged by his
  insistence on religious conformity.
• Desperate for money, he summoned a hostile
  Parliament
• Parliament condemned Charles I as a tyrant in
  1642
• Civil war broke out
• In 1645, Parliaments forces, led by Oliver
  Cromwell, defeated the royalist army and captured
  Charles

9
Cromwell Rules

• Radical Puritans dominated Parliament
• Tried and convicted the king for treason
• Charles I was beheaded on January 30, 1649
• Cromwell led the new government, called the
  English Commonwealth
• He dissolved Parliament in 1653 and named himself
  Lord Protector
• He ruled as a dictator until 1658 when he died

10
Outlawing

• Civil war had not led to the free society that
  many who had fought against the king expected.
• Hopes, economic hardship unrest
• The Commonwealth fueled discontent by outlawing
• Gambling
• Horse racing
• Newspapers
• Fancy clothes
• Public dancing
• The theater

11
The Restoration

• By Cromwells death, England had had enough
  taxation, violence, and disorder.
• In 1658, Parliament offered the crown to the
  exiled son of Charles I, who became Charles II in
  1660.
• The monarch was restored

12

• In sharp contrast to the drab Puritan leaders,
  Charles II and his court copied the plush
  fashions of Paris
• Charles
• Avid patron of the arts and science
• Invited Italian composers and Dutch painters to
  live and work in London.

13
European Political Thinkers
Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (1651) People are driven by selfishness and greed. To avoid chaos, they give up their freedom to a government that will ensure order. Such a government must be strong and able to suppress rebellion The condition of man in the state of nature is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
14
European Political Thinkers
Thinker Major Ideas Quotation
John Locke Two Treaties of Government (1690) People have a natural right to life, liberty, and property. Rulers have a responsibility to protect those rights. People have the right to change a government that fails to do so. Men being by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.
15
A Glorious Revolution

• Charles IIs successor James II
• Devout Catholic.
• Parliament invited Mary, the Protestant daughter
  of James II, to rule England jointly with her
  husband, William of Orange.
• Rather than fight, James escaped to France
• The people of England hailed the event as the
  Glorious Revolution of 1688 because not a drop
  of blood had been shed.

16
1689 Bill of Rights

• William and Mary agreed to Parliaments Bill of
  Rights
• This bill guaranteed Parliament the right to
  approve all taxes and forbade the monarch to
  suspend the law.
• England thus attained a limited, or
  constitutional, monarchy.

17
Tories and Whigs

• In ensuing decades, two political factions
  crystallized in Parliament the conservative,
  aristocratic Tories and the Whigs, drawn largely
  from Britains growing merchant class.
• A cabinet of ministers drawn from Parliament, and
  eventually unified under the leadership of a
  prime minister, began to rule the country.

18
An Agricultural Revolution

• By the late 1600s, new farm tools made it
  possible for farms to produce much more food.
• Population surged upward
• Many people left the countryside
• Growing towns
• Became factory hands who ran the machines of the
  early Industrial Revolution

19
The Enlightenment

• The scientific revolution that made industry
  possible stemmed from a larger development in
  thought known as the Enlightenment.
• Through reason and observation of nature, human
  beings could discover the order underlying all
  things

20
Literature of the PeriodThe Schools of Jonson
and Donne

• 17th and 18th Century

21
Ben Jonson ( 1572-1637)

• Strove for the perfection and harmony he found in
  his beloved classical authors, turning away from
  the ornate style of Elizabethan times to create
  his own modern, strong voice.
• He wrote poems, plays, and masques (court
  entertainments)

22
(No Transcript)
23
Ben Jonson

• Took seriously the role of the poet
• He believed, in fact, that no other profession
  could compare to it.
• Poets, he wrote, encourage young men to all good
  disciplines, inflame grown men to all great
  virtues and keep old men in their best and
  supreme state
• A person could not be a good poet without being
  a good man, he asserted

24
John Donne ( 1572-1631)
25
John Donne

• Pioneered a new, witty, cerebral style later
  known as Metaphysical Poetry
• Characterized by
• Unusual degree of intellectualism
• Subtle arguments that raid the worlds of science,
  law, and philosophy for surprising but strangely
  accurate comparisons.

26
Examples of such

• A Valediction of Weeping
• Compares his tears, which reflect his lovers
  face, to coins that are stamped with her image
• A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
• Compares parted lovers to the two legs of a
  drawing compass

27
The Puritan Writers

• Perhaps the greatest poet of the 17th century was
  a Puritan, not a Cavalier John Milton
• The Puritan movement also produced the
  best-selling prose writer of the century, John
  Bunyan
• Only the Bible sold more copies than Bunyans
  religious narrative, The Pilgrims Progress.

28
John Milton ( 1608-1674)

• Learned disciple of Greek and Latin authors
• Studied the Old Testament in Hebrew

29
Milton

• Went blind in 1652 as a result of his labors
• Composed an epic that would explain why God
  allows suffering in this world The epic,
  Paradise Lost, reflects Miltons humanistic love
  of poetry and his Puritan devotion to God.