The rise of Puritanism
In England, thanks mostly to Elizabeth I, late 1500 was a period of peace and prosperity. 1600 was a different story.
Charles I (son of James I) became king in 1625, and his strong belief in the divine right of kings caused the major political and institutional crisis.
In 1628 the Petition of Right was forced on Charles, which limited his power in several ways and prevented him from raising taxes without the authorization of the Parliament.
The Parliament refused to give him money so, after only four years of rule, he dissolved the Parliament and restored the absolute monarchy. There were two different factions, the Parliamentarians or Roundheads (led by Oliver Cromwell) and the Royalists or Cavaliers (the ones with the king). The Parliamentarians were Puritan and they were divided between a more conservative and more radical group (the Levellers).
Oliver Cromwell tried to mediate between these two groups, he needed the military forces of the Levellers who formed his new Model Army. He eventually sided with the conservatives.
As if that wasn’t enough he begins to rebuild relations with the church of Rome. This stormy political atmosphere finally exploded in 1640 when Charles tried to reorganize the Scottish church in the same way as the Anglican church.
The Scottish revolted of course and to fight this war Charles had to call out parliament to raise money to pay an army. A year later, in 1641, the Irish revolted and parliament refused to give the king the money to raise another army, They were afraid he would use it against them. This is the start of the civil war that pitted parliament and their followers against the king and his followers.
The defeat of the royal forces led to the public execution of the king in 1649. After this England became a Republic, known as the Commonwealth of England.
England was now ruled by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, but he was no less despotic than Charles I.
He died for malaria in 1658 and was so little loved that the royalist had him exhumed and symbolically executed in 1661. His head was then stuck on a pale and left outside of West-man's hall until 1685.
In short, the republican experiment in England was a failure.
When Charles II became king in 1660, he was careful not to make the same mistakes as his father.
He encouraged democratic dialogue and restored the parliament, which was now divided between two parties: the Tories (more conservative) and the Whigs (more reformist).
The political and social atmosphere remained tempestuous, especially because of Charles II's catholic sympathies which were even stronger in his successor, James II.
This new royal interest in the church of Rome helps explain the flight of many puritans to America.
The puritans
Puritanism was a movement that begins within the Church of England in the latter part of the 16th century, It was very influential in the first half of the 17th century, and from the Civil War until the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a Puritan government ruled England.
The puritans believed that the Church of England was too much like the Church of Rome.
Puritanism had specific beliefs:
- The only spiritual authorities were the Bible's. They believed that there was no need to practice the confession because they believed that no intermediary should interfere.
- They believed in the sanctity of private property, and their hardworking attitude was connected to the Calvinist theory of predestination, according to it, men and women were born sinners, and it was only through hard work and discipline that they could receive divine grace.
- They also believed that the ornate clothes of the priests, the images and the altars were just medieval superstitions that should be eliminated. They also began to regard any sort of entertainment, such as dancing and theatre, considered distractions from spiritual devotion. In fact, theaters were closed in 1642, acting was considered immoral because the actors sold their bodies.
Literature in the Puritan Age
Prose
The literature reflected the social conflicts of the period. The most important prose writers are Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne. Robert Burton's most influential work is The Anatomy of Melancholy. In this period melancholy was considered a sort of illness. In his work, he studies it. Browne was fascinated by religion and the Bible, which influenced his autobiography, Religio Medici.
Another writer is John Bunyan, whose The Pilgrim's Progress is considered a masterpiece of that time. In this novel an innocent hero, after undergoing a series of adventures and temptations, finally obtains maturity and wisdom.
Poetry during the Puritan Age
The major English poets of the Puritan Age were Andrew Marwell and John Milton. Milton is the one more in tune with the spirit of Puritanism. His most important poem is Paradise Lost. The poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Though commonly understood to be the antagonizing force in Paradise Lost, Satan may be best defined as a tragic or Hellenic hero. According to William McCollom, one quality of the classical tragic hero is that he is not perfectly good and that his defeat is caused by a tragic flaw. Milton is considered of the rank of Dante.
The restoration of the Monarchy - Charles II
In 1660 the monarchy was restored, Charles I's son was invited to return from his exile in France and became King Charles II. By the way, the real power of the monarch was transferred to the Parliament. It is in this period that the Tories and the Whigs are created. The Tories continued the sentiment of the Cavalier for Church and king, while the Whigs continued on the Roundhead's path. The last one was mainly supported by the urban middle classes. The Royal Society of London had the function of advising the government on problems that demanded a scientific explanation. They reflected a fundamental attitude of the period, rationalism, not just in science but also in prose writing. Charles II's French tastes began to influence the court. In contrast with the Puritanism, the men and the women were uninhibited, coltivating their appearence with elaborate wigs and extravagant clothes. This encouraged licentious behavior among the upper classes. During Charles II's reign, London was struck by two different calamities. IN first place the outbreak of the plague in 1665 and then in 1666 the Great Fire destroyed London.
James II
James II, brother of Charles II, had more open catholic sympathies, he wanted to impose his religion on a country that was mainly Protestant. He tried to replace Anglicanism and underline Parliament's authority. By the way, the Tories and the Whigs joined forces and invited James's Protestant daughter, Mary, to return from Holland and take the throne, along with her husband William of Orange. All this was defined as the Glorious revolution. James II was forced to exile in France. They became Mary II and William III under the Bill of Rights which stipulated that the king could no longer raise taxes, form an army or suspend laws without Parliament's consent. In the same year, the Tolerant Act granted freedom to Protestant dissenters. The Act of Settlement excluded James's son from the succession. When Mary and William died childlessly, Mary's younger sister took the throne becoming Queen Anne.
The literature of the Restoration
Restoration prose
Restoration writers were often determined to use prose as a vehicle of reason. indeed one of the Royal Society's aims was to encourage the 'virtue of intellectual lucidity in the writing of prose.
The most important philosophers during the restoration are Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
Thomas Hobbes's great work is the Leviathan. According to Hobbes people were left to themselves they would be unruly constantly trying to take advantage of one another, he believed that people could only be brought to order by fear. For him, life was nasty brutish and short.
His rationalism also involved a rigid theory of language and contempt for the imagination which according to him was the 'decay of sense'.
John Locke had a more optimistic view of human nature.
His Essay Concerning Human Understanding emphasized how reason was the dominant faculty of man, and all knowledge is acquired through experience based on impressions. This work marks the beginning of British Empiricism.
British Empiricism
British Empiricism is a philosophical movement that grew up, largely in Britain, during the Age of Reason and Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th Century. The major figures in the movement were John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume.
Empiricism is the idea that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas, and argues that the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori (based on experience). It relies on induction or inductive reasoning (making generalizations based on individual instances) in order to build a more complex body of knowledge from these direct observations. Modern science, and the scientific method, are considered to be methodologically empirical in nature, relying as it does on an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry.
Empiricism is usually contrasted with Rationalism (which holds that the mind may apprehend some truths directly, without requiring the medium of the senses) Locke, Berkeley and Hume vigorously defended Empiricism against Rationalists.
Restoration poets
John Dryden is one of the most influential poets and also a famous critic and dramatist. Among his most important poetic works are Astrea Redux, which contains the remarkable description of the Great Fire of London, Absalom and Achitophel, the Medall and MacFlecknoe.
Satire was an important genre of Restoration poetry.
Samuel Butler is considered the most significant exponent, well-known for his satirical poem Hudibras.
Another brilliant satirical poet is John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, whose A Satyr against Reason and Mankind shows the influence of Hobbes's philosophy.
Restoration comedy
In 1660 theatres were reopened after puritan closing and, it was born a new type of theatre characterized by the Comedy of Manners, so-called, for its exaggerations of the manners, modes and morals of Upper Classes. Among the most important European influences of this period, there were the French comedies of Moliere, the Italian Commedia dell’Arte and the Spanish playwright Calderon de la Barca.
After 1660 the original Elizabethan theatre disappeared and was replaced by a style that moved progressively in the direction of theatre design as we know it today. Theatre now was roofed, had painted sets and began to develop more sophisticated ways of stage lighting. Moreover, woman actors were employed, replacing the boys who used to take women’s roles during Shakespeare's time.
The Augustan Age
The pilgrim fathers (as these puritans are known in history set sail aboard the Male Flower in 1620, they founded Plymouth, one of the 1st American colonies. And started the tradition of the holiday of Thanksgiving. These religious tensions, which fled the dramatic imagination of John Milton as revealed in "Paradise lost".
William III came to the throne in 1688, at this point in history Britain enter what is known as the age of reason or the Augustan Age. A time when pragmatism and rationality triumph.
This is the time of enlightenment in philosophy and of order, simplicity, and purity in art; which was awfully inspired by classical art.
In literature, a new player appeared on the scene, the novel. Novels mix adventure and moral teachings, as can be seen in the very popular books of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson.
One result of these decades of tension was the coming into its own democracy. This is also be seen by the appearance of public opinion; a result of the wide distribution of political pamphlets and the 1st newspapers.
Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke added to the hot debate on the origins of the limits of political power.
Locke helped to establish the idea of constitutional monarchy as a barrier against despotic monarchies. In fact, Locke imagined an institutional balance between the powers of the king and those of parliament. The king was to be recognized as the head of state and the church and he is the head of the executive branch of government while parliament should concern itself whit the legislative branch.
Locke’s idea of the balance of power between the different branches of government has continued whit various changes to the present.
During 1700 the constitutional monarchy helped to bring about the industrial growth of the country.
The rise to the economic power of the middle class and the general establishment of protestant values such as self-reliance and industriousness.
This can be seen clearly in the fictional character Robinson Crusoe. In a way, he is the 1st example of the modern capitalist and he shows how much the economy influences the destiny of a nation.
Indeed during the next century, the industrial revolution would be the key event in English society.
Daniel Defoe
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is probably one of the most famous adventure story in English literature.
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe was born in the city of York, where he was educated. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but his only desire was to go to sea. When he was nineteen he left home without asking permission and began his life at sea. After various adventures, he finds himself in Brazil, where he became a plantation owner. From there he sets sail for Africa with some other plantation owners. It is on this journey that he is shipwrecked.
All the seaman abandoned the ship, and they drowned. But Robinson went ashore at the beach. He was on an island.
The second part of the book is in form of a journal in which Crusoe writes about life on the island and how he eventually becomes master of it. In this part, Robinson attacks some cannibals and saves a person, who he calls Friday.
Three years pass. One morning Friday sees an English ship. They will take home Robinson and Friday.