XVII CENTURY

Age of transition

• King vs liberal parliamentarian government

• Established Church vs liberal Church government

• Cavaliers vs Puritans

Tories vs. Wigs

Literature

• Renaissance was over

• Consolidation, introspection and examination of human values

DRAMA

PROSE

LYRICAL POETRY

THE DRAMA AFTER SHAKESPEARE(1603-1660)

• BEN JONSON (1573 – 1637)

• Translator, scholar, critic, classicist and realist (comedy of manners).

• Comedies: The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, Valpone, Bartholomew Fair

• JOHN FLETCHER (1584-1616) &

FRANCIS BEAUMONT (1579-1635)

• Philaster and The Maid’s Tragedy

• THOMAS DEKKER (1573 – 1632)

• The Shoemaker’s holiday

• THOMAS HEYWOOD (1570 – 1641)

• Dramatic journalist

• A woman killed with Kindness (1603), The Fair Maid of the West (1610), Love’s Mistress (1636) and The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1604)

• THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570 – 1627)

• Lawyer-playwrighter

• Combined comic prose with serious blank verse

• Michaelmas Term (1606), The Changeling (1622) and Women Beware Women (1621)

• JOHN WEBSTER (1575 – 1625)• Tragedies of blood: The White Devil (1612) and

The Dutchess of Malfi (1614)

• JOHN FORD (1586 – 1640)• Excellence of the structure and use of the blank

verse• Morbid and melancholic• The Broken Heart (1633) and ‘Tis Pity She’s a

Whore (1627)

• PHILIP MASSINGER (1583 – 1640)• Puritan• A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1625).

• JAMES SHIRLEY (1596 – 1666)• Imitative, precious, and uninspired.• Hyde Park (1637)

Closing of the theatres

• Actors vs. Puritans

• 1575: no theatres within the city

• 1603 (James I): from the theatres to the court

• 1642: closing of theatres

• 1649: closing of the court (O. Cromwell)

THE AGE OF PROSEFRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

• Reign of James I: Lord Chancellor, Viscount St. Albans

• Accused of corruption charges he retires to his country estate (study of science and philosophy)

• The Instauratio Magna, Novum Organum• Beginnings of inductive reasoning

• The New Atlantis: Utopia ruled by study and experimentation

• Essays or Council Civil and Moral (1597 and 1625) • Compact, economical, and pithy style.

• Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618):– The History of The World

• Lord Clarendon (1609-1674):– History of the Rebellion

• Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682):– Vulgar Errors (1646), Religio Medici (1642),

Hydiotaphia (1658)– Style: funeral, grand and solemn – Heavy language and phrases coined from the Latin

and Greek

• Robert Burton (1577 – 1641):– The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

• Izzak Walton (1593 – 1683):– The Complete Angler (1653) and Lives

• Jeremy Taylor (1593 – 1667):–Pastoral writings: Holy Living (1650) and Holy

Dying (1651).

• Thomas Fuller (1608 – 1661):–Holy State and The Profane State (1642)

• The Authorized Bible (1611): –Beauty of language

– Elizabethan and Shakespearean style

LYRICAL POETRY• Religious lyrics: George Herbert, Richard Crashaw,

Henry Vaughan Robert Herrick and John Donne

• Cavalier Lyrics: Thomas Carew, Richars Lovelance and Sir John Suckling.

• Metaphysical Lyrics: John Donne

• Classicist Lyrics: Ben Jonson

• The Formalists or Pre-Augustans: Sir William Davenant, Sir John Denham, Abraham Cowley, Edmund Waller and Andrew Marvell.

• JOHN DONNE (1573 – 1631)– His Songs ans Sonnets and Divine Poems (1633)– Classical in form (satires, epistles and elegies)– Unusual lyrical forms– Frank, realistic and cynical

• GEORGE HERBERT (1593 – 1632)– The Temple (1633) – A priest to the Temple (1652)– Use of conceits, direct and familiar phrasing

• RICHARD CRASHAW (1612 – 1649)– Steps to the Temple (1642) - secular and religious subjets.– Diffuseness and unevenness; rich in affective imagery.

• HENRY VAUGHAN (1621 – 1695)– Silex Scintillans (1650) - religion and nature.– uneven and obscure

THE SCHOOL OF SPENCER– Modification of the Spencerian stanza for narrative poetry– Figures of speech (personification)– Pastorals

• Gilbert Fletcher (1588 – 1623)– Christ’s Victory and Triumph on Earth and in Heaven (1610)

• Phineas Fletcher (1582 – 1650): – The Piscatory Eclogues and The Purple Island

• William Browne (1590 - 1645):– Britannia’s Pastorals

• George Wither (1588 – 1667): – Pastoral– Style: spontaneous and diffuse– The Shepard’s Hunting (1615), Fidelia (1615), Fair Virtue:

The Mistress of Philarete (1622) and “Sall I, Wasting in Despair

• ROBERT HERRICK (1591 – 1674)– Hesperides and Noble Numbers (1648)

THE CAVALIER POETS• Thomas Carrew (1595 – 1639):

– Mixture of genuine beauty and dignity, with occasional licentiousness.

– Influenced by both Ben Jonson and John Donne.– Coelum Britannicum (1634)

• Richard Lovelance (1618 -1657):– To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars and To Althea, from

Prison

• Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642)

THE RESTORATION(1660-1700)

•Introduced a century of realism

•Tories and Whigs

•Conservatism and moderation

Restoration Literature

• Largely politics-oriented

• Guideline provided by French literary taste

• Order and discipline

• Heroic couplet two pentameter linesconnected by rhyme

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

• Grace Abounding (1665)

• Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)

• The Holy War (1682)

John Dryden (1631-1700)

• Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

• Religio Laici (1682)

• Favored the modern sentence (lean, muscular, and relatively short)

• Samuel Butler (1612-1680)Hudibras (1663)

• Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)

Diary (1660-1669)

• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)Leviathan (1651)

John Locke (1632-1704)

• Two Treatises of Government (1690)

• Essay Concerning Human Understanding(1690)