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Today I would like to share my views on characteristics of Puritan age and restoration age. So let's discuss about it.
◆Literary Characteristics of the Puritan Age◆
The first half time period of the 17th century is considered as Puritan age. During this period Puritanism was dominating force. This time period is also famous with the name, Age of Milton. He was the greatest poet during this period. King James I was ruling during the Puritan period. Puritan age is considered as the renaissance of the moral sense of the man. The main aim of the Puritan age was:
To facilitate religious freedom.
Full civil liberty.
Puritans want the purity of life. During this period, church and court were highly criticized and this lead to the civil war and Charles I was beheaded.
In literature also the Puritan Age was one of confusion, due to the breaking up of old ideals. Mediaeval standards of chivalry, the impossible loves and romances of which Spenser furnished the types, perished no less surely than the ideal of a national church; and in the absence of any fixed standard of literary criticism there was nothing to prevent the exaggeration of the "metaphysical" poets,
who are the literary parallels to religious sects like the Anabaptists. (If you want to read more about metaphysical poetry read this blog 👉https://lattabaraiya1999.blogspot.com/2020/12/metaphysical-poetry.html). Poetry took new and startling forms in Donne and Herbert, and prose became as somber as Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The spiritual gloom which sooner or later fastens upon all the writers of this age, and which is unjustly attributed to Puritan influence, is due to the breaking up of accepted standards in government and religion. No people, from the Greeks to those of our own day, have suffered the loss of old ideals without causing its writers to cry,
"Ichabod! the glory has departed."
That is the unconscious tendency of literary men in all times, who look backward for their golden age; and it need not concern the student of literature, who, even in the break-up of cherished institutions, looks for some foregleams of a better light which is to break upon the world. This so-called gloomy age produced some minor poems of exquisite workmanship, and one great master of verse whose work would glorify any age or people, John Milton, in whom the indomitable Puritan spirit finds its noblest expression.
●Puritan and Elizabethan Literature :-
There are three main characteristics in which Puritan literature differs from that of the preceding age:
(1)Elizabethan literature, with all its diversity, had a marked unity in spirit, resulting from the patriotism of all classes and their devotion to a queen who, with all her faults, sought first the nation's welfare. Under the Stuarts all this was changed. The kings were the open enemies of the people; the country was divided by the struggle for political and religious liberty; and the literature was as divided in spirit as were the struggling parties.
(2)Elizabethan literature is generally inspiring; it throbs with youth and hope and vitality. While Puritan age speaks about sadness; even its brightest hours are followed by gloom, and by the pessimism inseparable from the passing of old standards.
(3)Elizabethan literature is intensely romantic; the romance springs from the heart of youth, and believes all things, even the impossible. The great schoolman's credo,
"I believe because it is impossible,"
is a better expression of Elizabethan literature than of mediaeval theology. In the literature of the Puritan period one looks in vain for romantic ardor. Even in the
lyrics and love poems a critical, intellectual spirit takes its place, and whatever
romance asserts itself is in form rather than in feeling, a fantastic and artificial adornment of speech rather than the natural utterance of a heart in which sentiment is so strong and true that poetry is its only expression.
●Realism in the poetry :-
Puritans believed that fictional elements in the work of art should be limited.
"They perceive literary work as a religious practice rather than any piece of entertainment".
The literary work of Puritans was all about spirituality. They talk about pilgrims and journey. They tried to motivate society by creating the allusion of an ideal state.
Earlier forms of love poetry were Petrarchan. One can see the platonic form of love in earlier forms of poetry but Puritan love poetry was based on realism. Women were not seen as a Goddess but a human with flesh and blood.
●The trend of sonnets :-
Poets largely used sonnets during Puritan age. Sonnets were popular because it was largely written during Elizabethan age.
●Major Poets of the Period●
The Puritan movement was one for very ugly literal expression and teaching. But, over time, some room for creative expression arose and Puritan poets such as John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor,Samuel Daniel, George Herbert, and John Dryden produced some of the greatest verse of their old age.
◆Characteristics of the Restoration Age◆
Let's discuss about what was the Major things in the period of restoration.
The restoration period began when King Charles II came to the English throne. It started in the year 1660 and lasted till 1785. The period is known as restoration because monarchy was restored in England. During the restoration period English, Irish and Scottish monarchy was restored. This period denotes the event of restoration of the monarchy and new political establishment. During the reign of King Charles II there was an increase in commercial and global trade for Britain. Education was also expanded during this period, middle classes and lower classes were also included for education.
[1]THE RESTORATION:- During this period gravity, spiritual zeal, moral earnestness and decorum were thrown to winds. The king was a thorough debauch. He had a number of mistresses. He was surrounded by corrupt courtiers. Corruption was rampant in all walks of life.
[2]Religious and Political Quarrels:-
In the Restoration period we see the rise of two political parties. They were the Whigs and the Tories. The Whigs were opposing and the Tories were supporting the king. The rise of these parties gave a fresh importance to men of literary ability. Both the parties supported them. The religious controversy was also going on. It was very bitter. The Protestant and the Catholics were face to face. The nation was predominately Protestant. The Catholics were being punished. Dryden’s 'Absalom and Achitophel' reflects these religious and political conflicts of the day.
[3]The Revolution:-
Charles' brother James II ascended the throne in 1685. He tried to establish Catholicism in the country. He became unpopular very soon. The entire nation rose against him. He lost his seat due to the bloodless revolution of 1688. The Restoration, the controversies and the revolution of 1688 deeply influenced the literature of the age.
[4]Rise of Neo-Classicism:-
During the Restoration period a new literary movement started. It is known as Neo-Classical movement. This reflected the mood of the century. Reason occupied an important place. The writers of this period agreed upon the rules and principles. Rules and literary conventions became more important than the seriousness of subject matter. The writers expressed superficial manners and customs of the aristocratic and urban society. They did not pry into mysteries of human mind and heart. The new epoch is the antithesis of the previous Elizabethan age. It is called classical.
[5]Imitation of the Ancients:- The authors of this period turned to the great classical writers. Thus grew the neo-classical school of poetry. The neoclassicists imitated the rules and ignored the importance of subject matter. They could not delve deep into human emotions. These things can be noticed in the age Dryden and Pope.
[6]Imitation of the French:-
The influence of France counted for much. Charles II and his companions demanded that poetry and drama should follow the French style. Now began the so-called period of French influence. Pascal, Racine, Boileau and other French writers were imitated blindly. The French influence is seen in the Restoration comedy of manners of Dryden, Wycherly and Congreve. This French influence is also responsible for the growth of opera.we read in the diary of Evelyn, another writer who reflects with wonderful accuracy the life and spirit of the Restoration,
"I saw Hamlet played; but now
the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long
abroad."
Since Shakespeare and the Elizabethans were no longer interesting, literary men began to imitate the French writers, with whose works they had just grown familiar; and here begins the so-called period of French influence, which shows itself in English literature for the next century, instead of the Italian influence which had been dominant since Spenser and the Elizabethans.
[7]Realism and Formalism:-
The writers of the Restoration age reacted against the romanticism of Elizabethan age. They developed realism to a marked degree. The early Restoration writers presented the realistic picture of a corrupt court and society. They emphasised vices rather than virtues. They gave us coarse, low plays without moral significance. They saw only the externals of man, his body and appetites. They did not see his soul and his ideals. In realism that is, the representation of men exactly as they are, the
expression of the plain, unvarnished truth with ideals or romance. The writers of the age followed formalism of style. They aimed at achieving directness and simplicity of expression. In both the Elizabethan and the Puritan ages the general tendency of writers was towards extravagance of thought and language. Sentences were often involved, and loaded with Latin quotations and classical allusions. The Restoration writers opposed this vigorously. From France they brought back the tendency to regard established rules for writing, to emphasize close reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and to use short, clean-cut sentences without an unnecessary word.
[8]The Couplet :-
Another thing which the reader will note with interest in Restoration literature is the adoption of the heroic couplet; that is, two iambic pentameter lines which rime together, as the most suitable form of poetry. Waller, who began to use it in 1623, is generally regarded as the father of the couplet, for he is the first poet to use it consistently in the bulk of his poetry. Chaucer had used the rimed couplet wonderfully well in his "Canterbury Tales", but in Chaucer it is the poetical thought more than the expression which delights us. With the Restoration writers, form counts for everything. Waller and Dryden made the couplet the prevailing literary fashion, and in their hands the couplet becomes
"closed"; that is, each pair of lines must contain a complete thought, stated as precisely as possible. Thus Waller writes:
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.
●Leading Authors●
Dryden was the representative poet of this age. His Absalom and Achitophel and Mac Flecknoe are very popular satires. Samuel Butler and John Oldham are also famous for their satires. John Dryden, John Bunyan, Hobbes, Locke, Temple etc. were eminent prose writers of this age. Congreve, Etherege and Whycherly were the eminent writers of comedy of manners.
Thus the Restoration age has great importance in the literary history of England. This age offered leading authors like Dryden and Congreve whose contribution to the literature is memorable.
In short The greatest writer of the age is John Dryden, who established the heroic couplet as the prevailing verse form in English poetry, and who developed a new and serviceable prose style suited to the practical needs of the age. The popular ridicule of Puritanism in burlesque and doggerel is best exemplified in Butler's Hudibras. The realistic tendency, the study of facts and of men as they are, is shown in the work of the Royal Society, in the philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, and in the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, with their minute pictures of social life. The age was one of transition from the exuberance and vigor of Renaissance literature to the formality and polish of the Augustan Age. In strong contrast with the preceding ages, comparatively little of Restoration literature is familiar to modern readers.
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