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LESSON 5
ENGLISH LITERATURE IN XVII CENTURY
Plan:
1.
The seventeenth century is the century of transition into our modern world.
2.
The influence of Civil war to literature
The seventeenth century is in many ways the century of transition into our modern world. The
Civil Wars separated men from the older ways of living and the religious controversies killed much
that had remained lively in the national imagination since the Middle Ages. Elizabeth I died in 1603
leaving no heir. Her cousin James VI of Scot-land became King James I of England In England
James governed the two countries as separate kingdoms. He was a member of the House of Stuart,
which ruled England for most of the period from 1603 to 1714. James was an arrogant and
superstitious man who quarrelled often with Parliament. After James died in 1625, his son Charles I
ascended to the throne.
Conflicts between the monarchy and Parliament worsened. Civil war broke out in 1642
between the king’s followers, who were called Cavaliers, and Parliament’s chief supporters called
Puritans. Oliver Cromwell, a puritan member of Parliament, headed the Parliamentary army. He
brought victory to the Parliamentary forces and temporarily ended the monarchy in 1649. Charles I
was tried and beheaded in January 1649. The House of Lords was abolished, and a commonwealth
(or Republic) was proclaimed. Later, frightened by the rising revolutionary spirit of the masses,
Cromwell intensified his oppression and in 1653 imposed a military dictatorship on the country. It
lasted till his death in 1658.
As neither the common people nor the upper classes were satisfied with the results of the
Puritan Revolution, the monarchy was restored after Oliver Cromwell’s death. Charles II, the son of
the executed king, ascended the throne in 1660. Charles II’s reign was followed by the brief reign
of his brother James II, who came to the throne in 1685. The years between 1660 and 1688 are
called the “Restoration”.
By that time two main parties had been formed in Parliament, one representing the interests of
businessmen, the other, the interests of the land-owners and clergy. The two parties hated each
other so much that the insulting nicknames of “Whigs” for businessmen and “Tories” for
landowners were invented. Later, these names came to be used officially.
In 1688 the Parliament worked out the Bill of Rights, according to which the royal power,
the armed forces, and taxation were brought under the control of Parliament. King James fled to
France, and in 1689 the crown was offered to his daughter Mary and her husband William of
Holland. These events were called the “Glorious Revolution”, a revolution without violence or
bloodshed. Thus constitutional monarchy was established, which marked the end of the whole
revolutionary epoch of the 17th century.
The political struggle involving the broad masses of the English population led to the
publication of pamphlets and laid the foundation of journalism and the periodical press. The
English people took a tremendous interest in all the political events of the time. The greatest of all
publicists during the Puritan Revolution was the poet John Milton. His pamphlets gave theoretical
foundation to the struggle of the puritans against the monarchy.
In Elizabeth’s time verse was the dominant form of literature. Poetry dominated in the
English literature of the early seventeenth century. The poet John Donne and his followers wrote
what later was called metaphysical poetry, that is complex, highly intellectual verse filled with
intricate and prolonged metaphors. Ben Jonson and his disciples, called “the sons of Ben” or “the
tribe of Ben”, developed a second main style of poetry. They wrote in a more conservative,
restrained fashion and on more limited subjects than the metaphysical poets. A great poet of the
century, John Milton had a style of his own, and he remained outside both Donne’s and Jonson’s
influence.
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