The Puritan Age

The Puritan Age (1625-1675/1620-1660)

The half century between 1625 and 1675 is called the Puritan period for two reasons: first, because Puritan standards prevailed for a time in England; and second, because the greatest literary figure during all these years was the Puritan, John Milton. Historically the age was one of tremendous conflict. The Puritan struggled for righteousness and liberty, and because he prevailed, the age is one of moral and political revolution. In his struggle for liberty the Puritan overthrew the corrupt monarchy, beheaded Charles I, and established the Commonwealth under Cromwell. The Commonwealth lasted but a few years, and the restoration of Charles II in 1660 is often put as the end of the Puritan period. The age has no distinct limits, but overlaps the Elizabethan period on one side, and the Restoration period on the other.

The Puritan Movement may be regarded as a second and greater Renaissance, a rebirth of the moral nature of man following the intellectual awakening of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. It had 2 chief objects: the first was personal righteousness; the second was civil and religious liberty. In other words, it aimed to make men honest and to make them free. Puritans believed in simplicity of life and disapproval of the sonnets and love poetry. The age produced many writers, a few immortal books, and one of the world’s great literary leaders. The literature of the age is extremely diverse in character, and the diversity is due to the breaking up of the ideals of political and religious unity. This literature differs from that of the preceding age in three marked ways: 1) It has no unity of spirit, as in the days of Elizabeth, resulting from the patriotic enthusiasm of

all classes. 2) In contrast with the hopefulness and vigor of Elizabethan writings, much of the literature of this period is somber in character; it saddens rather than inspires us. 3) It has lost the romantic impulse of youth, and become critical and intellectual; it makes us think, rather than feel deeply.

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), who is often classed with the first Metaphysical poets, is interesting to us for two reasons,---for his use of the artificial sonnet, and for his literary desertion of Spenser as a model for poets. His Delia, a cycle of sonnets modeled helped to fix the custom of celebrating love or friendship by a series of sonnets, to which some pastoral pseudonym was affixed. In his sonnets, many of which rank with Shakespeare’s, and in his later poetry, especially the beautiful “Complaint of Rosamond” and his “Civil Wars,” he aimed

solely at grace of expression, and became influential in giving to English poetry a greater individuality and independence than it had ever known. In matter he set himself squarely against the mediaeval tendency. This fling at Spenser and his followers marks the beginning of the modern and realistic school, which sees in life as it is enough poetic material, without the invention of allegories and impossible heroines.

The 2 song writers best worth studying are Thomas Campion (1567-1619) and Nicholas Breton (1545-1626). Like all the lyric poets of the age, they are a curious mixture of the Elizabethan and the Puritan standards. They sing of sacred and profane love with the same zest, and a careless love song is often found on the same page with a plea for divine grace.

Of the Spenserian poets Giles Fletcher and Wither are best worth studying. Giles Fletcher (1588-1623) has at times a strong suggestion of Milton in the noble simplicity and majesty of his lines. His best known work, “Christ’s Victory and Triumph” (1610), was the greatest religious poem that had appeared in England since “Piers Plowman”. George Wither (1588-1667) published in 1623 Hymns and Songs of the Church, the first hymn book that ever appeared in the English language. Metaphysical poetry deals with philosophical or spiritual matters but that is generally limited to works written by a specific group of 17th-century poets who wrote in the manner of the poet John Donne. Aside from Donne, the poets commonly referred to as metaphysical poets include John Cleveland, Abraham Cowley, Richard Crashaw, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughn. It has come to be

defined by its style rather than its content. The total effect of a metaphysical poem at its best is to startle the reader into seeing and knowing what he has not really noticed or thought about before. The Metaphysical Poets’ emphasis is on the intellect or wit as against feeling and emotion.

John Donne (1573-1631)

John Donne is the leading figure of the "metaphysical school." His poems give a more inherently theatrical impression by exhibiting a seemingly unfocused diversity of experiences and attitudes, and a free range of feelings and moods. The mode is dynamic rather than static, with ingenuity of speech, vividness of imagery and vitality of rhythms, which show a notable contrast to the other Elizabethan lyric poems which are pure, serene, tuneful, and smooth-running.

The most striking feature of Donne's

poetry is precisely its tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a real rather than a poetical world.

His works:

Donne wrote a large number of poems and prose works.

Most of The Elegies and Satires and a good many of The Songs and Sonnets were written in the early period.

He wrote his prose works mainly in the later period.

His sermons, which are very famous, reveal his spiritual devotion to God as a passionate preacher.

The Songs and Sonnets contains most of his early lyrics. Love is the basic theme. Donne holds that the nature of love is the union of soul and body. The operations of the soul depend on the body. The perfection of human lovers will not be made with souls alone. This thought is quite contrary to the

medieval love idea, which merely put stress on spiritual love. What's more, idealism and cynicism about love coexist in Donne's love poetry. He finds the meaning and the infinite value of love and he is concerned with the change and death confronting human love. He sometimes expresses the futility and instability of love in his poems. When eulogizing a woman, Donne tells us very little about her physical beauty. Instead, his interest lies in dramatizing and illustrating the state of being in love.

As a religious poet, he wrote Holy Sonnets and A Hymn to God the Father in which we find an assured faith; elsewhere there is always an element of conflict or doubt.

His conceits may be divided into two kinds: easy ones and difficult ones. Easy conceits, found in all Elizabethan poetry with images concerning mythology and natural objects, are not a novelty; but the difficult ones rely largely on the choice of

imagery. Donne's images are linked with new resources such as law, psychology and philosophy which endow his poetry with learning and wit, and which provide certain intellectual difficulties.

His poetry involves a certain kind of argument, sometimes in rigid syllogistic form. With the brief, simple language, the argument is continuous throughout the poem. It begins with a certain idea but ends in quite a contrary one. It is not only playful but paradoxical; it is not only witty, but implies different kinds of feelings, which can only be interpreted through the rhythms and inflections of the verse. Donne's great prose works are his sermons, which are both rich and imaginative, exhibiting the same kind of physical vigor and scholastic complexity as his poetry.

Donne’s poetry is so uneven, at times so startling and fantastic, that few critics

would care to recommend it to others. Only a few will read his works, and they must be left to their own browsing, to find what pleases them.

George Herbert (1593-1633)

His chief work, The Temple, consists of over one hundred and fifty short poems suggested by the Church, her holidays and ceremonials, and the experiences of the Christian life.

The Cavalier Poets include Herrick, Lovelace, Suckling, and Carew who write songs generally in lighter vein, gay, trivial, often licentious, but who cannot altogether escape the tremendous seriousness of Puritanism.

John Milton (1608-1674)

He is the poet of steadfast will and purpose, who moves like a god amid the fears and hopes and changing impulses of

the world, regarding them as trivial and momentary things that can never swerve a great soul from its course.

From boyhood two great principles seem to govern Milton’s career: one, the love of beauty, of music, art, literature, and indeed of every form of human culture; the other, a steadfast devotion to duty as the highest object in human life. In belief, he belonged to the extreme Puritans.

Milton’s Early Poetry:

His first work, the ode “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” (1630) approaches the high-water mark of lyric poetry in England. “L’Allegro”(1632) and “Il Penseroso”(1632) are twin poems, containing many lines and short descriptive passages which linger in the mind like strains of music, and which are known and loved wherever English is spoken. “L’Allegro” (the joyous or happy man) is

like an excursion into the English fields at sunrise. The air is sweet; birds are singing;

a multitude of sights, sounds, fragrances, fill all the senses; and to this appeal of nature the soul of man responds by being happy, seeing in every flower and hearing in every harmony some exquisite symbol of human life. “Il penseroso” takes us over t he same ground at twilight and at moonrise. The air is still fresh and fragrant; the symbolism is, if possible, more tenderly beautiful than before; but the gay mood is gone, though its memory lingers in the afterglow of the sunset.

“Masque of Comus” (1634); “Lycidas,” a pastoral elegy written in 1637/38.

20 Sonnets: “On His Deceased Wife,” “On Reaching the Age of Twenty-three,” “The Massacre in Piedmont,” the two “On His Blindness,” etc.

In his sonnets he seldom wrote of love, the

usual subject with his predecessors, but of patriotism, duty, music, and subjects of political interest suggested by the struggle into which England was drifting.

Prose: "Areopagitica" (Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing) (1644) is the most famous plea in English for the freedom of the press. Defense fro the English People (1650)

Milton’s Later Poetry:

Undoubtedly the noblest of Milton’s works, written when he was blind and suffering, are “Paradise Lost,”(1665/1667) “Paradise Regained,”(1671) and “Samson Agonistes.”(1671) The first is the greatest, indeed the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf; the last is the most perfect specimen of a drama after the Greek method in English.

The first tells how mankind, in the person

of Adam, fell at the first temptation by Satan and became an outcast from Paradise and from divine grace; the second shows how mankind, in the person of Christ, withstands the tempter and is established once more in the divine favor.

Regarded as a drama, Paradise Lost could never have been a success; but as poetry, with its sublime imagery, its harmonious verse, its titanic background of heaven, hell, and the illimitable void that lies between, it is unsurpassed in any literature.

"Samson Agonistes" is a poetical drama modeled on Greek tragedies. It deals with the story of Samson from the "Book of Judges" in the "Old T estament." Samson was an athlete of the Israelites. He stood as their champion fighting for the freedom of his country. But he was betrayed by his wife Dalilah and blinded by his enemies the Philistines. Being led into the temple "to

make them sport", he wreaked his vengeance upon his enemies by pulling down the temple upon them and upon himself in a common ruin.

Though Paradise Regained was Milton’s favorite and has many passages of noble thought and splendid imagery equal to the best of Paradise Lost, the poem as a whole falls below the level of the first, and is less interesting to read.

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

He was a prose writer.

Pilgrim’s Progress is n ot exclusively a Protestant study; it appeals to Christians of every name, and to Mohammedans and Buddhists in precisely the same way that it appeals to Christians. It has been translated into 75 languages and dialects and has been read more than any other book save one in the English language---Bible.

His other works:

The Holy War (1665)

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666)

The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1682)

The Pilgrim’s Progress is the most successful religious allegory in the English language. Its purpose is to urge people to abide by Christian Doctrines and seek salvation through struggles with their own weaknesses and all kinds of social evils.

Bunyan had a deep hatred for the corrupted, hypocritical rich who accumulated their wealth by hook and by crook.

Neo-classicism: A style of Western literature that flourished from the mid-17th c. until the end of the 18th c. and the rise of romanticism. The neo-classicists looked to the great classical writers for inspiration

and guidance, considering them to have mastered the noblest literary forms, tragic drama and the epic. Many practiced imitation of the “masters”---and their preferred literary forms such as satire and the ode---in order to perfect their own art and foster proper modes of expression. (Neoclassicists recognized that the creation of art requires individual inspiration and talent, but they also maintained that, except for the rare genius, long and careful study is equally essential to the production of great art.)

Neoclassical writers shared several beliefs. They believed that literature should both instruct and delight, and that the proper subject of art was humanity. (Their emphasis was more on humanity in general than on the individual.) Unlike some of the more idealistic, optimistic, and expansive writers who preceded them during the Renaissance (and followed during the

Romantic Period), neoclassicists started from the assumption that humanity is imperfect and limited. However, certain neoclassicists found cause for optimism, particularly in the power of reason to perfect human civilization gradually.