Lecture Seven. Commonwealth and Restoration

1. Historical and literary contexts

2. John Milton. Paradise Lost

1. the subject

2. Milton’s Universe

3. the problem of good and evil in the epic poem

4. the epic, lyrical and dramatic elements

3. Restoration literature.

   1. general characteristics

   2. John Dryden

   3. Restoration comedy

1.

By the time James I died in 1625 and was succeeded by Charles I, the bitter and divisive conflicts between the Crown and Parliament had lasted for some 40 years.

Religious confrontation grew more and more intense. The Stuart monarchs (who were Catholic) were not successful, especially the arrogant Charles I.

The struggle between the King and Parliament culminated in the Civil war in the 1640-s. In the war the forces of insurrection (Parliamentary armies supported by Puritans or Rounheads) rendered Charles powerless, brought him to trial and executed in 1649. But they failed to set up a stable government of their own; they failed to set up a new national church, to replace the episcopacy that they had long criticized.

The military dictatorship established by Oliver Cromwell under the name of Commonwealth and then maintained as Protectorate, was no more than a makeshift effort to contain a political instability that had got out of hand.

In 1660 Charles II was recalled from exile and put back on his father’s throne but without his father’s powers. It was clear that England was to have a new form of organization, a much looser one, in religion and politics. But no solid settlement was reached until 1688, when James II (Charles’s brother and successor) was ejected from his throne and sent into exile. Then England settled under a series of monarchs who made little trouble for parliaments and therefore had little trouble with their thrones. The crisis was over.

The social issues of the century were infinitely complex in details, but can be broadly stated in two sentences. In the religious sphere, the basic issue was: How far should the reformation of the Protestant church be carried? The solution (accomplished in 1688) was: “as far as any individual self-defined religious group wants”. In the sphere of constitutional politics, the basic issue was: How much authority should the monarch have independent of Parliament? And the solution accomplished in 1688 was, “Almost none”.

The value structure of English society before and after the Puritan revolt.

Under Elizabeth Tudor the court was the undisputed centre of national authority, influence, power and intellectual inspiration. Careers were made and fortunes established through court connections. The characteristic forms of literature were courtly: the sonnet sequence, the pastoral romance (Sidney’s Arcadia), the chivalric allegory (Spenser’s Faerie Queene), the learned sermon, the masque, the epic. Poetry was written for courtly readers and with the intention to please them. Patronage flowed from courtly donors, and patronage was almost the only way to live by writing.

The same pattern continued under the first two Stuarts, James I and Charles I. There were exceptions, of course, but the court influence was predominant. It tended to produce intricate, allusive and highly decorative writing.

After 1660, and even more strikingly after 1688, the pattern of values was quite different. For one thing, the court no longer had the power (social and financial) to be the unchallenged center of literary influence. London City (a network of banks and merchants) was one source; Parliament itself was another.

In the same way, the established church, which had once claimed to be sole guardian of men’s spiritual welfare, became after 1660 simply one of religious communities (it was the largest, the most acceptable, but not the only one)

New money brought to the fore new men, enterprising and respectable. The literature that appealed to them was less dogmatic and moralistic, more serious. Publishers began to aim their products at a particular market. Before long, they were hiring authors. Authors who wrote to order at the bidding of publishers became known collectively as Grub Street authors.

Literary crosscurrents

Hardly any of the high literature of the seventeenth century was the work of Puritans or men sympathetic to the Puritan course (with the exception of Milton and perhaps his friend Henry Marvell). The great Puritan art forms were the sermon and the religious tract. This is not just the joke it seems; Puritan sermons explored in intimate detail the psychology of the Christian trying to be sure of his own salvation, and Puritan tracts developed new ways of exciting the zeal of their readers. Puritans on the whole mistrusted belles-lettres, on the same principle that they mistrusted music, graven idols or religious rituals. They were all allurements and enticements of the sensual world, they threatened to contaminate and diffuse the pure spiritual energy of faith. The Puritans therefore did not compete with the old courtly forms of literature; they subjected those who followed those forms to heavy moral and social pressure. A sense of deep disquiet, of ancient traditions under challenge, is felt everywhere in the early seventeenth century, and it can hardly be accounted for except as a response to the growing discontents that ultimately erupted in the Revolt.

The experience of Puritanism gave to English life a strong steady moral tone, never so widely or deeply established before.