Oh, goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil should produce

And evil turn to good; more wonderful

Than that which by creation first brought forth

Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,

Whether I should repent me now of sin

By me done and occasioned, or rejoice

Much more hat much more good thereof shall spring

To God more glory, more good will to Men.

Milton thus suggests a positive role played by evil. Satan with his mutiny sets the world to motion, the Earth and men are created. After Satan tempts Eve, their idyll is over, but it is at this point that human history begins.

Another positive function of evil – it helps bring out whatever is weak and wavering in the good, purifies it, sifting out what is unsteady, superficial, what does not come from a strong conviction.

Milton’s picture of the Universe has a lot in common with that of Dante and still it is different. His universe is orderly and rational. The act of creation is in effect bringing order into Chaos, imposing divine laws upon it. Everything in the world has its limits. Should someone try to break the boundaries imposed by God, it threatens with revival of the primeval chaos in his soul.

Obedience, on the other hand, submission to those laws makes one capable of infinite, limitless development and perfection. Even the boundaries between the upper and the lower spheres are penetrable. The Man is superior to all earthly beings and actually brings these spheres together.

In the act of creation God imparts part of his divinity – reason is of divine origin. It makes men equal of angels.

THE POTENTIAL OF HUMAN MIND is immense, its claims are extravagant, but its possibilities are rather limited. Milton calls attention to the ethical aspects of knowledge.

Milton himself was acquainted with the newest discoveries and astronomic theories. The name of Galileo is mentioned in the poem. In Book Seven there is a conversation of Adam and Raphael about the universe. Adam expresses doubt that the earth is the centre of universe (The Ptolemaic System). Raphael admits there are grounds for his doubts. But still his advice is to be satisfied with the knowledge given by God and not to contest a mystery which is too big for human mind.

3. The conflict of values during the Restoration period was also reflected in literature. Milton’s last poems – a culmination of the Renaissance art and John Dryden – a paragon of elegance; Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress – expressing the Nonconformist conscience and the Restoration comedy expressing the libertine creed – appeared about the same time.

The Restoration is best known as dominated by the court, which was fun-loving and libertine. But the ordinary life of the nation did not change radically. Rural morals were as traditional and old-fashioned. The London middle-class citizens were scandalized by the behavior of upper-class rakes who regarded them with contempt and considered their wives and daughters fair game. General disapproval of the moral laxity of the court

Charles himself was easy-going, pleasure loving, more fond of company of his friend and mistresses than of the state’s business. But he also had serous intellectual interests and was a patron of the arts. He imported from the Continent composers, musicians, new musical instruments, the French and Italian opera. He was interested in theatre and supported actors.

The art of the period, naturally, reflected the interests and tastes of those who supported it. Artists addressed themselves to court and “town” (the western suburbs, which were the centre of fashion). The middle-class tradespeople were scorned as tasteless “barbarians”. Literature was not in itself a gainful profession (Milton received 10 pounds for the first edition of Paradise Lost), and authors had to seek for patronage.

However, by the end of the century, thanks to the enterprise of booksellers, the situation changed, and Dryden was able to earn between 1000 pounds and 1200 pounds by his translation of Virgil.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the Restoration period was the increasing challenge of various forms of secular thought to the old religious orthodoxies, which had been matters of life and death since the Reformation. There appeared other issues to attract adventurous minds. Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan taught a philosophic materialism and advocated an absolute government as the most efficacious to human nature, which he described as driven entirely by egotistic and predatory passions.

An important influence in philosophy was skepticism, which had found the most recent form in the essays of Montaigne (1533-1592). The skeptic argued that all our knowledge is derived from our senses, that our senses do not report the world around us accurately, and therefore reliable knowledge is an impossibility. The safest course is to affirm nothing, to remember that most beliefs were mere opinions.

Science in the seventeenth century was principally concerned with the physical sciences – astronomy, physics, to a lesser degree chemistry. New discoveries (Boyle’s law, Newton’s law of gravitation) seemed to promise a time when there would be no mysteries left, mystery would be banished entirely from religion, as well as from nature. Deism, or Natural Religion laid an increasingly wide appeal to “enlightened” minds. It deduced its simple realistic creed that the Book of Nature was God’s first and only revelation. The Deists deduced an existence of a Supreme Being, or First Cause, the Creator. The laws of nature sufficiently proved that the Creator is wise, reasonable and good. If He does not punish vice and reward virtue in this life, He, probably does so, after our death. Our duty on earth is to cooperate with Nature, cultivating wisdom, virtue and benevolence. This religion made “the second revelation”, the Scripture unnecessary.

Literary theory

Apparently, a sudden change of taste took place about 1660; but the change was not so sudden as it appears. Like the English Renaissance, it was part of a general movement in European culture. It was a reaction against the intricacy, boldness, obscurity and extravagance of the literature of the late Renaissance. There was a tendency toward greater simplicity, clarity, restraint, regulation and good sense.

In France this tendency produced the impressive body of classical literature that distinguished the age of Louis XIV. In England it produced a literature often termed “neoclassical” or “Augustan”.

Charles and his followers inevitably brought back from France an admiration for the contemporary French literature, as well as French fashions and elegance. The theories of Corneille, Nicholas Boileau also came into vogue. But English literature remained stubbornly English: English writers took what they required from France, but used it for their own ends. Dryden’s aim, for example, was never to imitate French (or, for that matter, Latin) authors, but to produce works in English which would be worthy to stand beside theirs. And he knew that this could be done only if English literature remained true to tradition: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne entered his literary consciousness as well as Virgil, Horace, or Corneille.

Above all, the new simplicity of style aimed to give pleasure to the common reader – to write about passions that everyone could recognize in language that everyone could understand.

The period between 1660 and 1700 was remarkably varied and vigorous. The prose of the period is a clear indication of the direction in which literature was moving. The ideal of good prose came to be clear, natural and simple style. Rhetorical flourishes were disapproved, because they engaged emotions, not reason – they were tolerable in poetry, but had no place in rational discourse. There was a similar movement away from the intricacies of the metaphysical poetry in verse.

A great output of political and religious pamphlets.

Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703). Diarist and naval reformer. Pepys’s Diary covers a period from 1660 January 1, to May 31 1669. He describes among other events the restoration and coronation of Charles II, the horrors of the plague and the great fire of London. His diaries were encoded. They were deciphered and first published in 1815 in 6 volumes.

However, Restoration did not break with the immediate past. It retained the admiration for heroic ideal, which was expressed in heroic plays, which Dryden defined as “a heroic poem in little”. The theme of these plays was the conflict between love and honor.

The dominant figure was Dryden. He wrote in all the important contemporary forms – occasional verse, tragedy, comedy, heroic play, satire, ode, translation and a critical essay. He gave to the England of his day a modern literature, which was cosmopolitan, but possessing the national richness and variety.

John Dryden (1631-1700) was a commanding figure of the last four decades of the century. He is that rare phenomenon, the man of letters in whose work the image of an age can be discerned. Every important aspect of the life of his times – political, religious, artistic, philosophic – finds reflection somewhere in his writings. Dryden is the least personal of all poets. He is not the solitary subjective poet listening to the murmurs of his own voice, but he is a citizen of the world commenting publicly on matters of public concern.

His poems are most typically occasional poems, which celebrate particular events – a coronation, a military victory, a death, a political crisis. Such poems are social and ceremonial, written not for the self, but the nation.

Between 1664 and 1681, Dryden was mostly a playwright. He frankly confessed that he wrote his plays to please his audiences, which were not heterogeneous like Shakespeare’s, but largely drawn from the court and people of fashion. He produced some heroic plays, with incredibly noble heroes facing incredibly difficult choices between love and honor. He wrote comedies and libretti for the newly introduced dramatic form, the opera.

All for Love, a tragedy in blank verse, adapts Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra to the three dramatic unities. Instead of Shakespeare’s world-wide panorama, his rapid shifts in scene and complex characters, we have the last hours of the tragic lovers in a neatly symmetrical plot.

Dryden also wrote formal verse satire (Absalom and Achitophel; the Medal), later turned to translations (Ovid, Bocaccio, Chaucer – Fables Ancient and Modern)

What was the nature of Dryden’s achievement? He helped establish the new type of prose – easy, lucid, plain. His satire is as vital today as it was three hundred years ago. He created a poetic language that remained the basic language of poetry until the nineteenth century and which even the Romantic movement did not wholly destroy. S. Johnson estimated him: “By him we are taught <…> to think naturally and to express forcibly… English poetry [was] embellished by Dryden <…> he found it brick, he left it marble”.

But the real distinction of Restoration drama was the comedy.

Restoration dramatists excelled in representing and critically evaluating the social behavior of the fashionable upper classes. The influence of Ben Jonson and his realism is obvious. Restoration comedy is often called the comedy of manners. Its concern is to bring the moral and social behaviour of characters to the test of comic laughter.

The plays were mainly in prose, with passages in verse for more romantic periods.

Restoration comedy was bright, witty, coarse and heartless. In tone, language and subject matter these plays were often frivolous, cynical and bawdy. The subject was love and marital behavior, but there appeared new concerns: older men seeking young lovers, upper class manners contrasting middle class behavior. The male hero of such plays lives not for military glory, but for love conquests and amorous campaigns. The female character is his equal in strategies of love. They are not distinguished by virtue, but wit, grace, love of pleasure. There appeared new concerns: older men seeking young lovers, upper class manners contrasting middle class behavior. Plays became more outspoken in treating sexual themes and forms of sexual behavior.

The plots were complex and usually double, sometimes triple, made up by a complicated intrigue. They are set in London, and country people are often mocked at.

Dryden wrote several such comedies (Marriage a-la-Mode), but the most famous comedies were written by William Wycherly, George Etherage, John Vanbrough and William Congreve.

e. g. The Country Wife by Wycherly. – a sharp stirical attack on social and sexual hypocrisy and on corruption of town manners. The main plot concerns Mr. Pinchwife who comes to London for the marriage of his sister Alithea, bringing with him his artless young wife Margery. He constantly warns her about London’s loose morals and it makes her curious. Margery is eventually seduced by Horner who pretends importent and persuades Margery that she’s merely behaving as town ladies. The play was heavily attacked for alleged obscenity.

John Dryden wrote in 1695: Themselves they studied, as they felt they writ,// intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.// Vice always found a sympathetic friend,// They pleas’d their age, and didn’t aim to mend.

The pinnacle of Restoration drama was the work of W. Congreve. He wrote only four comedies and a tragedy, but with these he proved to be one the greatest English dramatists.

He studies social pressures on love and marriage with wit and subtlety. The Way of the World, his final play written when he was still under thirty, takes the comedy of manners to the highest level of achievement.

The Way of the World.

Mirabell is in love with Millamant, a niece of Lady Wishfort. He pretends to make love to the aunt to conceal his suit of the niece. The truth comes out and Lady Wishfort determines to disinherit her niece if she marries Mirabell. Mirabell contrives an elaborate plot to persuade the lady to consent to their marriage. Millamant delicately persuades Mirabell that even in such a mercenary society love can survive into marriage. This delicacy is contrasted with the passionate and grasping relationship of Mrs. Marwood and her lover Fainall. Millamant’s attitudes are rather unusual (the oppisite of the romantic view of marraige) and stress the women’s independence. In fact, women had a strong voice in the Restoration period and the discussion of male and female roles was an important part of much writing of the age.

Congreve enlivens the action with a fine gallery of fools (characteristically Restoration conflict between the witty and the foolish) and exceptionally brilliant dialogue.

Restoration playwrights came under heavy attack for frivolity, immorality and blasphemy. Jeremy Collier published a pamphlet “A Sort View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage” in 1698. This recalls the Puritan complaints against the theatre in the 1630-s and 40-s. Collier attacked the plots of such plays, the dialogue which he considered improper for the theatre. He also disliked it when people laughed at religious men. Many people supported Collier, and the pamphlet was a major step in controlling he freedom of the theatre and dramatists

The subsequent admirers of Restoration playwrights defended their works as serious social criticism and mirrors to the age.