1. Commonwealth and Restoration

2. Commonwealth and Restoration
In 1640s, the Puritans (Roundheads) and Cavaliers (King's followers) went to war against each other.
Victory of the Roundheads meant the execution of King Charles I in 1649.
The period that followed is called the Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell, then his son.
In 1660, monarchy was restored; Charles II was restored from France: Restoration.

3. Commonwealth and Restoration
Although monarchy was restored, most of the power was held by the Parliament.
James II becomes the king who converted to Catholicism; his reign ended with the bloodless revolution of 1688.

4. Features of the Age
Main concern of the time was to avoid another revolution.
Reason was the spirit of the restoration.
Middle classes had more influence, their wealth grew, and they wanted stability above all.
A time of commercial growth and scientific advances
A time of war in the rest of Europe

5. Features of the Age Union of Parliaments of England & Scotland
Protestant victory in Ireland, though population was still largely Catholic.
So, Ireland remained a problem to the United Kingdom!
Restoration gave more importance to stable values and less for the search for new values & exploration of new worlds (i.e. Renaissance)

6. Andrew Marvell’s An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urgèd his active star:…
What field of all the civil war     
Where his were not the deepest scar?
In what sense does this piece of poetry reflect the spirit of the age?
List three poetic features available in these lines.
The major theme of this poem is strength and strong government. These were major concerns of the nation during Cromwell’s rule.

7. Andrew Marvell’s The Garden
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men; … Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude.
In his later years, Marvell got fed up with the unrests in Britain.
So, he contrasted the world of politics with the quit life in the countryside, highlighting the innocence of nature and country life.

8. Richard Lovelace’s ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’
Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind, 
         That from the nunnery 
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind 
         To war and arms I fly. 
How does Lovelace contrast the personal and public life in this poem?

9. Discussion!
What is the major difference between the literature written during the Renaissance and during the Commonwealth and Restoration period?

10. John Milton

11. John Milton
John Milton can be seen as both renaissance and post- renaissance man (veteran poet).

12. John Milton
He was contemporary to all struggles and battles of the seventeenth century.
He sided with Oliver Cromwell (Puritans) against the King, and he served as a secretary to the Lord Protector during the Commonwealth.
He was influenced by Latin writers, classical traditions, and religious principles.

13. John Milton
Milton was ambitious to become a great writer like Chaucer.
After the 1630s, Milton wrote little poetry and focused on writing prose pamphlets on many controversial subjects of the time: divorce, politics, education, freedom of the press, and religion.
After the restoration, Milton was arrested, but he was able to return to writing.
Milton’s eyesight had been steadily declining for years until he had gone completely blind by 1652.

14. Paradise Lost Paradise Lost is the major epic poem in English.
What is an epic?
At first, Milton considered using the myth of King Arthur, but he gave up the idea.
He decided to describe more general myth of creation, with the figures of God and Satan, Adam and Eve, and the Fall of Mankind.
Milton stresses the free choice of Adam and Eve as they choose human knowledge over the Garden of Eden, as Paradise Lost indicates.

15. Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is all about religious themes and principles. It is a religious text that supports Christian ideals.
Paradise Lost always caused controversy because it depicts Satan as a hero.
Milton states that his aim was to
To assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to Men.
What is the religious sense in these lines?

16. Paradise Lost
At the end of Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve follow the path of human knowledge towards the unknown future of humanity
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

17. Paradise Lost
According to Milton, neither Adam nor Eve is blamed for the fall (Eve eats from the forbidden tree and Adam loses the state of innocence); Satan, God, And Man are equally responsible.
Milton’s Paradise Lost is full of memorable description; here is the description of Hell:
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
What is the figure of speech in ‘darkness visible’?

18. Paradise Lost
Milton shows Eve as an extremely beautiful lady. She is compared to classical goddesses
Soft she withdrew; and, like a Wood-Nymph light,
Betook her to the groves, but Delia’s self
In gait surpassed, and Goddess-like deport,

19. Examples of Milton Poetry: Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes
Milton goes beyond the humanity of Adam and Eve, writing about superhuman heroes.
In Samson Agonistes, Milton puts his wisdom and religious principles side by side
…Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to the light.
so farewell hope and with hope farewell fear
Just are the ways of God,
And justifiable to men;
Unless there be who think not God at all.

20. Examples of Milton Poetry: Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes
In Paradise Regained (1671), Jesus becomes an example of how to live by resisting temptation, a kind of hero for the restoration, almost a return to the ideal figure of medieval religious texts.

21. In short… Milton’s poetry was
Classical (images from classical or Latin literature)
Highly Religious (images and stories from the Bible)
Controversial (criticism to his poetry)
Mythical

22. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress 1678
The text is an allegory.
It uses the technique of dream-vision, like medieval texts.
The main character, Christian, goes into a journey to the world “to come”.
He faces all sorts of difficulty from the Giant Despair.

23. Satire
Satire became an important kind of poetry that looks wittily at the manners and behaviour of society, and very often uses real people and situations to make its humorous point.
John Wilmot’s poetry celebrates the pleasures of life and satirizes all of society at the same time.
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.
‘A Satire against Mankind’

24. John Dryden( )
John Dryden was a master of satire in poetry after the Restoration.
He was at the center of most of the important discussions and controversies of the time.
Unlike Rochester, Dryden satirizes particular people and situations.
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
            ‘Absalom and Achitophel’

25. John Dryden
In Mac Flecknoe, Dryden aims at his literary rivals, in particular the playwright Thomas Shadwell, whom Dryden represents as the master of dullness.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense. 
‘Mac Flecknoe’

26. John Dryden Like Marvell, Dryden got fed up with wars and splits.
In his final work The Secular Masque (1700), Dryden claims that wars has brought nothing to the nation. He also highlights the end of an age and the start of a new one.
Thy wars brought nothing about; 
Thy lovers were all untrue. 
'Tis well an old age is out, 
And time to begin a new.