The Puritan Age

James I, designated by Queen Elizabeth, took over the kingdom after her death, settling the Stuart
dynasty on the English throne. Under his rule, the base of the monarch’s authority shifted from the
people’s love, which Elizabeth was constantly fostering, to the divine right of kings, which saw the
king as a representative of God’s will. Hence he ruled by himself, and the Parliament was summoned
only three times. Furthermore he pursued a policy of repression against Catholics and Puritans: after
the decades of tolerance under Elizabeth, he barred Catholics from public offices, fined who wouldn’t
attend the Church of England and considered dissent as treason. He joined Scotland to England and
Wales as one kingdom called Great Britain and introduced the Union Jack.
This period was known as Jacobinism. James I took Shakespeare’s company (which became the
King’s Men) and poets like John Donne under royal patronage. In 1604 he ordered a new translation
of the Bible, the first intended to be read and heard during religious services by laymen: it would be
used for three centuries and influenced the spread of literacy.
Due to the hostile religious policy, a group of Catholics plotted to blow up the Parliament. It was
called the Gunpowder Plot, and Guy Fawkes was the plotter picked to prepare the explosive, but he
was discovered on 5th November. An armed insurrection was organised, but it lacked popular support,
so the leaders were killed on the 8th. Guy Fawkes and the remaining plotters were executed in January
1606.
In 1620, Puritans (the most extreme Protestants) believed England was falling into moral decline and
wanted to purify both the Church of England and English society from every Catholic influence. A
hundred of them, the Pilgrim Fathers, obtained a government patent to colonize New England and
sailed on the Mayflower for the New World, where they founded New Plymouth.
James I’s son, Charles I, was coronated in 1625. A strong pursuer of absolutism like his father, he
frequently quarrelled with the Parliament who opposed his demands for new taxes. He also decided
to intervene in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) alongside the French Protestants (Huguenots) and
against other Catholic powers, but it resolved into a disaster.
After dissolving two Parliaments, he summoned a third one to obtain money for his warlike policies.
In order to grant his request, the House of Commons forced him to sign the Petition of Right,
establishing that the king could not imprison without trial or impose taxes without the consent of the
Commons.
Charles ignored the Petition of Right and established the Eleven Year Tyranny: he dissolved the
Parliament again, imprisoned his opponents, levied new taxes and appointed a new Archbishop of
Canterbury who had favoured Catholics, enraging the Protestants even further when Charles married
a Catholic princess.
When he needed money to fight a rebellion in Scotland, Charles I had to summon the so-called Short
Parliament, which turned down his requests and was then dissolved in three weeks. In a few months
he summoned a new one, which came to be called Long Parliament as it would last until 1649.

Charles I was captured and he was beheaded the following year, while the rest of the royal family
was sent into exile to the French court.
In 1649, the parliament was purged of 370 members, leaving only the 121 puritans who then formed
the Rump Parliament (remaining Parliament), while the House of Lords was abolished. England was
turned into a republic called Commonwealth that would last for ten years (a period known as
Interregnum). In 1653 Cromwell established a dictatorship: he dismissed the Parliament, which
wouldn’t pass his laws, and nominated himself Lord Protector in its place. He would remain in power
until his death in 1658.
Cromwell’s troops quenched a rebellion in Ireland, which was then considered a conquered colony
of Britain. Scotland too was submitted shortly after.
After Cromwell’s death, his son Richard shortly took over after him, but he wasn’t supported by the
Rump Parliament which, in 1659, abolished his protectorate. A new House of Commons was elected
in 1660 which was predominantly royalist, so it asked Charles II, Charles I’s son, to return from
France. The Restoration of the monarchy was completed.

This period’s literature can be divided into two parts:

 the Jacobean period (from the coronation of James I till the outbreak of the civil war),
which witnessed a continuation of courtly lyric and a shift to a more philosophical
production in poetry, as well as the success of satirical comedies and sensational tragedies
in drama;
 the Puritan Age (civil war and subsequent Commonwealth), which was marked by the
closure of theatres and a mostly philosophical and political production in prose.

Metaphysical poetry

Metaphysical poetry takes its name from the poets’ interest in the nature of the universe and the man’s
place in the world (this term was first used by the Restauration poet Dryden). This philosophical
interest was a reaction to the challenge Humanism had posed to the old systems of belief and the loss
of the stability under the Stuart kings.
Metaphysical poets showed a strong wit. They were able to create unusual and intellectual metaphors
and arrange images in unexpected ways so as to surprise the reader. This way they could also show
(off) their deep knowledge, as images from various fields (history, philosophy, alchemy, astrology...)
were mixed together. Paradoxes, and unusual metaphors and similes between two very dissimilar
things, known as conceits, were highly recognizable features of this kind of poems and contributed
to make them obscure to the reader. The syntax is compact, to the point of resembling epigrams, and
Latinisms are plentiful.
Metaphysical poems don’t have a precise form, and their metre is irregular. One of the few things in
common among them is that they were mostly in the form of monologues, to pursue a dramatic effect,
and for the same reason they begin in media res.
The most representative poets of this group are:
 John Donne (see specific chapter)
 George Herbert (1593-1633) was born in Wales and educated at Cambridge, where he
became Reader in Rhetoric and then public orator. He served two years in the Parliament and
took holy orders in 1630. All along he wrote poems and a friend of his published a posthumous
collection in 1633 under the name The Temple. Herbert’s interest was in the spiritual conflicts
man goes through letting God establish His temple in his soul. Like Donne and other
metaphysical poets, his style was characterized by a precise language, metrical versatility and
the use of conceits.

Cavaliers Poet

By this name went a group of poets attending Charles I’s court, whom they supported during the civil
war. They were strongly influenced by Ben Jonson’s style and his classical sources of inspiration: in
fact they were known as Ben’s ‘sons’ or ‘tribe’ before being called Cavalier Poets. As a result, they
used an elevated, though clear and direct language, and were inclined towards secular themes like
beauty and sensuality, celebrating the carpe diem motif and feeling that life was too short and
enjoyable to delve into more serious themes.
Beside Ben Jonson (see specific chapter), this group included poets like Herrick, Carew, Suckling
and Lovelace.
 Puritan Poets

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), the son of an Anglican clergyman, wrote most of his lyrics during the
Puritan Age. At first he took the royalist side during the civil war, but then had a change of heart
marked by his poem An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland in 1650. During the
Commonwealth he became an assistant to his friend John Milton and took seat in the Parliament, and
after the Restoration he devoted himself to political satires and pamphlets attacking the abuse of
monarchical power. In 1681, after his death, his Miscellaneous Poems went to press. Their style
combined the intense imagery of the Metaphysical poets and the smoothness and elegance of the
Cavalier poets.
Marvell’s most famous poem is To his coy mistress. It revolves around the poet urging a woman to
accept his sexual advances since, even though he could wait forever, life is short and they cannot
embrace in the grave. Here, the Cavalier Poet’s theme of carpe diem and elegant style, goes along
with complex metaphors, similes and paradoxes typical of Metaphysical poetry. The poem’s tune
ranges from a humorous first part to a more sad, meditative second part centred on human mortality;
nonetheless, in the end physical love is described as a force capable of transcending time and hence
death.

Prose

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the philosopher who started Empiricism. He wrote:

 The Advancement of Learning (1605), a treatise in which he theorized the inductive method
as a replacement for Aristotle’s deductive method - based on syllogisms and aprioristic
reasoning – believing it would allow for a right interpretation of nature. This made him the
initiator of Empiricism, He also made a distinction between theological truth, derived from
God and determined by faith, and scientific truth, based on the observation of nature and the
dictates of reason;
 Novum Organum (1620), where he described inductive method and that is considered the
first important step towards the modern scientific movement. He maintained that human
nature makes us biased and imprecise, because of our limited ability to observe, verbal
confusion and superstition, then only the inductive method would prove as the ‘new
instrument’ mentioned in the title, enabling men to reach true understanding;
  Essays (1625), a collection of 58 short texts written over the course of many years and inspired
by Montaigne’s Essais. They contain reflections and observations on a particular topic, of
private as well as public nature (society, state policy, marriage, human relationship, etc…);
 The New Atlantis (1626), a unfinished treatise of political philosophy in the form of a tale: it
relates a visit to the imaginary Pacific island of Bensalem to study its society. Bacon’s aim is
to show how that religion and science are not antithetical, and a Christian society could be
improved by increased knowledge. For this, he describes the idea of a college devoted to the
scientific method, Solomon’s House, that thirty years would inspire the Royal Society.

Robert Burton (1577-1469) is remembered for The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), a medical work
aiming at exploring the causes and effects of melancholy, a widespread issue in the Jacobean era, that
humour theory put down to an excess of black bile. In the 17th century, melancholy wasn’t just linked
to depression, but also to uncontrolled passions and madness. The worthiness of Burton’s work
derives from its early interest in psychology.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a fervent royalist, so he had to leave England in 1640 and went
into exile to Paris where his major work was published. He returned to London under Cromwell’s
Commonwealth. His most notable work is The Leviathan (1651), a treatise in which he maintained
that, due to the inherently selfish nature of each individual, men had to move out of the perennial war
of their state of nature (‘bellum omnium contra omnes’) to organize themselves in societies which
would provide for each other’s security. So he advocated in favour of an absolute monarch, as he
deemed essential that society is led by a single man with an authoritative power, capable of
maintaining law and order. However totalitarian, this type of government was still preferable to civil
war that stems from a lack of authority. The title recalls the biblical Leviathan, a huge sea monster
whose strength mirrors that of the absolute sovereign. Hobbes was therefore against the regicide of
Charles I and the separation of powers between King and Parliament.

Religious writing
John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a half-visionary preacher and the purest voice of Puritanism, of which
he was able to reproduce the religious ferments, the strict moral code and the firm faith in God,
freedom and independence. In 1660 he was imprisoned for repeatedly preaching without a licence
and was kept there for 12 years after his refusal to conform or to stop preaching. In jail he wrote The
Pilgrim’s Progress (published in two parts in 1678 and 1684), an allegorical narrative conveying a
medieval vision of salvation and damnation. The book is an enjoyable read, both for its easy style
and for the plot which resembles a travel book, as it deals with the journey of a simple man, Christian,
from the City of Destruction to the City of God. The experiences Christian goes through symbolize a
man’s spiritual stages and the temptations he has to suffer in his path to salvation. He meets with
various allegorical figures, some positive, like Hope and Evangelist, and some negative, like
Talkative and Ignorance.