Name : Putu Chintya Devi

NIM : A1M2 16 043

Restoration Period
After the Restoration in 1660, when Charles II came to the throne, there was a complete
repudiation of the Puritan ideals and way of living. In English literature the period from 1660 to 1700 is
called the period of Restoration, because monarchy was restored in England, and Charles II, the son of
Charles I who had been defeated and beheaded, came back to England from his exile in France and
became the King.
It is called the Age of Dryden, because Dryden was the dominating and most representative literary
figure of the Age. As the Puritans who were previously controlling the country, and were supervising her
literary and moral and social standards, were finally defeated, a reaction was launched against whatever
they held sacred. All restraints and discipline were thrown to the winds, and a wave of licentiousness and
frivolity swept the country. Charles II and his followers who had enjoyed a gay life in France during their
exile, did their best to introduce that type of foppery and looseness in England also. They renounced old
ideals and demanded that English poetry and drama should follow the style to which they had become
accustomed in the gaiety of Paris. Instead of having Shakespeare and the Elizabethans as their models,
the poets and dramatists of the Restoration period began to imitate French writers and especially their
vices.
The result was that the old Elizabethan spirit with its patriotism, its love of adventure and romance, its
creative vigour, and the Puritan spirit with its moral discipline and love of liberty, became things of the past.
For a time in poetry, drama and prose nothing was produced which could compare satisfactorily with the
great achievements of the Elizabethans, of Milton, and even of minor writers of the Puritan age. But then
the writers of the period began to evolve something that was characteristic of the times and they made two
important contributions to English literature in the form of realism and a tendency to preciseness.
In the beginning realism took an ugly shape, because the writers painted the real pictures of the
corrupt society and court. They were more concerned with vices rather than with virtues. The result was a
coarse and inferior type of literature. Later this tendency to realism became more wholesome, and the
writers tried to portray realistically human life as they found it—its good as well as bad side, its internal as
well as external shape.
The tendency to preciseness which ultimately became the chief characteristic of the Restoration
period, made a lasting contribution to English literature. It emphasised directness and simplicity of
expression, and counteracted the tendency of exaggeration and extravagance which was encouraged
during the Elizabethan and the Puritan ages. Instead of using grandiloquent phrases, involved sentences
full of Latin quotations and classical allusions, the Restoration writers, under the influence of French writers,
gave emphasis to reasoning rather than romantic fancy, and evolved an exact, precise way of writing,
consisting of short, clear-cut sentences without any unnecessary word. The Royal Society, which was
established during this period enjoined on all its members to use ‘a close, naked, natural way of speaking
and writing, as near the mathematical plainness as they can”. Dryden accepted this rule for his prose, and
for his poetry adopted the easiest type of verse-form—the heroic couplet. Under his guidance, the English
writers evolved a style—precise, formal and elegant—which is called the classical style, and which
dominated English literature for more than a century.
a. Restoration Poetry
John Dryden (1631-1700). The Restoration poetry was mostly satirical, realistic and
written in the heroic couplet, of which Dryden was the supreme master. In the field of poetry he
was, in fact, the only poet worth mentioning. In his youth he came under the influence of Cowley,
and his early poetry has the characteristic conceits and exaggerations of the metaphysical school.
But in his later years he emancipated himself from the false taste and artificial style of the
metaphysical writers, and wrote in a clear and forceful style which laid the foundation of the
classical school of poetry in England.
The poetry of Dryden can be conveniently divided under three heads :Political Satires,
Doctrinal Poems and The Fables. Of his political satires, Absolem and Achitophel and The Medal
 are well-known. In Absolem and Achitophel, which is one of the greatest political satires in the
English language, Dryden defended the King against the Earl of Shaftesbury who is represented as
Achitophel. It contains powerful character studies of Shaftesbury and of the Duke of Buckingham
who is represented as Zimri. The Medal is another satirical poem full of invective against
Shaftesbury and MacFlecknoe. It also contains a scathing personal attack on Thomas Shadwell
who was once a friend of Dryden.
The two great doctrinal poems of Dryden are Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther.
These poems are neither religious nor devotional, but theological and controversial. The first was
written when Dryden was a Protestant, and it defends the Anglican Church. The second written
when Dryden had become a Catholic, vehemently defends Catholicism. They, therefore, show
Dryden’s power and skill of defending any position he took up, and his mastery in presenting an
argument in verse.
The Fables, which were written during the last years of Dryden’s life, show no decrease in
his poetic power. Written in the form of a narrative, they entitle Dryden to rank among the best
story-tellers in verse in England. The Palamon and Arcite, which is based on Chaucer’s Knight’s
Tale, gives us an opportunity of comparing the method and art of a fourteenth century poet with
one belonging to the seventeenth century. Of the many miscellaneous poems of Dryden, Annus
Mirabilis is a fine example of his sustained narrative power. His Alexander’s Feast is one of
the best odes in the English language.

b. Restoration Drama
In 1642 the theatres were closed by the authority of the parliament which was dominated
by Puritans and so no good plays were written from 1642 till the Restoration (coming back of
monarchy in England with the accession of Charles II to the throne) in 1660 when the theatres
were re-opened. The drama in England after 1660, called the Restoration drama, showed entirely
new trends on account of the long break with the past. Moreover, it was greatly affected by the
spirit of the new age which was deficient in poetic feeling, imagination and emotional approach to
life, but laid emphasis on prose as the medium of expression, and intellectual, realistic and critical
approach to life and its problems. As the common people still under the influence of Puritanism had
no love for the theatres, the dramatists had to cater to the taste of the aristocratic class which was
highly fashionable, frivolous, cynical and sophisticated. The result was that unlike the Elizabethan
drama which had a mass appeal, had its roots in the life of the common people and could be
legitimately called the national drama, the Restoration drama had none of these characteristics. Its
appeal was confined to the upper strata of society whose taste was aristocratic, and among which
the prevailing fashions and etiquettes were foreign and extravagant.
The most popular form of drama was the Comedy of Manners which portrayed the
sophisticated life of the dominant class of society—its gaiety, foppery, insolence and intrigue. Thus
the basis of the Restoration drama was very narrow. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit
succeeds humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph; instead of pleasure, malignity,
sarcasm and contempt, succeed to sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile.
Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty of life, becomes, from the very veil
which it assumes, more active if less disgusting; it is a monster for which the corruption of society
for ever brings forth new food, which it devours in secrety.
In tragedy, the Restoration period specialised in Heroic Tragedy, which dealt with themes
of epic magnitude. The heroes and heroines possessed superhuman qualities. The purpose of this
tragedy was didactic—to inculcate virtues in the shape of bravery and conjugal love. It was written
in the ‘heroic couplet’ in accordance with the heroic convention derived from France that ‘heroic
metre’ should be used in such plays. In it declamation took the place of natural dialogue. Moreover,
it was characterised by bombast, exaggeration and sensational effects wherever possible. As it
was not based on the observations of life, there was no realistic characterisation, and it inevitably
ended happily, and virtue was always rewarded.

c. Restoration Prose
The Restoration period was deficient in poetry and drama, but in prose it holds its head
much higher. Of course, it cannot be said that the Restoration prose enjoys absolute supremacy in
English literature, because on account of the fall of poetic power, lack of inspiration, preference of
the merely practical and prosaic subjects and approach to life, it could not reach those heights
which it attained in the preceding period in the hands of Milton and Browne, or in the succeeding
ages in the hands of Lamb, Hazlitt, Ruskin and Carlyle. But it has to be admitted that it was during
the Restoration period that English prose was developed as a medium for expressing clearly and
precisely average ideas and feelings about miscellaneous matters for which prose is really meant.
For the first time a prose style was evolved which could be used for plain narrative, argumentative
exposition of intricate subjects, and the handling of practical business. The elaborate Elizabethan
prose was unsuited to telling a plain story. The epigrammatic style of Bacon, the grandiloquent
prose of Milton and the dreamy harmonies of Browne could not be adapted to scientific, historical,
political and philosophical writings, and, above all, to novel-writing. Thus with the change in the
temper of the people, a new type of prose, as was developed in the Restoration period, was
essential.
As in the fields of poetry and drama, Dryden was the chief leader and practitioner of the
new prose. In his greatest critical work Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden presented a model of the
new prose, which was completely different from the prose of Bacon, Milton and Browne. He wrote
in a plain, simple and exact style, free from all exaggerations. This style is, in fact, the most
admirably suited to strictly prosaic purposes—correct but not tame, easy but not slipshod, forcible
but not unnatural, eloquent but not declamatory, graceful but not lacking in vigour.
Other writers, of the period, who came under the influence of Dryden, and wrote in a plain,
simple but precise style, were Sir William Temple, John Tillotson and George Saville better known
as Viscount Halifax. Another famous writer of the period was Thomas Sprat who is better known for
the distinctness with which he put the demand for new prose than for his own writings. Being a
man of science himself he published his History of the Royal Society (1667) in which he expressed
the public demand for a popularised style free from “this vicious abundance of phrase, this trick of
metaphors, this volubility of tongue.” The Society expected from all its members “a close, natural
way of speaking—positive expressions, clear senses, a native  easiness bringing all things as near
the mathematical plainness as they can, and preferring the language of artisans, country men and
merchants before that of wits and scholars.”
John Bunyan (1628-1688). Next to Dryden, Bunyan was the greatest prose-writer of the
period. Like Milton, he was imbued with the spirit of Puritanism, and in fact, if Milton is the greatest
poet of Puritanism, Bunyan is its greatest story-teller. To him also goes the credit of being the
precursor of the English novel. His greatest work is The Pilgrim’s Progress. Just as Milton wrote his
Paradise Lost “to justify the ways to God to men”, Bunyan’s aim in The Pilgrim’s Progress was” “to
lead men and women into God’s way, the way of salvation, through a simple parable with homely
characters and exciting events”. Like Milton, Bunyan was endowed with a highly developed
imaginative faculty and artistic instinct. Both were deeply religious, and both, though they distrusted
fiction, were the masters of fiction. Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim’s Progress have still survived
among thousands of equally fervent religious works of the seventeenth century because both of
them are masterpieces of literary art, which instruct as well please even those who have no faith in
those instructions.