The Seventeenth Century in England

From Tudor to Stuarts

THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

17th.Century England opens a period of great political changes. Economy and trade flourish in parallel with Europe. The British colonizing of America was taking place at the time. The English Crown looses its strength and authority, now replaced by a strong Parliament. The TENSION monarchy/Parliament owes to James Is authoritarian, abusive yet largely dependant policy (16031625), which ignores or violates parliamentary consent yet asks frequently for financial aid. Moreover, James sympathizes with Scottish Calvinists yet will have to rely heavily on Anglican bishops, supporters of monarchy. Charles I (Jamess philo-Catholic son) (1625-1649), who was highly intolerant in religious matters (deposition of Protestant/Anglican posts in favour of Catholics) and continues to be as abusive, disregarding with respect to Parliament and prone to favoritism as James.

CIVIL WAR (1642)

TWO FACTIONS: The MONARCHIC /ROYALIST SIDE (gentry, conservative and feudalistic sections of society, Anglican clergy and peasantry). The PARLIAMENTARIANS /REPUBLICANS (enriched urban middle-classes representing new power relationship according to wealth, dissenters or radical groups such as Puritans, Presbyterians, Levellers, ). Not inherently anti-royalist yet resisting royal abuse.

Oliver Cromwell was the military leader of the republicans, a pious army of Ironsides praying soldiers. The battle of Marston Moor (1644) proved crucial for Cromwellss success whereas Charless royalist army was defeated by the Scotts, who sent the king to the Parliament and made him submit to its terms. As the king refused, he was tried by the high court and sentenced to die in 1649. The nation declared itself a commonwealth or republic (1649-1660), and Cromwell the Lord Protector. Cromwells rule was highly pragmatic (more inclined to obtain social freedom and liberties than religious intolerance) and utilitarian, as he dismisses any radical outburst or utopian idealism. After his death, his son Richard wont be able to prolong the Protectorate and the Parliament eventually invites exiled Charles II (Charles Is son) to return to England as king of England, Scotland and Ireland. Cromwells Protectorate abolished both Parliament and monarchy, proclaiming England a free State or Commonwealth, ruled by the Assembly of Saints, or devout reforming Puritans who seek to apply Moses law to the new Commonwealth. Courtly life and entertainment was forbidden, theatres closed, sociability almost vanished. Instead, it was a period of active pamphleteering and newspaper.

 ARTS enter into a period of splendor, specially plastic arts (music, scenic arts, architecture, ) yet it its the NEW SCIENCE that extends over Europe to question profoundlyand disturbinglyinherited authority, calling all into doubt. The Elizabethan ordered, liberal, classical and humanist training gives way to a sense of reality where all coherence is lost. New Science owes much to Machiavellian influences (realist, secular, pragmatic and sceptic approach to truth) and to scientific advancement (discoveries, Robert Boyles modern chemistry vs former alchemy, William Harveys blood stream, Christopher Wrens neo-classic architecture). A sense of disbelief that manifests in growing materialism and scepticism,progressive scientificism of reality (transformation of values , importance of facts and causes over dogma and faith in the eternal and fixed plan of Gods design) and amoral relativism/individualism.

 The JACOBEAN (James I) and CAROLINE (Charles I) mood permeates an atmosphere characterized by disunity, disharmony, unrest, incoherence and fragmentariness: constant and distressing wars, whether religious, domestic or continental are felt like sundering menaces to English society, which triggers off a sense of anxiety and tension, imbalance, disproportion, utter pessimism and death wish. Artifice and form, the wilful and grotesque, and irreconcilable separation idealism/realism (and apperance/reality), which manifest in the existence of separate groups or cliques, each one pursuing its own path.

CAVALIER AND METAPHYSICAL POETRY

BEN JONSON AND THE CAVALIER POETS (For reference, no exam material)
No clear-cut division into Cavalier and Metaphysical poetry, since poets drew from both standpoints, and they all rebelledin different waysagainst pictorial fluidity, decorative rhetorics, idealism and created new techniques, new realism of style, sharp, condensed, fit for the intellectual/critical realism of their stances. Called Cavalier as they supported the royalist cause, and the aristocratic manners and style. Elegant, polished manners as courtiers, soldiers, gallants and wits. Social verse with (neo-)classical virtues (clarity, proportion, symmetry, decorum, plainness, propriety, straightforwardness) and deeply informed by civilized reasonableness, ceremonious respect and inner self-sufficiency (stoicism). BEN JONSON (1572-1637) somehow sets the pace and pattern. His poetry is ethically sober and judicious, and the poet the supreme instructor leading society toward aristocratic ethic of gracious and responsible living; artifice and plain style (classic clarity and conciseness, yet abhorrence of vulgarity.) Catullus, Horace, Martial and classical urbanity and elegance: art that conceals art. Carpe diem motif. Love conventions lacking instrospection. Never private nor personal experience. Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Thomas Carew (1594-1639), Sir John Suckling ((1609-1642).

JOHN DONNE AND THE METAPHYSICAL POETS (For reference, no exam material)
These poets record the most baroque poetic sensibility, boundary-breaking and transgressive: the balance body/spirit destroyed either in favour of spirit (mysticism) or body (eroticism) (i.e.: treating God as woman, or women as goddesses); fragmentary vision of life, magnified or diminished; abrupt, fragmentary form, highly concious of its artifice. The term metaphysical or strong lines: complexity, difficulty, to be chewed and digested Against Elizabethan conventions (balance and sensuous serenity) and Ciceronian rhetorics (bombastic, vacuous artifice) Dense, complex poetry, eventually obscure, witty, which applies the language of science and philosophy when dealing with other experiences (love, religion,). Private, highly personal poetry: ego, and personal affairs. Unique approach to LOVE (human, actual, physical, sensual and true, rather than stoic or hopeless love for a goddess) and RELIGION (unlike theology, like personal meditation and involvement, squeazing biblical symbols to extract hidden and unexpected meanings; personal approach to God, directness, you instead of Thou). Existential tone. Use of the CONCEIT, or unexpected, difficult and witty metaphorical associations, forced link between unconnected ideas that extends over the poem. Expression of feelings rather than analysis, the conceit helps the poet explore the recesses of consciousness through irony, paradox, obliquity and dramatic directness.

 JOHN DONNE (1571-16319) treats experience as relative and multifocal. Poetic persona eludes definition, is quizzical and inverts normal perspectives . He belittles the public world and elevates the personal. Eroding division body/soul. Intense meditation on worldly vanity and the collapse of traditional certainties. ANDREW MARVELs (1621-1678) is finest poetry, extraordinarily dense and precise, graceful yet economy of statement, and manages to keep paradox between antagonic terms through wit, instead of reconciling/transcending opposites. George Herbert (1593-1633), Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), Richard Crashaw (1612-1649).

JACOBEAN AND CAROLINE DRAMA (1595-1642)

NON-PROFESSIONAL THEATRE The DRAMA OF THE COURT influenced deeply on drama from the ascension of James I to the closing of theatres by Puritans in 1642. Courtiers and the king himself became the chief patrons of private drama, and thus it catered for courtier tastes. It takes place in courtly places of residence, being spectacular, richly adorned, enormously expensive and fabulously lavish, fit settings extremely elaborated and showy. Masques (direct participation of audience), music and spectacle. Private theatre also included private drama by choir boys in roofed and enclosed galleries, being music and artifical scenery more important than verse. Courtly and well-to-do audiences. PUBLIC DRAMA: JACOBEAN DRAMA. The Jacobean mood. Marlowe anticipates this new approach to dramatic sensibility: highly secular, and skeptical about the ideal world, yet suspicious about the real world (corrupt, nonsensical, violent, fragmentary, despairing, frustrating, uncertain). Machiavellian influence (matter-of-factness and materialism): weakness, ingratitude and ill-will as drives of human character and society. Demystifying of spiritual world and leadership but open admission of cruelty, pragmatism and betrayal of faith if necessary. In Jacobean drama, the Machiavellian villain or discontent, bitterly cynical and fascinated with the mechanics of violence and (self-)destruction (bloody, unnatural acts, casual slaughters, ghosts, brutality, sadistic pleasure in punishing corrupt humanity). Tragedy: Cyril Tourneurs The Revengers Tragedy, John Websters The White Devil or The Duchess of Malfi. Comedy: Ben Jonsons comedy of humours, The Alchemist, Volpone.

RESTORATION ENGLAND (1660-1690)

Once the Protectorate finished, the members of Parliament asked for the Restoration of Monarchy The return of Charles II from France does not only bring about a strong reaction against Puritan excesses, manners and morals, for it also brings to England French culture, wit, gallantry and hedonistic liveliness at court. The Court Wits are non-professional artists, writing for their own amusement, confined to Londons courtly and fashionable circles, which laughed at country uncouthness and lack of sophistication. Yet social-political tensions: wars, natural disasters, political instability on account of Charless Catholic sympathies and dissenter resentment. After his death, James II (Charless brother) pushed the tensions with parliamentary petitions further as he intended jesuists to shatter Anglican primacy down. The Glorious Revolution (1688) deposes James, and parliamentary army joined the Dutch forces led by William of Orange (married to Jamess daughter, Queen Mary II) successfully took hold of the throne of England thus securing parliamentary and protestant liberties. WILLIAM III OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

1688 British Glorious Revolution: A Significant Date for Many Relevant Changes

1688 -William of Orange lands at Torbay. -James II and his family flee to France. -Convention Parliament. -Turning-point from Monarchic and Catholic general control and repression to a different religious orientation and more pressure on the crown from the people. -Influence of previuos years revolts and parliamentary dissolutions and achievements.

 The great philosophical and scientifical change is starred by relevant figures who displace Puritan moralist continence and self-discipline in favour of hedonism, materialism, pragmatism and scientific analysis. This New Science promotes empiricism and experiment in all areas of knowledge, which courtly wits , intellectuals and well-todo classes alike embrace. THOMAS HOBBES. The Leviathan (1651). Personally engaged in the civil war, he suspected fanatism and posits instead materialist views and split from supernatural causes. Popular sovereignity yet royal absolutism. Human nature to be approached on the basis of material ethics (pleasurable good vs painful bad, so instinctive regulations as long as one doesnt hurt the other). JOHN LOCKE. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Reason. Tabula Rasa. Rational scepticism. Anti-dogmatism. Separation State-Church. ISSAC NEWTON.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Locke applied Newton's recently published principles to psychology, economics, and political theory. With Locke, the Enlightenment came to maturity and began to spread abroad.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1687),a Jewish intellectual and Holland's greatest philosopher, was a spokesman for pantheism, the belief that God exists in all of nature. Spinoza's influence, along with Newton's (1642-1727), profoundly affected English thinkers.