The Middle Ages ca. 450: Anglo-Saxon conquest 597: Beginning of Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity 871-899: Reign of King Alfred 1066: Norman Conquest ca. 1200: Beginning of Middle English (ME) literature 1360-1400: The peak of ME literature with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer including Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 1485: William Caxton prints Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur The Middle Ages in the English literature includes more than 800 years from the end of the 7 th century up to the end of the 15 th century. This period is divided into two parts: the earlier centuries are called the Dark Ages while the later centuries are referred to as the Middle Ages and they represent the peak of the European history. English ME includes two different periods of literature, the Old English and the ME. These two periods are divided by the Norman Conquest in 1066. The Anglo-Saxons and the Heroic Ideal The Anglo-Saxons included three tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. Although each of these tribes was independent, they were very closely allied and related to each other because of their common Germanic heritage. They shared the same ancestor; their tongues only differed by some dialects of a common language and their customs were very similar. In that period the Germanic society has been divided into families: the head of each family was the leader of his close relatives and the family formed an independent political unit. As time passed, the unit of society gradually became larger and larger because a number of families united under the leadership of a superior leader called the "king". But this unit became very large only in some occasions when a very successful king attracted others to himself in order to do some battle. But in normal
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The Middle Ages
ca. 450: Anglo-Saxon conquest
597: Beginning of Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity
871-899: Reign of King Alfred
1066: Norman Conquest
ca. 1200: Beginning of Middle English (ME) literature
1360-1400: The peak of ME literature with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer
including Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1485: William Caxton prints Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur
The Middle Ages in the English literature includes more than 800 years from the
end of the 7th century up to the end of the 15th century. This period is divided into two
parts: the earlier centuries are called the Dark Ages while the later centuries are
referred to as the Middle Ages and they represent the peak of the European history.
English ME includes two different periods of literature, the Old English and the
ME. These two periods are divided by the Norman Conquest in 1066.
The Anglo-Saxons and the Heroic Ideal
The Anglo-Saxons included three tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.
Although each of these tribes was independent, they were very closely allied and
related to each other because of their common Germanic heritage. They shared the
same ancestor; their tongues only differed by some dialects of a common language
and their customs were very similar.
In that period the Germanic society has been divided into families: the head of
each family was the leader of his close relatives and the family formed an independent
political unit. As time passed, the unit of society gradually became larger and larger
because a number of families united under the leadership of a superior leader called
the "king". But this unit became very large only in some occasions when a very
successful king attracted others to himself in order to do some battle. But in normal
situations, the unit remained limited in size. The normal organization of the society
consisted of a number of bands or groups who shared a sense of community esp. in
front of a common enemy such as the Englishmen. The complete union of all
Englishmen was achieved only after the Norman Conquest.
For the Anglo-Saxons the ideal of kingly behavior was very important. It was the
main spiritual force and creative power that formed their history and literature. It was
called the heroic ideal. The king who was at the same time a hero tried to do better
than anyone else the things that a migratory life like that of the Anglo-Saxons needed.
His main duty was to fight, but he also did other difficult affairs. The main
characteristics of such a hero-king were skill and courage.
This heroic ideal in the oldest form was only proper for a king, but because society
was very united, all the other important male members of the society imitated this
kind of heroic behavior and bear in mind that in the Germanic society, only males
were important and there is nothing mentioned about females ☺. The king was the
leader of a group of warriors and a mighty king was able to gain the loyalty of his
followers.
The heroic ideal had two advantages: first of all it won practical success for the
king and another thing which is more important was that it achieved eternal fame for
the hero. In cultures like the Germanic culture in which nothing has been mentioned
about the life after death, eternal fame was regarded as immortality. Of course the
hero was dependent for his fame on the poet who created the heroic poem and a good
poet or bard (one who writes a heroic poem) was a valued member of the court. These
heroic poems were called "epic". They were not written down, but recited orally so
most of them have been lost. Form the Germanic epics the main survivor is Beowulf
written in the Old English.
Christianity and Old English Culture
The literature that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to the Britain was merely
in the oral form. They could only write their literary works when they were converted
to Christianity. For a period of 150 years after the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon
invasion, Christianity was only limited to the more distant regions of the country
where the Anglo-Saxons could not reach. In 597, St. Augustine was sent by Pope
Gregory as a missionary to the court of King Ethelbert of Kent, one of the
southernmost regions in the island, and about the same time missionaries from all
over the Ireland began to deliver Christianity to the northern regions of the kingdom.
Within 75 years the island was once more Christian. The first written work in the Old
English language is a code of laws created by the King of Ethelbert and this shows the
close connection between Christianity and writing.
In the following centuries up to the Norman Conquest, England produced many
important churchmen. One of the earliest of such persons was Bede (Ecclesiastical
History of the English People). In the next generation, Alcuin became the friend of
the emperor Charlemange and helped in making the court of this emperor a center of
learning. But the greatest development in the English culture was caused by a non-
clergy: Alfred the king of the West Saxons who united all the southern kingdoms and
beat off Vikings. He translated some works from Latin (the most important of which
was Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy). In this period Bede's History was also
translated into Old English and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begun to be written.
Old English Poetry
The Anglo-Saxons brought with them the heroic tradition and the alliteration
(use of similar sounds) technique to the Old English poetry. Because they wrote
nothing until they became Christian and because the Christian ideals and the heroic
ideals were so much different, no poetry except Beowulf has survived from the pre-
Christian period before the Anglo-Saxons were converted into Christianity. Thus the
majority of the Old English poetry is Christian and the main theme of these poems
was religious issues. However almost all these poems are in the heroic form. The Old
English poets combined the strange and unfamiliar world of the Bible with many of
the values of their own history (Germanic history) in order to make it more
understandable. Thus Moses and Christ, etc. were represented as heroes who
performed heroic deeds. The examples of such works include Dream of the Rood and
Cadmon's Hymn. Another theme of such poems was the combination of the sad
awareness of the transitoriness of all earthly goods and the compulsion to try harder
and harder which was the characteristic of the heroic poetry. This theme appears in
two works (the Wanderer, the Seafarer) more prominently than others.
The atmosphere of the Old English poetry is dark and narrow with limited laws
and humor. Men are said to be happy, but they only think of war, of possible triumph
and of more possible failure. Romantic love can hardly be found. Men rarely rest and
relax: they are always ready to test their courage and their abilities against their fate
and destiny. The world of such poetry is a depressing one and it is given a high
spiritual excitement by the use of ironic understatement (i.e. actions and things are
represented as less than they really are in order to show that they are more than they
really are). The dignity and the ancient traditions assigned to such poetry prevent the
works from having some humor. Old English poetry represents cruel reality
throughout using extraordinary subtlety and intensity.
The Norman Conquest and its Effects
The first effect of the Norman Conquest on the English literature was to remove it
from the control of aristocracy and to take away the cohesive spirit it had in the
Anglo-Saxon period. The important aristocratic families were broken up and the
English aristocracy was put into the service of the Normans. Even the English
language seems to be abandoned for a long time because very little survives between
the Norman Conquest and the year 1200. Educated men wrote either in Latin or in
Anglo-Norman but the Anglo-Norman did not last too much. Latin which was the
language of the churches all over the world produced many literary works in England
during this period esp. in the 12th century.
But while the educated men wrote their works in other languages than English, the
uneducated people composed many works in English. In fact, ME literature is a very
popular literature. Its main contrast with the Old English literature was that its works
were mostly related with the lives of people in the social classes below aristocracy
(workers, middle class, etc.). Most of the works in the Old English were uttered by a
single aristocrat talking about aspirations and ambitions while the ME literature is
uttered by many voices and it deals with many topics in different tones and genres.
Originality of thought can not be found in the literature of ME. Because the many
different voices in the work say exactly the same thing as each other.
However, ME literature has some advantages over its Old English counterpart:
• because the writers addressed the popular audience, they gained greater fame
• the modern reader easily understands the world these writers are talking about
• the hero is more sympathetic if less idealized who not only fights but also
laughs and cries and falls in love, etc.
• the role of women in society was recognized in the literature of this period
The life which is represented in the ME literature is shallow and it has little depth
but it can easily evoke our sympathy and compassion. It is represented sometimes as a
lively and colorful world full of surprises and it attracts our appreciation. It presents
accurately the details of life and humor which is the main characteristic of the ME
literature can be seen anywhere.
The lack of originality in the ME literature which was mentioned before is
somehow because of the attempt of many writers both religious and secular (i.e.
worldly) to make their works follow the principles of medieval Christianity. The
subject of personal salvation, the emphasis on the moral responsibilities of a human
being instead of his social or ethical duties is so obvious in the works of this period
that you would think the Middle Ages was a period of intellectual and social
unchangingness.
Between the years 1066 and 1485 England experienced great political and social
changes: developments in feudalism, the gradual growth of Parliament, the evolution
of cities and the middle class and the increase in foreign trade. But most of the writers
did not record these changes in their works except Chaucer and Langland's Piers
Plowman.
However these changes were very obvious in the daily lives of people. In fact the
inevitability of change for the worse is one of the prominent themes of ME
literature. This theme is the result of the violent life in the Middle Ages; constant
wars against enemies at home or outside the country, the powerful members of the
society supplying themselves from the hard works of the poor, the strictness of the
laws and the failure to apply them to the powerful members, and the famine and
pestilence are the reasons why medieval people expect a change for the worse.
But the funny side is that most of the ME literature is concerned with the normality
and its less preoccupied with the violence of the period, possibly because people in
that time never had saw a life without violence; in other words they had got used to
violence and difficulties.
Middle English Literature
The first important ME poem is Layamon's Brut (ca. 1205) which has been
written in the alliterative form and has clear connections with the Old English poetic
measures. Layamon's Brut is also the first poem in English in which the legend of
Arthur is told. Alliterative poetry was always composed; this is suggested by its
reappearance in written form in the period of "alliterative revival" in the 14th century
and reaches to its peak in Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Both Layamon and the poet of Beowulf dealt with legendary materials and sources
and they thought of these materials as history. Layamon's method, however, is
different of that of the poet of Beowulf: it makes use of romance; the romance has
some characteristics: it often deals with knights and it involves too much fighting and
many other adventures; it freely uses impossible events, and supernatural things and
it's most of the time involved with the romantic love; the heroes and heroines could
easily move from one romance to another; the plot often involves many events and the
same events may happen many times within the same romance and the style is easy
and colloquial.
Just a few skillful poets wrote in romance. The majority of those who composed
romance were uncultivated poets who addressed a semi-literate audience. The golden
age of medieval romance was the 12th and early 13th centuries and it was originated
from the aristocratic society of France by the work of such poets as Chretien de
Troyes. The ME poets of romance introduced the French romances into English. But
the aristocratic ideals of behavior of a different period and an unfamiliar society and
culture were replaced by those kinds of behavior that could be easily understood by
the lower-class and middle-class Englishmen.
The majority of ME literature is religious. The church has domination on literacy
during much of the Middle Ages and anyone who learned to write and read wanted to
become a cleric and work in the church and those who didn't want to do so, were
given a very basic education. Moreover, the church was a great producer of books.
And even secular literature might sometimes be lost because the churchmen had no
interest in keeping them because they did not express some Christian idea.
The majority of ME religious literature can hardly be regarded as literature:
sermons, manuals for priests, mystical writings, lyric poems, stories of miracles,
moral allegories, etc. were not very rich literary works.
Because almost everyone who knew how to write worked in the church, the
secular literature was very limited and by the way, many of this secular literature did
not survive because the churchmen did not approve them. Owl and the Nightingale is
one of the few works which survived this period.
During the last twenty-five years of the 14th century, ME literature suddenly
flowered in three great poets:
• the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight produced the best romance of
the period and some of the best religious poetry such as Patience and The
Pearl
• William Langland in Piers Plowman in which he faces the great religious and
social issues of the period
• Geoffrey Chaucer who had the greatest success
This sudden success is partly because of the patrons.
But patrons did not always make a poet great. Chaucer's friend, John Gower, was
supported by a royal patron but he did not succeed that much as Chaucer did. His
works include a work in Latin, a work in Norman French and also Confessio
Amantis in English.
The 15th century is a period in which popular literary genres flowered; they include
England, which had recently replaced Roman Catholicism with Protestantism as the
national religion. There were still many Catholics living in England, and, because of
this, religious protest was a part of Spenser's life. It was in this kind of atmosphere
that Spenser saw a Catholic Church full of corruption. This sentiment is an important
background for the battles of The Faerie Queene that often represent the "battles"
between London and Rome.
The themes of the work can be stated like this: that our native virtue must be
augmented or transformed if it is to become true Christian virtue. Spenser has a high
regard for the natural qualities of creatures; he shows that the satyrs, the lion, and
many human characters have an inborn interest for the good. And he believes that the
various evils in our lives can only be defeated by the Christian good.
The poem can be read on many different levels, it's an epic allegory, it's religious,
heroic, magical, medieval and It is Spenser's blending of such diverse sources with a
high-minded allegory that makes the poem unique and remarkable. For example if
you read the poem as a romantic narrative, it gives you some chivalric adventures by
Redcrosse knight that at the end he kills the dragon and rescues Una's parents and
then marries her, but if you read it from a spiritual and allegorical point of view it
gives you the story of any individual's struggle for defeating evil, for being good, for
salvation, for purifying himself from all the sins.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
ca. 1588-92: Lived in London as an actor and playwright
ca. 1592-98: Mainly writes chronicle histories and comedies
ca. 1601-09: Writes great tragedies and romantic comedies
ca. 1610: Retires to Stratford
• Venus and Adonis was a mythological-erotic poem which was dedicated to
the Earl of Southampton. He also dedicated The Rape of Lucrece to the
same person
• Francis Meres writes about Shakespeare that he was the best English writer in
producing tragedies and comedies for the plays
• Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus Andronicus and Romeo
and Juliet are his famous tragedies
• Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's
Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Love's Labor's Lost and Love's Labor's
Won are considered as his best comedies
• All of his best tragedies except for Romeo and Juliet and Titus Andronicus are
classified as chronicle history plays, kind of drama based on the history
books representing the events in the reigns of different English kings
• About the end of the 16th century he wrote his best romantic comedies
including As You Like It, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing
• In the next decade, he wrote some great tragedies like Hamlet, Macbeth,
Othello, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra
• About 1610 he retired to Stratford but he continued to write alone (The
Tempest) and with the help of others (Henry VIII). In this period he wrote
some romances and tragicomedies like The Tempest, Cymbeline and The
Winter's Tale
• His plays contain different kind of songs: the aubade or morning song, the
happy pastoral songs, love songs, ballads and funeral songs. These songs
represent the gifts of Shakespeare in writing lyrics, his humor and his great
sensitivity to the country life of Englishmen
• Shakespeare's sonnet cycles, different from all the other cycles of his time, tell
a story but the details of this story are not clear. There are certain motifs in
these cycles: admiring the beauty of a young man and recommending him to
marry (and probably become ugly thereafter☺); praising a lady; sonnets about
a love triangle with two men as rivals and a woman; sonnets about the
destructive power of time and the unchanging nature of poetry; sonnets about
a rival poet; and some sonnets about morality
• The vocabulary of his sonnets is often easy to understand but his many uses of
metaphor and how properly and richly he makes use of them is his
distinguishing feature
• The structure of his sonnets reinforces the power of his metaphors. They are
divided into two groups: Petrarchan sonnet and English sonnet. In the English
sonnet, he uses the first three quatrains to prepare the conclusion at the final
couplet; in the Petrarchan sonnet, he lists some items in the octave but in the
sestet, he may change the direction and the mood of the poem
• Regarding the rhetorical structure of his sonnets, some begin with
remembering the memories of the past, some are imperative and others use a
proverb, then improve it and add to it
• The images he uses in his sonnets come from different sources such as
gardening, law, farming, business, astrology, etc.
• The moods of his sonnets are, beside the sad mood of the Petrarchan sonnets,
delightful, proud, shameful, disgusting and fearful
• Oh, I nearly forgot to write the name of one of his works. It was The Phoenix
and The Turtle (sorry for that ☺)
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
• The famous philosophical romantic work of More, Utopia, derives partly from
Plato's Republic and as a result it is philosophical and partly from the tales of
travelers like Amerigo Vespucci and hence it is romantic
• Utopia is one of the great memorials of the Christian humanist awakening (the
name of a movement). Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus and More were the most
brilliant members of this movement
• Utopia was written in Latin
• Utopia can be classified as a traveler's tale which is told by an experienced
mariner who is also a philosopher to a group of skeptical companions as they
are sitting in a garden in one of the cities of Holland.
• Utopia is divided into two books: in the first one which is written in
dialogues, the corruption of the European civilization is criticized; in the
second book, one of the travelers named Hythloday describes the institutions
and organizations of Utopia; these descriptions ironically refer to the real
world
• The world of Utopia is not represented as a fanciful and dreamlike world. The
world comes out of the serious thoughts of More about the social problems of
his time. he felt that the social ideals he so much admired and praised were not
real in practice
• The central idea in his mind was the idea of community of property.
According to this idea, as long as private property is abolished or is not
allowed, no fundamental change and reform in society happens. In order to
support this idea, More defends it in the role of one of the characters in the
dialog against the main speaker, Hythloday
The Seventeenth Century (1603-1660)
1558: The Spanish Armada attacks England
1603: Death of Elizabeth I; accession of James from the Stuart
Family
1605: Last attempt of English Catholic extremists with the
Gunpowder Plot1
1620: First migration of the pilgrims to the New World2
1625: Death of James I; accession of Charles I
1641: Beginning of Civil War; theaters closed in 1642
1649: Execution of Charles I; beginning of Commonwealth 3and
Protectorate 4known as Interregnum 5(1649-60)
1660: Charles II returns to the throne
1688: Resignation of James II, the last king of Stuarts
The main social problems of the 17th century can be stated with their solutions at
that time:
1. In the religious context, the problem was that "how long and how far should
the Reformation of the Protestant church be done?" the solution was that "as
far as each individual religious group wanted"
2. In the political context, the issue was that "how much power should the king
have independent of the parliament?" the answer was that "almost none"
1 conspiracy plotted to blow up the English Parliament and to kill King James I of England on November 5th 1605 2 name given to the Americas during the time when they were first being explored and colonized by Europeans 3 the republican period of government in Britain between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 4 the English government from 1653 to 1659 5 period of time between the end of one king's rule and the beginning of the next, time when a country has no ruler or official government
Before and After the Puritan Revolt
It may be useful to describe the structure of the English society and the status of
literature before and after the Puritan Revolt.
Before the Revolt and under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the court was the
main center of power and authority, reward, patronage and intellect. London was the
center of England and the kingdom and the court was the center of London. This was
especially true in the case of intellect, literature and art. So the main sort of literature
under the reign of Elizabeth was courtly literature. The sonnet sequence, the pastoral
romances (e.g. Sydney's Arcadia), the chivalric allegory (Spenser's The Faerie
Queene), the sermons1, the erotic poems (Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis), the
masque2, the epic, all were courtly. Patrons were mostly from courtiers and the
money from the patrons was the only source of making a living for someone who
lived only by writing. The same pattern continued during the reign of James I and
Charles I. Poets like John Donne, Ben Jonson, Carew, Suckling and Lovelace
wrote almost only for court and courtiers or were themselves courtiers. So you
the domination of the court over all literary societies. And because the court was
rather small and limited in size, poets did not wait for their works to be published and
they used manuscripts and they could easily become famous among their fellow
can see
een.
hese themes was paying attention to the honor as the
ost important value of life.
poets.
The court had certain values and characteristics and these values formed the
framework for courtly writings. These values were a belief in the hereditary order
of the kings, obedience to the national church and loyalty to the king or qu
The popular themes among the courtiers were heroic love (not necessarily
marriage), warfare (mainly without a political context) and piety or religiousness.
The main principle behind all t
m
After the Puritan Revolt, this pattern changed 180 degrees. The court was no
longer the center of authority and intellect and it did not have that much social and
financial power. London which was the center of banks, merchants, financiers, etc.
1 lecture given by a clergyman for the purpose of religious instruction 2 dramatic and musical production (especially of the 16th and 17th centuries) for the entertainment of English aristocrats
soon became the main rival of the court. Another rival was the Parliament. The writer
did not only wrote for the court and the court was just one of the sources of writing.
Those writers who were conservative went towa
rd the court and those innovative
y
ore
nnounced their independence and began their development, each one of
t
t this new market. Another change was that
out
itical, social and religious matters without being that much worried that
Because of these changes the English society changed from a hierarchical society
a society based on the ideas of multiplicity, difference and toleration.
ones went toward the City of London and the members of Parliament went toward an
of these two according to the dominant situation.
And the church which, before the Puritan Revolt, was the dominant power in the
context of religion, after the Revolt, became just one of the several religious
communities. The Puritan factions which were members of the English church bef
the Revolt, a
them interpreting the biblical texts by its own method, following their own moral
principles.
New money from different enterprises and companies attracted new men to itself.
These men were respectable people but they were not interested in the courtly
behaviors or intellectualism. The kind of literature which they liked most was not tha
much moralistic and not that much about hell or heaven. It was more serious than the
literature of the Restoration period. Publishers who were aware of these issues, tried
to make their products suitable for this new group of men. Soon the writers put aside
the tradition of writing for honor and they realized that in order to gain money from
these men they should aim their works a
the courtly patrons were replaced by the booksellers so that the writers could much
more easily achieve financial success.
There were also a couple of intellectual and spiritual changes after the Revolt.
Before the Revolt, the Elizabethan monarchy and the church were thought to be
hereditary and all agreed that because the common people are imperfect, there should
a supreme ruler who knows everything, whose reason can not be challenged by
anyone and who can suppress his or her emotions. But gradually people showed that
they are less imperfect and they need less strict discipline from the side of the
monarch. Another change was that people could more freely express their views ab
different pol
something bad would happen to them and a strict belief in these matters were not
necessary.
to
Literary Cross-Currents None of the high literature of the 17th century (except for the works of Milton)
written by the Puritans. Many of the Puritans rejected the secular and worldly issue
They rejected literature because of the same reason that they rejected music and
statues. They believed that all these were temptations from the physical world and
they would contaminate the pure spiritual en
was
s.
ergies of a faithful man. As a result, the
han,
ers
aller, Davenant) tried to compress their poems and to give them
as
ical arguments. Dryden was for the most part a poet of statement; Milton was
rs
ks of tragic
riters such as Webster, Ford and Middleton. But beside these dark plays, some
agicomic, romantic comedy and pastoral fantasies were produced.
sense of deep disgust, of ancient traditions being challenged by the Puritans can be
seen in the works of the early 17th century.
Two of the contrasting literary schools of the 17th century were "metaphysical
poetry" and "Cavalier poetry". Metaphysical poets (Herbert, Crashaw, Vaug
Cowley, Cleveland) with the leadership of John Donne tried to extend and improve
the traditional love lyrics. In the poems of these poets, there is often a sense of
pressure and violent. On the other hand, the Cavalier poets (Jonson and his follow
Carew, Suckling, W
a high and elevated ending and a sense of domination by using explicit and clear
intellectual content.
Also one of the most prominent poets of the period was John Milton who gained
fame with the help of John Dryden. The difference between Milton and Dryden was
that the heroic couplets of Dryden had less instructional value than the blank verse of
Milton; their sentence-units were shorter and one of the main parts of the couplets w
their log
more a poet of suggestion. But their common point is that both built new forms of
verse.
During the twenty years that the Puritans ruled the kingdom, most of the theate
were closed and nearly nothing was written for the stage. During this period, the
revival of the English plays came from the works of Sir William Davenant. The
prominent mood of the plays was sad and dark as can be seen in the wor
w
tr
Birth and Death of Literary Forms
ften
ll a story. Donne
stly used by Spenser esp. in his Faerie Queene but later on
y
ved
h were kinds of
making them guilty and for this reason they were rejected
• ed couplets and other rhymed forms
de on Cary and Morison and Abraham Cowley in his
taly when he set his
this form became popular by the end of the 17th century. The duty of
e
• Burlesque: this form was introduced with the help of France. After the
problems caused by the Puritans, ridicule and mockery became fashionable
Literary forms which were abandoned include:
• Sonnets: they always dealt with erotic and sexual issues and they were o
connected together in the form of a sonnet cycle to te
introduced religious themes to the sonnets (by his Songs and Sonnets);
Milton's sonnets are often deal with political issues
• Allegory: mo
turned to the grotesque and comic themes by the works of Dryden and finall
disappeared
• Masque and Madrigal: the first one was a courtly form and the other one a
popular genre, but both of them were rejected because the Puritans belie
that they are aimless, physical and worldly. Madrigals whic
folk songs were believed by the Puritans to make men happy instead of
Blank verse: it was replaced by the rhym
Literary forms which were born include:
• Ode: they were irregular forms imitated from the works of the Greek poet
Pindar. Jonson in the O
Pindarique Odes and also Dryden, and later on Gray and Wordsworth
helped this form grow
• Oratorio and Opera: Dryden introduced Oratorio from I
odes to music. Opera was also imported from Italy via France. These two
forms replaced the abandoned masques and madrigals.
• Satire:
the satirist was to divert the reader and to insult the antagonist at the sam
time.
John Donne (1572-1631)
1615: Taking holy orders in the church
1633: First publication of Songs and Sonnets
lawfulness of suicide called Biathanatos
is Conclave
m to Sir
f
is
o it shows how deeply
order to twist
eaning could
explain
Late 1601 or early 1602: Secret marriage to Ann More
• He wrote an essay about the
• He helped Thomas Morton in writing anti-Catholic arguments, Pseudo-Martyr
and Ignatius h
• He wrote a pair of long poems, The Anniversaries, and dedicated the
Robert Drury
• He became a great preacher in the church of England because of his
metaphorical style, his rude knowledge and his dramatic cleverness
• The poetry of Donne differs greatly with his contemporaries. The majority o
the Elizabethan poems are decorative and they have a sweet and pleasant
meter. Donne's poetry, on the other hand, is full of conceits and intellectual
difficulties. He abandons most of the traditional images in his poetry. For
example, in his love poems there is no bleeding heart or something like th
• A poet who uses conceit shows how genius he is and als
he can see into the world. Donne's conceits continually change from the
personal conceits to the cosmic and philosophical ones
• The rhythm of his poems is colloquial and he uses many different rhythms. He
likes to twist metrical patterns and the grammar of his poem in
his ideas. In the satires, he twists the rhythm too much that the m
be distorted but in his lyrics, he always maintains the rhythm
• Donne and his followers are known as the metaphysical poets
• Donne was known outside the court as a preacher. There are two kinds of
preachers: those who stand in front of us as representatives of God and
His Word to us and those who stand in front of God and explain our problems
to Him. Donne belonged to the second group. He was not interested in
persuading people to have fixed and strict religious beliefs and to list the rules
of morality. He presented religious ideas through using elements of drama in
ama
• His private prayers were published in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions in
1624
Christianity- sin, guilt, repentance, faith, etc.- and he was the leading actor of
this dr
Ben Jonson his Humor
8
618: Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue
role. It was also the first "comedy of humor" in
thout excitement and had an old language
l on the stage
Jonson published a collection of his works entitled "The Works of Benjamin
categories:
)
ct and impersonal poems
e
d Masques often accompanied with music
(1572-1637) 1598: He published his first play Every Man in
1610: The Alchemist
1616: Jonson was appointed as poet laureate
1
• The first great play of Jonson was Every Man in his Humor in which
Shakespeare had the leading
which the great passions of human being (his humors) are reduced in
importance by using satire
• Jonson's classical tragedy Sejanus was not popular because it had a dark
mood, was static and wi
• His two satiric comedies, Volpone and The Alchemist had become very
successfu
•
Jonson"
The majority of Jonson's poetry can be classified into five
1. Poems of festive ceremonies or festivals which praise the qualities of a good
life (e.g. To Penshurst, On Inviting a Friend to Supper
2. Elegies and Epitaphs 9which are brief, simple, dire
such as those poems that can be found on a graveston
3. Compliments and Tributes that praise friendship
4. Plays an
8 official poet of the royal household who was formerly expected to write poems and songs for royal events 9 inscriptions on a gravestone in the memory of a dead person
5. Epigrams in al, funny and evil
themes
Andrew Marvell
ch
m
m becomes deep and hollow and Marvell through complimenting a
elings in the poem so in the first paragraph he talks about eternity and in the next
bout death.
orry if the sentences are vague and meaningless; I tried my best to make it clearer☺)
imitation of the Roman poet Martial with sexu
(1621-1678)
Marvell's poems have a playful, casual and witty tone. They are always light
regarding their metrical feet and exact regarding their diction and vocabulary. They
display depth and intellectual hardness in unexpected places; their texture is very ri
and you can find the best of these qualities if you read To His Coy Mistress. The
poem at first looks like an usual carpe diem poem with slight, monotonous rhyth
and semi-serious mood and it recommends the lady to enjoy the present. But soon
after the rhyth
pretty lady expresses matters like eternity and death. Marvell also balances his
fe
a
(s
John Milton (1608-1674)
p which reaches its climax
ith social and political issues
. Period of his return to literature as a mature and experienced person when
Lost, Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes
also be divided into three parts:
says
3. After the execution of Charles I, he published a series of disputations and
liament in executing Charles
1637: Lycidas
1640-60: The pamphlet wars
1651: He becomes blind
1667: Paradise Lost
The life of John Milton can be divided into three periods:
1. Period of youthful education and apprenticeshi
by writing Lycidas and by traveling abroad
2. Period of prose and controversy when he rarely wrote any poem and was
mainly concerned w
3
he publishes his three great poems Paradise
• In 1634 he wrote the masque named Comus
His literary career can
1. He began his work by publishing anti-prelatical (against bishop or other high
members of the church) essays, against the bishops who were controlling the
church.
2. Then after his first wife left him, from 1643-45, he published a series of es
advocating that right for getting divorce be given if there is incompatibility
between wife and husband
arguments in Latin against the European critics of the regime. In this essays, he
defends the actions of Par
In the writings of Milton, the influence of two prominent intellectual and so
movements
cial
can be seen:
e, its
sical works and its many uses of decorative
images
. The Reformation: the Christian figures and themes in his works comes
directly from this movement
1. The Renaissance: it created the rich and complex texture of Milton's styl
multiple references to the clas
2
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
ne book about physical bodies, one
secular tone and it
etween a legal king and an illegal dictator
• He was fond of materialism and this was a cause of his scandal all over the
court
best use of this summary and get a fair score
• He is considered as the second great philosopher of the 17th century after
Francis Bacon
• He as a philosopher had planned to write o
about human nature and one on the state
• He is most famous for writing Leviathan
• Leviathan insults the Puritans by its frank language and
also insults Royalists (supporters of the monarch) because it makes no
distinction b
Hope you make theSincerely Yours Shahrouz Malaki May 29, 2010