A Social and Cultural History of English

S. Gramley, WS 2009‐10

The 17th century

Dec. 17 The enclosures and urbanization, religious movements (esp. separatism and Puritanism; the Civil War, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution (17th

century)

Text 18: Samuel Pepys: Excerpts from his diary

Reading in Baugh and Cable, chap. 7, §§146‐151 (on dialects and the  standard) and chap. 8, §§ 152‐172 (on new words)

The Reformed Movement (Presbyterianism and Congregationalism)

• suspicious of the “common man”• supplied the rationale for modern democracy• emphasis on obedience (to magistrates, who were expected to behave

properly)• suspicious of luxury and sensuality (but more tolerant – or

unconcerned with injustice and inequality• intellectual (hence of little appeal to the common man, for whom a

more emotional religion would be more immediate)

Presbyterianism The Disinherited neededintellectualistic an emotionally experienceable andauthoritarian expressible faitharistocratic social amelioration

The Disinherited and the Disgruntled

• poverty caused by • the enclosures• rising prices (inflation due to New World gold and silver in

superabundance)• monopolies on the necessities of life• the miseries of the Civil War• increase in taxation• a series of bad harvests (in the 1640s)

• high expectations (with the end of the monarchy) for Utopia• spread of Familist and Baptist ideas

Enclosures and urbanization

• privatization of commons• paradigmatic of change from subsistence to market

agriculture (first wool, later modern agriculture)• beneficial for the better off• esp. the Tudor enclosures in which farmland became

grazing land (for sheep and wool production)• rate of enclosures increased in the 17th century• social unrest (depopulation of villages, increase in

vagrancy (note Newton Rebellion of 1607)

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) “The Deserted Village” (1770, excerpts)

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn; Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green: One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a village stints thy smiling plain: …Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

ll. 36-41 and 51-56

Language: Even in this 18th century text second-person thee/thou is still used in the genre of poetry. The apostrophe is used in the possessive (tyrant’s).

The Disinherited and the Disgruntled

Who were the Disinherited (which religious groups)?Anabaptists, Millenarians or Fifth Monarchy Men, Antinomians, Seekers, Ranters, Diggers, Levelers, Quakers

Common to all:• doctrine of inner experience as the ultimate authority on

earth• hope for Christ’s kingdom on earth

Hence, sectarian organization, rejection of professional clergy, lay preaching, spiritualist interpretation of the scriptures, rejection of the monarchy, and (sometimes) espousal of communismLeaders: from the upper ranks (craftsmen, cobblers, weavers, illiterate in the classical languages, open to emotional religion)

First real leader: George Fox, who gave focus and direction to the movement.

Anabaptists: mostly quietistic, but some were revolutionary (cf. Münster)

Millenarians or Fifth Monarchy Men: establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth; emotional and individual religious experience; ethical and social reconstruction (Leader: Harrison)

Antinomians: rejected the authority of the clergy to interprete God’s word

Seekers: no authority, not even the scriptures are certain (Naylor)

Ranters: the Light of Nature (under the name of Christ); opposed to church, scriptures, ministry, worship, and ordinances

Diggers: mystics and communists (Winstanley)

Levellers: more political, but with a religious character (Lilburne)

Quakers: the Inner Light, the quietistic result of these movements (Fox), tho’earlier some were radical: “It was learnt, that, though they were never seen with a weapon in their hands, several had been found with pistols under their cloaks” (Gooch: 278); social amelioration, emotional piety – and a retreat into sectarianism (in but not of society): mutual aid, brotherhood, love of equality (insistence on addressing everyone with thee and thou), pacifism, anti-slavery position

The Civil War

• the bourgeois Puritan Revolution• concerned with the corresponding values• life, liberty, and property

Brownists and Separatists represented the needs of the religiously disinherited.Indepencency: • a seeming shelter for the poor• toleration• attracted sectarians and had republicanism forced on it

Its genius was Milton, who said the new presbyter was “only the old priest writ large” (43), but who saw common men as an “inconsistent, irrational, and hapless herd, begotten to servility” (Eikonoklastes, Preface) By the 1650s the Independents were the substantial people and the new groupings of the Anabaptists, Millenarians, and Quakers arose and the once sectarian Puritans were hardly different from the Presbyterians.

John Milton (1608-1674)Cambridge (a dissenter)Civil servant Eikonoklastes (1649) an explicit defense of regicide

Areopagitica (1644). A plea for freedom of speech, but with responsibility, and not extended to radicals and Catholics

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Language: Unstressed affirmative do. Who for present-day whoever. Use of the apostrophe for the possessive (God’s)

John Milton: Paradise Lost (1667)

An epic poem recounting the divine history of the world on two levels,• that of the celestial conflict between God and Lucifer and • that of the domestic world of mankind, Adam and Eve.

Who first seduc’d them [Adam and Eve] to that fowl revolt?Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guileStird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d 35The Mother of Mankinde, what time his PrideHad cast him out from Heav’n, with all his HostOf Rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiringTo set himself in Glory above his Peers, He trusted to have equal’d the most High, 40If he oppos’d, and with ambitious aimAgainst the Throne and Monarchy of GodRais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proudWith vain attempt. Him the Almighty PowerHurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie 45With hideous ruine and combustion downTo bottomless perdition, there to dwellIn Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.

The English Civil War

• the result of a social division which pitted the old establishment (nobility and land-owners) against the rising bourgeoisie (producers of finished goods, merchants and traders)

• religion as a (partial) reflex of this socio-economic split: the established church (Anglicans) vs. the dissenters (Puritans and Separatists; but also Diggers, Levelers, Independents)

• religious movement of the middle class: Puritans• religious movement of the poor: Quakers as more or less

parallel to the Anabaptists in Germany (Niebuhr: 39f)

The English Civil War

Initially, the poor made common cause with the bourgeoisie hoping for economic and political readjustments

• General Baptists (1620s)• Independency (1640s), including Millenarians, Antinomians,

Anabaptists, Seekers, Ranters, and, finally, Quakers

The conflict was between Parliament and Crown. The Parliament had a large Puritan faction (approximately 1/3)

The New Model Army had financial backing in the City. This army was the basis of Cromwell’s power.

Charles II was crowned king of Scotland, which provoked an English invasion and defeat of Scotland (1651)

The English Civil War

The war • 1641 to 1651• Charles I: executed in 1649• Commonwealth declared (1649-1653); then the Protectorate

(1653-1959)• Head of Commonwealth/Protectorate: Oliver Cromwell • 1658: Death of Cromwell; succeeded by his son Richard • 1659: Deposition of R. Cromwell; reinstatement of the Rump

Parliament and reactivation by Monck of the MPs excluded in 1648

• 1660: Restoration of the monarchy (Charles II) and end of the Long Parliament (1640-1660), part of which was the Rump (Pepys: 1 Jan. 1660 ff)

Consequences of the Commonwealth and Protectorate

• promotion of godliness, including • the closing of theaters• laws against adultery, blasphemy, and enthusiasm

• invasion and conquest of Ireland and continued plantations of English and Scots in Ireland

• Protestant Ascendency in Ireland• Parliamentary supremacy over England, Scotland, and Ireland• weakening of the power of the House of Lords and of the Crown

Puritan views

closing of the theatersagainst high, excessive fashions

Puritan views of language

the plain stylesomewhat “puristic” (resistance to foreign borrowings)

Restoration Comedy

Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama. Restoration comedy is notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court. The socially diverse audiences included both aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on, and a substantial middle-class segment. These playgoers were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, by crowded and bustling plots, by the introduction of the first professional actresses, and by the rise of the first celebrity actors. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_comedy

The RestorationExecution of the regicides (Pepys: 13 Oct. 1660)A new era characterized by • dominance of the cavaliers• theaters reopened (Pepys: theater on 18 Aug. 1660 et sqq.)• laxer life styles (Pepys: 4 September 1660 et passim)• French ideas and social ideals (Pepys: 20 Nov. 1660 et passim)• French loan words (despite an anti-French faction)• Politeness ≠ ordinary or colloquial usage

• polite pronunciation – thru education, not vulgar thru listening and speaking as a child

• education (not birth) -> anti-affectation, cf. plays (satire)• age of the coffee-house• good language bred proper attitudes; correct language led to

correct behavior and social mores; no provincialisms, no cant: London English (not the English of the Court)

• gap between speech and written language• end of (Puritan) antipathy toward foreign ideas; Puritans as

• anti-Latin• pro-plain style

Pepys on the Restoration (1660)

The Rump7 February. Boys do now cry “Kiss my Parliament!” instead of “Kiss my arse!” so great and general a contempt is the Rump come to among men, good and bad.

Language:Note unstressed affirmative do.Also the perfect auxiliary is (rather than have)

Pepys on the Restoration (1660)

The Theater18 August. To the Cockepitt play, the first that I have had time to see since my coming from sea, The Loyall Subject, where one Kinaston, a boy, acted the Dukes sister but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life – only, her voice not very good.

Language:No apostrophe for the possessive (Dukes)Use of the simple past for the experiential (that ever I saw; today: have seen)Action nominal instead of gerund (since my coming)

Pepys on the Restoration (1660)

Lax behavior4 September. To Axeyard to my house; where standing at the door, Mrs Diana comes by, whom I took into my house upstairs and there did dally with her a great while, and find that in Latin nulla puella negat. So home by water; and there sat up late, putting my papers in order and my money also, and teaching my wife her musique lesson, in which I take great pleasure. So to bed.

Language:French spelling of musique

Pepys on the Restoration (1660)

Execution of a leader of the Puritan faction13 October. I went out to Charing Cross to see Major-GenerallHarrison hanged, drawn, and quartered – which was done there –he looking cheerfully as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down and his head and his heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. It is said that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now have judged him. And that his wife doth expect his coming again. Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at Whitehall and to see the first blood shed in revengefor the blood of the King at Charing Cross.

Language:Use of the adverb for the adjective (cheerfully)Unchanged concord there was despite plural subjectUse of doth (for does) as an auxiliary

Pepys on the Restoration (1660)

The Court and Fashion22 November. Mr Fox did take my wife and I to the QueenesPresence Chamber. Where he got my wife placed behind the Queenes chaire and I got into the crowd, and by and by the Queen and the two Princesses came to dinner. The Queen, a very little plain old woman, and nothing more in her presence in any respect, nor garbe, then any ordinary woman. The Princess of Orange I have often seen before. The Princess Henriettee is very pretty, but much below my expectation – and her dressing of herself with her hairefrized short up to her eares did make her seem so much the less to me. But my wife, with two or three black paches on and well dressed, did seem to me much handsomer than she.

Language:Unstressed affirmative did.No apostrophe in the possessive (Queenes)Action nominal instead of gerund (her dressing of herself)

Pepys on the Restoration (1660)

The Colonial Venture25 September. To the office, where Sir W. Batten, ColonellSlingsby, and I sat a while; and Sir R. Ford coming to us about some business, we talked together of the interest of this kingdom to have a peace with Spain and a war with France and Holland –where Sir R. Ford talked like a man of great reason and experience. And afterwards did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before) and went away.

Language:Peace as a countable nounUnstressed affirmative did.

Past participle drank (today: drunk)

The Glorious Revolution

• deposition of James II (1689)• House of Orange (Pepys: 22 Nov. 1660): William and Mary

(Mary was the daughter of James II and a Protestant)• confirmation of the supremacy of Parliament• Bill of Rights: certain basic rights, esp. the supremacy of

Parliament plus immutable civil and political rights:• No royal interference in the law (e.g. via special courts)• Taxation only by act of Parliament • Right to petition the monarch • No standing army in times of peace• Right of Protestants to defend themselves with arms • Free election of members of Parliament• Freedom of speech and debate in Parliament

• led effectively to a British-Dutch common market

Language developmentsspelling: standardization (by 1660); spelling pronunciations; etymological spellings (debt, doubt) which sometimes prevented homographs (scene – seen)

punctuation: now with a grammatical rather than a rhetorical function

GVS (push or pull chain) (see slides from the previous week)• two London systems

• that of Chaucer and the UMC (distinguished /e:/ and /E:/ as well as /o:/ and /ç:/)

• that of the East Anglian merchants (did not distinguish these sounds)• motivation for the GVS: possibly the trigger was an attempt by

some speakers to imitate the more acceptable pronunciation of London and the potential competition which this provoked, i.e. continued distancing, which would mean raising (cf. Blake 1996)

Language developmentsmorphology and syntax

• pronouns: • leveling of you/ye to you• thee/thou only in poetry and formal writing• my/mine according to the following word (initial vowel or not)

• reduction on three-member demonstrative system (here-there-yonder; this-that-yon for near speaker, near addressee, distance from both)

• verb inflections: • very restricted use of 3rd person –th instead of –s• reduction of the strong verb patterns• almost exclusive use of have (rather than be) as the perfect auxiliary

• use of the prop-word one• do-periphrasis: expanded beyond present usage to unstressed affirmative

do• word order: predominantly SVO• adverbs: increasing use of –ly, but not exclusive (fast, not *fastly)• relative pronouns: increased use of who and which

Literature

Blake, N.F. (1996) A History of the English Language. London: Palgrave.

Gooch, G.P. (1898) The History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century. London.

Niebuhr, R. (1929) The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Cleveland: Meridian.

Restoration Comedy (2009) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_comedy