the seventeenth century (1)

8/13/2019 The Seventeenth Century (1)

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The Seventeenth Century in England


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From Tudor to Stuarts


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THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

17th.Century England opens a period of great political changes. Economyand trade flourish in parallel with Europe. The British colonizing ofAmerica was taking place at the time.

The English Crown looses its strength and authority, now replaced bya strong Parliament . The TENSION monarchy/Parliament owes to

James I s authoritarian, abusive yet largely dependant policy (1603-1625), which ignores or violates parliamentary consent yet asksfrequently for financial aid. Moreover, James sympathizes with ScottishCalvinists yet will have to rely heavily on Anglican bishops, supportersof monarchy.

Charles I (Jamess philo-Catholic son) (1625-1649), who was highlyintolerant in religious matters (deposition of Protestant/Anglican postsin favour of Catholics) and continues to be as abusive, disregardingwith respect to Parliament and prone to favoritism as James.


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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 towealth, dissenters or radical groups such as Puritans,Presbyterians, Levellers , ). Not inherently anti-royalist yetresisting royal abuse.


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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 successwhereas Charless royalist army was defeated by the Scotts, who sent the king to theParliament and made him submit to its terms. As the king refused, he was tried by the highcourt 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 libertiesthan religious intolerance) and utilitarian, as he dismisses any radical outburst or utopianidealism. After his death, his son Richard wont be able to prolong the Protectorate and theParliament eventually invites exiled Charles II (Charles Is son) to return to England as kingof England, Scotland and Ireland.

Cromwells Protectorate abolished both Parliament and monarchy, proclaiming England a freeState or Commonwealth, ruled by the Assembly of Saints, or devout reforming Puritans whoseek to apply Moses law to the new Commonwealth. Courtly life and entertainment wasforbidden, theatres closed, sociability almost vanished. Instead, it was a period of active

pamphleteering and newspaper.
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ARTS enter into a period of splendor, specially plastic arts (music, scenicarts, architecture, ) yet it its the NEW SCIENCE that extends overEurope to question profoundly and disturbingly inherited authority,calling all into doubt. The Elizabethan ordered, liberal, classical andhumanist training gives way to a sense of reality where all coherence islost . New Science owes much to Machiavellian influences (realist,secular, pragmatic and sceptic approach to truth) and to scientificadvancement (discoveries, Robert Boyles modern chemistry vs formeralchemy, William Harveys blood stream, Christopher Wrens neo-classicarchitecture).

A sense of disbelief that manifests in growing materialism andscepticism,progressive scientificism of reality (transformation of values ,importance of facts and causes over dogma and faith in the eternal andfixed plan of Gods design) and amoral relativism/individualism.


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The JACOBEAN (James I) and CAROLINE (Charles I) mood permeates an atmosphere characterized by disunity,disharmony, unrest, incoherence and fragmentariness : constantand distressing wars, whether religious, domestic orcontinental 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 andform, the wilful and grotesque, and irreconcilable separation

idealism/realism (and apperance/reality), which manifest in theexistence of separate groups or cliques, each one pursuing itsown path.


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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 rebelled in different ways against 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 civilizedreasonableness, ceremonious respect and inner self-sufficiency (stoicism).

BEN JONSON (1572-1637) somehow sets the pace and pattern. His poetry is ethicallysober and judicious, and the poet the supreme instructor leading society towardaristocratic ethic of gracious and responsible living; artifice and plain style (classic clarityand conciseness, yet abhorrence of vulgarity.) Catullus, Horace, Martial and classicalurbanity and elegance: art that conceals art. Carpe diem motif. Love conventions lackinginstrospection. Never private nor personal experience.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Thomas Carew (1594-1639), Sir John Suckling ((1609-1642).


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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) orbody (eroticism) (i.e.: treating God as woman, or women as goddesses); fragmentaryvision of life, magnified or diminished; abrupt, fragmentary form, highly concious of itsartifice.

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 agoddess) and RELIGION (unlike theology, like personal meditation and involvement,squeazing biblical symbols to extract hidden and unexpected meanings; personalapproach to God, directness, you instead of Thou ). Existential tone.

Use of the CONCEIT, or unexpected, difficult and witty metaphorical associations, forcedlink between unconnected ideas that extends over the poem. Expression of feelingsrather than analysis, the conceit helps the poet explore the recesses of consciousnessthrough irony, paradox, obliquity and dramatic directness.


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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 traditionalcertainties.

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/transcendingopposites.

George Herbert (1593-1633), Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), Richard Crashaw(1612-1649).


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JACOBEAN AND CAROLINE DRAMA (1595-1642)

NON-PROFESSIONAL THEATRE

The DRAMA OF THE COURT influenced deeply on drama from the ascension of JamesI to the closing of theatres by Puritans in 1642. Courtiers and the king himself becamethe chief patrons of private drama, and thus it catered for courtier tastes. It takes placein courtly places of residence, being spectacular, richly adorned, enormously expensiveand fabulously lavish, fit settings extremely elaborated and showy. Masques (direct

participation of audience), music and spectacle. Private theatre also included privatedrama by choir boys in roofed and enclosed galleries, being music and artifical scenerymore 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 andill-will as drives of human character and society. Demystifying of spiritual world andleadership but open admission of cruelty, pragmatism and betrayal of faith if necessary.In Jacobean drama, the Machiavellian villain or discontent, bitterly cynical andfascinated 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 orThe Duchess of Malfi . Comedy : Ben Jonsons comedy of humours , The Alchemist ,Volpone.


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RESTORATION ENGLAND (1660-1690)

- Once the Protectorate finished, the members of Parliament asked for the Restoration ofMonarchy

The return of Charles II from France does not only bring about a strong reaction againstPuritan 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, confinedto Londons courtly and fashionable circles, which laughed at country uncouthness andlack of sophistication.

Yet social-political tensions: wars, natural disasters, political instability on account ofCharless Catholic sympathies and dissenter resentment. After his death, James II(Charless brother) pushed the tensions with parliamentary petitions further as heintended jesuists to shatter Anglican primacy down. The Glorious Revolution (1688)deposes James, and parliamentary army joined the Dutch forces led by William ofOrange (married to Jamess daughter, Queen Mary II) successfully took hold of thethrone of England thus securing parliamentary and protestant liberties. WILLIAM III OFENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.


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1688 British Glorious Revolution: A Significant Datefor Many Relevant Changes


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1688

-William of Orange lands atTorbay.-James II and his family flee toFrance.-Convention Parliament.-Turning-point from Monarchicand Catholic general control andrepression to a different religiousorientation and more pressure onthe crown from the people.

-Influence of previuos yearsrevolts and parliamentarydissolutions and achievements.


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The great philosophical and scientifical change is starred by relevant figures whodisplace Puritan moralist continence and self-discipline in favour of hedonism,materialism, pragmatism and scientific analysis . This New Science promotes empiricismand experiment in all areas of knowledge, which courtly wits , intellectuals and well-to-do classes alike embrace.

THOMAS HOBBES.The Leviathan (1651). Personally engaged in the civil war, hesuspected fanatism and posits instead materialist views and split from supernaturalcauses. Popular sovereignity yet royal absolutism. Human nature to be approached onthe basis of material ethics (pleasurable good vs painful bad, so instinctive regulations aslong as one doesnt hurt the other).

JOHN LOCKE. An Essay Concerning Human Understand ing (1690). Reason. Tabula Rasa .Rational scepticism. Anti-dogmatism. Separation State-Church.

ISSAC NEWTON.


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John Locke (1632-1704 )

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


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Baruch Spinoza (1632-1687),a Jewish intellectual and Holland's greatestphilosopher, was a spokesman for pantheism, the belief that God existsin all of nature. Spinoza's influence, along with Newton's (1642-1727),

profoundly affected English thinkers.


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the seventeenth century (1)

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