1. XVII CENTURY

2. Age of transition
• King vs liberal parliamentarian government
• Established Church vs liberal Church
government
• Cavaliers vs Puritans
Tories vs. Wigs

3. Literature
• Renaissance was over
• Consolidation, introspection and
examination of human values

4. DRAMA
PROSE
LYRICAL POETRY

5. THE DRAMA AFTER SHAKESPEARE
(1603-1660)
• BEN JONSON (1573 – 1637)
• Translator, scholar, critic, classicist and
realist (comedy of manners).
• Comedies: The Silent Woman, The
Alchemist, Valpone, Bartholomew Fair
• JOHN FLETCHER (1584-1616) &
FRANCIS BEAUMONT (1579-1635)
• Philaster and The Maid’s Tragedy

6. • THOMAS DEKKER (1573 – 1632)
• The Shoemaker’s holiday
• THOMAS HEYWOOD (1570 – 1641)
• Dramatic journalist
• A woman killed with Kindness (1603), The Fair
Maid of the West (1610), Love’s Mistress (1636)
and The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1604)
• THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570 – 1627)
• Lawyer-playwrighter
• Combined comic prose with serious blank verse
• Michaelmas Term (1606), The Changeling (1622)
and Women Beware Women (1621)

7. • JOHN WEBSTER (1575 – 1625)
• Tragedies of blood: The White Devil (1612) and
The Dutchess of Malfi (1614)
• JOHN FORD (1586 – 1640)
• Excellence of the structure and use of the blank
verse
• Morbid and melancholic
• The Broken Heart (1633) and ‘Tis Pity She’s a
Whore (1627)
• PHILIP MASSINGER (1583 – 1640)
• Puritan
• A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1625).
• JAMES SHIRLEY (1596 – 1666)
• Imitative, precious, and uninspired.
• Hyde Park (1637)

8. Closing of the theatres
• Actors vs. Puritans
• 1575: no theatres within the city
• 1603 (James I): from the theatres to the court
• 1642: closing of theatres
• 1649: closing of the court (O. Cromwell)

9. THE AGE OF PROSE
FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
• Reign of James I: Lord Chancellor, Viscount St. Albans
• Accused of corruption charges he retires to his country estate
(study of science and philosophy)
• The Instauratio Magna, Novum Organum
• Beginnings of inductive reasoning
• The New Atlantis: Utopia ruled by study and experimentation
• Essays or Council Civil and Moral (1597 and 1625)
• Compact, economical, and pithy style.

10. • Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618):
– The History of The World
• Lord Clarendon (1609-1674):
– History of the Rebellion
• Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682):
– Vulgar Errors (1646), Religio Medici (1642),
Hydiotaphia (1658)
– Style: funeral, grand and solemn
– Heavy language and phrases coined from the Latin
and Greek
• Robert Burton (1577 – 1641):
– The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

11. • Izzak Walton (1593 – 1683):
–The Complete Angler (1653) and Lives
• Jeremy Taylor (1593 – 1667):
–Pastoral writings: Holy Living (1650) and Holy
Dying (1651).
• Thomas Fuller (1608 – 1661):
–Holy State and The Profane State (1642)
• The Authorized Bible (1611):
–Beauty of language
–Elizabethan and Shakespearean style

12. LYRICAL POETRY
• Religious lyrics: George Herbert, Richard Crashaw,
Henry Vaughan Robert Herrick and John Donne
• Cavalier Lyrics: Thomas Carew, Richars Lovelance and
Sir John Suckling.
• Metaphysical Lyrics: John Donne
• Classicist Lyrics: Ben Jonson
• The Formalists or Pre-Augustans: Sir William Davenant,
Sir John Denham, Abraham Cowley, Edmund Waller and
Andrew Marvell.

13. • JOHN DONNE (1573 – 1631)
– His Songs ans Sonnets and Divine Poems (1633)
– Classical in form (satires, epistles and elegies)
– Unusual lyrical forms
– Frank, realistic and cynical
• GEORGE HERBERT (1593 – 1632)
– The Temple (1633)
– A priest to the Temple (1652)
– Use of conceits, direct and familiar phrasing
• RICHARD CRASHAW (1612 – 1649)
– Steps to the Temple (1642) - secular and religious subjets.
– Diffuseness and unevenness; rich in affective imagery.
• HENRY VAUGHAN (1621 – 1695)
– Silex Scintillans (1650) - religion and nature.
– uneven and obscure

14. THE SCHOOL OF SPENCER
– Modification of the Spencerian stanza for narrative poetry
– Figures of speech (personification)
– Pastorals
• Gilbert Fletcher (1588 – 1623)
– Christ’s Victory and Triumph on Earth and in Heaven (1610)
• Phineas Fletcher (1582 – 1650):
– The Piscatory Eclogues and The Purple Island
• William Browne (1590 - 1645):
– Britannia’s Pastorals
• George Wither (1588 – 1667):
– Pastoral
– Style: spontaneous and diffuse
– The Shepard’s Hunting (1615), Fidelia (1615), Fair Virtue:
The Mistress of Philarete (1622) and “Sall I, Wasting in
Despair

15. • ROBERT HERRICK (1591 – 1674)
– Hesperides and Noble Numbers (1648)
THE CAVALIER POETS
• Thomas Carrew (1595 – 1639):
– Mixture of genuine beauty and dignity, with occasional
licentiousness.
– Influenced by both Ben Jonson and John Donne.
– Coelum Britannicum (1634)
• Richard Lovelance (1618 -1657):
– To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars and To Althea, from
Prison
• Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642)

16. THE RESTORATION
(1660-1700)
•Introduced a century of realism
•Tories and Whigs
•Conservatism and moderation

17. Restoration Literature
• Largely politics-oriented
• Guideline provided by French literary taste
• Order and discipline
• Heroic couplet  two pentameter lines
connected by rhyme

18. John Bunyan (1628-1688)
• Grace Abounding (1665)
• Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)
• The Holy War (1682)

19. John Dryden (1631-1700)
• Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
• Religio Laici (1682)
• Favored the modern sentence (lean,
muscular, and relatively short)

20. • Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Hudibras (1663)
• Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
Diary (1660-1669)
• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Leviathan (1651)

21. John Locke (1632-1704)
• Two Treatises of Government (1690)
• Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690)