ThAct : History Puritan +Restoration Age

 Thinking Activity : Puritan and Restoration Age  of Literature 

This Blog is written in response to the Thinking Activity on The Puritan and The Restoration Period of Literature given by Dilip Barad sir at the Department of English, MKBU 

Puritan Age :

Puritan literature is a genre created by the Puritans, a religious movement which fought to remove the remnants of the Catholic Church from the Church of England. This led to conflict in England and to the founding of several colonies in the Americas, including settlements in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and other parts of New England. The movement began in 1530 and lasted well into the 17th century.

Religion was the central tenet of Puritan life. The movement began as a way to reform the Church of England, and its practitioners believed in creating a covenant with God and being humble. Their communities were governed by religious doctrine, a concept which clashed with the emerging modernity of science and reason. For example, during the Salem Witch Trials, a famous Puritan and author named Cotton Mather urged the court to not simply accept hearsay as evidence for the charge of witchcraft and instead rely on hard evidence.

Puritan literature is the result of this movement and lifestyle. Much of it is in the form of letters and journals written by Puritans regarding their experiences. Puritan writing is primarily made up of sermons, poetry, and historical narratives, but Puritan writers created very little fiction. Much like their lifestyles, Puritans used simple, straightforward sentences when writing.In this age, writer of written age divided into groups like:-

Cavalier Poets

Transitional poets

Metaphysical poets

Spenserian Poets

Writers of the Puritan Age:-

Jonh Milton 

Anne Bradstreet

John Bunyan 

Richard Cashaw 

Edward Taylor 

 

John Milton:-

Poet, Historian (1608-c. 1674)

John Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest epic poem in English. Together with Paradise Regained, it formed his reputation as one of the greatest English writers. In his prose works he advocated the abolition of the Church of England. His influence extended through the English civil wars and also to the American and French revolutions.

Early Life & Education

John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608 to John and Sara Milton. He had an older sister Anne, and a younger brother Christopher, and several siblings who died before reaching adulthood. As a child, John Milton attended St. Paul’s School, and in his lifetime he learned Latin, Greek, Italian, Hebrew, French, and Spanish. He attended Christ’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1629 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and 1632 with a Master of Arts.

Poetry, Politics, and Personal Life

After Cambridge, Milton spent six years living with his family in Buckinghamshire and studying independently. In that time, he wrote “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” “On Shakespeare,” “L’Allegro,” “Il Penseroso,” and "Lycidas," an elegy in memory of a friend who drowned.

In 1638, John Milton went to Europe, where he probably met the astronomer Galileo, who was under house arrest at the time. He returned to England earlier than he had planned because of the impending civil war there.

Milton was a Puritan who believed in the authority of the Bible, and opposed religious institutions like the Church of England, and the monarchy, with which it was entwined. He wrote pamphlets on radical topics like freedom of the press, supported Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War, and was probably present at the beheading of Charles I. Milton wrote official publications for Cromwell’s government.

It was during these years that Milton married for the first time. In 1642, when he was 34, he married 17-year-old Mary Powell. The two separated for several years, during which time Milton wrote The Divorce Tracts, a series of publications advocating for the availability of divorce. The couple reunited and had four children before Mary died in 1652. It was also in 1652 that Milton became totally blind. In 1656, he married Katherine Woodcock. She died in 1658.

Near the end of 1659, Milton went to prison because of his role in the fall of Charles I and the rise of the Commonwealth. He was released, probably due to the influence of powerful supporters. The monarchy was reestablished in 1660 with Charles II as king.

John Milton's Work:-

John Milton was a seventeenth century English poet whose works have greatly influenced the literary world. Milton wrote poetry and prose between 1632 and 1674, and is most famous for his epic poetry. Special Collections and Archives holds a variety of Milton's major works, including Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. 

Paradise Lost is one of the most recognized works in English literature. The first version, published in 1667, contained ten books. A later edition was published in 1674, which consisted of twelve books.Paradise Lost consists of more than 10,000 lines of verse. It tells the story of Adam and Eve, including their creation, inability to resist the temptations of Satan, and subsequent fall from grace. Special Collections and Archives holds several editions of Paradise Lost including one that was published in 1818. This edition was published by Benjamin Warner, a Quaker bookseller from Philadelphia. 

Another famous work by Milton is Paradise Regained, first published in 1671. Special Collections and Archives holds a 1790 edition titled, Paradise Regained. A poem in Four parts,by John Milton.This edition was published by William Young, a bookseller, printer, and publisher who had a printing business at his Philadelphia home. Milton's Paradise Regained is a philosophical dialogue between Satan and the Son of God. The Son of God strives for noble consciousness, an internal quality. Conversely, Satan believes that it is acceptable to pursue external values, such as power, wealth, and recognition.

 Allegro and ll Penseroso is another important work by Milton held in Special Collections and Archives. This edition was published 1855 in London by David Bogue. Myles Birket Foster, a famous illustrator, watercolor artist, and engraver in the nineteenth century, created the illustrations in this edition. His work depicts the interaction between day and night, one of Milton's primary themes in the work. Both L’Allegro and Il Penseroso consider the internal and external life of the poet through allegory.

Milton was in his twenties when he wrote L”Allegro and Il Penseroso, a young poet questioning what it meant to be an epic poet. As he matured, this early work had a major influence on his later writings. As he grew older, his poems became more complex and insightful. By the time he wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained Milton was blind. Although he had lost his sight, he utilized what he called "divinest Melancholy" to compose his most powerful works.  

There were many factors which led to Milton’s popularity during the eighteenth century:

(i) The eighteenth century was an age of classicism, and because Milton a wrote his epic, elegy and tragedy or the classical models, the classicists admired him and tried to imitate him.

(ii) His didacticism was in accord with the trends of the time.

(iii) The appeal of his poetry was primarily felt on account of the sublimity and fervour of his poetic imagination.

(iv) The undercurrent of romanticism in the middle of the century found a strong ally in his poetry and “Milton became more and more acclaimed as a champion of the inwardness and freedom of true poetry.”

(v) Milton’s poetic style was imitated and admired by every writer of verse in the eighteenth century— “he was a quarry of poetic phrases for everybody.”

(vi) Finally, his versification supplied a model to the poets who broke away from the classical tradition of the eighteenth century.

The poetry of the eighteenth century, both classical and romantic, was influenced by Milton. The poets of the classical school, including Pope, drew upon the treasury of poetical phrases, and it was the blank verse of Paradise Lost that served as a model for many of the longer poems of the eighteenth century. Among the blank verse poems may be mentioned Thompson’s Seasons, Young’s Night Thoughts, Warbon’s Pleasures of Melancholy, Akenside’s Pleasures of the Imagination and Cowper’s Task. All these poets took Milton as their model.

Among the nineteenth century poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley were influenced by Milton. There is a Miltonic quality in Wordsworth’s exalted utterances in blank verse; here and there we catch in his poetry echoes of Miltonic poetry. The sonnets of Wordsworth are modelled on those of Milton. Wordsworth felt the influence of Milton’s character and art, while Byron and Shelley admired that aspect of his poetry which coincided with their revolutionary ideas. Keats was attracted to Milton for the richness of his poetic phrase. Tennyson paid a reverent tribute to Milton and called him “God-gifted organ voice of England”.

John Milton died in England in November 1674. There is a monument dedicated to him in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey in London.