The Restoration Literature

The Restoration of the Stuarts(Charles II was proclaimed king in 1660 and was crowned one year later)transformed London in a center of frivolous pleasures.Literature manifested the influence of the Royal Court and of the much admired French literary models of the century(Boileau,but especially Moliere,as Moliere proved to be the most "plundered" author of this century).All that happens in English literature at this moment appears to be a reaction against the well known Puritan rigidity.The writers write for an aristocratic public,a public that indulges(that has a special taste for) in moral analysis,satire and the licentious comedy,and,as a form,in the symmetrical,abstract,conventional form. The Restoration of the monarchy meant,as already stated above,a rejection of Puritanism and the beginning of a new outlook on life and culture.An important feature of Puritanism was that culture was seen as being contrary to religion(which was definitely a major drawback).The Restoration brought a zest for life,a desire to live life,which contradicted the very core of Puritanism.The Restoration brought about the revival of the cultural,scientific and literary life(The Royal Society for Improving Human Knowledge was founded in 1660 and it included personalities such as Isaac Newton,Robert Boyle,the famous architect Sir Christopher Wren,Ernest Rutherford,etc).There appeared 2 important philosophical trends in this period:a)Empiricism-(the major representative was John Locke-his 2 important works were entitled Treatises on Government and Essay Concerning Human Understanding);b)Rationalism(the major representative was Thomas Hobbes,who is the author of Leviathan).Empiricism believed in the acquiring of knowledge through senses,whereas Rationalism believed in the power of Reason,as it was regarded as being the source of true knowledge( as senses,feelings can be confusing-thus,the influence of the French Rene Descartes),so Science became Cartesian. The Restoration period paved the way towards the English neo-classicism."The Progress of science,the growth of rationalism and skepticism,the spreading of deism and the gradual evolution of society from intransigence,intolerance and religious zeal to a more lay attitude paved the way for the advert of the Age of Reason and Enlightenment in England"-(David Daiches,A Critical History of English Literature).The Restoration of the monarchy brought about a new type of refinement of the Royal Court,the growth of the importance of the king's power in comparison with that of the Parliament(in 1681,Charles II dissolved the Parliament and ruled the country without it until his death,in 1685),also a growth in the
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importance of the role of aristocracy(the upper class and,of course,the Royal Court).The Restoration literature was therefore a class-oriented type of literature and it was greatly influenced by the French neo-classicism. John Dryden(1631-1700) followed extensively the model of the French Boileau.Dryden was an important poet,literary critic and also playwright of the Restoration literature.He is the founder of the modern literary criticism and the person who furnished the doctrine of a more careful type of poetry,in which the technique of the verses was the essential element.Dryden was undoubtedly the greatest of the transitional poets(the poets who made the transition from the Renaissance to the Neo-Classical Age).Dryden showed a great interest in the ancient poets'works,in achieving balance,harmony and order.He was the one to introduce the heroic couplet as the typical verse form of the new poetry.Dryden combined the classical rules with the metaphysical wit and images and also with some lyrical parts,so,Dryden's neo-classicism was not exactly a pure form of classicism.His most important work was entitled Of Dramatick Poesie,an Essay and it was written and published in 1668.Dryden displayed in this work his theory of the new poetry,being,as already stated,highly influenced by the French Boileau;Dryden insisted that poets should always obey rules in creating their new type of poetry and follow the models of the ancient writers,allowing themselves to be guided not by feelings,but by Reason. The Restoration Drama: 90% per cent of the Restoration Drama was comedy.Its main features are the following:a)amoral wit and b)stylized hedonism.The setting of the Restoration comedy was only London,so it was a metropolitan type of comedy that was played in and for the fashionable circles of society.The general theme of the Restoration comedy was the universal praise of London and the detestation of the countryside and of the country people,who were ridiculed for their lack of sophistication and noble manners.In this period one may speak about the:a)modernization of theatres and the modern theatre as a building;b)usage of the picture-frame stage;c)movable scenery;d)artificial light;e)women playing female parts. The plays started to be licentious,that is why the wide public perceived theatre as being a place of vice and exhibitionism.The Restoration drama was a class-oriented type of drama,which definitely meant a stylization of an upper class sensibility which was associated with the Court Wits(a group known as the Court Wits held a significant role in the evolution of the English literature, "especially Sir John Suckling, Abraham Cowley, and Edmund Waller, the last two of whom themselves survived into the Restoration and continued to write impressive verse). The Court Wits best works are mostly light lyricsfor example, Sir Charles Sedleys Not, Celia, that I juster am or Charles Sackville's, earl of Dorsets Dorindas sparkling wit, and eyes. However, one of these Court Wits, namely John Wilmot,
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the earl of Rochester, possessed a wider range and richer talent. Though some of his surviving poetry is in the least-ambitious sense occasional work, he also produced a writing of great force and authority, including a group of lyrics (for example, All my past life is mine no more and An age in her embraces past) that, in psychological grasp and limpid deftness of phrasing, are among the finest of the century. He also wrote the harsh and scornfully dismissive Satire Against Reason and Mankind (supposedly before 1676), in which, as elsewhere in his verse, his libertinism seems philosophical as well as sexual. He doubts religious truths and sometimes seems to be versifying Thomas Hobbes's materialism .Indeed, some of his verse that vaunts its obscenity, has an aspect of nihilism, as if the amoral sexual epicure were but fending off fear of oblivion. More lightly, Rochester experimented ingeniously with various forms of verse satire on contemporary society. The most brilliant of these, A Letter from Artemisia in the Town, to Chlo in the Country (written about 1675), combines a shrewd ear for currently fashionable idioms with a Chinese box structure that masks the authors own thoughts. Rochesters determined use of the strategies of indirection anticipates Swifts tactics as an ironist". The important playwrights of this period are the following: Sir George Etheridge(1635-1692),whose main dramatic works were entitled The Man of Mode "the symbol of the entire genre"(Martin Day-History of English Literature) and The Comical Revenge,which is generally regarded as being the first comedy of manners.William Wycherley(1640-1716) was the major moralist of this age.In his comedy entitled The Country Wife,Wycherley attacked harshly the inadequacies of the Restoration period.Another comedy which is worth mentioning and which was written by the same author,is The Plain Dealer. The most important representative of the Restoration drama is from afar William Congreve(1670-1729),who combined in his comedies essential features of the Restoration comedy with those of the Shakesperean comedy.The standard situations in his comedies are the following:a)the witty pair of lovers;b)the amorous widow;c)the would-be wit;d)the country squire.Congreve uses all these traditional elements in his comedies and there are several levels of meaning in the dialogues that he created. From one point of view,his comedy entitled The Way of the World(which was produced in 1700) represents "the flower of the Restoration comedy,being a much profounder comedy in which hero and heroine are perfectly aware of each other's flaws and they are willing to keep up the usual social games in order to save them from the embarrassment of the confrontation with each other's naked emotions and they reveal in their mutual conversation something of the complexity and sadness of all human relationships"(David Daiches-A Critical History of English Literature).The second important comedy written by Congreve was entitled Love
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for Love,which was produced in 1695 and which is,in many respects,reminiscent of the Jonsonian comedy of humours.The element of satire in the play is not Jonsonian however.Love for Love is in fact the most satirical of all of Congreve's plays; in the Prologue of this play,Congreve deliberately stated his intention of lashing his contemporary age: " Since the Plain Dealer's scenes of manly rage,/Not one has dared to lash this crying age./This time the poet ows the bold essay..../".The exposure of the sophisticated manners in the scene where Mr Tattle teaches Prue,a country girl,the importance of saying one thing and doing another,brings into the open the contrast between public reputation and private behaviour,which is implicit in so many of the Restoration wit combats. William Congreve continued the inheritance of Shakespeare,in the sense that his comedies combined the tragic and the comic effects,thus giving his comedies a moral significance that can be derived from the ironical coexistence of the tragic and the comic.Both Congreve and Shakespeare achieved a delicate balance between the satirical and the ludic comedy.Congreve followed the Shakesperean tradition by revealing in his work the world of the comic evil and he displayed in his comedies a rational and unsentimental approach to love. The Restoration versus the Renaissance drama : a)the element of continuity:the Restoration continued the comedy of humours(Ben Jonson),the difference between the 2 resided in the fact that The Restoration refined the comedy of humours,adding to it the force of the Restoration wit.The greatest difference between the Restoration and the Renaissance comedy lies in the fact that the former one was concerned with society as a whole, whereas the latter was concerned with its individuals.While the Renaissance comedy is illustrative for the comedy of humours,the Restoration comedy is illustrative for the comedy of manners.Peter Paul Dobree asserted that an essential similitude between the 2 types of comedy lies in the fact that "both are types of comedy that stripped man of his ornaments and revealed his naked essence as falling short of the ideal,of the model which it never managed to achieve." Both types of comedy display the hidden passions of the human soul,the deep recesses of mankind, and they show people as being essentially superficial and unable to live,to experience profound feelings. Important specification: the picture-frame stage= the proscenium stage-the primary feature is a large arch through which the audience views the performance.The audience directly faces the stage,which is typically raised several feet above the front row audience and views only one side of the scene.