THE PURITAN, RESTORATION AND AUGUSTAN AGE

1625 1776
During this period there were 3 religious groups :
1. The Church of England the official state Church established
by Henry VIII during the Reformation
2. The Roman Catholic Church ( Catholics)
3. Puritans, Presbyterians and Dissenters also known as
nonconformists; they had very strict moral principles and
believed that the way to salvation lay in a life of hard work
and avoidance of all forms of frivolous entertainment.
Charles I believed he had a divine right to rule and his acts were
answerable only to God. (the divine right of kings). In 1629 he
dissolved the Parliament. When the Parliament demanded
control of the army in 1642, Charles refused him, and this led to
the Civil War which ended with a Puritan victory. After that the
Commonwealth was founded by the Puritan Oliver Cromwell. After
20 years Charles II made possible the Restoration = when the
system of government returned to what it had been before the
Cromwellian revolution.
During this period took place two events that disturbed the life of
the city:
The plague in 1665
The great Fire of 1666
As the 18th century dawned, two of Englands historic conflicts
seemed to have been resolved:
The Church of England established as the dominant
Church in the land
Parliament had gained power at the expense of the
monarchy.
The 17th century was a time of constant religious and political
fighting and feuding, an age that stabilized the relationships
between Church and state, and between Parliament and monarchy.
During 1702 1776 the power of the monarch was limited in
favour of the Parliament by the Glorious revolution and there
were two political parties:
1. The Tory party which was supported by the old aristocracy
and the Church of England
2. The Whigs party which was supported by the emerging
middle classes
THE LITERARY BACKGROUND

The greatest 17th century poet was JOHN MILTON, who belongs in
spirit to the Puritan age of Cromwells Commonwealth, which he
supported fervently. His masterpiece was PARADISE LOST.
ROBERT BURTON, SIR THOMAS BROWNE and JOHN BUNYAN
are the most representative prose writers of the period. JOHN
BUNYAN and his masterpiece THE PILGRIMS PROGRESS was the
writer who most successfully captured the Puritan spirit.
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION which took place after the
Restoration, also played an important part in creating a new and
clear, concise prose style. EMPIRICISM the idea that scientific
assertions had to be tested by experiment was becoming
increasingly important.
The second half of the 17th century saw the emergence of a new
literary form : THE DIARY.
AUGUSTAN LITERATURE
The 18th century brought with it a general desire for order, clarity
and stability. Writers of the period drew inspiration from the Latin
poets Virgil, Horace and Ovid who, under the patronage of Emperor
Augustus, created the golden age of classical literature. English
writers tried to imitate the Latin poets, and the early and mideighteenth century became known as THE AUGUSTAN AGE. The
greatest poet of the Augustan Age was ALEXANDER POPE.
The 18th century is also best remembered for the development of
prose-writing. The early part of the century witnessed a dramatic
rise in prose output in the form of journalism, essay writing, political
satire and pamphleteering.
Five dominant literary figures DANIEL DEFOE, SAMUEL
RICHARDSON, HENRY FIELDING,
JONATHAN SWIFT and
LAURENCE STERNE moulded fictional prose into a literary form
that appealed to the 18th century reader. In doing so they created
the dominant literary genre of the next three centuries: THE
MODERN NOVEL.
In the second half of the 18th century, the admiration for the
classical ideals which had characterized the Augustan Age began to
wane (a fi in declin):
The grandeur, rationalism and elevated sentiments of the
early part of the century gave way to a simpler, more genuine
form of expression
There was a renewed interest in nature and the simple rural
life.