The Puritan Age

 

The Puritan Age

General Characteristics of the Age

1. Civil War: The entire period was dominated by the civil war, which divided the people into two fractions, one loyal to the King and the others, who opposed him. English people had remained one and united and loyal to sovereign. The crisis began when James I gave too much premium to the Divine Right and began to ignore Parliament, which had created him. The Puritans heralded the movement for constitutional reforms. The hostilities which began in 1642 lasted till the execution of Charles I in 1649. There was a little political stability during this period of eleven years which followed. These turbulent years saw the establishment of Commonwealth, the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the confusion which followed upon his death, and finally, the restoration of monarchy in 1660.

2. The Puritan movement: The Renaissance was essentially pagan and sensuous. It did not concern the moral nature of man. The Puritans were the members of that party of English Protestants who regarded the reformation of the church under Elizabeth as incomplete, and called for further purification. Puritanism had two main aims: the first was individual and civil liberty and the second was personal righteousness. The Puritan Movement may be regarded a second and greater Renaissance, a rebirth of the moral nature of man following the intellectual awakening of Europe in the 15th and the sixteenth centuries.”

3. Changing Ideals: The political upheaval of the period is summed up in the terrible struggle between the king and parliament. For centuries the English people had been loyal to their sovereigns but deeper than their loyalty to kings was the Old Saxon love for personal liberty. The crisis came when James I, who had received the right of royalty from an act of Parliament, began, by the assumption of “divine right”, to ignore the Parliament which had created him. The blasphemy of a man’s divine right to rule his fellow men was ended.

4. Religious Ideal: Religiously the age was one of even greater ferment than that which marked the beginning of the Reformation. The ideal of a national church was pounding to pieces. It is intensely interesting to note that Charles called Irish rebels and Scotch Highlanders to his aid by promising to restore their national religions and that the English Puritans, turning to Scotland for help, entered into the solemn Covenant of 1643, establishing a national Presbyterianism.

Literary Characteristics of The Age

In the literature also the Puritan age was one of confusion, due to breaking up of old ideals. Medieval standards of chivalry, the impossible loves and romances perished; and in the absence of any fixed standard of literary criticism there was nothing to prevent the exaggeration of the “metaphysical” poets. Poetry took a new and starling form in Donne and Herbert, and prose became as somber as Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. The spiritual gloom which sooner or later fastens upon all the writers of this age, is due to the breaking up of all standards in government and religion. This so-called gloomy age produced some minor poems of exquisite workmanship, and one great master of verse, John Milton, in whom the Puritan spirit finds its noblest expression.

The influence of the Puritanism upon English life and literature was profound. The spirit which it introduced was fine and noble but it was hard and stern. The Puritan’s integrity and uprightness is unquestionable but its outlook and sympathies were deplorable. In its over-enthusiasm to react against prevailing abuses, the age denounced the good things of life, condemned science and art, ignored the appreciation of beauty, which invigorates secular life. Puritanism destroyed human culture and sought to confine human culture with in the circumscribed field of its own particular interests. It was fatal to both art and literature.

The literature of this period lacks in concreteness and vitality. During this period James I and Charles II were hostile to the interests of the people. The country was divided by the struggle for political and religious liberty; and the literature was as divided in spirit as were the struggling parties. In the literature of the Puritan period, one looks in vain for romantic ardor. Even in the lyrics and love poems a critical, intellectual spirit takes its place.

This period is remarkable for the decay of drama. The civil disturbances and the strong opposition of the Puritans was the main cause of the collapse of drama. The actual dramatic work of the period was small and unimportant. The closing of the theatres in 1642 gave a final jolt to the development of drama.

Literature of The Puritan Period

The Transitional Poets: When one attempts to classify the literature of the first half of the seventeenth century, from the death of Elizabeth (1603) to the Restoration (1660), he realizes the impossibility of grouping poets by any accurate standard. Thus, Shakespeare and Bacon wrote largely in the reign of James I, but their work is Elizabethan in spirit; and Bunyan is no less a Puritan because he happened to write after the Restoration. The name Metaphysical poets is somewhat suggestive but not descriptive of the followers of Donne; the name Caroline or Cavalier poets brings to mind the careless temper of the Royalists, and the name Spenserian poets recalls the little band of dreamers who clung to Spenser’s ideal, even while his romantic medieval castle was battered down by Science at one gate and Puritanism at the other. At beginning of this bewildering confusion of ideals expressed in literature, we note a few writers who are generally known as Jacobean poets, but whom we have called the Transition poets because, with the later dramatists, they show clearly the changing standards of the age.

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619): - Daniel is interesting to us for two reasons - for his use of the artificial sonnet, and for his literary description of Spenser as a model for poets. His Delia, a cycle of sonnets modeled, perhaps, after Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, helped to fix the custom of celebrating love or friendship by a series of sonnets. In his sonnets, especially the beautiful Complaint of Rosamond and his Civil Wars he aimed solely at grace of expression and became influential in giving to English poetry a greater individuality and independence that it had been ever known.

The Metaphysical Poets: - This name is often applied to all minor poets of the Puritan Age. Donne and Herbert, in feeling and imagery both are poets of a high order, but in style and expression they are the leaders of the fantastic school whose influence largely dominated poetry during the half century of the Puritan period. Dr. Jonson borrowed this term from the phrase of Dryden ‘He affects the metaphysics’. Two things were common among all the Metaphysical poets, learning with a kind of misplaced wit and the desire to say something which had never been said before and in their poetry, we find a very fine blend of intellect and emotion but artificiality and hyperbolic expression could not keep itself away from this Metaphysical poetry.

1. John Donne (1537-1631): John Donne was the founder of the metaphysical school of poetry, and he is the greatest of the poets of this school. His works include Satires, Songs and Sonnets, Elegies, which were published posthumously about 1633. His poetry falls naturally into three divisions:

(i) Love poetry

(ii) Religious Poems

(iii) Satirical Poems

2. George Herbert (1593-1633): Herbert’s Chief work, The Temple, consists of over one hundred and fifty short poems suggested by the Church, her holidays and ceremonials and the experiences of the Christian life. The first poem, The Church Porch, is the longest and though polished with a care that foreshadows the classic school, the least poetical. He preferred simple, homely, racy language and naturalness of expression.

3. Richard Crawshaw (1613-49): Richard Crawshaw’s best work is in Steps to the Temple (1646). Some of his poems are secular but he is at his best in his religious poems. To him religion meant everything. Crawshaw’s poetry is noticeable for striking but fantastic conceits, for its religious fire and fervor.

4. Henry Vaughan (1622-95): His books include Poems (1646), Olor Iscanus (1651), Silex Scintillans (1650) and Thalia Rediviva (1678). In the beginning Vaughan composed secular poems under the influence of Ben Jonson. Vaughan like Crawshaw was at heart a mystic. He was more at home in sacred than in secular verse. His poems reveal his good intellectual power and originality.

5. Abraham Cowley (1618-67): Cowley distinguished himself as a classical scholar. He was a man of versatile literary interests, who wrote poems, plays, essays and histories. He wrote an epical romance Pyramus and Thisbe (1628) at the age of ten, and two years later he wrote Constantia and Philatus. His well-known poems are The Mistress (1647), a collection of love poems, The Davidie (1656) and the Pindaric Odes. Cowley is important as a transitional poet of this period. He was the last of the metaphysical poets and in many respects, he foreshadows the English classicists. He deserved to be numbered among the disciples of Donne.

6. Andrew Marvell (1621-78): Marvell’s poems have been described as the finest flower of serious and secular verse. Marvel’s work has the subtlety of wit, the passionate argument and learned imagery of the metaphysical, combined with the clarity and control of the classical followers of Jonson and the gracefulness of Cavaliers. His rhythms are flexible, his melody delicate. He loved nature and the freshness of gardens and in all his work there is a high seriousness and absolute sincerity.

The Cavalier Poets: In the literature of any age there are generally found two distinct tendencies. The first expresses the dominant spirit of the times; the second, a secret or an open rebellion. So, in this age, side by side with the serious and rational Puritan lives the gallant and trivial Cavalier. The Puritan finds expression in the best poetry of the period, from Donne to Milton and in prose of Baxter and Bunyan, the Cavalier in a small group of poets - Herrick, Lovelace, Suckling, and Care, who write songs generally in lighter vein, gay, trivial, but who cannot altogether escape the tremendous seriousness of Puritanism. Cavalier’s lyrics were notable for sweetness and charm and the cavalier poets most dealt with the themes of love and war and like Ben Jonson were always concise lucid and polished

Thomas Carew (1598 - 1639): - Carew may be called the inventor of Cavalier love poetry. As a lyric poet he is the first of his age.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674): The country life caught its spirit in many of his lyrics. His poems cover a wide range, from trivial love songs, pagan in spirit, to hymns of deep religious feeling.

Suckling and Lovelace: Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) was one of the most brilliant wits of the court of Charles I, who wrote poetry as he exercised a horse or fought  a duel, because it was considered a gentleman’s accomplishment in those days. Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) offers a remarkable parallel to Suckling, and the two are often classed together as perfect representatives of the followers of King Charles.

John Milton

Shakespeare and Milton are the representatives of the age that produced them. Shakespeare is the poet of impulse of the loves, hates, fears, jealousies, and ambition that swayed the men of his age. Milton is the poet of steadfast will and purpose who moves like a god amid the fears and hopes and changing impulses of the world. John Milton was the first English poet who gave a new conception of poetic art - sublimity and purity. For him poetry was a high and grave thing. He chose grand themes for his poetry. Born on December 9, 1608 in London, Milton spent most of his boyhood in this city. It was from his father that John Milton inherited love for music. The young Milton showed signs of remarkable literary promise. Milton’s foreign tour and his stay in Italy proved of very great significance in his life and in his life and his poetic career. During the twenty year of civil commotion, he wrote, except a few sonnets, no poetry, but was fertile in controversial prose. In 1658 he began work on Paradise lost and thus abandoning politics he returned finally to poetry. He finished the published the composition of Paradise Lost in 1664 which was published three years later. In 1671, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonists were published.

Prose Writers of Puritan Age

John Bunyan (1628-1688): Sir, John Bunyan was the greatest prose writer of the age of Milton. Bunyan was born in 1628 and died in 1688. Bunyan is remarkable for his simple and homely style, which can be at times, both forceful and eloquent, in English Literature.

Robert Burton (1577-1640): Burton is famous chiefly as the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy one of the most astonishing books in all literature, which appeared in 1621.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682): Browne’s great work is the Religio Medici, i.e. The Religion of a Physician (1642), which met with most unusual success. He is the first poet to use the couplet form consistently in the bulk of his poetry.