The Restoration & Eighteenth Century (1660 - 1798)

How does the Restoration start?

• Stuart royal family returns from French exile to rule Britain, new literary period begins

What was literature like during the Restoration?

• Dislike of change became a guiding principle

  • Attempt to keep things the way they are

  • Conservative arts

• Literature was filled with hints that the old world order was breaking down and new ways of understanding would soon follow

Charles II rule

• ascended and brought back the monarchy in 1660

• The previous civil war was fought to win religious freedom

  • Puritans were a minority and couldn’t have succeeded without powerful landowners

• Politics was dominated by a desire fro stability

James II rule

• Ascended in 1685

• Favoured Roman Catholicism and formed dangerous alliances with other European Catholic powers

• Expelled from the throne in 1688 - known as the “Glorious Revolution” even though there was no bloodshed or actual revolution

James’s daughters’ rule

• Mary

  • James daughter and a protestant

  • She and her husband, William of Orange, ruled from 1689 - 1702

• Queen Anne

  • rule 1702 - 1714

  • died childless

The Georges

• Parliament passed a law that the sovereign must be a protestant

• George I

  • Brought over from Hanover

  • Ruled 1714 - 1727

• George II

  • ruled 1727 - 1760

  • didn’t know English well and was more interested in Germany

  • control fell almost entirely to the parliament where it remains

• George III

  • ruled 1760 - 1820

  • Tried to be a good king

  • Lost thirteen American colonies

Politics in the parliament

• Parliament supremacy was being established

• Power moved between parties

  • two party system emerged

  • Whigs - financial & mercantile interests, progressive, no monarch interference

  • Tories - Jacobites, old tradition, blue collar

• Not many people could vote

• Whigs mostly rules

  • Prime Minister - Sir Robert Walpole (1721 - 1742)

• Political power was centred in England

What were the rich like during the Restoration?

• elaborate, artificial garb

  • wigs, lace, satin, coats, silk socks, buckled shoes, hooped skirts

What were the arts like during the Restoration?

• Practical - focus on allegories and portraits

• Music flourished

• Architecture improved (garden and landscape designs)

• Put art into the every day but wanted to make it look natural

What were the significance of Coffeehouses during the Restoration?

• It was the social center for the middle class

• news was gathered and exchanged, political secrets were whispered

• Hub for literature, philosophy, domestic and foreign affairs, gossip

What does “The age of reason” mean in relation to the Restoration?

• patriotic population

• Deism

  • world is a running machine that was set in motion by a deity

• “common sense” became common

Literary Developments during the Restoration

• Charles II reopens the theatres

  • now only for the rich

  • Women were beginning to be played by women

• Oscar Wilde gained popularity

• Public and general themes rather than private ones

• Lyric was coming back into use

• Writers were dependent on patronage

  • didn’t write what they wanted to but what they were supposed to

  • Gave way to publishers

• Reading gained popularity

  • Lending libraries were run by shopkeepers that you could borrow literature for a fee - made literature more accessible

• The novel emerged in 1770

The three sections of literature in the Restoration

• The Restoration

  • small, elite, privileged

  • the court, tons of french influence, traditional values

• Age of Pope

  • Satire and moral analysis

• Age of Johnson

  • rise of novels

  • actual life rather than imagined worlds

  • history, biography, philosophy, political debate