The Early Seventeenth Century (1).docx

The Early Seventeenth Century (1602-1660)

What was going on in English History?

Queen Elizabeth breather her last on March 24, 1603. James VI of ___________________scotland___________ took over as James I of England.

He didn’t quite have her _________diplomatic_____________________ skills, but he was a real Renaissance man, writing diverse books on poetry, witchcraft, and tobacco.

More importantly, he had _________________children_____________.

We use the term _____________jacobean_________________ to refer to the James years (1603 – 1625), perhaps because Jamesian sounds silly.

James was a royal ________________absolutist______________ who believed his power came from God.

Not surprisingly, ______________religious________________ tensions mounted during his reign – in 1605 a group of Roman Catholics led by Guy Fawkes plotted to blow up the houses of Parliament. Luckily, the so-called “Gunpowder plot” was foiled.

In 1611 James sponsored the Authorized Version of the ____________bible__________________, which, in addition to its sheer rhetorical beauty, was a powerful force for Protestant unity.

________puritans______________________ resisted the tenets of the Established Church, calling for even more reformation in doctrine, ritual, and church government. They were Calvinists and wanted to remove the “popery” in the Book of Common Prayer and Anglican service.

James’ son Prince _________henry_____________________, who was a strong supporter of reformist Protestants, died in 1612.

His brother __________________charles____________ then became the heir apparent and succeeded his father in 1625. He was even more of a royal absolutist than his father. He dissolved Parliament three times, raised taxes, and annoyed lots of people in the process.

In 1633, Charles I appointed William Laud as Archbishop of _____________canterbury_________________. This may not seem such a big deal to you, but it was. He was a “high church” man, and moved Anglicanism even closer to Catholic tradition.

He really irritated the Puritans by advocating a doctrine of ___________

free will___________________ ______________________________ instead of predestination.

Resistance to the _______absolutism_______________________ of the Stuarts came from many quarters: Parliament, the peerage, the Puritans, the wealthy bourgeois, and the Scots, who resented his effort to make their Presbyterianism Anglican.

Literature and Culture, 1603-1640

Many old ______________philosophical________________ ideas were still current in 1600, such as the Ptolemaic universe, the belief in the four elements that comprise the matter of all things, and belief in the four humors of the body (choler, blood, phlegm, and melancholy).

The Jacobeans especially liked to be melancholy. Think ________hamlet______________________.

But new theories and discoveries challenged old ideas: Francis __________________bacon____________’s emphasis on the scientific method, Gabriel Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood, and Galileo’s heretical discovery that the Earth was NOT the center of the universe.

The _________________court_____________ remained an important site of literary activity, and many occasions prompted the writing and performance of “court masques,” elaborately staged entertainments that celebrate the power of the King.

Many great writers continued to depend upon the kindness of ________patrons______________________, such as the Sidneys and the Herberts. These were THE people to kiss up to.

This was the great age of the ___________________sermon___________. These orations were often over an hour long, and gifted Anglican preachers like John Donne (Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral) gave rhetorical masterpieces, learned and allusive, witty, flowing, and rhythmical.

As expected, the Puritans didn’t like this and preferred a _________plain_____________________ preaching style. “The plainer, the better,” said William Perkins in The Art of Prophecying.

___________drama___________________ flourished during this period in the theatres just outside London: Shakespeare was on a roll with King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. Ben Jonson contributed his great comedies: Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. Newcomer John Webster reveled in dark revenge tragedies like The Duchess of Malfi.

Meanwhile in ______________poetry________________, the new fashion was for shorter poems in plainer style.

________________John______________ _____________Donne_________________ often explores the private worlds of love and religion in his poetry. His witty and allusive poetry is famous for its “metaphysical conceits” – surprising metaphors that link together images from different ranges of experience.

Ben Jonson and the ___________Cavalier___________________ poets (Herrick, Carew, Lovelance, Suckling, Vaughn, and others) are known for their association with the royal court.

George Herbert was a country pastor who ___________destroyed___________________ his secular verse and, on his deathbed, turned his religious verse over to a friend to either publish or burn.

The familiar _____________essay_________________ was a major genre of the period, with Bacon dispensing wisdom in his essays on a wide range of topics.

The Jacobean years saw many “firsts” for __________women____________________ writers in England: the first female polemical writers, the first Englishwoman to publish a substantial volume of poetry, the first female to publish a tragedy. One woman, Lady Mary Wroth (Countess of Pembroke) published three “firsts”: a sonnet sequence, a prose romance, and a pastoral tragicomedy.

Charles I and his wife _______henryetta_______________________ were hugs patrons of the arts, and the court masques continued to flourish as longs as they celebrated Charles in every way.

Guess what? The Puritans __________disapproved____________________ of the court masques, which they thought too pagan and too Catholic (which, for many Puritans, was the same thing).

The Revolutionary Era, 1640-1660

Three ______________fundamental________________ questions: What kind of church government is laid down in Scripture and should therefore be settled in England? What should be the relation between church and state? What is the ultimate source of political power?

_______parliament_______________________ in 1640 was intent upon expanding its rights in the face of the kind’s absolutist tendencies.

The rift between the kind and Parliament came to a head in _________1641_____________________, when news came of an uprising in Ireland. As many as 30,000 English and Scottish Protestant were massacred by the Catholic populace which they had dispossessed, persecuted, and reduced to poverty. Charles wanted to invade Ireland. Parliament wouldn’t allow it. When Charles tried to arrest five members of Parliament for treason, a riot broke out in London.

After two __________civil____________________ ________wars______________________ (1642-1646 and 1648), Charles was defeated and brought to trial for “High Treason.” He was beheaded, bless his heart, on January 27, 1649.

Meanwhile the Puritans went on a rampage, destroying religious images, statues, and stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals. They themselves faced deep divisions in the midst of a “___________________toleration___________ Controversy” in 1643, in which some urged tolerance for a broad variety of religious sects, including Baptists, Quakers, etc.

Parliament was purged of its ____________royalist__________________ members who supported Charles, and a new Commonwealth government was formed. Oliver Cromwell was sworn in as Protector for Life in 1653.

Cromwell dies in 1658, and __________charles II____________________ became king in 1660, beginning the period known as the “Restoration” of the Stuart dynasty. Charles II toned down the royal absolutism approach considerably.

Literature and Culture Part Deux, 1640-1660

Parliament shut down the _____________theaters_________________ in 1642, since it thought to be in bad taste to have fun during calamitous times.

The Cavalier poets supported the King, and some even went into exile. Their poems celebrated the royalist culture and courtly ideal of the good life. Theirs is the world of the ______________carpe diem________________ ______________________________ love lyric.

Women continued to produce literature of importance. _________margaret_____________________ Cavendish (Duchess of Newcastle) published two volumes of poetry and a utopian romance, The Blazing World (1668), which imagines a world governed by an empress with absolute power to rule.

________________hobbs______________ was the most important English philosopher and political theorist of the age, and his Levithan (1651) provided an analysis and defense of absolute sovereignty based on social contract.

The 17^th century saw the rise of _____________biographies_________________ as a genre; Izaak Walton’s Life of Donne was a notable accomplishment, even though you can’t believe everything in it.

The omnipresent prose genre of the revolutionary era was the polemic _______________tracts_______________. Everyone and his mother wrote one to blast everyone else and everyone else’s mother. We have the same thing today; we call it the Internet.

The two greatest _________________revolution_____________ writers in England were Andrew Marvell and John Milton, and there’s no way to summarize their accomplishments in a handout. Please see the Norton introduction to the Seventeenth Century, pages 1209-1230, from which this handout has been plagiarized anyway.