THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1660-1785

THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY • In 1660, England was exhausted by twenty years of civil wars and revolution. Charles II turned back restored the throne. But in the plague of 1665 and the fire of 1666 destroyed London. • Despite many controversies, the country struggled against the troubles and all those social issues enhanced the authors and poets for choosing the subject matters in their works.

Religion and Politics • The restoration of monarchy meant the restoration of the established church. • Although the ecclesiastical problems seemed to have been solved, the constitutional issues that had divided the court of Charles I and Parliament were not settled. • Charles II had promised to govern through Parliament, but like other members of his family he held strong views on the power and prerogatives of the Crown.

One important result of the political and religious turmoil of the decade was the emergence of two clearly defined political parties: Whig and Tory.The party of the court which supported the king in 1861 came to be called Tories; the king’s opponents Whigs.

The Tories • They drew their power largely from the landed gentry and the country clergy. • They were the conservatives of the period. • They were the strong supporters of the Crown and of the established church. • They were hostile to the new moneyed interests, for they held that landed wealth is the only responsible wealth.

The Whigs • They were a less homogenous group. • Many powerful nobles who were jealous of the powers of the Crown; the merchants and the financiers of London; a number of bishops and low church clergymen. • These varied groups were united by their policies of toleration and support of commerce.

Trade and Industrialism Affairs • Through the century and important development was seen in industry due to trade and colonialacts. • The emergence of Britain as a colonial power and the cry for a new social order based on liberty and radical reform. • Great Britain was no longer an isolated island but a nation with interests and responsibilities around the world. However, there was discontent at home. • The wealth brought to England by industrialism and foreign trade did not spread to the working classes.

Fear of their radicalism would contribute to the British reaction against the French Revolution after 1789. In the last decades of the century, British authors would be torn between two opposing attitudes: loyalty to the old traditions of subordination and local self-sufficiency and yearning for a new dispensation on principles of liberty, the rule of reason, and human rights.

Intellectual Background • The political turbulence of the 17th cc subsided gradually during the last decades of the century, and during the Restoration Period (1660-1700) literature also reflected a conflict of values. • The Restoration is best known as a period dominated by a fun-loving, dissolute court whose style of life was reflected in “rakish comedies”. But the ordinary life of the nation did not radically change. • Rural manners remained conservative and old fashioned.

The most important aspect of the Restoration period is the increasing challenge of various forms of secular thought to the old religious orthodoxies that had been matters of life and death since the Reformation.The new science was rapidly altering views of nature. Science in the 17th cc was concerned with the physical sciences. The discoveries in these sciences were reassuring in their evidence of universal law and order, clear proof of the wisdom and goodness of God in His creation.

As the 17th cc drew to a close, its temper became more secular, tolerant, and moderate. The new age was willing to settle for the possible within the limits of human intelligence and of the material world.(p.1773)

Although 18th cc brought a recognition of human limitations, it also took an optimistic view of human nature. Human beings, for the philosophers of the period, were naturally good and find their highest happiness in the exercise of virtue and benevolence. Such a view on human beings is called “sentimentalism”.

As the wave of sentimentalism mounted, a parallel rise of religious feeling occurred after 1740 known as Methodism, a conviction of sin and of conversion and the joy of the blessed assurance of being saved.The religious awakening persisted and affected many clergymen and laymen within the establishment, who as Evangelicals reanimated the church.

Literary Theory • The literary period between 1660 and 1785 can be considered in three lesser periods: the first is restoration period (1660-1700); the second is the culmination of neoclassism (1700-1744/45) and the third is the originating literature of romantism (1745-1785).

Literary Mood • Contrary to metaphysical obstacles, simplicity, clarity, regularity, easy and natural wit took place in literary works. The aim was to surprise readers not to shock them.(p. 1775) • The literature was termed neoclassical or Augustan because it was mostly impressed by the writers of the reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar. • English literature remained stubbornly English: The writers took what they required from France, but used it for their own ends.

“Nature” for the writers of the period is a word of many meanings. Nature as the universal, permanent and representative elements in human experience.External nature used for scientific enquiries and aesthetic pleasure is something different from human nature held to be uniform.

To study nature was also to study the ancients- the great artists and thinkers of Greece and imperial Rome. Nature had generally been an unlimited item in literary works in the former ages but the ways they used are varied.

Wit, like nature, is a complicated word of many meanings. It implies quickness and liveliness of mind, inventiveness, a readiness to perceive resemblances. Images, similes, metaphors were also widely used discursive elements.

The prevailing literary form in poetry was the closed heroic couplet. But in the 18th cc, the favoured form was blank verse. But gradually a more lyrical blank verse developed.

Restoration Literature • The contemporary literary genres such as verse, comedy, tragedy, heroic play, ode, satire, translation, critical essay were predominantly used genres in this era. • The prose was clearly identification of ideas. Metaphors, similes, and rhetorical flourishes were not approved in prose.Because they engaged in emotions, not the reason. They were used in poetry, but in prose they were not tolerable due to its rational discourse.

One important development in the restoration literature was comedy as a drama mode. The comedy of manners whose concern is to bring the moral and social behaviour of its characters to the test of comic laughter. But in 1690s, a considerable demand arose for moral reform in both literature and daily life.

Decorum was also enforced by the clubs where literary people tended to gather. From 1652 to the mid 18th cc,the coffeehouses of London served asinformal meeting places. There men could smoke, drink chocolate or coffee, read newspapers, write and receive letters, discuss the daily events, the success of literary works.

18th century literature (1700-1745) • The literature of this period wholly is a literature of wit concerned with civilization and social relationships; it is in some sense critical and satiric and in some sense mock heroic. • Such literature is addressed to highly sophisticated and cultivated readers. • The reading public extended throughout the 18th cc and included men and women readers from upper and middle classes.

Literature represented humanisticlearning, urbane enlightment and good taste.Expanding publication and numerous readers widened the scopes in literature. As literary theme, the actual world, men and women are chosen.

The novel as a new genre emerged. The comedy of manners replaced sentimental comedy dealt with high moral sentiments and virtue rather than wit. As tragedy froze into rhetoric, comedy dissolved in tears.Another genre that flourished the period was satire animated by moral urgency and heightened by a tragic sense of doom.

The Emergence of New Literary Themes and Modes (1740-1785) • Prose and satirical writings led to the emergence of literary criticism. • The prose style of the period seems to build on the principles of neoclassical verse. However such prose depends less on formal virtues than on its weight of thought.(p.1782). • The idea of the poet was changing from that of a maker to that of an introspective, brooding confessor; the materials of poetry were becoming rather the inner life and private vision of the poet than public, social affairs.

The revival soul of gothic styles influenced literature as well. Poets began to cultivate archaic language and antique literary forms.Forbidden themes are allowed free play; repressed feelings, morbid fears rose to the surface of the narrative. Gothic romances which tended to all those subject matters gave rise tothe emergence of novel.

The Beginning of Novel • The modern novel appeared at the beginning of the 18thcc. • Real social events, the subject about women, family life, economical issues all glorified the novel. • The picaresque tradition in the novel was highly popularized in this period. • Reader types of the novels from different social classes made the novel most distinguished literary genre among the others. • Literary criticism was also enforced with the emergence of novel.

THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY