ROBINSON CRUSOE
PURITAN PHASE
Puritan poets: believed in the values of Puritarism
Cavalier poets: continued along the tradition of Elisabethan poetry
Style: elegant and smooth, meditative mood
RESTORATION PROSE
PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS: emerged prose for developing the cultural and political debate of the age ⇒ philosophers
RELIGIOUS PROSE
John Bunyan: "The Pilgrim's Progress" is an allegorical representaion of the spiritual voyage of man's soul through vices and virtues
Isaac Newton: explained the forces that make the solar system work and formulated the "Law of Universal Gravitation"
Hobbes: Leviathan, idea that men were at war against eachother, so society established a social contract to prevent men from killing one another
Bacon: truth requires evidence from the real world to be revealed
Locke: idea that human knowlegde comes from experience by sensis (empirism)
NEW LIFE OF DRAMA: thanks to Restoration, was inaugurated a new chapter of freedom ⇒ REOPENING OF THEATRES
- theatre now is a form of art appreciated by a limited group of people (upple class)
WILLIAM CONGREVE: best playwright of his age
- roofed building
- mise-en-scine more refined,
intimate so realistic
- advent of female actors
new genre: COMEDIES OF MANNERS, because they centred around the manners (modes and morals) of the upper class
(more refined)
THEMES: love and marriage > plot: actions of a couple of lovers who struggle and finally get married
WIT, use language in a tricky and clever way to hide truth, quickness of thought
Aristocracy under the lenses of butter criticism: vivd portrait of the city of London
Age of Milton: he was a fervant Puritan, whose works express his religious values and political views
Main achievement: Paradise Lost, an epic poem, tells the story of man's disobedince to God in Heaven (≡ rebellion of Satan, real hero for Milton)
Metaphysical poets: devoted themselves to the exploration of universal and philosofical concepts
It's expressed their sense of dissatisfaction and confusion deriving from the crisis of the Elisabethan Age
Style: complex, difficult metaphors, drew inspiration from astronomy, medicine, geography
Main themes: love and religion; man and God
DIARIES: both as a private record and as a depository of memories
Samuel Pepys: detailed account of the everyday life of a 17th-century Londoner
FICTIONAL PROSE: Oroonoko or The Royal Slave, expression of anti-colonialism and abolitionist themes
POLITICAL SPECHEES: ex. Cromwell's speech