For Education Purpose

1. Selected Poets
of Puritan Age

2. Introduction
Name: Bhavyata Kukadiya
Roll No: 5
Paper No: 105
Paper Code: 22396
Paper Name: History of English Literature
Topic Name: Selected Poets of Puritan Age
Submitted To: Smt. S. B. Gardi, Department of English
Email Id: bhavyatakukadiya@gmail.com

3. Table of contents
02
04
01
John Milton
Edward Taylor
05
Anne Bradstreet
Introduction to
Puritan Age
03
Puritan Poetry

4. Introduction to
Puritan Age
● Puritanism was a religious reformation movement that began in
England in the late 1500s. Its initial goal was removing any
remaining links to Catholicism within the Church of England after
its separation from the Catholic Church. To do this, Puritans sought
to change the structure and ceremonies of the church.
● Puritanism first emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries in England
as a movement to remove all vestiges of Catholicism from the
Anglican Church.

5. ● The Anglican Church first separated from
Catholicism in 1534, but when Queen Mary took
the throne in 1553, she reverted it to Catholicism.
Under Mary, many Puritans faced exile.
● This threat and the increasing prevalence of
Calvinism—which provided support for their
viewpoint—further strengthened Puritan beliefs.
● In 1558, Queen Elizabeth took the throne and
reestablished the separation from Catholicism,
but not thoroughly enough for the Puritans.
(Sember)

6. Poetry
● In literature also the Puritan Age was one of confusion, due to the
breaking up of old ideals.
● Mediaeval standards of chivalry, the impossible loves and
romances of which Spenser furnished the types, perished no less
surely than the ideal of a national church; and in the absence of
any fixed standard of literary criticism there was nothing to prevent
the exaggeration of the "metaphysical" poets, who are the literary
parallels to religious sects like the Anabaptists.
● Poetry took new and startling forms 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, and which is unjustly attributed to Puritan influence, is due
to the breaking up of accepted standards in government and
religion. No people, from the Greeks to those of our own day, have
suffered the loss of old ideals without causing its writers to cry,
"Ichabod! the glory has departed." (Long)

7. John Milton ● John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November
1674)
● As a young man, Milton believed that God has
determined his destiny to be an epic poet in
the future.
● So, influenced by such a religious conception,
he had been thinking about composing the
greatest epic poem in English.
● According to Bremer (2009) “Nonconformity
still had an influence on the nation’s politics
and culture, however, and the following
decades saw some of the major puritan
contributions to literature. (Mahmoudi)

8. ● Milton wrote poetry and prose
between 1632 and 1674, and is
most famous for his epic poetry.
● Special Collections and Archives
holds a variety of Milton's major
works, including Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained, L'Allegro, and
Il Penseroso.
● Paradise Lost is one of the most
recognized works in English
literature
Milton's Famous Works

9. ● AS A PURITAN MINISTER WRITING POETRY , EDWARD TAYLOR
RELENTLESSLY searched his interior self and explored
external reality to discover the truth about God's
creation , so that , as a Puritan poet , he could properly
glorify God .
● In Taylor's terms , he had only one subject : " To Prove
thou art , and that thou art the best / And shew thy
Properties to shine most bright . " His quest and his
concentration on that one subject resulted in a
meditative poetry through which he discovered and
expressed the religious and philosophical truths of the
Puritan world . Even though his poetry glorifies God by
making His properties shine , it explores an important
second dimension , as well , which gives it a significance
beyond the historical and religious .
● Taylor's poetry becomes a poetry of human experience
and emotion , as he dramatizes the Puritan man's
response to his world and to his knowledge of God .
Edward
Taylor

10. Famous works of Edward Taylor
● The Ebb and Flow.
● Huswifery.
● I am the Living Bread: Meditation Eight: John 6:51.
● The Preface.
● Upon a Spider Catching a Fly.
● Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children.

11. Anne Bradstreet
● Anne Bradstreet was the first woman to be
recognized as an accomplished New World
Poet. Her volume of poetry The Tenth Muse
Lately Sprung Up in America ... received
considerable favorable attention when it
was first published in London in 1650.
● Eight years after it appeared it was listed by
William London in his Catalogue of the Most
Vendible Books in England, and George III is
reported to have had the volume in his
library.
● Bradstreet's work has endured, and she is
still considered to be one of the most
important early American poets. (Bradstreet
and Marks)

12. ● Bradstreet's earliest extant poem, "Upon a Fit of Sickness, Anno.
1632," written in Newtown when she was 19, outlines the traditional
concerns of the Puritan—the brevity of life, the certainty of death,
and the hope for salvation:
O Bubble blast, how long can'st last?
That always art a breaking,
No sooner blown, but dead and gone,
Ev'n as a word that's speaking.
O whil'st I live, this grace me give,
I doing good may be,
Then death's arrest I shall count best,
because it's thy decree.
(Bradstreet and Marks)

13. Works Cited
Bradstreet, Anne, and Laura Marks. “Anne Bradstreet.” Poetry Foundation,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-bradstreet. Accessed 19 October 2022.
Carlisle, E. F. “The Puritan Structure of Edward Taylor’s Poetry.” American Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 2, 1968,
pp. 147–63. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2711028. Accessed 18 Oct. 2022.
Long, William j. “English Literature.” Gutenburg, 1 January 2004,
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10609/pg10609-images.html#chap7a. Accessed 19
October 2022.
Mahmoudi, Yazdan. “The Ideology of Puritanism in John Milton's Paradise Lost International Journal of
Applied Linguistics & English Literatur.” AIAC Journals, 1 July 2018,
http://www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJALEL/article/viewFile/4447/3450. Accessed 19 October
2022.
“Puritan Literature | Characteristics, Writers & Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript.” Study.com, 25
May 2022, https://study.com/learn/lesson/puritan-literature-characteristics-writers-examples.html.
Accessed 19 October 2022.
Sember, Brette. “An Introduction to Puritanism.” ThoughtCo, 24 November 2019,
https://www.thoughtco.com/puritanism-definition-4146602. Accessed 19 October 2022.

14. Thank
You