This document provides an overview of English literature and drama in the 17th century. It describes the political, religious and social transitions of the time including the rise of Puritanism. For drama, it outlines the major playwrights after Shakespeare like Jonson, Fletcher, and Webster and notes the closing of theaters in 1642. It also summarizes the major prose writers like Bacon, Raleigh and Browne and metaphysical poets like Donne, Herbert and Vaughan who were influential in this period.

1. XVII CENTURY

2. Age of transition
• King vs liberal parliamentarian government
• Established Church vs liberal Church
government
• Cavaliers vs Puritans
Tories vs. Wigs

3. Literature
• Renaissance was over
• Consolidation, introspection and
examination of human values

4. DRAMA
PROSE
LYRICAL POETRY

5. THE DRAMA AFTER SHAKESPEARE
(1603-1660)
• BEN JONSON (1573 – 1637)
• Translator, scholar, critic, classicist and
realist (comedy of manners).
• Comedies: The Silent Woman, The
Alchemist, Valpone, Bartholomew Fair
• JOHN FLETCHER (1584-1616) &
FRANCIS BEAUMONT (1579-1635)
• Philaster and The Maid’s Tragedy

6. • THOMAS DEKKER (1573 – 1632)
• The Shoemaker’s holiday
• THOMAS HEYWOOD (1570 – 1641)
• Dramatic journalist
• A woman killed with Kindness (1603), The Fair
Maid of the West (1610), Love’s Mistress (1636)
and The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1604)
• THOMAS MIDDLETON (1570 – 1627)
• Lawyer-playwrighter
• Combined comic prose with serious blank verse
• Michaelmas Term (1606), The Changeling (1622)
and Women Beware Women (1621)

7. • JOHN WEBSTER (1575 – 1625)
• Tragedies of blood: The White Devil (1612) and
The Dutchess of Malfi (1614)
• JOHN FORD (1586 – 1640)
• Excellence of the structure and use of the blank
verse
• Morbid and melancholic
• The Broken Heart (1633) and ‘Tis Pity She’s a
Whore (1627)
• PHILIP MASSINGER (1583 – 1640)
• Puritan
• A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1625).
• JAMES SHIRLEY (1596 – 1666)
• Imitative, precious, and uninspired.
• Hyde Park (1637)

8. Closing of the theatres
• Actors vs. Puritans
• 1575: no theatres within the city
• 1603 (James I): from the theatres to the court
• 1642: closing of theatres
• 1649: closing of the court (O. Cromwell)

9. THE AGE OF PROSE
FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
• Reign of James I: Lord Chancellor, Viscount St. Albans
• Accused of corruption charges he retires to his country estate
(study of science and philosophy)
• The Instauratio Magna, Novum Organum
• Beginnings of inductive reasoning
• The New Atlantis: Utopia ruled by study and experimentation
• Essays or Council Civil and Moral (1597 and 1625)
• Compact, economical, and pithy style.

10. • Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618):
– The History of The World
• Lord Clarendon (1609-1674):
– History of the Rebellion
• Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682):
– Vulgar Errors (1646), Religio Medici (1642),
Hydiotaphia (1658)
– Style: funeral, grand and solemn
– Heavy language and phrases coined from the Latin
and Greek
• Robert Burton (1577 – 1641):
– The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

11. • Izzak Walton (1593 – 1683):
–The Complete Angler (1653) and Lives
• Jeremy Taylor (1593 – 1667):
–Pastoral writings: Holy Living (1650) and Holy
Dying (1651).
• Thomas Fuller (1608 – 1661):
–Holy State and The Profane State (1642)
• The Authorized Bible (1611):
–Beauty of language
–Elizabethan and Shakespearean style

12. LYRICAL POETRY
• Religious lyrics: George Herbert, Richard Crashaw,
Henry Vaughan Robert Herrick and John Donne
• Cavalier Lyrics: Thomas Carew, Richars Lovelance and
Sir John Suckling.
• Metaphysical Lyrics: John Donne
• Classicist Lyrics: Ben Jonson
• The Formalists or Pre-Augustans: Sir William Davenant,
Sir John Denham, Abraham Cowley, Edmund Waller and
Andrew Marvell.

13. • JOHN DONNE (1573 – 1631)
– His Songs ans Sonnets and Divine Poems (1633)
– Classical in form (satires, epistles and elegies)
– Unusual lyrical forms
– Frank, realistic and cynical
• GEORGE HERBERT (1593 – 1632)
– The Temple (1633)
– A priest to the Temple (1652)
– Use of conceits, direct and familiar phrasing
• RICHARD CRASHAW (1612 – 1649)
– Steps to the Temple (1642) - secular and religious subjets.
– Diffuseness and unevenness; rich in affective imagery.
• HENRY VAUGHAN (1621 – 1695)
– Silex Scintillans (1650) - religion and nature.
– uneven and obscure

14. THE SCHOOL OF SPENCER
– Modification of the Spencerian stanza for narrative poetry
– Figures of speech (personification)
– Pastorals
• Gilbert Fletcher (1588 – 1623)
– Christ’s Victory and Triumph on Earth and in Heaven (1610)
• Phineas Fletcher (1582 – 1650):
– The Piscatory Eclogues and The Purple Island
• William Browne (1590 - 1645):
– Britannia’s Pastorals
• George Wither (1588 – 1667):
– Pastoral
– Style: spontaneous and diffuse
– The Shepard’s Hunting (1615), Fidelia (1615), Fair Virtue:
The Mistress of Philarete (1622) and “Sall I, Wasting in
Despair

15. • ROBERT HERRICK (1591 – 1674)
– Hesperides and Noble Numbers (1648)
THE CAVALIER POETS
• Thomas Carrew (1595 – 1639):
– Mixture of genuine beauty and dignity, with occasional
licentiousness.
– Influenced by both Ben Jonson and John Donne.
– Coelum Britannicum (1634)
• Richard Lovelance (1618 -1657):
– To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars and To Althea, from
Prison
• Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642)

16. THE RESTORATION
(1660-1700)
•Introduced a century of realism
•Tories and Whigs
•Conservatism and moderation

17. Restoration Literature
• Largely politics-oriented
• Guideline provided by French literary taste
• Order and discipline
• Heroic couplet  two pentameter lines
connected by rhyme

18. John Bunyan (1628-1688)
• Grace Abounding (1665)
• Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)
• The Holy War (1682)

19. John Dryden (1631-1700)
• Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
• Religio Laici (1682)
• Favored the modern sentence (lean,
muscular, and relatively short)

20. • Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Hudibras (1663)
• Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
Diary (1660-1669)
• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Leviathan (1651)

21. John Locke (1632-1704)
• Two Treatises of Government (1690)
• Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690)