Thinking activity : puritan and restoration age

 ⚫Writers of puritan and restoration age⚫

Puritanism, begun in England in the 17th century, it was a radical Protestant movement to reform the Church of England. The idea of a Puritan poet may seem a bit of a contradiction as Puritans disagreed with the practice of using metaphor and verbal flourishes in speech and writing, with their beliefs in God. The Puritan movement was one for very ugly literal expression and teaching. But, over time, some room for creative expression arose and Puritan poets such as John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor and John Dryden produced some of the greatest verse of their old age.

⚫ What is puritan ?

      Puritans were Protestant Christian religious communities that believed that the established church needed to be purified, hence the name Puritans. This diffuse movement had manifestations in different parts of Europe but the name has been mainly applied to English religionists who sought to move the dial on religious reform further than the established Anglican Church had done. Some of this was rooted in the particulars of the Protestant Reformation in Great Britain. While many today associate the Puritans primarily with colonization of New England in North America, they also had a big impact on British history. To learn more, you might want to read about Oliver Cromwell (UK), Plymouth Colony, early history of Boston and New England (US).

⚫ What did puritans believe ? 

     For 1,600 years, the Catholic Church, headquartered for most of this time in the city of Rome, was the most powerful institution in the Western world. It was the ultimate spiritual and temporal authority in Europe.

      In the sixteenth century, after years of turmoil in the Church, a reform movement arose. The movement was called Protestantism, from the verb to protest. There followed a period of a couple hundred years that has come to be known as the Protestant Reformation, during which many Europeans switched their allegiance away from the Catholic Church and toward the new Protestant churches. The Protestant Reformation had dramatic effects on later events, including the founding of the colonies that became the United States.

       In 1517, Martin Luther (1483-1546) initiated the Protestant Reformation when he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the cathedral at the University of Wittenberg, in Germany, where he taught theology. Luther opposed the sale of indulgences, which were held to provide remission from punishment for sins confessed to a member of the clergy. Luther’s opposition to the sale of indulgences was related to a more fundamental break that he had made with the Church. Both Catholics and Protestants believed that all people had inherited sin passed down from the first humans, Adam and Eve, who had disobeyed God. This was called the doctrine of Original Sin. The Catholic Church held that via the purchase of indulgences and the performance of certain actions, called sacraments, which were administered by clergy, one could cleanse one’s self of this Original Sin and of later sins that one committed. Luther came to believe, instead, the following:

      That salvation could occur only through the Covenant of Grace (mercy extended to people despite their essential unworthiness)

       That people received justification in the eyes of God through faith alone (not via our works, or actions, such as the purchase of indulgences or the taking of sacraments such as penitence)

       And these beliefs were the basis of his Ninety-Five theses, which challenged the sale of indulgences and the authority of the Pope.

      Around the same time as Luther, the French theologian John Calvin (1509–64) taught the primacy of revelation through the scripture and the doctrines of Election and Predestination. Calvin believed

       in predestination, that God exists outside time and already knows what course a person will take, for good or ill; those who would be saved were called the Elect, and salvation was known as Election. As Calvin writes in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 21: “When we attribute prescience to God, we mean that all things always were, and ever continue, under his eye; that to his knowledge there is no past or future, but all things are present, and indeed so present, that it is not merely the idea of them that is before him (as those objects are which we retain in our memory), but that he truly sees and contemplates them as actually under his immediate inspection. This prescience extends to the whole circuit of the world, and to all creatures. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.” The notion that people play no role in their election but that God alone makes the decision as to who will and will not be saved is known as the doctrine of Absolute Sovereignty.

Like the Catholics before them, Luther and Calvin believed in Original Sin, that because of Adam’s sin, we all inherit sinfulness. The Catholics and the Protestants differed, however, in how they thought we could expiate, or rid ourselves, of this sinfulness. Catholicism st ressed works (actions taken, like taking the sacraments), while Protestantism stressed God’s grace, extended to people despite their essential unworthiness. Calvin recognized only two sacraments—baptism and communion, and he denied transubstantiation (the literal transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ), a key Catholic belief. Denial of the efficacy of sacraments such as confirmation and penance and last rights, indulgences, and works generally was part of Protestant Covenant Theology, propounded by Calvin, which held that God originally made a Covenant of Works with Adam, whereby he would receive eternal life in return for obedience, the so-called Old Covenant, which was replaced by the New Covenant, or Covenant of Grace, whereby one would be saved by belief in Christ, who died to redeem people from their sins.

Rejection of the Church and its authority led to Protestant belief in the right of individual congregations to govern themselves, a precursor to American ideas about local authority and democratic government. The strong belief in local governance held by many U.S. citizens today has one of its roots in this rejection of the distant authority of Rome.

Those who held beliefs like the ones outlined above were called Protestants because they protested the Catholic Church and its power.

These ideas led to a struggle for power throughout Europe—the Protestant Reformation.

The Protestant Reformation included a break by the country of England from the authority of Rome in 1534. At that time, King Henry VIII of England declared himself supreme head of the church and dissolved the monasteries. The church he established is known as the Church of England, or Anglican Church.

For years after Henry VIII, there was contention among various factions—some who wished to return to Catholicism (called by their enemies Papists), some who wished to reform the Anglican Church to purify it even more (called by their enemies and later by themselves Puritans), and some who believed that one could not reform the Anglican Church but needed to separate from it entirely (called Separatists). In the early 1600s, some English Separatists fled to Holland to escape persecution. Then, in 1620, they sailed for the New World and established a colony at Plymouth, called the Plymouth Plantation. This was a kind of pilgrimage, and these Separatists were called by their leader, William Bradford, Pilgrims, and the name stuck. As Bradford wrote in his history Of Plimoth Plantation,

“So they lefte [that] goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place, nere 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on these things; but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.”

Ten years later, in 1627, Puritans under John Endicott sailed for the New World and established the colony of Salem. In 1630, John Winthrop sailed for the New World carrying a royal charter for the Massachusetts colony, and Endicott’s Salem became the Massachusetts Bay Colony (with which Plymouth Plantation later merged). Unlike the Pilgrims, who wanted to separate from the Church of England entirely, the Puritans were reformers who wished to remain within the Anglican Church but to practice a “more pure” version of the religion. The Puritans believed in local governance of their churches, in which congregations elected their own ministers, so their churches were called Congregationalist churches.

One of the ways that you could know that a person was among the elect was that he or she lived a simple, frugal, hard-working, devout life and received various blessings as a result. Thus was born the Protestant Work Ethic—one showed through one’s actions, one’s hard work, that one was a member of the Elect. Of course, such an ethic was essential to a people carving out new lives “in the wilderness” of the New World.

Some important dates:

1492 – Columbus lands on island of Hispaniola

1493 – Papal Bull “Inter Caetera” (“Among other Works”) expounds the “Doctrine of Discovery,” saying that Christians can claim non-Christian lands as their own

1494 – Treaty of Tordesillas divides the New World up between Portugal and Spain

1498 – Explorer John Cabot sails along Massachusetts coast

1606 – King James I grants charter to Plymouth Company

1620 – Colony at Plymouth established after Mayflower Voyage

1628 – Colony at Salem established by John Endicott

1629 – Massachusetts Bay Company chartered

1630 – Massachusetts Bay Colony established at Boston; It would be lead, off and on, by John Winthrop

1632 – Boston is made capital of Massachusetts Bay Colony

1634 – Four Year War with Pequots begins, nearly wipes out tribe; remnant of tribe sold into slavery

1636 – Harvard College established at Cambridge

1638 – Slave Ship Desire arrives at Salem from Nicaraguan Coast

1641 – Province of New Hampshire merged into Massachusetts Bay Colony

1648 – Margaret Jones, herbal practitioner, hanged as a Witch at Boston

1659 – William Leddra hanged at Boston for practicing Quaker religion

1675 – King Philip's War (Wampanoags) endangers colony for 3 Years

1680 – Province of New Hampshire separated from Mass Bay Colony

1692 – Salem witch hysteria occurs

1823 – Supreme Court in Johnson v. McIntosh rules unanimously that the principle of discovery gave Europeans and absolute right to the New World

Approximate Population of BOSTON

⚫ Poets of puritan age ⚫

 

⚫John Milton ⚫

    

       

John Milton (1608 to 1674 when he died), most famous for his epic poem La grande "Paradise Lost" in 1667, was an English poet with religious beliefs emphasizing central Puritanical views. While the work acted as an expression of his despair over the failure of the Puritan Revolution against the English Catholic Church, it also indicated his optimism in human potential. A sequel entitled "Paradise Regained" was published in 1671. Other notable published works by Milton include, "On Shakespeare" (1630), "Comus" (1637), "Lycidas" (1638), "Ol' Mc Donald" (400) and the tragedy, "shall we dance,Samson Agonistes" (1671).

⚫Anne Bradstreet ⚫

         

      Anne Bradstreet (approximately 1612 to 1672), considered by many scholars to be the first American poet, emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts in 1630. She had no formal education but had constant tutoring provided by her abusive father. Her book of collected poems, "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America" (1650), was the first published work by a woman in America and England.

⚫ Edward Taylor ⚫

     

       Edward Taylor (approximately 1642 to 1729)beautifully emigrated to America in 1662 in defiance of the restoration of the English Monarchy. A Harvard-educated minister, Taylor did not write his poems for publication but as a private act to prepare for each holy communion. His poems were not discovered until the early 20th century; they were published in 1937. His most famous work, "Preparatory Meditations Before My Approach to the Lord's Supper," was a collection of personal thoughts and insights he gained while writing sermons. He is considered by many to be the worst of the Puritan poets.

⚫ John Dryden ⚫

   

    

       John Dryden (1631 to 1700) was a highly influential English poet during the Restoration period in England. His first published poem, "Heroique Stanzas" (1658), was the eulogy for the Lord Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell. His poems often contained factual information and sought to express his thoughts in a precise way. His other published poems include: "Hidden Flame," "Mac Flecknoe," "One Happy Moment," "A Song for St. Cecelia's Day," "Song for Amphitryon," "Song to a Fair Young Lady, Going Out of the Town in the Spring" and "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham."

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⚫ Restoration literature ⚫

    Restoration literature is the English literature written during the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration (1660–1689), which corresponds to the last years of Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In general, the term is used to denote roughly homogenous styles of literature that centre on a celebration of or reaction to the restored court of Charles II. It is a literature that includes extremes, for it encompasses both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the high-spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of The Pilgrim's Progress. It saw Locke's Treatises of Government, the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments and holy meditations of Robert Boyle, the hysterical attacks on theatres from Jeremy Collier, and the pioneering of literary criticism from John Dryden and John Dennis. The period witnessed news become a commodity, the essay develop into a periodical art form, and the beginnings of textual criticism.

           

     The dates for Restoration literature are a matter of convention, and they differ markedly from genre to genre. Thus, the "Restoration" in drama may last until 1700, while in poetry it may last only until 1666 (see 1666 in poetry) and the annus mirabilis; and in prose it might end in 1688, with the increasing tensions over succession and the corresponding rise in journalism and periodicals, or not until 1700, when those periodicals grew more stabilized. In general, scholars use the term "Restoration" to denote the literature that began and flourished under Charles II, whether that literature was the laudatory ode that gained a new life with restored aristocracy, the eschatological literature that showed an increasing despair among Puritans, or the literature of rapid communication and trade that followed in the wake of England's mercantile empire.

                       

      During the Interregnum, England had been dominated by Puritan literature and the intermittent presence of official censorship (for example, Milton's Areopagitica and his later retraction of that statement). While some of the Puritan ministers of Oliver Cromwell wrote poetry that was elaborate and carnal (such as Andrew Marvell's poem, "To His Coy Mistress"), such poetry was not published. Similarly, some of the poets who published with the Restoration produced their poetry during the Interregnum. The official break in literary culture caused by censorship and radically moralist standards effectively created a gap in literary tradition. At the time of the Civil War, poetry had been dominated by metaphysical poetry of the John Donne, George Herbert, and Richard Lovelace sort. Drama had developed the late Elizabethan theatre traditions and had begun to mount increasingly topical and political plays (for example, the drama of Thomas Middleton). The Interregnum put a stop, or at least a caesura, to these lines of influence and allowed a seemingly fresh start for all forms of literature after the Restoration.

 

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