Restoration

Three Main Branches of Christianity:
• Catholicism
• Protestantism
• Eastern Orthodox
Protestantism
• Martin Luther (1517)
• Widespread due to printing press
• desire to return Catholic Church to its purer ways
• Many denominations, many differences
Catholic Beliefs:
• good works + faith = salvation
• seven sacraments (vital to salvation)
• Eucharist (Communion)
• Church is essential to the mediation of God's love and grace to the world
• Priests cannot marry
• Belief in the Trinity
• Purgatory
• Ritual in services
Protestant Beliefs
• Salvation obtained through faith in Christ alone, not works
• Bible = truth. Church not needed to interpret it
• “Priesthood of all believers:” all people have access to God, not just clergy
• Services stress Biblical preaching
• Generally, reject clerical celibacy
Tudor Dynasty (118 years):
• Henry VII (ruled 1485–1509)
• Henry VIII (ruled 1509–1547)
• Edward VI (ruled 1547–1553)
• Mary I (ruled 1553–1558)
• Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603)
Stuart Dynasty
• James I (ruled 1603–1625)
• Charles I (ruled 1625–49)
Oliver Cromwell ( ruled 1649 and 1660)
• Charles II (ruled 1660–85)
• James II (ruled 1685–88)
• Mary II (ruled 1689–94)+her husband William III (ruled 1689–1702)
• Anne (ruled 1702–14).
Restoration (1660-1700)
Historical Background
• Restoration of the monarchy –Charles II (1660)
• James I translation of Bible
• Glorious Revolution–James II deposed, William and Mary share the English
throne (1688)
• The rise of two political parties: Whigs and the Tories
• Bill of Rights–limits crown, affirms supremacy of Parliament (1689)
• Toleration Act–religious freedom for dissenters (1689)
• Act of Union–England and Scotland for Great Britain (1707)
Philosophical Background
• Enlightenment was an intellectual movement.
• Enlightenment thinkers applied science and reason to society’s problems.
• They believed that all people were created equal.
• Education should be available to all
• They wanted to take power away from the monarchs and the church and
give it to the ordinary people.
• a conflict between established religion and the inquiring mind (evidence
and proof)
• The goals of rational humans were knowledge, freedom, and happiness.
• Sir Isaac Newton, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. They were inspired by17th century thinkers such as John Locke,
Francis Bacon, Pierre Bayle, Benedict de Spinoza and Rene Descartes.
Religious Background
• Deism, “the religion of nature” is the belief that a higher being
(like the Christian God) exists. God created the world, but then left
it to operate under the natural laws devised by God.
• The only revelation of God is in nature and reason, not in sacred
books or prophets.
• People should rely on logic and reason, and not traditions of
a religion that is based on a holy book.
• They usually reject supernatural events like miracles and prophets.
• By the late 18th century, deism was the dominant religious attitude
among Europe’s educated classes.
• It began with Edward Herbert in the first half of the 17th century
Cultural and literary Background
• Neoclassicism was a cultural movement in sculpture, painting,
architecture, literature, and music. It is a revival of the many styles and
spirit of the classical period.
• Painting: use of straight lines, minimal use of color, simplicity of form and,
of course, an adherence to classical values and techniques.
• Architecture: grandeur of scale, simplicity of geometric forms, symmetry,
use of columns, and a preference for blank walls.
Neo-Classical Literature
• It is divided into three periods:
✓ the Restoration Age (1660-1700):Milton, Bunyan, and Dryden
✓ the Augustan Age (1700-1750): Pope, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding
✓ the Age of Johnson (1750-1798)
• Imitation of the classics

• Importance of Reason
• Rules and literary conventions
• Aristocracy and urban society
• Human nature
• The age of satire
• Human as a social creature
• Style: symmetry, restraint, and order
• unemotional telling of events
• refinement, good taste, and correctness
• Poetry: heroic couplet
• Theater: comedy of manners
• Emergence of the novel
John Dryden
1631-1700
• A great English poet, dramatist, translator, and
literary critic
• He dominated the literary scene of his day to such a
point that the period came to be known as the Age
of Dryden.
• The son of a country gentleman, Dryden grew up in
the country.
• Dryden was admitted to Westminster School, where
he received a classical education.
• In 1650 he entered Cambridge.
• In 1668, Dryden was appointed poet laureate.
• His first important poem, Heroic Stanzas (1659): a
eulogy on Cromwell's death
His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;
His name a great example stands to show
How strangely high endeavours may be blessed
Where piety and valour jointly go.
• When in 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne,

Dryden joined the poets of the day in welcoming
him with two poems: Astraea Redux and To His
Sacred Majesty.
Yet when the flood in its own depths was drown’d,
It left behind it false and slipp'ry ground,
Thus (Royall Sir,) to see you landed here
Was cause enough of triumph for a year:
Till your kind beams by their continu'd stay
Had warm'd the ground and call'd the Damps away.
• Dryden’s longest poem, Annus Mirabilis
(1667), was a celebration of two victories by
the English fleet over the Dutch and the
Londoners’ survival of the Great Fire of
1666.
• Dryden’s great verse satire: Mac Flecknoe (1682), an
attack on Thomas Shadwell, another prominent
poet of the time. The poem illustrates Shadwell as
the heir to a kingdom of poetic dullness, represented
by his association with Richard Flecknoe, an earlier
poet already satirized by Andrew Marvell and
disliked by Dryden. This poem demonstrates
Dryden’s mastery over the mock-heroic style.
All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.
• His political satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681) contains
several brilliant satiric portraits.
• His famous odes Alexander’s Feast and A Song for St. Cecilia’s
Day.
• Dryden converted to Catholicism simultaneously with the

accession of the Roman Catholic king James II in 1685. Then, he
wrote the poem The Hind and the Panther (1687) after his
conversion. When the Catholic King James II was deposed in
1688, Dryden lost his position as poet laureate and suffered all
the penalties imposed against Catholics by the new king.
Alexander's Feast
or The Power of Music
or
The work describes a banquet held by Alexander the Great and his mistress Thaïs in
the captured Persian city of Persepolis, during which the musician Temotheus sings
and plays his lyre, arousing various moods in Alexander until he is finally incited to
burn the city down in revenge for his dead Greek soldiers.
Drama
• Unity of time, place, and action
• His Restoration comedy: Marriage A-la-Mode (1671)
• His Heroic tragedies: The Conquest of Granada (1671) and All for Love (1677)
Essay
• An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (the father of literary criticism in England)

Restoration

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Three Main Branches of Christianity:

• Imitation of the classics

• When in 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne,

• Dryden converted to Catholicism simultaneously with the

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