PURITAN AGE :

The Puritan Age

The period between 1625 and 1675 is known as the "Puritan Age (or John Milton's Age)", because during the period, Puritan standards prevailed in England, and also because the greatest literary figure John Milton (1608-1674) was a Puritan. The Puritans struggled for righteousness and liberty. 

Puritanism became a great national movement which included English Churchman as well as extreme Separatists. While the Catholic Church had always held true to the ideal of the united church, the possibility of the ideal of a purely national Protestantism grew. 

The political upheaval of the period is summed up in the struggle between the King and the Parliament, the blasphemy of a man's divine right to rule his fellowmen was ended. Thus the age marked the beginning of the reformation. 

In literature also, the age created a sort of confusion due to breaking up of old ideas. Some of the literary men had the tendencies to look backward for the old golden age, and some wanted to look forward for a better world with the throbs of hope and fresh vitality and youth. And in John Milton, the indomitable Puritan spirit finds its noblest expression. There was Samuel Daniel, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Robert Herick, Sir John Suckling, Sir Richard Lovelace, John Bunyan, Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, Izaak Walton among other important writers of the age. 

Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" , his sonnets and other works; Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress", and "Faerie Queene", Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", Browne's "Religio Medici", Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying", and Walton's "Complete Angler" are known as remarkable works of the age.

The Puritan AgeBack

The Restoration Period

During 1660-1700, there were tremendous social reactions from the restraint of parliament. A wild delight in the pleasures and varieties of the world like performances of dramas and theaters, the revival of bull and bear baiting, sports, music, dancing etc. replaced the absorption in other "other-worldliness",. The writers turned from Italian influence of imagination to French objective repression of emotions. 

The greatest literary figure of the Restoration period is John Dryden (1631-1700) whose book provides an excellent reflection of both good and evil tendencies of age. He is best known for his narrative poem "Annus Mirabilis", "All for love", "Religio Laici", "A'eneid", "Fables" etc. 

Samuel Butler, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke were among others prominent writers of the age. Butler's "Hudibras", Hobbe's "Leviathan", Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" etc. add glory to the literature of the age.