Tuesday 13 November 2012

The Commonwealth & The Protectorate period


The Commonwealth & The Protectorate period

The English Civil War of the mid-17th Century was part of a wider series of conflicts that spanned the entire British Isles, involving Scotland and Ireland as well as England and Wales. Also called "The Great Rebellion", "The English Revolution" and "The Wars of the Three Kingdoms", the British Civil Wars and Commonwealth period witnessed the trial and execution of a king, the formation of a republic in England, a theocracy in Scotland and the subjugation of Ireland. The first attempt was made to unite the three nations under a single government, and the foundations of the modern British constitution were laid.
From the signing of the Scottish National Covenant of 1638 to the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, this site explores the turmoil of the Civil Wars and Interregnum, and the constitutional experiments of the Commonwealth and Protectorate period of the 1650s.
Restoration literature

English literature written after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 following the period of the Commonwealth. Some literary historians speak of the period as bounded by the reign of Charles II (1660–85), while others prefer to include within its scope the writings produced during the reign of James II (1685–88), and even literature of the 1690s is often spoken of as “Restoration.” By that time, however, the reign of William III and Mary II (1689–1702) had begun, and the ethos of courtly and urban fashion was as a result sober, Protestant, and even pious, in contrast to the sexually and intellectually libertine spirit of court life under Charles II. Many typical literary forms of the modern world—including the novel, biography, history, travel writing, and journalism—gained confidence during the Restoration period, when new scientific discoveries and philosophical concepts as well as new social and economic conditions came into play. There was a great outpouring of pamphlet literature, too, much of it politico-religious, while John Bunyan’s great allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, also belongs to this period. Much of the best poetry, notably that of John Dryden (the great literary figure of his time, in both poetry and prose), the earl of Rochester, Samuel Butler, and John Oldham, was satirical and led directly to the later achievements of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Gay in the Augustan Age. The Restoration period was, above all, a great age of drama. Heroic plays, influenced by principles of French Neoclassicism, enjoyed a vogue, but the age is chiefly remembered for its glittering, critical comedies of manners by such playwrights as George Etherege, William Wycherley, Sir John Vanbrugh, and William Congreve.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Check it out

On the way forward a struggle of Pakistani English Literature and TEFL student.
Still on the go.

Popular Posts

Followers