- There was a great turning awayfrom religion as primary way of life.
- People had been caught up inreligious schism and sometimes outright warfare from 1534, the year HenryVIII split away from the Catholic church, until the Glorious Revolutionof 1589. England now turned its attention to politics and scientific/logicalanalysis & reason.
- belief had been based on authority;restoration brought the scientific method.
- scientific method - beliefsshould be proven through repeated experiments. Until now, one wasto trust the pronouncements of some authority. In religion, you acceptedthe dictates of the church; in science, you would turn to a recognizedauthority like Aristotle, Ptolemy, etc. Your own experience couldmislead you. The Wife of Bath trusted experience over authority,but she was wrong to do so. In this era, she would be right.
- Copernicus & Galileo trustedtheir own experience, their observations of the stars, over the authorityof Ptolemy. They concluded that the world circled the sun ratherthan the other way around.
Newton discovered the laws of gravity,motion, & created a new branch of mathematics - calculus.
- people wanted proof; did notwant to accept an idea as true just because some person of authority said.
- British Constitution changedwhen Charles II took the throne; he realized (unlike his father who believedin Divine Right of Kings) that Parliament ruled
- parties and political factionsbecame stable and more permanent
-Tories: King's party; conservative & Anglican
-Whigs: represented $ from rising middle class; Puritans (Protestant Revolutionhad economical effect)
Literature
- 1660-1700 Restoration Literature
- 1700-1745 The Augustan period
- 1745-1785 The Samuel Johnson period
Dryden was the main literary figure of this period.He wrote in the modes popular in that time - verse, comedy, tragedy, heroplays, ode, satire, translation, & critical essay. The styleof the time is less ornate than before, with a more plain, straightforwardapproach.
The literature of this era is "chiefly a literatureof wit, concerned with civilizatino and social relationships, and consequently,it is critical and in some degree moral or satiric" (Abrams 832).It is called the Augustan period because the golden era of Roman writingwas under the Emperor Augustus. This period tried to emulate theearlier one.
This was a period of intense prose writing.Earlier periods had tended to produce great poetry, but not great poetryso much.
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