LITERATURA INGLESA DEL RENACIMIENTO

1. HUMANISM

It was a fundamental intellectual is current in Renaissance whose two most important

exponents in England were Sr Thomas Moore and Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Thomas became the Chancellor of Elizabeth’s I father, he published Utopia. It was his
masterpiece written in latin and it was a critique of the European social, religion and
political institutions and practices, of all things known at that moment. But he wrote it from
the point of view of an imaginary society, (a dystopian one) and it was based only on
reason. What Thomas meant with his work was writing against the new Protestants
(corriente luterana desde el centro de europa) that were spreading all over Europe.

Education was a primary concern for English Humanists and it was based on the subjects
of medieval teachings. These subjects were divided into two blocks

- Trivium: Grammar, logic and rhetoric

- Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.

In the seventeenth century there is an emphasis on rhetorics and also a great interest in
classical texts coming from greek and latin ancient culture.

English humanism was also concerned with Christianity as well as with classical learning,
for example it is influenced very much the flourishing of the great universities such as
Cambridge.
For humanism the world was still considered as a chain beginning in the mineral world
followed y the living creatures and followed by the human beings. The medieval idea that
the center of the universe is the Earth is still present at this time. The main belief is that
everything has an order in the universe and that there is a correspondence among the
different creatures. What is this correspondence? The king is the sun, with all the power
and brilliance, a queen or king is the maximum element in society as the sun is for nature.
The day is similar to God, and the night represents the human instinct or the devil.

Human nature is involved in the original sin, also nature is imperfect and because there is
imperfection everywhere, the man has to control his spirit as much as posible by reason.
From this derives three ideas:

1. The idea of order in the universe, that there has to be an order in the universe,

2. The idea of the king or queen as representing worthily/wordly order. No one else.

3. That the second most important cultural movement is going to be the Protestant
Reform (Lutheranism) which came from Central Europe.

This reformation from the pointed view of those who supported it, it was a return to
pureness, that is to say a return to cleansing (cleanse), a return to the pure christianity,
cleaning the church of all of the corruption, ideology and idolatry that it had accumulated
over the centuries. The reformation believed that Jesus Christ didn’t note hierarchies,
fights or hypocrisy over power. From the point of view from Catholic church this was a
heresy. Today, in the contemporary world, it can be recognized as a major factor in the
break up of western Christendom (cristiandad), also of the secularización of society and
very recently with the identification of religion, and nationalisms

Another matter to take into account in Humanism is the birth and flourishing of the print.
Books were now cheaper, easier to make and easier to obtain. But interestingly, it was
poetry the only art that was still read in manuscripts. Elizabeth the first is an extremely
important figure at this point, she was a very good politician and at the same time she was
moderate in religious ideas. She cared about the social aspects, impressions, an example
is the portrait of the last session. But at the same time she became one of the most
significant protectors of the arts with the exercise of patronage, she was a great patron
(mecenas). As a patron she paid attention to authors and their art, she did two important
things:

1. The creation of intelectual societies

2. The creation of theaters (public and small ones)

She was so admired that she also inspired some authors. An example is the wonderful
play Summer night’s dream (el sueño de una noche de verano) by Shakespeare, in which
he shows his admiration towards everything she did. Another example is The Faerie/Fairy
Queen (la reina maga) written by Spencer.

Patronage was also a social institution of first importance, up to a point that the careers of
professional writers did not exist if it was not supported by patronage. This is so because
writing was regarded as an unimportant activity, not as a primary occupation. Writers even
considered themselves as companions, civil servants, land owners, courtiers, statements
officials but not workers of the arts. Writing was considered a social grace and simply a
past time. Among writers, dramatists were considered higher rank of work.
Elizabeth Aesthetics

Renaissance writers were, in the wrong way, quite original. But of course we can’t forget
that they didn’t think of originality as something involving opposition against the greatest
literary traditions or artistic conventions. They looked very much at classical works as
models to learn from.

Traditions:

- Homer and Virgil for epics

- Theocritus and Virgil for pastoral. For example, in Shakespeare’s work there are many
pastoral songs.

- Cicero for rhetoric

- Plautus and Terencio for comedy
- For tragedy they are based on their knowledge about Seneca. For example,
Shakespeare knew very much about Seneca, his work was influenced by him.

- Petrarch to speak about the sonnet

One of the most present features is the conceit, which is a sort of metaphor in which there
is a very strong idea of comparison. It is the nucleus of the poem, but this doesn’t mean it
is in the final conclusion, it can be in any part of the poem.

The three main themes in nearly all the poetry from the latest years of the sixteenth
century and all of the seventeenth are nature, love and art.

The instinctive element that was very present in the poetry of the Middle Ages is not going
to be here. An important rule for thus kind of poetry is the elaboration both in formal and in
language. Apart from specific cases, the “ I ”, the individual, is a representation of society.
In poetry there is a wish that all people can share political and artistic ideas. The general
idea of love in this kind of poetry has to do with the notion of change, the notion of
mutability.

The lady of the poem is usually represented as a virtuous lady, women in poems seem to
be dignified by their lovers just because of their chastity. The pain of absence, the
renunciation of love, the eternity of the feelings ( Petrarchan features) are represented all
over the poems
Quite generally women were presented unquestionable having also very much power over
their lover and chaste. The pain of absence is present, moreover, the renunciation of love
and the eternity of feelings are also very present themes.

Imagery:

- Metaphor: is a comparison of two unlikely concepts of things but never using “like” or
“as”. for example: “The creation of humanity is a glass of blessings”.

- Simile: a comparison of two unlike notions, poets use “like” or “as” quite frequently. For
example: “Creating man is like pouring talents into the earth”

- Oxymoron: a true self contradictory phrase: For example: “This is a happy sin”.

In Renaissance, to sin was to turn your back to God, and we will see in poetry. One could
not be happy away from God and that oxymoron as ideological principle is going to be
present in poetry.

- Paradox: when two truths contradict each other but are both true. For example: “When
decaying (si decaigo) more and more further is the light” (is a contradictory imagery)

2. SONNET

At the time of Renaissance, there was a rebirth of learning and poets were aware the
richness of ancient learning all throughout Western Europe. They liked to experiment with
with the kinds of poems found in the literature of Ancient Greece and Rome. However one
verse form that became very fashionable and very respectable did not come from the
culture of antiquity. In deed, the sonnet was evolved in Italy by Petrarch and was rapidly
imitated by many poets and sometimes modified in other different literatures.
The Italian/Petrarchan sonnet consisted in 14 lines which followed a very strict pattern of
two quatrains (4lines) together with two tercets (3lines). The two quatrains could only
contain two rhymes (ABBA, ABBA). The tercets contain two but sometimes three rhymes
(CDC, DCE / CDE, CDE).

English sonneteers of 16 and 17 centuries developed also a different form known as the
“Elizabethan sonnet” or “Shakespearean sonnet” with a rather freer rhyme scheme. It
consisted of ·quatrains and a final rhyming couple. (ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG).

Subsequent english poets, at the end of 17 century and more, continued to use both the
Italian and Elizabethan forms, and we are going to find that a poet adopting the Italian form
makes use of a very typical change in the direction of the thought of the poem with the
result that in the first 8 lines there is an idea developed and then follows a further line of
development or maybe an explanation of the first idea, or even an expansion of the
problem expressed in the sonnet.

The poets using the Elizabethan form will probably make a general statement (afirmación
rotunda) in the three quatrains and then they will sum up the contents pf the sonnet in the
final couple. This couple, will generally be the thought will be perhaps a moral conclusion,
not always but sometimes. It is important to realize that the sonnet is not just any poem, it
is not simplistic, such a strict form demands considerable skills in versification, and also it
lends itself to a great richness and concentration of meaning and effect.

The first sonnet was published in England in 1609 and it did not belong to Shakespeare,
it is called “the 1609 Quarto”. Why this? because of the type of the physical appearance of
the pages ii was written on. But we know that the first person who introduced the sonnet in
England was Sir Thomas Wyatt. He was the first man, and we have records from 1551,
from that moment on, the sonnet was made a fashion and it had one of it peaks in 1591
with the work “Astrophel and Stella” by Sir Philip Sydney.

Shakespeare needed some time materially, he needed materiality and sources, he

absorbed all sources and could concentrate on sonnets. It was important to have sources
and he was a very good friend of some of these writers so he absorbed all these sources
and was inspired by them.

In the “Long Love that my Thought Doth Harbour” by Sir Thomas Wyatt there is a shift in
the poem after the question in the penultimate line: “but in the field with him to love and
die?”

Just the title is pure Renaissance, “a thought harbored in my mind and not so much in my
heart”. The religious poems will become more metaphysical and willing to discuss all
aspects of things and not just beliefs. A clear statement of his faith appears in line 6 and 7.
Another example is the first and second line (“longë love is not a quick sensation, it is
something that is harbored, his love of God is possibly also a refuge”). There are two
important oxymorons in “to love and suffer” and in “to live and die”. One is a contradiction
of the other.
The main characters are God, love and himself (the poet).
2.2. SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS

Shakespeare followed conventions in his sonnets, in his works it is important “the I”, and
“I” can sometimes be the poet but also sometimes a friend or a lover, no matter if this
lover is a man or a woman, we are not absolutely sure if he was addressing them to a man
or a woman. The beloved present in Shakespeare poems has special features and that
makes us think that probably most of them are dedicated to a man lover. Many critics have
said that this is a sing of homosexuality but others have related them to a strong relation
between the poet and some patron that he could have admired very much.

In general his characters in sonnets are the poet and the beloved one, the beloved one is
a friend, - as we said before a man or a dark lady as he calls her -. And also we find two
other characters, a rival poet and the world.
Many sonnets are considered autobiographical, its true that there is a triangle in this ones,
and a friend as protagonists of a very complicated love argumentation. Even the poet
urges the friend to get married to the dark lady, she is always dark hair and not long, this
also announces new conceptions and fashion of feminine beauty, not always marble
feminine figures typical of this time but Shakespeare takes the leads and makes new
fashion.

Shakespeare sonnets were published in 1609 by a publisher called Thorpe, nut the date of
the composition is around 1590 and beyond, this isn’t very clear though. Many critics
believe that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in times of crisis because they show a
growing pessimism and also an awareness of the tragic side of life as will be shown
strongly in his late dramas.

The metric form of his sonnets is the Italian sonnets and also the English sonnets, he
was skillful as to produce both types.

The themes of his sonnets are generally about the beauty of his friend or his beloved.
Time: the passing of time, the mutability of time and also of love and also about the types
of love. We also find the presence of immortality in Shakespeare’s sonnets, but immortality
through poetry, meaning the man or the woman that understands and appreciates poetry
is more inmortal than those who are incapable of seeing it, of appreciating art. Also two
very frequent elements are nature and also fortune, fate and fortune.

His sonnets always come with an idea, and we have to think about something that is
worrying the poet for some reason. However he is not always dramatic, and for him poetry
is never allowing to be dramatic. Also when you read the first lines about his sonnets you
more or less know the end.
He follows the most frequent rhetorical devices of his time (simile, oxymoron, paradox,
conceit, metaphor…), however he also uses the “elizabethan syntax”, in which the subject
is nearly always at the end of the sentence and also it is “sugared syntax”, because it is full
of conceits. It is very witty and you have today attention because he can engañarte
muchas veces. For example:

“Let me not the marriage of true minds/

Admit impediments. Love is not love/
Which alters when it alteration finds”.
——- El amor no se bambolea porque encuentre dificultades (Epístola de san Pablo a los
Corintios).

The structure of his sonnets often reinforces the power of the metaphors that he uses,.
For example: it is very frequent that the 3 quatrains may be very well balanced and
successfully art work preparing for the conclusion of the couple. Another feature is that his
rhetorical strategy is varied, sometimes it can be imperative, as we said in the example
before, but some other times it can make an almost proverbial statement. His IMAGERY
comes from a variety of sources, for example, gardening, farming, pictorial art, navigation,
law, astrology, music (specially country dances), the Bible and domestic affairs, something
that was not typical.

The mood of his sonnets is not disappearing, the mood includes the light, pride, shame,
melancholy, disgust and fear.
As we anticipated before his sonnets were written probably in the last/final years of the
precedent century but what we know is that probably most of them would be written in 4
or 5 years and they are all united by a common theme called “Sonnet Sequence” that is
the way we study his sonnets.

- From sonnet 1 to 127, this sequence is written to the poet himself

- From 128 to 152, is the second part of the sequence, it is dedicated to a friend, a
person to whom he writes and also it is dedicated to their friendship itself as something
good, rich and valuable between themselves.

- From 153 to 154, is the third part of the sequence, this are the sonnets dedicated to the
dark lady. The only problem is we cannot know who this lady was because he never
names her. She is an anonymous lady.

This sonnet sequences are only in part autobiographical and perhaps they are poetical
missives (misivas poéticas) to the two main protectors in his life: The Earl of Southampton
and the Earl of Pembroke. (Conde de Southhampton y conde de Pembroke. )

We must also say that he had this feeling about friendship and gratitude, which is by the
way a feature of the general writer of the Renaissance. The general writer of the
renaissance embodies the personification of the value of friendship and gratitude. Reading
all the sonnets as a story, we find a plot/argument of love in which the poet advises
sometimes to his friends, other simply talks or chats with them and sometimes he talks
about deceiving. But it is thought that after his desillutions with his lover (maybe the man
or woman), then we come to the end of the sequence and we appreciate how he tries to
regain friendship, simply friendship.

The last sonnet that he wrote was (…) what we know is that from that moment on no other
sonnets appeared in his works. In comparison with Sonnet 18 we have a clear opposition
with Sonnet 73, in this sonnet and other similar ones, the poet is going to be expressing
feelings about being old, we must consider when we read Shakespeare that he was born
in 1564 and that he wrote his sonnets log 1592, 1594, that means she should be around
30 when he finished all the series. But, the friend that we know he was writing the sonnets
for was much younger than the writer, so that is the reason why in so many sonnets
Shakespeare considers himself as an old man, but there is also another reason for
considering himself old despite being only 30. This is a sociological reason, the
expectations of life in this times were about 40 or 50 years. This together with the
difference of age he considers that his friend or lover will last not very long.

As a general rule in Shakespeare the conclusion of the main idea is placed in the couplet,
a good technique for us is to divide the sonnet into the three parts that we may better
perceive the division of the poem.

QUESTIONS SONNET 18 :

- Number of lines of the poem and stanzas

The poem has 14 lines divided in three quatrains (or four stanzas) and a couplet.

- Rhyme squeme
The rhyme squeme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

- Any other observations that we are capable to capture (rhetorical devices)

- What is happening in each of the three quatrains?
- Do the poet’s thoughts shift or grow?
- Do the three quatrains build on each other? (dependen el uno del otro?)
- Does the sonnet begin with an image of the natural world?
Yes, Shakespeare is comparing his beloved with a summer’s day, also in the third line we can find
words like “rough winds”.

- What purpose does the ending couplet serve? Is it a conclusion?

The couplet is a conclusion, saying that the beauty of his beloved is inmortal, he wants to compare
his love which is so immensely felt, knowing that (…..)

- Does it refute or contradict a point made in the first twelve lines?

- Is the couplet strong? Does it provide a finality?
- What is the topic of the sonnet?
Eternal love

- Has the poet achieved a wholeness within the sonnet? How would you explain it?
The poet achieved his purpose by expressing one idea, “my love is absolutely enormous and
makes sense, it is big because….

- How does this poem fit the definition of the sonnet as a coherent packed and charged of
meaning poetic form?
It fits the definition of a sonnet,

3. JACOBEAN PERIOD, CAROLINE PERIOD AND COMMONWEALTH

The death of queen Elizabeth I in 1603 marks the beginning of this literary period. When
she died the queen was childless so a relation of her, James Stuart, succeeded her on
England’s throne and he became king James I., in Scotland he would be King James the
6th. His reign was from 1603 until 1625, this 22 years are know as the Jacobean period,
from his latin name Jacobus. After James I came Charles I and his reign was from 1625 to
1640, this period in English history and English literature is known as the Caroline period.
Today it is a feminine name, but in those times it was after his latin name Carolus.

James I was an authoritarian king who believed that kings derived their power from God
and not from people. This belief costs enormous political tensions between this king, the
Parliament and also among the common people. This tension intensified slowly throughout
his reign, and culminated in a bloody series of fights and wars that confronted the royalists
on one hand and the pro-parliamentary on the other. In fact this led to two civil wars
between 1642 and 1649.

In 1649 Charles I was executed and following this behaving the general of the
parliamentary forces called Oliver Cromwell ruled England. He said he was going to rule
as a “Commonwealth, a democratic state governed without a monarch”. Cromwell was
indeed known as Sir Protector.

Oliver Cromwell died in 1658 and his son who was called Richard ruled England briefly
and without effect, ineffectually. After two years the Parliament decided to invite king
Charle’s the first’s son to return from exile in Europe to rule England. Then there is a
Restoration of the power, of monarchical rule which will be followed by the name of
Restoration.

3.1. RESTORATION

The king was not supposed to tax people except in times of war. However, the crown was
getting poorer because of having had many wars, so the king James I thought he was
capable of issuing a Peace Treaty in 1604. That meant that the Atlantic Ocean for the first
time was a safe place for English ships and explorations. In the first years of his reign,
England was capable of establishing settlements in America. These first communities were
called Jamestown (primitive settlers in America). They also settled in the Caribbean.

In 1611 some wonderfully enormous facts took place:

1. This is the year that the first volume of poetry, written by a woman, is published. She
was called Aemilia Lanyer.
2. The east India company established England’s first comercial post in india, this
company was stablished for the first time in India.
3. In the north of England coal mines developed, in the north east drained wetlands were
yielded for the possibility to cultivate crops for the growing population of the north.
There was a rudimentary new practice of technology as a means of improving human
life. This of course was influenced by the new scientific theories that inspired also new
inventors and scientists.
4. People were arguing over many religious questions, including:
- the form of worship services
- the qualifications of ministers
- the interpretation of the gospels and the scripture in general (the bible)
- the meaning of the holy communion.
It is important to know about ordinary practices of people: old people were required to
attend church and the form of services to follow was explained for everyone in the “Book of
Common Prayer”.
Between 1580’s and the beginning of our century, a majority of catholic priests were
executed, Some historians said this was due to some Protestant religious minorities, also
Catholics, Protestants and other minorities were known for being violent. What we have
here is a big clash of what Queen Elizabeth had permitted by saying they were free to
practice whatever religion they wished but in public they must follow her ideas.

James I seeing all this social trouble, tried to give an impulse towards religious toleration,
but in 1605 there was the Gunpowder Plot. A group of Catholics packed the cellar next to
Houses of Parliament with GunPowder intending to make it explode to eliminate what they
said was ruling England’s class. They wanted to do that in a single blast. (They wanted to
leave England open for invasion by a fury power, the catholic power.) The discovery of this
immediately renewed the anti-Catholic sentiment in England. James I tried the other way
round: it was his commission of the translation of the Bible had to be a very elegant and
diplomatic translation for his people.

Today we know that document by the title “King James I Bible”, it was the bible used for
centuries in England. James died in 1625 and his son Charles came to the throne, Charles
was not his first son, but he was the first son to inherit the right to the throne as his first
son died. King Charles I was financially more prudent than his father, not so many luxuries
but he also had a reputation of not allowing powerful men, noble men, to share the rules
and workings of the state. He took privileges out to rule the state, he took privileges away
from the rich and the noblemen. Little by little he became cut off from his people, he had a
reputation of not being so close to the people, and he was a very religious man and his
french wife was a Catholic. And because they loved each other and they loved to show off
their splendor, this king began to be criticized as having “popish” sympathies.

The puritans were followers of John Calvin, the reformer. They believed that the salvation
of the soul depended upon the faith, not in showing off and good works, not in what you
told the people you did. At the same time Calvinists believed that God simply made them
predestined, Charles I conversation with the church of England brought that in the idea
that God made redemption free to all human beings. By acts of charity of devotion and
generosity to the church, they will have salvation.

At the end of the 1630’s many cousins of English puritans emigrated, they couldn’t stand
this contaminated atmosphere. They went to the colonies in America (called New England)
and many others remained in England but were discontent with the king and his manners.

We are still in a world where the world is a fixed element in which four elements rule (fire,
earth, water and air), and where a person’s character is the gift determined by the four
humors (cholera, blood, phlegm and black bile). They don’t know about social and
biological hereditary factors. Also we are still in a world in which the order of concepts is
important, for example the belief in the chain of being. The chain of being in order of
creation at all levels is: the first element is God, second element are angels, the third
element is the human being, the fourth element are animals, the fifth element are plants
and then the sixth element are rocks and soil.

For the man and woman this chain has an analogy in the state: The first element is the
King, then the nobles, then the genty, then ordinary people and last the laborers (the
poorest of the poor). Each level in this chain has a peculiar function, it is not possible to do
anything to belong to another part of the chain or change your function in life or status. You
were predestined to belong to one of them so there was difficulty for people to advance in
life.

In this world we have poets like Aemilia Lanyer, it is impossible and unthinkable for the
artists to live off their art. That is what Shakespeare was very grateful when he received
the attention of the poor.

SONNET 60 VOCABULARY:

line 3: sequent toil (continuo esfuerzo), contend (lucha)

line 5: crawls (trepar, reptar) wherewith (con el cual, con la cual -formal)
line 6: Crooked eclipses (torcido, encorvado de chepa)
line 7: doth
line 8: delves (excalvar)

QUE ES DEATH SECOND SELF?- PREGUNTA DE EXAMEN

3.2. JACOBEAN WRITERS

Poets and writers moved little by little towards what we could call colloquial rhythms and
very short concentrated forms and ideas, quite significant poets of this period are John
Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert and Lady Mary Wroth: They all promoted new forms
of writing including love elegies and satires. Chronics say that specially the three male
authors Knew among themselves, it is curious that the poems of the four of them
circulated in manuscripts, but most of them were printed after their death. Some of them
discussed the best parts of life celebrating life, love, sensuality and some of them
expressed also rough sexuality. Also the four of them and some followers were capable of
expressing the discontent in which fears and cruelty of life, most of them supported
themselves intellectually on the prose essays that wrote Montaigne. His essays appeared
in English translation in 1603 and influenced many writers and thinkers all over Europe but
in our case, specifically in England.

Among this myriad of writers we already know Aemilia Lanyer, so she, Lady Mary Wroth
and other female poets came from the nobility and genty and they were better educated
than most women of the period. Some of their works began to appear in print at the same
time or even before than some of their male poets colleagues.

- JOHN DONNE

Much of his poetry speaks either from the bedroom or from the grain, this is a metaphor,
the voice of this poet is however more or less always the same in all his works. He is at the
same time absolutely sad, unlikely he can be tender and tyrannical, he can be intimate
wishing for company of people, friends and family but he also loves solitude and he can be
absolutely funny and at the same time emotional and moving in equal measures. This
means that he was not particularly well understood in his time, even along the centuries
His voice has often been relegated of the margins of English. Today he has been
considered to be overshadowed by the two giants Shakespeare and Milton, two authors
by the way who bookend John Donne’s life.
- THE CANONIZATION ANALYSIS -
Chide - reprende
Palsy - parálisis muscular
Gout - enfermedad de la gota (por comer mucha proteína cárnica)
Plaguy bill - papel en el cual se colgaba en la puerta del fallecido durante la plaga indicando su
muerte

- SETTING: "The Canonization" offers up settings within settings (five stanzas, five settings): The
first setting is a conversation between the speaker and an outsider that seems annoying to him
because of his exasperated tone ("For God's sake hold your tongue"). Then, the speaker describes
several settings for his relationship with his lover: in the second stanza, he describes the earthly
setting in which nobody is against the couple’s love. In the third one, he moves us into a more
metaphorical setting, where they are depicted as symbolic birds. The four stanza gets even more
abstract, when he discusses the relationship in terms of a literary setting, as the couple will be
remembered in sonnets that, when people read them, will somehow obtain a religious significance
and be seen as ‘’hymns’’. In the final stanza the setting is heaven, suggesting that their love has
transcended and they have become lover-saints.

- TYPE: Dramatic monologue.

- PLOT: Dramatically, the speaker appears exasperated at being continually reprimanded for his
amorous life and so here he responds, not by apologizing for it but rather by mischievously
pleading for the social world at large to permit love to exist in some small comer of its realm,
devalued and frowned upon though it be.The speaker tells the critic that one day he and his lover
will be so revered that people will invoke their names. He imagines that countries, towns, and
courts will attempt to imitate the pattern of their love because they have the perfect love.

- LYRICAL VOICE OR “PERSONA”: John Donne in the person of the speaker.

- TONE: Ironic. A poem which takes a theological term for its title -'The Canonization' -and then
begins with a blasphemy -'For God's sake' -is clearly playing a number of ironic games with its
readers. The speaker's irony shows itself in his adoption of a tone of resigned agreement about
this state of affairs.

- THEMES: The mutability of love, as immortal and unifying.

- CHARACTERS: The poet himself as the speaker.-His mistress, the woman he loves. -The
addressee who has presumed to complain about the speaker's romance.-God, which gives Donne
the poetic leeway to connect physical love and spiritual love between man and woman.

- LANGUAGE: The whole poem is a metaphysical conceit (long and unlikely comparisons between
two things), comparing the ascendance of God to the ascendance of the lovers.-Spiritual
expressions, such as mysterious (27), hymn (35), canonized (36), reverend (37), and hermitage
(38). All of these words share a religious connotation. With using these words when talking about
love the speaker implies that love is similar to a love with God, and that love is spiritual.-Rhetorical
questions, to sneer at all the hyperbolic conventions and stereotypes of the Petrarchan tradition in
order to declare the innocence and ‘harmless’ nature of love. -In these first two stanzas, the poet
adopts the first person singular (eight times in nine lines) and distinguishes between ‘she’ and
‘I’(‘’Though she and I do love’’. l. 18). The third stanza, which is central in the whole stanzaic
pattern, opens with plural forms of the first person, ‘us’/’we’, in which ‘she’ and ‘I’ are now
«mingled». They have become one. -Verbal metonymy: ‘’your tongue’’ (I. 1), which represents the
interlocutor against their love. -Final paradox of God's consuming fires which, unlike the fires of lust
and envy, heal rather than hurt: they do 'in eating heal'.

- SYMBOLS: Bird imagery, metaphors that the speaker uses to describe himself and his lover.-The
eagle and the dove, a reference to the Renaissance idea in which the eagle flies in the sky above
the earth while the dove transcends the skies to reach heaven. The Phoenix, a bird that repeatedly
burns in fire and comes back to life, suggesting that they will reborn. -The phoenix is a mythical
bird that was associated with immortality. The saying goes that, when an old phoenix died, a new
one would rise right out of its body.

- INTERPRETATION: The lovers, having renounced the world but not the flesh, move from the
world of time into eternity. Donne makes love the ultimate weapon within the sphere of this world

John Donne was associated with the metaphysical poets, sometimes also called “strong
liners” the term metaphysics was indeed invented by another poet called Samuel Johnson:
The fact is that Donne wanted to shock his readers by breaking the conventions from the
past, later in the 18th century the poets will react against this poetry, considering it either
very bad or very difficult to understand, and so there was a general critical feeling o
rejection of this kind of poetry. Up to the poet that the metaphysical poets were ignored till
the beginning of the 20th century. In that time, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound found that their
poetry was quite similar to that all poetry of the 17th century so these two contemporary
poets worked for a revival of the metaphysical poetry of the 17th century.

John Donne’s poetry has some very clear characteristics. Metaphysical Poetry:

1. Very concise expression and concentrated images.

2. Rough versification, brisk versification (not regular) there is an intention to distort the
general, the admitted, ordinary word order.
3. It is also called Direct Poetry, that is the dramatic voices are used always discussing
or arguing, and there is a clear addressing to people. It is also known to be very agile
and colloquial poetry.
4. In contrast with the intention of the poet to express his anguish for the world, this is
also a very playful kind of poetry. We could think that sometimes the poet is not
always being serious because of the way of speaking.
5. This kind of poetry is generally speaking not soft or bland, on the contrary it has
extravagant metaphors and conceits.
6. There is what we called Disassociation of sensitivity (for example, sex is taken as
sinful and obscure). On the other hand, there is an abundance of very elevated
feelings with the expression of exquisite sensitivity, discontrasts

While Donne sometimes uses traditional poetry forms he is also fond of inventing
elaborate and intrincate stanzas In his lyrics and his sonnets his lines achieve a complex
… being also done the master of colloquial language. Donne’s religious poetry began to be
more and more profound after his wife’s death and it is known as divine poetry. We must
not forget that He had red immensely on divinity, law, philosophy and Classic Languages.
Today we know that he also was a great traveller, critics believed that he specially loved to
come to the south of Spain.
Donne took the habits after his enormous crisis due to his wife’s death and he became one
of the most accomplished oradores. He wrote sermons, prayers, discourses and speeches
and also this corpus of divine poetry. Inside this divine poetry we have 19 Holy sonnets,
one of those is sonnet 7.

Charles I was married to a catholic as we commented and they were famous for their
pubic demonstrations of their religious beliefs. That is why people in the kingdom began to
have contradictory feelings with this couple. aso during his reign the court emphasized still
chivalric ?? and divine beauty as a symbol of the marriage of the royal pair of these two
people king and queen, but while the court had fun and courtier poets wrote love lyrics that
celebrated platonic and physical love, in the world outside the court, Puritans … what they
saw because this court was a .. in moral excesses. Revolutions followed, protests too one
after the other and then on the 30th January 1649 the beheading of Charles I took less. Ad
this is a cataclysmic event in that moment because the assumption was that kings ruled by
divine right so with this violent act this was overturned as people felt that they could acuse
the king of treason/traición and then execute him
some historic say that longterm social and economic changes led to rising social tensions
and conflict all over the country. Particularly interesting were the problems among the
educated and affluent genty class who were below noble but above artisans artesanos. So
this class was growing but traditional social hierarchies did not grand them their economic
that they desired???

Between 1640 and 1660 new notions emerged and became central to this liberal class,
this burgueses … religious toleration, freedom from press censorship and they believed in
the separation between church and state. Also this ideas came from three relevant
questions who were discussed at the time.

1. People or intellectuals were interested in what is the ultimate source of political

power?
2. What kind of church government is presented in the scriptures and therefore should
be established in England?
3. What should the relation be between church and state?

We find argumentation in sermons and treatises and philosophical texts o the time, also in
writers who were not philosophical but were interested in this as for example Hobbes, his
work “Leviathan” discusses this questions in relation to his contemporaries

- BEN JONSON
His early life was very tough and turbulent, he was the posthumous son of a London …
He was educated at Westminster under the privilege of the great scholar William Camden.
With William Jonson developed his love for classical learning but his mother lacked the
resources to continue with his education. So young Jonson was forced to turn to his
stepfather’s trade of bricklaying. A life that this sensitive boy could not endure
In 1660 he accomplished the end of his first volume and he published it with the only title
“Works”. What critics and readers saw was a collection of plays and poems one after the
other all uncertain title, he didn’t seem to fear the great figure of John Donne and also
Jonson didn’t seem to fear the presence of Shakespeare

Jonson admired and knew both Donne and Shakespeare and he knew that they belonged
to very different worlds but when publishing his works Jonson was speaking not only of his
admiration but also of his claim to a higher literary status. He invested himself with the role
of the first professional author in England with dignity and respectability, so this was his
objective, not to be taken as an aficionado he wanted to be considered with a new status,
the status of a professional writer. This interest has also a source, and it is that Jonson
was in prison in 1697 for collaborating with another friend (Thomas Nashe, another
playwright) o the scandalous play “The isle of Dogs”. Nowadays this play is nearly lost,
there are just some pieces, what Jonson did when he was out of prison, he killed one of
his fellow actors in a duel. He escaped a second time in prison by pleading benefit of
clergy.
Johnson is at the moment a contemporary of Shakespeare, he was extremely well known
in his time and he started to work for the kinsmen. with this mission he wrote tragedies and
comedies very important for the development of the novel. He created prototypes in his
characters, he was capable of creating portraits of individual people and transform then
into characters. His essays are very important for the development of newspapers, with
very rich descriptions.

His poetry is the example of ……

His poetry is documentary poetry, he also anticipated genre, what we today know as
criticism.
His poetry serves as an introduction to the neoclassical period as a reaction against the
metaphysical poetry. These poets were a group of men and accused for being very witty
poets that take ideas from the super natural world and intelligence along with other….

Johnson was a representative of the neoclassical period. Johnson thought that art was not
natural in people that art should be sweated for and it is a technique that should be
practiced become an artist. He has a narrow concept of what being an artist is. His poetry
and the poetry of his followers is nourished by that of the classics. They used classic
sources considering them as models to follow. This is particularly important because this
idea of the classical as a model is extremely important for the neoclassical period as well.

CHARACTERISTICS:

This tendency to admire the classical sources, to follow the french neoclassical tendencies
came with the following ideas:

- These writers try to find Shakespeare’s position in english literature, this comes as a
desire of ranking?… authors, concluding with the idea that Shakespeare was better
than any other known author.

- Simplicity in writing, there are no complex paradoxes or conceits anymore.

- Reason and thought are important also for literature and creativity.
- Johnson is going to introduce a civilized tone to his poetry, a polish tone. This is known
as a courteous attitude in literature, this also comes with a didactic attitude which
means that the writer considers himself as a public speaker that can communicate
ideas of his time to people through writing

- John wrote a poem as an introduction for Shakespeare’s plays. However he always

criticized him, but in this particular poem he praises art and technique considering him
one of the greatest artists of all time. Johnson capitalized his sexless with four
comedies: Volpone, Epicen/Epicene, Bartholomew Fair. Johnson was very critical with
theatre audiences, specially when he knew that another play “The new Inn” was a
failure. He wrote the “ode to himself”. To him this poem was a disgusted farewell to…

This admiration was mutual between Shakespeare and Johnson but other critics say that
Johnson was envious of Shakespeare. We do know that what Johnson wanted was to find
his style little by little.
After James I and Queen Anne … the english term in 1603 they ….
they wanted that these fmascarades were the embodiment of all perfections? One of this
masks was called blackness and this stablished Johnson and another writer, Inigo Jones
and they became known as the sheep makers? for more than two decades.

This.. consisted on the presentation of a play followed by an elaborated ? and all night
dancings known as “The revels”. …. Differ from performances in the public … as we are
saying maskers were multiple events combine songs, speech, richly ornamented
costumes and masks and panels depicting elaborated architecture and landscapes and
also they introduced rudimentary machines in which gods and goddesses descended from
the heaven. There is a lot of money invested here, very different from the ordinary stage
representations in public theaters. These maskers ended to be long, elaborated, dialogic
and extremely spectacular, they were hyperbolic.

- “Though I am young, and cannot tell” by Ben Johnson:

We are in a revolutionary period as we know, the beheading of King Charles I was the 30th
of January of 1649. This was due because the assumption that kings ruled by divine right
was overturned as commoners accused the king of treason and executed him.

1. What is the ultimate source of political power?

2. What kind of church government is laid down in the scriptures, the holy bible, and
therefore ought to be established in England
3. What should the relation be between church and state?

These three main questions were due also because King charles I had dissolved
Parliament three times by 1629. And as a consequence he ruled for more than ten years
without a parliament at all. Parliament also refused to endorse (apoyar la idea de) taxes to
the people that would help the crown. We can’t say he was a dictator but he behaved
almost as an absolutist. Parliament did not dissolved when the king would have light,
instead the Parliament tried to remain in sessions abolishing extralegal taxes. It was also
trimming the bishop’s power and arresting and executing Archibishop Laud and the king’s
minister, Earl of Strafford. Moreover, Parliament disrupted not only the usual governance
of the state but also the usual censorship of the press. So as an opposition to censorship
weekly papers that reported on current domestic event flourished, even though they were
of various political perspectives. In July 1642, Parliament voted to raise an army and by
August 1642 England’s first civil war had begun, it lasted until 1646.

- GEORGE HERBERT: EASTER WINGS (Las alas de la resurrección)

George Herbert was an ordained priest and poet born on April 3, 1593, in Montgomery
Castle, Wales. Nestled in the age of Shakespeare and Milton.
In 1620, he was elected orator of the University of Cambridge.Herbert studied at
Westminster School and then attended Trinity College at Cambridge University.Herbert’s
poems have been characterized by a deep religious devotion, Linguistic precisión, metrical
agility, ingenious use of conceit.
Sound /s/ and sound /f/ are alliterations in this poem. In line 10, this alliteration phenomenon could
lead us to an onomatopoeic sensation (that is, sound /f/).

1. Why do the lines most poor and most themed form the shortest lines in the poem?
2. How much of this weakness is a natural part of being human and how much results from
choice according to Herbert?
3. How does the shape of the poem support the idea of transformation? theme 3
4. According to Herbert, is original sin different from individual sin? theme 4
5. What would a poem entitled Christmas wings be about? How might the religious ideas in that
poem transfer to the christmas period, what shape do you think that such a poem would
have?

Carmen Figuration or Patterned or shaped or figural poetry is when a poem has a special shape
(for example wings or the christmas tree that we said before.

- EASTER WINGS ANALYSIS -

- SETTING: set during Easter. Besides, since this poem is the speaker's one-sided conversation
with, we could also imagine that it's all taking place inside the speaker's religious brain—that it's
more a mental than an out-loud dialogue.

- TYPE: “Shape”/Metaphysicalpoem.
- PLOT: The poem tells of the poets desire to fly with Christ as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice, death
and resurrection.

- LYRICAL VOICE OR “PERSONNA”: The poet.

- TONE: holds an evident religious tone in its overall meaning.It is mostly sad, yet the speaker has
hope towards the end of each stanza.

- THEME: Religion, the speaker encourages the reader to praise God, not only to show our love
for God, but also because it will serve to elevate ourselves. Herbert was described as the only
metaphysical poet whose whole source of inspiration was his religious faith.This faith is evident
in “Easter Wings”, especially in the overall message of the poem. The poem’s physical form, a
pair of wings, is also significant as it demonstrates the distance between Heaven and Earth, and
therefore God and man.

- VISUAL SHAPE OF THE POEM: The first evident observation is that the poem forms a pair of
wings. These wings could belong to an angel, a lark, an eagle or Satan. They could also be
resurrection wings.Furthermore, the narrator illustrates the travel from Earth to Heaven, which
would involve the aid of angels to cross the distance. In the lines where the narrator says“With
Thee/ O let me rise, / As larks, harmoniously”(6-8)there is a message in which the narrator is
asking God to join him so he can rise to Heaven. Beyond merely being visually appealing, these
wings are a physical continuation of Herbert’s basic conceit of confession as a means of seeking
the flight –as the poems forms the words of the confession, so too does it take the shape of the
wings.

- LANGUAGE: The language becomes simpler still, with fewer poetic devices, until it reaches
man's most decayed state. In contrast, at the final extremity of each stanza, the point at which
Herbert describes the qualities of man's most uplifted state, he uses metaphors, alliteration,
paradox, and other classical poetic techniques. There is also a strikingly lyrical quality to the
language of "Easter Wings," which again sets it apart from other works on the same theme, and
suggests that it was meant to be spoken or recited aloud.

- INTERPRETATION: George Herbert wanted us to understand that we will face many difficulties
throughout our journeys in life, but regardless of the situation, we can overcome and learn from
them, even when our wings seem to be broken.
- JOHN DRYDEN
He is not committed, his essays speak about literary criticism. A Poet Laureate. His style of
writing has clarity and simplicity/ special ease (the line of thought) or manner and reason.
He is the beginner literary criticism, he deals with theoretical problems and literary
discussions

“He is the father of English criticism” (Samuel Johnson)

- RACHELL SPEGHT (1597 - 1630) A MOUZELL FOR MELSTOMUS

She was the daughter of a shepherd called James Speght, who has published some
devotional works. From his four children, Rachell was the one who inherited his books due
to her intellectual formation and being her godmother who really enhanced her talent.

Joseph Swetnam wrote under the pseudonym Thomas Teltroth a misogynistic pamphlet
entitled The Arraignment of Lewde, Idle Froward and Unconstant Women: Or the vanity of
them, choose whether (1615), which sparked a series of publications throughout 1617 in
defense of women. The first publication in defense of women was published by Rachell
Speght, A Mouzell for Melstomus: The Cynicall Bayter of, and Foule Mouthed Barker
against Evah’s Sex. Or an Apologeticall Answere to that Irreligious and Illiterate Pamphlet
made by Jo Sw. and by him Intituled, The Arraignment of Women (1617). Later appeared
other publication signed by Ester Sowernam (pseudonym of Swe(e)tnam) which title was
Ester Hath Hang’d Haman. Then on last place, it was published the work of Constantia
Munda (another pseudonym), “The Worming of a Mad Dogge.

Although at that time many of the responses to the works were carried out by the authors
themselves at the request of the publishers for commercial rather than logical purposes,
however it is believed that the two under pseudonyms were written by women due to their
different values and way of thinking. Therefore, of all of them the first one who answered
as well as the first woman to identify herself was Rachell Speght, great poet. The role of
women in society that Rachell describes remains largely the same. Due to his Christian
formation he demanded spiritual equality that would lead to social and political equality.
What is more, she comes to declare herself a defender of those to whom her work is
dedicated. The pamphlets of that period are characterized by being very satirical. The
pamphlets of that period are characterized by being very satirical, as satire had its origin in
the classics, its tradition was patriarchal, women were criticized but they should not
respond and if they did, their reputation would be damaged. Therefore the reputation of
women depended not on what they said or did, but on what they said to others. Thus,
women were trapped socially, economically and stylistically, also obliged to patriarchal
discourse. However, studying in depth flaws in the writings of their opponents, they began
to counteract sexist language for the first time through different tactics such as repetition or
puns; in fact, Speght published a short writing Certaine Quaeres to the Bayter of Women,
in which she criticizes Swernam's grammatical errors with examples.

Moreover, the English Renaissance had to adapt the characteristic syllogisms of these
pamphlets to the interest of the feminine condition, since this genre was always based on
supposedly witty slanders and heavy jokes about women; these writers made logic their
main weapon against tradition and custom. In the case of Rachell, she freely interprets the
​​
scriptures from a Protestant and feminine point of view, presenting an alternative to the
misogynistic version of creation according to Genesis and to the due submission of women
to their husbands according to Saint Paul; uses the creation story to show that woman was
created from Adam to be his equal, not to be trampled on. She also wrote a poetic work on
the occasion of the death of his mother "Mortalities Memorandum" (1621) That same year
he married William Proctor, with whom he had two children and did not republish. As for
the translation of his work, the general tone is quite calm compared to the preface. His
narrative on the nature of man and woman dates back to genesis, obviously from the
female point of view. The value of these women's early defenses is more in how they
approach the issue than in what they say. From the end of the 16th century, women guided
the prayers in meetings, but it was not until the middle of the 17th century that preachers
appeared. It is the first semi-religious publication written by a woman.

- A MOUZELL FOR MELSTOMUS ANALYSIS -

Speght's pamphlet was written as a direct response to Joseph Swetnam's popular 1615
anti-female diatribe,The Araignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women,
which, as the title suggests, condemns women as immoral, weak, and responsible for the
entrance of evil in the world. Although Swetnam's pamphlet would elicit numerous
responses, including some claiming to be written by women authors, Speght's refutation
was the earliest as well as the first to use its female author's real name. Taking on
Swetnam's anecdotes, jibes, and insults point by point, Speght belittles the author's logic
and his ability to understand Scripture. Using numerous biblical examples of her own as an
intellectual support, Speght argues that God created woman as an equal to man, that
marriage is a union predicated on partnership, and that, although woman is indeed the
“weaker vessel,” her weakness is purely physical.

How does Rachel Speght conceive her search for a better society?

In this work, Rachel Speght combined her superior education and religious upbringing to
rush to the defense of women, relighting the fire of the querelle and consequentially
influencing other writers for centuries to come. The querelle reaches back to the very
beginning of time, finding roots in the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. The
point of conflict in this debate centered on women’s behavior.At the onset of, and
throughout, the debate, society harbored a strongly misogynistic attitude toward women. In
short, because of the actions taken by Eve, “women were regarded as the source of sin
and mortality, and, consequently, all women should be punished throughout their lives.”
During this time in history, society dictated that women be quiet, mild-mannered, orderly,
and nurturing.Essentially, a proper woman made up for those characteristics men lacked.
This idea, however, clashed with the views of women from the eyes of misogynists.
Misogynistic behavior acted as the norm; strict divides existed between the behavior of
males and females, and women were objects to many men. Writing in an age in which
there were few women authors, Speght argued that those who considered women evil or
inferior by nature blasphemed God, since Scripture showed that woman was created as an
equal partner to man. While some critics have stopped short of labeling Speght an early
feminist, nearly all agree that Speght's writing displays a personal courage and
commitment to women's equality in matters of education and salvation that has few
predecessors in English literature
- TONE: Speght’s sense humor is apparent in an addendum to the Mouzell, in which, labeling
Swetnam an “Asse,” she mocks the flaws in grammar and logic that appear in his tract.She also
makes fan of this respected man by referring to him as a “wise and learned Lactantius,” being
ironic.

- LITERARY DEVICES: The use of capital letters to show importance (right Honourable and
Worshipfull Ladies). The use of the rhetorical technique Captatio benevolentiae in to
encounter with a furious enemy to our sexe, least if his vniust imputations should continue
without answer, he might insult and account himself a victor)”: to capture the goodwill of the
audience at the beginning of a speech or appeal.

1. Can you state the theme of the text in a sentence?

The theme of this texts is a vindication for women(?) against a pamphlet she read

2. Which words and vocabulary reveal the writer’s tone?

3. How are you affected by the meaning of the text?

Impressed by her braveness and how brave she was when writing this text in that kind of society

4. Have you ever experienced a feeling similar to that of the author of the text?

5. How does Speght conceive her search for a better society?

- ANDREW MARVELL: TO HIS COY MISTRESS

Coy = esquivo/a o timido/a

To summarize this era:

We have to be aware that we are leaving to the end of a period and as we all know this
has been a very long troubled conflicted period. So let us remember some facts and also
let us add some other crucial events to this period.

As we know know after the death of Shakespeare great changes took place in english life
and thought, with the removal of the threat of catholic Spain which one of whose missions
had been to reimpose catholicism on protestant England, after that

But there is a problem, from that moment England began to split into two camps, this
division of England took place at the end of queen Elizabeth the first reign but at the
beginning did not seem very dangerous. However under Charles I reign it became a very
difficult problem up to the point that it led to civil war.. Writers, some of them classical,
some of them metaphysical, some of them writing to new possibilities (specially women).
Times were very violent and convulsive. A second civil war 1648 to 1649, after this war
monarchy was abolished and a republic came. But a third civil war took place between
1649 to 1651.

It is necessary to mention Oliver Cromwell because he was a dictator who together with
some parties and also his son, secretaries etc holds a dictatorship until 1659. And it is only
after 1660 that the monarchy is again reestablished with the Tudors (Estuardo). Briefly
speaking we may say that the division in this period was between an old way of life and a
new way of life.
On the one hand was the conservative element of the country, that is to say those who
derived or had their wealth from the land and who supported the reigning monarchs and
accepted the old rules but on the other hand were those whose way of living came from
the trade, who belonged to the new towns who also wanted a greater share in the
government of the country and very importantly who thought that the reformation of
religion in England had not gone too far and should go further. So we have to bare in mind
that this split was threefold: economic, political and religious but along the period it
resolved itself into one issue, that the great political parties of England emerged from this
struggle or fight, we are speaking of the Tories and Whigs.

New people of England, who worked in the trade inclined a religious believe or practice
that was very different from the old established faith of England. This new people were
puritans and they wanted a purer type of christianity, a purer religion than that that the
reformation brought. They were known as an austere religion, which frowned on pleasure
and was obsessed with punishment so this was an austere and extreme way of life.

Also the stablished church of England derived from the German thinker Luther whose
reforms and thoughts did not move very far away from traditional christianity but the
puritans were following John Calvin from Geneva who taught that freewheel did not exist
and that men and women were predestined from the beginning of times to go either
heaven or hell. Puritans believed in predestination and that our predestination as humans
was in the hands of God, it implied that your actions in this life did not really make a
difference to your final destination. this lead to controlling of people’s morals, that is to say
that the church and politics believed that people were made to be good, you could lead
people to be made. Under Calvinism there is no division into church and state, with
separate powers, instead they became one in that ideology up to the point that England
wanted to have a government of change, against pleasures and good moments of life. But
one pleasure seems only open to calvinism, that is making money which Christianity
condemned, so there is a link, a new tendency arises between this new people of the trade
and the religion that they practiced. The bond between these religious ideas and the way
they understood politics and the state.

The reign of Charles I as now we know was a terrible struggle for power, and a lot of
arguments, discussions and fights of the English Parliament which all these represented
the new people? and that the king’s efforts to resist this new force and to put and end to
this new influence were very limited and vain. That is when war comes, and these puritans
were not gentle because they executed the king and the republic became a dictatorship
under Oliver Cromwell. It imposed on England a way of life such as it have never been
known before. Pleasure was now regarded as sinful and that moral crimes were
considered as that, as crimes, and that they were terribly punished.

This way of life under this wars and dictatorship was a way of life quite foreign to the
english character who had been enjoying the greatest openness and adventures (carpe
diem) of other times, for example under Elizabeth I. So finally in 1660 the Restoration of
the monarchy came and with it an attempt to return to the old way came also but up to that
moment England was serious ill and damaged and it could never be the same again, so
that is why we consider that 1660 brings another era. And this is really relevant because it
is an era in which the old land-owning class begins to sink and the new middle-class
begins to rise. At the same time, a sense of guilt seems to permeate all connections with
joy and pleasure for life up to the point that it seems to have continued even to the present
day. For example, it is still present in many corners of England what we call the “English
Sunday” meaning everything closed, nowhere to go except church. Till very recently it was
one of the living momentos of puritan rules, it is connected with coldness and
unwillingness to let oneself go.

So the literature that we are discussing briefly in this course and in this last part of the
course is seen once and again against this background of on the one hand violence and
struggle and on the other hand change.

Our next author is one example of the puritans but we have to acknowledge that he is
among the puritans, one of the greatest authors, he is John Milton. On the other hand, one
of the greatest thinkers open minded is Mary Astell.

- TO HIS COY MISTRESS ANALYSIS -

- SETTING: There are (at least) two layers of setting involved, the setting we imagine, and the
setting that the speaker imagines. In the first stanza, the speaker starts with "crime." He then
moves to the Ganges River in India and the Humber Estuary in England. From there, he moves
to the body of the mistress, or better said, "each part." Finally, he goes inside her body, to her
heart.In the second stanza the setting gets creepy quickly. "Deserts of vast eternity," has a
beautiful ring to it and even a feeling of freedom. The speaker snatches that image away and
leads us into a "marble vault".The third stanza is like a resurrection setting. The poem bursts
from "the grave" into "the morning dew," and, then, beyond the mistress’s body, into her "soul."
The speaker then imagines their union, and the setting moves up into the sky with the "amorous
birds of prey."In the final couplet, the setting seems dangerous. We feel like the speaker stands
very near to the sun, and that he might get burned.

- TYPE: Poem in Present Tense.

- PLOT: It focuses on the lustful desires of a man attempting to entice a female virgin, the
mistress, into sexual intimacy. The speaker argues that the Lady’s shyness and hesitancy would
be acceptable if the two had “world enough, and time”. But because they are finite human
beings, he thinks they should take advantage of their sexuality while it lasts.

- LYRICAL VOICE OR “PERSONA”: The speaker is anonymous. He could be any man,

anywhere.

- TONE: It goes through transitions throughout the poem. It begins seemingly romantic, speaking
of how his love for his mistress could endure vast expanses of time ("My vegetable love should
grow/Vaster than empires, and more slow", 11-12). From there the speaker expresses urgency,
with morbid descriptions of inevitable death, contradicting the previous statement of time being
irrelevant ("Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound/My echoing song; then worms shall try", 26-27).
It then turns passionate, but absent is the romantic tone the writer began with ("And now, like
amorous birds of prey/Rather at once our time devour", 38-39). So, in short, the poem begins
with a tone of romance and tranquility but concludes with almost violent lust.

- THEMES: There are two major themes in this poem, carpe diem and tempus fugit. Marvell gives
a magnitude of lively descriptions to express them.In lines 8-10(“Love you ten years before the
flood,/And you should, if you please, refuse/Till the conversion of the Jews.”), he creates a
dramatic image in which the speaker claims to have loved his mistress since the beginning of
time until the end of the word. Thus, the poet uses this powerful metaphor to reflect how long he
is willing to wait for his precious loved. A remarkable image canalso be found in lines 23-24, in
which Marvell elaborates how wonderful the world would be if he could share it with his
mistress: “And yonder all before us lie/Deserts of vast eternity”. This represents the
consequence of choosing: They would have endless spaces (“desserts”) to themselves. The
“deserts of vast eternity” refers also to time, because not only the space would be endless, but
also their time as lovers.Then, tempus fugit is shown in this image.Thus, we see that “To His
Coy Mistress” is a startling piece of carpe diem poetry which deals with the issue of speeding,
 ravaging time. The poet has used the scare of time as a weapon to intensify the pleasures of
mortal life.

- CHARACTERS: The poet and the Lady whom the poet loves.
- LANGUAGE:Marvell's narrator uses hyperbole, metaphor and imagery to seduce his coy (shy)
mistress. The first stanza is filled with hyperbole or exaggeration as he describes how he would
woo her if there were only endless time and space.

- INTERPRETATION: The poem explores the realm of human mortality, approaching the
seriousness of this finite reality with humour. For Marvell, if human life were not limited by space
and time, the beloved’s coyness would not harm the lover and the beloved. They would sit and
plan how to pass their endless time. The beloved would be by the side of the Indian Ganges and
thelover by the side of the Humber in England. She could refusehim as long as she pleased,
and his love would longer slowly.

-Elaborate an interpretation of these lines (8-12):

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;

In these lines there is a metaphysical conceit: “My vegetable love should grow”, which implies that
the narrator’s love is a slow-growing vegetable. This “plant” image over takes incredible spaces
until it becomes “vaster than empires”.Such a growth would take far longer than humans have to
live. It is a job for the enduring vegetable which, returning year after year, live longer than humans
and continues to grow. Time is not important to the plant, but it is for mortals.

- JOHN MILTON: PARADISE LOST

On the one hand a very original poem, on the other it looks like a deeply traditional poem
and it offers notions bout love, war, supernatural characters, life in hell and in heaven or
paradise, life on earth. John expresses this in one particular sentence, he wrote this work
to justify the actions of God to men. He considered he had the power to explain the acts of
god.

Milton came of a London family with a certain amount of money and he never had to earn
his own living. He had leisure that Shakespeare never had and was able by hard study, to
equip himself with more learning tan any previous great poet. His father was a composer
of music (his works are sometimes played today) and Milton himself was blessed with a
musical ear. In fact he was destined by physical endowment and eventual physical loss to
be a poet of the ear rather than the eye. After a lifetime of overworking already weak sight,
he went blind and his greatest work was written after this calamity struck him. even in his
early works it is the music of the language that strikes us first. A music like nothing ever
heard before, suggesting the deep and grave tones of the instrument which Milton himself
played, the organ. Milton’s exquisite ear and command over the sheer sound of language
is manifested not only in his english poems but also in those written in Latin or Italian.

In Milton’s earliest poems we meet the distinctive Miltonic personality which was pure,
austere and not to be seduced by either wine or women, in complete control of his learning
and his poetic medium. when he was 20 he wrote Ode On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,
in which he is not content, like Crashaw, merely to praise the new-born era heavenly
child, but must describe Christ’s victory over the false gods. The poem was written while
he was still at Cambridge University (where his physical beauty and flowing hair earned
him the name “the lady of Christ’s’ — Christ’s being to college). Between 1632 and 1638
Milton lived in retirement in the country, reading and writing producing works like
“L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” (The Cheerful Man and The Melancholy Man) which show
his descriptive gifts and his highly individual music. We also learn of Milton’s temperament,
he pictures himself seeking joy in country-life, watching the harvesters at work, drinking ale
and listening to old stories, going to the theatre, but it is a solitary joy: it is a lonely man
looking in at the life from the outside.

As Dr. Johnson said, there is no mirth in Milton’s melancholy, but plenty of melancholy in
his mirth. Milton was destined to be the man alone, sufficient unto himself, finding no
pleasure in the gay world about him. Belonging to this period of country retreat are the
masque “Comus” , written to celebrate the appointment of the Earl of Bridgewater as Lord
President of Wales, and the elegy “Lycidas” a poem on the death of Edward King, a fellow
undergraduate whom Milton didn’t know very well but whose untimely loss he was asked,
along with other poets, to mourn. Here in the midst of lamentations, comes a warning of
the political and religious strife to come.

At the end of this period Milton began to feel that he was destined for some great work, he
knew that he had in him the qualities of a great epic poet, and he contemplated various
themes for a work which should compare with Homer’s “Iliad” or Virgil’s “Aeneid” among
them that myth which will never cease to fascinate English writers, the myth of King Arthur.
But Milton wasn’t yet ready to start so tremendous an undertaking because he had to
study more, see the world and so he went to spend sixteen months in Italy. While he was
away, the struggle began at home and Milton returned to give his genius not to poetry but
to the Puritan cause. For 20 years he produced only sonnets and political religious books,
the epic had to wait.

During the period of civil war and commonwealth Milton gave himself almost wholly to
prose propaganda. He defended the commonwealth in his latin works. He was ready to
attack his own government where he thought it was limiting freedom of thought.
Theological matters also concerned him, and his unfortunate first marriage led to his works
on Divorce in which he cites the Bible as the authority for abolishing the existing marriage-
laws. Here we see Milton the egocentric, the proud self-centred man around whom the
universe revolves, what Milton wants God also must want, if Milton’s marriage is a failure
then the marriage-laws must be altered; if Milton despises woman, woman must be
inherently despicable. Milton is never wrong according to Milton.

- PARADISE LOST CONTEXT -

Milton was able to return to the full-time composition of poetry only in 1660 when the
monarchy was restored and with the death f the Commonwealth, his public tasks were
over. In 1652 he had lost his sight and from now on his world became a dim world of
remembered images, of sounds and not colour, a highly personal self-centred world, the
world of “Paradise Lost”.

This great epic records the greatest event known to the Hebraico-Christian peoples: the
Fall of Satan and the consequent Fall of Man. Milton’s sightless world enables him to paint
the diim vastness of Hell much more tellingly than the clear-visioned Italian poet Dante, but
it makes the real world seem unreal and artificial, the trees and flowers and beasts seen
through the medium of books and memory, not actually, as with the living eye of
Shakespeare. Milton is the hero of the poem, consciously in the flowing-haired Adam, to
whom woman, the lesser creature, looks up submissively; unconsciously in the
magnificent Satan, the fearless rebel thrown out of well-ordered sunlit heaven which is
really the new England of Charles II. Satan does emerge as the real hero of “Paradise
Lost”. For this poem Milton created a new kind of English and a new kind of blank verse:
both highly artificial , a world away from the English of everyday speech. This was
necessary for his subject which was far above the everyday world of human passions and
actions, but it served to slow the development of English poetry as a natural medium of
expression. It encouraged a mode of utterance in which rhythms and constructions and
vocabulary veered to Latin rather than Anglo-Saxon English. Milton’s sentences are long
like Latin sentences, he inverts the order of words like a Latin author.

Paradise Lost is a religious epic, and its subject matter makes it the common theological
property of Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians. even in his last days, Milton is still
experimenting with verse and language, producing new tones and rhythms.
- SETTING: (Time) Before the beginning of time. (Place) Hell, Chaos and Night, Heaven, Earth
(Paradise, the Garden of Eden) The poem rests on the contrasts between the great stages of
Heaven and Hell with the young Earth in between. Heaven is all light, purity and glory, but it is
Hell which is more vividly described by Milton, and nowhere more so than in the first book.

- SETTING BOOK 1: The first book is set in Hell. It specifically begins in the burning lake where
God had sent him and his fallen angels because they had revolted against Him.
- SETTING BOOK 3:The third book is set in Heaven. Milton addresses the light emanating from
Heaven. He still feels the heavenly light, but he can't see it because he's blind.

- GENRE: Allegory. Paradise Lost is an allegorical poem by focusing on Milton's allegorical

language, because it reflects the difference-from-Himself that God has inscribed into language
and built into human ontology.

- TYPE: Epic poem in the Present Tense.

- LYRICAL VOICE OR “PERSONA”: Milton himself.
- TONE: Serious, tragic and sad. Serious because Milton takes his poem very seriously. Adam
and Eve's fall was, for him, one of the greatest of human tragedies [it "brought death into the
world, and all our woe," (1.3)]. Satan's rebellion, his plotting of revenge, these are not laughing
matters. Tragic at the same time, we can often detect a sense of tragedy in Milton's verse. Even
though Milton re-conceptualized his poem (from tragedy to epic), he still approaches the subject
matter as if it were a tragedy. And Sad because we can also detect a sense of sadness in his
voice. Yes, Eden is lovingly painted as the most beautiful place ever, but Milton always makes it
clear that such a place is no more, that the only way we can access it is through poetry or the
imagination. That is very sad.

- THEMES: The Importance of Obedience to God (Book 1): The first words of Paradise Lost
state that the poem’s main theme will be “Man’s first Disobedience.” Milton narrates the story of
Adam and Eve’s disobedience, and places the story within the larger context of Satan’s rebellion
and Jesus’ resurrection. In essence, Paradise Lost presents two moral paths that one can take
after disobedience the first one is the downward spiral of increasing sin and degradation,
represented by Satan, and the second the road to redemption, represented by Adam and Eve.
While Adam and Eve are the first humans to disobey God, Satan is the first of all God’s creation
to disobey. The corruption of humanity after Jesus’ sacrifice (Book 3): The selfless and
virtuous sacrifice of God’s Son for humanity is confronted with the fraudulent purpose of Satan
to temp the first humans created by God(Adam and Eve).Good and Evil reside in this world
simultaneously where, on one hand, virtue tries to save humankind from an eternal downfall
while, on the other hand, vice tries its best to tempt and corrupt the human soul causing the
everlasting doom of humanity
- SYMBOLS: Blindness/Light: Milton’s blindness forces him to consider light and vision in ways
that are not purely physical. Instead, Milton expresses to his reader the need to understand light
and vision as phenomena that are also spiritual and intellectual. Thus, when he metaphorically
says that he can “feel” the Light of God, he is referring to emotions. The way that Milton feels
Light is not physical, but emotional, that is internal.The invocation of Book III is literally directed
at Light: “Hail, holy Light” (3.1). But it is not just any light; it is the light of God –the light that
created all. He says that “God is light” (3.3) and therefore eternal. If the object of this invocation
is both God and eternal, it can’t be physical light, since God later created the sun, which
provides physical light.It must be something else, something greater than what can be seen with
the eyes.

The fact that Milton requested inspiration from divine light is enough by itself to confirm its
importance within both the poem and the poet. All of the qualities and importance that Milton instills
into light and vision are useful for interpreting the devils and their actions presented in Book II, both
during the debate and after Satan has made his way out of Hell. The often chaotic and frivolous
actions of the devils in Hell seem more understandable if the reader interprets the devils as beings
that don’t have this spiritual, mental, internal illumination that Milton felt so strongly about. It
becomes arguable that the fruitless actions and decisions made by the devils are a result of their
lack of divine light.

Importance of verb SEE: Even though he cannot roll his eyes due to the lack of the capacity of
perceiving the nature of life, he is not different from the rest of human beings who cannot really see
the important things in life, such as the Light (God). The sense of Justice represented by God.
Paradise Lost is “a fierce argument about God’s justice” and that Milton’s God has been deemed
inflexible and cruel. By contrast, Satan has a dark charisma (“he pleased the ear”) and a
revolutionary demand for self-determination. His speech is peppered with the language of
democratic governance (“free choice”, “full consent”, “the popular vote”) –and he famously declares
“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven”. Satan rejects God’s “splendid vassalage”, seeking
to live: (Free, and to none accountable, preferring / Hard liberty before the easy yoke / Of servile
Pomp).

The Tree of Knowledge: The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is the only fruit that God forbids Adam
and Eve to eat of all the trees in Eden. This fruit gives knowledge of good and evil, which Adam
and Eve lack in their innocent ignorance, but the importance of the fruit is that they eat it despite
God’s commandment. The knowledge the Tree gives is not inherently sinful, but disobeying God by
eating of the Tree is sinful. The fruit that Eve and Adam eat then becomes the ultimate symbol –a
single small thing that represents the cause of all the evil and suffering in the world. Garden of
Eden symbolizes the innocence and ignorance of Adam and Eve. The Garden also contains the
forbidden Tree of Knowledge, from which God has instructed Adam and Eve not to eat. This
symbolizes that even in innocence temptation lurks, as does the potential for disobedience and sin

-CHARACTERS: God/Satan, Adam/Eve, Sin/Death. God (Jesus Christ): The ruler of Heaven and
the defender of Justice. He is the representation of Goodness, and gave humans the power of free
choice. Satan(Lucifer): The ruler of Hell. He is an outcast. He invents temptation. Both God and
Satan fight with each other, as enemies. Adam: The mortal representation of God. An incredibly
smart man. He has the ability to feel and think rationally. Eve: A woman created to be Adam’s
mate. She has the same capacities as Adam, but unlike him, she is easily tempted. In fact, she is
the first character who falls into Satan’s temptation. Sin: An allegorical character. She has no
mother but was born out of Satan himself at his rebellious assembly in Heaven. Death: The
consequence of Satan's sin.So both Sin and Death are powerful entities, portrayed as Satan’s
children, fed by him. They are the contrast to the Holy Trinity

- MARY ASTELL
- FROM SOME REFLECTIONS UPON MARRIAGE (PART 1) -
If marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it that there are so few happy marriages?
In answer it is not to be wondered that so few succeed, we should rather be surprised to
find so many do, considering how imprudently men engage, the motives they act by and
the very strange conduct they observe throughout.

What do men propose to themselves in marriage? What qualifications do they look after in
a spouse? What will she bring?. They who marry for love, as they call it, and time enough
to repent their rash folly, and are not long in being convinced, that whatever fine speeches
might be made in the heat of passion, there could be no real kindness between those who
can agree to make each other miserable. But though an estate is to be considered, it
should not be the main, much less the only consideration, for happiness does not depend
on wealth.

Suppose a man does not marry for money, though for one that does not, perhaps there are
thousands that do; suppose he marries for love, an heroic action which makes a mighty
noise in the world, partly because of its rarity, and partly in regard of its extravagancy, what
does his marrying for love amount to? There’s no great odds between his marrying for the
love of money or for the love of beauty; the man does not act according to reason in either
case, but is governed by irregular appetites. He loves her wit perhaps, which could be
more spiritual or refined, but not at all if examined to the bottom. For what is that which
nowadays passes under the name of wit? a bitter and ill-natured raillery or a confident
talking at all; and in such multitude of words, it’s odds if something or other doesn’t pass
that is surprising, though everything that surprises doesn’t please. some things being
wondered at for their ugliness as well as others for their beauty. True wit, durst one venture
to describe it, is quite another thing, it consists in such sprightliness of imagination, such a
reach and turn of thought, so properly expressed as strikes and pleases a judicious taste.

Thus whether it be wit or beauty that a man’s in love with, there are no great hopes of a
lasting happiness; beauty, with all the helps of art is no long date; the more it is helped, the
sooner it decays; and he, who only chiefly chose for beauty, will in a little time find the
same reason for another choice. Nor is that sort of wit which he prefers, of a more sure
tenure; or allowing it to last, it will not always please. For that which hasn’t a real
excellency and value in itself, entertains no longer than that giddy humor which
recommended it to us holds; and when we can like on no just, or on very little ground, this
certain a dislike will arise, as lightly and unaccountably. It is not improbable that such a
husband may in a little time by ill usage, provoke such a wife to exercise her wit, her
spleen in him and then it isn’t hard to guess how very agreeable will be to him. Do women
never choose amiss? Are te men only in fault? that is not pretended, for he who will be
just, must be forced to acknowledge, that neither sex is the right. A women indeed can’t
properly be said to choose, all that is allowed her is to refuse or accept what is offered.

- MARY ASTELL CONTEXT (PART2) -

She was famed as a devoted member of the Church of England, who went on to write
several explicit defenses of the Church’s position during the period of transition when it no
longer came to have a monopoly on English spiritual life.

A key preoccupation of the 1690’s was the idea of moral reform. Propounded by some of
the highest and lowest in the land, interest in moral reform trascended party boundaries
and sectarian differences, encompassing Jacobites and Williamites, Anglicans and
Dissenters alike. The movement took variety of forms, both political and social. It had a
parliamentary political dimension, with “Country” MPs campaigning against instances of
parliamentary corruption. It also received royal endorsement from William III and Mary II,
who were keen to make the royal court a fount of mortality and piety. Their supporters
depicted the king and queen as actively bringing about a new era in which vice and
religion would swept away. Moral reform also had a strongly voluntarist social dimension,
and no more so than in the shape of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners. These
were interdenominational associations formed by a number of the clergy and laity,
independent of the state. Their aim was to promote morality and enforce moral legislation
that was already on the statute books: they did this by disseminating moral tracts and
sponsoring keynote sermons, while their members policed the conduct of neighbors and
associates informing on drunkards, blasphemers, sabbath-bakers and fornicators to the
civil authorities for prosecution.

This extraordinarily widespread and fervent concern about the moral state of the nation
and the explosion of activity in attempting to reform it, can be seen as a direct response to
the three decades which preceded 1688, a period which, from the standpoint of the
1690’s, had allowed decadence, debauchery and irreligion to flourish almost unchecked.
To allow such behavior to continue would bring down upon England the unmitigated wrath
of an angry God. Such a characterization of the Restoration period was a particularly
helpful take on the reigns of Charles II and James VII and II for those who had supported
the Revolution and wished to validate it. But anxiety over morality and religion had
predated the Revolution. Such an obsession was fired in part by the loose-living, irreligious
behavior of Charles II and his courtiers, which became a major theme of the opposition
critiques of the 1670’s and early 1680’s. But it was fueled by the Restoration regime’s
attitude towards religion.. The king favored religious toleration and tried to bring about the
toleration for Protestant dissent that he had promised in 1660, thus undercutting the status
of the Church of England. Not only was Charles lukewarm in his support for the Church but
by the mid 1670’s he appeared to be favoring Catholics as well as Protestant Dissenters.
His court had a distinctly Catholic tone, and his brother and heir, James Duke of York was
a Catholic convert. The succession of James proved disastrous for the Church, for the new
king also tried to push through plans for toleration for both Protestant Dissenters and
Catholics.

While the Church of England was saved from James II by the arrival of William of Orange
in 1688, its status as the Church of England began to disintegrate with the passing of the
Toleration Act in 1689, which permitted Protestant Dissenters to separate themselves from
the established Church and worship elsewhere, and with the subsequent decline of legal
mechanisms which had previously compelled attendance at Anglican services. Lacking the
official support they had previously enjoyed, devout Anglicans now had to shift for
themselves in the battle against schism and vice, and they increasingly went on the
offensive with characteristic vigor and enterprise.

Probably the most successful and far-reaching of their efforts was the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1699. Its aim was to promote not so
much Christian knowledge as Anglican knowledge; as Craig Rose has demonstrated, the
Society placed great emphasis on holy living and good works as well as on helping others
to obtain salvation. The SPCK set about this task in several ways, but its chief weapon in
the fight against impiety and Protestant Dissenters was education. Although the Society
was mindful o the need to ensure that the children of the elite received some training in
Anglican devotion, it was especially prominent in establishing charity schools to ensure the
poor, and particularly the female poor, received a sound Anglican upbringing. This wasn’t
because the SPCK was especially interested in expanding the intellectual horizons of girls,
or even equipping them with some fragments of functional literacy. The interest was
entirely sectarian. The practices and beliefs of the Dissenting churches were seen as
having a string appeal to the female sex, and women were widely believed to make up a
large part of Dissenting congregations. Moreover, while it was important that young women
were trained in Anglican doctrines for the sake of their own souls, it was aso important
because girls were the mothers of the future who, if taught the tenets of Anglicanism,
would raise their children according to such principles. Schism and immorality would be
stamped out at the source. Indeed such project was so close to the heart of the benefactor
of one London charity school that he left money to fund the dowries of former pupils who
continued to be devout Anglicans and whose proposed husbands were also staunchly
anglican.

Despite the vast scholarly literature on moral reform, Astell’s contribution to the reformation
of manners movement has been rarely acknowledged, except in the context of the charity
school initiative. Astell became actively involved in this enterprise in 1709, with the
foundation of a charity school for girls in Chelsea, the London suburb where she had long
lived. Like its sister institutions, there was a strong religious element to the Chelsea
school’s curriculum. Although the pupils were taught reading, writing, accounting and
sewing, they were also taught Anglican precepts, were catechized twice a week and went
to church twice on Sundays. They were confirmed when they became old enough. Yet the
charity school at Chelsea should not be seen as Astell’s only contribution to moral reform.
So, too, can the first part of the “Serious Proposal” , if it is set against the backdrop of the
prevailing Anglican obsession with education as means of creating an Anglican society
where neither debauchery nor dissent could exist. Situating Astell within this context
reveals her as a key participant in the moral reform movement and illuminates the ideas
which she would develop with a sharper polemical edge in the 1700’s. Astell’s piety infuses
the “Serious Proposal” at every turn, from her assessment of what was wrong with
contemporary female educational practices to her plan for remedying it. Indeed she openly
declared that the main or only design of her institution was religious.

4. WHAT IS FEMINISM?
- Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics: Feminism is a way of looking at the world,
which women occupy from the perspective of women. It has its central focus the
concept of patriarchy, which can be described as a system of male authority, which
oppresses women through its social, political and economic authority.

- Chambers Dictionary: puts it more simply as the “advocacy of women’s rights, or of

the movement for the advancement and emancipation of women”.

4.1. WHEN DID IT ALL BEGIN?

Origins of women’s movement: During French Revolution (1789). That is not to say that
women hadn’t stood up for themselves before that or that there were no women of any
note. Examples are Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great of Russia and Joan of Arc.

There were quieter examples of women who made their own way in the world and
protested against the inequalities between men and women.
- Christine de Pizan: was a Venetian writer whose book Treasures of the City of Ladies
still quoted today. She refused to accept the male certainties that women were
inherently weaker than men and also more likely to fall into evil ways.

- Mary Astell: wrote Reflections on Marriage which is considered the earliest feminist
text. She wrote about the inequality between men and women when they get married
but also about the lack of work and educational opportunities given to women.

- Aphra Behn: established herself as the first English woman to become a playwright.
She developed themes such as the consequences of arranged marriages, however,
those women were few and far between, and the status quo remained unchallenged for
a long time.

There were little choice for women in order to how could they led their lives, the only
options available for them were marriage, convent or scratching a living as governesses.
Aphra Behn was the first among a long tradition of women writers, few of them were able
to rely on writing for their living.

Before Industrialisation: men and women worked together in farms and workshops, but
the work women did and the amount of money they were paid was different from men’s.
With the spread of industrialisation came a formal differentiation between women’s
work and men’s work. There wasn’t any active role for women in the public sphere and it
didn’t matter their social status or economic background. By the late eighteenth century,
just a few women were beginning to revolt against that restriction.

4.2. FRENCH REVOLUTION, OLYMPE DE GOUGES AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

In the late eighteenth century, the demand for women’s rights began to be voiced and it
forms the basis of nowadays’s feminism. During the French Revolution, the voices of
women were raised in unison and many of them took an active part in this movement. The
“Revolutionary Republican Women Citizens” were the ones who called for the right of
women to vote and to be able to hold civilian and military posts in the new Republic.

Women fought with men and they were disappointed when the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen” was published and denied the equality of women with men.

In 1791, Olympe de Gouges wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Women in order to call
for equal rights with men. She was a member of the Girondin Faction and two years later
in 1793 she was sent to the guillotine during the Jacobin Terror.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790) as a reply to

Edmund Burke’s attack on his work Revolution in France (1790). She was frustrated with
the revolutionaries’ neglecting women’s rights. Her most famous work is A Vindication of
the Rights of Women (1792), nineteenth century feminists didn’t want to be associated
with her outspoken opinions about sexuality and with the scandals of her illegitimate
daughter. However, nowadays her work is seen as the first step of the foundation of
modern feminism. She demanded that women should be recognized as citizens, have their
own rights including equality of access into education and employment.

Hannah Moore: she wrote the pamphlet Strictures on the Modern System of Female
Education (1799) in which she called for an education system in order to enable women to
be moral guardians of their children, to carry out their philanthropic duties and also lay the
foundations for a marriage based on friendship. She seems an unlikely feminist but she
made an important contribution to the movement.

In the expanding middle classes, the material conditions improved but women were still
relegated and confined only to the domestic sphere. They were expected to fulfill their
roles as moral educators of the coming generation. Hannah Moore took this idea outside
the home helping to establish a role for women which later would enable nineteenth
century feminists (like Josephine Butler) to extend the boundaries of moral education into
campaigning for women’s rights.

Wollstonecraft and Moore during the eighteenth century were part of a growing number
of women who regarded literature and writing as a viable profession as it offered them,
educated women, a small measure of financial independence and a way of drawing
attention to the difficulties that women had to face.

Later women figures like Mary Hays, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen
debated on the Woman Question in their novels. They expressed concerns about
marriage, motherhood and family life, but also sometimes they included issues such as
rape or prostitution too.