John Milton and his literary ts
His identities:
A Puritan
A staunch fighter for liberty in politics,
religion, education, marriage and all the other social fields
• The breakout of civil war in
1640
• Oliver Cromwell’s Republic
England
• The Restoration of
Monarchy in 1660
• Stuart Absolutism in the
reign of Charles II and
Pamphlets:
Of the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates The Defense of the English People The Second Defense of the English People The Ready and Easy Way
Epics:
of king by parliament
• Abolition of monarchy and the
establishment of republicanism
Religious conflict:
• The Anglican church VS the
Puritans
Philosopher:
John Locke (1632-1704)
James II
• Glorious Revolution in
1688
2. Ideological background of English Literature
Ideological conflicts:
• Affirmation of divine right of the
king
• Limitation of the absolute right
I saw that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition; …
----Of Prelatical Episcopacy
Good and evil we know in the field of the world grow up together almost inseparately; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned.
English Literature during the English Bourgeois Revolution and the Restoration
(1625-1688)
1. Political background
The intermingling conflicts within ruling classes
Paradise Lost Paradise Regained
Verse Tragedy
Samson Agonistes
Extracts from Milton’s works
No man who knows aught can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.
3. Major Literary Figures
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
The Pilgrim’s Progress
John Milton (1608-1674)
•A poet-dramatist-prose writer •“The father of English criticism •The forerunner of nJeooh-nclaDsrsyicdisemn An Essay of Dram(a1ti6c3P1o-e1s7y00)
A poet
A prose writer
A Latin Secretary: a pamphleteer in defense of English bourgeois revolution
An epic writer
A dramatist
His literary creations:
Prose works: Areopagitica
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
----Areopagitica
Extracts from Milton’s works
----The Second Defence of the English People
It being manifest, that the power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what is only derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the people to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright.