Week II James and Charles

17th century English
Literature
Dr. Ulaş Özgün
Outline of the Course
• Historical Context of the 17th century
• Jacobean and Carolean period
• Literary Scene
• John Donne and the Metaphysical Poetry

Age of Continuity
• Renaissance ideals
• Ptolemaic Universe
• The Great Chain of Being
• Theory of Humours
• The Protestant Reformation
• Literacy thanks to the printing press
• Discoveries in the New World
• London was growing.

Major Historical Events of the 17th Century
1603: Death of Elizabeth I, accession of James I, first
Stuart King of England
1605: The Gunpowder Plot
Guy Fawkes (c. 1570-1606)

Transformation of Guy Fawkes into a symbol of Rebellion
Occupy Wallstreet (2012)
Alan Moore, V for V for Vendetta (2006)

Vendetta (1982-86)
• 1607: First New

World Colony,
Virginia
Dutch Cartographer, Joan Blaeu (1635)

1625: Death of James I, Accession of

Charles I
1642: Outbreak of Civil War
1649: Execution of Charles I

• Interregnum (1649-1660)
• Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector (1653-58)

• Richard Cromwell (1658-1660)
Oliver Cromwell, 1620-1658

• Restoration (1660)
Jacobean Period (1603-25)
• James IV of Scotland became James I of England.
• Reservations by the people, the church, and Parliament.
• Absolutist in terms of government

• The balance between the monarch and Parliament
(English way)
• He sought to unite Scotland and England.
• Financial problems of James I

• Luxury
• Wasteful entourage
• New aristocrats
• Hunting
• James’ treaty with Spain made the Atlantic safe for British Painting of King James I
ships of England (1603-1625)
• Catholic x Puritan tension brewing.
• James’s Catholic upbringing, yet his embrace of
the Anglican Church
• 1605: Gunpowder Plot

• A small group of Catholics packed gunpowder in
a cellar adjacent to Parliament
• If the plot were successful, most of England’s
ruling class would be eliminated in a day.
• Possibility of foreign invasion.
Conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot
• Resulting in anti-Catholic paranoia.

• Patron of theatres
• Shakespeare’s troupe was now King’s
Men
• Creation of the Union Jack (1606)
• The King James Bible (1611).

Caroline Period (1625-1642)
• Royal absolutism.
• By 1629, he had dissolved Parliament three times and

ruled ten years without summoning Parliament.
• He and his wife, French princess Henrietta Maria,

were art collectors and patrons of painters such as
Peter Paul Rubens and Sir Anthony von Dyke
Peter Paul Rubens, Union of

Scotland and England.
King Charles of England 1625-

1642
• Religious conflict between the Catholics and the Puritans intensified.
• Charles was a staunch Anglican but his wife was Catholic and had an entourage of Catholic
priests.
• Puritans were enraged by the appointment of William Laud as the Archbishop of

Canterbury.
• The tension between the two sides generated a cultural war.

• In 1632, Puritan William Prynne wrote a treatise opposing stage plays, court masques,
Maypoles (pagan phallus worship), Laudian Church rituals, stained glass windows, mixed
dancing all of which he associated with licentiousness, effeminacy and the seduction of the
popish idolatry.
• He was imprisoned, his books burned, ears cut off.

• Finally, a Parliament was convened in 1640 as Charles was in need of
money.
• Parliament refused to approve the taxes levied by Charles I.
• The rift between Charles I and Parliament deepened after the King sought
five members of Parliament for treason.
• Londoners rebelled, Charles fled to York, Queen to the Continent.
• On July 12, 1642, Parliament voted to raise an army and civil war began.
Literary Scene during this period
• Patronage was still the most secure way for
the writers.
• Manuscripts still retained their importance.
• Despite the increase in literacy, the reading

public was still around the royal court, Recently found Donne Manuscript
universities, and the Inns of Court.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/nov/03/scurri
lous-manuscript-that-could-have-undone-john-donne-
discovered
• Many important writers’ (Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert) collected
works were published posthumously.
• Except for Ben Johnson, Works (1616)
• No royalty for the writers, only a fee in advance.
• London was the centre for printing and Stationer’s Company, in return
for censorship was holding a monopoly.
• Violation of censorship was subject to imprisonment and mutilation
• Some major Elizabethan genres fell out of favour
• Long allegorical or mythological narratives
• Sonnet sequences
• Pastoral poems
• Ornamentation and elaborate speech continued mixed with wit.
• Major poets of the period were John Donne, Ben Johnson and George
Herbert.
• They experimented with new genres such as love elegy, epigram, verse epistle,
meditative religious lyric, and country-house poem.
John Donne (1572-1631) and Metaphysical Poetry
• He was born in London to a Roman Catholic household.
• In 1590s, converted to Anglican Church.

• Security, social acceptance, and the possibility of a
public career.
• Became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton.

• Married his niece, Ann More, secretly. (Twelve children)
• Wrote Pseudo-Martyr (1610) and Ignatius His Conclave

(1611) to receive royal favour.
• James I urged him to an ecclesiastical career which he

finally consented to in 1615.
• Great preacher
John Donne Portrait
John Donne (1572-1631)
• Donne had a portrait made of himself in his
shroud and meditated on it daily.
• Circulated his poems in manuscript form.
• His finest religious poems predate his

ordination, and he continued to add
love poems to his collection after he
entered the Church.
John Donne in Shroud Sculpture

John Donne’s Songs and Sonnets (1633)
• Only one formal sonnet.
• Lyrical poems insist on the union of physical and spiritual love.
• Expression of intense energy and emotion, constantly shifting and

evolving.
• Speaker/author interchangeable
Metaphysical Poets
• A term applied to a group of 17th c. poets, yet not a formal school:
• John Donne
• Thomas Carew
• George Herbert
• Richard Crashaw
• Henry Vaughan
• Andrew Marvell
• William Drummond used the term in a letter in 1630.
• Dryden in Discourse of the Original and Progress of Satire (1692): “He [John
Donne] affects the metaphysics not only in his satires, but in his amorous
verses, where nature only should reign and perplexes the minds of the fair sex
with nice speculations of philosophy”
Metaphysical Poets
• Samuel Johnson in Lives of the Poets (1779-81) established the word’s
connection to these poets.
• He wrote somewhat disapprovingly of the discordia concors in the metaphysical
imagery by stating, “heterogenous ideas … yoked by violence together”
• Discordia concors: “Wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may
be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia
concors, a combination of dissimilar images as discovery of occult
resemblances in things apparently unlike” (Johnson)
• It is an inversion of Horace’s concept of concordia discouse (harmony in

discord)
Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry
• Arresting and original images, paradoxes, dialectical arguments and conceits
• Witty language, ingenuity and humour
• Use of colloquial speech
• Considerable flexibility of rhythm and meter
• Complex themes both sacred and profane, expressed in an ambiguous way

• Mortality, love etc.
• Conceit: a fairly elaborate figurative device of a fanciful king which incorporates metaphor,
simile, oxymoron, and hyperbole and is intended to surprise and delight the reader with its
ingenuity.
W. Bradforth Smith’s Definition
• “Metaphysical Poetry is a paradoxical inquiry, imaginative and intellectual,
which exhausts, by its use of antithesis and contradiction and unusual
imagery, all the possibilities in a given idea. This idea will predominantly be
a psychological probing of love, death, or religion as the more important
matters of experience in the life of the poet, and will be embodied in
striking metaphorical utterance or in the use of the common (familiar) or
the scientific word” (263)

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17th century English

• John Donne and the Metaphysical Poetry

• The Protestant Reformation

• Literacy thanks to the printing press

• Discoveries in the New World

• London was growing.

1605: The Gunpowder Plot

Guy Fawkes (c. 1570-1606)

Occupy Wallstreet (2012)

Alan Moore, V for V for Vendetta (2006)

• 1607: First New

Dutch Cartographer, Joan Blaeu (1635)

1625: Death of James I, Accession of

1642: Outbreak of Civil War

1649: Execution of Charles I

• Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector (1653-58)

Oliver Cromwell, 1620-1658

• Absolutist in terms of government

• He sought to unite Scotland and England.

• Financial problems of James I

• 1605: Gunpowder Plot

• Resulting in anti-Catholic paranoia.

• Creation of the Union Jack (1606)

• The King James Bible (1611).

• By 1629, he had dissolved Parliament three times and

• He and his wife, French princess Henrietta Maria,

Peter Paul Rubens, Union of

King Charles of England 1625-

• Puritans were enraged by the appointment of William Laud as the Archbishop of

• The tension between the two sides generated a cultural war.

• He was imprisoned, his books burned, ears cut off.

• Parliament refused to approve the taxes levied by Charles I.

• Londoners rebelled, Charles fled to York, Queen to the Continent.

• Manuscripts still retained their importance.

• Despite the increase in literacy, the reading

• No royalty for the writers, only a fee in advance.

• Ornamentation and elaborate speech continued mixed with wit.

• In 1590s, converted to Anglican Church.

• Became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton.

• Wrote Pseudo-Martyr (1610) and Ignatius His Conclave

• James I urged him to an ecclesiastical career which he

• Circulated his poems in manuscript form.

• His finest religious poems predate his

John Donne in Shroud Sculpture

• Lyrical poems insist on the union of physical and spiritual love.

• Expression of intense energy and emotion, constantly shifting and

• William Drummond used the term in a letter in 1630.

• It is an inversion of Horace’s concept of concordia discouse (harmony in

• Witty language, ingenuity and humour

• Use of colloquial speech

• Considerable flexibility of rhythm and meter

• Complex themes both sacred and profane, expressed in an ambiguous way

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