ENGLISH LITERATURE ADVANCING THROUGH HISTORY 3 – The Seventeenth Century

Petru Golban

Dec 2021 · Literature Series Book 3 · Transnational Press London

About this ebook

The present book is third in a series of works which aim to expose the complexity and essence, power and extent of the major periods, movements, trends, genres, authors, and literary texts in the history of English literature. Following this aim, the series will consist of monographs which cover the most important ages and experiences of English literary history, including Anglo-Saxon or Old English period, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Restoration, neoclassicism, romanticism, Victorian Age, and the twentieth-century and contemporary literary backgrounds. The reader of these volumes will acquire the knowledge of literary terminology along with the theoretical and critical perspectives on certain texts and textual typology belonging to different periods, movements, trends, and genres. The reader will also learn about the characteristics and conventions of these literary periods and movements, trends and genres, main writers and major works, and the literary interaction and continuity of the given periods. Apart from an important amount of reference to literary practice, some chapters on these periods include information on their philosophy, criticism, worldview, values, or episteme, in the Foucauldian sense, which means that even though the condition of the creative writing remains as the main concern, it is balanced by a focus on the condition of thought as well as theoretical and critical writing during a particular period.

Preface

Introduction: Approaching Literary Practice and Studying British Literature in History

Preliminaries: Learning Literary Heritage through Critical Tradition or Back to Tynyanov

Genre Theory for Poetry

The Intellectual Background

1.1 The Period and Its Historical, Social and Cultural Implications

1.2 The Philosophical Advancement of Modernity

1.2.1 Francis Bacon and the “New Method”

1.2.2 The Advancement of Classicism: French Contribution

1.2.3 The Social and Political Philosophy: Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan

1.2.4 Rationalists and Empiricists

1.3 The Idea of Literature as a Critical Concern in the Seventeenth Century

1.3.1 The English “Battle of the Books” or “La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” in the European Context

1.3.2 Restoration, John Dryden and Prescribing Neoclassicism

The Literary Background

2.1 The British Seventeenth Century and Its Literary Practice

2.2 Metaphysical Poetry, Its Alternatives and Aftermath

2.3 The Puritan Period and Its Literary Expression

2.4 The Restoration Period and Its Literature

2.5 The Picaresque Tradition in European and English Literature

Major Literary Voices

3.1 The Metaphysical Poets I: John Donne

3.2 The Metaphysical Poets II: George Herbert

3.3 The Metaphysical Poets III: Andrew Marvell

3.4 John Milton: The Voice of the Century

3.4.1 L’Allegro and Il Penseroso

3.4.2 Lycidas and Sonnets

3.4.3 Paradise Lost and the Epic of Puritanism

3.5 John Dryden and His Critical Theory and Literary Practice

Conclusion: The Literature of a Turbulent Age

References and Suggestions for Further Reading

Index

About the author

Petru Golban holds a PhD in English and American Literature from Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania. His academic and professional career started in 1995, and he currently teaches literary theory and English literature-related classes as an Associate Professor at Tekirdağ Namik Kemal University, Turkey. He is also the author of 9 books, including A History of the Bildungsroman: From Ancient Beginnings to Romanticism, The Foundations of English Literary Criticism: From Philip Sidney to Henry James and Texts Analyzing Literature as Argument, and some 50 literary studies. His research concerns include particular aspects of the history of English literature, comparative literary studies, and literary theory and criticism.