RESTORATION

The Restoration was accompanied by social change.
Puritanism lost its momentum.
Theatres reopened.
"Restoration comedy" became a recognisable genre.
Theatre licenses granted by Charles were the first in England to permit women to play female roles on stage
Restoration literature celebrated to the restored court, which included libertines like John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. Of Charles II, Wilmot supposedly said:
We have a pretty witty king,
And whose word no man relies on,
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
(1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680)
an English Libertine poet,
a friend of Charles II,
the writer of satirical and bawdy poetry.
the toast of the Restoration court,
a patron of the arts.

Johnny Depp as Rochester
John Malkovich as King Charles II
Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry

Premises to Art and Science Flourishing
The witty and wordrly monarch was renowned as a philanderer;
Highly witty, playful, and sexually wise poetry thus had court sanction.
Charles sponsored mathematics and natural philosophy;
Spirited scepticism and investigation into nature were favoured by the court.
Charles II sponsored the Royal Society, whose courtiers were eager to join; Royal Society members moved in court.
As a follow-up to the long exile, Charles was High Church (and secretly vowed to convert to Roman Catholicism on his death) and James was crypto-Catholic;
royal policy was generally tolerant of religious and political dissenters.
Charles was truly reluctant to persecute Puritans.
As a consequence, the prose literature of dissent, political theory, and economics increased in Charles II's reign.

literature
Two camps of authors:
Those recovering the English literature of the Jacobean
Those with a powerful sense of novelty, and authors approached Gallic models of literature and elevated the literature of wit (particularly satire and parody).
Literature of sceptical inquiry reflects the former; introduction of Neoclassicism into English writing and criticism is the result of the latter.
The Restoration is a time when the influence of the king's presence and personality permeated literary society: ALL literature reflects the court.
"The Restoration" as a critical concept covers the duration of the effect of Charles and Charles's manner. This effect extended beyond his death, in some instances, and not as long as his life, in others.

Jacobean literature
Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era; his characters embody the theory of humours.
According to this contemporary medical theory, behavioral differences result from a prevalence of one of the body's four "humours" (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) over the other three; these humours correspond with the four elements of the universe: air, water, fire, and earth.
Jonson is a master of style, and a brilliant satirist. His Volpone shows how vice is being punished by vice, virtue meting out its reward.
His followers include Beaumont and Fletcher,
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a mockery of the rising middle class and especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much literature at all. The book aimed at mocking how feudalism and chivalry had turned into snobbery and make-believe and that new social classes were on the rise.
Pupolar was the revenge play: John Webster and Thomas Kyd.
George Chapman: the famous translation of Homer, a profound influence on all future English literature, which inspired John Keats to write one of his best sonnets.
The King James Bible, one of the most massive translation projects in the history of English (1604-1611)
the culmination of a tradition of Bible translation into English that began with the work of William Tyndale.
It became the standard Bible of the Church of England.
This project was headed by James I himself, who supervised the work of forty-seven scholars.
John Donne and the other Metaphysical poets.
Metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, to reach surprise effects.
The paradox or the oxymoron is a constant in this poetry whose fears and anxieties also speak of a world of spiritual certainties shaken by the modern discoveries of geography and science, one that is no longer the centre of the universe.
Baroque poetry. The style is lofty, sweeping, epic, and religious.

Rubens.The Adoration of the Magi
Theory of Humours
John Donne
Frontispiece of King James’s Bible

The English Epic
No national epic.
Several poets attempted it.
Sir William Davenant’s Gondibert
John Milton's Paradise Lost chose blank verse;
Paradise Lost seeks to tell the story of all mankind,
Milton reveals pride in Christianity rather than Englishness.
Milton also began writing an epic on King Arthur, but rejected that subject.
No English epic ☹.

Poetry, verse, and odes
No moody lyric poetry of one’s own feelings in the first person
Poets express their points of view in odes, pastoral poetry, and ariel verse.
The poetry devaluates individual sentiment and psychology in favour of public utterance and philosophy.
Pastorals, though, remain, to preserve some sort of sentiment
Preferred rhyme scheme:
Rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter.
It is complete and coherent; a "decorum“, the fitness of form to subject (Dryden Epic).
Dryden finds a closed couplet in iambic pentameter with minimum of enjambment. This form was called the "heroic couplet," because it was suitable for heroic subjects.
The age also developed the mock-heroic couplet.

Paradise Lost and Regained by John Milton. 1667-1671
….Hail, horrors! Hail,
Infernal World! And thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new professor- one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Paradise Lost and Regained by John Milton. 1667-1671

Mace
granted by King Charles to Royal Society
SCIENCE
Mace
granted by King Charles to Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence;
Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London".
Today acts as a scientific advisor to the British government, receiving a parliamentary grant-in-aid.
The UK's Academy of Sciences, and funds research fellowships and scientific start-up companies.
There are currently 1,314 Fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), with 44 new Fellows appointed each year.
There are also Royal Fellows, Honorary Fellows and Foreign Fellows, the last of which are allowed to use their postnominal title ForMemRS (Foreign Member of the Royal Society).
Since 1967, the Society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London.

Robert Boyle:
British scientist, philosopher and theologian.

separated philosophy and science, referring to himself as philosopher – experimentalist or natural philosopher.
changed the course of Experiment;
developed the concept of the corpuscular structure of the world;
founded modern atomic-molecular theory;
laid the the basis for physical chemistry;
introduced the concept of chemical analysis

Traditional view of the world
Aristotle’s
Alchemists’

Boyle’s vision of the world