The early seventeenth century was an era of almost unprecedented agitation, excitement, and change in English society and in English literature. The spread of literacy and the growth of the book market meant that more people were writing—and publishing their work—in this period than ever before. There were not only many more writers than in the past, there were many more kinds of writers, and more kinds of writing. This era saw the entry of women in significant numbers into the fields of authorship and publication. It saw the emergence, from Ben Jonson onward, of the professional author as a (relatively) respectable member of early capitalist society. And it is also in this era where we begin to hear, if still only faintly and unclearly, the voices of the laboring poor.
With a multiplicity of voices comes a multiplicity of styles. The poetic voice in this period ranges from the jagged and variable rhythms of Donne's verse, in which he seeks to capture the effect of human speech:
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
to Milton's elaborate allusion-packed utterances, which roll along like great waves. (The first sentence in Paradise Lost goes on for sixteen unforgettable lines.)
In the sessions that follow, you will first be introduced to two of the major poets of the period, John Donne and Ben Jonson, and then to a range of themes that preoccupied early-seventeenth-century minds: the quest for Utopia or the perfect society; marriage, madness, and melancholy; revolution and regicide. These sessions will also provide valuable contexts for your reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost, an epic poem that reflects the aspirations, the anxieties, and the tumultuousness of the time. Paradise Lost is a poem about marriage (the union of Adam and Eve), about a utopian society (the garden of Eden), and about a civil war (in heaven). It is an immortal poem, yet one that could have been written at no other time.