The Puritan Age

The Puritan Age

The Puritan Age mirrors the religious and political’s instability present in the UK during the XVII century. Several authors reflect this volatility in their works, recalling John Milton’s importance and his allegorical masterpiece: Paradise Lost.

The Puritan Age presents a various and large aperture of different poetical shades, characterizing it therefore thanks to the Cavalier Poets, poets who emphasize their works with a blazing and brilliant vocabulary, loyal to Johnson’s model, Metaphysical Poets, following John Donne’s metaphysical context, and Satire’s importance (ironical way of writing tending to describe facts). It is fondamental to underline Don Quixote’s emphasis to it, which inspired Butler to write “Hubridas”, an allegorical parody of the British civil war.

John Milton

John Milton is known being as the Puritan Age’s poetical and political portray.

Known majorly as a political personality, Milton produced noteworthy literal works, which propelled him to the climax of his art; l’Allegro and il Penseroso aired his career with an emphasizing beginning. John defended literature’s cause and liberty, risked to be censured by the political situation at time, through a poetical speech layered by argued and defended political intentions: “Areopagitica”. John Milton’s climax of his career is evidenced by the high success of Paradise Lost, an allegorical work which symbolizes the spiritual statehood of the author, playing and shading therefore with the different roles attributed to God –and Adam– and his opposing rebel, Satan.

John Milton was gifted by an unlikely opinion and knowledge about theology, introducing to it another aspect (opposed to the Bible’s ideology at time): politics.

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is evidenced into two different parts:

Divine Drama:

The Divine Drama introduces a highly and brilliantly written vocabulary, accompanied by a certain divergence and superiority on what it concerns the word ledge and style.

Human Drama:

The Human Drama evidences a less stylish and literal importance vis-a-vis the Divine Drama. The Human Drama can be referred to in Dante’s Inferno, due to the plebeian and vulgar importance given to vocabulary.

...