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The Early Seventeenth Century: from Elizabethan to Jacobean (1603-1660)

The Early Seventeenth Century: from Elizabethan to Jacobean (1603-1660). LIT 207 Gazzara. INTRODUCING THE PERIOD. And new philosophy calls all in doubt; The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, no man’s wit Can well direct him where to look for it.

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The Early Seventeenth Century: from Elizabethan to Jacobean (1603-1660)

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  1. The Early Seventeenth Century: from Elizabethan to Jacobean (1603-1660) LIT 207 Gazzara

  2. INTRODUCING THE PERIOD And new philosophy calls all in doubt; The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, no man’s wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world’s spent, When in the planets and the firmament They seek so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. ‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject; father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that there can be None of that kind of which he is, but he. ~John Donne, Anatomy of the World

  3. Notions of the human-being • Self-interested, self-seeking individuals in a likewise society = novel/new concepts • These texts SHAPE the ideas about human nature and society they now seem to reflect (example: Goneril/Reagan) • State of nature as that of “war of every man against every man” and individual questing after TRUTH within the market of FREE IDEAS

  4. Increase of literacy/print trade • LITERACY and the massive growth of the print trade  more than doubled between 1600 and 1640 • Civil war and the Interregnum  rise of the newsbook and the temporary collapse of censorship = number of titles published EXCEEDED the total before that period • NEW VOICES INTO THE LITERARY SPHERE  MORE WRITERS  MORE KINDS OF WRITING • WOMEN entered authorship and publication • AUTHOR AS CAPITALIST • Voices of the laboring poor

  5. English Revolution? English Civil War(s)? War of the Three Kingdoms? • Few, if any, could avoid POLITICS (by choice or design) • Contemporary struggles or (paid or voluntary) propagandists • Distance was really impossible—events found their way into the works • Pervasive, inevitable effects of the English Revolution and its aftermath • Old order / rebellion and regicide  inevitable defeat to both, reflected in the works

  6. FINAL THOUGHTS • Debate, Dissent, and Revolution  should literature remain aloof from tawdry political squabbles? • Faith, Devotion, and Doubt  predestination, intense introspection • The Material world  scientists and philosophers sought the material causes of everything, male cynicism of sex • Writing Women  misogynist diatribes and subsequent attacks

  7. GENDER DEBATE~ • Using Faith, Devotion, and Doubt as your axis, produce an informal DEFENCE of either Speght’s or Swetnam’s argument, focusing on your particular author's treatment of the Fall. • Bonus points will be considered to each group member of the group who rushes to Swetnam’s defence…

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