During the reign of the Bloody Mary (Mary Tudor or Queen Mary 1 of England), a group of fanatical Christians known as Puritans arose. These people abhorred Roman Catholic practices.
They were Protestants and they lay low during the time of the reign of Mary Tudor who earned herself the alias of Bloody Mary because of her practice of arresting and burning Protestants while they were tied to the stakes. It was a time of terror in England.
You will recall that Mary Tudor’s father, King Henry VIII, being desperate for a male child to succeed him and despising his first wife Catherine of Aragon – a Spanish princess for not giving him a male child, and being disallowed by the pope at the time (Clement VII) to divorce Catherine and marry another wife, Henry VIII pulled out of the Catholic Church, and with him, all England.
England continued to enjoy Protestantism after the reign of Henry VIII as his son and successor, Edward V continued in his father’s legacy. The young king who ruled under regency must have so loved Protestantism that when he sensed that Tuberculosis (the same illness that killed his grandfather, Henry VII) would take him out, he named one Lady Jane Grey his successor instead of his half sister, Mary Tudor.
Anyway, when he died after a six-year reign (1547-1553), Mary Tudor came on the throne of England and took England right back to the Roman Catholic Church, much to the chagrin of England.
For five years, Mary Tudor (1553-1558) reigned and took England down the drain with much killing of Protestant Christians. Record has it that Mary Tudor burned at the stake about 300 Protestant Christians. Ask yourself what was the population of England at the time.
Well, when Edward’s and Mary’s half sister, Elizabeth (born by Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s 2nd wife) came to the throne in 1558, she restored England to Protestantism. However, her settlement into Protestantism did not quite satisfy the Puritans who felt that the Church of England was not fully reformed and that Roman Catholic practices were not fully eschewed.
So, the Puritans were English Protestants living in the 16th and 17th centuries England set to purge and purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic Church practices.
Curiously, despite the fact that these religious fanatics were not given to flowery language or verbal flourishes, neither were they interested in metaphors or any such literary elements, yet great poets emerged amongst them. Such great literary giants as John Milton, John Dryden, John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, Anne Bradstreet and others were writing at the time.
Anne Bradstreet who is said to have migrated to Salem Massachusetts in 1630 was one of the many Puritans who left England and founded the New England in America. Her book, a collection of poems titled “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” in 1650, was the first published work by a woman both in America.
The Puritans out of disenchantment about the state of religious affairs in England left England in Europe and migrated to America to found a new land where they could start afresh in religious freedom. According to them, they came to explore the new land, live on the land of their own, make money, and spread and practise their religion freely.
The idea for the exodus of the Puritans from England to New England, must have begun at the time of Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) and germinated in the reigns of the subsequent monarchs: Elizabeth 1 and James 1 because they were not fully allowed to practise their religious fanaticism.
To be able to practise a fully reformed Protestantism, the Puritans found an “empty land”, America. It did not matter to them that a small group of Red Indians inhabited the land at this time. They still regarded the land as empty and ‘untrodden’ ignoring the presence of Native Americans!
Anyway, you have just stumbled onto how the United States of America was born. However, that is not our destination. We are unto the Poetry of the Puritans because in Inside Literature, we are concerned with Literature.
The Poetry of John Milton
In 1667, John Milton (1608-1674) published “Paradise Lost”, an epic poem expressing dissatisfaction and despair at how the Puritan Revolution against the practices of the Roman Catholic Church in England failed. Nonetheless, the poet also expressed hope at the potential, the capability of the human mind – while there is life, there is hope!
In 1671, Milton published the sequel, Paradise Regained. Other published works of this great Puritan poet are: On Shakespeare, Comus, Lycidas, Ol’ Mc Donald, the tragedy, Shall We Dance Samson Agonistes, etc.
John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a preacher and a dissident. His most famous work is the allegorical poem, Pilgrim’s Progress. Fanatical and relentless, Bunyan was jailed several times for preaching without licence, but he couldn’t keep quiet for his beliefs. From Bunyan’s titles, you will know he was a Bible reader and believer for he roiled out such titles as From Mount Ebal; From Mount Gerizzim (both mounts mentioned in Deuteronomy 28); How Graces Are To Be Obtained; Of Holiness. Of hell and those Who Perish; Of the Love of Christ’Of Uprightness and Sincerity, etc.
Bunyan who was well known for his life of profanity changed in later life to become a pious fellow believing in sin and damnation as basic canon of existence. He ran into trouble as he preached against the Book of Common Prayer during the reign of Charles II of England and went to prison.
He began writing Pilgrim’s Progress in prison. The poem was in two parts published over a period of six years, 1678 and 1684 while he was in and out of prison.
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)’s poem To My Dear and Loving Husband (excerpt):
If ever two were one, then surely we,
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me you women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold…
Well, we can see a definite Christian stance in her poem. Christian marriage says one plus one equals to one! Christian marriage says husband must love wife as Christ loves the Church (willing and ready to die for her). You can see from the testimony of the speaker, this husband does. She was a Puritan, upholding everything biblical.
John Dryden (1631-1700) is the best of poets after John Donne and John Milton, of the 17th century. He is an institution. He comes after Shakespeare and Ben John as the best English playwright. In prose and literary criticism, Dryden has no equal.
His heroic play The Conquest Granada (1670, 1671) is said to be the greatest heroic play second to Shakespeare’s. His Marriage A-la Mode poem is the greatest tragicomedy.
Dryden has so many greatest works. His development of the historic, analytical, evaluative and dialogic methods helped to produce the neoclassical theory of literary criticism. He introduced paraphrasing in translating ancient works that eased translations from ancient antiquities to contemporary works using it to translate the works of such greats as Homer, Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Chaucer, etc.
Dryden gave much to literature by perfecting the heroic couplet garnishing it with thoughtful enjambments, triplets, metric variations et al. With his great satiric works; Mac Flecknoe and The Medall (both published in 1682), Dryden is best known today as a satirist.
One of his great satiric poems is Absalom and Ahitophel. Enjoy the few lines of this great poem:
In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli’d his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin’d
Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;
Then, Israel’s monarch, after
Heaven’s own heart,
His vigorous warmth did variously impart
To wives and slaves: and, wide as his command,
Scatter’d his Maker’s image
Through the land…
This satirical work ends in tragic resolution unlike satires in general.
Dryden is an institution whose works cannot even be scratched here. He relied on patterns and rhythm of every day speech in his poetry. He is truly a literary giant!