SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PROSE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PROSE

The development of English prose in the 17^th century can be divided into two periods: 

1) prose in the age of Milton 

2) prose during Restoration.

During the mid 17^th century or rather the Age of Milton the development of prose carried on from the previous age. In spite of the hampering effects of the civil strife, the prose output was copious and excellent in kind. There was a notable advance in the sermon writing; pamphlets were abundant; and history, politics, philosophy and miscellaneous kinds were well represented. There was a remarkable advance in prose style.

The prose of this age was cultivated in a style very different from the Elizabethan and Sixteenth century prose. The prose writers used a grand style which Bacon and Hooker never anticipated. It was loose in structure, over coloured, elaborate and way ward. The writers indulged too freely in the use of Latinised words of classical construction. Despite some drawbacks, the prose of this period has many qualities. It has the freshness of form. The Seventeenth century is the first great period of modern English prose when it was forming under the classical influence but independent of the French impact. In subject matter it represents the self conscious and personal interest of the time. It was also a period of biography, autobiography, history and personal essays. The prose of this age possesses a strongly religious or theological and philosophical character.

The important prose writers of this period are Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, Thomas Fuller, Jack Walton and John Milton.

ROBERT BURTON (1577-1613) made notable contribution by The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). It is an elaborate and discursive study of melancholy, its species and kinds, its causes, results and cure. The book, though laboured and saturnine in tone, shows an underlying common sense and a true sympathy with humanity. Its learning is immense and unconventional, being drawn from many rare authors; its humour curiously crabbed, subdued, and ironical; and its ‘melancholy’ though pervading, is not oppressive. The diction has a colloquial naturalness; the enormous sentences, packed with quotation and allusion, are loosely knit. Both as a stylist and as a personality Burton occupies his own niche in English prose.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-82), born at London and educated at Winchester and Oxford, studied medicine, practised at Oxfordshire, travelled abroad, and received his degree of M.D at Leyden. Almost alone among his contemporary writers, Browne seems to have been unaffected by the commotions of the time. His prose works, produced during some of the hottest years of civil strife, are oblivious of the unrest. Religio Medici (1635/1642), his confession of faith, is a curious mixture of religious faith and scientific scepticism. Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errors (1646), sharing the same mental inconsistency, resembles the works of Burton in it’s out of way learning. Hydriotaphia: Urne Buriall (1658), commonly considered to be his master piece, contains reflections on human mortality induced by the discovery of some ancient funeral urns. The Garden of Cyrus (1658) is a treatise on the quincunx. His last work Christian Morals was published after his death.

Browne was a great literary stylist. He shows the ornate style in its richest bloom. His diction is strongly latinised and he has the scholastic habit of introducing Latin tags and references. His sentences are carefully wrought and artistically combined into paragraphs. The diction has a richness of effect unknown among other English prose writers. The prose is sometimes obscure, rarely vivacious, and hardly ever diverting: but the solemnity and beauty of it have given it an enduring fascination.

JEREMY TAYLOR (1613-67) is the most important literary divine of the age. A learned, voluble, and impressive preacher, who carried the same quality into his prose works which consisted of tracts, sermons, and theological books. His popular works were The Liberty of Prophesying (1647), Holy Living (1650), and Holy Dying (1651). In his writings he is fond of quotations and allusions and of florid, rhetorical figures, such as simile, exclamation, and apostrophe; and his language is abundant, melodious and pleasing.

THOMAS FULLER (1608-61) had an original and penetrating mind. His literary works are of great interest and value. His serious historical books include The History of the Holy War (1639), dealing with the crusades, and The Church History of Britain (1655). Among his pamphlets are Good Thoughts in Bad Times (1645) and An Alarum to the Counties of England and Wales (1660). The work that has given him his reputation is The Worthies of England published after his death by his son in 1662.

JOHN MILTON (1608-74) was not only a great poet but also a finest writer of prose whose work is among the finest controversial writing in the language. Most of his prose was written during the middle period of his life (1640-60). The prose works have an unusual interest because they have a direct bearing on either his personal business or public interest. In all he has written twenty-five pamphlets (21 in English, 4 in Latin).He wrote his pamphlets on themes like divorce, episcopacy, politics, education, liberty of the press etc. His greatest prose work is Areopagitica (1644) which is a noble and impassioned plea for the liberty of the press.

While considering the prose style of Milton we must keep in mind how it was occasioned. His pamphlets were cast off at the centre of any controversy and precipitated into print while some topic was in urgent debate either in Milton’s or in public mind. Hence they are tempestuous and disordered in method and voluble, violent and lax in style. They reveal intense zeal and pugnacity, a mind at once spacious in ideals and intolerant in application, a rich fancy, and a capacious scholarship. They lack humour, proportion, and restraint; but in spite of these defects they are among the greatest prose compositions in the English language.

The other prose writers in the age of Milton were Izaac Walton, Earl of Clarendon and Thomas Hobbes. The period is almost devoid of narrative prose of the lighter sort, it is quite rich in sermons, pamphlets and other miscellaneous prose. The period has been called as “the Golden Age of English pulpit.” The violent religious strife of the time has a great flow of sermon writing which is marked with eloquence, learning and strong argument. In addition to Jeremy Taylor and Fuller we may notice Robert South, Issac Barrow and Richard Baxter. A number of philosophical works were also written. On the moral side there are the works of Browne; on the political those of Hobbes; and on the religious side the books of John Hales. In historical prose the works of Clarendon and Fuller stood pre eminent.

RESTORATION PROSE

With the exception of the works of Dryden and Bunyan, the prose work of the Restoration times is of little moment. Dryden’s prose is almost entirely devoted to literary criticism and Bunyan’s contribution shows a remarkable development of the prose allegory. The remainder of the prose writers deal with political, historical, theological and other miscellaneous subjects.

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) is the representative writer of the Restoration age. For forty years he continued to produce an abundance of literary works of every kind ----- poems, plays and prose works. Dryden’s versatility is apparent when we observe that in prose, as well as in poetry and drama, he attains to primacy in his generation. In prose Dryden has one rival, John Bunyan. No single item of Dryden’s prose work is of very great length; but in his Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1668), in his numerous dedicatory epistles and prefaces, and in scanty stock of his surviving letters we have a prose corpus of some magnitude. The general subject of his prose work is literary criticism, and that of a sane and vigorous quality. The style is free but not too much. There are slips of grammar, but not too many. Dryden has been given the credit of inaugurating the new era of English prose. He has also been considered as the father of English prose.

JOHN BUNYAN (1628-88) alone contests the supremacy of Dryden in the domain of Restoration prose. His first book Grace Abounding (1666) is a spiritual autobiography dealing with the spiritual history of his birth, childhood and youth. There is sincerity in expression and a remarkable simplicity. The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) is his masterpiece. It is an allegory which takes the form of a dream fragment. The whole book is remarkable for a powerful narrative style enriched by beauty, simplicity and vividness of language. Bunyan was the first writer who used a very simple and appealing prose. His other famous works are The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680) and The Holy War (1682).

Except for Grace Abounding, all Bunyan’s major works are allegorical and in each case the allegory is worked out with ease, force, and clearness. His allegorical personages are fresh and apt, and are full of an intense interest and a raw dramatic energy. Bunyan’s style is unique in prose. Though it is undoubtedly based on Biblical models, it is quite individual. It is homely, but not vulgar; strong, but not coarse; equable, but not monotonous; it is sometimes humorous but it is never ribald; rarely pathetic, but never sentimental.

LORD HELIFAX (1633-95) ranks high as orator; as an author his fame rests on a small volume called Miscellanies containing a number of political tracts. In his writings Helifax adopts the manner and attitude of the typical man of the world: a moderation of statement, a cool and agreeably acid humour, and a style devoid of flourishes.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE (1628-99) was an example of the moneyed, leisured semi amateur in literature who wrote little but elegantly. His chief works were his LETTERS (1700), MEMOIRS (1691) and MISCELLANA, a series of essays (1680, 1690 & 1701). His style resembles that of Halifax in its mundane, cultured reticence; but sometimes he has higher flights, in which he shows some skill in the handling of melodious and rhythmic prose.

It was a strange coincidence that two diary writers 

SAMUEL PEPYS (1633-1703) & JOHN EVELYN (1620-1706) were working at the same time during this period.

Though the prose writings of Restoration are not great in bulk, it shows a profound change in style. Previous writers, such as Browne, Clarendon, and Hobbes, had done remarkable and beautiful work in prose, but their style had not yet found itself. It was wayward and erratic, often cumbrous and often obscure, and weighted with a Latinised construction and vocabulary. In Dryden’s time prose begins definitely to find its feet. It acquires a general utility and permanence; it is smoothened and straightened, simplified and harmonised. This is the age of average prose and it prepares the way for the works of Swift and Addison.

Not that Dryden’s style is flawless. It is sometimes involved and obscure; there are little slips of grammar and many slips of expression; but on the average it is of high quality. In the case of Bunyan the style becomes plainer still. But it is powerful and effective. Pepys and Evelyn have no pretensions to style as such, but their work is admirably expressed.

In some writers of the period we find this desire for unornamented style degenerating into coarseness and ugliness. Such a one is JEREMY COLLIER (1650-1726), who’s Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) caused a great commotion. THOMAS SPRAT (1635-1713) wrote on the newly formed Royal Society in a close, naked, natural way of speaking. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704), in his famous An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) wrote with a style bare to bald but clear.