Matthew Higgins
5/11/10
Block 1

Historical Overview of Neo-Classicism (1660)
•	Artists looked to classical texts for creative inspiration. Logic order simplicity restraint of passion.
•	Themes: Intellectualism, Social Protest, Imitation.
•	Styles: Allegory, Didatic, Mock Epic, Blank Verse.
•	Charles I throned in 1625
o	Condemned by Parliament as a tyrant in 1642.
o	In 1645 Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell defeated a royalist army and captured Charles. He was convicted of treason. Beheaded on January 30, 1649.
•	Cromwell led new government called English Commonwealth.
o	Dissolved Parliament in 1653 and named himself “Lord Protector”. Ruled as a dictator until he died in 1658.
•	The Restoration (1660-1700)
o	England was tired of taxation, violence, and disorder.
o	In 1658, Parliament crowned Charles II in 1660. Monarchy restored.
o	Copied fashions of Paris; liked arts and sciences.
o	In 1662, he chartered the Royal Society, devoted to studying natural science.
•	Glorious Revolution
o	James II succeeded Charles II, religious differences occurred.
o	James fled to France in 1688, William and Mary (daughter of James II) took over.
o	No bloodshed.
o	In 1689, Bill of Rights passed in Parliament.
•	Industrial Revolution
o	Steam engines, power looms; increased wealth, gold, cotton cloth production.
•	The Enlightenment
o	The idea that through reason and observation humans can discover the underlying order behind things.
o	In 1687 Newton published a study of gravity and the movement of the planets.
o	In 1750, Britain industrialized. Mills and factories opened, poor working conditions and long hours.
•	Ben Jonson wrote plays and poems turning away from Elizabethan themes.
•	John Donne wrote metaphysical poetry.
•	Puritan writers
o	John Milton wrote Paradise Lost in 1667 about Christian themes.
•	Literature of the Age of Reason focused on harmony restraint and clarity.
•	Alexander Pope wrote The Rape of the Lock in the early 1700s, a mock epic.
•	Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal, showing human nature as flawed.
•	Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in the 1800s.
•	Samuel Johnson wrote the first English Dictionary in 1755.
Historical Overview of Romanticism (1789-1832)
•	Artistic and Intellectual movement with interest in nature emotion and imagination.
•	Representative Authors: Austin Coleridge Wordsworth Keats
•	Representative Works: Pride and Prejudice Frankenstein Songs of Innocence/Experience.
•	Themes: Dreams/visions, pantheism, the self, emotion/feeling.
•	Styles: Rejection of rigid poetic forms and emphasis on poetry.
•	French Revolution began on 1789. French citizens stormed the Bastille, a prison.
•	Limits placed on the powers of King Louis XVI, approved Declaration of the Rights of Man.
•	In 1792 France declared war on Austria.
•	Jacobins gained control of French legislature, abolished monarchy.
•	Louis XVI charged with treason and guillotined in 1793.
•	Over 17,000 sent to the guillotine in total.
•	In 1793 France declared war with Britain.
•	Napoleon defeated in 1815; Battle of Trafalgar, Duke of Wellington.
•	Luddite Riots (1811-1813) attempted to organize workers’ unions in Britain.
•	Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829 restored religious and financial freedoms to Catholics.
•	Reform Bill of 1832 extended voting rights to middle class.
•	Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote Lyrical Ballads in 1798.
•	From 1820 to 1829 literary criticism and essays were in The London Magazine.
Victorianism (1837-1901)
•	Working class drew up People’s Charter in 1838 for all male suffrage.
•	Second Reform Bill in 1867 granted rights to tenant farmers and male workers. By 1885 almost all males could vote.
•	Britain France and Turkey fought Russian expansion in the Crimean War (1853-1856).
•	Britain acquired Hong Kong from China in 1842.
•	Britain defeated Dutch settlers in South Africa in the Boer War of 1899-1902.
•	Charles Darwin Origin of Species 1859.
•	Confidence in humanity’s ability to better itself.
•	Naturalists wanted to put scientific observation to literary use and promoted social reform. Portrayed nature as harsh.
•	Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood rejected industrial life (1848).
•	Popular poets: Tennyson and Brown.
•	Matthew Arnold focused on the loss of ties with nature and each other.  Arnold Hardy and Housman were pessimistic writers.
•	Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was a famous satirical drama in 1895.
•	Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights in 1847. Her sister Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre in 1847.
•	Charles Dickens (1812-1870) dramatized grimy industrial England.
•	George Eliot examined social issues and personal relationships.
Modernism (1901-present)
•	Attempted to rethink science art culture ethics philosophy and psychology.
•	Came to terms with new ideas.
•	Investors, engineers, designers, and employment opportunities.
•	Break with tradition.
•	Everything is relative.
•	First World War (1914-1918) killed over 8 million.
•	Second World War (1939-1945) killed 45 million.
•	Edwardian Age (1901-1914) named after Edward VII, Victoria’s successor. Electricity, women’s suffrage, King George V in 1910.
•	Francis Ferdinand assassinated in 1914.
•	1917 Russian revolution and establishment of Soviet Union.
•	Armistice signed November 11, 1918.
•	Germany invaded Poland in 1939.
•	German invasion of Russia in 1941.
•	August 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings ended WWII.
•	Part of Ireland had independence in 1921.
•	Margaret Thatcher came to power as British Prime Minister in 1979. Resigned in 1990. Tony Blair replaced her in 1997.
•	Wales and Scotland set up their own parliaments in 1997.
•	T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote Love Song of Alfred Prufrock reflecting the generational despair.
•	Contemporary poets: James Berry and Nobel Prize-winner Derek Walcoot from St. Lucia.
•	George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) dominated Victorian and Edwardian eras. Socially conscious plays.
•	Depression years 1930s.
•	Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot (1952), a theater of the absurd.
•	James Joyce (1882-1941) revolutionized the short story and novel. Wrote Ulysses (1922).
•	Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote stream of consciousness To the Lighthouse (1927).
•	Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s 1984 (1949) show dystopian futures based on the present.
Great Fire and Diary of Samuel Pepys
•	Started on September 2, 1666.
•	Thomas Farnoyer’s house on Pudding Lane. King’s baker.
•	Lasted Sunday to Wednesday.
•	Sam Pepys witnessed the fire, naval officer, wrote about it in journal.
•	80% of London destroyed 7-16 deaths.
•	Helped prevent the spread of plague.

Great Plague of 1665
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