The Restoration and 18th Century
It is perhaps ironic that Paradise Lost, a story of fallen pride, was the first major poem to appear in England after the Restoration. The court of Charles II had, in its years in France, learned a worldliness and sophistication that marked it as distinctively different from the monarchies that preceded the Republic. Even if Charles had wanted to reassert the divine right of kingship, the Protestantism and taste for power of the intervening years would have rendered it impossible.
Read more about this topic: English Poetry
Famous quotes containing the words restoration and/or century:
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)