Storia dell'Inghilterra: dalla dinastia Stuart alla guerra civile, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica Storia dell'Inghilterra: dalla dinastia Stuart alla guerra civile e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Th Stua Dynast James I of England In 1603 Queen Elizabeth died without a husband and without children, so she was succeeded by her cousin James VI of Scotland the son of Mary Stuart, who became James I of England and the first Stuart king of England. He united England, Scotland and Ireland and he considered himself above the law and the parliament, so the only one above him is God. Two sections hoped that their situation would be improved by the accession of the king: the Catholics welcomed the king because his mother was a Catholic and the Puritans welcomed him because he brought up the Presbyterians. James I reinforced the Anglican Church and disappointed the two sections; so this situation led to two important events: ➽the Gunpowder Plot.In 1605 a group of Catholics plotted to murder the king; so their leader guy Fawker placed barrels of gunpowder under the House of Parliament to blow up it when the king was present. This “Gunpowder plot” was discovered and Guy Fawkes was arrested and killed with his men. ➽the departure of the Pilgrim Fathers.In 1620 a group of Puritans left from Plymouth in a ship called The Mayflower and arrived in Massachusetts. They founded a sort of Bible Commonwealth intolerantly Puritan. Sir Walter Raleigh wanted to create the State of Virginia, but this attempt failed and the old project was taken up by a company of London merchants and, soon after that, the discovery of tobacco brought prosperity. But,unfortunately there were some problems in Ireland and because James I,who was trying to bring a rebellious Ireland back under English control, encouraged England and Scotland to move to Ulster and to cultivate land and establish towns there. So they received the lands confiscated to Irish Catholic Gaelic owners,starting a war. James I decided that only the king can grant powers to the Parliament; so the Parliament can’t interfere in foreign affairs and the king could raise taxes without its consent. This problem led,in the next reign,to the Civil War. From the Puritan Age to the Augustan Age The 17th century was a period of social and political unrest: for example the monarchy was overcome and then restored with Puritan rule. The limitation of the power of the king was an important result. Instead the 18th century was a period of political fights for and against the Stuart Dynasty, but there was also political stability and rational thoughts become more important than religious feelings. The continuation of the struggle between Crown and Parliament James I died in 1625 and he was succeeded by his son Charles I,who believed in the Divine Rights of Kings and so refused to collaborate with the Parliament; he also wanted absolute religious conformity,so he choose William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury who insisted on the importance of the worship of the Anglican High Church which preferred the liturgy to evangelistic practice. Also, because of Laud, but life of the Puritans became so unpleasant that many migrated to America. Personal rule When Parliament refused to give to the king the money to pay the war against France,Charles I tried to get them with forced loans but they weren't enough and he had to summon the Parliament again in 1628. Parliament agreed to give him the money he needed but the king had to accept the Petition of Rights which claimed that no man had to pay taxes without Parliament's approval and no man could be imprisoned without a motivation. In 1629 the fight between the Parliament and the King became very bitter and Charles I decided to dissolve the assembly and to rule the country in a despotic way. So Charles tried to force the Scottish Presbyterians to follow the practices of the Church of England. In 1640 Charles named a Parliament which lasted only one month because he wanted to raise taxes for a war with Scotland but the Parliament was an opposition for him; but after six months Charles made up the Parliament again and this Parliament refused to grant funds and every kind of personal rule wasn’t allowed. So the position of the Parliament was secure because an Act affirmed that the Parliament couldn’t be dissolved without their own consent. When Parliament asked the King to renounce his control on military and religious affairs,the King arrested four Parliamentarians,but the attempt failed and the King escaped to the north of the country. The Civil War The war was inevitable because the old aristocracy and the country landlords were Anglicans and sided with the Kings,but the Parliamentarians were Puritans and supported by the middle class so they formed an army under their leader Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell's New Model of Army,called the Ironsides for their discipline,defeated the King’s army at the Battles of Marston Moor and Naseby. In the end Chales was imprisoned but he refused to defend himself because,in his opinion, no king could be tried by his own subjects. The attitude of the King was serene and not all the Protestants were anti-Royalists, so Cromwell had difficulty in having signed the death-warrant. Cromwell finally succeeded and on 29 January 1649 the King was beheaded and he was the first English monarch to be executed. Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth The Puritan Republic was very oppressive because Puritans wanted to create the godly society;so everything that was considered immoral,like theaters,were closed,the freedom of the press was denied,all the activities except worship and prayer were forbidden on Sunday and in 1650 the Parliament introduced some punitive laws like “the Adultery Act” which introduced the death sentence for adultery or incest. ➽The War of Jenkin’s Ear against Spain because English merchants wanted to trade with Spanish colonies. ➽The War of Austrian Succession in which England fought with France for rivalries in India and America. ➽The Seven Years’ War showed up the power of England in India and in Canada. Joh Donn John Donne was born in 1572 into a Catholic family and he studied at the University of Oxford and Cambridge even if he didn’t get a degree because he refused the Oath of Supremacy. After university he spent most of his money on women,books and travelling. When he was 25 years old he became private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton,but he married in secret Egerton’s niece who was 16 years old and he was imprisoned because the girl was underage and he married her without the consent of the Queen even though the girl was in the service of the Queen. In 1610 Donne published his anti-Catholic polemic called “Pseudo-Martyr” and he won the trust of James I,in the end,in 1615,he converted to the Anglican Church;moreover the death of his wife in 1617 marked the end of the production of love poems and the beginning pf religious production. In 1621 he became Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral,but he started to write a lot of plays about death,like the sermon called “Death’s Duel”. Donne’s works weren’t published during his lifetime,but he wrote some elegies, epigrams, verse letters,satires,two collections of poems called “The Songs and the Sonnets” and “the Holy Sonnets”,some sermons and others works. The only important work published during his lifetime was Anniversaries,but another important work was Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. He was pessimistic because he lived in a period of transition between the Middle Age and Renaissance and he had no certainty because in this period he was shocked by the new astronomical discoveries. Songs and Sonnets Songs and Sonnets is a collection of love songs and elegies published in 1633. The speaking voice uses a vocabulary that shows the emotional intensity of a dramatic situation. Moreover the speaking voice suggests the presence of a listener like the lover. In this work Donne used a lot of conceits and extended metaphors comparing situations and objects that seem very different. Donne explained his ideas with some references to alchemy,astronomy,medicine,politics, global exploration and philosophical disputation. Joh Milto John Milton is the most important poet of the Puritan Age and for him the scholarship was so important,in fact he studied Latin,Greek and Italian culture,he travelled a lot around Europe and he also met Galileo Galilei. During the Civil War he participated to the debate on the side of Puritans and he supported Cromwell even if he encouraged the liberty of the press. In 1658 Cromwell died,the monarchy was restored and Milton was obliged to hide until 1663,when he was arrested but,thanks to the help of influential friends,he was released and he began to write his best plays. Since then we can divide his works in three periods: ➽the first period was the period of Italians poems following the example of Petrarch (Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio in favor of Cromwell). ➽during the second period he wrote political pamphlets and prose works about religion,civil and domestic freedom,the Parliament and the divorce (Areopagitica about the freedom of speech). ➽during the third period he poet was blind and poor,but in this period he wrote his masterpiece called Paradise lost which is an epic poem that retells the story of the Book of Genesis. In the end Milton died on 8th November 1674. Paradise Lost In Paradise Lost Milton rewrote the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience,in fact the first line of the poem tells that this poem is about “Man’s first disobedience”. The poem starts with a soliloquy of Satan who speaks to the rebel angels around a lake of fire in Hell. After that Satan decided to go to Eden in the form of a serpent to corrupt God’s beloved creatures; so the talks to Eve,he compliments her on her beauty and Eve asks the serpent how he learned to speak;Satan tells her he ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and she eats it too. When Adam finds out that Eve has fallen,he eats the fruit too. God immediately punishes the serpent and banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In this poem we have two moral parts: ➽on one hand we have Satan who only support rebellion and disobedience; ➽on the other hand we have Adam and Eve who do something wrong but they hope of redemption. Moreover this poem divides the universe into four realms:at the top glorious Heaven,at the bottom dreadful Hell,confusing Chaos and in the middle young Earth;of course his cosmic geography is based on a religious hierarchy, which have the Son at the top with the archangels,then we have the humans,the animals and,at the bottom we have the devils. Of course Satan refuses this hierarchy to defeat God, but God will always be more powerful even if Satan is determined to be free. Satan is the most fascinating,complex and subtle character. At the beginning Milton have made him appear heroic to help the reader understand the seductive appeal of evil. Milton’s style is sometimes difficult to understand because he uses complex allusions, archaic vocabulary,complex grammatical structures and extended similes. Milton wrote this poem in heroic verse using an unrhymed iambic pentameter.