Puritanism, Enlightenment, and Romanticism: Key Concepts
Characteristics of Puritan Writing
Strenuous & Serious: Because life was an unremitting moral struggle.
Sober: To avoid showing light-mindedness or worldliness.
Rational & Orderly: God’s creation was logical & harmonious, so verbal representation should exhibit the same traits.
Realistic: Presenting life exactly as they saw it.
Plain Style: Distinct & orderly, using scriptural analogies, incidents from daily life, & allusions from the Bible.
Primary Dramatic: The struggle between Christ & Satan, as they believed themselves to be God’s predestined champions.
Seven Tenets of Puritanism
- Absolute Sovereignty of God: God rules all things.
- Predestination: Everything has been decided by God beforehand.
- Providence: God directly intervenes in this world.
- Natural Depravity: Since Adam’s fall, all men are born in sin & deserve damnation.
- Doctrine of the Elect: Through God’s mercy, a few are saved by God’s grace, not by their own efforts.
- Evil is Inner: Man needs to reform himself, not institutions.
- God is Revealed in the Bible.
The Enlightenment
Mankind emerged from centuries of ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, & respect for humanity. They were convinced that human reason could discover the natural laws of the universe & determine the natural rights of mankind, thereby unending progress in knowledge, technical achievement, & moral values would be realized. God was seen as a great inventor or architect who had created the universe then allowed it to function like a machine or clock without divine intervention.
The importance of cooperation & mutual respect was emphasized. Shared beliefs were more important than personal opinion.
Literature was realistic. Its aims were to instruct, to enlighten, & to make people think. The power of the mind to reason & to determine realities was central. Passions & emotions were deprecated. They saw reason as the ruling principle of life & the key to progress & perfection. They were optimistic & self-confident.
Ideas are the same as the basic ideas of humanism:
- There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, & universal.
- This self knows itself & the world through reason, or rationality.
- The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is ‘science’ which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
- The knowledge produced by science is truth & is eternal.
- The knowledge/truth produced by science will always lead toward progress & perfection.
- Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true & therefore what is right & what is good. Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
- Science is neutral & objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, & not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
Romanticism
Attachment to the individual, subjectivity (strongly personal viewpoint, often in a visionary sense). Spiritual, sometimes mystical significance. Nature. Individualistic & personally liberating, ethical codes. Revolutionary.
Rationality: The belief that an outlook & procedures based on the application of reason are the most apt for humanity. Emotions, sometimes in extreme, passionate states.
State of innocence & the accompanying senses of wonder, alienation, or even terror & madness. There was often great fascination for altered states of consciousness, sometimes drug-induced. Hero figures & heroic deeds. Ballads & folk-tales. Sometimes rebellious anti-heroes.