The Puritan Age and Literary Charistricts
The Puritan Age (1620-1660)
Most broadly, The Puritan movement is a rebirth of the moral nature of man followed by the intellectual awakening of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Puritans were neither a religious sect nor narrow-minded as many Historians pictured.
Pym, Hampden, Eliot and Milton were Puritans and were honoured. They struggled for human liberty. Cromwell and Thomas Hooker were also Puritans. Cromwell strongly supported religious tolerance while Hooker gave the world the first written constitution. That Puritan document is one of the greatest achievements in the history of government.
Since Puritans were in favour of religious tolerance, Puritanism included all sheds of religious beliefs. Puritanism is the name given to the people who wanted change in worship in the reformed English churches. But this idea was opposed by the king, his evil counsellors and a band of intolerant churchmen. Later this Puritanism movement turned into a national movement.
It includes English Churchmen as well as extreme separatists, Calvinists, Covenanters, and Catholic novel men who stand together and resist the dictatorship in church and state, with a passion for liberty and righteousness.
Even today in history Puritans were portrayed as gloomy and dogmatic, perhaps it has two reasons:-
(1) Such a huge movement with extremes and excesses has produced a few zealots and fanatics that created our misconception.
(2) When Puritans won under Cromwell many simple pleasures were forbidden, and strict standards were forced on unwilling people.
Literary Charistricts:-
It is one of a confusing age due to the breaking up of old ideals. Poetry took a new and astonishing form in Donne and Herbert. The prose becomes sombre. This age produced some minor poems of extremely delicate workmanship. One great master of this age is Milton that's why sometimes this age is also called "The Age of Milton".
source-English Literature by William. J. Long