English Literature: August 2013

Tuesday 20 August 2013

THE RESTORATION AGE

The Restoration Age and Restoration Comedy of Manners

The Restoration comedy is also known as Comedy of Manners. These comedies expressed a reaction against Puritanism and the sexual repression it had attempted to enforce. Fashionable intrigues, sex, marriage and adultery were treated with cynicism, with worldly wit and a sense of the comedy of life. The characters in the plays no doubt owed much to the courtiers, the wits, and the men about town as well as to ladies of fashion, citizens, wives and country 


girls. ―Restoration Comedy, according to Moody and Lovett, ―is a genuine reflection of the temper, if not of the actual life, of the upper classes of the nation, and as such it has a sociological as well as a literary interest.

Style of Romeo and Juliet By Jessica Barber and McCaul Baggett.

Writing Style of Romeo and Juliet  

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is arguably the greatest tragedy ever written. Using tragic elements such as pride, death, pain, and loss, he creates one of the most dynamic wolds in all of literature. It is the pride of the Montague and Capulet families which leads to the deaths of their children. The inability of the families to put aside their differences, even for true love, is the primary flaw in the tragedy. Ironically, the players of this drama in and of themselves are basic comic characters. As cited in Everybody's Shakespeare by

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is arguably the greatest tragedy
 Maynard Mack: "The characters are individualized, it is true, well beyond the usual comic types; but they show nonetheless some recognizable blood ties with the kinds of people we expect to meet within stage and film comedy: the Beautiful Ingenue, the Convention Ridden Parents including the Irascible Father, the Parent-Approved suitor, the Dashing Romantic Suitor, the Male Confidant and Female