JOHN DONNE, PURITANS, CIVIL WAR, JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

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some Puritan (Calvinists) groups separated from the Church of England: they were later called the Pilgrim Fathers because they went to America to find religious freedom, settling there and founding Plymouth Colony in 1620. THE CIVIL WAR Under the reign of Charles I, a bloody civil war broke out, since he, an Anglican king, interfered with the reforming spirit of the Puritans, who controlled the Parliament and wanted to reform the Anglican Church, to purify it. The conflict turned into a civil war between two parts: on the one side the king, the Anglican Church, and the aristocracy, on the other side the Puritans and Parliament. When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, people throughout the country had to choose which side they were on. For the king: anglicans; catholics; most of the Nobles; cavaliers. For the parliament: puritans; merchants; the richer areas; the roundheads (parliamentarians). Eventually Charles I was imprisoned, and then executed in 1649. When the Royalists were defeated in 1651, the war ended, replacing the English monarchy with the Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Puritans, ruled the country as a republican government. When he died, the Stuarts were called back. 1660 became the year of the Restoration to the throne of Charles II. JOHN MILTON - PARADISE LOST (1667) John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, into a middle-class family. He was educated at St. Paul's School, then at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English, and prepared to enter the clergy. In May of 1638, Milton began a 13-month tour of France and Italy, during which he met many important intellectuals and influential people, including the astronomer Galileo. During the English Civil War, Milton defended the cause of the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of pamphlets. During this time, Milton steadily lost his eyesight, and was completely blind by 1651. After the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, Milton was arrested as a defender of the Commonwealth, fined, and soon released. He lived the rest of his life in seclusion in the country, completing the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667. He died shortly afterwards, on November 8, 1674, in Buckinghamshire, England. Paradise Lost is considered his masterpiece and one of the greatest epic poems in world literature. It tells the biblical tale of the Fall of Mankind - the moment when Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and God banished them from the Garden of Eden forever. Paradise Lost incorporates the political tensions of Milton's own day - he was writing during and after the Civil Wars in England. In addition to its political resonances, Paradise Lost includes poetic treatments of some of the most important scientific, philosophical and astronomical advances of Milton's time.