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Thank you We sneak Early modern british literature eyelash shmoop

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the next time you step into your time machine and

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are trying to decide when to set your way don't

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recommend the early modern period Not unless you particularly enjoy

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plagues fires regicide tze and dubious personal hygiene We're talking

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about the period of time directly following the middle ages

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Back then if someone maced you you wouldn't get back

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up for a while Time to rough in early modern

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england but it doesn't mean that nothing good came of

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the era There was plenty of great literature written in

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seventeenth century which was great because then you had something

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to read while you were dying of smallpox and it

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took a while to die of smallpox The king james

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bible was a biggie It contained symbols and genres that

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we still make use of today as well A such

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memorable phrases as ask and it shall be given let

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there be light and like the good fight in its

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time it was more quotable than increment A classy early

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modern period A few days later john milton wrote a

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blockbuster hit Woo hoo Paradise lost It was the most

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epic epic since homer's odyssey Unfortunately james cameron wasn't alive

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at the time to adapt it to film I'm the

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king of the world but it still did pretty well

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in bookstores The book's cast of characters included well most

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of the same cast as the king james bible god

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jesus satan the whole game But are you ready to

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be really impressed Milton was blind You wrote the entire

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thing by dictation so for all we know milton wasn't

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a good writer at all But the guy taking dictation

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was brilliant Poetry became quite popular in the first part

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of the century even if it was pretty limited in

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its subject matter These metaphysical poets basically only wrote about

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either sex or god if you weren't a big fan

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of either Poetry probably wasn't going to be your thing

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later on a rival gang of cavalier poets popped up

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oh the gang's yeah it was intense jets vs sharks

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montagues versus capital it sort of thing Once in a

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while someone would get limerick to death way warned you

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These were dark times One of the cavalier poets robert

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herrick made a name for himself with poems that urged

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his listeners too seize the day and the girl He

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might have been the first newsy but enough with rhymes

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How about the guy named samuel peace who started recording

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his life just like any twenty first century hipster but

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without the knit cap and handlebar mustache Well okay he

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went through a phase His nine year long diary recorded

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everything from the great plague of fantasies he had while

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it church and they were more elaborate than simply fantasies

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about the past or having a decent singing voice Then

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james boswell published a biography of eighteenth century celebrity samuel

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johnson He was sort of like the t m z

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or people magazine of the early modern period Without him

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no one would have known what all the stars were

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wearing to their premieres Eventually literature had a clear new

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direction It was moving away from the super complex super

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elite world of metaphysical poetry and biblical epic and was

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starting to focus more on everyday life People were realizing

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that it was actually more interesting to read about themselves

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then about a bunch of gods kings and monsters Although

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the stories that combined all of the above were generally

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the best of the bunch Wait i'm the king of 00:03:39.16 --> [endTime] the world a little

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