 Hello Bello people, Arpita the side and welcome to my channel. In this video we are going to look at Jacobian Age of British Literature. So far I have covered still Elizabethan age, all the videos still Elizabethan age is available on my YouTube channel in a separate playlist. So if you have not gone through them, make sure you do it. Because in all those videos I have explained very specifically the important writers, poets and dramatists that you should be reading for each of those ages. And the same thing we are going to do in this particular video as well. But before we move on to the literateness of this age, it is important to also look at the political background and the first question comes that who was the ruler during this Jacobian period. So just like during Elizabethan period it was Queen Elizabeth who took the throne of British Empire, similarly during the Jacobian period it was King James the first who became the ruler. Now there might be two questions that could pop up in your head. The first would be, Elizabeth was a virgin queen, she did not marry, she never had kids, then from where did this person James the first came into England. And the second question can be that if the age of Elizabeth is known as Elizabethan age, the age of King James the first should be known as Jamesian age. Why is it known as Jacobian age? The ruler was not Jacob, he was James. So why this difference in the age and the ruler? I am going to answer both these questions first before moving on to a very very interesting story related to the Jacobian age. So the first question as you have pointed out beautifully is that the age should be named after King James the first and the name according to every one of us should be Jamesian but it is Jacobian. So if you look at the name James in Latin you will find out that in Latin it is known as Jacob and that is the reason why the name of the age is Jacobian age because the Latin word for James is Jacob. So this is from where Jacobian word is coming into the game. The second question is that why did James the first became the ruler of the England and for the first time you might also even think that who was James the first? Fine he became the ruler but he aya kaha se. So let us understand the history. Let's go back to King Henry VII. So we all know that King Henry VII who was ruling somewhere in 15th century had two kids King Henry VIII and Margaret Tudor. Now King Henry VIII had a daughter named Elizabeth. Now once King Henry VII died King Henry VIII took the throne after King Henry VIII died who would be the successor it would be Queen Elizabeth. Now on the other side of the story we also have the story of Margaret Tudor. Now this lady Margaret Tudor married the prince of Scotland and the name of the prince was James IV. So James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor they both gave a birth to two kids King James V of Scotland and married the first. Now marry the first was a rival of Queen Elizabeth we are not going to get into the rivalry but you just need to know that marry the first was executed by Queen Elizabeth. So now who remains? King James V. Now King James V son was King James VI. Now when Queen Elizabeth died without giving birth to any kid the entire Britain was questioning that who will be the next successor. So very simply they thought that let somebody who is related to Queen Elizabeth become the successor and the name that came to everyone's mind was King James VI. So King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England and that is how the Jacobian age started. Now that we know a bit about the Jacobian era and we are all set to talk about the writers and the works written during this era I would like to take a moment and talk about a very interesting story which is related to Jacobian era I am pretty sure that all of you would be hearing it for the first time. So this story dates back to November 5th. Now what happened on November 5th even today in England if you go to go on November 5th you will find that children make paper dolls life size paper dolls of an anonymous man and they you know put it in fire at the night and they also have fireworks. Now this tradition seems very similar to the tradition that we Indians follow on the same era so we make life size model of Ravan and we burn it in order to symbolize the victory of good over evil. Something very similar happened on November 5th during the Jacobian era. So there was a group of English Catholics who were against King James I. So King James I was a protestant ruler and a lot of people in England during that period were Catholics and they were against a person who was a protestant. So they decided that they are going to blow the parliament and kill the king on that particular day. Why? Because November 5th was the opening day of the parliament so they chose that particular day. But is it that easy to kill a king? No it's not. So what did they put gunpowder in the vault of the Westminster Abbey which is the parliament of England. So Westminster Abbey's basement they filled the entire basement with gunpowder. Gunpowder is basically English name for Barood and they decided that they are going to put fire in that gunpowder on 5th of November. But luckily somebody from that particular gang went and sent an anonymous letter to the king saying that there is something big that is going to happen on November 5th. The king was really smart so he ordered the king men to go and look for something in the basement. So when the king men went to the basement they could not only see the vault filled with gunpowder they also caught a person named Guy Fox who was kind of the ruler of this entire gang. So this person who the lead for this particular gang he was caught red-handed with matchboxes and torchlight in the basement. King decided to you know execute him he was executed and then finally king announced that November 5th is going to be celebrated every year with bonfire with fireworks to symbolize the safety and security of the whole British nation. So that is the story behind the gunpowder treason that was hatched against King James I but King was really lucky to get out of it very safely. Now that we are through with the history of Jacobian period it is time to look at the major works and the major writers. So if you look at the Jacobian era you will find majorly three types of writers we have poets essayist and dramatist. Let us first look at the poetry section because that's the most amazing one and I'm pretty sure that all of you are aware of metaphysical poets and their poetry. So yes all the metaphysical poets were writing during the Jacobian era. So from poets ranging from John Dunn to Andrew Marvel George Herbert all of them were working endlessly to create some amazing sonnets and poetries which are very dear to our heart even today and I'm going to not leave you without you commenting below your favorite metaphysical poetry because when I look at the metaphysical world I find that all the poems of John Dunn are my favorite and it is very difficult to get to that one particular piece which I love the most and I want to see that same dilemma in my audience as well. So I would like you to comment below your favorite metaphysical poetry not the poet poetry. So let's talk about metaphysical poetry I would not be taking it in a very detailed manner because I've already discussed a lot about metaphysical poetry in a separate video. You can get that video very easily on my channel but one important thing that I would like to clarify here is who coined the term metaphysics. A lot of students are confused whether it is Dryden or Samuel Johnson. See both of them did something in the field of metaphysics but they did very separate things. Dryden for the first time coined the term metaphysics whereas Samuel Johnson was looking at all these writers and he was somebody who put them together in a group and named it as metaphysical poets. In his book works of most eminent English poets. So Dryden has just coined the term metaphysics whereas Samuel Johnson put all these together in a group and named it metaphysical poets. So this is the difference and if you get a question please don't get confused. Now if you look at metaphysical poetry we all are aware that they were talking about religious theme, they were talking about love, romance, platonic love and they were also talking about a very simple term corpadium. I love this word and how it is pronounced beautifully. Carpadium basically means seized day. Make the best use of this particular day. This was what metaphysical poets were doing in regards to the theme. They also contributed a lot to the literary terms because they were using puns, paradoxes and conceits. So literary conceits was something which metaphysical poets used in a very charming way. Right? So this was about metaphysical poets. I'm not going to get into the details because I've already made a video. I really want to talk about the essays of Jacobian Age. So now let's jump right into the essay portion and see who were the famous essays who rocked the throne of English culture. The first person that will come to your mind when we are going to talk about essays and essayist of Jacobian Age is Mr. Francis Bacon. Yes, definitely. He is known as the father of modern essays and he has done some fantastic works when it comes to essays. So if you look at his works there are three major works which are very important from net point of view. The first one is advancement of learning. Why is it important? Because this work was written to King James the first. That's the reason why it's important. The second is essays, which is a collection of 58 essays. Now, what is important? Do you need to go through all the 58 essays? You're going to lose your mind if you go through it because they are filled with knowledge. Like I can read one essay and I need to at least take two days time to absorb the information. He was such a well-read man, Mr. Francis Bacon. But what you need to remember in the essays is the dates when they were published. So this collection of 58 essays were published first in 1597. The second edition was published in 1612 and the third edition was published in 1625. So kindly remember the dates because it has been asked a lot of times in net exam. And finally, we have the third important work which is in story of Magna. Now, this work as you can see from the title is not an English. This is in Latin. And why is this important? Because there's a very tricky thing related to in story of Magna. This particular work is divided into six book and the intention of Francis Bacon to divide it in six books was similar to the intention of God. So God tried to create the universe in six days and seventh day he wanted to rest. And that is why we have seven days of week, six days we work and seventh day that is Sunday we enjoy. We rest. The same thing was imitated or even I would say tried to imitate by Francis Bacon where he divided this work in story of Magna in six parts just to imitate the way God created the entire universe. Next important essay is Walter Raleigh. Now, Sir Walter Raleigh was very, very famous. Why? Because he was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth the first and Queen Elizabeth sent him on different missions to explore new lands and that is where he wrote a very beautiful work which was El Derado. El Derado symbolizes or stands for a mythical place which has immense wealth. So he was a sea dog. He used to go to distant land to find out where there is a land where England can go and colonize. And it was during this discovery that he also figured out America. He found America and he named it as Virginia. You know, just in order to clarify Virginia is basically named after the Virgin Queen Elizabeth. Now, what is important to know is that King James the first didn't like Walter Raleigh so much. So what he did when Walter Raleigh came back from one of his missions, he imprisoned him. King James the first he imprisoned and killed him in Tower of London. And his skull was presented to Walter Raleigh's wife who kept the skull with herself till the time she lived. So this is a very interesting story, though not very important from net point of view, but knowledge gained from anywhere doesn't harm us, right? So that's something about Walter Raleigh. Now let's move on and look at the dramatist and their fabulous words written during the Jacobian age. Now, when I was thinking of talking about the Jacobian drama, I was really confused about what to talk and what to skip because there is so much that was written during the Jacobian age that it is really, really impossible for me to summarize it in a 15 minute video. Because in my online course that I'm offering on my website, there have been more than 50 lectures which I give for just the Jacobian age, including essayist and poets and the dramatist. So it's very difficult to, you know, bring it down to a 15 minute video. But I would request you to kindly go to my website once and there's a section called online course syllabus where you can check out the list of all the essayist, poets and dramatist who were a part of Jacobian age. It is really important to know all of them because all of them have done something really wonderful in the field of literature and they are very, very important from the point of view of net exam. But if I have to like concisely talk about the dramatist, I would like to talk about the theme first. So if you look at the Jacobian age drama, it was different from the Elizabethan drama. In Elizabethan age, there were dramas related to aristocracy and prince and queen and all of that, just like we have Hamlet and Othello. But when we come down to Jacobian age, they were talking about realistic themes. They were talking about the problems that the society was facing, adultery, corruption, lust, anger, greed, all of these became the most important themes of the Jacobian plays. Now, when it comes to Jacobian plays, there are two very, very crucial types of plays you will find. The first one is the revenge tragedies. Now, the most important one is Thomas Middleton's revenge strategy. You might not have heard of Thomas Middleton, but I'm pretty sure that you would be knowing Duchess of Malfi and White Devil. These two are also a part of revenge tragedies. So revenge tragedy, as the name symbolizes, is about a person taking revenge of someone. And this was one of the most common type of tragedies that were popular during the Jacobian age. Another important type of tragedy was city comedies. City comedies are basically about the day to day life of people. And there was something called mask, which became very popular. Now, these masks were basically plays that were staged specifically for the aristocratic people and for the people who were a part of the Royal Court. So these plays were presented in front of the King. So they were very lavish in the way they have used the props and they've used the decor. And who was the founder of mask? It was Inigo Jones. Please remember the name, guys. This has been asked a lot of times in net exam. Inigo Jones was somebody who founded masks. And this was a very, very popular type of dramas that were staged during the Jacobian age. There's a lot, lot, lot more to dramas. But I'm really sorry I will not be able to cover it up in this particular video. I just wanted to give you a glimpse so that you will at least know where to start from. You can get the list of all the dramatic poets and essays easily and free of cost on my website. So if you are planning to start Jacobian age to study it further for any competitive exam, please make sure you go through that list. And if you want, you can even join our online courses. We have detailed lectures, PDFs and mock tests for each and every age of British literature and other parts of the world as well. So with that note, I would like to take your leave. Thank you for watching this video. I'll meet you very soon in the next video lecture. Till the time I meet next, happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to our Patakarva.com