Restoration Period and The Enlightenment period

Introduction
The two choices for this essay are the Restoration Period featuring Nicholas Rowe with Jane Shore a Tragedy, and The Enlightenment period with Anne Finch and A Nocturnal Reverie. The biggest difference between these two authors is that they are the opposite sex, and as such, they have very difference outlooks on the world because of this. Though each penned poetry, their lifestyles are quite different, and each wrote in overlapping periods their prose focused on situations each had a personal view of history. Rowe wrote about intrigue and violence. Finch wrote about the serenity and beauty of nature. They have quite the opposite themes.
In the case of Rowe, who wrote about life in the English Court of Edward IV and his relative, Richard of Gloucester, the struggle for power after the historical War of the Roses ended in 1485. Court intrigue is that Richard plots to turn Edward against the Duke of Clarence (Rowe, 114). Edward locks the Duke in the Tower of London for treason against the crown. Richard’s subterfuge set himself up to marry Lady Anne, widow of Henry VI. He then convinces Buckingham and Hastings that the queen is to blame for the Duke’s imprisonment. Richard then hires someone to take out the Duke. Richard’s plan comes to fruition when Edward learns that the duke has been murdered. Then Edward summons his sons, but Richard intervenes, captures, and executes Lords Grey, Rivers, and Sir Vaughn.
Rowe writes about subterfuge and treachery that works well for the restoration period the world of literature.

Jane Shore was the misunderstood mistress and passed around the court members during this period of true unrest in England that spawned executions and murder because of Richard’s goal to gain control of the throne (Rowe, 151). This drama unfolded right before the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Many typical literary forms of the modern world—including the biography, novel, travel writing, history, and journalist gained self-reliance during the Restoration period. Rowe wrote about the intrigue and violence at a time when the role of king passed between family members in strife and violence. The Restoration period was on its way out. This paved the way for the Enlightenment period.
This was in direct disparity to the sexually and intellectually libertine spirit of court life during the Enlightenment period with the addition of advances in science and new theoretical perceptions about life and the world. Philosophy, communications, and politics were fundamentally changed. The Enlightenment or the Age of Reason thinkers in Britain, France, and Europe examined old-style power and encompassed the idea that humanity could be amended through coherent change (Greenblatt et al., 21). This period produced a plethora of books, inventions, essays, wars, laws and of course revolutions at the ultimate of its impact and the start of its decline. The Enlightenment eventually paved the way to 19th-century Romanticism.
Authors like Anne Finch received inadequate acknowledgment as a poet in spite of the care she took with her writing. She was a woman, and an aristocrat and few paid attention to her until the twentieth century. Finch’s A Nocturnal Reverie is amongst the prose that garnered public devotion for the poet. Augustan in content and style, the poem encompasses classical descriptions and added references to nature (the moon and flowers) that are steady with the English Augustan Age. The poem’s opening phrase repeats three times over the progression of the poem and comes from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Greenblatt et al., 34). A catchphrase tugs the reader into the poem. The speaker describes a night in which all harsh winds are far away, and the gentle breeze of Zephyr, Greek god of the west wind, is soothing and refreshing. She wrote about the beauty in nature that only appears in the moonlight from a women’s point of view. Finch lived a man’s world, and her work was not appreciated, until much later in the timeline of literature. The Enlightened period was the time of transition where life changed in how royalty and aristocrats viewed the world.
Some contemplate that Finch’s couplet to be a forerunner to the romantic movement and reinforced by William Wordsworth, one of the forefathers of romantic literature in English did cite Finch’s poem in the second edition of his well-known assortment Lyrical Ballads (1815) and coauthored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Finch had a talent for serenity and imagery by creating a nature scene so inviting and tranquil in the evening just before the dawn. Finch writes about the melancholy of the sun rising on another day. It is one of the best works by a female author, way ahead of her time. The imagery in Finch’s works portrayed a true talent that went unrecognized during her lifetime, and according to Greenblatt et al. (217), she was ahead of her time in choosing the subject of nature and all its inherent beauty to create some of the best 18th-century prose.
Finch hardly ever wrote about the drama in polite society, or who was struggling for power and willing to kill to make it happen. That was definitely a task left to poets like Rowe, who was vastly more experienced in the drama and tragedies of majestic live of English royalty. As this was truly a man world, whereas Finch could care less about all the trappings of royal intrigue that all too often led to the murder or execution of family member in the royal lines of English Aristocracy. Her prose was quite refreshing to those who read her poems. The Enlightenment period was a time of transition for many, who found Finches prose something very different from the tragic lives of England’s royals. Her works provide an escape from the daily rigors of life in England.
Conclusion
There are inherent differences in the prose of these two celebrated authors. Rowe wrote about treachery, war, and executions. This is the stuff that men dream and that ruled those in power and those who want to be in power and will do anything to get it. Royal life in England is all about who will rule the country. Jane Shore was but a pawn in the chessboard of royal life. Her choices had no effect on the history of royal subterfuge because she was a mistress and not a queen. Richard ended Edward’s royal bloodline by murdering his sons. Finch’s prose was about the beauty of the night with all the expressive imagery of one who is in tune with nature. This comparison between these two poets was quite interesting, and very educational in the stark differences in their prose. These two poets’ lives overlapped but they wrote very different words.
Works Cited
Finch Anne, a Nocturnal Reverie the Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea, edited by Myra
Reynolds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903) 59-62 Print 21 November 2016
Greenblatt Steven et al., The Restoration, and the 18th Century Volume C the Norton Anthology
Of English Literature Ninth Edition W.W. Norton & Company 19- 31 1962 Print 21 November 2016
Rowe Nicholas, Jane Shore A Tragedy 1714 the Works of Nicholas Rowe, Esq. Vol. II 1756.
Oxford University 114-179 Print, 21 November 2016