The Restoration

1. So basically the “glorious revolution” was a period in time where King James the II was overthrown by a union led by William III of orange what who later ruled the English throne as William the III of England (after Charles II). They didn’t like the way King James ruled, his was like a vicious dictator who killed a lot of people that he didn’t like. After he was overthrown he fled to France. Not too soon after that King William III was threatened by the Scottish Jacobites under a man named Dundee who was killed in battle. After the defeat of the Jacobites, King William brought England to war against France. I think this was really important because it was a period of time where life in Britain went to normal for a while. But there was still plague and because there was plague it brought about scientific investigations. During this time other sorts of literature became popular.
2. When I think of the word satire I think of parody. Parody is what we refer to in modern times a “spoof”. A spoof is like taking something like a book or a show and making fun of it sarcastically using irony. An example of modern day satire can be anything from SNL (Saturday night live) to comedy movies like “Not another teen movie” and the “scary movie” series.
3. This is a really weird piece of writing. In the writing he was talking about a way to end poverty. It didn’t occur to me what his solution was until about the 9th or tenth paragraph. All in all the “proposal” was very amusing and entertaining to me. I enjoyed it a lot. This can be considered a work of satire because he’s making fun of the people in England about how they treat the Irish. Saying that this is a way that they can solve the problem of poverty, but he’s not being serious…he’s just joking.
4. I found “A journal of the plague year” very interesting. I like the way that he described what was happening in London at the time. What really caught my attention was in the beginning when he was describing the symptoms of the plague saying, “For example, many persons in the time of this visitation never perceived that they were infected till they found to their unspeakable surprise, the tokens come out upon them; after which they seldom lived six hours; for those spots they called the tokens were really gangrene spots, or mortified flesh in small knobs as broad as a little silver penny, and hard as a piece of callus or horn; so that, when the disease was come up to that length, there was nothing could follow but certain death; and yet, as I said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor found themselves so much as out of order, till those mortal marks were upon them..” I think it is awful that these people had no idea that they were infected until they had gangrene. But it was due to the fact that they had not advanced in medical technology. Another thing that I read that really struck me was when he was in the “Garret” which in olde English means the attic. Where the servant was found dead. He said “She started. 'Alas l' says she, 'I never thought more of him. He bade me carry him some warm ale, but I forgot.' Upon which, not the maid, but some other person was sent up to see after him, who, coming into the room, found him stark dead and almost cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard in one of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maid left him; and 'tis probable, had she gone up with the ale, she had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the bed. “ This was really a shock to me because I wasn’t expecting this to happen at all considering that fact that the had to converse with people at the hotel about whether or not he was infected, I thought surely that nobody in the house had been infected but since they really had no way of telling who was sick until they were dead, I shouldn’t have found this a shock but it happened anyways.
5. What I think was really important to the people at this time was good health, religion and family. The reason why I think this is because not many people during this time period were healthy; most of them were sick with disease and starving to death. Another thing I mentioned that was probably important to them was religion. I think that religion was a really big deal because there was a feud between the Catholics and the Protestants. Obviously this must have been really important because why else would they fight about it in the first place? And lastly family, with many people dying around them I think it was probably important to these people to have family to lean on. Although many of them didn’t I’m sure that the ones that did have family to support them were very grateful that they did.