The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Caroline Age (in English literature)

Caroline Age (in English literature): An age spanning the reign of Charles I (1625—49) that is often classified as the fourth of five literary eras within the Renaissance Period in English literature. The Caroline Age, which derives its name from Carolus (Latin for Charles), was racked from 1642 to 1651 by civil war between the Cavaliers, royalists who supported the king, and the Roundheads, who supported the Puritan parliamentary opposition.

Authors whose careers are closely associated with the Caroline Age include prose writer Sir Thomas Browne and the royalist Cavalier poets — Thomas Carew, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling — who wrote lyrics about love, women, and gallantry. Other authors associated with the Caroline Age include Robert Burton, author of Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), who began to write during the preceding Jacobean Age; George Herbert, a metaphysical poet who also began writing during the Jacobean Age; and John Milton, who did his greatest work in the succeeding Commonwealth Age and Restoration Age.

While drama flourished throughout most of the Caroline Age, the genre was strongly constrained from 1642, the year in which the Puritan-dominated Parliament closed all theaters to suppress stage plays, until 1660, with the end of the Puritan Interregnum and the restoration of the monarchy to power.