The Restoration is an event in political history: it is the re-establishment of the Stuart monarchy after the Interregnum of 1649-1660, which came to pass with the accession of Charles II in 1661. This political event, however, brought together with it such huge changes in British culture that the Restoration has also become the name of a period in cultural history. As far as literature is concerned, perhaps there is no other period in the history of British literature that is so radically different from the era just preceding it. The Restoration introduced new forms and modes in literature, as well as a wholly new aesthetic, moral, and philosophical outlook, which make this period fundamentally distinct from the previous great literary historical period, the English Renaissance. This is not to say, of course, that there were no continuities. Indeed one of the greatest achievements of the English Renaissance, Milton’s Paradise Lost, was composed and published in the Restoration era, and the neo-classical aesthetic attitude that emerged in this period can also be looked at as a natural continuation of Renaissance thought. However, the overall difference in the literary output of these two periods is still so vast that the Restoration remains perhaps the greatest watershed in the history of British literature. To account for these vast changes we must turn to history.