Events
- March 5 – A play adapted from The Taming of the Shrew is performed by students of the Gymnasium in Zittau, the earliest record of a Shakespearean comedy produced anywhere in the Holy Roman Empire; authorship is attributed to Christian Keymann, but remains disputed. [1] This climate inspires the Silesian playwright Andreas Gryphius. Also this year, he prints one of the first secular Baroque works in German literature, [2] the verse comedy Absurda Comica oder Herr Peter Squenz. Borrowing from A Midsummer Night's Dream (including its main character, Peter Quince), Gryphius' text rejects Meistersinger culture, while also "reinvigorating the tradition" of German-language theater after the long hiatus of the Thirty Years' War. [3]
- April – Blaise Pascal enters the creative period that will lead to his Pensées , with a lecture for his Jansenist friends at Port-Royal-des-Champs Abbey, and later with a series of scattered notes. [4]
- May 29 – Dara Shukoh, heir-apparent to the crown of the Mughal Empire, is defeated by his younger brother, Aurangzeb, in the Battle of Samugarh. Dara's overtures toward Vedanta and Sufism, including his promotion of the Upanishads, are condemned, as Aurangzeb formally adheres to Islamic fundamentalism – and in practice to a less syncretic theism. [5] The new regime has a working alliance with the Pashtun warrior-poet Khushal Khattak, until the latter is deposed and arrested in 1663. [6]
- July 6 – Teimuraz, deposed ruler of Kakheti and pioneer of Georgian poetry, is received in Moscow, Tsardom of Russia. An incident involving Bogdan Khitrovo contributes to the internal conflicts within the Russian Orthodox Church, generating the Raskol . [7]
- September 5 – Forces of the Ottoman Empire and Crimean Khanate, under the command of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, storm into the Transylvanian capital of Feyérvár (Alba Iulia). The city is devastated, and its role in fostering Renaissance humanism is forever ended: though restored, the Bethlen Collegium is transferred to Nagyenyed (Aiud). Approximately 20,000 books are destroyed in the raid, [8] and at least 53 students are killed. [9] This attack also brings to a standstill the Transylvanian printing press, [10] which had been established around 1622. A new press is founded at Nagyszeben (Sibiu). [11]
- September 13 (O. S. September 3) – Death of Oliver Cromwell in England, inaugurating the transition from Protectorate to Restoration. The event inspires Andrew Marvell to write "A Poem upon the Death of his Late Highness the Lord Protector"; this piece is not included in the official edition of Cromwellian panegyrics, which has verse by John Dryden, Thomas Sprat, and Edmund Waller. All these poets, alongside John Milton, will be ridiculed in Richard Watson's 1659 pamphlet, The Panegyrike and the Storme. [12]
- c. October 24 – Molière arrives in Paris to act at the Louvre Palace. He performs with his troupe in front of King Louis XIV in Pierre Corneille's tragedy Nicomède and in his own farce Le Docteur Amoureux (The Doctor in Love). The troupe is granted Monsieur's patronage and allowed to use the Petit-Bourbon, alongside Giacomo Torelli's rival company. [13]
unknown dates
- Arakel of Tabriz is persuaded by Jacob IV, pontiff of the Armenian Apostolic Church to resume work on his Book of Histories, which will be completed in 1662. [14]
- Czech educationist John Amos Comenius publishes Orbis Pictus (Visible World), "internationally recognised as the first text written specifically for children." [15] In associating Latin words with "the representation of most things capable of being set out in Pictures" it endures as "extremely popular in seventeenth-century Europe." [16] From his home in the Dutch Republic, Comenius also directs a Bible translation into the Ottoman Turkish language. The endeavor, which also involves Jacobus Golius, Levinus Warner and Wojciech Bobowski, is still unfinished by the time of Comenius' death in 1670. [17]
- Étienne de Flacourt of the French East India Company publishes his part history, part memoir, work on Madagascar. Partly written as a plea for colonial sponsorship, it is dedicated to Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances. [18] Flacourt's book introduces various theories, including one about the Jewish and Arabic origins of the Malagasy people; it is additionally noted for explaining the establishment of Fort Dauphin as an enterprise "for profit and gain, no matter how draped in the beautiful colors of religion." [19]
- Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro completes Przysłowia mów potocznych (Proverbs of Common Speech), containing a selection of Polish proverbs and his own aphorisms. The book is also a justification for Sarmatism and "Golden Liberty", with hints of xenophobia. [20]
- In Temeşvar Eyalet, Mihail Halici Sr. begins his translations from the Psalms, using Clément Marot's version in a Hungarian intermediary. These are noted as early samples of Romanian-language poetry, as well as for discarding Cyrillic in favor of Romanization. [21]
- Johann Heinrich Hottinger, a scholar based in Zürich, publishes his Promtuarium sive Bibliotheca Orientalis, which becomes a main reference work for Orientalism. [22]
- Hu Zhenheng's comprehensive collection of Tang poetry begins publication; the tenth and final volume (唐音癸籤, Tang yin gui qian), containing Hu's own literary criticism, is the first to be printed. [23]
- Mihnea III, Prince of Wallachia, begins his purge of boyardom. The scholar and poet Udriște Năsturel, who has been serving as Spatharios , is reportedly among those slaughtered in Bucharest. [24]
- Edward Phillips continues the Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Time of the Romans' Government unto the Death of King James (originally by Richard Baker) to this date.
- The Polish Brethren are repressed and expelled, prompting poet Wacław Potocki to embrace Catholicism. [25]
- Georg Stiernhielm, a nobleman of the Swedish Empire, publishes his epic poem Hercules. Inspired in part by Jacob Cats' blasons, it stimulates a Baroque in Swedish literature. [26] Hercules is also the first Swedish poem in hexameters. [27]
