Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660

ISBN-13: 9780521785693 / Angielski / Miękka / 2000 / 524 str.

David Norbrook

Opis

This magisterial new history of seventeenth-century republican political culture sets key texts by Marvell and Milton in a richly detailed context, showing how writers reimagined English literary culture without kingship. The book draws on extensive archival research, bringing to light exciting and neglected manuscript and printed sources. Offering a bold new narrative of the whole period, and a timely reminder that England has a republican as well as a royalist heritage, it will be of compelling interest to historians as well as literary scholars.

Recenzje

'The case for the republican conscience resounds most eloquently in the impressive coda to this book … By paying proper attention to poets and historians, Norbrook is able to show that republicanism's roots went deep into the political culture of the 1640s, and even earlier … But the pay-off for historians stems above all from Norbrook's decision to produce a theme-driven argument instead of a general survey. This has led him to dig deep into the textual remains of the Revolution, rather than content himself with the familiar surface structures.' London Review of Books

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Lucan and the poetry of civil war; 2. The King's peace and the people's war, 1630–43; 3. Rhetoric, Republicanism and the public sphere: Marten, Waller, and Milton, 1641–44; 4. Uncivil peace: politics and literary culture 1645–49; 5. Poetry and the Commonwealth, 1649–53; 6. Double names: Marvell and the Commonwealth; 7. King Oliver? Protectoral Augustanism and its critics, 1653–58; 8. Republicanizing Cromwell; 9. Culture and anarchy? The revival and eclipse of Republicanism, 1658–60; 10. Paradise Lost and English Republicanism; Appendix.