Uncloistered Virtue studies the relationship between literature and the political crises of the English Civil War. It explores the ways in which the literary culture of the period changed and survived in radically shifting circumstances and conditions of sometimes extreme adversity, and examines the ways in which old forms developed and new forms emerged to articulate new ideologies and to respond to triumphs and disasters.

Included in the book's discussion of a very wide range of authors and texts are examinations of the Cavalier love poetry of Herrick and Lovelace, Herrick's religious...