Roger L'Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture

by Lynch,Beth; Dunan-Page,Anne

• ISBN13: 9780754658009
• ISBN10: 0754658007
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704) was one of the most remarkable, significant and colourful figures in seventeenth-century England. Whilst there has been regular, if often cursory, scholarly interest in his activities as Licenser and Stuart apologist, this is the first sustained book-length study of the man for almost a century.L'Estrange's engagement on the Royalist side during the Civil war, and his energetic pamphleteering for the return of the King in the months preceding the Restoration earned him a reputation as one of the most radical royalist apologists. As Licenser for the Press under Charles II, he was charged with preventing the printing and publication of dissenting writings; his additional role as Surveyor of the Press authorised him to search the premises of printers and booksellers on the mere suspicion of such activity. He was also a tireless pamphleteer, journalist, and controversialist in the conformist cause, all of which made him the bête noire of Whigs and non-conformists.This collection of essays by leading scholars of the period highlights the instrumental role L'Estrange played in the shaping of the political, literary, and print cultures of the Restoration period. Taking an interdisciplinary approach the volume covers all the major aspects of his career, as well as situating them in their broader historical and literary context. By examining his career in this way the book offers insights that will prove of worth to political, social, religious and cultural historians, as well as those interested in seventeenth-century literary and book history.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Rhetoricating and identity in L'Estrange's early career, 1659-1662

L'Estrange's Milton

L'Estrange, Marvell and the Directions to a Painter: the evidence of Bodleian Library, MS Gough London 14

Roger L'Estrange's Observator and the exorcism of the plot

'Tales and romantick stories': 'Impostures', trustworthiness, and the credibility of information in the late 17th century

Roger L'Estrange and the Huguenots: continental Protestantism and the Church of England

'The art of schooling mankind': the uses of the fable in Sir Roger L'Estrange's Aesop's Fables (1692)

'My fiddle is a bass viol': music in the life of Roger L'Estrange

L'Estrange, Joyce and the dictates of typography

The works of Roger L'Estrange: an annotated bibliography

Select bibliography of secondary sources

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.