A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration

by Edited by Alan Houston , Steve Pincus

• ISBN13: 9780521173933
• ISBN10: 0521173930
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Originally published in 2001, A Nation Transformed is a major collection of essays by a mix of young and eminent scholars of early modern English history, literature, and political thought. The fruit of an intense interdisciplinary two-day conference held at the Huntington Library, California, it asks whether and in what ways the culture and politics of early modern England was transformed by the second half of the seventeenth century. In sharp contrast to those who have emphasised continuity and the persistence of the ancien règime, the contributors argue that England in 1700 was profoundly different from what it had been in 1640. Essays in the volume deal with changes in natural philosophy, literature, religion, politics, political thought, and political economy. The insights offered here, based on innovative research, will interest scholars and students of early modern history, Renaissance and Augustan literature, and historians of political thought.

Table of Contents

Introduction: modernity and later seventeenth-century England

The question of secularisation

'Meer religion' and the 'church-state' of Restoration England: the impact and ideology of James II's Declarations of indulgence

Radicals, reformers and republicans: academic language and political discourse in Restoration London

The family in the Exclusion Crisis: Locke vs. Filmer revisited

Understanding popular politics in Restoration Britain

The war in heaven and the Miltonic sublime

The Cowleyan Pindaric ode and sublime diversions

Plays as property, 1660-1710

Republicanism, the politics of necessity, and the rule of law

From holy cause to economic interest: the transformation of reason of state thinking in seventeenth-century England

Natural philosophy and political periodisation: interregnum, restoration, and revolution

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.