The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature

by Augustine, Matthew C.; Zwicker, Steven N.

• ISBN13: 9780192866035
• ISBN10: 0192866036
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-04-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature begins by asking if there was a distinctive literature of the Restoration. For a long time, the answer seemed obvious: heroic drama, libertine comedy, scandalous lyrics, and the short but brilliant career of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester. Could there be an age when the coincidence of literary culture and political rule were any more obvious? But as this Handbook will remind us, some of the most wonderful literature of this Restoration came from writers who had lived across the decades of turbulence and into an age when the Stuart kings returned, when the Church and House of Lords were restored, a world made safe for bishops and for the memory of divine right rule. Of course, these returns and restorations did not meet with uniform celebration. John Milton wrote his great epic poems not in quiet submission but in a kind of resistance to the dominant culture of the 1660s, and Andrew Marvell produced his most brilliant satiric verse by holding up a looking glass to court corruption and Anglican intolerance. So we begin with the most obvious conclusion: Restoration literature does and does not fit to the categories that so long defined the late Stuart age.

This book explores and contests, challenges and reimagines the experience embodied by the writing of the late Stuart world and invites readers new to this world and those who have often read its literatures to the pleasures but as well to the challenges and discomforts of its texts.

Author Biography

Steven N. Zwicker, Professor Emeritus, Washington University in St. Louis,Matthew C. Augustine, Senior Lecturer in English, University of St Andrews

As an undergraduate, Matthew C Augustine studied English, Rhetoric, and French at the University of Illinois and then went on to graduate study at Washington University in St Louis, where he became interested in the literary and political cultures of seventeenth-century England. Much of his work has been devoted to deforming the distinctions, boundaries, and oppositions that have traditionally governed our understanding of this period and of its cultural regimes. The poet and politician Andrew Marvell has for several years been a central focus, but he has also written and collaborated widely in studying seventeenth-century literature and literary culture.


Steven N. Zwicker was born in San Diego, California, and grew up in Los Angeles. Since his undergraduate days at UCLA, he has been interested in early modern literature, especially the literature of the civil war years and Restoration. Hisgraduate work was directed by Barbara Lewalski at Brown University and when he began teaching at Washington University in St Louis the late historian John Pocock taught the history of political thought at the university. Pocock's work and teaching opened for Zwicker a new way to understand relations between politics and literary culture, and he has worked along that axis for a number of years, writing and teaching about Marvell, Milton, Rochester, and Dryden, and, more broadly, Restoration culture and politics.

Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsList of FiguresNames and DatesAbbreviations and ConventionsContributorsPART I INTRODUCTION1. Writing the Stuart Restoration: Political Time, Cultural Time, and Literary Periodicity, Matthew C. Augustine and Steven N. ZwickerPART II FASHIONING THE RESTORATION2. The Theatre of Politics and the Politics of Theatre, David F. Taylor3. Restoration Panegyric, David Alff4. Acts of Indemnity and Oblivion: 'This Excellent Art of Forgetfulness', Edward Holberton5. Remembering the Civil Wars, Phil Connell6. Restoration Life Writing and the Arts of Assembly, Kate Bennett7. C. 22-23 April 1661, &c: or, The Diary Method of Restoration Sovereignty, Michael MascuchPART III THE INSTITUTIONS OF LITERARY CULTURE8. Plays and Players, Playhouses and Playgoers, Robert D. Hume9. Celebrity and the Restoration Actress, Julia Fawcett10. Patronage, Richard McCabe11. Censorship and the Regulation of the Press: 1660-1695, John Barnard12. Authorship and the Book Trade, Margaret J. M. Ezell13. Scribal Culture and Literary Sociability: Marvell and Etherege in Manuscript, Martin Dzelzainis14. Literary Criticism of the Restoration, Michael GavinPART IV WRITERS AT THE CENTRE15. 'For the Bays Designed': Waller, Cowley, Philips, Gillian Wright16. Dryden and Congreve (and Milton and Jonson), Tom Lockwood17. Cleveland's Ghosts: Butler, Marvell, and Restoration Satire, James Loxley18. Imagining It Was Otherwise: Cavendish and Milton, Erin Murphy19. 'Voice Made up of Harmony': Rochester and Behn, Katherine Mannheimer20. True Comedy? Etherege, Wycherley, Shadwell, David Roberts21. Grace Abounding: Baxter and Bunyan, David Parry22. The Experimental Theatre of Lee and Otway, Blair Hoxby23. The Power of Letters: John Locke and Lady Damaris Masham, Nigel SmithPART V BODIES POLITIC24. The Body Politic in the Literary Imagination, Niall Allsopp25. From the Body Politic to Biopolitics, Thomas A. King26. Scandalous Bodies in the Restoration, Laura J. RosenthalPART VI RESTORATION SPIRITUALITIES27. Negotiating Nonconformity: Arts and Animadversions, Elizabeth Sauer28. Women, Prayer, and Prophecy, Tessie Prakas29. Catholic Writing in the Restoration: Mission, Tradition, Opposition, Alison ShellPART VII PHILOSOPHY AND NATURAL SCIENCE30. The Royal Society and Literate Culture, Mordechai Feingold31. Restoration Science and Literary Representation in a Global Context, Helen Thompson32. 'Affections of Matter': Empirical Description in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, Claire PrestonPART VIII BORDER-CROSSINGS33. Traffic with the Ancients, Henry Power34. Restoration Parody and Plagiarism, Robert Phiddian35. Imitation and Admiration, Fear and Loathing: France in the English Imagination, Lines Cottegnies36. Stuart Britannia and the Worlding of Empire, Rajani SudanPART IX ''TIS WELL AN OLD AGE IS OUT': RESTORATION ENDINGS37. Affect and Uncertainty: Writing the Glorious Revolution, Christopher D'Addario38. Jacobite Literatures, Paul K. Monod39. When Did the Restoration End?, Paul Davis