Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681-1714

by Williams, Abigail

• ISBN13: 9780199255207
• ISBN10: 0199255202
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Poetry and the Creation of Whig Literary Culture offers a revisionist history of early eighteenth-century poetry. It demonstrates that many of the Whig writers frequently attacked as hacks and dunces by Alexander Pope and John Dryden were in fact successful and popular in their own time. Writers such as Joseph Addison, John Dennis, Thomas Tickell, and Richard Blackmore produced elevated poetry celebrating the achievements of post-Revolution Britain, verse which was heralded by their Whig contemporaries as the evidence of a new native literary excellence. This book maps for the first time the evolution of this distinct poetic tradition, offering new insights into the relationship between literary and political culture in the early eighteenth-century.

Author Biography

Abigail Williams is a Fellow and Tutor in English at St. Peter's College, University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations	viii
Introduction: Rereading Whig poetry	1	(21)
The Tory critique of Whig literature	22	(34)
Moderation, fanaticism, and `the people' 1681-1688	56	(37)
Legitimacy and the warrior king 1688-1702	93	(42)
Poetic warfare 1702-1714	135	(38)
The sublime and the liberty of writing	173	(31)
Patronage and the public writer in Whig literary culture	204	(37)
Conclusion: Whig afterlives	241	(6)
Biographical appendix	247	(11)
Bibliography	258	(38)
Index	296