Poetry of Opposition and Revolution Dryden to Wordsworth

by Erskine-Hill, Howard

• ISBN13: 9780198121770
• ISBN10: 0198121776
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-01-30
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

This is a major study of the relation between poetry and politics from the 1688 Revolution to the early years of the nineteenth century, focusing in particular on the works of Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and Wordsworth. Building on his argument in Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden (also available from OUP), Erskine-Hill argues that the major tradition of political allusion is not, as has often been argued, that of political allegory and overtly political poems, but rather a more shifting and less systematic practice, often involving equivocal or multiple reference.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	x	(1)
Abbreviations and Short Titles	xi
Introduction	1	(16)
PART I DRYDEN AND THE 1960s	17	(40)
1. Dryden's Later Plays and Poems	17	(40)
PART II POPE AND THE QUESTION OF JACOBITE VISION	57	(54)
2. Early Poems to The Rape of the Locke	57	(20)
3. The Rape of the Lock to The Dunciad	77	(34)
PART III JOHNSON: POEMS ON AFFAIRS OF STATE	111	(58)
4. The Decision of Samuel Johnson	111	(28)
5. The Vanity of Human Wishes in Context	139	(30)
PART IV THE POLITICS OF THE PRELUDE	169	(81)
6. Wordsworth and the Conception of The Prelude	169	(31)
7. Experiencing Revolution	200	(50)
Epilogue	250	(6)
Select Bibliography	256	(9)
Index	265