Poetry and the Realm of Politics Shakespeare to Dryden

by Erskine-Hill, Howard

• ISBN13: 9780198117315
• ISBN10: 0198117310
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-08-01
• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• More Book Details

Summary

This is a major study of the relation between poetry and politics in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature, focusing in particular on the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Dryden. Taking issue with the traditional concept of the political poem and with recent New Historicist criticism, Erskine-Hill argues that the major tradition of political allusion is not, as has often been argued, that of the political allegory of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel and other overtly political poems, but rather a more shifting and less systematic practice, often involving equivocal or multiple reference.

Author Biography

Howard Erskine-Hill is Professor of Literary History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Abbreviations and Short Titles	p. xii
A Note on Texts	p. xiv
Introduction	p. 1
Shakespeare and the Succession of Kings	p. 11
The Political Foreground	p. 13
The First Tetralogy and King John	p. 46
The Second Tetralogy and After	p. 70
The Republican Tide	p. 113
The Charisma of Italy	p. 115
Rome and English Republican Poetry	p. 133
After the Revolution	p. 169
Defeat and the Relevance of Epic	p. 171
Post-Revolutionary Tragedy	p. 216
Conclusion	p. 252
	p. 254
	p. 257
	p. 259
Select Bibliography	p. 261
Index	p. 273
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