Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660

by David Norbrook

• ISBN13: 9780521632751
• ISBN10: 0521632757
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This magisterial new history of seventeenth-century republican political culture sets key texts by Marvell and Milton in a richly detailed context, showing how writers reimagined English literary culture without kingship. The book draws on extensive archival research, bringing to light exciting and neglected manuscript and printed sources. Offering a bold new narrative of the whole period, and a timely reminder that England has a republican as well as a royalist heritage, it will be of compelling interest to historians as well as literary scholars.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	viii	(1)
Acknowledgements	ix	(3)
Note on references and abbreviations	xii
Introduction: acts of oblivion and republican speech-acts	1	(22)
1. Lucan and the poetry of civil war	23	(40)
2. The king's peace and the people's war, 1630--1643	63	(30)
3. Rhetoric, republicanism and the public sphere: Marten, Waller and Milton, 1641-1644	93	(47)
4. Uncivil peace: politics and literary culture, 1645-1649	140	(52)
5. Defending the Commonwealth, 1649-1653	192	(51)
6. Double names: Marvell and the Commonwealth	243	(56)
7. King Oliver? Protectoral Augustanism and its critics, 1653-1658	299	(27)
8. Republicanizing Cromwell	326	(53)
9. Culture and anarchy? The revival and eclipse of republicanism, 1658-1660	379	(54)
10. Paradise Lost and English republicanism	433	(63)
Appendix: Henry Marten's poem to Cromwell	496	(1)
Index	497