Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England

by Edited by Derek Hirst , Richard Strier

• ISBN13: 9780521100304
• ISBN10: 0521100305
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This volume focuses on the relationship between writing and public concerns in seventeenth-century England before, during and after the civil wars and revolution of the mid-century. The distinguished list of contributors represent a variety of disciplines - political scientists, social and political historians and literary critics. They share an intense concern with the relationship between the act of writing and the political and public issues of this extraordinary period. The essays suggest that in the seventeenth-century the private and the public intersected so thoroughly that ostensibly 'private' writing was engaged with public issues and public rhetoric, while on the other hand, political writing was deeply involved with questions of style and inward conscience. This volume illuminates the complex issues of 'public' and 'private', 'art' and 'conscience' in the period.

Table of Contents

Introduction

'I am Power': normal and magical politics in The Tempest

'Void of storie': the struggle for insincerity in Herbert's prose and poetry

Sir Kenelm Digby's rewritings of his life

Thomas Hobbes and the Renaissance studia humanitatis

Casuistry and allegiance in the English Civil War

Thomas May and the narrative of civil war

Samuel Parker, Andrew Marvell and political culture, 1667ndash;73

Sidney's Discourses on political imagoes and royalist iconography

Notes

Index

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