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This volume explores 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 contributors represent a variety of disciplines and methodologies. They share, however, 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 significant art, even when apparently "private," was deeply engaged with public issues, while political writing was intimately involved with questions of style and inward conscience.
Dominion: England and its Island Neighbours c.1500-1707 is a rich
narrative history of England's increasing dominance over the
cluster of territories that became known as the British Isles. It
brings alive a period and a geography remarkable for repeated
religious wars and a long colonial struggle as well as for London's
emergence as a political, economic, and cultural hub. While
Dominion concentrates on English actions and purposes, it pays
careful attention to interactions in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales,
and to the pressures of European competition. It does so by drawing
on the vibrant recent scholarship of the separate nations and
considerable primary research, and also on the language of the
actors, from Henry VIII and Elizabeth, Spenser and Shakespeare, to
Oliver Cromwell and John Milton. Its purpose is not just to explore
English understandings and ideologies, but their consequences, both
creative and disruptive. The landmarks of the Tudor and Stuart
centuries may be familiar: the creation of Ireland as a subordinate
but fractured kingdom, the unification of Wales with England, the
unstable union of the crowns of England and Scotland, the bloody
conquest and reconquest of Ireland, and the formation of the United
Kingdom amid fierce rivalry with France. By interweaving these
strands as a single coherent story of English reactions and
projections, this book opens up a new understanding of this
formative period in the history of these islands - and also of its
fractious legacy.
Andrew Marvell is one of the greatest English lyric poets of the
seventeenth century and one of its leading polemicists. This
Companion brings a set of fresh questions and perspectives to bear
on the varied career and diverse writings of a remarkable writer
and elusive man. Drawing on important new editions of Marvell's
poetry and of his prose, scholars of both history and literature
examine Marvell's work in the contexts of Restoration politics and
religion, and of the seventeenth-century publishing world in both
manuscript and print. The essays, individually and collectively,
address Marvell within his literary and cultural traditions and
communities; his almost prescient sense of the economy and ecology
of the country; his interest in visual arts and architecture; his
opaque political and spiritual identities; his manners in
controversy and polemic; the character of his erotic and
transgressive imagination and his biography, still full of
intriguing gaps.
Dominion: England and its Island Neighbours c.1500-1707 is a rich
narrative history of England's increasing dominance over the
cluster of territories that became known as the British Isles. It
brings alive a period and a geography remarkable for repeated
religious wars and a long colonial struggle as well as for London's
emergence as a political, economic, and cultural hub. While
Dominion concentrates on English actions and purposes, it pays
careful attention to interactions in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales,
and to the pressures of European competition. It does so by drawing
on the vibrant recent scholarship of the separate nations and
considerable primary research, and also on the language of the
actors, from Henry VIII and Elizabeth, Spenser and Shakespeare, to
Oliver Cromwell and John Milton.
Its purpose is not just to explore English understandings and
ideologies, but their consequences, both creative and disruptive.
The landmarks of the Tudor and Stuart centuries may be familiar:
the creation of Ireland as a subordinate but fractured kingdom, the
unification of Wales with England, the unstable union of the crowns
of England and Scotland, the bloody conquest and reconquest of
Ireland, and the formation of the United Kingdom amid fierce
rivalry with France. By interweaving these strands as a single
coherent story of English reactions and projections, this book
opens up a new understanding of this formative period in the
history of these islands - and also of its fractious legacy.
Andrew Marvell is one of the greatest English lyric poets of the
seventeenth century and one of its leading polemicists. This
Companion brings a set of fresh questions and perspectives to bear
on the varied career and diverse writings of a remarkable writer
and elusive man. Drawing on important new editions of Marvell's
poetry and of his prose, scholars of both history and literature
examine Marvell's work in the contexts of Restoration politics and
religion, and of the seventeenth-century publishing world in both
manuscript and print. The essays, individually and collectively,
address Marvell within his literary and cultural traditions and
communities; his almost prescient sense of the economy and ecology
of the country; his interest in visual arts and architecture; his
opaque political and spiritual identities; his manners in
controversy and polemic; the character of his erotic and
transgressive imagination and his biography, still full of
intriguing gaps.
This volume, first published in 2000, 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.
Contested elections became a fact of political life for the first
time in early-17th-century England as the gentry pressed for seats
in a parliament which was growing increasingly important. Dr Hirst
examines politics from the point of view of the ordinary man before
the Civil War. He asks what an election and being represented
meant: what kind of person voted; how did he vote and why; and what
might he gain by it. England was not yet shaped in the oligarchic
mould that characterised it in the 18th century, and a striking
feature of this period was the extent to which parliamentary
politics was open to a large social group. Inflation and peasant
survival on the land, and resistance to oligarchy in the boroughs
(supported by the parliamentary gentry seeking popular allies for
their own political battles), produced a broad rural and urban
electorate. The need for votes also ensured that members were
relatively responsive to, and representative of, pressures from
below. In arriving at this verdict, Dr Hirst challenges the notion
that politics in this period displayed a strong sense of direction.
At all levels, whether in the means of control employed by the
magnates, in electoral procedure, or in voting behaviour,
uncertainty was manifest, for contests were unprecedented.
England in Conflict 1603-1660 tells the story of the disintegration
of the early modern polity. By questioning the meanings of the body
politic it is able to bridge not only the high and low but also
divergent approaches to the period. The book's opening explorations
of the practices and assumptions of politics, of religious life in
center and locality, of social relationships and of economic
patterns, are followed by a turn to narrative. The drama of the
slide from royal peace into civil war and revolution, and the
trauma of the failure of that revolution, are caught with a clarity
that does not come at the price of distortion.
Derek Hirst has blended his own continuing researches with more
than a decade of challenging scholarship that appeared since his
Authority and Conflict (from which this book is descended). The
result is a wholly fresh work. Centered around ambiguities of
community in early modern England--the community of the realm
embodied in the king, the local communities with all their
strengths and subversions, the political community as an autonomous
agent--the text enlivens such debates as those over revisionism,
Puritanism, the church, and witchcraft while at the same time
making sense of the complexities of crisis and continuity.
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