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An innovative exploration of fake news and alternative reality in
late Stuart and early Hanoverian political and literary culture,
from the Popish Plot and the South Sea Bubble to the Dunciad. James
Francis Edward Stuart, the Prince of Wales born in 1688, was not a
commoner's child smuggled into the queen's birthing chamber in a
warming pan, but many people said he was. In 1708, the same prince
did not quite land in Scotland with a force of 5,000 men in order
to claim the Scottish crown, but writers busied themselves with
exploring what would have happened if he had succeeded. These
fictions had as potent an effect on the political culture of late
Stuart and early Hanoverian Britain as many events that really did
happen. From the alleged "Popish Plot" of Titus Oates to the South
Sea Bubble, John McTague draws on a rich variety of sources -
popular, archival and literary - to investigate the propagandic and
literary exploitation of three kinds of things that did not occur
at this time: failures which inspired "what if" narratives,
speculative futures which failed to come to pass and "pure"
fictions created and disseminated for political gain. Finally, a
ground-breaking reading of the various versions of Pope's Dunciad
reveals a work that in its exploration of historic causation and
agency and its repurposing o fthe material of contemporary
political and literary culture deploys many of the strategies
explored in earlier chapters to present Hanoverian reality as if it
were counterhistory. JOHN MCTAGUE is Lecturer in English Literature
at Bristol University.
Nicholas Rowe was the first Poet Laureate of the Georgian era. A
fascinating and important yet largely overlooked figure in
eighteenth-century literature, he is the 'lost Augustan'. His plays
are important both for the way they address the political and
social concerns of the day and for reflecting a period in which the
theatre was in crisis. This edition sets out to demonstrate Rowe's
mastery of the early eighteenth century theatre, especially his
providing significant roles for women, and examines the political
and historical stances of his plays. It also highlights his work as
a translator, which was both innovative and deeply in tune with
current practices as exemplified by John Dryden and Alexander Pope.
This is the first scholarly edition of all Rowe's plays and poems
and is accompanied by 15 musical scores and 31 black and white
illustrations. In this first volume, a general introduction by
Stephen Bernard and Michael Caines introduces Rowe's works and the
five volumes that comprise this set. It then presents the early
plays, The Ambitious Step-Mother, Tamerlane, and The Fair Penitent
along with a newly written explanatory introduction by Rebecca
Bullard and John McTague which precedes the full edited text.
Appendices covering dedications performance history, the related
music and textual apparatus are also included. A consolidated
bibliography is included with the final volume for ease of
reference.
The correspondence of John Dryden is the definitive edition of the
letters of the most important playwright and poet of the late
seventeenth century. He defined an age and his newly transcribed
disparate correspondence is placed in the context of
contemporaneous and current debates about literature, politics and
religion. It is also the most important account of the relationship
between an author and his bookseller of the time. The illustrated
correspondence contains a full biographical, textual introduction
and calendar of letters. It is transcribed diplomatically and
structured chronologically, with contextualising sections about
particular correspondences. The readership will be undergraduate,
graduate and postgraduate students and academics with an interest
in seventeenth century literature, politics, religion and culture.
The editor won the MLA Morton N. Cohen Award for a Distinguished
Edition of Letters. -- .
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