Thomas N. Corns
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128830
- eISBN:
- 9780191671715
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128830.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book studies the relationship between literature and the political crises of the English Civil War. It explores the ways in which the literary culture of the period changed and survived in ...
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This book studies the relationship between literature and the political crises of the English Civil War. It explores the ways in which the literary culture of the period changed and survived in radically shifting circumstances and conditions of extreme adversity, and examines the ways in which old forms developed and new forms emerged to articulate new ideologies and to respond to triumphs and disasters. Included in the book's discussion of a wide range of authors and texts are examinations of the Cavalier love poetry of Herrick and Lovelace, Herrick's religious verse, the polemical strategies of Eikon Basilike, and the complexities of Cowley's political verse. The book also provides an important new account of Marvell's political instability, while the prose of Lilburne, Winstanley, and the Ranters is the subject of a long and sustained account which focuses on their sometimes exhilarating attempts to find an idiom for ideologies which previously had been unexpressed in English political life. Through the whole study runs a detailed engagement with Milton's political prose, and the book ends with a consideration of the impact of the Civil War and related events on the English literary tradition, specifically on Rochester, Bunyan, and the later writing of Milton.Less
This book studies the relationship between literature and the political crises of the English Civil War. It explores the ways in which the literary culture of the period changed and survived in radically shifting circumstances and conditions of extreme adversity, and examines the ways in which old forms developed and new forms emerged to articulate new ideologies and to respond to triumphs and disasters. Included in the book's discussion of a wide range of authors and texts are examinations of the Cavalier love poetry of Herrick and Lovelace, Herrick's religious verse, the polemical strategies of Eikon Basilike, and the complexities of Cowley's political verse. The book also provides an important new account of Marvell's political instability, while the prose of Lilburne, Winstanley, and the Ranters is the subject of a long and sustained account which focuses on their sometimes exhilarating attempts to find an idiom for ideologies which previously had been unexpressed in English political life. Through the whole study runs a detailed engagement with Milton's political prose, and the book ends with a consideration of the impact of the Civil War and related events on the English literary tradition, specifically on Rochester, Bunyan, and the later writing of Milton.
Margaret J. M. Ezell
- Published in print:
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- eISBN:
- 9780191849572
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780191849572.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The trial and execution of Charles I by Parliament generated many accounts ranging from ballads to Eikon Basilike, a text believed to have been written by Charles himself during his final days. ...
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The trial and execution of Charles I by Parliament generated many accounts ranging from ballads to Eikon Basilike, a text believed to have been written by Charles himself during his final days. Although debunked by John Milton’s Eikonoklastes, Eikon Basilike rapidly went through multiple illegal editions and was the center piece of the royalist belief that Charles was a royal martyr. Among many of the prominent literary figures in royalist exile on the continent were Abraham Cowley, Edmund Waller; Thomas Hobbes, who wrote Leviathan in Paris; and William Davenant, who created his new style epic poem Gondibert. The last three returned to England in the 1650s having made arrangements with the Puritan Parliament. Those royalist supporters who remained in England lived mostly quiet and retired lives outside of London and pursed literary and translation projects, including Katherine Philips, and Richard and Ann Fanshawe.Less
The trial and execution of Charles I by Parliament generated many accounts ranging from ballads to Eikon Basilike, a text believed to have been written by Charles himself during his final days. Although debunked by John Milton’s Eikonoklastes, Eikon Basilike rapidly went through multiple illegal editions and was the center piece of the royalist belief that Charles was a royal martyr. Among many of the prominent literary figures in royalist exile on the continent were Abraham Cowley, Edmund Waller; Thomas Hobbes, who wrote Leviathan in Paris; and William Davenant, who created his new style epic poem Gondibert. The last three returned to England in the 1650s having made arrangements with the Puritan Parliament. Those royalist supporters who remained in England lived mostly quiet and retired lives outside of London and pursed literary and translation projects, including Katherine Philips, and Richard and Ann Fanshawe.
Jonathan Sheehan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804775366
- eISBN:
- 9780804780704
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804775366.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
This chapter examines two texts from mid-seventeenth-century England with a view to understanding the political work done by the language of sacrifice. It challenges the ideas that that moment in ...
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This chapter examines two texts from mid-seventeenth-century England with a view to understanding the political work done by the language of sacrifice. It challenges the ideas that that moment in history represented either the achievement of a political domain independent from theology, or the persistence of theological motifs in an ostensibly secular political order. John Milton responded to the publication of the Eikon Basilike, which had presented Charles II's martyrdom as a sacrificial judgment on the law, by insisting that Charles, like any other, was subject to the legal order. The second text shows how Thomas Hobbes also invoked sacrifice to embody and dramatize assent to the law as a basis for a contract theory of the state.Less
This chapter examines two texts from mid-seventeenth-century England with a view to understanding the political work done by the language of sacrifice. It challenges the ideas that that moment in history represented either the achievement of a political domain independent from theology, or the persistence of theological motifs in an ostensibly secular political order. John Milton responded to the publication of the Eikon Basilike, which had presented Charles II's martyrdom as a sacrificial judgment on the law, by insisting that Charles, like any other, was subject to the legal order. The second text shows how Thomas Hobbes also invoked sacrifice to embody and dramatize assent to the law as a basis for a contract theory of the state.
Kevin Sharpe
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300162004
- eISBN:
- 9780300164909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300162004.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter discusses the words and silences of kings in England. On the day of the regicide, Charles I's political testament, the Eikon Basilike, was published and went into 36 editions the same ...
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This chapter discusses the words and silences of kings in England. On the day of the regicide, Charles I's political testament, the Eikon Basilike, was published and went into 36 editions the same year. In 1651, the first collected works of the king, the Reliquiae sacrae Carolinae published not only the Eikon Basilike but Charles's papers and discussions about Presbyterianism with Alexander Henderson, and his papers regarding the Treaty of Newport. The selection of royal words chosen may have been, as most selections are, strategic and polemical. The works gathered dated from the onset of the king's troubles, which, it is implied, had no long-term causes, but rather followed from the Scots' invasion and the treasonable acts of a caucus of MPs after 1640. The official prayers, ordered to be used in all the churches of the realm, were almost always devised by bishops.Less
This chapter discusses the words and silences of kings in England. On the day of the regicide, Charles I's political testament, the Eikon Basilike, was published and went into 36 editions the same year. In 1651, the first collected works of the king, the Reliquiae sacrae Carolinae published not only the Eikon Basilike but Charles's papers and discussions about Presbyterianism with Alexander Henderson, and his papers regarding the Treaty of Newport. The selection of royal words chosen may have been, as most selections are, strategic and polemical. The works gathered dated from the onset of the king's troubles, which, it is implied, had no long-term causes, but rather followed from the Scots' invasion and the treasonable acts of a caucus of MPs after 1640. The official prayers, ordered to be used in all the churches of the realm, were almost always devised by bishops.
Todd Butler
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198844068
- eISBN:
- 9780191879715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198844068.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Concerns over equivocation, captured letters, and religious division continued to attend the relationship between thought, expression, and political obedience throughout the Restoration. The concern ...
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Concerns over equivocation, captured letters, and religious division continued to attend the relationship between thought, expression, and political obedience throughout the Restoration. The concern in early Stuart England for political intellection was thus not simply a product of its immediate moment but the catalyst for a more fundamental recognition of deliberation and other forms of individual and institutional thought as being arenas for political action. In looking backward, then, we might recognize the early Stuart era’s continual attention to the means by which monarchs and subjects alike thought through their political dilemmas to be something of a precursor to a more modern interest in political decision-making, and the extent to which processes of the mind remain integral to the operation—proper or otherwise—of contemporary democracies.Less
Concerns over equivocation, captured letters, and religious division continued to attend the relationship between thought, expression, and political obedience throughout the Restoration. The concern in early Stuart England for political intellection was thus not simply a product of its immediate moment but the catalyst for a more fundamental recognition of deliberation and other forms of individual and institutional thought as being arenas for political action. In looking backward, then, we might recognize the early Stuart era’s continual attention to the means by which monarchs and subjects alike thought through their political dilemmas to be something of a precursor to a more modern interest in political decision-making, and the extent to which processes of the mind remain integral to the operation—proper or otherwise—of contemporary democracies.
