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

Norbrook

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521785693 ISBN 13: 9780521785693

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Synopsis

'[A] marvellously original, densely researched study of the English republican imagination.' Tom Paulin, The Independent

About this title

Review

According to many historians, the Civil War which engulfed England in 1642 and which culminated in the execution of King Charles I in 1649, was an aberrant eruption of republican zealousness, completely out of keeping with the tolerant, benignly monarchical "middle way" of English political life. As an incomplete bourgeois revolution, The Civil War has even been blamed for stifling the development of a truly democratic civil society in England; as David Norbrook points out in Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660, "the reform group Charter 88 is making demands that were voiced by the Levellers in the 1640s". Not surprisingly, Norbrook proceeds to argue that the Civil War was no aberration, but drew on a long and distinguished tradition of republican thinking, a tradition which Norbrook also claims was by no means destroyed by the Restoration of 1660.

But as the book's subtitle suggests, this is not just an attempt to recover the lost history of radical republican thought within English political culture. It is also a profoundly original study of the ways in which a range of poets of the period criticised the authority of the king and then attempted to offer a vision of a possible future for the republic. As well as offering compelling new readings of Marvell and Milton, Norbrook also recovers the lost poetic voice of the period--Thomas May, Henry Marten, George Wither, John Hall and Payne Fisher.

Characterised by Norbrook's usual critical perceptiveness, the book weaves together a history of the period with a persuasive account of its radical literary culture. Writing the English Republic is destined to become a classic study in the "wars of truth" over one of the most turbulent periods in modern English history. --Jerry Brotton

Review

'[A] fine and important book ... I suspect that Writing the English Republic will have as large and lasting an impact as any previous or readily foreseeable study of the relationship between literature and politics in seventeenth-century England. [Norbrook] writes in an attractively exploratory spirit which resists dogmatism and the sealing of argument.' Blair Worden The Times Literary Supplement

'This is a profoundly important book and a really remarkable achievement. The historical scholarship is masterly, the intelligence and perceptiveness of the literary analysis is outstanding, and the book itself is beautifully and powerfully written. It is as important a book about seventeenth-century English republicanism as it is about seventeenth-century English poetry.' Jonathan Scott

'The case for the republican conscience resounds most eloquently in the impressive coda to this book ... By paying proper attention to poets and historians, Norbrook is able to show that republicanism's roots went deep into the political culture of the 1640s, and even earlier ... But the pay-off for historians stems above all from Norbrook's decision to produce a theme-driven argument instead of a general survey. This has led him to dig deep into the textual remains of the Revolution, rather than content himself with the familiar surface structures.' London Review of Books

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521785693
• ISBN 13: 9780521785693
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 524