Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to DrydenThis is a major study of the relation between poetry and politcs in sixteenth and seventeenth century English literature, focusing in particular on the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Dryden. Howard Erskine-Hill argues that the major tradition of political allusion is not, as has often been argued, that of the political allegory of Dryden's Absalom and Architophel, and other overtly political poems, but rather a more shifting and less systematic practice, often involving equivocal or multiple reference. Drawing on the revisionist trend in recent historiography, and taking issue with recent New Historicist criticism, the book offers new and thought-provoking readings of familiar texts. For example, Shakespeare's Histories, far from endorsing a conservative Tudor myth, are shown to examine and reject divine-right kingship in favour of a political vision of what the succession crisis of the 1590s required. A forgotten political aspect of Hamlet is restored and an anti-Cromwellian strain is identified in Milton's Paradise Lost. Again and again, Professor Erskine-Hill is able to show how some of the most powerful works of the period, works which in the past have been read for their aesthetic achievement and generalized wisdom, in fact contain a political component crucial to our understanding of the poem. |
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Page 34
... royal monarch where a just conquest is followed by a restoration of the liberties of the subject.46 Even a monarchy based on force and illegality may grow into a royal monarchy.47 Bodin's recognition of the complexities of political ...
... royal monarch where a just conquest is followed by a restoration of the liberties of the subject.46 Even a monarchy based on force and illegality may grow into a royal monarchy.47 Bodin's recognition of the complexities of political ...
Page 79
... royal line . " For while everywhere in 1 and 2 Henry IV Bolingbroke is referred to as the King , if one thing is clear from the relation of these plays to Richard II it is that he secured the throne by force , force partly acquired by ...
... royal line . " For while everywhere in 1 and 2 Henry IV Bolingbroke is referred to as the King , if one thing is clear from the relation of these plays to Richard II it is that he secured the throne by force , force partly acquired by ...
Page 110
... royal charisma of Richard II . Decisive , patriarchal , unwarlike , less cere- monious , and more natural , he is offered as the cynosure of fidelity and love . Lear is the royal patriarch whose patriarchal spirit fatally fails ; so ...
... royal charisma of Richard II . Decisive , patriarchal , unwarlike , less cere- monious , and more natural , he is offered as the cynosure of fidelity and love . Lear is the royal patriarch whose patriarchal spirit fatally fails ; so ...
Contents
List of Illustrations བ | 11 |
Introduction I | 11 |
The First Tetralogy and King John | 46 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown
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