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 49
... scene . It gives the origin of the York - Lancaster quarrel in so far as it presents the earliest dispute between the great protagonist of the Yorkist cause and his earliest opponents . The subtlety of the scene lies in its character in ...
... scene . It gives the origin of the York - Lancaster quarrel in so far as it presents the earliest dispute between the great protagonist of the Yorkist cause and his earliest opponents . The subtlety of the scene lies in its character in ...
Page 85
... scene of 1 Henry IV , this scene opens with Henry's plans for the crusade , but despite mention of all his practical preparations , his mind is really on his son . The long passage of advice to his younger sons , maxims from the art of ...
... scene of 1 Henry IV , this scene opens with Henry's plans for the crusade , but despite mention of all his practical preparations , his mind is really on his son . The long passage of advice to his younger sons , maxims from the art of ...
Page 91
... scene from the earlier play , it is improbable that Shakespeare himself had forgotten what he had written before about this episode . Indeed two details in the present scene hint at civil disaffection stemming from other than mercenary ...
... scene from the earlier play , it is improbable that Shakespeare himself had forgotten what he had written before about this episode . Indeed two details in the present scene hint at civil disaffection stemming from other than mercenary ...
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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