Synopses & Reviews
This volume offers an account of English literary culture in one of its most volatile moments, when literature was enmeshed with the extremes of social, political and sexual experience. Newly-commissioned essays make use of current critical perspectives in order to offer new insight into the literature of Restoration and early eighteenth-century England in all its variety, from vitriolic satire to heroic verse. The volume's chronologies and select bibliographies will guide the reader through texts and events, while the fourteen essays commissioned for this Companion will allow us to read the period anew.
Review
'\"...succeeds nicely. Graduate students working up a topic--and professors working up a lecture--will find this volume most useful, but it is recommended for all academic collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above.\" Choice\"...offers a concise and engaged treatment of the literary and historical contexts surrounding the topic in question.\" Virginia Quarterly Review'
Synopsis
Brings together essays examining English literary culture in the Restoration and early eighteenth century, from Milton and Marvell to Pope and Montagu.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; List of contributors; Preface; Chronologies; Part I. Contexts and Modes: 1. England 1649-1750: differences contained? John Spurr; 2. Satire, lampoon, libel, slander Michael Seidel; 3. Gender, literature, and gendering literature in the Restoration Margaret A. Doody; 4. Theatrical culture I: politics and theatre Jessica Munns; 5. Theatrical culture II: theatre and music James A. Winn; 6. Lyric forms Joshua Scodel; 7. Classical texts: translations and transformations Paul Hammond; Part II. Writers: 8. 'This Islands watchful Centinel': anti-Catholicism and proto-Whiggery in Milton and Marvell Cedric C. Brown; 9. John Dryden Steven N. Zwicker; 10. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester Ros Ballaster; 11. The authorial ciphers of Aphra Behn Margaret Ferguson; 12. Swift, Defoe, and narrative forms John Mullan; 13. Mary Astell and John Locke Patricia Springborg; 14. Alexander Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the literature of social comment Donna Landry; Index.