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The
Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more. This volume covers 1645 to 1714, which saw the rise of new media forms, and transformations in performance spaces, bookselling, and the concept of authorship.
List of contents
- List of Figures
- Abbreviations
- A Note on the Texts
- A Preface to the Reader: Describing 'Literary Life' in the Mid- and Late Seventeenth Century
- 1. Ending the War, Creating a Commonwealth, and Surviving the Interregnum, 1645-1658
- I: 1645
- II: Laws Regulating Publication, Speech, and Performance, 1645-1658
- III: Humphrey Moseley and London Literary Publishing: Making the Book, Image, and Word
- IV: Hearing, Speaking, Writing: Religious Discourse from the Pulpit, among Congregations, and from the Prophets
- V: Fiction and Adventure Narratives: Romantic Foreigners and Native Romances
- VI: Sociable Texts: Manuscript Circulation, Writers, and Readers in Britain and Abroad
- 2. The Return of the King, Restoration, and Innovation, 1659-1673
- I: 1659-1660
- II: Laws Regulating Publication, Speech, and Performance, 1660-1673
- III: Renovating the Stage: Companies, Actresses, Repertoir, Theatre Innovations, and the Touring Companies
- IV: Enacting Libertinism: Court Performance and Literary Culture
- V: Creating Science: The Royal Society and the New Literatures of Science
- VI: 'Adventurous Song': Samuel Butler, Abraham Cowley, Katherine Philips, John Milton, and 1660s Verse
- 3. Reading and Writing for Profit and Delight, 1674 - 1684
- I: 1674-1675
- II: Laws Regulating Publication, Speech, and Performance, 1674-1684
- III: Poets and the Politics of Patronage and Literary Criticism
- IV: Theatrical Entertainments Outside the London Commercial Playhouses: Smock Alley, Strollers, School Plays, and Private Performances
- V: Fictions: The Pilgrim's Progress, the New 'Novels', and Love and Erotica
- VI: Foreign Parts: English Readers and Foreign Lands and Culture
- 4. The End of the Century, Scripting Transitions, 1685-1699
- I: 1685-1686
- II: Laws Regulating Publication, Speech, and Performance, 1685-1699
- III: Heard in the Street: Broadside Ballads
- IV: Seen on Stage: English Operas, the Female Wits, and the 'Reformed' Stage
- V: Debates between the Sexes: Satires, Advice, and Polemics
- 5. Writing the New Britain, 1700-1714
- I: 1700
- II: Laws Regulating Publication, Preaching, and Performance, 1700-1714
- III: Kit-Cats and Scriblerians: Clubs, Wits, the Tatler, the Spectator, and The Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus
- IV: Booksellers and the Book Trade: John Dunton, Edmund Curll, Grub Street, and the Rise of Bernard Lintot
- V: 'The Great Business of Poetry': Poets, Pastoral, and Politics
- Appendix: Companion Volume: Table of Contents
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Margaret Ezell is a Distinguished Professor of English and the John and Sara Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. She received her degrees from Wellesley College and Cambridge University.
Summary
The Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more.
Each of these thirteen groundbreaking volumes offers a leading scholar's considered assessment of the authors, works, cultural traditions, events, and ideas that shaped the literary voices of their age. The series will enlighten and inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English Literature, but all serious readers.
This volume covers the period 1645-1714, and removes the traditional literary period labels and boundaries used in earlier studies to categorize the literary culture of late seventeenth-century England. It invites readers to explore the continuities and the literary innovations occurring during six turbulent decades, as English readers and writers lived through unprecedented events including a King tried and executed by Parliament and another exiled, the creation of the national entity 'Great Britain', and an expanding English awareness of the New World as well as encounters with the cultures of Asia and the subcontinent. The period saw the establishment of new concepts of authorship and it saw a dramatic increase of women working as professional, commercial writers. London theatres closed by law in 1642 reopened with new forms of entertainments from musical theatrical spectaculars to contemporary comedies of manners with celebrity actors and actresses. Emerging literary forms such as epistolary fictions and topical essays were circulated and promoted by new media including newspapers, periodical publications, and advertising and laws were changing governing censorship and taking the initial steps in the development of copyright. It was a period which produced some of the most profound and influential literary expressions of religious faith from John Milton's Paradise Lost and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, while simultaneously giving rise to a culture of libertinism and savage polemical satire, as well as fostering the new dispassionate discourses of experimental sciences and the conventions of popular romance.
Additional text
1645-1714: The Later Seventeenth Century is a splendid achievement in its breadth and detail. Undergraduate and graduate students would gain much from reading it. Scholars of any period will appreciate the excellent citations and bibliography of secondary sources. All readers interested in women and literature will be impressed by the range of voices and detail given to develop the field's understanding of women authors and audiences in the late seventeenth century.
