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

by David Norbrook

This magisterial new history of seventeenth-century republican political culture sets key texts by Marvell and Milton in a richly detailed context, showing how writers reimagined English literary culture without kingship. The book draws on extensive archival research, bringing to light exciting and neglected manuscript and printed sources. Offering a bold new narrative of the whole period, and a timely reminder that England has a republican as well as a royalist heritage, it will be of compelling interest to historians as well as literary scholars.

Genres: History, Politics, Literary Criticism

524 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1999

About the author

David Norbrook is Emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford.

Norbrook was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, the University of Aberdeen and Balliol College, Oxford. He became fellow and tutor in English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1978, and offered some support to the radical pressure group Oxford English Limited in the late 1980s. He is the author of Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660, and The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse.

Reviews

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the introduction and parts of Chapter 3 and Chapter 10. Norbrook's main point is that English republicanism didn't begin in 1649—there was a tradition (found especially in the poetry studied in humanist education) that made republicanism more coherent than something that sputtered onto the scene in 1649 and vanished just as quickly. I'd like to read a lot more of this book.

Review at the London review of books.