This volume offers a series of fresh explorations of the life, writing, and reputation of John Milton. The ten papers take us inside Milton's verse and prose, into the context of the events and the intellectual debates within which they were written, and into the later worlds within which his reputation evolved and fluctuated. Key topics discussed include: his political beliefs and career; the characteristics of his poetry - especially Paradise Lost; the literary influences upon his verse; his perception of women; and the ways he has been seen since his death. John Milton: Life, Writing, Reputation will be essential reading not only for scholars and students of literature, but for all those interested in Milton's work and reputation over the last four centuries.

John Milton: Life, Writing, Reputation (British Academy Original Paperbacks)

Literature & Fiction

Hammond, Paul

Worden, Blair

British & Irish

British Academy

In this book the pre-eminent history of Cromwellian England takes a fresh approach to the literary biography of the two great poets of the Puritan Revolution, John Milton and Andrew Marvell. Blair Worden reconstructs the political contexts within which Milton and Marvell wrote, and reassesses their writings against the background of volatile and dramatic changes of public mood and circumstance. Two figures are shown to have been prominent in their minds. First there is Oliver Cromwell, on whose character and decisions the future of the Puritan Revolution and of the nation rested, and whose ascent the two writers traced and assessed, in both cases with an acute ambivalence. The second is Marchamont Nedham, the pioneering journalist of the civil wars, a close friend of Milton and a man whose writings prove to be intimately linked to Marvell's. The high achievements of Milton and Marvell are shown to belong to world of pressing political debate which Nedham's ephemeral publications helped to shape. The book follows Marvell's transition from royalism to Cromwellianism. In Milton's case we explore the profound effect on his outlook brought by the execution of King Charles I in 1649; his difficult and disillusioning relationship with the successive regimes of the Interregnum; and his attempt to come to terms, in his immortal poetry of the Restoration, with the failure of Puritan rule.

Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham

Oxford University Press

In this book a pre-eminent historian of Cromwellian England takes a fresh approach to the literary biography of the two great poets of the Puritan Revolution, John Milton and Andrew Marvell. Blair Worden reconstructs the political contexts within which Milton and Marvell wrote, and reassesses their writings against the background of volatile and dramatic changes of public mood and circumstance. Two figures are shown to have been prominent in their minds. First there is Oliver Cromwell, on whose character and decisions the future of the Puritan Revolution and of the nation rested, and whose ascent the two writers traced and assessed, in both cases with an acute ambivalence. The second is Marchamont Nedham, the pioneering journalist of the civil wars, a close friend of Milton and a man whose writings prove to be intimately linked to Marvell's. The high achievements of Milton and Marvell are shown to belong to world of pressing political debate which Nedham's ephemeral publications helped to shape. The book follows Marvell's transition from royalism to Cromwellianism. In Milton's case we explore the profound effect on his outlook brought by the execution of King Charles I in 1649; his difficult and disillusioning relationship with the successive regimes of the Interregnum; and his attempt to come to terms, in his immortal poetry of the Restoration, with the failure of Puritan rule.

The Puritan Revolution escaped the control of its creators. The parliamentarians who went to war with Charles I in 1642 did not want or expect the fundamental changes that would follow seven years later: the trial and execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the creation of the only republic in English history. There were startling and unexpected developments, too, in religion and ideas: the spread of unorthodox doctrines; the attainment of a wide measure of liberty of conscience; and new thinking about the moral and intellectual bases of politics and society. God's Instruments centres on the principal instrument of radical change, Oliver Cromwell, and on the unfamiliar landscape of the decade he dominated, from the abolition of the monarchy in 1649 to the return of the Stuart dynasty in 1660. Its theme is the relationship between the beliefs or convictions of politicians and their decisions and actions. Blair Worden explores the biblical dimension of Puritan politics; the ways that a belief in the workings of divine providence affected political conduct; Cromwell's commitment to liberty of conscience and his search for godly reformation through educational reform; the constitutional premises of his rule and those of his opponents in the struggle for supremacy between parliamentary and military rule; and the relationship between conceptions of civil and religious liberty. The conflicts Worden reconstructs are placed in the perspective of long-term developments, of which many historians have lost sight. The final chapters turn to the guiding convictions of two writers at the heart of politics, John Milton and the royalist Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Material from previously published essays, much of it expanded and extensively revised, comes together with newly written chapters to bring fresh evidence and argument to a period of lively debate and interest.

God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell

History

Europe

Philip Sidney's Arcadia, written in about 1580, is a romance, a love story, a work of wit and enchantment set in an ancient and mythical land. But, as Blair Worden now reveals, it is also a grave and urgent commentary on Elizabethan politics. Under the protective guise of pastoral fiction, says Worden, Sidney produced a searching reflection on the misgovernment of Elizabeth I and on the failings of monarchy as a system of government.Elizabeth's failure to resist the Catholic advance at home and abroad and her apparent resolve to marry the Catholic heir to the French throne seemed likely to bring tyranny and persecution to England, which provoked a radical political dissent there. Worden reconstructs the dramatic events taking place while the Arcadia was composed and shows for the first time the important role they played in Sidney's work. He also closely analyzes the text of Arcadia, pointing out the distinctive vocabulary used by those sympathetic to the cause of Protestant unity in Europe, a cause that Sidney came to champion. Worden's new perspective transforms our understanding of Sidney's masterpiece and offers a fresh approach to the relationship between the history and literature of the Renaissance.

The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney`s `Arcadia` and Elizabethan Politics

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

Philip Sidney's Arcadia, written in about 1580, is a romance, a love story, a work of wit and enchantment set in an ancient and mythical land. But, as Blair Worden now reveals, it is also a grave and urgent commentary on Elizabethan politics. Under the protective guise of pastoral fiction, says Worden, Sidney produced a searching reflection on the misgovernment of Elizabeth I and on the failings of monarchy as a system of government. Elizabeth's failure to resist the Catholic advance at home and abroad and her apparent resolve to marry the Catholic heir to the French throne seemed likely to bring tyranny and persecution to England, which provoked a radical political dissent there. Worden reconstructs the dramatic events taking place while the Arcadia was composed and shows for the first time the important role they played in Sidney's work. He also closely analyzes the text of Arcadia, pointing out the distinctive vocabulary used by those sympathetic to the cause of Protestant unity in Europe, a cause that Sidney came to champion. Worden's new perspective transforms our understanding of Sidney's masterpiece and offers a fresh approach to the relationship between the history and literature of the Renaissance.

The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia' and Elizabethan Politics

The Rump Parliament was brought to power in 1648 by Pride's Purge and forcibly dissolved by Oliver Cromwell in 1653. This book is a detailed account of the intervening years. Dr Worden concentrates particularly on the Rump's policies in the contentious fields of legal, religious and electoral reform; its attempts to live down its revolutionary origins, to disown its more radical supporters, to conciliate those Puritans alienated by the purge and the King's death, and to re-create the Roundhead party of the 1640s. He examines the Rump's struggles for survival in the face of the Royalist threat between 1649 and 1651, and its fatal quarrel with the Cromwellian army thereafter. A concluding chapter deals with the Rump's forcible dissolution. This novel and challenging interpretation of the most dramatic phase of the English Revolution will interest all specialists in seventeenth-century political and constitutional history.

The Rump Parliament 1648-1653

Cambridge University Press

The Rump Parliament was brought to power in 1648 by Pride's Purge and forcibly dissolved by Oliver Cromwell in 1653. This book is a detailed account of the intervening years. Dr Worden concentrates particularly on the Rump's policies in the contentious fields of legal, religious and electoral reform; its attempts to live down its revolutionary origins, to disown its more radical supporters, to conciliate those Puritans alienated by the purge and the King's death, and to re-create the Roundhead party of the 1640s. He examines the Rump's struggles for survival in the face of the Royalist threat between 1649 and 1651, and its fatal quarrel with the Cromwellian army thereafter. A concluding chapter deals with the Rump's forcible dissolution. This novel and challenging interpretation of the most dramatic phase of the English Revolution will interest all specialists in seventeenth-century political and constitutional history.

The Rump Parliament 1648–53

The scars of England's Civil Wars have never healed. In "Roundhead Reputations" Blair Worden shows how, over 350 years, the memory of the conflict has been a battlefield of its own. In every age, writers and readers have seen their own reflections in the conflict and have used images of Puritan rule to sanction programmes for the present. The "Cavalier" allegiance has been inherited by successive generations of Tories and Anglicans, the "Roundhead" one by their opponents. Contenting against each other, the two traditions have also divided within themselves. "Roundhead Reputations" tells the Parliamentarian side of the story. It explains how radical Whigs in the late 17th and the 18th century, combative Liberals and Nonconformists in the 19th, and Marxists in the 20th struggled against more establishment-minded Roundhead sympathizers for interpretative supremacy. Blair Worden begins by discussing a spectacularly successful literary fabrication: the "Memoirs" of the regicide Edmund Ludlow, always a prominent source for the Civil wars, which were concocted for a Whig purpose and deceived posterity for three centuries. The middle section turns on representations of Algernon Sidney, a colourfully splenetic republican transformed by posthumous admirers into a plaster-saint. Finally he considers the fluctuating reputation of Oliver Cromwell, whom the Victorians, inspired by Thomas Carlyle's great edition of his letters and speeches, rescued from obloquy and made a cult figure -until socialists came to prefer the Levellers and Diggers, the Civil War heroes of modern times. For anyone interested in the Civil Wars, or in how history gets to be written, "Roundhead Reputations" should be enjoyable. Blair Worden is one of the leading scholars of the period, and this is a major work with large implications for an understanding both of England's sense of its own identity and of the relationship between past and present.

Roundhead reputations: The English civil wars and the passions of posterity

Allen Lane.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Worden, Blair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Worden, Blair

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Worden, Blair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

John Milton: Life, Writing, Reputation (British Academy Original Paperbacks)

Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham

Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham

God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell

God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell

The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney`s `Arcadia` and Elizabethan Politics

The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia' and Elizabethan Politics

The Rump Parliament 1648-1653

The Rump Parliament 1648–53

Roundhead reputations: The English civil wars and the passions of posterity