Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden | National Humanities Center

Work of the Fellows: Monographs

Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden

By Howard Erskine-Hill (NHC Fellow, 1988–89)

British Literature; Poetry; Politics; Seventeenth-Century; English Literature; Sixteenth–Century

Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1996

From the publisher’s description:

This is a major study of the relation between poetry and politics in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature, focusing in particular on the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Dryden. Taking issue with the traditional concept of the political poem and with recent New Historicist criticism, 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 Absolom and Architophel and other overtly political poems, but rather a more shifting and less systematic practice, often involving equivocal or multiple reference.

Subjects
Literature / History / British Literature / Poetry / Politics / Seventeenth-Century / English Literature / Sixteenth–Century /

Erskine-Hill, Howard (NHC Fellow, 1988–89). Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1996.