Secular chains : poetry and the politics of religion from Milton to Pope / Philip Connell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Connell, Philip, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion and literature--England--History.

Religion and literature.

English poetry--History and criticism.

English poetry.

History.

England.

Physical Description:

xv, 304 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Secular Chains offers an original and richly contextualized account of the relationship between poetry and religious controversy between 1649 and 1745. This was a period of political conflict and intellectual upheaval, in which traditional sources of spiritual authority were variously challenged and transformed. Philip Connell reveals the importance of English literary culture for our understanding of this process, and throws new light on the dynamics of change and continuity between the puritan revolution and the early Enlightenment. Based on extensive research in both printed and manuscript sources, the book combines detailed case studies of major literary figures with a sustained historical narrative linking the republican moment of the 1650s, the conflicts and crises of the Restoration, and the ecclesiastical politics of the early eighteenth century. Milton and Dryden provide the principal focus of the first three chapters, which explore the divisive issue of church settlement in the work of both writers, together with the increasingly prominent rhetoric of anti-clericalism and irreligion in the poetry and polemics of the later seventeenth century. Subsequent chapters extend the book's argument to the embattled condition of the Church of England in the decades after 1688, and the significant contribution of contemporary literary culture to a range of religious and philosophical argument, from heterodox free-thinking to Newtonian natural theology. Secular Chains demonstrates the close and continued relationship between poetry and religious politics in the age of Milton and Pope, and provides a new framework for understanding this complex and turbulent period in English literary history. Book jacket.

Contents:

I Commonwealth

1 'Hireling wolves': Poetry, Prophecy, and Republican Religion 23

Writing the Godly Republic 23

Milton, Marvell, and the Revolutionary Church 27

Harrington, Milton, and the Fracturing of the Good Old Cause 37

Mosaic Law and the Politics of Spirit in Paradise Lost 49

Orphic Song and the End of the Republic 55

II Restoration

2 The Failure of Uniformity 63

'Fanatique Bays' and Augustan Literary Culture 63

Royalist Panegyric and the Restoration Church Settlement 69

Comprehension, Kingship, and Paradise Regaind 82

Dispensing Power in Samson Agonistes 91

3 'Priests of all Religions are the same': Dryden and the Politics of Irreligion 98

Libertine Wit and Political Allegiance in the 1670s 98

The Exclusion Crisis and the Rhetoric of Imposture 104

Anti-Clericalism and Civil Idolatry in Absalom and Achitophel 110

Dryden's Religion and the Politico-Theology of Tory Reaction 120

III Enlightenment

4 Whig Poetics and the Church in Danger 133

The Rage of Religious Party 133

John Dennis and the Reformation of Poetry 144

Toland and Shaftesbury: Fable, Fiction, and Rhapsody 151

From Public Religion to Polite Letters 159

The Sacheverell Trial and the Making of the Characteristicks 167

5 The Literature of Physico-Theology 177

Newton's Fame and che Bounds of Orthodoxy 177

Cosmic Whiggism in The Seasons 187

Ecclesiastical Faction and the Politics of Enthusiasm 198

Thomson among the Patriots 207

6 Alexander Pope and the Modes of Faith 210

An Essay on Man and the Limits of Enlightenment 210

Pope's Early Career and the Later Stuart Church 217

A Priestless Muse: Satire, Religion, and Party in the 1730s 224

The D unci ad and the War on Free-Thought 233

Coda: Pope, Milton, Modernity 244.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-292) and index.

ISBN:

9780199269587

0199269580

OCLC:

920725035