Literature and the politics of family in seventeenth-century England / Su Fang Ng.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ng, Su Fang, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Politics and literature--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Politics and literature.

Families--Political aspects--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Families.

Families in literature.

Politics in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 236 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Literature & the Politics of Family in Seventeenth-Century England

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A common literary language linked royal absolutism to radical religion and republicanism in seventeenth-century England. Authors from both sides of the Civil Wars, including Milton, Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, and the Quakers, adapted the analogy between family and state to support radically different visions of political community. They used family metaphors to debate the limits of political authority, rethink gender roles, and imagine community in a period of social and political upheaval. While critical attention has focused on how the common analogy linking father and king, family and state, bolstered royal and paternal claims to authority and obedience, its meaning was in fact intensely contested. In this wide-ranging study, Su Fang Ng analyses the language and metaphors used to describe the relationship between politics and the family in both literary and political writings and offers a fresh perspective on how seventeenth-century literature reflected as well as influenced political thought.

Contents:

Introduction: strange bedfellows: patriarchalism and revolutionary thought; Part I. Revolutionary Debates: 1. Father-Kings and Amazon Queens; 2. Milton's band of brothers; 3. Hobbes and the absent family; 4. Cromwellian fatherhood and its discontents; Part II. Restoration Imaginings: Interchapter: Revolutionary legacies; 5. Execrable sons and second Adams: family politics in Paradise Lost; 6. Marriage and monarchy: Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World and the fictions of Queenly rule; 7. Marriage and discipline in early Quakerism; Epilogue: the family-state analogy's eighteenth-century afterlife.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-17162-8

1-280-75072-3

0-511-27039-9

0-511-26983-8

0-511-26853-X

0-511-32066-3

0-511-48383-X

0-511-26920-X

OCLC:

252534787