Ehud's Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution

by James Holstun

Overview

In this meticulously researched, award-winning book, James Holstun details seventeenth-century England’s first capitalist revolution, and its first anti-capitalist revolutions, in a stirring project of Marxist history from below.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859844076
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	12/15/2002
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

James Holstun is the author of Rational Millennium: Puritan Utopias of Seventeenth-Century England and America and the editor of Pamphlet Wars: Prose in the English Revolution. He is Professor of English at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

Editorial Reviews

This remarkable book offers both a passionate engagement with the concrete processes of political struggle in the English Revolution and a powerful critique of current theoretical models in historiography and literary theory. Intellectually alive from start to finish, Holstun’s book captures the polemical energy of the early modern radicals he discusses.”—David Norbrook, Merton Chair of Literature, Oxford University

“Thoroughly thought-provoking.”—History

“Ehud’s Dagger brings the events of the Civil War period and the ordinary people who made them to life.”—Observer

“An examination of radical projects which demonstrate the practical contribution of working people to the 1650s.”—History Today

“Powerfully cogent, often brilliant in its stylistic sophistication, and magisterial in the range of its scholarship ... A work brimming with intelligence.”—Chris Fitter, Rutgers University

“An intense, thoroughly researched new Marxist study of the English Revolution.”—Choice

“As an antidote to the distortions of revisionism and as an expression of the continuing vitality of Marxist historiography, Ehud’s Dagger is particularly welcome. Three cheers for it!”—Albion

“Holstun writes with a meticulous attention to historical detail, evoking the sense of peering into the past through a window in time.”—Reviewer’s Bookwatch

From the Publisher

...thoroughly thought-provoking...

History: The Journal of the Historical Association

Powerfully cogent, often brilliant in its stylistic sophistication, and magisterial in the range of its scholarship ... a work brimming with intelligence.

Chris Fitter

Holstun writes with a meticulous attention to historical detail, evoking the sense of peering into the past through a window in time.

Reviewer's Bookwatch

This remarkable book offers both a passionate engagement with the concrete processes sof political struggle in the English Revolution and a powerful critique of current theoretical models in historiography and literary theory. Intellectually alive from start to finish, Holstun's book captures the polemical energy of the early modern period he discusses.

David Norbrook

... an examination of radical projects which demonstrate the practical contribution of working people to the 1650s.

History Today

Ehud's Dagger brings the events of the Civil War period and the ordinary people who made them to life.

Observer

... an intense, thoroughly researched new Marxist study of the English Revolution.

Choice

As an antidote to the distortions of revisionism and as an expression of the continuing vitality of Marxist historiography, Ehud's Dagger is particularly welcome. Three cheers for it!

Albion

Thoroughly thought-provoking.

History

A comprehensive critical analysis of historical and literary theories relating to the English Revolution.

Socialist Review

"In this book," writes Holstun, author of and an English teacher at SUNY Buffalo, "I talk about some 17th- century malcontents, what upset them, what they said about it, and what they did about it. I argue that the radical praxis of working people played a crucial role in the English Revolution, the first capitalist and anti-capitalist revolution, and that it can help us better understand that struggle and the struggles of our own time." Holstun critiques the work of anti-communist historians and literary critics who have ignored or denied the role of working people in the English Revolution. He then draws on Bloch's utopian Marxism, Sartre's analysis of practical ensembles, and the works of British Marxist historians to reconstruct five radical projects of the time. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

James Holstun has written an original and stimulating book on class struggle in the English Revolution. With logic and wit he demolishes the fashionable revisionist interpretations, and combines theory with empirical studies to illuminate popular literature and radical activity.

Brian Manning

Vivid and substantial accounts of the lives, works and allegiances of radicals, supported by a vigorous and comprehensive assessment of historical and critical methods. This challenge cannot be ignored.

Alan Sinfield