Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1650-1830: From Revolution to Revolution

by Timothy Morton (Editor), Nigel Smith (Editor)

Overview

This study examines the radical tradition in British literary culture from the English Revolution to the French Revolution. It charts continuities between the two periods and examines the recuperation of ideas and texts from the earlier period in the 1790s and beyond. The volume argues that the radical agendas of the mid-seventeenth century, intended to change society fundamentally, did not disappear throughout the long eighteenth-century, only to be resuscitated at its close. Rather, through close textual analysis, these essays indicate a more continuous transmission.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521120876
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2009
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Timothy Morton is Professor of English at Rice University, Houston.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction Timothy Morton and Nigel Smith; Part I. From Revolution: 1. 'May the last king be strangled in the bowels of the last priest': irreligion and the English Enlightenment, 1649–1789 Justin Champion; 2. Radicalism and replication Nigel Smith; 3. The plantation of wrath Timothy Morton; 4. They became what they beheld: theodicy and regeneration in Milton, Law and Blake Donald John; 5. Fasting women: the significance of gender and bodies in radical religion and politics, 1650–1813 Jane Shaw; Part II. To Revolution: 6. John Thelwall and the revolution of 1649 Michael Scrivener; 7. Women's private reading and political action, 1649–1838 Charlotte Sussman; 8. The strange career of Richard 'Citizen' Lee: poetry, popular radicalism, and enthusiasm in the 1790s Jon Mee; 9. William Cobbett, John Clare, and the agrarian politics of the English revolution James McKusick; 10. 'Not a reforming patriot but an ambitious tyrant': representations of Cromwell and the English republic in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Peter Kitson; 11. The republican prompt: connections in English radical culture Paul Hamilton.

Editorial Reviews

"This collection of essays is uniformly lucid, engaging, and densely documented ... it offers a rich tapestry representing strains of radical thought." Seventeenth-Century News

From the Publisher