Royalists and Royalism in 17th-Century Literature: Exploring Abraham Cowley [Hardcover]

Author of plays, love-lyrics, essays and, among other works, The Civil War, the Davideis and the Pindarique Odes, Abraham Cowley made a deep impression on seventeenth-century letters, attested by his extravagant funeral and his burial next to Chaucer and Spenser in Westminster Abbey. Ejected from Cambridge for his politics, he found refuge in royalist Oxford before seeing long service as secretary to Queen Henrietta Maria, and as a Crown agent, on the continent. In the mid-1650s he returned to England, was imprisoned and made an accommodation with the Cromwellian regime. This volume of essays provides the modern critical attention Cowleys life and writings merit.

Introduction:

 

1 Abraham Cowley and Print: Paratexts and Contexts

Robert Wilcher

 

2 Laurels for the Conquered: Cowley, Epic, and History

Warren Chernaik

 

3 Generic Dialogue and the Sublime in Cowley: Epic, Didactic, Pindaric

4 Cowleys Epic Experiments

Maggie Kilgour

 

5 Abraham Cowley and the English literary canon

Gail Mobley