Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-Century England [Paperback]

Appelbaum surveys the utopian imagination in literature from 1603 to the 1660s.Appelbaum surveys literature from 1603 to the 1660s and shows how its ideal politics was engaged in the reality of political and social struggle. He also shows how self-defeating the exercise could be. In an era of political and religious conflict, writers asserted themselves as the authors of social and political ideals. But they also constructed systems in which the assertion of utopian mastery would have no place, and an ideal politics could no longer be imagined. This study will interest political and cultural historians as well as literary critics.Appelbaum surveys literature from 1603 to the 1660s and shows how its ideal politics was engaged in the reality of political and social struggle. He also shows how self-defeating the exercise could be. In an era of political and religious conflict, writers asserted themselves as the authors of social and political ideals. But they also constructed systems in which the assertion of utopian mastery would have no place, and an ideal politics could no longer be imagined. This study will interest political and cultural historians as well as literary critics.Appelbaum surveys literature from 1603 to the 1660s and shows how its ideal politics were engaged in the reality of political and social struggle. He also shows how self-defeating the exercise could be. In an era of political and religious conflict, writers asserted themselves as the authors of social and political ideals. But they also constructed systems in which the assertion of utopian mastery would have no place, and an ideal politics could no longer be imagined. This study will interest political and cultural historians as well as literary critics.Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The look of power; 2. Utopian experimentalism, 162038; 3. 'Reformation' and 'desolation': the new horizons of the 1640s; 4. Out of the 'true nothing', 164953; 5. From constitutionalism to aestheticization, l–