Module Outline

This module will run in Term 2. In the first week back after Christmas, we will study what was possibly the final play performed on the public stage in London before the closure of the theatres, Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew. On the one hand a light comedy about people pretending to be beggars, this play also has a lot to say about the novel religious and political ideas that were being debated in the capital in the early 1640s.

After Week 1, the module proceeds roughly chronologically through the middle decades of the 17th century. Each week we will examine a topic or a group that inspired interesting literature in a variety of forms and genres like newspapers, controversial pamphlets, prophecy, satire, elegy, and panegyric. We will look at the debates about the freedom of the press, the perspective of an English settler in America on the wars in her homeland, the poetry about the execution of King Charles I and the Republican and Protectoral regimes that followed, and the astonishing prose and verse produced by various sectarian groups like the Diggers, the Ranters, and the Fifth Monarchists.

Syllabus 2024/25

A Talis Aspire reading list is under construction for the module and will include details of suggested critical reading and electronic texts provided by the Library.

Many of the primary books for study will be available digitally either through scans, library e-texts or online editions and will be linked to from this page.

Week 1: England on the Edge: Richard Brome, A Jovial Crew (1641). You can read this play either in the Brome Online editionLink opens in a new window or you can buy Tiffany Stern's editionLink opens in a new window. I will be using the Stern edition but either is acceptable.

Week 2: Print and Politics: John Milton, AreopagiticaLink opens in a new window (1644).

Week 3: The Old Country and the New: Anne Bradstreet, poems from The Tenth Muse (1650).

Week 4: Regicide Literature: selection of prose and poetry about the execution of Charles I likely to include works by Milton, Katherine Philips, Hester Pulter.

Week 5: Republican and Protectoral Poetics: selection of poems about the English republic and Cromwell's Protectorate likely to include works by Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Edmund Waller and Lucy Hutchinson.

Week 7: The Ranters: Abiezer Coppe, A Fiery Flying Roll (1649).

Week 8: The Diggers: Gerrard Winstanley, The True Levellers Standard (1650); selection of Digger ballads and poetry.

Week 9: The Fifth Monarchists: Anna Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone (1654).

Week 10: History and Memory: Dryden, Astraea Redux (1660); Lucy Hutchinson, poems from Elegies (1660s).

Key Information

Module Convenor:

John West

Teaching Methods:

9 x 1hr lectures; 9 x 1hr seminars.

Assessment:

Intermediates:

• 1 x formative 800-1000-word close reading exercise
• 1 x summative 3500-word essay to be written in response to a title from a list provided by the convenor.

Finalists:

• 1 x formative 800-1000-word close reading exercise
• 1 x summative 4500-word essay to be written in response to a research topic devised by students.

Resources

Link to the module reading list will appear here soon.

Suggested Preparatory Reading

Before the module begins in Term 2, you could read:

• our Week 1 text, Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew in either Tiffany Stern's Bloomsbury edition or the Brome Online edition;
• a short introduction to the historical period such as Blair Worden's The English Civil Wars (2010);
• some of the essays in The Oxford Handbook of the Literature of the English Revolution ed. Knoppers (2012), which will provide a lot of our critical readings for the lectures and seminars so would be worth sampling ahead of time.