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The thesis is an annotated edition of MS Rawlinson Poetical 147, a miscellany of seventeenth-century verse written mainly by poets associated with Cambridge. The text of the MS is transcribed and presented (with a few exceptions) in its original form, retaining the scribe's spelling and punctuation. The textual introduction outlines the procedure adopted. The notes accompanying the verse provide a summary of the contemporary background and identify, where known, people, places and events directly relevant to the poems; allusions and obscure words are also explained. Where applicable, the commentary serves to provide additional information concerning the poems' origins, including authorship, variants in other MSS, and publication details. The biographical index provides details of the lives of the poets, particularly those who have received little or no scholarly attention. The introduction explores four topics of direct relevance to the study of minor seventeenth-century verse: the problems associated with establishing the authorship of minor verse where autograph variants are no longer extant; the style and purpose of topical and political satire; style as a reflection of contemporary taste and trends; and the specific style of Clement Paman, whose work comprises the largest body of unpublished verse in the collection. In conclusion the aim of the work is to increase the reader's perception of how contemporary tastes and trends influenced and directed the writing (and reception) of verse designated 'minor' in the twentieth century. In addition this study will furnish the student of seventeenth-century literature with an increased knowledge of the background against which poets such as Donne, Jonson and Milton were writing.

Focussing on the two most interesting and productive periods of his life, the years spent at Oxford (1653-7, possibly 1661) and in London as Chaplain to the Lord Keeper of the Beal, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, (1669-1674), this study analyses Traherne's published and unpublished writings in relation to specific aspects of the contemporary world from which they issue and to which they relate. The vigorous expatiation achieved in Traherne's prose and the intellectual ambitions revealed in his notebooks reflect an insatiable capacity for knowledge and experience. He rejects what he is aware of as the world of "Invention" only in order to idealise the world of "Nature". It is through observation and understanding ("Enjoyment") of this, the physical world, that "Felicity" is sought. This doctrine includes "Practical Happiness" and seeks fulfilment in "Perfect Life" in all senses in the "true Estate of this World". The rejection of the world of invention can be seen as a conscious reaction against "the Customs and Maters of Men" in a society in which the theories of Hobbes, for example, had serious ideological purchase. As a younger contemporary of Pepys and Dryden, Traherne can be seen in relation to the society in which they too lived and wrote. As Chaplain to the holder of the highest state office in Charles II's government he has a natural place in Restoration London. He suggests that he was "admitted to the society and friendship of Great Men". His patron Bridgeman was associated, through his involvement with the Comprehension Bill of 1668, with the Duke of Buckingham and John Wilkins, among others. Burnet suggests that Andrew Marvell can be associated with the cause that Bridgeman sought to promote. In 1673 when, as Burnet observes, "Popery was everywhere preached against", Traherne published Roman Forgeries, an attempt to discredit the authority of the Roman Catholic church. Traherne expressed particular interest in "Natural Philosophy". This contributes to "Felicity" through "Enjoyment" of God's creation and the "Thanksgiving" that issues from this". The Webster-Ward Debate and the meetings of John Wilkins' experimental philosophy club in Oxford in the 1650's suggest Traherne's proximity to an increasingly significant pursuit. The Early Notebook shows that Traherne read Bacon's De Aus~aantis Scientiarum at this time. His later writing is haunted by images reflecting preoccupations of contemporary natural philosophy, and his "Divine Philosophy" celebrates the "Common Things" of the physical world. In London the Bridgeman household lived at Essex House in the Strand when the Royal Society was meeting in the neighbouring Arundel House. Richard Cumberland, in a book dedicated to Bridgeman in 1672, describes the Society's "Natural Philosovhy" in such a way as to suggest close correspondence between this and Traherne's "Divine Philosophy". Thomas Sprat's The History of the Royal Society (1667) and other works by contemporary natural philosophers, particularly Robert Boyle, emphasize this. As for Traherne, "Felicity" is achieved through "contemplation of God's Works", so, for Sprat and the Royal Society, "contemplation of God's visible Works" leads man to millenial fulfilment. In this study, analysis of the notebooks and their sources, and of aspects of the contemporary milieu from which they and the prose writings issue and to which they relate, is complemented by an exploration of each of the prose writings in an attempt to show the extent and seriousness of Traherne's purpose and his intellectual accomplishment as a major writer of the Restoration period.

Margaret Cavendish has been understood as a problematic literary figure. Scholars generally conceive Cavendish’s proto-feminism as being juxtaposed incongruously with staunch, hierarchical thinking. From this critical perspective, Cavendish’s radical gender critique creates unintentional contradictions within her absolutist politics and her conservative ideology ultimately negates the value of her proto-feminist theories. This study addresses Cavendish’s politics by exploring the political dimensions of her scientific and philosophical thought. Chapter 1 discuses how the patriarchal binaries that structure western scientific traditions and knowledges are subverted and redefined through Cavendish’s theory of nature. Exploring how her science rejects, yet appropriates spiritually, the disruption of religious understandings of gender are investigated in Chapter 2. As Cavendish’s depiction of religion challenges the spirit/matter and man/woman dichotomies, religious explanations of women’s subordinate status are dismantled. Though Cavendish has been understood as a conservative thinker, Cavendish is much less problematic when understood outside the parameters of staunch royalist ideology. Chapter 3 examines Cavendish’s theories of atoms and multiple worlds in relation to Hobbes and seventeenth-century political science, demonstrating that <i>The Blazing World</i> surprisingly challenges absolute politics. Cavendish’s critique of class and gender hierarchy are further examined in Chapter 4 where texts such as <i>The Contract </i>and <i>Assaulted and Pursued Chastity</i> advocate republican ideals such as popular sovereignty, the belief that a monarch’s power should be limited and that tyrannicide is sometimes justifiable. Through exploring some of the most radical politics of her time, these texts further consider women’s identity in relation to early modern legislation while demonstrating that by republican definitions of liberty, women were slaves. Though scholarship tends to seek ones opinion or voice within Cavendish’s texts, this study will also contribute to a highly neglected aspect of her work by examining the meaning of Cavendish’s multifarious voices and perspectives. Contrary to critical understandings of Cavendish, her contradictions were not incidental, but were part of a complex political and scientific project. Using plurality as a foundation for her theoretical thought, Cavendish’s conception of an infinite and diverse nature could radically invoke limitless interpretations, knowledges, realities, worlds and even selves.

The commendable revival of seventeenth century poetry at the start of the twentieth century neither generated sufficient scholarly interest in Abraham Cowley nor restored his ailing reputation. Motivation for this study therefore comes from the thoroughgoing need for a comprehensive study of the works of Cowley, whose reputation was considered by his contemporaries to be as secure as that of any English poet before him. Our aim is to interpret his poetry by means of a closer reading than previously afforded in light of the forces that shaped this thought and literary practice, discerning in the process how he left such a mark on his age and why this imprint remains indelible for us. The best way to effect a study on Cowley’s works, as Jean Loiseau and to some extent David Trotter showed in the twentieth century, is still to respect the divisions the poet himself made when grouping his poems in different compartments, thus encouraging a separate approach to each of them. But Loiseau wrote in French and his work is part biographical and part textual criticism. Trotter’s work is limited in scope, because its attempt to show how the historical process that brought “a change in the conditions of thought” is restricted to Cowley’s 1656 Poems, thereby ignoring the impact of the 1660 Restoration event of unsurpassable historical interest. Our study addresses this lacuna as it covers Cowley’s works through the Civil War, the Interregnum and the Restoration on a scale attempted only by Loiseau, revealing in the process the historical, political, and intellectual forces that condition his thought and thereby shape his poetry. In addition, we being to the different sections propitious literary approaches to analyse the works in a manner as yet unattempted. Finally, our chronological arrangement of material suitably reflects Cowley’s evolution of thought; more especially, by respecting the formal divisions we show how these help him resolve a life-long search for true poetic forms.

This thesis examines the configurations of dialogic conflict and the rhetorical modes of legitimisation and delegitimation in the texts of Milton and his contemporaries. The English Revolution saw the development of major controversies over episcopacy, licensing, regicide and republicanism in the Cromwellian Protetectorate, which were crucially represented in linguistic and semantic conflict encompassing distinctive rhetorical strategies of legitimation and delegitimation among contending factions or writers. This thesis traces how the writers’ dissimilar criteria and choices of specific references in using evaluative words and signs promoted the conflict over language, sign and signification, and how the linguistic conflict was related to the rhetorical and ideological processes by which they had tried to secure the legitimacy of their positions or to attack and expose their adversaries’ political and religious interests as illegitimate. It argues that Milton’s <i>Paradise Lost</i> is an epitome of the linguistic conflict and the rhetorical practice of legitimation and delegitimation at the level of theme and structure. The introduction provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of the central themes by drawing on the model of dialogic conflict by Mikhail Bakhtin and V.N. Voloshinov and its relevance to Renaissance rhetorical theory. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first, chapters 1 and 2, outlines antagonistic rhetorical modes and strategies, appropriation of authoritative texts and conflicts over words and meanings in the episcopacy and licensing controversies. It also traces the figurative and logical strategies in Milton’s rhetoric of delegitimation, comparing his anti-prelatical tracts and <i>Areopagitica</i> with the various forms of writings by pro- and anti-Episcopalians and the Levellers. The second part of the thesis is more focused upon the question of legitimation, considering textual competition and semantic conflict regarding the regicide and republicanism in the Cromwellian Protectorate. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the similarities and differences of legitimation strategies in regicide writings and republican pro-Protectoral prose and poetry, and the problems revealed in the republican legitimation of the Protectorate in particular. They continue to show the extent of dialogic conflict with respect to textual competition in the <i>Eikon</i> series, appropriation of figurative signs between Royalists and regicide apologists, and semantic conflict surrounding the concept of civil liberty between pro- and anti-Cromwellians. The final part, chapter 5, traces the intersection, both thematic and structural, between the principal concerns of Milton’s prose writings and those of his epic, focusing on his legitimation of epic genre and Arian heterodoxy, and the ways of speaking and interpretation between his main characters.

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A decade after the Restoration of Charles II, a disturbing group of tragedies burst onto the London stage. Ten years later they were gone - absorbed into the partisan frenzy which enveloped the theatre at the height of the Exclusion Crisis. Some modern critics have dubbed these plays the horror or the blood-and-torture villain tragedies. As a group, they possess a definable set of traits and motifs which distinguish them from the . earlier heroic plays on the one hand, and from later sentimental tragedy on the other. They are characterised, abo~'all, by a cynical and unrelenting depiction of evil, violent spectacle, an insatiable human drive for power, an explicit ~bsence of providential justice, and a 10$s of faith in moral absolutes. This thesis is the first comprehensive study of these macabre tragedies and it takes place through the lens of the tumultuous social, religious, philosophical and political events of the 1670s. By the middle years of the Restoration, hopes of new-found peace and security under a constitutional monarchy had turned to disillusionment: Charles II had lost the trust of his parliament, and public fears were rife over his alliance with Catholic France. This was also, importantly, a time when groundbreaking scientific discoveries, based on empirical data, bolstered a materialistic view of the world: a view whic}l called into question seemingly infrangible moral, religious and philosophical certainties. Adopting the term 'horror' to characterise these plays, my contention is that the genre of horror gains its popularity at times of social dislocation. It reflects deep schisms in society, and English society was profoundly unsettled and in a (delayed) state of shock from years of social upheaval and civil conflict. Through recurrent images of monstrosity, madness, venereal disease, incest aiId atheism, the dramatists of the horror plays trope deep-seatea and unresolved anxieties. Ultimately, they take th~ir audience on an exploration ofhuman iniquity, thrusting them into an examination of man's relationship to God, power, justice and evil. English Literature: Seventeenth Century - Stuart Politics - Tragedy History and Literature - Restoration Literature - Nathaniel Lee - Thomas Otway - Thomas Shadwell- Aphra Behn - Elkanah Settle - John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester - John Dryden - John Crowne - Charles II

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