|
|
 |
 |
 |
- Lucy Hutchinson's Memories of Colonel
Hutchinson reconstructs a dramatic
scene in Nottingham in April 1642, as parliamentary
and royalist adherents, on the brink of
war, maneuvered for military support in
the countryside. Although England emerged
from its civil wars, it still had to face
the wars for independence among its overseas
colonies. E. M. Forester's A Passage
to India, covered in "The Twentieth
Century" (see pages 2133–2141
in volume 2C), addresses the question of
the legitimacy of England's right to
govern India as the "Quit India" movement
gained momentum toward independence nearly
three hundred years after the civil unrest
described by Hutchinson.
- With its focus on prostitution of every
aspect of human life to commercial interests,
Ben Jonson's satire on human greed, Valpone,
or The Fox, follows in the tradition
of other English writers, such as Sir Thomas
More, whose Utopia, covered in "The
Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century" (see
pages 506–523 in volume 1B), represents
the reality of everyday London with devastating
social and economic problems.
- Aemilia Lanyer's volume of poems, Salve
Dues Rex Judaeorum, incorporates a
defense of Eve and of all women in its
title poem, a baroque meditation on Christ's
Passion. Much later, Mary Wollstonecraft's
prose A Vindication of the Rights of
Women, covered in "The Romantic
Period" (see pages 166–192 in
volume 2A), would formalize a defense of
her sex as historically underprivileged.
- John Milton's Paradise Lost overlays
the political questions at stake in England
during the Revolution and Restoration with
difficult choices of his central characters — Satan,
Beelzebub, Abdiel, Adam, and Eve — under
the pressures of powerful desires and sometimes
devious temptations. A similar depth of themes
concerning civic and religious life is addressed
by Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury
Tales, covered in "The Middle Ages" (see
pages 213–316 in volume 1A), from the
perspective of pilgrims on their way to and
from Canterbury.
|
 |
|
 |
|
|