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Humanities LibreTexts

4.1: The Early Seventeenth Century

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  • Page ID 134586

Learning Objectives

  • Comprehend the political and religious turmoil that influenced the literature of the early 17th century.
  • Identify the contributions of Shakespeare and the King James Bible to early modern English, the language of the 17th century.
  • Define and compare metaphysical poetry and cavalier poetry.
  • Recognize the effects of the Puritan movement on drama and the theatre.

Political and Religious Controversy

In the sixteenth-century Tudor era, the religious turmoil that characterized the English Reformation under Henry VIII and continued, particularly during the reign of his daughter Queen Mary I, ameliorated during the reign of Elizabeth I.  James I  of England and VI of Scotland succeeded the childless Elizabeth, initiating the Stuart line of rulers. England’s religious struggles continued into the Stuart era, within forty years culminating in the English Civil War.

Only two years after James I came to the throne in 1603, Catholic activists attempted to assassinate him in what came to be known as the  Gunpowder Plot . Barrels of gunpowder were planted underneath the Houses of Parliament and were set to be detonated while James I was present to open Parliament’s session. The goal was to kill the King and most if not all the Lords, thus throwing England into chaos and allowing an opportunity to establish a Catholic realm. However, the  plan was discovered  and the gun powder found, guarded by  Guy Fawkes . The BBC presents a brief  computer-generated video  that portrays the history of the Gunpowder Plot.

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Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I.

When  Charles I  succeeded his father James I as king, he continued the objectionable policies of his father and, in fact, worsened the religious controversy by marrying a Roman Catholic French princess. Charles I himself favored the more formal services of the Anglican church angering those who wanted to “ purify “ the Church of England. Thus he managed to alienate all religious factions—Catholic, Anglican, and Puritan.

The  controversies that led to the English Civil War  were both political and religious. In the political realm, James I and his successor Charles I insisted on the  divine right of kings —the belief that kings were chosen by God and answered to no one but God, a theory that included the monarch’s right to rule without parliamentary intervention. On the religious front, in addition to the continuing strife between Protestant and Roman Catholic were added the additional demands of  Protestant reformers  who demanded reforms within the Church of England and the right to worship as dissenting organized religions.  Against the monarch’s belief in the divine right of kings stood the growing conviction that Parliament should have greater influence on governmental decisions.

The Puritan Revolution (The English Civil War)

Member of Parliament  Oliver Cromwell  distinguished himself as a radical Puritan, organized and led a cavalry regiment of Parliament forces, and quickly rose to the leadership of the  Puritan Revolution .  Cromwell , a leading force in convincing Parliament to raise an army against the king, led the movement to execute Charles I.

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Statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the British Houses of Parliament.

In 1649, Charles I was  executed . Parliament’s House of Commons abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords, declaring England a Commonwealth. A few years later, Oliver Cromwell was named Lord Protector. The years between 1649 and 1660 were known as the  Interregnum —literally meaning the time between kings. Upon Cromwell’s death, although Cromwell’s son assumed his father’s government position, the Commonwealth began to crumble under the son’s inept leadership. In 1660, Charles II, son of the executed king, assumed the throne and Britain’s monarchy was restored.

The early seventeenth century is considered the era of early modern English. Although contemporary audiences may consider the language of Shakespeare and the  King James Bible  quite different from 21st-century English, comparing the English of the seventeenth century with Chaucer’s Middle English reveals a vocabulary and a grammar familiar to contemporary readers. Both the works of Shakespeare and the publication of the King James Bible in 1611 helped standardize the language while at the same time enriching it with increased vocabulary and phrases now familiar to most English speakers. In her  Words in English  website, Suzanne Kemmer provides lists of words and phrases, now common in English, that originated with  Shakespeare  and the  King James Bible . King James I authorized a committee of about 50 clergy/scholars to create a new English translation of the Bible, accessible to all lay people. The resulting translation was dedicated to King James I and is still commonly known by his name. The British Library presents a brief history of the  King James Bible  and digital images of a first edition. The  Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image , University of Pennsylvania Libraries provides an  interactive digital version  of a 1611 King James Bible.

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Title page of 1611 King James Bible.

The Metaphysical Poets

Eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson first used the term  metaphysical poets  to refer to John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and other early 17th-century poets whose poetry was characterized by elaborate, unusual metaphors and philosophical speculations. The term  metaphysical  refers to ideas beyond the physical, to ideas that pertain to a world beyond the natural world.  Metaphysical  poetry often is contrasted with cavalier poetry.

The Cavalier Poets

The name  cavalier , which literally means knight, described the  followers of Charles I , the gentlemen soldiers who supported the monarchy during the English Civil War. The  Cavalier poets  wrote light-hearted poetry that seldom had the depth of philosophical thought evident in metaphysical poetry. Often, as in the case of Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” the poetry was seduction poetry, concerned with the physical pleasures of life.

Drama and the Theatre

Although Shakespeare continued writing plays through the first decade of the 17th century and renamed his company of actors The King’s Men in honor of King James I, the early part of the 17th century is not noted for its  drama . Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and other playwrights wrote for the stage, although like Shakespeare they are often considered to belong to the Elizabethan Age.  Under Puritan influence , drama and the theaters declined until in 1642 Parliament  shut down the theaters  completely.

Key Takeaways

  • The political and religious turmoil of the 17th century influenced the literature of the era in the same way that such struggles affected Renaissance literature.
  • The work of Shakespeare and the writing of the King James Bible influenced early modern English.
  • Metaphysical poetry and cavalier poetry are significant movements in early 17th-century poetry.
  • The Puritan government closed theatres in 1642, resulting in a dearth of English drama.
  • “ The Case of England .” Richard Hooker.  The European Enlightenment . Washington State University.
  • “ Citizenship 1625–1789 .”  The National Archives . Exhibitions. Citizenship.
  • Glorious Revolution: England in the 17th Century . Harold Damerow. Union County College, Cranford, New Jersey.
  • “ The Gunpowder Plot .” Bruce Robinson.  BBC History . BBC.
  • “ The Gunpowder Plot .” Folger Shakespeare Library.
  • “ The Gunpowder Plot .” John H. Lienhard.  Engines of Our Ingenuity . University of Houston. text and audio.
  • “ Gunpowder Plot CGI .”  BBC History . BBC. computer generated video depicting the Gunpowder Plot.
  • “ History of Great Britain (from 1707) .” Bamber Gascoigne.  HistoryWorld .
  • “ Parliament in 1605 .” The Gunpowder Plot: Parliament and Treason 1605.  UK Parliament Website .
  • “ People .” The Gunpowder Plot: Parliament and Treason 1605.  UK Parliament Website .
  • “ Rise of Parliament .”  The National Archives . Exhibitions. Citizenship.
  • “ Divine Right of Kings .”  Spartacus . Schoolnet.co.uk.
  • “ James I of England (1566–1625) .” John Butler. Anniina Jokinen.  Luminarium .
  • “ James I (1603–25) .”  Britannia .

Puritan Revolution

  • “ 1642–49: Civil Wars .”  Historical Outline of Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature . Alok Yadav. George Mason University.
  • “ English Civil War .”  Literary Metamorphoses . Colorado College.
  • “ Overview: Civil War and Revolution: 1603–1714 .” Mark Stoyle. British History In-depth. BBC.
  • “ The Puritan Revolution .” Folger Shakespeare Library.
  • “ The Puritan Revolution .” Voices for Tolerance in an Age of Persecution. Folger Shakespeare Library.
  • “ Puritanism in England .” David Cody and George Landow.  The Victorian Web . Brown University.
  • “ 1649 Confessions of Charles I’s Executioner .”  English Language & Literature Timeline . British Library.
  • “ Charles I .”  The Official Website of the British Monarchy .
  • “ King Charles I .” Anniina Jokinen.  Luminarium Encyclopedia Project . rpt. from  Encyclopedia Britannica , 11th Ed. Vol V. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. 934.
  • “ Trial of Charles I .”  The National Archives .
  • “ The Trial and Execution of Charles I .” History of Parliament Podcasts.  http://www.parliament.uk .
  • “ The Execution of Charles I 1649 .”  EyeWitness to History.com .

Oliver Cromwell

  • “ Oliver Cromwell .” David Cody.  The Victorian Web .
  • “ Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) “ Historic Figures. BBC.
  • “ Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) .” Great Britons: Treasures from the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Interregnum

  • “ Interregnum (1649–1660) .”  The Official Website of the British Monarchy .
  • “ Interregnum .”  Historical Outline of Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature . Alok Yadav. George Mason University.
  • “ Interregnum (1649–60) .”  Historical Outline of Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature . Alok Yadav. George Mason University.

King James Bible

  • “ The Holy Bible .” Furness Collection.  Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image . University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
  • “ King James Bible .”  Online Gallery: Sacred Texts . British Library.
  • “ King James Bible .”  Taking Liberties: The Struggle for Britain’s Freedoms and Rights . British Library.
  • King James Bible . Suzanne Kemmer. “A Brief History of English, with Chronology”  Words in English .
  • Shakespeare’s Legacy . Suzanne Kemmer. “A Brief History of English, with Chronology.”  Words in English .

Metaphysical Poetry

  • “ Introduction .”  Bartleby.com . rpt. from Herbert J.C. Grierson, ed. (1886–1960).  Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the 17th C . 1921.
  • “ Metaphysical Poets .” Anniina Jokinen.  Luminarium . rpt. from  The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English . Ian Ousby, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1998. 623.

Cavalier Poetry

  • “ Cavalier Poetry .” Jack Lynch.  Glossary of Literary and Rhetorical Terms . Rutgers University.
  • “ The Cavalier Poets .” Anniina Jokinen.  Luminarium . rpt. from Robin Skelton.  The Cavalier Poets . London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1960. 9–10.

17th Century Drama

  • “ The Closing of the Theatres .”  Internet Shakespeare Editions . University of Victoria and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
  • “ The Closure of the Theaters by the Puritans .”  Theater Database . rpt. from Henry Barton Baker.  English Actors: From Shakespeare to Macready . New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1879. 27–35.

English Literatures

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Background Information

16th & 17th century primary sources, research guides, catalogs & indexes, browsing areas.

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  • Search Strategies

Consult these sources to learn more about literary authors, periods, genres, texts, and their historical contexts.

  • Augustan Literature: A Guide to Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature, 1660-1789 LAU Stacks PR441 .A84 1994
  • The Cambridge History of American Literature LAU Stacks PS92 .C34 1994 vol. 1-8
  • The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature LAU Stacks PR411 .E53 2012 vol. 1-3
  • Renaissance: The Elizabethan World Provides background information about life and culture in Elizabethan England. Includes A Compendium of Common Knowledge 1558-1603, Elizabethan Heraldry, Elizabethan Sumptuary Statutes, and The Trial of the Earls of Essex and Southampton, 1601.
  • 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window Gathered by Reverend Charles Burney, 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers is a collection of the newspapers and news pamphlets primarily published in London, with some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and examples from the American colonies. The original Burney volumes are now in a poor physical state and only available through restricted use.
  • Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window Searches across Gale primary source collections, including Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO); Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO); Sabin Americana, 1500-1926; The Making of Modern Law; and The Making of the Modern World . more... less... You can select the Primary Source collections from the Gale Product menu by selecting, "Primary Sources".
  • BBC Shakespeare Plays This link opens in a new window Premier collection of BBC productions of Shakespeare's plays, available via streaming server and on mobile devices. The plays are chaptered by acts, which allows you to zoom directly to a desired segment.
  • British Literary Manuscripts This link opens in a new window A digitized collection of manuscripts of British authors dating from roughly 1120 to 1900. Contains poems, plays, novels, diaries, journals, correspondence, and other papers from major library collections, reproduced in facsimile and searchable via detailed descriptive information.
  • British Periodicals This link opens in a new window Facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts, archaeology, architecture, and the social sciences.
  • Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online This link opens in a new window Presents a fully searchable version of Jonson's complete works, including all the original introductions, collations, and commentary. Includes a comprehensive body of essays and archives necessary for full study of Jonson’s life, performance history, and afterlife. Comprises around 90 old-spelling texts, 550 contextual documents, 80 essays, several hundred high-quality images, and 100 music scores; lists details of more than 1300 stage performances; and has a cross-linked bibliography of over 7000 items
  • Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876 This link opens in a new window More than 140 newspapers from 22 islands, including Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Puerto Rico, St. Bartholomew, St. Christopher, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, and the Virgin Islands.
  • DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks Contains every playbook produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the beginning of printing through 1660 along with information about the original playbooks, their title-pages, paratextual matter, advertising features, bibliographic details, and theatrical backgrounds.
  • The Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy on Screen This link opens in a new window Part of Bloomsbury's Drama Online collection, Harriet Walter leads an all-female cast in these three productions of Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest, all set in a women's prison. Inspiration for these productions sprung from the real-life women who have experienced the criminal justice system.
  • Drama Online: National Theatre Collection This link opens in a new window Drawing on 10 years of National Theatre Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NT’s Archive, the National Theatre Collection makes this rich body of work available to students in schools, universities and libraries around the world. The collection contains 30 full length recordings of National Theatre performances.
  • Drama Online: Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Live Collection This link opens in a new window Bloomsbury's Drama Online: Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Live Collection provides access to filmed Live performances of Shakespearean plays staged and acted by the Royal Shakespeare Company. This growing collection currently consists of 24 performances with more scheduled to be included throughout the year. more... less... In 2013 the company began live screenings of its Shakespeare productions, captured here in The RSC Live Collection. In 2016-17 the company collaborated with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios to stage The Tempest, bringing performance capture to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for the very first time.
  • Early American Imprints (Series I): Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window Based on the Evans American Bibliography, this collection contains the full text of all known existing books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in the United States or in the British American colonies from 1639 through 1800. It provides a foundation for research in early American history, literature, philosophy, religion, politics and nearly every aspect of life in early America. more... less... When completed, the digital collection will include every item previously published in microform by Readex, plus more than 1,200 additional works located, catalogued and digitized since the microform effort was completed -- more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images.
  • Early American Newspapers This link opens in a new window Offers more than 700 historical American newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1876. Focusing largely on the 18th century, Series 1 is based on Clarence S. Brigham's "History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820" and other authoritative bibliographies.
  • Early Americas Digital Archive A collection of digital texts written in or about the Americas between 1492 and 1820. May be searched or browsed by author or title.
  • Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window Features page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700. From the first book printed in English through to the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War, EEBO's content draws on authoritative and respected short-title catalogues of the period and features a substantial number of text transcriptions.
  • Early English Books Online (EEBO) Text Creation Partnership (TCP) This link opens in a new window A partner database to Early English Books Online. Provides a subset of fully searchable texts from the titles available in EEBO. more... less... Any EEBO researcher can view the 250,000 page-image editions of EEBO titles, but only TCP partners can view these plus the corresponding full ASCII text.
  • Emory Women Writers Resource Project A collection of edited and unedited texts by women writing from the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century.
  • The English Renaissance in Context (ERIC) Provides tutorials on the making of Shakespeare's plays and a database of scanned texts from the Furness Shakespeare Library.
  • Europeana This link opens in a new window Online access to paintings, music, films and books from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
  • Gale Primary Source Newspapers This link opens in a new window Provides cross-searching capabilities for several Gale digital collections, including 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century British Library Newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals, Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003, Times Digital Archive 1785-1985, Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2006, Picture Post Historical Archive 1938-1957.
  • Global Shakespeares Online access to performances of Shakespeare from many parts of the world.
  • Leeds Verse Database (BCMSV) Provides detailed information about individual items of English poetry contained in the 17th and 18th-century manuscripts from the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds.
  • Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature Provides an online anthology of literature from Middle English, the Renaissance, & the 17th century. Includes essays, articles, and selected texts.
  • Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window Collection of digital facsimile images of 61,000 works of literature on economics and business published from 1450 through 1945. Covers commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport. Includes: Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450-1850 Part II, 1851-1914
  • Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online This link opens in a new window Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO) is an essential resource for the study of Britain and its place in the world during the medieval and early modern period (c. 1100-1800).
  • Renascence Editions An online repository for digital editions of works printed in English between 1477 and 1799.
  • Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.
  • The Shakespeare Quartos Archive A collection of of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare's plays.

Use the below guides to go deeper into your research.

Cover art for Literary Research and the British Renaissance and Early Modern Period

  • American Literary Manuscripts A checklist of literary manuscript holdings in academic, historical, and public libraries, museums, and authors' homes in the United States.
  • ArchiveGrid A searchable collection of finding aids to primary source material held in archives, special collections, and manuscript collections around the world. Includes historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.
  • Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts, 1450-1700 A freely-accessible record of surviving manuscript sources for over 200 major British authors.
  • English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) Indexes more than 460,000 that were published between 1473 and 1800 primarily in Britain and North America. Works are predominantly in English and are from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries.
  • A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640 (Pollard & Redgrave) LAU Ref Stacks Z2002 .P77 1976 vol. 1-3
  • Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700 (Wing) LAU Ref Stacks Z2002 .W5 vol. 1-3, Index

The following sections are good for browsing for books on 16th & 17th century literature, which are shelved on the 5th floor of Lauinger Library.

English Language

PE814-896 – Early Modern English.

English Literature

PR421-429 – Elizabethan Era (1550-1640)

PR431-439 – 17th century

PR2199-3195 – English Renaissance (1500-1640)

PR3291-3785 – 17th & 18th centuries (1640/1770)

American Literature

PS185-195 – 17th and 18th centuries

PS700-893 – Individual authors - Colonial Period (17th and 18th centuries)

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  • Last Updated: Feb 9, 2024 10:19 AM
  • URL: https://guides.library.georgetown.edu/english

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Queens College Libraries

Seventeenth Century British Literature Research Guide

Subject searching, subject headings, reference books.

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Books are often a good place to start, because they generally provide better introductions to unfamiliar subjects than articles do. Further, you do not need to read the entire book--just the relevant chapter is often sufficient. 

In any case, the search strategies listed here may also help you with other kinds of resources. 

Your search for books might start in one of two places...

  • CUNY Catalog The CUNY Catalog is where we list all the books in our collection, along with many other resources we provide.
  • OneSearch OneSearch is a tool that combines the catalog with the databases.

In both of these resources, if you are looking for books about a particular author, you can use a  Subject Search . This is very useful in literary research because it allows you to find all the books on an author, and  only  the books on that author. 

In some cases, there may be so many books on an author that browsing the subject headings doesn't work well.  Consider Shakespeare:

list of the subheadings under "Shakespeare -- Adaptations"

Those are  just  the books about adaptations of Shakespeare! Milton presents a similar problem.

In such cases, you may want to use the  Advanced Search  to combine your subject search with a keyword search.  For instance, John Milton, Radical Politics and Biblical Republicanism is one of many books you would find by searching for “Milton” as a subject and combining it with “politics” as a keyword.

For more information on subject searching, please see the general guide to literature research. 

Authors are usually subjects in the catalog. When you search for authors, remember, you are using a subject search to find books about the author, NOT an author search, which would find books by the author. So, you can do searches like this:

  • Behn, Aphra, 1640-1689
  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682
  • Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678
  • Milton, John, 1608-1674​

Remember to put the last name first!

You will also see headings that refer to particular types of works pertaining to these authors, such as Characters, Criticism and Interpretation, Political and Social Views and so on.

There are other subject headings you may also find of interest, such as:

  • Christianity and literature -- England -- History -- 17th century
  • England -- Intellectual life -- 17th century
  • English drama -- 17th century -- History and criticism
  • English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism
  • Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography
  • Epic poetry, English -- History and criticism
  • Milton, John, 1608-1674 -- Influence
  • Pastoral poetry, English -- History and criticism
  • Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century
  • Theater -- England -- History -- 17th century
  • Women and literature -- England -- History -- 17th century

Remember to browse, as some of these are further broken down into more specific subjects. For instance, in addition to English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism, you may also see headings like English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc. 

Although all of these are real subject headings and you should feel free to use them, there are also many more. This is just a list of examples to help you get started and give you some idea what kinds of searches are possible.

You can use these call numbers to find books on seventeenth century literature, which are grouped near each other in the library. While it may appear old fashioned, browsing is in fact a highly efficient method of taking advantage of the way the library is organized in order to find books on a topic.

  • DA 370-461              History of Great Britain -- The Seventeenth Century
  • PN 721-749              Literature of the Renaissance (1500-1700)
  • PR 431-439              Seventeenth century British literature
  • PR 521-549              Renaissance and seventeenth century British poetry
  • PR 641-701              Renaissance and seventeenth century British drama
  • PR 3291-3785         Seventeenth century authors by surname

Since books on the same author or topic are grouped together on the shelf, it is often a good idea to visit a particular call range and see what we have on the shelves.Note that in the Library of Congress system, the earlier sequences usually refer to more general topics. 

research about 17th century literature

  • Jacobean and Caroline Stage by Gerald Eades Bentley Call Number: Level 5 PN2592 .B4 Information about the companies performing at this time. Includes history, actor lists, repertories and more.

research about 17th century literature

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  • Last Updated: Oct 4, 2023 3:13 PM
  • URL: https://qc-cuny.libguides.com/17cbritlit
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The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I: The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century

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5 Literature and Empire

  • Published: May 1998
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At the height of British Imperial power, the relationship between literature and Empire seemed self-evident: the expansion of ‘England’ caused an explosion of English literature. English literature and the British Empire were the twin children of the English Renaissance, that extraordinary widening of intellectual and geographical horizons during Elizabeth I's reign. This association of the age of reconnaissance with the era of renaissance is one of the enduring myths of modernity. Since the sixteenth century, the coincidence of the discovery of the routes to the Indies and the rediscovery of ancient texts has been held to mark the break between the ‘middle’ ages and the modern world. However, only in retrospect did the Elizabethan era come to be seen as a golden age, and only with the rise of linguistic nationalism in the nineteenth century were literature and Empire traced back to common roots in the late sixteenth century.

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research about 17th century literature

Site copyright ©1996-2010 Anniina Jokinen. All rights reserved. Created by Anniina Jokinen on November 3, 1996. Last updated on June 2, 2010. Submissions welcomed .

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Lewis C Seifert

Website information, director of the centre of excellence, professor of french and francophone studies.

Lewis Seifert holds a DEA from the Université de Paris III (1986) and a PhD from the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Michigan (1989). He has taught in the Department of French Studies at Brown since 1989. His ongoing research interests include seventeenth-century French literature and culture, folk- and fairy-tale studies, gender and sexuality studies, and environmental humanities.

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Research Areas

Publications visualize it , research overview.

Professor Seifert's research interests include 17th-century literature, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, and comparative approaches to folklore and the literary fairy tale. He is the author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (1996) and of Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (University of Michigan Press, 2009). He has co-edited volumes on French and Francophone masculinities with Todd Reeser; on fairy tales by 17th-century French women with Domna Stanton; on gender, sexuality, and friendship in early modern France with Rebecca Wilkin; and on 19th-century decadent fairy tales with Gretchen Schultz. He has also edited a special issue of  Marvels and Tales  on "Queer(ing) Fairy Tales."

Research Statement

Lewis Seifert's teaching and research encompass two broad areas: seventeenth-century French culture and folk- and fairy-tale narratives from across the Francophone world. He has focused in particular on questions of gender and sexuality, both theoretically and historically, and he has also explored problems of early modern authorship, political discourse, and friendship. In his first book, Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (Cambridge UP, 1996), he explored reasons why the fairy tale genre appeared in late seventeenth-century France and in particular its ambivalent representations of femininity, masculinity, and (hetero)sexuality. He argues that the "marvelous" universe of the conte de fées is a throwback to earlier fictional forms that often allows for a critique of the past and an articulation of yet-to-be conceived identities and relations. His second book, Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (University of Michigan Press, 2009), investigates the struggle between the expectation of dominance and the risk of subservience and marginality that emerges in such seventeenth-century masculine types as the honnête homme, the male salon denizen, the sodomite, and the transvestite. His current research is centered around two projects. A book project, provisionally titled Unsettling Mischief: Tricksters and the Reordering of Nature in the Francophone Atlantic World , explores how tricksters from 17 th -century France to West Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries prompt a reframing of the basic principles by which cultures organize themselves and conceive of their relation to the natural world. His other project, with Pierre-Emmanuel Moog, is a new critical edition and translation of the fairy tales of Charles Perrault.

Seifert has co-edited several volumes: (with Gretchen Schultz) Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition . Princeton: Princeton UP, 2016; (with Rebecca Wilkin) Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France . Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015; (with Domna Stanton) Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers . The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, The Toronto Series, 9. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010; (with Todd Reeser) Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008; (with Todd Reeser) French Masculinities . Special Issue of L'Esprit Créateur Vol. XLIII, No. 3 (Fall 2003). He has also edited a special issue of Marvels and Tales on "Queer(ing) Fairy Tales" (2015). 

Funded Research

Distinguished Service Award, Office of the President, Brown University, 2016

Research Grant, Office of the Vice-President for Research, Brown University, 2004; 2005; 2006; 2008; 2013; 2014; 2015; 2017; 2019; 2021 Salomon Grant, Brown University, 2003 Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 1990; 1992; 1994; 1996; 1998; 2001 Faculty Research Grant from the Salomon Faculty Research Grant Fund, Brown University, 2000 University Small Grant, Office of Research, Brown University, 1993 Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA), research assistant, Dean of the College, Brown University, 1991; 1992 Travel Grant, Institute for International Studies, Brown University (May-June 1992)

Scholarly Work

“Humans and Non-Humans: Ambiguities of Agency and Personhood in Fairy Tales, 1650- 1800,” The Cultural History of Fairy Tales: The Long Eighteenth Century , ed. Anne Duggan. London: Bloomsbury, 2021. 91-112.

“Contes et mécomptes: Tahar Ben Jelloun réécrit Charles Perrault” in L’épanchement du conte dans la littérature , ed. Christiane Connan-Pintado. Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2018. 143-53.

Entries on Michel Ocelot, Ti-Jean, and Veillées for Encyclopedia of Folk- and Fairy Tales : Traditions and Texts from Around the World , eds. Anne E. Duggan and Donald Haase. 2nd edition. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2016. 4 vols. 

“The Marquise de Sablé and her Friends: Men and Women between the Convent and the World” in  Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France,  eds. Lewis Seifert and Rebecca Wilkin. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2015. 219-45.

“Introduction: Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France” (co-authored with Rebecca Wilkin) in Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France, eds. Lewis Seifert and Rebecca Wilkin. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2016. 1-29.

“Queer Time in Charles Perrault’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’,” Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies , 29.1 (2015): 21-41.

“Queer(ing) Fairy Tales: Introduction,” Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies , 29.1 (2015): 15-20.

“Ute Heidemann and Jean-Michel Adam, Textualité et intertextualité des contes: Perrault, Apulée, La Fontaine, Lhéritier... (Paris: Garnier, 2010)” Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 28.1 (2014): 196-99.

“Théophile et l’herméneutique de l’amitié masculine,” XVIIe siècle  258 (2013): 107-16.

“Animal-Human Hybridity in d’Aulnoy’s Babiole and Prince Wild Boar ,” Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies  25.2 (2011): 244-60.

Co-Editor and Co-Translator with Domna Stanton, Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, The Toronto Series, 9. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010.

Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Co-author with Todd Reeser, "Introduction: Marking French and Francophone Masculinities," Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008. 13-50.

Entries on Patrick Chamoiseau; Birago Diop; Feminist Tales; French Canadian Tales; Gay and Lesbian Fairy Tales; Pierre Gripari; Négritude, Créolité and Folklore; Sex and Sexuality for The Encyclopedia of Folk- and Fairy Tales , ed. Donald Haase (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008).

Co-Editor with Todd Reeser, Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008.

"Entre l'écrit et l'oral: la réception des contes de fées 'classiques'" in Le conte en ses paroles: la figuration de l'oralité dans le conte merveilleux du Classicisme aux Lumières , ed. Anne Defrance and Jean-François Perrin (Paris: Desjonquères, 2007), 21-33.

"Comments on Fairy Tales and Oral Tradition," Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies Vol. 20, No. 2 (2006): 276-279.

Afterword for The Misanthrope and Other Plays by Molière, trans. Donald Frame. Signet Classics (New York: New American Library/Penguin, 2005) 511-519.

"Une révolution nommée Shrek,"La Grande Oreille, special issue "On tourne! Contes en mouvement," ed. Catherine Velay-Vallantin, no. 26 (December 2005): 54-59.

"Féeries: Etudes sur le conte merveilleux, XVIIe-XIXe siècle, no. 1," Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies Vol. 19, No. 1 (2005): 133-137.

"Boisrobert's cabinet and the Seventeenth-Century Closet," Intersections: Actes de Dartmouth , ed. Faith Beasley and Kathleen Wine. Biblio 17, 161 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005) 261-270.

"The Male Writer and the 'Marked' Self in Seventeenth-Century France: The Case of the Abbé de Boisrobert," Early Modern France , no. 9 (2004): 125-42.

"Madame Le Prince de Beaumont and the Infantilization of the Fairy Tale," French Literature Series , Vol. XXXI (2004): 25-39.

Co-author with Todd Reeser, "Oscillating Masculinity in Pierre Bourdieu's La Domination masculine," L'Esprit Créateur Vol. XLIII, No. 3 (Fall 2003): 87-97.

Co-Editor with Todd Reeser, French Masculinities . Special Issue of L'Esprit Créateur Vol. XLIII, No. 3 (Fall 2003).

"Tales," Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment , ed. Alan Charles Kors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)

"Pig or Prince? Murat, d'Aulnoy, and the Limits of 'Civilized' Masculinity." High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France , ed. Kathleen Perry Long, Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies , 59. (Kirksville, MO: Truman State UP, 2002). 183-209.

"Orality, History and 'Creoleness' in Patrick Chamoiseau's Creole Folktales ." Marvels and Tales: A Journal of Fairy Tale Studies 16.2 (2002): 214-30.

"Geneviève Calame-Griaule, ed. and trans., Contes tendres, contes cruels du Sahel nigérien (Paris: Gallimard, 2002)," Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies , Vol. 18, No. 1 (2004): 116-118.

"L'Homme de ruelle chez les dames: Civility and Masculinity in the Salon." Biblio 17: Actes de New Orleans . Paris, Seattle, Tübingen: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 2001.

"Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Twice upon a Tale: Women and the History of the Fairy Tale (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001)," Modern Language Quarterly Vol. 65, No. 2 (June 2004): 301-304.

"Masculinity and Satires of 'Sodomites' in France, 1660-1715." Journal of Homosexuality Vol. 41 No. 3/4 (2001): 37-52.

Essays on d'Aulnoy, d'Auneuil, Bernard, Bernis, Chamoiseau, Choisy, Cocteau, Crébillon, Debussy, Diderot, Durand, Fagnan, Fénelon, Fleutiaux, Fairy Tale in France (5000 words), Galland, Giraudoux, Gomez, Hamilton, La Force, La Morlière, Le Noble, Levesque, Lhéritier, Lintot, Lubert, Maeterlinck, Mailly, Mayer, Mélusine, Moncrif, Nodot, Préchac, Princess Bride, Rousseau, Villeneuve, Voisenon, Yellow Dwarf for Oxford Companion to the Fairy Tale , Jack Zipes, Editor-in-Chief. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

"On Fairy Tales, Subversion, and Ambiguity: Feminist Approaches to the Seventeenth-Century French Contes de fées." Marvels and Tales: A Journal of Fairy Tale Studies 14.1 (2000): 80-98; slightly revised version reprinted in Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches , ed. Donald Haase. Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. Detroit: Waynes State University Press, 2004. 53-71.

Essays on d'Aulnoy, Bernard, Deshoulières, Fairy Tale, La Force, Lhéritier, and Murat for A Feminist Companion to French Literature , Ed. Eva Sartori (Greenwood Press, 1999)

"Masculinity in La Princesse de Clèves," Approaches to Teaching La Princesse de Clèves , Ed. Faith Beasley and Katharine Jensen (New York: MLA, 1998) 60-67.

"Création et réception des conteuses: du XVIIe au XVIIIe siècle," Tricentenaire Charles Perrault: les grands contes du XVIIe siècle et leur fortune littéraire , Ed. Jean Perrot, Collection lectures d'enfance (Paris: In-Press, 1998) 191-202.

"A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century by Jorge Arditi (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998)," Cahiers du Dix-Septième Vol. VIII, No. 1 (2005): 174-176.

"Abby E. Zanger, Scenes from the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997)," L'Esprit Créateur 29.4 (Winter 1999): 163-164.

"Marvelous Realities: Reading the Marvelous in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales." Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Fairy Tales in Italy and France , Ed. Nancy Canepa (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997)

Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias . Cambridge Studies in French, 55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; 2006 (paperback)

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"Eroticizing the Fronde: Sexual Deviance and Political Disorder in the Mazarinades." L'Esprit Créateur Vol. 35, No. 2 (Summer 1995): 22-36

"Les Fées Modernes: Women, Fairy Tales, and the Literary Field in Late Seventeenth-Century France." Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France , Eds. Elizabeth Goldsmith and Dena Goodman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995) 129-145.

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"Tales of Difference: Infantilization and the Recuperation of Class and Gender in 17th-Century Contes de fées." Biblio 17: Actes de Las Vegas , Ed. Marie-France Hilgar, Vol. 60. (Paris; Seattle; Tübingen: Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1991) 179-94.

Essay on Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy for Fifty French Women Writers , Eds. Eva Sartori and Dorothy Zimmerman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991) 11-20.

"Joan DeJean, Fictions of Sappho: 1546-1937. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989" L'Esprit Créateur 30.3 (Fall 1990): 83-4.

"Female Empowerment and Its Limits: The Conteuses' Active Heroines." Cahiers du Dix-Septième: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 4, No. 2 (1990): 17-34.

"The Rhetoric of Invraisemblance: Lhéritier's 'Les Enchantements de l'éloquence.'" Cahiers du Dix-Septième: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 3, No. 1 (1989): 121-39.

"Disguising the Storyteller's Voice: On Perrault's Recuperation of the Fairy Tale." Cincinnati Romance Review Vol. 8 (1989): 13-23.

"Marlies Kronegger, The Life Significance of French Baroque Poetry. New York: Peter Lang, 1988" Cahiers du Dix-Septième: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3.2 (Fall 1989): 183-85.

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Education and Training

Honors and awards, affiliations visualize it , collaborators, affiliations.

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International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR) Modern Language Association North American Society of Seventeenth-Century French Literature SE - 17

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Recent courses taught include:

Penser et écrire le non-humain au XVIIe siècle (graduate seminar) Queering the Grand Siècle (graduate seminar) Fairy Tales and Culture Contes et identités francophones Molière et son monde Pouvoirs de la scène : le théâtre du XVIIe siècle Le Grand Siècle à l'écran

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  • Published: 07 March 2022

The cultural evolution of love in literary history

  • Nicolas Baumard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1439-9150 1 ,
  • Elise Huillery 2 ,
  • Alexandre Hyafil   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0566-651X 3 &
  • Lou Safra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7618-6735 1 , 4  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  6 ,  pages 506–522 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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  • Human behaviour

Since the late nineteenth century, cultural historians have noted that the importance of love increased during the Medieval and Early Modern European period (a phenomenon that was once referred to as the emergence of ‘courtly love’). However, more recent works have shown a similar increase in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Indian and Japanese cultures. Why such a convergent evolution in very different cultures? Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we leverage literary history and build a database of ancient literary fiction for 19 geographical areas and 77 historical periods covering 3,800 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Modern period. We first confirm that romantic elements have increased in Eurasian literary fiction over the past millennium, and that similar increases also occurred earlier, in Ancient Greece, Rome and Classical India. We then explore the ecological determinants of this increase. Consistent with hypotheses from cultural history and behavioural ecology, we show that a higher level of economic development is strongly associated with a greater incidence of love in narrative fiction (our proxy for the importance of love in a culture). To further test the causal role of economic development, we used a difference-in-difference method that exploits exogenous regional variations in economic development resulting from the adoption of the heavy plough in medieval Europe. Finally, we used probabilistic generative models to reconstruct the latent evolution of love and to assess the respective role of cultural diffusion and economic development.

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research about 17th century literature

Data availability

The data, as well as the the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey and the Ancient World Values Survey ( Romantic Love and Attitudes toward Children ), are available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ).

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ). A detailed description of the model for study 4 as well as MATLAB code to fit and run such models can be found on https://github.com/ahyafil/Evoked_Transmitted_Culture .

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Boyer, C. Chevallier, L. Cronk, H. Mercier, O. Morin and M. Singh for their comments and feedback on the draft. We thank S. Joye, M. White-Le Goff, M. Daumas, W. Reddy, K. Zakharia, E. Feuillebois-Pierunek, D. Struve and C. Svatek for their feedback on the design of the project, and S. Joye for her help in kickstarting the project. We thank T. Ansart for his help and advice in designing the figures. For their expertise in history of literature and their reading the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey, we thank M. Balda-Tillier, G. Barnes, B. Brosser, S. Brocquet, J.-B. Camps, N. Cattoni, M. Childs, C. Cleary, B. Cook, H. Cooper, M. Eggertsdóttir, W. Farris, E. Francis, H. Frangoulis, H. Fulton, G. Fussman, D. Goodall, I. Hassan, L. Haiyan, D. Hsieh, A. Inglis, C. Jouanno, R. Keller Kimbrough, J. D. Konstan, R. Lanselle, R. Luzi, M. Luo, R. Martin, D. Matringue, K. McMahon, G. Nagy, P. Nagy, H. Navratilova, D. Negers, P. Orsatti, F. Orsini, S. Ríkharðsdóttir, F. Schironi, S. Valeria, C. Starr, R. Torrella and S. Torres Pietro. Funding: This study was supported by the Institut d’Études Cognitives (ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL) for N.B. and L.S., and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-2323) for A.H.

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Nicolas Baumard & Lou Safra

Laboratoire d’Economie de Dauphine, Université Paris Dauphine, PSL Research University, Paris, France

Elise Huillery

Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Bellaterra, Spain

Alexandre Hyafil

Sciences Po, CEVIPOF, CNRS, Paris, France

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N.B. conceived the project, supervised the creation of the Ancient Literary Fictions Database and wrote the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey. L.S. and A.H. designed the analyses for study 1. L.S. designed the analyses for study 2. E.H. designed the difference-in-difference for study 3. A.H. designed the latent probabilistic generative models for study 4. All authors wrote the paper.

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Baumard, N., Huillery, E., Hyafil, A. et al. The cultural evolution of love in literary history. Nat Hum Behav 6 , 506–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01292-z

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    1605-1615 - Miguel de Cervantes writes the two parts of Don Quixote. 1616: April - Death of both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. 1630-1651: William Bradford writes Of Plymouth Plantation, journals that are considered the most authoritative account of the Pilgrims and their government.

  3. 4.1: The Early Seventeenth Century

    Key Takeaways. The political and religious turmoil of the 17th century influenced the literature of the era in the same way that such struggles affected Renaissance literature. The work of Shakespeare and the writing of the King James Bible influenced early modern English. Metaphysical poetry and cavalier poetry are significant movements in ...

  4. A History of Seventeenth-Century English Literature

    Corns/ History of Seventeenth-Century English Literature 0631221697_3_posttoc Final Proof page ix 9.8.2006 2:36pm. Preface This is a history of English literature in the seventeenth century. It covers writing in English in England and Wales. Writing in English in

  5. 16th & 17th Centuries

    Facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts, archaeology, architecture, and the social sciences. Presents a fully searchable version of Jonson's complete works, including ...

  6. The Seventeenth Century

    The Seventeenth Century is established as the leading forum for interdisciplinary approaches to the period, and complements these with stimulating specialist studies on a wide range of subjects. The journal is international in its scope. There is a general preference for articles embodying original research. All contributions should be accessible to scholars who are not specialists in the ...

  7. 16th-and 17th-Century English Literature and Culture

    16th-and 17th-Century English Literature and Culture. Affiliated Faculty. ... Research Interests. 16th-and 17th-Century English Literature and Culture. The History of Poetics. Political Theory. The Reception of St. Augustine in Early Modern England. The English Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Metaphysical Wit. Autobiography.

  8. English Literature's Reflection of 17th Century Society

    The 17 th century marked a shift from an age of faith to an age of reason. Literature represents the turbulence in society, religion, and the monarchy of this period. Life for the English people changed as religious controversy and civil war shook the nation. These issues reformulated the roles of individuals in society, perspectives of faith ...

  9. A History of Seventeenth‐Century English Literature

    About this book. A History of Seventeenth-Century Literature outlines significant developments in the English literary tradition between the years 1603 and 1690. An energetic and provocative history of English literature from 1603-1690. ….

  10. A History of Seventeenth-Century English Literature

    A History of Seventeenth-Century Literature outlines significant developments in the English literary tradition between the years 1603 and 1690. An energetic and provocative history of English literature from 1603-1690. Part of the major Blackwell History of English Literature series. Locates seventeenth-century English literature in its social and cultural contexts. Considers the physical ...

  11. Seventeenth Century British Literature Research Guide

    Women and literature -- England -- History -- 17th century Remember to browse, as some of these are further broken down into more specific subjects. For instance, in addition to English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism, you may also see headings like English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and ...

  12. Research Guides: 16th- & 17th-Century English Literatures

    Four fields of British literature in rotating, quarterly issues: English Renaissance, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Nineteenth Century. The Sixteenth Century Journal Research and inquiry into the sixteenth century broadly defined (i.e., 1450-1648).

  13. American literature

    The utilitarian writings of the 17th century included biographies, treatises, accounts of voyages, and sermons.There were few achievements in drama or fiction, since there was a widespread prejudice against these forms. Bad but popular poetry appeared in the Bay Psalm Book of 1640 and in Michael Wigglesworth's summary in doggerel verse of Calvinistic belief, The Day of Doom (1662).

  14. Literature and Empire

    Armitage, David, 'Literature and Empire', in Nicholas Canny, and Wm Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I: The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford, 1998; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011), https://doi.org ...

  15. Essays on Early 17th Century English Literature

    Essays on Early 17th Century English Literature. These essays are not intended to replace library research. They are here to show you what others think about a given subject, and to perhaps spark an interest or an idea in you. To take one of these essays, copy it, and to pass it off as your own is known as plagiarism—academic dishonesty which ...

  16. Seifert, Lewis

    Professor Seifert's research interests include 17th-century literature, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, and comparative approaches to folklore and the literary fairy tale. He is the author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (1996) and of Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in ...

  17. Research Guides: 16th- & 17th-Century English Literatures

    A Companion to Tragedy by Rebecca Bushnell (Editor) "A Companion to Tragedy" is an essential resource for anyone interested in exploring the role of tragedy in Western history and culture. Tells the story of the historical development of tragedy from classical Greece to modernity Features 28 essays by renowned scholars from multiple disciplines, including classics, English, drama, anthropology ...

  18. The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature

    Chapter 1 - The Oeconomy of Nature in Seventeenth-Century England. pp 33-59. Get access. Export citation. Chapter 2 - Penshurst's Parasites. pp 60-81. Ben Jonson and the Art of Bad Housekeeping.

  19. The cultural evolution of love in literary history

    In literature, dozens of ... Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research ... The novel and sentimentalism in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe and China: a ...

  20. Current Dissertation Topics and Research Interests

    Research Interests: Early Modern French literature, especially 16th-17th century literature and Agrippa d'Aubigné; Baroque Poetry and Ekphrasis. MATTHEW BARFIELD Advisor: ... Research Interests: 20th Century Literature, Intersection of Philosophy and Literature, Experimental Literature, Philosophy of Humor, French Cinema.

  21. Science and English Literature: 1600-1820

    Composed at the beginning of the 17th century, it is the first known prose romance written by an English woman. The full work exists in two volumes, the first published in 1621 and the second written, but unpublished, during Wroth's lifetime.

  22. Seventeenth Century

    French and Francophone Studies - A Research Guide to Resources: Seventeenth Century - Books. ... Pedagogy and Literature in 17th-Century France aims to add a new dimension to the scholarly discussion on how culture is inculcated by focusing on the interplay between aesthetic forms and pedagogical agendas. The nine essays in the collection take ...

  23. American literature

    This article traces the history of American poetry, drama, fiction, and social and literary criticism from the early 17th century through the turn of the 21st century. For a description of the oral and written literatures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, see Native American literature. Though the contributions of African Americans to ...