Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Great Britain History Civil war, 1642-1649 Fiction »

Britain now wear's the sock; the Theater's clean Transplanted hither, both in Place and Scene.Martin Butler and Jonathan Dollimore have recently documented the importance of drama in English political life before 1642. Such scholarship, however, has stopped cold at the great divide of 1642. Except for Lois Potter in “‘True Tragicomedies’ of the Civil War and Interregnum,” no one has considered the relationship between politics and theater while the theaters were officially closed. Scholars have thereby missed a seminal question in understanding the discourse and complex political maneuvering enveloping the act of regicide in 1649. What is the relationship between the theatrical tradition and the execution of Charles I?Even though historians frequently comment on the “tragic” nature of the execution of Charles I, thus far neither historian nor literary person has bothered to examine the immediate and popular reactions to the act of regicide. This is understandable. An odd mix of imaginative projection and verifiable fact enshrines the execution of Charles, and documentation is admittedly difficult. The available assortment of primary literature, however, indicates that many Englishmen responded to the execution as theater, more specifically, the dramatic genre of tragedy. A 1649 sermon (attributed to the Royalist Robert Brown) exemplifies both the tragic response to the act of regicide and the mid-century employment of the theatrical tradition: Brown describes the execution as “the first act of that tragicall woe which is to be presented upon the Theater of this Kingdome, likely to continue longer then the now living Spectators.”

This thesis investigates the theology of violence in early modern England. It finds that violence had an important place in the theology of the English Revolution, which is at variance with many twentieth-century perceptions of Christianity. After introducing these ideas in the first chapter, chapter two begins with an outline of the general conceptions of the relationship between the Divine and violence, contrasting the image of a God of peace with a God of war. It also outlines just war theory, which was central to early modern English views of legitimate violence. Additional aspects of contemporaries' conceptions involved ideas of authorisation, violence as punishment, and a hierarchy of legitimate violence. These ideas are further developed in chapter three, first with reference to the Elizabethan Homilies and then in relation to theologians during the civil wars. This discussion of theologies of obedience anticipates chapter four's analysis of the theologies of resistance in relation to the theology of violence. Chapter four addresses a variety of themes concerning the illegitimacy of suicide and the corresponding legitimacy of self defence. The chapter concludes by addressing the idea of direct divine authorisation for violence, which is modelled by the biblical Book of Joshua and developed by examining Calvin's commentaries on the text. Direct authorisation lays the groundwork for chapter five, which addresses the apocalyptic perspective in relation to the theology of violence. The three interrelated themes of anti-Catholicism, anti-idolatry, and a new dispensation are examined. In chapter six, the previous themes are considered in an analysis of the regicide. The discussion of the regicide not only draws on the preceding discussion of the theology of violence but also examines the "scapegoating" dimension of the execution of the king. The final chapter offers reflections on the importance of the theology of violence for the view of the English civil wars as "wars of religion."

Edmund Waller, William Davenant, Andrew Marvell, and Abraham Cowley were royalist poets who changed sides following the English Revolution, attracted to Cromwellian military power, and the reforming aims of the Independents. This thesis contributes to existing scholarship by showing that the poets engaged strongly with theories of allegiance, self-consciously returning to first principles - the natures of sovereignty and obligation - to develop a concept of allegiance that was contingent and transferrable. Their crucial influence was Hobbes. Hobbes collapsed partisan perspectives into a general theory of sovereignty constituted by a de facto protective and coercive power; this was grounded on a psychological analysis of humans' restless appetite for power. The poets' approach to Hobbes was crucially mediated by Machiavelli, who provided a less abstract account of the relationship between individual agency and collective institutions, and whose concept of virtù offered a model for how restless ambition could be harnessed to political order. An introductory chapter sketches out the intellectual background to this body of theory and reflects on the methods used to show how the poets dramatized it in their works. Chapter two considers the disintegration of Waller's courtly poetry under the pressure of civil war, and his resulting turn to rationalist theory. Chapters three and four focus on the immediate aftermath of the revolution, considering the synthesis of Hobbes' and Machiavelli's theories of military power ventured by Davenant, and the influence of Davenant's ideas on Marvell's Machiavellianism. Chapter five focuses on Cowley and his more religiously-inflected account of Hobbesian psychology and political obligations. Chapter six asks how the poets responded to the Restoration of Charles II, and in particular charts their influence on the younger poet John Dryden. With their emphasis on materialist psychology, the turncoat poets abandoned allegory in favour of a mode of dramatization which observed the contingent circumstances in which allegiances could be generated, dissolved, and transferred. They possessed a political conservatism, but a conceptual radicalism which presented a serious challenge to Anglican and constitutionalist discourses of Stuart monarchy.

This thesis examines the descriptions of Royalist and Parliamentarian masculinity in English Civil War memoirs by women through a close reading of three biographical memoirs written by Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle; Lady Ann Fanshawe; and Lucy Hutchinson. Descriptions of masculinity are evaluated through the lens of Raewyn Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity to understand the impact two competing models of masculinity had on the social and political culture of the period. The prevailing Parliamentarian hegemonic masculinity in English Civil War memoirs is traced to its origins before the English Civil War to demonstrate how hegemonic masculinity changes over time. The thesis argues that these memoirs provide evidence of two competing models of Royalist and Parliamentarian masculinities during the Civil War that date back to changes in the Puritan meaning of the phrase “man of merit”, which influenced the development of a Parliamentarian model of masculinity.