In our era, politics and religion are sharply distinguished from each other: any given news programme will deal with what we now call ‘politics’ but this is a domain from which religion is generally excluded, except in cases where, as in terrorism, religion is being used for ends that seem political. In the 17th century, these two domains of debate were fused. What we might call religious questions were dominant in the political agenda. Milton and Dryden demonstrate continually that they aren’t so much discussing two things simultaneously, but that they regard as one issue what we have resolved into two. The execution of Charles I, for instance, was a political act with profound theological implications. It was politico-religious, or, more accurately, religio-political.
Still, the writings in prose and poetry of the period were animated by the personalities of their authors and we’ll be studying how far the personal peculiarities of each writer, along with our own, affect our sense of them.
This course will look at a range of widely-varying major writers in poetry and prose, encompassing the religious debates that characterise much 17th-century writing. The focus throughout will be on how each writer manifests his particular concerns in the minutiae of form and style. Among the genres addressed will be epic poetry (Milton's Paradise Lost), religious allegory (Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress), the pastoral lyric (Marvell) and political-religious satire (Dryden).
The aim will be to situate our own cultural assumptions in the context of 17th-century ones, rather than the other way around. This should help us to see that, and why, these four very different writers, in a culture massively different from ours, took Eden seriously.
What our students say
"Dr Stephen Logan was so knowledgeable and so passionate about the subject that I left each lecture feeling the same enthusiasm myself."
