Corns - A History of Seventeenth-Century English Literature

General editor: Peter Brown, University of Kent, Canterbury

The books in this series renew and redefine a familiar form by recognizing that to write literary history involves more than placing texts in chronological sequence. Thus the emphasis within each volume falls both on plotting the significant literary developments of a given period, and on the wider cultural contexts within which they occurred. Cultural history is construed in broad terms and authors address such issues as politics, society, the arts, ideologies, varieties of literary production and consumption, and dominant genres and modes. The effect of each volume is to give the reader a sense of possessing a crucial sector of literary terrain, of understanding the forces that give a period its distinctive cast, and of seeing how writing of a given period impacts on, and is shaped by, its cultural circumstances.

This paperback edition first published 2014
2014 Thomas N. Corns

Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (hardback, 2007)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Corns, Thomas N.
A history of seventeenth-century English literature / Thomas N. Corns.
p. cm.(Blackwell histories of literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-631-22169-2 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-118-65252-7 (pbk.)
1. English literatureEarly modern, 15001700History and criticism.
2. Great BritainIntellectual life17th century. I. Title. II. Series.
PR431.C67 2007
820.9004dc22
2006004745

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Detail of English turkey-work carpet, early 17th century. Knole, Kent; Photo
National Trust Photo Library/Andreas von Einsiedel

To Pat, for even more patience

This is a history of English literature in the seventeenth century. It covers writing in English in England and Wales. Writing in English in Scotland and Ireland, like new composition in Latin, figures only marginally, where it relates to or illuminates the principal subject. Literatures produced in the other languages of Britain and Ireland are not considered, because they are both beyond my remit and outside my competence.

Other decisions in the selection or omission of texts are less clear-cut. Those authors who currently are most read and studied receive most attention. I have added some non-canonical works to throw light on the mainstream, together with some which, in my view, have literary merit that has been overlooked. Writers who were once influential or were otherwise perceived as important in their own day are generally included, even though they have substantially fallen from the canon. Translation, particularly from the classical languages, was a significant component of the seventeenth-century experience of literature. Here my treatment is selective and perhaps somewhat arbitrary, though works which proved influential, like Sylvesters rendition of Du Bartas, are included. Drydens late, glorious translations seemed too good and too important a component of his oeuvre to omit. Populist genres such as ballads or works of popular piety for the most part are drawn on only as part of the larger cultural context. Writers in other genres outside those that are typically considered literary appear intermittently. Francis Bacon and Thomas Sprat, who have often figured in critical histories of non-fictional prose, are engaged with in literary terms; Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, despite their higher status as thinkers, are not considered, except as influences on or analogues to other writers. Though both write with persuasive power, their principal genius rests in their contribution to the tradition of western philosophy, and a proper appreciation of their work would have carried me beyond the concerns of literary history.