Seventeenth - Century Poetry: The Social Context

First published in 1985, Seventeenth-Century Poetry considers the way the poetry of the major seventeenth-century writers functioned in a social context: how it grew out of the poets’ social circumstances and ambitions, enhance their relationships with friends and patrons, how it proposed ideals of conduct and the good life. In the case of religious verse, the poetry is read within its devotional context, which in turn is related to the fortunes of the Church of England in Stuart and Commonwealth times. The book also pays serious attention to the millenarian strain which ran through religious poetry at this time.

Graham Parry has selected nine poets, both well and lesser known: Jonson, Donne, Herrick, Milton, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, Traherne and Marvell. For each, he considers individual volumes of poetry as they originally appeared and by analysing their structure and layout, as well as the content of the poems, he shows us what effects the poets aim to produce on their audience. In bypassing conventional groupings of seventeenth-century poets, and in emphasising the historical and social context in which they wrote, the author provides students with a fresh and illuminating perspective on their work. This is a must read for students and scholars of English literature.

Professor Graham Parry is with Department of English and Related Literature, University of York.