Wallington, Neil Anthony; (2005) Ideas of warfare in Royalist poetry 1632-1649. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis addresses the issue of the changing experience of warfare in the 1630s and 1640s, and how these changes are reflected in the Royalist poetry of the period. It is a central argument that English responses to war in this period must be understood within the context of central Europe's experience of the Thirty Years' War. The introduction examines the most influential sources of ideas about warfare in the early seventeenth century, and considers the importance of translation of classical epic, the proliferation of books of military theory, and the rise of the newsbook in creating an understanding of warfare. The thesis adopts a chronological approach in order to explain how attitudes changed as Britain moved from being a nation at peace to civil war. The first chapter begins with an examination of English responses to the death of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, and contrasts the pacific stance of these responses with the more bellicose writings produced later in the same decade in response to the Bishops' Wars and armed risings on behalf of the king. The second chapter constructs a chronology of the opening year of the English Civil War, based on Cowley's The Civill Warre. and through comparison with the longer prose histories by Clarendon and Thomas May, demonstrates how the attitudes towards the war changed with the flow of events. The third chapter considers how poets wrote about soldiers, and in particular examines the changes in the genre of elegy from the beginning of the First Civil War to the conclusion of the Second Civil War. The study concludes by suggesting how some of the issues raised may inform a reading of canonical text, Andrew Marvell's 'An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwel's Return From Ireland'.

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