Milton, the Metaphysicals, and Romanticism

Detailed analysis of the relationship between seventeenth-century literature and Romanticism.

Both the English Civil War and the French Revolution produced literature reflecting belief in a better world, and new philosophies of mind, language, and cosmos. Milton, the Metaphysicals, and Romanticism examines in detail for the first time the relationship between two of the richest periods of British literary history.Both the English Civil War and the French Revolution produced in England an outpouring of literature reflecting intense belief in the arrival of a better world, and new philosophies of the relationship between mind, language and cosmos. Milton, the Metaphysicals, and Romanticism is the first book to explore the significance of the connections between the literature of these two periods. The volume analyses Milton's influence on Romantic writers including Blake, Beckford, Wordsworth, Shelley, Radcliffe and Keats, and examines the relationships between other seventeenth-century poets - Donne, Marvell, Vaughan, Herrick, Cowley, Rochester and Dryden - and Romantic writers. Representing a wide range of theoretical approaches, and including original contributions by leading British, American and Canadian scholars, this is a provocative and challenging assessment of the relationship between two of the richest periods of British literary history.