This major study of the relation between poetry and politics, from the 1688 Revolution to the beginning of the 19th century, focuses in particular on the works of Dryden, Pope, Johnson and Wordsworth.
This is a major study of the relation between poetry and politics from the 1688 Revolution to the early years of the nineteenth century, focusing in particular on the works of Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and Wordsworth. Building on his argument in Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden (also available from OUP), Erskine-Hill argues that the major tradition of political allusion is not, as has often been argued, that of political allegory and overtly political poems, but rather a more shifting and less systematic practice, often involving equivocal or multiple reference.
It is one of the undoubted merits of Howard Erskine-Hill that many of his literary works are accessible to the historian, and his elucidation of difficult poetry can help the historian by opening up a better understanding the past and of how past events and issues were understood by some of the most gifted contemporary poets. This handsomely produced and gracefully written book is aimed at literary scholars, but historians will also learn much from it.
