Image Government: Monarchical Metamorphoses in English Literature and Art, 1649-1702

By T.R. Langley

A study of the art of political ‘spin’ in late Stuart England, and how art and literature were reflected and manipulated in the changing ideologies of the era.

ISBN: 9780227679630

Description

‘Spin’ seems to be everywhere in politics nowadays, and is often spoken of as if it were entirely new. This book gives the lie to that claim, showing how the art of the spin-doctor was widely practised over three hundred years ago.

The term ‘art’ is used here in the sense of artistic imagery as well as of the skill of the spinner in manipulating opinion. Langley discusses the work of authors such as Edmund Waller and painters like Antonio Verrio to illuminate the changing ideologies of the late Stuart era and the way in which ideas about sovereignty were expressed by artists.

Image Government traces some of the cranks and windings, ebbings and flowings that lead from Charles I’s downfall to Queen Anne’s coronation, as they are registered in printed literature and visual art. The poetry of Marvell and Dryden, multifarious political writings by greater and lesser figures, and the works of significant divines like the Whiggish Burnet, and Hickes, doyen of the non-jurers, are all used to show how the expression of ideas changed in the second half of the seventeenth century.

While his awareness of the contributions of modern scholarship is everywhere apparent, the author shows a magisterial grasp of often under-exploited primary sources. This book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all students and scholars of later seventeenth-century literature, history and art in bringing to light aspects of sovereignty and the underlying principles of political cohesion in the period which have hitherto been little understood.

Additional information

Dimensions 234 × 156 mm
Pages 260
Format

Trade Information JGEN

About the Author

T.R. Langley is a Lecturer in English at University College, London.

Contents

Preface

Part I
1. Prologue
2. In Medias Res: Panegyrical Economics
3. ‘A Deluding Streame’ gets Head
4. Rendering unto Caesar
5. Building upon an Old Frame
6. Troubling the Waters – Marvell’s First Anniversary
7. More directed to the Monarchy than the Person
8. Non Angeli sed Angli
9. Restoration
10. No Force but Love, nor Bond but Bounty
11. Indulgent to the Occupant
12. Pious Times: Dryden’s Absolom and Achitophel
13. The Exquisite Truth

Part II
14. Wonder en is gheen Wonder
15. Restoration, Revolution
16. ‘Bright Maria’s Charms’
17. Machines and Machines
18. Peace and Plenty and Julian the Apostate
19. ‘Saturnian Times’
20. More than Conqueror
21. A King Divine by Law and Sense
22. ‘Cette folle Vanité d’Alexandre’
23. Funeral bak’d Meats and Gendres de Mérite
24. Retouchings
25.‘Image Government’

Plates
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Extracts