The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution

Abstract

This volume has the commendable aim of being more than a historical guide, challenging its readers to (re-)appreciate the power of the literary text to ‘challenge, transform and revolutionize’ (p. 15), and in this it is largely successful. The Handbook is notable for an impressive list of contributors; though the volume comes with a hefty price tag, the range of expertise and insight here does go a long way towards justifying it, with pieces a pleasing balance between the depth of a traditional book chapter and the specificity of an article. It is organized into five chronological parts, spanning the pre-war period to the Restoration, though the pieces are rarely constrained by this chronology. It is, of course, impossible in such a short space to comment on each individual piece, so I will follow the Handbook's structure and reflect on each part. The first section, ‘England at Home and in the World’, offers an overview of the nation at the outset of the Civil Wars. These, though, are not introductory essays, often preferring to make their own interventions rather than outline the debates themselves, and as a result students new to the period may well feel a little disorientated. Each, though, does an excellent job of outlining the instability inherent in ‘Revolution’, defining the volume's unifying theme not as a sure-footed replacement of old with new, but as a moment of uncertainty, in which new and old forms of writing, government, and religion could be re-thought.

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