This book explores the complex ways in which authors, publishers, and readers contributed to the making of Restoration poetry. The essays in Part I map some principal aspects of Restoration poetic culture: how poetic canons were established through both print and manuscript; how censorship operated within the manuscript transmission of erotic and politically sensitive poems; the poetic functions of authorial anonymity; the work of allusion and intertextual reference; the translation and adaptation of classical poetry; and the poetic representations of Charles II. Part II turns to individual poets, and charts the making of Dryden's canon; the ways in which Mac Flecknoe operates through intertextual allusions; the relationship of the variant texts of Marvell's 'To his Coy Mistress'; and the treatment of Rochester's canon and text by his modern editors. The discussions are complemented by illustrations drawn from both printed books and manuscripts. PAUL HAMMOND is Professor of Seventeenth-Century Literature at the University of Leeds.
Reviews
This is a superb study that not only recreates the conditions of writing and readership in the Restoration period, revealing the persistence of modern assumptions about authorial primacy, but also opens up broader issues of the nature of poetry as text, woven from the interaction of author, reader, and community. MODERN PHILOLOGYThe textual, material and political archaeologies on which this innovative study is predicated will be highly significant for scholars of this period. TLS
