Among the other things produced by the seventeenth-century English Civil War was an enormous flood of written documents. These range from pamphlets to highly partisan “newsbooks” to religious visions, and their authors range from aristocrats to self-proclaimed prophets. Sectarian splinter-groups -- Ranters, Quakers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists, Baptists, Muggletonians – emerged into public view, and lay preachers , including women, soon sprang up everywhere. The “Four Kingdoms” (England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland) would divide along religious lines. Violence culminated inregicide: the highly symbolic execution, in 1649, of Charles I.

We will look at the conflict through a mixture of well-known and less-familiar writers. Among the former are John Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Bunyan, George Fox, Robert Herrick, Sir John Suckling, Samuel Butler, Abraham Cowley, and John Dryden. Among the latter are such religious radicals as Ranter Abiezer Coppe, Quaker Margaret Fell Fox, Digger Gerrard Winstanley, and Fifth-Monarchist Anna Trapnel. We will of course make use of pertinent scholarship by such historians as Nigel Smith, David Norbrook, Diane Purkiss, Christopher Hill, and Blair Worden.

Course Requirements:

The writing assignments will culminate in a research paper.

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