Does the monarch wield absolute power? Does Parliament have a say in how the country is governed? Does the monarch stand above the law? Conflicts over these questions led to the English Civil War (1642-1651), the execution of King Charles I, and the establishment of a (short-lived) republic. For contemporaries, the unravelling of the existing order could signify either hope or trauma; in any case, it formed a historical caesura that "cast the kingdom old / Into another mould" (Andrew Marvell).
In this class, we will discuss the functions of literature in times of upheaval. Focussing on poetry and political pamphlets, we will analyse the capacity of literary texts to spread propaganda, to manage emotions, and to shape history and memory by naming and describing events. We will study the canonical authors of the period, such as Marvell and John Milton, but we will also explore popular or marginalised voices, such as the tales about Boy (a magic dog that made the King’s nephew impervious to bullets) and the spiritual poems of Hester Pulter. According to this fervently royalist noblewoman, personal experience is always already political: her grief for children orphaned in the war only intensifies her wish that God should crush the rebels' "plots and cursed imagination / That have almost destroyed this church and nation".
- Kursleiter/in: Jan Sören Mosch