Culture and Politics From Puritanism to Enlightenment

📖 The Scoop

Culture and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment presents a compelling collection of essays exploring the dynamic interplay of culture and politics in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England. Edited by the first historian to hold the Clark Library Professorship, this volume offers a nuanced investigation into how these spheres—interwoven in English society during the age of the Stuart and Hanoverian monarchies—shaped intellectual and political life. Featuring contributions from leading historians and scholars, each essay reveals the cultural and political shifts that contributed to England’s evolving moral, religious, and political landscape, from Puritanism’s influence to the Enlightenment’s embrace of liberal ideals.

The collection’s essays span diverse topics, from Shakespeare’s Richard II and Sir Edward Coke’s legal thought to Dryden’s Stoic ethics and Newton’s scientific challenges at Cambridge. This breadth illustrates the era’s complexities: the interrelation of Puritan religious fervor with political controversy, Enlightenment deism’s challenge to established norms, and the shaping of bourgeois values in children's literature. The result is a rich tableau of English culture in motion, where politics informed values, and culture responded to power, providing fresh insights into one of history’s most transformative periods. Readers interested in the intersections of literature, law, and philosophy will find this anthology both enlightening and thought-provoking.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Genre: Political Science / Public Policy / General (fancy, right?)