Literature: Voices of the English Civil Wars.

Each of the texts and authors will be studied in depth, with context, textual analysis, and an investigation of the text’s style and unique themes to the fore. Each of these themes will provoke us to consider moral, ethical and philosophical responses to the trauma of mid-seveteenth century Britain, assessing as we do the continuing legacy of those years, the implications of which we are still contending with.

The course will examine the experience of the British Civil Wars on a political level and a domestic and familial one, and we shall discover the experiences of politicians, combatants and civilians.

Themes that we will encounter are those of the schism within organised religion, the developments of radical sects, both political and religious, the development of radical systems of morality and the philosophical backcloth to the period. In doing so we will experience the voices of well-known authors such as Marvell, Milton, Lovelace and Clarendon, and a host of less well-known diarists, letter writers and pamphleteers, many of whom anticipate political developments not enacted until two centuries later.

Come along and enjoy sessions of lively debate, which will inspire you to further reading and your own discoveries about this fascinating but under taught era of British history.