The Reflection of the Exclusion Crisis (1678-1683) in Contemporary Literature

• Thesis title in Czech: Reflexe vylučovací krize (1678-1683) v soudobé literatuře
• Thesis title in English: The Reflection of the Exclusion Crisis (1678-1683) in Contemporary Literature
• Key words: politický diskurz, propaganda, doba restaurace, Stuartovci, toryové, whigové, roajalismus, politické drama, restaurační komedie, vylučovací krize, papeženecké spiknutí, Aphra Behnová, John Dryden, Nathaniel Lee, Thomas Otway, Thomas Shadwell, John Banks
• English key words: political discourse, propaganda, Restoration period, Stuarts, Tories, Whigs, Royalism, political drama, restauration comedy, Exclusion Crisis, Popish Plot, Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Nathaniel Lee, Thomas Otway, Thomas Shadwell, John Banks
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 01.10.2014
• Date of assignment: 01.10.2014
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 08.10.2014
• Date and time of defence: 06.09.2016 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 08.08.2016
• Date of proceeded defence: 06.09.2016
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Klára Kolinská, Dr., Ph.D.

Guidelines

This MA thesis falls into the field of literary history. It will analyse several texts of the Restoration period in relation to their historical background, mapping the reflection of the Exclusion Crisis of 1678-1683. It is rooted in the assumption that the late seventeenth century was a period of the rise of the public sphere in Britain and literature was, among other, shaped by political concerns of the newly arising political parties of Tories and Whigs, as well as differing religious groupings of dissenters, Anglicans, Catholics and others.
The thesis will examine a range of texts across genres (focusing mainly on drama, but not excluding fiction, poetry, broadsheet and pamphlets) in order to locate, analyse and compare the discourse strategies employed by individual writers, who aim to comment on the political tumult of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis. Such study will inevitably include detailed research in the history of the Exclusion Crisis, the political theory of the 17^th century, the rise of the political parties of Tories and Whigs, the transformation of the public sphere (following the premises of the theory of Habermas, with an eye to its later revisions), and the typical imagery and strategies of Tory and Whig writing of the period. The authors that will stand at the core of this comparative analysis will be: Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Thomas Otway, Nahum Tate, Tom Durfey, Nathaniel Lee and Elkanah Settle.
While the thesis will offer an overview of the main rhetorical strategies used by both Tory and Whig writers to promote their political standpoint, it will also contain a more detailed analysis of some of the major works of the period, such as Otway’s Venice Preserv’d, Don Tomazo and Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel. The principal ideas about the character of these opposing political theories of royalist Tories and exclusionist Whigs will be based in my reading of the works of Robert Filmer (Patriarcha) and John Locke (Two Treatises).
In reading the individual literary texts I will examine how they use and transform this original imagery, how they work with the set tropes and motifs of partisan writing. As the works studied are highly topical, special attention will be paid to the ways in which the texts reflect contemporary events and issues such as the Popish Plot and how they work with personal satire that seems to be a very popular tool for party political writing of the period. Satirical mode is common to most of the Exclusion Crisis writing, especially to comedy and poetry as will be shown on the case of Dryden’s poem Absalom and Achitophel and plays by Thomas Durfey. Deriving from the Cavalier culture, Restoration literature features the figure of the rake that plays an essential part in expressing attitudes towards the court and its libertine culture, therefore the ways this figure is employed during the Exclusion Crisis in texts like Don Tomazo and The Second Part of the Rover will be analysed. The omnipresent sexuality of Restoration literature opens the question of its deployment for partisan writing, especially the image of rape that seems to be a frequent motive, as in Tate’s adaptation of King Lear.
While most of the more famous plays of the period seem to have rather royalist leanings (not surprisingly with the court censure), it will be helpful for the study to include plays of the opposition, such as Nathaniel Lee’s republican Lucius Junius Brutus and Settle’s Pope Joan, which opens questions of the religious tumult of the period and gender stereotyping used by both Whigs and Tories. As a major female voice of the period, Aphra Behn will provide a useful counterpart to the other male writers and offer material for the study of her transformation of the rogue character and treatment of female heroines.
The thesis does not aim at classifying individual texts as either “Tory” or “Whig”. In her study of Restoration theatrical culture, Susan J. Owen has persuasively argued that the drama of the Exclusion Crisis is rather a drama of contradiction and the plays rarely provide a clear-cut political message. I find a similar tendency also perceptible in both poetry and fiction writing. Therefore, the main objective of the thesis is to clarify and disclose the ways political events shaped public discourse and how the imagery employed by political theory was employed and transformed in literary works in the literary sphere. That is the reason for including both straightforward propagandist texts (like Pope Joan or Sir Barnaby Whig) and texts of a highly politically ambiguous meaning (like Venice Preserved by Thomas Otway).

References

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