Stoicism, Politics and Literature in the Age of Milton: War and Peace Reconciled

This book offers a fresh examination of key seventeenth-century writers in the context of their common interest in the republican, libertarian and oppositional potential of the philosophical tradition of Stoicism. Stoicism in England involved not actual withdrawal from society but an intense kind of literacy - reading and writing focused on Seneca, Tacitus, Lucan and Lipsius as they could be seen to comment on contemporary political situations and ideological problems. Through subtly nuanced close readings of Marvell, Katherine Philips and Milton, Andrew Shifflett shows that these writers had more in common than previous philosophical, political and aesthetic categories have allowed.

• Interdisciplinary study achieving its insights through a combination of literary, historical, philosophical and political perspectives • Sheds new light on major writers Milton and Marvell, in conjunction with lesser known figures such as the woman writer Katherine Philips • Offers a new understanding of political discourse during the period

Introduction; 1. Conflict and Constancy in Seventeenth-Century England; 2. Andrew Marvell: The Stoicism of Nature, War, and Work; 3. Katherine Philips: The Stoicism of Hatred and Forgiveness; 4. Jonson, Marvell, Milton: The Stoicism of Friendship and Imitation; 5. John Milton: The Stoicism of History and Providence.