“Literature and Utopian Politics.” Or is that “Politics and Utopian Literature”? Either one would do; for utopian politics as exercised in seventeenth-century England – whether in the sublime ideology of the Stuart Court, in the charterism of separatist Puritans, or in the revolutionary agitations of the Levellers, the Fifth Monarchists, and the Diggers – was always grounded in literary expression. And by the same token, utopian literature in the seventeenth century – whether among activists like William Walwyn or among retired scholars like Robert Burton – was always grounded in the political conflicts of the day. One engaged in utopian politics in keeping with impulses and goals articulated in literature; indeed the engagement itself was often primarily literary: a matter of letters, of words, of written “acts,” of poems, of recited addresses from the pulpit, of stage plays and pamphlets and books. But conversely, one essayed an adventure in utopian literature in keeping with impulses and goals derived from the political domain, a domain which was itself, in the seventeenth century, a location of not only the policies and procedures of the state but also the conduct of social life and the dissemination of cultural forms.

This book is a study of the interaction of literature and politics in their utopian dimension from the accession of James VI and I in 1603 to the consolidation of power in the late 1660s during the Restoration under Charles II.