aBurntShip

                      In Search of Poetry Relating to the Gunpowder Plot    This piece is the start of a longer study that I am working on, looking at the Gunpowder Plot and its place in Apocalypse culture of the 17th century and beyond. Links between  drama and the Gunpowder Plot continue to be made. Macbeth  is the most obvious play that allegedly draws on the Gunpowder Treason of 1605 . James Shapiro has also tried to connect King Lear to the Plot ( SHAPIRO ) . Contemporary plays which used the event for dramatic effect  included John Martson's Sophonisba, Thomas Dekker's The Whore of Babylon,  and Barnabe Barnes' The Devils Charter ( WILLS ) . From the 17th century until well into the 19th century regular sermons and an annual Church of England service of deliverance reminded the congregations of  the failure of the 'Plot .  Of course the most important commemoration takes place on Bonfir...

  'Poet of Revolution- The Making of John Milton' - Nicholas Mcdowell published by Princetown University Press, out now.    Nicholas McDowell is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Thought at the University of Exeter. He is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Milton ( amongst other publications).   John  Milton ( 1608-1670)  must be the leading poet of the British Civil Wars era. I have to lay my cards on the table, and concede that I am not a Milton scholar: I read 'Paradise Lost' twice during the Spring, and am familiar with Milton's sonnets dedicated to Lord Halifax and Sir Henry Vane the Younger. Have also  recently discovered a translation of   In Quintum Novembris , Milton's longest poem in Latin, written as a student at Cambridge University, around 1626 ,  about the Gunpowder Plot. So was wondering if I was out of my league when reading-and reviewing -this book. Especially as the biography is written by an esteemed acade...