English Nonconformist Poetry, 1660-1700

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 16; p. 144
• Main Author: Walker, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2012
• Subjects: Behn, Aphra (1640-1689); British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Dryden, John (1631-1700); English language; English literature; Poetry; Villiers, George (1592-1628); Wild, John; Wilmot, John (Earl of Rochester) (1647-1680); Wycherley, William (1640-1716)
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Nor did his royalism prevent Wild from defending his faith in print and indulging in satirical attacks on leading Restoration figures such as Roger L'Estrange, and in his 1665 satire The Grateful Nonconformist attacking the religious policy of the Cavalier Parliament and the money voted to prosecute the disastrous war against the Dutch (I, pp. xix and 215). Reading Keach, Wild, John Perrot, Vavasor Powell, Thomas Grantham, and Martin Mason reminds us that Restoration poetry consists not only of the writings of aristocratic court libertines such as John Wilmot and George Villiers, or professional poets and writers such as John Dryden, William Wycherley and Aphra Behn. [...]the edition draws attention to the radically diverse points on the nonconformist or Dissenting spectrum available to nonconformist poets. [...]it is not unusual in the later seventeenth century to read Baptist verse that is intuitive and sensitive to these charges and which takes a long historical perspective.