The Literary Underground in the 1660s: Andrew Marvell, George Wither, Ralph Wallis, and the World of Restoration Satire and Pamphleteering

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 19; p. 136
• Main Author: Pooley, Roger
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2015
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature; Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678); Wither, George (1588-1667); United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 0954-0970

More than twenty years later, Stephen Bardie can point to a much more substantial body of history and cultural criticism of radical writing that has recognised 'the provisional and fragile nature of the Restoration settlement' (p. 1), while arguing that the historical grammar of the Restoration is still too much that of a resounding full stop - no more civil war, welcome to the Augustan era. Of the three writers he has chosen, Andrew Marvell is utterly secure in the canon and the focus of a large body of historicist criticism; George Wither is well enough known, though more for his mid-century work, and he is hardly the stuff of undergraduate reading lists, and Ralph Wallis, an energetic pamphleteer and unreconstructed Civil War radical, is virtually unknown. [...]I feel this is a function of Wither's clarity, but also his limitations as a poet, rather than anything wrong with Bardie's approach.