Hobbes and Political Obligations in 1650s Epic Romance

• In Event: Marvell II: Poetry, Poetics, and Politics in Marvell

Abstract

The two major authors of epic poems following the English Revolution and fall of the Stuart monarchy—Sir William Davenant and Abraham Cowley—adapted the genre of national origins and destinies to investigate the political origins of sovereignty in circumstances where England’s destiny seemed newly uncertain. Both poets were friends with Thomas Hobbes, and close readings of Gondibert (1651) and Davideis (1656) reveal the systematic influence of Hobbes’s ideas. Both poems dramatize the psychology of restless desire which drives civil conflict, the artificiality of political sovereignty, and the de facto conditions under which political obligations are generated, dissolved, or transferred. The paper will also reflect on Andrew Marvell’s response to these efforts, in particular his provocatively ambivalent reception of Davenant.

Author

• Niall Allsopp, Oriel College, University of Oxford