Dragons Teeth: Literature in the English Revolution

by Michael Wilding

"Books," wrote Milton, "are like dragon's teeth that spring up armed men." This study looks at some of the armed men that Milton, Marvell, Browne, and Butler sent off to fight, reading a series of 17th-century literary texts against the historical and political backdrop of the English
Revolution. Confronting the formalist taboo on historical and political context, Wilding provides many challenging new readings, exploring issues of war and peace, of economic exploitation, social repression and the radical politics of the Levellers and Diggers. The issues that resulted in
revolution three centuries ago are still relevant today, as Wilding persuasively demonstrates in a collection that will interest scholars and students of English literature, history, and political science.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Michael Wilding is emeritus professor at the University of Sydney. He was a founding editor of the UQP’s Asian & Pacific Writing series, of the short story magazine, Tabloid Story, and co-founder of publishers Wild & Woolley, and Paperbark Press. He has also been a milkman, postman, newspaper columnist, apple-picker, Cosmopolitan ‘Bachelor of the Month’, and Chair of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre. He has published twenty-four works of fiction and books of criticism on Milton, Marcus Clarke and Henry Lawson. He has been translated and published in over twenty countries.