Radical Voices, Radical Ways: Articulating and Disseminating Radicalism in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain

284 Pages·2016·4.86 MB·English

by  Laurent Curelly

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This collection of essays studies the expression and diffusion of radical
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ideas in Britain from the period of the English Revolution in the mid-
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seventeenth century to the Romantic Revolution in the early nineteenth c
century. It covers almost two hundred years of radical history and a
literature and aims to establish transnational parallels as well as trace l
transhistorical continuities between forms and vehicles of radicalism.
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The essays included in the volume explore the modes of articulation and
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dissemination of radical ideas in the period by focusing on actors (‘radical
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voices’) and a variety of written texts and cultural practices (‘radical c
ways’), ranging from fiction, correspondence, pamphlets and newspapers e
to petitions presented to Parliament and toasts raised in public. They s
,
analyse the way these media interacted with their political, religious, social
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and literary context.
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d
In addition to benefiting from recent academic research, this volume
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provides a markedly interdisciplinary outlook on the study of early modern c
radicalism, with contributions from literary scholars and historians, and a
relies on cross-fertilisation between disciplines and scholarly approaches. l
It uses case studies as insights into the global picture of radical ideas. w
By exploring the ways in which radical voices engaged with forms and
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means of expression, the essays offer a sense of the complexity of radical
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communication in early modern England. It is hoped that they will
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contribute to a reappraisal of the concept of radicalism with reference
to its modes of diffusion.
This volume will be of interest to students of seventeenth- and eighteenth-
c
century literature and history.
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e
Laurent Curelly is Senior Lecturer in British Studies at Université de Haute Alsace, l
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Mulhouse

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Nigel Smith is William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and d

Modern Literature at Princeton University s
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i R a d i c a l v o i c e s ,
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(
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d R a d i c a l w a y s
Election fair, Copenhagen Fields, Islington,
s
London, 1795. Artist: James Gillray. Photo )
by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage ISBN 978-1-5261-0619-3
Images/Getty Images
ArticulAting And disseminAting rAdicAlism in
Cover design: riverdesign.co.uk
seventeenth- And eighteenth-century BritAin
edited by laurent curelly and Nigel smith
9 781526 106193
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Radical voices, radical ways
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies
General Editor
Anne Dunan-Page
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies is a series of the
Société d’Études Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
promoting interdisciplinary work on the period c.1603–1815,
covering all aspects of the literature, culture and history of the
British Isles, colonial and post-colonial America, and other British
colonies. The series welcomes academic monographs, as well as
collective volumes of essays, that combine theoretical and meth-
odological approaches from more than one discipline to further our
understanding of the period and geographical areas.
Radical voices, radical ways
Articulating and disseminating radicalism in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain
Edited by
Laurent Curelly and Nigel Smith
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2016
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press,
copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter
may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of
both author and publisher.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 1 5261 0619 3 hardback
First published 2016
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does
not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or
appropriate.
Typeset in 10/12 Sabon by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Contents
List of contributors page vii
Introduction – Laurent Curelly and Nigel Smith 1
PART I Radical language and themes
1 Community of goods: an unacceptable radical theme at
the time of the English revolution – Jean-Pierre Cavaillé 41
2 Thomas Paine’s democratic linguistic radicalism: a
political philosophy of language? – Carine Lounissi 60
3 English radicalism in the 1650s: the Quaker search for
the true knowledge – Catie Gill 80
PART II Radical exchanges and networks
4 Secular millenarianism as a radical utopian project in
Shaftesbury – Patrick Müller 103
5 The diffusion and impact of Baron d’Holbach’s texts in
Great Britain, 1765–1800 – Nick Treuherz 125
PART III Radical media and practices
6 The parliamentary context of political radicalism in the
English revolution – Jason Peacey 151
v
Contents
7 Toasting and the diffusion of radical ideas, 1780–1832
– Rémy Duthille 170
PART IV Radical fiction and representation
8 Contesting the press-oppressors of the age: the captivity
narrative of William Okeley (1675) – Catherine Vigier 193
9 Ways of thinking, ways of writing: novelistic expression
of radicalism in the works of Godwin, Holcroft and
Bage – Marion Leclair 211
10 ‘The insane enthusiasm of the time’: remembering the
regicides in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain
and North America – Edward Vallance 229
Select bibliography 251
Index 270
vi
List of contributors
Jean-Pierre Cavaillé is Senior Lecturer in History and Anthropology
at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales inToulouse. His
interests include the cultural, intellectual and social history of early
modern Europe as well as the history of early modern philosophy.
He is a member of various European research groups and scholarly
networks. He has published books, edited volumes and articles on
seventeenth-century libertinism and religious dissent.
Laurent Curelly is Senior Lecturer in British Studies at Université
de Haute Alsace in Mulhouse. He specialises in seventeenth-century
history, politics and literature. He wrote his PhD on tears and
weeping in the poetry of Crashaw, Donne, Herbert, Southwell and
Vaughan. In addition to the Metaphysical poets, his interests include
Civil War radicalism, early modern print culture and cultural trans-
fers between the British Isles and the European continent. He has
written widely on Civil War journalism and sectarian radicalism
and contributed essays to scholarly reviews as well as chapters to
edited volumes on these topics. He has published a translation into
French of the editorials of the radical newsbook The Moderate
(2011). He is currently working on a monograph in English on The
Moderate.
Rémy Duthille is Senior Lecturer in British Studies at Université
Bordeaux Montaigne. He wrote his PhD on the patriotism of British
radicals in the twenty years preceding the French Revolution, and
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list of Contributors
has published various articles on Richard Price. He is now broaden-
ing the scope of his research on political discourse, including toast-
ing, in the long eighteenth century.
Catie Gill is Lecturer in Early Modern Writing in the Department of
English and Drama, School of the Arts, Loughborough University.
She has published on Quakerism, and specifically on the collective
values of the movement with respect to gender. Her second book was
an edited collection: Theatre and Culture: From Leviathan to the
Licensing Act. She is currently working on William Chillingworth’s
religious rationalism.
Marion Leclair is an École Normale Supérieure graduate and a
doctoral student at Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle. She spe-
cialises in the English radical novel. She has published a translation
into French of A Dream of John Ball by William Morris.
Carine Lounissi is Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Université
de Rouen and a member of the LARCA research group at Université
Paris Diderot. She wrote her PhD on Paine’s political thought. She
published it in November 2012 as La Pensée politique de Thomas
Paine en contexte: théorie et pratique. Her research focuses on the
history of political ideas, the American Revolution, republicanism
and political language.
Patrick Müller, PhD in British Studies, is a teacher of English
for the German Federal Office of Languages. His doctoral thesis
Latitudinarianism and Didacticism was published in 2009. He
organised a symposium on the social and political impact of the first
and third Earls of Shaftesbury at the Ashley-Cooper’s family seat,
St Giles’s House, Dorset, in 2015. He has lectured and published
widely on Shaftesbury, other issues related to the eighteenth century
and on contemporary British and American literature.
Jason Peacey is Professor of Early Modern British History at UCL.
He edited The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (2001)
and The Print Culture of Parliament, 1600–1800 (2007), co-edited
Parliament at Work (2002), and is the author of Politicians and
Pamphleteers. Propaganda in the Civil Wars and Interregnum
(2004) and Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution
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list of Contributors
(2013). Recent articles include ‘Print, publicity and popularity: the
projecting of Sir Balthazar Gerbier, 1640–1662’, Journal of British
Studies (2012) and ‘Sir Edward Dering, popularity and the public,
1640–1644’, Historical Journal (2011). He is currently working
on a project relating to overlapping and interlocking publics in
seventeenth-century Europe.
Nigel Smith is William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of
Ancient and Modern Literature at Princeton University. He has pub-
lished mostly on early modern literature, especially the seventeenth
century; his work is interdisciplinary by inclination and training. He
has edited the Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Andrew
Marvell’s Poems (2003, pbk 2007), is the author of Andrew Marvell:
The Chameleon (Yale University Press, 2010; pbk 2012), and many
articles on Marvell. His other major works are Is Milton better than
Shakespeare? (2008), Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–
1660 (1994) and Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature
in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 (1989). He has also edited
the Journal of George Fox (1998), and the Ranter Pamphlets (1983;
revised edn. 2014), and co-edited with Nicholas McDowell the
Oxford Handbook to Milton (Oxford University Press, 2009, pbk
2011). A new book concerned with the state and literary produc-
tion in early modern Europe is forthcoming, and he has co-edited a
forthcoming collection with Jan Bloemendal, Politics and Aesthetics
in European Baroque Tragedy (Brill, 2016).
Nick Treuherz is Lecturer at the University of Liverpool. His PhD
thesis examined the writings of French materialists Diderot, La
Mettrie, Helvétius and d’Holbach, and more particularly their dif-
fusion and impact on the German Enlightenment.
Ted Vallance is Professor in Early Modern British Political Culture
at the University of Roehampton and has previously taught at
the universities of Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool. He is the
author of A Radical History of Britain (Little, Brown and Co.,
2009), The Glorious Revolution (Little, Brown and Co., 2006) and
Revolutionary England and the National Covenant (Boydell, 2005).
With Harald Braun he has edited two volumes on conscience and
casuistry in early modern Europe: Contexts of Conscience (Palgrave,
2004) and The Renaissance Conscience (Wiley Blackwell, 2011).
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