D’Addario Ch. Exile and Journey in Seventeenth-Century Literature

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, -209 p.The political and religious upheavals of the seventeenth century forced an unprecedented number of people to flee from England or remain in internal exile. Among these exiles were some of the most important authors in the Anglo-American canon. Christopher D’Addario explores how early modern authors reacted to and wrote about the experience of exile in relation both to their lost homeland and to the new communities they created for themselves. He analyzes the writings of first-generation New England Puritans, the Royalists in France during the England Civil War, and the ‘‘interior exiles’’ of John Milton and John Dryden. D’Addario explores the nature of artistic creation from the religious and political margins of early modern England, and in doing so, provides detailed insight into the psychological and material pressures of displacement and a much overdue study of the importance of exile to the development of early modern literature.Christopher D’Addario is visiting Assistant Professor of English at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania.