Siege literature has existed since antiquity but has not always been understood as a crucial element of culture. Focusing on its magnetic force, Besieged brings to light its popularity and potency between the British Civil War and the Great Northern War in Europe, a period in which literary texts reflected an urgent interest in siege mentality and tactics.
Exploring the siege as represented in canonical works by Milton, Dryden, Defoe, Davenant, Cowley, Cavendish, and Bunyan, alongside a wide array of little-known memoirs, plays, poems, and works of prose fiction on military and civilian experiences of siege warfare, Besieged breaks new ground in the field of early modern war literature. Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson draw on theories of space and place to show how early modern Britons feverishly worked to make sense of the immediacy, horror, and trauma of urban warfare, offering a valuable perspective on the literature that captured the cultural imagination during and after the traumatic civil wars of the 1640s.
Alker and Nelson demonstrate how the narratives of besieged cities became a compelling way to engage with the fragility of urban space, unstable social structures, developing technologies, and the inadequacy of old heroic martial models. Given the reality of urban warfare in our own age, Besieged provides a timely foundation for understanding the history of such spaces and their cultural representation.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 820.9/3581
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 9780228005919
- LCCN
- PR431
- LCCN Item number
- A45 2021eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- NLC
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (x, 324 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)kck00241613 (OCoLC)1191824304 (CaOOCEL)460267
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- NLC
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- BESIEGED 2
- Title 4
- Copyright 5
- Dedication 6
- Contents 8
- Acknowledgments 10
- The “Talismanic” Siege: An Introduction 14
- 1 Facts, Feelings, and Fractured Networks: Military Diaries, Letters, and Memoirs on Siege Warfare 35
- 2 Siege Drama Reimagined: From the Shakespearean to the Restoration Stage 74
- 3 Space Made for Change: Siege Drama after Davenant and Dryden 125
- 4 Songs of War in the Popular Imagination: The Siege Ballad 170
- 5 The Fading Heroic to the Satiric: The Siege in Elevated Poetic Strains 200
- 6 Old Forms, New Discourses: The Siege in Early Modern Prose Fiction 249
- Epilogue 266
- Notes 274
- Index 320