Texts and Readers in the Age of Marvell offers fresh perspectives from leading and emerging scholars on seventeenth-century British literature, with a focus on the surprising ways that texts interacted with writers and readers at specific cultural moments.

ContributorsAcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroductionChristopher D'AddarioPart I: Rethinking texts and readers1 Impractical criticism: close reading and the contingencies of historyMichael Schoenfeldt2 'Small portals': Marvell's Horatian Ode, print culture, and literary historyJoad Raymond3 Marvell discovers the public sphereMichael McKeon4 Extraordinarily ordinary: Nehemiah Wallington's experimental methodKathleen LynchPart II: Rethinking context5 A sense of place: historicism, whither wilt?Christopher D'Addario6 Understanding experience: subjectivity, sex, and suffering in early modern EnglandDerek Hirst7 Debating censorship: liberty and press control in the 1640sRandy Robertson8 'Armed winter, and inverted day': the politics of cold in Dryden and Purcell's King ArthurAnne CotterillPart III: Rethinking literary histories9 The European MarvellNigel Smith10 Waller, Tasso, and Marvell's Last Instructions to a PainterTimothy Raylor11 Marvell's personal elegy? Rewriting Shakespeare in A Poem upon the Death of O. C.Alex Garganigo12 How John Dryden read his Milton: The State of Innocence reconsideredMatthew C. AugustinePart IV: AfterwordOn behalf of the Age of Andrew Marvell?Steven N. Zwicker