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Article: Recent studies in the Restoration and eighteenth century.
- Article from:
- Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
- Article date:
- June 22, 2004
- Author:
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It may seem ungrateful, but I want to begin this review by asking if there were any such age as "The Restoration and Eighteenth Century." That awkward compound has given way to "The Long Eighteenth Century," but is this a period at all? A cultural, political, or social moment? What was the Restoration outside the fantasy of those cavaliers who rushed back in 1660 to reclaim what had been lost in the civil wars? And what sort of intimacy might it have had with the next century, which began by repudiating the Restoration as a sink of moral corruption, spiritual regression, and political tyranny? Are there other and better ways of constituting this literary period? Should it ...