Description: Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans looks at how the perspective of sixteenth-century English Catholic exiles and seventeenth-century English royalist exiles helped to generate a form of cosmopolitanism that was rooted in, but also transcended, contemporary religious and national identities. Lockey considers the experiences of English exiles and the influence that they had on writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Anthony Munday, Sir John Harington, Sir Richard Fanshawe, John Milton, and Aphra Behn.
Review Quotes:
"Lockey clearly emphasizes that 'English cosmopolitanism was first and foremost traditional and conservative' (314), although it served as a challenge to the emerging national narratives, and it contained the potential to be stripped of its more obviously conservative manifestations. It could be employed, for example, by writers who were working in the Protestant tradition, who introduced a transnational approach inherited from 'a prohibited ideology' (315). His monograph offers a careful exploration of early modern texts and a thought-provoking read for scholars working in the discipline of history as well as English literature."
- Katy Gibbons, University of Portsmouth, Renaissance Quarterly.
"...it is wonderfully nuanced and never repetitive. More than that, it is resonant in ways which--given the long gestation of academic monographs - its author could hardly have predicted. At a time when most British and American academics find themselves at odds with the nationalistic discourse of their respective countries, ideals of transnational engagement have never seemed more topical or more appealing. One can applaud Lockey's work for its timeliness."
- Alison Shell, University College London, UK