Conclusion

The Conclusion briefly narrates the decline of the model for political poetry explored in this book, with the deaths of Davenant and Cowley, Charles II’s short-lived experiment with prerogative toleration in 1672, and the political divergence of Dryden and Marvell. It then draws together the forms of sovereignty explored in this book. First, it reflects on the case for reading the poets’ views as secularizing, to the limited extent that they emphasize anti-clerical erastianism. And second, it considers the flexible yet absolute form of artificial sovereignty imagined through poetic imagination.