Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also of ... More

Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally. The study draws radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and locates a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. The book questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be, at a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action.