CRITICISM

Bush, Douglas. “Jonson, Donne, and Their Successors.” In English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century 1600-1660, pp. 104-69. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945.

Traces the currents of Cavalier and metaphysical poetry in the seventeenth century.

Butler, Martin. “Lovers and Tyrants: Courtier Plays 1637-42.” In Theatre and Crisis 1632-1642, pp. 55-83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Rejects popular notions about English drama in the decade before the closure of the theaters.

Deneef, A. Leigh. “The Courtly Ceremonial.” In “This Poetick Liturgie”: Robert Herrick's Ceremonial Mode, pp. 69-108. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1974.

Analyzes the ceremonial mode in Herrick's courtly lyrics, focusing on either their ‘Cavalier’ or ‘functionary’ voice.

Hammond, Gerald. “Richard Lovelace and the Uses of Obscurity.” Proceedings of the British Academy 71 (1985): 203-34.

Attempts to remove Lovelace's poetry from the “Cavalier” classification by arguing that Lovelace's work embodies the major concerns of mid-seventeenth-century lyric poetry in England.

Harbage, Alfred. “The Cavalier Mode.” In Cavalier Drama: An Historical and Critical Supplement to the Study of the Elizabethan and Restoration Stage, pp. 28-47. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1964.

Delineates the distinctive themes, characterization, and language of Cavalier plays.

Hartmann, Cyril Hughes. The Cavalier Spirit and Its Influence on the Life and Work of Richard Lovelace (1618-1658). New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd., 1973, 158 p.

Explores the character and philosophy of the Cavaliers and pronounces Lovelace the “ideal Cavalier.”

Judkins, David C. “Recent Studies in the Cavalier Poets: Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, John Suckling, and Edmund Waller.” English Literary Renaissance 7, no. 2 (spring 1977): 243-58.

Bibliography focusing on, but not limited to, research published in the 1960s and 1970s.

Maclean, Hugh. Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets: Authoritative Texts, Criticism, edited by Hugh Maclean, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1974, 591 p.

Includes poems of eighteen different poets and extensive criticism.

Malcolmson, Cristina. “The Garden Enclosed/The Woman Enclosed: Marvell and the Cavalier Poets.” In Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England, edited by Richard Burt and John Michael Archer, pp. 251-69. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Considers Marvell's criticism of the Cavalier poets, which contends that they attempted to justify the pursuit of their desires as part of the natural order.

Miner, Earl. “The Good Life.” In The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton, pp. 43-99. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Examines Cavalier poetry in the context of seventeenth-century ideas about the pursuit of pleasure and morality.

Rando, Sharon Sanders. “‘On My First Sonne’: The Aesthetic Radical of Cavalier Poetry.” Concerning Poetry 9, no. 1 (spring 1976): 27-30.

Regards Ben Jonson's funeral tribute to his son as “representative of the finest in Cavalier poetry.”

Skelton, Robin. Introduction to The Cavalier Poets, edited by Robin Skelton, pp. 21-30. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Discusses the prevailing themes of the Cavaliers and why their importance and influence has generally been undervalued by critics.

Summers, Joseph H. “Gentlemen of the Court and of Art: Suckling, Herrick, and Carew.” In The Heirs of Donne and Johnson, pp. 41-75. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Explains how the Cavaliers advanced the new ideal of gentlemanly behavior.