The Oxford Muses in the Protectorate

The University of Oxford compiled an anthology of poetry in celebration of the Anglo-Dutch peace treaty signed in the spring of 1654. In Chapter 3, this anthology's array of allusions and images of rebirth is related to the university's task of educating a post-war elite—a role which gave the university power and authority, but subjected it to external interference and pressures to reform. Looking closely at the poems' telling silences and conditional praise, it is shown how poets contributing to this anthology negotiate a fraught nexus of interests and values as they seek to define a new place for the university in British and European culture. This chapter shows that the university's own process of political adjustment, which involved complex struggles with other institutions, afforded its poets unique insights into the cultural tensions and possibilities that shaped the Protectorate.

Archaeology · Protectorate · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History