Republican writing from milton to locke

English republican thought emerged in full force during the Civil War years of the 1640s and the experiments in non-monarchical government during the 1650s. The effects on literature were profound because expression was given to republican ideas in the works of some of the greatest writers of the period. Foremost among these is Milton, but among the greater poets there is also Marvell, and among lesser but important writers in poetry and prose Lucy Hutchinson, George Wither, Thomas May, and Henry Neville. When the monarchy was restored and Charles II returned from exile, the public face of literature became decidedly monarchical, but republicanism was not consigned to oblivion. It lived on in various ways in the ensuing centuries, despite and, in some respects, because of its failure in 1660. Among other effects, that failure gave its literary expression the greatest and most fascinatingly contradictory complexion in Paradise Lost (1667).