Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought

by Kenneth A. Loparo

Overview

This study traces the decline of marriage as a metaphor for political authority, subjection, and tyranny in Seventeenth-century political thought. An image that bound consent and contract with divine right absolutism, and irrevocably connected royal prerogatives with subjects' liberties, its disappearance in the middle decades of the century coincided with the full emergence of patriarchalist and social contract theories. If both these accepted the importance of 'fathers of families', neither would suggest that political government could be comparable to 'marriage'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403920362
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	09/08/2004
Edition description:	2004
Pages:	243
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

BELINDA ROBERTS PETERS received her PhD in history from the University of California at Irvine in 1996, and taught courses in European culture and society, gender, and women's history at several southern California colleges, including California State University at San Marcos. She is beginning a project on seventeenth-century women's autobiography.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART I: MARRIAGE CONTRACT AS POLITICAL CONTRACT 'Union is a Marriage' 'A Mutuall Covenant betwixt King and People' 'From Adam's Having been Alone' PART II: SUBJECTION IN OECONOMY AND POLITY 'Life, Liberty, and Dower' 'All Natural Power is in Those Which Obey' 'Life, Liberty, and Estate' PART III: TYRANNY, CHASTITY, AND LIBERTY 'As David's Dealing with Uriah' 'Taking you a Wife for his Own Lusts' 'His Wife, Said he, His Wife, Fatall Sound!' Conclusion Notes Bibliography