Treaty of Utrecht - Literary Responses

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

John Richardson (National University of Singapore)
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The Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, prompted a great deal of writing. Partisan views about the war and its ending and excitement about the peace found expression in polemical pamphlets, caustic satire and self-professedly high-minded poetry. Some of these works or their offspring have survived. The figure of John Bull first appeared in a pamphlet series in 1712, and he has become one of the few fictional characters to earn an entry in the

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

. Specialists still study the party writings of Jonathan Swift, and three of Alexander Pope's major poems have connections, of differing degrees of closeness, with the treaty.

The Rape of the Lock

,

Messiah

and

Windsor-Forest

all belong in part to the controversial and…

2754 words

Citation: Richardson, John. "Treaty of Utrecht - Literary Responses". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 December 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5558, accessed 28 March 2024.]

5558 Treaty of Utrecht - Literary Responses 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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