Sign-In
Cart
The Isle of Pines and Plato Redivivus
Paperback
Series: Thomas Hollis Library
ISBN13: 9780865979161
Publisher: Liberty Fund Inc
Published: Jan 26 2021
Pages: 560
Weight: 1.65
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
Henry Neville (1620-1694), writes David Womersley in his Introduction, was an experienced political actor who united a practitioner's sense of possibility with literary flair and imagination as he struggled to achieve headway for his republican commitments in the deceptive waters of late Stuart monarchy.
Educated at Oxford, Neville made an extended visit to Italy in 1643-44, where he formed long-standing connections in Florence and studied the institutions of republican Venice. In 1649 he entered the House of Commons with the support of Algernon Sidney (who was his second cousin). Over the next few years, Neville wrote pamphlets against the usurpation of the army and the threat of Cromwellian dictatorship, and as the Restoration approached, he was a leading member of James Harrington's Rota Club.
In late 1667 or early 1668, after he had returned to England from a second trip to Italy, Neville wrote the two works on which his reputation now rests. The Isle of Pines (1668) is at initial glance a slight, even salacious, shipwreck fantasy in which a fictional Elizabethan castaway, George Pines, and four female co-survivors populate a luxuriant tropical island with a thriving community that numbers, after two generations, almost two thousand. Like Harrington before him, Neville plays with the island trope and flirts with political implication, although it is unclear quite how serious and profound these implications are intended to be.
Neville pursues similar republican themes more fully and directly in his major work of 1680, Plato Redivivus. Often read as a moderate adaptation of Harringtonian principles to the realities of a monarchical system that was now again entrenched, the treatise is notable for its insistence on kingship as a trust from the people, on the duty of kings to relegate their own interests beneath those of their subjects, and on constitutional sanctions such as annual parliaments as necessary checks on royal power. Mixed monarchy and limited monarchy are emphatic terms throughout the work. However, Neville's critique of late Stuart monarchy relies more on the kind of cosmopolitan republicanism to which he had been exposed in his Italian travels than it does on more familiar home-grown concepts such as ancient constitutionalism.
The only scholarly edition of Henry Neville's most important writings, the Liberty Fund edition is constructed on a solid textual foundation, offering for the first time a thorough annotation of both texts.
David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on English literature from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. He is the editor of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (2012) for Cambridge University Press.
1 different editions
Also available
Also in
Philosophy
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea
Hunt-Hendrix, Leah
Taylor, Astra
Hardcover
In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument
Williams, Bernard
Paperback
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge
Fixico, Donald Lee
Paperback
Dreaming of Cinema: Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media
Lowenstein, Adam
Paperback
Machine Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Spiritual Freedom and the Re-Animation of Matter
Lafitte, Luke
Paperback
The Sociogony: Social Facts and the Ontology of Objects, Things, and Monsters
Worrell, Mark P.
Paperback
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Pirsig, Robert M.
Hardcover
The Electromagnetic Brain: Em Field Theories on the Nature of Consciousness
Joye, Shelli Renée
Paperback
Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida
Roudinesco, Elisabeth
Paperback
The New Science of Giambattista Vico: Unabridged Translation of the Third Edition (1744) with the Addition of Practic of the New Science
Vico, Giambattista
Paperback
The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy
Giridharadas, Anand
Hardcover
The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
Gottlieb, Anthony
Paperback
The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations
Barnes, Jonathan
Julia, Annas
Annas, Julia
Paperback
Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine's Practical Philosophy
Burt, Donald X.
Paperback
Suffering and the Search for Meaning: Contemporary Responses to the Problem of Pain
Rice, Richard
Paperback
The Philosophy of John Dewey: Volume 1. the Structure of Experience. Volume 2: The Lived Experience
Dewey, John
Paperback
Essays V2: Moral And Entertaining On The Various Faculties And Passions Of The Human Mind (1815)
Clarendon, Edward Hyde Earl of
Paperback
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Holiday, Ryan
Hanselman, Stephen
Hardcover
The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger
Hardcover
The Obstacle Is the Way Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph
Holiday, Ryan
Hardcover
Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us about Living
Jones, Peter
Hardcover
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Godfrey-Smith, Peter
Paperback
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Fifth Anniversary Limited Edition: The Global Bestseller
Mackesy, Charlie
Hardcover
Bless & Release: The physics of letting go-and wanting what's meant for you.
Laporte, Danielle
Paperback
The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love
Hardy, Janet W.
Easton, Dossie
Paperback
Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Wisdom for Inspiration and Healing from the Heart of Japan
Yoda, Hiroko
Hardcover
Self-Reliance and Nature: The Complete First and Second Series of Emerson's Essays
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Hardcover