Right Romance

In Right Romance, volume 1, Emily Griffiths Jones provides a scholarly examination of the intersections between romance, religion, and politics in England from 1588 to 1688. This work of literary criticism explores how writers navigated a period of intense political turbulence by using romance as a multigeneric narrative strategy. Rather than viewing romance as a short-lived mode tied solely to royalist politics, Jones demonstrates how Puritan republicans also utilized the form for political resistance and solace. The text analyzes the profound influence of Philip Sidney's New Arcadia and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene on seventeenth-century literary approaches.

The analysis pairs writers from opposing sides of the English Civil War, such as John Milton with Margaret Cavendish, to illuminate ongoing ideological struggles. By studying authors like John Bunyan and Aphra Behn, Right Romance investigates how romance shaped national, communal, and personal identity. This Renaissance literary criticism offers a recontextualized understanding of how generic forms interacted with gender, election, and community.