Introduction

Summary

The ‘Introduction’ uses Rochester’s poem ‘Timon’ to illustrate the conventional view of Restoration poetry as topical, London-centric, satirical and male-dominated. It suggests that this perception of Restoration poetry, although correct to a degree, represents an unduly narrow view of the period, failing to account for such important works as John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Katherine Philips’s Poems and Abraham Cowley’s late English and Latin poetry. It makes the case for Restoration poetry’s engagement with wider contexts of literary history and literary geography and explains how these contexts are variously addressed in the three following chapters of The Restoration Transposed.