Two-Edg'd Weapons: Style and Ideology in the Comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve

This book provides an important rereading of dramatic language in the comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve. Demonstrating that comic wit of the late 1600s was a potent means by which to question orthodox political, social, and sexual values, this is the first work to draw significantly on postmodern theories to discuss the historical problems posed by late 17th-century dramatic style. Markley provides a dialogic account of style based on the work of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and gives revisionist reading of seventeenth-century stylistic theory.