1648 in literature

The year 1648 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• February - Ordinances passed in England against plays; actors to be fined and theatres pulled down.^[1]
• July 14 - During the siege of Colchester, the cannon, Humpty Dumpty, is blown off the walls, possibly inspiring the nursery rhyme.
• October - Richard Lovelace, Royalist poet, is imprisoned for opposition to Parliament.^[2]
• René Descartes meets Frans Burman, resulting in the Conversation with Burman.
• Robert Boyle writes Seraphic Love, his first important work, which will not be published until 1660.
• Ill-health forces Pierre Gassendi to give up lecturing at the Collège Royal.
• Richard Flecknoe travels to Brazil.
• Edward Pococke becomes Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, but Obadiah Walker loses his academic post.
• Richard Crashaw, exiled in Paris, publishes two hymns in Latin.
• King Charles I, imprisoned in Windsor Castle from December, reportedly spends much of his time reading the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
• King Frederick III of Denmark establishes the Royal Library, Denmark.

New books

• Robert Filmer - Freeholders Grand Inquest touching our Sovereign Lord the King and his Parliament
• Madeleine de Scudéry - Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus, volume 1
• John Wilkins - Mathematical Magick
• Baltasar Gracián - Agudeza y arte de ingenio
• Francisco Martínez de Mata - Memorial a razón de la despoblación y pobreza de España y su remedio
• José García de Salcedo Coronel - Comentarios al Panegírico del Duque de Lerma de Luis de Góngora
• Fray Marcos de Salmerón - El príncipe escondido

Published plays

• Anonymous - Crafty Cromwell
• Anonymous - Kentish Fair, or the Parliament Sold to Their Best Worth
• Anonymous ("Mercurius Melancholicus") - Mistress Parliament Her Gossiping
• Jasper Mayne - The Amorous War

Poetry

• Christen Aagaard - Threni Hyperborci
• Richard Corbet - Poetica Stromata
• Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland - Otia Sacra
• Robert Herrick
  • Hesperides
  • Noble Numbers
• Francisco de Borja y Aragón - Obras en verso
• Francisco López de Zárate - La invención de la Cruz
• Francisco de Quevedo (ed. Jusepe Antonio González de Salas) - El Parnaso español, en dos cumbre dividido, con las nueve musas

Births

• January 1 – Elkanah Settle, English poet and dramatist (died 1724)
• Unknown date – Gaspard Abeille, French poet (died 1718)

Deaths

• February 2 – George Abbot, English writer (born c. 1603)
• March 12 – Tirso de Molina, Spanish dramatist (born 1571)
• May 26 – Vincent Voiture, French writer and poet (born 1597)
• August 20 – Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury Anglo-Welsh writer and soldier (born 1583)
• September 1 – Marin Mersenne, French theologian and philosopher (born 1588)

References