While the baroque remains a foundational concept for other European literary and aesthetic traditions, scholars have largely elided the word from British literary history. Instead of
baroque
, these critics prefer to use terms like
metaphysical
,
Stuart
, and
Laudian
—terms that emphasise England’s primacy rather than its relations with the world. In response to these Anglocentric approaches,
The English Baroque in Early Modern Literature
shows how the baroque offers a better way to appreciate the importance of transnational and multilingual relations to the development of English letters.