SOURCE: "History and Propaganda," in The Civil War, edited by Allan Pritchard, University of Toronto Press, 1973, pp. 13-35.

In the essay below, Pritchard offers an extended evaluation of The Civil War in terms of the torrent of Royalist propaganda unleashed in the first months of the conflict. He examines various elements of the poem, including its depiction of military action, its structural design, its conservative political views, and its polemical treatment of history.

As Cowley implies in his description of The Civil War in his 1656 preface, 'three Books of the Civil War it self,' military action is central in the poem, although the scope of the poem is much wider than military history, and his treatment of events is that of a poet and propagandist, rather than that of a chronicler or historian. Cowley is concerned with the religious and political issues and the personalities of the...