Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton

Abstract

Réformeof the sixteenth century, and would tell us much about the transition from the feudal to the modern state.This raises a bigger question: must the modern state be examined through its new institutions, as Potter seems to imply, or through the message and the ideology that lay behind those institutions?The answer lies probably somewhere in the middle, as administrative history cannot be totally separated from political history.