SOURCE: Venuti, Lawrence. “The Politics of Allusion: The Gentry and Shirley's The Triumph of Peace.” English Literary Renaissance 16, no. 1 (winter 1986): 182-205.

In the following essay, Venuti examines allusions to Charles I's ban prohibiting the gentry from living in London in The Triumph of Peace.

Topical allusions can be said to anchor a literary text in history, but they soon prove to be an unsteady mooring once we begin to investigate the textual operation by which they are transformed. References to historical figures and events ultimately put into question the naive assumption that literature can be a mirror reflection of reality; they rather show us that “the text takes as its object, not the real, but certain significations by which the real lives itself—significations which are themselves the product of its partial abolition.”¹ These “significations” are social representations, values and beliefs that serve the interests of a particular...