The Insults of Defeat: Royalist Responses to Sir William Davenant's Gondibert (1651).

This article examines the controversy surrounding the publication of Davenant's epic romance, Gondibert, in order to demonstrate how a diverse group of royalist writers faced up to the profound absences and strange alterations attending the regicide by contemplating the flaws in Davenant's poetry and physiognomy. Drawing upon manuscript evidence and a very rare edition of a printed miscellany, it suggests that Davenant's nose, lost to venereal disease in the 1630s, became a potent symbol for royalist writers trying to come to terms with the Commonwealth political settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]