"The Republican Art of Digression in the Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson"
Résumé
This paper aims to examine how Lucy Hutchinson draws on a sophisticated art of digression to write a republican history of the English Civil War. What happens “abroad,” she repeats, is only important as long as it sheds light on the Colonel’s life, hence her use of digressions that subordinate general history to particular history. However, it will be argued that from one excursus to another, Lucy Hutchinson offers a polemical chronicle of the years 1642-1648 and an apology of tyrannicide, patiently demonstrating how the King’s repeated failure to negotiate with Parliament fatally led to his trial and execution. From this perspective, it will be asked to what extent her art of digression can be construed as a strategy of “camouflage,” allowing her to write a republican history in the margins of the Memoirs, without challenging the patriarchal and historiographical values of her age.