Chiastic history

Chiastic history January 12, 2007

Hobbes called it a “circular motion of the sovereign power,” but what he actually described in summarizing the Revolutionary-Restoration sequence was a chiasm: “it moved from King Charles I to the Long Parliament; from thence to the Rump; from the Rump to Oliver Cromwell; and thence back again from Richard Cromwell to the Rump; thence to the Long Parliament and thence to King Charles II, where long may it remain.”


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