Writers have always addressed political issues, from supporting or resisting revolution, to analysing the ethics of war or the sophistries of diplomatic language, to attacking the class politics of industrialisation, the exploitative dimensions of empire, sexual inequalities, prejudice and domestic violence. Literature has also drawn attention to the nexus between power and language: the ways in which language masks ideology, normalises inequality and stifles dissent. This course is designed to spotlight a series of central political issues with which writers have engaged from the Renaissance to the present.