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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1644.

Events

  • April 15 – The second Globe Theatre is demolished by the Puritan government to make room for housing.
  • November 23 – The publication in London of Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England.
  • The publication of The Bloody Tenet of Persecution marks the start of a major controversy between Roger Williams and John Cotton on religious tolerance in a Calvinist context. The controversy plays out through a series of works issued by both men in the coming years, through to Williams' The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody (1652).

New books

Prose

  • John Milton
  • Areopagitica (tract against censorship)
  • Of Education
  • Roger Williams – The Bloody Tenet of Persecution
  • Francisco de Quevedo
  • Vida de Marco Bruto
  • Vida de San Pablo Apóstol
  • Juan Eusebio Nieremberg – Vida del santo padre y gran siervo de Dios el beato Francisco de Borja
  • René Descartes – Principia Philosophiae
  • Marin Mersenne – Cogitata physico-mathematica
  • Evangelista Torricelli – Opera geometrica
  • Giulio Strozzi (editor) – Le glorie della signora Anna Renzi romana (published in Venice; a tribute to Anna Renzi, the "first diva")

Drama

  • Lope de Vega – Fiestas del Santísimo Sacramento
  • Pierre Corneille – Le Menteur
  • Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland – Virtue's Triumph

Births

  • August 6 – Louise de la Vallière, French royal mistress, subject of a Dumas novel (died 1710)
  • October 2 – François-Timoléon de Choisy, French memoirist (died 1724)
  • Unknown dates
  • Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉), Japanese poet (died 1694)
  • Elinor James, English pamphleteer (died 1719)

Deaths

  • January 30 – William Chillingworth, English religious controversialist (born 1602)
  • March 5 – Ferrante Pallavicino, Italian satirist (born 1615)
  • March 8 – Xu Xiake (徐霞客), Chinese travel writer and geographer (born 1587)
  • September 7 – Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, Italian historian (born 1579)
  • September 8 – Francis Quarles, English poet (born 1592)
  • November 10 – Luís Vélez de Guevara, Spanish dramatist and novelist (born 1579)
  • November 21 – Raphael Sobiehrd-Mnishovsky, Czech lawyer and writer (born 1580)

References