ABSTRACT
In The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, Christopher Hill attempts to rehabilitate radical Puritan ideas that had been dismissed as belonging to the “lunatic fringe”. John Morrill thought that by using only printed sources Hill had misunderstood the nature of radical debate. In response to the popular current of Marxist analysis, a school of thought critical of Hill’s theoretical position, the Revisionist School, developed. Hill’s insistence on the importance of ideas, particularly the ideas of groups that had always been looked down on as the “lunatic fringe,” still inspires scholars. During the 1980s, revisionist historians challenging some of the Marxists’ dominant claims and ways of working began to question Hill’s main argument of a “revolt within the Revolution.” Hill tries to show how the specific socioeconomic circumstances of the common people contributed to the rise and spread of radical Puritan ideas.
