1644 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1644.

Events

• April 15 - The second Globe Theatre is demolished by the Puritan government to make room for new housing.
• November 23 - Publication in London of Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England.
• December (end) - English Puritan controversialist Hezekiah Woodward is questioned for two days about "scandalous" pamphlets.
• With the London theatres closed by the Puritan regime, playwriting activity shifts to closet drama. The publication of an anonymous satire against Archbishop William Laud, titled Canterbury His Change of Diet, is one mark of the shift.
• 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, down to Williams' The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody (1652).

New books

• John Milton
  • Areopagitica
  • 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")

New drama

• Lope de Vega - Fiestas del Santísimo Sacramento
• Pierre Corneille - Le Menteur

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, Japanese poet (died 1694)
  • Elinor James, English pamphleteer (died 1719)

Deaths

• January – William Chillingworth, English religious controversialist (born 1602)
• March 5 – Ferrante Pallavicino, Italian satirist (born 1615)
• March 8 – Xu Xiake, 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)