Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose

In this book some of the most eminent critics of seventeenth-century literature and some of the liveliest younger scholars explore the interconnections between Milton’s politics, poetics and prose writings. While the essays focus on Milton’s prose, they open up interesting perspectives on his major poems and on seventeenth-century ideologies, theologies and interpretative practices. Their aim is to bridge the gap between a history-of-ideas approach and literary/textual analysis, showing how key ideas - such as authority, divorce, martyrdom or iconoclasm - stimulate and trouble the imagination of a great writer. These essays challenge the notion of Milton’s prose as an ‘achievement of the left hand’, and propose a complex relation between text and context, the aesthetic and the sociopolitical, issues of representation and the politics of gender.

List of illustrations; List of contributors; A note on citations and abbreviations; Introduction: 'labouring the word' David Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner; 1. Embodying glory: the apocalyptic strain in Milton's Of Reformation Janel Mueller; 2. Wanting a supplement: the question of interpretation in Milton's early prose Stanley Fish; 3. The metaphysics of Milton's divorce tracts Stephen M. Fallon; 4. No meer amatorious novel? Annabel Patterson; 5. Areopagitica: voicing contexts, 1643–5 Nigel Smith; 6. Milton's Observations upon the Articles of Peace: Ireland under English eyes Thomas N. Corns; 7. Milton's iconoclastic truth Lana Cable; 8. 'Suffering for Truths sake': Milton and martyrdom John R. Knott Jr; 9. Milton and the poetics of defense David Loewenstein; 10. Elective poetics and Milton's prose: A Treatise of Civil Power and Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings Out of the Church Susanne Woods; 11. Milton's The Readie and Easie Way and the English jeremiad Laura Lunger Knoppers; 12. Citation, authority, and De Doctrina Christiana Regina M. Schwartz; 13. The History of Britain and its Restoration audience Gary D. Hamilton; 14. The poetics of engagement James Grantham Turner; Index.

In this book some of the most eminent critics of seventeenth-century literature and some of the liveliest younger scholars explore the interconnections between Milton's politics, poetics and prose writings. While the essays focus on Milton's prose, they open up interesting perspectives on his major poems and on seventeenth-century ideologies, theologies and interpretative practices.