Milton and Modernity: Politics, Masculinity and Paradise Lost [Hardcover]

This book presents a theoretical and historicized reading of the production of the 'autonomous' subject in Milton's prose and in Paradise Lost. It rejects the current orthodoxy that liberal humanism is just a form of domination, and reads Milton's texts as revolutionary. Although Milton participates in the formation of discourses of sexuality, labour and the nature of reason which come to be normative, neither Milton's texts nor modernity more generally can be understood without also accepting the dynamism inherent in the belief in individual freedom.Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Milton and Modernity Born to Command and Not to Obey: Milton and the Political Force of Liberal Humanism No Respecter of Persons: Individual Merit in Milton's Heaven Stronger than Death: Masculinity and Marriage in Paradise Lost Labour and Love: The Individual and the Natural World in Paradise Lost Conclusion: On Even Ground: Adam as Every Man Select Bibliography IndexMATTHEW JORDAN is Lecturer in Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University.