Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose [Hardcover]

This book explores the interconnections between Milton's politics, poetics and prose writings.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.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.In this book, some of the most eminent critics of seventeenth-century literature and some of the liveliest younger scholars explore the interconnections among Milton's politics, poetics, and prose writings. While the essays focus on Milton's prose, they open up new perspectives on his major poems and on seventeenth-century ideologies, theologies, and interpretive practices. These essays challenge the notion of Milton's prose as an achievement of the left hand, proposing 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, 16435 Nigel Smith; 6. Milton'sl39