Milton and Religious Controversy
Milton and Religious Controversy
$127.00
USDReligious satire and polemic constitute an elusive presence in Paradise Lost. John N. King shows how Milton's poem takes on new meaning when understood as part of a strategy of protest against ecclesiastical formalism and clericalism. The experience of Adam and Eve before the Fall recalls many Puritan devotional habits. After the Fall, they are prone to 'idolatrous' ritual and ceremony that anticipate the religious 'error' of Milton's own age. Vituperative sermons, broadsides and pamphlets, notably Milton's own tracts, afford a valuable context for recovering the poem's engagement with the violent history of the Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Restoration, while contemporary visual satires help to clarify Miltonic practice. Eighteenth-century critics who attacked breaches of decorum and sublimity in Paradise Lost alternately deplored and ignored a literary and polemical tradition deployed by Milton's contemporaries. This important study, first published in 2000, sheds light on Milton's epic and its literary and religious contexts.
- Innovative study of religious invective, satire and polemic in relation to Milton's Paradise Lost by a distinguished scholar
- Considers Milton in relation to religious satire by Spenser in the sixteenth century, and the views of eighteenth-century critics
- Examines Paradise Lost in the context of seventeenth-century visual satires, many of which are reproduced here for the first time
Reviews & endorsements
"...this book constitutes a necessary correction to the general undrestanding of the place of satire in Paradise Lost, and it succeeds in 'complicating and enriching our understanding of an encyclopedic poem'." H-Net Reviews
"King shows that religious satire and polemic are an integral part of Paradise Lost and that the poem was deeply engaged with the religious controversies of the 17th century...Lucidly written.' Choice
"a terrific reference for anyone who works in seventeenth-century English literature...Without a doubt, King's book lays the ground for further work on relations between Milton, Spenser, and the seventeenth-century Spenserians." Spenser Review
"a ...capacious and significant work, continuing King's series of exploration of the impact of the Reformation in English literature and culture. Few books of this length shed more light on religious controversy, and even fewer are better written." Times Literary Supplement
"King has recovered for our time a style of reading and a religio-historical context that enrich our understanding of Paradise Lost. Essential reading for Milton scholars, this book will attract and hold the interest of historians of genre, of intellectual historians, and of historians of religion. It will be useful not only for its argument, but as a reference work on religious abuse, satire, and polemic." Stephen Fallon
"...Milton and Religious Controversy brings fresh insights and considerable erudition to readings of Lycidas and Paradise Lost in a carefully woven polemical context...Scholars of Milton and of seventeenth-century religious history will find much value in this thoughtful and stimulating work." Modern Philology
"...a wonderful little book whose relative brevity might conceal how much material John N. King...manages to pack into 195 pages of text...a triumph of scholarship in its coverage of primary and secondary sources." Christianity and Literature
"...splendid and readable...[King's] determination to disclose Milton's "controversial merriment" leads to a new udnerstanding of the epic." Sixteenth Century Journal
"the exciting and detailed handling of passages accumulates, any disappointment dwindles in the rearview mirror...Catholicism and formalism in the later books of Paradise Lost, and have already been put to good use in at least one classroom." Albion
Product details
July 2000Hardback
9780521771986
248 pages
229 × 152 × 17 mm
0.54kg
25 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Controversial merriment
- 2. Milton reads Spenser's May Eclogue
- 3. Satan and the demonic conclave
- 4. Milton's den of error
- 5. The paradise of fools
- 6. Laughter in heaven
- 7. Miltonic transubstantiation
- 8. Idolatry in Eden
- 9. Images of both churches
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Transcriptions from satirical broadsheets.
