Three and a half centuries after Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d
were written, do Milton’s epic poems still resonate with
contemporary concerns? In Milton’s Leveller God, David Williams
advances a progressive and democratic interpretation of Milton’s
epics to show they are more relevant than ever. Exploring two blind
spots in the critical tradition - the failure to read Milton’s
poetry as drama and to recognize his depictions of heaven’s
political and social evolution - Williams reads Milton’s “great
argument” as a rejection of social hierarchy and of patriarchal
government that is more attuned to the radical political thought
developed by the Levellers during the English Revolution. He traces
echoes between Milton’s texts and thousands of pages of Leveller
writings that advocated for popular rule, extended suffrage, and
religious tolerance, arguing that Milton’s God is still the
unacknowledged ground of popular sovereignty. Williams demonstrates
that Milton’s Leveller sympathies, expressed in his early prose,
conflicted with his official duties for Oliver Cromwell’s government
in the 1650s, but his association with the journalist Marchamont
Nedham later freed him to imagine an egalitarian republic. In a work
that connects the great epic poet in new ways to the politics of his
time and our own, Milton’s Leveller God shows how the political
landscape of Milton’s work fundamentally unsettles ancient
hierarchies of soul and body, man and woman, reason and will, and
ruler and ruled.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780773550360
Publisert
2021
Utgiver
ACP - McGill Queen's University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter