Milton's Warring Angels: A Study of Critical Engagements

ISBN-13: 9780521581042 / Angielski / Twarda / 1997 / 228 str.

William Kolbrener

Opis

The centrality of Milton to the study of English literature obscures the intense debates that rage about his true allegiances. Was he a Christian Republican or a committed individualist, a radical, heretical free thinker, or a traditional absolutist? In Milton's Warring Angels, William Kolbrener provides a critical account of the reception and interpretation of Milton's texts. He claims that Milton resists paradigms of modernity drawn from the Enlightenment. His writing instead mediates between apparently contradictory positions. This ability to resist tendentious appropriations and reductive readings helps explain the continuing critical fascination with this most enigmatic of writers.

Recenzje

"[Milton's Warring Angels] is brilliant. This is a serious book that invites every reader to Milton to acknowledge the 'situatedness' of his or her relation to the texts. The book is the product of sustained thought, and it invites questions from its readers. It subtly and maturely demonstrates the nexus of politics, religion, and poetics in Milton's texts...the reader can participate in the negativity in which thought - as opposed to fixed judgment - comes into its own and can thus occasionall experience the sublime." Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Spis treści

Introduction; Part I. Politics: 1. 'Plainly partiall': the liberal Areopagitica; 2. 'Not the readiest way': Milton and the abandonment of politics; Part II. Theology: 3. Introduction: Whig metaphysics; 4. 'Abnormal forms of discourse': Milton's De Doctrina Christiana; 5. 'Milton contrasted with Milton': multiplicity in De Doctrina Christiana; Part III. Poetics: 6. Those grand Whigs, Bentley and Fish; 7. A 'noble stroke': representation in Paradise Lost; Conclusion: devils, angels and Milton; Notes; Index.