Milton's Leveller God / David Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, David, 1945- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Milton, John, 1608-1674--Criticism and interpretation.

Milton, John.

Milton, John, 1608-1674.

Politics in literature.

God in literature.

Levellers.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xviii, 494 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017.

Summary:

"John Milton's epic poems are beginning to lose their relevance in a post-Christian world. Critics regularly ask: Isn't Paradise Lost a monument to dead ideas? The aim of this book is to restore Milton's cultural centrality by showing how his God remains the unacknowledged ground of popular democracy, a political form invented by social levellers in the 1640s. While the vast range of Milton's sources in classical republican thought, Christian humanism, and Machiavellian discourse have been well-documented by scholars, we are just beginning to understand how much his republican prose is inflected by his association with Marchamont Nedham's Mercurius Politicus, the weekly newsbook that Milton licensed in 1651-52. And Nedham himself was closely associated with Leveller thought, which he routinely dressed in Roman republican ideas. From thousands of pages of the newsbook and Leveller writings, I identify a deep repertoire of phrasings and ideas that reveal Milton's sympathy for Leveller ideas in his prose from 1644-49, his ambivalent support for both a classical republic and a Leveller democracy in the 1650s, and his active expression of Leveller ideas in his epic poems after the Restoration. Oliver Cromwell, whom the Levellers identified as the Apostate, serves as a distinctive model for Satan in Paradise Lost, while Milton's Heaven evolves from a feudal monarchy to a human world of liberty and equality, even after the Fall. As with his social heresies, Milton's religious heresies remain a carefully couched force for liberalism and sexual equality, since the figure of a material deity unsettles all the old hierarchies of soul/body, man/woman, reason/will, and ruler/ruled."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part I A Levelling History

1 The Levellers and the Council of State: Fateful Choices 33

2 Milton and Politicus: Deposing Cromwell 64

Part II Paradise Lost

3 "The Tyranny of Heaven": Republican Language in Hell 105

4 "The Great Consult": From Putney to Pandemonium 126

5 "All Power I Give Thee": Kingdom of Grace 151

6 "Two of Far Nobler Shape": Naked Majesty 169

7 "The Winged Hierarch": Ironies of Degree 191

8 "Behold the Excellence": Might and Right 211

9 "And Thence Diffuse His Good": God and Matter 231

10 "Among Unequals What Societie?": The Republic of Love 249

11 "Here Grows the Cure of All": Viral Hierarchies 271

12 "To Her Own Inclining Left": Judgment and Regeneration 300

13 "Brought Down to Dwell on Eeven Ground": Fathers and Sons 321

14 "So God with Man Unites": A Levelling Incarnation 334

Part III Paradise Regain'd

15 "Searching What Was Writ": The Foxean Reader 351

16 "Also It Is Written": The Flesh Made Word 367.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [391]-472) and index.

Other Format:

Williams, David, 1945- Milton's leveller God.

ISBN:

9780773550346

0773550348

9780773550339

077355033X

OCLC:

964327598