Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Milton's Warring Angels
  • Cited by 15
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
November 2009
Print publication year:
1997
Online ISBN:
9780511581991
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511581991
Subjects:
Literature, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature
Information

Book description

The centrality of Milton to the study of English literature often obscures the intense debates that rage about this ideological allegiances. The reception and interpretation of Milton's texts consistently present him as either 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 argues that the governing scheme of Milton criticism, the opposition of 'satanic' and 'angelic' readings, derives from historiographical tradition rooted in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment antithesis between reason and authority, Kolbrener argues, has generated a set of interpretive approaches that inevitably end up violating the meaning of Milton's texts. Kolbrener shows how Milton articulates his thought in lexicons which are never fully assimilable to paradigms of modernity drawn from the Enlightenment. Instead, Milton's prose and poetry mediate between apparently contradictory positions; they join without ever reconciling the satanic and the angelic.

Reviews

"Wide ranging and yet admirably focused, this volume is an important corrective to continuing arguments that emphasize only one of the poles on which the worlds of Milton's literary and polemical universe turn. Is Milton a dualist or monist? An individualist or a republican? A champion of freedom or authority? A proponent of contingent or absolute truth? This book responds, 'yes'." J.H. Sims, Choice

"Kolbrener provides a clear and concise argument for 'polyvalent' Milton, in a manner that raises questions and provokes further debate." Rachel Falconer, English Language Notes

"[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

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.