Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:01:39.546Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Milton and the Tragedy of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Abstract

Milton's one venture into the genre of tragedy, Samson Agonistes, has prompted a notoriously divided reception among modern critics, not least because it revives the topos of exemplary violence, which the poet had conspicuously rejected in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. I propose we consider the underlying Samson plot not simply as the triumph or tragedy of a chosen nation and its representative hero but as the tragic collision between a universalizing faith and a nation's claims to exceptionality. Even after the devastating collapse of England's republican experiment, Milton never wavered in his commitment to the communal as well as the private manifestations of faith. The nation, or a nation equivalent, was an indispensable vehicle for continuing Reform, but the conceptual parameters of that nation, its relation to geographic place, and its rights in relation to other nations and to faiths other than its own posed a foundational dilemma for Milton's dramatic poem.

Type
Special Topic: Tragedy Coordinated by Helene P. Foley and Jean E. Howard
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Achinstein, Sharon. “Samson Agonistes.” A Companion to Milton. Ed. Corns, Thomas N. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.411-28. Print.Google Scholar
Brooks, Douglas A. Introduction. Brooks, Milton 312.Google Scholar
Brooks, Douglas A. ed. Milton and the Jews. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, John. “A Work in Praise of Terrorism? September 11 and Samson Agonistes.” Times Literary Supplement 6 Sept. 2002: 1516. Print.Google Scholar
Corns, Thomas N.Milton and the Limitations of Englishness.” Loewenstein and Stevens 205–16.Google Scholar
Escobedo, Andrew. “The Invisible Nation: Church, State, and Schism in Milton's England.” Loewenstein and Stevens 173201.Google Scholar
Fenton, Mary C. Milton's Places of Hope: Spiritual and Political Connections of Hope with Land. Farnham: Ashgate, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. How Milton Works. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. “‘There Is Nothing He Cannot Ask’: Milton, Liberalism, and Terrorism.” Leib and Labriola 143–64.Google Scholar
The Geneva Bible. 1560. Facsim. ed. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1969. Print.Google Scholar
Gregory, Tobias. From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, Tobias. “The Political Messages of Samson Agonistes. SEL 50.1 (2010): 175203. Print.Google Scholar
Guibbory, Achsah. “England, Israel, and the Jews in Milton's Prose, 1649-1660.” Brooks, Milton 1334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guibbory, Achsah. “Israel and English Protestant Nationalism: ‘Fast Sermons’ during the English Revolution.” Loewenstein and Stevens 115–38.Google Scholar
Hadfield, Andrew. “Milton and the Struggle for the Representation of the Nation: Reading Paradise Lost through Eikonoklastes.” Loewenstein and Stevens 5172.Google Scholar
The Holy Bible. Oxford: Oxford UP, n.d. Print. Authorized King James Vers.Google Scholar
Hughes, Merritt Y. Introduction to Paradise Regained. Complete Poems and Major Prose. By John Milton. Ed. Hughes. Indianapolis: Odyssey, 1957. 471–82. Print.Google Scholar
JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Pub. Soc., 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Kahn, Victoria. “Disappointed Nationalism: Milton in the Context of Seventeenth-Century Debates about the Nation-State.” Loewenstein and Stevens 249–72.Google Scholar
Kelley, Mark R., and Joseph Wittreich, eds. Altering Eyes: New Perspectives on Samson Agonistes. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Kerrigan, John. “The Anglo-Scoto-Dutch Triangle: Milton and Marvell to 1660.” Loewenstein and Stevens 217–48.Google Scholar
Leib, Michael, and Labriola, Albert C., eds. Milton in the Age of Fish: Essays on Authorship, Text, and Terrorism. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Levinson, Marjorie. “Reflections on the New Historicism”. European Romantic Review 23.3 (2012): 355–62. Print.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, David. “Milton's Double-Edged Volume: On Religious Politics and Violence in the 1671 Poems.” Milton Quarterly 44.4 (2010): 231–38. Print.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, David. “Milton's Nationalism and the English Revolution: Strains and Contradictions.” Loewenstein and Stevens 2550.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, David. Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loewenstein, David. “Samson Agonistes and the Culture of Religious Terror.” Leib and Labriola 203–28.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, David, and Stevens, Paul, eds. Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2008. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milton, John. Areopagitica. Milton, Complete Prose Works 2: 480570.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose. Ed. Kerrigan, William, Rumrich, John, and Fallon, Stephen. New York: Mod. Lib., 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Complete Prose Works. Ed. Wolfe, Don M. et al. 8 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1953-82. Print.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The History of Britain, That Part Especially Now Call'd England; Continu d to the Norman Conquest. Milton, Complete Prose Works 5, pt. 1: 1457.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Of True Religion. Milton, Complete Prose Works 8: 408–40.Google Scholar
Milton, John. “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.” Milton, Complete Poetry 1830.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Milton, Complete Poetry 251630.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Regained. Milton, Complete Poetry 631–97.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Readie and Easie Way. Milton, Complete Prose Works 7: 340463.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Samson Agonistes. Milton, Complete Poetry 699761.Google Scholar
Mohamed, Feisal G.Confronting Religious Violence: Milton's Samson Agonistes.” PMLA 120.2 (2005): 327–40. Print.Google Scholar
Mohamed, Feisal G. Milton and the Post-secular Present: Ethics, Politics, Terrorism. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2011. Print.Google Scholar
Mohamed, Feisal G. “Reading Samson in the New American Century”. Milton Studies 46 (2006): 149–64. Print.Google Scholar
Norbrook, David. “Republican Occasions in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Milton Studies 42 (2002): 122–48. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Ed. May, Herbert G. and Metzger, Bruce M. New York: Oxford UP, 1965. Print. Rev. Standard Vers.Google Scholar
Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. Toward Samson Agonistes: The Growth of Milton's Mind. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Rudrum, Alan. “Milton Scholarship and the Agon over Samson Agonistes. Huntington Library Quarterly 65 (2002): 465–88. Print.Google Scholar
Sauer, Elizabeth M.Milton's ‘Peculiar’ Nation.” Brooks, Milton 3556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sauer, Elizabeth M. Milton, Toleration, and Nationhood. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. Print.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Regina. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
“Secular.” Def. 6. Oxford English Dictionary. Compact ed. 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Stevens, Paul. “How Milton's Nationalism Works: Globalization and the Possibilities of Positive Nationalism.” Loewenstein and Stevens 273301.Google Scholar
Stevens, Paul. “‘Leviticus Thinking’ and the Rhetoric of Early Modern Colonialism”. Criticism 35.3 (1993): 441–61. Print.Google Scholar
Testamenti Veteris Biblia Sacra. Trans. Immanuel Tremellius and Franciscus Junius. London, 1580. Early English Books Online. Web. 9 Sept. 2012.Google Scholar
Wittreich, Joseph. Interpreting Samson Agonistes. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Wittreich, Joseph. “‘The Ramifications of Those Ramifications’: Compounding Contests for Samson Agonistes.” Leib and Labriola 167–99.Google Scholar
Wittreich, Joseph. Shifting Contexts: Reinterpreting Samson Agonistes. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Wittreich, Joseph. Why Milton Matters: A New Preface to His Writings. New York: Palgrave, 2006. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Worden, Blair. “Milton's Republicanism and the Tyranny of Heaven.” Machiavelli and Republicanism. Ed. Bock, Gisela, Skinner, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. 225–45. Print.Google Scholar