Milton's Scriptural Reasoning

Download or read book Milton's Scriptural Reasoning written by Phillip J. Donnelly and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Milton's major poems have long provoked wide-ranging judgements about the purposes of his biblical engagement. In this elegant and insightful study, Phillip J. Donnelly transforms our common perceptions about Milton's writing. He challenges the traditional assumption that the poet shared our modern view that reason is a capacity whose purpose is to control nature. Instead, Milton's conception of reason - both human and divine - is bound up with a poetic sense of difference, a capacity for being faithful to a goodness and beauty that survives the effects of human frailty in the fall. Providing fresh new readings of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, Donnelly gives us important new perspectives on Milton's aesthetics, theology and politics.