Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination

How did Milton’s understanding of history relate to his literary expression of it? This book explores the role of history in Milton’s literary works. It focuses on the writer’s imaginative responses to the historical process - his interpretations of the past, visions of the future, and sense of the contemporary historical moment. David Loewenstein presents Milton as a controversial writer actively engaged in shaping, representing and participating in the drama of history of his age. Highlighting the apocalyptic and iconoclastic components of Milton’s historical vision, the book examines the more turbulent dimensions of his polemic and poetic works. It stresses the importance of his less canonical texts, including Eikonoklastes and the History of Britain, and shows how they illuminate the sense of history dramatized in Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. Analysing the literary expressions of Milton’s radicalism, this study reveals a complex interaction between consciousness and figurative expression, political vision and textual effects.

Acknowledgments; A note on texts; Introduction; 1. The drama of history in the early revolutionary prose; 2. ‘The wars of truth’: Areopagitica and the dynamics of history; 3. ‘Casting down imaginations’: iconoclasm as history; 4. ‘Great acts and great eloquence’: the historical imagination in the later revolutionary prose; 5. Paradise Lost and the configurations of history; 6. Spectacle of power: Samson Agonistes and the drama of history; Notes; Index.