Abstract
Milton’s self-presentation varies from prose tract to prose tract because of the type of argument he makes and the type of self, or persona, he fashions for the better persuasiveness of that argument. The persona and decorum of a given tract, therefore, are particular aspects of Milton’s response to an immediate occasion. Milton fashions the self after Jeremiah in two widely separated prose tracts, one written near the beginning, the other near the end of the revolution: The Reason of Church Government (1642) and The Readie and Easie Way (1660, second edition).1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For the historical background of this period in Israelite history, I have relied upon the following works: John Bright, A History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1981), 316–39;
Siegfried Hermann, A History of Israel in Old Testament Times (Philadelphia: Fortress P, 1975), 263–85;
J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1986), 391–415; and
Martin Noth, The History of Israel (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1965), 269–99.
See Michael Bauman, A Scripture Index to John Milton’s “De doctrina Christiana” (Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 67, 1989), 74–78.
See, for example, John Huntley’s analysis of Milton’s bene dicendi in The Reason of Church Government: “The Images of Poet & Poetry in Milton’s The Reason of Church-Government,” in Achievements of the Left Hand, ed. Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1974), 82–120.
Joan S. Bennett, Reviving Liberty: Radical Christian Humanism in Milton’s Great Poems (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989), 183.
Holstun, A Rational Millennium, 260. For another treatment of The Readie and Easie Wayas jeremiad, see Knoppers, “Milton’s The Readie and Easie Way,” 213–25. Knoppers shows how Milton’s response to the historical moment results in his unique use of, what has become by the eve of the Restoration, the popular and oft-used jeremiad. For background on the seventeenth-century jeremiad, see the following: Egan, “‘This is a Lamentation,” 400–410; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1953), 27–39; and
Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1978).
Merritt Y. Hughes, John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose (Macmillan Publishing Company, 1957), 898n.
Copyright information
© 2014 Reuben Sánchez
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sánchez, R. (2014). “As a Burning Fire Shut Up in My Bones”: From Polemic to Prophecy in The Reason of Church Government and The Readie and Easie Way . In: Typology and Iconography in Donne, Herbert, and Milton. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137397805_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137397805_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48508-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39780-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)