Milton's Scriptural Reasoning Narrative and Protestant Toleration [Hardcover]

New readings of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, offering fresh perspectives on Milton's aesthetics, theology and politics.Phillip J. Donnelly transforms our common perceptions about Milton's writing, challenging the traditional assumption that the poet shared our modern view that reason is a capacity whose purpose is to control nature. Through new readings of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, this book provides fresh perspectives on Milton's aesthetics, theology and politics.Phillip J. Donnelly transforms our common perceptions about Milton's writing, challenging the traditional assumption that the poet shared our modern view that reason is a capacity whose purpose is to control nature. Through new readings of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, this book provides fresh perspectives on Milton's aesthetics, theology and politics.John Miltons major poems have long provoked wide-ranging judgments about the purposes of his biblical engagement. In this elegant and insightful study, Phillip J. Donnelly transforms our common perceptions about Miltons 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, Miltons 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 Miltons aesthetics, theology and politics.Preface and acknowledgments; Abbreviations and editions; 1. Introduction: scriptural reasoning; Part I. Scriptural Reasoning in Milton's Prose: 2. Reason, rhetoric, and educational reading; 3. Monism and Protestant toleration; Part II. Biblicist Rhetoric and Ontology in Paradise Lost: Part II introduction; 4. Divine justicel#"