Milton's Ireland
Milton's Ireland
$120.00
USDIn this first book devoted to Milton's engagement with Ireland, Lee Morrissey takes an archipelagic approach to his subject. The study focuses on the period before the Cromwellian Conquest, explaining Milton's emergence as a public figure because of Ireland and tracing the paradoxical resonances of Milton's republicanism in Ireland to this day. Informed by developments in Irish history but foregrounding a lucid discussion of Milton's governmental prose works, Morrissey explores the tension between Milton's long-established image as a proto-Enlightenment, democratic figure, and the historical reality of his association with a Protestant invading force. Milton's Ireland incisively negotiates this complex subject, addressing clear absences in Milton scholarship, in the history of Ireland, and in the fraught relationship between Ireland and England.
- The first book-length study of John Milton's complex engagements with Ireland, exploring their rich contexts and tracing a subsequent tradition of literary and political reception
- Includes a number of maps and illustrations that serve to render a fraught and complicated story accessible, elucidating the effects of Milton's government on Ireland
- Takes an 'archipelagic' approach in order to address a historically-biased centering of England in discussions of early modern poetry, politics and culture
Reviews & endorsements
'The story of the Irish dimension of Milton's work, the decades of inter-island conflict unfolding before and during Milton's life, needs to be told, and Lee Morrissey tells it exceptionally well. Milton's Ireland makes valuable inroads into the study of early modern Ireland's cultural plurality, its complex relations to Britain, and the tensions operative in the British Isles (rather than the Atlantic archipelago). In this expertly researched and nuanced investigation, Morrissey also boldly demonstrates how Ireland challenges Milton's sense of Englishness.' Elizabeth Sauer, FRSC, Professor of English, Brock University, Canada
'Through a series of expertly-crafted explanations, Professor Morrissey shows how Milton was imbricated in a number of contexts and historical processes that are centered on Ireland and Irish politics. Although Milton invariably adopts an Anglocentric worldview in his political and literary visions, deracinating England from its island neighbour, the spectre of Ireland haunts his writings. This is a major work that resituates one of England's most canonical authors in relation to the conception of Britain; the reality of Ireland; and the forces of nation-building and colonial expansion that underpin the seismic shifts taking place in seventeenth-century Europe.' Andrew Hadfield, FBA, Professor of English, University of Sussex
Product details
December 2024Adobe eBook Reader
9781009462402
0 pages
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: John Milton and the Irish Crises
- 1. 1641–1642: Milton's anti-prelatical tracts and the ulster rising
- 2. The 1645 poems: spenser's 'colin clouts come home againe' and (the revisions of) Milton's 'Lycidas'
- 3. Early 1649: the execution of Charles I and Milton's 'observations' in the articles of peace
- 4. Later 1649: Milton's Eikonoklastes and Cromwell's invasion
- 5. The early 1650s: defences after Cromwell's invasion
- 6. The later 1650s: acts of settlement – varieties of English Republicanism
- Afterword 'conflagrations of conviction': Irish Republicanism and English Royalist Nationalism
- Index of names
- Notes.
