Samson’s Cords: Imposing Oaths in Milton, Marvell, and Butler

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Synopsis
In seventeenth-century Britain every debate about loyalty oaths invoked the biblical Samson. Samson’s Cords argues that these loyalty tests became an unprecedentedly pervasive feature of life in Restoration England and that writers of satire and epic had no choice but to respond. Alex Garganigo examines the radically different responses of John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Samuel Butler to the existential crises caused by this explosion of loyalty oaths. After early support, all three developed serious reservations, confronting the irony that while oaths often exclude and destroy, they also include and create. Tackling issues such as performance, ritual, religion, secularization, gender, swearing, republicanism, and citizenship, Garganigo offers original readings of Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland, The Rehearsal Transpros’d, and Hudibras.
Copyright:
2018

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781487512217
Publisher:
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
University of Toronto Press
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Religion and Spirituality, Social Studies, Language Arts, Philosophy
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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