Milton and the Jews

An insightful collection of new approaches to the debate on Milton and Judaism.

Douglas A. Brooks (Edited by)

9781107404694, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 February 2012

240 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.36 kg

'The essays in this volume richly document the productive ambivalence of Milton's thinking about the Jews. On the one hand the suffering Jew who endures the Babylonian captivity and remains faithful to his God is a model for God's Englishman. On the other, the literalist, surface-loving Jew - the outer Jew - exemplifies the idolatrous materialism that links him with the Turk and with Asian cybarites. Milton's complex deployment of these two figures of the Jew, the contributors show, is a key to the structure of his thinking about almost every issue that arises in both the poetry and the prose. All this and the incidental pleasure of learning that Sin is Jewish. Who knew.' Stanley Fish

The issue of the Jews deeply engaged Milton throughout his career, and not necessarily in ways that make for comfortable or reassuring reading today. While Shakespeare and Marlowe, for example, critiqued rather than endorsed racial and religious prejudice in their writings about Jews, the same cannot be said for Milton. The scholars in this collection confront a writer who participated in the sad history of anti-Semitism, even as he appropriated Jewish models throughout his writings. Well grounded in solid historical and theological research, the essays both collectively and individually offer an important contribution to the debate on Milton and Judaism. This book will be of interest not only to scholars of Milton and of seventeenth-century literature, but also to historians of the religion and culture of the period.

1. Introduction: Milton and the Jews: 'A Project never so seasonable, and necessary, as now!' Douglas A. Brooks
2. England, Israel, and the Jews in Milton's prose, 1649–60 Achsah Guibbory
3. Milton's peculiar nation Elizabeth Sauer
4. Making use of the Jews: Milton and philosemitism Nicholas von Maltzahn
5. Milton and Solomonic education Douglas Trevor
6. 'He is imitating nobody, and he is inimitable': T. S. Eliot and the anti-Semitic aesthetics of the Milton controversy Matthew Biberman
7. A metaphorical Jew: the carnal, the literal and the Miltonic Linda Tredennick
8. 'The people of Asia and with them the Jews': Israel, Asia, and England in Milton's writings Rachel Trubowitz
9. Returning to Egypt: 'the Jew', 'the Turk', and the English Republic Benedict Robinson
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Literary studies: general [DSB]