John Milton is widely known as the poet of liberty and freedom. But his commitment to justice has been often overlooked. As Alison A. Chapman shows, Milton’s many prose works are saturated in legal ways of thinking, and he also actively shifts between citing Roman, common, and ecclesiastical law to best suit his purpose in any given text. This book provides literary scholars with a working knowledge of the multiple, jostling, real-world legal systems in conflict in seventeenth-century England and brings to light Milton’s use of the various legal systems and vocabularies of the time—natural versus positive law, for example—and the differences between them. Surveying Milton’s early pamphlets, divorce tracts, late political tracts, and major prose works in comparison with the writings and cases of some of Milton’s contemporaries—including George Herbert, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and John Bunyan—Chapman reveals the variety and nuance in Milton’s juridical toolkit and his subtle use of competing legal traditions in pursuit of justice.

Reading John Milton is a guide to Milton’s writings written for students, teachers, and readers everywhere seeking to approach this major figure in English and world literature. Milton’s works range from the monumental epic Paradise Lost to moving personal sonnets, from the tragic grandeur of Samson Agonistes to prose defenses of political liberty and religious tolerance. This book offers clear, fresh introductions and commentary that make an author with a reputation for difficulty relevant and accessible. Individual texts are placed in their literary and historical contexts, and explored so as to encourage fresh, independent interpretations informed by the contemporary humanities. Carefully organized for ease of use, the book opens with reasons why Milton matters, ideas for critical approaches, and a biography of Milton. Subsequent chapters are dedicated to groups of works or individual masterpieces. Key themes are placed in focus and a full overview provided for all of Milton’s major poems. Each chapter includes a set of stimulating questions and activities and suggestions for further reading keyed to a generous bibliography, including online resources. Reading John Milton is both an ideal introduction and a complete companion for anyone ready to experience the sublimity and delight of reading Milton.

Reevaluates early modern poems of praise as, paradoxically, challenging an artistic economy that values exchange and productivity Early modern poems of praise typically insist that they do not have a purpose or enact real labor beyond their effortless listing of laudable qualities. And yet the poets discussed in this study, including Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, Anne Bradstreet, Lucy Hutchinson, and John Milton, hint at an alternative aesthetic economy at work in their verse. Poetic praise, it turns out, might show us a social world outside the organizing principle of exchange. In Economies of Praise: Value, Labor, and Form in Seventeenth‐Century English Poetry, Ryan Netzley explores how poems of praise imagine alternatives to market and gift economies and point instead to a self-contained aesthetic economy that works against a more expansive and productivist understanding of literary art. By depicting exchange as inconsequential, unproductive, and redundant rather than a necessary constituent of social order, these poems model for modern readers a world without the imperative to create, appraise, and repeatedly demonstrate one’s own value.

The seventeenth century saw some of the most important jurisprudential changes in England’s history, yet the period has been largely overlooked in the rich field of literature and law. Helping to fill this gap, The Legal Epic is the first book to situate the great poet and polemicist John Milton at the center of late seventeenth-century legal history. Alison A. Chapman argues that Milton’s Paradise Lost sits at the apex of the early modern period’s long fascination with law and judicial processes. Milton’s world saw law and religion as linked disciplines and thought therefore that in different ways, both law and religion should reflect the will of God. Throughout Paradise Lost, Milton invites his readers to judge actions using not only reason and conscience but also core principles of early modern jurisprudence. Law thus informs Milton’s attempt to “justify the ways of God to men” and points readers toward the types of legal justice that should prevail on earth. Adding to the growing interest in the cultural history of law, The Legal Epic shows that England’s preeminent epic poem is also a sustained reflection on the role law plays in human society.

A dedicated and innovative teacher, a towering intellect, one of the leading criminal lawyers in South Africa, collegial, supportive and empowering, a veritable polymath, the ultimate free-thinker - these are but a few of the appellations used to describe John Milton. Over a period of nearly forty years John Milton has made an immense contribution to the South African legal terrain as a scholar, a legal practitioner, a teacher, a mentor and a friend. The exemplary scholar - essays in honour of John Milton is a recognition and celebration of this respected academic and his legacy. The high esteem in which he is held by his peers, former students, colleagues and friends, and the broad scope of his influence are reflected in this collection of essays. Though known mainly as a criminal lawyer, Milton's interest and influence have extended to property law, statutory interpretation, the administration of justice, delict, environmental law, human rights, legal education and even outside the law to history.

General Civil law