Milton's Case for a Free Commonwealth

Lovett, Frank

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2005.00135.x

Cited by 24 publications

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“…12Here of course I follow the view of the contemporary civic republicans such as Skinner and Pettit, as against that of the civic humanists Pocock, Rahe and others. For further discussion, see Lovett (2005).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harrington's Empire of Law

Lovett

2011

Political Studies

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Nearly every reader of James Harrington has taken his theory that property is the foundation of government to be his central and most enduring contribution to political thought. Operating within this standard reading, most of the extensive literature on Harrington has focused on derivative issues, such as the accuracy and depth of his economic reading of English history, or the extent to which his mechanistic account of political institutions displaced more traditional republican accounts of civic virtue. But the standard reading is incomplete. For example, it is puzzling on this reading why Harrington should single out Thomas Hobbes as his chief opponent. To demonstrate the incompleteness of the standard reading, this article will examine a relatively neglected aspect of Oceana: namely, the sharp contrast drawn throughout the work between those communities organized as an 'empire of laws' and those organized as an 'empire of men'. As it turns out, Harrington strikes upon a deep problem, not noticed by previous authors in the classical republican tradition, but nevertheless lying at the very conceptual core of republican theory. Examining this problem in detail is both interesting in its own right, in so far as it sheds light on some central issues in republican theory, and in the renewed historical appreciation it brings to our reading of Harrington as well.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harrington's Empire of Law

Lovett

2011

Political Studies

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“…3 3 See Skinner, Liberty ix‐ x and “John Milton” 1‐22; Dzelzainis, “In These Western Ports” 58 and “Liberty”; Lovett 466‐78. …”

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Neo‐Roman Terms of Slavery in Samson Agonistes

Cox

2010

Milton Quarterly

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Rosanna CoxIn a recent paper, Balachandra Rajan argues that Samson Agonistes is a radically indeterminate text which is yet "a resistance drama, so deeply embedded in its discourse," that finding our way out of it is "a difficult task" (2). But it is in considering the terms of Samson's resistance, and the ideas which inform it, that we can begin to unravel the interpretive problems that relate to Samson's final actions. Recent critical attempts to draw parallels between Samson's activism and our contemporary experiences of cultures of violence and terrorism have been immensely valuable in establishing the "fundamentalist architecture" of the text (Rajan 2). 2 Building on the earlier writings of Carey (Milton), Samuel, and Wittreich, such work has done much to problematize for new generations of readers the notion of heroism in Samson. However, these readings, while admittedly enhancing our understanding of our own experiences of activism, terrorism, and violence, and reinvigorating the terms upon which we engage with the poem, have tended to overlook the political and legal implications of Samson's identity and actions in their own contexts. I want to argue that to the conundrum of Samson's identity and actions-whether as Christian or Hebraic hero or religious fundamentalist, whether active or passive-must be added the classical and neo-Roman understanding of what constitutes liberty and citizenship. Resistance-to authority, to tyranny-requires recontextualizing in relation to the discourses of political endeavor, vigor, and civic activity with which Milton engages throughout his works and particularly in his prose works from the mid-1640s onward.The ensuing remarks will demonstrate how the discourses of political activity and subjectivity that infused Milton's political prose works from the mid-1640s onwards are at work in Samson Agonistes and the ways in which political identity can be forged in the face of overwhelming tyranny. As the poem begins, Samson is a slave, but at the same time, he is both effeminized and infantilized; his attempts to break free from his physical, emotional, and psychological servitude mark the passage from passive subject to fully engaged citizen, from childhood and effeminacy to independence and manhood. But the conditions of Samson's intellectual, spiritual, and sexual maturation require a rereading of the poem, which considers Samson an embodiment of classical heroism and virtus and in relation to the ideas of the rights of men in a free state, which had come to the fore in opposition to the prerogative powers of the crown in the early 1640s. In response to recent works by Quentin Skinner (Liberty) and Martin Dzelzainis ("Republicanism"), who have demonstrated the ways in which Milton, in the early 1640s, turned to and engaged with familiar discourses of liberty and slavery in order to find legal and rhetorical precedent for his opposition to the royal prerogative, this paper will show how Milton explicitly portrays Samson in relation to neo-Roman conceptions of freedom and servi...

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A New Companion to Milton

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Milton's Case for a Free Commonwealth

Cited by 24 publications

References 14 publications

Harrington's Empire of Law

Harrington's Empire of Law

Neo‐Roman Terms of Slavery in Samson Agonistes

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