Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Chapman has written an excellent book, a fit companion for her award-winning
Legal Epic.
Courts, Jurisdictions, and Law is engaging and informative, economically expressed without sacrificing clarity or detail, and everywhere displaying expert knowledge of early modern law and of Milton’s body of work. With her twin studies, Chapman has secured a place at the fore of recent scholarship on early modern literature and law." * Modern Philology *
"Alison Chapman’s
Courts, Jurisdictions, and Law in John Milton and His Contemporaries. . . represents a crucial addition to not only Milton studies but to seventeenth-century legal studies in England." * Comitatus *
“[An] outstanding new monograph… Chapman’s book proves beyond reasonable doubt that legal issues played an enduring part in Milton’s thinking, and gives a detailed sense of how they did so. It is clearly written and well-informed on a complex subject. The book will be valuable to Miltonists, and to scholars working at the intersection of early modern law and literature.” * Review of English Studies *
“Chapman’s new book,
Courts, Jurisdictions, and Law in John Milton and His Contemporaries, extends her prior examinations and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how Milton approached the existing patchwork of English legal systems.” * New Rambler Review *
"Well suited to an intersectional field of law and literature that places questions of race, gender and religion at its center." * Seventeenth-Century News *
“Chapman’s work is both highly original and exceptionally readable, bringing together imaginative engagement with legal language, convincing arguments, and refreshingly forthright responses to other scholars. She presents unfamiliar legal matters in lucid, sometimes witty prose and cautions her readers against importing modern assumptions into early modern English literature. Students and scholars of Milton will benefit enormously from her carefully developed contextualization of Milton’s assumptions regarding jurisprudential fields, specific legal terms, and his own rhetorical practices.” -- Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto
“With careful attention to legal language, Chapman pulls at the tensions between libel and defamation, convincingly showing Milton’s continued interest in such questions. These are valuable new readings that explain several apparent tensions, and they show that Milton’s legal orientation can account for many of the most oddly vituperative moments in his prose. This is a very welcome addition to Milton studies.” -- Christopher Warren, Carnegie Mellon University
"Chapman considers the multiple, jostling, real-world legal systems in conflict in seventeenth-century England and brings to light the poet John Milton’s use of the various legal systems and vocabularies of the time... Chapman highlights the variety and nuance in Milton’s juridical toolkit and his subtle use of competing legal traditions in pursuit of justice." * Law & Social Inquiry *
"[This book] is not only an education in early modern law and in Miltonic rhetoric but also, in its acute exposition of the legalistic, if not authoritarian, bias of the great republican, Puritan, and libertarian, one of the best recent critical studies of Milton." * Milton Quarterly *
Table of ContentsA Note on Texts
List of Abbreviations
Preface: Making Sense of Many Laws
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Defending One’s Good Name: Free Speech in the Early Prose
Chapter 3: Monstrous Books:
Areopagitica and the Problem of Libel
Chapter 4: Civil Law and Equity in the Divorce Tracts
Chapter 5: Defending
Pro Se Defensio Chapter 6: The Tithes of War: Paying God Back in
Paradise Lost Chapter 7: “Justice in Thir Own Hands”: Local Courts in the Late Prose
Afterword: Justice in the Columbia Manuscript
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
