Description
Book SynopsisSamson’s Cords examines the radically different responses of John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Samuel Butler to the existential crises caused by an explosion of loyalty oaths in Britain before and after 1660.
Trade Review"Samson’s Cords is a sophisticated, learned, and thoughtful book based on wide reading and deep thinking." -- Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex *
Modern Philology *
"Garganigo’s work certainly increases our understanding of the literature of Milton, Marvell, and Butler, and for those who specialize in their study, Samson’s Cords is well worth a read." -- Jonathan Michael Gray *
Renaissance Quarterly *
"The dialogic nature of Samson’s Cords will make it the go-to book for people interested in any and all issues surrounding the oath: perjury, censorship, cursing, equivocation, casuistry, office, loyalty, promise, and ethics. There is much here as well for early modernists working on Butler, Marvell, and Milton, as Garganigo provides new, innovative, and restorative readings of all three, reminding readers how important literary poetics continues to be within the ethically focused historical scholarship of the last several years." -- Megan Matchinske, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill *
University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018 *
Table of Contents1. Samson’s Cords in Restoration England 2. Conjuring Oaths and Identities in Hudibras 3. Testing the Tests in The Rehearsal Transpros’d 4. An Horatian Oath: the Horatian Ode, Secularism, and Toleration 5. Samson’s Cords: Imposing Oaths in Eikonoklastes and Samson Agonistes 6. Paradise Lost I: God’s Swearing By Himself 7. Paradise Lost II: Of Apples, Oaths, and Women A Proposal for Emending One of Marvell’s Letters
