Milton and the Preaching ArtsDuquesne University Press, 2001 - 352 pages This study truly breaks new ground in Milton scholarship by demonstrating the extent to which Milton's work reflects the dominant discourse of his age - preaching. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the pulpit consistently commanded greater audiences than did the stage, and many of the era's great poets were also preachers. Milton himself argued that poetry can serve "beside the office of a pulpit" and prepared for his life's work at the greatest English center for formal homiletics of its time, Christ's College, Cambridge, but this connection has been virtually ignored by scholars and critics in examining Milton's poetry Lares now challenges the longstanding assumption that Milton the poet paid no attention to the ministerial training of his past, and she demonstrates how Milton appropriated many structures from English preaching in his own work. That preaching was informed by five sermon types - doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction and consolation - first enumerated by the continental reformer Andreas Gerhard Hyperius (1511 - 1564). Milton, we find, favored an odd combination of correction and consolation. Of all the preaching manuals published in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, only one so combines consolation and correction: Methodus concionandi by William Chappell, Milton's first tutor at Christ's College, Cambridge. Milton's use of homiletics, as explained by Lares, may be used in particular to resolve many critical issues related to the last two books of Paradise Lost, which are composed of Adam's dream vision and Michael's narration thereof. These diffuse books, which scholars have been unable to place into any critical paradigm, are actually sermonic in structure and content. And Paradise Regained, in which Milton seems to reject classical rhetoric, actually reflects then-contemporary pulpit concerns over the stylistic inadequacy of the Bible. Moreover, Milton's prose commentaries - often deplored as strident and uncharitable - follow the structure of a sermon of reproof. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
ONE Milton and the Sacred Office of Speaking | 16 |
Two Milton in the Context of Reformation Artes | 48 |
Copyright | |
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Adam Angeles Anglican Apology argues arguments artes praedicandi Augustine Bible biblical Bishop Boyle canons Chaderton Chappell chapter charity Christ Christ's College Christian Doctrine Church Concerning Conscience consolation controversialist controversy correction defenses discourse discussion Divine Sermons Ecclesiastes edited elocutio Eloquence England English epic episcopacy Erasmus faith Faithfull Shepheard Framing of Divine Hall's hath Holy Scriptures homiletics Humble Remonstrance Hyperius's insists instance James John Donne John Milton Joseph Hall Language Laurence Chaderton learned Literary London Melanchthon Michael Milton Studies ministers ministry oration Oxford Paradise Lost Paradise Regained poet poetic poetry polemical preacher preaching manual prelatical Princeton Prose pulpit Puritan Reason of Church-Government redargutive Reformation Religion religious Renaissance repr Rhetoric Robert Sacred Satan says Scrip scriptural style Scripture sermon manuals sermon types seventeenth century Smectymnuus theology Thomas Thomas Fuller tion tract Tradition trans Treatise tropes and figures truth vols William Ames William Chappell William Perkins words writing