Discipline Of Divorce Research Articles

“A Meet and Happy Conversation”: Milton and Divorce in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

ABSTRACT Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre has long been recognized as a feminist revision of Paradise Lost as told from Eve's perspective. Written at a time of significant legal reform concerning marriage and divorce in nineteenth-century England, Jane Eyre offers a much more engaged rereading of Milton than scholars have observed. Centering on the novel's three proposal scenes, this article understands Brontë to draw upon Milton's The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and extend its definition of marriage as “conversation” to include the experience of the wife.

성경 해석학으로 본 밀턴의 『이혼론』

John Milton’s biblical hermeneutics in his divorce tracks is a product of his strong belief in and commitment to personal and individual freedom. At the same time, it is an attempt to find the true meaning of God’s will revealed in Scripture with regard to marriage, the first institution created by God for the good of mankind. This study tries to see Milton’s views on divorce from his hermeneutic perspective, interpreting his stance not as liberal, but as rather conservative enough to make his opponents, so-called traditionalists, pale before his argument. In The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Milton accuses the Church of England of its strict adherence to canon law in which the biblical verses on divorce are construed so literally that it renders divorce almost impossible in England. Milton attacks the Church for its complete ignorance of incompatibility between husband and wife―the single most important factor for the fulfillment of God’s purpose in the joining of man and woman in matrimony. This study finds Milton’s claim to be prophetic, as well as modern, in terms of its foresight that has paved the way for a paradigm shift in biblical hermeneutics of marriage and divorce.

Elizabeth Attaway, London preacher and Theologian, 1645–1646

ABSTRACT This paper reconsiders the 1645–1646 career of Elizabeth Attaway, known primarily to scholars as an early reader of Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce or as evidence of General Baptist congregations’ openness to women’s preaching. Evidence of Attaway’s career survives primarily in the three parts of Thomas Edwards’s 1646 Gangraena, a polemical source that distorts her career even as it provides valuable information. This paper gives an account of the apocalyptic theology that shaped Attaway’s decision to “divorce” her husband. It also argues for the independence of Attaway’s preaching from established congregations, highlighting her role as the instigator of perhaps the first public preaching by women in civil war London – which happened not in gathered churches, but in public, revival-style exercises. Accordingly, it establishes Attaway as a more significant figure in the religious landscape of 1640s London than previously thought.

Roman Law and Equity in John Milton’s Divorce Tracts

Critics have often observed that Roman law plays an outsized role in Milton two major divorce tracts, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and Tetrachordon. This essay argues that Milton turns so repeatedly to Roman law because it offers a model of equitable interpretation, one that allows statutes to be read flexibly in light of their perceived intent. While canon law too prided itself on being an equitable system, the canonists’ approach to equity was crucially different from that of Roman jurists. For centuries, theologians had read the Bible’s passages on divorce through the lens of canonical equity, and the upshot was that divorce had been effectively banned. But Milton wants his readers to view these same Biblical passages as Roman jurists would and thus to bring a different understanding of equity to bear. Read in this way, he argues, the Bible allows divorce to all. Milton’s ultimate goal is to put divorce outside the cognizance of all forms of temporal law. Ironically, his argument relies upon the approach to statutory interpretation that he finds in Roman law and applies to the Christian Bible.

Lieuwe van Aitzema and John Milton’s The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: the Marquette Case

On January 29, 1655, Van Aitzema informed Milton that he had commissioned a Dutch translation of Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce for two reasons: (1) In Fides publica, Alexandre Morus, a leading French Calvinist minister co-opted by the Royalist exiles in the Dutch Republic, had attacked Milton for his newfangled interpretations of scripture on divorce. As Morus himself was not only suspected of Amyraldian heterodoxy but had seduced Madame Salmasius’ lady-in-waiting while a guest in the Salmasius household, there was lively gossip not so much about Milton’s character as Morus’ disgraceful behavior. (2) Many Dutch were indeed interested in how Milton argued in favor of dissolving marital unions. Three of the most powerful regent families in the United Provinces were even then affected by interrelated domestic scandals, the last of which was just devastating a renowned noble family famous in Dutch military history during the Eighty Years’ War. As Van Aitzema stated, there was in fact much lively concern in The Hague and elsewhere about how one might argue a Reformed case for divorce. In light of Cromwell’s efforts in getting the States General to adopt an Act of Seclusion ‘eternally’ excluding the House of Orange-Stuart from the Stadholdership, a Dutch translation of Milton on divorce was anything but a bad idea at the end of January 1655.

“Uniform in Virtue”: Discipline and Reform in Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643 and 1644)

Though John Milton would claim retrospectively that his divorce tracts were written in defense of domestic liberty, they often justify their conclusions in terms of national discipline. This essay proposes that the disciplinary rhetoric used in the first and second editions of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643, 1644) is indicative of Milton's close engagement with contemporary London-based discussions over the settlement of ecclesiastical discipline. Each edition considers and contends with the issues being debated by the divines of the Westminster Assembly and the “Presbyterian” and “Independent” party lines emerging in contemporary printed polemic. This essay argues that Milton's first divorce tract – both versions – articulates its case in a manner acceptable to those for whom national and ecclesiastical discipline was indispensible; yet, at the same time it subtly redefines discipline's meaning by repudiating legal coercion and lauding the virtue of self-restraint as the true basis of disciplined people.

Milton Rewrites The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

The second edition of John Milton’s The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce should be read as a document separate from the first edition. It is substantially longer, and it is buttressed heavily with “authority” brought in to supplement the argument. The argument has not changed; the tone and intent have. Milton has sharpened and coarsened the legalistic aspects of the tract. More precisely, he has shifted from proclaiming a restored freedom to emphasizing the faults of his attackers. In the process, he shifts from a portrayal of the wife as passive and rather pathetic to the wife as a shrewish usurper, in order to flatter and petition Parliament to see itself as an ally in similar projects of liberation from tyrannical custom.

Who Printed Milton's Tetrachordon (1645)?

This article examines the evidence regarding the printing of John Milton's Tetrachordon (1645), the third in the author's series of divorce tracts. This work appeared without a printer's name, thus contravening the 1643 Licensing Order. While it has long been understood that Tetrachordon was printed collaboratively, this article questions the common attribution to the printers Samuel Simmons and Thomas Paine, who had printed The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), and introduces the possibility that Francis Neile had a hand in the work, and that printing likely involved a network of printers working together. Exploring the forensic evidence of type, the complex printing contexts of Milton's divorce writings, and examining the unstable political identities of printers also brings to light Milton's long association with news-men. Further, the reappearance of Tetrachordon in John Starkey's book catalogues from the 1670s is addressed.

Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century English Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century English Literature Shannon Miller Murphy, Erin. Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century English Literature. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2011. 308 pp. Erin Murphy’s Familial Forms: Politics and Genealogy in Seventeenth-Century English Literature is an insightful addition to recent work on the relationship between the state and the family in the English Renaissance and Restoration period. To this rich topic, Murphy adds a focus onto the period’s “genealogical politics,” the deployment of the genealogical family line to argue for, and against, theories of monarchial authority (29). Centrally positioning the figure of the mother into discussions about the contested relationship of the family to the state, the book simultaneously explores the implicit temporality invoked by generational production. The first chapter, “The Jesuit, the King, and a Lady: Form and Jacobean Patriarchalism,” leads the reader through the writings of a less known political thinker, Robert Parsons, whose 1595 A Conference About the Next Succession was reprinted during the most contested seventeenth-century political crises. Framing a discussion of the importance of genealogy in Parsons with an effective summary of work on patriarchal thought, Murphy illustrates the disruption that actual families pose to theories of monarchical inheritance grounded on genealogy. The second part of the chapter considers Parsons’ views in light of James I’s writings on inheritance and government—including his difficult negotiation of his own mother Mary, Queen of Scots—and then Aemilia Lanyer’s portrayal of an alternative, female-based lineage in “The Description of Cookeham.” The seven chapters that follow illustrate how the “political temporality of the family” (34) becomes a central problem for patriarchal theory and literary texts throughout the seventeenth century. Murphy describes how “[s]ome texts would mobilize typology to shore up lineal right, while others would deploy it as an alternative to genealogy” (70), thus countering the lineal right upon which Filmerian-style patriarchalism depended. As Murphy moves from these Jacobean texts into three chapters on Milton, the book appears at times to be anexploration of the influence of Parsons’ thought, at others the exploration of a trope that Parsons deploys rather than introduces. When Familial [End Page 59] Forms is at its best, it engages this latter, much broader topic. The three Milton chapters engage the family politics of John Milton’s writing, offering a shorter chapter on the prose and two substantive chapters on Paradise Lost. This portion of the book effectively addresses the problem of Milton’s seeming use of the analogy of the family and state in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. By positioning his use of this analogy amidst a broader view of Milton’s treatment of genealogy and its political implications, Murphy traces the development of Milton’s theories on the family and state from “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” through Comus, and then into Paradise Lost: in his Restoration epic, the politics of reproduction and its connection to genealogical politics become significantly more focused. I find Murphy’s emphasis on the development of Milton’s thought particularly convincing at resolving the conundrum of a Republican seemingly relying on the family-state analogy in the 1640’s. By stressing the generational politics raised by the inheritance of the title of Protector from father (Oliver Cromwell) to son (Richard), as well as the moment of Charles’ restoration, Murphy offers rich, topical interpretations of key sequences of Paradise Lost. In Murphy’s reading of the Book 2 Sin and Death scene, which portrays reproduction as destructive and perverse, Milton “attacks royalist ideology [of genealogy] by attempting to expose the way. . .it literalizes metaphor” (93). In negating the genealogical argument, Milton effectively creates the domestic sphere and consequently dismisses the analogical argument at the heart of Filmerian thinking; the effect is to “preserve the health of the English nation” by separating it from the family (105). In Chapter 4 on Books 11–12 of Paradise Lost, Murphy emphasizes the disruption to the genealogical narrative as Eve is banned from Michael’s account of the history of man. The restoration of any genealogical line—one challenged by the choice of biblical stories recounted in Books...

The divorce tracts of John Milton: texts and contexts

In a span of only 18 months from August 1643 to March 1645 John Milton published five tracts on divorce: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, a much enlarged edition of that tract, The Judgement of Martin Bucer, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion. This book presents all five full-length pamphlets and documents in order to fully represent Milton's views on divorce, liberty, gender, and social institutions. Van den Berg and Howard also present Milton's work in the context of his contemporaries by including four other publications that represent the first wave of engagement with Milton's divorce tracts: the anonymously written An Answer to a Book, intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644); William Prynne's Twelve Considerable Serious Questions (1644); Herbert Palmer's The Glasse of God's Providence (1644); and Daniel Featley's The Dippers Dipt (1645). The current volume is unique in that it is the first in the field to showcase Milton's writings on divorce side by side with these related documents, and it provides the first modern transcription of An Answer. Milton's argument that divorce could be to the good of both sexes makes this often intimidating writer and his era accessible and compelling to contemporary readers. Indeed, his claim for divorce on the basis of mutual incompatibility established the groundwork for the justification of divorce in late twentieth century Anglo-American law. Milton's rhetorical methods from cogent advocacy to speculative commentary and poignant vignettes, from citation of authorities and carefully reasoned biblical exegesis to defensive vituperation demonstrate the range of debate in seventeenth century pamphlet warfare.

Milton's Words by Annabel Patterson

1140 Reviews Milton, warts and all. Thus, while the book remains a hero's life' (p. 4), itdoes not stint in exposing him as 'flawed, self-contradictory, self-serving, arrogant [...] and cunning (p. 3). Such even-handedness permeates an impressively comprehensive re-examination ofMilton's prose works. For instance, while his alignment in the 1640s with the influential credo of Protestant tolerationism is fulsomely extolled, his expressed perspective on Catholicism remained inimical and vengeful' (p. 172); and though TheDoctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) marks him as a 'heterodox thinker of growing confidence', whose 'exegetical skills [are] both subtle and bold' (pp. 161,164), by contrast his ideas for a radical overhaul of the nation's education system, set out in Of Education (1644), are 'Repressive, prescriptive, elitist, masculinist, militaristic, dustily pedantic, class-ridden, and affectionless' (p. 181). The explicitly chronological structure of the book?Milton's shifting age range is printed at the top of each page?might, in other biographies, have seemed unnecessarily rigid. Here, however, it complements one of the overriding objectives of the authors: to trace the specific trajectory ofMilton's radicalization. The governing paradigm of a Milton who was somehow always predisposed towards the revolutionary ideas on Church and state thatwould ultimately lead to the Civil War is persuasively challenged. Drawing with profit on the records relating to his upbringing and to his student years at Christ's College, Cambridge, Campbell and Corns command assent to the notion thatMilton's early decades were, in fact, ideologically conformist. The catalyst for his political volte-face, they postulate, were national and local events of 1637, when the twenty-eight-year-old Milton was living with his parents in the small Buckinghamshire village ofHorton. The public mutilation ofWilliam Prynne, Henry Burton, and John Bastwick for sedition against the Laudian Church 'demonstrated that the lives of the middling sort were [. . .] as fragile as those of the unpropertied' (p. 95); while the episcopal visitation ofHorton in thatyear directly impinged onMilton's family: its report reprovingly noting that some of the parish church seats, including his father's,were too high, and that the tombstone of his recently buried mother, Sara, was wrongly oriented. These seminal events give fascinating context to the sense of injustice and mission which sustained Milton through to and beyond his poetic magnum opus, Paradise Lost (1667), bywhen he was 'speaking for theGod whose conduit he had become' (p? 346). This is an assiduously researched and delicately calibrated studywhich, in vividly fleshing out its subject and his changing modes of thought and argument, both questions and affirmshis iconic status. Birkbeck, University of London Philip Major Milton's Words. By Annabel Patterson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. viii+212 pp. ?18.99. ISBN 978-0-19-957346-2. Few Miltonists can claim to be as committed, experienced, or productive as Annabel Patterson. For this reason alone it comes as no surprise that this disarmingly brief and ostensibly unprepossessing book carries the unmistakable MLR, 105.4, 2010 1141 stamp of scholarly heft. Cohering the work around close analyses of individual words employed by Milton, the author's stated aim, consonant with the recent academic trend (as exemplified in Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns's John Milton: Life,Work, and Thought from the same publisher (2008), reviewed above), is threefold: to rehabilitate her subject's neglected prose works; to encourage, confident in its canonical status, a less deferential attitude towards theMilton corpus in general; and relatedly, to emphasize its contingency, the 'series of changes of direction, impulsive gestures, apologies, revisions, and thoughts worked out in the very process ofwriting them down' (p. 14). An engaging chapter on the divorce pamphlets argues plausibly thatMilton presents a logical case for reform of the divorce law, superimposed on a subtext of emotional chaos' (p. 48), the latter evidenced by the copious deployment of metaphor and euphemism in the Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce (1643) which underscores his apparent physical and intellectual difficulties with sexual intercourse at this time. The most diverting?and important?chapter, however, concerns the still under-studied Paradise Regained (1671). In it,Patterson argues for, among other things, the significant influence on Milton's epic of JohnBale's Temptacyon of Christ...

John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought by Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns

MLR, 105.4, 2010 1139 the concept [. . .] than as an exemplar (p. 225), McMullan uses Shakespeare as a case study to interrogate the concept of late styleused across the disciplines. The book offers this critique most effectively,perhaps, through its examination of the contexts of production of these plays in the collaborative early modern theatre. Indeed, one of themost interesting aspects of this study is theway inwhich itbrings together two commonly used critical approaches in Shakespearian studies, and, by examining the tensions between concepts of latewriting and considerations of the plays in their historical and institutional contexts, demonstrates the limitations of an approach that continues to ignore history?a limitation that this book carefully avoids through itsdetailed historicized analysis of lateness. McMullan aptly concludes this studywith a chapter on the utility of lateness as a discourse through case studies of performances of The Tempest by JohnGielgud and Mark Rylance. Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing, therefore, provides a fresh history of criticism on Shakespeare's late plays through to the present day and reconsiders the plays' chronology, historical contexts, and appropriations: topics thatwill be of immense interest to Shakespearians and earlymodernists. Moreover, McMullan provides a new critical account of concepts of latewriting and late style. He not only achieves his aim of making it as difficult as I can for Shakespeareans ever again to treat "late play" as the neutral term' (p. 126), butmakes itequally difficult for critics in any discipline to use this term lightly. University of Sydney Edel Lamb JohnMilton: Life, Work, and Thought. By Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. xiii+488 pp. ?25. ISBN 978-0-19-928984-4. Such has been the level of scholarly attention paid to JohnMilton in recent years that sceptics have been drawn to refer to the Milton literary-critical 'industry', insinuating an emphasis on output over insight.Not unrelatedly, some observers have identified Milton studies as characterized, if not partly driven, by a recognizably bien pensant liberalism which routinely scants, and sometimes overlooks altogether, the less palatable aspects of his work and life. It is but one index of this book's profound achievement that it lends neither perception any credence. Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns, both distinguished Milton specialists, undertake an illuminating reassessment of the key Miltonic primary sources and a judicious re-evaluation of the secondary, melding impressive historical sweep with close textual scrutiny. The result is an involving book which provides fascinating apergus not only ofMilton himself, but also of the changing political and literary landscapes?or rather, in a figurative sense at least, battlefields?on which Milton was such a conspicuous feature. For sure, one may detect a gently stated authorial sympathy with both their subject and his causes, notably republicanism. Nevertheless, any such affinityfalls very far short of hagiography; to borrow from the famous contemporary painting of his onetime employer, Oliver Cromwell, we are served in this study with 1140 Reviews Milton, warts and all. Thus, while the book remains a hero's life' (p. 4), itdoes not stint in exposing him as 'flawed, self-contradictory, self-serving, arrogant [...] and cunning (p. 3). Such even-handedness permeates an impressively comprehensive re-examination ofMilton's prose works. For instance, while his alignment in the 1640s with the influential credo of Protestant tolerationism is fulsomely extolled, his expressed perspective on Catholicism remained inimical and vengeful' (p. 172); and though TheDoctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) marks him as a 'heterodox thinker of growing confidence', whose 'exegetical skills [are] both subtle and bold' (pp. 161,164), by contrast his ideas for a radical overhaul of the nation's education system, set out in Of Education (1644), are 'Repressive, prescriptive, elitist, masculinist, militaristic, dustily pedantic, class-ridden, and affectionless' (p. 181). The explicitly chronological structure of the book?Milton's shifting age range is printed at the top of each page?might, in other biographies, have seemed unnecessarily rigid. Here, however, it complements one of the overriding objectives of the authors: to trace the specific trajectory ofMilton's radicalization. The governing paradigm of a Milton who was somehow always predisposed towards the revolutionary ideas on Church and state thatwould ultimately lead to the...

Refiguring the Sacred Feminine: The Poems of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton by Theresa M. DiPasquale

MLR, 105.4, 2010 1141 stamp of scholarly heft. Cohering the work around close analyses of individual words employed by Milton, the author's stated aim, consonant with the recent academic trend (as exemplified in Gordon Campbell and Thomas Corns's John Milton: Life,Work, and Thought from the same publisher (2008), reviewed above), is threefold: to rehabilitate her subject's neglected prose works; to encourage, confident in its canonical status, a less deferential attitude towards theMilton corpus in general; and relatedly, to emphasize its contingency, the 'series of changes of direction, impulsive gestures, apologies, revisions, and thoughts worked out in the very process ofwriting them down' (p. 14). An engaging chapter on the divorce pamphlets argues plausibly thatMilton presents a logical case for reform of the divorce law, superimposed on a subtext of emotional chaos' (p. 48), the latter evidenced by the copious deployment of metaphor and euphemism in the Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce (1643) which underscores his apparent physical and intellectual difficulties with sexual intercourse at this time. The most diverting?and important?chapter, however, concerns the still under-studied Paradise Regained (1671). In it,Patterson argues for, among other things, the significant influence on Milton's epic of JohnBale's Temptacyon of Christ (1538), evidenced in both writers' vividly transforming the biblical account of Christ's trial in the wilderness into dramatic literature. Inwhat for Patterson is tantamount to an audacious mission to rework, and even rewrite, Scripture itself, Milton exhibits recognizably Socinian sympathies through rendering God's redemption ofmankind a corollary of Christ's passing, through constant reference toOld Testament writings, a word-based test of intellectuality. Birkbeck, University of London Philip Major Refiguring the Sacred Feminine: The Poems of JohnDonne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton. By Theresa M. DiPasquale. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. 2008. xiii+392 pp. ?49.99. ISBN 978-0-8207-0405-0. This tripartite study of the importance of the 'sacred feminine' for the poetics of JohnDonne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton is asworthy an act of scholarship as Theresa DiPasquale's previous book from the same publisher, her award-winning Literature and Sacrament: The Sacred and the Secular inJohnDonne (1999)- As in her previous research, DiPasquale's historical and philological understanding and her considerable sensitivity to the implications of patristic,medieval, Reformation, and post-Reformation theology enrich her formalist readings of early modern poetry. The focus of her enquiry concerns these seventeenth-century poets' portrayal of 'the feminine as a reflection of the divine, and woman herself, at her best, as an agent of redemption or conduit of grace' (p. 2), and the journey on which she takes her reader surveys individual poetic treatments of, variously, the biblical figure of divine, created, and practical Wisdom, the bride of the Song of Songs, the Pauline and apocalyptic Ecclesia, and theVirgin Mary. DiPasquale selects these three particular poets over the likes ofVaughan or Herbert because, 1142 Reviews she maintains, they are all [. . .] exceptionally provocative in their approaches to sex and gender as aspects of the sacred' (p. 2). As a leading Donne scholar, DiPasquale is in her element in the study's first chapter. She provides a fresh Trinitarian interpretation of Donne's little-read 'The Annuntiation and Passion', inwhich she uncovers a feminine triad of 'the cogitating Christian soul, the woman upon whom her mind's eye gazes (the Blessed Virgin), and her guide (the church)' (p. 24), and finds in the occasion celebrated, the coincidence of Lady Day and Good Friday, as much a celebration of 'the flesh of a woman (worn by her son) that redeems humanity' (p. 33) as a memorialization of the redeemer himself. Her analysis of one ofDonne's most intricate sonnets, the sonnet upon the death of his wife entitled 'Since She whome I lovd', is also worthwhile for its tactful handling of Donne's conflicted sense of Anne Donne as a human sacrament, his remembrance of her present absence as a celestial bride drawing his spirit heavenward even as his desire forher absent presence attracts his flesh to earth. The chapter concludes with an extended analysis of Donne's Anniversaries that resumes DiPasquale's enduring interest in sacramental poetics. In the First and Second Anniversaries...

A Printing Error in Milton's Colasterion and its Implications

THE Huntington Library copy of Colasterion (March 1645)—the copy-text for the Yale Edition—opens with a printing ‘error’ which until now appears to have gone unnoticed. The epigram it prints is taken from Proverbs 26:5: ‘Answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit’. When we look at the title page, however,1 we notice that what should be a long ‘s’ in wise has been printed as an ‘f’, so that the fool—Milton's opponent—will be ‘wife in his own conceit’. Thus the epigram, in describing a doubleness in rhetorical argument which hoists a fool with his own petard, itself enacts a double vision on the word wise/wife. In ‘correcting’ the spelling of wise, Milton's readers recognize the way the anonymous author's ‘conceit’ in An Answer to a Book, Intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (November 1644) has transformed him into a nagging wife clamorously attacking divorce to avoid being disowned.

Implicit Aesthetics

The rhetorical identities and variety of both the 1643 and 1644 editions of Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and Of Education (1644) can be recovered by examining them against the pervasive, vastly influential rhetorical-poetic tradition in which he was educated. Using the rhetorical-poetic tradition as a hermeneutic allows for the location of what is formulaic in the rhetorical structures and styles of both tracts, what is adaptive and distinctive, and what can be described as rudimentary patterns of aesthetic development. Not only did Milton theorize a “fitted style of lofty, mean, or lowly,” he actually practiced it, shaping his rhetoric according to oratorical theory readily available to him. Rather than the uniformity which postmodern scholarship has assigned to Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and Of Education, one can argue for considerable diversity of rhetorical modes and styles. This essay will demonstrate Milton's deployment of not only oratorical structures, but also the oratorical high, middle, and low styles, in addition to the creative extension of rhetorical constructions into mimetic devises, primarily sententiae, fictive scenarios, and the prose character.

:Marriage and Its Dissolution in Early Modern England

Volume 1 Henry VIII, A Glasse of Truth (1532) Thomas Abell, Invicta Veritas. An answere, that by no maner of lawe, it maye be lawfull for the moste noble kinge of englande, King Henry the ayght to be divorsed from the queens grate, his lawful and very wyfe (1532) Privy Council of England and Wales, Articles Devised by the holle consent of the kynges moste honourable counsayle, his gracis licence opteined therto, not only to exhorte, but also to enfourme his louynge subiectis of the trouthe (1533) Volume 2 Joannes Ludovicus Vives, The office and duetie of an husband (1553) Volume 3 George Joye, A Contrarye (to a certayne manis) consultacion: that adulterers ought to punyshed with deathe (1549) Erasmus, The Censure and judgment of Erasmus whyther dyvorsemente stondeth with the lawe of God (1550) William Tyndale, An Exposition uppon the V. VI. VII. Chapters of Mathew (1532) Erasmus, Exhortation to the Diligent studye of scripture: An exposition in to the seventh chapter of the first pistle to the Corinthians (1529) Heinrich Bullinger, The Christian State of Matrimonye (1541) Hugh Latimer, The First Sermon preached Before King Edward (1549) Hugh Latimer, A Most Faithful Sermon Preached Before the Kynges Most Excellent Majesty (1550) Thomas Bentley, A Monument of Matrones (1582) Henry Smith, A Preparative to Marriage (1591) T E, The Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights (1632) Volume 4 Anon., Helpes for Discovery ... in relation to some sinnes, viz. blasphemy, adultery ... (1648) Edmund Bunny, Of divorce for adulterie and marrying againe, that there is no sufficient warrent so to do (1610) John Rainolds, A defence of the judgment of the reformed churches. That a man may lawfulle not onelie put awaie his wife for her adulterie, but also marrie another (1610) Martin Bucer, De regno Christi. De coniugio et divortio. English Title: The judgement of Martin Bucer, concerning divorce. Writt'n to Edward the sixt, in his second book of the kingdom of Christ . And now Englisht. Wherein a late book restoring the doctrine and discipline of divorce, is heer confirm'd and justify'd by the authoritie of Martin Bucer To the Parlament of England (1644) Anon., An answer to a book, intituled, The doctrine and discipline of divorce (1644) William Whately, A Bride-Bush: or A Wedding Sermon (1617 and 1623 editions)

"Sion's Songs":

In her concept of counter-tradition, Sheila Delany articulates a tradition of opposition that affirms the place of critical dissent within a broader cultural heritage spanning historical periods and encompassing diverse cultures, nations, and religions. While Delany includes Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce as a representative text, Milton's Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes present further models of counter-tradition. In both poems, the Psalms provide a tradition of literary excellence and critical resistance for heroic figures confronting oppression. Structural, dialectical, and typological features of the Psalms illustrate counter-tradition as a dynamic association of memory, history, experience, and education in the development of individual readers. Thus, counter-tradition is a concept of enduring critical and pedagogical value.

G. M. Revealed: Printer of the First Attacks on The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

G. M. Revealed: Printer of the First Attacks on <i>The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce</i>

Tertullian's Pandora and John Milton'sThe Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

John Milton alludes the classical myth of several times in his writings. His earliest reference is in his third prolusion, On the Harmony of the Spheres, which he wrote while student at Christ's College, Cambridge, between 1625 and 1632. fact that we are unable hear this harmony, says Milton, seems certainly be due the presumption of that thief Prometheus, which brought so many evils upon men (CPW 1:238-39). Though Milton does not mention by name, her eventual role in the Fall is implicit in his remarks (CPW 1:239n15). His first explicit allusion is in his fourth prolusion, the Destruction of any Substance there can be no Resolution into First Matter, which he begins by saying: This is not the place in which enquire too nicely whether Error escaped from Pandora's box, or from the depths of the Styx, or lastly whether he is be accounted one of the sons of Earth who conspired against the gods (CPW 1:249). Milton makes his final reference in Paradise Lost (1667 and 1674), where he compares the unfallen Eve the character from classical myth. Eve is [...] more adorn'd, More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods Endow'd with all thir gifts, and O too like In sad event. (4.713-16) Between his Cambridge years and Paradise Lost, Milton mentions in the 1644 second edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. In that greatly expanded version of the 1643 first edition, he alludes illuminate the Fall and absolve God of responsibility for creating sin: Yet considering the perfection wherin man was created, and have stood, no decree necessitating his free will, but subsequent though not in time yet in order causes which were in his owne power, they [the Jesuits and Arminians] might, methinks be perswaded absolve both God and us. Whenas the doctrine of Plato and Chrysippus with their followers the Academics and the Stoics, who knew not what consummat and most adorned was bestow'd upon Adam be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happinesse and I mean his native innocence and perfection, which have kept him from being our true Epimetheus, and though they taught of vertue and vice be both the gift of divine destiny, they could yet find reasons not invalid, justifie the counsels of God and Fate from the insulsity of mortall tongues: That mans own freewill self corrupted is the adequat and sufficient cause of his disobedience besides [i.e., other than] Fate; as Homer also wanted not [i.e., did not fail] expresse both in his Iliad and Odyssei. (CPW 2:293-94) The above passage has yielded conflicting interpretations. Milton alludes a consummat and most adorned Pandora given Adam, and some critics have read his words as reference Eve. Such reading, in turn, makes Milton seem more charitable toward women in his divorce tract. Others, however, have challenged the interpretation that Eve was given Adam to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happinesse and perseverance, and also that she might have kept him from being our true Epimetheus. So, too, Eve had been condemned in patristic writings, thus making her an unlikely moral guardian. While Milton's allusion in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce has generated debate, the meaning of the passage becomes clearer in light of the writings of the Church Father Tertullian, with whose works Milton was well acquainted. Tertullian denounces Eve and associates her with Pandora, but he also treats as rhetorical figure denoting the perfect combination of all good gifts. The myth of originated with Hesiod, who says in the Theogony (c. 720 B.C.) that at Zeus' command Hephaestus made her avenge Prometheus' theft of fire. Athena adorned her, and Hephaestus crowned her. …

Disaffection, Dissimulation, and the Uncertain Ground of Silent Dismission: Juxtaposing John Milton and Elizabeth Cary

Disaffection, Dissimulation, and the Uncertain Ground of Silent Dismission: Juxtaposing John Milton and Elizabeth Cary Shari A. Zimmerman* In this our land we have an ancient use, Permitted first by our law-giver’s head: Who hates his wife, though for no just abuse, May with a bill divorce her from his bed. —Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam 1 When a man hath tak’n a wife and married her, and it come to passe that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanesse in her, let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house, & c. —Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce 2 Qui nescit Dissimulare, nequit vivere, perire melius. [He who does not know how to dissemble, is unable to live, and is better off dead.] —Cary, The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II 3 The best Composition, and Temperature is, to have Opennesse in Fame and Opinion; Secrecy in Habit; Dissimulation in seasonable use; And a Power to faigne, if there be no Remedy. —Bacon, “Of Simulation and Dissimulation” 4 In a range of texts and in a range of ways, John Milton and early modern dramatist Elizabeth Cary grappled with and wrote about established gender categories, received views of marriage and woman, competing assumptions about female silence and speech, as well as the fit and unfit wife. Significantly, and while occupying what were arguably [End Page 553] opposing subject positions, both writers addressed themselves to Mosaic divorce law (a problem to which Henry VIII had recently enough directed national attention)—Milton rather painstakingly in four polemical tracts devoted to the matter, Cary quite dramatically (but only most apparently) in the bold and iconoclastic speeches of The Tragedy of Mariam’s Salome, a woman who would pose her “will” (M, 1.6.454) against male “privilege” (M, 1.4.305) and “precedent” (M, 1.5.453), “employ [her] wits” (M, 1.4.296) against established “custom” (M, 1.4.309) and “Law” (M, 1.6.454). Notably, too, Milton and Cary, working in the same dramatic form, wrote neoclassical tragedies (Samson Agonistes and The Tragedy of Mariam) that take up the problem of mixed conjugal ties between “bordering [t]ribes,” classes, blood lines, or peoples. 5 Closet dramas based on Hebrew narratives (both recounted by first-century historian Flavius Josephus), these tragedies are punctuated throughout by the pronouncements of a Hebrew Chorus uttering conventional (and not so conventional) wisdom about women. Like the dramas they composed, Milton’s and Cary’s life stories also invite comparison. Demonstrating precocious intelligence as children (with a capacity for reading that would get Milton up well before dawn and keep Cary up well into the night), each enjoyed a lifelong passion for learning; an extraordinary talent for languages (including, even for Cary, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Hebrew); a fierce, always controversial, engagement with matters of religion. Indeed, both were capable of disputing any number of authoritative texts and traditions. 6 Perhaps equally noteworthy, for the purposes of this essay, Milton and Cary experienced difficult marriages strained by differences in age, social status, political loyalties, and religious sympathies. They were marriages which began (almost from the outset and quite possibly before consummation) with the lengthy separations of husband and wife—the years in which Milton would produce his four tracts on divorce, Cary a play that interrogates what Milton himself might have called “fit” and “unfit matrimony,” “fit” and “unfit” wives. 7 Not so surprisingly, then, and as I can only begin to establish here, the juxtaposition of Milton and Cary—the one male, the other female; the one an anti-Catholic Protestant temporarily left by his first wife, the other a Catholic convert from Protestantism eventually and, in effect, “dismissed” by her husband—can yield fresh insight and new debate both about and between the texts these authors write, the stories they tell, and the very different perceptions they formulate about male suspicion and headstrong female behavior, about male privilege and the “unconjugal” (by definition, always female) “mind” (D, 244). [End Page 554] While I will not here be...