
The End of Learning
Milton and Education
Thomas Festa(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 2. June 2006
Book
Hardback
252 pages
978-0-415-97839-2 (ISBN)
Description
This book shows that education constitutes the central metaphor of John Milton's political as well as his poetic writing. Demonstrating how Milton's theory of education emerged from his own practices as a reader and teacher, this book analyzes for the first time the relationship between Milton's own material habits as a reader and his theory of the power of books. Milton's instincts for pedagogy, and the habits of inculcation everywhere visible in his writings, take on a larger political function in his use of education as a trope for the transmission of intellectual history. The book therefore analyzes Paradise Lost in the complementary contexts of its outright educational claims and more subversive countervailing measures in order to show how Milton dramatizes "the end of learning," which is to say both its objective and its failure. The thesis emphasizes the argumentative resourcefulness of Milton's efforts to liberate readers from the tyrannical bonds of their political innocence, most immediately in the context of the failure of Cromwell's regime to establish lasting republican institutions. More philosophically, the book explores the ways in which Milton's works investigate the humane and intellectual yearning for justice in response to the problem of evil.
Reviews / Votes
"In The End of Learning: Milton and Education, Thomas Festa offers an impressively learned exploration of the meaning of education as theme, practice, and motive in Milton's poetry and prose...Festa's book represents a critically important contribution to our understanding of Milton's poetry and what it means to historicize poetic education." -- Julian Koslow, Virginia Tech University, Modern PhilologyMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
2 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
2 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
568 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-415-97839-2 (9780415978392)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
08/2014
1st Edition
Routledge
€26.90
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
09/2013
1st Edition
Routledge
€20.99
Available for download

E-Book
09/2013
1st Edition
Routledge
€20.99
Available for download
Person
Thomas Festa is Assistant Professor of Renaissance literature in the English department at the State University of New York at New Paltz. His essays have appeared in Milton Studies, English Language Notes,Reformation, the John Donne Journal, and The OxfordEncyclopedia of British Literature.
Content
Introduction; Chapter 1 Repairing the Ruins; Chapter 2 Milton and the Hebraic Pedagogue of the Divorce Tracts; Chapter 3 The English Revolution and Heroic Education; Chapter 4 The Inward Archives of Paradise Lost; Chapter 5 Coda;