The Complete Works of John Milton: Volume VI
Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings
Published on 26. December 2013
Book
Hardback
832 pages
978-0-19-921805-9 (ISBN)
Description
This is the fourth volume to be published in Oxford's 11-volume edition of the Complete Works of John Milton, the first complete scholarly edition for nearly 100 years. It brings together (for the first time in a single volume) Milton's English writing in prose on the political issues that exercised him throughout his life - civil and religious liberty, republicanism and the constitution of a free commonwealth, the rights and duties of citizens, resistance of tyranny and the role of military force in securing national stability. The eleven pieces here presented in chronological order, from The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) to Milton's last prose work, his translation of the proclamation announcing the election of John Sobieski as King of Poland (1674), articulate his responses to the unprecedented events of the seventeenth century - civil war, regicide, the Commonwealth, Cromwellian rule, the Restoration of monarchy and the restored Stuart regime -- events which shaped the social, political and religious structures of modern Britain. They do so with unrivalled polemical and rhetorical skill, instinct with revolutionary fervour and political idealism.
Each title is freshly edited from newly examined and collated copies of either the first and subsequent seventeenth-century editions or of the manuscript record to give the most accurate and authoritative texts. A headnote to each analyses and discusses (often with new evidence) its composition, production and reception. A very substantial general introduction sets the writings in the context of European intellectual history and of contemporary British controversy and polemic. References and allusions to events and to texts are elucidated by full and detailed annotation and commentary which takes full account of recent Milton scholarship but also often draws on original research. Taken together, these features constitute the definitive edition of these texts for the 21st century.
Both editors are established seventeenth-century scholars with expertise particularly in the political and religious literature of the Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration periods.
Each title is freshly edited from newly examined and collated copies of either the first and subsequent seventeenth-century editions or of the manuscript record to give the most accurate and authoritative texts. A headnote to each analyses and discusses (often with new evidence) its composition, production and reception. A very substantial general introduction sets the writings in the context of European intellectual history and of contemporary British controversy and polemic. References and allusions to events and to texts are elucidated by full and detailed annotation and commentary which takes full account of recent Milton scholarship but also often draws on original research. Taken together, these features constitute the definitive edition of these texts for the 21st century.
Both editors are established seventeenth-century scholars with expertise particularly in the political and religious literature of the Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration periods.
Reviews / Votes
demonstrates the diffusion of literary language into high politics...These moments exemplify not just the meticulous scholarship through which the editors this volume have situated these tracts anew, but the novel avenues for interpretation that they have opened up in doing so, surely the most important gauge of a new edition's success...This volume makes outstanding contributions to our local understanding of Milton'Acs political prose. * Joe Moshenska, The Times Literary Supplement * exemplifes the benefits of the readiness of literary critics to engage with historical scholarship [and] surpasses the corresponding portions of the Yale [edition of the texts] in scholarly exactness and judgement. * Blair Worden, London Review of Books * Through its introduction, headnotes, freshly edited texts, and elaborate endnotes, the volume synthesizes much of the bibliographical and historical work on Milton's English political prose writings that concern civil and religious liberty, republicanism, and the resistance of tyranny. It also adds additional scholarship on the European reception of Eikonoklastes, including collation of the French edition, and provides rich information about the circumstances, context, and subsequent print afterlife of these works. * Milton Society of America Awards Committee * This is the finest edition of these works that we have had or are likely to have. The care over producing totally trustworthy texts of these extraordinary writings is itself extraordinary...my abiding sense is one of awe at the scale of editorial concentration and gratitude, for, as the dust-jacket puts it, Actaken together [all the] features constitute the definitive edition of these texts for the twenty-first century. * John Morrill, Milton Quarterly * this edition deserves to be widely used * Jason Peacey, English Historical Review *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Illustrations
12 black-and-white halftones
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 48 mm
Weight
1158 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-921805-9 (9780199218059)
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
Persons
N. H. Keeble is Professor Emeritus of English Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland, from which he retired in 2010 as Senior Deputy Principal. His academic and research interests lie in English cultural (and especially literary and religious history) of the early modern period, 1500-1725. His publications in this field include studies of Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters (1982), The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in later seventeenth-century England (1987), The Restoration: England in the 1660s (2002), a two-volume Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter (1991; with Geoffrey F. Nuttall) and editions of texts by Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Lucy Hutchinson and Andrew Marvell. He currently leads an AHRC funded project to prepare a scholarly edition of Richard Baxter's Reliquiae Baxterianae for publication by Oxford University Press.
Nicholas McDowell is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Thought at the University of Exeter. His visiting positions have included Membership of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion, and Revolution, 1630-1660 (OUP, 2003) and Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit (OUP, 2008), and he is the editor, with Nigel Smith, of The Oxford Handbook of Milton (OUP, 2009; paperback, 2011), which was awarded the 2009 Irene Samuel Award of the Milton Society of America for most distinguished collection. In 2007 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust. He is currently writing an intellectual biography of Milton.
Nicholas McDowell is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Thought at the University of Exeter. His visiting positions have included Membership of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion, and Revolution, 1630-1660 (OUP, 2003) and Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit (OUP, 2008), and he is the editor, with Nigel Smith, of The Oxford Handbook of Milton (OUP, 2009; paperback, 2011), which was awarded the 2009 Irene Samuel Award of the Milton Society of America for most distinguished collection. In 2007 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust. He is currently writing an intellectual biography of Milton.
Content
LIST OF FIGURES; ABBREVIATIONS; EDITORIAL PROCEDURES; A NOTE ON DATES; GENERAL INTRODUCTION; 1: THE 1649 WRITINGS; 2: THE LATER WRITINGS