Description: A radical reassessment of Milton's religious identity, Milton among the Puritans challenges many received ideas about Milton's brand of Christianity, philosophy, and poetry. Surveying the largely secular provenance of so much of Milton's thought, Catherine Martin clearly demonstrates that received ideas about the "Puritan Milton" are neither as well-established as most scholars believe, nor as historically defensible as most literary critics still assume.
Review Quotes: A Yankee Book Peddler US Core Title for 2011 'Deeply thoughtful and widely researched, Catherine Gimelli Martin's account of Milton's religious and cultural milieu and disposition offers a boldly challenging interrogation of the usual orthodoxies about the poet and his work.' Thomas N. Corns, Bangor University, UK 'Catherine Gimelli Martin's book is a bold and salutary attempt to provide a new historical and conceptual foundation for the study of Milton. Martin works fiercely to dismantle the seldom questioned, but long orthodox, identification of John Milton as a "Puritan." And in so doing, she offers us a revisionist glimpse of how a new, more nuanced analysis of the period's politics and religion could enrich our understanding of England's greatest poet.' John Rogers, Yale University, USA '...Martin's lucid prose style makes this book accessible to a broad audience, and she provides footnotes rather than endnotes and a lengthy bibliography. Martin's audacious challenge to the assumption of Milton's Puritanism will surely figure importantly in debate over Milton's religion and literature, and the book is consequently a necessary addition to any academic library supporting the teaching of Milton...Highly recommended.' Choice 'The evidence Martin gathers is not new, but she marshals it so effectively that her case seems irrefutable. No careful reader of her book will glibly allude to the "Puritan" Milton again.' Times Literary Supplement 'Milton among the Puritans returns us to some familiar aspects of Milton's life and intellectual composition - his republicanism, his rationalism, his interest in science and his commitment to humanist learning - and it does so in a way that reminds us of the unique power of Milton's mind and art in secular, political, and Baconian terms. This book also brings us back to questions that naturally invite us to prod and probe Milton's complex and sometimes heterodox relationship to seventeenth-century English Puritanism...'