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Middle Tennessee State University Religious Dissent MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY RELIGIOUS DISSENT IN JOHN MILTON'S 1673 POEMS, &C. UPON SEVERAL OCCASIONS AND NONCONFORMIST SPEECH-ACTS IN THE RESTORATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY BY BRETT A. HUDSON MURFREESBORO, TENNESSEE MAY 2012 UMI Number: 3514915 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent on the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT ... - ... ^ ^»<-«-«- — IMMnnOn rUMnnQ UMI 3514915 Copyright 2012 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest" ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Religious Dissent in John Milton's 1673 Poems, &c. Upon Several Occasions and Nonconformist Speech-Acts in the Restoration APPROVED: Dr. PhilipJ?feillips, Major Professor Dr. K ^n, Second Reader , Third Reader Jfru< Dr. Tom Strawman, Chair, Department of English Dr. Michael Allen, Dean, College of Graduate Studies Copyright © 2012 by Brett A. Hudson All rights reserved ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have become indebted to numerous people throughout the process of researching and writing this dissertation, and these debts add to a greater tally incurred throughout my many educational experiences. I am grateful to all those who have taught, guided, and advised me in the many ways people do when they care. I am particularly thankful to Dr. Philip Phillips for the mentoring and guidance that he has given me throughout my tenure at MTSU. He has provided me with countless opportunities to improve my writing and professional skills. I am especially thankful for his guidance as my dissertation director throughout this lengthy process. He has been a part of this dissertation since its very beginning as a seminar paper for his Milton course, and he has graciously given me many hours of his time since then. I am also thankful to Dr. Kevin Donovan and Dr. Marion Hollings for their participation and guidance as part of my dissertation committee. Both have contributed valuable insight and recommendations to this project as well as to papers which served as foundations to chapters. Furthermore, both Dr. Donovan and Dr. Hollings have provided essential guidance in my professional development. My dissertation committee—as have all of my professors at MTSU—continually challenged me intellectually as a researcher and writer, and for all their efforts I thank them for making me a better scholar and Miltonist. I am thankful to the attendees of the 2009 Murfreesboro Conference on John Milton who listened to an early paper suggesting the direction of my dissertation and to attendees of the 2011 Murfreesboro Conference on John Milton who listened to a version i of Chapter 4. The comments and encouragement that I received at these conferences were invaluable. I am equally thankful to the Marvell Society members who listened to versions of Chapter 2 and Chapter 5 at the 2011 and 2012 South-Central Renaissance Conference and who provided helpful and heartening comments. I am thankful to the Graduate College and English Department at MTSU for awarding me a dissertation writing fellowship, providing me with the opportunity to finish this project in a timely manner, and I am most grateful to those who recommended me for this fellowship. Furthermore, I am grateful to Dean Mark Byrnes, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Graduate College at MTSU for cooperatively awarding me travel funds to conduct research at The Rare Books and Manuscript Library, University of Illinois, Urbana. Additionally, 1 am thankful to the librarians at The Rare Books and Manuscript Library for their assistance and patience during my visit. My words cannot express how eternally thankful I am for the unwavering encouragement of my family. They have provided me with the foundations I needed to succeed in this project. Finally, I am most grateful to my wife Sarah, who holds as great a share in this work as anyone. Without her all-encompassing support, these ideas would still be locked away in my mind. ii ABSTRACT This study reexamines the history of reception of John Milton and, in particular, his lyric poetry. Moving beyond the often examined social context of the 1640s, this work analyzes Milton's Poems, &c. Upon Several Occasions in the 1673 context of the republication of Milton's lyrics, focusing particularly on the discourse of England's post- Restoration religious nonconformity. The publication date of Poems 1673 places the book in the hands of nonconformist readers, facing harsh penalties and social exclusion due to England's ecclesiastical penal codes. Such disenfranchised readers sought encouragement, instruction, and catharsis. A combined assessment of the published text of Poems 1673 and of a post-Restoration nonconformist readership shows Milton's poetry to be material easily appropriated for the nonconformist agenda. Concerned with the coherency of Poems 1673 as a nonconformist speech-act, the study focuses closely on three major divisions within the book. Seen through comparisons to nonconformist biography, the sonnet sequence of Poems 1673 contains idioms typically employed by nonconformists to gain toleration and acceptance as well as to defend their public "voices." The pastoral section—dominated by Lycidas and A Mask—contains biblical typology utilized by nonconformist preachers and polemicists, engaged in the vitriolic debates over religious toleration. In their post-Restoration context, Lycidas and A Mask function as descriptions of the enemies of nonconformity in order to reverse the negative dichotomy placed on religious dissent. Finally, the Old Testament typology of Milton's Psalm translations provides emotional catharsis to disenfranchised individuals and groups facing the existential crisis of ideological uncertainty caused by persecution and isolation. iii Through a comparative analysis of the writings of such pro-nonconformist authors as Andrew Marvell, Joseph Alleine, and Richard Baxter, the poetic idioms and typology of Poems 1673 reveal their previously overlooked participation after the Restoration as nonconformist speech-acts. iv CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES vi ABBREVIATIONS vii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1 The Historical Context of Post-Restoration Nonconformity 6 The Biographical Context of Poems 1673 24 The Text of Poems 1673 32 CHAPTER II: ANDREW MARVELL AND MILTON'S POST-RESTORATION READER 50 CHAPTER III: NONCONFORMIST BIOGRAPHY AND THE SONNET SEQUENCE OF POEMS 1673 82 The Social Currency of Joseph Alleine's Personal Experiences 85 The Currency of Milton's Experiences 95 Authorized Speech and the Act of Uniformity 112 The Ministry of the Sonnets 117 CHAPTER IV: THE WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING IN POEMS 1673 135 The Biblical Pastoralism of Poems 1673 148 Lycidas 151 The Conventicle Acts 160 A Mask 166 Danger's Remedy 184 CHAPTER V: THE PSALMS TRANSLATIONS AND THE EMOTIONS OF IDENTITY AND DOCTRINE 187 Psalms 1-8 195 Psalms 80-88 213 CONCLUSION 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY 239 v FIGURES 1. Title Page of Poems 1673 34 2. Title Page of the Latin Poemata for Poems 1673 35 3. Frontispiece and Title Page of Poems 1645 42 4. Psalm 82 and 83 with Marginal Glosses on the Hebrew 217 vi ABBREVIATIONS Achinstein, Dissent Sharon Achinstein, Literature and Dissent in Milton's England CPW John Milton, The Complete Prose Works of John Milton CSP John Milton, John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems. Edited by Stella P. Revard DNB Dictionary of National Biography Keeble, Nonconformity N. H. Keeble, Literary Culture on Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England KJV King James Bible Lewalski, Milton Barbara Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography Life and Death Theodosia Alleine, et al. The Life and Death of Mr. Joseph Alleine OED Oxford English Dictionary PL John Milton, Paradise Lost Poems 1673 John Milton, Poems, &c. Upon Several Occasions Poems 1645 John Milton, The Poems of Mr. John Milton PWM Andrew Marvell, The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell SR Statutes of the Realm Watts, Dissenters Michael Watts, Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution vii 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION "Books are not absolutely dead things" - John Milton, Areopagitica The life of a book once it has left the author's hands depends much upon whose hands are holding that book. Such has been the case with many of Milton's books. In the hands of Andrew Marvell, the continuation of the literary life Paradise Lost was recommended because of its poetic inspiration.1 In the hands of the public executioner, the lives of Milton's interregnal tracts were condemned to death and subsequently burned as symbols of sedition.2 In the hands of post-Restoration religious dissenters, Samson Agonistes served as a lasting literary monument to their trials, imprisonments, and deaths.3 As both an author and a reader, Milton was aware of the various "lives" that were perhaps in store for his own books. In Areopagitica, Milton suggests that the interaction between readers and texts is an almost symbiotic relationship in which the process of reading breathes continued life into the author's words and in which the author's words affect the lives and minds of readers. Milton writes, "For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie 1 See Chapter 2. 2 See below, 25. 3 See Achinstein, Dissent, 130-53. 2 and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."4 Of course, Milton's particular poetic, religious, and political efficacy was, at times, potent enough to elicit a wide variety of contemporary responses; furthermore, Milton's efficacy keeps scholars returning to his texts in order to study the "potencie of life" left in his individual works.
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