| "Scholars
who seek the roots of Milton's influence in the early republic will
have in one volume precisely the kind of information they need. And
those who wish to understand Milton's place among the American Romantics
more generally will [find here] fine chapters on Emerson, Thoreau,
and the other Transcendentalists. This book will have wide appeal
among Miltonists and people in American literature, but even more
so for those who wish to be stimulated to reconsider transatlantic
literary culture."-Philip F. Gura, University of North Carolina
"Van Anglen has written a fascinating chapter in New England literary
sociology, [revealing] how early nineteenth-century New England
used the poetry, example, and person of Milton to solve the problem
of authority. The author knows the material thoroughly. His scholarship
is inclusive and up-to-date. This is a solid achievement."-Robert
D. Richardson, Wesleyan University
The New England Milton concentrates on the poet's place in the
writings of the Unitarians and the Transcendentalists, especially
Emerson, Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Jones Very, Margaret
Fuller, and Theodore Parker, and demonstrates that his reception
by both groups was a function of their response as members of the
New England elite to older and broader socio-political tensions
in Yankee culture as it underwent the process of modernization.
For Milton and his writings (particularly Paradise Lost) were themselves
early manifestations of the continuing crisis of authority that
later afflicted the dominant class and professions in Boston; and
so, the Unitarian Milton, like the Milton of Emerson's lectures
or Thoreau's Walden, quite naturally became the vehicle for literary
attempts by these authors to resolve the ideological contradictions
they had inherited from the Puritan past. |
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