“…Joad Raymond's assertion regarding the critical neglect of the Observations is telling because it acknowledges the tension between the two versions of Milton that persist in modern scholarship: His first duty as a state servant was to pen a tract attacking the factions struggling in Ireland, a tract to which scant attention has been paid, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker. It has recently undergone, however, a revival of interest, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker (Raymond , p. 316).In Observations , written at the behest of the recently established Council of State, the extent of Milton's complicity in the subsequent massacres orchestrated by Cromwell at Drogheda and Wexford is brought into focus. Although published 3 months before Cromwell set sail for Ireland, the tract functions, in Thomas Corns' words, as “preemptive justification” for the slaughter of thousands of soldiers and civilians by “laying the ideological foundations for the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland” (, pp.…”
Section: Approaching Milton's Receptionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…His first duty as a state servant was to pen a tract attacking the factions struggling in Ireland, a tract to which scant attention has been paid, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker. It has recently undergone, however, a revival of interest, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker (Raymond , p. 316).…”
Section: Approaching Milton's Receptionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The questions posed by Corns and Maley have retained a currency ever since and are echoed and responded to by Stevens (), Daems (), Gregerson (), Raymond (), Fenton (), Lim (), and McDowell (, , ), all of whom tackle the subject of Milton's writings about the Irish dimension to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the issues of colonialism, plantation, empire, nationhood, and identity that it raises. With the exception of Elizabeth Sauer, who explores the topic of English Protestant nationalism and the corresponding crisis in Ireland through the lens of Milton's sonnet “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” (Sauer, ), the overwhelming emphasis is placed on Milton's prose works of the 1640s, especially the antiprelatical tracts (1641–1642), the Observations upon the Articles of Peace (1649), and Eikonoklastes (1649).…”
This essay examines a largely undocumented aspect of Irish literary history: the reception and circulation of John Milton's writings in Ireland. Milton's negative views of the inhabitants of Ireland have been well documented, but this essay analyses some of the intellectual responses of readers, writers, and thinkers in Ireland to the English republic's leading apologist for the conquest of Ireland. I argue that such an approach is required in order to redirect the critical narrative away from examinations of the hackneyed anti‐Irish stereotypes written for colonial agendas and to shed light on the ways in which Milton was read to speak to and about a range of political, religious, social, and ethical issues in early modern and late modern Ireland. The essay also seeks to introduce my book‐length study of the topic which, ranging across printed and manuscript sources—from Irish translations of Milton's poetry to political appropriations of his controversial prose—interrogates the collective assumptions, aspirations, fears, anxieties, and prejudices of readers and writers in Ireland as they are revealed in response to the self‐conflicting voice of civil and religious liberties, on the one hand, and aggressive English colonialism on the other.
“…Joad Raymond's assertion regarding the critical neglect of the Observations is telling because it acknowledges the tension between the two versions of Milton that persist in modern scholarship: His first duty as a state servant was to pen a tract attacking the factions struggling in Ireland, a tract to which scant attention has been paid, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker. It has recently undergone, however, a revival of interest, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker (Raymond , p. 316).In Observations , written at the behest of the recently established Council of State, the extent of Milton's complicity in the subsequent massacres orchestrated by Cromwell at Drogheda and Wexford is brought into focus. Although published 3 months before Cromwell set sail for Ireland, the tract functions, in Thomas Corns' words, as “preemptive justification” for the slaughter of thousands of soldiers and civilians by “laying the ideological foundations for the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland” (, pp.…”
Section: Approaching Milton's Receptionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…His first duty as a state servant was to pen a tract attacking the factions struggling in Ireland, a tract to which scant attention has been paid, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker. It has recently undergone, however, a revival of interest, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker (Raymond , p. 316).…”
Section: Approaching Milton's Receptionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The questions posed by Corns and Maley have retained a currency ever since and are echoed and responded to by Stevens (), Daems (), Gregerson (), Raymond (), Fenton (), Lim (), and McDowell (, , ), all of whom tackle the subject of Milton's writings about the Irish dimension to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the issues of colonialism, plantation, empire, nationhood, and identity that it raises. With the exception of Elizabeth Sauer, who explores the topic of English Protestant nationalism and the corresponding crisis in Ireland through the lens of Milton's sonnet “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” (Sauer, ), the overwhelming emphasis is placed on Milton's prose works of the 1640s, especially the antiprelatical tracts (1641–1642), the Observations upon the Articles of Peace (1649), and Eikonoklastes (1649).…”
This essay examines a largely undocumented aspect of Irish literary history: the reception and circulation of John Milton's writings in Ireland. Milton's negative views of the inhabitants of Ireland have been well documented, but this essay analyses some of the intellectual responses of readers, writers, and thinkers in Ireland to the English republic's leading apologist for the conquest of Ireland. I argue that such an approach is required in order to redirect the critical narrative away from examinations of the hackneyed anti‐Irish stereotypes written for colonial agendas and to shed light on the ways in which Milton was read to speak to and about a range of political, religious, social, and ethical issues in early modern and late modern Ireland. The essay also seeks to introduce my book‐length study of the topic which, ranging across printed and manuscript sources—from Irish translations of Milton's poetry to political appropriations of his controversial prose—interrogates the collective assumptions, aspirations, fears, anxieties, and prejudices of readers and writers in Ireland as they are revealed in response to the self‐conflicting voice of civil and religious liberties, on the one hand, and aggressive English colonialism on the other.
“…Milton, by contrast, was silent on the subject of the Levellers, even when he had been ordered to write against them (Raymond, “Complications” 342; Norbrook 203). Like Nedham's, Margetts's view of the world and his political analysis were fundamentally shaped by religion, but religion played a closely circumscribed part in his writing about politics, perhaps because he understood it was as likely to result in disagreement as in effective persuasion (Raymond, “Marchamont Nedham”). However, in the final instance he differs from Nedham in expressing a suspicion of “interest,” despite its usefulness as an analytic category.…”
Section: The Life and Fortunes Of Thomas Margettsmentioning
“…It has recently undergone, however, a revival of interest, perhaps because of the political offence it gives to the image of John Milton as a liberal thinker.' 19 The enthusiasm to enlist Milton as the ideologist of Cromwellian conquest can, however, sometimes race ahead of the facts: a substantial recent collection of essays on the subject of Milton and Toleration twice describes the Observations as 'defending Cromwell's re-conquest of the rebellious Irish in 1649' when Cromwell did not set sail for another three months after the publication of the tract. 20 Nonetheless, as Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns comment in their recent biography, with an eye on twenty-first-century geopolitics: 'Milton produced a tendentious dossier designed to launch and excuse a dubious war of aggression.…”
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