Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination

This first book-length study explores the relationship between Milton’s vision of history and his literary imagination in the revolutionary prose and great poems. It focuses on Milton as a controversial writer actively engaged in shaping, representing, and participating in the drama of history of his age. Highlighting the apocalyptic and iconoclastic components of Milton’s historical vision, the book examines the more turbulent dimensions of his polemic and poetic works. Loewenstein stresses the importance of Milton’s less canonical texts (such as Eikonoklastes and the History of Britain) and shows how they illuminate the sense of history dramatized in Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. Analyzing the literary expressions of Milton’s radicalism, this study reveals a complex interaction among historical consciousness and figurative expression, political vision and textual effects.