Description
Taking as its starting point the long-standing characterization of Milton as a "Hebraic" writer, Milton and the Rabbis probes the limits of the relationship between the seventeenth-century English poet and polemicist and his Jewish antecedents. Shoulson's analysis moves back and forth between Milton's writings and Jewish writings of the first five centuries of the Common Era, collectively known as midrash. In exploring the historical and literary implications of these connections, Shoulson shows how Milton's text can inform a more nuanced reading of midrash just as midrash can offer new insights into Paradise Lost. Shoulson is unconvinced of a direct link between a specific collection of rabbinic writings and Milton's works.
About the Author
Jeffrey Shoulson is assistant professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Miami.
Reviews
[Shoulson]... is as sophisticated a reader of Milton's works as he is of the rabbinical writings that shaped the milieu in which Milton and his contemporaries worked out their relationship to Christiantiy and to the ancient and contemporary Hebraic traditions. The results are enlightening and truly rewarding. Seventeenth-Century News A rich canvas... Shoulson brings to his task great erudition, scholarly comprehensiveness, and critical acumen. -- Manfried Weidhorn Sixteenth Century Journal Insightful and inventive... Rather than trying to claim a specific source for Milton's "Hebraic" tendencies, Shoulson asserts that rabbinic literature might have reached [Milton] through a variety of means, direct and indirect. -- Heather Shillinglaw, Indiana University Religious Studies Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780231123297
Author Jeffrey Shoulson
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press