"Masculin births": The re -conception of seventeenth -century law in Milton's poetry.
Item
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Title
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"Masculin births": The re -conception of seventeenth -century law in Milton's poetry.
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Identifier
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AAI3008831
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identifier
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3008831
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Creator
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Greenberg, Lynne Ann.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joseph Wittreich
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English
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Abstract
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Taken in isolation, John Milton's seemingly definitive pronouncement in The History of Britain suggests that he concurred in seventeenth-century English law's discriminations on the basis of gender, presupposing justifications both divine and natural for men's unilateral domination of the legal system. The common-law unequivocally favored the rights of men: "Women have no voice in Parliament, They make no Lawes, they consent to none...All of them are understood either married or to be married and their desires...subject to their husband, I know no remedy though some women can shift it well enough.";This study takes as its starting-place woman's potential to shift the legal system and interrogates Milton's sliding scale of responses to such shifting women. This work will argue that Milton's thought in the area of gender relations is as revolutionary as his political thought, that, in fact, it engages in shifting maneuvers, subtly calling into question the framework, justification and immutability of the law. Interrogating women's limited legal status grafted onto Milton's poetry and enforced by English law, this work explores how Milton's poetry does not simply acquiesce in, but instead, subtly transgresses and even critiques these limitations. A chapter-by-chapter exploration of the different stages of a woman's life as represented in A Mask, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes permits an in-depth analysis of early modern constructions of female power and agency, revealing how Milton's gender discourse is as revolutionary as his political thought.;This book will also historicize Milton's work within the larger legal revolution of the period, interlacing Milton's prose and poetry with official legal literature, in order to reveal just how central changing legal definitions were to Milton's thought. What is most extraordinary about Milton's vision is how he managed not only to conceive of a society structured along modern contractarian, proprietary and individualistic principles but also to anticipate many of the implicit problems associated with a system under which we still live.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
