Is this our boasted constitution? Is this our liberty?”
Reading Milton in Ireland
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12880658 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Colin Lahive (0000-0002-5805-8390, University College Dublin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Publication date | 2018-09-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Literature Compass (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1741-4113 • E-ISSN: 1741-4113 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/lic3.12492 |
| OpenAlex | W2892332026 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 67 |
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
Art · Colonialism · Constitution · Irish · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions
The British Problem, c. 1534–1707
Faithful Labourers: A Reception History of Paradise Lost, 1667-1970
The Irish Enlightenment
Milton and the Jews
Milton in Translation
From Belfast to Baghdad
‘The Odious Demon from Across the Sea’. Oliver Cromwell, Memory and the Dislocations of Ireland
Wolfe Tone
Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland
Ireland, Ethnicity and the Nation
Shakespeare, Easter 1916, and the Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain
Making Ireland English
Celtic Shakespeare
Rebels and Redshanks
Exclusionary Empire
Milton, Macbeth, and Buchanan
Paradise Lost and the Rise of the American Republic
Political Thought in Ireland, 1776-1798
A New World of Words
Milton's Imperial Epic
Milton in Early America
The Oxford Handbook of Milton
Milton in the Arab-Muslim World
Milton's Enmity towards Islam and the Intellectus Agens
Mathew Carey’s Irish Apprenticeship
Anglo-Irish Patriotism and its European Context
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History
From Patriots to Unionists
Crises of Identity Among Irish Protestants 1641-1685
Planters and Policies in Cromwellian Ireland
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |