The Poetics and Politics of Youth in Milton's England

Blaine Greteman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781107439986
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

As the notion of government by consent took hold in early modern England, many authors used childhood and maturity to address contentious questions of political representation - about who has a voice and who can speak on his or her own behalf. For John Milton, Ben Jonson, William Prynne, Thomas Hobbes and others, the period between infancy and adulthood became a site of intense scrutiny, especially as they examined the role of a literary education in turning children into political actors. Drawing on new archival evidence, Blaine Greteman argues that coming of age in the seventeenth century was a uniquely political act. His study makes a compelling case for understanding childhood as a decisive factor in debates over consent, autonomy and political voice, and will offer graduate students and scholars a new perspective on the emergence of apolitical children's literature in the eighteenth century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• The Poetics and Politics of Youth in Milton’s England
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I The Growth of Consent and Discipline of Childhood in Early Modern England
• Chapter 1 Coming of Age on Stage
• Chapter 2 Children, Literature, and the Problem of Consent
• Chapter 3 Contract’s Children
• Part II Milton and the Children of Liberty
• Chapter 4 “Perplex’t Paths”
• Chapter 5 “Children of Reviving Libertie”
• Chapter 6 “Youthful Beauty”
• Chapter 7 Children of Paradise
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Index