Milton and the Burden of Freedom

Warren Chernaik is Emeritus Professor of English, University of London. He was the founding Director of the Institute of English Studies (IES), University of London, and is now a Senior Research Fellow of IES. He is the author of The Myth of Rome in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Cambridge, 2011), The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's History Plays (Cambridge, 2007), a study of The Merchant of Venice (2005), Sexual Freedom in Restoration Literature (Cambridge, 1995) and The Poet's Time: Politics and Religion in the Work of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1983). He has also published essays on such authors as Marvell, Milton, Shakespeare, Jonson, Herbert, Traherne, Rochester, Pepys, and Behn, and has co-edited books on topics as diverse as detective fiction, changes in copyright law, and Andrew Marvell.

'Topics include the relations between divine Providence and human freedom, classical and biblical republicanism, God's justice and God's mercy, law and Gospel, and Milton's anti-monarchical politics and the divine monarchy of Paradise Lost. While these are familiar subjects to Miltonists, Chernaik discusses them with lucidity and sound judgment, drawing on a mature knowledge of Milton's work, of the writings of his contemporaries, and of Milton criticism past and present.' Tobias Gregory, Renaissance Quarterly

• Introduction. Free to fall: Milton and the Old Testament God; 1. Milton's post-Calvinist theology; 2. 'Providence their guide': providence in Milton; 3. The unpolluted temple of the mind: virtue on trial; 4. Classical and Biblical Republicanism: Milton and some contemporaries; 5. Victory's crest: Milton, the English nation, and Cromwell; 6. Monarchy and servitude: the politics of Paradise Lost; 7. God's just yoke: power and justice in Paradise Lost; 8. 'Tyrannie must be': Milton and the Restoration; Postscript.