Friday 6 November 2009

Book Review - Dragon's Teeth: Literature in the English Revolution, by Michael Wilding

Michael Wilding's opening sentence sets the scene early on – a reference to a cannonball from the seventeenth century Civil War Battle of Worcester makes it clear that Wilding's brand of criticism is going to be rooted in the events surrounding Milton, Browne, Butler and Marvell. Having told us that critics like T S Eliot have dehistoricised and depoliticised Milton, Wilding aims to restore the poet to his rightful place. He does this by re-examining Milton's poetry through the filter of his earlier, pre-Republic, prose. By re-applying the historical and political contexts to Milton, a political radical very much of his time, Wilding fulfils the brief of his final chapter heading and reclaims the radical Milton.

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