17th century
A01=Alison A. Chapman
adam and eve
arch-felon
Author_Alison A. Chapman
british literature
Category=DSB
christian ethics
christianity
conscience
early modern period
english law
epic poem
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
gods will
great poet
heaven
human society
John Milton
judicial processes
jurisprudential changes
justice
kingdom of god
legal history
morality
Paradise Lost
philosophy
polemicist
reason
religion
renaissance literary criticism
Product details
- ISBN 9780226435138
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 Feb 2017
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The seventeenth century saw some of the most important legal changes in England's history, yet the period has been largely overlooked in the rich field of literature and law. Helping to fill this gap, The Legal Epic is the first book to situate the great poet and polemicist John Milton at the center of late seventeenth-century legal history. Alison A. Chapman argues that Milton's Paradise Lost sits at the apex of the early modern period's long fascination with law and judicial processes. Milton's world saw law and religion as linked disciplines and thought therefore that in different ways, both law and religion should reflect the will of God. Throughout Paradise Lost, Milton invites his readers to judge actions using not only reason and conscience but also core principles of early modern jurisprudence. Law thus informs Milton's attempt to "justify the ways of God to men" and points readers toward the types of legal justice that should prevail on earth. Adding to the growing interest in the cultural history of law, The Legal Epic shows that England's preeminent epic poem is also a sustained reflection on the role that law plays in human society.
Alison A. Chapman is professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is the author of Patrons and Patron Saints in Early Modern English Literature.
