Mammon’s Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton

Blair Hoxby

Published by Yale University Press 2008

Mammon’s Music

Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton

Blair Hoxby

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300129632

Overview
Contents

About this book

The commercial revolution of the seventeenth century deeply changed English culture. In this ambitious book, Blair Hoxby explores what that economic transformation meant to the century’s greatest poet, John Milton, and to the broader literary tradition in which he worked. Hoxby places Milton’s workas well as the writings of contemporary reformers like the Levellers, poets like John Dryden, and political economists like Sir William Pettywithin the framework of England’s economic history between 1601 and 1724. Literary history swerved in this period, Hoxby demonstrates, as a burgeoning economic discourse pressed authors to reimagine ideas about self, community, and empire. Hoxby shows that, contrary to commonly held views, Milton was a sophisticated economic thinker. Close readings of Milton’s prose and verse reveal the importance of economic ideas in a wide range of his most famous writings, from Areopagitica to Samson Agonistes to Paradise Lost.

Author / Editor information

Blair Hoxby is assistant professor of English at Yale University.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
A Note on Conventions and Texts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART ONE. VIRTUE, COMMERCE, TRUTH
1. The Trade of Truth Advanced Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
PART TWO. THE GOVERNMENT OF TRADE
2. Republican Experiments, Royalist Responses Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
3. The King of Trade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
PART THREE. FORCE, COMMERCE, AND EMPIRE
4. Royalist Topography and the Epic of Trade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
5. Speculation in Paradise Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
6. From Amboyna to Windsor Forest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
PART FOUR. THE MEANING OF WORK
7. Idleness Had Been Worse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311

Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press
Pages
- Main content: 336
Illustrations
- Other: 36 b-w illus.

eBook

Published: October 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780300129632