Milton, Toleration, and Nationhood

Elizabeth Sauer is Professor of English at Brock University, Canada, and winner of a Killam Research Fellowship from the Canada Council for the Arts. She has published widely on Milton and Early Modern culture, including co-edited collections such as The New Milton Criticism (2012) and Reading the Nation in English Literature (2010).

• Note on editions; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. 'Temple-worke': Milton's literary ecclesiology; 2. Reduction: civilizing conquests in Ireland; 3. Natural law: Milton's post-revolutionary Defences of England; 4. Disestablishment: divorce of church and state; 5. Geography: spatial poetics; 6. Exogamy: 'entercourse' with philistines; Epilogue.

'This penetrating new study enhances the field, re-examining through the prism of English nation forming such major Miltonic themes as ecclesiology, exclusionism, natural law, disestablishment and marriage … Sauer's stated intention in Milton, Toleration, and Nationhood is 'to illustrate how a study of these conjoined subjects enriches appreciation of Milton's works, broadens understanding of the role of literature in the conceptualizing of early nationhood, and opens up possibilities for further scholarship in the field'. On all three counts, and with no little aplomb, she has succeeded.' Philip Major, The Review of English Studies