Samson's Cords: Imposing Oaths in Milton, Marvell, and Butler

by Alex Garganigo

Overview

In seventeenth-century Britain every debate about loyalty oaths invoked the biblical Samson. Samson’s Cords argues that these loyalty tests became an unprecedentedly pervasive feature of life in Restoration England and that writers of satire and epic had no choice but to respond.

Alex Garganigo examines the radically different responses of John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Samuel Butler to the existential crises caused by this explosion of loyalty oaths.  After early support, all three developed serious reservations, confronting the irony that while oaths often exclude and destroy, they also include and create. Tackling issues such as performance, ritual, religion, secularization, gender, swearing, republicanism, and citizenship, Garganigo offers original readings of Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland, The Rehearsal Transpros’d, and Hudibras.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487512217
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	04/13/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Alex Garganigo is an associate professor in the Department of English at Austin College.

Table of Contents

1. Samson’s Cords in Restoration England

2. Conjuring Oaths and Identities in Hudibras

3. Testing the Tests in The Rehearsal Transpros’d

4. An Horatian Oath: the Horatian Ode, Secularism, and Toleration

5. Samson’s Cords: Imposing Oaths in Eikonoklastes and Samson Agonistes

6. Paradise Lost I: God’s Swearing By Himself

7. Paradise Lost II: Of Apples, Oaths, and Women

A Proposal for Emending One of Marvell’s Letters

What People are Saying About This

Alvin Snider

"Samson's Cords mines a rich vein of critical discourse on seventeenth-century texts, and offers many new insights into the politics of oath-making and oath-breaking. The book represents a considerable achievement in its approach to bringing canonical literary works into dialogue with more ephemeral writings of the period."

Yr Athro John Spurr

"Samson's Cords contributes to the scholarly understanding of two major writers of the seventeenth century, Milton and Marvell, to the wider appreciation of British seventeenth-century history and culture, including the writings of Samuel Butler, and to the way we understand oaths and swearing from a theoretical perspective."

Editorial Reviews

"Samson’s Cords is a sophisticated, learned, and thoughtful book based on wide reading and deep thinking."

—Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex, Modern Philology

"Garganigo’s work certainly increases our understanding of the literature of Milton, Marvell, and Butler, and for those who specialize in their study, Samson’s Cords is well worth a read."

—Jonathan Michael Gray, Renaissance Quarterly

"The dialogic nature of Samson’s Cords will make it the go-to book for people interested in any and all issues surrounding the oath: perjury, censorship, cursing, equivocation, casuistry, office, loyalty, promise, and ethics. There is much here as well for early modernists working on Butler, Marvell, and Milton, as Garganigo provides new, innovative, and restorative readings of all three, reminding readers how important literary poetics continues to be within the ethically focused historical scholarship of the last several years."

—Megan Matchinske, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018

" Samson’s Cords mines a rich vein of critical discourse on seventeenth-century texts, and offers many new insights into the politics of oath-making and oath-breaking. The book represents a considerable achievement in its approach to bringing canonical literary works into dialogue with more ephemeral writings of the period."

—Alvin Snider, Department of English, University of Iowa

" Samson’s Cords contributes to the scholarly understanding of two major writers of the seventeenth century, Milton and Marvell, to the wider appreciation of British seventeenth-century history and culture, including the writings of Samuel Butler, and to the way we understand oaths and swearing from a theoretical perspective."

—Yr Athro John Spurr, Department of History, University of Swansea

From the Publisher

"Garganigo's work certainly increases our understanding of the literature of Milton, Marvell, and Butler, and for those who specialize in their study, Samson's Cords is well worth a read."

Renaissance Quarterly - Jonathan Michael Gray

"Samson's Cords is a sophisticated, learned, and thoughtful book based on wide reading and deep thinking."

Modern Philology - Andrew Hadfield

"The dialogic nature of Samson's Cords will make it the go-to book for people interested in any and all issues surrounding the oath: perjury, censorship, cursing, equivocation, casuistry, office, loyalty, promise, and ethics. There is much here as well for early modernists working on Butler, Marvell, and Milton, as Garganigo provides new, innovative, and restorative readings of all three, reminding readers how important literary poetics continues to be within the ethically focused historical scholarship of the last several years."

University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018 - Megan Matchinske