Mammon's Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton.Blair Hoxby. Mammon's Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton. New Haven New Haven, city (1990 pop. 130,474), New Haven co., S Conn., a port of entry where the Quinnipiac and other small rivers enter Long Island Sound; inc. 1784. Firearms and ammunition, clocks and watches, tools, rubber and paper products, and textiles are among the many and London: Yale University Yale University, at New Haven, Conn.; coeducational. Chartered as a collegiate school for men in 1701 largely as a result of the efforts of James Pierpont, it opened at Killingworth (now Clinton) in 1702, moved (1707) to Saybrook (now Old Saybrook), and in 1716 was Press, 2002. xii + 320 pp. index. illus. $40. ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m : 0-300-09378-0. In Mammon's Music, Blair Hoxby effectively interweaves two projects: he maps the emerging discourse of economics occasioned by the commercial revolution of seventeenth-century England, and he rereads the poetry of Milton and a few other contemporaries against the background of this discourse. In both projects Hoxby's book is revelatory. In the first case, while the period's economic history has been much studied, no one has so thoroughly investigated its discursive dimension. In the second, Hoxby will surprise many readers who assume Milton's lack of interest in economics, as he demonstrates convincingly that the poet is a sophisticated economic thinker who engaged his period's great economic themes throughout his career. Hoxby's attention to the discourse of economics as a "discipline in the making" (5) begins with the trade depression of the 1620s, which led to the writing of "newly sophisticated economic treatises that had a profound influence on English society" (2). These influences included a new identification of national interest with economic productivity and a new emphasis on the economy as a dynamic system of production, trade, and consumption. Milton's initial response was negative, for in his 1634 Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle Ludlow Castle is a large, now partly ruined, non-inhabited castle which dominates the town of Ludlow in Shropshire, England. It stands on a high point overlooking the River Teme. the new economic discourse is taken up by the evil enchanter Comus and roundly rejected by the masque's heroine, who prefers an older discourse "predicated on the economy's being static rather than dynamic" (23). As Milton's career evolved in its middle phase from poetry to pamphleteering in support of the Puritan revolution Puritan Revolution: see English civil war. , he shifted ground radically, enthusiastically embracing the dynamic model, applying it not to commodities but to the open marketplace of ideas This article is about the concept. For the public radio show and podcast, see The Marketplace of Ideas (radio program). The "marketplace of ideas" is a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market. . In the 1644 Areopagitica, "traditionally suspect qualities like flexibility and opportunism Opportunism Arabella, Lady squire’s wife matchmakes with money in mind. [Br. Lit.: Doctor Thorne] Ashkenazi, Simcha shrewdly and unscrupulously becomes merchant prince. [Yiddish Lit. " (44) become positives in the marketplace's search for Truth through unfettered production and exchange. Similarly, Milton's regicide REGICIDE. The killing of a king, and, by extension, of a queen. Theorie des Lois Criminelles, vol. 1, p. 300. tracts and defenses of the English people Noun 1. English people - the people of England English nation, country, land - the people who live in a nation or country; "a statement that sums up the nation's mood"; "the news was announced to the nation"; "the whole country worshipped him" use the new economic discourse to link political and religious tyranny to the state's destructive suppression of market forces. England's next serious trade depression began soon before the death of Cromwell in 1658. This confluence of events allowed Royalists to portray the monarchy's restoration as a necessary condition for prosperity in an empire based on trade rather than dominion, reversing the new economic discourse's political valence. Milton countered, in the 1660 Readie and Easie Way, with a proposal for a model of governance borrowing features from the United Provinces and the American colonies. Hoxby, rejecting the received wisdom, which finds little value in the tract's politics, finds instead a sophisticated vision of a dynamic federalism constructed on free market principles. Following the Restoration, the ideal of a trade-based empire dominated English economic discourse, receiving its most eloquent early advocacy in Dryden's 1667 Annus Mirabilis. Hoxby argues that the 1667 Paradise Lost was "a direct response on Milton's part to Dryden's poem" (151) and, more generally, an attack upon the Restoration regime's commercial imperialism. Hoxby shrewdly avoids the monological approach of a number of critics who dwell on Satan's association with trade and empire. He concludes that while "largely negative" on trade, the poem is, nevertheless, based on the "profoundly abstract and mobile conception of the individual and the community" (177) central to the new economic discourse. The Great Fire of London Great Fire of London (September 2–5, 1666) Worst fire in London's history. It destroyed a large part of the city, including most of the civic buildings, St. Paul's Cathedral, 87 parish churches, and about 13,000 houses. in 1666 further aligned the Restoration regime with the cause of trade, allowing the labor of rebuilding a ruined London to become identified with the "work" of the restored monarchy. Hoxby sees in the 1671 closet drama Samson Agonistes Milton's "antagonism toward the discourse of work, building, and production" (228) used to support the regime's imperial-commercial project. Responding to the increasing tendency of economic analysis to portray the market as equivalent to a natural force, and so to de-emphasize "the moral evaluation of internal states" (232), the poet seeks to liberate the notions of "labor" and "work" from the economic sphere. Milton does so by both displaying the troublesome mental labor Samson must apply to the problem of privately received divine impulses and, through the poem's studiously stu·di·ous adj. 1. a. Given to diligent study: a quiet, studious child. b. Conducive to study. 2. sustained "profound ambiguity" (228), demanding "interpretive labor of the private reader" (232). PATRICK J. COOK George Washington University George Washington University, at Washington, D.C.; coeducational; chartered 1821 as Columbian College (one of the first nonsectarian colleges), opened 1822, became a university in 1873, renamed 1904. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||

Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion