The concept of discipline :: poetry, rhetoric, and the Church in the works of John Milton

Discipline was an enduring concept in the works of John Milton (1608-1674), yet its meaning shifted over the course of his career: initially he held that it denoted ecclesiastical order, but gradually he turned to representing it as self-willed pious action. My thesis examines this transformation by analysing Milton’s complex engagement in two distinct periods: the 1640s and the 1660s-70s. In Of Reformation (1641), Milton echoed popular contemporary demands for a reformation of church discipline, but also asserted through radical literary experimentation that poetry could discipline the nation too (Chapter 1). Reflecting his dislike for intolerant Presbyterians in Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, the two versions of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643 and 1644) reconsider discipline as a moral imperative for all men, rooted in domestic liberty (Chapter 2). Although written long after this period, the long poetry that Milton composed after the Restoration reveals his continued interrogation of the concept. The invocations of the term ‘discipline’ by Milton’s angels in Paradise Lost (1667) sought to encourage dissenting readers to faithfulness and co-operation (Chapter 3). Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes (1671) advance the concept in the language of ‘piety,’ emphasising that ‘pious hearts’ are the precondition for godly action in opposition to contemporary Anglican ‘holy living’ (Chapter 4). In analysing Milton’s shifting concept of discipline, my thesis contributes to scholarship by showing his sensitivity to contemporary mainstream religious ideas, outlining the Christian—as opposed to republican or Stoic—notions of praxis that informed his ethics, and emphasising the disciplinary aspect of his doctrinal thought. Overall, it holds that in discipline, as word and concept, Milton expressed his faith in the capacity of writing to change its reader, morally and spiritually.This thesis is not currently available in ORA

Chastity on the early modern English stage, 1611-1649

‘Chastity on the Early Modern English Stage’ seeks to explain the relationship between tragicomedy’s brief and short-lived English popularity and the royal cult of chastity which spanned exactly the same historical time-frame. This study attempts to define a cultural movement which influenced the political, religious, social, intellectual, aesthetic, and medical fields in the first half of the seventeenth-century and argues that the narrative tropes which structured, and assisted the spread of, the post-Elizabethan cult of chastity were the same tropes governing the tragicomedies so popular in the period. The arguments made for tragicomedy are speculatively extended to all generic forms, with the intention of expanding an area of scholarship still dominated by formalist analysis. By focussing on narrative tropes and locating them within both fictional and non-fictional texts and in the presentation and discussion of significant events (from medical discoveries to liturgical arrangements and royal birthing rituals) this thesis aims to illustrate that the human and cosmic visions articulated by different dramatic genres were as relevant to early modern lives outside the theatre as they were to those within it. Genre is thus less a description of a text’s formal characteristics and more a set of truths governing certain human experiences both in texts and in life. Focussing on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, two plays by John Ford, Caroline court masques and birthing rituals, Milton’s A Maske and a number of non-professional performances (from the Earl of Castlehaven’s trial to William Harvey’s demonstration of the circulation of the blood), ‘Chastity on the Early Modern English Stage’ describes the four tropes of chastity and their place in tragicomic experience from the death of Elizabeth I to the beheading of Charles I. While Charles’s death and the closure of the theatres are crucial reasons for the abrupt end of the cult of chastity and tragicomedy, this thesis argues that cause must also be attributed to the efforts of pro-Parliamentary and Puritan writers who, throughout the 1630s and 1640s, sought to claim the tropes of chastity for their own rhetoric and cause. Their success resulted in a redefinition of chastity as masculine, individuated, Parliamentarian, Protestant, intellectual, civic and prosaic instead of Catholic, royal, spectacular, feminised, Marian, pietised, and theatrical.This thesis is not currently available in ORA