Milton, Music and Literary Interpretation: Reading through the Spirit constructs a musical methodology for interpreting literary text drawn out of John Milton’s poetry and prose. Analyzing the linkage between music and the Holy Spirit in Milton’s work, it focuses on harmony and its relationship to Milton’s theology and interpretative practices. Linking both the Spirit and poetic music to Milton’s understanding of teleology, it argues that Milton uses musical metaphor to capture the inexpressible characteristics of the divine. The book then applies these musical tools of reading to examine the non-trinitarian union between Father, Son, and Spirit in Paradise Lost, argues that Adam and Eve’s argument does not break their concord, and puts forward a reading of Samson Agonistes based upon pity and grace.
Milton, Music and Literary Interpretation: Reading through the Spirit constructs a musical methodology for interpreting literary text drawn out of John Milton’s poetry and prose. Analyzing the linkage between music and the Holy Spirit in Milton’s work, it focuses on harmony and its relationship to Milton’s theology and interpretative practices.
Introduction
Spiritual Reading
Musical Reading
Three Approaches for Musical Reading
Harmony
Dissonance and Discord
Solo and Choral Song
1 Spiritual Harmony
Music with a Purpose
Heavenly Harmony and the Spirit
Hearing the Inexpressible: Music and Transcendent Indefinition
2 Spiritual Hermeneutics
The Spirits Role in Reading
God, the Spirit, and Truth
3 Spiritual and Musical Teleology
The Teleology of the Spirit
Music as Metaphor: Playing Poetic Games
4 Harmonious Reading
Harmony and Miltons Trinity
Concord, Discord, and Marriage
5 Music and Literary Interpretation
Reading Samson Agonistes Musically
"He may dispense with me or thee:" Concord and Discord with God
Dying is Easy; Harmony is Hard
Conclusion
David Ainsworth is Assistant Chair and Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama, and part of the faculty of the Hudson Strode Program for Renaissance Studies housed there. His first book, Milton and the Spiritual Reader: Reading and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England was published by Routledge in 2008, and he has published articles in journals including Milton Quarterly, Religion and Literature, and SEL.
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