Milton and the Preaching Arts

This study truly breaks new ground in Milton scholarship by demonstrating the extent to which Milton’s work reflects the dominant discourse of his age – preaching.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the pulpit consistently commanded greater audiences than did the stage, and many of the era’s great poets were also preachers. Milton himself argued that poetry can serve “beside the office of a pulpit” and prepared for his life’s work at the greatest English center for formal homil...