The Experience of Defeat: Milton And Some Contemporaries - Softcover

Hill, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140552030 ISBN 13: 9780140552034

Publisher: Penguin, 1985

Synopsis

The failure of the English Revolution in 1660 provoked a variety of responses among radical clergy, intellectuals and writers, as they struggled to accept and account for their defeat in the light of divine providence. Christopher Hill's close analysis of the writings of the Levellers and Diggers, of Fox and other important early Quakers suggests that the revolutionary beliefs and savage social judgments and disillusionments that Milton expressed in his writings at the time were shared by many of his contemporaries. Hill makes a provocative case, as well, that Milton s three great poems - Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes - came directly out of his painful reassessment of man and his society, and of society's relation to moral order.

About this title

Review:

'No historian of recent times was so synonymous with his period of study; he is the reason why most of us know anything about the 17th century at all.' --Guardian

'A book I argued with from beginning to end, and I was sometimes overborne by its arguments. It is also, in an old-fashioned phrase, a book of great learning. Both these observations constitute high praise' --John Morrill, History Today

'He established the concept of an 'English Revolution' every bit as significant and potentially as radical as its French and Russian equivalents ... Wide-ranging, popular and immensely prolific.' --Daily Telegraph

About the Author:

Christopher Hill was the pre-eminent historian of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history, and one of the most distinguished historians of recent times. Fellow historian E.P. Thompson once referred to him as the dean and paragon of English historians. From 1965 to 1978 he was Master of Balliol College. After leaving Balliol he was for two years a Visiting Professor at the Open University. Dr Hill, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the British Academy. He died in 2003.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0140552030
• ISBN 13: 9780140552034
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352