Abstract

Language and the hermeneutic journey, like mystery, are never exhausted. Accordingly, in Milton and the Hermeneutic Journey, Gale H. Carrithers, Jr., and James D. Hardy, Jr., do not seek to provide a last word in the reading of Milton but instead employ a Miltonic method that renounces closure and the pretense of a monopoly on truth. Their aim in this cross-disciplinary work is to suggest a general interpretive matrix that embraces most of Milton's poetic corpus in a coherent rather than exhaustive vision. In the most comprehensive reading of Milton in over a decade, Carrithers and Hardy proceed on three assumptions: that love, in all its various and contradictory forms, is of central importance in Milton's poetry; that much of Milton's poetry is a discourse in theology, primarily Augustinian and biblically based; and that theirs will be a hermeneutic analysis of a hermeneutic text. Both Miltonists and scholars from the humanities in general will find satisfaction in reconsidering Milton from this different perspective. And for those readers who sense a profound disorder in the modern world, Carrithers and Hardy suggest that the greatest critic of the myth of power can offer reflections still enhancing to life, as well as strategies for critically reading any text that would make extreme claims upon us.