Milton Toleration and Nationhood

John Milton lived at a time when English nationalism became entangled with principles and policies of cultural religious and ethnic tolerance. Combining political theory with close readings of key texts this study examines how Milton''s polemical and imaginative literature intersects with representations of English Protestant nationhood. Through detailed case studies of Milton''s works Elizabeth Sauer charts the fluctuating narrative of Milton''s literary engagements in relation to social political and philosophical themes such as ecclesiology exclusionism Irish alterity natural law disestablishment geography and intermarriage. In so doing Sauer shows the extent to which nationhood and toleration can be subjected to literary and historicist inquiry. Her study makes a salient contribution to Milton studies and to scholarship on Early Modern literature and the development of the early nation-state.