Acknowledgments; A Note on the Texts; Introduction: Hebraism and Literary History; 1. Diaspora and Restoration; 2. "Taking Sanctuary Among the Jews": Milton and the Form of Jewish Precedent; 3. The Poetics of Accommodation: Theodicy and the Language of Kingship; 4. Imagining Desire: Divine and Human Creativity; 5. "So Shall the World Go On": Martyrdom, Interpretation, and History; Epilogue: Toward Interpreting the Hebraism of Samson Agonistes; Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index
Summary
Taking as its starting point the long-standing characterization of Milton as a ""Hebraic"" writer, Milton and the Rabbis probes the limits of the relationship between the seventeenth-century English poet and polemicist and his Jewish antecedents. Shoulson's analysis moves back and forth between Milton's writings and Jewish writings of the first five centuries of the Common Era, collectively known as midrash. In exploring the historical and literary implications of these connections, Shoulson shows how Milton's text can inform a more nuanced reading of midrash just as midrash can offer new
