Through detailed case studies of Milton's works, Elizabeth Sauer shows the extent to which seventeenth-century English notions of nationhood and toleration can be subjected to literary and historicist inquiry.

She investigates the texts' discursive practices and the politics of their orchestration of voice, showing how the poems spoke to their own time and how they might speak to ours. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

'Paper-contestations' and Textual Communities in England challenges traditional readings of literary history and proposes a fresh approach to the politics of consensus and contestation that distinguishes current scholarly debates about this ...