VOLUME TEN (2017): ARTEFACTS
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2013
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August
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- VOLUME SIX (2013): EDITIONS & EDITING
- * * * ARTICLES * * *
- Matthias Bauer & Angelika Zirker: “Connotations”
- Sheila Cavanagh: “Value in Editorial Humanities”
- Clay Daniel: “Restoration Lost”
- Amanda Haberstroh: “MasterMistress”
- Robert Imes: “Editing the Spatial Turn”
- * * * REVIEW ESSAY * * *
- David V. Urban: “The New Milton Criticism”
- * * * REVIEW * * *
- Cole Jeffrey: "Political Theology & Modernity"
- * * * NOTE * * *
- David V. Urban: “Milton & Same-Sex Marriage”
- VOLUME SIX (2013): EDITIONS & EDITING
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August
(14)
Monday, August 12, 2013
David V. Urban: “Milton & Same-Sex Marriage”
David V. Urban
Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, An
Answer to a Book, and Same-Sex Marriage
2> My own reading of The
Divorce Tracts of John Milton has
been memorable for a different reason: Its publication of the anonymous An
Answer to a Book, intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644). This tract, a lengthy
response to the first edition of DDD, offers a statement germane to
perhaps the most contentious social and legal issue of our present day: same-sex
marriage. In recent years, DDD has occasionally been
mentioned regarding this issue with the suggestion that Milton’s argument for
companionate marriage in DDD can be applied to arguments in
favor of same-sex marriage.1 In the words of Richard Strier,
“Milton’s conception of marriage as essentially a matter of happy and
nourishing conversation [. . .] (and of the necessary availability of divorce
when this is lacking) [. . . ] is perfectly compatible with same-sex marriage
and divorce” (Shoulson and Strier). But no commentator has noted that the heretofore
essentially forgotten and unread An Answer to a Book actually
anticipates this application of Milton ’s
argument to same-sex marriage.
3> The anonymous author writes as if he were directly
addressing Milton himself:
Your first proofe [in
favor of divorce] is the institution of marriage Gen. 2 to make woman a
meet help for man, because it was not good that man should be alone: whence you
collect that a happy conversation by preventing lonelinesse, was the chiefest
and noblest end of marriage; and in case this end cannot be found in marriage,
there may be reliefe by parting.
We answer and tell you againe, that it is a happie or a
pleasant conversation, made up by creating them male and female, and not simply
as Eve was a fit conversing soule for Adam, as you afterward expresse it, for
then would it have been more pleasant and beneficiall to Adam to have another
man created, then [than] a woman. (416)2
4> Toward the end of this passage, the anonymous author
explicitly asserts that Milton ’s
argument is actually more applicable to male-male relations than to male-female
relations. Although the author clearly believes that such an application
demonstrates the illogicality of Milton’s argument, and although it seems
anachronistic to suggest that Milton himself would have supported same-sex
marriage, it remains to be seen if the author’s assertion, which may become
increasingly recognized with An Answer to a Book’s recent
republication, propels Milton’s larger argument regarding companionate marriage
to a more prominent position in future discussions of same-sex marriage. And it
remains to be seen if the above passage—something brought to light only by
virtue of van den Berg and Howard’s edition—elicits a new avenue of scholarly
discussion regarding Milton
and sexuality.
NOTES
I wish to thank Calvin College, whose
Calvin Research Fellowship enabled me to write this piece. Thanks also to Paul
Klemp, who read and commented on an earlier version of this note.
1. Examples of this application of Milton’s divorce tract to
discussions of same-sex marriage include Nussbaum, 138, 143; Nardo, 133; and
Shoulson and Strier.
2. Italics in the first paragraph appear in the original text. Italics
in second paragraph are mine.
WORKS CITED
An Answer to a Book, intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce in The Divorce Tracts of John Milton: Texts and Contexts,
ed. Sara J. van den Berg and W. Scott Howard (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 2010).
401-47.
Kranidas, Thomas. “Milton Rewrites The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.” Studies in English
Literature 53.1 (Winter 2013): 117-35.
Nardo, Anna. Rev. of The Divorce Tracts of John Milton:
Texts and Contexts, ed. Sara J. van den Berg and W. Scott Howard, Seventeenth
Century News 69 (2011): 131-34.
Nussbaum, Martha C. From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual
Orientation & Constitutional Law (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010).
Shoulson, Jeffrey and Richard Strier. “The Doctrine and Discipline
of Gay Divorce.” Discussion on Milton-L listserv. 21 July 2011,
_____
David V. Urban is
associate professor of English at Calvin College.
He completed John Milton: An Annotated
Bibliography, 1989-1999 and is the
co-editor of Visionary
Milton. His most recent articles on Milton appear in Appositions, Connotations, Milton Studies, and Milton
Quarterly. He has also recently published essays on Fugard and Tolstoy and Pauline
Rhetoric. He is completing a book on Milton and Jesus’ parables.
_____
APPOSITIONS:
Studies in Renaissance / Early Modern Literature and Culture, http://appositions.blogspot.com/, ISSN: 1946-1992, Volume Six (2013): Editions & Editing
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