Exiled from light : divine law, morality, and violence in Milton's Samson Agonistes / Derek N.C. Wood.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Wood proposes that Milton's Samson is an emblematic embodiment of Old Testament consciousness as rigorous, incomplete, literalistic, and uncomprehending, fashioned by the old Mosaic Law, without the amelioration of Christ's charity and forgiveness.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Reading here that "attention to its intertextuality reveals in Samson not this or that interpretation but a sustained multivalency held poised ... in delicate suspension" and that the play may demonstrate "the hermeneutics of uncertainty," one wonders if this is John Shawcross (The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes, CH, Oct'01) redux. Certainty emerges as Wood's attacks on other critics get shriller (e.g., a description of Dalila is the "equivalent of an axe murder," detecting progression in Samson is "theological UFO spotting"). Finally, unexpectedly, one returns to a play that "is ambiguous and unclear." The mid- to late-20th-century critical poles are located in F. Michael Krouse (Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition, 1949, Samson as saint) and Joseph Wittreich (Interpreting Samson Agonistes, CH, Oct'86, Samson as plague), and though Wood (St. Francis Xavier Univ.) sails on a latitude near the Wittreich pole, he sets no required heading for others. This work's chief contribution is its insistence on the vast difference, for Milton even more than for other reformers, between law, under which Samson acts, and grace, to be revealed in the Gospel and in the Christ; yet, even on this point there is inconsistency. Extensive Milton collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above. J. H. Sims emeritus, University of Southern Mississippi