Milton and the Spiritual Reader considers how John Milton's later
works demonstrate the intensive struggle of spiritual reading.
Milton presents his own rigorous process of reading in order to
instruct his readers how to advance their spiritual knowledge.
Recent studies of Milton's readers neglect this spiritual dimension
and focus on politics. Since Milton considers the individual soul
at least as important as the body politic, Ainsworth focuses on
uncovering the spiritual characteristics of the reader Milton tries
to shape through his texts. He also examines Milton's reading
practices without postulating the existence of some ideal or
universal reader, and without assuming a gullible or easily
manipulated reader. Milton does not simply hope for a fit audience,
but writes to nurture fit readers. His works offer models of
strenuous and suspicious close reading, subjecting all authors
except God to the utmost of scrutiny. Milton presents Biblical
interpretation as an interior struggle, a contention not between
reader and text, but within that reader's individual understanding
of scripture. Ainsworth's study rethinks the basic relationship
between reading and religion in seventeenth-century England, and
concludes that for Milton and his contemporaries, distinguishing
divine truths in worldly texts required a spiritually guided form
of close reading.
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