Milton’s logic: the early years
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This article revisits the long-established claim that Milton was trained as a Ramist during his Cambridge studies, arguing that, by the 1620s, Ramism had been superseded by a method of instruction based on the systematic textbooks produced chiefly by Bartholomew Keckermann and Franco Burgersdijk. This hypothesis has a number of implications for our approach to the question of Milton’s intellectual development. I argue that the terms and labels we use to describe Milton’s logic training should be nuanced and updated in light of advances in scholarship since Ong’s influential work on the Artis Logicae. A re-examination of Milton’s university training also qualifies our current understanding of the Prolusions as compositions arising from an anti-scholastic mentality and redirects attention to their function as academic exercises. In conclusion, I briefly consider the potential impact of Keckermann’s method on a reading of Milton’s own theological “systems” in De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost.
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2050-4616