Milton’s logic: the early years
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: This article revisits the long-established claim that Milton was trained as a Ramist during his Cambridge years, arguing that, by the 1620s, Ramism had been superseded by a method of instruction based on the systematic textbooks produced chiefly by Bartholomew Keckermann and Franco Burgersdijk.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 Walter 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.
Source: The Seventeenth Century
Author: Katrin Ettenhuber
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3023724224