{"product_id":"9781487500986","title":"Samson's Cords: Imposing Oaths in Milton, Marvell, and Butler","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn seventeenth-century Britain every debate about loyalty oaths invoked the biblical Samson. \u003ci\u003eSamson's Cords\u003c\/i\u003e argues that these loyalty tests became an unprecedentedly pervasive feature of life in Restoration England and that writers of satire and epic had no choice but to respond.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlex Garganigo examines the radically different responses of John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Samuel Butler to the existential crises caused by this explosion of loyalty oaths. After early support, all three developed serious reservations\u003cb\u003e, \u003c\/b\u003econfronting the irony that while oaths often exclude and destroy, they also include and create. Tackling issues such as performance, ritual, religion, secularization, gender, swearing, republicanism, and citizenship,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eGarganigo offers original readings of \u003ci\u003eParadise Lost\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSamson Agonistes\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAn Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Rehearsal Transpros'd\u003c\/i\u003e, and\u003ci\u003e Hudibras\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Toronto Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47054770569456,"sku":"9781487500986","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781487500986_p0.jpg?v=1763635924","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781487500986","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}