Brock University, Ontario

By Author: peter
Total Articles: 191
Comment this article

The authors claim two purposes: (1) a response to the debate over Milton's authorship of De Doctrina Christiana and (2) an extended introduction to a forthcoming edition of De Doctrina in Milton's collected works. As the second purpose implies, the book argues for Milton's authorship, concluding that the ''De Doctrina Christiana rightfully belongs in the Milton canon' because 'Its powerful argumentation, its undeferential perspective on key issues in Christian ED Hardy Boots belief, and its robust yet flexible expression are worthy of their author'. Establishing authorship of a transcribed work is difficult: it requires a story of the history of the manuscript, a story of the details of the author's life and thought, and a story of the facts of the physical manuscript that converge seamlessly. Flaws in execution and conception prevent this volume from establishing Milton's authorship.

The lengthy debate over Milton's authorship of De Doctrina was recently reignited by Bill Hunter's 1991 International Milton Symposium paper questioning the attribution ...
... based on the theology in De Doctrina, a position developed at length in his 1998 Visitation Unimplor'd: Milton and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana. Robert Lemon the elder, who discovered the manuscript in 1823 in a large cupboard in the Old State Paper Office in the Middle Treasury Gallery in Whitehall, first attributed 'De Doctrina' to Milton. The first doubter, Thomas Burgess, authored Milton Not the Author of the Lately-discovered Arian Work De Doctrina Christiana in 1829. The first salvo fired by our authors (with additional co-author David I. Holmes), 'The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana', appeared in Milton Quarterly in 1997. In this earlier essay, they concluded differently: 'The relationship of De Doctrina Christiana to the Milton oeuvre must remain uncertain', prematurely announcing this position as 'the final stage of our contribution to the debate'.

In 2001, Hunter asked me to look at the manuscript of De Doctrina to see if anything about the manuscript itself could help resolve the controversy. After a three-day examination (admittedly not enough time for a full bibliographical work-up on a 760-page manuscript), I realized the Milton Quarterly essay had given short shrift to the application of forensic bibliography to ED Hardy Hoodies resolve the controversy: 'Generally, examination of the paper seems to us unpromising'. The claim that 'we couldn't find any watermarks' does not accurately describe the manuscript: I identified five watermarks and two countermarks. In a paper at the Milton Society session at the 2001 MLA, I showed slides of the watermarks and countermarks I discovered and analysed the information they provided for authorship and construction of the manuscript. My admittedly incomplete evidence suggested an erratic production of the manuscript over a substantial period of time, possibly beginning by 1625 a date that would preclude Milton's authorship of a manuscript not in his hand.