Exteriority in Milton and Puritan Life Writing

Abstract

This essay reassesses the relationship between Protestantism and the rise of individuality in the early modern period, specifically the claim that Puritanism encouraged believers to scrutinize their internal psyche for signs of election and thus helped form a modern subjectivity located within an interior essence. Instead, this essay argues that in Milton's prose autobiographical statements and in Puritan life writing, the true location of individual identity lies not within but without. These writers offer an important step in the creation of modern identity precisely because they devalue the interior self rather than celebrating or essentializing it.

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