Poetry and the Pursuit of Consensus in Early Modern England: Skelton, Spenser, Milton

• In Event: The Early Modern Public Sphere Revisited: Consensus Politics as Usual?

Abstract

What role should transcendence play in the secular public sphere? For most political philosophers since Hobbes, the answer is none, since public discourse aims for rational consensus and so cannot broach religious arguments that will be convincing only to people who have already accepted the dogmas in question. But the history of religious engagement in twentieth century American politics, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Fred Phelps, suggests that prophetic speech still shapes public opinion. In this essay I turn to three early modern poets—Skelton, Spenser, and Milton—in order to consider how they used prophetic poetry to establish, defend, or subvert consensus in an emerging public sphere. Their example provides a rich context for understanding why prophetic speech still has the power to compel when reason does not.

Author

• Jason Peters, University of Toronto