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(2014) The return of theory in early modern English studies II, Dordrecht, Springer.
This essay examines debate in Milton's work, especially his late poems, and in the thought of Jürgen Habermas. I argue that Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes offer forms of debate highly resistant to the proto-Habermasian version of communicative action advanced in the early Areopagitica. Each of these three late poems casts a Habermasian hallmark - persuasion by force of the better argument — in starkly sinister lights.
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Kuzner, J. (2014)., Milton, Habermas, and the dynamics of debate, in P. Cefalu, G. Kuchar & B. Reynolds (eds.), The return of theory in early modern English studies II, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 237-256.
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