Repository | Book | Chapter

Using network analysis, this chapter complicates our understanding of moneylending through an examination of John Milton, Sr.'s (the poet's father) litigation. The records show that small-scale lending created a small community. After visualizing and analyzing Milton's loans, Herman applies this data backwards for a reading of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and forwards for a reading of Milton's Paradise Lost. Rather than planning from the start to destroy Antonio, Shylock invents a bargain that subordinates economics to social utility. By losing money (potentially), he might gain a friend, and a network. Milton, on the other hand, depicts God as the kind of cruel lender we see in the anti-usury tracts, thereby providing more justification for Satan's rebellion.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90478-8_7

Full citation: