Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to examine prayer not only as a spiritual but as a physiological and emotional matter, and to interpret the role of the body in prayer as well as the role of the prayer in and on the body. In order to offer a comprehensive discussion of bodies at prayer in John Milton, it examines his poetry and prose in an interdisciplinary framework that builds on perspectives on Reformation theology, embodiment, and the history of emotions in order to place him firmly in the time when "prayer was too important to be left to chance". The book ascribes to the empirical methodology of the aforementioned critics and extends it to one of the most important and prolific writers of the seventeenth century. It aims to read pathetical prayer as a productive force: one that participates in and exemplifies Milton's monist theology.