Milton's divorce tracts refer to the four interlinked polemical pamphlets—The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, The Judgment of Martin Bucer, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion—written by John Milton from 1643-1645. They argue for the legitimacy of divorce on grounds of spousal incompatibility. Arguing for divorce at all, let alone a version of no-fault divorce, was extremely controversial and religious figures sought to ban his tracts. Although the tracts were met with nothing but hostility and he later rued publishing them in English at all, they are important for analyzing the relationship between Adam and Eve in his epic Paradise Lost. Spanning three years characterized by turbulent changes in the English printing business, they also provide an important context for the publication of Areopagitica, Milton's most famous work of prose.
Famous quotes containing the words milton, divorce and/or tracts:
“They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Ever since you came back from Tibet I’ve had a feeling you were planning to divorce me and marry a laboratory.”
—John Colton (1886–1946)
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)