Milton and usury

Like his father before him, John Milton was a lifelong professional usurer. At a time when that profession was held in general contempt, this fact must have impinged upon his life in many and various ways. It seems clear, for example, that Milton's fraught first marriage was the fruit of usury. This essay traces the profound influence of the usury debate throughout Milton's work. While he sometimes echoes the popular denunciation of usurers as living from "the sweat of other men," Milton also defends usury in certain circumstances. He does not view usury as a narrowly economic phenomenon, but explores its impact on politics, aesthetics, theology and sexuality. Despite his complex and nuanced treatment of the subject, Milton ultimately portrays usury as Satanic. It involves the attribution of autonomous reproductive power to financial signs, and thus stands convicted of the same epistemological error as liturgical idolatry. Through close readings of several of Milton's poems, this essay demontrates that once the verb "to use" is understood in its proper historical context, a whole new vista of interpretative possibilities opens for the attentive reader.