LAUSR

that of God rather than vice versa; for him, this surrender means not defeat but peace and action” (141). At the midpoint of the book, we shift from playwrights to poets. The matters of genre and mode need more theorization—tragedy being a different vehicle for exploring the metaphysics of agency than lyric or epic—but chapter 3’s account of the turmoil in Donne’s devotional poems is fresh and intriguing. While I am not finally persuaded by Rosendale’s reading of “Good Friday, 1613,” which contends that the poem is a selfconscious “devotional failure” (176), his portrait of Donne as a man whose desire for autonomy makes him resist the grace for which he simultaneously longs is compelling, and an initial contrast with Herbert, who so often works through his doubt to reach the peaceful acceptance denied to Donne, is apt. The last chapter takes us down well-trodden paths in Paradise Lost. Milton, Rosendale writes, resolves the problem of evil by affirming “agential human freedom and choice” (188); he claims that the poem’s index of moral responsibility is found in Milton’s assignment of blame. Rosendale is aware that many others have seen creaturely freedom as the key to Milton’s theodicy (Milton himself being frank enough on that score), and so not much really new ground is broken here. Nevertheless, Rosendale performs a tightly argued and thorough close reading of the poem that those interested in Milton’s soteriology and defense of divine goodness should take seriously. Rosendale has read the critics closely. He is also a pugilist who deals sharply with sloppy or tendentious analyses. On the whole, his forthrightness is refreshing, and counterbalanced by a willingness to spell out what is estimable in scholarship otherwise taken to task. His book is admirable for several reasons: comprehension of the soteriological tradition; skilled and sustained close readings of major texts; and, perhaps most importantly, a thoroughgoing effort to understand the early modern preoccupation with this issue on early moderns’ own terms.