David Urban follows such prominent works of scholarship as Dayton Haskin's Milton's Burden of Interpretation (1994) and Stephen Fallon's Milton's Peculiar Grace (2007) by reading Milton's canon from the perspective of his self-representation. In this highly readable book, Urban offers a sharp focus on the relationship of the personal and the poetic by arguing that, over the course of his life, Milton found deep connections between his own concerns and four of Jesus's parables from the book of Matthew.

The book has three parts, organized not by chronology but by parable. Part 1 concerns the parable of the talents and the parable of the laborers, part 2 the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, and part 3 the parable of the householder. In part 1, Urban describes Milton's fear of being the unprofitable servant as a manifestation of his anxiety about his own relationship to God. Urban traces Milton's concern with the use of his talents from Sonnet 7 (“How soon hath time”) through the autobiographical preface to the second book of The Reason of Church Government and Sonnet 19 (“When I consider”). These highly personal texts ultimately remind Milton of God's grace that “offers relief from past failures and divine hope for an uncertain future” (52). Urban then presents a regenerationist reading of Samson Agonistes in which Samson learns to use his talent in response to God's call, and a comparison between Abdiel in Paradise Lost and the Son in Paradise Regained. Both represent the “ideal servant of God” (77), their steadfastness and patience.

The strongest section of the book—on the wise and foolish virgins—examines manifestations of the parable in Sonnet 9 (“Lady, that in the prime”), A Masque … at Ludlow Castle, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Beginning with scholars’ arguments about Milton's own gender identity, Urban identifies the lady of Sonnet 9 as Milton's initial idealization of Mary Powell, a point Urban connects to the idealization of marriage in the divorce tracts and of chastity in the masque. As Urban makes clear, Milton's version of chastity includes marital sexuality, which Adam and Eve learn can be “genuinely redemptive” (141). Improper sexuality, or passion, causes Samson's failure: his freeing himself from passion allows him to return to God's favor as his champion.

The final section, on the householder “which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old,” uses this very brief story as Milton's model for reading and using the scriptures. Urban sees this metaphor as an exhortation to read Jesus's teachings “in light of the Hebrew scriptures” and to pass “such knowledge on to his own audience” (192). The parable thus provides the justification for Milton's practice in Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and De Doctrina Christiana of being guided by “the inner scripture of the Spirit” (195). From this perspective, the epic voice in Paradise Lost becomes a direct parallel to Moses, both inspired by the Holy Spirit. In Paradise Regained, both the Son and Mary relate and interpret what they have learned. Finally, Samson learns to read and apply his intuitions of God's call.

Urban offers a coherent argument for identifying parables as a significant vehicle for understanding both Milton's personal and poetic visions. He also clearly frames his thesis within the context of the larger conversation on Milton's self-representation, in accessible language. The audience for this book should therefore include readers whose familiarity with Christian scriptures may be weak and those who may be unfamiliar with this subject within Milton studies.

However, readers may be annoyed by Urban's tendency to assume as settled certain issues that remain debatable, to the point where he sometimes overlooks textual points that could compromise his argument. In his discussion of A Masque, for example, he mentions only in passing that the Lady becomes trapped in Comus's chair. This point has generated extensive discussion about the Lady's chastity, but a reader would not know this from Urban's presentation. He also seems to assume that Samson's regeneration is a settled question, and that Eve's supposed narcissism is without nuance. Readers should regard this book as an engaging, but not definitive, contribution to the study of Milton's life and works.