Some writers use the literature of a period to explain its history. Other writers, such as Alex Garganigo in his Samson's Cords, use the history of a period to elucidate its literature. Garganigo claims that a detailed knowledge of the various oaths of the English Civil War, Interregnum, and Restoration, as well as the controversies surrounding them, help us to understand better the poetry of Samuel Butler, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton.

In chapter 1, Garganigo argues that a close of reading of Butler's Hudibrus in the context of the state oaths of the middle of the seventeenth century shows that Butler did not, as it is sometimes claimed, oppose all oaths but rather rejected the oaths of the Civil War and Interregnum in favor of those of the Clarendon Code. Chapter 2 explores the many themes around oaths in Marvell's The Rehearsal Transpos'd, concluding that Marvell disliked any oath that mixed religion with politics, but he had no problem with simple oaths of allegiance that did not explicitly delve into doctrine or discipline. In chapter 3, Garganigo interprets Marvell's Horatian Ode in light of the controversy over the Oath of Engagement, which was a statement of loyalty to the Commonwealth as it stood in 1649 without a king or House of Lords. According to Garganigo, just as the proponents of the Engagement described it as a mere promise of civil obedience to the government as it was (not as it should be), so the apparent absence of religion in the Horatian Ode served to support a Cromwellian establishment in which subjects owed allegiance to a state regardless of their religion and in which the state tolerated a variety of religious expressions.

The rest of the book focuses on Milton. Milton was well aware of the problems of conscience caused by the imposition of multiple, sometimes contradictory, oaths. In chapter 4 Garganigo explores the analogy, prevalent in Milton and his contemporaries, of oaths as the cords that bound the biblical Samson. Garganigo then turns to Paradise Lost in chapters 5 and 6. First, he interprets God's coronation oath in Paradise Lost in the context of the long debate over whether the coronation oath of an English monarch emphasized the monarchy as hereditary and divine or elective and contractual. Garganigo argues that Milton intended his depiction of God's oath in strikingly absolutist terms “to provoke in the reader troubling thoughts not so much about God as about the system of reciprocal oaths underpinning the restored English monarchy” (135). Garganigo then shifts his focus to the Fall. He notes that Milton portrayed God's prohibition from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as a kind of oath of allegiance to God. Eve's subsequent choice to eat the fruit and break her oath, a choice made independently from Adam, was thus an act of political autonomy. According to Garganigo, Milton was making the bold claim that women should “be full citizens of England” (179). This is Garganigo's most interesting argument, one that will surely provoke further debate.

Samson's Cords is well written and thoroughly researched. Garganigo is familiar with and contributes to current debates within literary theory, English literature, and seventeenth-century historiography. My primary quibble with the book is its lack of a unifying argument. This is evident not only in the book as a whole but also in its individual chapters, each of which juggles multiple claims with no apparent hierarchy of importance. Samson's Cords is organized thematically; oaths—not arguments—are the cords that bind the book together. Nevertheless, Garganigo's work certainly increases our understanding of the literature of Milton, Marvell, and Butler, and for those who specialize in their study, Samson's Cords is well worth a read.