Books by James Dougal Fleming

This book examines the seventeenth-century project for a "real" or "universal" character: a scientific and objective code. Focusing on the Essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language (1668) of the polymath John Wilkins, Fleming provides a detailed explanation of how a real character actually was supposed to work.

Debates that the poetry and prose of John Milton are about the presentation of a radically different hermeneutic model. Drawing on Renaissance Neoplatonism, Tudor-Stuart ideology, and Calvinist theory of conscience, this work argues that the attempt to theorize interpretation without discovery is not unorthodox within early modern English culture.