![Cover: Civil Idolatry: Desacralizing and Monarchy in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton Cover: Civil Idolatry: Desacralizing and Monarchy in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton](https://udpress.udel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/civilidolatry-207x300.jpg)
This work discusses important texts that scrutinize the cult of monarchy in light of the injunction against idolatry. When Milton deplored the “civil kind of idolatry,” he echoed a significant theme in earlier texts—Erasmus’s political writings, Spenser, and Shakespeare’s political plays. Milton redefines conquest and fatherhood in response to contemporary monarchists’ patriarchalism and conquest-theory.