A Concise Companion to Milton

by Duran, Angelica

• ISBN13: 9781405122719
• ISBN10: 1405122714
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-10
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

With brevity, depth, and accessibility, this book helps readers to appreciate the works of John Milton, and to understand the great influence they have had on literature and other disciplines. Presents new and authoritative essays by internationally respected Milton scholars. Explains how and why Milton's works established their central place in the English literary canon. Structured chronologically around Milton's major works. Also includes a select bibliography and a chronology detailing Milton's life and works alongside relevant world events. Ideal as a first critical work on Milton.

Author Biography

Angelica Duranis Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Purdue University. A Milton specialist, she is on the editorial board of Milton Quarterly and is currently working on two book-length projects entitled Milton among Spaniards and Milton in Hispanoamerica. Her book on The Age of Milton and The Scientific Revolution is forthcoming in 2007.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	ix
Introduction
Angelica Duran	1	(6)
Part I Surveys
1 A Reading of His "left hand": Milton's Prose
Robert Thomas Fallon	7	(18)
2 "Shedding sweet influence": The Legacy of John Milton's Works	25	(18)
John T. Shawcross
3 "The world all before [us]": More than Three Hundred Years of Criticism
Roy Flannagan	43	(18)
Part II Textual Sites
4 First and Last Fruits of Education: The Companion Poems, Epistola, and Educational Prose Works
Angelica Duran	61	(17)
5 Milton's Heroic Sonnets
Annabel Patterson	78	(17)
6 The Lives of Lycidas
Paul Alpers	95	(16)
7 A Mask: Tradition and Innovation
Katsuhiro Engetsu	111	(17)
8 The Bible, Religion, and Spirituality in Paradise Lost
Achsah Guibbory	128	(16)
9 Gender, Sex, and Marriage in Paradise
Karen L. Edwards	144	(17)
10 The Ecology of Paradise Lost
Juliet Lucy Cummins	161	(17)
11 The Messianic Vision of Paradise Regained
David Gay	178	(19)
12 The Nightmare of History: Samson Agonistes
Louis Schwartz	197	(20)
Part III Reference Points
Select Chronology: "Speak of things at hand/ Useful"
Edward Jones	217	(18)
Select Bibliography: "Much arguing, much writing, many opinions"
J. Martin Evans	235	(35)
Index	270