The Oxford Handbook of Milton

by McDowell, Nicholas; Smith, Nigel

• ISBN13: 9780199210886
• ISBN10: 0199210888
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Four hundred years after his birth, John Milton remains one of the greatest and most controversial figures in English literature. The Oxford Handbook of Milton is a comprehensive guide to the state of Milton studies in the early twenty-first century, bringing together an international team ofthirty-five leading scholars in one volume. The rise of critical interest in Milton's political and religious ideas is the most striking aspect of Milton studies in recent times, a consequence in great part of the increasingly fluid relations between literary and historical study. The OxfordHandbook both embodies the interest in Milton's political and religious contexts in the last generation and seeks to inaugurate a new phase in Milton studies through closer integration of the poetry and prose. There are eight essays on various aspects of Paradise Lost, ranging from its classicalbackground and poetic form to its heretical theology and representation of God. There are sections devoted both to the shorter poems, including 'Lycidas' and Comus, and the final poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. There are also three sections on Milton's prose: the early controversialworks on church government, divorce, and toleration, including Areopagitica; the regicide and republican prose of 1649-1660, the period during which he served as the chief propagandist for the English Commonwealth and Cromwell's Protectorate, and the various writings on education, history, andtheology. The opening essays explore what we know about Milton's biography and what it might tell us; the final essays offer interpretations of aspects of Milton's massive influence on later writers, including the Romantic poets.

Author Biography

Nicholas McDowell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Exeter. Previously he was a Research Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He is the author of The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion, and Revolution, 1630-1660 (Oxford University Press, 2003), Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit (Oxford University Press, 2008), and essays on Milton in Journal of the History of Ideas, Milton Quarterly, and Review of English Studies. He is editing Milton's 1649 prose for the Oxford Complete Works of John Milton. In 2007 his research was recognized by the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust.
Nigel Smith is Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of Books and Media at Princeton University. He was previously Reader in English at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in English at Keble College. He is the author of Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640-1660 (Oxford University Press1989); Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (Yale University Press, 1994), Is Milton better than Shakespeare? (Harvard University Press, 2008), and Andrew Marvell: a Biography (Yale University Press, 2009). He has edited the Ranter pamphlets, the Journal of George Fox and the Longman Annotated English Poets edition of the poems of Andrew Marvell (a TLS 'Book of the Year' 2003, Guardian Paperback of the Week, 2006). He is a recipient of British Academy awards, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations

Miltons' Life: Some Significant Dates

Lives

'Ere Half My Days': Milton's Life, 1608-1640

John Milton: The Later Life, 1641-1675

Shorter Poems

'The Adorning of My Native Tongue': Milton's Latin Poetry and Linguistic Metamorphosis

Milton's Early English Poems: The Nativity Ode

'A thousand fantasies': The Lady and the Maske

'Lycidas' and the Influence of Anxiety

The Troubled, Quiet Endings of Milton's English Sonnets

Civil War Prose, 1641-45

The Anti-Episcopal Tracts: Republicanism Puritanism and the Truth in Poetry

'A Law in this matter to himself': Contextualising Milton's Divorce Tracts

Whose Liberty? The Rhetoric of Milton's Divorce Tracts

Milton Areopagitica and the Parliamentary Cause

Areopagitica and Liberty

Regicide Republican and Restoration Prose

'The Strangest Piece of Reason': Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates

Milton's Regicide Tracts and the Uses of Shakespeare

John Milton, European: the Rhetoric of Milton's Defences

Defensio Prima and the Latin Poets

'Nothing nobler then a free Commonwealth': Milton's Later Vernacular Republican Tracts

Disestablishment Toleration, the New Testament Nation: Milton's Late Religious Tracts

Milton and National Identity

Writings on Education, History, Theology

The Genres of Milton's Commonplace Book

Milton, the Hartlib Circle and the Education of the Aristocracy

Conquest and Slavery in Milton's History of Britain

De Doctrina Christiana: An England That Might Have Been

Paradise Lost

Writing Epic: Paradise Lost

'A mind of most exceptional energy': Verse Rhythm in Paradise Lost

Editing Milton: the Case against Modernization

The 'World' of Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost and Heresy

God

Eve, Paradise Lost, and Female Interpretation

The Politics of Paradise Lost

1671 Poems: Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes

'Englands Case': Context of the 1671 Poems

Paradise Regained and the Memory of Paradise Lost

Samson Agonistes and 'Single Rebellion'

Samson Agonistes: the Force of Justice and the Violence of Idolatry

Samson Agonistes and Milton's Sensible Ethics

Aspects of Influence

Milton Epic and Bucolic: Empire and Readings of Paradise Lost 1667-1837

Miltonic Romanticism

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