Milton's Visual Imagination
Imagery in Paradise Lost

Milton's Visual Imagination contends that Milton enriches his biblical source text with acute and sometimes astonishing visual details.

Stephen B. Dobranski (Author)

9781107476240, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 July 2021

233 pages, 12 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15 x 1.5 cm, 0.36 kg

'It is full of vividly presented material things that often cast direct or associative light on Paradise Lost. Dobranski always astutely positions his own claims in relation to those made by others... an extremely illuminating and thought-provoking book.' Colin Burrow, Milton Quarterly

Critics have traditionally found fault with the descriptions and images in John Milton's poetry and thought of him as an author who wrote for the ear more than the eye. In Milton's Visual Imagination, Stephen B. Dobranski proposes that, on the contrary, Milton enriches his biblical source text with acute and sometimes astonishing visual details. He contends that Milton's imagery - traditionally disparaged by critics - advances the epic's narrative while expressing the author's heterodox beliefs. In particular, Milton exploits the meaning of objects and gestures to overcome the inherent difficulty of his subject and to accommodate seventeenth-century readers. Bringing together Milton's material philosophy with an analysis of both his poetic tradition and cultural circumstances, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of early modern visual culture as well as of Milton's epic.

1. Introduction: of things invisible
2. Free will and God's scales
3. Heaven's gates
4. Pondering Satan's shield
5. What do bad angels look like?
6. Transported touch
7. Clustering and curling locks
8. Images of the future and the son.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]