The New Milton Criticism

A collection of new essays demonstrating a wholly new approach to the complexities of Milton's work.

Peter C. Herman (Edited by), Elizabeth Sauer (Edited by)

9781107019225, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 April 2012

266 pages
23.4 x 15.5 x 1.7 cm, 0.57 kg

'A collection of largely embracing essays, studded with bright little insights into particular passages, and the 'against-the-grain' feel of (almost) the entire book will surely have warmed the hearts of its contributors.' William Poole, Milton Quarterly

The New Milton Criticism seeks to emphasize ambivalence and discontinuity in Milton's work and interrogate the assumptions and certainties in previous Milton scholarship. Contributors to the volume move Milton's open-ended poetics to the centre of Milton studies by showing how analysing irresolvable questions – religious, philosophical and literary critical – transforms interpretation and enriches appreciation of his work. The New Milton Criticism encourages scholars to embrace uncertainties in his writings rather than attempt to explain them away. Twelve critics from a range of countries, approaches and methodologies explore these questions in these new readings of Paradise Lost and other works. Sure to become a focus of debate and controversy in the field, this volume is a truly original contribution to early modern studies.

Introduction: paradigms lost, paradigms found: the new Milton criticism Peter C. Herman and Elizabeth Sauer
Part I. Theodicies: 1. Milton's fetters, or, why Eden is better than heaven Richard Strier
2. 'Whose fault, whose but his own?': Paradise Lost, contributory negligence, and the problem of cause Peter C. Herman
3. The political theology of Milton's heaven John Rogers
4. Meanwhile: (un)making time in Paradise Lost Judith Scherer Herz
5. The gnostic Milton: salvation and divine similitude in Paradise Regained Michael Bryson
6. The discontents with the drama of regeneration Elizabeth Sauer
Part II. Critical Receptions: 7. Against fescues and ferulas: personal affront and individual liberty in Milton's prose Christopher D'Addario
8. Disruptive partners: Milton and seventeenth-century women writers Shannon Miller
9. Eve and the ironic theodicy of the new Milton criticism Thomas Festa
10. Denis Saurat, and the old new Milton criticism Jeffrey Shoulson
11. The poverty of context: Cambridge School history and the new Milton criticism William Kolbrener
12. Afterword Joseph Wittreich
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]