Paradise Lost

DAVID AERS Professor of English and Religion and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Duke University CATHERINE BELSEY Chairs the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at the University of Wales, Cardiff CLAUDIA CHAMPAGNE Lecturer in English at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans ANTONY EASTHOPE Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University SANDRA GILBERT Professor of English at the University of California, Davis GEOFFREY HARTMAN Sterling Professor (Emeritus) in English and Comparative Literature at Yale Unviersity CHRISTPHER HILL Honoray Fellow of Balliol College Oxford BOB HODGE Foundation Professor of Humanities at the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury FREDRIC JAMESON Director of the Literature Program at Duke University WILLIAM KERRIGAN Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst ANDREW MILNER Associate Professor in theCentre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University in Melbourne MARY NYQUIST Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto MAUREEEN QUILLIGAN Catherine Bryson Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania

The essays are by writers working at the forefront of current criticism, and not only provide an overview of contemporary readings of one of the seminal works of English literature, but also indicate the range and subtlety of the revolution in English studies that has taken place in the past two decades.The interpretation of Paradise Lost has undergone remarkable changes in the last twenty years. This new collection of essays maps these changes, showing how they have been achieved by the combined discourses of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism. The essays are by writers working at the forefront of current criticism, and not only provide an overview of contemporary readings of one of the seminal works of English literature, but also indicate the range and subtlety of the revolution in English studies that has taken place in the past two decades. Paradise Lost is revealed as a work of immediate and challenging relevance.