Milton Studies

Published annually by Duquesne University Press as an important forum for Milton scholarship and criticism, Milton Studies focuses on various aspects of John Milton's life and writing, including biography; literary history; Milton's work in its literary, intellectual, political, or cultural contexts; Milton's influence on or relationship to other writers; and the history of critical response to his work. The eight essays in this volume offer a variety of fresh subjects and cutting-edge approaches to Milton's prose and poetry. Nine essays focus on Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and selected major prose works such as Areopagitica and The Second Defense of The English People. The essays on Samson Agonistes are among the most revolutionary ever composed: the first interprets the protagonist in the context of royalist politics; the second reevaluates Milton's poem in light of present-day anxiety over terrorism and suicide bombers. One essay on Paradise Lost examines the theme of obedience in the epic poem and in Milton's treatise Of Education. A second uses the context of martyrology to investigate Adam's disobedience in partaking of the forbidden fruit and his willingness to die. A third essay cites evidence of Milton's acute awareness of seventeenth-century disputes concerning the structure of the universe, while a fourth essay identifies a baroque sensibility in rhythms of the blank verse. The final essay on Paradise Lost discerns how Milton accommodates science and philosophy in his biblical epic. Hardcover is un-jacketed.