John Milton is, next to William Shakespeare, the most influential English poet, a writer whose work spans an incredible breadth of forms and subject matter. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton celebrates this author’s genius in a thoughtfully assembled book that provides new modern-spelling versions of Milton’s texts, expert commentary, and a wealth of other features that will please even the most dedicated students of Milton’s canon. Edited by a trio of esteemed scholars, this volume is the definitive Milton for our time. In these pages you will find all of Milton’s verse, from masterpieces such as Paradise Lost–widely viewed as the finest epic poem in the English language–to shorter works such as the Nativity Ode, Lycidas,, A Masque and Samson Agonistes. Milton’s non-English language sonnets, verses, and elegies are accompanied by fresh translations by Gordon Braden. Among the newly edited and authoritatively annotated prose selections are letters, pamphlets, political tracts, essays such as Of Education and Areopagitica, and a generous portion of his heretical Christian Doctrine. These works reveal Milton’s passionate advocacy of controversial positions during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth and Restoration periods. With his deep learning and the sensual immediacy of his language, Milton creates for us a unique bridge to the cultures of classical antiquity and medieval and Renaissance Christianity. With this in mind, the editors give careful attention to preserving the vibrant energy of Milton’s verse and prose, while making the relatively unfamiliar aspects of his writing accessible to modern readers. Notes identify the old meanings and roots of English words, illuminate historical contexts–including classical and biblical allusions–and offer concise accounts of the author’s philosophical and political assumptions. This edition is a consummate work of modern literary scholarship.

This ground-breaking nineteenth-century volume is of considerable scholarly interest as an example of a femino-centric popular novel. Celia in Search of a Husband is a high-spirited and entertaining example of an anti-Jacobin novel, written at the height of the backlash against female intellectuals during the Napoleonic wars. Despite this hostile climate, the author sought to acknowledge the importance of female education and independence whilst at the same time endorsing the traditional Christian teaching that a wife should be subordinate to her husband. Although second wave feminists prioritized the progressive writers with whom they more readily identified, more recent scholarship has rightly paid close attention to conservative or moralist writers such as Miss Byron and recognized how influential they were. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this edition of Celia in Search of a Husband contributes to this scholarship on the literary history of women’s writing, and will be a welcome to those with a particularly interest in women’s writing, satiric novels and spoofs, and Jane Austen.

The Renaissance, scholars have long argued, was a period beset by the loss of philosophical certainty. In Possible Knowledge, Debapriya Sarkar argues for the pivotal role of literature--what early moderns termed poesie--in the dynamic intellectual culture of this era of profound incertitude. Revealing how problems of epistemology are inextricable from questions of literary form, Sarkar offers a defense of poiesis, or literary making, as a vital philosophical endeavor. Working across a range of genres, Sarkar theorizes "possible knowledge" as an intellectual paradigm crafted in and through literary form. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers such as Spenser, Bacon, Shakespeare, Cavendish, and Milton marshalled the capacious concept of the "possible," defined by Philip Sidney as what "may be and should be," to construct new theories of physical and metaphysical reality. These early modern thinkers mobilized the imaginative habits of thought constitutive to major genres of literary writing--including epic, tragedy, romance, lyric, and utopia--in order to produce knowledge divorced from historical truth and empirical fact by envisioning states of being untethered from "nature" or reality. Approaching imaginative modes such as hypothesis, conjecture, prediction, and counterfactuals as instruments of possible knowledge, Sarkar exposes how the speculative allure of the "possible" lurks within scientific experiment, induction, and theories of probability. In showing how early modern literary writing sought to grapple with the challenge of forging knowledge in an uncertain, perhaps even incomprehensible world, Possible Knowledge also highlights its most audacious intellectual ambition: its claim that while natural philosophy, or what we today term science, might explain the physical world, literature could remake reality. Enacting a history of ideas that centers literary studies, Possible Knowledge suggests that what we have termed a history of science might ultimately be a history of the imagination.

This second edition of Approaches to Teaching Milton's Paradise Lost addresses Milton in the light of the digital age, new critical approaches to his poem, and his continued presence in contemporary culture. It aims to help instructors enliven the teaching of Paradise Lost and address the challenges presented to students by the poem--the early modern syntax and vocabulary, the political and theological contexts, and the abounding classical references. The first part of the volume, "Materials," evaluates the many available editions of the poem, points to relevant reference works, recommends additional reading, and outlines useful audiovisual and online aids for teaching Milton's epic poem. The essays in the second part, "Approaches," are grouped by several themes: literary and historical contexts, characters, poetics, critical approaches, classrooms, and performance. The essays cover epic conventions and literary and biblical allusions, new approaches such as ecocriticism and masculinity studies, and reading Milton on the Web, among other topics.

From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight. “[A] thought-provoking mixture of criticism, memoir, and advocacy." —The New Yorker There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind.” For millennia, blindness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil). Godin—who began losing her vision at age ten—illuminates the often-surprising history of both the condition of blindness and the myths and ideas that have grown up around it over the course of generations. She combines an analysis of blindness in art and culture (from King Lear to Star Wars) with a study of the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, embossed printing, digital technology) to paint a vivid personal and cultural history. A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.

Regarded by many as the equal of Shakespeare in poetic imagination and expression, Milton was also a prolific writer of prose, applying his potent genius to major issues of domestic, religious and political liberty. This superbly annotated new publication is the most authoritative single-volume anthology yet of Milton's major prose works. Uses Milton's original language, spelling and punctuation Freshly and extensively annotated Notes provide unrivalled contextual analysis as well as illuminating the wealth of Milton's allusions and references Will appeal to a general readership as well as to scholars across the humanities

This book draws attention to the pervasive artistic rivalry between Elizabethan poetry and gardens in order to illustrate the benefits of a trans-media approach to the literary culture of the period. In its blending of textual studies with discussions of specific historical patches of earth, The Poem and the Garden demonstrates how the fashions that drove poetic invention were as likely to be influenced by a popular print convention or a particular garden experience as they were by the formal genres of the classical poets. By moving beyond a strictly verbal approach in its analysis of creative imitation, this volume offers new ways of appreciating the kinds of comparative and competitive methods that shaped early modern poetics. Noting shared patterns—both conceptual and material—in these two areas not only helps explain the persistence of botanical metaphors in sixteenth-century books of poetry but also offers a new perspective on the types of contrastive illusions that distinguish the Elizabethan aesthetic. With its interdisciplinary approach, The Poem and the Garden is of interest to all students and scholars who study early modern poetics, book history, and garden studies.

Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon Derived from the Modern Library’s esteemed The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this new volume, extensively revised and updated by its editors, contains Milton’s two late masterpieces, the brief epic Paradise Regained and the tragic drama Samson Agonistes. Age after age, these works have inspired new controversy and exciting interpretive debates. With expert commentary to guide the reader through historical contexts and verbal details, as well as the larger political and philosophical implications, the concerns of these canonical pieces live once again for today’s audiences. The volume also contains Milton’s complete shorter poems, which include such major achievements as “Lycidas,” “A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634,” “L’Allegro,” and “Il Penseroso,” and the author’s twenty-four influential sonnets. Thoughtfully edited and carefully designed, this is an essential publication of Milton’s classic poetry. Praise for The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton “For generations of readers Milton has been the measure of both eloquence and nobility of mind. For the next generation, this new Modern Library volume will be the standard. It brings Milton, as a poet and a thinker, vividly alive before us.”—Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States “A superb edition of the great poet, with modernized spelling, lucid introductions to each work, illuminating footnotes, and fresh prose translations in Latin, Greek, and Italian. This will surely be the edition of choice for teachers, students, and general readers too.”—Leo Damrosch, Harvard University

Reading John Milton is a guide to Milton’s writings written for students, teachers, and readers everywhere seeking to approach this major figure in English and world literature. Milton’s works range from the monumental epic Paradise Lost to moving personal sonnets, from the tragic grandeur of Samson Agonistes to prose defenses of political liberty and religious tolerance. This book offers clear, fresh introductions and commentary that make an author with a reputation for difficulty relevant and accessible. Individual texts are placed in their literary and historical contexts, and explored so as to encourage fresh, independent interpretations informed by the contemporary humanities. Carefully organized for ease of use, the book opens with reasons why Milton matters, ideas for critical approaches, and a biography of Milton. Subsequent chapters are dedicated to groups of works or individual masterpieces. Key themes are placed in focus and a full overview provided for all of Milton’s major poems. Each chapter includes a set of stimulating questions and activities and suggestions for further reading keyed to a generous bibliography, including online resources. Reading John Milton is both an ideal introduction and a complete companion for anyone ready to experience the sublimity and delight of reading Milton.

The experimental and diverse writing of John Milton's early career offers tanatalising evidence of a precocious and steadily ripening author. This book explores these writings, including 'Lycidas' and 'The Passion'.