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Milton's Modernities: Poetry, Philosophy, and History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present

edited by Feisal G. Mohamed and Patrick Fadely

Northwestern University Press, 2017
eISBN: 978-0-8101-3535-2 | Paper: 978-0-8101-3533-8 | Cloth: 978-0-8101-3534-5
Library of Congress Classification PR3588.M534 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification 821.4

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The phrase “early modern” challenges readers and scholars to explore ways in which that period expands and refines contemporary views of the modern. The original essays in Milton’s Modernities undertake such exploration in the context of the work of John Milton, a poet whose prodigious energies simultaneously point to the past and future.

Bristling with insights on Milton’s major works, Milton’s Modernities offers fresh perspectives on the thinkers central to our theorizations of modernity: from Lucretius and Spinoza, Hegel and Kant, to Benjamin and Deleuze. At the volume's core is an embrace of the possibilities unleashed by current trends in philosophy, variously styled as the return to ethics, or metaphysics, or religion. These make all the more visible Milton’s dialogues with later modernity, dialogues that promise to generate much critical discussion in early modern studies and beyond.

Such approaches necessarily challenge many prevailing assumptions that have guided recent Milton criticism—assumptions about context and periodization, for instance. In this way, Milton’s Modernities powerfully broadens the historical archive beyond the materiality of events and things, incorporating as well intellectual currents, hybrids, and insights.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

FEISAL G. MOHAMED is a professor of English at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and author of Milton and the Post-Secular Present: Ethics, Politics, Terrorism and In the Anteroom of Divinity: The Reformation of the Angels from Colet to Milton.

PATRICK FADELY is a graduate student in the department of English at the University of Illinois.

REVIEWS

“The volume as a whole marks a turn away from the historicism that has dominated Milton studies for the past three decades.” —Modern Philology

"What is exciting about the recent wave of Milton scholarship—and I include Milton’s Modernities in that category—is that it builds on foundational new critical and historicist work to rethink the boundaries of Milton studies more generally. This timely and innovative volume will appeal not only to dyed-in-the-wool Miltonists, but also to scholars who may not think of themselves as Miltonists at all."—Melissa E. Sanchez, author of Erotic Subjects: The Sexuality of Politics in Early Modern English Literature

“The premise for this volume is significant, timely, and salient. The editors have declared the modernity of John Milton, a major, if not the major, poet in the English literary canon. The essays they have gathered demonstrate how reading Milton’s works and studying key thinkers’ interpretations of Milton can open new possibilities for both Milton Studies and studies of modernity. Thus, the volume successfully achieves its goals of reinvigorating Milton Studies and supplying alternative lenses for conceptualizing modernity.”
—Elizabeth Sauer, author of Milton, Toleration, and Nationhood and coeditor of Milton and the Imperial Vision

"Comprising papers by such established Miltonists as Gordon Teskey and Lee Morissey, and also by a number of scholars at the beginning of their careers, the book provides a rich mélange of perspectives and readings. All the essays are cogent and learned... At their best, they suggest new ways of reading England’s greatest poet while reflecting suggestively on a modernism whose legacy persists into the present moment. Recommended." —CHOICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction, Patrick Fadely and Feisal G. Mohamed, “Satan or Samson? The Question of Milton and Modernity”
1) James Nohrnberg, “Periodizing Milton: In Two Sallies”
2) Jessie Hock, “‘The Mind is its Own Place’: Lucretian Moral Philosophy in Paradise Lost”
3) Ryan Netzley, “Learning from History: Empiricism, Likeness, and Liberty in Paradise Lost, Books 11-12”
4) Jennifer Tole, “Divine Violence and the Messianic Possibilities of Samson Agonistes”
5) Christopher Kendrick, “Constituent Providence and Antinomian Obedience: Monistic Stories in Spinoza’ Ethics and Milton’s Paradise Lost”
6) Sanford Budick, “Miltonic Mind”
7) Russ Leo, “Milton’s Sublime Judaism and Hegel’s Religion der Erhabenheit: The Ends of Typology and the Impossibility of Christianity”
8) Feisal G. Mohamed, “Milton’s Tacitist Sovereignty”
9) Lee Morrissey, “‘A Secular Bird Ages’: Samson Agonistes as a Tragic Reaction against Modernity”
10) Gordon Teskey, “Insideoutput: Milton’s Inspiration”
11) Wendy Furman-Adams, “Tablet for the God of Israel: Robert Medley’s 1979 Samson Agonistes”
Afterword, Sharon Achinstein, “Suddenly Emergent Milton”

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