Milton Now

Sharon Achinstein, John Hopkins University, USA Ann Baynes Coiro, Rutgers University, USA Katharine Gillespie, Miami University of Ohio, USA Jonathan Goldberg, Emory University, USA Feisal G. Mohamed, The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA Molly Murray, Columbia University, USA Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto, Canada Diane Purkiss, Oxford University, UK Rachel Trubowitz, University of New Hampshire, USA Christopher Warley, University of Toronto, Canada Reginald A. Wilburn, University of New Hampshire, USA

"All of the essays in this collection are well worth reading. Those in parts 1 and 2 should appeal mainly to Milton scholars and other early modern specialists. ... Part 3 should command a broader audience with its diverse perspectives and applications. The collection certainly makes its case that a wide variety of critical and theoretical approaches can contribute greatly to Milton studies." (Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 69, 2014) "This remarkable book offers its readers twelve original essays (including a brilliant introduction) and a cumulative experience of high-quality adventure. The collection contributes not only to Milton studies but also to the history and theory of reading. Experimental, edgy, self-reflective, and wide-ranging in their critical conversations, these writers place Milton in newly framed pictures of a multiple and layered past. In doing so, they make the past speak to and about the resonant 'now' signaled by the title." - Margaret W. Ferguson, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Davis, USA "A remarkably rich collection, organized and presented in a thoughtful, timely form, representing the most interesting developments in recent Milton criticism. Several of the essays should have a major impact on the field for years to come." - Christopher Kendrick, Professor of English, Loyola University of Chicago, USA "Certain to provoke significant debate on how Milton can be read and renewed awareness that he must Milton Now is nothing short of bracing. Milton's own words in Areopagitica furnish an apt account of the value of this volume: 'Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.' Milton Now does not shy from the disagreements through which knowledge is refined, and it will be essential reading for Miltonists and non-Miltonists alike. Indeed, part of the volume's brilliance is that it unsettles that distinction." - Melissa E. Sanchez, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, USA

• Introduction; Erin Murphy and Catharine Gray PART I: TEMPORALITY AND HISTORICISM 1. 'Shipwreck is everywhere': Lycidas and the Problems of the Secular; Sharon Achinstein 2. 'What dost thou in this world?'; Jonathan Goldberg 3. Milton's Capitalist Son of God? Temporality and Divine Order in De doctrina Christiana ; Feisal G. Mohamed PART II: FORM AND FIGURES 4. Sufficient and Free: The Poetry of Paradise Lost ; Ann Baynes Coiro 5. As Jesus Tends To Divinity in Paradise Regained : Mathematical Limits and the Arian Son; Rachel Trubowitz 6. Uncouth Milton; Christopher Warley PART III: TAKING LIBERTIES: RECONSIDERING MILTONIC FREEDOM 7. The Liberty of the Subject and the 'Pris'ner Samson'; Molly Murray 8. What Do Men Want? Satan the Rake, and Masculine Desire; Diane Purkiss 9. Shades of Representation: Lucy Hutchinson's Ghost and the Politics of the Representative; Katharine Gillespie 10. Equiano, Satanism, and Slavery; Mary Nyquist 11. When Milton was in Vogue: Cross-Dressing MiltonicPresence and William Craft's Slave Narrative; Reginald A. Wilburn