Milton and the Network of Disability, Embodiment and Care

Angelica Duran is Professor of English, Comparative Literature and Religious Studies at Purdue University, where she has also served as Purdue’s Director of Religious Studies (2009–2013), Interim Director of Creative Writing (2022–24) and affiliate faculty of Critical Disability Studies. She is the author, editor and co-editor of ten books, including Milton among Spaniards (2020), Global Milton and Visual Art (2021) and Milton Across Borders and Media (2023). She has served on the Executive Committee (2012–21) of the Milton Society of America, on the editorial board of Milton Quarterly (2005–) and as Conference Chair of the Renaissance Society of America (2022–27). Pasquale Toscano is Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College, after earning a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a PhD in English from Princeton University. He is a co-winner of the Sixteenth Century Society’s Harold J. Grimm Prize for scholarship on the Reformation and was named a 2023–24 Peter Ogden Jacobus Fellow, Princeton’s highest honour for graduate students. His scholarship appears in Studies in English Literature, 1550–1900 (SEL), Classical Receptions Journal, Disability Studies Quarterly, The Oxford Handbook of George Herbert and Shakespeare and Early Modern Madness. His public-facing and creative writing focus primarily on disability-related issues and appear in The New York Times, The Atlantic and other venues.

This timely collection breaks important new ground by addressing the divide between Milton scholarship and Critical Disability Studies. Contributors offer fresh and innovative insights on Milton’s self-representations and literary imaginings of blindness, as well as on his lived experience of embodied disability and access to the world of care.

• List of figuresNotes on contributorsAcknowledgementsForeword by Rosemarie Garland-ThomsonPart I. 'A Darksome House of Mortal Clay'1. 'With wand’ring steps and slow'Angelica Duran and Pasquale Toscano2. Milton and disabilityThomas N. CornsAppendix 1: Milton’s Letter to Philaras about his blindness (Epistolae familiares 15), Latin transcription and English translationSarah KnightPart II. 'Spirited with Various Forms'3. Milton’s stammerJoe Moshenska4. Incapacity and human life in Paradise Lost, Artis logicae, and De doctrina ChristianaTimothy M. Harrison5. Milton and the human conditionElizabeth Sauer6. The matter of blindness in the Second Defence and Samson AgonistesSusannah B. Mintz7. Disability and the drama of Folly in Samson AgonistesMaura BradyPart III. 'Gathering Up Limb by Limb'8. Blind self-governance in Milton’s 'Cyriack, This Three Years’ Days These Eyes'Teri Fickling9. Paradise Regained, prophetic practice, and the Quaker communities of care Joan Curbet Soler10. Access, ableism, and accommodation in Samson Agonistes and its Restoration successorsPasquale ToscanoPart IV. 'Written to Aftertimes'11. The blind Milton as caretaker, Englishman, and husband on the Spanish stageAngelica Duran12. When Tyehimba Jess (re)considers Milton’s Sonnet 'When I Consider How My Light Is Spent'Reginald A. Wilburn13. Picturing Satan’s body in Paradise LostJohn LeonardAfterwordGeorgina KleegeIndex