Milton Studies: Volume 45

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. The eight essays in this volume are evenly divided between the poetry and prose of Milton. Two of the essays discuss major sonnets, and two other essays on poetry engage Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d, respectively. The essays on prose are brilliantly revisionist: one, for example, analyzes Aeropagitica by citing the ironic relationship of truth and the grotesque. Another examines the rhetorical techniques Milton employs for the capable though small audience at which he aims Eikonoklates. The third discusses how and why Milton embeds autobiographies in the midst of political tracts, and the final essay studies an often overlooked work, the Art of Logic, and its value in illuminating selected poetry and prose of Milton. Hardcover is un-jacketed.