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Introduction
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Introduction 1 1 Critical approaches to literature in recent years have included the significance of women writers and readers, and the contemporary or near contemporary reception of an author and her or his works. Implicit in such concerns is also an awareness of an author’s potential influence upon the thinking and creative work of others. The literary world has finally recognized that women writers contribute, and have contributed , as superior, meaningful and highly praiseworthy poems, novels, dramas and belles lettres as their male counterparts . Gender may affect the creative result, but differences in that result may be largely the differences that individuals exhibit, regardless of gender. With the rise in the last few decades of reader-response theory, it has also been finally understood that women readers may experience responses to a piece of literature that show differences from those of a male audience. Most clearly people of varied life experiences — racial, social, gendered, political, educational — will find in the same literary work numerous varied reactions and readings. Introduction Mark R. Kelley, Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross 2 Kelley, Lieb and Shawcross The poem, the novel, the prose exposition is not self-contained, dominated by a view of its author writing. We have rejected the single interpretation of a literary work that former scholars have been more recently accused of proffering as well as the so-called “old historical” impingement on a literary work where delimitation to an event or issue only informs that work. Nonetheless, we continue to encounter a ground of critical argument arising from the treatment and viability of women authors and feminine criticism. Joseph Wittreich is a major voice in recasting such issues concerning John Milton’s works. His employment of the reception theory of Hans Robert Jauss has led us well beyond the simplistic epitomes of the past. It is incumbent upon a reader-critic to examine any literary work within its period of production, the political and social attitudes of its world and, in turn, its telling influence on any future looked at from that future’s contemporaneity. Gender and contemporaneity (of the work and of its period of influence) set up a political climate for literature and its significance and for its reading at any specific point in time. Grounds of contention for a readership of Milton’s works abound in these statements. The issue of influence, its nature and importance, its relationship with and upon the political and social worlds that postdate a work’s publication are all matters that admit of many interpretations, many “facts” (some conflicting), many evaluations. The issue of the place of women in the political and interpretive world seems not to have disappeared. The importance of this dimension in literature or of that pulse of the people upon the work itself, particularly in the frequent daily political, religious and social shiftings of the seventeenth century, has not been given the full and close attention it deserves. The world out of which an author writes is of great signi- ficance, yet past criticism has often taken a path of either arguing for one interpretation on the basis of a historical element (at least this has been the accusation leveled by some [44.213.65.97] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:44 GMT) Introduction 3 more recent commentators) or ignoring that world, and particularly ignoring the author, to present an interpretation limited to an isolated, disembodied literary work. While socalled “new historical” approaches have at times left the literature itself behind, they have also made unavoidable the recognition that a literary work offers “power” in political, sociological and philosophical arenas. Such “power” is within the work and of the work in its effect upon its reading audience, contemporaneously and afterward. All of these avenues for reading and interpretation create a dynamic literature that can no longer be viewed as singular or only personal. To recognize that a piece of literature is not a fixed commodity with no ambiguities about it at all and with only an aesthetic experience is the welcome inheritance from the last half of the twentieth century. “Grounds of contention” arise clearly within these remarks, implying argument and counter-argument. These are pursued in the ten essays presented here which focus on John Milton, his poetry and his prose, his world and that which ensued and which reflects his continuing presence. These issues — involving our reading of the works, Milton’s position in the...