Project MUSE®: Milton Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Milton Studies.daily12024-03-29T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 53 (2012) through current issueLatest Articles: Milton StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Milton Studies2330-796X0076-8820Latest articles in Milton Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Milton, Lucretius, and the “Womb of Nature”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/921865
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Natura natam se fateturNature” declares itself nata—“born”The great Lucretius expert Philip Hardie once claimed that “Lucretian echoes are sparser than might be expected in Latin poems such as Naturam non pati senium.” The implications of this are weighty because Hardie shows, in contrast to this early work from Milton’s Cambridge years, how deeply Paradise Lost was indebted to the ancient materialist epic—not just in details or scattered phrases but in its entire conception as a groundbreaking “epic of knowledge.” Hardie demonstrates that both authors present their heroic-didactic poem in similar words, both claiming to travel on paths never explored before and both being “smit” or percussus with the love of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-29T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallMilton, Lucretius, and the “Womb of Nature”2024-03-08text/htmlen-USMilton, Lucretius, and the “Womb of Nature”2024-03-082024TWOProject MUSE®1646082024-03-29T00:00:00-05:002024-03-08Schooling Milton: Materialism and Social Ontology in Milton’s Educational Prose
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/921866
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A credible narrative emerges from Milton’s contemporary biographers and the autobiographical passages in his own political and theological writings, which suggests that the author’s intellectual development unfolded, almost entirely, by design. The son of a prosperous Scrivener and accomplished musician, Milton writes, “My father destined me in early childhood for the study of literature.”1 The young Milton learned to read English, Latin, and other languages from “sundry masters and teachers both at home and at the schools,” and his father ordered servants to remain awake in support of the adolescent Milton’s diligent efforts, according to his brother Christopher, “commonly till 12 or one aclock at night” (YP
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-29T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallSchooling Milton: Materialism and Social Ontology in Milton’s Educational Prose2024-03-08text/htmlen-USSchooling Milton: Materialism and Social Ontology in Milton’s Educational Prose2024-03-082024TWOProject MUSE®1687242024-03-29T00:00:00-05:002024-03-08London’s First Public Library: Books and Readers at Sion College, ca. 1630–60
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/921867
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After taking his Cambridge University MA in July 1632, John Milton moved back in with his parents, first in Hammersmith and then in Horton, and dedicated himself to the encyclopedic program of study to which his Commonplace Book attests. As Milton would later draw on his reading from this period of “studious retirement” in his controversial prose as well as in his poetry—in the argument to book 1 of Paradise Lost, for instance, the preexistence of angels before the Creation is justified with reference to “the opinion of many ancient Fathers”—this crucial phase in his formation as a scholar has attracted a fair amount of interest.1 A recurring question is whether, in addition to his own personal library and those
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-29T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallLondon’s First Public Library: Books and Readers at Sion College, ca. 1630–602024-03-08text/htmlen-USLondon’s First Public Library: Books and Readers at Sion College, ca. 1630–602024-03-082024TWOProject MUSE®934632024-03-29T00:00:00-05:002024-03-08Infernal Rhetoric: Counseling and Listening among the Fallen Angels in Paradise Lost
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/921868
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Many scholars of Paradise Lost have shown, through compelling rhetorical analyses, the eloquence of the fallen angels’ speeches. Nancy Hagglund Wood accurately observes, “Paradise Lost is full of oratory, from the debate in Pandaemonium to the persuasion of Eve.”1 But for Wood, the focus is on Satan, who demonstrates his mastery of Aristotelian rhetoric as “the most skillful of the orators in the poem,” especially in the temptation scene.2 While John Steadman, too, acknowledges “the seductive force of Satan’s oratory,” he insists that we distinguish between the poem’s “Just and Unjust Discourse, or true and false eloquence.”3 Steadman argues that through Satan, who uses sophistic, or unjust, rhetoric with evil
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-29T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallInfernal Rhetoric: Counseling and Listening among the Fallen Angels in Paradise Lost2024-03-08text/htmlen-USInfernal Rhetoric: Counseling and Listening among the Fallen Angels in Paradise Lost2024-03-082024TWOProject MUSE®1205942024-03-29T00:00:00-05:002024-03-08Reconsidering the Curse of Ham in Milton’s Paradise Lost: Canaan, “Vitious Race,” and Renaissance Biblical Commentary
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/921869
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Much recent scholarship on early modern authors has attempted to evaluate their relation to the phenomenon of racism that, as historians such as Geraldine Heng and others are emphasizing, long predates the putatively biological racism of the eighteenth century.1 Scholarly movements such as Race B4 Race and Premodern Critical Race Studies derive some of their urgency from social movements that seek to combat racial prejudice and to promote inclusion instead. Several recent books have emerged to address the question of Shakespeare’s relation to race, and Shakespeare journals—some issues in particular—have featured a preponderance of essays on this topic.2 Other work has begun to examine race in other early modern
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-29T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallReconsidering the Curse of Ham in Milton’s Paradise Lost: Canaan, “Vitious Race,” and Renaissance Biblical Commentary2024-03-08text/htmlen-USReconsidering the Curse of Ham in Milton’s Paradise Lost: Canaan, “Vitious Race,” and Renaissance Biblical Commentary2024-03-082024TWOProject MUSE®1589392024-03-29T00:00:00-05:002024-03-08Milton’s Belly Talk
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/921870
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Demonic possession or ventriloquism, as manifested in ventris loqui (speakers from the belly), was a pervasive subject in seventeenth-century literary culture. Sermonists and polemicists regularly invoked the belly talking Witch of Endor, for instance, to condemn the “enthusiasts” allegedly turning England upside down.1 Likewise, philosophers and satirists recast their enemies as newfangled oracles of Delphi, wafted from below by Satanic breezes. These ancient high priestesses of Apollo’s temple were emblematic belly talkers throughout the Christian reception of this idea.Milton, no less than his contemporaries, engaged deeply with this discourse. In his early poetry, his engagements were basically conventional.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2024-03-29T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallMilton’s Belly Talk2024-03-08text/htmlen-USMilton’s Belly Talk2024-03-082024TWOProject MUSE®1227602024-03-29T00:00:00-05:002024-03-08