Project MUSE®: Milton Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Milton Studies.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 53 (2012) through current issueLatest Articles: Milton StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Milton Studies2330-796X0076-8820Latest articles in Milton Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Preface: Precarious Milton—Essays from a Field in Crisis
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987672
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The articles in this special issue of Milton Studies on "Precarious Milton" explore some of the ways Milton's life and works might be illuminated by considering them in relation to the subject and experience of precariousness in its myriad forms, from the early modern period to today. This issue thus joins growing scholarly interest in precariousness now emerging within early modern studies more broadly.1 The following seven articles, however, also do something unique: together they represent, to our knowledge, the first scholarly collection on the subject of precariousness in early modern studies written by authors who themselves, at the time the articles were begun, belonged to the swelling ranks of what have
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallPreface: Precarious Milton—Essays from a Field in Crisis2026-04-13text/htmlen-USPreface: Precarious Milton—Essays from a Field in Crisis2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®656152026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13How Milton Got Tenure
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987673
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When I was invited to contribute to this special issue of Milton Studies comprising articles by precarious scholars, I thought the project was great, but I was not sure I was a good fit. I left the university years ago to teach high school. I no longer worry about health insurance or where I will be next year, and I was inclined to yield my place to those better able to channel Milton's fiery indignation. On second thought, I decided an outsider's perspective might be useful. Like anyone who has spent years on the job market, I have known anxiety, frustration, and the odd Miltonic urge to grope the temple's posts in spite. But I can now speak from a more secure place, with most—if not all—passion spent. I have no
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallHow Milton Got Tenure2026-04-13text/htmlen-USHow Milton Got Tenure2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®694492026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Precarious Preachers in the Age of Milton
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987674
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It is well known that Lycidas possibly marks John Milton's earliest unambiguous criticism of the Caroline Church and its authorities.1 Although his "learned friend" Edward King was likely hoping to train to become a divine before his life was cut short, Milton's tribute to him in Lycidas was laced with swipes at a "corrupt clergy."2 While Milton's early masterpiece has lain at the heart of numerous scholarly analyses of his anticlericalism, I want to begin this article by speculating about the unrealized clerical career of King.3 Although he was wealthy during his lifetime, and despite the fact that his social standing allowed him to secure a fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge, he might not have been
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallPrecarious Preachers in the Age of Milton2026-04-13text/htmlen-USPrecarious Preachers in the Age of Milton2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1134072026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13A Footnote to Milton in Strauss, or, Publicity as Precariousness
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987675
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Early in his 1941 essay "Persecution and the Art of Writing," the historian of political philosophy Leo Strauss mentioned John Milton in a footnote: "'Reason is but choosing' is the central thesis of Milton's Areopagitica," reads the note.1 This reference was conspicuous, since Strauss, one of the twentieth century's most influential interpreters of medieval and classical political philosophy, was not a Milton scholar. Comb his writings for other notes to Milton's works and you will find few.2 Yet the footnote falls in what would become Strauss's most influential essay, which for many readers defines his legacy by offering a "Straussian" way of reading.3 Why did Strauss cite Milton on reason and choice? And why did
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallA Footnote to Milton in Strauss, or, Publicity as Precariousness2026-04-13text/htmlen-USA Footnote to Milton in Strauss, or, Publicity as Precariousness2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®832272026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Precarious Stooping among the Roses in Paradise Lost and Mansfield Park
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987676
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Sensuous and symbolic, Eve's depiction among her roses has long intrigued scholars of Paradise Lost. In the key passage, Satan "spies" Eve, alone, tending the vigorous growth of her young flowers:
                Eve separate he spies,
Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,
Half spied, so thick the roses bushing round
About her glowed, oft stooping to support
Each flow'r of slender stalk, whose head though gay
Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold,
Hung drooping unsustained; them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while,
Herself, though fairest unsupported flow'r,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.
(9.424–33)1
Alastair Fowler's interests in his edition of the poem
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallPrecarious Stooping among the Roses in Paradise Lost and Mansfield Park2026-04-13text/htmlen-USPrecarious Stooping among the Roses in Paradise Lost and Mansfield Park2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®926782026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Milton's Precarious Data
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987677
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Milton's 1638 meeting with Galileo Galilei has long captivated scholars interested in the intersection between Milton and the history of science.1 The encounter dramatizes many of the debates that would preoccupy the author for the rest of his life: the young man, Milton, who would become an epic poet meets, at a key moment, the aging scientific visionary, Galileo, already convicted of heresy. It may be that the real meeting did not match the high expectations that contemporary scholars would later impose on it; the two men may not have talked for long, or if they did, their conversation may not have been detailed. But the pairing of Milton and Galileo continues to fascinate in part because it gets at a core
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallMilton's Precarious Data2026-04-13text/htmlen-USMilton's Precarious Data2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®862522026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13Toland's Milton, the Acta Eruditorum, and the Reception of English Republican Ideas in the German Enlightenment
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987678
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John Milton's works led a precarious existence in Germany in the two centuries following the British Civil Wars as the author's output was forever linked to his defense of the regicide. Publications defending the actions of the English Parliament and threatening to incite rebellion had been banned by the Imperial Diet in Regensburg as early as 1653.1 Presumably as a consequence, none of Milton's works were published in German during his lifetime. The first published German translation of any of his writings was the 1682 edition of Paradise Lost by Ernst Gottlieb von Berge, followed by several other translated versions of his epic poem by the Swiss scholar Johann Jakob Bodmer. It took until the mid-nineteenth
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallToland's Milton, the Acta Eruditorum, and the Reception of English Republican Ideas in the German Enlightenment2026-04-13text/htmlen-USToland's Milton, the Acta Eruditorum, and the Reception of English Republican Ideas in the German Enlightenment2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1132712026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13How Malcolm X Read His Milton: Paradise Lost and the Politics of Abolition
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987679
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Absolute power in the hands of idiots! It makes me think of Rome and England.In August 2020, a word was graffitied on a correctional facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin: "Abolish!"1 That injunction, on the wall of a building later burnt to the ground, is imprinted on the historical memory of that summer. In May, after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, protests erupted across the United States, with acts of civil disobedience and rioting in more than 200 cities. The New York Times described it as the largest protest movement in American history; radical commentators called it an uprising or rebellion.2 One of the enduring impacts was the prevalence of a politics that had up until that point
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/570/image/coversmallHow Malcolm X Read His Milton: Paradise Lost and the Politics of Abolition2026-04-13text/htmlen-USHow Malcolm X Read His Milton: Paradise Lost and the Politics of Abolition2026-04-132026TWOProject MUSE®1189192026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-13