Edited for the modern reader by Stephen B. Dobranski (author of The Cambridge Introduction to Milton), the Norton Library edition of Paradise Lost features the complete text of the second (1674) edition, the last published during Milton's lifetime. Extensive endnotes clarify obscure terms and references, and a thorough introduction discusses the epic's innovations and its historical and religious contexts, illuminating the author's radically ambitious undertaking to "justify the ways of God to men."

Critics have traditionally found fault with the descriptions and images in John Milton's poetry and thought of him as an author who wrote for the ear more than the eye. In Milton's Visual Imagination, Stephen B. Dobranski proposes that, on the contrary, Milton enriches his biblical source text with acute and sometimes astonishing visual details. He contends that Milton's imagery - traditionally disparaged by critics - advances the epic's narrative while expressing the author's heterodox beliefs. In particular, Milton exploits the meaning of objects and gestures to overcome the inherent difficulty of his subject and to accommodate seventeenth-century readers. Bringing together Milton's material philosophy with an analysis of both his poetic tradition and cultural circumstances, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of early modern visual culture as well as of Milton's epic.

Critics have traditionally found fault with the descriptions and images in John Milton's poetry and thought of him as an author who wrote for the ear more than the eye. In Milton's Visual Imagination, Stephen B. Dobranski proposes that, on the contrary, Milton enriches his biblical source text with acute and sometimes astonishing visual details. He contends that Milton's imagery - traditionally disparaged by critics - advances the epic's narrative while expressing the author's heterodox beliefs. In particular, Milton exploits the meaning of objects and gestures to overcome the inherent difficulty of his subject and to accommodate seventeenth-century readers. Bringing together Milton's material philosophy with an analysis of both his poetic tradition and cultural circumstances, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of early modern visual culture as well as of Milton's epic.

Few early modern poets engaged more fully with their historical circumstances than John Milton. A pamphleteer, government employee, and writer of occasional verse, Milton did not retreat from public life even after his political hopes were dashed by the Restoration. This volume investigates the various ways in which Milton's works and experiences emerged from the culture and events of his time. In a series of concise, engaging essays, an international group of scholars examines both the social conditions of Milton's life and the broader intellectual currents that shaped his writings and reputation. A uniquely wide range of topics is covered: from biography to translations, from astronomy to philosophy, and from the English Church to the civil wars. Milton in Context is an accessible reference work that both students and scholars will turn to again and again to enrich their understanding of Milton's writings and his world.

John Milton is one of the most important and influential writers in English literary history. The goal of this book is to make Milton's works more accessible and enjoyable by providing a comprehensive overview of the author's life, times and writings. It describes essential details from Milton's biography, explains some of the cultural and historical contexts in which he wrote, offers fresh analyses of his major pamphlets and poems - including Lycidas, Areopagitica and Paradise Lost - and describes in depth traditional and recent responses to his reputation and writings. Separate sections focus on important concepts or key passages from his major works to illustrate how readers can interpret - and get excited about - Milton's writings. This detailed and engaging introduction to Milton will help readers not only better understand the author's life and works but also better appreciate why Milton matters.

While authors in early modern England were gaining new authority - legally, economically and symbolically - Renaissance readers also were expected to participate in and make use of an author's writings. In this book, Stephen B. Dobranski examines how the seventeenth-century phenomenon of printing apparently unfinished works ushered in a new emphasis on authors' responsibility for written texts while it simultaneously reinforced Renaissance practices of active reading. Bringing together textual studies, literary criticism and book trade history, Dobranski provides fresh insight into Renaissance constructions of authorship and offers discerning interpretations of publications by Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, John Donne, Robert Herrick and John Milton. The omissions in all these writers' works provide a unique window into English literary history: through these blank spaces we glimpse the tension between implication and inference, between writers' intentions and readers' responses and between an individual author and a collaborative community.

This study offers an original exploration of Milton's relationship to the seventeenth-century book trade. Critics have often assumed that Milton presided over all stages of his texts' creation, and little has been said about his dependence on other people for producing his works. Examining Milton's changing historical circumstances with special attention to his texts' material production, Stephen B. Dobranski shows in a series of provocative and original case studies that Milton benefited from a collaborative process of writing and publishing. He worked with amanuenses, acquaintances, printers and publishers, often in dramatic and surprising ways: paradoxically, Milton's implied persona of the independent, even isolated, poet required the cooperation of these various individuals. With the attentiveness of textual scholarship and booktrade history to the material forms of publication, Dobranski offers fresh insight into the practice of authorship and the meaning of Milton's works.

It is distinctly paradoxical that John Milton - who opposed infant baptism, supported regicide, defended divorce and approved of polygamy - should be heard as a voice of orthodoxy. Yet modern scholarship has often understated or explained away his heretical opinions. This volume investigates aspects of Milton's works inconsistent with conventional beliefs, whether in terms of seventeenth-century theology or the common assumptions of Milton scholars. Contributors situate Milton and his writings within his specific historical circumstances, paying special attention to Milton's pragmatic position within seventeenth-century religious controversy. The volume's four sections deal with heretical theology, heresy's consequences, heresy and community, and readers of heresy; their common premise is that Milton, as poet, thinker and public servant, eschewed set beliefs and regarded indeterminacy and uncertainty as fundamental to human existence.

While authors in early modern England were gaining new authority - legally, economically and symbolically - Renaissance readers also were expected to participate in and make use of an author's writings. In this book, Stephen B. Dobranski examines how the seventeenth-century phenomenon of printing apparently unfinished works ushered in a new emphasis on authors' responsibility for written texts while it simultaneously reinforced Renaissance practices of active reading. Bringing together textual studies, literary criticism and book trade history, Dobranski provides fresh insight into Renaissance constructions of authorship and offers discerning interpretations of publications by Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, John Donne, Robert Herrick and John Milton. The omissions in all these writers' works provide a unique window into English literary history: through these blank spaces we glimpse the tension between implication and inference, between writers' intentions and readers' responses and between an individual author and a collaborative community.

This study offers an original exploration of Milton's relationship to the seventeenth-century book trade. Critics have often assumed that Milton presided over all stages of his texts' creation, and little has been said about his dependence on other people for producing his works. Examining Milton's changing historical circumstances with special attention to his texts' material production, Stephen B. Dobranski shows in a series of provocative and original case studies that Milton benefited from a collaborative process of writing and publishing. He worked with amanuenses, acquaintances, printers and publishers, often in dramatic and surprising ways: paradoxically, Milton's implied persona of the independent, even isolated, poet required the cooperation of these various individuals. With the attentiveness of textual scholarship and booktrade history to the material forms of publication, Dobranski offers fresh insight into the practice of authorship and the meaning of Milton's works.

John Milton is one of the most important and influential writers in English literary history. The goal of this book is to make Milton's works more accessible and enjoyable by providing a comprehensive overview of the author's life, times and writings. It describes essential details from Milton's biography, explains some of the cultural and historical contexts in which he wrote, offers fresh analyses of his major pamphlets and poems - including Lycidas, Areopagitica and Paradise Lost - and describes in depth traditional and recent responses to his reputation and writings. Separate sections focus on important concepts or key passages from his major works to illustrate how readers can interpret - and get excited about - Milton's writings. This detailed and engaging introduction to Milton will help readers not only better understand the author's life and works but also better appreciate why Milton matters.

It is distinctly paradoxical that John Milton--who opposed infant baptism, supported regicide, defended divorce and approved of polygamy--should be heard as a voice of orthodoxy. Yet modern scholarship has often understated or explained away his heretical opinions. This collection of essays investigates aspects of his works inconsistent with conventional beliefs, showing how Milton, as poet, thinker and public servant, eschewed dogma and regarded indeterminacy and uncertainty as fundamental to human existence.