John T. Shawcross's groundbreaking new study of John Milton is an essential work of scholarship for those who seek a greater understanding of Milton, his family, and his social and political world. Shawcross uses extensive new archival research to scrutinize several misunderstood elements of Milton's life, including his first marriage and his relationship with his brother, brother-in-law and nephews. Shawcross examines Milton's numerous royalist connections, complicating the conventional view of Milton as eminent Puritan and raising questions about the role his connections played in his relatively mild punishment after the Restoration. Unique in its methodology, The Arms of the Family is required reading not only for students of Milton but also for students of biography in general. Entire chapters dedicated to Milton's brother Christopher, his brother-in-law Thomas Agar, and his nephews Edward and John Phillips, illuminate the domestic forces that helped shape Milton's point of view. The final chapters reconsider Milton's political and sociological ideology in the light of these domestic forces and in the religious context of his three major poetic works: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain'd, and Samson Agonistes. The Arms of the Family is a seminal work by a preeminent Miltonist, marking a major advance in Milton studies and serving as a model for those engaged in family history, social history, and the early modern period.

An important and innovative edition of Milton's shorter verse & the first volume to present the poems with the original spelling and pronunciations intact, offering readers the opportunity to experience the vitality of the poems as they were experienced by Milton's contemporaries: Includes Milton's original Latin poems, with a new English translation on facing pages for cross-comparison Serves as a companion to Lewalski's Paradise Lost and Loewenstein's prose selections of Milton Features both collected and uncollected poetry in English, Latin, and Greek, the latter two with translations Retains original spelling and punctuation of Milton's 1645 Poems and his 1671 Paradise Regained and Sampson Agonistes Offers readers comprehensive footnotes, marginal glosses, chronology, bibliography, and longer discussions in introductions to sections

John Milton (1608-1674) is best known as the author of the masterful epic retelling of fall of man, Paradise Lost. But he was more than just the 17th century voice of Satan. Wise and witty scholar Anna Beer traces his literary roots to a youthful passion for ancient verse, especially Ovid. She also rounds out parts of his life that have been, until now, little studied. Milton was deeply involved in the political and religious controversies of his time, writing a series of pamphlets on free speech, divorce, and religious, political and social rights that forced a complete rethinking of the nature and practice not only of government, but of human freedom itself. He struggled to survive through Cromwell's rise to power, chaotic reign and death, and then the restoration of the monarchy. Milton's personal life was just as rich and complex as his professional, and here it receives a fresh assessment. For centuries, he has emerged from biographies either as a woman-hating domestic tyrant or as a saintly figure removed from the messy business of personal affections. While Milton was probably a touch tyrant and saint, Beer suggests he also suffered lifelong heartache at the untimely death of his intimate friend Charles Diodati, with whom he was likely in love. Milton's context, from religious persecution to institutional turmoil to sexual politics, is as central to the book as Milton himself. With extensive new research, Milton emerges from Anna Beer's ground-breaking biography for the first time as a fully rounded human being.

John Milton is widely known as the poet of liberty and freedom. But his commitment to justice has been often overlooked. As Alison A. Chapman shows, Milton’s many prose works are saturated in legal ways of thinking, and he also actively shifts between citing Roman, common, and ecclesiastical law to best suit his purpose in any given text. This book provides literary scholars with a working knowledge of the multiple, jostling, real-world legal systems in conflict in seventeenth-century England and brings to light Milton’s use of the various legal systems and vocabularies of the time—natural versus positive law, for example—and the differences between them. Surveying Milton’s early pamphlets, divorce tracts, late political tracts, and major prose works in comparison with the writings and cases of some of Milton’s contemporaries—including George Herbert, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and John Bunyan—Chapman reveals the variety and nuance in Milton’s juridical toolkit and his subtle use of competing legal traditions in pursuit of justice.

The experimental and diverse writing of John Milton's early career offers tanatalising evidence of a precocious and steadily ripening author. This book explores these writings, including 'Lycidas' and 'The Passion'.

This collection of original essays by literary critics and historians analyzes a wide range of Milton’s writing, from his early poetry, through his mid-century political prose, to De Doctrina Christiana, which was unpublished in his lifetime, and finally to his last and greatest poems. The contributors investigate the rich variety of approaches to Milton’s engagement with Catholicism and its relationship to reformed religion. The essays address latent tensions and contradictions, explore the nuances of Milton’s relationship to the easy commonplaces of Protestant compatriots, and disclose the polemical strategies and tactics that often shape that engagement. The contributors link Milton and Catholicism with early modern confessional conflicts between Catholics and Protestants that in turn led to new models and standards of authority, scholarship, and interiority. In Milton’s case, he deployed anti-Catholicism as a rhetorical device and the negative example out of which Protestants could shape their identity. The contributors argue that Milton’s anti-Catholicism aligns with his understanding of inwardness and conscience and illuminates one of the central conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in the period. Building on recent scholarship on Catholic and anti-Catholic discourses over the English Tudor and Stuart period, new understandings of martyrdom, and scholarship on Catholic women, Milton and Catholicism, provides a diverse and multifaceted investigation into a complex and little-explored field in Milton studies. Contributors: Alastair Bellany, Thomas Cogswell, Thomas N. Corns, Ronald Corthell, Angelica Duran, Martin Dzelzainis, John Flood, Estelle Haan, and Elizabeth Sauer.

With brevity, depth, and accessibility, this book helps readers to appreciate the works of John Milton, and to understand the great influence they have had on literature and other disciplines. Presents new and authoritative essays by internationally respected Milton scholars Explains how and why Milton’s works established their central place in the English literary canon Structured chronologically around Milton’s major works Also includes a select bibliography and a chronology detailing Milton’s life and works alongside relevant world events Ideal as a first critical work on Milton