English 218

Book List

Milton, John: The Riverside Milton [hardcover]

Description

This course will perform various operations on the massive corpus of Milton's writing. We will try to break down the isolation and idealization of a few major poems, to bring the prose writings into focus, to confront the politics of gender, and to see how Milton "produces himself" in his work. Though we are unlikely to abolish Milton's canonical position, we may invert the internal canon of his work, giving a central place to hitherto marginal texts: prose, minor poems, manuscript variants, foreign-language writings. Individual projects can develop from within this programme of intensive reading. I will not assume previous knowledge of Milton, but I would certainly recommend a preliminary (re)reading of Paradise Lost. Nor do I formally require reading in secondary sources, though we will often cross-refer to the standard positions. I will provide a list of research tools and suggestions for further reading, once I learn your particular interests and lines of enquiry.

This course satisfies the 17th-18th-century historical breadth requirement.