Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment: One First Matter All

by Kevin J. Donovan (Editor), Thomas Festa (Editor)

Overview

Bringing together eight original essays from leading and emerging Miltonists, this volume explores a second wave of critical thought about Milton’s monist materialism, the view that all existence arises from a single substance or reality. Contributors examine sensory matters of fragrance and sound, the literary politics of walking and of sexual reproduction, the ontology of embodiment as human beings and angels, and the appropriation of Milton’s materialism by both early Mormons in the nineteenth century and fringe figures such as gun enthusiasts in the twentieth. In so doing, they demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Milton’s writings in the history of views of embodiment and materialist thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271092959
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Series:	Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Kevin J. Donovan is professor of English and director of graduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University and coeditor of the volume Irish Drama of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

Thomas Festa is associate professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of The End of Learning: Milton and Education and coeditor of Early Modern Women on the Fall: An Anthology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: One First Matter All—Kevin Donovan and Thomas Festa

Part One: Materiality and the Senses

1. The Fragrance of the Fall—Lauren Shohet

2. Sound as Matter: Milton, Music and Monism—Seth Herbst

Part Two: Human Embodiment

3. Milton on the Move: Walking and Self-Knowledge in Paradise Lost—Ryan Hackenbracht

4. Radical Relations: The Genealogical Imaginary and Queer Kinship in Milton's Paradise Regained—Erin Murphy

Part Three: Angelic Embodiment

5. Milton's Strange Angels—Rebecca Buckham

6. Dark Looks and Red Smiles: Homeric Gesture and the Problem of Milton's Angels—Lara Dodds

Part Four: Milton's Materialism Redux

7. Orson Pratt, Parley Pratt, and the Miltonic Origins of Mormon Materialism—John Rogers

8. The Scanning of Error: Areopagitica and 3-D-Printed Guns—David A. Harper

Notes

About the Contributors

Index