The Milton Society of America invites proposals for 15-minute papers considering any aspect of John Milton’s writings, their reception, and their significance. In the spirit of the RSA, we also welcome papers that bring into dialogue Milton Studies and areas of research across the Renaissance world, from literature, music, theater, or visual art to geography, history, religion, or science.

How did John Milton conceive of space, whether cosmic, terrestrial, or textual? Papers in this session could address the way that Milton’s works depict the cosmos, space travel, the possibility of plural worlds, or more simply the geographical relation of one place to another. Presenters might also examine the ways that some of Milton’s works anticipate the genre of science fiction—in particular questions of extraterrestrial life and scientific advances—or the ways that a specific work of science fiction seems engaged with Milton’s writings. Alternatively, presenters could explore textual space and look at the significance of caesurae, layout, or poetic form in Milton’s works. Papers submitted to this panel, even if not accepted for the RSA, would be automatically considered for a special issue of Milton Studies.

Any reader of Milton who’s living in our politically perilous present knows that words like tyrant and freedom are particularly susceptible to semantic manipulation. This roundtable seeks papers that variously address how Milton centers this problem in his work both by defending the concepts of choice and reason against the overreach of license and despotism and by dramatizing clashing perspectives about these ideals. That Milton does so, time and again, makes his oeuvre a particularly apt laboratory for crafting an interpretive practice that’s commensurate to separating the wheat of principled consistency from the chaff of quicksilver spin doctoring—and for mustering up the epistemological humility to do this from within, as much as from without, our ideological camps. The aim is not only to revisit persistent debates about Milton’s own, too easily simplified political commitments but also to consider the intellectual stakes of his work for scholars and students today.