We hope this newsletter finds everyone enjoying the deep heart of summer, with friends and family and excellent books. Here we share wonderful news to share about our Honored Scholar, a report on the recent International Milton Symposium 13 in Toronto, word of members’ career transitions, and news of upcoming conferences. We will follow up with a second newsletter in a few weeks to celebrate a rich harvest of new publications on Milton by members.
Announcing this year’s Honored Scholar
The MSA Executive Committee is pleased to announce that Dennis Danielson has been chosen as the Society’s Honored Scholar of 2024.
Dennis is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of British Columbia. He has had an outsized influence on Milton studies and on studies of science, and particularly astronomy and cosmology, in the early modern period. He has authored four monographs, including two on Milton. The pointedly titled Milton’s Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy (Cambridge UP, 1982), has over the last four decades served as one pole of the spectrum of arguments concerning free will, foreknowledge, and theodicy in Paradise Lost, with William Empson’s 1961 classic Milton’s God defining the other. In “Paradise Lost” and the Cosmological Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2014), Dennis, drawing on his broad and deep knowledge of the history of cosmology, helped us to understand not only the shape of Milton’s epic universe but Milton’s attitude toward the licitness of knowledge.
Dennis edited The Cambridge Companion to Milton (1989) as well as a revised second edition (1999). In 2008 Dennis published facing page edition of Paradise Lost with his own modern prose translation; in a NYTimes review Stanley Fish described the work as a “a powerful pedagogical tool that is a gift to any teacher of Milton whatever the level of instruction.”
Outside of Milton studies, he has published two monographs, The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution (2006) (nominated for the 2010 triennial book prize of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society) and The Tao of Right and Wrong (2018). A full list of Dennis’s broad array of articles and chapters will be featured in the booklet of the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Milton Society.
Previous year’s recipients can be found on the main MSA site, miltonsociety.net.
Conferences
International Milton Symposium 13
The Thirteenth International Milton Symposium met in July at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College, overseen by the presiding spirits of Northrop Frye, A.S.P. Woodhouse, and Ernest Sirluck. The weeklong event was a smashing success, with over 250 presenters and with packed houses for plenary addresses by Lorna Hutson, Achsah Guibbory, Nick McDowell, Feisal Mohamed, Su Fang Ng, and David Quint.
A particular highlight was a Wednesday evening concert, “Harmonious Milton: An Evening of Voice and Verse,” which featured eight of Toronto’s finest ensemble singers, a string quartet, and an organist, performing lyric pieces by John Milton, Sr. and Henry Lawes, classic choral settings of Milton by Handel and Parry, as well as two recent choral settings of Milton by Torontonian composers Robert Busiakiewicz and Stephanie Martin. “Harmonious Milton” was narrated by an “Attendant Spirit” played by actor R. H. Thomson, who spoke the artfully “Miltonic” verse penned by Seth Herbst.
For many it was the first time gathering with Milton friends and colleagues since the pandemic, which made the week all the more special, as did, despite what some fear is the decline of the humanities, the marvelous papers by so many brilliant young scholars, including graduate students. The Friday evening banquet at Massey College was a fitting end to the weeklong intellectual feast. All of us who care about Milton studies owe a great debt of gratitude to the organizers of the Symposium, John Rogers and Andrea Walkden and their entire team at the University of Toronto.
There are exciting possibilities for the next International Milton Symposium, most likely to meet in the Summer of 2026. Bids for hosting the Symposium will be accepted until the end of 2023; they should be sent to the co-chairs of the IMS Standing Committee, Karen Edwards (K.L.Edwards@exeter.ac.uk) and Steve Fallon (sfallon@nd.edu).
Modern Language Association Convention 2024
MSA will sponsor two panels at the 2024 MLA Convention, which will meet January 4-7 in Philadelphia:
Milton’s Networks, Transhistorical and Global
- “Thomas Tillam’s The Unequall Yoke Unloosed: A Miltonic Doctrine of Divorce,” Madison Wolfert (Princeton U)
- “Early Intersemiotic Translators of Milton in Brazil: Claudio Manuel da Costa and Junqueira Freire,” Luiz Fernando Sá (Federal U of Minas Gerais) and Miriam Mansur Andrade (Federal U of Minais Gerais)
- “Miltonic Fruit as Joycean Temptation in ‘Calypso’,” Noam Flinker (U of Haifa)
Milton and Bodily Freedom
- “When Milton Was Cis,” Ari Friedlander (U of Mississippi)
- “Eve in the Liberties of London,” Katarzyna Lecky (Loyola U, Chicago)
- “Blackness as Chaos and Old Night: The Provenance of Paradise Lost and Black Revolt,” Dorell Oneil Thomas (Brooklyn C, City U of New York)
2024 Conference on John Milton
The 2024 Conference on John Milton will take place June 10-12, 2024, in conjunction with the Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SMRS) at Saint Louis University. The official call for papers and the conference poster will appear in late October, and the portal for submitting abstracts of proposed papers, panel sessions, and roundtables will open shortly afterwards in early November. The deadline for abstract submissions will be December 31, 2023. Acceptance notifications will be sent out by February 15, 2024.
The conference is sponsored by Saint Louis University and Washington University in St. Louis. For more information, please do not hesitate to contact Sara van den Berg (sara.vandenberg@slu.edu), Jonathan Sawday (jonathan.sawday@slu.edu), or Ryan Netzley (rnetzley@siu.edu).
News
The Renaissance World
June of this year saw the launch of Routledge Resources Online — The Renaissance World, a large-scale digital humanities project about the global Renaissance. Several of our MSA colleagues are centrally involved. Lauren Shohet is the Subject Editor for English lit & drama, Jeffrey Shoulson is the subject editor for religion, and Eric Song, Feisal Mohammed, Alison Chapman, and Melissa Sanchez have essays published or forthcoming on the site. Kristen Poole, the General Editor, writes, “Our essays seek to present the idea of the ‘Renaissance world’ through often offbeat or anamorphic approaches….I hope some of our members will take a look!” I’ve done so, and I second Kristen’s call.
Transitions
Two colleagues have taken up important administrative roles.
After a long and distinguished career as a scholar, teacher, and administrator at the University of Connecticut, Jeffrey Shoulson is embarking on a new challenge as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University. In announcing the appointment, the president of Brandeis observed that “Jeffrey Shoulson’s exceptional leadership, scholarship, and commitment to collaboration make him the ideal candidate for this important role. I am confident that he will advance our unique position in higher education and work successfully with faculty and staff from across the university to help us meet our high aspirations.”
Reginald Wilburn, after fourteen highly successful years as a teacher, scholar, and administrator at the University of New Hampshire, was appointed Dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Texas Christian University in the Fall of 2021, and a year later to the office of Associate Provost of Undergraduate Affairs. In announcing the appointment, TCU praised Reggie’s record of “visionary strategic planning, transparent decision making, shared governance, and championing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness.”
King James Bible
Angelica Duran shares the news that the edition of the King James Bible used at the May 6, 2023, coronation of King Charles III was edited by Gordon Campbell, MSA Honored Scholar of 2005. You can read about it here, Leicester scholar’s Bible. And here, from a different angle, King Charles’s Coronation Oath Bible.
Reminders
We love sharing the good news of our members’ publications, career changes, and other professional news and accomplishments. And if you encounter interesting Miltoniana your wanderings, virtual or otherwise, we’d love to share that too! Just drop us a line using our easy Update form (on the home page and also available here.)
And while we are in reminder mode, the MSA offers an array of awards–books, book collections, and articles–some of which come automatically under consideration (e.g., articles in journals such as Milton Quarterly and Milton Studies) but some of which require nomination/self-nomination. We also hope-hope-hope some of you will consider nominating work by others or yourselves.
Stephen M. Fallon, MSA President
Alison A. Chapman, MSA Past-President