As promised in the August Newsletter, here is news of recent publications about Milton by MSA members. Have a look at this bumper crop of books and articles by MSA members. It heartens one about the resiliency and enduring appeal of good scholarship. In the second half of the newsletter you will find a few other items, including an announcement of the winner of the Labriola Award for best article by a graduate student, news of MSA sponsored sessions at March 2024 RSA conference in Chicago,

Recent publications by MSA members

MSA members have, as we’ve come to expect, been remarkably productive over the last year. Below I’ve listed books and articles by members that focus primarily or largely on Milton. Apologies to those I’ve missed; please send word for inclusion in a future newsletter.

Books

• Katherine Cox’s Climate Change and Original Sin: The Moral Ecology of John Milton’s Poetry was published by the University of Virginia Press in June.
• Blair Hoxby’s edited collection Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe’s Age of Reason was published in 2022 by The Ohio State University Press.  Blair has another edited collection out early next year from the University of Toronto Press, Opera, Tragedy, and Neighboring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi. 
• Islam Issa’s and Angelica Duran’s collection Milton Across Borders and Media will soon be published by Oxford University Press.
• Dave Harper’s book Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism will be published by Routledge in December 2023, and is available now for pre-order.
• Jason Kerr’s book, Milton’s Theological Process: Reading ‘De Doctrina Christiana’ and ‘Paradise Lost’, has just been published by Oxford UP.
• A new edition of Lee Morrissey’s Milton’s Late Poems: Forms of Modernity was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press.

Articles

• Judith H. Anderson, “Milton, Time, and Narrative: ‘Now,  While Time Was,” ELH 90.2 (2023). (See In Memoriam section below for sad news about Prof. Anderson.)
• Steven Cowser, “Richard Bovet’s PandæMonuim (1684) as Early Political Engagement with Paradise Lost,” Notes And Queries 268.1 (2023)
• Amrita Dhar, “When They Consider How Their Light Is Spent: Intersectional Race and Disability Studies in the Classroom,” in Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide, ed. Anna Wainwright and Matthieu Chapman (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Press, 2023). Amrita notes that the piece examines sonnets by Milton and Tyehimba Jess, whose sonnet was commissioned by the MSA and first read at our 2017 Annual Meeting. Amrita will speak about her chapter at a Nov 15 Digital Roundtable.
• Joshua Held, LM, “Epic Messengers in Homer, Virgil, and Milton: Repetition and Gender in Paradise Lost,” Philological Quarterly 101.1-2 (2022)
• Jason Kerr, “‘There’s a religion in our Love’: Katherine Philips’s Eccelesiology of Friendship,” The Seventeenth Century 38, no. 4 (2023): 597–623.
• Guilherme Nabais Freitas, “Anti-Spenserian Amaranth In Milton’s ‘Lycidas,’” Notes and Queries 69 (2022)
• David Quint, “Epic Futurity: The Phaeacians, Carthage, and the Tradition,” Comparative Literature 75.1 (2023)
• James Nohrnberg, “Poetics of the Sequel: After Spenser’s Six Legends and Milton’s Diffuse Epic,” Spenser Review 53:2 (2023).
• Matthew Rickard, “Dryden, Rymer & the Interested Gods,” Notes and Queries 69 (2022)
• ___________. “Milton and the Education Monopoly,” Studies in Philology 119.3 (2022)
• Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler, “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror”—The Logic of Petrus Ramus and the Tragedy of Samson Agonistes,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 48.2 (2022)
• David Urban, LM, “Metagenre in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained: Its Relevance to Milton’s Presentation of the Son’s Self-Sacrificial Epic Heroism,” Style: A Quarterly Journal of Aesthetics, Poetics, Stylistics, and Literary Criticism 56.4 (2022)
• James Grantham Turner, “Milton’s Skin,” in Milton in Strasbourg, a collection of essays arising from IMS 12, edited by Christophe Tournu, John K. Hale, and Neil Forsyth (Peter Lang, 2022).
• _______. “Milton, Lucretius and the ‘Womb of Nature,’” forthcoming in Milton Studies.
• Esther Van Raamsdonk, “Vondel’s English Lucifer and Milton’s Dutch Satan,” Renaissance Studies 36.1 (2022)
• Daniel Vitkus, “All the Kingdoms of the World”: Global Visions of Empire and War in Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,” 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 27 (2022)
• Thomas Vozar, “Selden’s Reply to Salmasius, an Alternative Title for the Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, and Why Milton Deserves to Be Strangled: Rumour and Opinion in the Correspondence of Guy Patin,” The Seventeenth Century 37.6 (2022))
• John Yargo, “Milton’s Postures: Prostrating, Grinding, Leaning,” Studies in Philology 119.3 (2022)

Milton Studies 65.1 (2023)

• Stephen B. Dobranski, “Preface: Shakespeare and Milton”
• Maggie Kilgour, “On First Looking into Milton’s Shakespeare.”
• John Rumrich, “Milton’s Shakespeare: Gentle Will, Spare John, and Plump Jack”
• Benjamin Card, David Scott Kastan, “Wanting a Supplement”: Milton and the Partial Reformation of His First Folio”
• Paul Stevens, “Milton’s Hamlet: The Tragedy of Adam Unparadized”
• Nicholas McDowell, “’Shakespeares Workes, and such Prelaticall trash’: Milton’s Shakespeare from the Philadelphia First Folio to the Political Prose”
• Lynne Magnusson, “Milton, Shakespeare, and the English Grammar of Possibility”
• Tianhu Hao, “Shakespeare’s and Milton’s Impact on Chinese Literature and Culture: A Preliminary Comparison”

Milton Quarterly 56.1-2 (2022)

• Claire M. L. Bourne and Jason Scott-Warren, “’thy unvalued Booke’: John Milton’s Copy of the Shakespeare First Folio”
• John K. Hale, “The Ancile in Pro Se Defensio”

Milton Quarterly 56.3-4 (2022) — 57.1-2 (2023)

• No essays by MSA members, but articles on acrostics in Paradise Lost, the queerness of pleasure in Paradise Lost, enlightenment in Paradise Regained, typology in Samson Agonistes, Raphael’s Anachronisms in Paradise Lost, and Milton and Mansus.

Two new issues of the Caucasus Journal of Milton Studies are now available, with essays by MSA member Edward Raupp on “The Pastoral Elegy in Literature, Painting, and Music: From Theocritus to Virgil to Milton and Beyond.”

Labriola Award

The Albert C. Labriola Award recognizes a distinguished article on Milton by a graduate student. The award this year goes to Ian Hynd for his essay “Virgil’s Disappearing Wives in Milton’s Sonnet 23,” which appeared in Milton in Strasbourg. Ian and the winners of the other MSA awards will be recognized at the Annual Dinner at RSA Chicago.

RSA Chicago — March 21-23, 2024

MSA will once again sponsor sessions at RSA next year, and I’m delighted to share the news that we will resume our in-person MSA Annual Dinner. News of location, date, and time will follow as the Executive Committee finalizes plans. The MSA will sponsor the following sessions:

350 Years of Paradise Lost, A Poem in Twelve Books 

• Wendy Furman-Adams (Whittier C): “Visualizing Paradise Lost, 1688-2000”
• Marissa Greenberg (U of New Mexico): “Is Paradise Lost Still Radical? Or,How Ursula K. Le Guin Adapts Milton”
• Laura Lunger Knoppers (U of Notre Dame): “‘Tears such as Angels Weep’: Milton, Blake, and Sympathy for the Damned in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Director’s Cut (1992)”
• Lauren Shohet (Villanova U): “Paradise Lost: An anniversary in 350 years”

Milton and Disability

• Maura Brady (Le Moyne C): “Mental Disability and Slavery in Milton’s Prose Polemics”
• Amrita Dhar (Ohio State U): “The Access Poetics of Paradise Lost, 1667-1674”
• Jen Mylander (San Francisco State U): “Disability, Embodiment, and Learning in Paradise Lost”
• Pasquale Toscano (Princeton U): “The Head of a Dog or Horn of a Rhino: Meaning, Milton, and Me”

Milton and the Uncertain Restoration

• Jason Kerr (Brigham Young U), “Milton and the Troublesome Theology of Vows”
• Tomos Evans (U of Birmingham), “Writing about Milton in 1660”
• Edward Jones (Oklahoma State U), “Milton in the Early Years of the Restoration”

Milton’s Place in the Profession (Roundtable)

• Hyunyoung Cho (George Mason U, Korea)
• David Currell (American U of Beirut)
• Emily Jones (U of South Florida)
• Islam Issa (Birmingham City U)
• Eric Song (Swarthmore C)

Upcoming lecture

On Tuesday, November 14, 1t 10 a.m. PST (6 p.m. in the UK), MSA member Dr. Tomos Evans will deliver a lecture titled “The First English Philhellene? John Milton and Advocating Greece’s Liberation in the Seventeenth Century,” drawn from his book-in-progress on “Milton’s Hellenism.” The lecture will explore Philaras’s network (ranging from Venice to Moscow) and his efforts to bring about a revolutionary uprising in Ottoman-ruled Greece. Dr Evans will address the developments of Milton’s political Philhellenism and the vital role that Philaras played in changing Milton’s attitudes towards contemporary Greeks. The lecture will be streamed on zoom (passcode: 499384).

Transition

Colonel Dave Harper has retired from the U.S. Army and West Point and is now teaching part-time at the University of York (U.K.). See above for word on Dave’s book due out soon.

In Memoriam

Milton and Early Modern Studies lost a leading light with the September 10, 2023 passing of Judith Anderson, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus at Indiana University-Bloomington. For tributes capturing her remarkable career, see https://shorturl.at/svxD3.

A collection of tributes to Michael Lieb, who passed away last year, by Joseph Wittreich, David Loewenstein, David Urban, Stephen Fallon, and (soon) Regina Schwartz can be found under the “Most Recent” tab on the Milton Quarterly website.

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 your graduate students as our Labriola award has been vacant for several years. Check out the Submission Guidelines for Awards, and email MiltonSocietySec@gmail.com as questions arise.

Steve Fallon, MSA President

Amrita Dhar, MSA Vice-President