A time of political and social unrest in England, this period produced some of the greatest poetry in English. This volume includes the major poets--John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell--the major women writers of the era--Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, and Katherine Philips--and nineteen other poets essential to an understanding of English literature in the seventeenth century. The poems are accompanied by headnotes and explanatory annotations. "Criticism" is divided into two sections. The first, "Seventeenth- and...

John Milton holds a crucial strategic position on the intellectual and ideological map of literary studies. In this provocative and liberating study, John P. Rumrich contends that contemporary critics have contributed to the invention of a monolithic or institutional Milton: censorious preacher, aggressive misogynist, and champion of the emerging bourgeoisie. Rumrich exposes the historical inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies that sustain this orthodoxy, and argues instead for a more complex Milton who was able to accommodate uncertainty and doubt.

John Milton holds a crucial strategic position on the intellectual and ideological map of literary studies. In this provocative and liberating study, John P. Rumrich contends that contemporary critics have contributed to the invention of a monolithic or institutional Milton: censorious preacher, aggressive misogynist, and champion of the emerging bourgeoisie. Rumrich exposes the historical inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies that sustain this orthodoxy, and argues instead for a more complex Milton who was able to accommodate uncertainty and doubt.

It is distinctly paradoxical that John Milton--who opposed infant baptism, supported regicide, defended divorce and approved of polygamy--should be heard as a voice of orthodoxy. Yet modern scholarship has often understated or explained away his heretical opinions. This collection of essays investigates aspects of his works inconsistent with conventional beliefs, showing how Milton, as poet, thinker and public servant, eschewed dogma and regarded indeterminacy and uncertainty as fundamental to human existence.

Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon

Derived from the Modern Library's esteemed The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this new volume, extensively revised and updated by its editors, contains Milton's two late masterpieces, the brief epic Paradise Regained and the tragic drama Samson Agonistes. Age after age, these works have inspired new controversy and exciting interpretive debates. With expert commentary to guide the reader through historical contexts and verbal details, as well as the larger political and...

Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon

The legendary author of Paradise Lost and other poems was also a superb and provocative prose writer. Culled from Modern Library's definitive The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this indispensable collection, authoritatively annotated and updated for this new volume, now includes selections from Milton's Commonplace Book and the complete text of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates in addition to Milton's letters, pamphlets, political tracts, and essays. Milton tackles...