"Pursuing things yet unattempted" in literary criticism, Reginald A. Wilburn offers the first scholarly work to theorize African American authors' rebellious appropriations of Milton and his canon. This comparative and hybrid study engages African Americans' transatlantic negotiations with perhaps the preeminent freedom writer in the English tradition.

Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt: Appropriating Milton in Early African American Literature contends that early African American authors appropriated and remastered Milton by "completing and complicating" England's epic poet of liberty...