Cover image for Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment: One First Matter All Edited by Kevin J. Donovan and Thomas Festa

Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment

One First Matter All

Edited by Kevin J. Donovan and Thomas Festa

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$74.95 | Hardcover Edition
ISBN: 978-0-8207-0702-0

$39.95 | Paperback Edition
ISBN: 978-0-271-09295-9

266 pages
6" × 9"
2017
Originally published by Duquesne University Press

Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies

Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment

One First Matter All

Edited by Kevin J. Donovan and Thomas Festa

Bringing together eight original essays from leading and emerging Miltonists, this volume explores a second wave of critical thought about Milton’s monist materialism, the view that all existence arises from a single substance or reality. Contributors examine sensory matters of fragrance and sound, the literary politics of walking and of sexual reproduction, the ontology of embodiment as human beings and angels, and the appropriation of Milton’s materialism by both early Mormons in the nineteenth century and fringe figures such as gun enthusiasts in the twentieth. In so doing, they demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Milton’s writings in the history of views of embodiment and materialist thought.

 

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Bringing together eight original essays from leading and emerging Miltonists, this volume explores a second wave of critical thought about Milton’s monist materialism, the view that all existence arises from a single substance or reality. Contributors examine sensory matters of fragrance and sound, the literary politics of walking and of sexual reproduction, the ontology of embodiment as human beings and angels, and the appropriation of Milton’s materialism by both early Mormons in the nineteenth century and fringe figures such as gun enthusiasts in the twentieth. In so doing, they demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Milton’s writings in the history of views of embodiment and materialist thought.

Kevin J. Donovan is professor of English and director of graduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University and coeditor of the volume Irish Drama of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

Thomas Festa is associate professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of The End of Learning: Milton and Education and coeditor of Early Modern Women on the Fall: An Anthology.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: One First Matter All—Kevin Donovan and Thomas Festa

Part One: Materiality and the Senses

1. The Fragrance of the Fall—Lauren Shohet

2. Sound as Matter: Milton, Music and Monism—Seth Herbst

Part Two: Human Embodiment

3. Milton on the Move: Walking and Self-Knowledge in Paradise Lost—Ryan Hackenbracht

4. Radical Relations: The Genealogical Imaginary and Queer Kinship in Milton's Paradise Regained—Erin Murphy

Part Three: Angelic Embodiment

5. Milton's Strange Angels—Rebecca Buckham

6. Dark Looks and Red Smiles: Homeric Gesture and the Problem of Milton's Angels—Lara Dodds

Part Four: Milton's Materialism Redux

7. Orson Pratt, Parley Pratt, and the Miltonic Origins of Mormon Materialism—John Rogers

8. The Scanning of Error: Areopagitica and 3-D-Printed Guns—David A. Harper

Notes

About the Contributors

Index

Also of Interest

Also of interest book cover

Gluttony and Gratitude

Milton’s Philosophy of Eating

Emily E. Stelzer

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