Four hundred years after his birth, John Milton remains one of the greatest and most controversial figures in English literature. The Oxford Handbook of Milton is a comprehensive guide to the state of Milton studies in the early twenty-first century, bringing together an international team of thirty-five leading scholars in one volume. The rise of critical interest in Milton's political and religious ideas is the most striking aspect of Milton studies in recent times, a consequence in great part of the increasingly fluid relations between literary and historical study. The Handbook both embodies the interest in Milton's political and religious contexts in the last generation and seeks to inaugurate a new phase in Milton studies through closer integration of the poetry and prose. There are eight essays on various aspects of Paradise Lost, ranging from its classical background and poetic form to its heretical theology and representation of God. There are sections devoted both to the shorter poems, including 'Lycidas' and Comus, and the final poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. There are also three sections on Milton's prose: the early controversial works on church government, divorce, and toleration, including Areopagitica; the regicide and republican prose of 1649-1660, the period during which he served as the chief propagandist for the English Commonwealth and Cromwell's Protectorate, and the various writings on education, history, and theology. The opening essays explore what we know about Milton's biography and what it might tell us; the final essays offer interpretations of aspects of Milton's massive influence on later writers, including the Romantic poets.

Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations Miltons' Life: Some Significant Dates Part I: Lives 1: Edward Jones: 'Ere Half My Days': Milton's Life, 1608-1640 2: Nicholas von Maltzahn: John Milton: The Later Life, 1641-1675 Part II: Shorter Poems 3: Estelle Haan: 'The Adorning of My Native Tongue': Milton's Latin Poetry and Linguistic Metamorphosis 4: Gordon Teskey: Milton's Early English Poems: The Nativity Ode, 'L'Allegro', 'Il Penseroso' 5: Ann Baynes Coiro: 'A thousand fantasies': The Lady and the Maske 6: Nicholas McDowell: 'Lycidas' and the Influence of Anxiety 7: John Leonard: The Troubled, Quiet Endings of Milton's English Sonnets Part III: Civil War Prose, 1641-45 8: Nigel Smith: The Anti-Episcopal Tracts: Republicanism Puritanism and the Truth in Poetry 9: Sharon Achinstein: 'A Law in this matter to himself': Contextualising Milton's Divorce Tracts 10: Diane Purkiss: Whose Liberty? The Rhetoric of Milton's Divorce Tracts 11: Ann Hughes: Milton Areopagitica, and the Parliamentary Cause 12: Blair Hoxby: Areopagitica and Liberty Part IV: Regicide, Republican, and Restoration Prose 13: Stephen M. Fallon: 'The Strangest Piece of Reason': Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates 14: Nicholas McDowell: Milton's Regicide Tracts and the Uses of Shakespeare 15: Joad Raymond: John Milton, European: the Rhetoric of Milton's Defences 16: Estelle Haan: Defensio Prima and the Latin Poets 17: N. H. Keeble: 'Nothing nobler then a free Commonwealth': Milton's Later Vernacular Republican Tracts 18: Elizabeth Sauer: Disestablishment, Toleration, the New Testament Nation: Milton's Late Religious Tracts 19: Paul Stevens: Milton and National Identity Part V: Writings on Education, History, Theology 20: William Poole: The Genres of Milton's Commonplace Book 21: Timothy Raylor: Milton, the Hartlib Circle, and the Education of the Aristocracy 22: Martin Dzelzainis: Conquest and Slavery in Milton's History of Britain 23: Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns: De Doctrina Christiana: An England That Might Have Been Part VI: Paradise Lost 24: Charles Martindale: Writing Epic: Paradise Lost 25: John Creaser: 'A mind of most exceptional energy': Verse Rhythm in Paradise Lost 26: Stephen B. Dobranski: Editing Milton: the Case against Modernization 27: Karen L. Edwards: The 'World' of Paradise Lost 28: Nigel Smith: Paradise Lost and Heresy 29: Stuart Curran: God 30: Susan Wiseman: Eve, Paradise Lost, and Female Interpretation 31: Martin Dzelzainis: The Politics of Paradise Lost Part VII: 1671 Poems: Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes 32: Laura Lunger Knoppers: 'Englands Case': Context of the 1671 Poems 33: John Rogers: Paradise Regained and the Memory of Paradise Lost 34: R. W. Serjeantson: Samson Agonistes and 'Single Rebellion' 35: Regina M. Schwartz: Samson Agonistes: the Force of Justice and the Violence of Idolatry 36: Elizabeth D. Harvey: Samson Agonistes and Milton's Sensible Ethics Part VII: Aspects of Influence 37: Anne-Julia Zwierlein: Milton Epic and Bucolic: Empire and Readings of Paradise Lost, 1667-1837 38: Joseph Wittreich: Miltonic Romanticism