Machacek (English, Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York) examines how the Homeric epics figure in the composition of Paradise Lost diverging somewhat from most scholars of the later 20th century who
After the fourteenth century horror of the Black Death there were lesser recurrences of the plague over the next three hundred years. Totaro (English, Florida Gulf Coast University) has transcribed se
The 17th century saw the beginnings of industrialization in England and also some of the finest English Renaissance literature and art. It also was a time of air pollution from the burning of coal and
"Reassesses the literary invention of Margaret Cavendish -- the use she makes of other writers, her own various forms of writing, and the ways in which she creates her own literary persona -- to trans
Lawrence (English, U. British Columbia) invokes a radical philosophy of generosity in this reading of a number of plays by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. He argues that the plays express
Fenton and Schwartz offer a collection of scholarly essays discussing Milton's poetry with the idea of finding a creative path to cut through the ambiguity of many of Milton's themes, and then find
Sokolov explores the potential poetic continuum between the medieval period and the Renaissance by rereading a number of early modern Petrarchan texts as discursively linked to medieval English poe
"By isolating and discussing competing hermeneutics as integral to Milton's poetry, the essays in this collection show a writer unwilling to present formulae or neat packages of doctrine, instead envi
Shakespeare is often assumed to be the most secular of Renaissance playwrights. Yet the practical religion of the day permeates his plays. Benson (English, Malone College) examines the images of resur
Theis (English, Salem State College) blends ecohistory and literature in this study of the pastoral form in Early Modern England. The forests as imagined in several of Shakespeare's plays form the fir
The author explores why people in early modern England were motivated to interpret their historical period through the perspective of their lives, and the consequences of this biographical reorient
This study of John Donne’s treatment of equity and law in his Satyres, five formal verse satires written in the mid-1590s, demonstrates that Donne presented the Satyres as a response to the early deve
How does soil, as an ecological element, shape culture? With the sixteenth-century shift in England from an agrarian economy to a trade economy, what changes do we see in representations of soil as re
In revised and extended versions of eight presentations to a 2013 conference on John Milton at Middle Tennessee State University, scholars of English literature look at his work in terms of materi
In this provocative study, Kristin A. Pruitt offers a close reading of pivotal passages and critical concerns in Paradise Lost and examines Milton’s presentation of Adam and Eve’s relation
"Readers of Paradise Lost have long been struck by two prominent aspects of the poem: its compelling depiction of Satan and its deep engagement with its literary tradition. Satan's Poetry brings these
Eating and drinking -- vital to all human beings -- were of central importance to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Culinary Shakespeare, the first collection devoted solely to the study of food and
Despite the persistence and popularity of addressing the theme of eating in Paradise Lost, the tradition of Adam and Eve’s sin as one of gluttony—and the evidence for Milton’s adapta
