Undergraduate Courses
E463 Milton
Prerequisite: : E 341 and one other upper-division E prefix courseHe has been understood as everything from a radical underminer of received authority and a member of "Satan's party" to a repressive Puritan zealot. In prose, he defended regicide, advocated liberalizing divorce law, opposed certain forms of censorship. His highly cerebral, densely allusive, passionate poetry re-wrote the map of English literary history. Milton continually presented and re-presented himself as an author with a capital A; indeed he helped invent the very idea, one that we so take for granted that we forget that it is a construct that had to develop historically. This course will sample poetry, prose, and drama written throughout Milton's career, with particular emphasis on Paradise Lost. We will draw on a range of critical approaches and interpretive theories, attending to Milton's formal and stylistic achievements, his uses of scriptural and classical material, and how his texts intervene in the turbulent events and the cultural and conceptual shifts of the seventeenth century. Which Milton(s) will be your own? Responding to the challenge of making Milton your own will require engaged, timely, close reading as well as active preparation and discussion. The course assumes some familiarity with reading early British literature and some conversancy with different critical approaches.
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