Immortality and the Body in the Age of Milton

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-108-43204-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 257 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 424 g

Seventeenth-century England teemed with speculation on body and its relation to soul. Descartes' dualist certainty was countered by materialisms, whether mechanist or vitalist. The most important and distinctive literary reflection of this ferment is John Milton's vitalist or animist materialism, which underwrites the cosmic worlds of Paradise Lost. In a time of philosophical upheaval and innovation, Milton and an unusual collection of fascinating and diverse contemporary writers, including John Donne, Margaret Cavendish, John Bunyan, and Hester Pulter, addressed the potency of the body, now viewed not as a drag on the immaterial soul or a site of embarrassment but as an occasion for heroic striving and a vehicle of transcendence. This collection addresses embodiment in relation to the immortal longings of early modern writers, variously abetted by the new science, print culture, and the Copernican upheaval of the heavens.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rumrich, John

Fallon, Stephen M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part I. 1. The enfolded sublime of incarnate immortality Gardner Campbell; 2. Milton's 'Lycidas', or Edward King's two bodies James Nohrnberg; Part II. 3. Narcissus in the boudoir: Aretino's Petrarchan postures Gordon Braden; 4. Carnality into creativity: sublimation in John Bunyan's 'Apology' to The Pilgrim's Progress Vera Camden; 5. Milton's beautiful body Gregory Chaplin; 6. The fortunate, unfortunate fall and two varieties of immortality in Paradise Lost Stephen M. Fallon; Part III. 7. The miracle in Francis Bacon's natural philosophy Gregory Foran; 8. Flesh made word: pneumatology and Miltonic textuality John Rumrich; 9. Milton beyond iconoclasm David A. Harper; Part IV. 10. Hester Pulter's brave new worlds Louisa Hall; 11. Death-weddings or living books: Cavendish rewriting Donne Dustin Stewart; 12. Paradise Lost and the creation of Mormon theology John Rogers.

Über Autor(innen)

Rumrich, John
John Rumrich is A. J. and W. D. Thaman Professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin. He has written monographs on John Milton, Matter of Glory: A New Preface to 'Paradise Lost' (1987) and Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation (Cambridge, 1996), and he has co-edited several editions of Milton's works for Modern Library (with Stephen M. Fallon and William Kerrigan) as well as the Norton Critical Edition: Seventeenth-Century British Poetry, 1603–1660 (2005, with Gregory Chaplin). In 2013 he was named an Honored Scholar of the Milton Society.

Fallon, Stephen M.
Stephen M. Fallon is John J. Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England (1991) and Milton's Peculiar Grace: Self-Representation and Authority (2000), and has co-edited Modern Library's Milton editions (with William Kerrigan and John Rumrich). In 2011 he was named an Honored Scholar of the Milton Society and subsequently served as the Society's president.