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 Oxford 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.
Nicholas McDowell is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Exeter. Previously he was a Research Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He is the author of The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion, and Revolution, 1630-1660 (Oxford University Press, 2003), Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit (Oxford University Press, 2008), and essays on Milton in Journal of the History of Ideas, Milton Quarterly, and Review of English Studies. He is editing Milton's 1649 prose for the Oxford Complete Works of John Milton. In 2007 his research was recognized by the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust.
Nigel Smith is Professor of English and Co-director of the Center for the Study of Books and Media at Princeton University. He was previously Reader in English at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in English at Keble College. He is the author of Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640-1660 (Oxford University Press, 1989); Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (Yale University Press, 1994), Is Milton better than Shakespeare? (Harvard University Press, 2008), and Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon (Yale University Press, forthcoming, 2010). He has edited the Ranter pamphlets, the Journal of George Fox and the Longman Annotated English Poets edition of the poems of Andrew Marvell (a TLS 'Book of the Year' 2003, Guardian Paperback of the Week, 2006). He is a recipient of British Academy awards, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships.
