ENGL 389: England's Lost Paradise (HC)

Thirty-seven new essays by literary critics and historians on the writings generated by the tumultuous events of mid-seventeenth-century England. Opening with essential contextual chapters on religion, politics, society, and culture, the largely chronological subsequent chapters analyse particular voices, texts, and genres as they respond to revolutionary events.

This collection of essays examines the extraordinary diversity and richness of the writing produced in response to, and as part of, the upheaval in the religious, political and cultural life of the nation that constituted the English Revolution. Essays explore the course of events, intellectual trends and the publishing industry, the work of canonical figures such as Milton, Marvell, Bunyan and Clarendon, women's writing and fictional and non fictional prose.

Comprises over 400 entries ranging from 1000 to 5000 words written by leading international scholars. Arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Provides coverage of canonical authors and their works, as well as a variety of previously under-considered areas, including women writers, broadside ballads, commonplace books, and other popular literary forms.

Examines Marvell's work in the contexts of Restoration politics and religion, and of the seventeenth-century publishing world in both manuscript and print. The essays, individually and collectively, address Marvell within his literary and cultural traditions and communities; his almost prescient sense of the economy and ecology of the country; his interest in visual arts and architecture; his opaque political and spiritual identities; his manners in controversy and polemic; the character of his erotic and transgressive imagination and his biography, still full of intriguing gaps.

Fifteen short, accessible essays exploring the most important topics and themes in John Milton's masterpiece, Paradise Lost. Part I introduces the characters who frame the poem's story and set its plot and theological dynamics in motion. Part II deals with contextual issues raised by the early books, while Part III examines the epic's central and final episodes. The volume concludes with a meditation on the history of the poem's reception and a detailed guide to further reading, offering students and teachers of Milton fresh critical insights and resources for continuing scholarship.

This volume investigates the various ways in which Milton's works and experiences emerged from the culture and events of his time. In a series of concise essays, an international group of scholars examines both the social conditions of Milton's life and the broader intellectual currents that shaped his writings and reputation.

This second edition contains several new and revised essays, reflecting increasing emphasis on Milton's politics, the social conditions of his authorship and the climate in which his works were published and received, a fresh sense of the importance of his early poems and Samson Agonistes, and the changes wrought by gender studies on the criticism of the previous decade.