Milton in Seventeenth Century Context: Authority, Exploration, Choice

Focused by a semester-long reading of Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, this seminar will think about some of the major intellectual and social controversies--philosophic, political, religious, scientific, familial/sexual, economic--that roiled the middle decades of the Seventeenth century in England and the new North American colonies, as well as on the Continent. We will read Milton alongside a selection of texts by, among others, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Shakespeare, Donne, Elizabeth Carey, Oliver Cromwell, Amelia Lanyer, Eleanor Davies and various Ranters and Levelers. Sometimes described as the beginning of the modern world, this period saw in England: an attack on the legitimacy of monarch and Church, violent Civil War, changes in family structure and a small explosion in writing by women, the imaginative as well as practical impact of the discoveries of Galileo, Newton and Harvey, increased encounters with non-European peoples, along with the articulation of ideas of overseas expansion, trade, and manifest destiny--topics we may explore as we work out way through Milton's poem, reading it also with close attention to its language and structures. This upper-level seminar is designed for students with college-level background in literature, history, philosophy or related fields.