Text Box: Milton Professor James Holstun MWF 8:00 - 8:50 Reg. No. 487858 Text Box: 315 Text Box: The most important page in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) is one that isn’t there: the missing dedication to a king, earl, or other patron. This course will begin with that blank page, and consider how the son of a London scrivener born in 1608 became the voice of the revolutionary English republic in 1649, escaped the gallows in 1660, and concluded his career as a defeated revolutionary, cut off from state power, by creating a great epic poem that summarized (and tore to shreds) the English Renaissance, laying the groundwork for the novel and for English Romanticism. More than any other English poet before or since, Milton constructed for himself a career combining the roles of great poet and political revolutionary. His heretical theology, his fierce hatred of tyranny, and his insistence on the power and independence of individual human conscience distinguish him from his more conservative poetic contemporaries. Yet for all of his anti-authoritarian qualities, Milton is by no means a poetic populist. The extraordinary energy animating Milton’s poetry arises from the conflict between liberty and authority in his culture and in himself. This conflict appears perhaps most memorably in the argument between authoritarian Adam and radical Eve in Book 9 of Paradise Lost, just before the Fall. But we will see versions of the same argument turning up just about everywhere: in Milton’s strange combination of misogyny and feminism, aristocratic sensibilities and radical democratic arguments, biblical fundamentalism and heretical innovation, in his attempt to replace received and customary modes of political and poetic authority with new modes. We’ll spend a good deal of time talking about gender-oriented interpretation of Milton’s work, and political interpretation of Milton’s relation to the royalists and radicals of his day. We will also think about Milton’s relationship to the bourgeois revolution of the middle seventeenth century. We will read some of Milton’s shorter poems, including “The Nativity Ode,” a selection of sonnets, a court masque (Comus), and two pastoral elegies: “Lycidas” (the most famous poem of the genre in English) and, in translation, “Epitaphium Damonis” (the great gay elegy of English Renaissance literature). We will also read The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (Milton’s 1649 defense of regicide) Areopagitica (his 1644 prose defense of liberty of publication), and Samson Agonistes (his play of terrorist revenge on the courtly culture of Restoration England). But we will spend most of the semester reading Paradise Lost, a work that transforms most readers who attempt to master it. You will write a midterm and final exam; regular, short informal essays (5-10 minutes) on our reading; and a 10-page paper. Text: John Milton: The Complete Poems and Major Prose (Talking Leaves Bookstore) and a course handbook (Queen City Imaging). At some point during the semester, we’ll wander over to the Rare Books Collection in Capen Hall for a hands-on encounter with UB’s remarkable collection of Milton first editions. Please contact me with any questions about the course: Clemens 319; (716) 645-2575 x1021; jamesholstun@hotmail.com. This course satisfies an earlier literature requirement. Text Box: NOTE: Change in days and time. Now meets on TTH 8:00 - 9:20.