ENGH 428: Milton

ENGH 428-001: Milton
(Spring 2012)

01:30 PM to 02:45 PM TR

East Building 121

Section Information for Spring 2012

This course is intended to be an advanced introduction to the major writing of the seventeenth-century poet and revolutionary, John Milton. Students will read Paradise Lost, Comus, Samson Agonistes,and selections from the prose works; in addition, we will examine his peculiar status as a boundary case--he is the "last Renaissance poet," yet author of the epic to end all epics, and demonstrably an agent of the early modern period, not least in his representation of gender. How is the feminist reader to assess Eve, or Delilah, or the lady whose virginity is threatened within Comus? Are we to write Milton off historically as a product of his times, or might we rather consider the proposition that Milton's texts produce anideology of gender that bears on more recent contestations concerning separate spheres for men and women?

For all the veneer of the venerable and remote that Milton's poetry wears for us not least because of the admitted complexity of his language--Milton is a modern poet. A demonstration of this proposition, both through a close reading of Milton's texts and through pertinent readings from Pierre Bourdieu, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Catherine Belsey, is the agenda of this course.

Course Information from the University Catalog