John Milton

Laura Lunger Knoppers

Milton's participation in the history and politics of his time makes his works both exciting and difficult for students and scholars. This volume offers not only a newly-collated, scrupulously-edited old-spelling text of two of Milton's major poems, Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes, but crucial information on the political, religious, print, and publishing milieu in which the poems appeared. New archival materials are used to show howMilton's volume appeared at a time of high tension with repressive measures against dissent, and disaffection with the extravagance of the court of Charles II and with his pro-French foreign policies. While teaching editions have all but ignored the material agents of publication, this edition examines Milton's poems aspart of a radical print network that continued to oppose the restored church and monarchy. Milton's publisher, John Starkey, is shown to be consistently sympathetic with republican and Machiavellian thought. Early readers not only linked Milton's poems with earlier literary texts but read them as commentary on their own times. Again, unlike teaching editions, this volume considers in detail the material process of producing the text and the many contributions made by the publisher andprinting house. This includes for the first time an analysis of the variant spelling as the work of multiple pressmen (or compositors). Finally, extensive notes provide word definitions and classical, biblical, geographical, and historical references helpful for students and scholars alike.

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