Paradise Lost And The Cosmological Revolution

This volume brings John Milton's Paradise Lost into dialogue with the challenges of cosmology and the world of Galileo, whom Milton met and admired: a universe encompassing space travel, an earth that participates vibrantly in the cosmic dance, and stars that are "world[s] / Of destined habitation." Milton's bold depiction of our universe as merely a small part of a larger multiverse allows the removal of hell from the center of the earth to a location in the primordial abyss. In this wide-ranging work, Dennis Danielson lucidly unfolds early modern cosmological debates, engaging not only Galileo but also Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, and the English Copernicans, thus placing Milton at a rich crossroads of epic poetry and the history of science.

This volume brings John Milton's Paradise Lost into dialogue with the challenges of cosmology and the world of Galileo, whom Milton met and admired: a universe encompassing space travel, an earth that participates vibrantly in the cosmic dance, and stars that are 'world[s] / Of destined habitation'. Milton's bold depiction of our universe as merely a small part of a larger multiverse allows the removal of hell from the center of the earth to a location in the primordial abyss. In this wide-ranging work, Dennis Danielson lucidly unfolds early modern cosmological debates, engaging not only Galileo but also Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, and the English Copernicans, thus placing Milton at a rich crossroads of epic poetry and the history of science.

“An authoritative, and accessible, introduction to Milton’s life and an engaging examination of the process of composing Paradise Lost” (Choice). In early 1642 Milton promised English readers a work of literature so great that “they should not willingly let it die.” Twenty-five years later, the epic poem Paradise Lost appeared in print. In the interim, however, the poet had gone totally blind and had also become a controversial public figure―a man who had argued for the abolition of bishops, freedom of the press, the right to divorce, and the prerogative of a nation to depose and put to death an unsatisfactory ruler. These views had rendered him an outcast. William Poole devotes particular attention to Milton’s personal life: his reading and education, his ambitions and anxieties, and the way he presented himself to the world. Although always a poet first, Milton was also a theologian and civil servant, vocations that informed the composition of his masterpiece. At the emotional center of this narrative is the astounding fact that Milton lost his sight in 1652. How did a blind man compose this intensely visual work? Poole opens up the world of Milton’s masterpiece to modern readers, first by exploring Milton’s life and intellectual preoccupations and then by explaining the poem itself―its structure, content, and meaning. “Poole’s book may well become what he shows Paradise Lost soon became: a classic.” —Times Literary Supplement “Smart and original . . . Demonstrates with astonishing exactitude how Milton’s life and―most impressively of all―his reading enabled this epic.” ―The Spectator “This deeply learned and lucidly written book . . . makes this most ambitious of early modern poets accessible to his modern readers.” ―Journal of British Studies

William Poole recounts Milton's life as England’s self-elected national poet and explains how the greatest poem of the English language came to be written. How did a blind man compose this staggeringly complex, intensely visual work? Poole explores how Milton’s life and preoccupations inform the poem itself—its structure, content, and meaning.

The most comprehensive collection of essays on Renaissance poetry on the market Covering the period 1520–1680, A Companion to Renaissance Poetry offers 46 essays which present an in-depth account of the context, production, and interpretation of early modern British poetry. It provides students with a deep appreciation for, and sensitivity toward, the ways in which poets of the period understood and fashioned a distinctly vernacular voice, while engaging them with some of the debates and departures that are currently animating the discipline. A Companion to Renaissance Poetry analyzes the historical, cultural, political, and religious background of the time, addressing issues such as education, translation, the Reformation, theorizations of poetry, and more. The book immerses readers in non-dramatic poetry from Wyatt to Milton, focusing on the key poetic genres—epic, lyric, complaint, elegy, epistle, pastoral, satire, and religious poetry. It also offers an inclusive account of the poetic production of the period by canonical and less canonical writers, female and male. Finally, it offers examples of current developments in the interpretation of Renaissance poetry, including economic, ecological, scientific, materialist, and formalist approaches. • Covers a wide selection of authors and texts • Features contributions from notable authors, scholars, and critics across the globe • Offers a substantial section on recent and developing approaches to reading Renaissance poetry A Companion to Renaissance Poetry is an ideal resource for all students and scholars of the literature and culture of the Renaissance period.

Setting Aside All Authority is an important account and analysis of seventeenth-century scientific arguments against the Copernican system. Christopher M. Graney challenges the long-standing ideas that opponents of the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and Galileo were primarily motivated by religion or devotion to an outdated intellectual tradition, and that they were in continual retreat in the face of telescopic discoveries. Graney calls on newly translated works by anti-Copernican writers of the time to demonstrate that science, not religion, played an important, and arguably predominant, role in the opposition to the Copernican system. Anti-Copernicans, building on the work of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, were in fact able to build an increasingly strong scientific case against the heliocentric system at least through the middle of the seventeenth century, several decades after the advent of the telescope. The scientific case reached its apogee, Graney argues, in the 1651 New Almagest of the Italian Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who used detailed telescopic observations of stars to construct a powerful scientific argument against Copernicus. Setting Aside All Authority includes the first English translation of Monsignor Francesco Ingoli’s essay to Galileo (disputing the Copernican system on the eve of the Inquisition’s condemnation of it in 1616) and excerpts from Riccioli's reports regarding his experiments with falling bodies.

Exploring the diverse forms of natural theology expressed in seventeenth-century English literature, Katherine Calloway reveals how, in ways only partially recognized until now, authors such as Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Cavendish, Hutchinson, Milton, Marvell, and Bunyan describe, challenge, and even practice natural theology in their poetry.

Many able and cultured writers have delighted to expatiate on the beauties of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and to linger with admiration over the lofty utterances expressed in his poem. Though conscious of his inability to do justice to the sublimest of poets and the noblest of sciences, the author has ventured to contribute to Miltonic literature a work which he hopes will prove to be of an interesting and instructive character. Perhaps the choicest passages in the poem are associated with astronomical allusion, and it is chiefly to the exposition and illustration of these that this volume is devoted.