A Concise Companion to Milton

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction 1
Angelica Duran

Part I Surveys

1 A Reading of His "left hand": Milton's Prose 7
Robert Thomas Fallon

2 "Shedding sweet influence": The Legacy of John Milton's Works 25
John T. Shawcross

3 "The world all before [us]": More than Three Hundred Years of Criticism 43
Roy Flannagan

Part II Textual Sites

4 First and Last Fruits of Education: The Companion Poems, Epistola, and Educational Prose Works 61
Angelica Duran

5 Milton's Heroic Sonnets 78
Annabel Patterson

6 The Lives of Lycidas 95
Paul Alpers

7 A Mask: Tradition and Innovation 111
Katsuhiro Engetsu

8 The Bible, Religion, and Spirituality in Paradise Lost 128
Achsah Guibbory

9 Gender, Sex, and Marriage in Paradise 144
Karen L. Edwards

10 The Ecology of Paradise Lost 161
Juliet Lucy Cummins

11 The Messianic Vision of Paradise Regained 178
David Gay

12 The Nightmare of History: Samson Agonistes 197
Louis Schwartz

Part III Reference Points

Select Chronology: "Speak of things at hand/ Useful" 217
Edward Jones

Select Bibliography: "Much arguing, much writing, many opinions" 235
J. Martin Evans

Index 270