Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment by Kevin J Donovan

Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment by Kevin J Donovan

Bringing together eight original essays from leading and emerging Miltonists, this volume explores a second wave of critical thought about Milton’s monist materialism, the view that all existence arises from a single substance or reality. Contributors examine sensory matters of fragrance and sound, the literary politics of walking and of sexual reproduction, the ontology of embodiment as human beings and angels, and the appropriation of Milton’s materialism by both early Mormons in the nineteenth century and fringe figures such as gun enthusiasts in the twentieth. In so doing, they demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Milton’s writings in the history of views of embodiment and materialist thought.

Kevin J. Donovan is professor of English and director of graduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University and coeditor of the volume Irish Drama of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

Thomas Festa is associate professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of The End of Learning: Milton and Education and coeditor of Early Modern Women on the Fall: An Anthology.