Milton and the climates of reading : essays / edited by Elizabeth Sauer ; with an afterword by Joseph A. Wittreich.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Milton and the Climates of Reading offers timely statements about the ways in which Milton's writings not only addressed their own time, but also speak profoundly and powerfully to ours.

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CHOICE Review

This volume includes nine major essays by Rajan (emer., Univ. of Western Ontario), one of the foremost critics of Milton's poetry and prose. The book opens with an introduction by Sauer (Brock Univ.) and concludes with an afterword by Joseph Wittreich (CUNY Graduate Center), each highlighting the importance and influence of Rajan's work. Some of Rajan's essays are reprinted, but with revisions, and about half are new. This volume justifies itself admirably and cogently because its essays span Rajan's long career as a Miltonist. Rajan published his first essay in 1945 and his first book on Milton (Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader) in 1947. Across decades he has embraced new critical methodologies; having done so, he continues to be as astute and sensitive to Milton's writings as he was in his earlier career. The essays manifest how newer critical lenses yield remarkably innovative interpretations from a critic whose background is in historical research and new criticism. Rajan addresses Milton's prose and major poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, from a traditional historical perspective but also from the standpoint of present emphasis on imperialism, postcolonialism, and the like. His critical versatility is kaleidoscopic and breathtaking, his lucid prose eloquent. ^BSumming Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. A. C. Labriola Duquesne University