Paradigms lost, paradigms found: the New Milton Criticism

Abstract

This article describes the current state of Milton studies. In the first part, I outline the dominant paradigm -i.e., that Milton is a poet of certainty and orthodoxy -showing how this paradigm arose and how it continues to shape a great deal of Milton scholarship. In the second part, I outline how a New Milton Criticism is starting to take shape, one which embraces indeterminacy and incertitude.

Speaking for the Dead: C. S. Lewis Answers the New Milton Criticism; or, “Milton Ministries” Strikes Back

“…9 9 New Miltonist challenges to Surprised by Sin and its alleged place as the dominant paradigm in Milton studies are seen throughout the Introduction of Rumrich's Milton Unbound and Rumrich's earlier “Uninventing Milton,” and in Bryson 22‐25. Herman also challenges Fish throughout his Introduction to Destabilizing Milton , although he focuses more on various other writings, including Fish's comparatively recent How Milton Works (16‐19; cf. Herman “Paradigms” 13‐14). …”

CRITICAL FORUM: C. S. LEWIS, DAVID URBAN, AND THE NEW MILTON CRITICISM. C. S. Lewis and the New Milton Criticism

“…First, it is very odd that Urban would turn to an unpublished conference paper by Stanley Fish for his initial description of the New Milton Criticism's aims, which is sort of like turning to The Reason of Church‐Government to learn about the history of bishops in England or to The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates for an understanding of royalism (assuming for a second that both remained in manuscript). Urban could have used my Literature Compass article, or the introduction to my Destabilizing Milton , or Joseph Wittreich's Why Milton Matters . Urban could have even asked me for a copy of The New Milton Criticism 's introduction (surely a forthcoming publication would have more authority than a conference address Fish has evidently decided against publishing).…”

“…Urban could have used my Literature Compass article, or the introduction to my Destabilizing Milton , or Joseph Wittreich's Why Milton Matters . Urban could have even asked me for a copy of The New Milton Criticism 's introduction (surely a forthcoming publication would have more authority than a conference address Fish has evidently decided against publishing). Second, according to Urban, Michael Bryson wrongly asserts that the Satanist position dominated the nineteenth century, and Urban cites an essay by Calvin Huckabay proving that “the state of nineteenth‐century critical attitudes toward Satan was more complex than Bryson indicates” (96).…”