Milton in the Library (original) (raw)
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A Librarian's Stroll Through Milton's Afterlife
The Journal of the Rutgers University Library, 2012
BY MICHAEL JOSEPH "A Librarian's Stroll through Milton's Afterlife" is a brief gallery tour of our favorite books in the exhibition, The Afterlife of John Milton. They are not necessarily curatorial favorites, assuming curators should want books that best illustrate the arguments underlying their show, nor a reader's favorite-books with the most powerful or influential or recognizable texts. Although all of them do support the theme of the show and possess famous and astonishing texts, our favorites are first and foremost distinctive, one-of-a-kind objects, with their own unique histories and compelling stories. A few of these are modest in scope-amusing anecdotes, or bibliographic jokes-but one or two are truly remarkable. As many of the books in the show were acquired by the Libraries many years ago-at a time when, in order to contribute to a unified national database, university cataloging consisted largely of deriving records of the ideal copy from the Library of Congressthe distinctive qualities of these books were unrecorded and unknown to us. They represent the sort of undiscovered treasures that used to tempt English majors into library schools, before the rise of digitization shifted the grounding of library service away from bibliography. The exhibition, The Afterlife of John Milton, was a companion to Thomas Fulton's John Milton and the Cultures of Print. It was conceived collaboratively by Dr. Fulton, a Milton specialist, Dr. Kevin Mulcahy, humanities bibliographer, and me, rare books librarian, with the notion of pointing out that John Milton continued to shape and influence English and American literature well after his death in 1674, and to suggest the scope of his influence in a broad survey of great books stretching over two and a half centuries. The larger body of the show resembled the syllabus of a mid-twentieth century intro to English lit, with Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714), 1 and his translation of Homer's Iliad, 2 Joseph Addison's Notes upon the Twelve Books of Milton's Paradise
The Value of John Milton. John Leonard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xii+161
Modern Philology, 2017
In this slim, rewarding volume, aimed at both general readers and specialists, celebrated Miltonist John Leonard surveys Milton's writings, emphasizing Milton's relevance for the present time and successfully demonstrating his value to audiences of varying perspectives. Lamenting the proliferation of "'speech codes' and other prohibitive initiatives," Leonard opens by discussing Milton's tract Areopagitica (1644) "because it speaks to our current concerns about free speech" (1). Within this first chapter, Leonard discusses three major scholarly views concerning Areopagitica: the traditional view that it is a seminal text of "modern liberalism"; the contrary view that Areopagitica is itself "illiberal and intolerant"; and the iconoclastic view that the tract is valuable "because it limits freedom" (1). Leonard himself tends toward the first view, noting various caveats. He recognizes and regrets Milton's own elitism, arrogance, and intolerance, but he praises Milton's embrace of problematic sources of knowledge, observing Areopagitica's enduring significance in the internet age. Moving to Milton's "minor poems," Leonard champions the "undervalued" Sonnet 8 ("Captain or colonel" [1645]) because he considers it "a touchstone to valuing Milton"; it speaks to Milton's "faith in poetry" (26)its ability to change how people think and act-in ways that should continue to inspire readers. Leonard also examines A Masque (1634), praising the work's virgin Lady and her strong, articulate resistance against the libertine Comus's seductions. He writes, "We need the Lady's temperance at the present time when Comus's philosophy has wrought so much damage in the world" (37).
How Milton Reads: Scripture, the Classics, and That Two-Handed Engine
Modern Philology, 2006
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Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell, ed. Thomas Corns, 1993
It would be difficult and indeed absurd to approach Milton's poetry without an awareness of his revolutionary commitment. One of the foremost polemicists against the bishops, the monarchy, and the rest of the baggage of the old order, he became Latin secretary to the republican Council of State and official propagandist of the new regime with his great Defences of the English people. After the Restoration his life was in danger, he was imprisoned and some of the books that he wrote were burned. 1 Yet when we turn to his first book of Poems, the political, the revolutionary are not the immediate impression we receive. 2 Certainly the volume includes early work dating from before the revolutionary years. Yet the collection was published in 1645, after the conclusion of the first phase of the Civil War and at a point when Milton had already published polemical and increasingly radical prose tracts-Of Reformation in England (1641), Of
An Excellent Core": Rutgers Milton Collection
The Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries, 2012
In creating this bibliography, I am indebted to Special Collections cataloger Silvana Notarmaso, who cataloged and re-cataloged the Milton Collection in conjunction with the 2011 exhibition, John Milton and the Cultures of Print. The information in the checklist was largely drawn from her careful research and knowledge of rare book description. I would also like to thank Thomas Fulton of the Rutgers Department of English for many helpful suggestions.
T he Boston area is home to one of the most impor tant ensembles of medieval and R enaissance i l luminated manuscr ipts and early pr inted book s in Nor th Amer ica. In large measure, however, these treasures remain unknow n to scholars and the w ider public ali ke. Be yond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections documents the f irst ex hibition to showcase highlights from local librar ies and museums. Li ke the ex hibition itself , w hich was spread over three venues -in Cambr idge, at Har vard Universit y 's Houghton Librar y, and in Boston, at Boston Col lege's McMul len Museum of Ar t and the Isabel la Stewar t Gardner Museum-the catalog ue is div ided into three pr incipal par ts, each conceived as an idealized librar y for a par ticular group of readers. Par t I considers Manuscr ipts from Church & Cloister, addressed pr imar i ly to cler ics, monk s, and nuns. Par t II turns to Manuscr ipts for Pleasure & Piet y, made f irst and foremost for a lay audience, including a generous selection of r ichly i l luminated book s of hours. The catalog ue culminates w ith Italian R enaissance Book s -both manuscr ipts and early pr inted volumes -w hich exemplif y humanist culture of the f ifteenth and si x teenth centur ies and the transformations in reading habits and social practice they both embodied and enabled. D raw ing on the col lections of nineteen Boston-area institutions, the catalog ue char ts the development of the book ar ts from L ate Antiquit y r ight through the R enaissance, w ith the focus on the L atin West : in al l, more than a mi l lennium of cultural histor y. Produced for the communal use of religious institutions as wel l as the educational, professional, and spir itual needs of indiv iduals, the book s documented w ithin these pages testif y to reverence for the w r itten word, belief in the eloquence of images, and the power and cultivation of R enaissance r ulers. In addition to essays that locate the mater ial w ithin the contex t of cultural histor y, this volume contains 249 contr ibutions by eight y-three international ex per ts from Europe and Nor th Amer ica on outstanding manuscr ipts and pr inted book s dating from the ninth to seventeenth centur y.