Milton's Rival Hermeneutics : : “Reason is But Choosing” / / ed. by Margaret Olofson Thickstun, Richard J. DuRocher.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• MitwirkendeR: DuRocher, Richard J.,; Feroli, Teresa,; Flesch, William,; Jenkins, Hugh,; Lewalski, Barbara K.,; McColley, Diane,; Revard, Stella P.,; Teskey, Gordon,; Thickstun, Margaret Olofson,; Wittreich, Joseph,; Woods, Susanne,
• HerausgeberIn: DuRocher, Richard J.,; Thickstun, Margaret Olofson,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2022]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (303 p.)

Recent critical conversation has described John Milton’s major works as sites of uncertainty, irreconcilability, or even confusion—as texts that actually reflect radical incoherence and openness. These newer critical voices posit, moreover, that traditional critics must strain to find coherence and authorial control in Milton’s poetry. Richard DuRocher and Margaret Thickstun, together with an esteemed group of Milton scholars from a wide range of critical and theoretical backgrounds, respond to this challenge. While accepting the presence of uncertainty and welcoming the multiple perspectives that Milton builds into his works, this volume offers a variety of nuanced approaches to Milton’s texts.As these eleven essays demonstrate, Milton’s own acts of interpretation compel readers to reflect not only on the rival hermeneutics they find within his works but also on their own hermeneutic principles and choices—an interpretive complexity that is integral to his poetry’s enduring appeal. Thus, each of the contributors takes up the problem of this interpretive dilemma in some way: several explore Milton’s own engagement with the texts of Scripture and the classics; some examine the ways in which Milton represents the process of interpretation in his narrative poems; and still others are intrigued by the challenges that Milton’s works present for the reader’s own interpretive skills.Milton’s Rival Hermeneutics, in responding directly to the “incertitude critics” of Milton, will be of interest to those on all sides of this debate and will certainly redirect the ongoing conversation.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- A Tribute to Richard J. DuRocher, 1955–2010 -- Introduction -- Part One: Reading Violence -- 1. Inviting Rival Hermeneutics -- 2. “A Table Richly Spread” -- 3. Dead Shepherd -- 4. Toward Latinitas -- Part Two: Reading Paradise Lost -- 5. Interpreting God’s Word — and Words — in Paradise Lost -- Sites of Contention in Paradise Lost -- 7. Narrative, Judgment, and Justice in Paradise Lost -- Part Three: Reading Cruxes in Milton’s Major Poems -- 8. Rethinking “shee for God in him” -- 9. Fame, Shame, and the Importance of Community in Samson Agonistes -- 10. Satan in Paradise Regained -- 11. Hermes’s Blessed Retreat -- Notes -- About the Contributors -- Index