Scholarly Milton

Following the editors' introduction to the collection, the essays in Scholarly Milton examine the nature of Milton's own formidable scholarship and its implications for his prose and poetry - "scholarly Milton" the writer; as well as subsequent scholars' historical and theoretical framing of Milton studies as an object of scholarly attention - "scholarly Milton" as at first an emergent and later an established academic discipline. The essays are particularly concerned with the topics of the ethical ends of learning, of Milton's attention to the trivium within the Renaissance humanist educational system, and the development of scholarly commentary on Milton's writings. Originally selected from the best essays presented at the 2015 Conference on John Milton in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the essays have been considerably revised and expanded for publication.

THOMAS FESTA, Professor of English at the State University of New York, New Paltz, is the author of The End of Learning: Milton and Education (Routledge, 2006; pb: 2014) and co-editor, with Kevin J. Donovan, of Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment (Duquesne UP, 2017) and, with Michelle M. Dowd, of Early Modern Women on the Fall (MRTS, 2012), which won an award for Best Teaching Edition from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. He is currently at work on a book about radicalism and poetic form from Milton to the present.
KEVIN J. DONOVAN, Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, co-directed with Charles W. Durham and Kristin A. Pruitt the biennial Conference on John Milton from 1991 to 2015. With Thomas Festa he co-edited Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment (Duquesne UP, 2017). He also wrote the Survey of Interpretive Criticism for the New Variorum Shakespeare King Lear, edited by Richard Knowles (forthcoming 2019, MLA) and is associate editor of the volume.