Podcast Pedagogy

In this episode of Promiscuous Listening, Marissa talks with Dr. Rachel Trubowitz (University of New Hampshire) about death and renewal in the final two books of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Particular attention is given to Eve's role in the epic's concluding lessons about Jesus's death and Christian salvation. For Milton, “Jesus son of Mary second Eve” (10.183) descends spiritually on the maternal line rather than genealogically through the paternal bloodline. In this way, as Dr. Trubowitz puts it, "Bloodline and primogeniture (male birthright) play no role in defining Jesus’s sovereignty" in Paradise Lost -- nor should they, according to Milton, in England's governance.

Resources for this episode: 

- John Milton, The Passion (1645, 1673) 

- John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671)

- Pope John Paul XXIII led the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, including its “repudiate[ion of] the ancient charge of collective Jewish guilt in the death of Jesus."

- Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” King James Bible via Bible Gateway.

- The description of the final books of Paradise Lost as an “undigested lump of futurity” comes from C.S. Lewis’s A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford University Press, 1947).

- Check out this contemporary engraving on the British Museum website of Charles II’s exhumation and posthumous execution of Oliver Cromwell’s body.

More about our guest, Dr. Rachel Trubowitz, Professor of English and former President of the Milton Society of America (website)

In addition to her many publications on gender and race in Milton and his contemporaries, Dr. Trubowitz’s current work focuses on mathematics in early modern English literature and culture. Here’s a sampling of her recent scholarship:

- “Reading Milton and Newton in the Radical Reformation: Poetry, Mathematics, and Religion.” ELH: English Literary History 84, no. 1 (2017): 33-62.

- “The Consolation of Natural Philosophy: Margaret Cavendish and the English Revolution Book.” The Oxford Handbook of Literature & the English Revolution, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 656-668.

- Nature and Nurture in Seventeenth-Century English Literature. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2012.

- “’’The People of Asia and with Them the Jews’: Israel, Asia, and England in Milton's Writing.” Milton and the Jews, edited by Douglas A. Brooks. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 151-177.

- Enjambment: “The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped.” (Poetry Foundation)

- Definitions and examples of the rhetorical figures synecdoche, epithet (see epitheton), and irony may be found on Silva Rhetoricae 

- Joseph Swetnam, The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (1615). Read the full text – as well as link to Rachel Speght’s response, A Mouzell for Melastomas (1617) – here. 

- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818): Read more about the connection between these two texts on the British Library website.

Select bibliography:

- Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

- Thomas H. Luxon, Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage, and Friendship. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2005.

- Lara Dodds, “Women’s History, Gender History, and Milton Studies.” Milton Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2014): 172-178.

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Debapriya Sarkar (University of Connecticut) theories of knowledge, early modern science, and the fall as experimentation in book 9 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

References:

• The Royal Society's office website.
• Learn more about and read Thomas Shadwell’s The Virtuoso (1676), a dramatic satire of the Royal Society, at this online exhibition from King's College, London.
• Learn more about Sir Francis Bacon from the good folks at the BBC.
• Margaret Cavendish, including open-access editions of The Blazing World, in which Cavendish portrays the female scientist asking questions, is the subject of Digital Cavendish: A Scholarly Collaborative, an amazing new digital humanities project.

Select scholarship:

• Joanna Picciotto, Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England (Harvard University Press, 2010).
• Debapriya Sarkar, “’Sad Experiment’ in Paradise Lost: Epic Knowledge and Evental Poetics,” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 26, no. 4 (2014): 368-388. Winner of the 2015 Schachterle Essay Prize from the Society for Literature, Sciences, and the Arts.

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Mary Grace Elliott (Kennesaw State University) about knowledge in book 8 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

• Here’s a link to the passage in Isaiah that we discuss.
• Check out the definitions of “concoction” that we discuss.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Angelica Duran (Purdue University) about creation in book 7 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

Terminology:

• The four-fold way of biblical interpretation: literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogical
• Hexameron: the six days of creation

Editions and Images:

• Two open-access editions of the 1611 edition of the King James Version (KJV)/Authorized Version (AU): http://www.biblegateway.org and https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/
• John Milton’s family Bible (at the British Library).
• William Blake’s “The Ancient of Days” (1794) (at the British Museum).
• Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, with foldout images (at the University of Reading).

Selection of Dr. Duran’s scholarship:

• (Editor) The King James Bible: Across Borders and Centuries. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. 2014.
• The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2007.
• Milton Among the Spaniards. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2020.
• “Not Either-Or but Rather Both-And: Using Both Material and Electronic Resources.” Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives, edited by Heidi Brayman Hackel and Ian Frederick Moulton. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2015. 162-170.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

• Jacques de Gheyn's military drill manual Wapenhandelinghe van Roers Musquetten ende Speissen (1607) was translated and published in England as The Exercise of Arms. View its famous plates on the online collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Milton’s sonnets to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Vane may be read on The John Milton Reading Room website under the heading of Uncollected Sonnets – respectively, 15, 16, and 17.
• Check out Dr. Bardunias modeling Abdiel's movements at Paradise Lost 6.186-198.

Select bibliography:

• Paul M. Bardunias and Fred Eugene Ray, Jr. Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016.
• David H. Lawrence. The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645.Leiden: Brill, 2009.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

Contact Dr. Earle by email: philippa.earle208@gmail.com; and follow her on Twitter: @uncouthswain!

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In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Ari Friedlander (University of Mississippi) about sexuality and gender in book 4 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

Terminology:

· wanton (e.g., Paradise Lost 4.306): 17th-century meanings range from rebellious to reckless, from playful and carefree to lustful and promiscuous ("wanton, adj. and n." OED Online. December 2020. Oxford University Press.)

· prelapsarian: Generally, a state of innocence. In specific relation to Paradise Lost, before the fall of humanity as related in Genesis

· postlapsarian: Generally, a state of sin and guilt. In specific relation to Paradise Lost, after Adam and Eve's disobedience to God.

References:

• Check out Milton’s initial outline for a play titled Adam Unparadised on the website Darkness Visible, a website on John Milton by Christ's College at Cambridge University.
• Michel Foucault, author of Discipline and Punish (original French publ., 1975; trans. into English, 1977) and A History of Sexuality (1976-1984; 1978-1986). Click here for the entry on Foucault in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• “Methought I saw my late espoused saint”: This sonnet may be accessed on The John Milton Reading Room as Sonnet 23 in Milton’s Poems (1673).

Select bibliography:

• Ari Friedlander. “Roguery and Reproduction in The Winter’s Tale.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race, edited by Valerie Traub. 491-505. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Ari Friedlander, Melissa E. Sanchez, and Will Stockton, eds. “Desiring History and Historicizing Desire.” Special Issue of Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (2016).
• David Glimp. Increase and Multiply: Governing Cultural Reproduction in Early Modern England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
• Melissa Sanchez. Erotic Subjects: The Sexuality of Politics in Early Modern English Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Mario Murgia (National Autonomous University of Mexico) about theology, politics, and poetics in book 3 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

Terminology:

· Soteriology: doctrine of salvation

· Arminianism: Check out this entry by Thomas Talbott on “Heaven and Hell in Christian Thought” (2021) in the open-access Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

· “Paradise of Fools”: This phrase appears in Paradise Lost 3.496 but may refer to part or all of the passage 3.440-497.

Selection of Dr. Murgia’s scholarship:

· “Either in Prose or Rhyme: Translating Milton in(to) Latin America.” Milton in Translation, edited by Angelica Duran, Islam Issa, and Jonathan R. Olson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2017. 279-292.

· “Gerard Manley Hopkins, or the Poem as (Baroque) Prayer.” Hopkins Quarterly (2011): 113-131.

· Global Milton and Visual Art, edited by Angelica Duran and Mario Murgia, Lexington Books 2021. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793617064/Global-Milton-and-Visual-Art

· “Milton in Revolutionary Hispanoamerica.” Milton Studies 58 (2017): 203-222.

· (In Spanish) Versos escritos en agua: la influencia de Paradise Lost en Byron, Keats y Shelley, FFyL, UNAM, 2018. http://novedadeseditoriales.filos.unam.mx/tag/versos-escritos-en-agua/

· (In Spanish) El mundo perdone, Aliosventos, 2017. https://www.aliosventos.com/index.php/aliosventos/catalog/book/55

· (in Spanish translation) Milton, John, and Francisco Granados Maldonado, El paraíso perdido, Imprenta de Ignacio Cumplido, Mexico, 1858.

Learn more about Dr. Murgia’s publications! Check out his author page for MadHat Press.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Amrita Dhar (The Ohio State University) about disability and empire in book 2 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

References:

· Tobin Siebers. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

· The phrase "fit audience ... though few" comes up a few times in the podcast; it appears in book 7 of Paradise Lost.

· The Readie and Easie Way is a political tract published in 1660 in which Milton, despite England's restoration of the monarchy, makes the case for "re-settling a republican commonwealth" -- a proposal that (according to Thomas Luxon, editor of The John Milton Room) "[Milton] ironically refers to as 'readie' and 'easie.'"

· Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (London, 1598-1600). A transcription is available on the open-access database Perseus: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collections(here’s a page with extensive references to Bengala: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.0070%3Anarrative%3D450); to view an early modern printed edition of Hakluty’s text, check out Stanford’s Renaissance Exploration Map Collection: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/renaissance-exploration/catalog/wp151rz1920.

Selection of Dr. Dhar’s scholarship:

·  "Toward Blind Language: John Milton Writing, 1648–1656." Milton Studies 60, no. 1 (2018): 75-107.

· “Seeing Feelingly: Sight and Service in King Lear.” Disability, Health and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, edited by Sujata Iyengar. Routledge, 2015, pp. 76-92.

· “Madhusudan’s Miltonic Epic: The Meghnad-Badh Kabya.” Milton Across Borders and Media, ed. Angelica Duran and Islam Issa (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

· “When They Consider How Their Light Is Spent: On Intersectional Race and Disability Theories in the Classroom.” Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide, ed. Anna Wainwright and Matthieu Chapman (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Press, forthcoming).

Want to listen to more of Dr. Dhar talking about disability studies? Check out her interview with BritGrad, the British Graduate Shakespeare Conference: https://www.britgrad.com/post/plenary-interview-amrita-dhar.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

Welcome to Promiscuous Listening: A John Milton Podcast! In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Reginald A. Wilburn (University of New Hampshire) about race, adaptation, and poetics in book 1 of Paradise Lost. (Since recording this episode, Dr. Wilburn was named Dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Texas Christian University.) 

Here are some resources to support your listening:

Terminology:

· Amplification: A range of rhetorical strategies and kinds of expression, including the inventive use of figures of speech to develop an idea. To learn more, check out the discussion of figures of amplification on Silva Rhetoricae.

· Intersectionality: A framework for understanding the relationship between an individual’s social identities, like gender and race, and systems of oppression, including legal, political, economic, and environmental. To learn more, check out this video created by the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

· Intertextuality: A literary theory for understanding the relationships among texts and their impact on how readers interpret a text. Resources to learn more include: Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, and Robin Parmar, “Intertextuality,” The Electronic Labyrinth. 2000. 19 Nov 2007 http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0278.html.

References:

· Lil Nas X, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” (watch video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/6swmTBVI83k)

· Cheryl A. Walls, Troubling the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 

· A selection of African American writers/novels adapting and appropriating Milton: Phyllis Wheatley; Frances Harper; Sutton Griggs, Imperium in Imperio (1899); Charles W. Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars (1900); Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); Toni Morrison, Paradise (1997).

Selection of Dr. Wilburn’s scholarly publications:

· Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt: Appropriating Milton in Early African American Literature (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2014).

· “Getting ‘Uppity’ with Milton; or Because My Mom Politely Asked: ‘Was Milton Racist?,’” Milton Studies 62, no. 2 (2020):  266–279.

· “Malcolm X and African-American Literary Appropriations of Paradise Lost,” in Milton in Popular Culture, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers and Gregory M. Colón Semenza (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2015), 199-210.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]