The author examines Milton's poetry in the light of the poet's treatise on the subject of devotion in the often-overlooked second book of The Christian Doctrine. This study suggests that Milton's poems can be understood as both theodices and devotions.

This book is a comprehensive account of Milton's two aristocratic entertainments, Arcades and Comus in the context of their original occasions and in the light of Milton's developing sense of vocation as a poet in the earlier part of his career. The book is especially original in the amount of socio-historical information it offers about the relationship between the independent and pastorly poet and his aristocratic patrons, and about the degree to which Milton was prepared to work within the constraints and decorum of the Caroline masque and country-house entertainment. A particular feature of the book is the analysis of changes in the texts of the two entertainments, from the earliest version in the Trinity College manuscript through to the first printings, considering Milton's changing manner of address to the different occasions of performance and publication. A degree of tension is discovered between the poet and the organisers of the Ludlow masque, and an explanation is given for a kind of censorship in the Bridgewater manuscript of Comus.

The facts of John Milton's life are well documented, but what of the person Milton -- the man whose poetic and prose works have been deeply influential and are still the subject of opposing readings? John Shawcross's "different" biography depicts the man against a psychological backdrop that brings into relief who he was -- in his works and from his works. While the theories of Freud, Lacan, Kohut, and others underlie this pursuit of Milton's "self," Jung and some of his followers provide the basic understanding by which Shawcross places Milton in the panorama of history. His explorations of the psychological underpinnings of Milton's decision to become a poet, of the homoerotic dimensions of his personality, and of his relationships with father and mother demonstrate the extent to which psychobiography proves itself invaluable as a means to appreciate this complex writer and his complex writings. This biography combines the traditional chronological narrative with a technique akin to that of fiction, "a mixture of times and a triggering of remembrances from various time frames without time differentiations." Such an approach offers a view of Milton "not only in being but in process of being." Shawcross's examination of two current concerns, gender attitudes and political ideologies, ranges Milton's work against the self he exhibits. Specialists and nonspecialists alike will find in this magisterial biography a wealth of new insight into one of the greatest of English poets.

This collection of selected writings represents the best of recent critical work on Milton. The essays cover all stages of his career, from the early poems through to the later poems of the Restoration period, especially Paradise Lost. Professor Patterson includes British and American critics such as Michael Wilding, Victoria Kahn, James Grantham Turner and Mary Ann Radzinowicz and guides the reader through the varied ways Milton's achievement has been explored and debated by modern criticism.