Includes index.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction: paradigms lost, paradigms found: the new Milton criticism Peter C. Herman and Elizabeth Sauer; Part I. Theodicies: 1. Milton's fetters, or, why Eden is better than heaven Richard Strier; 2. 'Whose fault, whose but his own?': Paradise Lost, contributory negligence, and the problem of cause Peter C. Herman; 3. The political theology of Milton's heaven John Rogers; 4. Meanwhile: (un)making time in Paradise Lost Judith Scherer Herz; 5. The gnostic Milton: salvation and divine similitude in Paradise Regained Michael Bryson; 6. The discontents with the drama of regeneration Elizabeth Sauer; Part II. Critical Receptions: 7. Against fescues and ferulas: personal affront and individual liberty in Milton's prose Christopher D'Addario; 8. Disruptive partners: Milton and seventeenth-century women writers Shannon Miller; 9. Eve and the ironic theodicy of the new Milton criticism Thomas Festa; 10. Denis Saurat, and the old new Milton criticism Jeffrey Shoulson; 11. The poverty of context: Cambridge School history and the new Milton criticism William Kolbrener; 12. Afterword Joseph Wittreich; Index.

"The New Milton Criticism seeks to emphasize ambivalence and discontinuity in Milton's work and interrogate the assumptions and certainties in previous Milton scholarship. Contributors to the volume move Milton's open-ended poetics to the centre of Milton studies by showing how analysing irresolvable questions - religious, philosophical and literary critical - transforms interpretation and enriches appreciation of his work. The New Milton Criticism encourages scholars to embrace uncertainties in his writings rather than attempt to explain them away. Twelve critics from a range of countries, approaches and methodologies explore these questions in these new readings of Paradise Lost and other works. Sure to become a focus of debate and controversy in the field, this volume is a truly original contribution to early modern studies"--