Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: intention, historicism and interpretation
- Part I Milton
- Chapter 1 The Brenzel lectures
- Chapter 2 To the pure all things are pure
- Chapter 3 “There is nothing he cannot ask”
- Chapter 4 Why Milton matters; or, against historicism
- Chapter 5 Milton in popular culture
- Chapter 6 How the reviews work
- Chapter 7 The new Milton criticism
- Part II Early modern literature
- Index
Chapter 5 - Milton in popular culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: intention, historicism and interpretation
- Part I Milton
- Chapter 1 The Brenzel lectures
- Chapter 2 To the pure all things are pure
- Chapter 3 “There is nothing he cannot ask”
- Chapter 4 Why Milton matters; or, against historicism
- Chapter 5 Milton in popular culture
- Chapter 6 How the reviews work
- Chapter 7 The new Milton criticism
- Part II Early modern literature
- Index
Summary
What exactly does one do when one studies the presence of Milton in popular culture? What pleasures and/or illuminations does such study promise to provide? What's the point, finally, of a volume like this one? One answer to these questions is given several times in the volume itself in the twined form of a complaint and a claim. The complaint is that Milton's presence in popular culture has been “overlooked” (4) and the claim is that these essays will at least begin to redress this slight. But the notion of an “overlooked presence” is an odd one. Overlooked by whom? Not by the authors who have embedded it; they, after all, knew what they were doing and that they were doing it, in some sense, with Milton. Nor is it readers and viewers who overlook Milton's presence, for in the examples analyzed here the allusions to Milton are foregrounded and flagged. It must then be the scholarly community that has been insufficiently attentive to the continuing influence on popular culture of Milton's prose and poetry, perhaps (and this is more than hinted at) because too much attention has been paid to the influence of Shakespeare. One could say then (although it would be ungenerous to say it) that the spirit informing this collection is “popular culture-envy”: our guy's presence is just as big as yours. If that's what's at issue, I am only too happy to grant the point: everywhere you look in popular culture Milton is there, and it's time for a movie titled Milton in Love. (Actually, it is.)
- Type
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- Information
- Versions of AntihumanismMilton and Others, pp. 110 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012