Milton’s poetry is pivotal in world literature; his prose advanced an integrated theory of radical change: of sexuality, personal and political freedom, theology, poetry, cognition, the universe. Key in England’s only non-monarchical regime, a torchbearer for republicanism after its defeat; the most influential non-dramatic English poet down to the 21st-century; an early global Anglophone poet. We will explore Milton’s writings in the context of their emergence and later works under or against his sway: e.g., Toland, Astell, Phillis Wheatley, Hollis, Blake, both Shelleys, Douglass, Empson, Pullman, Ronald Johnson, Deleuze, Hill, Guillory.
