The 2003 Conference on John Milton

October 23-25, 2003

Sponsored by the English Department

Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

William Blake's The Magic Banquet with the Lady Spellbound is reproduced by permission of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.

Schedule of Events

Thursday, October 23

6:30-8:30 p.m. Reception

Friday, October 24

9:00-9:15 a.m. Official Welcome

9:15-10:00 a.m. Featured Address

Annabel Patterson (Yale)

"Milton and the Problem of Evil"

10:15-11:30 a.m.

Shorter Poems

Matthew Stallard (Ohio)

"'The Two-Handed Engine' of Lycidas as Christ's Second Advent"

James Dougal Fleming (Simon Fraser)

"'Ay Me, I': Conscience in Lycidas"

Leland Ryken (Wheaton)

"'Lady that in the Prime of Earliest Youth': Milton's Sonnet 9 in Its Puritan Context"

Eve

Amy D. Stackhouse (West Georgia)

"Eve's Language"

Elisabeth Liebert (Otago)

"Through Eve's Looking Glass"

Maggie Kilgour (McGill)

"Eve and Flora ( Paradise Lost V.15-16)"

Milton and Performance

Timothy J. Burbery (Marshall)

"Intended for the Stage?: Samson Agonistes in Performance"

Bill Goldstein (CUNY)

"Samson Regained: A Play in Perpetual World Premiere"

Andrew Garner (CUNY)

"'Their song was partial': Time, Place, and Tragedy in Paradise Lost"

11:45 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

Milton and Influence I

James W. Broaddus (Indiana State)

"'[G]ums of glutinous heat' in Milton's Maske and Spenser's Faerie Queene"

Christopher Bond (Yale)

"'The Legende of Holinesse' and the Fall of Man: Spenser as Milton's Original for Books Nine and Ten of Paradise Lost"

Joan Blythe (Kentucky)

"Sticky Words vs. Standing by Poetic Words: Jeremias Drexel's Lascivious Sins of the Tongue, Wendell Berry, and A Mask"

Paradise Lost I

Margaret Justice Dean (Eastern Kentucky)

"Choosing Death: Adam's Temptation to Martyrdom in Paradise Lost"

William Walker (New South Wales)

"Machiavelli's Republican Historiography and Paradise Lost"

Margaret Olofson Thickstun (Hamilton)

"Adam as Parent in Paradise Lost"

Paradise Regained

Alice Mathews (North Texas)

"Acquiring Knowledge in Paradise Regained: A Rebuttal against Instant Gratification"

Tim Moylan (St. Louis)

"Sound and Silence: Interpretive Pause in Milton's Paradise Regained"

Karen Weiser

"'House' and 'Home': Illuminating Redemption in Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained"

1:00-2:30Lunch

2:30-4:15

Prose

David Ainsworth (Wisconsin)

"The Trouble with De Doctrina Christiana"

William B. Hunter

"Once More unto the Breach"

Jeffrey Gore (Illinois Chicago)

"Obedience in Of Education and Paradise Lost"

Robert King (Purdue)

"John Milton's Of Education as Narrative Utopia: Imagining the Nation-State"

Milton and the Heavens

David Boocker (Western Illinois)

"Milton the Christian Scientist"

Irfana M. Hashmi (Hunter)

"Galileo, Anamorphosis, and Painting Eve: Perspectival Poetics in Paradise Lost"

Lara Dodds (DePauw)

"Milton's Other Worlds"

Matt Dolloff (Texas)

"Milton's Urania and the Tradition of Cosmic Journey and Dream Narratives"

Milton and Influence II

Glenn Sucich (Northwestern)

"'Not without Dust and Heat': Alchemical Structure in Areopagitica"

Richard J. DuRocher (St. Olaf)

"Eve, Descartes, and the Passions of the Soul"

Stella Revard (Southern Illinois)

"Milton and Henry More: Another Look at the Chariot in Paradise Lost VI"

John Mulryan (St. Bonaventure)

"Satan's Headache: The Perils and Pains of Giving Birth to a Bad Idea"

Rhetoric and Perspectives

Derek N. C. Wood (St. Francis Xavier)

"Milton's Later Poetry and 'Rhetoric That So Captivates the Minds of Men'"

Thomas L. Wilmeth (Concordia Wisconsin)

"Advocating Declensions: Milton's Remarks on Latin in the Familiar Letters"

Rebecca Totaro (Florida Gulf Coast)

"The Rectification of Air in Plague-Time: Paradise Lost and The Blazing World"

Anthony Welch (Yale)

"Losing Paradise in The State of Innocence: Dryden and the Restoration Milton"

4:30-5:45 p.m.

Paradise Lost II

Jon Baarsch (Wisconsin)

"Lucretian Materialism in Paradise Lost"

Bryan Adams Hampton (Northwestern)

"Infernal Preaching: God's Name and the 'Great Prophesying Movement' in Paradise Lost, Book 2"

Elizabeth Human (St. Louis)

"Satan the Republican: Untangling the Political Paradox in Paradise Lost"

Milton and Influence III

Angelica Duran (Purdue)

"Jorge Luis Borges and Milton's 'Condemnation of Rhyme'"

Ken Hiltner (Harvard)

"Toni Morrison's Paradise and Exile in Paradise Lost"

Kemmer Anderson (McCallie)

"Advocates of Religious Liberty, Thomas Jefferson and John Milton: Milton's Influence on the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom"

Biblical Poetics

Jameela Lares (Southern Mississippi)

"In Praise of the Transmuted Lump: Paradise Lost, books 11-12 and the Genesis Commentaries"

Kevin Lindberg (Texas A&M International)

"Do You Hear What I Hear: The Rhetoric of Milton's Biblical Poetics"

Sandra Mayfield (Central Oklahoma)

"Donne and Milton and the 'Proceedings of God with Men'"

6:30-7:30 p.m.Cash Bar

7:30 p.m.Dinner (Casual Attire)

Saturday, October 25

8:30-9:45 a.m.

Samson Agonistes

Sherry Lutz Zivley (Houston)

"The Prosody of Samson Agonistes"

Jeff Roberts (Connecticut)

"The Dialectic of Samson Agonistes: Orthodoxy, Gnosticism, and the Search for the Inner I"

David V. Urban (Calvin)

"'Rousing Motions' and the Written Law: Scripture and Immediate Revelation in Samson Agonistes"

Satan

Pitt Harding (Georgia State)

"'Strange point and new!': Satan's Challenge to Nascent Christianity"

Scott Vander Ploeg (Madisonville Community)

"Speaking in Ears: Milton Trumps Evil Annunciation"

Jamie Harmon Ferguson (Indiana)

"Satan's Supper: The 'Language of Sacrament' in Paradise Lost"

Milton and the Arts

Ellen M. Bayer (Purdue)

"J. M. W. Turner's Illustrations of the Poetry of Milton"

Cheryl H. Fresch (New Mexico)

"Picturing Milton and His Daughters: From Romney to Strang"

Wendy Furman-Adams (Whittier) and Virginia James Tufte (Southern California)

"The Uses of Enchantment: Four Twentieth-Century Artists Restaging Milton's Mask"

10:00 - 11:15 a.m.

Biographical Studies

Mary Fenton (Western Carolina)

"The Boundaries of Reform: Milton on Ireland before and after 1649"

Edward Jones (Oklahoma State)

"Milton, the Army, and the Poor: New Records from the Petty France Years"

Carol Barton

"'Ill fare the hands that heaved the stones': A Preview of 'John Milton, A Preliminary Thanatography'"

Paradise Lost III

Gen Ohinata (Kwansei Gakuin)

"The Techniques of Idealization in Paradise Lost"

Gardner Campbell (Mary Washington)

"Grateful Milton"

Stephen Dobranski (Georgia State)

"Milton's Divine Balancing Act: Free Will and God's Scales in Paradise Lost"

Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle

William Shullenberger (Sarah Lawrence)

"Circe's Best Boy"

Eliza Fisher Laskowski (North Carolina)

"'Freeing the Corporal Rinde': The Songs of Milton's 1645 Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle"

T. Ross Leasure (Cornell)

"William Burton's Belial: Anatomizing Milton's Lesser Demon"

11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.Panel: " How Milton Works"

Stephen Dobranski, Moderator (Georgia State)

Laura L. Knoppers (Pennsylvania State)

Louis Schwartz (Richmond)

Joseph Wittreich (CUNY)

Stanley Fish, Respondent (Illinois Chicago)

12:45-1:00 p.m.

Official Closing