Study on Milton

The central focus of seventeenth century studies is re-reading Milton; in that respect we can say that a seventeenth century study is the study of Milton. It is natural to ask about Shakespearean studies; the great interests have been paid by new historicist towards Shakespeare.

But Shakespeare is studied much more by individual scholars or by institutional academies in such a way that there is no any control upon Shakespearean issues. Shakespeare has gone out of control; both the author and his texts are beset with deep uncertainties. Issuing major new editions, updating the completed editions seem as yearly event. Shakespearean texts are not under the disciplines.

 In comparison to Shakespeare new historicists pay less attention towards Milton studies. The Milton's study is more disciplined and unanimous than that of Shakespeare. Milton himself was very careful to correct his texts was conscious about recording his own development.

The pioneer Miitonists of the twentieth century did the following things after reading Milton:

They synthesized "the annotational alertness of the eighteenth century", "the visionary agonistics of the Romantics" and "the historical contextualism" of later historicist critics, the synthesis produced a coherent discipline and that discipline is supposed to bring further progress.

The Miltonists are arguing that they are familiar with Milton's last two book of "Paradise Lost", the epic invocations, the characterizations of Stan and heresies of the "Christian Doctrine", the ironies of “Samson Agonists", the climax of "Paradise Regained" and hundreds of other things. Apart from these all the things Miltonists are finding familial Bible of Milton, his common place book, his horoscope, his marginalia, his drafts, his treatise on theology and other materials.

Contemporary Miltonists inherit a fund of medical learning from their predecessor. Kester Svendson's Milton and Science provides a great deal of commentary about Milton's blindness and other medical conditions.

Later political critics have studied political consciousness and political ideology of Milton. William Haller's Rise of Puritanism, Don M. Wolfe's Milton in the Puritan Revolution and Arthur Barker's Milton and the Puritan Dilemma are some of the books which have seen Milton's acceptance of Politics. Milton himself was the main participant in the pamphlet wars of the revolutionary decades.

 Christopher Kendrick's Marxist work, Milton: A Study in Ideology and Form has analyzed the concept of "Predestination" in "Paradise Lost" this concept represents an effort to include all life within the realm of religion, the unreligious domain of ethnical and psychological individualism became weak in Milton's epic. The religious concept resists the emergence of authentic politics, predestination makes obstacle to the class struggle that helps to avoid the fate of Marxism in his poems. Though Milton's epics are far away from Marxist touch, he wants to talk about politics in a religious framework. Finally Kendrick suggests us to talk about Milton's religion in a political framework.

Postmodernists bent of critics are still interested to read Milton. Among them R.A. Shoaf's Milton, Poet of Duality A Study in Semiosis in the Poetry and Prose contains some skilful and important wordplay but does not hold Milton's text with the sustained power to change anyone's mind. Another important book to capture the attention of wide audience is Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton and Literary History by John Guillory which combines the view of Harold Bloom, Louis Althusser Derrida and Paul de Man. William Kerrigan's "The scared complex: on the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost" is another important work on MiIton from a Freudian point of view, but Psychoanalysis is very common in MiItonists studies by which many of the books and article in Milton have Freudian episodes.

 Though the Miltonists had defended Milton for his style, his Puritanism, his character, and now again they have to defend Milton against feminist attacks on the attitude towards women.

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the radical post modern feminists in their work, The Madwoman In the Attic, the one chapter entitled as "Milton's Bogey: Patriarchal poetry and Women Readers", attacks on Milton, They argue that Milton has always been a repressive figure to independent female intellectuals. To such women the unholy trinities of Satan, Sin and Eve have been shown very unnecessarily by copying the holy trinity of God, Christ and Adam by Milton to represent women, that degraded representation continued even on eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Feminist literary scholars have taken Milton's representation of Eve unsatisfactory.

Feminist scholars have attacked Milton from the side of gender. Milton is charged by them as deliberate setout to activate and redesign the mythologies of gender difference. Modern feminist scholars are discovering that "Paradise Lost" provides an opportunity to engage the strategies, possibilities, and contradictions of patriarchy than any other work of that time.

Left wing feminist emphasize the bourgeois trap of Milton's appeal for the alliance of the gender. Some liberal feminists perceive that Milton's confusion and complexity over gender leaves the place for them to create an individualism of their own.

Hence feminist reading has changed the face of Milton from a pure puritan to a biased masculine puritan who ignored or misrepresented the originality of women. Along with the feminist scholars, new historicists and other political critics seem successful to represent the hidden facts about Milton.