John Milton Books

If you're not sure that "polygamophile" is a word, don't worry - neither am I. Miller seems to invent this word to describe John Milton, and puts his favourable views on polygamy and divorce down to unhappy experiences of marriage. Milton, of course, would probably put them down to an unbiased search for truth. Miller does an excellent job of tracking down Milton's views on polygamy in his mainstream work. This takes some doing, as they were not generally known about until his treatise on Christian Doctrine was unearthed 150 years after his death, but about half this book is made up of endnotes - it does not lack evidence for its comments. Milton is not the only person seen to have an interested in polygamy, but you'll have to search out a copy of the book to find the rest. Even for the material on Milton alone, it will be worth it.

Any Milton fan will greatly appreciate phillip's in depth and detailed analysis of Milton's work. This book could not have been written more solid, or have explored Milton more precisely!

Not slick and trendy, but a good, solid introduction, as long as you don't need the latest Milton scholarship.
Nicolson helped me get clear on what Milton might have meant in each major scene, book by book.

This book is an excellent companion piece to Milton studies, whether one is an undergraduate reading Milton for the first time, or a Milton scholar of a quarter-century's standing. Prof. Shawcross is recognized by his peers as the premier authority for Milton biography among scholars living today, and his former teacher, William Parker, held that rank for the previous generation. Though its approach is sufficiently psychological to earn it a classification among the works of that discipline by Library of Congress, it is densely populated by matters biographical. It addresses textual issues intermingled with a reliable account of the events of Milton's life, and includes a goldmine of insights gleaned over the decades of Prof. Shawcross's own meticulous readings, making Milton's works not only more comprehensible to the novice, but enriching the experience of reading them even for an "old hand."

Prof. Shawcross's writing style is lucid and non-pedantic, and the effort is a masterful one (not surprising, to anyone who knows his previous output). Like Nicolson's _Reader's Guide_ of several decades ago, _The Self and the World_ provides the rich background modern students need to understand the relevance of Milton studies to today's world -- only it does so even more successfully, in my opinion (and I have the greatest respect for Prof. Nicolson's work).

I would recommend this book to anyone teaching or studying Milton, at any level of expertise -- without reservation.

Learning from Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise
Author: John V. Knapp

Although teaching is perhaps the central public activity of most university English professors, there is surprisingly little research in the specifics of expert professorial practice. Many previous studies describe, recipe-like, the end products of successful teaching, while others conflate expertise in this subject matter with pedagogical expertise. This study focuses on the moves the expert professor makes in a semester-long process of literary teaching----of a literature far removed in time and space from most undergraduates' experience----and discusses a day-to-day case study of an advanced undergraduate literature course in the writings of John Milton. By employing a "situated learning" model explaining the incremental growth of students' knowledge and critical skills, the author details how an expert professor teaches complex works to undergraduates with no previous exposure to an author's writings. This process is generalized to describe literary learning in its particulars and the paths students must take from possessing scant knowledge about an author or historical period to their developing mastery. John V. Knapp is professor of English at Northern Illinois University, and Editor of the literary journal, Style.

2008 ISBN: 978-0-87413-026-3

This is one of those books that's so brilliant that it sends one running to Geza Csath and William S. Burroughs desperately seeking a way into Interzone. A must read by a guy who's been there.

Chapters include: Dimesions & Areas of Circles, Chordal Dimensions, Segments and Spheres, Formulas & their rearrangement, geometrical propositions, problems in designing & cutting gears, & cutting speeds, feeds and machining power.

The seminal text on product development by two of the top consultants in the field. A must read ror anyone involved in the product development proces

A masterful study of how the novel ideas of Milton's time inform his vocabulary and thought. Rogers is especially attentive to the differences between our notions of "science" and those of the early Enlightenment. Essential.

This book represents the painstaking and very fruitful efforts of some excellent literary scholars to record Herman Melville's marginalia in his copy of The Poetical Works of John Milton. Just flipping through this volume, any bibliophile or lover of literature will experience the thrill of getting into the mind of a great writer, and through that nineteenth-century mind, appreciating a unique understanding of the mind of another, earlier luminary of the literary and political world. You will never read Moby-Dick or Paradise Lost the same way again.