An introduction to John Milton: man, poet, and legend. Milton's place at the center of the English literary canon is asserted, articulated, and examined through a discussion of Milton's long, complicated association with literary power. The conception of Miltonic power and its calculated use in political literature is analyzed in the feminist writings of Lady Mary Chudleigh, Mary Astell, and Virginia Woolf. Later the god-like qualities often ascribed to Miltonic authority are considered alongside Satan's excursus on the constructed nature of divine might in Paradise Lost, and the notorious character's method of analysis is shown to be a useful mode of encountering the author himself.

1. Introduction: Milton, Power, and the Power of Milton
2. The Infant Cry of God
3. Credible Employment
4. Poetry and Virginity
5. Poetry and Marriage
6. Lycidas
7. Lycidas (cont.)
8. Areopagitica
9. Paradise Lost, Book I
10. God and Mammon: The Wealth of Literary Memory
11. The Miltonic Smile
12. The Blind Prophet
13. Paradise Lost, Book III
14. Paradise Lost, Book IV
15. Paradise Lost, Books V-VI
16. Paradise Lost, Books VII-VIII
17. Paradise Lost, Book IX
18. Paradise Lost, Books IX-X
19. Paradise Lost, Books XI-XII
20. Paradise Lost, Books XI-XII (cont.)
21. Paradise Regained, Books I-II
22. Paradise Regained, Books III-IV
23. Samson Agonistes
24. Samson Agonistes (cont.)

A study of Milton's poetry, with some attention to his literary sources, his contemporaries, his controversial prose, and his decisive influence on the course of English poetry.