New Essays on John Milton and Lucy Hutchinson
"More Equal"
Edited by David Ainsworth and Thomas Festa
New Essays on John Milton and Lucy Hutchinson: “More Equal” challenges the myth of Milton as a solitary genius, instead suggesting that scholarly work on early modern women’s writing and their collaborations and contexts can be usefully applied to Milton. By bringing essays about Milton and about Lucy Hutchinson together, the collection suggests that studying each author’s works within the context of the other can further interpretative possibilities. The collection as a whole argues that the roles women played in seventeenth-century England deserve more attention within literary readings of authors of the period, and asserts the value of understanding the writing of authors like Milton within the context of those women and their work. Featuring an essay by foremost Hutchinson scholar David Norbrook, which conjoins the two authors and considers them in relation to one another, this volume offers a fresh understanding of both Milton and Hutchinson’s writings and beliefs.
The volume’s contributors represent a range of scholars and techniques, and their work represents an expansion of work presented at the Conference on John Milton. Past volumes drawing from that conference series have been recognized for their significance to Milton studies, receiving the Society’s Irene Samuel Award for distinguished multiauthor collection on Milton, including Locating Milton (Clemson UP, 2021), co-edited by this volume’s editors, Festa and Ainsworth. As with those past volumes, contributors represent a range from distinguished senior scholars to graduate students.
About the Editors
David Ainsworth is Professor of English at the University of Alabama and a faculty member of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies. He is the author of Milton, Music, and Literary Interpretation: Reading through the Spirit (2020) and Milton and the Spiritual Reader: Reading and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (2008). He co-edited Locating Milton (2021) with Thomas Festa. He is currently working on a book titled Milton’s Queer Spirit.
Thomas Festa is Professor of English at the State University of New York, New Paltz. He is the author of The End of Learning: Milton and Education (Routledge, 2006) and co-editor of five volumes, including Locating Milton: Places and Perspectives (Clemson UP, 2021), which won the Irene Samuel Award from the Milton Society of America. His published scholarship includes over two dozen articles, for which he has received awards from the John Donne Society and the Stationers’ Company of London. His own poetry has appeared in many journals internationally and in a chapbook, Earthen (Finishing Line, 2023), and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Introduction | David Ainsworth
1 To Be Taken as a Woman Writer: Lucy Hutchinson and John Milton | Lara Dodds and Michelle M. Dowd
I COLLABORATION
2 The Largely Forgotten Service of Isabel Webber to the Milton Family | Edward Jones
3 Eve Writes Back: Feminist Adaptations of Paradise Lost | Monica Wolfe
4 Who is Listening? Alice Egerton, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, and Queer Erotics | Erin Murphy
II CONJUNCTION
5 John Milton and Lucy Hutchinson: Politics, Theology, and the Origins of the English Revolution | David Norbrook
6 “Tis now our best grace to be wild & rude”: Vengeful Nature and Times in Lucy Hutchinson’s “Elegies” | Alexandria Morgan
III EXPERIMENTATION
7 Milton’s Classroom: Erasmus, Civic Humanism, and the Instruction of Child-Figures in Paradise Lost |Chloe Brooke
8 “Pernicious and perplexed”: The Repudiations of Lucy Hutchinson in Order and Disorder | J. Antonio Templanza
9 Paradise Lost and Eve’s Experimental Fall | William John Silverman, Jr.
Conclusion | David Ainsworth
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Details
Published: May 2026
Formats
Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-63804-220-4
eBook
ISBN: 978-1-63804-221-1
Subjects
Early ModernLiterature
