The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost offers a new critical insight into the relationship between Milton and the Romantic poets. Shears devotes a chapter to each of the six major Romantics, contextualizing their 'misreadings' of Milton's Paradise Lost within a range of historical, aesthetic, and theoretical contexts. Shears argues that the Romantic inclination towards fragmentation and a polysemous aesthetic leads to disrupted readings of Paradise Lost that obscure the theme, or warp the 'grain', of the poem.

The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost offers a new critical insight into the relationship between Milton and the Romantic poets. Beginning with a discussion of the role that seventeenth and eighteenth-century writers like Dryden, Johnson and Burke played in formulating the political and spiritual mythology that grew up around Milton, Shears devotes a chapter to each of the major Romantic poets, contextualizing their 'misreadings' of Milton within a range of historical, aesthetic, and theoretical contexts and discourses. By tackling the vexed issue of whether Paradise Lost by its nature makes available and encourages alternate readings or whether misreadings are imposed on the poem from without, Shears argues that the Romantic inclination towards fragmentation and a polysemous aesthetic leads to disrupted readings of Paradise Lost that obscure the theme, or warp the 'grain', of the poem. Shears concludes by examining the ways in which the legacy of Romantic misreading continues to shape critical responses to Milton's epic.

These essays lead the reader into the political and intellectual worlds within which John Milton wrote his verse and prose, and into the later worlds within which his reputation evolved and fluctuated. The illuminating and entertaining range of perspectives will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike.

With the three works included in this volume--Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and Lycidas--Milton placed himself next to Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer as one of the greatest literary genius in history.

In this story of romance and sisterhood, Sophie learns that the inheritance of a lifetime sometimes comes with a catch. When Sophie’s uncle leaves her a castle on the Italian Riviera in his will, she can’t believe her luck. The catch? She and her estranged sister, Rachel, must live there together for three months in order to inherit it. A cheating Italian ex soon learns of Sophie’s return and wants to rekindle their spark, but Sophie realizes that distance does make the heart grow fonder—for her friend back home, Chris, who becomes more to her than just a friend. But does he feel the same? This beautiful story is perfect for fans of Alex Brown and Lucy Coleman.

The book remains a central work of criticism for all students of literature.

This Side of Paradise is a novel about post-World War I youth and their morality. Amory Blaine is a young Princeton University student with an attractive face and an interest in literature. His greed and desire for social status warp the theme of love weaving through the story.

The great Romantic poet Lord Byron starved himself compulsively for most of his life. His behaviour mystified his friends and other witnesses, yet he never imagined he was ill. Instead, he rationalised his behaviour as a fight for spiritual freedom and made it the cornerstone of his heroic ideal, which was central to his work and to his life and his death. This fresh biographical study aims to explore neglected or misunderstood aspects of his private life to illuminate his writing, his affairs with women, his passion for Napoleon and his conflicted friendships with Coleridge and Shelley. This in turn leads to a new understanding of his masterpiece, Don Juan. 15 July 2019 marks the 200th anniversary of its first publication. Antony Peattie situates these patterns of behaviour in a vividly rendered contemporary world, culminating in Byron’s last days in Greece, where he tried to starve himself into heroic leadership but damaged his constitution, resulting in his death at the age of thirty-six.

Four hundred years after his birth, John Milton remains one of the greatest and most controversial figures in English literature. The Oxford Handbook of Milton is a comprehensive guide to the state of Milton studies in the early twenty-first century, bringing together an international team of thirty-five leading scholars in one volume. The rise of critical interest in Milton's political and religious ideas is the most striking aspect of Milton studies in recent times, a consequence in great part of the increasingly fluid relations between literary and historical study. The Oxford Handbook both embodies the interest in Milton's political and religious contexts in the last generation and seeks to inaugurate a new phase in Milton studies through closer integration of the poetry and prose. There are eight essays on various aspects of Paradise Lost, ranging from its classical background and poetic form to its heretical theology and representation of God. There are sections devoted both to the shorter poems, including 'Lycidas' and Comus, and the final poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. There are also three sections on Milton's prose: the early controversial works on church government, divorce, and toleration, including Areopagitica; the regicide and republican prose of 1649-1660, the period during which he served as the chief propagandist for the English Commonwealth and Cromwell's Protectorate, and the various writings on education, history, and theology. The opening essays explore what we know about Milton's biography and what it might tell us; the final essays offer interpretations of aspects of Milton's massive influence on later writers, including the Romantic poets.