This volume of Milton Studies consists of eight papers: four on the poetry and four on the prose. Of those on the poetry, two are on the sonnets, only one on Paradise Lost, and one on Paradise Regained. The others are concerned with Areopagitica, Eikonoklastes, the autobiographical elements in Milton's prose, and the Art of Logic.

In "From Orthodoxy to Heresy: A Theological Analysis of Sonnets 14 and 18," Timothy J. Burbery argues for the possibility of mortalist readings of sonnets 14 ("When faith and love which parted from thee never") and 18 ("On the Late Massacre in Piedmont"). Mortalism is the idea, which Milton expresses in Christian Doctrine and elsewhere, that body and soul are inseparable, with the consequence that the soul shares the death of the body until the resurrection revives both. Burbery proposes that the two sonnets are amenable to both conventional and mortalist readings and uses the sonnets to track Milton's transition "from orthodoxy to heterodoxy" (2, 16). The indeterminacy, he writes, may reflect a deliberate strategy of protection against censorship (6-7), and his mortalist reading is accordingly subtle.

Hugh Dawson's treatment of Milton's last sonnet, "Methought I saw my late espousèd saint," is equally subtle for different reasons. Dawson traces the various elements of the sonnet to the dream itself and to the successive "mental actions" (23) that followed it: awakening, recall of the dream, introspective exploration of its recalled elements in terms of Milton's intellectual background, and finally the statement of faith, hope, and love in anticipation of seeing the saint again in heaven. Dawson places enormous emphasis on lines 7 and 8, which, he says, detract from the "structural perfection" (33) of the sonnet. The justifications for Dawson's advocacy of Katherine Woodcock, whom Milton was never able to see, as the saint of the poem include the proposal that "again" refers to the vision in the dream (31).

As genre provides the segue between the two first essays, the reference to dreams links Dawson's contribution to Diana Treviño Benet's essay on Eve's dream, in which she opposes the determinist view that the dream reveals an innate disposition to sin in the prelapsarian Eve. Benet bases her case on the early modern hypothesis of animal spirits as the link between body and mind and on passages from Crashaw's translation of Marini's Sospetto d'Herode and Cowley's Davideis in which Satan controls the behavior of his victims by poisoning them with irresistible venom. According to Benet, Milton carefully distinguishes his treatment of Eve's dream to maintain his insistence on her free will and innocence until she actually eats the forbidden fruit.

Eve's dream reappears in "Composing the Uneasy Station: Confession and Absence in Paradise Regain'd" by George H. McLoone: "Along with the reminder of Satan's persuasive tongue that 'won so much on Eve,' the filial and testimonial senses of 'relation' echo an uneasy station in Paradise Lost, where 'Eve relates to Adam her troublesome dream' of a tempter and ascent, and where Raphael 'relates at Adam's request who that enemy is, and how he came to be so, beginning from his first revolt in Heaven' (from the argument to Book Five)" (75). The allusive style of McAloon's essay contrasts with the clarity and accessibility of its predecessors and most of its successors, although the final essay, by John T. Connor on the Art of Logic, will also give you a headache. McLoone examines Paradise Regained in the light of the traditions of Puritan autobiography on both sides of the Atlantic and links these with Paradise Regained through their common "binary imagery" of "wandering and pilgrimage, falling and rising, absence and home" and their common concern with literary and filial relation (55).

"The Grotesque in Areopagitica," by Markus Klinge, is based on the author's PhD thesis. Klinge defends Areopagitica against recent critics' skepticism about its political effectiveness by characterizing it as a literary work whose purpose is to influence its readers through esthetic, rather than polemical, strategies. In other words he resists restricting the purpose of the tract to the repeal of the Licensing Order of 1643. Klinge's essay involves extensive contextualization of Areopagitica in relation to the politics of the period. He goes on to demonstrate notable inconsistencies in the authorial point of view, in Milton's position in relation to the various parties engaged in the debate, and in his stand on licensing. Klinge uses the concept of the grotesque to explore a "dualistic" (111), Platonic, prophetic, and poetic notion of truth in Areopagitica, one that participates simultaneously in the transience of experience and in the permanence of ideas. He juxtaposes this positive view of the grotesque to another Miltonic grotesque of stasis and conformity, associated with the Index of Prohibited Books and the Index of Expurgations, which Milton regards as evil enough to ban, along with the Licensing Order of 1643. Areopagitica in Klinge's reading is a self-referential document that testifies indirectly through the complex construction of its argument, as well as directly through the argument itself, against the crude and fatuous simplifications required by the practices of licensing and censorship.

Daniel Shore's "'Fit Though Few': Eikonoklastes and the Rhetoric of Audience" continues the rhetorical consideration of Milton's prose. Using Eikonoklastes as his central example, Shore proposes that Milton's division of his audience between fit and unfit readers, elect and reprobate, rather than describing those readers, uses their desire for inclusion among the fit to motivate them to follow and assent to his claims, while Eikonoklastes, by its analysis of the king's rhetoric in Eikon Basilike, educates them as critical readers. Milton's classification of his audience further enables him to anticipate and control the potential variety of responses to his writing.

Iconoclasm links "Crisis and Autobiography in Milton's Prose," by Brooke Conti, to the preceding paper. In Conti's case Milton himself becomes the icon. Conti shows that the autobiographical passages in Milton's prose betray a lack of confidence in their assertions of the author's lofty qualifications for a lofty vocation. His convincing representation of a vain and anxious Milton provides a corrective contrast to the monumental figure who emerges from the other essays in the volume.

The final essay, "Milton's Art of Logic and the Force of Conviction," by John T. Connor, is the most specialized and technical contribution to the volume. Connor treats the Art of Logic as a work of the Restoration, when Milton revised and published it. The essay explores the ramifications of Milton's logic for his thinking about truth. Connor's intricate argument relates the Art of Logic to Christian Doctrine and to the poetry, particularly Paradise Regained. In Connor's view, Milton's logic is an instrument of interior reasoning, rather than of public debate, and based theologically on a God who is "all causes conjoined" (193) with the result that "all knowledge reveals God's causal agency and contains his providential purpose" (204). Thus Connor presents Milton's logic as a distillation of his thought. There is nothing dualistic about the view of truth here. What unites the essays in this volume, apart from their subject of course, is their ingenuity and the diversity that is its effect.