The twelve essays in this collection represent efforts at the outset of the twenty-first century to engage in the search for Truth in the poetry and prose of John Milton. Whether analyzing the poet’s use of myth or genre, examining the style or political import of Milton’s psalm translations, addressing the issue of the sufficiency of angelic instruction in books 11 and 12 of Paradise Lost, exploring the relationship between flesh and spirit from the perspective of accommodation theory or Milton’s food imagery, interrogating attitudes towards individual autonomy, especially as it relates to gender, or assessing Milton’s influence in early America or on artist Henry Fuseli, the contributors offer rich and varied critical commentary that illuminates twenty-first-century Milton.

That Milton himself consistently reflected a concern for reassembling Truth is evidenced in a wide-ranging body of works in different genres and on stunningly diverse topics. Similarly, the contributors to this collection seek to reanalyze, reinterpret, and recontextualize his literary, political, religious, and social views and values in order to reassess the impact of his writings. These essays were originally presented at the 1999 Conference on John Milton at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and because of their quality, the contributors were invited to expand and revise their papers. The collection does not focus on a common theme, although there are obvious relationships between and among essays. For example, several focus on Paradise Lost and Samson Agonsites, often using other works—mythological, theological, political, legal, and artistic—as a springboard to interpretation. Some consider minor poems from the perspective of poetic and biblical sources. And others use Milton’s prose works as a gloss to his poetry or to highlight the early American appropriation of selected prose works.

Aeropagitica, Milton offers the following caveat regarding the search for Truth’s scattered members: “We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall doe, till her Masters second coming; he shall bring together every joynt and member, and shall mould them into an immortall feature of loveliness and perfection.” This volume, then, stands as yet one more effort, as Stella Revard puts it, “to reassemble the scattered limbs of [Milton’s] mythic goddess Truth.”