John Milton in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Visual Culture

Laura Fox Gill sheds new light on Milton's afterlives in a multimedia age, expanding our understanding of literary influence, reception, and the visual imagination, and bringing Milton's canonical works from the early modern period into conversation with a range of key figures in nineteenth-century culture.

The intermedial legacy of John Milton in nineteenth-century literature and visual culture features writers not only engaging with Milton's works but also responding to each other's rich and varied interpretations. Challenging linear models of literary tradition, Laura Fox Gill proposes a method of cross-disciplinary reading that stages triangular conversations across media. Through case studies pairing Milton with Mary Shelley and John Martin, Herman Melville and J. M. W. Turner, A. C. Swinburne and William Blake, and Thomas Hardy and Biblical illustrators, she uncovers a rich network of creative exchange. While Milton's legacy was often mediated through Romantic predecessors, his texts – especially Paradise Lost – remained vital touchstones for Victorian readers and viewers. Gill sheds new light on how Milton's works were reimagined in a multimedia culture, expanding our understanding of literary influence, reception, and the visual imagination of the nineteenth century.