John Milton's New World Contours
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17851/2317-2096.28.3.47-61Keywords:
John Milton, Americas, Paradise Lost, alterity, travel literatureAbstract
Given the relative novelty of the Americas in the early modern world, the indirectness of transatlantic routes at the time, and the vastness of his own imagination, English poet John Milton’s virtual travels to the Americas are marked by detours, circumnavigations, and chance encounters. Nevertheless, the challenge of this article is to delineate the contours of Milton’s Americas, whith attention to the specific and different historical, political, and generic contexts in which his few allusions and references to the New World appear. By doing so, one discovers that Milton approaches the Americas as a mundus alter et idem or as an exercise in othering as well as a self study.
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Copyright (c) 2018 Elizabeth Sauer (Autor)
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