Theatrical Milton

Milton Revealed is a collaborative project to collect audio-visual materials related to John Milton and his work, to re-examine his relation to theatricality, and to develop teaching approaches to Milton that use performance across a variety of media. We are closely aligned with Staging Shakespeare, which aids and promotes the teaching of Shakespeare through performance and performance-related materials.

Any uncertainty about Milton's modern critical status and audience appeal may be offset by greater stress on his biography as a prototype for modern temperament, instead of focus on arcane puritan theological and political debates, often at the expense of demonstrations of the poet's still compelling literary vision of the human condition, as seen in Philip Pullman's prefaces to the Oxford University Press Paradise Lost. Such broader recognition of his fascination might be reinforced by an audio-visual approach such as is used in a comparable site at Staging Shakespeare which exploits students' newly heightened visual expectations. Modern technology permits extensive use of images and video clips of Miltonic materials, such as are already available to the UCB English Department, and seen in Christ's College's Anniversary Website. The increasing interest in performance of Milton's works provides further examples of such heightening resources, including the staging of "L'Allegro and Il Penseroso" by the Mark Morris Dance Company. Such materials will be reinforced here by recording of current research, presentations, and other activities concerning Milton, which may be relevant to contemporary experience and helpful to enhancement of the impact of scholars and teachers.

The initial goal of this group will be to establish a listing of resources to reinforce the contemporary impact of Milton's work. The list will provide access to audio-visual material such as the video documentary Milton by Himself distributed by Films for the Humanities, which covers his life and works, while providing new dynamic approaches to their presentation, such as public performances of Comus, Paradise Lost and Samson. The site will identify professionals actively involved in such activities. For example, there is a libretto based on Paradise Lost by Benjamin Stillingfleet with music by John Christopher Smith the Younger was first performed in 1760, with a printed version that year. This was re-edited by Kay Stevenson and Margaret Sears in 1998. Many other musical versions of Milton exist: the music from Handel's setting of Samson is a regular source for modern concert programming, and Handel has unique empathy for Milton's verse, as seen in his settings for "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" used by Mark Morris for his dance group. In 2006 there were also favorably-reviewed stage performances of a three-hour version of Paradise Lost at the Oxford Playhouse (U.K.). For several years concert recitations of Paradise Lost have also been successfully presented in England and elsewhere by David Burns, based on recitation of complete books chosen from the full text. As awareness of such achievements is established, our group might aspire to its own programming and initiatives to confirm Milton's modern significance and accessibility. Suggestions are welcomed.

Current Members of Milton Revealed

James Harriman-Smith
Holder of the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Scholarship at the University of Cambridge, where he is in the process of finishing a masters thesis on the reception of Shakespeare in the eighteenth-century novel. He won the Harness Prize for a long essay on Shakespeare in 2008, and has been working on Open Shakespeare since 2009 with responsibilities ranging from day to day administration to active contribution of articles and annotations.

Jeffrey Jampel
Ph.D., Independent Scholar

Anders Rendtorf Klitgard
Lektor in English at Københavns Voksenuddannelsescenter (Denmark)

David Landreth
Aassociate professor of English at UC Berkeley. I received my Ph. D. from NYU in 2005. I've published _The Face of Mammon: the Matter of Money in English Renaissance Literature_ (Oxford UP, 2012) and a number of essays.

Terrance Lindall
American artist , born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1944. Lindall attended the University of Minnesota and graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College in New York City in 1970, with a double major in Philosophy and English and a double minor in Psychology and Physical Anthropology. He was in the Doctor of Philosophy program in philosophy at New York University from 1970 to 1973. Lindall's art has been on the covers of numerous books and magazines and has been exhibited at many galleries and museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, Hudson River Museum, the Museum of the Surreal and Fantastic and the Society of Illustrators Museum. He provides illustrations for many editions of Milton's works.

Enna Martina
Independent Scholar

Christopher Mead
Grad. Student (Early Modern English) U. C. B.

Stephanie Moore
B.A. Yale, Ph.D. Candidate (English) U.C. Berkeley

Vique Mora
Undergraduate, California State University, Los Angeles

Mario Murgia
Independent Student

Claire I R O'Mahony
University Lecturer in History of Art and Design at the Department for Continuing Education and a Fellow of Kellogg College since 2006. She is Course Direcor for the MSt in the History of Design and the Undergraduate Diploma in the History of Art. Her research centres on the history of decoration in Europe and America between 1848 and 1968 with Third Republic France as a primary focus.

Brendan Prawdzik
Ph. D. University of California, Berkeley; Assistant Professor of 17th C. Literature t at Christian Brothers University

Hugh Macrae Richmond
Professor Emeritus of English at U.C. Berkeley, B.A., Cambridge U. and a D. Phil. from Oxford U., with diplomas from the U.Florence and the U. Munich. He directs the U.C.B. Shakespeare Program, producing videos on "Shakespeare & the Globe" (Films for Humanities); "Shakespeare's Globe Restored" (TMW Media); and "Shakespeare and the Spanish Connection" (TMW Media). He edited "Henry IV Part 1" and "Henry VIII," and wrote "Shakespeare’s Political Plays" and "Shakespeare’s Sexual Comedy." His research at Cambridge was on Milton, and at Oxford on 17th C. poetry (see "The School of Love" Princeton U. P.). He contribued to the first MLA teaching handbook on Milton and the second one (2012). He produced a video documentary (Films for the Humanities), called "Milton By Himself" - in which he delivers Milton's own words, with clips from performances of "Comus," and "Paradise Lost" at U.C. Berkeley. His script for this "Paradise Lost" is published byMouton, while the U.C. Press published his study, "The Christian Revolutionary: John Milton."

Beverley Sherry (MA Queensland, PhD Bryn Mawr)
Beverley has followed a career at the University of Queensland, where she was a Senior Lecturer in English, the Australian National University, and the University of Sydney, where she is now an Honorary Associate in the Department of English. Her work crosses the disciplines of literature, the visual arts, and history, as evidenced in her books, Australia’s Historic Stained Glass (1991) and the bicentennial history Hunter’s Hill: Australia’s Oldest Garden Suburb (1989). John Milton remains, however, her principal interest and she serves on the boards of Milton Quarterly and the International Milton Symposium. Her recent publications include fourteen entries in the new Milton Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas N. Corns (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2012); “Milton, Materialism, and the Sound of Paradise Lost,” Essays in Criticism 60 (2010): 220-41; “John Martin’s Apocalyptic Illustrations to Paradise Lost” in Milton and the Ends of Time, ed. Juliet Cummins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and the Introduction to John K. Hale’s Milton as Multilingual (University of Otago, 2005).

Matthew Stallard
Assistant Professor of English Ohio University. Assistant Editor of Milton Quarterly; Author of Paradise Lost: The Biblically Annotated Edition. Mercer University Press, 2011.

Paloma Catarina Zart
Graduate Student, Federal University of Santa Maria

Jonathan Zilberg
Trained as a cultural anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a special interest in ethnomusicology, my research focuses on art, religion and popular culture in Latin America, Africa and Asia. A full cv is available at the University of Plymouth's Department of Trans-technology web site. I am an active reviewer for the on-line Arts and Science journal Leonardo associated with the MIT based Leonardo music journal. Currently my Latin American and African work is archive based while conducting long term fieldwork in Indonesia.

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