Paradise Lost and the Cosmological Revolution

Dennis Danielson is Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. He is also a member of the Milton Society of America and an associate member of the American Astronomical Society. Danielson's previous books include Milton's Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy and The Cambridge Companion to Milton (1999).

• 1. The discarded image; 2. Multiverse, chaos, and cosmos; 3. Copernicus and the cosmological bricoleurs; 4. Milton and Galileo revisited (1); 5. Milton and Galileo revisited (2); 6. The sun; 7. Planet Earth; 8. Space flight, ET, and other worlds.

'Dennis Danielson's remarkable new book, Paradise Lost and the Cosmological Revolution, is a highly readable, lucid, and important account of the universes of Milton's epic poem in their historical context … Danielson offers his book as 'the full rescue mission' necessary for readers 'to relish the astonishing engagement of the plot, persons, and poetry of Paradise Lost with the Cosmos'. He succeeds famously, and along the way he demolishes the view of Milton as scientifically obscurantist or backward or as settling for an antiquated cosmology for poetic convenience. Milton emerges instead as an early master of informed science fiction.' Stephen M. Fallon, The Review of English Studies