John Milton’s Blind Language

FAIN: FEL-273185-21

Amrita Dhar
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)

Research and writing leading to a book on the influence of blindness on the writing of English author John Milton (1608–1674).

This is a study of seventeenth-century author and polemic John Milton’s poetic language created in his years of partial and ultimately complete blindness: his psalm translations and some shorter poems, and significantly, the landmark achievements Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Examining, on one hand, blindness in terms of language, and on the other, poetic language in terms of visual transformation, this project demonstrates the workings of blindness towards the creation of some of our most enduring poetry. Similarly, this study shows how Milton’s final long blind verse bears the weight of its author’s lived visual difference. This work thus addresses a gap in early modern studies, scholarship on poetry, disability studies, and the literary humanities by establishing the affirmative capacities and far-reaching aesthetic consequences of blind writing.