Our First Invited Speaker (2019)
Alison A. Chapman is Professor and English Department Chair at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the United States.
While her scholarly work began with an interest in English Reformation literature (including her first book, Patrons and Patron Saints in Early Modern English Literature, 2012), she has in recent years focused almost entirely on the works of John Milton.
As a Miltonist, she has published numerous articles and serves as the co-organizer of the biannual Conference on John Milton.
As a result of volunteer teaching for many years in a maximum security prison, she became interested in early modern ideas of law. In 2017, this interest led to the first book-length study of Milton’s extensive legal involvements and the way that law presses on Milton’s imagination in Paradise Lost.
Alison's Selected Works on Milton (as of 2019):
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The Legal Epic: Paradise Lost and the Early Modern Law, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018 (Named by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title and recipient of the 2017 James Holly Hanford Book Award from the Milton Society of America)
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“The Lay Reader’s Guide to Milton v. Cope: Trust, Debt, and Loss in Chancery.” Milton Quarterly 52 (2018): 113-127.
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“Roman Law and Equity in John Milton’s Divorce Tracts,” Critical Analysis of Law 5:2 (2019): 27-43
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“Defending Milton’s Pro Se Defensio: A Legal Reading.” Milton Quarterly 51 (2017): 75-96
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“Milton and Legal Reform,” Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 529-65
Our First Session
The first session of the Budapest Milton Seminar took place in Room 104 of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences from 6:00 p.m. on 11 March, 2019,
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Alison A. Chapman, “Milton and the Baptists: The Immersive Religion of Paradise Regained.”
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Abstract
Critical readings of John Milton’s brief epic Paradise Regained have typically focused on its ambiguous ending when the Son of God stands miraculously atop the pinnacle of the Temple while Satan falls. This paper, instead, centers on the poem’s beginning and specifically on Milton’s decision to open with a depiction of full-body baptism in running water. This was a heretical practice in the early modern world, one associated with radical groups such as the Baptists and Anabaptists. By choosing to begin his poem with the Son’s immersion in the River Jordan, Milton reinforces views he expresses in De Doctrina Christiana, his unpublished theological masterwork, and he also offers a controversial vision of the true church.
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