Book contents
- John Milton in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Visual Culture
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- John Milton in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Visual Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Prophetic Temporality and Apocalyptic Grief
- Chapter 2 Passive Power and Vortical Forms
- Chapter 3 Cleaving Bodies and Erotic Liberty
- Chapter 4 Edenic Wessex and Handed Moments
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Chapter 3 - Cleaving Bodies and Erotic Liberty
John Milton, A. C. Swinburne and Intermedial Ekphrasis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2026
Book contents
- John Milton in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Visual Culture
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- John Milton in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Visual Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Prophetic Temporality and Apocalyptic Grief
- Chapter 2 Passive Power and Vortical Forms
- Chapter 3 Cleaving Bodies and Erotic Liberty
- Chapter 4 Edenic Wessex and Handed Moments
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
Chapter 3 explores A. C. Swinburne’s intermedial engagement with Milton. In Swinburne’s republican poetry, Milton emerges as a significant figure associated with virtue and freedom; both poets link questions of liberty to bodily violence. The chapter discusses Milton’s Areopagitica, the divorce tracts and the Piedmont sonnet alongside Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, before turning to Paradise Lost. The chapter draws on queer readings of Milton’s epic to argue that Milton’s erotic, androgynous universe informs Swinburne’s anti-theistic poetic project, particularly in its treatment of bodily indeterminacy and the figure of the hermaphrodite. Swinburne’s reading of Milton is considered alongside his reading of Sappho and Charles Baudelaire, as well as William Blake: Swinburne alludes to erotic moments in Paradise Lost at the same time as he transforms William Blake’s illustrations of the poem, in an act of commingling presented as an example of Swinburne’s ‘intermedial ekphrasis’.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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