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and digital materials that adapt and appropriate Milton in our own time” (15).
They insist, in fact, that “this process of bold adaptation, of appropriating
canonical texts in surprising new contexts, is itself Miltonic. To neglect
rewritings of Milton is to neglect Milton as a rewriter and the importance of the
books, music, film, and graphic arts that make him a vital, living part of today’s
culture” (16). That said, Knoppers and Colon Semenza divide Milton in Popular
Culture into five parts that cover topics as diverse as: Milton in Fantasy
Literature, Milton in Horror Film, Milton in Comedic Film, Milton and Social
Justice, and Milton in Modem Technologies. A sampling of the discrete pieces
included within these sections calls attention to: '"His Dark Materials, Paradise
Lost, and the Common Reader,” “Miltonic Loneliness and Monstrous Desire
from Paradise Lost to Bride of Frankenstein,'^ "National Lampoon's Animal
House and the Fraternity of Milton,” “Malcolm X and African-American
Literary Appropriations of Paradise Lost," and “Milton and the Web.” An
“Afterward” by the ever-tendentious Milton scholar extraordinaire, Stanley Fish,
offers an intriguing counterpoint, as well as a suitable complement, to Milton in
Popular Culture as a whole.
Knoppers and Colon Semenza also write: “As readers, scholars, and
teachers, we best capture the spirit of Milton’s own artistic enterprise by
embracing the power of popular appropriations—things attempted yet in prose
or rhyme, digital or film” (16). Milton in Popular Culture succeeds brilliantly in
not only exploring, but proving this point. Indeed, this work stands as an
invaluable resource for anyone seeking a fresh take on Milton and his poetry,
and/or an effective means of uniting the myriad insights of the literary-historical
with all the relevance of the contemporary and the popular in a pedagogically,
and theoretically sound, manner.
Anthony Guy Patricia, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
The Things Themselves: Phenomenology
and the Return to the Everyday
H. Peter Steeves
State University of New York Press, 2006
Some books tell it like it is; others as it should be. This one does both.
Steeves is a philosopher, but he doesn’t write like one. Nor is he interested in the
usual topics that make professionalism as safe as it is boring. Instead, he takes us
to meet our own bodies, minds, and souls, using Disneyland and the Las Vegas
Strip to chart undiscovered country. We learn that we are animals, not much
different from Bigfoot or King Lear; that life on other planets is possible, so
long as it’s not based on private property, military power, and conspicuous