"A Life Beyond Life"

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Milton was born four hundred years ago in 1608. The University of Queensland’s symposium on Milton in Intellectual and Cultural History culminates in a day of celebration at Duchesne College on Sunday 17 August.

Milton fervently hoped that he “might perhaps leave something to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.” So this will be a celebratory day of public readings from Milton’s works. Participants include past and present students and faculty, visiting scholars, poets, teachers, actors, and lawyers. Among the readers will be Australian poet and novelist David Malouf, former High Court Justice Ian Callinan, and Milton scholars Diane McColley (Rutgers University), Stephen Fallon (University of Notre Dame), and John Hale (University of Otago). The day of readings will show that Milton indeed achieved a “life beyond life,” and that he is – as Wordsworth once hoped – still “living at this hour.”

The program will feature selections from the whole span of Milton’s writing career: in the morning from L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, sonnets, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes; and in the afternoon from Paradise Lost.

Morning (10 am – 12 pm)

Inspired “Utterance and Knowledge”: Milton 1628-1671      

Afternoon (12.45 pm – 4 pm)

“Things Unattempted Yet in Prose or Rhyme”: Paradise Lost (1667, 2nd edition 1674)

“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life” —Areopagitica (1644)