Faculty Directory
Laura Knoppers
Professor of English
Contact:
252 Burrowes Building
University Park, PA 16802
Office Phone: 814-865-5640
llk6@psu.edu
Office Hours:
T 2:30-4 and W 2-3:30
Educational History:
Ph.D., M.A. Harvard University
B.A. Calvin College
Research Interests:
John Milton; seventeenth-century literature, politics, religion, and visual arts; Oliver Cromwell; Henrietta Maria; early modern women's writing; literature and the English Revolution; domesticity, gender, and literature; print culture and the history of the book; textual scholarship and scholarly editing; Shakespeare
Major Publications: Books
- Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009)
- The 1671 Poems, Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, Volume 2 of The Complete Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Thomas Corns and Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
- Milton in Popular Culture , edited with Gregory Semenza (Palgrave, 2006)
- Monstrous Bodies / Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe , edited with Joan Landes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)
- Puritanism and Its Discontents, edited collection (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003)
- Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print, 1645-1661 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
- Historicizing Milton : Spectacle, Power, and Poetry in Restoration England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994)
Books under contract and in progress
- Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, scheduled for publication, 2011)
- Divulging Household Privacies: The Politics of Domesticity from the Caroline Court to Paradise Lost (monograph in progress)
Publications: Journal Articles
“Revell Like Belshazzar: Censorship, Biblical Allusion, and Milton’s 1671 Poems,” Milton Studies 48 (2008), 113-34.
“Opening the Queen’s Closet: Henrietta Maria, Elizabeth Cromwell, and the Politics of Cookery,” Renaissance Quarterly 60(Summer 2007), 464-99.
“Satan and the Papacy in Paradise Regained.” Milton Studies 42 (2002), 68-85. Reprinted in Harold Bloom, ed. Satan. Bloom’s Major Literary Characters (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005), 219-38.
"'Sing Old Noll the Brewer': Royalist Satire and Social Inversion, 1648-1660," The Seventeenth Century 15.1 (2000), 32-51.
"The Politics of Portraiture: Oliver Cromwell and the Plain Style," Renaissance Quarterly 51.4 (1998), 1283-1319.
"(En)gendering Shame: Measure for Measure and the Spectacles of Power," English Literary Renaissance 23.3 (1993), 450-71.
"Paradise Regained and the Politics of Martyrdom," Modern Philology 90.2 (1992), 200-219. Reprinted in Critical Essays on John Milton, ed. Christopher Kendrick (New York: G. K. Hall, 1995), 95-114.
"Rewriting the Protestant Ethic: Discipline and Love in Paradise Lost," ELH [English Literary History] 58.3 (1991), 545-59.
"'This So Horrid Spectacle': Samson Agonistes and the Execution of the Regicides," English Literary Renaissance 20.3 (1990), 487-504.
"'Sung and Proverb'd for a Fool': Samson Agonistes and Solomon's Harlot," Milton Studies 26 (1990), 239-52.
"'Happy Nuptial League': Milton's Covenantal Concept of Marriage," The CEA Critic 48.4 / 49.1 (1986), 55-64.
Publications: Chapters in Books
“Consuming Nations: Milton and Luxury,” in Early Modern Nationalism and Milton’s England, ed. David Loewenstein and Paul Stevens (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 331-55.
“Now let us play’: Paradise Lost and Pleasure Gardens in Restoration London,” in Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books: Essays on the 1667 Edition, ed. Michael Lieb and John Shawcross (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007), 123-40.
“Milton versus King Charles: Recreating the Debate of Eikonoklastes,” in Approaches to Teaching Milton’s Shorter Poetry and Prose, ed. Peter Herman (Modern Language Association, 2007), 222-27.
“Cavalier Poetry and Civil War,” in Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion, ed. Patrick Cheney, Andrew Hadfield, and Garrett Sullivan (Oxford University Press, 2007), 289-301.
“Miltonic Loneliness and Monstrous Desire from Paradise Lost to Bride of Frankenstein,” in Milton in Popular Culture, ed. Laura Knoppers and Gregory Semenza (Palgrave, 2006), 99-112.
“’The Antichrist, the Babilon, the Great Dragon’: Oliver Cromwell, Andrew Marvell, and the Apocalyptic Monstrous,” in Monstrous Bodies / Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe, ed. Laura Knoppers and Joan Landes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 93-126; 263-69.
“Imagining the Death of the King: Milton, Charles I, and Anamorphic Art,” in Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton, ed. Elizabeth J. Bellamy, Patrick Cheney, and Michael Schoenfeldt (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 151-70.
“Paradise Regained and the Politics of Martyrdom,” Reprinted in Bloom’s Biocritiques: John Milton, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003), 11-34.
"Milton's Late Political Prose, 1659-1660," in A Blackwell Companion to Milton, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 309-26.
"Noll's Nose: Body Politics in Cromwellian England,” in Form and Reform in the English Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ed. Mary Thomas Crane and Amy Boesky (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000), 21-44.
"Reviving the Martyr-King: Charles I as Jacobite Icon," in The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 263-87.
"Milton's The Readie and Easie Way and the English Jeremiad," in Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose, ed. David Loewenstein and James Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 213-25.
Book Chapters Forthcoming or in Progress:
- “England’s Case: Contexts of the 1671 Poems,” in Oxford Handbook to Milton, ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith. 25 pp. typescript. (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2009).
- “Historicizing Gender or The Queen’s Ill Body in The King’s Cabinet Opened,” in Rethinking Historicism: Essays in Honor of Annabel Patterson, ed. Ann Baynes Coiro and Thomas Fulton (in progress).
Publications: Book Reviews
Over twenty book reviews and book review essays in such journals as American Historical Review, Reviews in History, Albion , Renaissance Quarterly , Religion and Literature, JEGP, Milton Quarterly, Modern Philology, Clio, Review of English Studies, Shakespeare Quarterly , Christianity and Literature , and Seventeenth-Century News
Honors and Grants:
- Resident Scholar, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Penn State, fall 2009
- Katherine Pantzer Fellowship in the British Book Trades, Bibliographical Society of America , 2006.
- Class of 1933 Distinction in the Humanities, College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State, 2003.
- NEH Challenge Grant (with Yvonne Gaudelius), $500,000, for the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, 2002
- Short-term Fellow, Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies, Penn State, 1997-99.
- Research Fellowship, Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies, Penn State , 1996.
- Pew Charitable Trust Fund Fellowship, 1995-96.
- Helena Rubenstein Endowed Faculty Fellowship, Penn State , 1993.
- Folger Shakespeare Library Short-Term Resident Fellowship, 1989.
- National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 1989.
National Professional Service
- President of the Milton Society of America , 2006; Vice-President, 2005
- Chair, Northeast Milton Seminar, 2006-
- Reviewer, National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant Program, 2004
- Member of Seventeenth-Century Literature Division Committee, MLA 2001-2006
- Editorial Board, Yale Milton Encyclopedia , gen. ed. Thomas Corns, 2002-
- Elected member, Northeast Milton Seminar, 1998-
- National Advisory Board, Pew Charitable Trust Fund Fellowship Program, 1997-1999
- Member of Executive Board, Milton Society of America , 1993-95
