What in Me Is Dark tells the unlikely story of how Milton's epic poem came to haunt political struggles over the past four centuries, including the many different, unexpected, often contradictory ways in which it has been read, interpreted, and appropriated through time and across the world, and to revolutionary ends.
Enlightening and enthusiastic ... Offers an expansive history of the epic’s reception as it was interpreted and then put to use ... A writer like Reade offers not commandments for living but interpretations for analysis, and if that seems less authoritative then that’s precisely the point.
Paradise Lost can still be illuminated — and, indeed, illuminating — if we approach it with care, and What in Me Is Dark shows us how ... This book-by-book approach could easily become dull, but in Reade’s hands it is a delight. He possesses a sharp eye for the details of Milton’s verse and his writing crackles with imaginative energy.
Reade is an academic, but his book is mercifully unlike most academic works. It is witty and sardonic ... Reade writes himself into the book, not as a sleuth-researcher nor a lofty pedagogue. He is sensitive and shockable.
