‘Milton’s Universe’, an exhibition of images of cosmological scenes from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. In collaboration with literary historian Vladimir Brljak.
The exhibition opens on November 14 and runs until 13 December, and is included with entry to Milton’s Cottage. Located in Chalfont St Giles, the Cottage is Milton’s only surviving residence, and now houses a museum devoted to his life and work. Milton moved here from London to escape the Great Plague of 1665-66, and completed ‘Paradise Lost’ in this house in 1667.
Space travel, other worlds, a malevolent alien race conspiring to destroy humanity – it’s all there in Milton’s sci-fi epic, composed at the height of the original Space Age. Yet although ‘Paradise Lost’ has been illustrated by numerous artists ever since the seventeenth century, and although the poem’s unique cosmology is one of its most visually arresting aspects, much of it has never been depicted. Our images explore this neglected aspect of Milton’s work, both as artworks in their own right and as a contribution to literary history and the history of the cosmological imagination. We are honored to present them in Milton’s Cottage, recapturing Milton’s cosmic vision in the very place in which it came into being. – Vladimir Brljak
