Laura Knoppers
Department Chair
George N. Shuster Professor of English Literature
Areas of study
- Early Modern
- Gender and Sexuality
- Religion and Literature
Education
Ph.D. and M.A., Harvard University
B.A., Calvin College
Research and teaching interests
Seventeenth-century British literature, Milton, early modern women writers, gender in history, English Revolution, poetry and poetics
Biography
Laura L. Knoppers’s primary research focus is on Milton’s works and life in religious, political, and cultural context. She has written books on Milton’s oppositional poetry in Restoration England and on Milton’s Eve in relation to courtly representations of marriage and family; her award-winning scholarly edition of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes broke new ground in book history and the history of reading, and she served as editor of the flagship journal Milton Studies from 2009-2018. Knoppers also teaches and writes about transatlantic early modern women writers, especially Margaret Cavendish. She is currently writing a book on luxury, cultural politics, and the court of Charles II and editing the seventeenth-century volume of the Oxford History of Poetry in English. A regularly-invited lecturer in national and international venues, Knoppers has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Folger Shakespeare Institute.
Representative publications
- The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution. Editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Politicizing Domesticity from Henrietta Maria to Milton’s Eve. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing. Editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait, and Print, 1645-1661. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Historicizing Milton: Spectacle, Power, and Poetry in Restoration England. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
