Clemson English professor’s book earns international award from The Milton Society of America

Alumni Distinguished Professor Lee Morrissey’s most recent book won the James Holly Hanford Book Award. With a prestigious list of previous awardees, the recognition shows the depth of humanities scholarship at Clemson.

Lee Morrissey, Alumni Distinguished Professor in the Department of English, was awarded the James Holly Hanford Book Award by The Milton Society of America for his new book Milton’s Ireland: Royalism, Republicanism and the Question of Pluralism.

The James Holly Hanford Book Award recognizes a distinguished book on Milton. The award boasts a history of accomplished awardees, with authors across the globe, from Ivy League institutions in the U.S. to Oxford and other universities in the U.K.

“Award-winning international-level work in the humanities can be and is being done at Clemson,” Morrissey said, reflecting on what the award means to him. “Another meaningful aspect of the award is how it implicitly recognizes three decades of teaching and learning about Milton with students, nearly always undergraduate students, at Clemson.”

A longtime Milton scholar, the origins for Morrissey’s most recent publication go back to childhood.

As a Boston-native with Irish origins, Morrissey grew up hearing about Irish history. He first encountered Milton’s writings in college, but it was a trip to Ireland as a Fulbright Scholar that began to raise the questions his new book explores: how did Milton influence Ireland? And, how did Ireland influence Milton?

Milton’s Ireland: Royalism, Republicanism and the Question of Pluralism places Milton in a historical context that prior scholarship on the author has yet to explore in a book-length project. Morrissey emphasizes Milton’s role as a political figure emerging in response to the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, in which Milton—as a member of the republican government—was tasked with publicly explaining the aims of the invasion to the English people.

And, 300 years after Cromwell’s arrival, the Irish Free State has declared itself a republic, which is the very hope that Milton had had for both England and Ireland.

Since publication, critics have praised Morrissey’s work.

• “‘Milton’s Ireland makes valuable inroads into the study of early modern Ireland’s cultural plurality, its complex relations to Britain, and the tensions operative in the British Isles… In this expertly researched and nuanced investigation, Morrissey also boldly demonstrates how Ireland challenges Milton’s sense of Englishness.” — Elizabeth Sauer, FRSC, Professor of English, Brock University, Canada
• “This is a major work that resituates one of England’s most canonical authors in relation to the conception of Britain; the reality of Ireland; and the forces of nation-building and colonial expansion that underpin the seismic shifts taking place in seventeenth-century Europe.” — Andrew Hadfield, FBA, Professor of English, University of Sussex

As he continues teaching, Morrissey hopes to apply his book to the classroom and draw out connections between Milton’s writings and Irish thought.

“I read, and teach, 20th- and 21st-century Irish literature, in which Milton appears regularly as a poet but without any seeming awareness of the role he played in the history of Ireland.  I hope my book is part of a process of changing that.”