VCU students follow in John Milton’s footsteps — literally

By Amelia Heymann and Drew Thompson

It's one thing to get wrapped up in a work of literature. It's another to actually inhabit the space, and even the methods, of the author.

This past summer, Virginia Commonwealth University students found themselves in "Paradise Lost" author John Milton's world. Sponsored by the Department of English in the College of Humanities and Sciences, the full-credit study abroad trip to Cambridge, England, was led by professor Joshua Eckhardt, Ph.D., who teaches a course on the 17th-century poet and civil servant whose masterpiece retells the biblical story of the fall of man.

During their multiweek trip, students stayed at Christ's College, which Milton attended, where they replicated some of his notebooks and explored his original works - an opportunity for experiential learning beyond the printed page.

"My students have learned most everything about Milton's writing that they would learn from affordable printed books, but they have also learned more: how he drafted poems, how he formed his letters, where his drafts are now," Eckhardt said.

In learning how a scribe made Milton's manuscripts and how printers made first editions, the students even wrote with goose quills and printed with moveable type under the guidance of VCU alums Julian Neuhauser and Meghan Kern, who are based in England and have expertise in literary production.

The trip humanized Milton, pulling back the curtain on a poet whose works reflect life experience that can resonate with modern college students.

"Replicating his drafts, including the words and stanzas that he scratched out, has helped students recognize that he was once young and unsure what he was going to do and struggling with his writing," Eckhardt said. "When we read Milton's poem about turning 23 and feeling like he had accomplished nothing, it helped to see the college that he left in order to move back in with his parents."

Outside the classroom, students enjoyed excursions to Dover Castle, a deeper exploration of Cambridge and even a day and a half in Scotland. Janiya Williams, a senior majoring in medical laboratory sciences and psychology, said the summer course's lessons similarly extended beyond the classroom.

"What stood out to me most was the independence I gained navigating England on my own, traveling to London for a weekend and embracing new cultural experiences," she said. "These moments built resilience and confidence that I know will serve me well as a professional."

Maya Sunderraj, a senior majoring in English, said being immersed in Milton's physical spaces helped her appreciate the weight and historical significance of his work and other writers of the period. She saw the influence everywhere, from the coats of arms associated with colleges the students visited to examining the collective national effort to domesticate the English countryside.

"[Witnessing] that pride for tradition in person helps give so much context to how these ideas formed throughout history," Sunderraj said. "As someone who's lived in a very young town and going to a much younger school, I could go and see things that blew my mind as well. It feels like you're surrounded by art in a lot of places."