ABSTRACT
This chapter constitutes a project of recovery by introducing contemporary audiences in Milton and African-American studies to two works by black writers, which, prior to this collection, have not been evaluated and examined as bearing the influential presence of England’s Christian and epic poet of liberty. The essay focuses on Elizabeth Josephine Brown’s biography of her father, Wells Brown, the famous fugitive slave, antislavery orator, and novelist, whose travel narrative contains numerous references and allusions to Milton. The essay recognizes Brown’s Biography as a Miltonic brand of living black history, a literary account of a courageous figure in African-American culture, who, in addition to surpassing Milton in heroic statesmanship, serves as an emulative model to remember beyond the long nineteenth century in ‘aftertimes’. Two moments of Miltonic engagement in Biography serve as interpretive focal points for exploring Brown’s creative approach to rewriting Milton. Both moments articulate a textual system of Miltonic engagement that particularly announces Milton’s influential presence in the work through numerous rhetorical silences. As such, this recovery project, concerning two of Milton’s unattributed heirs in black tradition, underscores the rhetorical prowess of a virtually unknown daughter in African-American tradition. Placing emphasis on Elizabeth Josephine Brown’s rhetorical rewriting of Milton, the essay examines her literary efforts to ensure her father’s heroic kleos would live on in the hearts and minds of her racial kin into perpetuity, and at the expense of Milton’s reputation, especially.
