Coming To

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"The idea that Eden was a place of discovery from the start is also the motivating insight of Harrison’s Coming To. Before Milton’s time, Harrison argues, 'consciousness' was a moral faculty, interchangeable with what God in book 3 of Paradise Lost calls 'my umpire conscience,' 'place[d] within' fallen humanity 'as a guide.' . . . Milton’s—and Harrison’s—minute attention to the fashioning of each blank verse line pays off in startling insights into the texture of what Milton’s contemporaries were just beginning to call consciousness." – Catherine Nicholson, New York Review of Books

"Joining a growing wave of scientifically minded studies of Renaissance literature, Harrison finds real conceptual work in literature. As the shadow of STEM looms over the humanities, Harrison’s book is a timely reminder that literary scholarship can historically analyse scientific concepts without sacrificing its distinctive concerns for value and form. In fact, he shows the mimetic, particularizing character of literature to be a prerequisite for consciousness to emerge at all. . . . Coming To is a signal contribution to Milton studies and perhaps a watershed in the history of ideas."