Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism

It *identifies the early reception of Paradise Lost* as a site of contest over the place of literature in political and religious controversy and explains how it prompted its earliest readers and critics to innovate new critical strategies

Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism identifies the early reception of Paradise Lost as a site of contest over the place of literature in political and religious controversy. Milton's earliest readers and critics (Dryden, Addison, Dennis, Hume, and Bentley) confronted a poem and author at odds with the prevailing culture and the revanchist conservatism of the restored monarchy. Grappling with the epic required navigating Milton's reputation as a "fanatick" who had called in print for Charles I's execution, inveighed openly against monarchy on the eve of Charles II's return, and held heretical views on the trinity, baptism, and divorce. Harper argues that foundational figures in English literary criticism rose to this challenge by innovating new ways of reading: producing creative (and subversive) rewritings of Paradise Lost, articulating new theories of the sublime, explaining the poem in the first substantial body of annotations for an English vernacular text, and by pioneering early forms of textual criticism and editing.

Autorentext

David A. Harper is the former Professor and Head of the Department of English and Philosophy at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point. He is now teaching in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, UK.

Klappentext

It identifies the early reception of Paradise Lost as a site of contest over the place of literature in political and religious controversy and explains how it prompted its earliest readers and critics to innovate new critical strategies

Inhalt

Acknowledgements

Frequently Cited Works

Introduction: Birth Narratives

Chapter 1

Milton's Profaned Pen: Paradise Lost and the Political Anxiety of the Restoration

Chapter 2

"Sad Conclusions:" Paradise Lost, John Dryden, and Political Genre

Chapter 3

"So Bold in the Design:" John Dennis and the Sublime Paradise Lost

Chapter 4

"The Merit of Being the First:" Jacob Tonson's 1695 Paradise Lost and Hume's Annotations

Chapter 5

The Great Explainer: Addison's Return to Paradise Lost

Chapter 6

"Such Scorn of Enemies:" Richard Bentley's Paradise Lost

Bibliography

Index