Faithful Labourers: a Reception History of Paradise Lost, 1667-1970: Volume I: Style and Genre; Volume II: Interpretative Issues

Faithful Labourers: a Reception History of Paradise Lost, 1667-1970: Volume I: Style and Genre; Volume II: Interpretative Issues
ISBN-10
0198778686
ISBN-13
9780198778684
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
878
Language
English
Published
2017-02-23
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
John Leonard

Description

"Volume one attends to questions of style and genre. The first three chapters examine the longstanding debate about Milton's grand style and the question of whether it forfeits the native resources of English. Early critics saw Milton as the pre-eminent poet of 'apt Numbers' and 'fit quantity', whose verse is 'apt' in the specific sense of achieving harmony between sound and sense; twentieth-century anti-Miltonists faulted Milton for divorcing sound from sense; late twentieth-century theorists have denied the possibility that sound can 'enact' sense. These are extreme changes of critical perception, and yet the story of how they came about has never been told. These chronological chapters explain the roots of these changes and, in doing so, engage with the enduring theoretical question of whether it is possible for sound to enact sense"--

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