Overview

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.

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9781032232409

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David Harper’s Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Scholarship is an original piece of work based on rigorous archival research, on history of the book methodology, and on close reading. It is a book that reshapes our understanding of the history of English literary criticism and scholarship by illuminating how Paradise Lost was interpreted and annotated in the Restoration and its aftermath. This book makes a major contribution to scholarly work on the poem’s reception history, while deepening our understanding of the discipline of English literary scholarship and criticism. Scholars and students of Milton will greatly benefit from reading Harper’s book, as will anyone interested in the making of English literary scholarship. -David Loewenstein, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Penn State-University Park, US

Author Information

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.

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