First published in 1980. Paradise Lost was once a favourite text for family reading; today it is confined to the educational system, which treats it as an object to be investigated rather than a subject that demands response. Professor Hunter writes inevitably for an audience of literary students, but he invites them to consider Paradise Lost as a text that must be enjoyed before it can be explained. He understands the need to explain complexities, but is mainly concerned with the onward flow of our engagement with an ancient poem. Milton's narrative technique is explored as a system which both encourages and frustrates our native sense of story. His poetic power is shown to grow from our assent to its brilliant evocation of "as if" fictions. Milton is a master of audience manipulation, of dramatic tension and intellectual paradox. These characteristics are described in the context of the task the poem sets itself to tell the untellable and describe what no man has ever seen. The power of Milton's art is traced through his rehandling of Homer and Virgil and in his daringly individual fidelity to scripture. Professor Hunter does not try to smooth away the contradictions inherent in Milton's ambition to write an English classical Christian epic. He rather stresses the contradictions as cues to a properly alert reading. And this is what the book aims at above all a response to Paradise Lost which is alert to poetry and unintimidated by scholarship.

First published in 1980. Paradise Lost was once a favourite text for family reading; today it is confined to the educational system, which treats it as an object to be investigated rather than a subject that demands response. Professor Hunter writes inevitably for an audience of literary students, but he invites them to consider Paradise Lost as a text that must be enjoyed before it can be explained. He understands the need to explain complexities, but is mainly concerned with the onward flow of our engagement with an ancient poem. Milton's narrative technique is explored as a system which both encourages and frustrates our native sense of story. His poetic power is shown to grow from our assent to its brilliant evocation of "as if" fictions. Milton is a master of audience manipulation, of dramatic tension and intellectual paradox. These characteristics are described in the context of the task the poem sets itself to tell the untellable and describe what no man has ever seen. The power of Milton's art is traced through his rehandling of Homer and Virgil and in his daringly individual fidelity to scripture. Professor Hunter does not try to smooth away the contradictions inherent in Milton's ambition to write an English classical Christian epic. He rather stresses the contradictions as cues to a properly alert reading. And this is what the book aims at above all a response to Paradise Lost which is alert to poetry and unintimidated by scholarship.

First published in 1962, John Lyly marks a shift from the traditional focus on John Lyly as the originator of the strange stylistic craze called Euphuism, and as the dramatist from whose plays Shakespeare deigned to borrow some of his earliest and least attractive comic devices to an author whose works are excellent in themselves. Critics have suggested that an independent reading of Euphues, and more especially of the plays, reveals an attractive delicacy of wit and a refined power of linguistic filigree quite independent of his influence on others or his capacity to illustrate the curious tastes of our forefathers. The eight plays - his most mature artistic achievements - are analysed in detail to bring out their relation to the tradition of court drama. A final chapter compares Lyly and Shakespeare in an attempt to show in operation the different traditions which the book has discussed. This book will appeal to students of English literature, drama and literary history.

This is the finest critical edition of the two earliest comedies written by John Lyly. The text of "Sappho and Phao" is based on a first edition that was never before recognized as such. The text of "Campaspe" has also been take from early editions. The substantial introductions and commentary notes give a new view of Lyly's learning, style, wit and theatrical genius, along with the presentation of the battle of the sexes that offered such vital models for the early Shakespeare. The editors have worked to ensure that the two plays in this joint edition will compliment and illuminate each other. The plays are set in their historical, literary and theatrical context. With modernized spelling, explanations of difficult passages and extensive footnotes, this book will be a welcome addition for anyone interested in English Renaissance drama.

Although Shakespeare is acknowledged to be one of the greatest masters of language the world has known, there are very few books among the thousands devoted to his work which attempt to deal directly with how he uses language. No single book could deal with the 'infinite variety' of tone, diction, imagery, rhythm, and so on which together make up Shakespeare's different styles. But the editors of this book asked a number of distinguished Shakespearian scholars to give an account of what seemed to him or her some particularly interesting and important feature of Shakespeare's use of language. Using a quotation from Shakespeare as a starting point, some authors have focussed their discussion on individual plays; others have ranged more widely under general headings, such as bombast, rhetoric or paradox. The cumulative effect will enable readers, students and theatre-goers to come to a greater awareness of the richness and subtlety of 'Shakespeare's styles'. The three editors are senior Shakespeare critics and scholars and they have all been close associates of Professor Kenneth Muir. It was to honour the life-long devotion of Kenneth Muir to the study of Shakespeare, and to pay a tribute to the inspiration and help which he has given to those who have worked with him, that his new book was devised.

Shakespeare is usually set apart from his contemporaries, in kind no less than quality. This book sees Elizabethan drama as drawn together by a shared need to deal with contradictory pressures from heterogeneous audiences, censorious authorities, profit driven managers, and authors looking for classic status and social esteem. Hunter follows the compromises and contradictions of the Elizabethan repertory, examining how Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists were able to move easily from vulgar realism to poetic transcendence.