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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.
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