Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton

Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton

Author: E. Bellamy

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2003-09-29

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0230522661

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Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton assembles a collection of essays on the compelling topic of death in two monumental representatives of the early modern canon, Edmund Spenser and John Milton. The volume draws its impetus from the conviction that death is a central, yet curiously understudied, preoccupation for Spenser and Milton, contending that death - in all its early modern reformations and deformations - is an indispensable backdrop for any attempt to articulate the relationship between Spenser and Milton.


Book Synopsis Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton by : E. Bellamy

Download or read book Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton written by E. Bellamy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-09-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton assembles a collection of essays on the compelling topic of death in two monumental representatives of the early modern canon, Edmund Spenser and John Milton. The volume draws its impetus from the conviction that death is a central, yet curiously understudied, preoccupation for Spenser and Milton, contending that death - in all its early modern reformations and deformations - is an indispensable backdrop for any attempt to articulate the relationship between Spenser and Milton.


“Disdeining life, desiring leaue to die”. Spenser and the Psychology of Despair

“Disdeining life, desiring leaue to die”. Spenser and the Psychology of Despair

Author: Paola Baseotto

Publisher: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press

Published: 2012-02-10

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 3838255674

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Paola Baseotto’s important study stresses death’s ubiquity as a concept in Spenser’s works, always present in intimate relation to life, whether in the recurring, disturbing, figures of “deathwishers,” characters who seem to belong as much to the dead as the living, or as a perspective, challenging both characters and readers, to reassess their own apprehension of death and the way in which it shapes our lives. Baseotto’s analyses of Spenser’s “deathwishers” and “living dead” focus our attention on some of the most compelling and distinctive images in Spenser’s work, illuminating our understanding of their power and significance through a combination of detailed attention to language and context, and a thoroughly informed understanding of contemporaneous religious ideas and attitudes. Through close and sensitive study of Spenser’s writing from The Shepheardes Calender, through The Faerie Queene, to such little discussed poems as The Ruines of Time and Daphnaida in Complaints, Baseotto establishes the centrality, the subtlety and the distinctiveness of Spenser’s figuring of death. Baseotto’s study offers us a new and illuminating understanding of an aspect of Spenser’s writing that is fundamental, but which has been strangely neglected in recent decades. – Elizabeth Heale (Senior Lecturer, University of Reading)Author of The Faerie Queene: A Reader’s Guide (Cambridge University Press, 1987, 1999) and Autobiography and Authorship in Renaissance Verse (Palgrave, 2003).Exhaustive and succinct, rigorous and readable, Baseotto examines Spenser’s obsession with death, and shows us what a remarkable, independent and surprisingly modern sensibility he had. Here is a Spenser who engages our sympathies with unexpected intensity.– Tim Parks (Lecturer, IULM University, Milan) Novelist and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.


Book Synopsis “Disdeining life, desiring leaue to die”. Spenser and the Psychology of Despair by : Paola Baseotto

Download or read book “Disdeining life, desiring leaue to die”. Spenser and the Psychology of Despair written by Paola Baseotto and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-02-10 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paola Baseotto’s important study stresses death’s ubiquity as a concept in Spenser’s works, always present in intimate relation to life, whether in the recurring, disturbing, figures of “deathwishers,” characters who seem to belong as much to the dead as the living, or as a perspective, challenging both characters and readers, to reassess their own apprehension of death and the way in which it shapes our lives. Baseotto’s analyses of Spenser’s “deathwishers” and “living dead” focus our attention on some of the most compelling and distinctive images in Spenser’s work, illuminating our understanding of their power and significance through a combination of detailed attention to language and context, and a thoroughly informed understanding of contemporaneous religious ideas and attitudes. Through close and sensitive study of Spenser’s writing from The Shepheardes Calender, through The Faerie Queene, to such little discussed poems as The Ruines of Time and Daphnaida in Complaints, Baseotto establishes the centrality, the subtlety and the distinctiveness of Spenser’s figuring of death. Baseotto’s study offers us a new and illuminating understanding of an aspect of Spenser’s writing that is fundamental, but which has been strangely neglected in recent decades. – Elizabeth Heale (Senior Lecturer, University of Reading)Author of The Faerie Queene: A Reader’s Guide (Cambridge University Press, 1987, 1999) and Autobiography and Authorship in Renaissance Verse (Palgrave, 2003).Exhaustive and succinct, rigorous and readable, Baseotto examines Spenser’s obsession with death, and shows us what a remarkable, independent and surprisingly modern sensibility he had. Here is a Spenser who engages our sympathies with unexpected intensity.– Tim Parks (Lecturer, IULM University, Milan) Novelist and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.


John Milton

John Milton

Author: Kristin A. Pruitt

Publisher: Associated University Presse

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781575911236

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"These ten essays, originally presented at the 2005 Conference on John Milton, sponsored by Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, were selected for inclusion in this collection on the basis of merit rather than theme, focus, or critical approach. Nonetheless, they all suggest, albeit from disparate perspectives, ways in which careful attention to Milton's language, to his "reasoning words," can offer a colorful palette of choices for the contemporary reader."--BOOK JACKET.


Book Synopsis John Milton by : Kristin A. Pruitt

Download or read book John Milton written by Kristin A. Pruitt and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2008 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "These ten essays, originally presented at the 2005 Conference on John Milton, sponsored by Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, were selected for inclusion in this collection on the basis of merit rather than theme, focus, or critical approach. Nonetheless, they all suggest, albeit from disparate perspectives, ways in which careful attention to Milton's language, to his "reasoning words," can offer a colorful palette of choices for the contemporary reader."--BOOK JACKET.


Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England

Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England

Author: David Loewenstein

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2008-11-29

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 144269100X

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Although the poet John Milton was a politically active citizen and polemicist during the English Revolution, little has been written on Milton's concept of nationalism. The first book to examine major aspects of Milton's nationalism in its full complexity and diversity, Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England features fifteen essays by leading international scholars who illuminate the significance of the nation as a powerful imaginative construct in his writings. Informed by a range of critical methods, the essays examine the diverse - sometimes conflicting - and strained expressions of nationhood and national identity in Milton's writings, to address the literary, ethnic, and civic dimensions of his nationalism. These essays enrich our understanding of the imaginative achievements, religious polemics, and political tensions of Milton's poetry and prose, as well as the impact of his writings in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England also illuminates the formation of early-modern nationalism, as well as the complexities of seventeenth-century English politics and religion.


Book Synopsis Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England by : David Loewenstein

Download or read book Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England written by David Loewenstein and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2008-11-29 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the poet John Milton was a politically active citizen and polemicist during the English Revolution, little has been written on Milton's concept of nationalism. The first book to examine major aspects of Milton's nationalism in its full complexity and diversity, Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England features fifteen essays by leading international scholars who illuminate the significance of the nation as a powerful imaginative construct in his writings. Informed by a range of critical methods, the essays examine the diverse - sometimes conflicting - and strained expressions of nationhood and national identity in Milton's writings, to address the literary, ethnic, and civic dimensions of his nationalism. These essays enrich our understanding of the imaginative achievements, religious polemics, and political tensions of Milton's poetry and prose, as well as the impact of his writings in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Early Modern Nationalism and Milton's England also illuminates the formation of early-modern nationalism, as well as the complexities of seventeenth-century English politics and religion.


The Secret Wound

The Secret Wound

Author: Marion Wells

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2007-01-03

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780804767446

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This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. The book argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. Unlike many recent studies of romance, this book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. Wells begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) from its earliest roots in Greek and Arabic medicine to its translation into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing on this detailed historical material, the book considers three important early modern romances: Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief consideration of the significance of this literary and medical legacy for Romanticism. Most broadly, the interdisciplinary nature of this study allows the author to investigate the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in substantially new ways.


Book Synopsis The Secret Wound by : Marion Wells

Download or read book The Secret Wound written by Marion Wells and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-03 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. The book argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. Unlike many recent studies of romance, this book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. Wells begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) from its earliest roots in Greek and Arabic medicine to its translation into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing on this detailed historical material, the book considers three important early modern romances: Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief consideration of the significance of this literary and medical legacy for Romanticism. Most broadly, the interdisciplinary nature of this study allows the author to investigate the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in substantially new ways.


John Milton, Radical Politics, and Biblical Republicanism

John Milton, Radical Politics, and Biblical Republicanism

Author: Walter S. H. Lim

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9780874139402

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In analyzing how Milton reads and appropriates different biblical texts to give shape to his republican vision, this book also assesses his significance to the development of early modern English political thought, his conception of the English nation, and finally, his response to pressures exerted by a secular modernity grounded on international commercial activities."--Jacket.


Book Synopsis John Milton, Radical Politics, and Biblical Republicanism by : Walter S. H. Lim

Download or read book John Milton, Radical Politics, and Biblical Republicanism written by Walter S. H. Lim and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In analyzing how Milton reads and appropriates different biblical texts to give shape to his republican vision, this book also assesses his significance to the development of early modern English political thought, his conception of the English nation, and finally, his response to pressures exerted by a secular modernity grounded on international commercial activities."--Jacket.


Milton's Inward Liberty

Milton's Inward Liberty

Author: Filippo Falcone

Publisher: James Clarke & Company

Published: 2014-12-25

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 022790379X

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What is true liberty? Milton labors to provide an answer, and his answer becomes the ruling principle behind both prose works and poetry. The scholarly community has largely read liberty in Milton retrospectively through the spectacles of liberalism. In so doing, it has failed to emphasize that the Christian paradigm of liberty speaks of an inward microcosm, a place of freedom whose precincts are defined by man's fellowship with God. All other forms of freedom relate to the outer world, be they freedom to choose the good, absence of external constraint and oppression, or freedom of alternatives. None of these is true liberty, but they are pursued by Milton in concert with true liberty. Milton's Inward Liberty attempts to address the bearing of true liberty in Milton's work through the magnifying glass of seventeenth-century theology.


Book Synopsis Milton's Inward Liberty by : Filippo Falcone

Download or read book Milton's Inward Liberty written by Filippo Falcone and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2014-12-25 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is true liberty? Milton labors to provide an answer, and his answer becomes the ruling principle behind both prose works and poetry. The scholarly community has largely read liberty in Milton retrospectively through the spectacles of liberalism. In so doing, it has failed to emphasize that the Christian paradigm of liberty speaks of an inward microcosm, a place of freedom whose precincts are defined by man's fellowship with God. All other forms of freedom relate to the outer world, be they freedom to choose the good, absence of external constraint and oppression, or freedom of alternatives. None of these is true liberty, but they are pursued by Milton in concert with true liberty. Milton's Inward Liberty attempts to address the bearing of true liberty in Milton's work through the magnifying glass of seventeenth-century theology.


Milton and Gender

Milton and Gender

Author: Catherine Gimelli Martin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-01-06

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1139442813

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Milton's contempt for women has been accepted since Samuel Johnson's famous Life of the poet. Subsequent critics have long debated whether Milton's writings were anti- or pro-feminine, a problem further complicated by his advocacy of 'divorce on demand' for men. Milton and Gender re-evaluates these claims of Milton as anti-feminist, pointing out that he was not seen that way by contemporaries, but espoused startlingly fresh ideas of marriage and the relations between the sexes. The first two sections of specially commissioned essays in this volume investigate the representations of gender and sexuality in Milton's prose and verse. In the final section, the responses of female readers ranging from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf to lesser-known artists and revolutionaries are brought to bear on Milton's afterlife and reputation. Together, these essays provide a critical perspective on the contested issues of femininity and masculinity, marriage and divorce in Milton's work.


Book Synopsis Milton and Gender by : Catherine Gimelli Martin

Download or read book Milton and Gender written by Catherine Gimelli Martin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-06 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Milton's contempt for women has been accepted since Samuel Johnson's famous Life of the poet. Subsequent critics have long debated whether Milton's writings were anti- or pro-feminine, a problem further complicated by his advocacy of 'divorce on demand' for men. Milton and Gender re-evaluates these claims of Milton as anti-feminist, pointing out that he was not seen that way by contemporaries, but espoused startlingly fresh ideas of marriage and the relations between the sexes. The first two sections of specially commissioned essays in this volume investigate the representations of gender and sexuality in Milton's prose and verse. In the final section, the responses of female readers ranging from George Eliot and Virginia Woolf to lesser-known artists and revolutionaries are brought to bear on Milton's afterlife and reputation. Together, these essays provide a critical perspective on the contested issues of femininity and masculinity, marriage and divorce in Milton's work.


The Oxford Handbook of Milton

The Oxford Handbook of Milton

Author: Nicholas McDowell

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-11-19

Total Pages: 752

ISBN-13: 0191607304

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Four hundred years after his birth, John Milton remains one of the greatest and most controversial figures in English literature. The Oxford Handbook of Milton is a comprehensive guide to the state of Milton studies in the early twenty-first century, bringing together an international team of thirty-five leading scholars in one volume. The rise of critical interest in Milton's political and religious ideas is the most striking aspect of Milton studies in recent times, a consequence in great part of the increasingly fluid relations between literary and historical study. The Oxford Handbook both embodies the interest in Milton's political and religious contexts in the last generation and seeks to inaugurate a new phase in Milton studies through closer integration of the poetry and prose. There are eight essays on various aspects of Paradise Lost, ranging from its classical background and poetic form to its heretical theology and representation of God. There are sections devoted both to the shorter poems, including 'Lycidas' and Comus, and the final poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. There are also three sections on Milton's prose: the early controversial works on church government, divorce, and toleration, including Areopagitica; the regicide and republican prose of 1649-1660, the period during which he served as the chief propagandist for the English Commonwealth and Cromwell's Protectorate, and the various writings on education, history, and theology. The opening essays explore what we know about Milton's biography and what it might tell us; the final essays offer interpretations of aspects of Milton's massive influence on later writers, including the Romantic poets.


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Milton by : Nicholas McDowell

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Milton written by Nicholas McDowell and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four hundred years after his birth, John Milton remains one of the greatest and most controversial figures in English literature. The Oxford Handbook of Milton is a comprehensive guide to the state of Milton studies in the early twenty-first century, bringing together an international team of thirty-five leading scholars in one volume. The rise of critical interest in Milton's political and religious ideas is the most striking aspect of Milton studies in recent times, a consequence in great part of the increasingly fluid relations between literary and historical study. The Oxford Handbook both embodies the interest in Milton's political and religious contexts in the last generation and seeks to inaugurate a new phase in Milton studies through closer integration of the poetry and prose. There are eight essays on various aspects of Paradise Lost, ranging from its classical background and poetic form to its heretical theology and representation of God. There are sections devoted both to the shorter poems, including 'Lycidas' and Comus, and the final poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. There are also three sections on Milton's prose: the early controversial works on church government, divorce, and toleration, including Areopagitica; the regicide and republican prose of 1649-1660, the period during which he served as the chief propagandist for the English Commonwealth and Cromwell's Protectorate, and the various writings on education, history, and theology. The opening essays explore what we know about Milton's biography and what it might tell us; the final essays offer interpretations of aspects of Milton's massive influence on later writers, including the Romantic poets.


National Reckonings

National Reckonings

Author: Ryan Hackenbracht

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1501731084

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During the tumultuous years of the English Revolution and Restoration, national crises like civil wars and the execution of the king convinced Englishmen that the end of the world was not only inevitable but imminent. National Reckonings shows how this widespread eschatological expectation shaped nationalist thinking in the seventeenth century. Imagining what Christ's return would mean for England's body politic, a wide range of poets, philosophers, and other writers—including Milton, Hobbes, Winstanley, and Thomas and Henry Vaughan,—used anticipation of the Last Judgment to both disrupt existing ideas of the nation and generate new ones. Ryan Hackenbracht contends that nationalism, consequently, was not merely a horizontal relationship between citizens and their sovereign but a vertical one that pitted the nation against the shortly expected kingdom of God. The Last Judgment was the site at which these two imagined communities, England and ecclesia (the universal church), would collide. Harnessing the imaginative space afforded by literature, writers measured the shortcomings of an imperfect and finite nation against the divine standard of a perfect and universal community. In writing the nation into end-times prophecies, such works as Paradise Lost and Leviathan offered contemporary readers an opportunity to participate in the cosmic drama of the world's end and experience reckoning while there was still time to alter its outcome.


Book Synopsis National Reckonings by : Ryan Hackenbracht

Download or read book National Reckonings written by Ryan Hackenbracht and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the tumultuous years of the English Revolution and Restoration, national crises like civil wars and the execution of the king convinced Englishmen that the end of the world was not only inevitable but imminent. National Reckonings shows how this widespread eschatological expectation shaped nationalist thinking in the seventeenth century. Imagining what Christ's return would mean for England's body politic, a wide range of poets, philosophers, and other writers—including Milton, Hobbes, Winstanley, and Thomas and Henry Vaughan,—used anticipation of the Last Judgment to both disrupt existing ideas of the nation and generate new ones. Ryan Hackenbracht contends that nationalism, consequently, was not merely a horizontal relationship between citizens and their sovereign but a vertical one that pitted the nation against the shortly expected kingdom of God. The Last Judgment was the site at which these two imagined communities, England and ecclesia (the universal church), would collide. Harnessing the imaginative space afforded by literature, writers measured the shortcomings of an imperfect and finite nation against the divine standard of a perfect and universal community. In writing the nation into end-times prophecies, such works as Paradise Lost and Leviathan offered contemporary readers an opportunity to participate in the cosmic drama of the world's end and experience reckoning while there was still time to alter its outcome.