Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / "Stellingen": 2 leaves laid in. A survey of 17th century Dutch translations of English theological works (p. [207]-220).

Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / "Stellingen": 2 leaves laid in. A survey of 17th century Dutch translations of English theological works (p. [207]-220).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2008. / Abstract only has been uploaded to OhioLINK. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 691-701)

This study offers a narrative of literary responses to lost texts, ancient and modern, from the age of Petrarch to the age of Milton. Whether continental scholars or English poets, the authors whom I consider share an abiding belief that the imagination is the right vehicle to access the otherwise irretrievable past, and that absent texts can be put to practical uses. Bringing together the work of textual critics, bibliographers, and literary scholars, the introduction evaluates available methods of studying lost texts and proposes an integrated framework for further research. The four chapters that follow provide four distinct answers to the question, what did early modern scholars and poets make out of lost texts? The first chapter finds Petrarch in his De remediis utriusque fortunae inaugurating a long-lasting tradition, the lament for lost books and libraries. I argue that, with help from Petrarch, the Florentine circle of Leonardo Bruni developed what would become a conventional language for explaining these losses. A chapter on scholarly misbehavior examines fifteenth- and sixteenth-century narratives—i.e., legends, lies, and slanders—about lost texts alongside the emergence of the humanist supplements, the efforts of early modern editors (e.g., Erasmus, Ermolao Barbaro) to fill lacunae in partial classical texts with their original compositions, sometimes surreptitiously. This practice of imitation-as-emendation led English authors—Shakespeare, Chapman, Jonson, and Burton—to complete the partial texts of their recent and medieval predecessors and to apprehend with their imaginations the literary heritage that they could not hold in their hands. In the two latter chapters, I argue that this interest sometimes took the form of an imaginative supplement, as when Spenser completes Chaucer's fragmentary Squire's Tale in The Faerie Queene, and sometimes the form of a meditation, as when Milton in "Il Penseroso" envisions English literary history as a series of incomplete works. Likewise, earlier claims about lost texts could simply be revived (e.g., in the invective of Thomas Nashe), or they could be repurposed in self-conscious tropes, as when Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser entice their readers with representations of lost, unpublished, and unwritten works. / 2019-08-01T00:00:00Z

My thesis explores the way in which the Italian language and literary culture contributed to John Milton’s early development as a poet (over the period up to 1639 and the composition of Epitaphium Damonis). I begin by investigating the nature of the cultural relationship between England and Italy in the late medieval and early modern periods. I then examine how Milton’s own engagement with the Italian language and its literature evolved in the context of his family background, his personal contacts with the London Italian community and modern language teaching in the early seventeenth century as he grew to become a ‘multilingual’ poet. My study then turns to his first published collection of verse, Poems 1645. Here, I reconsider the Italian elements in Milton’s early poetry, beginning with the six poems he wrote in Italian, identifying their place and significance in the overall structure of the volume, and their status and place within the Italian Petrarchan verse tradition. After considering the significance of the Italian titles of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, I assess the impact of Italian verse forms (and particularly the canzone) upon Milton’s early poetry in English and the question of the nature of the relationship between Milton’s Mask presented at Ludlow Castle and Tasso’s ‘favola boschereccia’, Aminta. Finally, I consider the place in Milton’s career of his journey to Italy in 1938-9 and its importance to him as a personal ‘conquest’ of Italy. I suggest that, far from setting him upon the path toward poetic glory, as is often claimed, his return England marked the beginning of a lengthy hiatus in his poetic career. My argument is that Milton was much more Italianate, by background, accident of birth and personal bent, than has usually been recognised and that an appreciation of how this Italian aspect of his cultural identity contributed to his poetic development is central to an understanding of his poetry.

This thesis examines the belief that ideologies about blindness which have their provenance in religious, mythical and symbolic belief are 'infused into our literature and art' to become 'an important part of the way we perceive ourselves and others'. Depictions of the enduring power and influence ot symbolic belief is examined in fictional and autobiographical writings from 1600-1995. The history of theories of causation of disease in general is discussed in the first chapter. This is tollowed in the second chapter by an examination of the myths, meanings, symbols and ideologies which have become attached to blindness from pre-Christian times to the present day. The third chapter is devoted to an assessment of the influential meanings given to his own blindness by the poet John Milton and to an appraisal oi the responses, in the following century and a half, both by his adherents, notably Marveli, Dryden and the Romantic Poets, and his detractors, not least among whom was Samuel Johnson. The tollowing two chapters are given to an examination of the influence of ideology on depictions of blindness in Nineteenth and twentieth Century literature. Special attention is given to portrayals of blindness in recent works for children, in view of the belief and recommendation that writings about and for handicapped children should be realistic and tree from stereotype. Both chapters are underpinned by brief surveys of the then current social situation of the blind and of the state of medical knowledge at the time. Finally, fictional representations of blindness are compared with a number of experiental accounts taken from autobiographies of blind people written between 1870-1990.

The essay critically examines Stanley Fish’s reader-response reading of Paradise Lost.In particular Fish’s main thesis that John Milton’s sole purpose in Paradise Lost is toeducate the reader on their position as fallen.The essay then examines two key claimsthat Fish employs to arrive at his conclusion, namely: (1) Fish’s notion of intendedreadership and authorial intent for Paradise Lost; and (2) Fish’s claims of readerresponse to Paradise Lost in two selected contexts (i) the reader response to Satan in thebeginning of Paradise Lost (ii) the reader response to an aspect of narration in ParadiseLost i.e. the poem’s epic voice. Based on the analysis of these two key claims the essayfinds Fish’s thesis unsubstantiated and in need of further argument.

Scholars have long argued that the rhetorical concept of aemulatio best describes the tie between Milton’s Paradise Lost and Klopstock’s Messias. Against the backdrop of an emerging German national literature, Klopstock’s intention was not to merely imitate but to surpass his English predecessor. This view certainly has some merit, particularly since Klopstock himself alluded to this intention.However, crucial differences in aesthetics are obscured if the Messias is read in this sense. In order to challenge this common notion of the relationship betweenMilton and Klopstock, I analyze concepts of space and divine presence in both epic poems. I show how both Milton and Klopstock presented specific poetic solutions to problems in aesthetics and theology posed by their respective historical ‘situation’ (P. Tillich).

Because of the mainly scholarly studies of Milton’s works, and the many questions that have yet to be resolved, an annotated bibliography of Milton’s classicism is indispensable in enabling one to survey the ground that has been covered and to clarify the issues further. The observation that John M. Steadman makes about Paradise Lost also applies to Milton’s entire canon. The items in this bibliography are organized in five categories: (1) epic, (2) tragedy, (3) prose, (4) minor poetry, and (5) general criticism. Listings within these categories are alphabetical.

John Milton has been frequently associated with rebellion, both by modern scholars and by his contemporaries. Objectively speaking, he may very well be a rebel; however, looking to his own works complicates the issue. In fact, Milton makes very clear in his writing, especially in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, that he abhors rebellion mainly because it is unlawful. Furthermore, he describes the uprising against King Charles I by disassociating it from any kind of rebellion, instead determining that the uprising was done lawfully. Milton writes about rebellion in the same way in many of his works leading up to and including Paradise Lost, where Satan resembles the rebel that Milton so vehemently despises. Given Milton's dislike of rebellion, his association of it with Satan complicates another commonplace scholarly argument; that Satan is sympathetic in Paradise Lost. This work will explicate Milton's definition of rebellion, especially through Tenure, and will then use that definition to demonstrate that Satan cannot be read as sympathetic. / Master of Arts