Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism [Paperback]

David Harpers 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 poems 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 Harpers book, as will anyone interested in the making of English literary scholarship.

David Loewenstein, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Penn State-University Park, USA

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. Miltons 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 Miltons reputation as a fanatick who had called in print for Charles Is execution, inveighed openly against monarchy on the eve of Charles IIs 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 Englishl,