Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts

Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts PDF Author: Tania Demetriou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351341316
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book

Book Description
This collection reconsiders Milton’s engagement with Greek texts, with particular attention to the theological and theatrical meanings attached to Greek in the early modern period. Responding to new scholarship on early modern reactions to Greek authors – especially Euripides and Homer, Milton’s particular favourites – the collection emphasizes the associations of Greek with both Protestantism and the origins of tragedy, two arenas frequently in tension, but crucially linked in Milton’s literary imagination. The contributions explore a range of works spanning the whole of Milton’s career, from the early masque Comus, through the political and religious prose, to the 1671 closet drama, Samson Agonistes. They consider the ways in which the authority and controversy attached to Greek authors framed Milton’s approaches to their texts. Looking at both the texts and their interpretative traditions together, this book suggests that Greek authors shaped Milton’s attitudes to drama in ways even more extensive and surprising than we have yet recognized. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Seventeenth Century.

Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts

Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts PDF Author: Tania Demetriou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351341316
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book

Book Description
This collection reconsiders Milton’s engagement with Greek texts, with particular attention to the theological and theatrical meanings attached to Greek in the early modern period. Responding to new scholarship on early modern reactions to Greek authors – especially Euripides and Homer, Milton’s particular favourites – the collection emphasizes the associations of Greek with both Protestantism and the origins of tragedy, two arenas frequently in tension, but crucially linked in Milton’s literary imagination. The contributions explore a range of works spanning the whole of Milton’s career, from the early masque Comus, through the political and religious prose, to the 1671 closet drama, Samson Agonistes. They consider the ways in which the authority and controversy attached to Greek authors framed Milton’s approaches to their texts. Looking at both the texts and their interpretative traditions together, this book suggests that Greek authors shaped Milton’s attitudes to drama in ways even more extensive and surprising than we have yet recognized. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Seventeenth Century.

Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes

Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes PDF Author: William Riley Parker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Comparative literature
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book

Book Description


Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages

Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages PDF Author: Tanya Pollard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198793111
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book

Book Description
"The book argues that rediscovered ancient Greek plays exerted a powerful and uncharted influence on sixteenth-century England's dramatic landscape, not only in academic and aristocratic settings, but also at the heart of the developing commercial theaters."--Introduction, p. 2.

Milton and the Resources of the Line

Milton and the Resources of the Line PDF Author: John Creaser
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192679295
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Get Book

Book Description
This book will change how readers read not only Milton but any poetry. Whereas prose is written in sentences, poetry is written in lines, lines that may or may not coincide with the syntax of the sentence. Lines add an aural and visual mode of punctuation, with some degree of pause and weight at the line-turn. So lineation, the division of poetry into lines, opens a repertoire of possibilities to the poet. Notably, it encourages an enhanced concentration on meaning, rhythm, and sound. It makes metrical patterns possible, with interactions between regularity and deviation; or it makes possible the presence or absence of structural rhyme; or the multiple variations of the line-turn, whether in harmony with syntax or overflowing, in ways that may be either more or less conspicuous. Starting from theories of Derek Attridge, this book develops new methods for exploring the expressive resources of the verse line as exploited by the greatest of English poets, John Milton. Topics examined include: the interaction of strictness and freedom in the rhythms of Milton's line and paragraph; the interfusion of diverse prosodies in a single poem; approaches to free verse; rhyme in the earlier lyric verse and modes of near-rhyme in the later blank verse; the diverse modes of onomatopoeia; and the complex interweavings of prosody and ideology in this very political poet. The great themes and issues and characters of Milton's innovative and always controversial poetry are perceived afresh, being approached intimately through the rich possibilities of the line, and the insights of the approach illuminate the reading of any poetry.

Samson Agonistes

Samson Agonistes PDF Author: John Milton
Publisher: Signet Classics
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Get Book

Book Description


The Enjoyment of Drama

The Enjoyment of Drama PDF Author: Milton Marx
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book

Book Description
The Purpose and Aim of Drama -- What is a Play -- Conflict: the Essence of Drama -- Structure of a Play -- Tragedy -- Comedy -- Serious Drama, Comedy Drama, and Other Tupes -- Literary Movements and Reality in Drama -- How to Judge a Play.

Making Milton

Making Milton PDF Author: Emma Depledge
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198821891
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
A collection of essays exploring John Milton's rise to popularity and his status as a canonical author. The volume considers Milton's 'authorial persona' in the context of his relationships with his contemporary writers, stationers, and readers.

Interweaving myths in Shakespeare and his contemporaries

Interweaving myths in Shakespeare and his contemporaries PDF Author: Janice Valls-Russell
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526117711
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Get Book

Book Description
This volume proposes new insights into the uses of classical mythology by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, focusing on interweaving processes in early modern appropriations of myth. Its 11 essays show how early modern writing intertwines diverse myths and plays with variant versions of individual myths that derive from multiple classical sources, as well as medieval, Tudor and early modern retellings and translations. Works discussed include poems and plays by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and others. Essays concentrate on specific plays including The Merchant of Venice and Dido Queen of Carthage, tracing interactions between myths, chronicles, the Bible and contemporary genres. Mythological figures are considered to demonstrate how the weaving together of sources deconstructs gendered representations. New meanings emerge from these readings, which open up methodological perspectives on multi-textuality, artistic appropriation and cultural hybridity.

The Dark Bible

The Dark Bible PDF Author: Alison Knight
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192650130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book

Book Description
The Dark Bible explores early modern England's interactions with difficult aspects of the Bible. For the early modern reader, although the Bible was understood to be perfect, sufficient, and transcendent (indeed, the Protestant Reformation required it), it was not always experienced as such. While traditional interpretive precepts, such as the claim that all dark passages could be read in the light of clear ones, were frequently recited by early modern commentators, their actual encounters with the darkness of the Bible suggest that writers, commentators, and translators were often deeply uncomfortable with the disjunction between what the Bible should be, and what it actually was. The Dark Bible investigates writers' and translators' attempts to explain, accommodate, circumvent, and repair problematic texts across a range of genres and contexts. It charts early modern English use of biblical scholarship in vernacular culture and investigates how vernacular writing in various genres could give voice to questioning and confused biblical interactions. The Dark Bible demonstrates that early modern writers and critics engaged extensively with the Bible's difficulties, attempting to circumvent and repair problematic texts, and otherwise reconcile the darkness of the Bible with theories of the Bible's perfection and clarity.

Samson Agonistes: : A Dramatic Poem / Milton by Mark Pattison

Samson Agonistes: : A Dramatic Poem / Milton by Mark Pattison PDF Author: Mark Pattison
Publisher: Milton's Notable Works
ISBN: 9781091034518
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book

Book Description
About the Series "Milton's Notable Works"Volume 1. Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books (Illustrated) / Paradise Regained.Illustrations by Gustave Doré (49 plates)Included biographical notes about John Milton [From A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin, 1910] and Gustave Doré.Volume 2. Samson Agonistes: A Dramatic Poem / Milton by Mark Pattison.Mark Pattison (10 October 1813 - 30 July 1884) was an English author and a Church of England priest. He served as Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.- -Samson Agonistes (from Greek Σαμσών ἀγωνιστής, "Samson the champion") is a tragic closet drama by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's Paradise Regain'd in 1671, as the title page of that volume states: "Paradise Regained / A Poem / In IV Books / To Which Is Added / Samson Agonistes." It is generally thought that Samson Agonistes was begun around the same time as Paradise Regained but was completed after the larger work, possibly very close to the date of publishing, but there is no agreement on this. Milton began plotting various subjects for tragedies in a notebook created in the 1640s. Many of the ideas dealt with the topic of Samson, and he gave them titles such as Samson pursophorus or Hybristes ("Samson the Firebrand, or Samson the Violent"), Samson marriing or in Ramath Lechi, and Dagonalia (the unholy rites at which Samson performed his vindication of God). The title he chose emphasises Samson as a warrior or an athlete, and the play was included with Paradise Regained and printed on 29 May 1671 by John Starkey. It is uncertain as to when the work was composed, which leaves the possibility that it was an early work that was filled with Milton's ideas about the English Civil War or it was a later work that incorporates his despair over the Restoration. Evidence for the early dating is based on his early works and his belief in revolution whereas evidence for a later dating connects the play with his later works, such as Paradise Lost, and comments reflecting on the fall of the Commonwealth. In 1671, the work was printed with a new title page and prefaced his work with a discussion on Greek Tragedy and Aristotle's Poetics.On the title page, Milton wrote that the piece was a "Dramatic Poem" instead of it being a drama. He did not wish for it to be performed on stage, but thought that the text could still influence people. He hoped that in combining Samson with traits of other Biblical figures, including those of Job or of the Psalmist, he could come up with the perfect hero who could deal with complex theological issues. In writing the poem and choosing the character of Samson as his hero, Milton was also illustrating his own blindness, which afflicted him in his later life.- Annotated by Mark Pattison.Mark Pattison (10 October 1813 - 30 July 1884) was an English author and a Church of England priest. He served as Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.Milton by Mark Pattison: FIRST PERIOD. 1608-1639.1.FAMILY-SCHOOL-COLLEGE. 2.RESIDENCE AT HORTON-L'ALLEGRO-IL PENSEROSO-ARCADES-COMUS-LYCIDAS.3.JOURNEY TO ITALY. SECOND PERIOD. 1640-1660.4.EDUCATIONAL THEORY-TEACHING. 5.MARRIAGE, AND PAMPHLETS ON DIVORCE 6.PAMPHLETS.7.BIOGRAPHICAL. 1640-1649.8.THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP.9.MILTON AND SALMASIUS.-BLINDNESS. 10.MILTON AND MORUS-THE SECOND DEFENCE-THE DEFENCE FOR HIMSELF.11.LATIN SECRETARYSHIP COMES TO AN END-MILTON'S FRIENDS. THIRD PERIOD, 1660-1674.12.BIOGRAPHICAL.-LITERARY OCCUPATION.-RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 13.PARADISE LOST-PARADISE REGAINED-SAMSON AGONISTES