Milton's Complex Words
Essays on the Conceptual Structure of Paradise Lost
1st Edition
Published on 17. November 2017
480 pages
978-0-19-253817-8 (ISBN)
Description
Every major poet or philosopher develops their own distinctive semantic field around those terms which matter most to them, or which contribute most profoundly to the imagined world of a particular work. This book explores the specific meanings which Milton develops around key words in Paradise Lost.
Some of these are theological or philosophical terms (e.g. 'evil', 'grace', 'reason'); others are words which shape the imagined world of the poem (e.g. 'dark', 'fall', 'within'); yet others are small words or even prefixes which subtly move the argument in new directions (e.g. 'if', 'not', 're-'). Milton seems to expect his readers to be alert to the special semantic field which he creates around such words, often by infusing them with biblical and literary connotations, and activating their etymological roots; alert also to the patterns created by the repetitions of such words, and particularly to their diverse use (and often their blatant misuse) by different characters. To understand the migrations and malleability of key words is part of the education of Milton's reader.
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11/2017
Oxford University Press
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Person
Paul Hammond was educated at Peter Symonds' School, Winchester, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Prize Fellow in English. He is currently Professor of Seventeenth-Century English Literature at the University of Leeds. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002.
Content
- Preface
- A Note on Texts and Abbreviations
- 1: Alone
- 2: Art
- 3: Chance, Fate, and Providence
- 4: Change
- 5: Choice
- 6: Dark and Light
- 7: Desire
- 8: Ease
- 9: Envy
- 10: Equal
- 11: Evil
- 12: Fall
- 13: Fancy and Reason
- 14: Free
- 15: God
- 16: Grace
- 17: Hope
- 18: I
- 19: Idol and Image
- 20: If and Perhaps
- 21: Knowledge and Wisdom
- 22: Love
- 23: Naked
- 24: New and Old
- 25: Not
- 26: Re-
- 27: See and Seem
- 28: Self-
- 29: Within
- 30: ?
- Afterword
- Bibliography
