John Milton: The Inner Life""John Milton: The Inner Life" is the product of a mature scholar's lifelong reflection on Milton. The subject matter is thus significant and intelligent. The style is lively, straightforward, and lucid. Thorpe brings to the study of Milton a breadth of general literary knowledge which is never paraded but which is pervasive in ways which enrich his understanding and ours. There are many good things to savor throughout, and the fifth chapter in particular is the best I remember on Milton's treatment of the natural world. This is an idealistic book, in the best sense, emphasizing basic human values, rather than the minutiae of technical scholarship, but it will attract wide scholarly attention, and I should think also from the general public of intelligent readers."--Roland Mushat Frye, University of Pennsylvania "A truly elegant and engaging book. Thorpe is a marvelous stylist, his prose crisp and lucid. And the individual chapters mesh wonderfully: they provide a series of perspectives on Milton, an emerging profile of the poet, especially of his inner life. That profile is strongly and finely etched and while it fixes on Milton's inner life, it also takes stock of Milton's sense of others and of the world around him. Throughout, the book is marked by an impressive mastery of Milton's poetry and prose by an agile movement between the efforts of his right, and left, hand, by a sensitive understanding and grasp of a poet who thought that the poet himself would be a true poem. I can think of no book I've read in recent years that is a better introduction to the poet through his writings, of none that makes Milton so attractively accessible to a general reading public."--Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., University of Maryland "This is a thoughtful and well-proportioned book, lucidly and gracefully written. It should be welcomed by teachers and students of Milton's poetry and also by non-specialists. It combines fresh insights with sound judgments, and explores with tact and sensitivity the complex problem of the relations between Milton's life and personality and the major themes of his poetry and prose."--John M. Steadman, University of California, Riverside |
From inside the book
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Page 48
... seem to have retained some sense of elevation very like fantasy in thinking of the audiences for his prose pamphlets . In the Second Defence ( 1654 ) , he gives a candid account of his own sense of the audience that he had addressed in ...
... seem to have retained some sense of elevation very like fantasy in thinking of the audiences for his prose pamphlets . In the Second Defence ( 1654 ) , he gives a candid account of his own sense of the audience that he had addressed in ...
Page 91
... seems to be equating " a pleasant and gay disposition " - the most likely quality to make and retain friendships , he thinks- with the possession of " wit and humour and elegant pleasantry . ” This is the learned man's equation ...
... seems to be equating " a pleasant and gay disposition " - the most likely quality to make and retain friendships , he thinks- with the possession of " wit and humour and elegant pleasantry . ” This is the learned man's equation ...
Page 165
... seems to be the ultimate form of conflict in Milton . Conflict was , for him , a purifying form of experience , and opposition was the way he seems to have perceived the human mode of existence . It is only the one tempted who can ...
... seems to be the ultimate form of conflict in Milton . Conflict was , for him , a purifying form of experience , and opposition was the way he seems to have perceived the human mode of existence . It is only the one tempted who can ...
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achieve action Adam and Eve Andrew Marvell answer appears Areopagitica argument believe blindness chapter characters Christ Christ's College Christian Doctrine classical classical antiquity Comus conflict course Dalila death delight Diodati divine doubtless dramatic poems earth Edward Phillips Elegy eloquence example eyes fame fantasy father favor feelings flowers friends friendship garden give glory God's guidance hath heart heaven hope human important inner invocation to Book John Aubrey John Milton kind L'Allegro Lady learning letter liberty live Lycidas Milton felt Milton's sense Milton's writings mind natural world night orator pamphlet Parable Paradise Lost Paradise Regained passage perhaps poet poetry praise Prose Reason of Church-Government relations rhetoric Riley Parker role Samson Agonistes Satan says Second Defence seems Seventh Prolusion sometimes sonnet Spirit tactic talent tells temptation thee things thir thou thought tion ton's true understanding verse virtue words wrote