| Unit name | Paradise Lost: Inception and Reception |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL29032 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Mason |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Paradise Lost is the most consequential poem in English; many later writers regard Milton as a poet who had extended the possibilities of poetic attainment. One book (or so) will be studied in detail each week. Particular attention will be paid (1) to Milton’s materials (including translations of Hebrew verse, Homer, Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid), and (2) to various poetical and scholarly responses of contemporaries and successors (including Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Voltaire, Richard Bentley, Jonathan Richardson, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Alfred Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and T.S. Eliot). The popular and critical success of Paradise Lost will be compared with some comparative failures (including poems by Abraham Cowley, Samuel Wesley, and Richard Blackmore, and some attempts to render the poem in heroic couplets or in prose).
Students will (a) attain an in-depth knowledge of the most consequential poem in English, its sources and its inheritors; (b) engage with classical and Hebraic literature in translation, as it influenced Milton, and thereby develop an understanding of the nature of literary reception; (c) learn about the significant literary legacy of the poem, and its influence on the works of later writers; (d) cultivate a comparative critical perspective by negotiating with the views of other respondents to the poem; (e) extend the range of their close-reading skills through sustained attention to form, rhythm, diction, imagery and allusion.
1 x 2-hour seminar per week plus use of Consultation Hours
1 x 2,000 word essay (33.3%) and 1 x 4,000 word essay (66.7%), both summative. The 2,000 word essay will demonstrate a relatively limited mastery of (a) to (e). The 4,000 word essay will demonstrate a much fuller mastery of (a) to (e).
John Milton, Paradise Lost, a Poem (in editions of 1667, 1674, 1732, 1749, 1801, 2001) The Bible, (particularly Genesis, Song of Songs, Job, Revelations) Homer, The Iliad (trans. Pope) Virgil, The Æneid (trans. Dryden) Ovid, The Metamorphoses (trans. Sandys 1632, Garth et al. 1717) John Shawcross, ed., Milton: The Critical Heritage (2 vols., London, 1970)
