Addison on Milton (LIT 05(z))

  • Day and time: Thursday 10:00 - 11:00
    Weekly
  • Length of course: 1 term. Autumn (10 Weeks)
  • Number of places: 8
  • Start date: 14 October 2021
  • Description:

    (Follow-up to last year's Milton course) Addison on Paradise Lost. The poem was first published in 1667, perhaps the least propitious decade that could possibly have been chosen. The Restoration was at its height, the Puritans who had secured the trial and execution of Charles I were either themselves dead or in disgrace or in great danger, the Commonwealth and all its works despised and derided. Early in 1711 Joseph Addison published 17 essays in the Spectator which claimed for Paradise Lost a uniquely high status that (despite the efforts of Eliot and Leavis) it never afterward lost. Why? And why did Addison's use, in these papers, of a new term, the Sublime, have such an effect on English thinking about poetry and other arts?

  • Format: Lecture

  • Tutor: Christopher Bristow
  • I have taught for the Cambridge English Faculty for some decades.


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