| dc.description.abstract | This thesis argues for the importance of Longinus’ Peri hupsous and, more broadly, the idea of the sublime for John Milton. Contrary to the perception that Milton’s sublimity is an anachronism or an invention of the eighteenth century, this thesis aims to establish that (1) Longinus’ Peri hupsous was better known in seventeenth-century England than has been previously appreciated, (2) various notions of sublimity beyond that of Longinus would have been available to Milton and his contemporaries, and (3) that such notions of the sublime, Longinian and otherwise, were integral to Milton’s rhetorical, natural-philosophical, and theological imagination. This thesis therefore makes substantive contributions to Milton criticism, classical reception studies, and the history of ideas. A historical overview illustrates the development of the idea of the sublime from antiquity to the Renaissance, distinguishing three species of sublimity: the rhetorical, the physical, and the theological. Additional material relating to the early modern reception of Longinus is provided in the appendices, which contain a bibliographical study of copies of Longinus in English private libraries to 1674 and an edition of a previously unknown seventeenth-century English translation of Longinus in the Lansdowne manuscript collection at the British Library. Milton’s engagements with the three species of the sublime are then considered in turn. It is demonstrated that Milton drew from Longinus and other classical authors a notion of sublime rhetoric that intersects with questions of biblical style, religious enthusiasm, and republican politics. Milton’s understanding of the physically sublime, informed in part by the new science, is shown to underlie the similes of magnitude and immeasurably vast spaces of Paradise Lost. Finally, the role of the sublime in Milton’s theological thought is revealed through his conceptions of sacred virginity, the war in heaven, divine wrath, and fear of God. | en_GB |
