6/20/2023 0 Comments Paradise lost authorIt is this play of oxymorons - sublime epic and beautiful sublime - that marks the brilliance of the early eighteenth century' criticism of Paradise Lost. Though beauty did mark a certain generic stability (in a Burkean sense), it came increasingly to represent generic transformation, which in its most radical form recast the notion of a 'sublime Milton'. Modern critics look askance at these 'sublime Miltonists', who are charged with forcing Paradise Lost, they took what was essentially a Restoration term and challenged it with an alternative aesthetic category - the beautiful. 'Sublime' and 'Milton' - no other pairing is used more frequently in early discussions of the author of Paradise Lost: Addison finds Milton's genius 'wonderfully turned to the Sublime', John Dennis calls Milton 'the sublimist of all our poets', while Jonathan Richardson concludes that Milton's mind 'is truly poetical.
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