Title: Moral fiction in Milton and Spenser
First published: 1995
Description: In Moral Fiction in Milton and Spenser, John M. Steadman examines how Milton and Spenser - and Renaissance poets in general - applied their art toward the depiction of moral and historical "truth." Steadman centers his study on the various poetic techniques of illusion that these poets employed in their effort to bridge the gap between truth and imaginative fiction.

Emphasizing the significant affinities and the crucial differences between the seventeenth-century heroic poet and his sixteenth-century "original," Steadman analyzes the diverse ways in which Milton and Spenser exploited traditional invocation formulas and the commonplaces of the poet's divine imagination.

Steadman suggests that these poets, along with most other Renaissance poets, did not actually regard themselves as divinely inspired but, rather, resorted to a common fiction to create the appearance of having special insight into the truth.

The first section of this study traces the persona of the inspired poet in DuBartas's La Sepmaine and in The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost. Reevaluating the views of twentieth-century critics, it emphasizes the priority of conscious fiction over autobiographical "fact" in these poets' adaptations of this topos.

The second section develops the contrast between the two principal heroic poems of the English Renaissance, The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, in terms of the contrasting aesthetic principles underlying the romance genre and the neoclassical epic.
Subjects: Adaptations, Christian poetry, English, English Christian poetry, English Epic poetry, English Romances, English poetry, Epic poetry, English, Ethics, Ethics in literature, History, History and criticism, Moral conditions in literature, Poetics, Romances, English, Faerie queene (Spenser, Edmund), Conditions morales dans la litterature, Histoire et critique, Ballades anglaises, Poetique, Morale dans la litterature, Poesie anglaise, Early modern, Poesie chretienne anglaise, Ethische aspecten, Morale, Poesie epique anglaise, Spenser, edmund, 1552?-1599, Milton, john, 1608-1674, religion and ethics, English poetry, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700
People: Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599), John Milton (1608-1674)
Time periods: 16th century, 17th century, Early modern, 1500-1700
LC classification: PR3592.E8 S84 1995