Abstract
If Milton had spared some of his learning, his muse would have gained more glory than he would have lost by it.
Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition
Schooling, belatedness and ambition define the early career of John Milton. Belatedness is evident everywhere in Milton’s early work; indeed, he uses the term himself: ‘“I do notice a certain belatedness in me”… The young Milton was … always aware of his superior abilities but also aware of his slow development’. (Schiffhorst, 18); ‘His was a “slow-endeavouring art”; … It was his destiny to be slow in development.’ (Parker, W. R. Milton: a Biography [ed. Gordon Campbell] Oxford, 1996, 145)
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Notes
R. B. Jenkins, Milton and the Theme of Fame (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1973).
Eric Smith, By Mourning Tongues: Studies in English Elegy (London, 1977).
Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York/Oxford, 1986).
Richard Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates (Berkeley, 1986).
Graham Parry, The Seventeenth Century: the Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1603–1700 (London, 1989).
John Guillory, Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton and Literary History (New York, 1983).
E. M. W. Tillyard, Milton (London, 1966).
E. P. J. Corbett, introduction, The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, ed. Corbett (New York: Random House, 1984).
Don M. Wolfe, Milton and His England (New York, 1970).
A. N. Wilson, The Life of John Milton (New York, 1983).
Barbara Johnson, ‘Fiction and Grief’ Milton Quarterly (1984): [p].
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© 2000 John Dolan
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Dolan, J. (2000). ‘Pardon, Blest Soul, the Slow Pac’d Elegies’: Ambition and Occasion in Justa Edovardo King. In: Poetic Occasion from Milton to Wordsworth. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230286474_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230286474_2
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