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Elizabethan Prose Fiction and Some Trends in Recent Criticism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

A. C. Hamilton
A. C. Hamilton*
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston
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Abstract

Current methodological trends now influence the study of most literature, but as I shall argue, in the future they may alter radically the study of Elizabethan prose fiction. Some works of literature, especially the major ones, may be enjoyed by readers in any age, but many, perhaps now most, depend on literary criticism to be properly understood and fully appreciated. At one time Milton's Paradise Lost was a popular work, requiring of its readers only that their lives be grounded in the Bible to ensure their full response to it. For most readers today, an adequate response to Milton's poem is a product of the historical scholarship and the New Criticism practiced mostly in America in the first half of the twentieth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , Spring 1984 , pp. 21 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1984

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the South Central Renaissance Conference and the Renaissance Society of America in Memphis, Tennessee on March 26, 1983, as part of its panel on “Current Methodological Trends in Renaissance Studies.“ I acknowledge gratefully the financial assistance given me by the School of Graduate Studies and Research at The Queen's University, Kingston towards the expense of my trip to the Conference.

References

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9 I cite, in modern spelling, from the 1587 edition reprinted in the Everyman Edition, Shorter Novels, Elizabethan and Jacobean, vol. 1.

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