Dating Milton's History of Britain
Dating Milton's History of Britain
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约会弥尔顿的英国史
DOI：
10.1017/s0018246x00014576
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发表时间：
1993
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Woolrych
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Woolrych
当我有幸回顾尼古拉斯·冯·马尔扎恩对弥尔顿的《英国史》的研究时，我对他为这部作品的整个知识背景带来的学术知识，以及他明智地将其置于弥尔顿经典之中，除了赞扬之外，什么也没有。他的书很好地描述了17世纪上半叶英国史学的状况，并展示了弥尔顿对历史本质上的人文主义和文学观念，以及他对叙事来源的独家兴趣，使他的方法已经过时，而当时斯佩尔曼和塞尔登正在开创一种公认的现代历史学术形式。他仔细地追溯了弥尔顿写伟大的民族历史的野心的发展，解释了为什么他最初的诗歌史诗，歌唱英雄的过去，让位于崇高的散文叙事，最终以庆祝上帝与他的选民在他自己的时代为宗教和公民自由而斗争的存在。他对《历史》的风格和内容，从萨洛斯特（弥尔顿最喜欢的榜样），Tacítus，到培根（可能），再到长期议会之前的快速布道的传教士，进行了全面而博学的研究。他阐明了弥尔顿心中，口才和美德之间的紧密联系，以及他对天意运作的信仰，如何改变了他写历史的经典方法。他对这部作品的文本历史提供了详尽的信息，尤其是关于1681年出版的约翰·弥尔顿先生《漫长议会的性格》的片段，他令人信服地指出，这部作品的编辑是保守党的罗杰·埃斯特兰奇。
When I had the pleasure of reviewing Nicholas von Maltzahn's study of Milton's History of Britain, I had nothing but praise for the scholarship he brought to the whole intellectual background of the work, and for his judicious placing of it in the Miltonic canon. His book gives an excellent account of the state of British historiography in the first half of the seventeenth century, and shows how Milton's essentially humanist and literary conception of what a history should be, and his exclusive interest in narrative sources, made him already out of date in his method at a time when Spelman and Selden were pioneering a recognizably modern form of historical scholarship. He carefully traces the development of Milton's ambition to write a great national history, explaining why his first conception of a verse epic, singing the heroic past, gave way to that of a lofty prose narrative that would culminate in a celebration of God's presence with his elect nation in the struggle for religious and civil liberty in his own time. He deals fully and learnedly with the influences upon the style and content of the History, from Sallust (Milton's favourite exemplar) and Tacítus through Bacon (possibly) to the preachers of the Fast Sermons before the Long Parliament. He is illuminating about the close association in Milton's mind between eloquence and virtue, and about the ways in which his beliefs about the operation of divine providence modified his predominantly classical approach to the writing of history. He is thoroughly informative about the textual history of the work, and especially about the fragment published in 1681 as Mr John Miltons Character of the Long Parliament, whose editor he convincingly identifies as the arch-Tory Roger L'Estrange.