Early Modern Consolations from More to Milton

我提出的项目旨在研究近代早期英国安慰的形式和语境，大致跨越莫尔的主要作品和弥尔顿的最后诗歌之间的时期。虽然古典、教父和中世纪的安慰已经被彻底地研究过了，但在早期现代英国，作为一种包含各种体裁的文学模式的安慰研究仍有待撰写。安慰的形式非常多样，从诗篇或十四行诗的简短到史诗的长度；虽然它们可能采用看似普遍的论点，但它们也是相当热门的文本。他们沉浸在那个时代的政治争议中，跨越了公共领域和私人领域，跨越了意识形态和忏悔的界限。所有安慰的共同之处，也是一种强烈意识到自己说服力局限性的修辞学，这解释了从伊拉斯谟到天使日，修辞学和公式中关于安慰的许多讨论。因此，近代早期英国文学安慰的历史也是其古典接受、道德哲学和宗教政治的历史，我的项目将通过各种体裁的研究来追溯这段历史，如哲学对话、诗歌挽歌、诗篇意译、虔诚的冥想和圣经史诗。

My proposed project seeks to examine the forms and contexts of consolation in early modern England, roughly spanning the period between More's major works and Milton's final poems. Whilethe classical, patristic, and medieval consolatio has been thoroughly examined, a study of consolation as a literary mode encompassing a variety of genres in early modern England remains to be written. Consolations are remarkably diverse in form, ranging from the brevity of a psalm or sonnet to the length of an epic; and while they may employ seemingly universal arguments, they are also considerably topical texts. Steeped in the political controversies of their time, they straddle thepublic and private spheres, and cut across ideological and confessional boundaries. Common to all consolations, too, is a rhetoricity intensely conscious of its own persuasive limits, which accounts for the many discussions of consolation in rhetorics and formularies from Erasmus to Angel Day. The history of literary consolations in early modern England is therefore also the history of its classical reception, moral philosophy, and religious politics, and my project will trace this history through the study of various genres such as philosophical dialogues, verse elegies, psalm paraphrases, devotional meditations, and biblical epics.