Celestial Aspirations: Classical Impulses in British Poetry and Art

Hardback

Main Details

Title Celestial Aspirations: Classical Impulses in British Poetry and Art
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Philip Hardie
SeriesE. H. Gombrich Lecture Series
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:400
Dimensions(mm): Height 235,Width 156
Category/GenreBritish and Irish History
ISBN/Barcode 9780691197869
ClassificationsDewey:821.0093823624
Audience
General
Illustrations 23 color + 48 b/w illus.

Publishing Details

Publisher Princeton University Press
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publication Date 1 March 2022
Publication Country United States

Description

A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight preoccupied early modern British writers and artists Between the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination - poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and religious-displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent and flight to the heavens. Celestial Aspirations explores how British literature and art during that period exploited classical representations of these soaring themes-through philosophical, scientific and poetic flights of the mind; the ascension of the disembodied soul; and the celestial glorification of the ruler. From textual reachings for the heavens in Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne and Cowley, to the ceiling paintings of Rubens, Verrio and Thornhill, Philip Hardie focuses on the ways that the history, ideologies and aesthetics of the postclassical world received and transformed the ideas of antiquity. In England, narratives of ascent appear on the grandest scale in Milton's Paradise Lost, an epic built around a Christian plot of falling and rising, and one of the most intensely classicizing works of English poetry. Examining the reception of flight up to the Romanticism of Wordsworth and Tennyson, Hardie considers the Whig sublime, as well as the works of Alexander Pope and Edward Young. Throughout, he looks at motivations both public and private for aspiring to the heavens-as a reward for political and military achievement on the one hand, and as a goal of individual intellectual and spiritual exertion on the other. Celestial Aspirations offers an intriguing look at how creative minds reworked ancient visions of time and space in the early modern era.

Author Biography

Philip Hardie is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Professor Emeritus of Latin at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Rumour and Renown and The Last Trojan Hero.

Reviews

"[Hardie's] engagement with early modern British literature and art is impressive. Scholarly yet approachable."---P. E. Ojennus, Choice "A sublime intellectual journey that holds appeal to a wide range of audiences"---Bobby Xinyue, Times Literary Supplement