Pre-Eminent among Gentiles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Reisner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

This chapter examines the various extant Hebrew translations of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. Both poems were first translated into elaborate biblical and midrashic Hebrew in the nineteenth century by interested Jewish readers with widely differing religious, spiritual, and literary agendas. As this chapter argues, a close examination of these translations, and their implicit and explicit aims, reveals much about the vexed, fertile relationship between Jewish and Christian consciousness. Even more interestingly, this discussion ultimately sheds fresh and important light on the peculiar Hebraic integrity of Milton’s English verse. This chapter proposes that, when viewed in light of these translations, many previous questions raised with respect to Milton’s putative anti-Semitism and his ambivalent Hebraism may be rethought and readdressed from the outside in, as it were, with startling results.

Jungmann’s Translation of Paradise Lost in the Vanguard of Modern Czech Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Šárka Tobrmanová
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Culture And Language

This chapter centres on the 1811 experimental Czech translation of Paradise Lost, Ztracený ráj, by the Czech polyglot Jungmann, because it vitally affected the rise of modern Czech language and literature. Jungmann belonged to the second generation of the Czech national revivalists who strove to revive the Czech culture and language oppressed by Austrian rule and dominated by German. The chapter considers Jungmann’s reasons for choosing to translate Milton’s epic, concluding they were patriotic and linguistic. Relying on eighteenth-century German and Polish translations, Jungmann embarked on creating modern Czech literary language, reviving or inventing many now common words. His treatment of Milton’s grand style, including prosody, helped to shape nineteenth-century Czech poetry. Later renderings of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and a recent translation of Samson Agonistes are discussed, to reveal that Jungmann’s achievement remains unsurpassed.

scholarly journals Tożsamość żydowska na pograniczu kultur i narodów

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Irmina Jaśkowiak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Anti Semitism

Identity construction is one of the fundamental human needs. The process takes place in two areas simultaneously: internal, self-reflexive and external, associated with a sense of belonging to a particular group. The Jews, until the beginning of the nineteenth century constituted quite uniform society voluntarily separating themselves from other communities. As a result of emancipation and assimilation processes, various influences affect their identity. As a consequence the Jews faced two difficulties. The first one was the dilemma between own nation and territorial homeland while the other was the progressing deep internal divisions. At present Jewish identity is most of all national and ethnical identity strongly reinforced by historical memory and fight with anti-Semitism. After the period of the twentieth century crisis and in the light of the western world secularization it has become also cultural identity.Identity construction is one of the fundamental human needs. Theprocess takes place in two areas simultaneously: internal, self-reflexiveand external, associated with a sense of belonging to a particulargroup. The Jews, until the beginning of the nineteenth century constitutedquite uniform society voluntarily separating themselves fromother communities. As a result of emancipation and assimilation processes,various influences affect their identity. As a consequence theJews faced two difficulties. The first one was the dilemma betweenown nation and territorial homeland while the other was the progressingdeep internal divisions. At present Jewish identity is most of allnational and ethnical identity strongly reinforced by historical memoryand fight with anti-Semitism. After the period of the twentieth centurycrisis and in the light of the western world secularization it hasbecome also cultural identity.

The Chronology of Milton's Major Poems

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 345-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Shawcross
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
Important Study

The conclusion of Ants Oras as to the chronology of Milton's major poems, based on his important study of the blank vejse, is, I believe, in serious error. Examining strong pauses, both terminal and medial, the distribution of medial pauses over the pentameter line, run-on lines, feminine and masculine pauses, the distribution of polysyllables over the verse line, feminine endings, rhythmical expressions creating shifted stresses, syllabized “-ed” endings, and pyrrhic verse endings, Oras concludes that the traditional chronology for Paradise Lost (from Book I through Book XII), Paradise Regained (from Book I through Book IV), and Samson Agonistes is correct. As a prosodical study, the statistical data presented lead us to a greater understanding of the aforementioned verse techniques as used by Milton than we have heretofore known. Professor Oras' inferences of dated practice are, however, another matter.

John Milton and Musical Abjection

2019 ◽  
pp. 149-202
Author(s):  
Scott A. Trudell
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
The State ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Media Adaptation ◽  
Music Publishers ◽  
Authorial Voice

In John Milton’s works, music is a powerful instigator of unsettling modes of poetry. From A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle to Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost, Milton remains fascinated by the transformative potential of song, though he comes increasingly to eschew its uncontrollable qualities. In his later career, Milton found it increasingly pressing to subordinate music to his authorial voice. Yet his fantasies of bibliographic control did not prevent him from influencing the songbook movement of the 1650s or from becoming a source for Dryden’s unperformed opera The State of Innocence. Tracing Milton’s connections to his erstwhile collaborator Alice Egerton, to Cavalier songwriters including William Cartwright, and to music publishers including John Playford, Chapter 4 reveals that poetry retained its tendencies toward media adaptation notwithstanding the conflicted desires of poets.

The Use of Biblicizing Techniques in Isaac Salkinson’s Hebrew Translations

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-82
Author(s):  
Eran Shuali
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
British Society ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
The New Testament

In this article, I examine the character and reception of the Hebrew translations of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet, Tiedge’s Urania, and the New Testament produced in the second half of the nineteenth century by Isaac Salkinson, a Jew converted to Christianity and employed as a missionary by the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. I focus on a salient feature of these translations, that is the use of biblicizing techniques. In contrast to previous studies, I tie the production of all of Salkinson’s translations to his activity as a missionary.

XVII.—Samson Agonistes Again

PMLA ◽  
1921 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paull Franklin Baum
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
The World ◽  
Suspension Of Disbelief ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Obiter Dictum

Although Dr. Johnson is one of our best English critics, he has left much that the world would willingly let die. But alas ! the written word is imperishable, and will every now and then repair its drooping head, in spite of the opportunities of oblivion. Johnson's strictures on the shorter poems of Milton have now for a good while been taken for what they are worth; even his severity with Comus is recognized as more than half perversely irrelevant. I say nothing of Paradise Lost, for no other poem so inexorably demands the willing suspension of disbelief which Johnson was incapable of. But recently his obiter dictum that Samson Agonistes is not a dramatic whole in the Aristotelian sense, having a beginning, a middle, and an end; that “ the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor retard the catastrophe ” has re-entered the listed field. And “ these shifts ” must be “refuted.”

NATION, GOVERNMENT, AND ‘ANTI-SEMITISM’ IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY AUSTRIA

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM D. GODSEY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Imperial Capital ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jewish Descent ◽  
Late Modern

ABSTRACTIn 1808, an Estate of the lesser nobility of the Lower Austrian diet approved a statute barring from membership persons of Jewish descent in the ‘third degree’ regardless of confession. It is the only documented instance in Europe for the revolutionary era of such a paragraph that, in its rejection of Jewish ancestry in both the paternal and maternal lines, resembled the early modern Spanish statutes of ‘blood purity’ and the twentieth-century Nuremberg laws. The Josephian patent of toleration of 1782 had not allowed Jews to become members of the corporate nobility (the first Jew was only ennobled in 1789), but had relieved some of the worst aspects of discrimination. By the early nineteenth century, the archduchy of Lower Austria (including the imperial capital at Vienna) contained the largest, wealthiest, and most self-confident Jewish community in the Hapsburg Monarchy. The statute of 1808 was a reaction to Jewish acculturation to the upper class (including conversion, intermarriage, concessions of property-rights, the existence of salons in which Jews and new Christians mixed with the nobility) that presented a perceived threat to the status of its marginal members (lesser landed nobles, ennobled officialdom, and ennobled professionals). The statute was also a product of the politically and nationally charged atmosphere in Vienna between the Austrian defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz (1805) and the renewed war against France (1809). No simple ideological continuum connects the Lower Austrian paragraph to either the early modern Spanish or the late modern Nazi ordinances. But it was the first such statute to take shape in a political context fraught with recognizably late modern concepts of ‘nation’. The statute of 1808 furthermore evidences the continuing fractured nature of public authority and lack of thorough-going state-formation in Austria.

XIII.—An Objective Study of Syllabic Quantity in English Verse

PMLA ◽  
1918 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blank Verse ◽  
Ada L. F. Snell
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Student ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Vocal Expression ◽  
The Third ◽  
English Verse ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
The University ◽  
Objective Study

It is my purpose in this paper to consider the quantity of, the syllables in twenty-five lines of Milton's Paradise Lost. The selection, given below, was read by three different men. The first is an instructor in vocal expression, the second is a graduate student in language and phonetics, and the third is a professor in the Department of General Linguistics. All three are connected with the University of Michigan.

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