Elizabethan Prose Fiction and Some Trends in Recent Criticism
Keyword(s):
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.