Title Richard Bentley : poetry and enlightenment / Kristine Louise Haugen

Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2011 ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (333 pages) : illustrations Contents Introduction : what was a scholar? -- Before Bentley : restoration Cambridge -- London in the 1680s : Bentley begins -- Bentley in Oxford : the new and the strange -- Into the drawing room : the public intellectual -- Rewriting Horace : the force of reason and the force of habit -- The measure of all things : Vi commodavi -- Bentley's New Testament : the return of the repressed -- Interlopers and interpolators : Manilius and Paradise lost -- Conclusion : dominating antiquity Summary What made the classical scholar Richard Bentley deserve to be so viciously skewered by two of the literary giants of his day--Jonathan Swift in the Battle of the Books and Alexander Pope in the Dunciad? The answer: he had the temerity to bring classical study out of the scholar's closet and into the drawing rooms of polite society. Kristine Haugen's highly engaging biography of a man whom Rhodri Lewis characterized as "perhaps the most notable--and notorious--scholar ever to have English as a mother tongue" affords a fascinating portrait of Bentley and the intellectual turmoil he set in motion. Aiming at a convergence between scholarship and literary culture, the brilliant, caustic, and imperious Bentley revealed to polite readers the doings of professional scholars and induced them to pay attention to classical study. At the same time, Europe's most famous classical scholar adapted his own publications to the deficiencies of non-expert readers. Abandoning the church-oriented historical study of his peers, he worked on texts that interested a wider public, with spectacular and--in the case of his interventionist edition of Paradise Lost--sometimes lamentable results. If the union of worlds Bentley craved was not to be achieved in his lifetime, his provocations show that professional humanism left a deep imprint on the literary world of England's Enlightenment Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Bentley, Richard, 1662-1742. SUBJECT Bentley, Richard, 1662-1742 fast Subject Classicists -- Great Britain Learning and scholarship -- England -- History Civilization, Classical -- Study and teaching -- England -- History Criticism, Textual -- History LITERARY CRITICISM -- Ancient & Classical. HISTORY -- Europe -- General. Civilization, Classical -- Study and teaching Classicists Criticism, Textual Learning and scholarship Klassieke talen. Verlichting (cultuurgeschiedenis) England Great Britain Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Noord-Ierland. Genre/Form Electronic books History Form Electronic book LC no. 2010034159 ISBN 9780674061002 0674061004

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