At 07:17 PM 8/11/2004 +0100, Leofranc Holford-Strevens wrote: >There was another possibility: blank verse, with its capacity for >constructing paragraphs in the Vergilian manner, as demonstrated by >Milton, again citing Italian precedent. But Dryden rejected this: how >far was this due to the new French aesthetic (which not only privileged >the couplet, but required clear demarcation of line-ends) and how far >(without admission) to Milton's outdated and undesirable views on >religion and politics?
I think you have already cited all the reasons that I can think of. The preference for clear line-endings is one that lasted for a very long time: in spite of his work with Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson was still complaining, in his life of Milton, that it's very hard to _hear_ the line-breaks in Paradise Lost. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] East Carolina University Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
