Hao Tianhu
in Foreign Literature, no. 3, 2025
Abstract: John Milton was not only, in Wang Zuoliang’s words, “the last giant of the English Renaissance,” but also the first great thinker and writer of the modern world. Based on Wang Zuoliang’s concept of affinity, this article discusses the modernity of Paradise Lost from the special perspective of Thomas Deloney’s Jack of Newbury, an Elizabethan popular novel. The two writers perform narrative experiments and generic experiments with similar literary techniques, including the dramatic technique and psychological realism, thus creating modern new genres such as the proto-novel and the psychological epic. I attempt to extend the boundaries of studies of English Renaissance literature on the grounds of existing work.
About the author: Hao Tianhu was a HYI Visiting Scholar from 2023-24.