This comprehensive study delves into Milton's multilingualism and its influence on his major works. By examining the various languages he employed, the book reveals how this linguistic diversity shaped his poetic style and themes. It offers insights into the interplay between language and meaning in Milton's poetry, highlighting the significance of his cultural and intellectual background. Through detailed analysis, the study enhances the understanding of Milton's literary contributions and the complexity of his language use.
In his first ten comedies Shakespeare is at his most myriad-minded and companionable. He concentrates on giving wide, deep, serious pleasure. «We'll strive to please you every day». So these plays suit a multiple approach which in turn centres on pleasure. The connected approaches begin with sources and their construction into multiple plot, whose firmness and pleasure Shakespeare well understood. His transforming of sources is also the surest evidence we have of genesis. Next, moving from structure to texture, the study examines the moment-to-moment excitements of the text. Their pleasure principle is then theorised. But pleasure impinges both in the completed effect of each play and in its succession of intense pleasures: the diversity of relations between whole and parts is examined and theorised. Finally, a theory of comedy and of «multiple» approach to it is adumbrated, and briefly tested on Shakespeare's comic work beyond the ten comedies. Throughout, the reader is offered a method, by which to teach as well as research these inimitable plays. The method moves from probabilities, then probes pleasure seriously, as indeed Shakespeare himself did.
