Thomas Nicholas Corns, FBA (born 1949), is a literary scholar. He was Professor English Literature at Bangor University from 1994 to 2014.
Thomas Nicholas Corns was born in Prescot. After attending the city's grammar school, he was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating in 1972. He completed his doctoral studies at University College, Oxford; his DPhil was awarded in 1978 for his thesis "Studies in the development of Milton's prose style". Corns joined the University College of North Wales at Bangor as a lecturer in 1975, and was promoted to a senior lectureship in 1987. In 1992, he was appointed to a readership there, and then in 1994 became Professor of English Literature. By the time he retired in 2014, the institution had become Bangor University; he remains there as an emeritus professor. Corns also spent time as head of his department, head of the School of Arts and, between 2004 and 2007, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the university. [1] [2] [3]
According to his British Academy profile, Corns's research entails "the historically-informed study of seventeenth-century English literature; scholarly editing of seventeenth-century texts; [and] stylistic criticism". [2] He is a specialist on John Milton and has published widely on him and the mid-17th-century political literature. [2]
In 2015, Corns was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [2] In 1997 he gave the British Academy's Warton Lecture on English Poetry. [4]
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, written in blank verse and including twelve books, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. Paradise Lost elevated Milton's reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.
Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh was an English scholar, poet, and author. Raleigh was also a Cambridge Apostle.
Sir John Frank Kermode, FBA was a British literary critic best known for his 1967 work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing.
De Doctrina Christiana is a theological treatise of the English poet and thinker John Milton (1608–1674), containing a systematic exposition of his religious views. The Latin manuscript "De Doctrina" was found in 1823 and published in 1825. The authorship of the work is debatable. In favor of the theory of the non-authenticity of the text, comments are made both over its content, and it is difficult to imagine that such a complex text could be written by a blind person. However, after nearly a century of interdisciplinary research, it is generally accepted that the manuscript belongs to Milton. The course of work on the manuscript, its fate after the death of the author, and the reasons for which it was not published during his lifetime are well established. The most common nowadays point of view on De Doctrina Christiana is to consider it as a theological commentary on poems.
The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty is an essay by English poet John Milton distributed as one of a series of religious pamphlets by the writer. Published in 1642, the political work details Milton's preference for a Presbyterian approach to the Church of England over approaches favoured by the episcopal organization of the time. Milton states that this form of worship stems from Hebrew scriptures. The essay was meant as a response to the beliefs of Bishop Joseph Hall and Archbishop James Ussher.
Eikonoklastes is a book by John Milton, published October 1649. In it he provides a justification for the execution of Charles I, which had taken place on 30 January 1649. The book's title is taken from the Greek, and means "Iconoclast" or "breaker of the icon", and refers to Eikon Basilike, a Royalist propaganda work. The translation of Eikon Basilike is "icon of the King"; it was published immediately after the execution. Milton's book is therefore usually seen as Parliamentarian propaganda, explicitly designed to counter the Royalist arguments.
Defension Secunda was a 1654 political tract by John Milton, a sequel to his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano. It is a defence of the Parliamentary regime, then controlled by Oliver Cromwell; and also defense of his own reputation against a royalist tract published under the name Salmasius in 1652, and other criticism lodged against him.
A Treatise of Civil Power was published by John Milton in February 1659. The work argues over the definition and nature of heresy and free thought, and Milton tries to convince the new English Parliament to further his cause.
The religious views of John Milton influenced many of his works focusing on the nature of religion and of the divine. He differed in important ways from the Calvinism with which he is associated, particularly concerning the doctrines of grace and predestination. The unusual nature of his own Protestant Christianity has been characterized as both Puritan and Independent.
Politics were an important part of John Milton's life. Milton enjoyed little wide-scale early success, either in prose or poetry, until the production of his later, controversial political works starting with The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes.
The reception history of John Milton and his works has been a mixture of positive and negative responses, with his greatest influence being found within his poetry.
Michael O'Neill was an English poet and scholar, specialising in the Romantic period and post-war poetry. He published four volumes of original poetry; his academic writing was praised as "beautifully and lucidly written".
Frank Percy Wilson was a British literary scholar and bibliographer. Author of many works on Elizabethan drama and general editor of the Oxford History of English Literature, Wilson was Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford from 1947 to 1957.
Michael Lapidge, FBA is a scholar in the field of Medieval Latin literature, particularly that composed in Anglo-Saxon England during the period 600–1100 AD; he is an emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, and winner of the 2009 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize.
Ernst Anselm Joachim Honigmann, FBA was a German-born British scholar of English Literature, Shakespeare scholar, and Fellow of the British Academy.
Constantinos Apostolos Patrides was a Greek–American academic and writer, and "one of the greatest scholars of Renaissance literature of his generation". His books list the name C. A. Patrides; his Christian name "Constantinos" was shortened to the familiar "Dinos" and "Dean" by friends.
Gordon Campbell FBA is a professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester known for his work on Milton and on the King James Bible. Campbell is one of the "world's leading authorities on the King James Bible." He has published extensively in a number of areas.
Lucy Newlyn is a poet and academic. She is Emeritus Fellow in English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, having retired as a professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford in 2016.
Annabel M. Patterson is the Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University.
Sir James Runcieman Sutherland, FBA was an English literary scholar, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern Literature at London University.