Abstracts.

Publication: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

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Katharine A. Craik, Reading Coryats Crudities (1611)

Coryats Crudities, Thomas Coryat's account of his five-month tour of Europe, was published in 1611. This article argues that Coryat's "crudities" resist ideals of humanist pedagogy, where rhetorical digestio involved the proper organization and assimilation of knowledge. Coryat and his mock panegyrists explore connections between writing and intemperance, discussing the painful effects of pleasurable reading experiences on the bodies of aristocratic men. In so doing, they coin a new generic position for Crudities as a travelogue that resists truth telling but is nevertheless not quite a traveler's tall tale.

Clay Daniel, Milton's Neo-Platonic Angel?

Readers generally agree that Raphael administers--probably inappropriately--Neo-Platonic correction to Adam when the man extols Eve's beauty (Paradise Lost 8.523-51). However, Raphael only appears to endorse Neo-Platonism in order to entangle a "wary" Adam fatally--and Neo-Platonically--curious about "proportional ascent, which cannot be / But to be gods, or angels demi-gods" (PL 9.936-7). Adam is maneuvered into...

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