Canon before Canon, Literature before Literature: Thomas Pope Blount and the Scope of Early Modern Learning
Abstract
Sir Thomas Pope Blount (1649–1697), an English essayist and country gentleman, published two major literary biobibliographies, Censura celebriorum authorum (1690) and De re poetica (1694). In this essay, Kelsey Jackson Williams discusses the texts within the genre of historia literaria and contemporary understandings of literature. In doing so, he engages with current debates surrounding canon formation and the shifts in disciplinary boundaries that followed in the wake of the Battle of the Books. Early modern canons and definitions of “literature” differed radically from their modern equivalents, and a close reading of Blount’s work offers a window onto this forgotten literary landscape.
Citation
Williams , K J 2014 , ' Canon before Canon, Literature before Literature: Thomas Pope Blount and the Scope of Early Modern Learning ' , Huntington Library Quarterly , vol. 77 , no. 2 , pp. 177-199 . https://doi.org/10.1525/hlq.2014.77.2.177
Publication
Huntington Library Quarterly
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0018-7895Type
Journal article
Rights
©2014 by Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://dx.doi.org/10.1525/hlq.2014.77.2.177.
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