[Milton-L] Du Bartas

[Campbell, W. Gardner]

It is an extravagant claim, at least in my view, so I have softened it to "helped inspire." Even those words could be more precise-they're just the best I can do late on a Friday night.

Wikipedia welcomes corrections, which are as easy to make as clicking on a link, changing the words, and saving the results. It's not that the article should be edited. Rather, it's that *we should edit the article*, making it better bit by bit, together, as time and interest permit.

Thanks for alerting us to this need. I hope others more learned than I will make their own edits.

Gardner Campbell

From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Nancy Charlton
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 9:36 PM
To: milton-l at lists.richmond.edu
Subject: [Milton-L] Du Bartas

I was just looking on the internet for du Bartas in either French or English, and found a Wikipedia article that makes this claim: "it [La Sepmaine, or Creacion du Monde]formed the basis for Milton's Paradise Lost."

This seemed to me a rather extravagant claim. Certainly, Sylvester's translation of du Bartas was important to Milton, but the basis of PL??  Seems to me you could argue more plausibly for Dante or Virgil or Homer of the Bible than for du Bartas. Or have I been missing something?

If this is truly the case, the Wikipedia article needs to back up this claim. If it is perhaps an overgeneralization, it needs to be qualified. Either way, the article should be edited.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_de_Salluste_Du_Bartas

Nancy Charlton


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