Corns, Thomas N.

(T. N. Corns)

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Brasenose College, Oxford, M.A.; University College, Oxford, D.Phil.; studied at Maximilianeum Foundation (Munich, Germany).

ADDRESSES: Office—University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2DG, Wales. E-mail—els009@bangor.ac.uk.

CAREER: University of Wales, Bangor, professor of English and head of School of Arts and Humanities, pro-vice-chancellor. British Milton Seminar, founder and co-convenor; International Milton Symposium, secretary to standing committee.

MEMBER: Royal Historical Society (fellow), English Association (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS: Irene Samuel Prize, Milton Society of America, 2002, for A Companion to Milton; named honored scholar, Milton Society of America, 2003.

WRITINGS:

The Development of Milton's Prose Style ("Oxford English Monographs" series), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1982.

(As T. N. Corns; with B. H. Rudall) Computers and Literature: A Practical Guide, Abacus Press (Cambridge, MA), 1987.

(Editor) The Literature of Controversy: Polemical Strategy from Milton to Junius, Frank Cass (Totowa, NJ), 1987.

Milton's Language ("Language Library" series), Blackwell Publishers (Cambridge, MA), 1990.

(Editor, with Peter J. Kitson) Coleridge and the Armoury of the Human Mind: Essays on His Prose Writings, Frank Cass (Portland, OR), 1991.

Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640–1660, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor, with J. A. Downie) Telling People What to Think: Early Eighteenth-Century Periodicals from the "Review" to the "Rambler," Frank Cass (Portland, OR), 1993.

(Editor) The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell ("Cambridge Companions to Literature" series), 1993.

Regaining Paradise Lost ("Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library" series), Longman (New York, NY), 1994.

(Editor, with David Loewenstein) The Emergence of Quaker Writing: Dissenting Literature in Seventeenth-Century England, Frank Cass (Portland, OR), 1995.

John Milton: The Prose Works ("Twayne's English Authors" series), Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor) The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) A Companion to Milton ("Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture" series), Blackwell Publishers (Malden, MA), 2001.

Associate editor of New Dictionary of National Biography. Contributor to books, including The Historical Development of Narrative, edited by R. T. Eriksen and H. E. Aarset, Mouton de Gruyter (Berlin, Germany), 1994; Milton and Republicanism, edited by Quentin Skinner, David Armitage, and Armand Himy, Cambridge University Press, 1995; and The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature, edited by David Loewenstein and Janel Mueller, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS: With others, a new edition of the complete works of Gerrard Winstanley, for Clarendon Press; with others, an investigation of the provenance of De Doctrina Christiana and its place in the Protestant exegetical tradition; as editor-in-chief, the Milton Encyclopedia, for Yale University Press.

SIDELIGHTS: An educator and scholar specializing in seventeeth-century literature, Thomas N. Corns is the author or editor of several volumes, a number of which concentrate on the works of English writer John Milton. The Development of Milton's Prose Style, a revised version of Corns' doctoral thesis, describes a computer program called COCOA, which was developed at the universities of Oxford, Manchester, and Wales. Fed 3,000-word samples of Milton's works, as well as samples of the works of other writers, the program functioned to analyze and compare them. Milton's Language is a further examination of Milton's style.

In Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640–1660 Corns examines the literature of the mid-seventeenth century and how it influenced and reflects the politics of the period. While Milton's writings are central to the volume, the author also includes other, lesser-known texts. N. H. Keeble wrote in Notes and Queries that "this exceptionally fine book offers new perceptions and strikingly illuminating comments on nearly every page. Its very considerable achievement is to make us realize how little we have appreciated the diversity and richness of the cultural history of these so much studied years."

Corns and J. A. Downie coedited Telling People What to Think: Early Eighteenth-Century Periodicals from the "Review" to the "Rambler," a collection of essays that study journalism of the early 1700s as well as that era's central literary figures, many of whom wrote under pseudonyms, but all of whom gave their respective publications a unique voice. During this period in history, periodicals experienced increased circulation with the development of more efficient production and distribution methods, and they served to encourage literacy and women's participation as both readers and writers.

Michael Schoenfeldt, in a review of The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell for Renaissance Quarterly, noted that "one of the signal virtues of this fine collection is its expert blend of traditional and novel approaches." The first of the book's two sections, titled "The Context," contains five essays organized thematically around the headings "Politics and Religion," "The Politics of Gender," "Manuscript, Print, and the Social History of the Lyric," "Genre and Tradition," and "Rhetoric." The second part of the book, "Some Poets," contains essays that focus, in turn, on the poets such as Donne, Jonson, Herrick, Herbert, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Milton, Crashaw, Vaughan, and Marvell.

In Regaining Paradise Lost Corns focuses on Milton's master work, and examines the role of the Trinity, angels, and God in the work, as well as the poet's representation of women in his use of the story of Adam and Eve. Dennis Kezar commented in Notes and Queries that this study "comes as near to fact as criticism can: a chapter on Milton's formal poetics, and a concluding account of Paradise Lost's development as the work of a republican right hand, offer short but helpful introductions to topics rarely summarized with much profit."

The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I collects essays that address representations of Charles Stuart before, during, and following his troubled reign; the book was published on the 350th anniversary of the monarch's death in 1649. "In his preface," wrote W. B. Patterson, "Corns sums up the cultural aspirations and achievements of the king in the years before the outbreak of civil war in all three of his kingdoms…. Yet, as Corns shows in his opening chapter on 'Duke, prince and king,' negative images of Charles began to emerge soon after his accession in 1625 over issues of foreign policy, the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, parliamentary privileges and subjects' rights, and the theology and liturgical practices of the Church of England." These images intensified in the 1640s as the king continued to struggle with Parliament and civil war erupted in Ireland, Scotland, and England.

The twelve essays in The Royal Image are written by contributors with academic backgrounds in political history, literary criticism, and the visual arts. They focus on ways in which the king was represented over which he had no control, as in poetry and in the press, and others over which he did. In his essay "The Visual Image of Charles I," John Peacock discusses those images that were viewed almost exclusively by aristocrats—such as the royal portraits by Van Dyck and Daniel Mytens, as well as sculptures, prints, and masques—and those that were available to the public, including the king's depiction on English coins. Other essays focus on Charles's reign and his marriage to Henriette Marie. Michael G. Brennan wrote in Notes and Queries that "although many single-author historical studies of individual kings and queens have rightly attained considerable critical acclaim …, few … have possessed the sheer range of expertise demonstrated in this volume (and, it should also be noted, so effectively drawn together by its editor)."

Corns has also edited A Companion to Milton, a collection of twenty-nine essays that analyze the monumental author's output and the influences on his writings. Austin Woolrych wrote in English Historical Review that in the first essay, Barbara Lewalski presents the other twenty-eight contributors with "a hard act to follow with a wonderfully perceptive, beautifully written essay on the manner in which the genre in which Milton was writing—pastoral, masque, sonnet, epic, heroic drama—affected the style and content of his major works." Choice contributor A. C. Labriola noted that the essays assembled by Corns "strike the perfect balance between an exploration of the context surrounding Milton's writings and an intensive analysis of his poems and prose treatises."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, June, 1994, R. Boston, review of The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, p. 1576; November, 1998, D. S. Gochberg, review of John Milton: The Prose Works, p. 520; December, 2001, A. C. Labriola, review of A Companion to Milton, p. 681.

Contemporary Review, November, 1999, review of The Royal Image: Representations of Charles I, p. 278.

English Historical Review, September, 2000, Pauline Croft, review of The Royal Image, p. 971; April, 2002, Austin Woolrych, review of A Companion to Milton, p. 477.

English Studies, December, 1991, Frances Austin, review of Milton's Language, pp. 564-565; November, 1994, reviews of The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell and Telling People What to Think: Early Eighteenth-Century Periodicals from the "Review" to the "Rambler," pp. 536-561; November, 1997, Frances Austin, review of The Emergence of Quaker Writing: Dissenting Literature in Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 585-586.

History Today, July, 1993, Ivan Roots, review of Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640–1660, p. 56.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, July, 1994, David Loewenstein, review of Uncloistered Virtue, p. 425; January, 2002, Christopher Orchard, review of The Royal Image, p. 138.

Modern Language Review, July, 1988, Brian Vickers, review of The Development of Milton's Prose Style, pp. 673-677; April, 1995, Cedric C. Brown, review of Uncloistered Virtue, pp. 413-414; January, 1996, Neil Rhodes, review of The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, pp. 193-195; October, 1996, Diane Purkiss, review of Regaining Paradise Lost, pp. 973-974.

Modern Philology, August, 2001, Derek Hirst, review of The Royal Image, p. 112.

Notes and Queries, March, 1989, David Womersley, review of The Literature of Controversy: Polemical Strategy from Milton to Junius, pp. 107-108; June, 1991, Avril Bruten, review of Milton's Language, pp. 228-229; June, 1994, N. H. Keeble, review of Uncloistered Virtue, p. 247; September, 1994, Jeremy Black, review of Telling People What to Think, p. 393; March, 1995, Andrew Hadfield, review of The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, p. 91; March, 1998, Dennis Kezar, review of Regaining Paradise Lost, p. 112; September, 2000, Michael G. Brennan, review of The Royal Image, p. 366.

Renaissance Quarterly, autumn, 1983, William G. Riggs, review of The Development of Milton's Prose Style, pp. 479-482; autumn, 1996, Michael Schoenfeldt, review of The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, pp. 654-655; winter, 1996, Samuel Glen Wong, review of Regaining Paradise Lost, pp. 887-891; summer, 2001, W. B. Patterson, review of The Royal Image, pp. 643-646.

Review of English Studies, November, 1984, Alan Ward, review of The Development of Milton's Prose Style, pp. 539-540; November, 1993, W. J. B. Owen, review of Coleridge and the Armoury of the Human Mind: Essays on His Prose Writings, p. 595; February, 1995, Joad Raymond, review of Uncloistered Virtue, p. 92; February, 1996, Joanne Shattock, review of Telling People What to Think, p. 91; May, 1996, Alan Rudrum, review of The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, p. 256.

Sewanee Review, spring, 1984, Thomas Wheeler, review of The Development of Milton's Prose Style, pp. 304-312.

Times Literary Supplement, January 8, 1993, Nigel Smith, review of Uncloistered Virtue, p. 20; February 2, 1996, David Norbook, review of Regaining Paradise Lost, pp. 4-6; February 15, 2002, H. Neville Davies, review of A Companion to Milton, p. 25.

ONLINE

University of Wales, Bangor Web site, http://www.bangor.ac.uk (June 2, 2005), "Thomas N. Corns."