| Richard Bentley: Poetry and Enlightenment Subjects: Bentley Richard 1662–1742; Classicists -- Great Britain; Learning and scholarship -- England -- History; Civilization Classical -- Study and teaching -- England -- History; Criticism Textual -- History; What made the classical scholar Richard Bentley deserve to be so viciously skewered by two of the literary giants of his day--Jonathan Swift in the Battle of the Books and Alexander Pope in the Dunciad ? The answer: he had the temerity to bring classical study out of the scholar's closet and into the drawing rooms of polite society. Kristine Haugen's highly engaging biography of a man whom Rhodri Lewis characterized as "perhaps the most notable--and notorious--scholar ever to have English as a mother tongue" affords a fascinating portrait of Bentley and the intellectual turmoil he set in motion. Haugen Kristine Louise : Kristine Louise Haugen is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the California Institute of Technology. |