Daniel Fried

daniel fried2
DPhil Candidate
New College

Thesis title:  'John Milton (1608-74) and the Uses of Ancient Learning'

 

Supervisor: Dr William Poole

 

Doctoral research: We know very much about John Milton’s classical sources, allusions, and formal archetypes. But humanism did not only entail the imitation of ancient literature—and we know less about Milton’s place in the broader intellectual culture of late humanistic classical scholarship. My thesis is an attempt to look over the shoulder of Milton the Scholar at work. 
I discuss the wide uses to which Milton put ancient learning throughout his life—in his Cambridge years; his interest in confessionalised erudition and patristic scholarship; his educational writings and practice; and his methodologies for encountering and accommodating ancient wisdom. The second half of the thesis generally considers how these conventional structures of late humanistic thinking might have propped up Milton’s poetry—including some of its aspects that have long been classified as unconventional and even radical. Specifically, I trace Milton's understanding of the ancient cosmography, physics, and astronomy that both contain and comprise the universe of Paradise Lost.

 

 

 

Other research: I have wider interests in intellectual history and bibliography. I am a member of the Oxford Centre for Intellectual History. I served as Hon. Treasurer of the Oxford Bibliographical Society (2020-23), and remain on its council. Some current research projects include:

  • The reception of the ancient astronomical writings of Aratus and Geminus of Rhodes in early modern Europe
  • The life and times of Robert Sharrock (1630-84), the sometime editor of Robert Boyle
  • The libertas philosophandi in England and continental Europe
  • A co-edited revised edition of Paul Morgan, Oxford Libraries Outside the Bodleian (Oxford, 1973)

Publications:

  • ‘Robert Burton, Lucretius, and the Savilian Professors’, Notes and Queries, 67 (2020), 361-5
  • (with William Poole), ‘Stephen Standish and the Provenance of the New College Astronomicum Cæsareum (1540)’, New College Notes, 12 (2019), article 5

Conference papers:

  • Co-convenor (with Dr Sarah Cusk), 'Bibliography's Past, Present, and Future: the OBS Centenary Colloquium' (approx. 20 speakers & 130 attendees) (September 2022)
  • ‘Robert Sharrock (1630-84): the varying institutional commitments of Robert Boyle’s editor’, at ‘The mind is its own place? Early modern intellectual history in an institutional context’, Oxford (April 2022)
  • ‘Thomas James: catalogues and chronology’, at ‘Bodley’s first librarian, Thomas James: his career and legacy’, Bodleian Libraries Centre for the Study of the Book, Oxford (September 2020; postponed due to Covid)
  • ‘The Royal Society Library in the seventeenth century’, at ‘Provenance in the Royal Society early book collection’, Royal Society of London (March 2020)

Grants/fellowships:

  • 'Friends of the Princeton University Library Research Grant', Princeton University Library Special Collections (2024)
  • Research fellowship, The Huntington Library, California (2023)
  • Minor Grant from The Bibliographical Society of London. Project title: ‘The annotations of G.J. (1577-1649) and Isaac Vossius (1618-89) to their copies of Lucretius held at Leiden’ (2021)