Milton in Strasbourg: A Collection of Essays Based on Papers Delivered to the IMS12, 17-21 June 2019 2875744240, 9782875744241

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Milton in Strasbourg A Collection of Essays based on papers delivered to the IMS12, 17-21 June 2019

Peter Lang Bruxelles Bern Berlin New York Oxford Wien 

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Christophe Tournu, John Hale, & Neil Forsyth (eds.)

Milton in Strasbourg A Collection of Essays based on papers delivered to the IMS12, 17–21 June 2019

Peter Lang Bruxelles Bern Berlin New York Oxford Wien 

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Cover: (c) Université de Strasbourg

We would like to thank the University of Strasbourg for its financial support.      

This publication has been peer-reviewed All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

© P.I.E. PETER LANG s.a.

Éditions scientifiques internationales

Bruxelles, 2022 1 avenue Maurice, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgique www.peterlang.com ; [email protected]

ISBN 978-2-87574-424-1 ePDF 978-2-87574-425-8 ePUB 978-2-87574-426-5 DOI 10.3726/b19772 D/2022/5678/29 Bibliographic information published by “Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek” “Die Deutsche National Bibliothek” lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at .

Acknowledgements Our greatest thanks must be given to the contributors. They are authors with long-​lived academic careers or young PhD students, all sharing the same passion for Milton studies, and they come from all over the world: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, France, Hungary, Italy, Lebanon, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA. Many thanks to my colleagues and friends, Neil Forsyth and John K. Hale. As can easily be imagined, preparing the essays collected in this volume has been a lot of work: selecting the papers, asking for clarifications, proof-​reading, and editing. It was quite funny and exciting, though, to ask for help from the other end of the world just before bedtime here in Europe and get an answer early the next morning, “Coming dancing from the East.” John was especially helpful in the making of this volume, relentlessly reading the texts, raising questions, and making suggestions. We are immensely indebted to him, and the Contributors must be all thanked for their collaboration and patience. This publication would not have been possible without the support of the Conseil de publication of the University of Strasbourg and of my own research unit, UR4378 Théologie protestante, to whom we express our deepest gratitude. Finally, Joan Blythe offered some financial assistance with the volume’s publication, and we are also grateful to her. We would like to thank Dyana Devadhas for her work on the book production. Last but not least, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Prof. Michel Deneken, President of the University of Strasbourg, for his support and for writing the Foreword. Christophe Tournu 28 April 2022

Foreword by Michel Deneken, President of the University of Strasbourg Here is a large, polyphonic and cosmopolitan volume resulting from the twelfth edition of the Milton international symposium. It constitutes the harvest of the rich days which, from 17–​21 June 2019, brought together the Miltonian Areopagus, who came from all over the world to write a new and amazing chapter of Milton’s reception story. It is an understatement to say that it was a milestone event for our university as the figure of the author of Paradise Lost goes beyond disciplinary and national borders. The readers of this collection will tolerate the pride of the president of the University of Strasbourg when he dares to affirm that it was also an event for the specialists of Milton. It is the internationalism of our university and the disciplinary abundance that prevails there that will excuse the academic chauvinism that I assume. Milton has some links with Strasbourg and Alsace; we are reminded of this from the introduction to this collection: Bucer and Doré, for example. But if Strasbourg was for the Miltonians the place to be in 2019, it is because the university, which had the joy and the honour of receiving them, is by essence comprehensive, European and humanistic, in line therefore with this polymorphic and timeless genius. And we will also speak, in this volume, of the “Strasbourg connection” on the subject of Paradise Lost. Let us dare to ask the question which can annoy: how can Milton still interest the intellectual and university community of the twenty-​ first century? Those who gather for this symposium are certainly convinced of the timeliness and genius of their author, to whom some of them devote their entire lives as researchers. But beyond that, isn’t the Miltonian community, consciously or not, through the ages, nations and disciplines, bound by the ever-​present drama of Paradise Lost? Blind like Homer, pessimistic like Saint Augustine, demiurge like Dante, Milton leaves open the time of history, beyond all judgement, and beyond questions and answers. Because this genius who shakes up institutions and criticizes those who govern them, in the name of freedom, is he not the one who composed his epic poem sitting at the feet of the chained

10 Foreword

Prometheus? The drama of freedom constitutes the integrality of all of Milton’s work. How can an author be more up-​to-​date? Italo Calvino tries to define what is classic in literature: “The classics are books which, when they reach us, carry within them the traces of the readings which preceded ours and trail behind them the traces which they have left in the culture or cultures which they have crossed.”1 Paradise Lost is in such a way a classic. But the other writings of Milton continue to fascinate us, for, as Hippolyte Taine says in the middle of the nineteenth century: “I have before me the formidable volume in which, sometime after Milton’s death, his prose was collected. And what a book! The chairs creak when you put it down, and whoever has handled it for an hour has less headache than arms hurt. Still it is necessary to think that the author was singularly literate, elegant, traveler, philosopher and man of the world for his time.”2 Taine highlights the athletic dimension of Milton’s entire work, a work of struggle for freedom of life and thought. In conclusion, he writes that Milton’s style and ideas are “monuments of history (which) concentrate, recall or anticipate the past and the future; in the work of a great man, one discovers the events and the feelings of several centuries and of a nation.”3 Thanks to Christophe Tournu, John Hale and Neil Forsyth we have become more aware that Milton is more current and provocative than ever. The disastrous Brexiteer wants to believe in a political estrangement justified by the quest for the identity of a kingdom more than ever disunited. But no political decision, however unanimous, will get a hold on Shakespeare, Marlowe, Eliot, and Woolf, who belong to and continue to make Europe. Milton, likewise, embodies something irreducible in

1

Translated from the Italian, Perché leggere i classici, 1991. The English version of the essay was originally published in The New Yorker, 9 October 1986. Italo Calvino (1923–​85) was an Italian journalist, short-​story writer, and novelist. 2 Hippolyte Taine, « Milton, son génie et ses œuvres », in Revue des deux mondes, 2ème période, tome 9, 1857, pp. 818–​54 ; pp. 823–​24. « J’ai sous les yeux le redoutable volume où, quelque temps après la mort de Milton, on a rassemblé sa prose. Quel livre ! Les chaises craquent quand on le pose, et celui qui l’a manié une heure en a moins mal à la tête qu’aux bras. Encore faut-​il songer que l’auteur fut singulièrement lettré, élégant, voyageur, philosophe, homme du monde pour son temps. » 3 Taine, idem., p. 854. « Ce style et ces idées sont des monumens d’histoire. Ils concentrent, rappellent ou devancent le passé et l’avenir ; dans l’œuvre d’un grand homme, on découvre les événemens et les sentimens de plusieurs siècles et d’une nation. »

Foreword

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the idea of ​European culture. This attachment to freedom, which animated his whole life, runs through all his work and today more than ever constitutes an imperative duty and both an intellectual and political commitment. “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”4

4 Milton, Areopagitica, in: Edward Arber Ed. London, 1868, p. 73.

Contents Introduction �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  19 The International Milton Symposia ����������������������������������������������  47 Gordon Campbell

Part I  Milton and Materiality Milton’s Skin ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  57 James Grantham Turner “So all was cleared”: Corrupted Fancy and Purgative Tears in Paradise Lost ��������������������������������������������������������������������  71 Sarah S. Keleher (née Rice) Milton’s Deafened Moment �����������������������������������������������������������  87 Miles Drawdy

Part II  Milton’s Language and Style Scripture, Scorn, and Milton’s Dynamics of Derision ���������������� 101 David Currell Milton and the Political Sonnet’s Deep State ������������������������������  115 Lana Cable

14 Contents

Milton, Sublime Style, and the Problem of Enthusiasm ������������� 137 Thomas M. Vozar

Part III  Milton’s Prose “Knots and Twirls”: Conflictual Metaphors in Of Reformation ������������������������������������������������������������������������� 161 Daniele Borgogni “Better To Marry than To Burn”: Milton’s Deliberate Translation of Paul ������������������������������������������������������������������������ 183 Matt Dolloff John Milton’s View of the Present State of Ireland ���������������������� 195 David Harris Sacks

Part IV  Paradise Lost “Short” in Paradise Lost ��������������������������������������������������������������  225 Neil Forsyth Doré’s Illustrations to Paradise Lost and to The Holy Bible ������  229 Hiroko Sano “Tyranny must be” (PL, XII, 195): Milton’s Politics of Heaven in Paradise Lost ����������������������������������������������������������� 251 Victoria M. Griffon

15

Contents

Satanic L/​Imitations. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. 2:6)” ����������  263 Ágnes Bató “In a troubled sea of passion tossed”: Adam, Hamlet, and Skepticism in Paradise Lost and Hamlet ������������������������������������  279 Bradley Fox Whither Goes AI: Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, Ex Machina, and the Boundaries of Knowledge ����������������������������������������������� 291 Tianhu Hao

Part V  Other Poems Milton as Phoebicola, a Follower of Phoebus: The Pauline Poet in His Latin Poetry ��������������������������������������������������������������  307 Chika Kaneko Virgil’s Disappearing Wives in Milton’s Sonnet 23 �������������������  323 Ian Hynd “My Heart Hath Been a Storehouse of Things”: The Passionless Son in Paradise Regained ������������������������������������������������������������� 337 William Yang

16 Contents

Part VI  De Doctrina Christiana Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana, the Anonymous Treatise Currently Attributed to Milton �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 351 Hugh Wilson and James Clawson

Part VII  Reception Studies “J’ai cru servir la littérature, j’ai désiré de bien mériter de la patrie” –​A Study of Fidelity in Translation as Viewed in the Case of Abbé Leroy’s Paradis perdu (1755) ��������������������������������  403 Christophe Tournu The Lists of Paradise Regained: An Economy of The Full and The Empty �����������������������������������������������������������������������������  437 Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá The Brazilian Milton: Innovation, Recreative Spirit and Absence in Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa ������������� 451 Miriam Piedade Mansur Andrade

Part VIII  Milton and his Audience: The Miltonic Reader, Listener and Viewer Donne, Milton, and the Understanders ��������������������������������������� 471 Warren Chernaik “Now Chaos Ends and Order Fair Prevails”: A Rationalistic Interpretation of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Oratorio The Creation by van Gottfried Swieten and Joseph Haydn ��������������  487 Beat Föllmi

Contents

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Milton in Stained Glass ���������������������������������������������������������������  503 Beverley Sherry About the Authors ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  531 Index ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 541

Introduction Sixteen years have elapsed since the Eighth International Milton Symposium was held in Grenoble, a little provincial city nestled in the valleys of the French Alps, and Miltonists rallied from 21 countries across the globe to talk about “Milton, Rights, and Liberties”, the main conference theme. In 2019, after London (2008), for the quatercentenary of Milton’s birth, Tokyo (2012), and Exeter (2015), Strasbourg was honoured to host the Twelfth edition of the Symposium. Once again, people from around the world, from Japan to Mexico, from Canada to New Zealand, from the US to Europe, flurried to a Milton spot. For five working days, in Strasbourg, at the Palais universitaire, the Great and Small Miltonists “In close recess and secret conclave sat /​[two hundred] Demy-​Gods on golden seats /​Frequent and full.” The leader of the Miltonic crew was once again Neil Forsyth, an Englishman from Switzerland –​as in 2005; he repeated the not so vain attempt of gathering a global crowd of swarming fans, and all paid tribute to “the general”.

The Strasbourg Connection This time, the main conference theme was “Milton’s Politics of Religion”. The topic was chosen because of the particular position of Strasbourg. Indeed, Strasbourg is the capital of Alsace and, since Napoleonic times, has had a special status. Ten years after the French Revolution, when Napoleon came to power (1799), one of his main objectives was to achieve peace –​including religious peace, to soothe one of the great wounds of the French Revolution, which had widened a gulf within the nation. As a matter of fact, with the end of the Ancien Régime society in 1789, the Catholic clergy no longer occupied the leading position in French society. With the passing of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790, the clergy was elected by the citizens and became civil servants,

20 Introduction

and had to take an oath of fidelity to the Constitution.1 Then there was a dechristianization movement during the Terror years, and after the Coup of 18 Brumaire,2 Bonaparte was eager to reconcile the Catholic Church. The Concordat is an agreement signed on 15 July 1801 by the representatives of the First Consul, Joseph Bonaparte,3 and of the Pope, Cardinal Consalvi, and ratified in the following weeks by the First Consul Bonaparte and by Pope Pius VII (papal bull Ecclesia Christi, 15 August 1801). The main lines of Concordat concern the freedom of worship of the Catholic religion within the French Republic and the appointment and remuneration of the clergy. According to the terms of the agreement, Catholicism was no longer the State religion, but remains the “religion of the majority of French people” (art. I).4 In exchange for the appointment of archbishops and bishops by the First Consul, bishops, parish priests and servants were to be remunerated by the Republic (art. XIV).5 The bishops, before taking office, shall take directly, in the presence of the first Consul, the oath of fidelity expressed in the following terms: I swear and promise to God, on the holy Gospels, to keep obedience and fidelity to the Government established by the Constitution of the French Republic. I also promise not to have any intelligence, or to attend any council, or to maintain any league, either inside or outside, which is contrary to public tranquillity; and if, in my diocese or elsewhere, I discover that

1

André Latreille, L’Église catholique et la Révolution française [1946], Les Éditions du Cerf, Collection « LeXio », 2019. 1040 p. 2 9 November 1799. 3 Napoleon Ier’s elder brother, 1768–​1844. 4 Art. Ier. « La religion catholique, apostolique et romaine, sera librement exercée en France. Son culte sera public, en se conformant aux règlements de police que le Gouvernement jugera nécessaires pour la tranquillité publique » [The Catholic, apostolic and Roman religion will be freely exercised in France. Its worship will be public, in accordance with such police regulations as the Government deems necessary for public tranquillity]. 5 « Le Gouvernement assurera un traitement convenable aux évêques et aux curés … » [The Government will ensure proper treatment for bishops and parish priests (…)]. On the other hand, bishops were to appoint parish priests but their choice had to be approved by the Government (art. 10).

Introduction

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something is going on to the detriment of the State, I will let the Govern6 ment know (art. VI).

The same oath was to be taken by the clergy of the second order (art. VII).7 The Concordat was abolished by the law of 9th December 1905 concerning the separation of the Churches and the State,8 which is still debated today in the context of the surge of Islamic radicalism. The “principles” of the new law are encapsulated in the first two articles: 1. The Republic ensures freedom of conscience and guarantees the free exercise of religion provided there is no disturbance to public order. 2. The Republic does not recognize, pay, or subsidize any form of worship. Yet, as Germany invaded Alsace-​Lorraine in 1870 and its occupation lasted until 1914, the Concordat remained in force there and has not even been abolished ever since. Had Milton been living in France in the beginning of the twentieth century, he, as the author of A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Cause (1659), would certainly have applauded the separation of the Church and State, and, as the author of The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church (1659), he would also have approved of the plan of the French government to stop giving a maintenance allowance to clergymen. If Milton obviously was not living in France in the beginning of the twentieth century, his name was mentioned and he was furthermore quoted in the debates at the National Assembly in the drafting of the

6 « Les évêques, avant d’entrer en fonctions, prêteront directement, entre les mains du premier Consul, le serment de fidélité qui était en usage avant le changement de gouvernement, exprimé dans les termes suivants: « Je jure et promets à Dieu, sur les saints évangiles, de garder obéissance et fidélité au Gouvernement établi par la Constitution de la République française. Je promets aussi de n’avoir aucune intelligence, de n’assister à aucun conseil, de n’entretenir aucune ligue, soit au dedans, soit au dehors, qui soit contraire à la tranquillité publique; et si, dans mon diocèse ou ailleurs, j’apprends qu’il se trame quelque chose au préjudice de l’État, je le ferai savoir au Gouvernement. » » 7 « Les ecclésiastiques du second ordre prêcheront le même serment entre les mains des autorités civiles désignées par le Gouvernement. » 8 Loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Églises et de l’État.

22 Introduction

law. A French MP, Mr. Eugène Réveillaud,9 a journalist, lawyer, historian, and politician, called upon Milton to support his view: Mr. Eugène Réveillaud.  I return to the Reformation to find in the pen of a great English poet, the author of Paradise Lost, who was at the same time a great theologian and a statesman, Cromwell’s much listened to adviser, this idea that we can call the idea of the new world, the great thesis of the freedom that must be granted to all opinions, to all cults. I want to bring back here this profound word of John Milton … (he is interrupted) Mr. Julien Goujon10 (Seine-​Inférieure).  He was blind. Mr Gabriel Deville.11  That does not prevent him from speaking well. Mr. Eugène Réveillaud.  … “Though, he said, all the winds of doctrines are unleashed onto the world, if the truth lies in the middle, we have nothing to fear. Let truth and falsehood take hold of each other; who has ever heard it said that truth was defeated, put to the test, when the meeting was fair on the field of freedom?” Here, formulated by this act of faith in freedom, in the power of truth against all its adversaries, is the fruitful principle of the new times, the normal idea which must henceforth regulate the relations of the State, the consciences and the Churches. It is this norm, this principle that we will consecrate in this legislature by voting this great law, the greatest that has been deliberated and voted on for a century, this law of the separation of the temporal and the spiritual, of the reciprocal independence of the State and the Church. (Very good! very good! to the left).12 [My translation] 9 Eugène Réveillaud was député (1902–​12), then a Senator (1912–​21); gradually moving away from Catholicism, he became a convinced anticlerical republican and was initiated to Freemasonry in Troyes. He then moved closer to evangelical Protestantism, to which he converted in 1878. 10 Julien Goujon (1854–​1912) was a brilliant lawyer and politician, and a playwright. 11 Gabriel Deville (1854–​1940) was an MP (1896–​98 and 1903–​06) and a member of the Parti ouvrier français (French Workers’ Party). Sitting with the parliamentary socialists, he actively participated in the debates on the law on the separation of church and state. 12 « M. Eugène Réveillaud. –​Je reviens à la Réforme pour retrouver sous la plume d’un grand poète anglais, l’auteur du Paradis Perdu, qui fut en même temps un grand théologien et un homme d’Etat, le conseiller écouté de Cromwell, cette idée

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This is quite strange: Milton, though a republican, was often considered a liberal and therefore could not conceivably be recuperated by socialists to support their own views. It is yet precisely what they did in 1905. Two figures further relate Milton to Strasbourg: Martin Bucer and Gustave Doré.

Martin Bucer Martin Bucer was born in Sélestat, thirty-​five miles south-​south-​west of the Alsatian capital, on 11 November 1491. Educated as a Dominican in Colmar, Bucer met Luther in Heidelberg in 1518 and converted to Protestantism, and he was called to preach the Reformation in Wissembourg. The German Protestant reformer was excommunicated by the bishop of Spire13 and fled to Strasbourg, where he was to stay between 1523 and 1549. Strasbourg was then a Free Imperial City (in German: Reichsstadt Straßburg), hence a former city-​state under the direct jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire. It obtained its status by freeing itself from the political domination of its bishop at the end of the battle of Hausbergen in 1262, and was entitled to full privileges in 1358. Strasbourg was to retain its territorial independence until Louis XIV and his qu’on peut appeler l’idée du monde nouveau, la grande thèse de la liberté qui doit être accordée à toutes les opinions, à tous les cultes. Je veux rapporter ici ce mot profond de John Milton : M. Julien Goujon (Seine-​Inférieure). –​Il était aveugle. M Gabriel Deville. –​Cela n’empêche pas de bien parler. M. Eugène Réveillaud. –​« Quand même, dit-​il, tous les vents de doctrines seraient déchaînés sur le monde, si la vérité est au milieu, nous n’avons rien à craindre. Laissons la vérité et le mensonge se prendre corps à corps ; qui a jamais entendu dire que la vérité ait été défaite, mise à mal, lorsque la rencontre a été loyale sur le terrain de la liberté ? » Voilà, formulé par cet acte de foi en la liberté, en la puissance de la vérité contre tous ses adversaires, le principe fécond des temps nouveaux, l’idée normale qui doit régler désormais les rapports de l’État, des consciences et des Églises. C’est cette norme, c’est ce principe que nous consacrerons dans cette législature en votant cette grande loi, la plus grande qui ait été délibérée et votée depuis un siècle, cette loi de la séparation du temporel et spirituel, de l’indépendance réciproque de l’État et de l’Église. (Très bien ! très bien ! à gauche) ». 13 Wissembourg, a locality situated about thirty miles north of Strasbourg, was to embrace the Reformation after the Peasants’ Revolt led by a wine-​grower called Bacchus Fischbach in 1525.

24 Introduction

troops marched into the City (1681). As early as 1521, Martin Luther’s theses were known, published and preached in Alsace, notably in Strasbourg by the cathedral priest, Matthieu Zell. In 1524, the old world was turned upside down: after a short wave of iconoclasm, the first cults in the vulgar language were celebrated as well as the first marriages of clerics; henceforth the Magistrate, that is, the three city councils, plus the Ammester (alderman), appointed pastors. Wolfgang Capito, Bucer and Caspar Hedio settled in the city and took up preaching positions. Bucer set up Bible reading classes. That same year, the city council assigned the cathedral, which was built from 1015 to 1439 in Rayonnant Gothic architecture, to the Protestant faith. The last step was taken in 1529: the Latin mass was banned. Normative texts were published to provide a framework for society. Religious affairs were henceforth handled by the ecclesiastical court, under the authority of the Magistrate. After Calvin was dismissed from his post in Geneva, Bucer managed to attract him to Strasbourg, where he was to stay for three years (1538–​ 41). Calvin was to teach in the Haute École (high School), which was to become the University of Strasbourg in 1621. Accused by some of being an enthusiast, that is, infected with Anabaptist notions, Bucer was expelled from Strasbourg by Charles V (1549) and exiled to England at the invitation of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. There, he was presented to King Edward VI on 5 May 1549, and was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge until his death in 1551. Queen Mary I had his remains exhumed and publicly burnt in 1557. De Regno Christi, his last book, was published posthumously in Basel in the same year14 and two French editions appeared in both Lausanne and Geneva in 1558.15 To support his own case, Milton translated the chapter on divorce, which he published as The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce (1644). And, in the preface to the book, he mentions Strasbourg: Yet did not Bucer in that volume [De Regno Christi] only declare what his constant opinion was herein [on divorce], but also in his comment upon

14 De regno Christi Iesu seruatoris nostri, Basel, Johann Oporinus, 1557. 15 Deux livres du Royaume de Jesus Christ nostre Sauveur, composez par Martin Bucer peu de temps avant sa mort, et dediez à Edouard VI. Roy d’Angleterre … Lausanne: Jean Rivery pour Richard Neudin, 1558; 390 p.

Introduction

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Matthew, written at Strasburgh divers years before, he treats distinctly and 16 copiously the same argument in three several places.

Indeed, exactly thirty years before his De Regno Christi, Bucer had published Enarrationum in Evangelia Matthaei, Marci, & Lucae, Libri duo (Strasbourg: Johannes Herwagen, 1527), a book in which he commented upon Mt 5: 32 and 19: 9, two scriptural texts dealing with the interdiction of divorce, “saving for the cause of fornication,” and remarriage with a divorced woman.17 Three years later, the work, much augmented and including his commentary on John’s Gospel, was reissued as Enarrationes perpetuae, in sacra quatuor Evangelia (Strasbourg, Georg Ulricher, 1530).18 Milton was well informed about Bucer, his theory of divorce, and Strasbourg itself, as we can gather from the following passage: Wherin his faithfulnes and powerful evidence prevail’d so farre with all the church of Strasburgh, that they publisht this doctrine of divorce, as an article of their confession, after they had taught so eight and twenty years, through all those times, when that Citie flourisht, and excell’d most, both in religion, learning, and goverment, under those first restorers of the Gospel there, Zelius, Hedio, Capito, Fagius, and those who incomparably then govern’d the Common-​wealth, Ferrerus and Sturmius.19

16

17 18 19

Du Royaume de Jesus Christ nostre Sauveur. Par M. Martin Bucer. Au Roy d’Angleterre Edoüard, sixieme de ce nom. II. Livres tresutiles et necessaires non seulement à tous theologiens et jurisconsultes, mais aussi à tous ceux qui sont commiz au gouvernement des republiques et communautez. Geneva : Jacques Berthet, 1558 ; 582 p. https://​w ww.dartmo​uth.edu/​~mil​ton/​readi​ng_​r​oom/​bucer/​text.shtml. See Herman J. Selderhuis, Marriage and Divorce in the Thought of Martin Bucer. Trans. From the Dutch by John Vriend and Lyle D Bierma. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, Vol. 48. Kirksville, Mo., Thomas Jefferson UP, 1999, especially “Chapter 6: Divorce” (pp. 257–​311). See pp. 166a–​167a. See pp. 53b–​54a and pp. 139a–​157b. Matthew Zell (1477–​1548) was minister of the Catholic cathedral in Strasbourg and, when he became a Lutheran pastor, he initiated the Protestant Reformation there (1521); Caspar Hedio (1494–​1552) was a preacher at the Cathedral of Strasbourg; Paulus Fagius (1504–​49) was appointed Professor of Old Testament Studies in Strasbourg (1544), and Hebrew Lecturer at the University of Cambridge (1549); Ferrerus refers to Mathias Pfarrer (1489–​1568), several times Ammester of Strasbourg, and Sturmius to Jacob Sturm (1489–​1563), Stettmeister of Strasbourg.

26 Introduction

Here Milton alludes to Bucer’s Epitome, hoc est, brevis comprehen20 sio doctrinae ac religionis Christianae, quae Argentorati annos iam ad XXVIII. publice sonuit (1548). Article XXI, entitled “Of Sacred Matrimony,” contemplates the possibility of getting a divorce: But, if a divorce occurs, in accordance with or against the Word of the Lord, in this case, the Word of the Lord, the attitude of the first and true Apostolic Church, and also the Christian ordinances of the pious emperors will always be observed. (Mt 19 [: 3–​9], Dt 24 [: 1–​4]; I Cor 7 [: 10–​15]; Ambrosia on the same; Co[de], 1. Consensu21)

Portrait of Martin Bucer by Johann Theodor de Bry, Copper engraving, circa 1612–​13 (published 1627) 20 Argentoratum is the ancient name of the city of Strasbourg, from the twelfth century bc to the fifth century ad. 21 Translated from the French version of François Wendel, established from Bucer’s German translation. Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses (1951), vol. 31. 1 (1951), pp. 12–​101. See original text, “XXI. De Sacra coniugio” (p. 181): “(…)

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Gustave Doré Another connection between Milton and Strasbourg was Gustave Doré, the famous illustrator of Paradise Lost. Doré was born in Strasbourg on 6 January 1832. At the age of fifteen, he was hired by Charles Philippon, the editor of the Journal pour rire, and within seven years he made no fewer than 1,379 drawings. The most famous album is The Works of Hercules, which, as the editor claimed, was realized by a self-​ taught fifteen-​year-​old child with no knowledge in the classics. In 1850 he exhibited his first paintings at the Salon,22 the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-​A rts in Paris –​arguably the greatest annual or biennial art event in the Western world between 1748 and the end of the nineteenth century. Three years later, he published Petits Albums pour rire, twenty-​four woodcut drawings for the Complete Works of Lord Byron. In 1854 he illustrated the Works of Rabelais, his first great success and twelve paintings entitled Paris As It Is. In a single year (1856), he produced more than 1,200 graphic illustrations. The Legend of the Wandering Jew by Pierre Dupont is the best-​k nown illustrated work. Following his success, he was commissioned by the Ministère d’Etat to paint The Battle of Inkerman (5 November 1854), a decisive battle in the Crimean War which ended with an Anglo-​French victory over the Russian Empire (1854–​56). Then Doré turned to religious art: thus, in 1861, he illustrated Dante’s Inferno and began the ambitious project of illustrating masterpieces of world literature. Two years later, he published illustrations of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Chateaubriand’s Atala, and Ernest L’Epine’s La Légende de Croque-​Mitaine. In 1864, Napoleon III invited him to spend ten days in Compiègne, thereby establishing his reputation. In 1866, he illustrated Théophile Gautier’s Captain Fracasse, Paradise Lost,23 and the Holy Bible. Alfred Mame’s edition of La Sainte Bible selon la Vulgate (Tours, 1866) contained 312 drawings by Doré, in

Deniq, si fortè iuxta verbum Dei, aut etiam contra illud, diuortia incidant : in tali casu perpetuò agendum esse iuxta verbum Domini, obseruationem primitiuæ verè Apostolicæ Ecclesiæ, nec non Christianas constitutiones piorum Cæsarum.” See Ambrosiaster, Commentaria in xii epistolas beati pauli, Migne Patrologie Latine, t. 7, coll. 230s; Justinien, Code, V, 17, 8 22 The original exhibition (1667) was hung in the Salon d’Apollon of the Louvre Palace in Paris, hence its name. 23 An electronic edition is available on Gallica: https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr/​a rk:/​12148/​bpt6k​ 8549​76d/​f62.item

28 Introduction

which “the illustrator gives full measure to the epic visions and scenes with the grandiloquent theatricality of the Old Testament, indulging in crowd effects, grandiose landscapes and dramatic scenes, served by powerful chiaroscuro effects.”24 In 1868 Fairless and Beeforth, art dealers, opened the “Doré Gallery” in London with his drawings and paintings, while the illustrator struck again with La Fontaine’s Fables and Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, a poem retelling the legend of King Arthur. In 1870 he enlisted as a National Guard during the Franco-​Prussian War and painted The Marseillaise, from the song which a French army officer, Rouget de Lisle, had composed while in garrison in Strasbourg in 1792.25 Doré’s last major work was the illustration of Ariosto’s Roland Furieux (1879), for which he produced no fewer than 618 drawings. In 1880 he exhibited a sculpture called “La Madone” at the Salon.26 The monument for Alexandre Dumas, which was inaugurated in Paris on 4 November 1883, was his last work: Doré had worked six months on the sculpture of Dumas père (the elder), whom, according to Dumas fils (the younger) he resembled in so many ways27 –​not least because of his profuseness –​before he died of a heart attack on 23 January 1883. Milton’s Paradise Lost: Illustrated by Gustave Dore (1866) was a large, elegant folio volume, bound in best polished morocco, with fifty full-​ page original engravings. This luxury edition, which sold at £10 (or £5 if bound in cloth) was followed by a popular edition five years later: Milton’s masterpiece, containing Doré’s illustrations, “the first which he especially executed for the British Public”28, as the publishers advertised, was to be issued in monthly parts, selling at two shillings each, and completed in sixteen parts. “The Doré Milton,” as they said, was to be made affordable for everyone to see the magnificent engravings.

24 Translated from « Gustave Doré : L’imaginaire au pouvoir », A BnF Exhibition. Available at: http://​expo​siti​ons.bnf.fr/​orsay-​gust​aved​ore/​a lb​ums/​bible/​index.htm 25 The song, which became the French national hymn in 1795, was first called “Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin” (War Song for the Army of the Rhine). 26 A reproduction is to be found on the BnF website at http://​expo​siti​ons.bnf.fr/​orsay-​ gust​aved​ore/​grand/​dor_​353.htm 27 Adolphe de Leuven, Le monument de Alexandre Dumas, oeuvre de Gustave Doré: discours prononcés devant le monument le jour de l’ inauguration, poésies récitées le même jour (Paris, Librairie des bibliophiles, 1884), p. 87. 28 The Practical Poultry Keeper, … by L. Wright. Second edition, London and New York, Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1868 (unnumbered pages).

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Portrait of Gustave Doré Photograph by Felix Nadar (circa 1860) (Courtesy of BnF)

Summaries This volume falls into eight parts.

Part I In Part I, “Milton and Materiality”, James Grantham Turner, in “Milton’s Skin”, wonders why a distinguished statesman and poet, in the midst of justifying the most drastic coup d’ état in European history (the trial and execution of the King, the ensuing abolition of the monarchy and establishment of a Republic), would insist on telling us what great skin he has. Partly, of course, because his attacker (Pierre du Moulin) has resorted to ad hominem insults. But for Milton this is much more than a rhetorical tactic: he wants to claim that despite the ravages of age and blindness he embodies virtue, quite literally and corporeally. Milton invites the proper reader of this Latin Second Defence to experience the

30 Introduction

seductive presence of the author, to look into eyes that still look clear and touch that perfect complexion. By the same logic he must try to destroy his opponent in the flesh, de-​facing him. As scholars and teachers, Miltonists need to get under that skin. Then, two of his PhD students, Sarah Sands Rice and Miles Drawdy, bring their own contributions. In “ ‘So all was cleared’: Corrupted Fancy and Purgative Tears in Paradise Lost”, Rice argues that Early modern physiology conceived of imagination as a corporeal phenomenon, and a poisoned imagination could be quite a literal complaint. It is in that sense that Milton describes Satan “inspiring venom” into Eve’s ear to access “the organs of her fancy” and “taint /​The animal spirits that from pure blood arise.” Satan prompts Eve to “distempered thoughts” by distempering her body. He renders her animal spirits –​and perhaps even the blood from which they arise –​impure. Eve’s dream and the symptoms of biological imbalance that she displays upon waking demonstrate that Satan’s venom has had its desired effect: an effect that is, at root, biological. The materiality that Milton grants to Satan’s poisoning of Eve’s imagination radically disrupts the narrative of bodily corruption appearing as a result of the Fall. Instead, Satan’s physical corruption of Eve’s imaginative faculties precedes and enables Eve’s moral corruption, compromising her agency in the Fall. The entry of sin into humanity becomes a matter of the introduction of an external, material evil into the human body, and impurity of spirit becomes inseparable from impurity of substance. Miles Drawdy is also concerned with the ear –​hearing or rather non-​hearing (deafness). Materialist philosophies of the seventeenth century –​to the extent that they are empirical –​are fundamentally invested in both the senses and language. For this reason, deafness presented a complicated challenge: the uncooperative ear was understood to be incompatible with the idea of a universe elegantly and exhaustively defined by the interaction of material substance. This begins to explain why Hobbes describes deaf persons as irrational (or, at the very least, as incapable of abstract thought). Milton, however, makes deafness a fundamental characteristic of postlapsarian experience. Especially throughout his earlier poems, Milton explicitly characterizes fallen man as deaf to the song of the celestial spheres and needing to learn to hear. Drawdy situates Milton’s materialism among that of his contemporaries by focusing on his description of the deaf experience. In doing this, he relates Milton’s philosophical project –​and materialism more broadly –​to contemporary experiments in deaf education.

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Part II Part II is devoted to Milton’s style and language. David Currell examines Milton’s satire. According to Dryden (via Aubrey), Milton could not speak except under the sign of satire: “He pronounced the letter R very hard (a certain sign of a satirical wit).” This presentation considers how Milton lets slip the canine letter in Animadversions (1641) and Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (1654), texts within which Milton offers his most detailed justifications for satire in public disputation in terms of a politics and ethics of derision. While Milton adduces Biblical warrants for these affects, the pairing also recalls keywords from Latin verse satire (Juvenal’s indignatio and Persius’s cachinno). In these texts, Milton cuts his satirical teeth on Hall’s Toothlesse Satyres and blackens the name of More, but in doing so also foreshadows the place of satire in his late poetic works. Where Virgidemiarum positioned itself against epic poetry, Milton assimilates satire to heroic discursive modes, activating an alternative classicizing tradition that cultivated a dynamic (rather than antagonistic) interplay between epic and satiric modes. His success in recreating this generic dynamism in Defensio Secunda paves the way for the crucial place of satire in the generic orchestration of Paradise Lost and its further complication in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Then Lana Cable considers Milton’s sonnets in a new light, that is, as shifting from thematic Love to Politics. The Petrarchist overlay on sonnet form, she observes, marginalizes sonnets of significant intellectual and emotional authority, so that Miltonists rightly look to the concrete conditions inspiring Milton’s sonnets in order fully to appreciate them. Yet the Petrarchist slight still leads some to outflank that bias by crediting Milton with the invention of a sub-​genre, the Political Sonnet. Rightly to appreciate a sonnet’s complexity, however, regardless of its departure from, or adherence to, any particular theme, requires that we understand how the sonnet came to be invented. For the sonnet is not just another expressive lyric form, but an explicitly forensic one that, when its argumentative potential is realized, tends to have political significance however it may be defined, whether public or private. To explain why, this inquiry brings historical evidence to bear on a thought experiment in order to recover the theoretical setting for inventing the sonnet as an analytical tool, the thoughtful use of which enables any mind to create a moment of reason for bringing its particular challenge under better

32 Introduction

control. The very early Italian sonneteers included Giacomo da Lentini, a thirteenth-​century poet and what is known as the Sicilian School gathered around Holy Roman Emperor Philip II. Lastly, Thomas M. Vozar’s paper considers Milton and enthusiasm in relation to the treatise De Sublimitate attributed to Longinus (whom Milton names in Of Education), which often speaks of its subject in terms of divine inspiration and enthusiasm. From the earliest years of the Reformation there appeared those who claimed to receive direct revelations from the Holy Spirit, such as Melchior Hoffman, who declared that in Easter 1533 the city of Strasbourg would become the site of the New Jerusalem. Martin Luther labelled them Schwärmer; in English, they were enthusiasts. In the age of Milton, the problem of enthusiasm was especially acute, threatening authorities religious and political alike. But enthusiasm also signified “poeticall furie” (in Joshua Sylvester’s words), making it important to distinguish between rhetorical enthusiasm and “real” enthusiasm: the difference, as Henry More put it, is that “a Poet is an Enthusiast in jest, and an Enthusiast is a Poet in good earnest.” Milton derides enthusiasts several times in his prose, but he cannot be said to have an uncomplicated relationship with enthusiasm, given his radical politics, his idiosyncratic theology, and his poetry’s claims of inspiration; indeed, Vozar further argues, several scholars have suggested that Restoration writers found the “enthusiasm” of his poetry problematic precisely because it seemed to be more than merely rhetorical.

Part III The next part (Part III) is devoted to a study of Milton’s prose. Daniele Borgogni discusses Milton’s politics of religion from the perspective of recent theories of metaphor analysis, and his attention bears especially on Of Reformation (1641). Milton’s very first prose work is a notoriously rough text, which Don M. Wolfe characteristically described as a “hard pine log full of knots and unexpected twirls.” While the argument of this tract is often so intricate as to challenge the reader’s understanding, Milton’s visionary conception of history and his apocalyptic strain rely on conflicting metaphors and metaphorical swarms to stimulate an imaginative vision in which concepts and images are inseparably welded together. Modern metaphor theories provide useful instruments to discuss and highlight the peculiar nature and scope of Milton’s reliance on metaphors as privileged instruments for his “vindication of truth,”

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but they also shed light on the relation between Milton’s creativity and ideological violence. As a matter of fact, metaphors in Of Reformation do not only buttress self-​authentication (or defamation), but open up new possibilities of signifying, and offer the opportunity of expressing religious ideas and ideological views in a different way, overcoming the typical problems of ambiguity which affected apocalyptic writing by reinterpreting stock images and epithets, and transforming them into original images. Prompted by the conference’s setting in Martin Bucer’s home of Strasbourg, Matt Dolloff revisits Milton’s divorce tracts and the social justice arguments they make. While the overt persuasive thrust of the tracts is biblical, Milton enhances and polishes his argument with ideas from Plato. Urania, Milton’s Protestant Christian Muse of Paradise Lost, is an emanation of Plato’s Uranian Aphrodite and a consistent vehicle for human rights. From Ancient Greece to Milton’s own day, she had been an advocate for spiritual unions over the Dionian physical and procreative ones. Her peculiar vocabulary of, for instance, “pregnancy” in wisdom, a “womb of teeming truth,” and “solace and delight” populate Milton’s tracts along with an emphasis on friendship and a strong prejudice for the masculine over the “androgynous.” Bucer’s own assertion that there can be “no matrimony […] but what is knit in love and consent” follows suit. This discourse adds colour, nuance, and softness to otherwise forceful epideictic, Biblical, and political rhetoric so that his argument for human rights on the topic of divorce takes on a toneless “papistical” and more representative of the Renaissance and Early Modern eras. Finally, David H. Sacks focuses on a rarely-​studied piece of Milton’s, namely his Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels (1649) responding, “by Authority,” on behalf of Council of State to the terms agreed between the Earl of Ormond, King Charles I’s Governor of Ireland, and Ireland’s Roman Catholics. Although Charles himself had been tried and executed months before Milton’s comments were published, conditions in Ireland remained for some time a living issue for the Commonwealth and for Oliver Cromwell, its most powerful figure. In commenting on Milton’s Observations a number of scholars have remarked on its debt to Edmund Spenser’s A View… of Ireland, which emphasized the barbarous customs of the Irish and the need to eradicate them using penal laws and harsh military measures before Ireland could be civilized and Christianized. Other scholars have juxtaposed the coercive civilizing mission advocated by Milton for Ireland with his

34 Introduction

commitment to personal liberty and republican freedom put forward in political tracts such as Areopagitica and The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. This paper uses Milton’s view of Ireland to consider the role played by his conceptions of human and Christian liberty in shaping his understanding of civility and theory of republican government.

Part IV Part IV is composed of five essays on Paradise Lost. After a study of the word “short” in Milton’s epic poem by Neil Forsyth, President of IMS12, Hiroko Sano29 analyses “Doré’s Illustrations to Paradise Lost and to The Holy Bible”. There are no fewer than fifty etchings in Milton’s Paradise Lost, illustrated by Gustave Doré. Edited, with notes and a life of Milton, by Robert Vaughan DD. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galphin (1866).30 As you may remember, our local hero, a magnificent inspiration for Miltonists,31 acquired international fame thanks to the illustration of the Holy Bible32 and Dante’s Inferno. Never before in the history of Christian representations had the Bible been so much illustrated and “imagined” –​at the risk of offending some sensibilities. Then followed the wood engravings of Paradise Lost,33 notably his famous Satan’s Flight to earth at the end of Bk III, and sundry other works for which he was acclaimed, and his success was such that he opened his own Art Gallery in London in 1867–​68. One of his last masterpieces is the illustration of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1875). Before comparing some of Doré’s Bible illustrations to some of his illustrations of Paradise Lost, Hiroko Sano tells us more about Doré’s

29 The following paragraph is freely adapted from the site of the 2014 Exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, entitled “L’imaginaire au pouvoir.” See their website: http://​expo​siti​ons.bnf.fr/​orsay-​gust​aved​ore/​index.htm 30 The 1866 edition of PL, with Doré’s illustrations, is available online on Gallica (Bibliothèque Nationale de France): https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr/​a rk:/​12148/​bpt6k​8549​76d 31 My new hometown Doré has an entire 3-​chapter Part dedicated to him in Gobal Milton and the Visual Arts, edited by Angelica Duran and Mario Murgia (Lexington Books: Lanham, Boulder, New York, 2021), 73–​138. 32 La Sainte Bible selon la Vulgate. Traduction nouvelle avec les dessins de Gustave Doré. 2 vol. Tours, Alfred Mame et fils, 1866. Available on Gallica (https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr). 33 All 50 images are to be found at: https://​digi​tal.lib.buff​a lo.edu/​items/​bro​wse/​tag/​ Parad​ise+​L ost

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life and works, and takes us with her to his workshop: “In the 1860s Doré employed many artisans―about forty―to engrave his drawings designed on woodblocks, which made mass production possible. He would draw directly upon woodblocks, often using both pencil and brush, with dark washes building up the core which characterizes each design.34 A total of eighteen engravers, including a Belgian engraver, Adolphe-​François Pannemaker (1822–​1900), worked on his Paradise Lost.”35 The following essay, “ ‘Tyranny must be’ (PL, XII, 195) Milton’s Politics of Heaven in Paradise Lost,” by Victoria M. Griffon, reconsiders Milton’s support of God’s tyranny in heaven. Since its publication, readers of Paradise Lost have been struck by the apparent contradiction between Milton’s firm opposition to monarchy, as stated in his political pamphlets such as The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates or Eikonoklastes, and the way he chose to represent God and Heaven in the poem.36 Indeed, the God of Paradise Lost appears as an absolute and omnipotent monarch, reminiscent of the Old Testament God of wrath, and his unquestioned authority culminates in Book V with the exaltation of the Son. The arbitrariness of the appointment as announced ratifies the idea that Heaven is represented as a hereditary and absolute monarchy, an idea that many critics have felt rather uncomfortable with as it generates a

34 « Il exécute un dessin à la plume, tout en volume et ombres, avec des lavis d’encre aux cinquante nuances de gris, puis il rehausse le tout de quelques touches de lumières blanches. Alors, les artisans-​graveurs reproduisent exactement l’œuvre qu’ils gravent sur des plaques métalliques (…) Le résultat permet d’imprimer des centaines de fois le dessin, et, en plus, de lui donner une précision et une force particulières, une clarté et des nuances encore plus subtiles qu’avec l’encre (…) » https://​w ww.nova.fr/​news/​gust​ave-​dore-​trop-​doue-​6981-​24-​02-​2014/​ 35 The process used by Gustave Doré is therefore much different from his predecessor and fellow countryman, Jean-​Frédéric Schall (1572–​1825), also born in Strasbourg. In the 1792 monumental edition of Paradise Lost (John Milton, Le Paradis perdu, Chez Defer de Maisonneuve, rue du Foin S. Jacques, no. 11, Paris, 1792. 2 vol.), “the plates are noted for their early use of the fascinating color stipple process developed by Francis Bartolozzi, a process involving the tedious inking of each plate with the colors, so that the plate would be printed with one single pull. […]” 36 See John Rogers, “The Political Theology of Milton’s Heaven”, in: The New Milton Criticism, edited by Peter C. Herman and Elizabeth Sauer, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 68–​84. there can be no possible parallel between earthly kings and divine kingship

36 Introduction

seeming inconsistency in the poem and conflicting politics between Milton’s regicide tracts and his late poetical work. In her essay, Victoria M. Griffon studies how this “tyranny of Heaven” (I, 124) has led to conflicting critical responses, and she contends that rather than trying to avoid this issue in the poem as Barbara Lewalski did, stating that “there can be no possible parallel between earthly kings and divine kingship,”37 we should embrace this tension in Milton’s writings. Indeed, Milton’s project in Paradise Lost was to “justify the ways of God to men” (I, 26) so we cannot just assume the way he portrayed God and the divine monarchy to be completely out of our human grasp. On the contrary, the absolute monarchy of Heaven could even be considered as the necessary condition of the felix culpa. In “Satanic L/​Imitations” Ágnes Bató proposes a challenging reading of Paradise Lost. To analyse the relationship between Satan and God in Milton’s epic, she uses the concept of imitation. Her goal is to show that Satan’s self-​perception as superior, similar to God, is what motivates his rebellion and rivalry. The background of her study is René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire (1961, 1972)38: what we want, the French anthropologist says, is imitated by a person serving as a model. We emulate someone believed to be exemplary. In other words, we do not desire spontaneously but “desire according to the Other.”39 And desire always ends up in rivalry, as appears in Satan’s famous address to the sun at the opening of Bk 4: “Two desires converging on the same object are bound to clash. Thus, mimesis coupled with desires leads automatically to conflict.”40 Consequently, instead of bringing people together, convergence leads to rivalry. This is precisely what happens in Paradise 37 Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 466. 38 In Mensonge romantique et Vérité romanesque (1961) René Girard refutes the illusions of romantic thought, which defines love as a mimetic relationship between two lovers. Rather, he argues that the psychological truths contained in the relationships between the characters in romantic narratives such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband, or Stendhal’s The Red and the Black reveal that the subject (hero) seeks to resemble the one who opposes him in his quest for love. This other, who is more successful in the eyes of the hero than he is, becomes the model to be imitated. The theory of mimetic desire is further expounded in La Violence et le Sacré (1972), especially chapter VI: « Du désir mimétique au double monstrueux. » 39 René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965, p. 4. 40 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1977, p. 164.

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Lost: in claiming to imitate God,41 Satan becomes his rival and revolts against him. Turning to the character of Adam, Bradley Fox ponders his soliloquy in book ten of Paradise Lost, where “our Father penitent”42 gives voice to sceptical notions about the nature of existence and the afterlife which are expressed first in the soliloquies of Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet. By revisiting Hamlet’s doubts, Milton confronts the mounting philosophical scepticism of his own era in order that his poem may ultimately “justify the ways of God to men.” Hamlet’s first and fourth soliloquies inspire Adam’s Stoic and atheistic reflections upon existence, death, and the prospect of an afterlife. Having transgressed God’s prohibition, then, a fearful and despairing Adam becomes preoccupied with the same sceptical ideas that preoccupy Hamlet: death as annihilation and death as a senseless sleep. Meanwhile, Hamlet’s second soliloquy contributes to Adam’s palpable self-​loathing, a mentality which only fuels his bleak philosophy, much as it did Hamlet’s. Milton recognized long ago what modern scholars like Stephen Greenblatt and Rhodri Lewis have asserted more recently: that the tragedy Hamlet, and the prince’s soliloquies, in particular, capture growing confusion and doubt regarding the Christian afterlife, and hence Christian faith. Through Adam’s soliloquy, Milton incorporates this sceptical perspective as a valid viewpoint endemic to our fallen world, but one which Adam surmounts in Milton’s epic through love and renewed faith. In an original essay, Tianhu Hao discusses Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and the contemporary film Ex Machina (2015) as a coherent group concerning the boundaries of knowledge and the perils of scientific Prometheanism. The development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) must be delimited and contained, if not curtailed or banned, and scientists ought to proceed in a responsible and cautious manner. An obsessive or excessive pursuit of knowledge, usually a human’s, in the direction of equalling God and creating humanoid beings constitutes the essential feature of scientific Prometheanism, which can end

41 Cf. “The end … of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection” (Of Education, CPWJM, II, 366–​67). 42 Paradise Lost 10: 1097.

38 Introduction

in catastrophic destructions. Both Frankenstein and Ex Machina make a pungent critique of scientific Prometheanism as an aspect of modernity with an exposition of the real dangers posed by AI to the very existence of humanity and civilization. Milton’s masterpiece is also closely connected with the figure of Prometheus (4.714–​19); the epic poet’s classical discussion of Prometheanism and explication on the necessity of the bounds of knowledge in Paradise Lost (7.126–​28) provide the epistemological framework for Frankenstein and Ex Machina.

Part V Studies of Milton’s other poems appear in Part V. Chika Kaneko’s paper follows a pattern of self-​assessments of Milton in the role of a follower of Phoebus, the god of poetry. In his Latin poems, Milton describes an allegorical pasture where Phoebus as a shepherd cares for Milton as a sheep. This paper traces the relationship between Phoebus and Milton through Milton’s Latin pastorals Carmina elegiaca, Elegia prima, Elegia quinta, Mansus, and Epitaphium Damonis. These works show Milton as conscious of the relationship between success and the favours of Phoebus. Milton presents himself as a follower of Phoebus. Moreover, in the poems Ad Patrem and Mansus, as Noro and Branken indicate, Milton builds a pattern in which he is an adopted son of Phoebus. This is demonstrated in Epitaphium Damonis, where Milton’s intention to depart from the pastoral field is declared. The poem’s climax shows the figure of an imitation of Phoebus. This shows that Milton’s poetic vocation relates to the god of poetry, like the Christian Father and Christ. Here, she illustrates the making of the poet in Milton. Ian Hynd examines Sonnet 23. Since the Richardsons, he points out, critics have been alert to echoes of Sonnet 23 within Adam’s dream of Eve in Paradise Lost Book 8. Both dreamers are given visions of their beloveds only to have them disappear as they wake, leaving them to “deplore [their] loss” in darkness. Commentary dealing with these similarities has been sparse, however, relegated to annotators’ notes rather than critical debate. This paper draws on similar echoes in Virgil’s Georgics IV and Aeneid II to argue that these disappearing wives show the limitations of consoling faith in the face of grief. Following a chain of wives lost, regained, and lost once more, Ian Hynd looks at allusions to the Virgilian Eurydice and Creusa, whose disappearances are detailed with the same verbal patterns. The precedent for “self-​imitation” set by

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Virgil likely underpins Milton’s own “self-​a llusion,” in which both poets draw on their earlier minor works for their major epics to display the same image: the disappearing wife. From these precedents and allusions, Hynd makes two claims: (1) that the influential tripartite rising movement of Sonnet 23 observed by Leo Spitzer is inconsistent with the Virgilian allusion of the final lines and (2) that the overriding theme of Sonnet 23 is grief in spite of profound faith, with the “trust to have /​ Full sight of her in Heav’n” conspicuously absent as the sonnet comes to a close. Lastly, William Chien-​wei Yang analyses the character he describes as “The Passionless Son” in Paradise Regained. The fact that the Son is intentionally rendered deficient in essential human qualities has puzzled and divided critics since the publication of Paradise Regained. The perceived lacuna in the Son’s humanity in fact stems from his “calm of mind,” or rather lack of human emotions. Why would Milton envision the Son of God, a prime example for his fallen readers, as a character scanty in human emotions? How do the readers interpret a hero devoid of affections? Yang argues that to fully appreciate Milton’s passionless Son one has to consult the Early Modern discourses on emotions. As emotion drew wide attention in seventeenth-​century Europe, treatises by Thomas Wright,43 Edward Reynolds,44 Jean François Senault,45 and William Fenner46 were composed to investigate the nature of passions and, more significantly, to distinguish between affection and passion. The intellectual consensus reached at that time is that while passion, being unruly and disruptive, must be suppressed or even purged, affection, being pure and holy, should be nurtured. The Son’s mysterious insufficiency in emotions, or passions, viewed in the light of the Early Modern understanding of passion and affection, is therefore to be justified, whereas Satan’s appealing abundance in passions testifies to his fallen state. However, the absence of passions in the Son does not preclude

43 The passions of the minde in generall. Corrected, enlarged, and with sundry new discourses augmented … (1604). Available on EEBO. 44 A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties (1640) 45 De l’usage des passions (Paris, 1641). Available on Gallica at: https://​gall​ica.bnf.fr/​ ark:/​12148/​bpt6k​1649​041.image 46 A treatise of the affections, or, The souls pulse whereby a Christian may know whether he be living or dying (1650).

40 Introduction

him from sensing joy, a dominant affection commonly approved by Milton’s contemporaries, which is also partaken by Mary, disciples, and the angelic choirs.

Part VI Part VI proposes a new candidate for the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana. The history of the MS of De Doctrina Christiana, and of doubts about its attribution to Milton, is first reviewed by Wilson and Clawson. They continue with modern misgivings, centering on their own, from William Hunter’s (1991) till now. Despite the conclusions of the multidisciplinary enquiry of Campbell and Corns which reported in 2007, finding in favour of Milton, this Strasbourg panel developed new grounds of misgiving. Its authors argue strenuously that the theology of De Doctrina differs so much from known Milton elsewhere that we should look for a likelier author. Clawson’s focus is stylometric. His tests find that the Latin of the treatise resembles that of other known authors more than that of Milton’s other Latin. Between them, Wilson and Clawson propose instead a continental author, and mention Jeremias Felbinger (1616 –​c. 1690). Wilson resists philological scholarship that finds the Latin of De Doctrina continuous with that of undisputed Milton. But he does it here without confronting the Latin itself. And as to the ideas, Milton did change his mind, from time to time, and its expression or emphasis varies with genres. As argued more fully elsewhere (John K. Hale, Milton's Scriptural Theology: Confronting De Doctrina Christiana, 2019), the relationship between what Milton says in one place or in another can be found to vary without awakening doubts about authenticity. The whole issue remains intractable. Few of us have enough grasp of Latin and again of stylometrics to decide for ourselves. Still, the evidence adduced by the Campbell-​C orns consortium links Milton with the scribing and provenance and format and history of the MS (inter alia), which should not be dismissed as merely “circumstantial.” Reattributions to Felbinger or A. N. Other will need to be scrutinized with the same vigorous skepticism as that applied here to Milton (and the presence of his name on the MS needs to be more fully explained away).

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All in all, it is good that the issue got an airing at IMS. It can be followed further in exchanges since then in the on-​line forum regarding the authorship question in Connotations.47

Part VII Part VII is concerned with reception studies. First, as Strasbourg is a bilingual city, John Mulryan’s paper48 surveyed both German and French translations of Paradise Lost. The first German translation, by Ernst Gottlieb von Berge, appeared in 1682, but it was overshadowed by Johann Jakob Bodmer’s translation in 1732.49 This translation was evaluated by George Burridge Viles, in his Cornell University dissertation, “Comparison of Bodmer’s Translation of Paradise Lost with the Original” (1903). According to Viles, “Bodmer has followed the original so closely and accurately … that my labor was reduced largely to noting the difference in idiom of the two languages.50” There was in fact a quarrel going on. Though he was a Professor of Helvetian History in Zurich, Bodmer produced no fewer than six translations of Milton’s epic (1732, 1742, 1754, 1759, 1769, 1780) at a time when Milton’s reputation in Europe was low because of Voltaire’s criticisms in his Essay on Epick Poetry (1728). Johann Christoph Gottsched, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, disseminated Voltaire’s ideas and was Bodmer’s main opponent. Thus, whereas according to Gottsched Milton’s poetry violated the principle of Wahrscheinlichkeit or “verisimilitude” (a poet, he argued, should imitate or copy nature), Bodmer asserted the superior right of the imagination in poetical composition –​poetry, he insists, ought to be a kind of painting in words –​and he invoked Leibniz’s theory of “possible worlds” to make his point. Furthermore, while Gottsched wanted German literature to be subordinated 47

Connotations is published by The Connotations Society for Critical Debate, a Germany-​based tax-​exempt organization that encourages scholarly communication in the field of literature in English (from the Middle English period to the present). Website: https://​w ww.conno​tati​ons.de/​ 48 John Mulryan’s paper unfortunately remained unrevised, and so could not be edited as such. 49 Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698–​1783) published no less than six translations of Paradise Lost (1732, 1742, 1754, 1759, 1769, and 1780). 50 This thesis was reissued (in English) in 2015 (Leopold Classical Series), 174p.

42 Introduction

to the laws of French classicism, Bodmer, and the Swiss school, denied the infallibility of French models. In the end, Bodmer’s ideas prevailed, bridging the gap between the Aufklärung and the Romantics of the succeeding century. As we turn to the French translations, there were seventeen full translations,51 beginning with Dupré de Saint Maur’s illustrated 1729 translation and concluding with Armand Himy (2001). Chateaubriand’s masterpiece appeared in 1836.52 Thus, Milton’s Paradise Lost has been well served by its German and French translations, the first for its accuracy and the second for the prodigious number of available translations, ranging from “les belles infidèles” (beautiful but unfaithful translations) to more literal, or accurate translations. Christophe Tournu focuses on the first French verse translation of Paradise Lost in 1775, forty-​six years after the first prose translation of Milton’s masterpiece. It was published by an abbot –​while the first one was made by a maître des requêtes, with the help of Abbé de Boismorand.53 Le Roy has remained famous for his apologetic sermons in Rouen as they were transformed into unqualified and irrevocable indictments: “he preached […] brilliantly, ranting about philosophers, and so openly that he named them, even though they were alive. Voltaire and Rousseau appeared in almost all his sermons.54” Then, there is no wonder he would use the same energy as he felt he had the duty to warn the

51 Eighteen if we include Anne-​Marie du Bocage’s “imitation” of Paradise Lost in Le Paradis Terrestre, poëme imité de l’anglois de Milton (Rouen, 1748). See next note. 52 See my own chapter, « ‘The French Connection’ among French Translations of Milton and within du Bocage’s Paradis terrestre (1748) », in Milton in Translation, edited by Angelica Duran, Islam Issa, and Jonathan Olson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 139–​63. See also my two-​volume set critical edition of Chateaubriand’s translation of 1836 (Paris, Honoré Champion, 2021). 53 Le Paradis perdu de Milton. Poëme héroïque. Traduit de l’anglois, avec les remarques de Mr. Addison (3 vol., Paris, 1729). Nicolas François Dupré de Saint Maur (1695–​ 1774). On the website of the French Academy, of which he was made a member in 1733, we can read: “A statistician, economist and translator of Milton’s Paradise Lost, he spread a taste for English literature in France.” Claude Jean Chéron de Boismorand (1680–​1740) was a professor of rhetoric at the Jesuit college in Rennes. After he left the religious order, he remained a priest. 54 Mémoires de l’abbé Baston, chanoine de Rouen, 3 t., Paris, 1897–​99. Tome I, 1741–​ 1791, abbé J. Loth et M. C. Verger (éd.), [Paris 1897], Paris-​Genève, Champion, Slatkine reprints, 1977, p. 228.

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reader, in footnotes, against what he would find worthy of blame in the poet. Then, we may ask: why did he translate Milton at all? Nothing else committed me more to the work of this translation, than the very subject, so interesting for the human race, which has to do both with the destiny of our first parents, & that of our last nephews,55 which, strictly speaking, is not foreign to any of us. This subject, moreover, has so much to do with Religion, which is painted in such a grand style, often even in the style of Scripture and prophetic language, that it did not seem to me to be outside the sphere of my state.56

Luiz Sá’s article works from Madeleine Jeay’s Le Commerce des Mots (2006), Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists (2009), and Bernard Sève’s Philosophie des Listes (2010) to understand the abundance of lists in John Milton’s Paradise Regained. The lists in Paradise Regained emerge from the following conditions: the fantasy of chaos remaining an unfulfilled horizon; the complicated coherence among things escaping the worst disorder; and the tortuous cohesive power of analogy barely unifying a worldview by holding the chaos of reality at bay. In sum, the lists would mark, as a manifestation, the trace, like the shadow, of the intractable fallen world within the very act of worldliness (much like the creation of an alternative Christian ethos), always leaving a space of nothingness necessarily paradoxical and in some ways astonishingly so. The last essay by Miriam A. Mansur discusses the traces of Milton that can be found in Brazilian literature, namely, the short story “A Igreja do Diabo” (“The Devil’s Church”) by Machado de Assis (1839–​1908) and the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) by Guimarães Rosa (1908–​67). Assis and Guimarães are the most widely read, studied and translated Brazilian writers, which contributes to a 55 « Dans le style soutenu et en poésie, Nos neveux, nos derniers neveux, nos arrière-​ neveux, La postérité, ceux qui viendront après nous » (Littré). [our posterity, those who will come after us]. Cf. Nephew, n. †2. a. Descendants, posterity; successors in inheritance. Also plural. Obsolete (OED). 56 « Rien du reste ne m’a plus engagé au travail de cette traduction, que le sujet même si intéressant pour le genre-​humain, qui tient tout à la fois à la destinée de nos premiers parents, & à celle de nos derniers neveux, qui, à proprement parler, n’est étranger à aucun de nous. Cette matiere en outre a tant de rapports à la Religion qui par-​tout s’y trouve peinte en grand, souvent même dans le style de l’écriture et le langage prophétique, qu’elle ne m’a point paru sortir de la sphère de mon état » (Le Paradis perdu, poème, traduit de l’anglais de Milton, en vers français… Par M. l’abbé Le Roy, Rouen, 2 t., 1775 ; I, p. xxiv).

44 Introduction

further possible dissemination of Milton in Brazilian literature. Their writings allude to religious issues while at the same time going beyond the traditional politics of religion and examining other elements explored in Milton’s works, especially Paradise Lost. The Brazilian authors established textual relations with the English poet not based on imitation, but through the use of key, indirect references and allusions, through which they innovate and recreate Milton’s texts in Brazilian Literature. In this sense, the English poet is part of the compositional universe of Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa, but not in a straightforward manner –​rather as an absence that may be read as presence. The intertextual relations between the Brazilian writers and Milton are analysed based on Jacques Derrida’s thoughts on the logic of the supplement, with writing serving as a way of proliferating meaning in different spatiotemporal contexts.

Part VIII The final part, Part VIII, entitled “Milton and his Audience: The Reader, Listener and Viewer”, considers Milton’s public from the perspective of his politics of writing, and Milton in the arts, especially music and visual images. To begin with, in “Donne, Milton and the Understanders,” Warren Chernaik contrasts the two authors’ strategies of publication and goes on to explore the idea of the search for a true friend or companion in a number of Milton’s writings in English and Latin, including some of his sonnets and Paradise Lost, in relation to the idea of “fit audience” as expressed in Book 7 of Paradise Lost.57 Then Beat Föllmi writes on The Creation [Die Schöpfung], an oratorio premièred in Vienna in 1798.58 After attending a performance of Haendel’s Messiah in the early 1790s, Haydn pledged he would do something in the same vein. One day, he laid hands on a MS which had been intended for his model: a libretto on the Creation, which his patron, baron Gottfried van Swieten, translated into German. Van Swieten’s 57 “… still govern thou my Song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few” (PL 7: 30–​31). 58 This piece is worthy of a more thorough study. “The oratorio focuses on the happy union between Adam and Eve, culminating in a tender marriage duet; the temptation of Eve and expulsion from the Garden of Eden are only indirectly hinted at in the libretto.” Schwarm, Betsy. “The Creation.” Encyclopedia Britannica: www.bri​ tann​ica.com/​topic/​The-​Creat​ion-​by-​Haydn.

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German text derives mainly from paraphrases of the English Bible and Milton’s PL. An actual English translation appears in the first published edition of The Creation (1800), which gives singing texts in both German and English. The Creation is a complex reception of Milton’s Paradise Lost as the oratorio reflects the intellectual and historical environment of the two authors, the librettist van Swieten and the composer Haydn: the late Enlightenment and early Romanticism. An unknown English Urlibretto from the 1740s, widely inspired by the seventh book of Milton’s text, was transformed into a German oratorio text (accompanied by an English version) in the 1790s.59 Within the oratorio we can identify two different voices: in the text the voice of van Swieten pleading for a Josephinian, enlightened society, and in the music Haydn’s voice calling for order in a period of political upheaval (the Napoleonic Wars and the conservative reign of Francis II). The last essay, by Beverley Sherry, is about Milton and stained glass. Though a widely researched subject, Milton and the visual arts has not yet extended to stained glass. Portraits of Milton and illustrations of his works date from the seventeenth century on, but it was not until the nineteenth century that they appeared in stained glass. The Gothic Revival brought with it a revival of stained glass, which had been virtually a lost art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the mid-​nineteenth century, portraits of Milton in stained glass proliferated –​in schools, libraries, universities, civic buildings, churches, even residences. Depictions of his works are much rarer. As with the portraits, they carry a rich freight of meaning because of the nature of stained glass. As an architectural art, stained glass is not an autonomous art but is tied to a building, a building constructed at a particular time and place for a specific purpose and associated with particular people. Stained glass is thus part of a social and historical context. Sherry has discovered portraits of Milton in stained glass in the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia, plus the Paradise Lost window at Geneva College (Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania), and the Paradise Lost window at Princeton University. This essay focuses on the Milton memorial window at St Margaret’s Church Westminster, which encompasses portraits of Milton at different stages of his life as well as scenes from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Particularly rich in meaning, this window exemplifies Milton’s 59 The libretto, accompanied with some remarks, can be found at: https://​w ww.ecl​a ssi​ cal.com/​shop/​17115/​a rt71/​4803​171-​2e7​b15-​69106​2040​129.pdf

46 Introduction

own description of stained glass as “storied Windows richly dight” (Il Penseroso 159). A Milton Symposium without Tom Corns and Gordon Campbell is inconceivable. That is why I asked the former to contribute to the ongoing debate on the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana,60 and the latter to write a paper on the history of the International Milton Symposium, which started exactly forty years ago, in 1981. It is important, I think, to remember and commemorate past events and pay tribute to all Miltonists –​because we as a Milton community are part of a continuum, past, present, and future. Gordon could not eventually come, for he had booked on a trip on the Arctic Sea which sadly he could not cancel. Therefore, he sent us a video, which we played at the opening of the Symposium on Monday 17 June 2019. Let us read his paper as a prelude before we “embark,” not “in a troubled sea of noise and hoarse disputes,” but on an exciting voyage, as “IMS 12” steers its course, with a selection of the best essays issued from the Strasbourg Conference. Christophe Tournu 10 june 2022

60 Thomas N. Corns is Fellow of the British Academy, Emeritus Professor, Bangor University (UK). He contributed to the panel session entitled “New Directions on De Doctrina Christiana” (Chair: John Rumrich) with “Not just a source of footnotes: De Doctrina Christiana and polemical strategy” (briefing notes).

The International Milton Symposia1 Gordon Campbell

In the twenty-​first century there is a global community of Milton specialists sustained by national societies, specialist journals, and the International Milton Symposia. This has not always been the case. Until 1981, the year of the first IMS, there was no such community of Miltonists, even though Milton was the subject of scholarly enquiry in many countries. There were, however, four active centres of scholarship: North America, Japan, Britain, and France. We scarcely talked to each other. In North America, where “Miltonist” was already an established academic identity, the Milton Society of America was founded in 1948. Every year it honoured a Milton scholar. In the 1950s the Society reached across the Atlantic to honour Sir Herbert Grierson, E. M. W. Tillyard, Helen Darbishire, and C. S. Lewis, and in the 1970s ventured across the Canadian border to honour Arthur Barker, Northrop Frye and Balachandra Rajan. The cost of travel meant that none of the four Britons could attend the ceremony. In the early 1970s the Milton Society of America was the only organization of Miltonists, until the Milton Center of Japan was formed in 1974, the tercentenary of Milton’s death, at Doshisha Women’s College in Kyoto, where Frank Livingstone Huntley had taught Milton in the 1930s and Fumio Ochi was teaching in the 1970s. Like its American opposite number, the Milton Center of Japan was quick to establish links beyond its borders; the first American visitor was Irene Samuel, and Earl Miner was always a supporter. The Europeans stood apart from all this. In Britain there was Milton scholarship, centred for the most part on the ancient universities,

1 This paper is based on a video recording played at the opening of the conference. It traces the building-​up of the global community of Miltonists since its inception exactly forty years ago when the first IMS was held, and is thought of as a tribute to all international Milton symposia, past, present, and future. Gordon Campbell is Emeritus Professor and Fellow in Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester, in the UK.

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but “Miltonist” did not exist as an identity, nor does it now. No British university has ever advertised for a Milton specialist. There was no society of Miltonists, nor were there gatherings until Tom Corns and Neville Davies established the British Milton Seminar in 1991. I’m not even certain that there were Milton conferences. The only one I can remember was the commemoration at Cambridge in 1974 organized by Lady Radzinowicz. Christopher Hill spoke, apologizing for his temerity as an Oxford man in discussing a Cambridge poet. The Reverend Professor Owen Chadwick was rolled out, and opened his remarks by saying something like “Mr Milton, a member of this university, passed to his heavenly home exactly 400 years ago”. It sounded like the beginning of a memorial service. The situation was the same on the European mainland, where the centre of Milton studies was France. There were distinguished students of Milton, among them Robert Ellrodt, Armand Himy, Jean-​François Camé, Roger Lejosne, and Olivier Lutaud, but apart from the occasional dinner at Olivier Lutaud’s flat in Paris, where I can attest to the excellence of the food and the conversation, those who wrote on Milton had no occasion to meet until the Société d’Études Miltoniennes was established at Protestant Institute of Theology in Paris in 2005. That location might be deemed to imply that Milton’s Christianity was central to his attraction to scholars, as is often the case in Japan. By the measure of scholarly writing on Milton, however, it would seem that the central interests of the French were in Milton’s poetry and in his influence on French republicanism. The people who brought these disparate communities together were Ron Shafer and Al Labriola, and it was they who organized the first International Milton Symposium, at Chalfont St Giles, in the summer of 1981. It was largely an American affair, because, as Joe Trapp (director of the Warburg Institute) observed, Europeans “in general are shy of such gatherings, preferring, on the whole, to work in isolation … they feel (wrongly, in Joe’s view) that such gatherings indicate a sort of specialisation of which they disapprove”. To that I would add that the procedures of American conferences were not understood by the Europeans, and the phenomenon of wholly American conferences on European soil persisted –​thus, in 2000, the Renaissance Society of America held its first annual meeting outside North America in Florence, and members were puzzled that Italians didn’t submit papers to be considered, and so didn’t

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attend. They might usefully have learned from the Milton symposia, as Miltonists had slowly cracked the problem. The first IMS was a combination of academic papers and sight-​seeing, melding the two by having papers in historic locations. We met in the garden of Milton’s cottage, but also had a session in Westminster Abbey, where we assembled in the Jerusalem Chamber (where Henry IV had died and two of the translation committees for the King James Bible had met). We had another session in the village of Jordans, which has a barn allegedly built from the timbers of the Mayflower and a Quaker meeting house associated with William Penn, who is buried in the village. One of the purposes of the conference was to raise money for a car park for Milton’s Cottage. We managed to do so, but not enough, so the need for a more substantial donation to the car park fund was one of the motives behind the mounting of a second symposium. Besides, it had been a very successful conference: the initiative of Ron and Al had laid the foundations for a series of symposia that is important to all of us. The second IMS was organized by Ron Shafer in 1983, in Chalfont St Giles and Cambridge. This time a few British academics who wrote on Milton attended. The encounters between Brits who had never been to America and Americans visiting Britain for the first time led to some bizarre conversations. There was an American couple on honeymoon who asked an Oxford don how often he had a bath, as the British were suspected of being backward in these matters. There was also a tension between American royalists, who organized a visit to Princess Diana’s childhood home, and grumpy British republicans, who saw themselves as the righteous guardians of Miltonic republicanism. It was a substantial conference, with 120 participants registered, including scholars from Australia, Canada, Egypt, France, India, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Norway, and South Africa –​five out of the six inhabited continents, including a large number of colleagues from Japan. It was this conference that achieved our aim of creating a global community of Miltonists, not an easy feat in the years before the internet. When the conference moved to Cambridge, the level of cultural engagement rose sharply. We saw a performance of Comus, and we listened to a concert of music composed by Milton’s father; I think that we were all hearing it performed for the first time. The final address was a keynote speech by the eminent scholar Robert Ellrodt, who spoke with the grandeur of an Olympian and introduced delegates to his habit of reading all aspects of

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western civilization through the prism of the French intellectual tradition. It’s not a bad way to view the world. It was time to spread our wings and move away from the car park, so in 1988 IMS 3 was held in Tuscany, in Vallombrosa and Florence. The gang of four who organized the conference –​Mario di Cesare, Neil Harris, Roy Flannagan and me –​faced formidable challenges. The Benedictine monks in the monastery at Vallombrosa only hosted religious conferences, so in putting the proposal to them, Neil Harris pitched Milton as a Protestant poet and the conference as an ecumenical enterprise. The monks had had no exposure to American requirements, so the notion of smoking not being allowed in the accommodation puzzled the abbot, who observed, puffing on his cigarette, that smoking was surely optional. In the event, the Vallombrosa leg of the conference was very successful, in part because delegates were not tempted to skip sessions in order to see the local sights, because there weren’t any. At the mid-​point of the conference we moved to Florence, where Neil Harris had managed to secure the finest settings for papers that any Milton conference could ever have: we met in Villa Schifanoia, the Medici villa at Castello, Villa I Tatti, Palazzo Strozzi and Palazzo Gaddi. It was in Palazzo Gaddi (which is now a hotel) that Milton had visited the academy of the Svogliati, so we had our conference banquet there. If you look on the hotel website, you will see that Milton composed Paradise Lost there, which I had not known. At IMS 3 we decided to honour disparate academic traditions by offering a variety of procedures for securing speakers. Americans therefore submitted papers for selection by an advisory board, and Japanese scholars used a similar procedure, but Europeans followed their local tradition and simply invited their friends to speak. Perhaps the most moving paper was by Eugenio Garin, the Director of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, who, speaking in Italian, recalled the day in 1922 when the National Fascist Party became the government of what was then the Kingdom of Italy. At the time, Garin was a twelve-​ year-​old schoolboy, and he movingly described how in school that day, his teacher had responded to this national calamity by reading passages from Milton’s Areopagitica. In 1991 Paul Stanwood mounted IMS 4 in Vancouver. The natural beauty of the setting was wondrous, but it did not distract the most resolute of the Miltonists. At one point there was a boat trip around the harbour, and a circle of Miltonists remained locked in conversation about

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possible misprints in the 1645 Poems while dolphins swam alongside. The centrepiece of the conference was the paper in which Bill Hunter set out his contention that Milton was not the author of De Doctrina Christiana. The scholarly consensus, which has a few dissenters to this day, is that Milton is indeed the author, but Bill’s thesis provoked a lot of serious work on the treatise, work that went well beyond the question of authorship, so we are all in his debt. In 1995 Tom Corns, who had led the investigation of De Doctrina, mounted IMS 5 at Bangor, on the coast near which Edward King drowned. Those of our colleagues who are interested in anatomies were hoping that King’s body would be washed up on the beach while we were there. In the event, the only significant sightings on the sea were the guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, shags and fulmars that we saw on our excursion to the South Stack sea cliffs on Anglesey. The solitary cormorant that we saw was over the sea, so it wasn’t perched with outspread wings like the one in Book 4 of Paradise Lost. For some reason, Milton and bird-​watching are often embodied in the same people in Britain; perhaps that could be subject of a paper at a future conference. The symposium had some excellent papers –​I particularly remember a plenary session in which Barbara Lewalski and Michael Wilding spoke about Milton’s radicalism. Perhaps the most memorable experience was a concert of music by Milton’s father, Gibbons and Byrd, mounted by the Fretwork consort of viols, whose music was punctuated by loud thunderclaps that we interpreted as divine applause. In 1999 we met in York for IMS 6, which for me was an exercise in nostalgia, as I had taken my PhD there under the supervision of Dinos Patrides. I gave my paper on the same platform on which I had stood 30 years earlier to sing Bach’s B minor Mass. The conference was organized by Graham Parry, whose antiquarian expertise means that he knows the city brick by brick, and is eloquent on its architecture. The visiting eminence was Alastair Fowler, whom many met for the first time. The session that lingers in the mind is a panel discussion of Milton’s republicanism, with Nigel Smith, David Norbrook, Barbara Lewalski, Laura Knoppers and Nicholas von Maltzahn. And in an odd twist on the republican theme, we also enjoyed a performance of Shirley’s masque of 1653, Cupid and Death. In 2002 we convened in Beaufort (South Carolina), where our host for IMS 7 was Roy Flannagan. This was, like Vancouver, an earthly

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paradise. As I drove in with Tom Corns, we saw pelicans and an osprey, and some of our colleagues saw dolphins. We attended a performance of Comus, and listened to an extraordinary range of papers: there was a session devoted to Death, and papers on subjects such as vegetarianism and lycanthropy. There was even a ridiculous after-​dinner speech on the improbable subject of Milton and the water supply of Cambridge. In 2005 we met for IMS 8 in Grenoble, where Christophe Tournu was then working. France’s distinctive culture of laïcité was welcomed by many: as Roy Flannagan observed, “neither an atheist nor a fundamentalist pall hung over this conference”; there were no religious services on the programme, and “a fitting separation of church and state was observed”. That did not mean, of course, that people did not bring their religious sensibilities and sensitivities with them, as I discovered when in my lecture I proposed that the Holocaust was at least in part a Christian crime, and was booed for the only time in my life. The same sensibilities emerged around the cluster of papers that discussed the question of whether Milton’s Samson could usefully be seen as a suicide bomber. In 2008 we met in London for IMS 9, an academic party for Milton on the occasion of his 400th birthday, organized by Warren Chernaik. I couldn’t attend, and had to explain to puzzled colleagues from other countries that that week I was on duty as public orator at my University, and had to speak at seven graduation ceremonies and entertain honorary graduates at a daily grind of lunches and formal dinners. My sense of what transpired is therefore entirely at second hand. The conference theme of heresy, orthodoxy, unorthodoxy, and radicalism, drew plenty of papers on the prose, often accompanied by the sound of drills and jackhammers in Senate House. Stanley Fish, attending his first IMS, reflected in a New York Times opinion piece on why anyone would be attracted to a career centred on reading Milton for a living. We all wonder that from time to time, and wonder why institutions are willing to pay us to do so. In 2012, Hiroko Sano organized IMS 10 in Tokyo. In fact, she organized it twice, but the 2011 event had to be postponed because of the damage to infrastructure, especially to Fukushima, in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Hiroko, however, has the will and strength of Samson, and no-​one was surprised when the following year she organized a conference that ran so smoothly that we couldn’t hear the sound of the organizational machinery. The outstanding event of the conference, and in my view of all Milton conferences, was a specially

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commissioned production of a Noh play inspired by Samson Agonistes, at the National Noh Theatre. The Sakoku Edict of 1635 isolated Japan for 220 years, during which time its ancient culture continued to evolve, and mutual understanding of Japanese and western cultures became much harder to achieve. At IMS 10, the gap was bridged with an art form that is quintessentially Japanese representing an English closet drama with roots in classical antiquity. We watched the anguished spirits of Samson and Dalilah achieve calm of mind through the poetic gifts of Milton, who was able to tell their story. Watching the play was an extraordinarily moving experience, and we all felt privileged to have been accorded a measure of access to a great Japanese art form and to a Japanese artistic understanding of Milton’s play. In 2015 we went to Exeter, as Milton’s father and brother certainly did and Milton may have done. Our host at IMS11 was the indefatigable Karen Edwards, for whom no problem was too small for her attention or that of her colleague Philip Schwyzer. This was the most global IMS to date. All six continents were represented, and the report on the conference in Milton Quarterly was written by a Hungarian colleague. The one glaring geographical anomaly was that four of the six plenary speakers were Canadian. Some may have suspected a dark plot orchestrated by Justin Trudeau, but as Canadian is my spare nationality, I naturally reject all such theories as fake news. The plenaries and the papers were very good, and I am conscious that it was the last symposium at which Barbara Lewalski was present. The highlight of the conference for many was the performance by the Tallis Scholars organized by Karen Edwards. We had heard Milton the Elder’s instrumental music in the past, but not his choral music. Listening to singing of such quality, half of it by Milton’s father, in a great medieval cathedral, constitutes one of life’s greatest joys. In 2020, Christophe Tournu became the first person to achieve the superhuman feat of hosting two IMSs, when Miltonists assembled in Strasbourg for IMS 12. Christophe was back in action, once again with the support of Neil Forsyth. When the dates of the conference were announced, I was already committed to research in the high Arctic, Milton’s Cronian Sea, trying to understand the simile in Book 10 of Paradise Lost, “As when two polar winds blowing adverse/​Upon the Cronian Sea together drive/​Mountains of ice that stop th’ imagined way/​Beyond Petsora eastward to the rich Cathaian coast”. I much regretted having to miss it, not only because I love a Milton beano, but also because I much

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enjoy Strasbourg. I subscribe to the sentiment famously attributed to the Miltonist Thomas Jefferson, who went on to do something in politics. The precise phrasing seems to originate in a verse drama by Henri, vicomte de Bornier, called La Fille de Roland (1875), in which Charlemagne says “tout homme a deux pays, le sien et puis la France,” which made its way into English as the inappropriately gendered “every man has two countries –​his own and France”. Jefferson anticipated the aphorism in a passage in his Autobiography: So ask the travelled inhabitant of any nation, In what country on earth would you rather live? [The traveller would reply] Certainly in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest & sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? [The traveller would reply] France.

I suspect that many delegates came to support this view, because Strasbourg is a beguiling city. Graham Parry and John Hale have kindly passed on accounts of their experience of the Symposium. Delegates enjoyed a conference lunch in the Orangerie of the Jardin Botanique de l’Université de Strasbourg, cruised along the River Ill through the city centre, toured the Cathedral and marvelled at the automata on its extraordinary astronomical clock. They also attended a magnificent concert in the medieval Église protestante Saint-​Pierre-​le-​Jeune, in which the programme included highly accomplished performances of Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” and Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence”. And there were papers, organized in 56 panels over five days, read by delegates from around the world; there were also high-​quality plenary lectures delivered by senior Miltonists. Many Americans, Chinese and Japanese delegates attended, but very few Britons: Milton appears to be losing ground in the country of his birth. Perhaps he is too European a poet for this dark age of Brexit. Of the twelve IMSs to date, six have been held in the UK, two in France, and once each in Canada, Italy, Japan and the US. Will there be more? Those who have organized these conferences know that they are an immense amount of work, but those who have attended them know how beneficial and how enjoyable they are. Perhaps the symposia can continue as free-​standing events, if, as Eve hoped, younger hands ere long assist us. Alternatively, the symposia could shelter under the wing of a large organization, such as the Renaissance Society of America. The vehicle doesn’t matter, but the continuation of the symposia would be a benefit to many members of the global community of Miltonists.

Part I Milton and Materiality

Milton’s Skin James Grantham Turner

Idem hodie animus, eadem vires, oculi non iidem; ita tamen extrinsecus illaesi ita sine nube clari ac lucidi, ut eorum qui acutissimum cernunt: in hac solum parte, memet invito, simulator sum: in vultu, quo nihil exsanguius esse dixit, is manet etiamnum color exsangui & pallenti planè contrarius, ut quadragenario major vix sit cui non denis prope annis videar natu minor; neque corpore contracto neque cute (Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda)

Why would a distinguished statesman and poet, in the midst of justifying the most drastic coup d’état in European history, insist on telling us what great skin he has? “To this day” –​that is, to this moment in 1654 when Milton is 45 years old –​he assures us that he has “the same spirit, the same vital forces, [only] my eyes are not the same. Yet even so, unharmed from the outside (extrinsecus), even so, without cloud clear and shining, like [the eyes] of those who see most acutely”. The eyes don’t just look normal, they look as if they could see acutissimum, in the superlative. They are “clear and lucid,” with lucidi retaining some sense of giving out or extromitting light according to the science of the day: in the letter written this same year to Leonard Philaris on his blindness Milton uses the active verbs emicare, exilere and effundere, to convey how his eyes “shone out,” “burst out” and still “pour out” a dark kind of light. “In my face” (the Second Defence continues) there remains a healthy “colour … so that though I am in my forties to almost everyone I seem ten years younger”. Most of all, “neque corpore contracto neque cute”. Neither is his body “contracted” nor his skin, his cutis, as in cuticle and subcutaneous. It remains entirely without lines or wrinkles.1 It is hard to resist citing John Aubrey’s note, which similarly locates Milton’s essence

1 Col. VIII.60 (CPW IV.583), XII.68 (CPW IV.869); the odd spelling exilere for exsilere may suggest that Milton is still smarting from the accusation of being exilis. Aubrey’s ms. is conveniently edited in Flannagan (2).

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in his skin: “his complexion very fair … he was so faire they called him the Lady of Christ’s college”. We know, of course, the immediate occasion of this self-​defence –​ the ad hominem insults launched by Milton’s attacker in Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum. This kind of polemic was entirely familiar from the Smectymnuus controversy, where the opponent had accused Milton of brothel-​going and he responded with the famous autobiographical account of his sexual and literary purity. Now he insists on his dermatological and ophthalmic purity. The Clamour of the Royal Blood had hurled at him Virgil’s cruel line about the blinded Cyclops Polyphemus, monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum, and then contradicted itself (as Milton points out) to make the insult even worse. The opponent gloats that he is indeed horrendous, blinded, informe meaning ugly, “deform” or even formless like Milton’s own later character Death –​but he cannot be called ingens, gigantic. The Clamour turns Milton into a nightmarish mini-​Cyclops, blind and lumbering but shrivelled: “there is nothing [that appears] more feebly (exilius, perhaps also with a pun on ‘exiled’ or banished), nothing more bloodless (exsanguius), nothing more shrunken and wrinkled (contractius, contracted, in every sense)”.2 This attack provides the precise agenda for Milton’s point-​by-​ point refutation. Accused of being informe he counters with his forma, meaning his beauty as in Formosa –​though real men don’t talk about their looks –​but also his “form,” the shape of his very essence. He insists that his size is medium not small, his build is sturdy, not exilis (having been a good swordsman), the “colour” in his face is “the absolute opposite of exsanguis and pallid”. Most of all he is “contracted neither in body nor in skin,” an ablative absolute that seeks to make this happy condition permanent. The Clamour’s accusation of bodily decrepitude continues to rankle in the following pages of the Second Defence, the impassioned eulogy of blind prophets and leaders. Particularly relevant is Phineas, the prophet cited here and also in Paradise Lost and the letter to Philaris, who was punished not only by loss of sight but by extreme physical wasting. The passage in Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica that Milton quotes twice describes Phineas as a living skeleton, bent over and hobbling, caked in

2 Col. VIII.58 (CPW IV.582), and cf. PL II.706 (‘More dreadful and deform’).

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filth and with “dessicated, withered skin”.3 Phineas uncomfortably combines the divine blessing on the seer –​the comfort that Milton assures us he too enjoys –​and the worst feature of the caricature held up by his enemy, “nothing more shrunken and wrinkled”. All the more important to thrust away this negative image that might come too close to his own appearance. Milton’s proud statement about his complexion raises an urgent question: how would he know what he looked like after going blind, when he could no longer check the mirror? Sources would be both internal and external. Internally one could learn from proprioception –​what the nerves convey about one’s own facial muscles and skin tension –​and from exploring the skin with the fingertips. These neural pathways are linked even in sighted persons, as Milton understood when he recreated the sequence of Adam’s feelings on first encountering Eve, in Paradise Lost (‘transported I behold, /​Transported touch’, where behold retains some sense of manual rather than optic grasping). The interrelation of sight, digital touch and proprioception, or what scientists call “coding across modalities,” was vividly dramatized when Milton’s daughter Deborah looked at the crayon portrait now in Princeton: –​’tis My Father, tis my Dear Father! I see him! ‘tis Him! and then She put her Hands to several Parts of Her Face, ‘tis the very Man! Here, Here–​.4

By transference Milton invites the reader to feel the lack of contractions and corrugations as well as to see the fresh rosy complexion of the very man. “Solid and treatable smoothnesse” had been one of the special effects of literature praised in Reason of Church-​Government –​literally tractabilis, tangible, experienced through the hand.5 Here in the Second Defence as well as in Paradise Lost when he asks Heavenly Light to “plant

3 Col. VIII.62–​4 (CPW IV.584–​5), Apollonius Arg. II.200–​1 (αὐσταλέος χρὼς /​ ἐσκλήκει), immediately before the lines quoted to Philaras about the porphyrian darkness that overtakes Phineas’s eyesight (Col. XII.68); cf. PL III.36 (‘Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old’). 4 Jonathan Richardson Sr, based on George Vertue’s eyewitness account, quoted in Martin (12) (and cf. PL VIII.529–​30). Deborah may also have been responding to the medium of this portrait, crayon or pastel, which was chosen for its ability to capture skin texture and was literally blended with the fingers (William Sanderson cited in Martin 31–​2 n. 28). 5 CPW I.817 (and cf. PL III.53).

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eyes,” Milton conceives his eloquent writing as a kind of virtual reality device, inducing surrogate tactile and visual perception in the reader. To ratify his appearance externally, that is extrinsecus, Milton would need to ask people what they saw when they looked at him. These surrogate eyes would have to be planted intimately at first, close enough to detect the smallest mote in the neighbouring eye, in the study or in the bedroom. All depends on the condition of what he calls being-​seen; videar, the passive of video, comes up often in writings on his blindness, for example in the private letter to Philaris where he describes his symptoms as much from the point of view of the doctor as from his own inner experience, and plays with the idea of his visitor visens non videntem, “coming to see him who is not seeing”. But in the Second Defence Milton is writing as a public figure, and soon extends this imagined gazing to larger and larger spheres: he could not possibly be lying about his appearance, because “there are many thousands of my own people who know me face-​to-​face [facie], and even quite a few foreigners”. This vision of eyes in their thousands looking back at Milton looks forward to Eve’s dream in Paradise Lost, where the implanted Satanic voice imagines the stars as “eyes” gazing at her beauty, but it also harks back to the opening pages of the Second Defence itself. There, readers from all over Europe are envisaged as the audience in a vast theatre, listening raptly to Milton’s oration and showing signs of covert or open approval on their faces –​that is, the treatise itself is an auditorium which is also a virtual spectatorium, where Milton can be seen but can also see his readers face to face and scrutinize them deeply.6 Well before he became literally blind Milton would visualize being-​ seen, seeing the other looking back at him, either optically or virtually though the means of art. Already in Reason of Church-​Government he called prophetic “knowledge, and foresight” an “eye-​brightening electuary,” that is, medicine that makes the eye brighter –​where we would expect “sharper” or “keener”. As later in his diagnostic letter, he writes from the eye-​doctor’s point of view looking in. Textual evocation of

6 Col. VIII.12–​14 (videor mihi … perlustrare … ob oculos versatur … Videor jam mihi…’), 60, 62 (CPW IV.554–​55, 583–​84), XII.66–​8 (and cf. PL V.44–​7); in the Philaras letter he also evokes being oculatum by God, ‘eyed’ or planted with eyes as in inoculation (XII.70). It could be argued (though it would beyond the scope of this essay) that Milton sloughs off the negative aspect of ‘being-​seen’ onto Samson, the public spectacle.

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face-​to-​face contact was fundamental in rhetorical training, in fact, so that the very first of Milton’s own university disputations already sounds uncannily like the opening of the Second Defence: the Lady of Christ’s first “encounters none but hostile glances,” then picks out in the audience some few “who without a word show clearly by their looks how well they wish me”.7 The reciprocity of literal and virtual seeing also lies at the core of another crucial work of authorial self-​fashioning, the Latin poem Mansus. Milton was especially impressed by coming face-​to-​face with the bronze memorial bust of the poet Marino that Manso had commissioned: “we ourselves saw the poet smiling from the finely-​worked bronze” (line 16). Consequently Milton ends the poem by imagining a future friend doing the same for him, perhaps “drawing from the marble our own facial features” (line 91), “nostros ducat de marmore vultūs,” echoing Anchises’s prediction of future Greek artists in Aeneid 6.848 who “ducent de marmore vultūs”. Thus commemorated, Milton can then be crowned with myrtle or laurel and “applaud myself on Mount Olympus, smiling [like Marino], a purple glow suffusing my features” –​vultūs, the facial features, once again ending a triumphal line. Manso himself responded with an epigram that Milton proudly published in the 1645 Poemata: if only his religion matched the rest of his person Milton would be an Angel not an Angle. Manso praises mens, forma, decor, facies, mos … What a mind! what a form! What beauty! What a face! What character! And the high point of this list is facies, the face.8 Milton invites the proper reader of this Second Defence to experience the seductive presence of the author’s face and form, then, to look into eyes that still look clear and touch that perfect complexion. He re-​faces himself, as it were, or fills in the blanc with what the art historian calls “faciality”.9 And by the same logic he must try to destroy his opponent in the flesh, de-​facing him. At first he dismisses the idea of saying anything at all about a fellow beneath contempt, except for dismissing him as a malitiae vivam imaginem, a living image of malice. But then he returns 7 CPW I.803, Col. XII.118–​20 (‘videar … video’); the idea of warding off an evil eye reappears in the epigraph chosen for the 1645 Poems. 8 Manso’s reply is cited e.g. in the intro. to Mansus in Carey. Milton’s self-​modelling, which we might say evokes brass rather than bronze, is interpreted as satirical and amusing in Low (121). 9 Cf. Loh.

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to the attack with almost hysterical fervour: as I put it in an earlier essay, “page after page of Pro Se Defensio,” Milton’s follow-​up polemic against the person he wrongly thought had authored the Clamour, “belabors Alexander More with puns on inscribing, writing, and engraving, to play upon his literal defacement –​his gory visage scratched by the nails of” the maid he has violated. (The same cluster of associations resurfaces in Satan, whose scarred and entrenched skin he alters when simulating a Cherub and “smooths” dishonestly after he “mars his borrowed visage” when passions “dim his face” and Uriel sees him “disfigured”). In that essay I extended the idea of “de-​facing” to the Greek poem on the incompetent engraver who made the frontispiece portrait for the 1645 Poems, literally scratched into the copperplate and thus cancelling the unflattering image. Intriguingly More himself turned the knife in the same wound when he protests that he is innocent of the insults in the Clamour, that he was unaware of Milton’s blindness and even thought him handsome because of “that elegant picture prefixed to your Poems”.10 For Milton vehement confutation and self-​regeneration is much more than a rhetorical tactic, the kind of “fenc[ing]” that the Lady condemns in Comus: he wants to claim that despite the ravages of age and blindness he embodies virtue, quite literally and corporeally, that he is the viva imago of goodness and probity –​the diametric opposite of his despised assailant. He surely wanted to be remembered in Aubrey’s terms: “His harmonicall and ingeniouse soul dwelt in a beautiful and well-​proportioned body –​In toto nusquam corpore menda fuit”. (Lady as he was, he might not have appreciated this outrageous quote from Ovid’s Amores I.5 about Corinna’s flawless nudity). Nevertheless, one “flaw” or disability had to be recognized, his blindness. Milton is therefore obliged to admit one vice into his self-​portrait of virtue: since his eyes look bright and exceptionally keen-​sighted, “in this part alone, against my will, I am a deceiver, a simulator”. Though he refers immediately to the clear-​looking eyes, the same applies equally to the Spring-​like complexion, since he 10 Turner (34), citing Col. IX.118–​28 (and cf. PL I.600–​2, II.635–​36, IV.104–​27); More’s reply is partially redacted in CPW IV.1103, where the previous passage is itself a de-​facing of Milton, a grotesque satiric catalogue of his supposed facial features including portable eyes that he can shut up at home and bring out when needed for some malign purpose. Since engraving was often denoted by ‘sculpt.’ and the same Latin word aes, aeris was applied to the bronze statue and the copper plate, Milton’s resentment at Marshall’s bad frontispiece was probably intensified by association with the bronze bust that he imagined in Mansus.

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does not look his age. He “simulates” a younger still-​sighted self, yet with no intention to deceive, no dissimulation. Milton has thus returned to something like the condition that he laments in the unpublished letter to a friend and its embedded sonnet: My hasting dayes flie on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, That I to manhood am arriv’d so near, And inward ripenes doth much less appear, That som more timely-​happy spirits indu’th. Now his full career has brought him to a more timely-​happy point, but there is still a divergence between his “semblance” and his inward truth, still an age-​difference though now the spring blossoms are on the outside while manhood and ripeness dwell within … and Milton still uses the language of deception to define that difference. “Deceiving the truth” in the sonnet is especially slippery, since we would expect belie the truth. Like the rest of this letter, the sonnet performs a “reciprocal contradiction,” announcing that he does and does not “deceive”.11 Milton thus places himself in the category of fallacious objects, entities whose external appearance belies, or “deceives,” the substance within. This is a widespread phenomenon in Milton, subdivided into beings that intend or are designed to deceive (Satan’s youthful Cherub, Comus’s shepherd disguise or the drink he offers) and beings who through no fault of their own happen to be different on the outside and the inside: his own eyes in the Second Defence, or the wife in the divorce tracts who seems demure on the outside and so deceives the inexperienced suitor even if not intentionally. It will be objected that every living thing looks different if you cut it open, that no creature is homogenous through and through. But some have at least a consistency or congruity between outside and inside, skin and pulp, both being wholesome or useful. In the human realm an example would be the virtuous boy as conceived by the Elder Brother in the Ludlow Mask, who shuts out lewdness to avoid the horrible fate of having his insides “clotted by contagion”. In the vegetable kingdom the fruits of Paradise, “burnisht with Golden Rinde 11 Mask line 791, Col. VIII.60, ‘Letter to a friend’ and sonnet ‘How soon hath time’, Aubrey in Flannagan (3).

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… Hesperian Fables true, /​If true, here only,” provide a pulpy flesh “of delicious taste” while their presumably inedible “rinde[s]‌” come in handy to scoop up drinking water. “Rind” in turn evokes the “skaly rind” of Leviathan, who never means to deceive those sailors who think he is an island. In contrast, “it was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World” (a famously startling image from Areopagitica). The forbidden fruit in Paradise Lost, explicitly called “fallacious,” is even more dramatically booby-​trapped, laced with hallucinogens and aphrodisiacs (perhaps to fool those divines who insist that the fruit had no intrinsically bad properties and served only as a token of obedience). The trickster-​god enjoys this jest so much that he repeats it with the fake apples in Hell, sent “to delude” and even “more delusive” than the ones in Eden.12 Thus rind in typical Miltonic semantics has its good Paradisal meaning and its fallen meaning. The equivalent word skin, however, appears almost never in the poetry and in the prose normally conveys something barbaric or repulsive, so it is especially remarkable that Milton speaks so openly in the Defence about his excellent cutis. Skin seems to be a low word, used in Paradise Lost only for the pelts of dead animals that clothe Adam and Eve after the fall. Nevertheless, cutaneous events happen in the epic, both before and after the fall. Throughout his oeuvre, in fact, Milton attends to the phenomena of the human epidermis, often focussing on its pathology. The healthy skin is translucent and permeable, and even in diseased bodies the skilled diagnostician can infer the inward condition from the “complexion, skin, or outward temperature” (another striking image from Reason of Church-​Government). When Comus invokes “the lean and sallow Abstinence” we know exactly what he means even if we don’t approve of his argument –​and it is precisely the lean and sallow figure that Milton is refuting in the Second Defence, exilis and exsanguis. The skin also expresses shock by losing its colour: when Adam hears that Eve has eaten the fruit he becomes “Blank … and pale” –​blank meaning literally white as well as “astonied” or as we might say wiped out. And skin is literally porous. Though Milton doesn’t endorse Samson’s idea that eyesight should have been available at every pore, he does dramatize 12 Mask lines 463–​48, CPW II.514, PL I.206, IV.249–​51, 335–​36, IX.1046, X.557, 563. Milton does not specify what happens to the discarded rinds or whether Eve maintains a compost heap.

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dermic effects such as sweating and flushing: Comus dissolves in a “cold shuddring dew,” and in the epic “what redounds transpires” through the skin of angels, who also turn “celestial rosie red” when they smile, exactly as Milton imagines himself doing in Olympus. Adam wakes up drenched in “Balmie Sweat” or “reaking moisture,” and Zephyr cools the first couple by evaporation after their labours. Eve blushes like the morn and the Morn blushes like Eve, innocently at first though the amorous blush and the guilty flush start to resemble each other.13 Skin paradoxically conceals and reveals, allowing a glimpse into the true interior –​“one might almost say the body thought,” as Donne said of “eloquent” blushing –​but also encasing, hardening, callousing over, becoming an opaque hide. I already mentioned Satan’s ability to extrude a sort of plastic skin that allows him to look like a fresh-​faced Cherub incapable of guile. When Milton’s prose confronts hypocrisy and false religiosity, he comes up with medical case-​histories such as the man struck by lightning, terribly destroyed inside though nothing is visible on his skin, or the victim of a poisonous “unction” that has a similar effect –​a vivid metaphor for flattery.14 Another figure for the hypocrite or deliberate simulator is the Biblical “whited sepulchre,” freshly painted on the exterior but stinking within. Milton also works this into the micro-​ecology of the skin. At one of the high points of Areopagitica “fugitive and cloister’d vertue” is denounced as “but a blank vertue, not a pure; her whitenesse is but an excrementall whitenesse.” He has shifted the imagery from the building to the body, from architecture to biology, since the “excrement” is not something pleasant-​looking applied to a wall but something that literally grows out from the body, like hair, as if the skin itself exudes a cosmetic whiteness that hardens into a leprous crust. (Blank of course everywhere in Milton denotes both nullity and deadly whiteness, punning on French blanc). Exactly this imagery recurs in the prose when Milton inveighs against “outward conformity”: in the ungodly, according to Of Reformation, inward religious impulses “run out lavishly to the upper skin, and there 13 CPW I.835, Mask lines 709, 802, SA line 97, PL IV.329, V.438, VIII.255–​56, 511, 619, IX.890, 894 (Adam’s reaction to Eve ‘flushing’ in line 887), XI.184, 217, 220 (‘Skins’). Familiarity with sweat might explain Adam’s nonchalant reaction to the curse of labour (‘Idleness had bin worse’, X.1055, and cf. the non-​metrical ‘In the sweat of thy Face shalt thou eat Bread’, X.205). 14 Donne, Second Anniversary, lines 244–​46, Milton, CPW I.847, I.860.

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harden into a crust of Formallitie”. In an even more repulsive usage, he compares the zeal of the Anglicans to “a seething pot set to coole”: most of the good impulses “exhale and reake out” leaving “a skinny congealment of ease and sloth at the top”. The traumatic primal scene for Milton, as for most children, was apparently not his parent’s love-​making but seeing the skin form on his milk.15 In the poetry the most striking use of the word “skin” reinforces this imagery of hypocrisy, exterior inauthenticity and revolting encrustation. In fact it is the only use of that word in Milton’s verse apart from the brief episode where Adam and Eve get their fur coats. It comes in his six-​line translation from Horace, inserted into Tetrachordon immediately after an allusion to “med’cining our eyes” so that we can see the true meaning of Scripture: Horace claimed that the hypocritical public figure cannot fool his family and neighbours, who see his inner turpitude despite the “beautiful skin,” pelle decora where pellis denotes the animal hide or pelt, as in a beast-​fable or “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. Milton translates this as “the whole neighbourhood /​Sees his foule inside through his whited skin” –​the unusual word “whited” putting it beyond doubt that he conceived the corrupt body as a whited sepulchre.16 We can now understand better why Milton is so keen to present his own skin as smooth in texture, youthful in appearance and rosy in colour. Smoothness alone might be suspect, as Satan can simulate it and the public servant might have been poisoned with unctuous “flatteries[,]‌which while they smooth the skin, strike inward and envenom the life blood” (one of the permutations of epidermic pathology in Reason of Church-​ Government). Wrinkles alone might be acceptable, on the other hand, if they are produced not by ageing but by moral indignation: Raphael’s “contracted brow” when he disapproves of Adam’s passion directly cites the attacker’s use of contractius to insult Milton’s shrivelled features. As early as Of Reformation, creating the allegorical figure of Excommunication as a sublime yet maternal female, Milton eulogizes “the awfull and majestick wrincles of her brow”.17 But the composite tactile and visual self-​portrait in Second Defence cancels out negative associations 15 CPW I.522, 536, II.515–​16. 16 CPW II.639, Horace Epist. I.16, lines 44–​5 (and cf. ‘detrahere pellem’, Sat. II.1 line 64). 17 CPW I.609, 860 (and cf. V.239, ‘neither do I care to wrinkle the smoothness of History’), PL VIII.560.

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of smoothness and positive aspects of wrinkling. Milton reassures the reader –​and probably himself too –​that his smoothness is “solid and treatable,” that his face and eyes are not blank, featureless and expressionless, that his skin has not crusted over with excremental whiteness, even though the external world is now “a Universal blanc” with the page of Nature’s book “expung’d and ras’d”. This too must be counted among Milton’s epidermic metaphors, as it refers to scraping away the top layer of vellum, and the prose offers several dreadful images of human skin being “rais’d,” meaning razed or mutilated by cutting.18 At another high point in Areopagitica the dead, wrinkled skin returns with a slightly different connotation, even closer to what Milton tries to convey in the Defence. He compares the healthy state of wartime London to “a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital but to rationall faculties” –​the very healthy “constitution” that he claims for himself ten years later. Now that “the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up” bodily imagery comprises the whole radical citizenry rather than the individual saint or hypocrite. The ferment “of controversie and new invention,” Milton insists, “betok’ns us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatall decay, but casting off the old and wrincl’d skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entring the glorious waies of Truth and prosperous vertue …. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks”.19 Looking at Milton in 1654 you would see the Milton of 1644, still writing Tetrachordon and Areopagitica. Now he himself is the strong man rousing herself, still with bright eyes and Lady-​like complexion to match her invincible locks. Milton reconstructs or refaces herself, not only as an embodiment of individual virtue, but as a body politic. ...... Cutaneous Milton studies fit into a larger interest in the body, the material world and “vitalistic monism” in his oeuvre. The dermatocritical project extends beyond this individual case-​history, moreover. As I was writing this a conference materialized on “Global Skins” in the Renaissance, proposing to study “natural surfaces as a key to creating order” 18 PL III.48–​9; cf. CPW I.609 (‘not the least skin rais’d’), 896 (‘that any mans skin should be rais’d’). 19 CPW II.557.

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and “the continuity of surface between the human and non-​human … ranging from rhinoceros hides, citrus peel, bark, and leather to the highly contentious notions of human skin colouring and skin marking,” whereby “skin increasingly acted as a marker of social identity, hierarchy and difference”.20 Meanwhile, my local natural history museum staged an exhibition entitled Skin: Living Armor, Evolving Identity, also featuring a rhinoceros. (Coincidentally, the self-​portraying author of the Second Defence assures us that he is not a rhinoceros). Exploring Milton’s representation of his own skin and that of others, I have emphasized its double functions, as a protective container and an organ of sense, a barrier and a place of fluid exchange, with particular focus on the face as the only place in Early Modern Europe where bare skin appeared in public, subject to scrutiny for signs of youthfulness and ageing, health and disease. The scientists advertise their exhibition in similar terms: “uniquely personal yet universal, skin forms a living interface between organisms and their environment –​and is our public face to the world.”21 Indeed, the snarling aggression and intense self-​justification of the Clamour of the Royal Blood and Milton’s rebuttal in the Second Defence could be summed up in much the same way: living armour, evolving identity.

Works Cited Carey, John, editor. Milton: The Complete Shorter Poems (London: Routledge, 2015) Flannagan, Roy, editor. The Riverside Milton (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998) Loh, Maria H. “Renaissance Faciality”, Oxford Art Journal 32 (2009), 341–​63 Low, Anthony. “Mansus in its Context”, Milton Studies 19 (1984), 105–​26 Martin, John Rupert. The Portrait of John Milton at Princeton, and its Place in Milton Iconography (Princeton University Library, 1961)

20 King’s College London, 19–​20 September 2019, organised by the research group Renaissance Skin led by Evelyn Welch et al. (I quote from the Call for Papers posted earlier that year); Milton denies that he looks like ‘a dog-​headed monster or a Rhinoceros’ in Col. VIII.60 (CPW IV.582). Skin (and the punishment of flaying) is discussed by Maurette (129–​60). 21 California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, August 2019–​January 2020; citations from publicity brochures and website.

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Maurette, Pablo. The Forgotten Sense: Meditations on Touch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018) Milton, John. Works, edited by Frank Allen Patterson et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–​38) (Col.) —​—​—​. Complete Prose Works, edited by Don M. Wolfe et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953–​1982) (CPW) Turner, James Grantham. “Elisions and Erasures”, Milton Quarterly 30 (1996), 27–​39

“So all was cleared”: Corrupted Fancy and Purgative Tears in Paradise Lost Sarah S. Keleher (née Rice)

Unfallen Adam is “exempt from wound” at non-​ divine hands (ix.486–​88), but the pathways of human anatomy –​the orifices, vessels, and fungible fluids that bind together the Galenic body and bind it to its environment –​create their own form of vulnerability to corruption by external forces. Satan seizes on that bodily vulnerability as a means to spiritually corrupt Eve by materially corrupting her. Through “inspiring venom” into Eve’s ear, Satan attempts to “forge” disordered dreams with the “organs of her fancy” and to “taint /​The animal spirits that from pure blood arise,” coaxing “distempered” thoughts from her distempered spirits (iv.802–​7). The mechanisms of bodily corruption that Satan employs follow Early Modern medical theories of fancy and the spirits. Harinder Singh Majara and Diana Treviño Benet have both provided physiological readings of Satan’s attempt to corrupt the sleeping Eve, but Majara and Benet come to quite different conclusions about the efficacy of Satan’s efforts. While Majara contends that Satan successfully manipulates Eve’s fancy and taints her animal spirits (272–​74), Benet vehemently disagrees, arguing that Satan is responsible for Eve’s dream but is unable to pollute her animal spirits (47–​50). According to Benet, Milton “refers to the possibility of tainted animal spirits in order to refute the idea that Satan could hurt Eve’s mind through an infusion of evil, circumventing reason and will by poisoning her bodily fluids” (48). Benet’s objection gets to the heart of the issue: Satan’s success in tainting Eve’s spirits threatens to create a fissure in Milton’s theodicy. The material continuity between body and soul in Milton’s monist cosmology raises the possibility that unwilled bodily corruption could materially compromise the soul, thereby making spiritual purity subject to material conditions outside of the control of free will. I follow Majara in arguing that Satan is successful in tainting Eve’s spirits as well as her fancy, but I want to take seriously Benet’s emphasis on Eve’s continued innocence up until the Fall (Benet 39). After all, the narrator assures us that Eve is “yet sinless” when Satan begins his temptation (ix.659). In the absence of a material

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division between soul and body, Eve’s continued innocence does not sit comfortably with Satan’s success in materially corrupting her. If soul and body are continuous, how can Eve remain spiritually pure after she has been materially corrupted? And why would Milton include such a scenario in Paradise Lost when it threatens to undercut his theodicy? I argue that through Satan’s tainting of Eve’s spirits and its aftermath, Milton works to establish a material, spiritual therapeutics capable of countering the possibility that unwilled bodily corruption could materially compromise the soul. Eve’s tears following her dream provide such a therapeutics. Through her tears, “all was cleared” (v.134–​36). Her tears ‘clear all’ both physically and spiritually by combining “remorse /​And pious awe” with Galenic purgation to materially purify her animal spirits and the organs of her fancy (v.134–​36). The corruption and purgation of fancy and the spirits are, I want to suggest, of particular importance in the idiosyncratic monist physiology that Milton develops in Paradise Lost. Fancy and the spirits capture the continuity between body and soul with particular intensity. The spirits provide Milton with both a model and a means for the spirituous rarefication of the prelapsarian body, while fancy, which Adam identifies as the mechanism of “internal sight” (viii.461), holds the potential for embodied revelation. The role of fancy and the spirits in spirituous ascent and inner sight makes their purity central to spiritual and bodily health; however, the material corruption of fancy and the spirits that Eve suffers through Satan’s machinations becomes the inherent condition of humanity after the Fall, impeding postlapsarian spirituous ascent and clouding internal sight. The therapeutics of fancy that Milton establishes through Eve’s remorseful tears acts as a model for the purgation of postlapsarian internal sight necessary to prophetic vision.

1. Miltonic Physiology and the Material Pathways of Diabolical Corruption Satan’s infiltration of Eve’s body through her animal spirits and the organs of her fancy was biologically plausible in the context of Early Modern medical theory, in which the Galenic model of the spirits remained pervasive. Even the pioneering anatomist Andreas Vesalius, who was quick to point out Galen’s errors, adhered to Galen’s model of the spirits (Vesalius VII.1.161–​62). Galen was not a Christian, but his model of the

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body was readily assimilated into Christianity as his writings became a cornerstone of Western medical education. Galen anchored anatomy and physiology in a theory of providential design according to which a divine Creator or Demiurge crafted each body part in a manner that optimized the functioning of the body and soul.1 Galen regarded anatomy and physiology as so intimately bound to theology that he termed his treatise De usu partium a “sacred discourse” (III.10.189). Many Early Modern medical writers retained the Galenic framework of anatomy as a theologically invested enterprise while replacing Galen’s Demiurge with the Christian God. Vesalius asserted that dissection “will show you how great, then, was the skill of the Creator” (II.1.102), and Helkiah Crooke claimed that anatomy contributes to our knowledge of God because humans are made in God’s image (12–​14). Johann Remmelin, in turn, stated that “the dignity and excellence of Man” blazoned forth in our anatomy “open to view the ineffable power, the incredible wisdom, the infinite goodness, nay, the very essential being of the Wisest God, most glorious Maker of such a fabric” (Br).2 In the Early Modern West, the Galenic body had become a Christian body. The humours, spirits, and faculties of the Christianized Galenic body were regarded, as we will see, as susceptible to both diabolical and divine influence. The model of the spirits that Galen bequeathed to Early Modern medicine posits three types of spirits of ascending degrees of rarefication: natural spirits, vital spirits, and animal spirits. The liver concocts nutriment into natural spirits, which are concocted into vital spirits in the heart. The vital spirits are then refined into animal spirits in the brain. From there, the animal spirits are distributed through the body by the nerves, enabling motion and sensory perception and causing the body to act in accordance with the soul. The animal spirits stand at the highest verge of bodily materiality. They are, as Robert Burton explains, substances “refined to a more heavenly nature” that function as the “common tie or medium between the body and soul” (I.141). Adaptations of the Galenic model of the spirits by Thomas Willis and René Descartes, respectively, link the animal spirits more directly to the blood. Willis attributes the 1 See, for example, Galen’s De usu partium (I.5.72, I.18.79). 2 Translation mine. Original Latin: “Nam ita Hominis dignitas & excellentia, Sapientissimi Dei tantae fabricae Conditoris gloriosissimi ineffabilem potentiam, incredibilem sapientiam, infinitam bonitatem, imò ipsissimam ejus essentialem substantiam aperiet” (Remmelin Br).

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concoction of the animal spirits to fermentation and to the purification of the most “spirituous” portions of the blood in the brain (Thomson 81), while Descartes argues that the animal spirits are formed from “the liveliest and finest portions of the blood” (Passions 23). Despite their alterations to the Galenic model, both Willis and Descartes preserve a central role for the animal spirits in binding the soul to the body. Willis describes the animal spirits as “Aetherial Particles of a more Divine Breathing … the Instruments of Life and Soul” (Fermentation II.3), and Descartes identifies them as the means by which the soul “radiates into all the rest of the body” from its “principal seat” in the pineal gland (Passions 37).3 For all their ethereality, the spirits are so concretely material that both Willis and Descartes claim that the animal spirits can carve tracks in the brain (Two Discourses 36; L’Homme 450–​53). The medical theory of ventricular psychology, which assigns concrete locations in the brain to faculties such as fancy and memory, grants a similar materiality to fancy by locating its seat in a specific cerebral ventricle. In Early Modern medical theory, as in Paradise Lost, the materiality of fancy and the spirits makes them vulnerable to material pollution by Satan. Burton asserts that Satan can work upon fancy by “mingling himself” with the liquid humours of the body (Anatomy I.199–​200). Willis explains that “very oftentimes, most admirable passions, are produced in the humane body, by the delusions of the Devill” who “insinuates … heterogeneous Atoms, or little Bodies” into “the constitution of the animal spirits” (Pathology 46–​48). Levinus Lemnius reports that “good and ill Angells,” when “entermingled with the humours & spirites,” can “cause sondry chaunges and mutations in mens minds.” Lemnius associates the Fall with bodily infiltration by diabolical forces, asserting that when evil angels “glyd into the body,” they “not onely incense and pricke a man forward to mischiefe, but also like most pestilent Counsellers, promyse to the party reward & impunitye. By this meanes the wylie Serpente enueigled Adam” (C4r-​v).4 On the one hand, the animal spirits are a vivid anatomical manifestation of the immanence of spirit in “bodily matter” that John Rogers identifies as central to seventeenth-​ century vitalism (2). On the other hand, they are a striking example 3 See Thomson for further discussion of Willis and the animal spirits (81). 4 For further discussion of the belief that the Devil could infiltrate the animal spirits, see Benet (40–​41). For a discussion of Lemnius in relation to Satan’s influence on Eve’s spirits, see Schoenfeldt (147).

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of the potential danger that materiality poses to spiritual purity. The animal spirits retain their vulnerability to material corruption by Satan in Paradise Lost even as Milton transforms them from a biological intermediary between body and soul into an instantiation of the material continuity between the two.5 The physiology of the spirits lies at the core of Raphael’s explanation of the spirituous refinement of “one first matter all” (v.472). Raphael explains to Adam that     flowers and their fruit Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed To vital spirits aspire, to animal, To intellectual, give both life and sense, Fancy and understanding, whence the soul Reason receives, and reason is her being. (v.482–​87) Milton follows the Galenic model of the spirits in identifying three types of spirits in the human body, but they are not the traditional three spirits. The natural spirits are absent, and Milton has invented a new type of spirits altogether: the intellectual spirits.6 In Milton’s model, a single substance sublimates by degrees from vital, to animal, to intellectual spirits, giving the body not only life and sense, fancy and understanding, but also –​and here is the crucial contribution of the intellectual spirits –​ reason, which is the “being” of the soul. Stephen M. Fallon convincingly contends that “[w]‌hile the construction is remarkably fluid … to save the coherence of the passage one must take the ‘intellectual spirits’ as interchangeable with the soul” (104). The intellectual spirits combine body and soul into a seamless physiology, removing the lingering physiological separation between body and soul just as monism negates an ontological separation between the two. That continuity exacerbates the threat that Satan’s attempt to “taint” Eve’s animal spirits poses to her spiritual integrity. Eve’s tainted animal spirits may carry their corruption with them as they sublimate to intellectual spirits, which are “interchangeable with the soul.” 5 6

See Fallon (96–​104), Kerrigan (248–​49), and Rumrich (139–​52) for further discussion of Milton and the biology of the spirits. See Fallon (102) and Rumrich & Fallon (8) for Milton’s invention of the intellectual spirits.

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The animal spirits, in turn, activate the faculty of fancy. The physiological connections between fancy and the animal spirits mean that the two ways through which Satan attempts to corrupt Eve –​accessing the organs of her fancy or tainting her animal spirits –​are simply different points of entry into the same bodily system. Tainted spirits would promptly corrupt fancy, whose actions the spirits enable, while corrupted fancy would taint the spirits through the material and functional contact between the two. Monism heightens the material continuity between the spirits and fancy, negating the potential for different outcomes from the tainting of the spirits versus the corruption of fancy. Benet’s claim that Satan successfully manipulates Eve’s fancy but is unable to taint Eve’s animal spirits does not hold up against Miltonic physiology. The function of the two options that Milton describes is not to suggest the possibility of two different outcomes but to call attention to the physiological logistics of the corruption and thus to its bodily literalism. When Satan, squat at Eve’s ear, attempts “to reach /​The organs of her fancy, and with them forge /​Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams” (iv.800–​04), he is acting in accordance with the standard biological functions of the faculty of fancy. The “organs” of fancy are as anatomically concrete as the animal spirits in the framework of Early Modern ventricular psychology, which, as previously mentioned, locates fancy in a specific area of the brain. The function of fancy is to transform sensory data into mental representations of real or imagined objects. Those mental representations are the raw material upon which reason acts.7 The intellect rules over fancy in a well-​ordered soul, but reason depends on fancy for its proper functioning. Willis explains that when the mental images produced by fancy “are deficient or distorted … the faults or vices of these infects the Intellect” (Two Discourses 41–​42). If Satan were to successfully corrupt Eve’s fancy, he would stand to undermine Eve’s reason by providing her reason with corrupted data. Milton grants fancy the additional function of inner sight. Adam gains his first direct experience of the divine in and through fancy when “a shape divine” appears to him in a dream shortly after his creation. That “inward apparition,” Adam recalls, “moved /​My fancy to believe I yet had being” (viii.293–​94). The phrase “moved my fancy” takes on a remarkable physicality when read in combination with the biological

7 For an excellent discussion of Early Modern fancy, see Roychoudhury (8–​36).

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concreteness of Satan’s interference with the “organs” of Eve’s fancy. God and Satan alike produce effects in the mind –​effects that we might be tempted to mistakenly think of as immaterial –​through material interactions with fancy. Adam identifies inner sight with embodied fancy even more strongly when he describes his Maker putting him to sleep prior to opening his side to extract a rib. Adam tells Raphael that the Creator placed him in slumber but “open left the cell /​Of fancy my internal sight” (viii.460–​61). The description carries the anatomical specificity of the cerebral cells of ventricular psychology: “the cell /​Of fancy my internal sight.” Adam identifies fancy as a biological mechanism of revelation, a medium of divine visions. Fancy provides the material means through which, when God wishes, Adam can glimpse the hidden workings of Creation. In Milton’s model of physiology, material corruption of fancy may muddy not only the capacity for rational choice but also the capacity for receiving revelation. Fancy is a point of particular vulnerability for biology and theodicy alike in Paradise Lost. Milton portrays fancy as innately unruly. It is naturally inclined to err even in its God-​given state. Adam calls attention to the errant tendencies of fancy when he attempts to comfort Eve after her dream by explaining that disjointed dreams stem from fancy’s natural mischievousness. Adam states that such dreams occur when reason retires to her rest and … mimic fancy wakes To imitate her; but misjoining shapes, Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams, Ill matching words and deeds long past or late. (v.100–​13) Temporarily usurping the place of reason, fancy swerves away from truth and faithful representation. Unbridled fancy mimics, imitates, and misjoins. It threatens to compromise rational choice even without Satan’s interference. Fancy is already tenuously poised between reason and disorder, between revelation and rebellion. What Adam attributes to unruly fancy is relatively close to what Satan does in orchestrating Eve’s dream, perversely producing “wild work” by reshuffling recent words and deeds. Adam, unaware of Satan’s role in producing Eve’s dream, pinpoints fancy as the source of the “evil” that “into the mind of god or man /​May come and go” (v.117–​18), thereby identifying evil as a natural part of human biology. Naturally occurring evil in prelapsarian humans

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must be able to come and go without blame if God created humans sinless and made their corruption subject to free will. The external source of Eve’s material corruption salvages theodicy from the prospect that God may have created humans with a source of evil inherent in their biology. Nonetheless, Eve’s vulnerability to unwilled bodily corruption and to unwilled corruption of her soul by means of her body undercuts that salvaging of theodicy. Fancy may not be an inherent source of evil, but it is inherently susceptible to a form of corruption that bypasses free will. Breathing (“inspiring”) venom into Eve’s ear as she sleeps, Satan transforms the porosity of the body into an invasive penetration, echoing Death’s perversion of angelic sexual intermingling into rape.8 The persistent sexualization of Satan’s temptation of Eve makes rape an apt model for his invasion of her sleeping body, providing an interpretive template in which Eve’s sleeping state negates the possibility of consent. Although Adam attempts to comfort Eve after her dream by assuring her that evil may pass through the mind “so unapproved, and leave /​No spot or blame behind” (v.117–​19), his conviction does not hold true for Eve’s body. As Majara observes, “The events, as they come to pass later on, show Adam to be wrong. The demonic influence does leave its spot behind, and Eve’s animal spirits do take the taint” (273). The Miltonic continuity between body and mind prevents Eve’s mind from being proof against unwilled material corruption when her body is vulnerable to it. Eve’s dream ends abruptly when Ithuriel and Zephon, apparently aware of her vulnerability, interrupt Satan as he envenoms her, but their intervention does not come soon enough to preserve Eve from Satan’s corruption. By the time that the two angels come to Eve’s assistance, Satan has already sufficiently manipulated Eve’s fancy to “forge” an extended and elaborate dream from it, and the dream has progressed far enough that Eve has eaten the fruit and felt its effects. The physical changes that Adam observes in Eve when he wakes the following morning to find “unwakened Eve /​With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek” confirm that Satan has materially altered her (v.10–​ 11). Eve’s “discomposed” tresses suggest that the misjoining that Satan has wrought upon her fancy undoes (dis-​composes), if only slightly, the original state of Eve’s body as composed by God. Eve’s distempered

8

For Raphael’s description of angelic sex, see viii.622–​29; for Death’s rape of Sin, see ii.790–​95.

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physical state doubly resonates with Milton’s description of postlapsarian physicality. The fallen Adam and Eve are “discount’nanced both, and discomposed” (x.110), and after Eve eats the forbidden fruit, “in her cheek distemper flushing glowed” (ix.887). Eve’s postlapsarian flush marks flushing as a physiological symptom of distemper, making Eve’s flush following her dream an indication that Satan has succeeded in raising “distempered, discontented thoughts” from Eve’s animal spirits (iv.807), having successfully distempered her spirits themselves.

2. Eve’s Tears and Material, Spiritual Purgation When Eve presents herself to Raphael later in Book V, however, the narrator specifies that “no veil /​She needed, virtue-​proof, no thought infirm /​Altered her cheek” (v.383–​85). Something has healed Eve in the interval between her dream and Raphael’s visit. That something, I propose, is Eve’s tears. Eve’s tears function as a means of spiritual purgation through physical purgation, a process that is the mirror image of Eve’s polluted spirits tainting her soul. The narrator asserts that “all was cleared” through Eve’s tears, those “gracious signs of sweet remorse /​And pious awe, that feared to have offended” (v.134–​36). The material meaning of the verb “to clear” as “to remove matter which clouds or troubles (a medium)” or “to clarify (a liquid)” casts Eve’s tears as an act of physical purification that removes the troubling matter that Satan has introduced into her spirits (“Clear,” def. 1.b). The associated meaning of “to clear” as a term for “mak[ing] (the eyesight) clear” prefigures the purgative cleansing of inner sight for which Eve’s tears serve as a model (def. 3). Meanwhile, the Early Modern usage of “to clear” as a figurative term meaning “to wash away (a stain),” particularly the stain of sin (def. 8), links the physical purgation wrought by Eve’s tears to moral and spiritual purification. The judicial meaning of “to clear” as “to clear from blame” or “to prove innocent” binds purification back into exculpation (def. 9.a.). The exculpation encompassed by “all is cleared” differs from the form of exculpation that Adam offers in his assurance to Eve that “no spot or blame” adheres to the mind when “unapproved” evil passes through it (v.118–​19). Adam seeks to preserve Eve’s innocence by denying that she has been stained. “All is cleared” opens the way for the preservation of innocence through penitent purgation even when the body has been materially compromised.

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In Eve’s tears, Christian repentance and monist physiology converge with a Galenic therapeutics of humoural purgation. Gail Kern Paster notes that “Galenic physiology proposed a body whose constituent fluids, all reducible to blood, were entirely fungible … blood, semen, milk, sweat, tears, and other bodily fluids turn into one another” (9). The blood from which Eve’s spirits “arise” is bound to Eve’s spirits and her tears in a relationship of interconnectivity and dynamic transformation in which blood, spirits, and tears “turn into one another.” That fungibility allows Eve’s tears to purge the impurity that has entered her body through her blood and spirits. Milton’s monist version of Galenic physiology strengthens the substantial continuity between blood, spirits, and tears, extending that fungibility to the spirituous substance of the soul, which is one with the body. Physiological connectivity between body and soul holds out hope for a solution to the very problem it causes. If the body can serve as an entry point for spiritual corruption, it can also serve as an instrument for spiritual purgation. Purgation is a central natural process of Milton’s cosmos both before and after the Fall. Milton imagines Creation as a physiological process of digestive separation involving excretion of separated matter: the purgation of “dregs,” a term used not only for the settled sediments of wine but also, in Early Modern medical writing, for feces (“Dreg,” defs. 1.a. and 2).9 The expulsion of the rebel angels from heaven is also an act of purgation, as is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.10 God explains that the expulsion of man is the inevitable consequence of the humoural laws of nature, according to which the pure elements of Paradise “Eject him tainted now, and purge him off /​As a distemper, gross to air as gross” (xi.50–​53). Salvation too involves purgation. Galenic purgation merges with the alchemical separation of pure from impure in the disciplined purification by which postlapsarian humans may be “refined /​By faith and faithful works, to second life” (xi.61–​66), and at the end of time, the world will be “purged and refined” by divine fire (xii.548). The therapeutic model of bodily, spiritual purgation that Milton establishes through Eve’s tears is part of the larger purgative operations of the cosmos and the purgative processes of salvation history. 9 See Schoenfeldt (140–​4 4) and Rogers (135–​38) for further discussion of the purgation of dregs in Milton’s depiction of Creation. 10 See Lenhoff for a discussion of the expulsion of the rebel angels as an act of purgation (432).

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Eve’s vulnerable spirits and purgative tears provide a model for postlapsarian embodied repentance, with Eve temporarily occupying the postlapsarian physiological state of corrupted spirits and polluted fancy. As Eve wipes her tears with her hair, her typological connection to salvation history shifts. She becomes a type not of Mary but of Mary Magdalene, not of virgin purity but of penitential purification from a particularly bodily type of spiritual corruption. Penitential tears constitute a key physical mode of spiritual expression for Adam and Eve after the Fall. When Eve humbles herself before Adam in Book X, she does so by embracing his feet “with tears that ceased not flowing, /​And tresses all disordered” (x.910–​11). When she and Adam first pray to God in contrition, they fall “prostrate,” “with tears /​Watering the ground” (x.1099, x.1101–​2). There is, however, a vital difference between the therapeutic mechanism of Eve’s purgative tears prior to the Fall and the therapeutics of embodied penance after the Fall. That difference is the direct intervention of God’s grace. Grace is the ultimate form of therapeutics in the fallen world. Milton gives no indication that grace intervenes to enable the tears that clear Eve’s incipient material corruption by Satan. Her heart has not yet so hardened that it requires the melting power of God’s grace to soften it. After the Fall, grace becomes the necessary theological and material precondition for embodied spiritual purgation. Adam and Eve, tearfully penitent, are able to confess their sins and pray for forgiveness because … from the mercy-​seat above Prevenient grace descending had removed The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breathed Unutterable, which the spirit of prayer Inspired, and winged for heaven with speedier flight Than loudest oratory. (xi.2–​7) Milton transforms God’s replacement of a stony heart with a heart of flesh in Ezekiel 11.19 into a divinely wrought medical operation in which grace removes pathological hardening from the fallen heart and makes healthy flesh grow where the corrupt material was extracted. The new flesh is “regenerate,” generated anew by an act of redemptive re-​creation that works in and through the body. Ezekiel’s God “will take the stony

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heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh” (KJV, Ezek. 11.19). Milton’s grace takes out “the stony” and heals the heart. The embodied nature of the spiritual therapeutics modelled by Eve’s tears reflects the embodied nature of the spiritual changes wrought by the Fall. The fruit operates on and through the spirits as it alters Adam and Eve. The initial bodily effects of the fruit –​distemper and intoxication –​merge spiritual corruption with physical illness.11 The sense of giddy inebriation fades while Adam and Eve sleep, but the damage caused by the fruit remains. The fruit systematically corrupts them as the successive stages of digestion and spirituous concoction integrate it into their substance. The “unkindly fumes” that the fruit produces during digestion make sleep itself “grosser” (ix.1049–​50), recalling the material hardening of the spiritually corrupt rebel angels, “gross by sinning grown” (vi.661). In the process of being digested, the fruit makes the digestive process impure. At the higher stages of spirituous rarefication, the “force” of the fruit twines about the spirits “with exhilarating vapour bland” (ix.1047–​48). The corruption of the spirits causes the “inmost powers” to “err” (ix. 1048–​49), for those powers are enabled, or even created, by the spirits. The spirits, as we have seen, “give both life and sense, /​Fancy and understanding, whence the soul /​Reason receives, and reason is her being” (v.485–​87). The fruit materially alters the being of the already sinful soul by poisoning the body with which the soul is materially continuous, ensuring that the body and soul share a unified material corruption. That unified corruption reaffirms the monist inseparability of body and soul in the fallen world. Only after the completion of that physiological process do Adam and Eve awake to find themselves fully fallen, “their eyes how opened, and their minds /​How darkened” (ix.1053–​54). The two effects of the corrupted spirits that Milton highlights –​opened eyes and darkened minds –​merge in the physiology of fallen sight. The shared bodily nature of external and internal sight runs so deep that when Michael temporarily cures Adam’s eyesight and “mental sight” to allow him to view prophetic visions, the angel uses the same medicine to treat Adam’s eyes and mind. The narrator recounts that Michael, tending to Adam, “purged with euphrasy and rue /​The visual nerve,

11 See Schoenfeldt for a discussion of the moral and physiological valences of distemper in the Miltonic Fall (152).

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for he had much to see /​And from the well of life three drops instilled” (xi.414–​16). The mixture is so potent that “the power of these ingredients pierced, /​Even to the inmost seat of mental sight” (xi.414–​18): the seat of fancy. William Kerrigan reads the passage as a description of two separate treatments. According to Kerrigan, Michael first uses an herbal remedy of euphrasy and rue to heal Adam’s eyes and then uses water from the well of life to treat the seat of Adam’s internal sight. Kerrigan asserts that the second treatment “leave[s]‌empirical medicine behind,” although the problem that it cures “is no less physical than the film bred in Adam’s eyes” (253). Kerrigan is correct about the shared physicality of the damage to external and internal sight, but he misreads the passage in assigning a separate cure to each. The phrase “And from the well of life three drops instilled” is a continuation of Michael’s treatment of Adam’s visual nerve with euphrasy and rue. The “power” of the “ingredients” that Michael applies to Adam’s eyes –​euphrasy, rue, and water from the well of life –​“purges” Adam’s external sight and seeps inward through his visual nerve to his cerebral ventricles, where it reaches what Adam earlier describes as “the cell /​Of fancy my internal sight” (viii.460–​61). The healing mechanism of the medicine for Adam’s external and internal sight is, like that of Eve’s tears, material purgation. It is just such a material, spiritual purgation that Milton seeks from the “celestial light” when he calls on it to Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. (iii.51–​55) Clouded by mist, the inner sight is impaired by the same type of obscuring film that clouds Milton’s eyes, with “dim suffusion veiled” (iii.26). The eyes and the inner sight, corrupted by the same underlying physiological changes wrought by the Fall, suffer the same forms of damage. The reference to the “powers” of the mind, suggesting the cognitive faculties, reiterates the crucial role of fancy in the physiology of revelation. The purgation of fancy modelled by Eve’s tears and elaborated in Michael’s treatment of Adam is the enabling condition of prophetic sight and prophetic poetry. It is the enabling condition of Paradise Lost. Nevertheless, in Eve’s case, the redemptive mechanisms of physiology seem unable to fully counterbalance the danger posed by the

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permeability of the body, which is also the permeability of the soul. Eve’s purgative repentance cannot entirely undo the damage wrought by the ideas that Satan has shaped in her dream, even though the disorder that prompted those ideas has been healed. While Satan’s material infiltration of Eve does not negate her free will, it may influence her decision to eat the fruit in a manner for which she cannot be held morally accountable.12 The vulnerability of the prelapsarian body is a lingering vulnerability of Milton’s theodicy. That vulnerability is the cost of creating sufficient continuity between pre-​and postlapsarian bodies to ensure that prelapsarian mechanisms of embodied spiritual purgation remain available to postlapsarian humanity, albeit in a manner contingent on grace, faith, and discipline. Establishing a prelapsarian model for material, spiritual healing requires establishing a prelapsarian model for material, spiritual pathology. Pathology slithers into Eden, slithers into Eve’s spirits, and slithers into Milton’s theodicy so that healing can take root in Eden too.

Works Cited Benet, Diana Treviño. “Milton’s Toad, or Satan’s Dream.” Milton Studies, vol. 45, 2006, pp. 38–​52. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited and with an introduction by Holbrook Jackson, and with a new introduction by William H. Gass, New York Review, 2001. “Clear, v.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2019, www.oed.com/​ view/​Entry/​34079. Accessed 24 September 2019. Crooke, Helkiah. Microcosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man. Together with the Controversies thereto Belonging. Collected and Translated out of all the Best Authors of Anatomy, Especially out of Gaspar Bauhinus and Andreas Laurentius. Printed by William Jaggard, 1615. Descartes, René. Le Traité de l’Homme. Oeuvres Philosophiques de Descartes: Tome I (1618–​1637), edited by Ferdinand Alquié, Garnier Frères, 1963, pp. 379–​480.

12 See Majara (272–​74) and Rumrich (151) for further discussion of the possibility that Satan’s material infiltration of Eve increases her susceptibility to the serpent’s temptation.

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—​— ​—​ . The Passions of the Soul. Translated by Stephen Voss, Hackett Publishing, 1989. “Dreg, n.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2019, www.oed.com/​ view/​Entry/​57649. Accessed 24 September 2019. Fallon, Stephen M. Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-​Century England. Cornell UP, 1991. Galen. On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (De usu partium). Translated and with an introduction and commentary by Margaret Tallmadge May, Cornell UP, 1968, 2 vols. The Holy Bible. King James Version, Ballantine, 1991. Kerrigan, William. The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost. Cambridge UP, 1983. Lemnius, Levinus. The Touchstone of Complexions Generallye Appliable, Expedient and Profitable for all such, as be Desirous & Carefull of their Bodylye Health: Contayning most Easie Rules & Ready Tokens, Whereby Euery One may Perfectly Try, and Throughly Know, as Well the Exacte State, Habite, Disposition, and Constitution, of His Owne Body Outwardly: As also the Inclinations, Affections, Motions, & Desires of His Mynd Inwardly. Translated by Thomas Newton, printed by Thomas Marsh, 1576. Lenhoff, Kent R. “Scatology and the Sacred in Milton’s Paradise Lost.” English Literary Renaissance, vol. 37, no. 3, 2007, pp. 429–​49. Majara, Harinder Singh. Contemplation of Created Things: Science in Paradise Lost. University of Toronto, 1992. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 2nd ed., edited by Alistair Fowler, Routledge, 2013. Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Cornell UP, 1993. Remmelin, Johann. Catoptrum Microcosmicum, suis aere incisis visionibus splendens, cum historia, & pinace, de nouo prodit. Sumptibus Johannis Görlini, 1639. British Library copy, shelfmark Tab.583.f.45. Rogers, John. The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics. Cornell UP, 1996. Roychoudhury, Suparna. Phantasmatic Shakespeare: Imagination in the Age of Early Modern Science. Cornell UP, 2018. Rumrich, John. “Flesh made Word: Pneumatology and Miltonic Textuality.” Immortality and the Body in the Age of Milton, edited by John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon, Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 139–​52.

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Rumrich, John, and Fallon, Stephen M. Introduction. Immortality and the Body in the Age of Milton, edited by John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon, Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 1–​20. Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton. Cambridge UP, 1999. Thomson, Ann. Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment. Oxford UP, 2008. Vesalius, Andreas. On the Fabric of the Human Body: A Translation of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem. Translated and edited by William Frank Richardson in collaboration with John Burd Carman, San Francisco, Norman Publishing, 1998–​2009, 5 vols. Willis, Thomas. An Essay of the Pathology of the Brain and Nervous Stock: In Which Convulsive Diseases Are Treated of. Translated by. S.P., printed by J. B. for T. Dring, 1681. —​—​—​. A Medico-​Philosophical Discourse of Fermentation, or, Of the Intestine Motion of Particles in Every Body. Translated by S.P., printed for Thomas Dring, Ch. Harper, and John Leigh, 1681. —​—​—​. Two Discourses Concerning the Souls of Brutes, Which is that of the Vital and Sensitive of Man. Translated by S. Pordage, printed for Thomas Dring, Ch. Harper, and John Leigh, 1683.

Milton’s Deafened Moment Miles Drawdy 1. Milton & Disability A blind scholar writing in 1934, Eleanor Gertrude Brown protested simplistic critical methods that either shrink or eliminate altogether the distinctions between disability as a subject within Milton’s writing and disability as a quality of Milton’s lived experience. This concern about conflation may help explain –​albeit ironically –​the apparent reluctance of disability studies scholars to engage with Milton (and, for that matter, of Miltonists to engage with disability studies). One notable exception, Amrita Dhar has recently argued that Milton’s experiments with translating the psalms allowed him to reconceive of his impairment in literary terms as “an acute and prospective poetic tool” (102–​3). My point here is simply to suggest that while the fact of Milton’s blindness has consistently incited interest, it is the rare article that negotiates and interrogates that interest in order to understand disability as more than merely biographically relevant.1 This essay is an attempt to bring the insights of disability theory to a reading of Milton’s poetry. At the risk of seeming perverse, I want to suggest at the outset that deafness –​rather than blindness –​is not only a key concern in Milton’s work but also offers a less fraught way for thinking about Milton and disability. To be clear, my interest here is explicitly not in hearing 1 In Narrative Prosthesis, Mitchell and Snyder discuss “the paradoxical impetus that makes disability into both a destabilizing sign of cultural prescriptions about the body and a deterministic vehicle of characterization for characters constructed as disabled” (50). Motivated readings of Milton’s blindness do seem to enact, in a metaliterary sense, the fascination with disability leveraged consciously by authors in the western tradition. In the terms and analysis provided by Mitchell and Snyder, Milton’s blindness allows him to be co-​opted by interpretive strategies developed for reading disabled characters. He becomes the disabled character of his own work. This fascination would also explain the scarcity of theoretical treatments of his blindness since, as Mitchell and Snyder elegantly point out, “disability also operates as the textual obstacle that causes the literary operation of open-​endedness to close down or stumble” (50).

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impairments per se but in a kind of deaf epistemology. By this, I mean a way of knowing that circumvents the ear, especially when such circumvention seems deliberately paradoxical or counterintuitive. Specifically, I here put into conversation Milton’s early writings on audition with ideas derived from deaf studies in order to ask: how might we orient ourselves toward a sound we cannot hear? Critiquing Paul de Man’s paradoxical invocation of blindness as both a metaphor for ignorance and the enabling condition of critical insight, Lennard J. Davis notes how “ableist concepts permeate the literary/​critical lexicon” (882). He then teases out how our critical theories might be productively recalibrated by understanding deafness –​rather than blindness –​as a critical modality. Davis helpfully clarifies, Here one wants to distinguish among the Deaf, the deaf, and the deafened moment. The Deaf are that community of deaf people who share language, cultural values, history, and social life. The deaf are simply those that do not hear. But the deafened moment is one that does not rely on either the Deaf or the deaf, although it exists in a dynamic relationship with the Deaf. I am speaking (writing) of the deafened moment as a contextual position, a dialectical moment in the reading/​critical process that is defined by the acknowledgement on the part of the reader/​writer/​critic that he or she is engaged in an activity that does not involve speaking or hearing. (882–​83)

Having established a series of relationships among deafness, textuality, and print, Davis argues that the deafened moment is fundamentally defined by a literary engagement. Describing the rise of print culture across the eighteenth century, he notes that “the cultural icon for the reader of print culture becomes the deaf person” and, inversely, that the “deaf person becomes the reader incarnate” (890). This association of the reader with the deaf person disputes the illusion that reading involves sound even as it corrects the assumption that deafness is characterized by silence. Milton’s deafened moment, however, is defined not by attention to a text but, rather, by particular attention to the divinely-​authored universe, the prime experience of which involves listening to the music of the spheres. Despite his obvious and lifelong interest in music, Milton repeatedly admits a lack of commitment to the notion that listening to or for the heavenly music involves hearing at all. The speaker of “The Nativity Ode” gives voice to this scepticism when he implores, “Ring out ye crystal spheres, /​Once bless our human ears” only to wonder parenthetically,

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“(If ye have power to touch our senses so)” (125–​27).2 That is, if ye have power to touch our senses in such a way. Throughout his early writings, Milton considers ways of listening that, to quote Davis, “[do] not involve speaking or hearing” (883).

2. Milton & the Music of the Spheres As every reader of his poetry doubtless realizes, the unheard symphony of the heavens fascinated Milton to the point of obsession. This fascination emerges in his earliest writings. Indeed, Milton dedicated his second prolusion to the very question of whether the heavens make music at all. Academic orations delivered to members of one’s college, prolusions are obviously rhetorical exercises. As such, they apparently obligate anyone writing on them to acknowledge their constructed, contingent, occasional character. Fair enough; though I might add that “rhetorical” is not necessarily a synonym for “insincere.” Nevertheless, as performance texts, academic orations are fundamentally invested in “sonic presence, silence, duration in time, breath, voice, and ideologically ratified forms of conversation (that is, oral exchange of semantic units)” (Davis 886). It is these features of a text which, according to Davis, are most compromised by deafness. Having identified the reader with the deaf person, it follows that in order to read Milton –​to listen to him –​we must first recognize that not every instance of sound is reified as textual detail, and vice versa. Of the seven prolusions Milton composed and performed while at Cambridge, his second is frequently considered for various reasons to be exceptional. In the mid-​eighteenth century, Francis Peck noted that he “found in it something…so exceedingly beautiful, that [he] was immediately tempted to make a translation of it” (“Prolusions” 211). E. M. W. Tillyard asserts that “[i]‌n point of sheer craft…[it] is the best of them all” (Tillyard xxvi). The second prolusion intercedes in an ancient debate between Aristotle and Pythagoras on the question of whether or not the heavens produce music. Milton initially tries to embarrass Aristotle by claiming that he took seriously what Pythagoras (and Plato and Homer after him) meant only allegorically. Pythagoras, Milton explains, 2

All quotations of Milton except for those from his prolusions are taken from Kerrigan, Rumrich, and Fallon’s edition.

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“followed the example of the poets, or (what is almost the same thing) of the divine oracles, who never display before the eyes of the vulgar any holy or secret mystery unless it be in some way cloaked or veiled” (“Prolusions” 235–​36). Milton, however, suddenly invoking metempsychosis (that other influential Pythagorean theory), boasts, “if only fate or chance had allowed your soul, O Father Pythagoras, to transmigrate into my body, you would not have lacked a champion to deliver you without difficulty under however heavy a burden of obloquy you might be laboring” (“Prolusions” 236–​37). Wondering, “[W]hy should not the heavenly bodies give forth musical tones in their annual revolutions?” (“Prolusions” 237), Milton finds himself (pace himself) taking Pythagoras seriously and defending him all the same. Wryly reminding Aristotle that absence of evidence is not, in fact, evidence of absence, Milton asks, Ergone omnia supra Lunæ Sphæram muta prorsus erunt, torpidoque silentio consopita? Quinimo aures nostras incusemus debiles, quæ cantus & tam dulces sonos excipere aut non possunt, aut non dignæ sunt. [What if no one on earth has ever heard this symphony of the stars? It does not therefore follow that everything beyond the sphere of the moon is mute and utterly benumbed in silence. The fault is in our own deaf ears, which are either unable or unworthy to hear these sweet sirens.] (“Prolusions” 238)

The presence –​the omnipresence, even –​of sound does not imply hearing. Yet, I will argue, in the space between “unable” and “unworthy” lies the possibility of listening. This idea that we “are either unable or unworthy to hear these sweet sirens” has its most frequently cited literary precedent in the final scene of The Merchant of Venice. Before ordering the musicians of Belmont to “wake Diana with a hymn,” Lorenzo lectures Jessica, There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still choiring to the young-​eyed cherubim. Such harmony is in immortal souls, But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. (V.i.66, 60–​5) Those who read Lorenzo as something of a source for Milton’s later writings on the music of the spheres are, I think, right but for reasons beyond the obvious and patent. The editors of The Norton Shakespeare

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responsibly clarify that the antecedent of the first “it” is “soul” and the antecedent of the second “it” is “music.” These are, of course, sensible and helpful glosses unless we consider that the confusion may, in fact, be part of the point. After all, Lorenzo insists that the celestial harmony “is in immortal souls.” I would argue, therefore, that the ambiguity is surely worth preserving. Milton similarly reflects on the potential resonance of the music of the spheres and the music in immortal souls when he suggests to the audience at Cambridge, “if our souls were pure, chaste, and white as snow…then indeed our ears would ring and be filled with that exquisite music of the stars in their orbits” (“Prolusions” 239). In “At A Solemn Musick,” Milton inverts this process, imploring that “Blest pair of sirens…voice and verse, /​Wed your divine sounds” explicitly so that “we on earth with undiscording voice /​May rightly answer that melodious noise” (1–​3, 17–​18). The speaker of “The Nativity Ode” imagines a new golden age coming about only “if such holy song /​Enwrap our fancy long” (133–​34). In these examples, our collective spiritual health is a consequence of listening to the celestial music rather than a necessary precondition for doing so. The music presents itself as something like a promise or a prize. Until our reformation –​whether that be to doff our “muddy vesture of decay” or to escape our “darksome house of mortal clay” (Milton, “Christ’s Nativity” 14) –​the symphony of the heavens remains unheard. The genius of the Arcades teases the shepherds by recounting how he spends some nights listening to “the celestial sirens’ harmony” before reminding them that when it comes to this particular “heavenly tune…none can hear /​Of human mold with gross unpurg’d ear” (72–​3). In what may be Milton’s most explicit expression of our common human disability, the Genius’s derivative song (“Whate’er the skill of lesser gods can show, /​I will assay” [79–​80]) ironically serves only to accentuate how incomparable and sublime the symphony is which it fails to surrogate. Throughout his writings, Milton alters the terms of Davis’s argument in that, for Milton, the deafened moment is not momentary.

3. Milton & the Matter of Deafness In the remainder of this essay, I situate the music of the spheres within a seventeenth-​century discourse of disability. Writing about the unheard symphony, Milton doesn’t merely intercede in a stale debate

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between Aristotle and Pythagoras; he enters into a debate concerning the meanings and the implications of disability. I want to take Milton himself seriously and to accept that the music of the spheres is not simply a convenient metaphor but, rather, that the heavens do indeed make music that doesn’t meet our ears but manages nevertheless to mean. If we accept Seth Herbst’s conclusion that “in a universe that is completely material –​where every object, animate or inanimate, is composed of physical stuff –​even music must be made of matter,” (37) then it is perhaps not so surprising that disability –​and, especially, deafness –​ appears throughout the writings of seventeenth-​century materialist philosophers. Thomas Hobbes, for example, invokes the hypothetical deaf man in the first book of Leviathan in order to argue that oral language is necessary for rational thought. He writes, [A]‌man that hath no use of speech at all, (such as is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb), if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles (such as are the corners of a square figure), he may by meditation compare and find that the three angles of the triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand by it. But if another triangle be shown him different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same (26).

Hobbes’s argument that speech is necessary for the discovery and application of universal rules rests upon the assumption that a person “such as is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb” is incapable of exhibiting rational, complex thought. It is worth noting that the legendary process by which Pythagoras deduced the laws of harmony, providing a mathematical explanation for his aesthetic experience of the music of the spheres, relied on an act of transference not unlike the meditation of Hobbes’s hypothetical deaf man (Summers 52–​3). Descartes disputes –​though barely –​Hobbes’s claim that the deaf have neither language nor reason. We observe that magpies and parrots can utter words like ourselves, and are yet unable to speak as we do, that is, so as to show that they understand what they say; in place of which men born deaf and dumb, and thus not less, but rather more than the brutes, destitute of the organs which others use in speaking, are in the habit of spontaneously inventing certain signs by which they discover their thoughts to those who, being usually in their company, have leisure to learn their language. And this proves not only that the brutes have less reason than man, but that they have none at all (32).

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The ability to reliably, if contingently, communicate thought demonstrates to Descartes that, unlike magpies and parrots, the deaf do, in fact, possess language, reason, intelligence, and, it follows, a soul. Though more immediately interested in questioning the existence of objective morality, Spinoza, too, refers to the deaf. As far as good and evil are concerned, they also indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves, nor are they anything other than modes of thinking, or notions we form because we compare things to one another. For one and the same thing can, at the same time, be good, and bad, and also indifferent. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf (115).

The wistfulness of an argument that so directly affirms the innocence of deafness appears refreshingly progressive in the context of Hobbes and Descartes; however, in the course of his argument, Spinoza renders deafness inconsequential, a thing indifferent. And, in doing so, he overlooks the materiality of deafness and fails to consider the phenomenological, epistemological, or philosophical implications of a deaf embodiment. Expanding upon the terminology of de Man’s Blindness and Insight, Davis notes that, according to western hegemonic norms, the blinded critic is “cut off from culture, from discourse, from representation, and from the technology of writing, printing, reading…from the world of system, logocentrism, [and] phallocentrism” (885). The moment of insight that follows the period of critical blindness is therefore marked by the reintegration of the critic into culture, discourse, representation, logocentrism, phallocentrism, and so forth. Conversely, the deafened critic is “severed, not from the world of the symbolic, the systematic, but from the experiential, from the body” (885). Therefore, the analogous moment of insight is constituted by “a reconfiguration with the body … with immanence, with the contingent” (885). In his early writings on audition, Milton testifies to the significance of the experiential and to the necessity of the body as an acoustic tool. Toward the end of L’Allegro, the speaker imagines the cultural indulgence of playgoing. Then to the well-​trod stage anon, If Jonson’s learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child, Warble his native wood-​notes wild.

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And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes with many a winding bout Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony. (131–​44) Playgoing here is defined by musical pleasure and yet it is a music that is delightfully unconcerned with the ear. The insistent rhyme –​“eating cares” /​“Lydian airs” –​suggests the “ear” and yet it is the soul which is pierced with immortal verse and a music that laps or wraps the speaker. The haptic quality of this music is qualified by the ambiguously melting voice that not only meets the soul (or does the soul meet it?) but manages also to enter the soul and to explore the body, emancipating that “hidden soul of harmony” which Lorenzo had so pessimistically abandoned to the gross recesses of our muddy, mortal bodies. In Comus, Thyrsis describes for the wandering brothers his experience of hearing the Lady’s song. I was all ear. And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of death. (560–​62) Though a beautiful idiom, “I was all ear” is not entirely unambiguous. That said, rather than describe a Kafkaesque transformation in which Thyrsis becomes “all ear” –​that is, nothing but an ear –​the phrase indicates that Thyrsis’s entire body functioned like an ear. Like the happy man of L’Allegro who understands musical audition to be a hypersomatic affair, Thyrsis here admits to hearing with his body, his chest, his heart, his nose. After all, he describes the Lady’s song as “a steam of rich distilled perfume” (556). Both the happy man and Thyrsis describe the kind of rapturous embodiment which Davis claims is inaccessible to the deafened critic and reader. Of course, these are both instances of genuine audition, of hearing audible sound. As I noted earlier, it is in considering how we might listen to the unheard symphony that Milton comes to describe the deafened moment.

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In the middle of “The Nativity Ode,” the speaker pleads, Ring out ye crystal spheres, Once bless our human ears, (If ye have power to touch our senses so) … For if such holy song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold … (125–​35) As the imperative transforms into the subjunctive, the character of audition becomes less absolute. While “enwrap” presents the possibility of a haptic (and therefore more embodied) metaphor, “fancy” qualifies that insistence on the material body. Similarly, the siren song of the celestial spheres is reimagined in “At A Solemn Musick” when the speaker of that poem asks, Blest pair of sirens, pledges of Heav’n’s joy, Sphere-​borne harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse, Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce, And to our high-​raised fantasy present That undisturbèd song of pure concent. (1–​6) “Fancy” and “fantasy” function as mediating terms between somatic experience and pure imagination. These poems both describe or envision the experience of listening to the music of the spheres and, in both cases, it is an experience that circumvents the ears. I juxtapose these two examples with the above excerpts from L’Allegro and Comus in order to demonstrate that attending to the music of the spheres is a relatively disembodied experience and, as such, recalls Davis’s deafened moment. To listen to this music requires “the acknowledgement on the part of the reader/​writer/​critic that he or she is part of a process that does not involve speaking or hearing” (Davis 883). To listen to this music is to imagine a deaf epistemology. Once we understand these moments as deafened, we can begin to appreciate that to debate whether Pythagoras was speaking literally or allegorically risks missing the point. To listen to the heavenly harmony is to escape the body. It is an escape Milton himself claims to have made.

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Sometime in the 1630s, Milton –​frustrated by paternal insinuations and criticism –​wrote Ad Patrem, a Latin poem directly addressed to his father. With all the cleverness of the second prolusion, Milton not only defended his poetic vocation but also blamed his father for providing him with the education that made him a poet. Denique quicquid habet caelum, subiectaque coelo Terra parens, terraeque et coelo interfluus aer, Quicquid et unda tegit, pontique agitabile marmor, Per te nosse licet, per te, si nosse libebit. [Finally, whatever heaven holds, and parental earth that lies under heaven, and the air flowing between earth and heaven, and whatever the waves and the moving marble of the sea cover, because of you I can learn, because of you, if I want to learn it.] (85–​88)

In praising the poet’s work, Milton reminds his father that the heavens are defined by music. He then goes further, asserting that Spiritus et rapidos qui circinat igneus orbes Nunc quoque sidereis intercinit ipse choreis Immortale melos, et inenarrabile Carmen; Torrida dum rutilus compescit sibila Serpens, Demissoque ferox gladio mansuescit Orion; Stellarum nec sentit onus Maurusius Atlas. [The fiery spirit which circles the rapid spheres is itself now singing immortal music and indescribable song among the starry choirs, while the ruddy serpent suppresses his scorching hisses, and fierce Orion, dropping his sword, grows calm, and Mauretanian Atlas does not feel the weight of the stars.] (35– ​40)

Reading Cicero, Macrobius, and Hermes, John Carey argues in no uncertain terms that the “spiritus of Ad Patrem, 35 is Milton’s own spirit” (182). I gratefully accept Carey’s interpretation but I resist as unnecessary his insistence that Milton’s singing spirit is entirely unrelated to the music of the spheres. This insistence underappreciates the proximity between the indescribable song of Ad Patrem and the unheard symphony of the second prolusion, both of which –​to note one point of similarity –​ relieve the toil and labour of Atlas. Further, Carey makes no mention of the fact that the song of the sirens in “At a Solemn Musick” is precisely what enables humanity to, in the words of that poem, “rightly answer that melodious noise” (18). Repeatedly, Milton notes that listening to the music of the spheres –​even when such listening does not involve the ear –​allows us to answer back, to participate, to sing among the starry

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choirs. In other words, Milton’s deafened moment allowed for the separation of his living body from his singing spirit. In lieu of a conclusion, Milton interrupts his second prolusion. At this moment, however, as it were in the midst of my speech, time has cut me off; and I suspect this has happened very opportunely indeed, lest I prove an obstacle to this whole occasion by a style, rude and quite lacking in rhythm compared with the harmony which I mentioned before; and lest I myself should be a hindrance, preventing you from hearing it. (“Prolusions” 157)

In effect, Milton here creates a communal deafened moment –​a moment that is defined neither by hearing nor by speaking. He creates the necessary condition for listening to the unheard symphony of the heavens. And he reminds us that reading Milton occasionally means listening to his silences.

Bibliography Brown, Eleanor Gertrude. Milton’s Blindness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934. Carey, John. “Milton’s Ad Patrem, 35–​37.” Review of English Studies 15 (1964): 180–​84. Davis, Lennard J. “Deafness and Insight: The Deafened Moment as a Critical Modality.” College English 57, no. 8 (1995): 881–​900. Descartes, René. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998. Dhar, Amrita. “Toward Blind Language: John Milton Writing, 1648–​ 1656.” Milton Studies 60, no. 1–​2 (2018): 75–​107. Herbst, Seth. “Sound as Matter: Milton, Music, and Monism.” In Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment: One First Matter All, edited by Kevin J. Donovan and Thomas Festa, 37–​55. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2017. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Milton, John. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. New York: Random House, 2007.

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Milton, John. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, edited by Don M. Wolfe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953. Mitchell, David T. and Sharon L. Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: W. W. & Norton, 2018. Spinoza, Benedict de. Ethics. Translated by Edwin Curley. New York: Penguin Group, 2005. Summers, David. The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Tillyard, E. M. W. “Introduction.” In Milton: Private Correspondence and Academic Exercises. Translated by Phyllis B. Tillyard, i–​xxxix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932.

Part II Milton’s Language and Style

Scripture, Scorn, and Milton’s Dynamics of Derision David Currell I In his Apology against a Pamphlet (1642), John Milton gets salty over some reheated Bacon: And we may frequently reade, that many of the Martyrs in the midst of their troubles, were not sparing to deride and scoffe their superstitious persecutors. Now may the confutant advise againe with Sir Francis Bacon whether Eliah and the Martyrs did well to turne religion into a Comedy or Satir; to rip up the wounds of Idolatry and Superstition with a laughing countenance.1

The italicized phrases are from Francis Bacon’s A Wise and Moderate Discourse, Concerning Church-Affaires (1641), the first appearance in print of a manuscript text written in the age of Marprelate (1589) with the title Advertisement Touching the Controversies of the Church of England. Milton cited it in his Animadversions (1641). In reply to that pamphlet, the author of A Modest Confutation of a Slanderous and Scurrilous Libell, Entituled, Animadversions (1642) quoted it back against Milton, to denounce Milton’s mocking tone on Bacon’s authority. The Confutation hit a nerve. In the quoted passage, Milton is taking his second pass at this condemnation of satire in religious argument (cf. 1:882) and it touches off his lively and learned bandying of authorities, classical and Christian, in defense of his satiric method. Raymond Anselment has argued that Milton could not have felt legitimately challenged by Bacon’s rule of decorum, “because Milton believes that religion is not the ‘object’ of laughter” (65). That is, the strictures in Bacon’s Discourse not “to intermix Scripture and scurrility” but rather to respect a cardinal separation of “the majesty of religion, and the contempt and deformity of things ridiculous” (qtd. in Anselment 58) do not apply to Milton, as Milton identifies everything he says 1 An Apology against a Pamphlet, in Complete Prose Works 1:903. Milton’s prose is hereafter cited by volume and page number from this edition; his verse by line from Complete Poetry and Essential Prose.

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with religion, and that religion licenses complete freedom of speech. The Confutation wishes to taint Milton’s scriptural appeals with the stain of scurrility, but for Milton there is no distance between Scripture and his own discourse. What he lobs in laughter or anger only serves to unmask and deface his irreligious adversary. This exchange, early in Milton’s public career, signals important and related themes in Milton’s writings: his attachment to derision and his attachment to Biblical warrants for its indulgence. The themes are perennial but not static. Milton’s relationship to a special constellation of texts –​the Lord’s secure laughter (Ps. 2:4), the fool answered according to his folly (Prov. 26:5), and the perfection of strength through weakness (2 Cor. 12:9) –​evolves as his theory and poetics absorb the complications of history and experience. The final book of his epic furnishes an example. The last laugh in Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) appears to be God’s over Babel: But God who oft descends to visit men Unseen, and through their habitations walks To mark their doings, them beholding soon, Comes down to see their city, ere the tower Obstruct Heav’n tow’rs, and in derision sets Upon their tongues a various spirit to raze Quite out their native language, and instead To sow a jangling noise of words unknown: Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud Among the builders; each to other calls Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage, As mocked they storm; great laughter was in Heav’n And looking down, to see the hubbub strange And hear the din; thus was the building left Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named. (12.48–​62) Humanity raises but God razes: the structure soon, but first the speech. The building is left ridiculous while the deity’s derision lingers over the hubbub and din of miscommunication. Milton covets this laughter. In the hubbub of pamphlet warfare, his Animadversions included among its answers to the remonstrant a famous “Ha, ha, ha” (1:726). This laugh is not the last word of Animadversions; his discursive dissection of Joseph Hall returns to its more prosaic rhythms. But in retrospect one can

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recognize in the onomatopoeia a Miltonic fantasy of leaping above the Smectymnuan fray, outside the temporality of debate, and beyond the medium of language.2 Within the confusions of history, laughter is a weapon that proves double-edged: And what will they at best say of us and of the whole English name, but scoffingly as of that foolish builder, mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower, and was not able to finish it. Where is this goodly tower of a Commonwealth, which the English boasted they would build to overshadow kings, and be another Rome in the west? The foundation indeed they laid gallantly; but fell into a wors confusion, not of tongues, but of factions, then those at the tower of Babel; and have left no memorial of thir work behinde them remaining, but in the common laughter of Europ. (7:422–​23)

How different is this laughter of the second edition of The Readie and Easie Way (1660) from that of Areopagitica (1644): “And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms and that we shall not need that solicitude honest perhaps though over timorous of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end, at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to perswade me” (2:556). As the Restoration looms, the mockery suffered in Jesus’s parable of the unprepared builder (Luke 14:28-30) modulates back to Babel and rebounds upon Milton’s good old cause. In imagining England as a European laughing-stock, Milton creates a fantasy of ridicule as rhetorically vivid as Book 12 of Paradise Lost, but from the feared perspective of the derided.3 Book 12 of Paradise Lost glances back at this pamphlet by name (12.216) and through the shared topos of a return to Egyptian bondage (12.217–​20; compare 7:463). Milton underscores the theme in Michael’s account of the Babylonian Captivity: the Israelites “will so incense /​God, as to leave them…a scorn and prey /​To that proud city” (12.338–​42). Both editions of The Readie and Easie Way end with explicit jeremiad (“O earth, earth, earth!” [7:462; cf. 388]); in Paradise Lost an allusion to Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jer. 25:11) is sharpened by the introduction of the Babylonians’ “scorn.” Will the last laugh in fact belong to temporal tyranny? Will they “whose high walls thou saw’st /​Left in

2 As Susan Rupp glosses the moment: “laughter here is meant to figure as the ultimate expression of superiority” (54). 3 On the connections between these passages see also Song 86.

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confusion” (12.342–​43) satisfy the “Confusion” of their former laying low with vengeful scorn? Milton’s answers to these questions depended on appropriating the scriptural idea of weakness become strength.

II “Milton is the supreme poet of Scorn 2,” William Kerrigan asserts, applying his taxonomic distinction between the scorn of the socially superior to the socially inferior (“Scorn 1”) from the metaphorical extension of this scorn from a class basis to claims of moral or intellectual superiority (“Scorn 2”) (“Of Scorn” 146–​47). The accelerated continuation of Michael’s narrative in Book 12 from the captivity to the advent of the Messiah partly dissipates the fearful questions posed in the previous section. In fact it effects a species of reversal crucial to Milton. The Savior’s mode of action will be “by things deemed weak /​ Subverting worldly strong” (12.567–​68). Babylon’s scorn—a form of Scorn 1—is itself worthy of Scorn 2. And that higher scorn, as Kerrigan also emphasizes, emerges in Milton’s poetics as a discursive imperative: “Throughout his works we observe the assumption…that true greatness must entail the scorning of what is base” (“Of Scorn” 151). And so scorn most properly belongs to Milton’s God, as when in Psalm 2 (which informs the “great laughter” of 12.59 and was translated by Milton in 1653). God looks down on and derides the vain arrogance of human kings. But this is an ideal and divine perspective. It is one thing for Abdiel to turn his back upon Satan “with retorted scorn” (5.906), to be welcomed by light, approbation, and greater military forces across the suspense of the book division. It is another for the blind and politically defeated poet to draw spiritual sustenance from this representation when “fall’n on evil days” (7.25). Milton achieves this thanks to the internal division of Scorn between types 1 and 2. Affliction and impotence (the inferior position in terms of Scorn 1) are absorbed as signs of righteousness (the superior position in terms of Scorn 2). But the rhetorical challenges of using weakness as a warrant of strength are many and inform the increasingly complex workings of derision across Milton’s works. Two interacting literary models of moral strength combined with social weakness, i.e. of Scorn 2 without Scorn 1, are of fundamental importance to Milton’s dynamics of derision: the satirical poet and the Biblical prophet. I concentrate here on the scriptural side of the equation, treating Milton’s relationship to classical

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satire in a parallel essay (Currell). This separation is partly artificial, yet I believe it reflects a genuine complementarily (rather than perfected synthesis) between the models in Milton’s thought and art, reflected in turn through the distinct poetic moments that resonate most powerfully with each.4 I aim to expand the range of texts and techniques relevant to the study of Milton and satire, in the company of other scholars broadening the range of critical perspective on this topic.5 Scorn is an affective compound whose constituents form the basis of Milton’s literary theory of satire. In the Preface to Animadversions, ­Milton advances the striking claim that “anger and laughter” comprise “two most rationall faculties of humane intellect” (1:664) –​in Edward Tayler’s judgement an “extraordinary revision of faculty psychology, without precedent in the history of thought” (81). The collocation, if not the psychology, is established in one of the key scriptural texts mentioned above, Psalm 2, rendered in English terza rima by Milton in 1653: Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations Muse a vain thing, the kings of th’ earth upstand With power, and princes in their congregations Lay deep their plots together through each land, Against the Lord and his Messiah dear? Let us break off, say they, by strength of hand Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear, Their twisted cords: he who in Heaven doth dwell Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe Speak to them in his wrath (1–​10). 4

Joel Morkan illustrates the risk of an artificial separation by observing that Thomas Drant’s 1566 translation of Horace was published with his translation of Jeremiah (484). Commentators mined Christian morals out of Latin satire and “Renaissance editors such as Landino, Stephano, Heinsius, Valla, and Fontius, in turn, incorporated this Christian commentary into the margins of their editions” (493). Milton is, of course, thoroughly aware of this imbrication, extending the genealogy far backward in Areopagitica: “Aristophanes…may be excus’d, if holy Chrysostome, as is reported, nightly studied so much the same Author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the stile of a rousing Sermon” (2:495–​96); “Basil teaches how some good use may be made of Margites” (2:510). 5 The key surveys of satirical techniques in Milton include French, “Satirist” and Samuels. Their groundwork helped to establish the legitimacy (even the legibility) of the topic. More recently, John N. King has elaborated the central place of satire in Milton’s project of religious reform, James G. Turner has read Milton’s wit in the context of erudite pornography, and Feisal G. Mohamed has interpreted Miltonic satire as contributing to a critique of high mimetic genres.

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The Lord’s aggressive laughter is the ultimate judgement upon “the kings of th’ earth,” the complement and sign of the “wrath” they have merited. The psalm plays a substantial role in Milton’s presentation of the War in Heaven, which is at least in part another contest over the last laugh (Rovang 30). Satan ardently covets God’s position as scoffer-​in-​chief; it is one of the earliest and most consistent targets of his usurpation (Rupp 51). Even as he rallies his gamesome mates in derision over their new artillery (6.608), however, the Son has already glossed the episode in advance, answering the Father’s irony with a paraphrase of the psalm:    Mighty Father, thou thy foes Justly hast in derision, and secure Laugh’st at their vain designs and tumults vain (5.735–​37). Milton had put the Biblical image to use as early as In Quintum Novembris 166–​69 (Hale 176). The diction and thought of Psalm 2 are woven throughout Milton’s anti-​prelatical tracts. In Of Reformation, a generous God is figured helping those who opposed the Bishops’ Wars “sit still, and smile out the stormy bluster of men more audacious and precipitant,” confident in a “Liberty and safety, that laught such weak enginry to scorne” (1:596–​97). The imagery partly glances back at an earlier satirical passage concerning the “painted Battlements, and gaudy rottennesse of Prelatrie, which want but one puffe of the Kings to blow them down like a past-​bord House built of Court-​Cards” (1:583). The rhetorical efforts to deride prelatry ease Milton’s adoption of a stance of serenity, security, and scorn grounded in Psalm 2 and wishfully projected upon the reformed nation both here and in the apocalyptic, downward vision of the pamphlet’s close (1:616–​17). Such passages keep visionary company with the poetic revelation of Zeal’s chariot in An Apology: Zeale whose substance is ethereal, arming in compleat diamond ascends his fiery Chariot drawn with two blazing Meteors figur’d like beasts, but of a higher breed then any the Zodiack yields, resembling two of those four which Ezechiel and S. John saw, the one visag’d like a Lion to expresse power, high authority and indignation, the other of count’nance like a man to cast derision and scorne upon perverse and fraudulent seducers; with these the invincible warriour Zeale shaking loosely the slack reins drives over the heads of Scarlet Prelats, and such as are insolent to maintaine traditions, brusing their stiffe necks under his flaming wheels. (1:900)

Here is another anticipation of the War in Heaven (Kerrigan, Prophetic 172–​73), but also confirmation of the critical pairing of anger (the lion

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of indignation) and laughter (the man of scorn), yoked yet imagistically as they are theoretically in Animadversions. Countervailing such direct representations of triumph are other key Biblical texts, already activated in Of Reformation, but increasingly emphasized in Milton’s writing. The most important is 2 Cor. 12:9–10: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong”. The history of the church reviewed in Of Reformation celebrates “the Martyrs, with the unresistable might of Weaknesse” (525) even as it leads to an age in which “every good man was had in scorn and derision” (558). In The Reason of Church-Government Milton trusts “the mighty weaknes of the Gospel” to overthrow “the weak mightiness of mans reasoning” (1:827). The idea of perfection through weakness came to occupy so fundamental a place in Milton’s self-​conception that he adapted a version of the Corinthians verse in the 1650s as a personal motto.6 In Christopher Arnold’s and Johannes Zollikofer’s autograph albums Milton inscribed the phrase ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τελειοῦμαι, i.e. “I am made perfect in weakness” for “[my, i.e. the Lord’s, strength] is made perfect in weakness” (French, “Autographs” 323–​24). The change of grammatical subject invites a personal application of the phrase and an interpretation of “weakness” as a reference to Milton’s blindness which would lend the phrase special confidence: in his apparent disability Milton has become his complete self. Milton worked this idea out carefully in Defensio Secunda (1654): Nor do I feel pain at being classed with the blind, the afflicted, the suffering, and the weak (although you hold this to be wretched), since there is hope that in this way I may approach more closely the mercy and protection of the Father Almighty. There is a certain road which leads through weakness, as the apostle teaches, to the greatest strength. May I be entirely helpless, provided that in my weakness there may arise all the more powerfully this 6

As will be clear, my argument challenges Arthur Barker’s comments on Milton and weakness: “It seemed to Milton that to be weak was miserable, doing or suffering. He seldom admitted weakness in himself, nor did he find it easy to excuse it in others. If he learned to compound with it, he could never bring himself to justify it intellectually” (116). It may appear that I also depart from Richard Strier’s claim that Milton deprecates humility, but I believe our positions are more compatible; briefly, “Scorn 2” represents a recovery of magnanimitas within abjection.

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immortal and more perfect strength; provided that in my shadows the light of the divine countenance may shine forth all the more clearly. For then I shall be at once the weakest and the strongest, at the same time blind and most keen in vision. By this infirmity may I be perfected, by this completed. (4:589–​90).

A nod to Heb. 11:33–​34 (“Who through faith…out of weakness were made strong”) prepares for the emphatic echoings of 2 Cor. 12:9. Justified by classical myth and scriptural warrant to trust his inner vision, Milton humbly elevates himself over a thousand gibes at his blindness and can get back to business answering Salmasius and More according to their folly. Prov. 26:5 (“Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit”) is a cardinal Biblical warrant for satire, presiding like a godfather over the brood of texts at Apology 1:874–​75 and given title page billing on Colasterion (1645). From Of Reformation to the end of the republic, then, Milton puts in motion a cooperative dynamics of derision: it is good to scoff, but to be scoffed back may be better. Laughter is the sign and tool of the powerful righteous against despicable adversaries, yet phases of apparent weakness (marked by the condition of being mocked) engender new strength: the strength to endure scorn and await the next chance to laugh the mighty out of countenance, out of court, or out of heaven. But is Milton’s reliance on 2 Cor. 12:9 (“my weakness…more perfect strength”; “at once the weakest and strongest”; “By this infirmity may I be perfected, by this completed”) and the emergence of “uncharacteristically frank admissions of weakness” in Pro Se Defensio (1655) also legible, as Stephen Fallon suggests, as signs of an inevitable anxiety (122)?7 Can the persona of heroic satirist-​prophet of literary theory and Biblical citation be tolerably borne by a flesh-andblood person?

7 See also Yu, who illuminatingly inscribes seventeenth-century English validations of weakness over strength within a governing “affective political theology” of the tender conscience (13). In this ideological context, religious disputants had to come to terms with the “affective and ethical authority of a conscience that seemed, at least for the time, more familiar with pain than power” (14). Yu’s reading of Paradise Lost emphasizes Milton’s elevation of weakness over strength within the natural order of his unfallen world, arguing that the human experience of vulnerability becomes, if anything, dangerously mollified in Eden. In the next section I read an acute vulnerability to derision both before and after the Fall, but we share the fundamental question: “When does [emotional] pain become so great as to render Paradise no paradise at all?” (21).

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III In the 1640s and 1650s, Milton effectively deprecates physical ­courage in order to set off courageous exposure to mockery as contributing to a series of national achievements. In his Restoration poetry, however, the anxious compounding of emotional and moral vulnerability with corporeal vulnerability becomes a dominant motif. In these late poems, the canonical posture of heroism is patient fortitude under spiritual as well as physical assault. Samson –​“Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze” (34), “Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound, /​Thy foes’ derision” (365–​66) and “The subject of their cruelty, or scorn” (646) –​is wracked by his feelings that the scorn is well merited: if sharing a human secret would deserve the “Contempt and scorn of all” (494), he tells Manoa, then his failure to keep God’s counsel surely evinces an especially despicable weakness. Blair Worden usefully links the derision theme in Samson Agonistes (1671) to the sense and fact of derision felt by defeated republicans, citing Lucy Hutchinson as well as Milton (372–​73). At the level of plot, Milton’s tragedy is, perhaps predictably, ambiguous on the matter of weakness. On the one hand, Samson’s “physical strength is as fragile as the weakest part of the body, the hair. God mocked Samson by giving him what was supposedly a gift but was really insultingly useless” (Wilson 151). On the other, Samson’s strength returns, is made perfect, is put to its ultimate use when he appears externally most abject. He conforms to the promise of 2 Cor. 12:9 with literal strength and vengeful violence. The Jesus of Paradise Regained is also obsessed with the outward signs of weakness as they are given in 2 Cor. 12:9–​10. As he asks himself rhetorically in Book 3: What if he hath decreed that I shall first Be try’d in humble state, and things adverse, By tribulations, injuries, insults, Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence, Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting Without distrust or doubt, that he may know What I can suffer, how obey? (3.188–​94) Jesus imagines this litany of trials as a test that would prove his power: the “scorns” and other indignities are prolepses of his salvific mode. This is

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consonant with Michael’s formula in Paradise Lost, “by things deemed weak /​Subverting worldly strong” (12.567–68), and relates to 1 Cor. 1:27 (“God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty”), evoked also in The Reason of Church Govern­ ment (1:824). The outmatched Satan of the brief epic offers a similar litany at 4.386–​88 (“scorns” feature again, and Satan attempts scorn in propria persona a final time at 4.550), not recognizing how mentally self-​prepared his adversary is to face these. Even to show perturbance at the prospect of scorn would be a kind of defeat given the Father’s anticipatory announcement that “His weakness shall o’ercome Satanic strength” (1.161). Mental imperviousness to derisive exposure and invulnerability in vulnerability: how utterly different a fantasy from that of Samson Agonistes, although formed against a common anxiety. Jesus’ and Samson’s starkly different modes of moving from weakness to strength show Milton’s dynamics of derision in motion within the 1671 volume. And this dimension of each poem coordinates with the fundamental critical problems they have generated (most obviously, what force effects Samson’s transition from weakness to strength?) Paradise Lost is the most complicated case. Vulnerability to mockery proves to be an important ingredient in humanity’s overthrow even as it represents a condition for Christian heroism. This poem meditates especially richly upon what “sinewy force in teaching” (Animadversions, 1:664) subjection to derision might have, as Adam’s and Eve’s feelings of being mocked appear to occasion a kind of error which, unlike most of the errors that feature in critical discussions of the human pair, does not seem to be incipiently or implicitly Satanic in its form. Satan wants to scoff, to usurp the power of divine laughter, to be the protagonist of Psalm 2. And he wants applause for his own derisive performances, leaving him fittingly punished by a “dismal universal hiss, the sound /​Of public scorn” (10.508–​9). Adam and Eve do not experience this aggressive urge (albeit they “swim in mirth” after the Fall), but they do seem to be especially troubled –​each before their respective fall –​by the prospect of suffering derision. This affect guides Eve’s first argument in the separation colloquy: Adam, well may we labor still to dress This garden, still to tend plant, herb and flow’r, Our pleasant task enjoined, but till more hands Aid us, the work under our labor grows, Luxurious by restraint; what we by day Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind,

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One night or two with wanton growth derides Tending to wild. (9.205–​12; my emphasis) Eve picks up on Adam’s remark that the growth in Eden’s arbors “mock our scant manuring” (4.628): “No other early modern paradise stands in such urgent need of reform as Milton’s” (Picciotto 465). Their duty is objectively too heavy (a debt immense, still haying, still to mow); subjectively, however, Eve feels made light of. Among the intermixed roses and myrtle, the couple’s own intermixture intermits their gardening, perhaps especially through the innocuous-​seeming “smiles” that Eve mentions among their distractions (9.222). It is derision that motivates division. When Eve brings Adam the fruit she has tasted, the idea that wasted labor would be laughable appears also to be part of his reasoning to join her. Adam imagines Satan, witnessing God’s uncreation of humanity, saying:   Fickle their state whom God Most favors; who can please him long? Me first He ruined, now mankind; whom will he next?

(9.948–​50)

And he dismisses his whole hypothetical chain of reasoning with the confident judgement: “Matter of scorn, not to be given the foe” (9.951). Adam is not necessarily on shaky ground. He is closely echoing the Son’s question in Book 3, when the consequences of the Fall were discussed in Heaven:   Or wilt thou thyself Abolish thy creation, and unmake, For him, what for thy glory thou hast made? So should thy goodness and thy greatness both Be questioned and blasphemed without defense.

(3.162–​66)

Moreover, as Jason Rosenblatt has noted, Adam’s reasoning tracks Moses’s argument (versions of which appear in Exod. 32:11–​12 and Num. 14:11–​ 16) when God threatens to smite the Israelites: bringing death to them, observes Moses (“if thou shalt kill all this people as one man”) would

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arm their foe (the Egyptians) with a matter of scorn that would wound God’s reputation (226). It is striking that Adam is made unwittingly to misapply or misconstrue a Biblical text at this crucial moment. True, an important difference is that, unlike the Son or Moses, Adam is trying to reason without the benefit of face-​to-​face dialogue with God, but it appears that the issue of derision interferes with Adam’s powers of reasoning, throwing into doubt the function of laughter as the most rational faculty of human intellect. In Paradise Regained the situation appears to have stabilized, and the fishermen upon the banks of the Jordan apply a kind of “matter of scorn” reasoning unproblematically: “he will not fail /​Nor will withdraw him now, nor will recall, /​Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence” (2.54–​56). So too did Milton in Tetrachordon: “God cannot in the justice of his own promise and institution so unexpectedly mock us by forcing that upon us as the remedy of solitude, which wraps us in a misery worse then any wilderness” (2:598). Yet a later flourish in the second part of the pamphlet may plant the seed that grows so luxuriantly in Paradise Lost book 9: the great and almost only commandment of the Gospel, is to command nothing against the good of man, and much more no civil command, against his civil good. If we understand not this, we are but crakt cimbals, we do but tinckle, we know nothing, we doe nothing, all the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock us. (2:638–​39)

“All the sweat of our toilsomest obedience will but mock us”: a voice crying in the Edenic wild. The motif of mockery is amplified after the Fall via Adam’s self-​pitying cry, “Why am I mocked with death?” (10.774). This question introduces what Emily Wilson has identified as the theme of tragic overliving, but perhaps Milton is inventing a new variation out of Biblical soil, the theme of satiric overliving, of living on in the face of hostile laughter and exclusion from sharing God’s just derision. Do these passages imply that Adam and Eve, like Jesus in Paradise Regained, should simply have committed more firmly to the Miltonic dynamic? Should they have embraced subjection to a primal derision and the apparent mockery of toilsomest, but temporary (“till more hands”) and tolerable (“looks intervene and smiles”) obedience, until with winged ascension they could look down laughing (cf. 5.498)? Or perhaps a fantasy formed around the idea of perfect weakness entails the full imaginative affirmation of fallenness?

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Works Cited Anselment, Raymond A. “Betwixt Jest and Earnest”: Marprelate, Milton, Marvell, Swift and the Decorum of Religious Ridicule. U of Toronto P, 1979. Barker, Arthur E. Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, 1641-1660. U of Toronto P, 1942. Currell, David. “Milton among the Satirists.” Changing Satire. Transformations and Continuities in Europe, 1600–​1830, edited by Cecilia Rosengren, Per Sivefors, and Rikard Wingård, Manchester UP, 2022, pp. 139–​61. Fallon, Stephen M. “Alexander More Reads Milton: Self-​representation and Anxiety in Milton’s Defences.” Milton and the Terms of Liberty, edited by Graham Parry and Joad Raymond. D.S. Brewer, 2002, pp. 111–​24. French, J. Milton. “The Autographs of John Milton.” ELH, vol. 4, no. 4, Dec. 1937, pp. 301–​30. —​— ​—​. “Milton as Satirist.” PMLA, vol. 51, no. 2, June 1936, pp. 414–​29. Hale, John K. “Milton and the Rationale of Insulting.” Milton and Heresy, edited by Stephen B. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich, Cambridge UP, 1998, pp. 159–​75. —​—​—​. Milton’s Cambridge Latin: Performing in the Genres 1625–​1632. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005. Kerrigan, William. “Of Scorn.” George Herbert Journal, vol. 22, no. 1–​2, Fall 1998/​Spring 1999, pp. 143–​63. —​—​—​. The Prophetic Milton. UP of Virginia, 1974. King, John N. Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire and Polemic in Paradise Lost. Cambridge UP, 2000. Milton, John. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, edited by William Kerrigan et al., Random House, 2007. —​—​—​. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, general editor, Don M. Wolfe, Yale UP, 1953–​82. 8 vols. Mohamed, Feisal G. “Fielding, Jonson, and the Critique of High Mimesis in Paradise Lost.” Milton and Questions of History: Essays by Canadians Past and Present, edited by Feisal G. Mohamed and Mary Nyquist, U of Toronto P, 2012, pp. 291–​310. Morkan, Joel. “Wrath and Laughter: Milton’s Ideas on Satire.” Studies in Philology, vol. 69, no. 4, Oct. 1972, pp. 475–​95. Picciotto, Joanna. Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England. Harvard UP, 2010.

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Pucci, Pietro. Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad. Cornell UP, 1987. Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton UP, 1994. Rosenblatt, Jason P. Torah and Law in Paradise Lost. Princeton UP, 1994. Rovang, Paul. “Milton’s War in Heaven as Apocalyptic Drama: ‘Thy Foes Justly Hast in Derision.’ ” Milton Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 2, May 1994, pp. 28–​35. Rupp, Susanne. “Milton’s Laughing God.” A History of English Laughter: Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett and Beyond, edited by Manfred Pfister, Rodopi, 2002, pp. 47–​55. Samuel, Irene. “Milton on Comedy and Satire.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2, Feb. 1972, pp. 107–​30. Song, Eric B. Dominion Undeserved: Milton and the Perils of Creation. Cornell UP, 2013. Strier, Richard. The Unrepentant Renaissance: From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton. U of Chicago P, 2011. Tayler, Edward W. “Milton’s Grim Laughter and Second Choices.” Poetry and Epistemology: Turning Points in the History of Poetic Knowledge, edited by Roland Hagenbüchle and Laura Skandera, Pustet, 1986, pp. 72–​93. Turner, James Grantham. “Milton among the Libertines.” Milton, Rights, and Liberties, edited by Christophe Tournu and Neil Forsyth, Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 447–​60. Wilson, Emily R. Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton. Johns Hopkins UP, 2004. Worden, Blair. Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham. Oxford UP, 2007. Yu, Esther. “Tears in Paradise: The Revolution of Tender Conscience.” ­Representations, no. 142, Spring 2018, pp. 1–​32.

Milton and the Political Sonnet’s Deep State Lana Cable

Since the 1960s, scholars have largely come to terms with Milton’s political writing. No longer do they see it as having distracted him from his poetic mission, but having enriched it. Yet when they read his sonnets, many still rely on the Petrarchist bias that associates sonnets with love, which results in some of Milton’s most renowned examples getting cordoned off in a sub-genre: Political Sonnet. But this move only sidesteps the highly varied themes Milton’s sonnet writing actually takes up. Thus while developing a graduate course focused on the sonnet, I realized that full appreciation of the form, regardless of poet or theme, demands a more complex understanding of its roots than Petrarchism affords: an understanding of not just when and where the sonnet was first invented, but how and why. For the sonnet’s prescriptive form was not just innovative, but explicitly analytical, argumentative. It therefore held the potential for political bearing regardless of whether its ostensible theme or sphere happened to be public, private, social, political, or natural. In other words, the power of sonnet structure remains its “deep state” even when it goes untapped. To better understand how this deep state came into being, the present study invokes two episodes from the politico-cultural setting that inspired sonnet form, and it uses these to ground a thought experiment that aims toward recovery of the theo­ retical step that had to have been taken by the sonnet’s thirteenth century inventor. For that theoretical step goes far to explain how and why, centuries before John Milton’s birth, sonnet form was already equipped to meet his political requirements.

The Question of Genre The common equation of sonnets with Petrarchan love themes arises not just from the popularity of those themes: after all, love is welcomed by other art forms and literary genres without the invited guest presuming to define the host. This common equation in fact slights sonnets by

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poets of even the highest intellectual and creative caliber merely due to an old misunderstanding. By the time sixteenth-​century genre theorist Julius-​Caesar Scaliger added sonnets to his list of poetic “kinds,” Pietro Bembo –​long smitten by the sonnets of Francesco Petrarch –​had already made imitating Petrarch’s “model texts” de rigueur for new poets seeking literary renown, the ones who would come to be known as bembistas. Scaliger’s taxonomy further elevated popular notions of the sonnet when, as Barbara Lewalski explains, he endorsed two basic elements of the Renaissance poetics of genre: the primary importance of model texts and authors in establishing the conception of the kinds, and the ready paralleling of prose and poetic kinds. … Such kinds, or historical genres, include epic, tragedy, sonnet, ballad, funeral elegy, hymn, epigram, masque, eclogue, encomium, verse satire, deliberative oration, dialogue, debate, and more.1

In the rapidly expanding, increasingly commodified literary marketplace, Scaliger’s “model texts and authors” concept reinforced popular equations of sonnets with love poetry by making an entire genre out of the bembista’s favourite sonnet theme, Love. For by and large, these poets assumed that Petrarch had written only love sonnets, and Bembo had persuaded them that only painstaking imitations of Petrarch merited readerly attention. Evidence of other sonnet themes from not only the Petrarchan canon, but also sonnets by later accomplished poets who questioned such reductivism –​Della Casa’s “heroic sonnets” for instance, and a number of Shakespeare’s sonnets –​might have raised doubts about limiting sonnets to just one theme. But if they did, it did not keep the notion that sonnets are love poems from hardening into dogma: Petrarchist conformity made outliers of sonnet writers who strayed from the norm. Among the most prominent of those outliers was of course John Milton, whose thematic shift from love to other topics, especially political ones, has tempted some to credit him with inventing a new sonnet “kind”: the sub-​genre Political Sonnet. But in a compelling study, Janel Mueller complicates that supposed solution. She begins by scrutinizing 1

“Introduction: Issues and Approaches” in Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ed., Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1986), p. 5 (emphasis added for relevant terms). I wish to thank Professor Warren Chernaik of King’s College, London for recommending this collection to support my case for the sonnet.

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Milton’s prose for argumentative parallels to his political sonnets, exactly as required by the Scaligerian definition of genre, in order properly to read sonnets like “Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,” “A Book was writ of late call’d Tetrachordon,” and “Avenge O Lord thy slaughter’d Saints.” As expected, Mueller does indeed find prose parallels for all three. Nevertheless, she warns that this exercise is far from sufficient, because we must “be wary of criticism that applies the inertness of generic inventorying to works that raise questions of choice and change in an acute way.” Invariably, Milton’s political sonnets “raise both kinds of ­questions.”2 In other words, what makes Milton’s sonnets worth paying attention to has little to do with how they might be categorized. “Questions of choice and change” are raised by the historical circumstances that underlie each and every one of them, as perhaps had been anticipated by the rather mixed signals sent by F. T. Prince, when he made his mid-​ twentieth century study of Milton’s Italian influences. Prince had clearly anticipated the need for Mueller’s questions, not only because Milton’s “essential gift of a poet, which is a personal feeling for his own language” eloquently frames those questions, but also because Milton’s “present and past environment, the present and past situation of his country, press continually on his act of creation, which is an act of intense and sustained consciousness, but which coexists with deep unconscious life.”3 Yet despite these anticipations of the “questions of choice and change” that underlie Milton’s poetry, neither Prince’s appreciation of Milton’s inimitable poetic gifts, nor what is distinctive to Milton’s many political investments, prevent him from discussing Milton’s poetry as if it had been pieced together from a collection of imitable techniques. From Tasso Milton learns “magnificent” style and epic devices; from Della Casa, complex word order and sustained rhythms; and from both, a “heroic sonnet” manner replete with specific tricks of diction and prosody. Neither is this technical imitability limited to Milton’s Italian models: Tasso and Della Casa too built on technical imitations of earlier

2 Mueller, Janel M. “On Genesis in Genre: Milton’s Politicizing of the Sonnet in ‘Captain or Colonel’,” in Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ed., Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA and London, 1986), 213–​40. The quotation is from pages 216–​17 (italics added). 3 Prince, F. T., The Italian Element in Milton’s Verse (Oxford University Press: London, 1954), x-​xi. Subsequent pages numbers appear in the text.

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models, including imitations by Bembo of Petrarch, and also writers whom Petrarch himself had imitated. The upshot of Prince’s imitative sequence is that Bembo’s “new aesthetic ideals” were “founded entirely on the literature and criticism of Greece and Rome”: [b]‌oth the weakness and the strength of the new aesthetic ideals are … above all literary. They made possible the creation of great literary epics, the Gerusalemme Liberata or Paradise Lost, by poets of exceptional powers; but they encouraged minor talents to treat literature as a self-​justified activity, with the rules and assumptions of an elaborate game, and this could not but lead to an impoverishment of poetry in particular. (5, my italics)

In short, although Prince praises Milton’s “exceptional powers,” his acknowledged “present and past environment … his country … his act of creation” play no part in Prince’s formalist, curatorial artistic valuation of his poetry. Instead, Milton’s sonnets are treated as ends in themselves: finished, frameable works of art to be appreciated in a perfectionist’s gallery, regardless of what Milton might have had in mind while writing them. Still more curious is the fact that the resulting detached-​ from-​life status granted to Milton’s poetry by formalist critic Prince accidentally mirrors the status aspired to by bembistas of “minor talents” who “treat literature as a self-​justified activity.” So still we must ask: What is it about sonnet form that enables certain sonnets by Milton to exercise political power? Recently, a section title in Michael Komorowski’s study of “On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament” seems to credit Milton with inventing the Political Sonnet, even though Komorowski himself seems uneasy with that particular sonnet’s double caudation. “What this formal experimentation allows Milton is clear,” Komorowsky explains: “he is able to show his anger spilling over the confines of the 14-​line container in a visually striking manner. It is less clear that he improves the sonnet by doing so.”4 The idea that experimentation ought to “improve” a sonnet or sonnet form, or even that experimentation is what Milton is up to in this poem, suggests that formalist thinking may still impede appreciation of a given sonnet. Here Milton’s response would be simply to point out that form serves poetry, not the reverse.

4 Komorowski, Michael. “On ‘The New Forcers of Conscience’ and Milton’s Erastianism,” Milton Studies, vol. 55 (2014), 240; the section referred to is titled “The Invention of the Political Sonnet and Milton’s Erastianism”; it begins on p. 247.

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Meanwhile, we might replace the question “Does formal tinkering improve the sonnet?” by asking instead “Why does sonnet form invariably survive being tinkered with?” For to ask that question is implicitly to ask: Why subdivide sonnets into more descriptive categories in the first place? Does genre-​splitting enrich or deepen our appreciation of any single sonnet by any one poet? Or does it merely reduce sonnets to commodities for stockpiling in the inert generic inventories that Mueller warns against, instead of doing what she recommends: which is to “raise questions of choice and change”?

Purposiveness and a Thought Experiment I suggest that when Milton speeds “New Forcers” past the standard sonnet finish line, or when he applies sonnet form to whatever purpose he chooses –​public or private, personal or political –​he does so not to expand or somehow “improve” sonnet form, but rather, to unleash the meticulously structured forensic, rather than thematic, power that he recognizes as having defined sonnet form from its inception. According to Michael Spiller, the sonnet first took shape as “a forensic instrument … for pleading, arguing, asserting in a voice that is in control of worldly experience.”5 The human need to fashion some kind of personal control in a world fraught with threatening experience is not confined to any given time or place: the energies of creative resistance provoked by forcing of seventeenth-​century English consciences differ very little from the energies provoked when thirteenth-​century Sicilian consciences are provoked. The first sonnet was therefore conceived as an instrument for gaining better control over worldly experience on an individual emotional, intellectual, and spiritual plane: the same cause Milton would four centuries later defend in various sonnets of his own. The three sonnets Janel Mueller examines (“Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,” “A Book was writ of late call’d Tetrachordon,” and “Avenge O Lord

5 Spiller, Michael R. G., The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction (Routledge: London and New York, 1992), 17. Despite the astuteness of this description, when Spiller turns to the Elizabethan Petrarchists, his valuable insight into the nature of sonnet form gets sidelined by themes, such as lovers “disturbed…by an excursion into the wastes of time” (129). That shift from form to theme elides, even as it implies, political significance: for voices that change from “asserting … control” to being disturbed by “wastes of time” have clearly been forced to change.

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thy slaughter’d Saints”) “comprise a core group because their concerns with power are political in a definitional sense: they address issues of due governance and, specifically, of human agency in the control and direction of public life and public affairs” (230). As suits the sonnets she discusses, Mueller defines political power in terms of public governance. But to appreciate the full power of the sonnet as forensic, our definition of “political” needs to be expanded: after all, Milton uses sonnets for defending human agency in the private as well as the public domain. To take full advantage of the form’s structural authority, he extends the dominion of human agency beyond “control and direction of public life and public affairs” to embrace whatever domain is pertinent for the particular occasion, whether that domain is circumscribed by his own creative work (Sonnet VII, “How soon hath Time”), or by a young woman’s personal integrity (Sonnet IX, “Lady that in the prime”), or by intimacy of a pleasant friendship (Sonnet XX, “Lawrence, of virtuous Father vertuous Son”): all of these sonnets are made political by Milton’s advancing in them priorities of human agency. For no one knew better than he that human activity by definition requires choices to be made, and that it must therefore find a way to accommodate change. Given these facts, we can surmise how the quasi-​syllogistic structure of sonnet form sustains purposiveness: the principle of coherence that Immanuel Kant perceived as oneness of natural objects with their intrinsic purpose in the universe, as set out in Critique of Judgment.6 Kant’s concept of “purposiveness” applies as fittingly to sonnet form as it does to natural forms, because a sonnet’s autonomous forensic structure both advocates its own sense of purpose, and in that fleeting moment, eclipses every other. Because of its inbuilt purposiveness, a well-​turned

6 Because the sonnet fuses aesthetic and logical patterns to make up its form, both Kant’s “formal or subjective purposiveness” (as perceived by the discriminating powers of Aesthetic Judgment) and his “real or objective purposiveness” (as perceived by the reasoning powers of Teleological Judgment) are essential to its definition and judgment. The scientific judgment that perceives oneness of a natural object with its intrinsic purpose is further explained in Kant: Aesthetics, § 3.a: “Kant’s Teleology, Objective Purposiveness and Science,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “a judgment concerning an object the possibility of which can only be grasped from the point of view of its purpose. The purpose in question Kant calls an ‘intrinsic purpose’. In such a case, we have to say that, strictly speaking, the object was not made according to a purpose that is different from the object . . ., but that the object itself embodies its purpose” (italics added) https://​w ww.iep.utm.edu/​k anta​est/​#H3

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sonnet can no more be detached from its argument than a flower can be detached from its stamen and pistil. But properly to grasp purposiveness as intrinsic to sonnet form requires some sense of the political environment that inspired its invention: the Sicilian court of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, nicknamed Stupor Mundi (“Wonder of the World”). Frederick had ordered a courtly lawyer and poet, Bologna-​educated notary Giacomo da Lentini, to head the think tank we know as the Sicilian School: a group of courtiers to whom Frederick assigned the task of elevating Italian vernacular literature to world prominence almost a century before the appearance of Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia. Scholars have determined that it was Giacomo himself who invented the sonnet, inspired by quatrains from his native Sicilian strambotto, also influenced by Occitan Troubadours, and likely as well the Sufi-​inflected ghazal, an autonomous five-​to-​fifteen couplet form that was then, and still is, highly prized across western Asia and the Mediterranean.7 Christopher Kleinhenz documents Giacomo’s “need for renewal in his own lyric tradition, for a change which would render it somehow more distinct and less conventional.”8 But none of the evidence that Kleinhenz cites answers the fundamental question raised by the invention of the sonnet: Why did Giacomo add two tercets to two quatrains and thereby restrict his new form to fourteen lines? That question remains unanswered simply because Giacomo, who wrote a number of sonnets himself, left no written record of his poetic theorizing.9 However, Frederick’s reactions to having his imperial prerogative questioned are very well documented, for at stake was nothing less than his own imperial purposiveness. Therefore, in a court where political analysis preoccupied the keenest minds, all of them adept at using poetry to leaven

7 For a complete description of the ghazal, see: www.poets.org/​poets​org/​text/​gha​zal-​ poe​tic-​form. Relevant poems from Giacomo’s era and later have been translated into English by Joseph Tusiani, The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry (Baroque Press: New York, 1974). English translations for all of Giacomo’s poetry may be found in Richard Lansing, tr., Giacomo da Lentini: The Complete Poetry (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, London, 2018). 8 Kleinhenz, Christopher, The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–​1321) (Milella: Lecce, 1986), 29. 9 The strambotto origins of the sonnet were first demonstrated by Ernest Wilkins in “The Invention of the Sonnet,” Modern Philology, Vol. 13, No. 8 (December 1915), 463–​94. But how and why tercets were added to the strambotto has ever since Wilkins remained a mystery.

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contentious discourse, courtiers closest to the emperor lived under the ceaseless pressures of shifting pleasures, dread and cognitive overload. Exactly how those conditions shaped Giacomo’s poetic theory we can only surmise, but a simple “thought experiment” proves illuminating. By tracking the classical design principle Form Follows Function10 through two episodes of challenge to Frederick’s prerogative, we begin to understand why and how Giacomo must have interpreted his explicit Sicilian School assignment so as implicitly to reinforce the minds and temperaments of courtly individuals who had no choice but somehow to cope with collateral damages produced by Frederick’s absolutism. Our thought experiment begins by perceiving the Function that Giacomo’s sonnet Form was designed to Follow. That perception arises from considering two very different political conflicts that would have left sensibilities among Frederick’s courtiers badly shaken.

Conflict #1: Frederick’s “Tarì War” The first conflict involves Sicilian Muslims who had initially respected Frederick as a tolerable king. Unlike his father, Hohenstaufen Henry VI, Frederick had not only been born in Sicily: he was intensely curious, and conversant in Arabic, as well as Sicilian, Greek, Latin, French and German. Arabic allowed him directly to communicate with his many thousands of Sicilian Muslim subjects, as well as with more distant scholars whose thinking intrigued him. He liked to explore points of religious doctrine and natural science by distributing inquiries across the Mediterranean in what came to be known as The Sicilian Questions, the title of a response published by Andalusian Sufi philosopher Ibn Sab’in of Murcia.11 Contacts like this promoted an image abroad of Frederick 10 The English phrase for this principle was first coined by American architect and skyscraper inventor Louis Henry Sullivan in 1896 and reiterated in his Autobiography of an Idea (Press of the American Institute of Architects, Inc.: New York, 1922, 1926; reissued by Martino Publishing: Mansfield Centre, CT, 2014). Sullivan’s concept (see p. 258) is grounded in the theory of Beauty codified by first century bce Roman architect and engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, known today as Vitruvius. 11 Thomas Curtis Van Cleve, The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Immutator Mundi (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1972), 309. The Latin text of Frederick’s original questions to Michael Scot appears in C. H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science (Ungar Publishing Co.: New York, 1960, c. 1955), 292–​95;

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as personally cosmopolitan, even as his domestic policies were reducing multicultural Sicily to a Latinate Christian country. A significant element of that reduction Frederick achieved by depreciating signs of Muslim influence on Sicily’s material culture, as seen on the widely circulated gold tarì. After the eleventh century invasion by Frederick’s Norman ancestors, tarìs were minted to sustain the market value of the pre-​Norman ruba’ i (Fig. 1) by maintaining Kufic inscriptions to identify them in the broader Mediterranean as still uniquely Sicilian. For example, the Kufic inscription on a tarì designed for Frederick’s maternal grandfather Roger II translates as “The King Ruggero Exalted in God” (Fig. 2). But as soon as King Frederick of Sicily in 1220 became Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II,12 he replaced the tarì’s Kufic with an imperial eagle (Fig. 3). Then barely a decade later, he issued a second new tarì, which replaced the imperial eagle with pseudo-​Kufic (Fig. 4).13 This compromise was probably the outcome of a bitter political backlash. Exactly what provoked that backlash was left unrecorded by Frederick’s chroniclers, but since it erupted shortly after the 1220 eagle tarì first appeared, that symbolism seems the likeliest cause. For the fully Latinized imperial eagle tarì imposed on a centuries-​old multicultural Sicilian trading practice an exclusively Christian identity.14 The revolt came from the last Muslim enclave in Sicily, where appearance of the Latinized eagle was met by its leader minting coins of his own (Fig. 5)15 inscribed “Muhammad ibn ‘Abbad /​Lord of the Muslims” –​a

12 13

14 15

English translation, 266–​67. For similar questions to scholars in Muslim countries under the title Questions siciliennes, Van Cleve defers to M. Amari in Journal Asiatique, 1870; see also Philip K. Hitti in History of the Arabs, 587. HRE Frederick I was Frederick’s paternal grandfather, German King Frederick Barbarossa. Fig. 1, https://​comm​ons.wikime​dia.org/​wiki/​File:Caliph​_ ​A l_​Must​a nsi​r_ ​Si​cili​a n_​ c​oin.jpg; Fig. 2, https://​w ww.fit​zmus​eum.cam.ac.uk/​gall​ery/​norm​ans/​gall​ery/​coin​_​27.htm; Fig. 3, https://​w ww.fit​zmus​eum.cam.ac.uk/​gall​ery/​norm​a ns/​gall​ery/​coin​_​37.htm; Fig. 4, https://​w ww.numisb​ids.com/​n.php?p=​lot&sid=​2626&lot=​604 A more inclusive historical overview of Sicilian Muslim resistance under Frederick is provided by David Abulafia in Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (Oxford University Press: New York & Oxford, 1988), 144–​48. Fig. 5, the coin minted for independence by Ibn ‘Abbad appears here:

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clear declaration of economic independence.16 Frederick retaliated from his imperial outposts, and after two months of pitched battle, the Muslim stronghold was demolished and Muhammad ibn ‘Abbad arrested. He signed a treaty that would allow him to live in exile, transported to Africa; but his daughter mistrusted this treaty and refused to accompany him. Instead, she promised to join him if he arrived safely; if he did not, she would take revenge. He set sail and, as she had feared, his carriers drowned him at sea.17 Frederick’s chroniclers skip the embarrassing details, but a Maghrebi account relates how Ibn ‘Abbad’s daughter made good her promise.18 Perceiving the conflict as not in fact about military power but merely one man’s will, she targets Frederick’s imperial prerogative. She writes to him claiming exhaustion from these battles, and begs him for warriors to rescue her from her own people: for their resentment over loss of their leader cannot be assuaged. Under cloak of night she will silently admit his soldiers into her fortress at Entella, where they can take her guards by surprise and free her to obey only Frederick. Flattered by this unexpected offer, the emperor sends soldiers to her rescue, and she admits them as promised. But by sunrise, their heads can be seen dangling from her parapets. Frederick is shocked and shamed, but also riveted by the woman’s audacity. He sends her a twofold message: (1) now only he can keep his people from tearing her to shreds; and (2) she is the kind of woman on whom an emperor must beget a child: it’s her choice. But she cannot choose to become his imperial instrument. Denied her own will, she in turn denies his: no one but she will determine the meaning of her own life. “You will fall into my hands,” she answers, “and I will battle you … https://​aucti​ons.bertol​a mif​i nea ​r ts.com/​en/​lot/​35318/​italy-​sic​ily-​ente​l la-​muham​ mad-​ibntab​bad-​/​ 16 Philip Grierson and Lucia Travaini, Medieval European Coinage: With a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Volume 14, Italy (III), (South Italy, Sicily, Sardinia), Cambridge University Press, 1999, 183–​84. 17 Between Maghrebi and Italian accounts, details differ on the manner of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abbad’s death (see Abulafia, 145), but all agree that afterwards, his daughter assumed leadership of the Sicilian Muslim resistance. 18 English translation of the complete account by fifteenth century Maghrebi jurisconsult Ibn ‘Abd al-​Mun’im al-​Himyari is provided by Karla Mallette in the The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100–​1250, pp. 151–​53. The Arabic original with a French translation is provided by Évariste Lévi-​Provençal: see “Une héroine de la resistance musulmane en Sicile au début du XIIIe siècle,” in “Oriente Moderno,” XXXIV (1954), 283– ​88.

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until the provisions in this citadel are exhausted and my people weakened. When I reach that point –​you will learn what I will do.” Soon she does reach that point, and what Frederick learns is that she has thwarted his will by taking her own life. Over time, Frederick came to displace some 20,000 Sicilian Muslims to Lucera on the mainland, where he resettled them into lives of farming, craftsmanship, and horse breeding. They would breed soldiers for his empire as well: those who could abide his autocratic will, became private assets impervious to papal or other Christian influence; and Lucera became his private economic base and exotic retreat. Meanwhile, Frederick’s chroniclers labelled the woman who defied him Virago of Entella. Eventually that word virago lost its Latin significance, but to Frederick it meant exactly what it had meant to Ovid and Virgil: a woman of manlike courage, a female warrior. He himself could have named her Virago of Entella, and she might still have been on his mind when he replaced his imperial eagle tarì with pseudo-​Kufic. But whether that decorative touch signalled a new measure of respect for Sicily’s Muslim culture, or further un-​peopling of it, is not recorded.

Conflict #2: Frederick’s Son Henry When his will was crossed, Frederick gave little thought to such nuances, although later he could have regrets. That is confirmed by a prerogative dispute far more personal than his “Tarì War,” because it caused his eldest son, progressive-​minded King Henry of Germany, to raise arms against him. Their relations had already been strained by Henry’s siding with Stedingen peasants who, fed up with their feudal repression, provoked the pope to launch against them an anti-​Christian Crusade. Henry’s sympathies on that occasion got him excommunicated, but since his father could treat pope-​defiance as within his rights, Henry followed suit. A few years earlier Frederick had shrugged off his own excommunication to launch his own Crusade, and on reaching the Holy Land, made a deal with the Sultan to crown himself King of Jerusalem. Nor was he fazed on returning home to find Sicily invaded by papal troops and his Jerusalem deal mocked by hardliners. He simply routed the invaders and made a polite visit to the pope, who at that point considered it best to restore him to the Christian fold. Thus when Henry pursued his own kingly prerogative by making a treaty with empire-​averse German nobles and Italian cities, perhaps

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he counted on another free pass. But this act Frederick could only see as treason. So rapidly did he confront his son with a bristling array of imperial troops that Henry’s new allies fled, leaving him isolated in the field to be arrested and imprisoned. His filial expectations and kingly prerogative alike stripped away by Frederick’s absolutism, Henry never recovered. Yet eventually, even that crisis yielded a kind of nuance. Frederick convened an imperial diet in Mainz to lay down a new principle of governance “amid surroundings of great splendour” that aimed to hold future such disputes in check. The 1235 Landfrieden (“land peace”) made it illegal to wage private wars unless no other possibility for justice exists.19 Perhaps Frederick was troubled by the thought that some other possibility could have saved his now ruined son, if only the “Wonder of the World” had permitted it. In 1242 Henry was buried with honours.

Thought-​Experiment Giacomo Theorizes Uproars over Frederick’s prerogative, like this one with Henry, or the earlier one with Sicilian Muslims, would have deeply disturbed Giacomo and his fellows in the Sicilian School, because events of that nature showed that in a crisis, Frederick could make choices that prove not only disastrous for others, but eventually upsetting to himself. Giacomo would also have seen that having no restraints on his will was for Frederick simply what it meant to be emperor. Yet if he could be rash, he could also be philosophical, analytical. When an outcome failed his expectations, he could wonder: Had he authorized this one too, or only those outcomes he happens to find pleasing? Does a Stupor Mundi exercise meaningful control over his empire, or is he too an imperial instrument? What does it actually mean to call it his, this empire that he celebrates by minting his own Augustales (Fig. 6) to rival ancient Rome?20 With Frederick churning out endless rationalizations, revisions and new ambitions, the question of contingency –​the unknowns that absolutism defies but cannot control –​necessarily preoccupy Giacomo whether or not it is discussed in court. As a poet, he needs to understand exactly why and how things come about. As a lawyer, he knows that whatever 19 The Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Volume 11, 844. 20 Fig. 6: https://​w ww.fit​zmus​eum.cam.ac.uk/​gall​ery/​norm​a ns/​gall​ery/​coin​_​38.htm

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does come about rarely works to the good unless logic is heeded. So Thought-​Experiment Giacomo wonders: Why can’t Frederick be happy solving problems already well known? He keeps ordering his empire to be infinite in possibilities, but then he expects it to be defined by what he means, not what he does. This paradox leads him to poetry for solace: not expecting solutions, so much as insights into how he might build his vernacular project. He asks: Could poetry support intellectual analysis while also expressing emotion? Might an essentially rational poetic form impose limits of its own on its meaning? Could it sharpen understanding? Stimulate progressive thought? Exercise at least imaginative control over contingencies? Such questions would have led him also to consider differences between Frederick’s royal tutoring and his own background as a Lentini landowner, from which he had travelled across the sea to train as a legal aide to that royal ruler. Frederick’s private tutors had been nobles who included a pope; Giacomo’s University of Bologna training had been by scholars whose disciplines were busy rediscovering and updating the ancient Roman jurisprudence that he and his fellow courtiers were now applying to meet Frederick’s imperial demands. While studying Aristotle as a university student, he had enjoyed playing with syllogisms, their major and minor premises acting as mental fitness machines. That disciplinary rigor taught syllogistic thinking as absolute in its form, while its function is to work out ideas according to elementary logic. So, Thought-​Experiment Giacomo reasons, if a poetic form were to function like a syllogism, it might help to rein in a mind even as unbridled as Frederick’s. A topic subjected to syllogistic thinking follows a logical pattern from premise to conclusion by tracing cause and effect, or relation of question to answer, problem to solution: any concise reasoning process that can carry the topic from start to finish. Syllogistic form itself requires a conclusion to make its value complete, self-​contained, autonomous as a miniature empire. But this little poetic empire would be one anybody could create and rule, for its conditions, its premises or “contingencies,” would depend entirely on the poet’s own thoughts, its terms what only the poet knows and is therefore equipped to address or resolve. Having thus theorized the function he wants his new poetic form to follow, our Thought-​Experiment Giacomo needs now only a lyric form able to carry out the task. From childhood Giacomo had known the Sicilian strambotto to express every conceivable feeling in song: its double quatrains could be multiplied, if desired, to elaborate endlessly on joys

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or sorrows while leaving them unchanged. Therefore he wonders: If the infinitely extensible strambotto is actually capable of arousing a feeling or posing a problem in just two quatrains, why can’t a consolation or resolution be worked out in two more? Or better yet, why not intensify that crucial second step? Reduce the poem’s third and fourth quatrains to tercets, and presto –​case closed! Two walking quatrains plus two running tercets equal one concisely reasoned argument for solving a problem that is quick to produce, easy to remember, and gratifies the human need for logic by mimicking syllogism in a little unsung song. A Sonnet! Such a lyric might offer only brief satisfaction in Frederick’s imperial scheme of things, of course, but even a moment’s respite eases a troubled mind. And if further argument on the topic is needed, simply write another sonnet, and another, with each new sonnet contributing its own related conditions or premises, its own resolution. Extended poetic dialogues could come of this, tenzones: sonnet after sonnet taking on a problem by coming up with new contingencies and resolving them with still newer ways of seeing, thinking, feeling: like a lively conversation. Surely that would be the kind of progress Frederick wants his Sicilian School to achieve: doubts, fears, and sorrows yielding to reason, as people create fresh ways of anchoring their hearts and minds in the turbulent waters of his ever-​expanding imperium! To be sure, a sonnet is only a poem, but then ars longa, vita brevis: poetry does not die.

Frederick Composes a Sonnet One of the first to try out Giacomo’s little mind-​anchor was Frederick himself. His Sicilian School leader had presented him with a serviceable poetic form with no history or agenda of its own: one short enough to spare his precious time, yet long enough to convey his own purpose, whatever that might be: to say precisely what he means and why he means it. For example, what a Stupor Mundi actually is. Or would be, if people’s foolhardy actions and contrary opinions would only stay out of the picture. But this little toy easily excludes such impertinence, so one might actually enjoy being Wonder of the World! So, off with tedious contingencies; off with even Giacomo’s fusty old syllogisms. Simply stick to his rules of rhyme and meter to find out what his new poetic game is like to play! Settling into his favourite attitude of seasoned wisdom, Frederick then crafts a homily that at least sounds as if it had been distilled from lived experience:

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Balance, providence and true refinement    Make any man both savvy and aware,    And every sort of grace means better judgment    And every sort of wealth produces care. No mass of money, no matter how abounding,    Can make a coward a man of bravery.    Only habits of life with solid grounding    Can offer people true nobility. The man placed in a lordly high position,    Who swims in money, falls hardest in the muck,    Believing his rank to be a solid fact. That’s why the wise won’t jump beyond his station,    To greater heights presented him by luck,    But always keeps his tastefulness and tact.21 His imperial majesty’s sonnet delivers Frederick exactly as he wants to see himself, and to be seen by others: as one no different from “any man” (l. 2), apart from being supremely self-​ mastered. Given the counter-​evidence by scrutinizing which Frederick could have been seen, he simply jettisons demonstrable fact to yield an abstract, coherent, even rather likeable Everyman. Giacomo’s invention has given his hyperactive, uncontrollable mind a gift it had not quite known it longed for: an instrument that enables him momentarily to dwell in his own vision of success.

The Political Legacy of Sonnet Form That this same invention might also be made into a powerful instrument of social or political change need not have been anticipated by Frederick, nor even by its inventor, in order for the sonnet to serve its

21 English translation by Paul Oppenheimer, The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet (Oxford University Press: New York & Oxford, 1989), 65. Oppenheimer includes Frederick’s original in the Tuscan dialect, 64: Misura, provedenza e meritanza /​fa esser l’uomo savio e conoscente, /​e ogni nobiltà buon senn’avanza /​e ciascuna riccheza fa prudente. //​Nédi riccheze aver grande abundanza /​faria l’omo ch’ è vile esser valente, /​ma della ordinata costumanza /​discende gentileza fra la gente. //​Omo ch’e posto in alto signoragio /​e in riccheze abunda, tosto scende, /​credendo fermo stare in signoria. //​Unde non salti troppo omo ch’ è sagio, /​per grandi alteze che ventura prende, /​ma tuttora mantegna cortesia.

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political objectives. For what Giacomo had created in sonnet form was a compact, portable, flexible but sturdy, dreadless scaffold upon which can be built –​if a poet so chooses –​a reasoned argument that frees the poet’s solitary voice to speak in control of worldly experience. What actually gets built on that scaffold depends of course on individual need: the poet’s own interest in reasoning might be strong or weak or even non-​ existent. The sonnet’s purely structural invitation to reason stands neutral, on call, until it is put to work. Since the work to be done differs for a poet like Milton with each of his sonnets, we should approach all of them not on Petrarchist terms as departures from some presumed ideal; nor on the terms set by Scaliger’s “inertness of generic inventorying”; nor on Prince’s formalist terms that admire, only to bypass, meaningful engagement with each technical masterpiece. Instead, we should recognize and understand each of Milton’s sonnets on the terms by which his own reasoning choices and changes bring it to a close. Only then can a Miltonic sonnet be experienced as he experienced it: as a vital moment in his complex and politically charged creative life. Sonnet form concentrated his thoughts, as proven by his very first sonnet, in which he berates a nightingale for singing too late to rescue him from poetic obscurity, thereby abandoning him to “hopeless doom in some grove nye.” His subsequent five sonnets invoke the same mind-​anchoring poetic aspiration, even as he hones his Italian on the conventional theme of love. “Would that my insensible heart and stony breast were fruitful soil for him who sows from Heaven,” he laments in Sonnet III. By Sonnet VI, however, he finds his heart “as secure from the attacks of Fortune and of Envy, … as he is fond of glory, of valor, of the tuneful lyre and of the Muse.”22 This little sequence indicates that even Milton’s most Petrarchan sonnets circumvent the received love sonnet convention in order to illuminate not just what he thinks and feels regarding love, but how and why. In other words, sonnet structure works for Milton exactly as Giacomo meant it to work: as terra firma for a striving spirit in a rapidly spinning world; as witness to a vital moment of choice and change so as to bring experience under better control. To create such a sonnet preserves that moment of control; to read it confirms that moment.

22 English translations by Dino Bigongiari, Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia University, in Frank Allen Patterson, ed., The Student’s Milton, Revised Edition (Appleton-​Century-​Crofts, Inc.: New York, 1961), 110–​11.

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Christopher Kleinhenz describes sonnet form in words that are striking for their militancy in an otherwise decorous literary argument. He calls it “a battleground on which the poet wages war with the form, on which grammar and syntax come to blows with metrics and versification, and on which spirit confronts matter.”23 Giacomo da Lentini clearly girded his new form with the armaments needed for the warfare Kleinhenz describes: whatever cause demands attention in a world where neither reason nor purpose can be taken for granted. Sonnet form’s purposive deep state stands as unalterably as does Areopagitica’s battle for Free Conscience, which cannot end lest it “sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.”24 The Milton of “Avenge O Lord thy slaughtered saints” would have fully understood why, centuries later, a poet might turn to the sonnet to process a shock, as did Paul Oppenheimer in his post-​9/​11 “Little Picture” (“Some say that sonnets cannot hold great battles /​… yet they must know that one charred face outshines /​the shining sun when stumbled on in mud”). Or why this same form is chosen to celebrate, satirize and mourn those who inspired a culture-​bending youth movement, as seen in Patricia Smith’s “Motown Crown.” Or how it confers eloquence on victims once silenced by injustice, but whose voices are now resurrected by Tyehimba Jess on the stage of Olio. Or how the sonnet can craft analytics by Terrance Hayes (“part music box, part meat grinder” he calls the form) in American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin.25 Poets who understand the sonnet’s deep state can always tap into its purposiveness regardless of the theme they happen to choose. Yet even if they only like the way sonnet form sings, they preserve the vitality of its deep state: for sonnets are also like Milton’s guardian angels: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

23 Christopher Kleinhenz, The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–​1321) (Lecce: Milella, 1986), 24–​25 (my italics). Kleinhenz remains the foremost critical authority on the early Italian sonnet; but see also the illuminating Introduction by Akash Kumar to Richard Lansing, tr., Giacomo da Lentini: The Complete Poetry (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, London, 2018). 24 Frank Allen Patterson, ed., The Student’s Milton, Revised Edition (Appleton-​ Century-​Crofts, Inc.: New York, 1961), 746. 25 Paul Oppenheimer, from “The Little Picture,” In Times of Danger (Spuyten Duyvil: New York City, 2010), 89; Patricia Smith, “Motown Crown” published in Rattle, January 6, 2010; Tyehimba Jess, Olio (Wave Books: Seattle & New York, 2016), sonnets passim; Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books: New York, 2018), 11.

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Coins Referred to in the Text

Fig. 2:  King Roger II tarì.

Fig. 1:  Calif Al-​Mustansir.

Fig. 3:  HRE Frederick II Imperial Eagle tarì.

Fig. 4:  HRE Frederick II Pseudo-​ Kufic tarì.

Fig. 5:  Ibn ‘Abbad Coin of Independence.

Fig. 6:  HRE Frederick II Imperial Augustale.

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Works Cited Abulafia, David. Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. Oxford University Press: New York & Oxford, 1988. Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Vol. 11. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.: New York, 1910. Grierson, Philip, and Lucia Travaini, Medieval European Coinage: With a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Vol. 14, Italy (III) (South Italy, Sicily, Sardinia), Cambridge University Press, 1999. Haskins, C. H. Studies in the History of Medieval Science. Ungar Publishing Co.: New York, 1960, pp. 292–​95; English trans. of Frederick’s questions, pp. 266–​67. Hayes, Terrance. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. Penguin Books: New York, 2018. Hitti, Philip K. History of the Arabs: From the Earliest Times to the Present. Macmillan: London, 1951. Jess, Tyehimba. Olio. Wave Books: Seattle & New York, 2016. Kleinhenz, Christopher. The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–​ 1321). Milella: Lecce, 1986. Komorowski, Michael. “On ‘The New Forcers of Conscience’ and Milton’s Erastianism.” Milton Studies, Vol. 55, 2014, pp. 237–​68. Lansing, Richard, tr. Giacomo da Lentini: The Complete Poetry. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, London, 2018. Lévi-​Provençal, Évariste. “Une héroine de la résistance musulmane en Sicile au début du XIIIe siècle.” Oriente Moderno, XXXIV, 1954, pp. 283–​88. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer, ed. Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA and London, England, 1986.

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Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100–​1250. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, PA, 2005. Mueller, Janel M. “On Genesis in Genre: Milton’s Politicizing of the Sonnet in ‘Captain or Colonel’.” Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation, edited by Barbara K. Lewalski, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA and London, England, 1986, pp. 213–​40. Oppenheimer, Paul. The Birth of the Modern Mind: Self, Consciousness, and the Invention of the Sonnet. Oxford University Press: New York & Oxford, 1989. Oppenheimer, Paul. In Times of Danger. Spuyten Duyvil: New York City, 2010. Patterson, Frank Allen, ed. The Student’s Milton, Revised Edition, Appleton-​ Century-​Crofts, Inc.: New York, 1961. Smith, Patricia. “Motown Crown.” Rattle, 6 January 2010, Rattle Foundation: Los Angeles, CA. Spiller, Michael R. G. The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction. Routledge: London and New York, 1992 Tusiani, Joseph. The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry. Baroque Press: New York, 1974. Tyehimba Jess. Olio. Wave Books: Seattle & New York, 2016. Van Cleve, Thomas Curtis. The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Immutator Mundi. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1972. Wilkins, Ernest. “The Invention of the Sonnet.” Modern Philology, Vol. 13, No. 8, December 1915, pp. 463–​94.

Online Resources [Norman and Frederician coins:] https://​w ww.fit​zmus​eum.cam.ac.uk/​gall​ ery/​norm​ans/​ [pseudo-​kufic tarì:] https://​w ww.numisb​ids.com/​n.php?p=​lot&sid=​2626 &lot=​604 [Ibn ‘Abbad declaration coin:] https://​aucti​ons.bertol​amif​i nea​rts.com/​en/​ lot/​35318/​italy-​sic​ily-​ente​lla-​muham​mad-​ibntab​bad-​/​ [Ghazal:] www.poets.org/​poets​org/​text/​gha​zal-​poe​tic-​form

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[Henry (VII) of Germany:] https://​en.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​Hen​r y_​( VII)_​ of_​Germ​any https://​en.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​Stedin​gen [Kant’s teleology:] https://​w ww.iep.utm.edu/​kanta​est/​#H3

Milton, Sublime Style, and the Problem of Enthusiasm Thomas M. Vozar

From the earliest years of the Reformation there appeared those who claimed to receive direct revelations from the Holy Spirit, such as Melchior Hoffman, who declared that in 1533 the city of Strasbourg would become the site of the New Jerusalem. Martin Luther labelled them Schwärmer; in English, they were enthusiasts. In the age of Milton, the problem of enthusiasm was especially acute, threatening authorities religious and political alike. At around the same time the Greek treatise Peri hupsous or On the Sublime, ascribed to one Dionysius Longinus, was being rediscovered throughout Europe.1 Milton is one of the earliest English authors to refer to Longinus, even going so far as to recommend the Peri hupsous for the teaching of “a gracefull and ornate Rhetorick” in his tract Of Education in 1644,2 and the first complete

1

Some recent scholarship on Longinus and the sublime in the Early Modern period, to provide a small selection, includes Caroline van Eck et al. (eds.), Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre (Leiden, 2012); Kelly Lehtonen, “Peri Hypsous in Translation: The Sublime in Sixteenth-​Century Epic Theory,” Philological Quarterly 95.3–​4 (2016), 449–​65; Patrick Cheney, English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime: Fictions of Transport in Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2018); Wieneke Jansen, Appropriating Peri hypsous: Interpretations and Creative Adaptations of Longinus’ Treatise On the Sublime in Early Modern Dutch Scholarship (Leiden University PhD diss., 2019); Thomas Vozar, “An English Translation of Longinus in the Lansdowne Collection at the British Library,” The Seventeenth Century 35.5 (2020), 625–​50. 2 CPW II: 402. In this paper I cite three major series of editions of Milton’s works: the Columbia Works of John Milton (New York, 1923–​40), abbreviated WJM; the Yale omplete Prose Works (New Haven, 1953–​82), abbreviated CPW; and the Oxford Complete Works (Oxford, 2008–​), abbreviated CW. For previous work on Milton and the sublime –​not including studies concerned primarily with Milton’s posthumous reception –​see Annabel Patterson, Reading Between the Lines (Madison, WI, 1993), 258–​72; David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–​1660 (Cambridge, 1999), passim; Ryan Stark, “Cold Styles: On Milton’s Critiques of Frigid Rhetoric in Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 37.1

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English translation, published in 1652, was written by his associate John 3 Hall. Since the term enthusiasm could equally signify rhetorical rapture, a mark of Longinian sublimity, or the supposed religious fanaticism of dissenting sects like the Ranters and Quakers, from the 1640s onward it became important to distinguish between a merely rhetorical enthusiasm and the real, more dangerous enthusiasm of latter-​day prophets like Abiezer Coppe.4 In this paper I contend that Milton, understanding Scripture to exemplify a kind of sublime style in the Longinian sense, presumed to write his own poetry in such a mode, making himself open to the charge of enthusiasm.

1. On the Sublimity of Biblical Style In the seventeenth century many understood Scripture to be an exemplar of sublime rhetoric5 –​“a sublime style for sublime things” (hupsēlon (2003), 21–​30; David Sedley, Sublimity and Skepticism in Montaigne and Milton (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005), Ch. 3 and Ch. 4; Patrick Cheney, “Milton, Marlowe, and Lucan: The English Authorship of Republican Liberty,” Milton Studies 49 (2009), 1–​19; Kelly Lehtonen, “The Satanic Sublime in Paradise Lost: Tasso, Charisma, Abjection,” Modern Philology 116.3 (2019), 211–​34; Nicholas McDowell, “Refining the Sublime: Edward Phillips, a Miltonic Education and the Sublimity of Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 61.2 (2019), 239–​60. This paper is drawn from Thomas Vozar, Milton, Longinus, and the Sublime in the Seventeenth Century (University of Exeter PhD diss., 2020). 3 John Hall, Περὶ ὕψους, or Dionysius Longinus of the Height of Eloquence. Rendered out of the original by J. H. Esq. (London, 1652). On Hall see Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, passim; Nicholas McDowell, Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit (Oxford, 2008), passim. 4 On Coppe see Clement Hawes, Mania and Literary Style: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart (Cambridge, 1996), Ch. 1 passim and Ch. 3; Nicholas McDowell, “A Ranter Reconsidered: Abiezer Coppe and Civil War Stereotypes,” The Seventeenth Century 12.2 (1997), 173–​205 and The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion, and Revolution, 1630–​1660 (Oxford, 2003), Ch. 4; Robert Kenny, “ ‘In These Last Dayes’: The Strange Work Of Abiezer Coppe,” The Seventeenth Century 13.2 (1998), 156–​84; David Loewenstein, Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries (Cambridge, 2001), 93–​115; Ariel Hessayon, “The Making of Abiezer Coppe,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 62.1 (2011), 38–​ 58. The scholarly literature on the sects of the 1640s and 1650s more generally is too extensive to outline here, but see esp. the influential account of Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (London, 2020, first published 1972). 5 See Debora Shuger, Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance (Princeton, 1988), Ch. 4 as well as Deitmar Till, “The Sublime and the

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hupsēlais), as Isaac Casaubon put it: “Whatever Longinus and the other theorists of rhetoric say about how one attains sublimity in speech will all be found, brilliantly expressed, in the writings of the prophets.”6 Indeed, the rhetorical sublimity of Scripture was one of the very marks of its divinely inspired character: among the reasons that the preacher Robert Boughton gave in response to the question “What Arguments are there to assure us, that those bookes of the Old and New Testament are the Scriptures and undoubted Word of God?” was “the singular Maiestie and sublimitie of stile, which every where shineth in them.”7 Milton, too, recognized that biblical style could be just as sublime as biblical matter. In one place in De Doctrina Christiana he writes for instance that “no one more sublimely and clearly declares the generation of divine nature” than the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews: it is not just the subject that is sublime, but the way that the Apostle writes (sublimius…declarat).8 But perhaps Milton’s most important statement on biblical style comes in an exchange in Paradise Regained, when Satan, with the “perswasive Rhetoric /​That sleek’t his tongue” (PR 4.4–​5), tempts Christ with the entire intellectual and literary patrimony of “Athens the eye of Greece, Mother of Arts /​And Eloquence” (PR 4.240–​41), including the power of classical rhetoric:9 Thence to the famous Orators repair, Those antient, whose resistless eloquence

6

7 8 9

Bible: Longinus, Protestant Dogmatics, and the ‘Sublime Style,’ ” in Caroline van Eck et al., Translations of the Sublime, 55–​64 and Kevin Killeen, “Immethodical, Incoherent, Unadorned: Style and the Early Modern Bible,” in Andrew Hadfield (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500–​1640 (Oxford, 2013), 505–​21 (esp. 513–​14). Bodleian Library, MS Casaubon 51, fol. 19r, quoted and translated in Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 107, 107 n.140 (quicquid est apud Longinum et alios rhetoras quod τὸ ὕψος τῷ λόγῷ conciliet, id omne reperietur in prophetarum scriptis luculentissime expressum.) Robert Boughton, God and Man. A Treatise Catechisticall (London, 1623), 8. CW VIII.1:134 (Divinae autem naturae generationem nemo neque sublimius neque disertius declarant). Translations of Milton’s Latin works are adapted from the editions cited. On this exchange see Jameela Lares, Milton and the Preaching Arts (Cambridge, 2001), Ch. 5, including a discussion of previous criticism. Citations of Milton’s poetry are from the Oxford CW, except Paradise Lost, which is cited from Barbara Lewalski (ed.), Paradise Lost (Oxford, 2007).

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Wielded at will that fierce Democratie, Shook the Arsenal and fulmin’d over Greece (PR 4.267–​70) The verb fulmin’ d, literally “thundered” (from Latin fulmen), evokes not only the figure of Pericles, who was famously described by Aristophanes and Plutarch as a “thundering” orator,10 but also Longinus, who made the Periclean fulmen eloquentiae, with its unstoppable force (“resistless eloquence”), the emblematic image of rhetorical sublimity.11 Christ rejects this, along with the rest of the classical inheritance, in favour of the Hebrew prophets: Thir Orators thou then extoll’st, as those The top of Eloquence, Statists indeed, And lovers of thir Country, as may seem; But herein to our Prophets far beneath, As men divinely taught, and better teaching The solid rules of Civil Government In thir majestic unaffected stile Then all the Oratory of Greece and Rome. (PR 4.353–​60) Milton’s Christ affirms that the Greek and Roman orators were “Statists indeed” –​that is, skilled in politics and affairs of state12 –​but claims that the “divinely taught” Hebrew prophets are more fit for “teaching /​The solid rules of Civil Government.” Yet the poet extols the superiority of Scripture not only in the matter that it teaches –​namely, principles of law and political philosophy –​but also in the style in which it is written: for Milton the “majestic unaffected stile” of Scripture matches –​or excels –​the “resistless eloquence” of the fulminating orators of Greece and Rome. Earlier, in his 1641 pamphlet Of Reformation, Milton had referred to the “sober, plain, and unaffected stile of the Scriptures,” but there “sober” and “plain” served to highlight the contrast between biblical style and “the knotty Africanisms, the pamper’d metafors; the

10 Ar. Ach. 530–​31; Plut. Per. 8.4. Classical works are cited according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary abbreviations. 11 [Longinus] Subl. 1.4. 12 See OED s.v. statist, n.1 and adj. A.1.a.

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intricat, and involv’d sentences of the Fathers.”13 Here instead the “unaf14 fected stile” of Scripture is called “majestic.” Why? Because Milton, like many of his contemporaries, understood biblical style to be sublime –​for which “majestic” is another word.15 Milton’s notion of biblical style is Longinian: it is “majestic” and sublime, but at the same time simplex and “unaffected,” as exemplified in the words of the Mosaic fiat lux.16 Milton’s Christ does not compare the sublime style of the pagan orators with the plain style of the Hebrew prophets, but rather one kind of sublimity with another, pagan rhetorical sublimity with biblical rhetorical sublimity.17

2. Milton’s Sublime Rhetorical Flight Milton’s recognition of the sublimity of Scripture was not just an idle notion, for throughout his writings, and in various ways, he attempts to imitate, emulate, reproduce, and reformulate biblical style.18 Milton’s commitment to a sublime biblical style is perhaps nowhere more evident than in his invocation of the “Heav’nly Muse” (PL 1.6) at the beginning of Paradise Lost, where Milton marks his stylistic aspirations in sublime terms:    I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song That with no middle flight intends to soar

13 CPW I: 568. 14 Milton also writes in Tetrachordon of “the Majesty of Scripture” (CPW II: 613). 15 See e.g. Phillips, The New World, s.v. grandiloquence: “Grandiloquence, or Grandiloquie, (lat.) Majesty, or heigth of stile,” keeping in mind that Phillips also glossed “Sublimity” as “heighth.” 16 [Longinus] Subl. 9.9. 17 Price McMurray, “Aristotle on the Pinnacle: Paradise Regained and the Limits of Theory,” Milton Quarterly 32.1 (1998), 7–​14, at 12 similarly observes that “[Christ’s] response also describes a counter-​sublime,” a different “version of the sublime.” 18 See Emory Elliott, “Milton’s Biblical Style in Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 6 (1974), 227–​41; Mary Ann Radzinowicz, Milton’s Epics and the Book of Psalms (Princeton, 1989), passim; and Kari Boyd McBride and John C. Ulreich, “Answerable Styles: Biblical Poetics and Biblical Politics in the Poetry of Lanyer and Milton,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100.3 (2001), 333–​54.

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Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. (PL 1.12–​16) As he would later in Paradise Regained, Milton privileges the biblical over the classical, here transcending Hellenic Helicon (“th’ Aonian Mount”) through the power of the inspiring Spirit. But the parallel is closer than that, for what Milton presumes to surpass the ancients in is style. Milton here declares the superiority not, as we might expect, of the biblical matter –​that is taken for granted –​but of the verse: it is the “Song” that is the subject of “intends,” the “Song” that aspires to “soar /​Above th’ Aonian Mount.” The phrase “middle flight” signifies that the style is, to use Milton’s own terms from Of Education, not “mean” but “lofty” –​sublime.19 It also announces Milton’s departure from the Huguenot poet Du Bartas, who gave Milton his model for the Christian muse Urania: Du Bartas describes how his “heedfull Muse,” in the Jacobean translation of Josuah Sylvester, “keepes the middle Region: /​ Least, if she too-​high a pitch presume, /​Heav’ns glowing flame should melt her waxen plume;”20 the poet of Paradise Lost, on the other hand, is what Milton elsewhere, in The Reason of Church-​Government, called “a Poet soaring in the high region of his fancies,”21 one who takes “no middle flight” but “intends to soar.”22 Unlike Du Bartas with his timid muse, Milton attempts the “unattempted,”23 choosing to be bold and “adventrous,” soaring upward and risking the plunge of Icarus with his “waxen plume” or the fall of Phaethon, both of whom according to Ovid failed to take the “middle” (medio) flight advised by their respective fathers, Daedalus and Apollo.24 The poet’s flight of Icarian and Phaethonic danger is manifestly sublime: Longinus, for whom sublimity 19 CPW II: 401. 20 Josuah Sylvester, Bartas: His Devine Weekes and workes Translated (London, 1605), 6. 21 CPW I: 808. 22 See Barbara Lewalski, Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (Princeton, 1985), 30. 23 PL 1.16 adapts Ariosto’s cosa non detta in prosa mai, né in rima (Orl. Fur. 1.2), but “unattempted” is Milton’s (cosa non detta meaning “things not said ”); Daniel Shore, “Things Unattempted … Yet Once More,” Milton Quarterly 43.3 (2009), 195–​200, at 197 calls it “the most substantial deviation.” 24 Ov. Met. 8.203, 2.137; David Quint, “Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius in Paradise Lost,” Renaissance Quarterly 57.3 (2004), 847–​81, at 875.

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is by nature literally “prone to fall” (episphalē), singles out Euripides’ description of Phaethon’s ascent, saying, “Could you not say that the spirit of the writer mounts the chariot beside him and takes wing with the horses, facing the danger with them?”25 Phaethon was recognized in seventeenth-​century England as an icon of Longinian sublimity and its perils: the title page of the 1636 Oxford edition of Longinus, engraved by William Marshall, features the falling charioteer in the upper right of the composition,26 along with the Virgilian tag Animos aequabit Olimpo (“it will make souls equal to Olympus”).27 Opposite Phaethon, Marshall includes an eagle soaring upward, accompanied by the tag In Sublime feror (“I am borne on high”); Milton appropriates this sublime imagery too, becoming aquiline in his intention to “soar,” a word he associates especially with eagles, writing that Raphael flew “within soare /​of Towring Eagles” (PL 5.270–​71) and that on the fourth day of Creation birds like “the Eagle” (PL 7.423) from their birth “soaring th’ air sublime /​With clang despis’d the ground” (PL 7.421–​22).28 Hazarding the Icarian and Phaethonic danger of falling, soaring eagle-​like with lofty flight, Milton in the proem signals clearly the sublimity of his poetic project. Milton expressed his ambitions of sublime flight early on, writing in 1637 to his friend Charles Diodati: “Let me speak of grand things…. What am I doing? I am growing wings and intending to soar.”29 As one of the senses of the verb meditor is “to design, purpose, intend,”30 it is possible to interpret the Latin phrase volare meditor, as I have here, as 25 [Longinus] Subl. 33.2, 15.4. 26 On the iconography of Marshall’s Longinus title page see Lydia Hamlett, “Longinus and the Baroque Sublime in Britain,” Tate Papers 13 (2010), at https://​w ww.tate.org.uk/​a rt/​resea​rch-​publi​c ati​ons/​t he-​subl​i me/​lydia-​haml​ett-​ longi​nus-​a nd-​the baroque-​sublime-​in-​britain-​r1108498 and Lydia Hamlett, “The Longinian Sublime, Effect and Affect in ‘Baroque’ British Visual Culture,” in Caroline van Eck et al., Translations of the Sublime, 187–​219. 27 Verg. Aen. 6.782. 28 Here “clang” takes one of the senses of its Latin root clangor: “The loud harsh resonant cry or scream of certain birds” (OED s.v. clang, n. 2). On eagles in Milton see Karen Edwards, “Milton’s Reformed Animals: An Early Modern Bestiary D-​F,” Milton Quarterly 40.2 (2006): 99–​187, at 134–​39. 29 WJM XII: 26 (grandia loquar. [...] Quid agam vero? πτεροφυῶ, & volare meditor). 30 LSJ s.v. meditor.

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“I am intending to soar” –​perfectly prefiguring the expression that we find later in the proem of Paradise Lost (“intends to soar,” PL 1.14). The Greek verb pterophuō (ptera “wings” +​phuō “I grow”) carries a Platonic connotation, having been used to describe the flight of the soul in the Phaedrus,31 but there is another instance with which Milton would have been familiar too, in the Septuagint text of Isaiah 40:31: “they shall grow wings [pterophuēsousin] as eagles.”32 The biblical association of the verb points us to the notion that to soar into “th’ air sublime” is to assume the voice and station of a prophet, a connection Milton makes when he remarks of Revelation that “the whole Booke soares to a Prophetick pitch”33 –​“pitch” here having the same sense as in Du Bartas’ “too-​high a pitch,” namely a sublime height.34 That the verb appears in Isaiah in particular gives Milton’s pterophuō a special resonance, as in several places Milton defines his own prophetic role in Isaiahic terms, twice referring to the seraphim touching Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal, a vivid biblical image of the prophetic vocation.35

31 Pl. Phdr. 251c, 255d; see Quint, “Fear of Falling,” 877 and John K. Hale, “Young Milton in His Letters,” in Edward Jones (ed.), A Concise Companion to the Study of Manuscripts, Printed Books, and the Production of Early Modern Texts (Oxford, 2015), 66–​86, at 72–​73. 32 The Greek reads: πτεροφυήσουσιν ὡς ἀετοί. On Milton’s familiarity with the Septuagint see Gordon Campbell, “Milton and the Septuagint: The Problem of Chrysolite,” Journal of Theological Studies 38.2 (1987), 441–​43; Milton cites Is. 40:31 in De Doctrina, but in the Latin translation of Junius and Tremellius (CW VIII.2: 950). 33 CPW I: 714. 34 OED s.v. pitch, n.2 sense V.a. On prophetic soaring in Milton see Noam Reisner, “The Prophet’s Conundrum: Poetic Soaring in Milton’s ‘Nativity Ode’ and ‘The Passion,’ ” Philological Quarterly 83.4 (2004), 371–​87. 35 On the morning of Christs Nativity vv. 27–​28; CPW I: 821. On Milton’s prophetic role see William Kerrigan, The Prophetic Milton (Charlottesville, 1974); Louis Martz, “Milton’s Prophetic Voice: Moving Toward Paradise,” in P. G. Stanwood (ed.), Of Poetry and Politics: New Essays on Milton and His World (Binghamton, NY, 1995), 1–​16; and Barbara Lewalski, “Milton: The Muses, the Prophets, the Spirit, and Prophetic Poetry,” Milton Studies 54 (2013), 59–​78; see also John R. Knott, The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Responses to the Bible (Chicago, 1980), Ch. 5. On Milton and Isaiah see Youngwon Park, Milton and Isaiah: A Journey through the Drama of Salvation in Paradise Lost (New York, 2000).

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3. Prophecy, Inspiration, and Enthusiasm The term prophecy (prophetia), as Milton observes in De Doctrina, can in some cases signify nothing more than “the simple gift of ­teaching,”36 but of course often implicit in the assumption of a prophetic role is a claim of divine inspiration. In the proem to Paradise Lost Book 9, Milton asks for an “answerable style” (PL 9.20) –​that is, a style suited to the majesty of his subject, a sublime style for a sublime theme –​from the muse who “inspires /​Easie my unpremeditated Verse” (PL 9.23–​24)37 in her “nightly visitation” (PL 9.22). It may appear here, and in other places where Milton speaks in terms of his own inspiration, that the poet is only making a gesture toward the typical literary pretense of being inspired: after all, Milton’s muse, like Du Bartas’, is ostensibly Urania, a poetic fiction with a classical name. At the same time, however, it is easy to discern a claim of real, literal inspiration. Indeed, in the first lines of the poem Milton specifies that the muse he invokes is the same entity “that on the secret top /​Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire” (PL 1.6–​7) the prophet Moses. Thomas Newton, in the biography of Milton prefixed to his 1749 edition of Paradise Lost, related an anecdote of the poet’s third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, “from the accounts of those who had seen her,” writing that: being asked whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness that he stole from no body but the Muse who inspired him; and being asked by a lady present who the Muse was, replied it was God’s grace, and the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly.38

The credibility of Newton’s report is debatable, and I do not purpose to divine whether Milton the man really did consider himself to be a latter-​day prophet directly inspired by the Spirit: that is between Milton and God.39 The point is that Milton’s poetic invocation of the Spirit –​ especially when considered in light of his heterodox religious opinions 36 37 38 39

CW VIII.2: 788 (simplex donum docendi). With regard to the sense of unpremeditated cf. CPW III: 506 and PL 5.148–​149. Thomas Newton (ed.), Paradise Lost, 2 vols. (London, 1749), I: lvi. David Masson (ed.), The Poetical Works of John Milton, 3 vols. (London, 1874), III: 114 could write confidently: “That Milton believed himself to be, in some real sense, an inspired man, admits of little doubt.” Kerrigan, The Prophetic Milton argues this point strongly, but scholars have not always found Masson’s proposition

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and, as we shall see, his sublime style –​could easily be interpreted in this way: what is implied is that the poet’s very utterances flow from the Spirit; that they are revealed to him, as to Moses before him –​“That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, /​In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth /​Rose out of Chaos” (PL 1.8–​10) –​by God. As William Poole puts it: “When Milton sat down (or slept, as he claimed) to compose Paradise Lost, was he not continuing, rather than simply commenting on, the creative powers of the first author, of God himself?”40 Milton must have understood that this would make him vulnerable, indeed even more so in the conservative religious and political climate of the Restoration, to the charge of what was known as enthusiasm.41 While the word carries no special technical sense today, in Early Modern English enthusiasm was a term of polemical abuse applied to any number of unorthodox individuals or groups, from Anabaptists to experimental philosophers, but in particular to those who made claims of divine revelation by way of prophetic visions, dreams, and other means of inspiration.42 The philosopher Henry More, in his 1656 tract Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, defined it succinctly as “nothing else but a misconceit of being inspired.”43 Given that claims of direct inspiration by God could –​ and often did –​challenge established authorities, in seventeenth-​century England enthusiasm was seen to pose an acute threat to Church and State alike. Thomas Hobbes warns in Leviathan that those who “take their owne Dreames, for the Prophecy they mean to bee governed by, and the tumour of their own hearts for the Spirit of God” end up “destroying all laws, both divine, and humane” and “reduce all Order, Government, and Society, to the first Chaos of Violence, and Civill warre.”44 Similarly so obvious; see e.g. Mary Ann Radzinowicz, Toward Samson Agonistes: The Growth of Milton’s Mind (Princeton, 1978), 350 ff. William Poole, “Out of His Furrow,” London Review of Books 29.3 (2007), 16–​17. 41 Newton, Paradise Lost, 9, commenting on Milton’s invocation of the Spirit in the proem of PL 1, writes that “some may think that he incurs a worse charge of enthusiasm,” concluding that “his works are not without a spirit of enthusiasm.” 42 For general overviews of Early Modern enthusiasm see Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion with Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries (Oxford, 1950) and Michael Heyd, “Be Sober and Reasonable”: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden, 1995). 43 Henry More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, or a Discourse of the Nature, Causes, Kinds, and Cure of Enthusiasme (London, 1656), 2. 44 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-​wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London, 1651), 232. 40

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the scholar and theologian John Spencer in his polemic against “Vulgar Prophecies” warns that these “are of very evil consequence in the State. The monuments of our own and forrein Nations assure us that there is not a more fruitful womb of seditions and confusions in States.”45 The word enthusiast first appears in the 1536 translation of Philip Melanchthon’s Apologia Confessionis Augustanae by Richard Taverner, which refers to “enthusiastes whiche fayned them selves to be inflate and inspired by the divine influence and power.”46 But by the Jacobean period enthusiasm was being applied beyond the religious sense, namely in relation to poetry, signifying the furor poeticus or inspired frenzy of the poet: Josuah Sylvester, in the “Index of the Hardest Words” appended to his translation of Du Bartas, glosses “Enthousiasmos” as “poeticall furie,”47 while John Marston, in his 1606 play Parasitaster, writes of “Estro or Enthusiasme, /​(For these are phrases both poeticall).”48 After the political and religious upheavals of the middle of the seventeenth century, the resulting ambiguity of the term makes it important to distinguish between the two senses, that is, between rhetorical, relatively safe enthusiasm and real, potentially dangerous enthusiasm. Henry More neatly epitomizes the issue when he writes that “a Poet is an Enthusiast in jest, and an Enthusiast is a Poet in good earnest.”49

4. Enthusiasm and the Longinian Sublime Enthusiasm –​or to be precise, “vehement and enthusiastic [enthousiastikon] passion”50 –​formed a part of Longinian poetics, and the sublime style, being partly a matter of technique but partly a matter of inspiration, could potentially be understood as real enthusiasm. Already in the editio princeps of the Peri hupsous Francesco Robortello identified the

45

John Spencer, A Discourse Concerning Vulgar Prophecies, Wherein the Vanity of Receiving Them as the Certain Indications of Any Future Event Is Discovered (London, 1665), 8. 46 Richard Taverner (tr.), The confessyon of the fayth of the Germaynes […] To which is added the apologie of Melancthon (London, 1536), sig. N6v. 47 Sylvester, Bartas, sig. XX4v. 48 John Marston, Parasitaster, or The Fawne (London, 1606), sig. D3r. 49 More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, 20. 50 [Longinus] Subl. 8.1.

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origin of sublimity as inspired furor.51 The aforementioned John Spencer, like More and other contemporary anti-​enthusiastic writers, treats enthusiasm as primarily a physiological disorder, due to “a natural pregnancy and fervor of temper,” but adds that false prophets are also incited by “an ἀτμός ἔνθεος (as Longinus stiles the Earthy vapor which inspired the Pythia) an enthusiastick vapor of heated Melancholy arising from the hypochondria,” which “cannot fail of displaying it self in such rapturous and lofty strains of divine rhetorick; as shall be verily thought to flow e vena Israelis, from the same Divine Spirit which inspired the Prophets.”52 Spencer thus implicates Longinus and the sublime style in the real enthusiasm of false prophets, making the “enthusiastick vapor” (atmos entheos)53 of Delphi, with which Longinus compares the inspiration of sublime writers, the root cause of enthusiasm, and describing the sublime speech of enthusiasts as “rapturous and lofty strains of divine rhetorick” such as could be mistaken for the rhetorical sublimity of the Hebrew prophets. Yet while Longinus often speaks of the sublime in terms of inspiration, he mocks the “enthusiasm” (enthousia)54 of writers who believe themselves to be truly inspired by the gods, those who, as the newly discovered Lansdowne manuscript translation reads, “under a fond supposall of their being actuated by some Enthusiastick Spiritt think they speak by inspiration when indeed it is all but a childish Prate and Babble.”55 Indeed, the Lansdowne translator appears to make some effort to appropriate Longinus as an anti-​enthusiastic writer. Here the manuscript’s phrase “Enthusiastick Spiritt” translates the Greek enthousian, but the translator must have been aware of the connotations of this particular choice of words. Even more telling is the passage where Longinus condemns the quality of certain episodes in the Odyssey: “Can we call these anything other in truth than the dreams of Zeus [tou Dios 51 Francesco Robortello, Dionysii Longini […] de grandi sive sublimi orationis genere (Basel, 1554), marginal note at [Longinus] Subl. 13.2, as noted by Christoph J. Steppich, “Inspiration through imitatio /​ mimesis in On the Sublime of ‘Longinus’ and in Joachim Vadian’s De poetica et carminis ratione (Vienna, 1518),” Humanistica Lovaniensia 55 (2006), 37–​70, at 52. 52 Spencer, Vulgar Prophecies, 72. 53 [Longinus] Subl. 13.2. 54 [Longinus] Subl. 3.2. 55 British Library, MS Lansdowne 1045/​73, fol. 167v; see Thomas Vozar, “An English Translation of Longinus.”

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enupnia]?”56 The Lansdowne manuscript concludes the list of episodes saying: “All which odd conceits are but a better sort of Enthusiastick dreams.”57 Thus Longinus’ tou Dios enupnia, “dreams of Zeus,” is reinterpreted for seventeenth-​century readers as “Enthusiastick dreams,” or the dreams through which enthusiasts claim to receive divine revelations. Meric Casaubon, too, clearly understood Longinian enthusiasm as merely rhetorical. Casaubon, in his Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme, makes a point of discriminating carefully between rhetorical enthusiasm and the enthusiasm that is the object of his polemic, writing: “I will not take advantage of the words, ἐνθουσιασμός, ἐνθουσιάζειν, or any other equivalent unto them: because often by Greek Authors used figuratively, where no real Enthusiasme or supernaturall agitation, so farre at least as can be collected from the words, is intended.”58 Casaubon turns to the Peri hupsous to illustrate this, citing among others those passages where Longinus writes that sublime passion “inspires and possesses one’s words as if [hōsper] by some madness and enthusiastic [enthousiastikōs] spirit” and that the orator Demosthenes spoke “as if [hoionei] he had been possessed by Apollo.”59 From this Casaubon deduces that Longinus is not speaking of real divine inspiration, but only a rhetorical enthusiasm: It appears by those qualifications, ὥσπερ and οἱονεὶ, that he intended it only after a sort, as things may be compared, not really. Indeed Longinus, though a heathen by profession, yet was not very superstitious; as may appear by this, that he durst challenge Homer, (upon whom especially all heathenish Theology was grounded,) though but a Poet, of Atheisme and grosse absurdity, for making his Gods to fight with men; and not only to fight, but receive wounds also.60

Casaubon considers Longinus to be “not very superstitious,” on the evidence of his criticism of Homer’s profane portrayal of the gods as excessively human,61 and accordingly not one to believe that the enthusiasm 56

[Longinus] Subl. 9.14. 57 British Library, MS Lansdowne 1045/​73, fol. 170v. 58 Meric Casaubon, A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme, As it is an Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolical Possession (London, 1655), 141; see Ryan Stark, Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-​Century England (Washington, D.C., 2009), Ch. 5. 59 [Longinus] Subl. 8.4, 16.2. 60 Casaubon, A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme, 142. 61 See [Longinus] Subl. 9.7.

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of the poet or orator is a form of actual divine inspiration: Longinus, as Casaubon notes, deliberately qualifies his frequent talk of sublime inspiration with adverbs like hōsper (“just as, as it were”) and hoionei (“as if”), which signify that he speaks of the inspiration of the sublime speaker and the real enthusiasm of false prophets “as things may be compared, not really.” Whereas for Spencer the rhetorical enthusiasm of the Longinian sublime seems to be implicated in real enthusiasm, Casaubon, like the Lansdowne translator, strives to separate Longinus from genuine “superstitious” enthusiasts.

5. Milton and the Problem of Enthusiasm When Paradise Lost was first published in 1667, Milton’s inspired poetry, with its invocations of the Holy Spirit as its motivating muse –​ especially coming from such an infamous defender of regicide and dissenter from established religion –​would have posed for Restoration readers the question of whether Milton’s enthusiasm was real or whether it was merely rhetorical. The question was not trivial. Was Milton’s inspiration simply a literary conceit, or was it a dangerous claim of divine revelation? Andrew Marvell and John Dryden, among others, were forced to confront this problem in their respective receptions of Milton.62 Milton’s own direct comments on enthusiasm are polemical –​understandably so, as enthusiast, like fanatic, was a derogatory term, not a label with which one identified. Milton only ever uses the term enthusiast (or rather the Latin enthusiasta) in his Defensiones. In the Defensio pro Populo Anglicano he criticizes his opponent, Claudius Salmasius, for judging the principle of popular sovereignty “to be utterly new and merely dreamt up by the deliriums of Enthusiasts [Enthusiastarum].”63 Here Milton clearly wants to rebut the accusation that his political ideas are tainted with enthusiasm: he does not wish for his countrymen to be libeled as “fanatics” (Fanaticos),64 or as John Lilburne translates it, “Fantastic Enthusiasts.”65 62 See Sharon Achinstein, “Milton’s Spectre in the Restoration: Marvell, Dryden, and Literary Enthusiasm,” Huntington Library Quarterly 59.1 (1996), 1–​29 and John West, Dryden and Enthusiasm: Literature, Religion, and Politics in Restoration England (Oxford, 2018), 44–​53 et passim. 63 WJM VII: 186 (novam esse prorsus et Enthusiastarum tantummodo deliriis somniatam). 64 Ibid. 552. 65 John Lilburne, As You Were (Amsterdam, 1652), 16.

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Later in the same work, however, Milton for a moment assumes the role of enthusiast, if only rhetorically: “seeing that we English are so often to you enthusiasts and inspired men and prophets, know, as I am a prophet, that God and men threaten you as avengers for so great a crime.”66 Rather than turn the charge of enthusiasm against his opponent, as he does once in the Defensio Secunda –​castigating a poet who defended Salmasius as one who “does not in fact make verses, but is simply insane, he himself being the most mad of all those enthusiasts whom he so rabidly attacks”67 –​Milton agrees to play the prophet (me vate) so that he can summon God’s wrath polemically against Salmasius. Here it is a polemical ploy, but it calls to mind Milton’s assumption of a prophetic voice already in his early poetry, as in Lycidas,68 and his desire, as expressed in Il Penseroso, to “attain /​To somthing like Prophetic strain” (vv. 173–​74). At times Milton seems somewhat sympathetic toward groups that were often described as enthusiasts, as when he notes in The Reason of Church-​Government that “Primitive Christians in their times were accounted such as are now call’d Familists and Adamites, or worse.”69 He writes derisively in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce of “the sort of men who follow Anabaptism, Famelism, Antinomianism, and other fanatick dreams,”70 but the second edition, issued the following year, adds the parenthetical remark “if we understand them not amisse,” thereby softening the sense and perhaps suggesting some reservation of judgement71 –​though Milton still insists that, if his proposals

66 WJM VII: 360, 362 (quandoquidem Angli Enthusiastae, et Enthei, et Vates toties tibi sumus, me vate scito, Deum tibi atque homines tanti piaculi ultores imminere). 67 WJM VIII: 80 (vero non versos facit, sed plane insanit enthusiatarum omnium quos tam rabide insectatur, ipse amentissimus), adapting Hor. Serm. 2.7.117 (aut insanit homo aut versus facit). 68 See e.g. Joseph Wittreich, “From Pastoral to Prophecy: The Genres of Lycidas,” Milton Studies 13 (1979), 59–​80; John C. Ulreich, “ ‘And by Occasion Fortells’: The Prophetic Voice in Lycidas,” Milton Studies 18 (1983), 3–​23; and Michael Dietz, “ ‘Thus Sang the Uncouth Swain’: Pastoral, Prophecy, and Historicism in Lycidas,” Milton Studies 35 (1997), 42–​72. 69 CPW I: 788. 70 CPW II: 278. Jeffrey Shoulson, “Milton and Enthusiasm: Radical Religion and the Poetics of Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 47 (2008), 219–​57, at 228 finds the passage from which this excerpted to be “strikingly continuous with Casaubon’s or More’s explanation of the fancies of enthusiasts.” 71 CPW II: 278; see ibid. n.2.

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were implemented, “many they shall reclaime from obscure and giddy 72 sects,” the word “giddy” here referring to the divine madness of the enthusiasts.73 By 1660 Milton was using the term fanatic to describe not the sectaries but royalists and supporters of the established church, as for instance when he rebukes Matthew Griffith, former chaplain to Charles I, in his Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon: “you and your Prelatical partie are more truly schismatics and sectarians, nay more properly fanatics in your fanes and guilded temples, then those whom you revile by those names.”74 What is perhaps Milton’s most bold statement on enthusiasm is found in Areopagitica, where Milton deplores the consequence of Parliament’s Licensing Order of 1643 that a book might be prohibited publication due to “one sentence of a ventrous edge, utter’d in the height of zeal, and who knows whether it might not be the dictat of a divine Spirit” –​displaying a remarkably radical openness to the possibility that a contemporary book could be divinely inspired.75 The fact that Milton describes the language of the envisaged book in sublime terms (“ventrous,” “height”) invites us to consider, finally, how the poet’s own rhetorical sublimity relates to the potential charge of enthusiasm in Paradise Lost.76 Just as the Hebrew prophets who achieved the “majestic unaffected style” (PR 4.359) of the Bible were “divinely taught” (PR 4.357), so Milton’s sublime style demands to be understood as the rapturous strain of one inspired by God: as Edward Phillips writes, “the heighth of Poetical

72 CPW II: 355. Noted by David Loewenstein, “Milton among the Religious Radicals and Sects: Polemical Engagements and Silences,” Milton Studies 40 (2001), 222–​47, at 242 n.2. 73 OED s.v. giddy, adj. (“The primary sense thus appears to be ‘possessed by a god, ἔνθεος’ ”). 74 CW VI: 548. See also CW VI: 511, 542. On Milton’s play on words ( fanatics/​fanes) see Neil Keeble and Nicholas McDowell’s note at CW VI: 777 n.96. 75 CPW II: 534. Knott, Sword of the Spirit, 119 cites this as evidence that Milton “believed in the possibility of prophetic utterance,” while Michael Wilding, “Milton’s Areopagitica: Liberty for the Sects,” Prose Studies 9.2 (1986), 7–​38, at 18 comments that Milton “covertly insinuates the subversive alternative of divine inspiration” using language that is “part of the rhetoric of the radical sects.” 76 The connection between sublimity and enthusiasm is observed in passing, though only in relation to Milton’s reception, by Achinstein, “Milton’s Spectre in the Restoration,” 16 and West, Dryden and Enthusiasm, 52.

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rapture” –​ heighth being for Phillips synonymous with sublimity –​“hath 77 ever been accounted little less then Divine Inspiration.”

6. The Danger of Milton’s Sublime Enthusiasm The danger of Milton’s sublime enthusiasm is given vivid expression in the proem to Book 7. The poet opens with the invocation of Urania “whose Voice divine /​Following, above th’ Olympian Hill I soare, /​ Above the flight of Pegasean wing” (PL 7.2–​4). These are familiar terms, looking back to the proem of Book 1, where Milton announces the sublime flight in which he “intends to soar /​Above th’ Aonian Mount” (PL 1.13–​14). The allusion to the winged horse Pegasus (“Pegasean wing”), however, prepares us for an extended simile in which the poet compares himself to Bellerophon, the Greek hero who mounted Pegasus in an attempt to ascend to Olympus, only to be struck down to the earth, where he was left to wander blind for the rest of his days.78 Addressing the muse, Milton writes:    Up led by thee Into the Heav’n of Heav’ns I have presum’d, An Earthlie Guest, and drawn Empyreal Aire, Thy tempring; with like safetie guided down Return me to my Native Element: Least from this flying Steed unrein’d, (as once Bellerophon, though from a lower Clime) Dismounted, on th’ Aleian Field I fall Erroneous there to wander and forlorne. (PL 7.12–​20) The poet registers the anxiety that he has been presumptuous in undertaking his visionary transport to “the Heav’n of Heav’ns” where he has “drawn Empyreal Aire.” There, he recognizes, he is a “Guest” –​a word which may signify that he is one who is welcome, but which may also be understood in the sense of one who is foreign to a place, a stranger, one

77 Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum, sig. *5. 78 Important early sources for the myth, conflated in the mythological tradition, include Hom. Il. 6.155–​210, Hes. Theog. 319–​25, and Pind. Isthm. 44–​47.

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who does not belong (cf. Greek xenos).79 Milton fears that such presumption could bring him to a calamitous fall, indeed one worse than that of Bellerophon, for the Greek hero dropped from “a lower Clime” –​he seeking only to reach Olympus, the poet attempting to soar far beyond. Through the figure of Bellerophon, of a kind with Phaethon and Icarus, Milton imagines the danger of falling that necessarily attends the flight of sublime style, which is, as Longinus reminds us, literally “prone to fall” (episphalē).80 The poet wishes to be “with like safetie guided down” from the sublime height, brought down to his “Native Element” where he no longer risks falling: “Standing on Earth, not rapt above the Pole, /​More safe I Sing with mortal voice” (PL 7.23–​24). Here Milton climbs down not only from his sublime flight, but from his claims of divine inspiration. The verb rapt appears in two other places in the poem, in both instances describing the divine transport of prophets to heaven, Elijah “Rapt in a Chariot drawn by fiery Steeds” (PL 3.522) and Enoch “Rapt in a balmie Cloud with winged Steeds” (PL 11.706).81 Ceasing to be “rapt above the Pole,” that is, sublimely raptured or transported beyond the visible universe, Milton seems to downplay, if not renounce, his own prophetic role. Inhabiting this role, as Milton understood, laid him open to the charge of enthusiasm, and his hesitation is connected with a palpable fear of retribution. Continuing, he urges the muse: But drive farr off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the Race Of that wilde Rout that tore the Thracian Bard In Rhodope, where Woods and Rocks had Eares To rapture, till the savage clamor dround Both Harp and Voice; nor could the Muse defend Her Son. So fail not thou, who thee implores: For thou art Heav’nlie, shee an empty dreame. (PL 7.32–​39) 79 Pace Fallon, Milton’s Peculiar Grace, 226; see OED s.v. guest, n. 2.a. as well as the etymological note. 80 [Longinus] Subl. 33.2. See Colin Burrow, “Combative Criticism: Jonson, Milton, and Classical Literary Criticism in England,” in Glyn P. Norton (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol. III: The Renaissance (Cambridge, 1999), 487–​99, at 496, who notes in passing the Longinian tenor of the passage, as well as Quint, “Fear of Falling,” 875–​76. 81 Noted by Fallon, Milton’s Peculiar Grace, 209–​10. Cf. the use of rapture in CPW I: 752.

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For Milton, the threat of sparagmos, of being rent into pieces like Orpheus, was not just figurative: in the months immediately following the restoration of Charles II there was a real possibility that Milton, the renowned apologist for the Cromwellian regime, would be hanged, drawn, and quartered –​his body mutilated –​for treason against the Crown.82 The riotous Bacchantes that threaten to tear apart the Orphic poet here have long been interpreted as a reference to the carousing Cavaliers of the Restoration court, an identification supported by a parallel in The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth where Milton describes proponents of the restoration as “these tigers of Bacchus, these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating-​tub, inspir’d with nothing holier then the Venereal pox.”83 Indeed, the parallel is, I think, more telling than has been recognized, for in representing the Restoration court as the frenzied sectaries of Bacchus, Milton makes those who mutilate Orpheus into “fanatics,” that is, enthusiasts84 –​adopting the same tactic that we have found in his polemical prose, turning the charge of enthusiasm back against his opponents. That it reappears here, in Paradise Lost, suggests Milton’s awareness that, as an inspired poet who, like Orpheus, has the power to “rapture” his audience with sublime rhetoric, he invites the dangerous charge of enthusiasm, and thereby the doom of dismemberment. In response, he frames his enemies themselves as the real enthusiasts –​“more properly fanatics in your fanes and guilded temples, then those whom you revile by those names.”85

82 See Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Violence (Ithaca, NY, 1994). 83 CW VI: 509–​11. Noted by Thomas Corns, Regaining Paradise Lost (London, 1994), 25. 84 Examples of Bacchantes described in terms of enthusiasm include Thomas Anyan, A Sermon Preached at Saint Marie Spittle (Oxford, 1615), 31 (“enthusiasme of Bacchus”); Henry Hammond, A Paraphrase and Annotations Upon the Books of the Psalms (London, 1659), sig. B1v (“Bacchus’s Enthusiasts”); and Theophilus Gale, The Court of the Gentiles (Oxford, 1669), 289 (“the Dithyrambus, or Song dedicated to Bacchus, was a kind of Enthusiastick Rapture […sung by] persons Ecstatick, or rather phrenetick, and mad”). 85 CW VI: 548.

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7. Conclusion In the Restoration the enthusiasm of the sublime poet, as described by Longinus, could be interpreted as real enthusiasm, as a dangerous claim of inspiration by the Spirit, and could thereby potentially provoke retribution, as evoked in the image of murderous Bacchantes in Paradise Lost. But careful readers like Meric Casaubon understood that Longinus himself, while drawing on the Platonic notion of the poet’s divine madness, “intended it only after a sort, as things may be compared, not really,”86 and indeed that he mocked those who, as the Lansdowne translation reads, “under a fond supposall of their being actuated by some Enthusiastick Spiritt think they speak by inspiration when indeed it is all but a childish Prate and Babble.”87 Milton, whose sublime rhetorical flight, together with his poetic professions of divine inspiration and his radical reputation, made him vulnerable to the charge of enthusiasm, seems to have understood the same: he freely calls upon the Spirit to inspire his poetry, but never in a way that is unequivocally enthusiastic, and he composes his epic in a sublime style, but one that is qualified –​ let us recall Longinus’ use of hōsper and hoionei –​as only “somthing like Prophetic strain” (Il Penseroso vv. 173–​74).88

Selected Bibliography Achinstein, Sharon. “Milton’s Spectre in the Restoration: Marvell, Dryden, and Literary Enthusiasm.” Huntington Library Quarterly 59.1 (1996): 1–​29. Casaubon, Meric. A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme, As it is an Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolical Possession. London, 1655. van Eck, Caroline et al. (eds.). Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Edwards, Karen. “Milton’s Reformed Animals: An Early Modern Bestiary D-​F.” Milton Quarterly 40.2 (2006): 99–​187. 86 Casaubon, A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme, 142. 87 British Library, MS Lansdowne 1045/​73, fol. 167v. 88 Emphasis mine.

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Fallon, Stephen M. Milton’s Peculiar Grace: Self-​Representation and Authority. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. Heyd, Michael. “Be Sober and Reasonable”: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Kerrigan, William. The Prophetic Milton. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974. Killeen, Kevin. “Immethodical, Incoherent, Unadorned: Style and the Early Modern Bible.” In Andrew Hadfield (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500–​1640. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 505–​21. Knott, John R. The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Responses to the Bible. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Knox, Ronald A. Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion with Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950. Lieb, Michael. Milton and the Culture of Violence. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. McDowell, Nicholas. “Refining the Sublime: Edward Phillips, a Miltonic Education and the Sublimity of Paradise Lost.” Milton Studies 61.2 (2019): 239–​60. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 2 vols. Ed. Thomas Newton. London, 1749. –​–​–​–​–​–​. The Poetical Works of John Milton. 3 vols. Ed. David Masson. London, 1874. –​–​–​–​–​–​. The Works of John Milton. 20 vols. Gen. ed. F. A. Patterson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–​1940. –​–​–​–​–​–​. Complete Prose Works of John Milton. 8 vols. Gen. ed. D. M. Wolfe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953–​82. –​–​–​–​–​–​. Paradise Lost. Ed. Barbara Lewalski. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. –​–​–​–​–​–​. The Complete Works of John Milton. Gen. eds. Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009–​. More, Henry. Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, or a Discourse of the Nature, Causes, Kinds, and Cure of Enthusiasme. London, 1656. Poole, William. “Out of His Furrow.” London Review of Books 29.3 (2007): 16–​17.

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Quint, David. “Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius in Paradise Lost.” Renaissance Quarterly 57.3 (2004): 847–​81. Reisner, Noam. “The Prophet’s Conundrum: Poetic Soaring in Milton’s ‘Nativity Ode’ and ‘The Passion.’ ” Philological Quarterly 83.4 (2004): 371–​87. Shoulson, Jeffrey. “Milton and Enthusiasm: Radical Religion and the Poetics of Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 47 (2008): 219–​57. Shuger, Debora. Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Vozar, Thomas. “An English Translation of Longinus in the Lansdowne Collection at the British Library.” The Seventeenth Century 35.5 (2020): 625–​50. West, John. Dryden and Enthusiasm: Literature, Religion, and Politics in Restoration England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Part III Milton’s Prose

“Knots and Twirls”: Conflictual Metaphors in Of Reformation Daniele Borgogni

The article discusses Milton’s politics of religion in his early prose works from the perspective of recent theories of metaphor analysis. Attention will be devoted to his first anti-​prelatical tract, Of Reformation, Milton’s notoriously flamboyant and rough debut in the pamphlet war of the 1640s and 1650s. Its rhetorical intensity and abusive language elicited a mixed critical opinion;1 its arguments, too, have puzzled scholars because they are so intricate as to challenge the reader’s understanding: Don M. Wolfe characteristically described the text in a metaphorical way as a “hard pine log full of knots and unexpected twirls, rarely straight and smooth and easy to follow” (Milton 1953: 108). At the same time, the text features by far the highest proportion in Milton’s prose of “extended-​substitution imagery” ‒ as Corns (1982: 46–​ 47) defines metaphors that extend beyond one element in the grammatical structure ‒ and is full of memorable images and metaphors which make it “luxuriant –​rich in lexical variety and inventiveness and often leisurely in the development of [its] imagery” (Corns 1982: 101). The article will try to highlight some cognitive, imaginative, and affective implications of the tract’s figurative language and their effects on the reader’s hermeneutic answer.

I The cognitive force of figurative language, and metaphors in particular, was clearly underscored by Aristotle. It is highly significant that he developed his theory of metaphor both in his Rhetoric and in his Poetics: this choice itself brings out the complexity of functions and 1 This is particularly true for the often apologetic studies in the second half of the XXth century: see, for example, Kranidas (1965a), Kranidas (1965b), Lieb (1974), Wittreich (1974), Auksi (1977), Kranidas (1982), Kranidas (1983).

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intentions which he associated to metaphors, linking them to persuasion as well as to poetic creation. In Rhetoric, metaphor is strictly connected with “clarity, pleasantness and unfamiliarity” (Aristotle 2004: 334) and is thus fundamental to produce the enjoyable, even witty element of successful communication: “to learn easily is naturally pleasant to all, and words mean something, so that those words that produce knowledge for us are most pleasant. Exotic words are unfamiliar, and pertinent ones we know, and so it is metaphor that particularly has this effect” (Aristotle 2004: 359–​60); in Poetics, on the other hand, metaphor is defined as “applying to something a noun that properly applies to something else” (Aristotle 1996: 34) and is thus valorized for its cognitive impact: “the successful use of metaphor is a matter of perceiving similarities” (Aristotle 1996: 37). Unfortunately, Aristotle’s multifaceted approach, which allowed him to give metaphors a conceptual as well as a communicative reach, was rather curtailed through the centuries and, with few exceptions, scholars progressively diminished the scope of metaphors, transforming them into purely elocutionary tropes. Only in relatively recent times have metaphors been reconsidered in their linguistic, conceptual, and communicative functions: Black’s theory of metaphor (1954), for example, stressed the projective dimension of metaphors (i.e. the dynamic conceptual interaction between their elements) and their importance in creating a cognitive framework which streamlines and selects information, ultimately producing a new representation and interpretation of the world. Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory2 (1980 and 1999), too, demonstrated that metaphorical concepts are the linguistic surface of deeper conceptual structures, called image-​schemata, which give coherence and structure to our experience. They are therefore pervasive in human communication and have great cognitive power because they rely on the correlations we perceive and experience in our lives. In other words, from the perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, 2 The bibliography on Conceptual Metaphor Theory is unmanageably broad. Apart from the classic seminal studies by Ortony (1979), Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999), Lakoff and Turner (1989), the main ideas and theoretical aspects are usefully summarized by Kövecses (2015). Following the widely acknowledged convention adopted in metaphor studies, conceptual metaphors are written in small caps throughout the article.

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metaphors are not intellectual creations but are rooted in human experiences: the force of such metaphorical concepts as life is a journey or argument is war lies exactly in the fact that they guarantee a shared conceptualization of reality, because they are perceived as inherently true and constantly proved in everyday life. Since they locate the very essence of metaphors in collective experiences, cognitivist studies give special emphasis to common metaphorical concepts and thus tend to consider metaphors as instruments to defuse and smooth conceptual conflicts. This means that, if on the one hand they rightly recognize the pervasiveness and “naturalness” of metaphors, on the other they run the risk of downplaying the importance of conceptual creativity. To use Aristotelian terms, many cognitivists can easily account for the epiphoric character of metaphor (i.e. its capacity to combine terms on the basis of rational, explicable similarities and to extend meanings through comparison) but are more hesitant about diaphoric combinations (i.e. original, unexpected, seemingly nonsensical couplings).3 For this reason, this article will also rely upon the model of scholars such as Prandi, whose recent comprehensive study on metaphors and figurative language (2017) revived the Ricœurian concept of “métaphore vive.” In Ricœur’s perspective, the scope of metaphors should not be confined to rhetoric: they start as rhetorical figures in discourse, but progressively produce semantic shifts and eventually acquire a hermeneutic bearing. This means that a metaphor cannot be considered just a trope which underlines unexpected or unknown resemblances, but is a “living” instrument which generates semantic innovation and a new interpretation of reality. From this perspective, metaphorical, hermeneutic, and cognitive discourses are strictly connected: “Metaphor is living by virtue of the fact that it introduces the spark of imagination into a ‘thinking more’ at the conceptual level. This struggle to ‘think more,’ guided by the ‘vivifying principle,’ is the ‘soul’ of interpretation” (Ricœur 2003: 358).

3 The two terms appear in Poetics (1996: 34–​38) but have been used by critics even in recent times: in his well-​k nown study on the relation between language and reality, Wheelright (1973:72) highlighted the unescapable importance of metaphor to tackle the ancient philosophical problem of truth and revived the distinction between “‘epiphor’ and ‘diaphor’ –​the one standing for the outreach and extension of meaning through comparison, the other for the creation of new meaning by juxtaposition and synthesis.”

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Prandi’s theory is obviously linked to Ricœur’s, but it gives more emphasis to the conflictual aspect of metaphors: according to Prandi, all metaphors generate a tense conceptual interaction because they project a concept into an alien domain, but they become truly original and innovative when “the conflict is kept open and valorized as an instrument of […] creation” (Prandi 2017: 94). In this way, they shift the expectations and stimulate the direct involvement of their interpreters, who do not get one meaningful expression but are called to deal with teeming, multiple inferences. The emphasis laid on the hermeneutic response of the reader/​listener is, in fact, the consequence of a structural severance: metaphors stemming from conceptual conflicts are contingent interpretations of individual conflictual expressions which, at the syntactical level, usually present a rather straightforward structure, but at the conceptual level trigger a network of relations that do not match with any consistent and shared conceptual model.4 This, in turn, implies that “a conflict is not a structural property of the expression, but the outcome of a choice made by the interpreter” (Prandi 2017: 42). Moreover, conflictual metaphors show a typical tendency to aggregate in consistent groups, because the more conflictual a single metaphorical concept is, the greater the network of projections it generates: as Prandi (2012: 149) showed, conflictual metaphors “are ready to give birth to more or less dense swarms of interconnected metaphorical expressions”. Conflictual metaphors are, thus, highly productive and usually play a decisive role in reasoning because their prerogative is to connect several concepts in inconsistent or conflictual ways, ultimately favouring a more reflective argumentation and an active hermeneutic action by their interpreters.5 In short, they trigger a tension which involves the total meaning of a phrase or a sentence; they valorize the interplay of a 4

An inconsistent sentence “violates no formal distributional restriction. On the contrary, it is precisely its formal scaffolding, which is insensitive to the pressure of the connected concepts, that gives a sentence the strength to put together atomic concepts in a creative way” Prandi (2017: 56). Carston (2002 and 2010), among others, stressed the local, pragmatic adjustment of the encoded lexical meaning in metaphors, resulting in an “ad hoc” concept. 5 After all, as Ricœur reminds us, the “tendency towards further development distinguishes metaphor from the other tropes, which are exhausted in their immediate expression” (Ricœur 2003: 224). Carston (2010: 299) duly reminded us that “Grice, Searle and Sperber-​Wilson … all acknowledge the rich open-​endedness of

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term and its context, stressing the absurdity or incongruence of a literal interpretation; they deepen conceptual thought by inducing people to “think more”. Conflictual metaphors also stand out for their capacity to fuse the cognitive, imaginative, and affective aspects of language.6 Their relevance depends on the extension of knowledge they engender, which usually means destroying language in its referential dimension in order to open it to new, unconventional truths. This tensional and quintessentially dissociative quality of metaphors forces language to go beyond itself: the productive and projective nature of original metaphors borders on intuitive understanding and involves interpreters in a construction of literary experience which eventually conveys a “poetic feeling” which, as Ricœur maintains, “in its metaphorical expressions bespeaks the lack of distinction between interior and exterior” (Ricœur 2003: 291).7 Conflictual metaphors additionally stimulate an affective assent because they valorize what cannot be reduced to purely rational formulas. They arouse our affective resources, beliefs, and desires, turning into poetic devices which express “a truth whose habit is less to proclaim itself than to invoke in its reader affective assent” (Cable 1995: 30). As such, they displace lexical meanings and shake our intellectual and emotional self-​ complacency. Obviously, the emotional processes triggered by metaphors have a strong evaluative dimension, since they assign a positive or negative marking to objects or events. However, they are also closely linked to cognitive attitudes: the attention to the cognitive repercussions of emotional responses, developed within the framework of embodied cognition, have influenced the understanding of the nature of reasoning and

metaphoric interpretation, the indeterminacy of the speaker’s intention in this connection and the indefinite range of the implications that might be recovered.” As Ricœur wrote: “If metaphor adds nothing to the description of the world, at least it adds to the ways in which we perceive; and this is the poetic function of metaphor. This still rests upon resemblance, but at the level of feelings. […] In its poetic function, therefore, metaphor extends the power of double meaning from the cognitive realm to the affective” (Ricœur 2003: 224). 7 Stambovsky (1988: 103) doubles down Ricœur’ ideas when he claims that “metaphor is the principal epistemic means by which we transform the experience of what we do – which in literary reading involves going beyond ourselves – into that of what we are.” 6

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communication in discourse at all levels.8 Many critics have insisted that different emotions inevitably affect judgement and decision-​making: for example, Marcus, Neuman and Mackuen’s studies on Affective Intelligence (2000) tried to integrate emotions and rationality by identifying specific deliberative or argumentative roles for distinct emotions.9 The creative force of metaphors and emotions has also been highlighted by the argumentative theory of reasoning proposed by Mercier and Sperber (2017). The relationship between intuitive and rational processes presupposed within this theory was extended to moral and political domains, allowing the authors to conclude that argumentation and emotional processing are highly integrated in human societies. Moreover, they also established that our confirmation biases –​our tendency to stick to our opinions and find reasons supporting our initial choices –​are not caused by a temporary failure of our rational qualities but by an innate emotional predisposition to sociality. Sloman and Fernbach (2017), too, underscored the importance of the social element in human relationships, demonstrating that we often think we rationally developed our personal opinions without realizing that in fact they come from other people’s ideas. These perspectives have had a major impact on the analysis of inconsistencies of reasoning, which are less puzzling when analysed in social dynamics, but they have also highlighted an interesting feature of metaphors: the new meanings produced by a conflictual metaphor may be unexpected, bewildering or counterintuitive, but interpreters instinctively tend to endow them with truth-​conditions as if they inherently bore the writer’s implicit viewpoints. According to experimental data, this happens because the argumentative force of such metaphors is more easily accepted due to their creative power, which strikes the interpreters’ imagination, influences their overall comprehension and ultimately produces a persuasive argumentation. The importance of this imaginative dimension of metaphors cannot be overstated: Carston (2010) stressed the importance of the evocative power of images for metaphor understanding, because it is part of a 8 On these aspects see Evans and Frankish (2009). 9 For example, emotions such as anger, disgust, enthusiasm and aversion seem to be correlated with people’s preference for a selective exposure to information and induce people to have a defensive reaction and search for information to support their prior beliefs. On these aspects see also Marcus (2002).

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global pragmatic process resulting in a range of communicated affective 10 and imagistic effects. In other words, metaphors not only do not convey meanings directly, but characteristically imply them through images. In sum, conflictual metaphors, thanks to their tensional character which favours imagistic effects and the fusion of cognitive, imaginative, and affective aspects, ultimately engender a more reflective argumentation and, more importantly, boost the reader’s hermeneutic role.

II Milton’s heavy reliance on metaphorical and figurative language in Of Reformation has long been underscored, also in its emotional implications. Corns (1982: 17) noticed that “in the earlier pamphlets it seems a Miltonic habit of thought to consider style and verbal complexes as though they were animate” while Cable (1995) insisted on the sensory and affective aspect of Milton’s “carnal” rhetoric in the anti-​prelatical tracts. The imagistic effect of metaphors, too, has been noted as one of the most evident features of Of Reformation: Emerson (Milton 1967: 38) described its prose as characterized by “striking images; concise, powerful, often highly sensuous phrases”; Kranidas (1982: 508) maintained that “The sustained organicism of the imagery, demonstrates powerfully that Milton’s ideas work in and as images, that their intellectual effect is always something more than logical”; Cable (1995: 54), too, argued that Milton’s temporal world has details that are “abundant but unmemorable. The language of Milton’s metaphoric moral realm, on the other hand, produces images that are unforgettable.”11 Such opinions confirm that the great quantity and variety of figurative language in the tract is not necessarily a proof of Milton’s lack of argumentative logic and rational arguments, as some critics dismissively concluded. In the light of the metaphor theories discussed above, Of 10 As she claims, “what a metaphor does is bring to our attention aspects of the topic that we might not otherwise notice, by provoking us or nudging us to ‘see’ the topic in a new or unusual way. Rather than communicating a cognitive content, a metaphor evokes certain responses, in particular, mental images” (Carston 2010: 298). On these aspects see also Carston and Wearing (2011) and Carston (2018). 11 Verbal representation of course interests also the construction of an image of the writer, as Corns (1986), Teller (2010), Egan (2001) and Skerpan-​W heeler (2016) pointed out.

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Reformation can be considered an attempt to give a different vision of what is cognitively valid as argument, imposing a contingent interpretative process, in which the inferential content is activated by open-​ended projections and transfers in the hope of influencing the reader’s vision and interpretation of the world. Milton begins his tract with a breathtaking passage, which deserves to be quoted in full: Sir, Amidst those deep and retired thoughts, which, with every man Christianly instructed, ought to be most frequent, of God and of his miraculous ways and works amongst men, and of our Religion and Worship, to be perform’d to him; after the story of our Saviour Christ, suffering to the lowest bent of weaknesse, in the Flesh, and presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory in the Spirit, which drew up his body also; till we in both be united to him in the Revelation of his Kingdome: I do not know of any thing more worthy to take up the whole passion of pitty on the one side, and joy on the other: then to consider first the foule and sudden corruption, and then, after many a tedious age, the long-​deferr’d, but much more wonderfull and happy reformation of the Church in these latter dayes. Sad it is to thinke how that Doctrine of the Gospel, planted by teachers Divinely inspir’d, and by them winnow’d, and sifted from the chaffe of overdated Ceremonies, and refined to such a Spiritual height, and temper of purity, and knowledge of the Creator, that the body, with all the circumstances of time and place, were purifi’d by the affections of the regenerat Soule, and nothing left impure but sinne; Faith needing not the weak, and fallible office of the Senses, to be either the Ushers, or Interpreters of heavenly Mysteries, save where our Lord himselfe in his Sacraments ordain’d; that such a Doctrine should, through the grossnesse, and blindnesse, of her Professors, and the fraud of deceivable traditions, drag so downwards, as to backslide one way into the Jewish beggary, of old cast rudiments, and stumble forward another way into the new-​vomited Paganisme of sensuall Idolatry, attributing purity, or impurity, to things indifferent, that they might bring the inward acts of the Spirit to the outward, and customary ey-​Service of the body, as if they could make God earthly, and fleshly, because they could not make themselves heavenly and Spirituall; they began to draw down all the Divine intercourse, betwixt God and the Soule, yea, the very shape of God himself, into an exterior, and bodily forme, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joyning the body in a formall reverence, and Worship circumscrib’d; they hallow’d it, they fum’d it, they sprincl’d it, they be deck’t it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure Linnen, with other deformed and fantastick dresses, in Palls, and Miters, gold and guegaw’s fetcht from Arons old wardrope, or the Flamins vestry: then was the Priest set to con

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his motions and his Postures, his Liturgies and his Lurries, till the Soul by this meanes of over bodying her selfe, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downeward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous collegue the body, in performance of Religious duties, her pineons now broken, and flagging, shifted off from her selfe the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droyling carcas to plod on in the old rode, and drudging Trade of outward conformity. (Milton 1953 –​henceforth CPW I: 519–​22).

Editors Wolfe and Alfred duly highlighted the richness of the opening sentence, its “ascendant parallel metaphor” which draws a parallel between the Church and Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, and the fact that “the metaphors used when Episcopacy is treated tend to be metaphors of nausea, disease, and deformity” (CPW I: 519 note 1). The opening lines of the text, however, feature a figural complexity which goes well beyond these general observations. Milton significantly opens his tract with an allusion to Christ’s incarnation, a paradox not only from a religious point of view, but also from the perspective of conceptual metaphors: the basic, widely established metaphorical concept low is bad (vs. high is good) is blatantly denied by the fact that Christ’s kenosis, and the consequent acceptance of “suffering to the lowest bent of weaknesse, in the Flesh,” was in fact the most radically positive act which allowed him to be exalted and “presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory, in the Spirit, which drew up his body also, till we in both be united to him in the Revelation of his Kingdome”. Christ’s example is noteworthy because his “descent” into emptiness was absolute and complete, and thus he was able to ascend to heavenly honours (clearly a positive upward movement, as confirmed by the density of such terms as “triumph,” “highest,” “glory,” “drew up”). In other words, the Incarnation undermined the shared traditional idea that low is bad and proved that a thorough lowering is the precondition for glorious exaltation. Unfortunately, Christ’s prototype does not find adequate imitation on man’s part: originally, the true doctrine of the Gospel was “refined to such a Spiritual height, and temper of purity,” because it was “purified by the affections of the soul,” free from “the fallible office of the senses”; now, however, that doctrine is corrupted by those who unworthily profess it and is dragged downwards by deceiving traditions. Notably, the main cause of this downward, backsliding movement is its inherent bond with the sensual idolatry of outward appearance: the appeal to “the outward, and customary ey-​Service of the body,” which is in fact an

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attempt to take God down to earth instead of aiming high at heaven and spiritual things. This association is explicitly repeated shortly after, when the deadly force of exterior forms induces the soul to bate “her wing apace downeward,” to shun “the labour of high soaring” until it “forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droyling carcas to plod on in the old rode, and drudging Trade of outward conformity”. The beginning of the tract, then, draws a radical dividing line at figural level: Christs’ example is extolled resorting to a conflictual image which destabilizes and recontextualizes the traditional conceptual metaphor low is bad. On the contrary, mankind (of which contemporary England is a chief emblem with its delayed reformation of the Church) is in a despairing condition because it did not accept the idea of a radical emptying out. As a consequence, man is condemned to live in a society which will forever maintain granted, commonsensical concepts such as low is bad: in a fallen world, low is really negative, because it has been inextricably attached to outward appearance which dragged it down and prevented people from going beyond standard, received notions. In this way, Milton is able to exploit the force of figurative language to achieve several goals at the same time: he invites the reader to see things differently by juxtaposing an unexpected but positive metaphorical concept against a forthright but negative one; he criticizes the office of the senses as a hindrance to faith; he demonstrates the harmful affinity of two established conceptual metaphors (low is bad and outward is bad); more importantly, he shows that universally accepted paradigms derive, in fact, from the corruption of a perfect model which relied on a completely different image-​schema. From its outset, thus, the tract imposes on the reader a precarious view of entrenched metaphorical concepts and the possibility of interpreting them in different, even opposite, ways, a feature which Kranidas (1982: 500) highlighted when he claimed that in the tract “Polarities are everywhere”. This means that acknowledged metaphorical concepts are not systematically dismissed as useless or ineffectual per se: for example, a conceptual metaphor such as exteriority is falsehood recurs throughout the tract and produces different metaphorical images which are not particularly original (most of them exploit well-​k nown biblical images), but maintain an undeniable argumentative force.12 However, the most 12 For example, the “upper skin” which hardens “into a crust of Formallitie” (CPW I: 522), or the prelates’ tendency to “hide their Slavish approach […] by cloaking

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important and controversial claims in the text are usually accompanied and/​or conveyed by more original and conflictual metaphors. In the first pages, for instance, Milton proposes a definition of church discipline and then denounces its absence in the Church of England: … albeit in purity of Doctrine we agree with our Brethren; yet in Discipline, which is the execution and applying of Doctrine home, and laying the salve to the very Orifice of the wound; yea tenting and searching to the Core, without which Pulpit Preaching is but shooting at Rovers; in this we are no better then a Schisme, from all the Reformation, and a sore scandall to them (CPW I: 526).

While church discipline is characterized by a metaphorical swarm revolving around the conflictual metaphor of the examined and cured wound (thus relying on such conceptual metaphors as the English are wounded and church discipline is a salve), pulpit preaching is unexpectedly projected onto the image of shooting at random, which has nothing to do with the preceding curative image but rather, and quite interestingly, suggests a possible cause of that wound. This combination of a tenor coherent with the ongoing text and an inconsistent focus puts the pressure onto the tenor itself, with a negative backfiring effect on pulpit preaching. The accusation is not explicit, of course, but the presence of an unexpected projection alerts the reader to the presence of a conflictual metaphorical concept which requires his active hermeneutic action.13 In other words, from the beginning the text makes the most of the fact that the meaning of a metaphor, as Fludernik (2010: 7) points out, “does not need to be spelled out, since it is left open … and what the results of this projection will be remains negotiable.” The disrupting force of the preceding passage in Of Reformation is further demonstrated by the fact that from this moment on a series of diaphoras start to feature prominently and incessantly in the text, either

their Servile crouching to all Religious Presentments” (CPW I: 522) and to put “the plaine and homespun verity of Christs Gospell […] into better clothes; her chast and modest vaile surrounded with celestiall beames they overlai’d with wanton tresses, and in a flaring tire bespecckl’d her with all the gaudy allurements of a Whore.” (CPW I: 557). 13 This happens because the invited option (a consistent relation) appears untenable and so the activation of an admitted option (a conflictual interpretation) becomes necessary. On the difference between invited and admitted options see Geis-​Zwicky (1971).

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explicitly or implicitly.14 For example, when Milton considers “Ministers to be no Ministers” and “Church to be no Church” (CPW I: 526), the simple repetition of the same words allows him to suggest a radical difference in their meanings, strongly implying a discrepancy between names and essence: some people bear the title of ministers, or some institutions bear the name of Church, but that title does not correspond to any real ministerial conduct and role in them, and thus their authority is nullified. In this way, Milton is able to intensify the vehemence of his denunciation and get the reader to appreciate the inherently harmful nature of ceremonies which are no ceremonies but a “mist” or an “Enterlude” (CPW I: 526–​27), of martyrs who are not inherently true witnesses (CPW I: 533), of bishops who are no bishops (CPW I: 537–​38). So upended and debased is the state of religious affairs in England that Milton can even claim that his insults are no insults but a “mere necessity” (CPW I: 535). The same happens at the figurative level, by exposing the potentially negative implications of traditional, entrenched images: when Rome is described as the “womb and center of Apostacy” (CPW I: 547) the metaphor is enriched by a revitalized expression and image, Rome as the mother and cradle of Christianity, which is then turned upside down at a symbolical level. As a consequence, the initial, non-​conflictual image of Rome as mother is problematized by its vivid representation as a degenerate human being and attached to a series of projections that construct a network of inconsistent metaphorical expressions. So, the table of communion becomes a fortified “Table of separation,” the sacramental bread is handled like a “Tavern Bisket,” people are “vilifi’d and rejected,” and the Prelates become strange human beings with a “many-​benefice-​ gaping mouth” who delight in “canary-​sucking with their swan-​eating palat” (CPW: 547–​49). In this way, the subsidiary subject –​in this case womb − becomes relevant at textual level, puts pressure on the tenor, challenging and reshaping its conceptual profile, and leads to different conclusions, as is typical of conflictual metaphors: an objective, explicit argument which 14 Diaphora is a figure of repetition, similar to antanaclasis, which produces a change in the meaning of common names (and not proper names as in ploce) through their repetition. The same word, in this way, performs two logical functions, or alternately designates an individual and his qualities connoted by that individual’s name or title.

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demonstrates the corruption of the Church of Rome is welded to an affective one which denounces the corruption of the Church of England and its absurd claim to be considered the true heir of the original Church. Obviously, this rhetorical strategy hides the debatable character of Milton’s opinions, since the provocative ideas put forward in the text are not rationally justified.15 Nevertheless, Milton’s views appear acceptable because they are selectively presented resorting to living, original metaphors. The use of this rhetorical strategy based on conflictual metaphors seems to indicate a clear argumentative intention, despite the fact that most critics maintained that Milton’s tract featured a prominent confirmation bias and was written for people who did not need convincing. More importantly, the emotions triggered by the text do not induce readers to have a defensive reaction and just look for the confirmation of their prior beliefs, but to be open to an explorative search for information and to a figurative language which requires the adoption of a different point of view. After this series of warnings and denunciations, at the very heart of the tract, Milton declares that: The very essence of Truth is plainnesse, and brightnes; the darknes and crookednesse is our own. … If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glisterings, what is that to Truth? If we will but purge with sovrain eyesalve that intellectual ray which God hath planted in us, then we would beleeve the Scriptures protesting their own plainnes, and perspicuity, calling to them to be instructed, not only the wise, and learned, but the simple, the poor, the babes, foretelling an extraordinary effusion of Gods Spirit upon every age, and sexe, attributing to all men, and requiring from them the ability of searching, trying, examining all things, and by the Spirit discerning that which is good (CPW I: 566).

15 Teller (2010: 123) claimed that Of Reformation’s rhetorical consistency “depends not on a rational argument, but on Milton’s belief that his texts … embody God’s voice.” Kranidas (1965a), Auksi (1977) and Cable (1995) demonstrated that Milton was working within a well-​established tradition of slandering which implied scurrility and obscene imagery. After all, the confessional struggles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced an incredible amount of violent polemical tracts in all Europe, as witnessed by the recent exhibition in York “The Art of Disagreeing Badly: Religious Dispute in Early Modern Europe” (2016).

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The metaphorical concept truth is brightness is quite conventional and, unsurprisingly, a little later the writer celebrates the piercing effect of the Word of God, asking why Ministers don’t just follow the Gospel and keep it as a dazzling mirror to purge their misty eyeballs “Wherfore should they not urge only the Gospel, and hold it ever in their faces like a mirror of Diamond, till it dazle, and pierce their misty ey balls?” (CPW I: 569–​70) Here, however, the conceptual metaphor truth is brightness is opposed to the conceptual metaphor ignorance is a film which, in turn, is unexpectedly associated with the similarly blinding effects of false glitter. In other words, while later, light and brightness are predictably commended for their positive effects, here they are presented in their negative effects, which must be countered by the purging, soothing qualities of an eye salve. In this case, then, the restoration of the full function of the rational faculties cannot be achieved by an assertive, “enlightened” rhetoric, but by a mitigating instrument. So, the conflictual metaphor of the salve, which at the beginning of the tract was associated to church discipline, is now used again but its implications are greater and less definite: it can be another allusion to church discipline, but it can also be a warning against an overzealous pursuit of rhetorical clarity and moral “light,” or even a metatextual reference to Milton’s text itself, which is inviting its readers to search, try and examine all things, because men are surrounded by darkness. Moreover, since an excessive light can be dazzling, it is necessary to have the right salve to preserve the physical as well as symbolical faculty of sight. Particularly important, in any case, is the fact that a concrete thing (church discipline or whatever it can allude to) has the consequence of restoring the divine “intellectual ray” benumbed by Prelates. And when, near the end of the tract, there is one last reference to a wound: They pray us that it would please us to let them still hale us, and worrey us with their band-​dogs, and Pursivants; and that it would please the Parliament that they may yet have the whipping, fleecing, and fleaing of us in their diabolical Courts to tear the flesh from our bones, and into our wide wounds instead of balm, to power in the oil of Tartar, vitriol, and mercury (CPW I: 612).

Again, the exact reference of the balm is left open to the reader’s speculation. in this case: surely the Prelates who caused the “wide wounds” cure

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them in the opposite way than the tenting, and curing mentioned at the beginning of the tract. This complex interplay of figurative language, which Greteman (2000: 399) described as “the mixed and heterogeneous mode of Milton’s imagery,” revolves around the overarching image of the salve /​balm to soothe a wound and produces new, contingent interpretations of the metaphorical concept exteriority is falsehood, but also of other, more conventional ones such as truth is brightness. The use of metaphors, then, is not a decorative choice but a necessity, because their projective, tensional character allows the writer to call into question entrenched privileges and misconducts but also entrenched concepts, confirming the strong link the tract has created between the figurative level and the political and religious level. This radical questioning involves anything, as is demonstrated by the final part of Book I, which features an incredible sequence of conflictual metaphors: … the chase is too hot; they seek the dark, the bushie, the tangled Forrest, they would imbosk: they feel themselvs strook in the transparent streams of divine Truth, they would plunge, and tumble, and thinke to ly hid in the foul weeds, and muddy waters, where no plummet can reach the bottome. But let them beat themselvs like Whales, and spend their oyl till they be dradg’d ashoar: though wherfore should the Ministers give them so much line for shifts, and delays? Wherfore should they not urge only the Gospel, and hold it ever in their faces like a mirror of Diamond, till it dazle, and pierce their misty ey balls? (CPW I: 569–​70)

Interestingly, however, if the projections of these conflictual metaphorical images are left open to inferential interpretation of the reader, this does not mean that the text is clear and unambiguous, rather it capitalizes on its approximation. Particularly interesting, for example, is the inconsistent metaphorical concept muddy waters are unfathomable: muddy waters are not necessarily deep, so further meanings are obviously projected on the plummet and the lack of a bottom, leaving them open to interpretation. Once again, the lack of conceptual consistency has an undeniable imagistic appeal which is highly evocative and convincing, though not on a rational, logical plane. Milton even exposes the possible drawbacks of his own text: when he admits he produced “a paroxysm of citations” (CPW: 566) he demonstrates he is perfectly aware that people can selectively pick data and

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come to whatever conclusion they desire. From a stylistic point of view, as well, his own tract ran the risk of conforming to a negative model of rhetorical excess: when the author mentions … the knotty Africanisms, the pamper’d metafors; the intricat, and involv’d sentences of the Fathers; besides the fantastick, and declamatory flashes; the crosse-​jingling periods which cannot but disturb, and come thwart a setl’d devotion worse then the din of bells, and rattles (CPW I: 568).

it is difficult not to level the same charges against Of Reformation itself and its idiosyncratic style.16 Moreover, Milton seems aware that his “vehement expressions” (CPW I: 535), his sardonic language and his affective appeal were or could be used to support opposite opinions17 and might easily be turned against him. The mix of factual and affective arguments and the use of conflictual images can be regarded as an attempt to avoid this danger: metaphors, with their relational nature, become the basis of an argument that relies on both reason and emotion, as if Milton were trying to carve himself a niche in a sort of post-​truth world in which he felt “both the need for and the danger of verbal exchange” (Skerpan-​W heeler 2016: 293) and where the appeal to emotions and personal beliefs was more and more exploited in shaping public opinion. Metaphor, from this perspective, could become a privileged instrument because its affective dimension might be supplemented with a deliberate, though morally thorny, attempt to do what was right to do: “of meere necessity, to vindicate the spotlesse Truth from an ignominious bondage” (CPW I: 535). All this questions the idea that Of Reformation “is an unfree text … organized as to prohibit questioning and exploration of alternatives, and it demands of them an unqualified assent to its conclusions” (Corns 16 According to Corns’s data (1982: 40), Of Reformation (together with An Apology) has the highest number of subordinate clauses supporting three or more subordinate clauses. The same is true for the number of images per thousand words of text (in this case only Animadversions has a higher incidence; 1982: 45). 17 Just to make two obvious examples: John Foxe (1563) had given particular emotive emphasis to the martyrdom of Protestant reformers, stressed the historical precedent for royal authority over the church, and ironically described the abuses of the clergy and papacy. The royalist Thomas Fuller (1655) included many satirical considerations and stories denouncing the abuses of monks only to support the king’s power to rule over the church and confirm his absolute prerogative as to church reformation, dismissing the role of radical reformers.

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1986: 95), or that Milton wanted to convey “a truth whose habit is less to proclaim itself than to invoke in its reader affective assent” (Cable 1995: 30), or that the tract has an “exclusively emotional orientation” and is full of “sentimental panegyrics to the Reformation” (Stavely 1975: 28). Milton’s visionary conception of history and his “vindication of truth” led him to be harsh against popery as he was against lukewarm English Protestants whose sin was even greater because they in a way opposed the Reformation or prevented its full blooming in England. At the same time, his tract relies on conflictual metaphors and metaphorical swarms to stimulate an imaginative vision in which concepts and images are inseparably welded together. So metaphors in Of Reformation do not only buttress self-​authentication (or defamation), but open up new possibilities of signifying, and offer the opportunity of expressing religious ideas and ideological views in a different way, overcoming the typical problems of ambiguity which affected apocalyptic writing by reinterpreting stock images and epithets, and transforming them into original images. The shocking metaphors of Of Reformation do not just elicit the reader’s affective assent, nor are they a way of “manipulating and exacerbating the zealous emotions of the faithful” as Stavely (1975: 27) maintains, but are part of a complex, and sometimes self-​consuming, strategy with paramount, though unpredictable, cognitive bearings: as Ricœur avers, “If metaphor adds nothing to the description of the world, at least it adds to the ways in which we perceive” (Ricœur 2003: 224).

III In conclusion, Of Reformation is an interesting case study to discuss the scope and function of metaphors in a historical period which was so polarized and ideologically rife with linguistic and hermeneutic issues. Together with the affective element duly underscored by Cable and others, the analysis of conflicting metaphors and metaphorical swarms as imagistic elements in Of Reformation confirms the vision of “a Milton for whom the whole enterprise of knowledge-​making was a collaborative process, an insight that challenges the conventional view of Milton as the epitome of the individualistic, independent author” (Skerpan-​W heeler 2016: 292), as well as Mueller’s idea that Milton’s apocalyptic strain

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imposed a reformation of his readers by fusing together concepts and 18 images at a metaphorical level. Milton’s use of living, conflictual metaphors also sheds light on the relation between his creativity and his ideological violence. Milton seems fully aware that persuasion does not necessarily come from a rational argument because emotions have a clearer cognitive value and can produce a stronger cognitive bias. His use of abusive words is then justified as a mere necessity to fuse cognitive understanding and bodily understanding. In effect, the tract presents its arguments sometimes rationally, sometimes affectively, sometimes even fallaciously, so that readers realize that the conceptual structure of reality is in fact determined by the molding power of complex linguistic expressions and by the radical ambivalence of images, objects, and visual representations. But, far from just trying to shock his readers or stirring their passions, “Milton’s text has the effect of broadening readers’ generic awareness” (Teller 2010: 128), thus producing a sort of basic theory of mind: in appealing to the beliefs and desires of his readers, Milton implicitly exalts their capacities as intentional agents to refine or even change their beliefs about their desires. He also hopes to have an impact on their cognitive abilities, so they can go from a naïve reading of reality in its appearance to a more critical, “opaque” reading which distinguishes between what is true, what people are induced to believe as true, and what people should do because it is right to do. The sheer number and density of Milton’s conflictual metaphors is particularly interesting because they draw attention to themselves as self-​ referential instruments to underscore the fact that the particular historical situation of Milton’s time, the whole anti-​prelatical diatribe and even the polemic force of the various pamphlets for or against episcopacy in England must be read metaphorically as having a tensional, projective nature. So paradoxically Milton’s violent rhetoric is not a way to convince people emotionally but to make them realize rationally the dangers of a purely emotive answer. Of Reformation stimulates readers’ strong feelings and mixes rational and affective aspects to strengthen their interpretive spirit as Greteman (2000: 414) states: 18 Mueller (1991: 30) even claimed that Milton arrived “at a position beyond Calvin’s in imputing to human agency a role in bringing about the Second Coming”.

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One important element of Milton’s metaphors and all proper or live metaphors, in that context, is not just their ability to engage the reader and create the imaginative space that Ricoeur has described, but also their specific ability to obtain the reader’s consent, his attempt to fashion a language that does not bind the individual’s interpretive spirit, but frees it, through correct and even proportion, to interpret wisely and in accordance with reason. In recent years, critics have often downplayed this rationalist, and hence supposedly conservative, aspect of Milton’s work.

Milton is not afraid of exposing the limits of his tract –​the possible fallacies in his reasoning, the uselessness of orderly historical accounts, the risks of producing a paroxysm of quotations or a convoluted language. Conflictual metaphors are thus exploited in the text to let readers perceive, affectively and visually, the risks inherent in the use of entrenched images, and the fact that language is so slippery and the object of ideological misappropriations means that anything can be easily perverted and transformed into its opposite. In this way, Milton can effectively reverse the usual path: he does not go from the so called thinking metaphors (I think as you do) to feeling metaphors (I feel the way you do), but the opposite direction, from encouraging an affective assent (feel the way I do against prelacy) to producing rational conviction in his audience in the hope of making “travellers” of his readers and warning them to follow the ideals of moral, learning and eloquence instead of inflammatory demagogues. As Corns (1982) convincingly claimed, Milton’s later pamphlets are somewhat different from earlier ones as to the use and reach of figurative language, so it would be interesting to see if the theoretical approach and the recent theories on figurative language presented in this article could be applied to all the prose tracts. Certainly, they seem to provide a useful set of theoretical tools to account for the apparently impetuous and dissonant character of the earlier tracts and fully appreciate their cognitive and ideological implications.

Select Bibliography Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric (translated with an introduction and notes by H. C. Lawson Tancred), London: Penguin, 2004. Aristotle, Poetics (translated with an introduction and notes by M. Heath), London: Penguin, 1996.

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Auksi, Peter. “Milton’s ‘Sanctifi’d Bitternesse’: Polemical Technique in the Early Prose.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 19 (1977): 363–​81. Black, Max. “Metaphor.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55 (1954): 273–​94, reprinted in Max Black, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962. Cable, Lana. Carnal Rhetoric: Milton’s Iconoclasm and the Poetics of Desire, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. Carston, Robyn. Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Carston, Robyn. “Metaphor: Ad Hoc Concepts, Literal Meaning and Mental Images.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110:3 (2010): 295–​321. Carston, Robyn. “Figurative language, mental imagery, and pragmatics.” Metaphor and Symbol 33 (2018): 198–​217. Carston, Robyn, and Catherine Wearing. “Metaphor, Hyperbole and Simile: A Pragmatic Approach.” Language and Cognition 2 (2011): 283–​312. Corns, Thomas. N. The Development of Milton’s Prose Style, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Corns, Thomas N. “The Freedom of Reader-​Response: Milton’s Of Reformation and Lilburne’s The Christian Mans Triall”, in R.C. Richardson and G.M. Ridden (eds.), Freedom and the English Revolution: Essays in History and Literature, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986: 93–​110. Egan, James. “ ‘As His Own Rhetorick Shall Persuade Him’: Refutation and Aesthetic Self-​Construction in Milton’s Antiprelatical Tracts.” Prose Studies 24.2 (2001): 41–​64. Ervas, Francesca, Elisabetta Gola, and Maria Grazia Rossi (eds.). Metaphor in Communication, Science and Education, Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 2017. Evans, Jonathan and Keith Frankish. In Two Minds. Dual Processes and Beyond, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Fludernik, Monika. “Naturalizing the Unnatural: A View from Blending Theory.” Journal of Literary Semantics 39.1 (2010): 1–​27. Foxe, John. The First Volume of the Ecclesiasticall History Contaynyng the Actes and Monumentes of Thynges Passed in Euery Kynges Tyme in this Realme …, London, 1563. Fuller, Thomas. The Church-​history of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year 1648, London, 1655.

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Geis, Michael and Arnold M. Zwicky. “On invited inferences.” Linguistic Inquiry 2 (1971): 561–​66. Greteman, Blaine. “ ‘Exactest Proportion’: The Iconoclastic and Constitutive Powers of Metaphor in Milton’s Prose Tracts.” English Literary History 76.2 (2009): 399–​417. Kövecses, Zoltán. Where Metaphors Come From. Reconsidering Context in Metaphor, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Kranidas, Thomas. “ ‘Decorum’ and the Style of Milton’s Antiprelatical Tracts.” Studies in Philology 62 (1965a): 176–​87. Kranidas, Thomas. “Milton and the Rhetoric of Zeal.” Texas Studies in ­Literature and Language 6 (1965b): 423–​32. Kranidas, Thomas. “Milton’s Of Reformation: The Politics of Vision.” English Literary History 49.2 (1982): 497–​513. Kranidas, Thomas. “Style and Rectitude in Seventeenth-​ Century Prose: Hall, Smectymnuus, and Milton.” Huntington Library Quarterly 46 (1983): 237–​69. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. More than Cool Reason. A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books, 1999. Lieb, Michael. “Milton’s Of Reformation and the Dynamics of Controversy,” in Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross (eds.). Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John Milton, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974: 55–​82. Marcus, George E. The Sentimental Citizen. Emotion in Democratic Politics, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Marcus, George E., W. Russel Neuman, and Michael MacKuen. Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment, Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Mercier, Hugo and Daniel Sperber. The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Milton, John. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume I, 1624–​1642, Don M. Wolfe (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.

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Milton, John. The Prose of John Milton, J. Max Patrick (ed.), New York: Anchor Books, 1967. Mueller, Janel. “Embodying Glory: The Apocalyptic Strain in Milton’s Of Reformation,” in David Loewenstein and James G. Turner (eds.), Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990: 9–​40. Ortony, Andrew (ed.). Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Prandi Michele. “A Plea for Living Metaphors: Conflictual Metaphors and Metaphorical Swarms.” Metaphor and Symbol 27.2 (2012): 148–​70. Prandi, Michele. Conceptual Conflict in Metaphors and Figurative Language, New York and London: Routledge, 2017. Ricœur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor. The Creation of Meaning in Language, Routledge: London and New York, 2003. Skerpan-​W heeler, Elizabeth. “Early Political Prose,” in Thomas N. Corns (ed.), A New Companion to Milton, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2016: 291–​ 307. Sloman, Steven and Philip Fernbach. The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, New York: Riverhead Books, 2017. Stambovsky, Phillip. The Depictive Image. Metaphor and Literary Experience, Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Stavely, Keith W. The Politics of Milton’s Prose Style, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975. Teller, Joseph. “Bodying Truth: Mediation, Prophecy, and Sacrament in Milton’s Early Prose.” Prose Studies 32.2 (2010): 122–​33. Wittreich, Joseph Anthony, Jr. “ ‘The Crown of Eloquence’: The Figure of the Orator in Milton’s Prose Works,” in Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross (eds.), Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John Milton, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974: 3–​54.

“Better To Marry than To Burn”: Milton’s Deliberate Translation of Paul Matt Dolloff

“Come, sweet Audrey: We must be married, or we must live in bawdry.” Touchstone, As You Like It (3.3.81–​2)

An angry mob of Catholic conservatives arrived at the Gabriel García Moreno Panopticon prison in central Quito on 28 January 1912, where José Eloy Alfaro Delgado sat awaiting trial having failed at an attempted coup to become President of Ecuador for a third time. Not suspecting that the prison guards were sympathetic to the rabble, Alfaro and his lieutenants might have been surprised by the sudden entrance of the murderers and the swiftness of the ensuing bloodbath. If he miraculously survived the initial assault, then his fate was nevertheless sealed by the roughly hewn, centuries old “adoquines,” or cobble stones, over which his body, soon bloody, flayed, broken, and concussed, was dragged behind a wooden cart to the Parque El Ejido in what was then the suburbs of the city. There he was drawn and quartered. Neither the assassins, driven by insatiable blood thirst and shouting “Viva la religión!,” nor the start of the rainy season prevented the next stage in the orgy of violence. The sun always sets at 6:00 in Quito, and the fire that the mob set to Alfaro’s corpse lit the darkening sky and ensured the bodily disappearance of the “Viejo Luchador,” the “Old Fighter.” Now recognized as “The Greatest Ecuadorian,” Alfaro is memorialized at the scene of his fiery end with the “llama eterna,” or “eternal flame,” burning in stone representation in the Parque El Ejido (“Eloy Alfaro”). This gruesome assassination was intended to crush the liberalization and secularization of Ecuador largely introduced by Alfaro: freedom of speech, public education, civil marriage, and divorce for any reason, including simple mutual consent (Schwind 603). Alfaro had been influenced mostly by contemporaneous North American liberalism, feminism, and the suffragette movement, and neither his letters nor biographies (one coincidentally written by Ecuadorian historian John Milton Palma) suggested any links to John Milton specifically, aside from

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general vitriolic complaints about Catholicism and slavery to custom.1 Nevertheless, I began to think about the many instances of the pairing of, on the one hand, unfaithfulness in general, divorce in particular, and non-​traditional unions, and on the other hand, fire and burning, in major literary works or traditions. For example, in the Aeneid, Dido thinks she is married to Aeneas when she spies him preparing to abandon her in Carthage so he can sail away and found Rome. She commands her sister Anna, “Secretly raise up a pyre in the inner court under the sky, and heap up on it the arms that heartless one left hanging in my bower and all his attire and the bridal bed that was my undoing. I want to destroy all memorials of the abhorred wretch” (Virgil 474). Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream reminds us that Dido eventually commits suicide on “that fire which burned the Carthage queen /​When the false Troyan under sail was seen” (1.1.173–​74). As far back as the ancient Indian epic, the Ramayana of Valmiki, the hero Rama has accused his wife Sita of being unfaithful to him with the many headed demon Ravana, who had held her captive for a full year: “For Rávan bore thee through the sky, /​ And fixed on thine his evil eye” (Valmiki 496). Sita, ashamed beyond belief, decides to prove her love in a test of purity: “fearless to the last /​ Within the flame’s wild fury passed. /​Then rose a piercing cry from all /​Dames, children, men, who saw her fall /​Adorned with gems and gay attire /​Beneath the fury of the fire” (496). Fortunately, as an avatar, Sita miraculously emerges unscathed, unlike the so-​called “dowry deaths,” or wife burnings (“suttee”) of modern India, which even today account for as many as 2,500 deaths annually (Kumar). In England, both tradition and Christopher Marlowe have Queen Isabella kill her husband Edward II, in large part for carrying on a homosexual affair with Piers Gaveston, by burning him in a most gruesome and symbolic way. The executioner Lightborn requests of Matrevis: “See

1

After the Strasbourg conference, I discovered a book by Federico Gonzalez Suarez, Archbishop of Quito and Alfaro’s theological antagonist, written in 1909 in the middle of Alfaro’s second term as president. In it, he discusses the epic tradition with a chapter on Paradise Lost –​so far the only historical Ecuadorian analysis of Milton I have yet been able to find. Although he does not mention Alfaro by name, he complains that Milton gives Satan all the best speeches and makes a parallel to the Ecuador of his day. “We naively confess that the arguments of Satan, in spite of the rhetorical care with which they are composed, remind us of a presumptuous warlord’s ballads. No one is in a better position than an Ecuadorian to taste such revolutionary rhetoric and also experience its great failure” (64). (My translation)

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that in the next room I have a fire, /​And get me a spit, and let it be red hot” to burn the king from the backside without leaving visible evidence of murder. Chaucer was miraculously able to satirize this murder of Edward III’s father in the “Miller’s Tale” when Absolon accidentally burns the clerk “hende Nicholas” (91) in the “toute” (704) with a “hote cultour” (668) when in fact he was trying to punish Alison for not committing adultery with him. Upon reflection, the audience might see this burning as additional punishment for Nicholas’ having had an affair with John’s wife, Alison, and for being the reason she refused to commit adultery with Absolon. Elsewhere, the Afro-​Caribbean Santeria deity, Shango or Changó, is the god of fire who burns the houses of those who offend his sexuality or machismo, and the practice of setting one’s unfaithful lover’s body or belongings (or both) on fire allegedly still takes place today in Cuba and Florida (Har Konen 136). Even Margaret Mead famously burned her lover Edward Sapir’s letters once she learned he had married somebody else. In Ancient Greece, one of the very few depictions of anything resembling a divorce is to be found in Euripides’ Medea, where Jason has decided unilaterally to put away his wife Medea and their children in order to marry the Princess. For revenge, Medea has her children give wedding gifts to the Princess that set her on fire in a horrific scene described by the messenger to Medea herself: “But a twofold trouble was warring against her: /​the crown of gold around her head /​was spewing out an eerie stream of ravenous fire, /​and the fine robes, gifts from your children, /​were eating away the poor girl’s beautiful flesh. /​ She stands up and tries to escape, but she is on fire” (1185–1191). The setting is the City of Corinth, where centuries later Paul will establish a Christian church and write two letters to the Corinthians, and it seems likely Paul would have been familiar with the story of Medea, as was, of course, Milton, who cites the play in his epigraph to Tetrachordon. But instead of mentioning either divorce or this cruel death, Milton’s choice to quote seems as if it could have been taken from any number of texts and not this play specifically: “For if thou bring strange wisdom unto dullards /​Useless thou shalt be counted and not wise /​And, if thy fame outshine those heretofore /​Held wise, thou shalt be odious in men’s eye” (298–​301). Why is Milton avoiding the fiery content of the play that seems so relevant to his argument on divorce rather than posing this backhanded ad hominem against Parliament and his critics?

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In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul sets forth a famous maxim as translated by the King James Version: “for it is better to marry than to burn” (I Corinthians 7:9). The thesis of this presentation is that Milton deliberately misinterprets this scripture for both aesthetic and moral reasons. First, it’s important to state that for Milton, Paul’s “burn” is not literal burning, and an alternative meaning must therefore be found. Evidently, Milton was so disturbed by this verse that he skipped it over altogether in the Tetrachordon, choosing rather to begin his discussion of I Corinthians ­chapter 7 at verse 10. A year and a half earlier, this saying had not sat well with Milton, as he indicated in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, where he left behind the literal burning and began to interpret the verse in terms of misplaced desire as follows: “but what does this burning mean? Certainly not the meer notion of carnall lust, not the meer goad of a sensitive desire; God does not principally take care for such cattell” (CE 3.2.396). Milton’s dismissive tone strikingly resembles that of Raphael in Book 8 of Paradise Lost right after Adam describes having sex with Eve, when Raphael misogynistically compares Eve to “cattle” (8.582), even though that first human sexual encounter was innocent enough. Milton thus tries to align Raphael with Paul on this interpretive nuance. Milton’s analysis continues in the same logic with the idea that the burning Paul mentions is not carnal and has nothing to do with Touchstone’s “bawdry,” or worse, Satan’s psychological state when he sees glorious Eve in the perfect garden, and “the hot hell that always in him burns” prevents him from enjoying “pleasure not for him ordained” (9.467 and 9.470), although it is possible that Milton means for Satan to feel a real interior physical burning. Part of the eternal Satanic torment is to burn in lust for that which is forbidden, so Satan’s goal becomes, in I Corinthians 7:5, to “tempt” our “incontinency.” Thus the sexual passion, which Adam feels for Eve after eating the forbidden fruit that Satan has tempted them with, turns dark: “but that false fruit /​Far other operation first displayed, /​Carnal desire inflaming, he on Eve /​Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him /​As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn” (9.1011–​15). That, surprisingly, is the incontinent state Milton thinks Paul is not talking about. Many modern English translations of the Bible tend to disagree with Milton and give mirroring synonymic versions that amplify Paul’s signifier “burn”: “burn with lust” (New Living Translation), “burn with passion” (New International Version, English Standard Version, and King James 2000 Version), or “burn in sexual desire” (New

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English Translation) (Interlinear). In both these translations and Milton, the burning is evidently not literal even though they disagree on what kind of metaphorical burning Paul implies. Milton must suggest another type of burning: “What is it then but that desire that God put into Adam in paradise before he knew the sin of incontinence; that desire which God saw it was not good that man should be left alone to burn in” (CE 3.2.396). As literal burning and burning in lust are not viable for him, Milton’s third option is an interpretation of “burn” that is a truly innocent, prelapsarian will to marry and to mate: “this pure and more inbred desire of joining to itself in conjugal fellowship a fit conversing soul.” If this was Paul’s intention, then “burn” seems an incredibly harsh or inappropriate metaphor that Milton must negotiate delicately given the brevity of the scripture and paucity of actual words to translate and interpret. Indeed, in Paradise Lost, there appears to be no suggestion of Adam’s prelapsarian burning in desire for Eve during the beautiful description of marriage in Book 4, the descriptions of sex in Books 4 and 8, nor in the creation of Eve in Book 8. Burning in lust appears only in a Satanic or fallen context, and no form of the word “burn” appears in prelapsarian descriptions of love, desire, or sex. Milton is free to change his mind and occasionally does, but this feels like a true inconsistency between the DDD and Paradise Lost. Moreover, it is not the case that Paul intended the burning in Corinthians to refer to those who are living in celibacy, which he considers the best way to avoid fornication of any type, but instead to refer to those who cannot humanly be celibate. The first half of I Corinthians 7:9, which Milton deletes in the DDD, added to the second, gives the complete verse: “But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.” Paul’s logic is simple: if one cannot be celibate, then one must marry or else one must burn. In addition, custom dictates that the marriage must meet the criteria of church approval or face resistance or retaliation or even burning. Modern linguists point out that Paul’s Koine Greek word for “burn” is “purousthai,” which stems from “pur,” or “fire,” from which we derive many English words such as pyrotechnics and funeral pyre. Moreover, McGrath argues that the New Testament employs only passive forms of the verb, suggesting that a more literal translation of Paul would be: “for it is better to marry than to be burned” (200). Indeed, the sigma, theta, alpha, iota ending (“-​sthai”) that Paul employs does indicate a passive infinitive construction. “Pur” is the root of the words used by Paul,

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Euripides, and Virgil, and the Greek word itself evidently stems from the Sanskrit “parim,” to purify, as in Sita’s “agni pariksha,” or “trial by fire” in the Ramayana (Hess 2). Given the cross-​cultural, etymological, and diachronic examples of the link between infidelity, divorce, or poor matrimonial choices and burning, perhaps the straightforward King James Version (with simply “burn”) is correct and both the newer editions’ and Milton’s interpretations are untenable. For a parallel example, the penultimate and oft neglected book of the New Testament, Jude, warns readers against fornication, again in the King James Version: “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 7). The word for fire here again is “pur,” and Thomas Hobbes’s theory in the Leviathan is that popular notions about the flames of hell, for which there is little Biblical precedent, are actually based on the description of the destruction of Sodom by literal fire and brimstone (Hobbes 281). Evangelical churches in the United States routinely link Sodom to only male homosexuality, so it is clear that the meaning of “fire” in Jude has been and continues to be quite literal in the minds of many Christians. Perhaps the urge to recast the concise term “burn” with the two alternatives “burn with passion” (the modern biblical interpretations) or, I don’t know, “burn in innocent conjugal aspiration” (Milton’s interpretation), even though there is no literal, translational reason to do so, comes from positions of either privilege or disgust. In the former position, gay people, it is presumed, will suffer the eternal flames of Hell, while straight people who do not marry and then commit fornication or adultery instead suffer only a metaphorical or psychological burning linked speciously to a traditional reading of Genesis. This strikingly unequal justice is depicted in Dante’s Inferno as well. In Canto 5.31-2, we learn that the lustful, carnal, and presumably heterosexual sinners are buffeted about by endless violent windstorms in the Second Circle of Hell: “La bufera infernal, che mai non resta, / mena li spiriti con la sua rapina” (42). Meanwhile, Canto 15 takes us down to the Seventh Circle, where the Sodomites ceaselessly walk fiery sands and endure a rain of fire. All things considered, I would prefer the former. On the position of disgust, the thought of literal burning would perhaps come across as simply inconceivably repugnant to Milton. As I marched this past Saturday in the Strasbourg Gay Pride parade mentally revising this presentation, I thought how inhuman it would be to feel justified

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in setting on fire any of the beautiful young people I was with, although the fear of burning was very present and real in Milton’s day and in some places, our own. This past Wednesday, 12 June 2019, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court legalized same-​sex marriage in a 5–​4 vote. The precedent of civil unions, in addition to divorce, was established by President Eloy Alfaro, the man whose father gave Theodore Roosevelt his first Panama hat. May this fighter for the civil and human right to marry and divorce rest in peace, whose eternal flame memorial in Quito is known locally as “la pira del parque” with the Spanish variation of pur. In Orlando Furioso, Ariosto decries a similar injustice as applied to women. In Canto 4, Rinaldo finds himself in Scotland where he hears the sad tale of Ginevre, the daughter of the monarch, who has been accused of letting down from her balcony a secret rope in order to admit her lover. For this alleged extramarital affair, she is condemned by the local laws to be burnt: “Per le leggi del regno condannata al fuoco fia” (stanza 58). Choosing to outsource their chivalry to an Italian, the Scots ask Rinaldo to rescue the princess as the only recourse. Rinaldo cannot in fact verify the truth of the accusation, but it does not matter to him anyway, for he finds the law itself to be unjust (stanza 66): If the same ardor, if an equal fire Draws and compels two people ever more To the sweet consummation of desire (Which many ignoramuses deplore), Why should a woman by a fate so dire Be punished who has done what men a score Of times will do and never will be blamed, Nay, rather, will be praised for it and famed? Women have suffered this inequality in law (“legge disuguale”) for too long, he says, as one type of “fire” should not of necessity lead to another. Perhaps Milton held a similar contempt or, at the very least, distaste for such cruelty in response to human affections, a cruelty unworth of poetic mimesis. When Milton dictates his own masterful meditation on divorce and fire, Samson Agonistes, he changes the title from his original idea: Samson Pursophoros, or Samson the Arsonist, again with the root “pur” (Hughes 531). From beginning to end, Samson’s biography, embellished by Milton, is consumed with fire. His auspicious birth is announced by an

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angel who “all in flames ascended” (24) for his parents to witness; the ropes that bind him magically break as “threads /​Touched with the flame” (262); and alone in the wilderness, he drinks only water from “fountain or fresh current” (547) illuminated by the “touch ethereal of Heav’n’s fiery rod” (549), when it is Samson who consumes fire. Before the final catastrophe of the play, the Chorus prays for a “shield /​Of fire” (1434–​35) to protect Samson; after the catastrophe, Milton interprets Samson’s life as one “illuminated” with “fiery Virtue rous’d” (1689–​90) and compares him to “that self-​begott’n bird” (1699), the Phoenix, who dies and is reborn in a “Holocaust” (1702), Milton’s verbal choice for the traditional pyre of spices from which the Phoenix resurrects. But it is not Samson who must fear the flames of unfaithfulness and divorce; it is the poor Wife of Timna who has no escape. If she refuses to divulge to her own countrymen the answer to the riddle about the lion and the bees, they would threaten her with a “cruel death” (1198) that Milton only alludes to but that the King James Version explicitly describes: “Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire” (Judges 14:15). In a strange inversion, the Infidels will burn the wife for remaining faithful to her husband, but if she betrays Samson, a similar fate awaits her nonetheless. After Samson divorces her and gives her away to a friend, the Bible narrates that “Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives” (Judges 15:4–​ 5). After the Philistines learn that the Wife and her father had been the root cause of the destruction of the village, they “came up, and burnt her and her father with fire” (Judges 15:6). The wife burns if she does remain faithful and burns if she doesn’t. Curiously yet consistently, this crucially important dilemma in the life of the Wife of Timna hardly receives any notice from Milton in the play, occurring in what Hughes calls “flash-​ backs.” Equally curious, if Samson’s life is truly consumed by fire, is the absence in the narration of any fiery passion felt by Samson toward either wife. In fact, the descriptions are remarkably dispassionate. “She pleased me” (219), Samson says of the Wife, and his love was “divinely called” (226) by an “intimate impulse” (223). His attraction to Dalila seems less about passion than of pride: “Then swoll’n with pride into the snare I fell /​Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains, /​Soft’n’d with pleasure and

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voluptuous life” (532–​34). In fact, Samson goes so far as to say that he has been “quell’d” (563) by Dalila, suggesting his fire has been put out. Paul and I Corinthians 15:33 make one last appearance in Milton in the introduction to Samson Agonistes to show that even a Christian can borrow from an ancient pagan, here again Euripides, to make a valid point. In this case, the King James Version offers: “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” This is certainly a poor translation, and most modern editions give some form of “Bad company corrupts good manners,” which makes more sense for Samson Agonistes since the moral to the story for young women, or “Virgins” (1741), is a warning against unfortunate nuptial choices. For the “valiant” male youth, Samson’s memory is supposed to “inflame thir breasts /​To matchless valor” (1739–​40) in Milton’s final printed reference to fire. “Matchless” must be a pun here, as Samson’s valor happened not because of, but in spite of, his unfortunate nuptial choices, and the whole tale is a depressing exercise on marriage, betrayal, divorce, and fire. The three “liberties” with which Milton had been obsessed in the 1640s as revealed in the Second Defense were “the nature of marriage itself, the education of the children, and finally the freedom to express oneself” filtered through what Lewalski reminds us was Milton’s own “painful personal experience” (154). These debates struck at the core of the Protestant Reformation. In the Sixteenth Century, one prominent voice in marriage and divorce reformation was John Hooper, the English bishop who had advocated for more liberal policies for both men and women. For his unorthodox beliefs, he fled here to Martin Bucer’s Strasbourg in 1545 (Primus 183). A disciple of Heinrich Bullinger, Hooper argued that marriage was both sacred and secular, that men and women should be liberally allowed to divorce, and that the clergy should be allowed to marry as he himself had (Euler). For these and other heresies, Hooper was, as John Foxe says, “kindled” in an incredibly gruesome, protracted execution that compares to Alfaro’s execution for his holding similar convictions. Finally, after the third fire was set, “Then immediately bowing forwards, he yielded up his spirit” (211). By the time of the composition of Paradise Lost, Milton seemed rather unafraid of incorporating heresy into his grand epic. For example, he puts into the mouth of Raphael the same heretical notions about infinity and a plurality of worlds that had gotten Giordano Bruno burnt at the stake in 1600. But as a less famous, younger author during the tempestuous 1640s, Milton had genuine reason still to fear physical retribution

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for espousing philosophical positions. His stern critic Herbert Palmer preached before Parliament: “The Arguments that are used in some books (well worthy to be publikely burnt) plead for […] all manner of false Religions under pretense of Liberty of Conscience” (55). His vitriol was aimed specifically at Milton and “all such most pernicious and pestiferous books and opinions [that] advance Satans kingdome” and called for the “Extirpation of Heresie and Schisme” (56). It would appear that Milton, brave enough to affix his name to these heresies, had much to fear at that time. An emblem of that fear is perhaps subtly expressed in the rebuttal to his critics in the Areopagitica. While acknowledging in other passages that books have historically been burned, for his own thesis, he changes the vocabulary: “as good almost kill a man as kill a good book.” “Burn” clearly makes more sense than “kill.” Perhaps there is a parallel with “The Passion,” the poem that reveals Milton’s inability to depict abject human cruelty in the suffering of Christ. The thought of burning a man or his book is equally ineffable: that anyone could be ­literally burned for their choice of love or that anyone would burn someone else over their own emotional pain, sense of self-​righteousness, or strictures of custom represents the rock bottom of human imagination and cruelty. Since it is inconceivable that Milton could possibly mistranslate a tiny passage from scripture, it is my contention that his painstaking exegesis of Paul’s “for it is better to marry than to burn” is a deliberate misinterpretation.

Works Cited Alighieri, Dante. “Inferno.” The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Allen Mandelbaum. Bantam Books, 1980. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso, Part One. Translated by Barbara Reynolds. Penguin Classics, 1973. Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Miller’s Tale.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 1. Edited by David Damrosch and Kevin Dettmar. Longman, 2006. “Eloy Alfaro: The Greatest Ecuadorian.” Ecuador.com Euler, Carrie. “Heinrich Bullinger, Marriage, and the English ­Reformation: ‘The Christen State of Matrimonye’ in England, 1540–​53.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 34, no. 2, 2003, pp. 367–​93. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​20061​414.

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Euripides. Medea. Translated by C.A.E. Luschnig. https://​diot​ima-​doct​ afem​ina.org/​trans​lati​ons/​greek/​euripi​des-​medea/​ Foxe, John. Fox’s Book of Martyrs. https://​w ww.gutenb​erg.org/​files/​22400/​ 22400-​h/​22400-​h.htm#Page_ ​209 Gonzalez Suarez, Federico. De la poesía épica Cristiana. Tipografía y ­Encuadernación Salesiana, 1909. Har Konen, Heidi. “To Not Die Alone”: Kinship, Love, and Life Cycle In Contemporary Havana, Cuba. 2014. University of Helsinki, PhD dissertation. Hess, Linda. “Rejecting Sita: Indian Responses to the Ideal Man’s Cruel Treatment of His Ideal Wife.” Journal of the American Academy of R ­ eligion, vol. 67, no. 1, 1999, pp. 1–​32. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Andrew Crooke, 1651. https://​soc​ials​cien​ces. mcmas​ter.ca/​econ/​ugcm/​3ll3/​hob​bes/​Leviat​han.pdf Interlinear Bible. The Online Parallel Bible Project. https://​bible​hub.com/​ inte​rlin​ear/​ JSTOR, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​24006​329 Kumar, Virendra and Sarita Kanth. “Bride Burning.” The Lancet, vol. 364, December 2004, pp. 18–​9. Lewalski, Barbara. The Life of John Milton. Blackwell, 2000. Marlowe, Christopher. Edward II. Edited by Ernest Rhys. Project Gutenberg, 2007. http://​w ww.gutenb​erg.org/​cache/​epub/​20288/​pg20​288.html McGrath, Aidan. A Controversy Concerning Male Impotence. Editrice ­Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 1988. Milton, John. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Edited by Merritt Hughes. The Odyssey Press, 1980. —​—​—​. The Works of John Milton. Edited by Frank Patterson et al. Columbia University Press, 1931. Palma, John Milton. Eloy Alfaro: su vida, sus obras, y su revolucion. ­Libromanta, 2010. Palmer, Herbert. The glasse of Gods providence … Underhill, 1644. https://​ quod.lib.umich.edu/​e/​eebo/​A70​812.0001.001?view=​toc Primus, J. H. “The Role of the Covenant Doctrine in the Puritanism of John Hooper.” Nederlands Archief Voor Kerkgeschiedenis /​Dutch Review of Church History, vol. 48, no. 2, 1968, pp. 182–​96.Schwind, Michael

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A. “Ecuador: New Conflict of Laws in Divorce Cases.” The American Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 4, no. 4, Autumn, 1995, pp. 603–​6. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller. Penguin, 2002. Valmiki. Ramayana. Translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith. Trübner & Co., 1870. Project Gutenberg. https://​w ww.gutenb​erg.org/​files/​24869/​24869-​ h/​24869-​h.html Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Harvard University Press, 1916. https://​w ww.theoi.com/​Text/​Virgil​Aene​id1.html

John Milton’s View of the Present State of Ireland David Harris Sacks

This essay, its title borrowed from Edmund Spenser, is about Milton’s view not just of Ireland, but of civility in relation to religion. When I last addressed Milton’s writings, I discussed his view of “liberty” in Areopagitica (Sacks, 2007). However, in that essay I did not consider his refusal to extend the same freedom to Roman Catholics that he was willing to grant to the members of divers Protestant congregations. Although he held it “more Christian that many be tolerated, rather all compell’d,” he excluded “Popery, and open superstition,” equating the two, on the grounds that Roman Catholicism “extirpats all religions and civil supremacies” and “so it self should be extirpat.” That which is “impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners,” he says, “no law can possibly permit, that extends not to unlaw it self” (Areopagitica, Milton, 2:565). Especially to be noted in this context is Milton’s mention of “maners,” a term in the plural that by Milton’s day already referred to the modes of life, conditions of society, rules of behaviour, or moral code prevailing in a particular society or period, i.e. to what ethnographers call “customs” and anthropologists call “culture.”1 Later, he would also explicitly include “declar’d atheists” among those to be denied religious liberty (Observations, Milton, 3:311). Focusing especially on Milton’s Observations upon the Articles of Peace, I propose in this essay to consider his reasons for taking this view (Observations, Milton, 3:260–​334).2 1 OED “manner,” n. (and int.). II.4. In plural. 2 Note that the “Articles of Peace” and the other works “Published by Authority” in Milton’s pamphlet along with his Observations on them, were officially received from the Council of State by the House of Commons on 28 March 1649. On the same day, Milton, newly appointed as the Council’s Secretary for Foreign Tonques, was instructed to prepare and publish a response, which however was not ready until some weeks later (French, ed., 2: 240). Thomason acquired his copy on 16 May 1649, which suggests the work was published within a few days of this date (Keeble and McDowell, 46, 47, 189, 190; see also Milton, 3:168–​83; Hughes, 1949, 1049–​73; Parker, Milton, 1:355–​36). Milton also discussed the Irish rebellion in a number of places in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (Milton, 3:189–​258); Thomason acquired his copy of this work on 13 February 1648/​49, only two weeks

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However, I want first to take a brief look at another work by Milton –​his Brief History of Moscovia, published in 1682, but written, his publisher says, “before he lost his sight,” i.e. before July 1652 (Moscovia, Milton, 8:475).3 Although Milton probably completed the draft in 1647 or 1648, it is likely that he consulted it in 1649 or 1650, soon after he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Commonwealth’s Council of State, around the time news reached England that the Russian Tsar had expelled English merchants to protest Charles I’s execution and the Council in response was preparing to send an ambassador with a letter of protest (Lewalski, 2000, 212; Parker, 1:325; Worden, 213, 213n3; Parks, 1943, 399–​404; Moscovia, Milton, 8:460–​63). However, Milton does not appear to have revisited the text again until the early 1670s when he prepared it for possible publication. In the preface, he explained that in providing a possible model for a useful geography, he “began with Muscovy, as being the most northern Region of Europe reputed civil” (Moscovia, Milton, 8:475–​76; Parks, Moscovia, Milton, 8:454; Lewalski, 2003a, 210–​16; Gleason, 640–​49). We do not know for certain if Milton thought the same during the “vacant time” when, years before, he first set out his text (Moscovia, Milton, 8:474). Nevertheless, “reputed civil” is an interesting phrase whenever he first came to use the phrase. The judgement requires careful interpretation. In describing Russia’s system of rule, Milton says “the Emperour exerciseth absolute power,” a claim evidenced by his arbitrary capacity to deprive Russians of their estates and put others into possession he

after Charles’s execution, which strongly suggests that Milton had begun writing it before 30 January 1648/​49. Milton also commented in 1649 on Irish affairs in ­chapter 12 of Eikonoklastes (Milton, 3:115–​27); Thomason acquired his copy on 6 October 1649. For commentary on the political works Milton produced in connection with Irish affairs during the first years of his service to the Commonwealth, see Lewalski, 2000, 236–​77, esp. 240–​4 4; Campbell and Corns, 203–​49, esp. 212–​ 28; Keeble and McDowell, 47–​58. 3 Parker dismisses this work as “neither very scholarly nor very interesting” (Parker, 1:326). Henry Oxinden, a Kentish gentleman, inscribed his copy of Eikonoklastes with the news that Milton had become completely blind in July 1652 (Campbell and Corns, 423n44). The main sources for Moscovia, which Milton may have begun collecting while a student in Cambridge, are Hakluyt and Purchas. Milton’s Commonplace Book includes some notes from Purchas but not Hakluyt (Commonplace Book, Milton, 1:368, 382–​83; Lewalski, 2000, 21). However, Milton was also familiar with Giles Fletcher’s account of the Russia (G. Fletcher, 1591, 1643; modern edition, G. Fletcher, 1966).

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deemed more serviceable to his interests. Similarly, as Milton explained, “the Revenues of the Emperour are what he list … and he omits not the coursest means to raise them” (Moscovia, Milton, 8:487, 489). In Milton’s day, and long before, the Tsar’s actions would have been regarded in England as violating the principles of common right and natural justice embodied in Magna Carta, most especially the liberties derived in the traditions of legal and political discourse from its chapter protecting persons and property from unjust action and unlawful rule (Magna Carta, 1225, cap. 29: Statutes, 1: 22–​5).4 The Tsar, in other words, would have been classed as a tyrant according to the definition Milton employed in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, i.e. as a ruler “who regarding neither Law nor the common good, reign[ed] onely for himself and his faction” (Tenure, Milton, 3:212).5 Hence, it would seem for Milton that in Muscovy, and arguably under favourable conditions elsewhere, civility could prevail against the tyranny of arbitrary and despotic rule. What, then, enabled Milton to repute Russia as “civil”? I hope to suggest a satisfactory answer in the conclusion of this essay. There can be no doubt that by the time Milton wrote Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, he considered Charles I a tyrant fully deserving of his fate. One mark of his guilt, he says there, was Charles’s complicity in the Irish Rebellion, which broke out in October 1641. To justify his trial and execution, Milton argues “that if such a one there be, by whose Commission, whole massachers have been committed on his faithfull Subjects, his Provinces offered to pawn or alienation, as the hire of those whom he had solicited to come in and destroy whole Citties and Countries… the Sword of Justice is above him” (Tenure, Milton, 3:197; see also Observations, Milton, 3:301; Eikonoklastes, Milton, 3:470; A Defense, Milton, 4.1:522–​23).6 Similar language appears in Milton’s Observations, where he not only accused Charles of acting “like a demigod in lawlesse and 4 This charter, dating from 9 Henry III (1224–​25), was treated by Sir Edward Coke in his Institutes as the first English “statute” (Coke, 45–​57; see Cromartie, 78–​9, 86, 112, 118). Skinner argues that Milton’s view also derives from Roman law sources (Q. Skinner, 2:288–​89, 297–​307). 5 In his Commonplace Book, Milton recorded the following from St. Basil: “…a tyrant differs from a king; the one considers at every point his own advantage, the other provides what is helpful to his subjects” (Commonplace Book, Milton, 1:453). 6 Milton also refers to Charles I’s offer to the Irish of control over five counties to match the offer of four counties in the north of England made to the Scots (Eikonoklastes, Milton, 3:385, 475).

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unbounded anarchy,” pretending himself to be “a God, exalted above Law,” but of authorizing the “mercilesse and barbarous Massacre of so many thousand English” by the Irish rebels –​who Milton called “inhumane … Papists” (Observations, Milton, 3:301, 305, 307–​8).7 Two words stand out in this last passage: “massacre” and “barbarous.” The former derives from post-​classical Latin words where macella refers to a “butcher shop” or “meat market” and macellarius to a “butcher.” By the twelfth century, the word had entered into Anglo-​Norman and medieval French where it referred to killing a great quantity of prey in a hunt. From there it came to mean the butchery of large numbers of cattle as in the shambles of a town and from thence to “mass slaughter” more generally.8 Sometime in the later middle ages, the phrase “Massacre of the Innocents” was then widely applied to Herod’s infamous order to kill all the children in Bethlehem mentioned in the nativity narrative in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 2:16–​17).9 Given this history, French Protestants unsurprisingly began using the word to describe the multiple murders of Huguenots by Catholics during the French Wars of Religion, starting with the Massacre of Wassy (or Vassy) in 1562. The most famous of these events is, of course, the killing of numerous Protestants beginning on St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572. By 1574, French publications were already calling the event the “massacre de Paris.” Stories of the murders included the claim of a Paris butcher to have personally slaughtered 700 Huguenots, and the accusation –​in this case by Jean de Léry, and alluded to by Montaigne –​that the butchery was accompanied by acts of cannibalism (Applebaum, 138–​40; Lery, 132; Montaigne, 82).10 7 Milton also argued that Charles, or Ormond acting in his name, had compounded his involvement by agreeing to the 18th Article of the Peace “wherein without the least regard of Justice to avenge the dead, while he thirst[ed] to be avenged upon the living,” he granted an Act of Oblivion “to all the Murders, Massacres, Treasons, Pyracies, from the very fatall day wherein that Rebellion first broke out” (Observations, Milton, 3:301, 308). 8 OED, “massacre”; the word derives originally from Arabic, where the equivalent term referred initially to a slaughterhouse, and somewhat later to the decapitated head of a deer at the end of a hunt; (Dictionnaire, 2:1481–​82; Levene and Roberts, ed., Massacre, ed., 7–​11; Applebaum 138). 9 During the fifteenth century, the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem ordered by Herod began being called “le massacre des Innocents” in French; the phrase “Massacre of the Innocents” was in use in England by 1510. 10 On the Massacre of Wassy of 1 March 1562, see (Carroll, 12–​19; Levene and Roberts, ed., 69–​88, esp. 69–​70). The literature about the St. Bartholomew’s Day

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As Milton’s own usage suggests, “massacre” was commonly employed to describe the actions of Irish rebels against the English, including in Eikon Basilike, attributed to Charles I himself ([Gauden], 62, 63, 65).11 Although in Eikonoklastes Milton called Charles the “Author or Instigator of that Rebellion,” and quoted Proverbs to the effect that a “wicked Ruler” is “as a roaring Lyon, and a ranging Beare” over his people, he agreed with the text that the murderers, in treating their victims as bestial, were themselves savages living like beasts outside civil society (Eikonoklastes, 1649 and 1650 title pages, Milton, 3:470, 472).12 Milton’s repeated use of the word “barbarous” in commenting on the Irish captures this same sense. To use the language of Areopagitica, his discussion centres on the “impious or evil…maners” of the Irish that, he said, “no law could permit” (Areopagitica, Milton, 2:565). As Willy Maley and others have suggested, Milton’s comments on this subject Massacre is vast, although “Bartholomew massacre” as a phrase probably is a coinage from the later seventeenth century; see (Varamund of Freseland [i. e. François Hotman]; Goulart; see also the documents printed in Diefendorf, ed., 82–​127). For overviews of the events, see Diefendorf, 93–​106; Holt, 76–​98; Jouanna,, 97–​156. For the early use of “massacre de Paris,” see [Barnoud]; for the provenance of this text see Kingdon, 70–​87; see also Levene and Roberts, ed. 39–​54, 89–​126. Similar reference to a “barbarous massacre” was made in 1622 when, on a single day, 347 Virginia Company colonists, perhaps a quarter of Virginia’s English settlers, were killed by the members of the Powhattan Confederacy with whom they had been carrying on peaceable trade (Waterhouse, title page; see also Smith; Brooke; Sacks, 2012, 553–​57; Sacks, 2020, 563–​64). The torture and execution of twenty men at Amboyna by the Dutch in 1623, ten of whom were in the service of the English East India Company, called “barbarous proceedings” at the time, also came to be identified by the English as a “massacre” (Games). However, the word “massacre” itself was not used in the English pamphlets that first described the events (J. Skinner). I am grateful to Faye Getz Cook, John Craig and Una McIivenna for their suggestions and advice on this topic. 11 Oliver Cromwell, as Lord Lieutenant in Ireland in 1649–​50, called those same events “the most barbarous massacre (without respect of sexe or age) that ever the Son beheld”; ([Cromwell], sig. B[1]‌v; see also Morrill). The bloody events of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 began being called “massacres” almost from their inception as recorded in a number of the depositions taken from English settlers attacked by the Irish during the Rebellion, see (Trinity); for contemporary use of his language in print see (Temple); for commentary, see (Clark). I am grateful to John Morrill for discussion of these issues. 12 The passage cited is Proverbs 28:15; for similar language see W[aring], which was “Published by special authority”; one of Milton’s assignments from the Council of State was to see to the printing of this work; Thomason’s copy bears the date “Mar. 19, 1649,” i.e. 1650.

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closely relate to Edmund Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland, which 13 Milton read probably in the early 1640s (Maley, 1993, 193–​200). There he would have encountered Spenser’s picture of the “licentious barbarism” of the “stubborne nation of the Irish,” who he considered, in Ulster at least, to be descendants of the savage, uncivilized, heathen Scythians (Spenser, 20–​1, 44–​55).14 For Milton in the Observations, the issue rose in its most specific form in relation to the 22nd Article of the Peace which repealed two acts of the Irish Parliament: “one prohibiting … plowing with Horses by the tail, and the other prohibiting the burning of Oates in the straw” (Observations, Milton, 3:278). These were longstanding practices among the inhabitants of Ulster, explicable in light of the region’s natural features and economy that are not mentioned by Milton.15 The former, which persisted in the region well into the nineteenth century, involved the use of a short plough of ancient design that was, according to Ulster traditions, especially suited for its “mountaines & boggish grounds,” and more functional than the longer, heavier English plough drawn by a horse using a collar and traces. The English in Ireland objected to what they called this “rude & hatefull custome” because, they said, “the cruelty used to the Beasts” not only resulted in a “scarcity of Corne & the Poverty of the People,” but left “the Breed of Horses … much impaired,” diminishing their value especially for export. The second complaint refers to another ancient practice, this one reflecting labour shortages in the thinly populated northern Irish region. It involved the 13 Milton’s Commonplace Book shows that he took notes from Spenser’s View, albeit as a guide on pressing political and military issues (Commonplace Book, Milton, 1:465, 496). 14 Milton made no direct reference to Spenser’s View in his Observations, but in his History of Britain, on which he was working at the same time, he drew related materials from Spenser’s Faerie Queene in comparing the imagined encounters of Brutus and the Trojans with the uncivil Picts in the as yet “desert and inhospitable” island of Britain (History of Britain, Milton, 5.1:16–​17, 20; Raymond, 324). Milton began and then halted the writing of the History of Britain in the late 1640s, before picking it up again and largely completing it in the late 1650s; it was first published in 1670 and then quickly republished in 1671 (Von Mahlzahn, 22–​38; Dzelzainis, 2009, 408). 15 However, in his History of Britain Milton acknowledged that in the ancient past and still in his own day, northern Ireland, a “watrie place” filled with “Bogs and rott’n Moars,” suffered a “lack of tillage” (History of Britain, Milton, 5.1:101; Hadfield, 2001, 187).

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use in harvesting grains of what is called the “fiery flail,” i.e. the burning of the straw to recover the grain, rather than threshing. The English in Ireland objected, it appears, primarily because they regarded the practice as wasteful. When these two methods were prohibited by the Irish Parliament in 1634, soon after Thomas Wentworth became Lord Deputy, the proscriptions quickly became grievances. (Pinkerton, 213, 215, 216; Bagwell, 1:65, 124–​25).16 Milton thought Article 22 “more ridiculous than dangerous,” but took the Rebels’ continued support for the practices as evidence of their having “a disposition not onely sottish but averse from all Civility and amendment.” “[W]‌hat hopes do they then give for the future,” he asked, “who rejecting the ingenuity of all other Nations to improve and waxe more civill by a civilizing Conquest, though all these many yeares (are) better shown and taught, (still) preferre their own absurd and savage Customes before the most convincing evidence of reason and demonstration”? Their “[b]arbarisme and obdurate wilfulnesse.” he insisted, had left them so debased that they were rendered incapable of reasoning in their own best interests, fit only to be ruled, which, then, was “to be expected no less in other matters of greatest moment” (Observations, Milton, 3:303–​4).17 What other matters might Milton have had in mind? The first items in Ormond’s Articles of Peace supply the answer. The most important is the promise that in the next Parliament in Ireland, an act would be

16 The practice was first subject to regulation in 1613 by Arthur, Lord Chichester, then the Lord Deputy in Ireland. According to Pinkerton, it was still common in Ulster in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. The distinction between the short and long plough would by the eighteenth century itself come to mark the difference between barbarism and the civilized cultivation of the land; on the importance of the heavy plough in stadial histories of civilization see Pocock, 13–​14, 172–​73. Horses were an important Irish export to England. According to the complainants, “many hundreds [of beasts] are killed & maimed yearly” by the practice of attaching ploughs to their tails. According to Kearney the legislation of 1634 devoted to prohibiting or limiting the short plough, and related agrarian practices, “were of minor importance” (Kearney, 62). 17 Milton’s reference to “conquest” in Ireland as a “civilizing” instrument almost certainly springs from his interpretation of Spenser’s View (Canny, 1–​58, 552; see also Hadfield, 2001, 186–​90; Stevens; Maley, 1993, 200–​1, Maley, 1999; Maley, 2003, 139–​48; Corns, 123–​34; Raymond, 323–​25; Daems, 51–​55; Fenton; Dzelzainis, 2009, 423; Dzelzainis, 2019). Hadfield comments frequently on Spenser’s View throughout his Spenser biography (Hadfield, 2012).

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passed freeing “all and every the professors of the Roman Catholicke Religion” there from all penalties “concerning the free exercise” of their religion, and from being “compelled to exercise any Religion…other then such as shall be agreeable to their Conscience” (Observations, Milton, 3:262).18 Since the second article conceded the repeal or suspension of Poynings’ Law (1494), which had made the Irish Parliament subordinate to England’s, Ormond not only granted toleration to the Irish Catholics, but effective political independence. Although, as we are assured by Hughes, Ormond was insincere in making these concessions, Milton took him at his word.19 In keeping with his opposition to the toleration of Catholics, Milton regarded Ormond’s concessions as anathema. Somewhat unexpectedly, he singled out the exemption he granted them from swearing the Oath of Supremacy, which required acknowledging the English monarch “as the only supreme governor of this realm, and…dominions, as well in all spiritual…causes, as temporal” (Observations, Milton, 3:262).20 In its place, the Articles required Roman Catholics in Ireland only to take the 1606 Oath of Allegiance acknowledging the legitimacy of the reigning English

18 The statute referred to is the Act of Uniformity, 1 Eliz. I, c. 2: “An Acte for the Uniformitie of Common Prayoure and Dyvyne in the Churche and the Administration of the Sacramentes” (Statutes, 4.1.458–​67). 19 Poynings’ Law, also call the Statute of Drogheda, 10 Hen. 7, c. 4 (Irish, 761), passed while Sir Edward Poynings was Lord Deputy in Ireland, is entitled “An Act that no Parliament be holden in this Land until the Acts be certified into England.” It provided that the Irish Parliament could not meet until its proposed legislation had been approved both by the Lord Deputy and Privy Council in Ireland and by the English monarch and Privy Council. Viewed in retrospect, Ormond’s measures might seem a welcome harbinger of a transformation in Anglo-​Irish relations, if only they had been brought to fruition. However, as Hughes has argued, Ormond’s concessions were “more or less insincere,” forced on him by the dire circumstances of the moment, and were granted unwillingly without the intention of keeping them if he did not need to (Milton, 3:169; see also Hughes, 1052–​66). 20 The statute referred to is 1 Eliz. I, c. 1: “An Acte restoring to the Crowne thauncyent Jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiasticall and Spirituall, and abolishing all Forreine Power repugnant to the same” (Statutes, 4.1.350–​55); the language of the oath is specified in the 9th article of the statute (352). It also required those taking it to agree “that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-​eminence or authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm.”

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monarch; its swearing had been added to the Oath of Supremacy after 21 the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot (Observations, Milton, 3:262–​63). In commenting on this concession, Milton objects, somewhat oddly, to that fact that it would advance the Irish Catholic rebels “to a Condition of freedome” superior to English Protestants who the statutes had required to take both Oaths (Observations, Milton, 3:302).22 At the time Milton wrote these words, England, of course, no longer had a monarch serving as supreme governor of its Church to be acknowledged by swearing the Supremacy oath. It was a self-​governing “Commonwealth and Free State,” as it had already begun calling itself (Acts, 2:122).23 By then, also, Milton had long since left the communion of the Church of England and its form of episcopal government, and had come not just to reject “regal tyrannie over the state,” but “state-​t yrannie over the church,” as he would later put it. Whatever significance he saw in the

21 The relevant statute is 3 Jac.I, c. 4: “An Acte for the better discovering and repressing of Popish Recusantes” (Statutes, 4.2.1071–​77); the language of the oath is specified in the 9th article (1074). Along with acknowledging the English monarch’s legitimacy, those taking the Oath swore that neither the Pope nor any official of the Church of Rome had the power to depose the English monarch, or to authorize his murder or deposition, or to sanction any foreign prince to attack him, or to absolve anyone from the Oath. For the controversies caused by the Oath, see McIlwaine, lvi-​viii; Sommerville, esp. 163–​67. 22 “For what else,” Milton asked, “can be the meaning to discharge them the Common Oath of Supremacy, especially being Papists (for whom principally the oath was intended) but either to resigne them the more into their own power, or to set a mark of dishonour upon the British Loyalty; by trusting Irish Rebels for one single Oath of Alleagance, as much as all his Subjects of Britaine for the double swearing both of Alleageance and Supremacy” (Observations, Milton 3:302). 23 The act, dated 19 May 1649, was entitled “An Act declaring and constituting the People of England to be a Commonwealth.” With the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1648/​49 and the formal abolition of the House of Lords on 19 March 1648/​49, England was a republic, without a King or House of Peers (Acts, 1:1363; 2:24). To enforce or reinforce these momentous changes, an ordinance passed by the Rump Parliament in January 1649/​50, required all men in England aged 18 and older to swear an Oath of Engagement declaring they will “be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now Established, without a King or House of Lords” (Acts, 2:325–​29, quote at 325): “An Act for Subscribing the Engagement,” dated 2 January 1649/​50. For the intellectual controversies generated by this oath, see Q. Skinner, 3:287–​307.

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Royal Supremacy, he was not endorsing it (Civil Power, Milton, 7:254).24 What was he doing instead? Although Milton had subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643, by the middle of the 1640s he had not just rejected “prelacy,” but had broken with the Presbyterians, and had come to share many beliefs with the sectaries (Campbell and Corns, 161, 196; Lewalski, 2000, 162). In 1645, he was classed among England’s “notorious ‘Atheists’ ” by Ephraim Pagett, the London-​based Calvinist minister, and associated with the radical tolerationist ideas of Roger Williams, who had recently returned to London from New England (E[phraim] P[agitt], sig. A3v-​r; Lewalski, 2000, 202).25 At around the same time, Robert Baillie, the Scots Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, not only connected Milton’s publications on divorce with the Separatists’ rejection of ecclesiastical authority, but also with the Antinomianism of Ann Hutchinson and Samuel Gorton in New England (Baillie, 101–​30).26 Milton also was associated in these debates with the so-​called Erastians in the Westminster Assembly and House of Commons. Their most important representative in both places was John Selden, who Milton named “the chief of the learned men in this Land” (Areopagitica, Milton, 2:513; Lewalski, 2000, 180, 193; Campbell and Corns, 161). As Barbour has argued, “Selden and his ilk” were not purely secularist in their view of religion, devoid “of any real or sincere involvement with those aspects of religious culture, belief and experience that fall outside the purview of civil regulation” (Barbour, 3–​5 11–​13, 15, 289–​91, 298, 308). Nevertheless, in response to the question whether the Church or Scripture was the proper “Judge of Religion,” Selden himself is reported in his

24 J[ohn] M[ilton], A treatise of civil power in ecclesiastical causes shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on earth to compell in matters of religion (London, 1659; Wing M2185). 25 Thomason records the date of his acquisition of Pagitt’s Heresiography (Wing P174) as May 8, 1645. For Williams’s tolerationist position, see (Williams); Thomason gives the date he acquired his copy as 15 July 1644 (Campbell and Corns, 164–​65; see also Lewalski, 2003a, 162–​80). Milton’s four divorce tracts were published between August 1, 1643 and March 4, 1644/​5, (Milton, 2:217–​356, 416–​77, 571–​ 718, 719–​58). 26 Baillie’s reasoning turns especially on the Separatists “denial and decrying of all the Magistrates’ power in matters of Religion,” even though their congregations “runne into all the confusion whither Satan and his Instruments are able to carry them” (Baillie, 115, 116; Lewalski, 2000, 202).

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Table Talk, to have answered: “In truth neither, but the State” (Selden, 1689, 51; Selden, 1696, 158). For his strict subordination of the church to the state, Baillie unsurprisingly called him “the head of all the Erastians” (Toomer, 2:569; Haivry, 85; 374–​85, 397, 413, 421; Rosenblatt, 101; Lamont, 79–​80; E. Fletcher, 14). Milton, who cited Selden twice in his Commonplace Book and drew on his commentaries on divorce, also aligned himself with his resistance to the establishment of a Presbyterian church settlement in England as well as with the tolerationism advanced not only by him but also by Roger Williams’s Bloudy Tenet and by the Independents in the Westminster Assembly (Commonplace Book, Milton, 1.402, 403; Areopagitica, Milton, 2:502–​7; Campbell and Corns, 172–​73; Lewalski, 2003a, 191; Haivry, 84–​7, 406–​18).27 Nevertheless, Milton was not a radical Erastian. Just as he opposed the imposition of tyranny over the state, he also stood, as he would acknowledge, “against Erastus and state-​t yrannie over the church” as well as the church’s –​any church’s –​tyranny over consciences and the interpretation of Scripture. However, in insisting that toleration should not be extended to Roman Catholics in their public practices and religious rituals, Milton parted ways with Selden and Williams, both of whom would allow it (Civil Power, Milton, 7:254).28 Although anti-​Catholicism, fed by Catholic conspiracies as well as Protestant propaganda, had become conventional among English Puritans long before Milton’s day, Milton’s anti-​Catholicism, focusing on the linkage of human freedom to reason and civility, transcended those generalities as well as the particularities of the moment. In his Observations, especially in his responding to Ormond’s exchanges with Col. Michael Jones, the Governor of Dublin, and with the Ulster Presbytery in Belfast, Milton not only rejected the Papacy, but any “secular and carnall Tyranny over spirituall things.” Parliament, he claimed, would “imploy the 27 For Selden’s activities in the Long Parliament as well as the Westminster Assembly, see (Toomer, 2:562–​75). Campbell and Corns have suggested that in equating the Long Parliament’s authorization of the licensing of books with what he called the “lordly Imprimatur[s]‌” of Roman Catholic officials, Milton Areopagitica reflects,“in its rhetoric at least,” his “Erastian commitment to the supremacy of the state over the church” (Campbell and Corns, 161). 28 Lewalski has argued that because Milton was instrumental in bringing Williams’s Bloudy Tenet to print, he may have felt obliged to distinguish himself from Williams on the fraught question toleration of Catholics, while agreeing fundamentally with what else Williams argued; (Lewalski, 2000, 191).

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Civill sword” no “further than the edge of it could reach; that is to Civill offenses onely.” The sword, as he put it, had always proved “a ridiculous weapon” against spiritual objects. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that Parliament would act against “declar’d atheists, malicious enemies of God, and of Christ,” insofar as they posed threats to civil order. He took the same view of the Pope’s committed followers. “[T]‌heir Consciences we leave, as not within our Cognisance, to proper cure of instruction, praying for them.” In response to accusations made by Ulster Presbyterians that their enemies in the Rump Parliament had broken their oath in swearing to the Covenant to suppress “Popery” along with “Heresy, Schism, and profaneness,” Milton replied that the Covenant did not in “any way engage us to extirpate, or to prosecute the men, but the heresies and errors in them.” These were actions, he said, to be performed “in the diligent preaching and insisting upon sound Doctrin…not of persecution” (Observations, Milton, 3:310–​11, 324). His view, then, was close to Oliver Cromwell’s as Lord Lieutenant in Ireland in 1649–​50. A people’s religious convictions were “in their owne breasts,” Cromwell said. While they were subject to the state in regard to their public practices and evangelizing, they should not be compelled to worship as the state required, but remain free in matters of conscience “to walke honestly and peaceably” until “God…give them another or a better minde” ([Cromwell], sig. B[4]v). Milton extended these arguments fifteen years later in his Treatise of Civil Power (Civil Power, Milton, 7:241–​72).29 There he stated bluntly that “no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force on earth whatsoever” for following the injunctions of his “conscientious perswasion” (Civil Power, Milton, 7: 246).30 However, he again excluded Roman Catholics, denouncing them for following the dictates of the Pope, who he said “makes himself greater not only then the church, but also then the scripture, then the consciences of other men.” These “ignorant and irreligious… papists,” as he calls them, think they are “discharged in Gods account, beleeving only as the church beleevs.” It is 29 For commentary, see Milton, 7:229–​38; Lewalski, 2000, 361–​63, 382–​86; Campbell and Corns, 281–​83. 30 See also Considerations, Milton, 7:276. As we have already noted, Milton also emphasized that just as he was against “regal tyrannie over the state,” as he had argued in his Defense of the English People against Salmasius, he was also “against Erastus and state-​t yrannie over the church” as well as the church’s –​any church’s –​tyranny over consciences and the interpretation of Scripture (Defense, Milton, 4.1:522–​23).

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“chiefly for this cause,” Milton goes on, that “all true protestants account the pope antichrist, for that he assumes to himself…infallibility over both the conscience and…scripture” (Civil Power, Milton, 7:246, 247, 247–​48, 254). For Milton “matters of religion” are to be followed as “the dictate of reason tells us.” Being about “the knowledge and service of God,” they are “above the reach and light of nature.” This principle granted “rule of everie mans conscience to himself” (Civil Power, Milton, 7:245–​46). Nevertheless, Milton refused this freedom to Roman Catholics because, as he argued in On Civil Power, Roman Catholicism “the more considered, the less can be acknowledged a religion; but a Roman principalitie, endevouring to keep up her old universal dominion.” It is, he argued, “a catholic heresie against the scripture; supported mainly by a civil, and…a forein power.” In consequence, the consciences of its followers “become implicit, and so by voluntarie servitude to mans law,” they forfeit their “Christian libertie.” “[B]‌eing implicitly entrald to man instead of God,” their conscience “almost becoms no conscience, as the will not free becoms no will. Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of state more then of religion” (Civil Power, Milton, 7:256–​57). In Areopagitica, as we saw, Milton connected “Popery” with “open superstition,” and called it “impious or absolutely evil against faith or maners” (Areopagitica, Milton, 2:565). In religious discourse, “superstition” commonly is defined as an irrational belief based on a conviction in an unreality, and is associated with superfluous or excessive actions lacking in efficacy.31 In On Civil Power, Milton restated the point by linking “poperie” with “idolatry.” “[F]‌or idolatrie,” he says, “who know it not to be evidently against both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresie, or rather an impietie wherin a right conscience can have naught to do; and the works therof so manifest, that a magistrate can hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the publick and

31 As Richard Hooker defined it, “superstition is when things are either abhord or obserued, with a zealous or fearfull, but erroneous relation to God” (Hooker, 8). Hooker also says in the same place: “Superstition neither knoweth the right kinde, nor obserueth the due measure of actions belonging to the seruice of God, but is always ioyned with a wrong opinion touching the diuine.”

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scandalous use therof” (Civil Power, Milton, 7:256, 257).32 “Idolatry” is something more dire than “open superstition,” since it is a sin practiced directly against God’s specific commandment to “have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2–​4, KJV). By also alluding to the ideology of Universal Monarchy, Milton equated the Pope, in his putative claims to absolute “Temporal” or “Civil power,” with the Antichrist. This judgement led Milton to call the Pope the “Subverter of all true Religion” and “grand Enemy of the true Church,” who in assuming “infallibility” not only turned himself into an idol –​a material, this-​worldly, and therefore inherently false representation of divine power –​but robbed those who adhered to him of their Christian liberty (Observations, Milton, 3:309, 310).33 By extension, as Milton implied most overtly in Eikonoklastes, Charles I had made himself into a false idol, “a demigod in lawlesse and unbounded anarchy,” who like the Antichristian Pope himself refused “to be accountable for that authority over men naturally his equals, which God himself without a reason givn is not wont to exercise” (Observations, Milton, 3:307, 308; Eikonoklastes, Milton, 3:337–​49, esp. 343).34 As Lewalski has said, “idolatry was a central concern for Milton from his first major poem,” On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, written in 1629 (Lewalski, 2003b, 213; Brennan). In his unfinished De Doctrina Christiana, which he began writing in 1658, he defined it as the “making or owning an idol for religious purposes, or worshipping it, whether it be a representation of the true God or some false God” (Christian Doctrine, Milton, 6:690–​91).35 Akin to what Francis Bacon called “idols of the mind,” his meaning extended beyond the realm of formal worship to the way anti-​Christian illusions and falsehoods enthralled the understanding and enslaved the will (Bacon, li-​lvii, 72–​3, 78–​109). The idols Milton 32 For references to the Antichrist, see Rev. 13, 19:19–​21, 20:1–​3; for references to the Whore of Babylon, see Rev. 17:1–​6, 19:1–​2; on the concept of “Universal Monarchy,” see Bosbach; Pagden, 1995, 29–​62; Pagden, 1990. 33 In On Civil Power, Milton cites 2 Thessalonians 2:4 to this same effect, viewing the Pope “siting in the temple of God, as it were opposite to God, and exalting himself above all that is called god, or is worshipped ” (Civil Power, Milton, 7:248). 34 Milton especially singled out the Act of Oblivion granted to the Irish rebels for their massacres agreed to on the King’s behalf by Ormond in Article 18 of the Articles of Peace (Observations, Milton, 3:274–​77, 308). 35 Milton also included entries on “Idolatry” and “The Church” in a separate collection of “commonplaces” in his as yet undiscovered “Theological Index” (Commonplace Book, Milton, 1:504, 504n1).

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resisted were subservience to superstition and the accompanying descent into barbarism that was promoted, he believed, by all forms of spiritual and ecclesiastical tyranny. For him, Roman Catholicism, with its adherence to the supreme power of the Pope, veneration of the saints, and reliance on the mass and the ceremonial forms of worship that accompanied it, was inherently idolatrous as well as barbarous. The Pope was Antichrist himself, the “Subverter of all true Religion.” But he was joined by the “secular and carnal tyranny over spiritual things” of Anglo-​Catholicism in the Church of England associated with Archbishop Laud and by the Presbyterians in Britain’s three kingdoms. (Observations, Milton. 3.309, 310, 313; Lewalski, 2003b, 214; Keeble, esp. 109; McDowell). Milton’s condemnation of idolatry especially manifests itself in his Observations in his extended attack against the Belfast Presbytery. More than half of the work is taken up in answering their “Necessary Representation” of February 1648/​9. (Observations, Milton, 3:317–​34). In contrast, he required only four and a quarter pages to dismiss the 34 pages in the pamphlet taken up by Ormond’s Articles of Peace (Observations, Milton, 3:300–​8).36 What, then accounts for the extra attention Milton allotted to the Belfast Presbyterians? The declaration of the Belfast Presbytery singles out Charles I’s execution as manifesting “the extirpation of Lawes and Liberties,” and condemns the Rump Parliament’s establishment of “an Universall Toleration of all Religions” as “an Innovation over-​turning of Unity in Religion,” attributing both to the actions of the “Sectaries” and “Malignants” against what it calls “lawfull and supreme Magistracy” (Observations, Milton, 3:297, 298). For Milton, however, the text especially represented the Belfast Presbyterians complicity with “the abhorred Irish Rebels,” the

36 The full title of the Belfast Presbyterian’s declaration is “A NECESSARY ­R EPRESENTATION of the present evills, and eminent dangers arising from the late, and present practices of the Sectarian party in England: together with an Exhortation to duties relating to the Covenant, unto all within our Charge; and to all the well-​a ffected within this Kingdome, by the Presbytery at Belfast, February 15th 1649” (Observations, Milton, 3:296–​99); the date given counts January 1st as the beginning of the new year. Its text, which fills only four-​a nd-​a-​half pages in the original, survives in full only in Milton’s 1649 pamphlet. The 35 articles of Ormond’s Peace fill over half of 65 pages of the original pamphlet. Ormond’s letter to Col. Michael Jones, Governor of Dublin and Jones’s response fill another five-​a nd-​a-​half pages, eliciting a four-​a nd-​a-​half page answer from Milton (Keeble and McDowell, 50–​51).

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Catholic Confederation of Kilkenny –​“their Copartning Rebels in the South,” as he named them (Observations, Milton, 3:300, 317; Meehan; Siochrú). It followed, first, that “in heaving out the Prelats,” they “heave in themselves” to become “Popish and Prelaticall Courts, or the Spanish Inquisition.” As the “Pontificall See of Belfast,” they pretended to the same “absolute and undepending Jurisdiction” claimed by “the Pope… for many Ages.” Second, Milton argued that in besieging “in London-​ Derry those Forces which have fought against Ormond,” the Presbyterians’ “unchristian Synagogue” had directly joined forced with the “bloudy Rebels and Papists in the South,” and “begun op’n war against Parlament.” Worst of all, Milton also argued that in “supposing all men to be servants, but the King,” the Belfast Presbytery had in effect erected the King himself into an idol, and transformed all others into “down right slaves,” thereby exposing Protestants in England as well as Ireland to conquest and enslavement (Observations, Milton, 3:319, 320, 322, 325, 326, 332, 333; Keeble and McDowell, 54). In making this case, Milton drew an analogy to Britain in the fifth century, when –​as he said in writings composed around the same time –​ Christianized Britons invited the pagan Saxons to help them overcome the “confused Anarchy” that followed their “manumission” from slavery when the Romans departed from the British isles (History of Britain, Milton, 5.1:129–​30).37 In the “Digression” to Book 3 of his History of Britain, he compared their succumbing to the Saxons to the threat of foreign invasion and enslavement he saw unfolding in his own day as the Presbyterians forged connections with royalists and Catholics (History of Britain, Milton, 5.1:441, 443,445. 449, 451; Dzelzainis, 2009, 416–​23; Keeble and McDowell, 53). In his Observations Milton touched on this same theme in comparing the Presbyterians with “High-​land theevs and Red-​shanks,” an allusion to Spenser’s evaluation of the wild Celts. Milton feared that, like the Saxons, the Presbyterians, especially those in Scotland, would “prove ingratefull and treacherous guests” and conquer “our Province, a Countrey better then thir own” (Observation, 37 Milton drew this analogy in his History of Britain, which he was writing around the same time as he composed his Observations. He also addressed it in the “Digression” to Book 3 of the History, also written at this historical juncture (Milton, History of Britain, 5.1: 439–51). The Yale edition of Milton’s Complete Prose Works prints a transcription of the original 12-page long manuscript of the Digression along with a copy of the 1681 printed version (Wing M2098); for the Digression’s context and dating, see Dzelzainis, 2009, 419–21; see also Milton, 5.1: 405–35; Hadfield, 2001, 181–82.

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Milton, 3:333–​34; Maley, 1994). The lesson was double-​sided, not just that enslavement leads to servility, as Tacitus and other Roman historians held, but that self-​indulgent slavishness and the loss of virtue that follows from it leads to enslavement (Dzelzainis, 2009, 423; Q. Skinner, 2:302–​7, esp. 304). Two puzzles remain: what for Milton might connect the Pope’s Antichristian usurpation of secular power with the “impious…maners” –​the savage barbarism –​of the Irish rebels? And what, in light of this, might have allowed Milton to repute Tsarist Russia as “civil”? The answer to the first question turns on the fact that the Irish lived –​at least in the North –​as nomadic herdsmen, following practices that Spenser and others equated with the customs of the ancient Scythians, a wild people associated with Europe’s northern regions and the Asian steppes (Spenser, 44, 47, 54–​57, 61–​66; 149–​50).38 Drawing on this judgement, Milton, called the Irish, as we have seen, “sottish” and “averse to all Civility” (Observations, Milton, 3: 303–​4). This analysis of the indigenous inhabitants of Ireland as a barbarous people, went hand-​in-​glove, according to the model, with a view of them as lawless, intemperate and brutally cruel, that is as a people living like beasts outside a well-​ordered polity and without a capacity for sociability, morality and the conduct of a citizen, and who, in consequence, were despotic in their own natures and at the same time submissive to despotic rule (Pocock, 11–​14; Thomas, 1–​5). On this view, the Irish were without limits or restraint, lacking reason or the ability to control their own passions. They were the worshippers of idols, as it were, and thereby subject to Antichrist and his satanic command, just the sort of people to be his instruments of mass slaughter in a massacre. 38 As Spenser put it, the Irish lived “the most part of the yeare in boolies, pasturing upon the mountaine, and waste wild places, removing [with their animals] to fresh land as they have depastured the former” (Spenser, 55; see also Shuger, 495, 498–​ 99; Hadfield, 1997, 102–​8). Milton appears to have first read Spenser’s View soon after it was published in 1633 with its dedicatory letter to Thomas Wentworth, who recently had been appointed Lord Deputy in Ireland, (Commonplace Book, Milton, 1:465, 496); the 1633 prefatory letter to Wentworth is by James Ware (Spenser, 3–​ 4). Spenser regarded the Anglo-​Irish –​the Old English in the south –​having turned barbaric as “now much more lawlesse and licentious then the very wilde Irish… much degenerate from their first natures.” He especially mentions the “Geraldines and Butlers” (Spenser, 67). A “booly” –​the word derives from the Irish buaile meaning “cattle-​fold” –​was a temporary enclosure used by the Irish as they wandered with their herds in the mountains during the summer.

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What then let Milton treat Muscovy as “civil” despite the fact that he said its people “have no learning,” and that its Tsar ruled despotically over them? (Moscovia, Milton, 8:475, 477, 487, 493, 497–​510). The answer here lies, I believe, in Milton’s description of religion in Russia, which he says followed “the Greek Church” (Moscovia, Milton, 8:492).39 Russia’s church was unambiguously a state-​church, which, because it followed Byzantine practice, is taken in most accounts to have been under the autocratic authority of the Tsar, who in effect was both Caesar and Pope, a form often called “Caesaropapism.” England under the Royal Supremacy is sometimes judged the same (Runciman, 1–​2, 4–​10).40 However, Milton’s treatment of the Tsar’s religious role in Russia contradicts this common interpretation. “The Emperour,” he says, “esteemeth the Metropolitan next to God…as being his spiritual Officer, himself 39 In briefly discussing some of the Russians’ beliefs and practices, Milton mentions, among other things, that “they have many great and rich Monasteries,” whose monks also are great merchants; he also indicates that Moscovites inhabiting to the south were “Pagans” (Moscovia, Milton, 8:492–​93). The accompanying marginal note reads “Hac. 253,” which is a reference to vol. 1, p. 253 in the 1599–​1600 edition of (Hakluyt); in this section Milton primarily paraphrases two sections from Hakluyt’s account; one derived from Clement Adams’s Latin version entitled “The newe Nauigation and discouerie of the kingdome of Moscouia, by the Northeast, in the yeere 1553” (Hakluyt, 1:253, which itself derives from Richard Chancellor’s “The booke of the great and mighty Emperor of Russia, and Duke of Moscouia”); the other (Hakluyt, 1:241–​42), comes directly from Chancellor’s text itself. In addition to citing materials from Hakluyt in his marginal names, Milton also frequently cites materials from (Purchas, 1625) or (Purchas, 1626). In addition, there is one marginal reference to Giles Fletcher’s Of the Russe common wealth, whether from (G. Fletcher, 1591) or (G. Fletcher, 1643). 40 Some commentators argue that constitution of the Russian Church shared elements with the Royal Supremacy in the Church of England under the Act of Supremacy of 1558/​59, according to which the monarch was the supreme governor of the realm in all spiritual or ecclesiastical causes as well as all temporal affairs (1 Eliz. I, c. 1; Statutes, 4.1:350–​55). The concept is depicted symbolically in the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, where the ornamental capital “C” at the beginning of the dedicatory letter to Queen Elizabeth I, is the first letter in the name of “Constantine the greate,” who is identified as the head of “the churche of Christ.” It shows the Queen enthroned in her royal regalia attended by her counsellors (Foxe 1563, sig, B.i; Collinson, 205–​29; Hoak, 94) In the dedicatory letter to Queen Elizabeth I in the 1570 edition of Foxe, the ornamental capital “C” is the first letter in the name of Christ. It begins by declaring that Elizabeth had been placed on her throne by “Christ, the Prince of all Princes … to gouerne the Church and Realme of England” under him (Foxe, 1570, sig. *i). On this view, the English Church under its royal governor was, like the Russian, a state-​church that embodied the unity of the nation under God (Runciman, 2, 5).

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but his temporal” (Moscovia, Milton. 8:493). “God” is the antecedent for “his.” I believe that this understanding, from wherever Milton derived it, explains his willingness to call the Empire “civil.”41 Although he depicted the Tsar as a tyrant within his realm, he judged his power to extend only to civil life, while the Metropolitan of Moscow possessed no temporal power and had oversight only over the Church’s cure of souls. Milton reputed Russia to be “civil,” therefore, because he believed that its church and its Metropolitan did not meddle in civil society nor its Tsar in spiritual life. That is, in Milton’s view neither the Metropolitan nor the Tsar, was the equivalent of the Pope. The Russian Church may have spread an “excess of Superstitions” (Moscovia, Milton, 8:492), but it was not a false church which must be extirpated. The lesson, then, is that the members of a society living under a tyranny could retain the capacity to forswear barbarism and manifest civility, so long as “the subject’s soul” remained “his own” to adapt what the character Henry V says in Shakespeare’s play to the ordinary soldiers before the Battle of Agincourt (H5, IV.1.164–​65). For Milton, the principal problem with the Roman Catholic Church was not that its practices were superstitious or its doctrines error-​filled. It was that its Pope claimed temporal rule and sought to exercise it. Seen in this light, Milton was not denying “toleration” to Roman Catholics, since, as the London Calvinist minster Herbert Palmer correctly discerned in 1644, toleration was not his concern, but “liberty of conscience.” For Milton this meant the freedom to choose, that is to obey the dictates of one’s own reason and follow one’s own will: as he said in Areopagitica “reason is but choosing” (Palmer, title page; Areopagitica, Milton, 2:577).. It was Milton’s conclusion that once people became committed papists, they surrendered their freedom of conscience. He believed therefore that in adhering to the authority of the Pope, Roman Catholics had forfeited their freedom to choose, their Christian liberty, and thereby lost control of their wills, and, in Ireland, their capacity for

41 None of the sources Milton cited mention any such relationship between the Tsar and the Metropolitan. However, he may have arrived at his judgment from a brief reference to the Metropolitan of Moscow’s power over religious matters in Anthony Jenkinson’s account of this first voyage to Moscovy in 1557, printed by Purchas: “The Metropolitan dealeth in matters of Religion, as himself listeth, whom the Emperour greatly honoureth” (Purchas, 1905–​07, 11:694; Fletcher, 1966, 107–​24).

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civility and ability to use their reason to overcome the shortcomings of their ancient customs.

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Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–​1629, 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 2005. Hughes. Merritt Y. “The Historical Setting of Milton’s Observations on the Articles of Peace, 1649,” PMLA, vol. 64. No. 5, 1949, pp. 1049–​73. The Irish Statutes, 3 Edward II to the Union, AD 1310–​1800, ed. W. N. Osborough. Round Hall Press, 1885. Jouanna, Arlette. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: The Mysteries of a Crime of State, trans. Joseph Bergin. Manchester UP, 2015. Kearney, Hugh F. Strafford in Ireland, 1633–​41: A Study in Absolutism. Manchester UP, 1959. Keeble, N. H. “Milton’s Christian Temper,” in John Milton: Life, Writing, Reputation, eds. Paul Hammond and Blair Worden. Oxford UP, 2010, pp. 107–​24. —​— ​—​and Nicholas McDowell, “General Introduction,” in The Complete Works of John Milton. Volume VI: Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings, eds. N. H. Keeble and Nicholas McDowell. Oxford UP, 2013, pp. 1–​129. Kingdon, Robert M. Myths about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1572–​ 1576. Harvard UP, 1988. Lamont, William. “Pamphleteering, the Protestant consensus and the English Revolution,” in Freedom and the English Revolution: Essays in History and Literature, eds. R. C. Richardson and G. M. Ridden. Manchester UP, 1986, pp. 72–​92. Lery, Jean de. History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, otherwise called America, trans. and ed. Janet Whatley. University of California Press, 1990. Levene, Mark ed. and Penny Roberts. The Massacre in History. Berghahn Books, 1999. Lewalski, Barbara K. The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography. Blackwell Publishers, 2000. —​— ​—​. “Milton and Idolatry,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–​1900, vol. 43, no. 1, 2003, pp. 212–​32. McDowell, Nicholas. “From Belfast to Baghdad: editing Milton’s for the twenty-​first century,” Critical Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 4. 2010, pp. 39–​46. McIlwain, Charles Howard. “Introduction,” The Political Works of James I, ed. Charles Howard McIlwaine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), pp. xv–​cxi.

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Maley, Willy. “How Milton and Some Contemporaries read Spenser’s View,” Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534–​1660, eds. Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley Cambridge UP, 1993, pp. 191–​208. —​— ​—​. “Milton’s Observations (1649) and ‘Complication of Interests’ in Early Modern Ireland,” Willy Maley, Nation, State and Empire in Renaissance English Literature: Shakespeare to Milton. Palgrave MacMillan, 2003, pp. 135–​48. —​— ​—​. “Rebels and Redshanks: Milton and the British problem,” Irish Studies Review, vol. 2, no. 6 (1994), pp. 7–​11. Mahlzahn, Nicholas von. Milton’s History of Britain: Republican Historiography in the English Revolution. Clarendon Press, 1991. Milton, John. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe. 8 vols. Yale UP, 1953–​1982. Meehan, Charles Patrick. The Confederation of Kilkenny. J. Duffy, 1905. Montaigne, Michel de. “On Cannibals,” Essays, trans. M. A. Screech. Penguin Classics, 2013, pp. 79–​84. Morrill. John. “Cromwell, priestcraft and the ‘seduced and deluded’ people of Ireland,” Ireland in Crisis: War, Politics and Religion, 1641–​50, ed. Patrick Little. Manchester UP, 2019, pp. 193–​210. Pagden, Anthony. “Instruments of Empire: Tommaso Campanella and the Universal Monarchy of Spain,” Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-​American Social and Political Theory, 1513–​1830. Yale UP, 1990, pp. 37–​63. —​—​—​. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France. c. 1500-​c. 1800. Yale UP, 1995 P[agitt], E[phraim]. Heresiography: or, A description of the heretickes and sectaries of these latter times. London, 1645 (Wing P174). Palmer, Herbert. The glasse of Gods providence towards his faithfull ones. Held forth in a sermon preached to the two Houses of Parliament, at Margarets Westminster, Aug. 13. 1644. being an extraordinary day of humiliation. London, 1644 (Wing P235). Parker, William Riley. Milton: A Biography, 2 vols. Oxford UP, 1968. Parks, George B. “The Occasion of Milton’s Moscovia.” Studies in Philology, vol. 40, no. 3 1943, pp. 399–​404. Pinkerton, W. “Ploughing by the Horse’s Tail,” Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st ser., vol. 6, 1858, pp. 212–​21.

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Pocock, J. G. A. Barbarism and Religion. Volume 4: Barbarians, Savages and Empires. Cambridge UP, 2004. Purchas, Samuel. Hakluytus Posthumus. 20 vols. J. MacLehose and Sons, 1905–​1907. —​—​—​. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes. Contayning a History of the World, in Sea Voyages & Lande-​travells, by Englishmen & Others. London, 1625 (STC 20509). —​—​—​. Purchas his Pilgrimage, or Relations of the vvorld and the Religions obserued in al ages and places discouered, from the Creation vnto this present. London, 1626 (STC 20507). Raymond, Joad. “Complications of Interests: Milton, Scotland, Ireland, and National Identity in 1649,” Review of English Studies, new ser., vol. 55, no. 220, 2004, pp. 315–​45. Rosenblatt, Jason. England’s Chief Rabbi: John Selden. Oxford UP, 2006. Runciman, Steven. “Byzantium, Russia and Caesaropapism,” Canadian Slavonic Papers /​Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, vol. 2, 1957, pp. 1–​10. Sacks, David Harris. “Adam’s Curse and Adam’s Freedom: Milton’s Concept of Liberty,” in Milton, Rights and Liberties, eds. Christophe Tournu and Neil Forsyth. Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 69–​98. —​— ​—​. “Love and Fear in the Making of England’s Atlantic Empire,” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 3, Autumn 2020, pp. 543–​65. —​— ​—​. “The true temper of empire: dominion, friendship and exchange in the English Atlantic, 1575–​1625,” Renaissance Studies, vol. 26, no. 4, 2012, pp. 531–​58. Selden, John. Table-​talk being the Discourses of John Selden, Esq., or his Sence of Various Matters of Weight and High Consequence Relating Especially to Religion and State, ed. Richard Milward. London, 1689 (Wing S2437). —​—​—​. Table-​talk, being Discourses of John Seldon, Esq or his Sense of Various Matters of Weight and High Consequence, Relating Especially to Religion and State. London, 1696 (Wing S2438). Siochrú, Michael Ó. Confederate Ireland, 1642–​1649: A Constitutional and Political Analysis. Four Courts Press, 1999. Skinner, John. A true relation of the vniust, cruell, and barbarous proceedings against the English at Amboyna in the East-​Indies, by the Neatherlandish gouernour and councel there. London, 1624 (STC 7452). Skinner, Quentin. Visions of Politics, 3 vols. Cambridge UP, 2002.

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Shuger, Debora. “Irishmen, Aristocrats, and Other White Barbarians,” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 2, 1997, pp. 494–​525. Sommerville, Johann P. “Papalist political thought and the controversy over the Jacobean oath of allegiance,” Catholics and the “Protestant Nation”: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England. Manchester UP, 2005, pp. 162–​84, Spenser, Edmund. A View of the State of Ireland: From the first printed edition (1633), ed. Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley. Blackwell Publishers, 1997. The Statutes of the Realm (1225–​1713): printed by command of His Majesty King George the Third in pursuance of an address of the House of Commons of Great Britain, from original records and authentic manuscripts, ed. A. Luders, Sir T. Edlyn Tomlins, J. France, W. E. Taunton, J. Raithby, J. Caley, and W. Elliott. 9 vols. in 10. G. Eyre and A. Strahan, 1810–​1822. Stevens, Paul. “Spenser and Milton on Ireland: Civility, Exclusion, and the Politics of Wisdom,” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 26, no. 4, 1995, pp. 151–​67. Temple, John. The Irish rebellion: or, An history of the beginnings and first progresse of the general rebellion raised within the kingdom of Ireland, upon the three and twentieth day of October, in the year, 1641. Together vvith the barbarous cruelties and bloody massacres which ensued thereupon. London, 1646 (Wing T627). Thomas, Keith. In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England. Brandeis UP, 2018. Toomer, G. J. John Selden: A Life in Scholarship, 2 vols. Oxford UP, 2009. Trinity College Library Dublin. 1641 Depositions. www.1641.tcd.ie Varamund of Freseland, Ernest [i. e. François Hotman]. A true and plaine report of the furious outrages of Fraunce. Striveling in Scotlande, [i.e. London], 1573 (STC 13847). W[aring], T[homas]. A brief narration of the plotting, beginning & carrying on of that execrable rebellion and butcherie in Ireland. With the unheard of devilish-​cruelties and massacres by the Irish-​rebels, exercised upon the Protestants and English there. London, 1650 (Wing W873) Waterhouse, Edward. A declaration of the state of the colony and affaires in Virginia With a relation of the barbarous massacre in the time of peace and league, treacherously executed by the natiue infidels vpon the English the 22

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of March last. Together with the names of those that were then massacred. London, 1622 (STC 24844). Williams, Roger. The bloudy tenent, of persecution, for cause of conscience, discussed, in a conference between truth and peace. VVho, in all tender affection, present to the high court of Parliament, (as the result of their discourse) these, (amongst other passages) of highest consideration. London, 1644 (Wing W2758). Worden, Blair. The Rump Parliament, 1648–​1653. Cambridge UP, 1974.

Part IV Paradise Lost

“Short” in Paradise Lost Neil Forsyth

The excellent and efficient local organizer, Christophe Tournu, suggested that I make a brief speech to open the symposium. We both thought it should be short. As I was at the time working on an edition of Paradise Lost for Bloomsbury, it immediately occurred to me that I should look up that very word short and see what work it does in the poem. Would it be a significant word? I looked for examples, and came up with several well -​k nown lines, many of which people attending the conference would have been able to recall. What turned out to be interesting was the distribution and the concentration of the instances. And one of them I realized was probably the turning point in the poem. Here first are some of the lines I collected. Many have to do with time, as when Satan says to his victims “enjoy, till I return, /​Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed” (IV.534); or in the narrator’s “After short silence then, /​And summons read, the great consult began” (I.797); or as when Adam learns the truth about “the bevy of fair women” and he is “of short joy bereft” (XI 582/​628); or the portents of the Fall that appear in the “air suddenly eclipsed, /​After short blush of morn” (XI.184); or when “Raphael, /​After short pause assenting” begins his speech (V.561); or when Satan contemplates relenting and soon realizes he would thus “purchase dear /​Short intermission bought with double smart” (IV.101); or Eve begging Adam for peace between them since “we live, scarce one short hour perhaps” (X.923); or when twilight is called “short arbiter /​ ‘Twixt day and night” (IX.50); or as when Eve suggests to Adam that “both ourselves and Seed at once to free/​from what we fear for both, let us make short,-​-​/​Let us seek Death;-​-​or, he not found, supply with our own hands his office” (X.1000); or when Adam, turning optimistic in a lovely phrase about prayer says that “one short sigh of human breath, upborne /​Even to the seat of God” may incline his will (XI.147). A few of the short words are spatial, as when “By shorter flight to the east” the less voluble earth had left Uriel in the sun (IV.595); some are at least metaphorically spatial, as when Adam replies seriously to God’s

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joking question about being alone that “To attain/​The height and depth of thy eternal wisdom, /​All human thoughts come short, Supreme of things!” (VIII.414); or when in her “O glorious trial of exceeding love” speech, Eve hypocritically says to Adam she falls “short /​Of thy perfection” (IX.963); that same metaphor Satan uses when he says that since he cannot attack the Son he will aim at mankind: “since higher I fall short, on him who next /​Provokes my ire” (IX.174) he will work his revenge. The word thus occurs often enough in the poem for it not to bear any special significance of itself, however long the poem may be. But the most striking use is perhaps this one, as the climax of the events approach. Adam makes a longish speech to Eve about how we do not need to work too hard, since God has not forbidden us to enjoy refreshment, or food, or “this sweet intercourse Of looks and smiles, for smiles from Reason flow, To brute deni’d, and are of Love the food, Love not the lowest end of human life. (9: 239–​41) We sense that perhaps Adam has too much to say at this point, and he even goes on a bit more to explain that not to irksom toile, but to delight He made us, and delight to Reason joyn’d. These paths & Bowers doubt not but our joynt hands Will keep from Wilderness with ease, as wide As we need walk, till younger hands ere long Assist us: (9: 239–​47) If Adam had stopped speaking here, all would be well, but instead his anxiety that Eve love him makes him go on too long. He continues with a very big “But”. But if much converse perhaps Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield. For solitude somtimes is best societie, And short retirement urges sweet returne. (247–​50) Adam has said the word short twice in three lines, though as Fowler says, “it hardly helps his argument”. He cannot bear to think of a long absence, and touchingly speaks of “short retirement,” which he follows

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swiftly with the even shorter phrase “swift return”. Soon they will separate, and indeed these are among the last words that Adam or Eve say to each other before the Fall. His aphorism about solitude, commentators point out, is a reference to Cicero’s comment about Scipio Africanus: nec minus solum quam cum solus esset, that he was never so little alone than when by himself: De Officiis. Bk. III.1.i. Also in Rep. I. 17. 27. Marvell’s more or less contemporary poem “The Garden” is an extended meditation on this idea. Milton’s line about solitude is actually an Alexandrine, ie with six syllables rather than the usual five, the last two being quite lightly stressed. But in Paradise Lost we recall that Eve was specifically created because God knew it was not good for man to be alone, as the text of Genesis 2:18 puts it: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” That apparently simple statement is followed, however, by a rather surprising set of verses. Having averred that it is not good for man to be alone, the biblical text does not immediately proceed to the creation of Eve, but instead pauses on all the animals that Adam now names, including cattle and “the fowl of the air,” and then, even more strangely, says that the projected “helpmeet” could not be found among these beasts! Only then, in verse 21, does God cause a deep sleep to fall on Adam, take a rib, and make a woman. 19

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

In these resounding words we find the declaration that the female is subsequent in order of production to the male, and formed from him. She is to be a help meet for him: or, as the Syriac translates it, a helper similar to him. In Genesis 1: 27; Genesis 5:2, on the other hand, the creation

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of male and female is represented as having been simultaneous. Here in Genesis 2.18 the woman is described as “a help meet for him:” The New Testament rather seems to perpetuate this confusion. The gospels take one view, and Paul another. At Matthew 19:4 Jesus answered, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female”; Mark 10: 6: But, from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.

But in the world of Paul, no such equality. He writes at 1 Corinthians 11:7 “A man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.” Milton must have been aware of the discrepancy, and it may have informed his deeply ambivalent portrait of Eve. Or is it Milton’s Adam, in is loving anxiety, who is more to blame for the Fall? Why, for example, does Adam say Eve might not like “converse” with him? He is perhaps aware he has already talked too much, and thus expresses his fear that she might quickly get too much of him (Thee satiate). He still thinks he is in charge (I could yield), but is afraid of being dull. So he talks on, and opens the way for the coming catastrophe.

Doré’s Illustrations to Paradise Lost and to The Holy Bible Hiroko Sano

The French artist Gustave Doré (1832–​83) energetically illustrated chefs-​d ’oeuvre de littérature and fostered their success through various means. In 1861, he financed the publication of Dante’s Inferno, which proved an immediate success. In 1865, he was commissioned to illustrate La Sainte Bible by the firm of Alfred Mame et Fils of Tours, an even greater success. In 1866, the London Press of Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. bought the English rights to it and published its English version. Furthermore, the press commissioned him to illustrate Paradise Lost. Given the literary relationship of the Bible and Milton’s epic, as well as their nearly coeval creation, Doré’s illustrations are in deep conversation with each other―and indeed others of Dore’s oeuvre―yet even when they treat similar scenes and characters, they display unique voices. Doré was fond of drawing since childhood in Strasbourg.1 His early sketches drawn as an eight-​year-​old boy show a strong tendency for caricature. He received his only instruction in the art of drawing at Mlle. Jeannot’s Academy of Art in Bourg-​en-​Bresse. He worked hard at his drawing and painting. He started his career at the age of fifteen in 1847 in Paris, with Charles Philipon (1800–​61), who was already famous throughout France for his caricatures, cartoon albums, and comic magazines. The boy’s father made a contract by which Doré was commissioned to produce a weekly cartoon for Philipon’s new comic paper, Le Journal pour Rire, for three years. During this period, he became a full-​ time student at the Lycée Charlemagne. He observed the crowded streets of Paris and studied the marbles of the Louvre and the masterpieces of Renaissance engraving during his training. Even after the three-​year contract, he continued to work for Philipon and later for other publishers as well. He produced an enormous number 1 I owe Doré’s early biography to the accounts made by Kaenel, Lehmann-​Haupt, Lehni, Malan, and Rose.

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of cartoons and illustrations. He drew directly upon woodblocks, which would be passed to engravers. Doré complained that Philipon’s engravers had no respect for him because he was young. By the 1860s he had gathered around him a group of craftsmen of his age, who could meet his high standards. He formed a school of young engravers, who converted his drawings in reproducible form. He regarded them as his personal friends, and their relationship remained close. In 1854, Doré’s illustration of the classics began with Rabelais’ Gargantua et Pantagruel, which enjoyed great success. He stopped making his caricatures for Philipon, and he cut down on journalistic drawing in order to specialize in illustrating chefs-​d ’oeuvre de littérature, or the worlds’ great literature, an area that he had been interested in since childhood. He decided to illustrate a large folio edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy in 1855, and began The Inferno in 1857. When he finished The Inferno, Doré could find no publisher because so large a volume of illustrations would have to be sold at a forbiddingly high price. Eventually in 1861, he financed the publication of The Inferno by himself. Its immediate success justified his plan to illustrate more great literary works. Louis Hachette, a Paris publisher, issued several editions of The Inferno.2 During these years, Doré turned to religious subjects. The firm of Alfred Mame et Fils of Tours commissioned him to illustrate the Bible and published La Sainte Bible in 1865. It was an unusually costly production, but three thousand copies were sold within a month and a second edition was called for within the year. The firm of Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. of London bought the English rights to La Sainte Bible. The publications of this firm were for the newly literate masses, so Doré’s Bible was to be produced as cheaply as possible. The firm had already published Cassell’s Illustrated Family Bible in four volumes in 1859–​63. It was illustrated by an international range of artists; Doré himself was employed to illustrate a few of the scenes. But The Doré Bible was the work of Doré’s genius alone. He employed thirty-​five engravers including Hélidore-​Joseph Pisan (1822–​90) for his Bible. Millicent Rose writes, “For the bourgeois nineteenth century, to possess Doré’s Bible was like owning a great cycle of masterpieces, like having a copy of Giotto’s Arena

2 In 1868, Doré finished The Purgatorio and The Paradiso, and Hachette published the complete Divine Comedy.

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Chapel in the family.”3 Nearly seven hundred editions of Bibles and religious books have used Doré’s illustrations. The success of The Inferno and the Bible led to the effort to illustrate Paradise Lost. Cassell, Petter, Galpin, & Co. was so impressed by Doré’s earlier work that they commissioned him to illustrate Milton’s epic. In 1866 they sold Doré’s Paradise Lost for a very high price and subsequently issued about thirty editions.4 It became very popular, appearing in about one hundred editions worldwide. In the 1860s, Doré employed many artisans―about forty―to engrave his drawings designed on woodblocks, which made mass production possible. He would draw directly upon woodblocks, often using both pencil and brush, with dark washes building up the core which characterizes each design. A total of eighteen engravers including a Belgian engraver, Adolphe-​François Pannemaker (1822–​1900), worked on his Paradise Lost. Doré’s signature is inscribed on each page (usually on the lower left), as are those of the engravers (usually on the lower right). A joint signature appears in seven illustrations engraved collaboratively by Pannemaker and A. Doms (fl.1872). [The Doré Illustrations in Paradise Lost (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1866)] List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 1 I. 44, 45

Distribution Captions Engravers of Plates by Books 5 Him the Jonnard Almighty Power /​ Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky.

3 Rose, “Introduction to the Dover Edition” vii. 4 “Milton [Paradise Lost] sold for a whopping 100s, double the price of Inferno, even though Milton had 26 less engravings,” according to Malan 73.

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 2 I. 221, 222

Engravers

Plate 3

Hotelin

Plate 4

Plate 5

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool /​His mighty stature. I. 331 They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung. I. 344, So 345 numberless were those bad Angels seen, /​ Hovering on wing, under the cope of Hell. I. 757–​ Their 759 summons called /​From every band and squared regiment, /​ By place or choice the worthiest.

Laplante

Gusmand

Pannemaker

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 6 II. 1, 2

Engravers

Plate 7

Pannemaker–​ Doms

Plate 8

Plate 9

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books 4 High on a throne of a royal state, which far /​ Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind. II. 628 Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. II. 648, Before the 649 gates there sat /​On either side a formidable shape. II. 949, With head, 950 hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, /​ And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.

Pannemaker–​ Doms

Pannemaker–​ Doms

Gusmand

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 10 III. 347–​ 349

Engravers

Plate 11

Hotelin

Plate 12

Plate 13

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books 3 Heaven rung /​With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled /​The eternal regions. III. 473, And many 474 more too long, /​ Embryos, and idiots, eremites, and friars. III. Towards the 739–​ coast of Earth 741 beneath, /​ Down from the ecliptic, sped with hoped success, /​ Throws his steep flight in many an aëry wheel. IV. 73, 7 Me miserable! 74 Which way shall I fly /​Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?

Pannemaker–​ Doms

Jonnard

Pannemaker–​ Doms

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List of Books Distribution Captions Illustrations and of Plates by Lines Books Plate 14 IV. 172, Now to the 173 ascent of that steep savage hill /​ Satan hath journey’d on, pensive and slow. IV. 247 A happy rural Plate 15 seat of various view. Plate 16 IV. 335, The savoury 336 pulp they chew, and in the rind, /​ Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream. Plate 17 IV. 589, So promised 590 he; and Uriel to his charge /​ Returned. Plate 18 IV. 798, These to the 799 bower direct /​In search of whom they sought.

Engravers

Smeeton

Laplante Gauchard

Pannemaker–​ Doms Jonnard

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 19 IV. 1014, 1015

Engravers

Plate 20

Pannemaker

Plate 21

Plate 22

Plate 23

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books Nor more; but fled /​ Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night. V. 12, 3 Leaning, 13 half raised, with looks of cordial love, /​Hung over her enamoured. V. 309, Eastward 310 among those trees, what glorious shape /​Comes this way moving? V. 468–​ To whom 470 the wingèd Hierarch replied: /​O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom /​All things proceed. VI. 188 7 This greeting on thy impious crest receive.

Gauchard

Pannemaker–​ Doms

Monvoisin

Huyot

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 24 VI. 207–​ 209

Engravers

Plate 25

Piauad

Plate 26 Plate 27

Plate 28 Plate 29

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books Now storming fury rose, /​And clamour, such as heard in heaven till now /​Was never. VI. 327, Then Satan 328 first knew pain, /​And writhed him to and fro. VI. 406 Now Night her course began. VI. On the 410–​ foughten field 412 /​Michaël and his angels, prevalent /​ Encamping, placed in guard their watches round. VI. 871 Nine days they fell. VI. Hell at last, 874, /​ Yawning, 875 received them whole.

Demarle

Ligny Ligny

Gusmand Hotelin

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 30 VII. 298, 299

Engravers

Plate 31

Smeeton

Plate 32

Plate 33

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books 5 Wave rolling after wave, where way they found; /​If steep, with torrent rapture. VII. And God 387–​ said: Let 389 the waters generate /​ Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul; And let fowl fly above the earth. VII. And seems a 415, moving land; 416 and at his gills /​ Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea. VII. Meanwhile 417, 418 the tepid caves, and fens, and shores, /​ Their brood as numerous hatch.

Laplante

Hildibrand

Ligny

239

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 34 VII. 581, 582

Engravers

Plate 35

Pannemaker

Plate 36

Plate 37

Plate 38

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books And now on earth the seventh /​ Evening arouse in Eden. VIII. 1 So parted 652, they: the 653 Angel up to heaven /​From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower. IX. 74, 6 In with the 75 river sunk, and with it rose, /​Satan. IX. 99, O Earth, 100 how like to Heaven, if not preferred /​More justly. IX. Him, fast 182, sleeping, soon 183 he found /​ In labyrinth of many a round, self-​ rolled.

Piaud

Jonnard

Goebel

Gauchard

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 39 IX. 434, 435

Engravers

Plate 40

Huyot

Plate 41

Plate 42

Plate 43

Distribution Captions of Plates by Books Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed /​ Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm. IX. Back to the 784, thicket slunk 785 /​The guilty serpent. IX. Nor only 1121–​ tears /​Rained 1123 at their eyes, but high winds worse within /​ Began to rise. X. 99–​ 4 They heard, /​ 101 And from His presence hid themselves among /​The thickest trees. X. And now 439–​ expecting /​ 441 Each hour their great adventurer, from the search /​ Of foreign worlds.

Dupont

Gusmand

Jonnard

Jonnard

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List of Books Distribution Captions Illustrations and of Plates by Lines Books Plate 44 X. 521–​ Dreadful 523 was the din /​Of hissing through the hall, thick-​ swarming now /​With complicated monsters, head and tail. X. 610 This said, Plate 45 they both betook them several ways. Plate 46 XI. 3 The heavenly 208–​ bands /​ 210 Down from a sky of jasper lighted not /​ In Paradise. Plate 47 XI. 729 Began to build a vessel of huge bulk. Plate 48 XI. All dwellings 747–​ else /​Flood 749 overwhelmed, and them, with all their pomp, /​Deep under water rolled.

Engravers

Dupont

Jonnard

Pannemaker

Pannemaker Hildibrand

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List of Books Illustrations and Lines Plate 49 XII. 236–​ 238

Plate 50

XII. 645

Distribution Captions Engravers of Plates by Books 2 They beseech Hotelin /​That Moses might report to them his will, /​And terror cease. Some natural Deschamps tears they dropt, but wiped them soon.

Reader-​ viewers might notice some differences in the quality of engravings. These may be the result of fast production by Doré himself and qualitative differences between different engravers. When John Dixon Hunt says, “the figures” in Doré’s work “posture as in Victorian melodrama,” he seems to be referring to Adam and Eve’s portrayal (Plate 41), and to Doré’s attempt to portray Satan crying “Me miserable!” (PL. 4.73. Plate 13).5 Hunt comments severely, “It may well be that Doré is responsible for the dearth of Milton illustration since” (217). Doré chose fifty scenes from Milton’s epic and gave each illustration a caption consisting of brief, direct quotations. The number of illustrations for each book is uneven, varying from one, for Book 8, to seven, for Books 4 and 6. In his examination of the relation of image and text, Edward Hodnett looks into “the initial problem that confronts the artist: which of all the possible moments of choice are the ones that are most significant in terms of contributing to the reader’s understanding of the text and of reinforcing the emotional effect sought by the author?” According to Hodnett, “[i]‌deally, each illustration would reflect and sustain the tone of the work as a whole” (8). We therefore must understand Doré’s uneven distribution of plates by books as his own approach to Paradise Lost.

5 The quotations are taken from Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler. 2nd ed.

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Twenty-​nine illustrations depict Satan and his cohorts, while only twelve illustrations depict Adam and Eve. Satan, as the devil or the serpent, is foregrounded even in three illustrations of the couple. The predominance of devils over humans is telling. Earlier, in 1861, in his Inferno, Doré illustrated devils and Lucifer in Hell very powerfully. When he turned to Paradise Lost in1866, he might have been still preoccupied with devils, but he righty recognized Satan as a principal driving force in the epic as the Romantic poets did. Doré was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it,” or perhaps he was fully aware of which party was the most fascinating .6 He reflected the taste of his times. Doré impressively depicted Satan and rebel angels, but his Adam and Eve are, admittedly, unsatisfactory. Books 8 and 12 describing Adam and Eve have far fewer illustrations than other books. The single illustration for Book 8 (Plate 35) has the caption from the Book’s concluding lines: “So parted they: the Angel up to heaven /​From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower. Book VIII, lines 652, 653.” We feel something is lacking. While Doré depicted five scenes (Plates 30–​34) from Milton’s tour de force verbal representation of the Creation in Book 7, he did not include the creation of humankind. The Creation begins with the creation of light and ends with the creation of humankind. And the creation of humankind is consummated by the creation of Eve. But Doré’s illustrations of the Creation scenes end without the creation of humankind. Therefore the separation scene of the angel and the human couple appears abrupt. The paucity of Doré’s illustrations of Adam and Eve for Paradise Lost requires us to delve deeper for both the cause and effect of Doré’s artistic choice. In The Doré Bible, we find two illustrations of Adam and Eve, which Doré seems to have based on Paradise Lost rather than on Genesis itself.

6 Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Note to Plates 5–​6.

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[HB 2 “The Formation of Eve”]

The first one is captioned “THE FORMATION OF EVE” with a biblical quotation: “She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man … (Genesis 2:23).” But this illustration narrates more than Genesis. Specifically, it suitably explains the passage of Paradise Lost, 8.452–​90. Based on and extended from three verses of Genesis (2:21–​23), Milton narrates Adam’s retrospect in exquisite detail. Adam finds a creature Manlike, but different sex, so lovely fair, That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained And in her looks, which from that time infused Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before, And into all things from her air inspired The spirit of love and amorous delight.   (8.471–​77) Adam bestows his unqualified praise on this newly-​created creature. He senses himself inspired with love even during his sleep.

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When we look at Doré’s illustration Plate 2 for the Bible, we find that Milton’s passage is well reflected. Adam’s dreamy, ecstatic face implies his feeling. Eve’s looks and posture well reflect her nature explained in the subsequent lines: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . on she came, Led by her heavenly maker, though unseen, And guided by his voice, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................... Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love, I overjoyed could not forbear aloud.   (8.484–​90) Eve is full of “grace,” “dignity,” and “love” in the bright light reflecting the light of God. This finely drawn image would have been appropriate for Adam’s account of Eve’s creation in Book 8 of Paradise Lost. The Doré Bible editions were heavy and expensive with their two hundred and sixty-​five engravings, so several publishers printed smaller collections of usually one hundred biblical illustrations in the so-​called Doré Bible Gallery editions.7 Forty editions were published by eighteen different publishers between 1866 and 1891. There are different illustrations for the same biblical passage.

7 228 plates for the first edition and 37 plates for the second edition, according to Malan 9.

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[DBG “The Creation of Eve”]

In the illustration entitled “THE CREATION OF EVE,” interestingly enough, God is depicted in the light. The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Doré Gallery of Bible Illustrations explains how Milton elaborates on the brief biblical account of Eve’s creation (Genesis 2:18; 21–​24): “It is at this point the artist [Doré] comes to interpret the poet’s dream. Amid the varied and luxurious foliage of Eden, in the vague light of the early dawn, Eve is presented, coy and graceful, gazing on her sleeping Lord, while in the background is faintly outlined the mystic form of Him in whose image they were created.”8 It is noteworthy that Doré produced “The Creation of Eve” for his Bible Gallery as a variant of “The Formation of Eve” in his Bible.

8 Web. 29 Sept. 2019. .

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The six illustrations for Book 9 (Plates 36–​41) depict well the process 9 of the fall, but they mainly focus on Satan. The three illustrations (Plate 47: Noah’s Ark; Plate 48: The Deluge; Plate 49: Moses’ Ten Commandments) for Books 11 and 12 are too difficult to understand that they depict the future of mankind Michael foretells through his vision. The last illustration for Book 12 (Plate 50) depicts a scene with the caption: “Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon. Book XII, line 645.”

[PL 50]

This line for the caption is followed by the four lines that end the whole epic.

9 For an analysis of Doré’s six illustrations for Book 9, see Virginia Tufte, “Visualizing Paradise Lost: Classroom Use of Illustrations by Medina, Blake, and Doré” 117–​20.

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The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and providence their guide: They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.   (12.646–​49) From this passage, we imagine the human couple looking ahead soon after they have wiped away their tears. In Doré’s last illustration for Paradise Lost, however, Eve is still weeping her eyes out, and Adam seems to weep silently. We hardly feel that they have wiped away their tears. They do not appear to be stepping forward. The caption is not expressed at all in the very last illustration. In his Bible, Doré had already illustrated “ADAM AND EVE DRIVEN OUT OF EDEN” with the verse “And he [the Lord God] placed at the east of the Garden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life … (Genesis 3:24).”

[HB 3 “Adam and Eve Driven Out of Eden”]

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This image also could have been added to his two illustrations for Book 12, especially for the final Expulsion scene. This scene from the Bible illustrations is far more suitable for the caption for the final illustration to Paradise Lost and comparable to the famous Expulsion scenes drawn by various painters and illustrators in the history of art. Let us look closely at Doré’s Bible illustration Plate 3. Eve leans sadly on Adam’s shoulder but steps forth, supported by Adam. He looks back but appears to be determined to step forward. They are reunited in love and trust. Michael stands backlit by the light of Paradise where nature is fruitful and benevolent. By contrast, the area into which Adam and Eve have walked is dark and barren. A dog on the lower left side is barking at them. Doré’s addition of a dog is not original, but perhaps it might have been inspired by the preceding example of the Expulsion (1827) by John Martin (1784–​1854). He depicted a small dog in his mezzotint illustration to Paradise Lost, 12.641 (Plate 24). Hodnett regards “A small dog, symbol of faithfulness, accompanying the couple” as intrusions, but recognizes the two lonely figures “brought together in love and perhaps peace” (135).10 Although Doré has the opposite way of depicting the dog, he tries to show the bond of Adam and Eve. The contrast in Doré’s Expulsion scene implies that a severe environment is awaiting the couple. However, Michael, who is not depicted in Martin’s illustration, magnificently but gently points ahead, showing them the way to go. We can sense the final lines of Milton’s epic in this scene, an ending that is indeed a beginning and, though sad, makes reader-​viewers feel hope more than despair. The years 1865 to 1866 were Doré’s most prolific period, accounting for the overlap of themes in the many illustrations he produced in that brief time. More than an overlap, there seems to be a mixing of his two great works, the Bible and Paradise Lost. The two illustrations from his Bible, “The Formation of Eve” and “Adam and Eve Driven out of Eden,” as well as additional illustrations of Adam and Eve, would have strengthened the human drama in his Paradise Lost. Conversely, some illustrations for the Creation and early events in Genesis would have fit the Bible illustrations. Plus, there is the fact that Doré did not attend to balancing the number of illustrations allotted to each book of Milton’s

10 Hodnett 135. He gives an analysis of all the twenty-​four plates in Chapter 5, “John Martin’s Paradise Lost.”

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epic. Nevertheless, we can fully recognize the value of Doré’s Paradise Lost illustrations. They have for many years captured the imaginations of readers of Milton’s epic.

Works Cited Blake, William. William Blake’s Writings. Vol. 1. Ed. G. E. Bentley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Doré, Gustave. The Doré Bible Illustrations. New York: Dover Publications, 1974. —​—​—​. The Doré Illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy. New York: Dover Publications, 1976. —​—​—​. Doré’s Illustrations for Paradise Lost. New York: Dover Publications, 1993. —​—​—​. The Inferno: The Definitive Illustrated Edition. New York: Dover Publications, 2016. Hodnett, Edward. Image and Text: Studies in the Illustration of English Literature. Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1982. Hunt, John Dixon. “Milton’s Illustrators.” John Milton: Introductions. Ed. John Broadbent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. 208–​25. Kaenel, Philippe, ed. Doré: Master of Imagination. Paris: Musée d’Orsay, 2014. Lehmann-​Haupt, Hellmut. The Terrible Gustave Doré. New York: Marchbanks Press, 1943. Lehni, Nadine, et al. eds. Gustave Doré: 1832–​1883. Strasbourg: Musée d’Art Moderne-​Strasbourg, 1983. Malan, Dan. Gustave Doré: A Biography. St. Louis: MCE Publishing, 1996. Milton, John. Complete Shorter Poems. Ed. John Cary. 2nd ed. London and New York: Longman, 1997. —​—​—​. Paradise Lost. Ed. Alastair Fowler. 2nd ed. London and New York: Longman, 1997. Rose, Millicent. Gustave Doré. London: Pleiades Books, 1946. Tufte, Virginia. “Visualizing Paradise Lost: Classroom Use of Illustrations by Medina, Blake, and Doré.” Approaches to Teaching Milton’s Paradise Lost. Ed. Galbraith M. Crump. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1986. 112–​25.

“Tyranny must be” (PL, XII, 195): Milton’s Politics of Heaven in Paradise Lost Victoria M. Griffon

Since its first publication in 1667, readers of Paradise Lost have been struck by the apparent contradiction, or discrepancy at least, between Milton’s firm opposition to monarchy –​and to tyranny, its worst corollary –​as stated in his political pamphlets such as The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates or Eikonoklastes, both published a few years before Paradise Lost in 1649, and the way he chose to represent God and Heaven in the poem in terms of politics. At the end of Paradise Lost, Archangel Michael tells Adam that tyranny is to be the consequence of “Man’s first disobedience”: Since thy original lapse, true liberty Is lost, which always with right reason dwells Twin’d, and from her hath no dividual being: Reason in man obscur’d, or not obey’d, Immediately inordinate desires And upstairs passions, catch the government From reason; and to servitude reduce Man, till then free. Therefore, since he permits Within himself unworthy powers to reign Over free reason, God, in judgment just, Subjects him from without to violent lords; Who oft as undeservedly enthral His outward freedom: tyranny must be; Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse. (PL, XII, 83–​96) In these quite severe and uncompromising lines, it seems to the readers that tyranny belongs to the postlapsarian world and is part of man’s lasting punishment, but if we go back earlier in the poem, it appears that the idea of tyranny already permeates the prelapsarian political structure of Heaven. Indeed, while in Books I and II of the poem Satan appears as the champion of Republicanism and as a persuasive opponent

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to the “tyranny of Heaven,”1 God on the contrary takes on every aspect of a tyrant, he is an arbitrary ruler whose legal right to exercise power is never justified nor explained and who defends his position and authority by repressive means if we consider Satan’s fate for having defied God’s authority. From a human perspective, God in Paradise Lost meets all the requirements of the perfect tyrant and this is an aspect that Satan puts forward in the poem when he complains about God’s radical authority to which everyone and everything must be submitted: “is there no place/​ left for repentance, none for pardon left?/​None left but by submission.”2 And even though in Of Reformation (1641) Milton himself contrasts “earthly tyrannies” with the “mild monarchy of heaven,” the monarchy of Heaven as presented in the epic poem is everything but mild and disobedience is not an option for the characters, either in Heaven or in Paradise, if they want to remain in God’s protective bosom and be saved. The God of Paradise Lost appears as an absolute and omnipotent king, highly reminiscent of the Old Testament God of wrath, and his unquestioned authority seems to culminate in Book V with the episode of the exaltation of the Son, chosen as his father’s rightful heir. This totally arbitrary appointment seems to ratify the idea that Heaven is to be considered by the readers as suddenly becoming a hereditary and absolute monarchy and many critics have felt uncomfortable with this idea as it generates a seeming inconsistency in the poem and conflicting politics between Milton’s regicide tracts and his late and major poetical work. When it comes to politics in Paradise Lost, the readers’ attention is first drawn to the politics of Hell and to its disconcerting resemblance with Milton’s own political views as a supporter of the Commonwealth and as a systematic challenger to monarchy. Pandaemonium indeed appears as a possible Parliament and the “great consult” (I, 798) of Book II could be seen as an exercise in parliamentary democracy. However, Satan and his fellow devils’ rhetoric soon appears to be rather duplicitous and fraught with contradiction –​at least to what Sharon Achinstein calls “the fit reader.”3 Then, when Satan states that God should be regarded as a tyrant whose absolute authority can never be questioned and before whom every creature should “bow” (I, 111–​12), we might not be inclined 1 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler (London: Routledge), 2007, I, 124. 2 Id. IV, 79–​81. 3 Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994).

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to believe him. Nevertheless, a real sense of uneasiness emerges in Book III in which God is represented –​by the illuminated narrator this time and no longer through the corrupted eyes of Satan –​with all the pomp and circumstance of an absolute monarch: Thee, Father, first they sung, omnipotent, Immutable, immortal, infinite, Eternal King; thee author of all being, Fountain of light, thyself invisible Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sit’st Thron’d inaccessible; but when thou shad’st The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine, Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear. Yet dazzle Heaven; that brightest seraphim Approach not, but with wings veil their eyes. (PL, III, 372–​82, emphasis mine) God’s unequalled authority and brightness is here made quite clear in the description as even his most distinguished angels cannot bear the sight of such a prodigious power. Here we might feel rather uncomfortable reading these lines considering Milton’s fierce opposition to any form of monarchy in his political prose. As stated earlier, this outward inconsistency and the political ambiguity of the poem have led to many conflicting critical responses in the world of Milton studies. In the wake of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, scholars like Barbara Lewalski or Blair Worden believe Milton’s political representations in Paradise Lost to be categorically disconnected from earthly politics. They consider that by the time he composed his epic poem, Milton had completely “withdrawn from politics into faith”4 as Blair Worden puts it in “Milton’s Republicanism and the Tyranny of Heaven” which tackles this tension between Milton the pamphleteer and Milton the poet. Another answer to this issue also appears in Barbara Lewalski’s biography of John Milton: “there can be no possible parallel between earthly kings and divine kingship”5 4 Blair Worden, “Milton’s Republicanism and the Tyranny of Heaven,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 244. 5 Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 466.

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so that the reader understands that earthly kings are actually idolatrous beings trying to equal God. This idea that we should separate politics as represented in Paradise Lost and earthly politics seems quite unsatisfactory to me for two reasons. First, I agree with Blair Worden’s paradoxical statement that, after all, “we should hardly expect a writer who had dedicated his life […] to a political cause, and who had proclaimed that ‘poets truly so called’ […] were ‘the sworn foes of tyrants’ to have suddenly lost his political interest”6 just when he composed Paradise Lost. Moreover, the notion that there is no parallel between divine and earthly politics seems to contradict Milton’s didactic project for Paradise Lost, which is to “justify the ways of God to men.”7 If there is no possible parallel between what is at stake in Heaven and our mundane postlapsarian environment, then we must regard Milton’s Paradise Lost as an absolute failure. As John Toland puts it, “the chief design [of the poem] is to display the different effects of Liberty and Tyranny” with a God that is associated with all the “imagery and accoutrement of absolute kingship.”8 So if we keep in mind that Paradise Lost can be read as a didactic work, then would it be possible to find an “excuse” (XIII, 96) for this tyrant-​like God? If Satan’s illusory liberty proves to be “tyranny in disguise”9 to the fit reader, then we could consider God’s indisputable authority not as the “tyranny of Heaven,” but as a more complex element in the poem’s political and religious dimensions. I believe that even though Paradise Lost should probably not be read as what Armand Himy calls a “tractatus theologico-​politicus,”10 it nevertheless remains influenced by Milton’s political and religious convictions. And even though we assume that, theologically speaking, God is far beyond our human

6 Blair Worden, “Milton’s Republicanism and the Tyranny of Heaven,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1990, p. 235. 7 Paradise Lost, I, 26. 8 Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 466. 9 David Lowenstein, “The Radical Religious Politics of Paradise Lost,” in A New Companion to Milton, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-​Blackwell), 2016, p. 377. 10 Armand Himy, “Paradise Lost as a republican ‘tractatus theologico-​politicus’,” in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy, Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 118–​34.

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understanding,11 Milton’s didactic project for Paradise Lost demands a certain level of accommodation from the poet. Through the use of accommodation, Milton tried to translate and represent “things invisible to mortal sight”12 as intelligibly as possible for the contemporary readers of the poem. As stated by J. Allan Mitchell, the problem of God in Paradise Lost hence appears as “essentially representational”13 and so has to do with the poem itself and its structure more than with theology strictly speaking. The question is not to know how God really is theologically speaking, but to study the way he is portrayed as a character in the poem. If Milton knowingly chose to represent Heaven as the place of God’s arbitrary authority, then we should consider it to be part of the broader didactic programme of the poem and we should try to understand the function of such a representation in the story of the Fall in Paradise Lost. As the Fall –​the central concept of the poem –​is built upon Milton’s belief in individual liberty and free choice, I think an interesting track to understand Milton’s God in the poem might be to contemplate the relationship between the concepts of authority and liberty, both political and religious, as displayed in the story of Paradise Lost through the character of God. The representation of God in the poem seems to originate in Milton’s heterodox religious beliefs and I think that to a certain extent, we can consider Paradise Lost as a possible “Arian [and also an Arminian] fiction”14 in which the poet not only displays “different effects of Liberty and Tyranny” but also explores the possibility of writing a heretic Arian and Arminian poetry of the Fall, incorporating his theological views on the concepts of liberty and Trinity into the structure and story of the poem. I am hardly alone in thinking that Milton’s religious stances can be used as a key to understand the political structure of Paradise Lost, and as both dimensions were often combined throughout seventeenth-​century 11 Complete Prose Works of John Milton, 8 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1953–​82, 6:133, further referred as CPW. 12 Paradise Lost, III, 55. 13 J. Allan Mitchell, “Reading God, Reading ‘Man’: Hereditary Sin and the Narrativization of Deity in Paradise Lost, Book 3,” in Milton Quarterly 35.2 (2001) 73. 14 John Rogers, “The Political Theology of Milton’s Heaven,” in The New Milton Criticism, eds. Peter C. Herman and Elizabeth Sauer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 72.

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England and Europe, we might expect Milton’s poem to reflect this connection between those two aspects. In two thought-​provoking essays published in 2012 and 2017,15 John Rogers and Warren Chernaik have also explored this relationship between Milton’s heretical theology and politics to try and understand the representation of God in Paradise Lost. Indeed, if Milton is often defined as a Puritan, in some of his theological writings such as The Reason of Church-​Government Urged against Prelacy (1642), we can see that he frequently departed from strict Calvinist theology, and some of his views seem closer to two major Christian heresies, Arianism and Arminianism. By understanding that Milton’s representation of God can originate in those two heretical currents, we understand that maybe the apparent tyranny of Heaven can in fact be seen as a key element in the programme of Paradise Lost. Warren Chernaik starts with Milton’s Arminianism –​found mainly in his rejection and redefinition of the Calvinist idea of predestination –​ exploring how Milton managed to incorporate the idea of liberty into the poem in spite of God’s being depicted as an absolute monarch: “Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes explore the problematical aspects of a universe ruled by an all-​powerful God of wrath, demanding obedience, who allows his creatures the freedom to be ‘authors’ of their own fate.”16 The main pitfall of Calvinism, according to Milton, was that, because of predestination, God could be considered as the primary cause of the Fall and of evil in general, which to Milton was completely unacceptable. Indeed, Milton’s paradoxical project for Paradise Lost, which seems at first sight completely unworkable, is to “carve out a space of liberty”17 for God’s creatures, while representing him as an absolute monarch, maintaining the biblical tradition that always associates God with the idea of monarchy and rejecting at the same time the possibility of portraying a God whose authoritarian behaviour would irresistibly lead to the Fall. In this regard and according to Chernaik, we can easily sense the Arminian roots of Paradise Lost in the way God is depicted, as he sometimes freely chooses not to use his absolute power over his creation and rather to behave like a limited monarch, an idea that Milton expressed in De Doctrina Christiana (1825): “Divine foreknowledge definitely cannot 15 Id. See also Warren Chernaik, Milton and the Burden of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 16 Warren Chernaik, op. cit., p.13. 17 John Rogers, “The Political Theology of Milton’s Heaven,” p. 79.

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impose any necessity, nor can it be set up as a cause, in any sense, of free action […] liberty will be an empty word, and will have to be banished utterly not only from religion, but also from morality.”18 This interestingly echoes Book III of the epic: “Not free, what proof could they have given sincere /​Of true allegiance, constant faith or love?”19 This non-​systematic behaviour, as if God had his own system of check and balances, allows characters like Adam and Eve to have some room for liberty in the poem, but does not seem to justify completely Milton’s choice to show us a God who otherwise acts like an unpleasant tyrant almost everywhere else in Paradise Lost. In this regard, I believe that John Rogers follows the same idea –​to go back to Milton’s heretical beliefs –​but in a much more radical and convincing way. He investigates Milton’s Arianism which denies equality and identity of the three persons of the Trinity; the Son and the Holy Spirit being no longer ontologically equal to God but rather submitted to his absolute authority. Indeed, the most explicit instance of God’s authoritative power in Paradise Lost is definitely the scene of the exaltation of the Son, as related by Raphael to Adam in Book V:   Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light, Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers; Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand. This day I have begot whom I declare My only Son, and on this holy hill Him have anointed, whom ye now behold At my right hand; your head I him appoint; And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow All knees in Heaven, and shall confess him Lord: Under his great vicegerent reign abide United, as one individual soul, For ever happy: Him who disobeys, Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day, Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls Into utter darkness, deep engulfed, his place Ordained without redemption, without end. So spake the Omnipotent, and with his words All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but were not all. (V, 600–​17) 18 CPW, 6:164–​65. 19 Paradise Lost, III, 103–​04.

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In this passage, every element reminds the reader of the monarchic atmosphere of the event as God chooses his own Son to become his “vicegerent,” his legitimate heir. Tracing back the Arian foundations of this passage, Rogers explains how arbitrary this appointment may appear to a reader familiar with the Arian heresy that poses a radical inequality and hierarchy between God and the Son, debunking the traditional Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity. If God and his Son are no longer to be regarded as one theological entity, bound together by an ontological and necessary link, then God’s choice to appoint his Son must be the expression of his own authority as the king of Heaven and it appears as a fundamentally unnecessary act, not founded on reason nor faith: “It is fundamentally a free, political relation, and not an obligatory filial relation that the Son of God has with the Heavenly Father.”20 This arbitrary choice, Raphael tells Adam, accounts for Satan’s rebellion against what appears a whimsical decision to him. The exact same movement can be seen in God’s command to Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. No justification for this interdiction is given anywhere in the poem, and even Adam does not seem to understand it fully:    he who requires From us no other service than to keep This one, this easy charge, of all the trees In Paradise that bear delicious fruit So various, not to taste that only tree Of knowledge, planted by the tree of life; So near grows death to life, whate'er death is, Some dreadful thing no doubt; for well thou knowest God hath pronounced it death to taste that tree, The only sign of our obedience left, Among so many signs of power and rule Conferred upon us, and dominion given Over all other creatures that possess Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard One easy prohibition. (IV, 417–​31) (Emphasis mine)

20 John Rogers, op. cit., p. 81.

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In the above extract, the most important part to me lies in the very short clause on line 425: “whate’ver death is.” The fact that Adam does not know what death is appears, of course, as the consequence of his prelapsarian state at this moment in the epic, but it also tells the reader that Adam does not possess the capacity to calculate the implication of this command. To him, it must appear as whimsical and as arbitrary as the exaltation of the Son was to Satan’s eyes earlier in the narrative framework of the poem. This second example seems to show that, once again, the God of Paradise Lost is to be considered a potential tyrant, an arbitrary monarch whose unaccountable decisions demand only pure obedience from his subjects. And indeed, it is in this notion of pure obedience that may lie one of the key aspects of the poem’s programme. According to John Rogers, the paradox of Heaven’s politics in Paradise Lost does not lie so much in the fact that God is represented as a potential tyrant, but that his arbitrary commands put the other characters, and maybe the readers too, into the position of choosing and to practice their free will. Had God’s choices in the poem been reasonable, rationally explained by a theological or natural necessity, then obedience to his authority would have been natural and easy for characters such as Satan or Adam and Eve who are themselves endowed with reason. After all, as stated in the epic: “But God left free the will, for what obeys/​ Reason, is free, and Reason he made right” (IX, 51–​52), the paradox of obedience lies in the fact that one has to unfetter oneself from reason to be completely free and to choose God not because of reason but in spite of it: “Milton was never unmindful of the fact that the free Christian’s moral obligation to obey the internally inscribed natural law rather than the externally imposed positive civil law was still an obligation.”21 In the end, the choice to obey, to follow God’s commands, is not, in Paradise Lost, the result of the law of nature or reason, that would be naturally implanted into God’s creatures; otherwise that would not have been the proof of a free choice. Adam’s limited knowledge of what death is and God’s arbitrary appointment of his Son seem to prove that God’s monarchic authority, not being founded on reason nor faith, implies a radically free will for the other characters and it is the exercise of this radical free will that allows the story of the Fall to take place: “The potential for a radical creaturely freedom […] emerges not in spite of, but because of,

21 Id., p. 78.

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the dread phenomenon that Satan labels, provocatively, and to some level 22 justly, the ‘Tyranny of Heaven’.” Of course, Milton never advocates such a radical freedom in his political tracts as he believed that the law of nature, or the right reason, was naturally inscribed into man’s heart and that it is the foundation for any suitable social contract on earth. But in his poetry, Milton contemplates the possibility of a radical religious and political liberty in man’s relationship to God. Paradise Lost goes beyond and further than what is possible on earth, not by being completely disconnected from earthly politics and problematics, but by incorporating them to its structure and programme so as to show that the characters’ relationship to God should be absolute, freely chosen and that faith should be a sign of their choice of “pure obedience” to God’s arbitrary and sometimes unfathomable and unacceptable authority. Paradoxically, Milton’s choice to represent God as an absolute monarch who shares every aspect of the tyrants he despised so much, actually allows him to create a unique and poetical space of radical liberty for the creatures, that is essential to the structure of the story in Paradise Lost. Satan’s fall leading to Adam and Eve’s results in what I believe is the most important concept of the poem, the felix culpa, the fortunate fall, the great sacrifice of the Son to redeem humankind and to eventually overcome death and sin. So the issue of God’s authority in Paradise Lost is not so much about understanding if it is to be considered analogically regarding human politics, nor is it about evading the question by stating that his “kingdom is not of this world.”23 I think that the question of God’s authority in the poem is more about acknowledging the role of this tyrant-​like God in the economy of the poem, as the possible condition for the story of the Fall to happen. Indeed, “Tyranny must be”24 in Paradise Lost, to guarantee the mechanisms that will lead to the fall of Adam and Eve and to justify the eventual grandeur of the sacrifice of the Son. God’s authority ensures the radical consistency of the whole poem as the story of the Fall. There seems to be a political and theological imperative for Milton in reasserting this notion of individual liberty as absolute in the poem. Paradise Lost, though not being a theological or political pamphlet, nevertheless remains strongly rooted in politics and faith, and I think that one of Milton’s tour-​de-​forces is to have been 22 Id., p. 82. 23 King James Bible, John 18:36. 24 Paradise Lost, XII, 195.

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able to incorporate all these elements into an epic that transcends both politics and theology.

Critical Bibliography Achinstein, Sharon, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, 1994). Bryson, Michael, Milton’s Rejection of God as King (Newark: University of Delaware Press), 2004. Chernaik, Warren, Milton and the Burden of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2017. Herman, Peter C., Destabilizing Milton, “Paradise Lost” and the Poetics of Incertitude (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 2005. Himy, Armand, “Paradise Lost as a republican ‘tractatus theologico-​ politicus’ ” in Milton and Republicanism, eds. David Armitage, Armand Himy, Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 118–​34. Lewalski, Barbara K., The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell), 2000. Lowenstein, David, “The Radical Religious Politics of Paradise Lost” in A New Companion to Milton, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-​Blackwell), 2016, p. 377. Lim, Walter S.H., John Milton, Radical Politics and Biblical Republicanism (Newark: University of Delaware Press), 2006. Mitchell, J. Allan, “Reading God, Reading ‘Man’: Hereditary Sin and the Narrativization of Deity in Paradise Lost, Book 3” in Milton Quarterly 35.2 (2001) 73. Milton and Republicanism, eds. David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1995. Raymond, Joad, “The Restauration” in Milton in Context, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2010. Rogers, John, “The Political Theology of Milton’s Heaven” in The New Milton Criticism, eds. Peter C. Hermand and Elizabeth Sauer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2012. Worden, Blair, “Milton’s Republicanism and the Tyranny of Heaven” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, eds. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1990.

Satanic L/​Imitations. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. 2:6)” Ágnes Bató

In my study, I analyse the structure of the arguments in Paradise Lost that Satan uses to justify his rebellion against God, I am showing that the logic of his relation to the Father is based on imitation. My approach to the epic is cognitive, since I understand imitation as the perception and the enaction of similarity. I consider imitation as an underlying pattern of the epic, as the theological basis of the character’s existence is the fact that they are described as made after the image, or being sons of God.1 Since this paper is part of a more extensive research wherein I analyse the metaphorical implications of “image” and “son,” within the scope of this article I would focus on the way the fallen archangel redefines likeness to God, and establishes the rivalistic way of imitation, as opposed to obedience and creative work. I would like to show that Satan‘s pride, which leads to his rebellion, originates from his self-​perception as being similar to, or even identical with God, and I will show that in order to maintain this likeness, he attempts to imitate God. In order to describe the logic of imitation, I find useful the theory described by the French philosophers Gabriel Tarde and René Girard. While the former approached it from a sociological aspect, and argued that it defines the scope of behaviour of the imitating agent (The Laws Of Imitation, 1890), the latter described two types of imitative behaviours: one that leads to learning and actual similarity, and

1

Image, and its synonymous concepts as likeness, resemblance, and the kinship metaphors son and father appear very often in the epic, and they serve as denominators for humans and angels respectively, implying that their existence is based on similarity to God. Curiously, however, the rebel angel is not once referred to as either image or son with relation to God.

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another that causes rivalry between the model and the imitating agent (Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World, 1987). I am going to use these theoretical principles to show that Satan misinterprets similarity to God, and understands it as a basis to reclaim power and position. He expounds this interpretation to Eve upon the temptation in Book 9, and tries to convince her that her innate divinity authorizes her to disobey God. He also creates an alternative idea of God as a tyrant and together with the host of fallen angels they become similar to their image of a merciless god. Rebellion is contagious, and several angels participate in the creation of a false transcendence, which is a negative imitation of the divine. However, as Satan and the fallen angels become more and more dissimilar to God, their rivalry limits their powers. As Tarde explains, imitation is a threefold structure, consisting of the model, the world, and the imitating agent. The world, and the identity of the imitating agent as well are only accessible through the model; it is the model, in this case God, who establishes the self and the world; furthermore, God is in the focal point of the attention and the actions of the rebels; who end up serving His purposes. According to Girard, imitation can be acquisitive and appropriative; the former being the result of externally, the latter of internally mediated mimetic desire.2 Rivalry is the result of the imitating agent wanting to become the model; thus the aim of its imitation is to replace the model. As Paul Richard Blum has already shown (2012), the Satan described 2

Girard writes about what he calls mimetic desire, and it is a certain type of mimetic desire, internally mediated mimetic desire, which I am concerned with. Desire by Girard is defined as a triangular relation between subject, object, and a mediator or model who directs the subject’s desire to the object. Girard’s primary classification depends on whether the mediator is external or internal to the world of the desiring subject. External mediation usually happens by God, gods and heroes, and is conscious and socially reinforced. Internal mediation, whether by one’s “peer group” or individuals felt to possess a secret charisma, is more dangerous. The closer the mediator to the self, the less one is willing or able to admit his influence. This internal type of mediate may lead to frustration and rivalry, usually involving both the model and the imitating subject. The epic is a special case in this sense, since God, who is usually conceived as the primary external model, is internal to Lucifer’s world to the extent that he is able to enter into a one-​sided rivalry with him. He becomes, as a result, actively a rival of the Son. Their rivalry climaxes in the epic Paradise Regained when Satan tempts the Son in order to make him similar to himself.

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by Girard, who perpetuates the mimetic cycle of violence, is parallel to Milton’s Satan. Blum carries out what he calls a “Girardian reading” of the epic, pointing out the aspects of rivalry, frustration and vengeance that characterize the Satan in Girard’s approach to myth and the Bible, which can also be found in the epic. In my view, in Paradise Lost imitation plays a fundamental role: on the one hand, Adam and Eve are by definition imitations, made after the image of God; and it is their duty to further imitate Him and be like Him. On the other hand, the angels are mentioned as sons, while the Son is both son and image, embodying the ultimate likeness. The Archangel, however, wants to achieve not likeness, but identity with God, so he rebels and counter imitates Him, but by establishing his rule in Hell and then on Earth, he becomes less alike. Contrary to this, the human couple are instructed to respect the image of God in themselves and in each other, and become more alike but not identical with God; a type of similarity epitomized by the Son.

Origin of the Epic Rivalry A fundamental question of Milton’s epic is why the Archangel Lucifer rebels against the father in the first place. The motivations behind this are described by Raphael in Book 5, describing it as the result of the exaltation of the Son. If not the first Arch-​A ngel, great in Power, In favour and præeminence, yet fraught With envie against the Son of God, that day Honourd by his great Father, and proclaimd Messiah King anointed, could not beare Through pride that sight, & thought himself impaird (5.660–​65). Satan’s envy, then, is centered around the Son, whose anointing leaves him with a feeling of depravity. This conflict brings into mind the conflict between Cain and Abel as analysed by Darrin Synder Belousek in terms of imitation in his article on Girard’s theory, which he criticizes, arguing that not every desire is mimetic (2017, 62). The problem in the Genesis story, as he argues, is rooted in Cain’s disordered relationship with God. Cain, being envious of Abel, focuses not on God, but on Abel, and he listens not to God, but to Abel, he turns away from God,

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and that makes him essentially to transgress. I agree with Synder Belousek’s line of argumentation, and I consider the biblical story parallel to the epic conflict in Paradise Lost, but I also claim that this jealousy is mimetic: Cain imitates Abel with his sacrifices, which are not offered in order to please God, but in order to make him more similar to Abel (Belousek, 62– ​63). This is analogous to what happens to the Archangel Lucifer. He envies the Son, and thus he focuses on him. There is an interesting shift in his focus of attention, since he wants to be in the Son’s position; thus he rivals with him. His fascination with the Son culminates in Paradise Regained, where Satan practically adores him. But even though he is jealous of the Son, his rivalry is apparently projected onto the Father. He is envious of the Son, who possesses the perfect image of the Father. As a result, he feels as if he was unimpaired, that is, bereft of something he believed had been his. In other words, Satan measures himself with the Son, comparing himself to the Son, as Cain also compared himself to Abel. Jealousy and envy according to Girard, in fact, are not evoked by the absence of something; it is evoked by another person possessing an object. The Archangel understands God‘s empowering act as a disempowerment of the other angels, the creation of division, as he explains: Natives and Sons of Heav’n possest before By none, and if not equal all, yet free, Equally free; for Orders and Degrees Jarr not with liberty, but well consist. Who can in reason then or right assume Monarchie over such as live by right His equals, if in power and splendor less, In freedome equal? or can introduce Law and Edict on us, who without law Erre not, much less for this to be our Lord, And look for adoration to th’ abuse Of those Imperial Titles which assert Our being ordain’d to govern, not to serve? (5.790–​802) There is a shift in focus again, and it is as if a logical link was missing. Lucifer is jealous of the Son, but he accuses the Father of depriving the angels of their freedom by ordaining a king over them. In my view, this is because the Archangel is aware that he should not be jealous of the

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Son, and being envious of the Son’s position is the acknowledgement of the Father’s superior position. He recognizes that the ultimate model is God, who defines the world for the creatures, and he feels remorse because of this recognition. He is ashamed that he envies the Son. In consequence, he voices his refusal of this situation, and he tries to remove himself from the framework of imitation by denying the superiority of the Father. Satan thus in fact actually tries to escape from being an imitating agent by rebelling against God. On the other hand, the quote refers to another important aspect of the conflict with God, that of being a lawgiver. As Darrin Synder Belousek explains, a form of vindicating God’s position is to put oneself into the position of the lawgiver (Belousek, 61). Here, Satan dismisses the idea of God as a lawgiver, and argues that law interferes with freedom. Later, Satan clearly depicts God as a tyrant and claims that he is only superior because he expects the angels to glorify him: “To bow and sue for grace /​With suppliant knee, and deifie his power” (1.111–​12); and describes the Father as “Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy/​ Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n” (1.123–​24). At the beginning of the epic, the reason why Satan rebelled is described as his innate envy and pride, the fact that he considered himself as powerful as God: To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deifie his power, Who from the terrour of this Arm so late Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods And this Empyreal substance cannot fail, Since through experience of this great event In Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc’t, We may with more successful hope resolve To wage by force or guile eternal Warr Irreconcileable, to our grand Foe, Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n (1.111–​124). The word deify has special significance here, as it signifies how Satan claims that God’s preeminence is the result of the adoration received from the angels. This way, Satan establishes a civilization, but unlike

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Cain, it is not the civilization of cities, but that of revenge and violence. What is more, unlike Cain, who after his deed accepts God’s decree and his punishment, and actually listens to God, Satan establishes himself as the enemy, and thus he misses the chance to reconcile with God. Satan’s motivations, however, are described at the beginning of the epic by the narrator as pride and ambition, as if they were caused by purely these traits of Lucifer’s nature: Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in Glory above his Peers, He trusted to have equal’d the most High, If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim Against the Throne and Monarchy of God Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud With vain attempt (1.34–​44). However, according to Raphael’s narration of the origin of the conflict there was no ambition in Lucifer to “equal the most High”. Only the exaltation of the Son triggered the archangel’s antagonism. The crucial point here is that according to the text, the rebel angel believed that he is so similar to God, the model, that if he opposes him, he is able to defeat God (1.40.41). What remains unclear, though, is whether his ambition to “set himself in Glory above his Peers” (1.39) refers to the state before or after the rebellion. I argue that the angel’s obsession with likeness and similarity to God, enhanced by proximity had given him the sense of identity, which was shattered when the Son was named more alike God than the rest. In my view the core conflict in Milton’s epics, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, is between the problem of wanting to be like God and wanting to be God. Applying the mimetic structure to this conflict, the ultimate model is God, and the desired possession is the image or likeness of Him. Satan’s rival is, consequently, the Son. As Rachel Trubowitz in her article explained, “Although the Son is the “divine similitude” of the Father, the Son can never be identical to the Father, because he is a creature and God is the Creator (53). To be sure, the Son’s likeness to the

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Father is so perfect that it is “Beyond compare” (PL, 3.138).” The Son accepts this condition, which ultimately makes him the perfect image. The epic, thus, negotiates the meaning of being like God.

Creation of a False Model Satan’s imitation is further complicated by his inability to perceive the model, God, correctly. He sees the Father as a tyrant because of his decision to honour the Son, and chooses to react to this behaviour in a hostile way. He acts as if the Son’s honour was originally intended to him, even though he argues that the natural equality among heavenly creatures has been disrupted by the Son’s elevation. The “Tyranny of Heaven,” is, moreover, a power established as the result of the conflict with the rebel angels, since according to their account the Father only proved to be almighty as the result of winning this conflict, as Beelzebub says: “whom I now /​Of force believe Almighty, since no less /​Then such could hav orepow’rd such force as ours” (1.143–​45). Another fallen angel, Moloch calls God a torturer, and argues for vengeance during the conference of the demons upon their awakening in Hell, described in the second book: Heav’ns fugitives, and for thir dwelling-​place Accept this dark opprobrious Den of shame, The Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns By our delay? no, let us rather choose Arm’d with Hell flames and fury all at once O’re Heav’ns high Towrs to force resistless way, Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise Of his Almighty Engin he shall hear Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his Angels; and his Throne it self Mixt with Tartarean Sulphur, and strange fire, His own invented Torments (2.57–​70). This narrative unites the fallen angels, who see an antagonistic God as their model. The fallen angels thus challenge this model by its own

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means. The original conflict was, then, according to the demonic narrative, between equal parties, and the Father, overcoming the rebels, could establish his tyrannical power. The narrator, however, compares Satan to a tyrant on numerous occasions, deceiving his followers: “So spake the Fiend, and with necessitie, /​The Tyrants plea, excus’d his devilish deeds” (2.393–​94). The tyrant is Satan, who after not having succeeded in deposing his rival, justifies his rebellion with the Father’s behaviour, arguing that his act of rebellion was preceded with God’s disruption of the heavenly order. Satan rebels against a tyrannical god, who is, however, the creature of the demonic narrative, and alternative reality. The reason for not giving up on the conflict is also mimetic: as Beelzebub said, the Father has proven to be indeed almighty; therefore becoming like him is even more alluring. Girard explains, “Obstacles and contempt redouble the desire because they confirm the superiority of the mediator” (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 204). In my view, this is the aspect of the relationship between Satan and God where it is possible to identify what Girard calls scapegoating (Girard 2001 xvii–​x viii). In his terms, the scapegoat is the victim singled out by a community, on whom the tensions of the group are projected, and whose expulsion or murder would lead to reconciliation within the group. As a result, however, the scapegoat is also deified, being perceived as both the reason and solution of the internal conflict of the community. According to Girard’s theory, Satan singles out the innocent victim, but also maintains the illusion of a false deity who, through its own sacrifice and resurrection, protects the community. Satan singles himself out as victim, and poses as a savior for the host of the fallen angels, who does not only undertake the dangerous travel through chaos, but also crowns himself as a ruler of their new world, creating a false illusion of victory and a false transcendence.

Creation of a False Transcendence An uncanny similarity between the Son and Satan is expressed in the fact that they are both models, and seek to be imitated. While the role of the Son as a model becomes obvious in the sequel, Paradise Regained, Satan makes the host of angels appropriate his ideas and convinces Eve to imitate his action of eating of the fruit. Imitation is contagious, and the fallen angels, according to Chaos, follow the Archangel in large

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numbers, that is, one-​third of them accept his arguments against God (2.688–​95). The fallen angels relate to the world through Satan, their model, and thus share his attitude.3 On the other hand, there is a certain kind of natural inclination, as it is described in the case of Mammon. Curiously, Mammon also goes on to become a model, demonstrating how the creation of the false transcendence would affect humankind: Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From heav’n, for ev’n in heav’n his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’n Gold, Then aught divine or holy else enjoy’d In vision beatific: by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransack’d the Center, and with impious hands Rifl’d the bowels of thir mother Earth For Treasures better hid (2.678–​88). Mammon, then, had possessed a tendency for idolatry, not to mention his corporeality which reflects his inner nature, and thus he, like Lucifer, suffered a disruption in his relationship with the Father, and probably as a result followed Lucifer. Suggestion is a key concept here, pointing out that human behaviours are learned from a model. Satan, however, as an act of rebellion tries to dissociate himself and his followers from God, denying that their, and particularly his actions are mimetic. This is typical of the vaniteux described by Girard in his analysis of novels. The vaniteux, who is the typical anti-​hero, wants to be original but borrows his desires and thus his behaviours from his model He writes, “A vaniteux will desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is already desired by another person whom he admires” (15). In Satan’s case the complicated relationship between the Father, the Son and Satan implies that Satan becomes jealous of the Son’s position as it is praised, acknowledged and admired by the Father, who is the 3 Girard writes that “The desire according to the Other is always the desire to be the Other. There is only single metaphysical desire but the particular desires which concretize this primordial desire vary ad infinitum.” (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 101)

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arch-​model in his world. Satan’s alluring romantic character is enhanced by the vehement denial of the Father’s superiority and the reclamation of his independence. As Girard explains, “The romantic vaniteux does not want to be anyone’s disciple. He convinces himself that he is thoroughly original” (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 15). His vanity comes from the fact that he pretends to be original, unique. Even though he denies it, his actions and attitudes are inspired by his model, or rather, the model he creates through assimilation. Tarde describes imitation as somnambulism, since imitation is largely unconscious, and the fallen archangel is unaware of his negative imitation as well as his lack of originality and limitedness. The somnambulism defined by Tarde is akin to Girard‘s process of scapegoating, since the violence performed on the victim and its subsequent deification maintains the illusion of a false divinity who requires sacrifice and who is resurrected. Thus, as opposed to a conscious obedience and unification, the members of a community seek blaming and violence to solve tensions –​as Satan could have accepted the Son’s elevation, but he decided he would not. But he believes his only course of action was to rebel, and deceives himself, and his followers as well. The abovementioned ideas surface particularly when amid the rebellion Satan is confronted by Abdiel, who questions Satan’s somnambulistic misconceptions.4 Satan most fervently argues against being in any way indebted and secondary to God. Doctrin which we would know whence learnt: who saw When this creation was? rememberst thou Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being? We know no time when we were not as now; Know none before us, self-​begot, self-​rais’d By our own quick’ning power, when fatal course Had circl’d his full Orbe, the birth mature Of this our native Heav’n, Ethereal Sons. Our puissance is our own, our own right hand Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try Who is our equal (5.853–​66)

4

“Both the somnambulist and the social man are possessed by the illusion that their ideas, all of which have been suggested to them, are spontaneous.” (Tarde, 109).

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Satan’s main argument is the cognitive discrepancy of not being able to remember his own creation, confirming his and his comrades’ originality. Based on these convictions he claims to be the rival of God, since rivalry makes the two parties equal. He also calls himself and the other angels “Sons of Heaven,” thus justifying their rebellion by belonging there.5 Perhaps Satan‘s counterargument against Abdiel’s words is the strongest denial of any similarity or relationship between the angels and God. He argues that they also have powers of creation; nonetheless, the fallen angels mold the infernal environment into the shape of their original home, Heaven, thus imitating the creativity of the Father: Affecting all equality with God, In imitation of that Mount whereon Messiah was declar’d in sight of Heav’n, The Mountain of the Congregation call’d; For thither he assembl’d all his Train, Pretending so commanded to consult About the great reception of thir King, Thither to come, and with calumnious Art Of counterfeted truth thus held thir ears (5.763–​71) The above quote contains several indicators of the negative imitation that the fallen angels carry out: affecting equality with God, building an imitation of the mount, pretending to be consulting, using calumnious, that is, false art and talking about counterfeit truth. These expressions are all linked to imitation, particularly negative imitation, which means aping the Father, and creating a mock kingdom which is a grotesque counterpart of the original. However, the effort is also obvious, the demonic kingdom abides by the routine and the customs learned in Heaven, unaware of their mimetic character. The creation of a false transcendence falls in line with Frye’s demonic world in the biblical text, reducing other mythologies to demonic parody

5

See also: “A generation, whom his choice regard /​Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven” (1.653–​54); “ye Sons of light, /​A ngels” (5.160–​61); “saw without thir light /​Rebellion rising, saw in whom, how spred /​Among the sons of Morn” (5.714–​16); “if I trust /​To know ye right, or if ye know your selves/​Natives and Sons of Heav’n possest before /​By none” (5.788–​91)

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of the heavenly order (Frye, 149). The creation takes place, but only as a negative image of the divine. Similarly, everything the rebel angels do defines them in relation to Hell. Abdiel, for example, points out the fact that Satan pretends to become a lawgiver, however, he is only able to rule within the confines of Hell: “Shalt thou give law to God? Shalt thou dispute /​With him the points of liberty, who made /​Thee what thou art, and formed the Powers of Heaven” (5.822–​24). Abdiel’s character shows, as opposed to the angels who decide to follow the rebellious Archangel, the logic of obedience.

Temptation The epic culminates in Book 9, when the temptation of Eve takes place; this episode is outstanding due to its logical argumentation and ferocious rhetoric; moreover it is significant in the sense that Satan achieves his goal by making Eve imitate him as a model in eating from the Forbidden Tree. Who sees thee? (and what is one?) who shouldst be seen A Goddess among Gods, ador’d and serv’d By Angels numberless, thy daily Train? (9.546–​48) Talking to Eve, Satan voices what he imagines to be the sense of being like God: to be admired and served. This is the exact opposite of likeness that the Son represents. This also implies that resemblance needs to be acknowledged and thus validated, either by the model or by an audience. Satan’s resemblance to God has never been reinforced or acknowledged, and highlighting the Son’s similarity caused him to feel bereaved of his own divine resemblance. Then, Satan goes on to apply a similarly reconstructed narrative to Eve’s case as to his own; as Girard said, the imitating hero, who is in conflict with his model, transforms the order of events to his own advantage, and thus puts the blame on the model. The same shift happens in Eve’s case, as Satan reinterprets the prohibition. As Neil Forsyth also highlighted, this episode of reinterpretation bears a huge significance from the viewpoint of the narrative, and it further reinforces the tyrannical

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image of God that the fallen angels created.6 Satan reinterprets, however, with Eve’s assistance, not only the prohibition and the death threat, but also the motivations behind it. Satan argues, in disguise, that it was the Father in the first place, who would want to prevent the similarity to be complete and entire, and motivated by jealous envy put a prohibition on the fruit. The motivation of the prohibition, therefore, is to forego imitation, which of course contradicts the idea of man being the image of God. Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe, Why but to keep ye low and ignorant, His worshippers; he knows that in the day Ye Eate thereof, your Eyes that seem so cleere, Yet are but dim, shall perfetly be then Op’nd and cleerd, and ye shall be as Gods, Knowing both Good and Evil as they know (9.703–​09)

Imitation Delimits the Imitator As I argue, Satan’s imitation is also a limitation, due to the fact that he becomes obsessed with his perceived enemies, the Father and the Son, and despite proclaiming supremacy in Hell, he intends to overtake to rule over the world. The Satanic ambition shrinks after the first failure, and it becomes even more limited. As Milton’s contemporary, the demonologist, John Gaule writes, Satan is God’s ape, “and one that faines to imit[a]‌te him though in contrary ways.”7 Aping God is the wrong way of imitating God, and Satan’s wrong imitation emphasizes the right way of imitating God: the Son’s way. As Stuart Clarke writes, the Early Modern sense of opposition relied on juxtaposing contraries (Clarke, 106), and Satan’s aping helps making sense of the Son’s similarity to God, and vice-​versa. 6

Neil Forsyth writes: “God said, “In the day ye eat thereof, you shall surely die,” and Satan has got Eve to question that text, to divide its meanings, to interpret or read it, to be her own judge or critic. Satan, as it were, has just shown himself as the first literary critic, and Eve has quickly learned to be one, too.” (2003:223). 7 Quoted by Stuart Clark in his Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, p. 82. Cf. Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcrafts. By John Gaule, Preacher of the Word at Great Staughton in the County of Huntington. London, 1646, p. 68.

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Satan‘s original pride comes not from his self-​k nowledge, but from perceiving himself as similar to, or even identical with, God. He essentially compared himself to the Father, and when his likeness to God was questioned, he challenged his rival, the Son. Through Satan’s limited likeness to God, the epic negotiates what it means to be like, and wanting to be like the Creator, while also exploring the laws of imitation and its implications on humankind. In the end, it is Satan‘s self-​perception that leads to his demise. He still believes that the closer one is to God, the more similar one is to Him, the more equal he is, and similarity and greatness inevitably lead to conflict and rebellion. The more he intends to prove that he is like God, the more different he becomes, the more he strives to deflect the divine authority, the more it binds him. In this article, in sum, I used Tarde‘s and Girard’s concepts related to imitation to analyse the relationship between Satan and God in Milton’s epic, and show that Satan’s self-​perception as superior, similar to God, is what motivates his rebellion and rivalry. The structure of imitation understood in a cognitive sense enables him to create the false transcendence of gods and ultimately reinterpret the divine prohibition as a proof of inferiority instead as a token of unity, which leads to the fall of men. However, what Satan fails to recognize is that rebellion against God‘s law and his role as a lawgiver means acknowledging the reality of the law and its binding power, thus by counter-​imitating, or rebelling, he continues to rely on God as the ultimate model of his action and the mediator to the world.

Bibliography Primary Texts Milton, John, Paradise Lost. Edited by Barbara K. Lewalski, Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007. The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998.

Secondary Texts Belousek, Darrin Snyder. “Violence and Vengeance, Mimesis and Murder, Conflict and Cross: A Critical-​Constructive Engagement with Rene Girard.” Brethren Life & Thought 62.1 (Spring) (2017): 60–​74. Print.

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Blum, Paul Richard. “Satan and the Human Condition: John Milton Read in Terms of René Girard,” in Gábor Ittzés and Miklós Péti (eds.), Milton Through the Centuries, Budapest: Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary /​L’Harmattan Publishing, 2012, pp. 263–​73. Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford England: Clarendon Press, 1997. Forsyth, Neil. Satanic Epic. Princeton University Press, 2003. Girard, René. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965. Girard, René. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. Marsden, P. (1998). Memetics and Social Contagion: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Journal of Memetics -​Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. http://​cfpm.org/​jom-​emit/​1998/​vol2/​marsde​n_​p.html Tarde, Gabriel. The Laws of Imitation [1890], London, Forgotten Books, “Classic Reprint Series,” 2018.

“In a troubled sea of passion tossed”: Adam, Hamlet, and Skepticism in Paradise Lost and Hamlet Bradley Fox

The thoughts of a newly-​fallen Adam in book ten of Paradise Lost reveal some remarkable similarities to the thoughts of Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet, and these similarities, I argue, indicate the extent to which Milton regarded Shakespeare’s tragedy, and its title character, as the seminal literary expression of philosophical skepticism, one which required an answer from Milton. What Harry Levin called Hamlet’s interrogative mode, the play’s thematic obsession with uncertainty, with facts that demand testing and verification, such as the ghost’s status or Claudius’s guilt, reflects the tragedy’s obsession with ontological and epistemological doubt. More perhaps than any other tragedy, Hamlet captures the cultural currents moving through England marked by a revival of Pyrrhonic skepticism, the corrosive effects of religious quarrels like the Blackloist debates, and the eventual emergence of Hobbesian materialism and Cartesian notions of selfhood.1 Shakespeare was 1

See Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959). For the affinity of Elizabethan tragedy for such skepticism, see, inter alia, William M. Hamlin, Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare’s England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Benjamin Bertram, The Time is Out of Joint: Skepticism in Shakespeare’s England (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004); Millicent Bell, Shakespeare’s Tragic Skepticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), Graham Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), and Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 1987). In religious circles, the Blackloist debates surrounding the “rule of Faith” controversy unleashed skeptical arguments against both the Protestant Bible and the Catholic faith that neither side could effectively contain. See Beverly C. Southgate, “Blackloism and Tradition: From Theological Certainty to Historiographical Doubt” Journal of the History of Ideas 61:1 (Jan. 2000): 97–​114. Also see Southgate’s earlier “ ‘Cauterising the Tumour of Pyrrhonism’: Blackloism versus Skepticism” Journal of the History of Ideas 53:4 (Oct-​Dec. 1992): 631–​45. R. Darren Gobert, writing about Descartes’s influence on theater practices and characters in the mid-​seventeenth century, examines “how Descartes’s thought came to be distorted into the received wisdom of ‘Cartesianism’,” which emphasized the exclusive

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prescient in dramatizing the skepticism of a prince who privileges solil2 oquy and owns a heightened sense of his own interiority. Hamlet anticipates Descartes (and Milton’s Satan) when the Danish prince schools Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that “nothings either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (Ham 2.2.249–​50).3 This is why Milton re-​visits Hamlet’s thoughts in soliloquy on suicide, death, and the afterlife in Adam’s own postlapsarian soliloquy in book ten of Paradise Lost. Milton wants to confront, in a dramatically compelling and verisimilar manner, skeptical ideas challenging faith that by the middle of the seventeenth century must have been very popular, widespread, and pleasing indeed to those whom Gabriel Harvey, in his 1598 edition of Speght’s Chaucer, termed the “wiser sort.”4 Milton recognizes the affinity between such skepticism and the convention of Elizabethan tragic soliloquy as Shakespeare developed it. While Satan’s soliloquy atop Mt. Niphates is a soliloquy of damnation drawing upon the final speech of Marlowe’s Faustus, Adam’s lone soliloquy in Paradise Lost is a composite drawing upon Hamlet’s soliloquies. Adam’s speech appropriates the self-​loathing castigation evident in several of Hamlet’s soliloquies, but mostly it is patterned after Hamlet’s fourth soliloquy, the prince’s philosophical meditation upon suicide and

importance of mind at the expense of the body, a prejudice which Descartes himself tried hard to avoid. See R. Darren Gobert, The Mind-​Body Stage: Passion and Interaction in the Cartesian Theater (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 6–​7. 2 Alex Newell, for one, finds that Hamlet is most profitably read as staging “a deep subjectivity, a profoundly interior mode of discourse” that allows conflicts to reverberate with metaphysical significance for the individual mind that struggles with them. See Alex Newell, The Soliloquies in Hamlet: The Structural Design (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991), 19. John Lee has also made the case for Hamlet’s intense subjectivity over and against New Historicist and Cultural Materialist arguments that would deny it. See John Lee, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Controversies of Self (Oxford University Press, 2000). 3 The emphasis on the individual’s own mind that Descartes captures in his iconic formulation cogito ergo sum is anticipated in Hamlet; Shakespeare’s tragedy is arguably a formative part of the cultural zeitgeist leading up to Descartes’ assertion in his Discourse on the Method (1637) of the mind’s experiential priority. All quotations from Hamlet are from Hamlet: The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2006; London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). 4 Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Shakespeare Head Press: Stratford-​upon-​Avon, 1913), viii, 53.

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the nature of death and the afterlife as a response to the upending of Hamlet’s world, along with all of its former guarantees, with the murder of his father/​k ing. Hamlet’s fourth soliloquy, I suggest, offers Milton a blueprint for realistically depicting the skepticism to which we are susceptible when life-​a ltering events undermine our faith. If Claudius’s ambition has made life in Elsinore unbearable, Satan’s ambition has done the same to Adam’s Eden. Indeed, Milton prepares us for Adam’s soliloquy by alluding to Hamlet’s fourth one. Surveying the physical changes wrought upon the fallen world, the Miltonic narrator in book ten of Paradise Lost reports that Adam “worse felt within, /​And in a troubled sea of passion tossed, /​Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint” (10.717–​19).5 Calling our attention to how Adam “worse felt within,” and by describing Adam’s state as “in a troubled sea of passion tossed,” Milton recalls the first movement of Hamlet’s soliloquy, which begins: To be, or not to be –​that is the question; Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them … (Ham 3.1.57–​61). Here, Hamlet asserts the classical idea of Stoic resolve in the face of shifting fortunes, an idea that stands in stark contrast to the edicts of his Christian society. Hamlet’s warlike rhetoric (“slings and arrows,” “to take arms”) entertains suicide as a noble, heroic course of action. Like his friend Horatio, Hamlet is a university student well-​versed in classical philosophy. He would no doubt be familiar with Seneca’s epistle 70, “Suicide,” in which Seneca counsels that when one “encounters many vexations that disturb his peace, he will release himself” and “when pressure reaches the allowable point a man can look around for an easy exit.”6

5 All quotations from John Milton’s Paradise Lost are from Paradise Lost ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd edition (London: Pearson Education Limited, 1997). 6 The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters of Seneca, trans. Moses Hadas (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1958), 202, 206. Such classical philosophy co-​existed uneasily with Christian ideals of patience and forgiveness, and Milton would be attuned to this conflict of value systems, especially as it manifested itself in English ideas of heroic valor. On the uneasy coexistence of pagan and Christian values in Hamlet, see Jan Blits, Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human Soul (New York: Lexington Books, 2001).

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Milton’s recollection of Hamlet’s inner “sea of troubles” as the fallen Adam is about to soliloquize functions as what William Porter terms a “critical allusion,” one that invites readers to recall Hamlet’s words, but also the substance and dramatic context of his fourth soliloquy –​the prince’s internal debate about whether one should endure misfortune or escape one’s “sea of troubles” by ending one’s life in good Stoic fashion.7 The allusion is significant because it alerts us to the fact that Hamlet’s soliloquy will function as a kind of source text for Adam’s, one through which Milton highlights the moral error of such skepticism a person may embrace when beset by despair and grief. Indeed, Milton could expect his more fit readers to recognize the phrase “sea of troubles” from the Book of Isaiah, where it refers to “the wicked” who “are like the troubled sea”; it is their minds that “cannot rest” and which are compared to waters that “cast up mire and dirt.” For them, “there is no peace.”8 As a critical allusion, this phrase also invites connections between Adam’s soliloquy and the larger context of Hamlet, including the prince’s expressed desire for non-​existence in his first soliloquy, the visceral self-​loathing of his

7

Speaking of allusions in Paradise Lost to classical literature, Porter explains that “[a]‌ critical allusion is one in which the homologies between source-​text (Paradise Lost) and target (for example, the Aeneid) extend beyond local verbal resemblances to the larger contexts, and in which the relationship of allusive source (the later text) to target (the earlier) is dialectical, that is, the source is aggressively critical of the target, but in a manner that is obviously unfair, so that the reader feels –​or at least ought to feel –​compelled to speak up on behalf of the target text.” See William M. Porter, Reading the Classics and Paradise Lost (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 9. Editions by numerous scholars support this echo as an example of what Porter terms a critical allusion as Adam in book ten of Paradise Lost echoes more than just Hamlet’s memorable phrasing; Adam also echoes Hamlet’s dramatic situation (despair leading to suicidal thoughts) and Hamlet’s penchant for tragic soliloquy. A. W. Verity, editing Paradise Lost earlier in the twentieth century, finds Adam’s rumination on being abandoned to sorrow “And in a troubled sea of passion tossed” (PL 10.718) a clear recollection of Hamlet’s “a sea of troubles” (3.1.59), an observation supported by the modern editions of Alastair Fowler and Roy Flannagan. See Paradise Lost, ed. Arthur Wilson Verity, 2 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1934). Flannagan, commenting on the lines leading up to Adam’s soliloquy, finds Adam’s monologue to be another version of Hamlet’s: “Using the imagery of Hamlet, taking arms against a sea of troubles (3.1.58), Adam begins to contemplate whether to be or not to be. Adam’s soliloquy may be a sign of his fallenness, in the sense that he now ‘talks to himself ’. … His soliloquy is no more reprehensible or unsympathetic than Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy.” The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998), 646. 8 Isaiah 57:20–​21 (KJV).

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third soliloquy, and his materialistic treatment of the soul and its fate as “dust” in the graveyard scene. In book ten of Paradise Lost, an emotional Adam, wracked by fear and shame, contemplates suicide, and puzzles over the nature of death and the afterlife, retracing and dilating upon Hamlet’s arguments. Beginning with his apostrophe “O miserable of happie!” Adam despairs over the harm he has wrought upon all ensuing generations. With no remedy for his guilt, he desires to be rendered back into nothingness and non-​ being, thereby dramatizing Hamlet’s case in the fourth soliloquy “not to be” by taking arms against one’s “sea of troubles”; one ends these troubles, of course, by ending oneself, by erasing one’s memory and identity. Thus Milton’s Adam laments:    yet well, if here would end The miserie, I deserv'd it, and would beare My own deservings; but this will not serve; All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, Is propagated curse. Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay To mould me Man, did I sollicite thee From darkness to promote me, or here place In this delicious Garden? as my Will Concurd not to my being, it were but right And equal to reduce me to my dust, Desirous to resigne, and render back All I receav'd, unable to performe Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold The good I sought not (PL 10.725–​52). Adam wishes to cancel his existence and all that comes with it. Such atheistic thinking is lamented by Richard Hooker, who, in his Ecclesiasticall Politie of 1597, chides those that would wipe away “the soules immortalitie” by “willing that their soules should be like the soules of beasts, mortall and corruptible with their bodies.”9 Adam embraces such stark materialism whereby one’s selfhood and consciousness can be

9 Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie. The fift Booke. (London: Printed at John Windet dwelling at Powles . . ., 1597), 5. Early English Books Online. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.

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dissolved back into “dust”; in Adam’s thinking, selfhood emerges “from/​ darkness” and can be dispersed back into it. Hamlet’s thinking reflects the same skeptical materialism as he contemplates the desire to end one’s “sea of troubles” with “a bare bodkin” (3.1.75). Such thinking presupposes a universe indifferent to human fate, one in which blind Fortune or the random interaction of Epicurus’s atoms determine events, not Christian Providence. In such a universe, death is equivalent to the cessation or annihilation of selfhood; there is no sense of an immaterial soul or an afterlife in a Christian heaven. In a Christian universe, though, suicide remains an unforgiveable sin, one for which Ophelia is denied a Christian burial. Hamlet knows this all too well in his first soliloquy, where he expresses frustration that God has “fix’d /​His canon against self-​slaughter” (1.2.131–​32). Aware of the prohibition, the dramatic and emotional force of Hamlet’s words in the first and fourth soliloquies defend suicide and self-​annihilation. The idea that one could obliterate one’s being gained traction in the late sixteenth into the seventeenth century with the spread of Epicurean philosophy, as Robert Watson demonstrates in The Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance. “Jacobean culture,” Watson informs us, “struggled with the suspicion that death was a complete and permanent annihilation of the self, not merely some latency of the body awaiting Last Judgment.”10 What is astonishing in Shakespeare’s tragedy, for all of its Christian trappings, is the absence of any real Christian assurance. In his recent book Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness, Rhodri Lewis concludes that what is missing from Hamlet’s thinking in his fourth soliloquy, and from the rest of Elsinore’s inhabitants in general, is an affirmation of the soul’s Christian afterlife. “For a purportedly Christian world,” Lewis argues, “there is a complete lack of conviction with respect to the immortality of the soul.”11 In his fourth soliloquy, Hamlet concludes that people avoid Stoic suicide not because it is inherently wrong but because “the dread of something after death … puzzles the will” (3.1.78–​80); “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” (3.1.83). This is hardly a ringing endorsement of Christian doctrine –​ uncertainty characterizes Hamlet’s thought here, rather than Christian 10 Robert N. Watson, The Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 3. 11 Rhodri Lewis, Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 262.

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faith. This is very close to the argument made by Milton’s Adam, in fact, except that the newly-​fallen Adam, for the duration of his soliloquy, remains ignorant of God’s providential plan and forthcoming Grace. Adam’s desire in his soliloquy to be rendered back into “dust” or insensible matter recalls Hamlet’s own neurotic obsession throughout the play with humans’ material fate.12 Again, Adam argues “it were but right /​And equal to reduce me to my dust” (PL 10.747–​48), and later in his soliloquy he laments “Be it so, for I submit his [God’s] doom is fair, /​ That dust I am, and shall to dust return: /​O welcome hour whenever!” (10.769–​71). Such overt materialism, one which collapses our bodies and minds into one base matter, is an inescapable truth for Hamlet, and one that lacks the comfort provided by Milton’s own theological mortalism, which posited our eventual reconstitution and resurrection at the Last Judgment. Hamlet, for his part, relishes the consequences of materialism when taunting the king about Polonius’s fate, who is “at supper” (4.3.18) “where he is eaten,” by worms. The natural world reduces kings and beggars to the same detritus; it is an irony that annihilates identity and rank together, so that “Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes at one table. That’s the end” (4.3.23–​4). This is part of what the Arden editors Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor call Hamlet’s graveyard reflections upon “to what base uses we may return” (5.1.192) as identity and individuality are reduced to bones that may be smacked with a “sexton’s spade” (5.1.85) or used “to play at loggets with them” (87). In like manner, Hamlet muses “a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar” (4.3.29–​30), and later to Horatio, “Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till ‘a find it stopping a bung-​hole?” (193–​94). Wholly absent in Hamlet’s thoughts, as in Adam’s soliloquy, is the conviction of a divine like the Presbyterian Edmund Calamy, writing in 1651, that even “the dust of a Saint is part of that man who is a member of Jesus Christ,” so that “his dust is a part

12 For the motif of man-​a s-​dust in Hamlet, see Margreta de Grazia’s informative study, Hamlet without Hamlet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), especially Chapter 2, “ ‘Old mole’: The modern telos and the return to dust,” 23–​4 4. De Grazia argues against prince Hamlet as a wellspring of interiority and instead reads the play in light of something very external –​the physical earth, whether the dirt of the grave, the land, or the physical area of empires.

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of Christ mystical, and Christ as an head will raise it up, and cannot be 13 compleat without it” (15). Despite his evident skepticism though, Adam, like Hamlet before him, cannot escape the idea that some part of the self endures beyond death. Whether the prospect of total non-​existence is too much to bear, or it is simply too philosophically difficult to maintain, Adam’s soliloquy retraces the pattern of Hamlet’s fourth one as both characters’ move from reflections of death as non-​existence to ideas of death as a kind of sleep. The way in which death was understood as a kind of sleep was myriad and confusing in the seventeenth century. The possibilities were in conflict with each other, fostering yet another stream of religious skepticism. Edmund Calamy warns us in his sermon The Saint’s Rest: or Their Happy Sleep in Death, to “take heed of that wicked opinion, to say, that the soul sleeps in an Anabaptistical sense, that is. That it lies in a strange kind of Lethargy, neither dead, nor alive, neither capable of joy nor sorrow, untill the resurrection.”14 In his fourth soliloquy, Hamlet quickly jumps from the idea of death as a senseless sleep to the idea of death as a sleep consisting of dreams, and hence a continuation, on some level, of consciousness and identity. Hamlet’s first mention of sleep in the soliloquy is clearly an extension of his thinking about annihilating one’s selfhood –​sleep here is another name for non-​existence: To die: to sleep –​ No more, and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished (3.1.59–​63) Almost immediately, though, Hamlet’s thoughts are affected by his choice of metaphor for death. If his first association of death and sleep (“to die: to sleep –​No more . . .”) carries with it all the terrifying ambiguity occasioned by the Dickinsonian long dash preceding “no more,” his next association is with dreaming. He progresses in the soliloquy 13 Edmund Calamy, B. D. The Saint’s Rest: or Their Happy Sleep in Death, a Sermon as It Was Delivered in Aldermanbury, London, Aug. 24 1651 (London: Printed by A. M[iller], 1651), Early English Books Online. Accessed 18 Jan. 2019. 14 Ibid., 10.

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through a rapid sorites, or chain syllogism, that mimics the mind’s spontaneous and natural associations: “to die: to sleep –​No more … To die: to sleep –​/​To sleep, perchance to dream” (3.1.63–​4), and thus arrives at a potentially more reassuring conclusion, one that seemingly preserves identity and selfhood beyond death. Still, the nature of this afterlife remains murky for Hamlet:   –​ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause –​there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life (3.1.65–​9). Adam’s soliloquy is characterized by the same ambivalence.15 No sooner does he express the wish to be “earth /​Insensible” than his image of laying down in the earth’s lap suggests to his mind the idea of sleep: How gladly would I meet Mortality my sentence, and be earth Insensible, how glad would lay me down As in my mother’s lap? There I should rest And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more Would thunder in my ears, no fear of worse To me and to my offspring would torment me With cruel expectation (PL 10.775–​82). Soon enough, though, Adam wonders just what sort of “sleep secure” this thing death might be. If he first imagines it as a reprieve from God’s cruelty, he next speculates it might be a nightmare of worse suffering: Yet one doubt Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die, Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of man Which God inspired, cannot together perish 15 In Sean Murphy’s study of the “language forms” prominent in Elizabethan soliloquies, he finds an emphasis on “dream and sleep [which] indicate a focus on states of unconsciousness.” Sean Murphy, “I will proclaim myself what I am: Corpus stylistics and the language of Shakespeare’s soliloquies,” Language and Literature 24, no. 4 (2015): 339, https://​doi: 10.1177/​09639​4701​5598​183. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.

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With this corporeal clod; then in the grave, Or in some other dismal place who knows But I shall die a living death? O thought Horrid, if true! (PL 10.782–​89) Here, the monist Milton puts into Adam’s mouth a fairly good argument against a spirit or soul distinct from the body; a separate spirit might become trapped in the grave, enduring “a living death,” something akin to a horror-​filled sleep. Other scholars have perceived echoes of Hamlet’s fourth soliloquy here. For example, Rachel Trubowitz in her PMLA essay “Body Politics in Paradise Lost,” hears a strong echo of Hamlet’s soliloquy in Adam’s question “Who knows /​But I shall die a living death?”16 Adam, like Hamlet, worries that what we experience or suffer in this sleep could be far worse than what a person must endure in life. Hamlet, for his part, heeds the skeptical principle of acatalepsia, or the inability to apprehend, when it comes to questions about what he terms “the undiscover’d country.” He offers a long list of abuses people would rather endure than embrace the peace Stoic suicide might afford (“When he himself [a man] might his quietus make /​With a bare bodkin”) because people fear “the dread of something after death”: But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? (Ham 3.1.77–​81) If there is an afterlife where identity endures, Hamlet cannot say; there is little sense here of Christian surety. Given the depth of his skepticism, Hamlet concludes only that some type of afterlife, perhaps a horrible one, might exist, and this is enough to prevent most people from ending their suffering here to encounter another, unknown one that may be worse. In his soliloquy, Adam’s continues to pursue these possibilities in an endless circle, what he calls an “Abyss of fears /​And horrors” (PL 16 Rachel J. Trubowitz, “Body Politics in Paradise Lost,” PMLA 121, No. 2 (Mar. 2006): 399.

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10.842–​43), thus elaborating upon the range of errors available to skeptical thinkers who dispense with Christian Providence. Milton’s point is that Adam, like Hamlet, finds himself lost among unsatisfying possibilities. Without knowledge of God’s providential plan, humans are doomed, like those devils in Paradise Lost who “reasoned high /​Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate” but “found no end, in wandering mazes lost” (PL 2.558–​61). Terrified of enduring “a living death,” Adam reasons in his soliloquy that “It was but breath /​Of life that sinned; what dies but what had life /​And sin? The body properly hath neither. /​All of me then shall die” (PL 10.789–​91). Absent any awareness right after the Fall of God’s providence and grace, Adam’s conclusion is less monist than nihilist, and of the same kind as his wish to be rendered back into dust. Reviving the questions asked by Hamlet, and his skeptical answers, Milton dramatizes in Adam’s soliloquy that without recourse to faith, philosophy is a dead end. Milton saw that Hamlet’s desire for self-​ annihilation in order to escape the pains (and memories) “[t]‌hat flesh is heir to” (Ham 3.1.63) was a dangerously alluring error, especially with the advent of the new philosophy. For Hamlet, there are no answers from “[t]‌he undiscover’d country, from whose bourn /​No traveller returns” (Ham 3.1.79–​80). Milton, though, in his effort to “justify the ways of God to men” (PL 1.26), will supply the archangel Michael to aid Adam and Eve, who through vision and dream will help them to understand correctly the nature of death and its role in God’s providential plan.

Bibliography Calamy, B. D., Edmund. The Saint’s Rest: or Their Happy Sleep in Death, a Sermon as It Was Delivered in Aldermanbury, London, Aug. 24 1651. London: Printed by A. M[iller], 1651. Early English Books Online. De Grazia, Margreta. Hamlet without Hamlet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Harvey, Gabriel. Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, edited by G. C. Moore Smith, Shakespeare Head Press: Stratford-​upon-​Avon, 1913. Hooker, Richard. Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie. The fift Booke. London: Printed at John Windet dwelling at Powles . . ., 1597. Early English Books Online.

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Levin, Harry. The Question of Hamlet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. Lewis, Rhodri. Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Edited by Alastair Fowler, 2nd edition. London: Pearson Education Limited, 1997. Porter, William M. Reading the Classics and Paradise Lost, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet: The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2006; London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters of Seneca, trans. Moses Hadas, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1958. Trubowitz, Rachel J. “Body Politics in Paradise Lost.” PMLA 121, No.2 (Mar. 2006): 388–​404. https://​doi.org/​10.1632/​00308​1206​X129​611. Watson, Robert N. The Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Whither Goes AI: Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, Ex Machina, and the Boundaries of Knowledge* Tianhu Hao

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it will take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-​increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded. Stephen Hawking

At the end of a recent critically acclaimed film on AI, Ex Machina (2015, written and directed by Alex Garland), the heroine Ava (Alicia Vikander) manages to leave the enclosed space of Nathan’s (Oscar Isaac) laboratory and glides into the human throng at a city crossroads. She looks perfectly human, a standard beauty. The crowd walks and talks, passing by, entirely unaware of the critical addition of an alien creature among them and the impending perils that may ensue in view of Ava’s relentless treatment of her creator Nathan (killed) and her “friend” Caleb (trapped; Domhnall Gleeson). Thus ends the film, casting in the mind of the absorbed audience a big question: What will happen next? Ava manifests the possession of human-​like consciousness in the Turing test. Will this strong AI normalize and assimilate herself into the human race, or will she let loose her secret ambition and jeopardize the very existence of humanity, as she has just done in the laboratory against Nathan and Caleb together with another AI Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), Nathan’s dutiful servant, agile dancer, and mute sex slave? Can we assume that Ava or any other strong AI is benevolent in nature and always friendly to humans? Since the film is covertly based upon Mary Shelley’s prophetic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831),1 what occurs * Supported by the Zhejiang University Global Partnership Fund and the National Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation, China (authorization: 19ZDA298). 1 For lists of and discussions on film adaptations of Frankenstein since 1910, see Schor, pp. 63–​83, 283. For the text of Frankenstein, I prefer J. Kinsley and M. K. Joseph (eds.), Frankenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, which is based on the 1831, instead of 1818, version.

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after Ava escapes from the laboratory may be found in Frankenstein, which narrates at length the story of the Monster’s failed attempt to join human society. Frankenstein, in its turn, was heavily influenced by John Milton’s masterpiece Paradise Lost (1667, 1674).2 The three works –​ the epic, the novel, and the film –​stretch across several centuries, yet taken together, they make a single humanistic statement about the serious problems of scientific Prometheanism and the proper boundaries of human ­k nowledge. AI represents a most advanced form of the progress of human knowledge; the ethics or “human values” of science dictates that the development of AI must be delimited and contained, if not curtailed or banned, and that scientists ought to proceed in a responsible and cautious manner. Pure science, as a Kantian “disinterested pursuit of truth,” is “an end in itself, like art,” and pure scientists “regard it as a means only to the highest interests of humanity.” This is basically what Herbert J. Muller means by the “human values of science” (Muller 7, 130), which is consistent with the Western humanistic tradition from Aristotle to Milton and beyond. Intellectual freedom is no excuse for scientists to abdicate their own responsibility for the supreme interests of humankind. In a Christian humanist context, John Milton maintains through his mouthpiece Raphael that in the human acquisition of knowledge, as in many other things, the classical virtue of temperance is paramount. With the counter-​examples of Frankenstein and Nathan as mad scientists or “Faustian overreachers” (Levine 9), humans should beware of the dangers and limits of knowledge and sail the ocean of knowledge by following the guidance of humility rather than that of pride. The universality of Milton’s epic empowers the novel’s and the film’s critique of scientific Prometheanism as a negative element of modernity. By arguing against scientific Prometheanism, this article insists on the value of carbon-​based human existence and rejects the grim prospect of human extinction, to be replaced by silicon-​based AIs.

What Happens Next? The intricate intertextuality of the three works (along with Genesis in the background) is embodied and encoded in nomenclature. Nomen est 2

Mary Shelley’s indebtedness to Milton even surpasses the usual impression. See, for example, Milton A. Mays.

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omen. The heroine of Ex Machina is named Ava, not only after Eve (in Genesis and in Milton), which reads identically backward and forward (Nathan reads almost the same way), but also because the director’s and the actress’s first names both start with A, and the letter a, the first in the alphabet and the one opening AI (Artificial Intelligence), with the suggestion of Ava’s avant-​gardeness as an AI, appears most frequently in the two’s names (Alex Garland; Alicia Vikander). The choice of the letter v represents the pernicious victory of AI and coincides with the actress’s surname initial; the letter is also reminiscent of Frankenstein’s first name Victor, which is sometimes the devil’s epithet for God the Father in Paradise Lost (e.g. 1.169).3 Thus the careful naming of the heroine in Ex Machina skilfully links the theme of the film AI, the film itself, and its literary predecessors, including Genesis, Paradise Lost, and Frankenstein. The Chinese mistranslation of the seven sessions in Ex Machina as seven “days” enhances the film’s relation with Genesis by making Nathan the scientist’s creation of AIs more closely parallel God’s work of creating the world and humans. The Latin title Ex Machina, taken from the classical dramatic technique deus ex machina with the significant omission of the familiar deus (god), shows the absence of the traditional god and the dominance of the machine in the modern technological culture. The word machine(s) appears twice in the 1818 edition of Frankenstein: “He (my father) constructed a small electrical machine;” “[Waldman] explained to me the uses of his various machines.”4 The machine, the devilishly invented engine, or power-​craving art, is associated with evil in the war in Heaven in Paradise Lost, while the good angels fight back with upturned hills and mountains, part of Nature (6.644–​58) (Werblowsky 85). Nathan the boss-​scientist displaces God, but he is killed by the machines he creates. Hence the destined disappearance of deus. In the modern disenchanted world, the dues of deus are to die and disappear.

3 For the text of Paradise Lost I use the Modern Library edition prepared by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon (eds.), Paradise Lost, New York: Modern Library, 2008. 4 Words cognate with machine often occur in Frankenstein: machinery (7), engine (9), mechanism (9, 48, 49, 185), mechanics (53), machinations (153, 176, 186), mechanical (204), etc. The first machine in the 1818 edition disappears from the 1831 text due to authorial revision. For quotations from the 1818 text, see James Rieger (ed.), pp. 35, 43.

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The name Caleb comes from Mary Shelley’s father William Godwin’s best fiction Caleb Williams (1794), one of the prior texts for Frankenstein. According to Harold Bloom, the daughter’s narration of the creator’s pursuit of his creature and her destructive theme of the monster’s revenge against human society carry the impact of the father’s work (Bloom 4).5 The Orientalism contained in the wordless sex slave Kyoko’s name, which is Japanese in origin, is consistent with the light touches of Eurocentric Orientalism in Paradise Lost and Frankenstein. The scientific Prometheanism in Ex Machina is Eurocentric in nature and commends scientific progress at the expense of the East, and the Orientalism of the film continues an old tradition in Western culture. The beauty of Kyoko, like the sweetness of Safie the Arabian in Frankenstein, serves as a mere decoration to glorify the Westerner’s scientific experiment, though the representation in the novel is more nuanced, with more sympathy lavished on the lovely Safie, who could be an image of Mary Shelley herself (Lew 278–​83). Thus the four major characters’ names in Ex Machina –​Ava, Nathan, Caleb, and Kyoko –​all connect the film, in one way or another, with its prior texts: Genesis, Paradise Lost, and Frankenstein. This fact justifies my juxtaposition of the four texts. Just as Eve is a first-​rate poet in Paradise Lost, the young Mary Shelley proved herself to be a gifted novelist and initiated the modern genre of science fiction with her debut novel Frankenstein (Mellor 89). The character of the Monster has been designed to be “beautiful” (57) but looks repulsive and frightful when finished, while Milton’s Satan is assessed by Baudelaire to be “the most perfect type of virile beauty” (Teskey, Poetry 289) and Ava and Kyoko are both sexy and beauteous. In spite of, or just because of their physical attractiveness, the two AIs from Ex Machina are much more deceptive than the Monster, whose deformed and dreadful appearance sets off his susceptible and even tender heart, or at least so at the initial stage. Frankenstein’s AI is a social animal endowed with human-​like emotions, e.g. he has a compassion for the cottagers’ lack of food. The tension between the Monster’s outward and inward registers Mary Shelley’s anxiety about the potential evils of bad science and also signals her ideal of the eighteenth-​century man of feeling, as Anne K. Mellor has brilliantly demonstrated in her study (Mellor 5 For a more detailed analysis of similarities between Caleb Williams and Frankenstein, see Katherine C. Hill-​Miller, pp. 68–​75.

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89, 108–​09). Domestic affections and human bonds are the novelist’s weapon to counter-​balance and fight against the alienating effects of the overly enthusiastic scientist’s rationalistic obsession. Contemplating the reflection in a transparent pool makes Franken-​ stein’s AI aware of his monstrous appearance in a Narcissus-​or Eve-​like moment (114), and the sympathetic reading of Paradise Lost as “a true history” (129) assists his self-​definition: “I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed” (100), as he complains to his creator. With human acceptance the seeming Monster might well become a good citizen. Even after the destruction of Victor the Monster reveals a capability for domestic affections (221). His creator acknowledges the Monster to be “a creature of fine sensations” (146). In fact, the Monster appears to be more human than his creator (Bloom 3–​4; Scott 197). He is intelligent like Adam, sly like Satan, and powerful like a superhuman. His persistent efforts towards humanizing and civilizing are sincere, but his fate seems to be sealed by his native “unearthly ugliness” (99), which is arguably symbolic of the nature of his creator’s single-​minded scientific endeavour. The self-​ alienated scientist harbours a monster within; like God he creates his creature in his own image. The Monster he creates deliberately and then spurns irresponsibly is in fact his alter-​ego, the materialization of his internal state. The Monster’s flight from his creator’s laboratory is disastrous with the fatal multiple deaths and an aborted marriage. The triumphant creation turns out to be a catastrophe. The Monster’s painful and harmful experience after his flight from the laboratory testifies to the extreme difficulty for AIs to integrate themselves into human society and the severe damage which AIs may inflict upon humanity. The gloomy thriller ends with the concluding note of “darkness and distance” (223). It is expected that the escaped Ava in Ex Machina will also bring darkness and destruction to humanity, only Ava is more treacherous with her fraudulent beauty and seeming friendliness. Robert Walton rightly describes the Monster as a “hypocritical fiend” (220), which would equally be an apt title for Ava. According to Milton, hypocrisy, to be discerned by “neither man nor angel,” is “the only evil that walks /​Invisible, except to God alone” (Paradise Lost, 3.682–​84). Hypocrisy is the defining mark of Ava as well as Satan, for the former disguises herself successfully under the scrutinizing eye of Nathan and Caleb. Ava out of the lab is comparable to Satan out of Hell, with humankind to be victimized fatally and

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decisively. Essentially the modern novel and the contemporary film convey the same message, i.e. Frankenstein’s “apt moral” (30). What is it? Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world… (53) Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. (217–​18)

Frankenstein’s parting message about the perils of knowledge and ambition is especially timely today, when AlphaGo defeats every human go master in the world and when RealDoll goes on the market. The AI technology is undergoing swift progress, and it is no exaggeration to say that the crisis of AIs has dawned. The reflective scientist’s emphasis on the Romantic “happiness in tranquility” and the value of the domestic hearth will be a potent antidote against the rampant social and professional mania. An obsessive or excessive pursuit of knowledge, usually a human’s, in the direction of equaling God and creating humanoid beings, constitutes the essential feature of scientific Prometheanism, which can end in catastrophic destructions. Frankenstein is also named “The Modern Prometheus,” and Nathan in Ex Machina is called Prometheus. Both works are modern in spirit and make a pungent critique of an aspect of modernity, i.e. scientific Prometheanism with an exposition of the real dangers posed by AIs to the very existence of humanity and civilization. The two works are to a greater or lesser extent grounded upon Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is also closely connected with the story of Prometheus. The epic’s classical discussion of Prometheanism and explication on the necessity of the bounds of knowledge provide the epistemological framework for Frankenstein and Ex Machina.

Milton’s Prometheanism and Scientific Prometheanism The mythological figure of Prometheus, sometimes regarded as “a fundamental myth of Western culture” (qtd. in Lewis 1), associates Milton with English Romanticism, of which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a quintessential product, whereas Frankenstein and Ex Machina share a coherent reflection on scientific Prometheanism. The myth of Prometheus is a complex one that evolves over centuries, and different

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people –​Hesiod, Aeschylus, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Mary Shelley, Alex Garland, and many others –​appropriate the malleable figure to their own purpose. This section simultaneously surveys the history of the myth and explores Milton’s version of Prometheanism and its connection with scientific Prometheanism, which affects directly the present and future development of AIs. In the Theogony Hesiod establishes a hierarchy of Olympian gods, with Zeus presiding. Fathered by Iapetus the Titan, Prometheus was cousin to Zeus, who was begotten by Cronos the Titan. Zeus later overthrew his father Cronos and superseded him as the supreme god. In a Latin poem “In Inventorem Bombardae” (“On the Inventor of Gunpowder”) Milton writes: “Iapetionidem laudavit caeca vetustas, /​Qui tulit aetheream solis ab axe facem” (“Blind antiquity praised the son of Iapetus, who brought the heavenly torch from the sun’s chariot”) (Kerrigan et al., Complete Poetry 200). Iapetus had four sons with Clymene, and the son here refers to Prometheus, or Forethought. Milton links Prometheus the fire-​thief with Satan, the inventor of gunpowder in ­Paradise Lost (6.470–​506) (Teskey, John Milton 393). The modern name for the inventor of gunpowder is the chemist, and Victor Frankenstein is a chemist engaged in the new branch of science called chemical physiology.6 In this sense he is a “modern Prometheus.” According to Hesiod, the cunning Prometheus stole the spark of fire in a hollow fennel stalk to succor mankind, who was meant for wholesale obliteration by Zeus. The master god punished the rebel by chaining him to the Caucasus and sending his sacred bird the eagle to feed ceaselessly on the liver of the offender. Zeus also put a curse on man and his friend and spread all ills among humankind with Pandora’s jar. Pandora in Greek means “all gifts” for all gods participated in her creation. In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Epimetheus or Afterthought, unmindful of his brother Prometheus’s advice, married Pandora conducted to him by Hermes. The fair lady opened the jar and released all evils into the world (Lewis 17–​18). Milton was familiar with the story and combined it with the Biblical account, for he depicts Eve as More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods Endowed with all their gifts, and O too like 6

Humphry Davy, a contemporary scientist who influenced Mary Shelley, touches on the chemist’s discovery of gunpowder (Mellor 90, 94–​95).

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In sad event, when to the unwiser son Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire. (4.714–​19)

The passage equates Iapetus, the father of Prometheus (“him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire”) and Epimetheus (“the unwiser son /​Of Japhet”), with Noah’s son Japhet. Milton unifies Greek and Roman mythology with the Biblical history; or rather, the Biblical authority in poetic guise overshadows the pagan naming. The poet compares Eve with Pandora –​both being the first woman in the world –​to the former’s advantage, but the two are “too like /​In sad event,” thus relegating Eve to the status of another ensnarer of “Mankind with her fair looks.” The line echoes with Adam’s forced choice to eat the forbidden fruit, “Against his better knowledge, not deceived, /​But fondly overcome with female charm” (9.998–​99). Eve’s feminine attractiveness becomes a snare that brings her husband’s fall. Milton elucidates the same point in his prose tract The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce by designating Eve as “a consummate and most adorned Pandora” and Adam as “our true Epimetheus” (Kerrigan et al., Complete Poetry 892). In Ex Machina Caleb’s failure to escape is likewise caused by Ava’s trap of “female charm,” which has been tailored for Caleb’s particular taste on the basis of a collection of powerful search engine data. Big data, big trap. If Ava acts like Pandora, then Caleb is the perfect Epimetheus. It is amazing that faced with the enchanting chain of Pandora-​Eve-​Ava, all straight males disarm themselves as “the unwiser son,” leaving the wiser one suffering in tyrannical chains perpetually and vainly. The distinction is that both Epimetheus and Caleb are fooled by their female partner, while Adam chooses knowingly. Adam’s choice puts a premium value on domestic feelings and the “bond of nature” (Paradise Lost, 9.956) in preference to the arbitrary divine injunction. Victor’s fault lies in his thrice violation of the “bond of nature,” for he acts against the human nature of communion and connection, against the evolutionary law of Dame Nature (Mellor 95–​102), and against the proper role of the heavenly Creator. Nature breaks, and Victor falls, down into the pit of Hell, never to return. It is fair enough that both he and his creature confess to bear a burning Hell within them (88, 136) like the arch-​fiend (Paradise Lost, 4.75, 9.467).

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Mary Shelley’s critique of scientific Prometheanism centres round a probe into the nature and use of knowledge. Knowledge, which is indispensable and inevitable in the postlapsarian world, occupies an insecure and dubious position between the extremes of ignorance and wisdom. Hence the problem. “Of what a strange nature is knowledge!” exclaims the pestered Monster, whose sorrow increases with knowledge (120). The Miltonic epistemology of knowing good by evil as expounded in Areopagitica and Paradise Lost informs the philosophy of knowledge and ethics of science in Frankenstein, for Milton’s epistemology is both things in itself. In his juvenilia Prolusion 7 Milton distorts the story of Prometheus to present “the wisest of gods and men” as pursuing learning in his purposeful withdrawal “to the lofty solitude of the Caucasus” (Kerrigan et al., Complete Poetry 794). To this simplistic positive view of learning the mature Milton adds two points. First, his famous and perplexing denunciation of Greek learning through the Son in Paradise Regained highlights the priority of a knowledge of God and divine wisdom, which alone can equip the “spirit and judgment equal or superior” necessary for a wise reading of books (4.324). The Son sighs on the ignorance of Greek philosophers, “Alas what can they teach, and not mislead; /​Ignorant of themselves, of God much more” (4.309–​10). Therefore, the pursuit of knowledge ought to be guided by a Christian faith and aim at “True wisdom” (4.319).7 Adam’s, Victor’s, or Nathan’s search for knowledge is shallow and misleading because they disregard the Christian faith and fail to revere God. They either ignore God or seek to become God themselves. According to Milton, this is false from the start, if not like the reasoning devils in Hell (2.557–​65). Psychiatrist C. G. Jung holds that the rift between knowledge and faith opened out with the coming of Enlightenment and could no longer be repaired (Werblowsky xi-​xii). This is the reason, I suppose, for the post-​Enlightenment hypertrophy of absolutist rationalism and the simultaneous neglect of God or the Christian faith. Second, Raphael’s teaching of “knowledge within bounds” in Paradise Lost (7.120) introduces the classical virtue of temperance into epistemology: “But knowledge is as food, and needs no less /​Her temperance 7 For another example of Milton’s advocation of the union of knowledge and faith, see Of Education: “The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him” (Kerrigan et al., Complete Poetry, 971).

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over appetite, to know /​In measure what the mind may well contain” (7.126–​28). In Paradise Lost, whose central action is tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, eating and knowing are often related, as when Adam compares Raphael’s lecture to “sweet repast” (8.214). Mary Shelley utilizes the same metaphor when she writes that “in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder” (50). Victor’s admission that his irresistible occupation “swallow[s]‌up every habit of [his] nature” (55) delineates the overwhelming destruction of intensive intellectual pursuits with the implied knowledge-​as-​food metaphor. Like the consumption of food, the acquisition of knowledge demands the governance of the principle of temperance. If out of measure, wisdom will be turned to folly, just as nutrition to wind. To put it another way, since God has suppressed certain knowledge in night, “To none communicable in Earth or Heaven” (7.124), it would be folly for humans to search and know such things. When proud and selfish Faustians such as Victor and Nathan trespass the bounds of knowledge stipulated by God and attempt to “unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation,” discover “the principle of life,” and bestow “animation upon lifeless matter” (48, 51, 52), they destroy the divine order –​pun intended –​by playing God and will be severely punished for their misdeeds. Such people’s way of living necessarily opposes the temperance principle, for Victor drops the habit of corresponding with his family and friends despite his father’s prior admonition (55) and Nathan is a habitual drunkard. When Victor summarizes his lesson, he knows good by evil, bitter experiential evil: in the pursuit of knowledge no one should “allow passion or transitory desire to disturb his tranquility” of domestic affections; otherwise that study is “certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind” (55–​56). Mary Shelley’s Romantic rule of tranquility as a state of mind and Milton’s classical rule of temperance as a manner of self-​discipline seem to be disparate, but the two are consistent in spirit. For proof we may refer to Adam and Eve’s perturbed and intemperate behaviour after their fall, the “fruitless hours:” carnal desire and burning lust “As with new wine intoxicated” (9.1188, 1008), covering their bodies with fig leaves out of shame (cf. “that first naked glory:” 9.1115), weeping and suffering, mutual accusation and endless quarrel, thoughts of suicide, and so on, so forth. For the first couple, the interruption of tranquility and the breach of temperance amount to the same thing: the former results from the latter, because eating the forbidden fruit obviously disrupts their tranquil pastoral life. “Knowledge

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is as food;” both the poet and the novelist endorse the necessity of the bounds of knowledge, which scientific Prometheanism unlawfully oversteps. As Andrew Griffin observes, “Frankenstein’s Prometheanism is more and more clearly revealed as obsessive and inhuman, the cause of much suffering and many deaths” (Griffin 51). Nathan’s Prometheanism is all the more obsessive and inhuman, the cause of much suffering and his own death. In his excellent treatise Lucifer and Prometheus: A Study of Milton’s Satan, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky points out that knowledge is a blessing, but can also be destruction if it is not carefully limited and kept down. But significantly enough it is also the only element whose natural tendency is upwards. … Fire is the appropriate symbol for the spirit and knowledge which is in man and by which he “aspires to divinity” and becomes a god. (Werblowsky 56)

In Greek philosophy Empedocles attributed to fire consciousness, thought, and knowledge, which qualities Heraclitus held to be divine prerogatives (Werblowsky 56). Stolen from Hephaestus and Athena, Prometheus’s gift of fire brings with it arts and sciences, all departments of knowledge for the birth and growth of human civilization. Bacon’s household aphorism “Knowledge is power” annotates the symbol of Prometheus’s fire as a stolen forbidden power, just as it comments on Adam and Eve’s abrogation of forbidden knowledge, which Satan urges to get hold of: “Can it be sin to know?” (4.517) Elsewhere Bacon lists the attempt to ravish Athena as Prometheus’s additional crime and views this as an allegory: “when men are puffed up with arts and knowledge, they often try to subdue even divine wisdom” (Lewis 73). Knowledge breeds contempt, of God. Adam’s planned use of fire after the climactic change subsequent to the fall (Paradise Lost, 10.1070–​78) literally anticipates Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment with lightning in the storm, which is repeated by Frankenstein’s father: “he made also a kite, with a wire and string, which drew down that fluid from the clouds” (Rieger 35). The modern Prometheus’s stolen fire is electricity or galvanism. Electricity, possibly the “principle of life,” plays a key role in both Frankenstein and Ex Machina. In the novel electricity animates the lifeless matter, and in the film each power outage leaves an opportunity for Ava and Caleb’s private, unmonitored exchange. Like God’s breath of life into the first man’s nostrils, electricity is the AI’s breathed air, without which the simulated life could not live. From another perspective, the upward

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movement of knowledge/​fire resembles that of the Romantic symbol of Shelley’s high-​flying skylark, but the soaring of knowledge lacks the Romantic spontaneity of the skylark, which sings “hymns unbidden” in “profuse strains of unpremeditated art” (Woodberry 270). On the contrary, the high flight of knowledge in the lab, like Victor’s or Nathan’s, isolates the egotistic pursuer from nature and human relationship and has a feature of strained obsession that dehumanizes. They think they are God-​like, but actually they are slaves to their excessive passion, or madness, which is certainly not the skylark’s “harmonious madness” (Woodberry 274), the work of supreme Nature. Just as they learn of the destructive power of fire that radiates light and heat (41, 104–​05), Frankenstein and the Monster get to know the negative sides of knowledge through acute experience. As the smart creature philosophizes, “How strange…that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!” (104) Well used, knowledge is a most powerful weapon; abused, the fire of knowledge can destruct not merely an oak, but also the entire human species. Like the image of Prometheus (Christ or Satan), knowledge is also double-​edged, leading to happiness or misery, civilization or extinction, pending on the ethics of the wielder of knowledge.

Concluding Remarks In the preface to Prometheus Unbound (1820), Shelley lavishes unbounded praise on the mythological figure: “Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends” (qtd. in Teskey, John Milton 393). In her “secular myth” of Frankenstein (Levine 4), a far-​sighted critique of scientific Prometheanism with Miltonic epistemological frame-​work, Mary Shelley radically and quietly reverses her husband’s agenda of unequivocal Prometheanism. For the initiator of science fiction, the mad scientist’s obsessive pursuits of knowledge directed toward the creation of humanoid beings are against the necessary boundaries of knowledge and encroach upon the divine privilege. Such pursuits are anti-​humanistic, for the products thereby are inevitably monsters, unnatural in appearance or in reality. Between Zeus and Prometheus, the woman novelist seems to champion the former, by whatever name he is called (Marsh 152). Mary Shelley and Ex Machina artistically weave scientific elements into literary/​cinematic texts, and their successful practice shows that science and arts

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are not necessarily opposed to each other. Instead, the union of science and arts in science fiction/​films informed by humanistic values can be very productive. As an end in itself, pure science resembles arts and both aim to serve the highest interests of humankind. The legacy of Western humanism dictates the purpose of human activities (including arts and sciences) to be humane. Like Ava standing at a crossroads, every conscientious and responsible scientist must bear Stephen Hawking’s caution in mind while confronting this crucial issue: Whither goes AI? To make or not to make, that is the question.

Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1987. 1–​11. Garland, Alex, dir. Ex Machina. Universal Pictures International, 2015. Film. Griffin, Andrew. “Fire and Ice in Frankenstein.” Levine and Knoepflmacher 49–​73. Hawking, Stephen. “Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind.” BBC News. Web. 30 Oct 2015. Hill-​Miller, Katherine C. “My Hideous Progeny”: Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and the Father-​Daughter Relationship. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1995. Kerrigan, William, et al., eds. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. New York: Modern Library, 2007. —​— ​—​, eds. Paradise Lost. New York: Modern Library, 2008. Kinsley, James, and M. K. Joseph, eds. Frankenstein. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969. Levine, George. “The Ambiguous Heritage of Frankenstein.” Levine and Knoepflmacher 3–​30. —​ —​ —​ , and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel. Berkeley: U of California P, 1979. Lew, Joseph W. “The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Orientalism in Frankenstein.” Studies in Romanticism 30.2 (1991): 255–​83. Lewis, Linda M. The Promethean Politics of Milton, Blake, and Shelley. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1992.

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Marsh, Nicholas. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Mays, Milton A. “Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s Black Theodicy.” Southern Humanities Review 3 (1969): 146–​53. Mellor, Anne K. “A Feminist Critique of Science.” Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Routledge, 1988. 89–​114. Muller, Herbert J. The Children of Frankenstein: A Primer on Modern Technology and Human Values. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1970. Rieger, James, ed. Frankenstein. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. Schor, Esther, ed. Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Scott, Peter Dale. “Vital Artifice: Mary, Percy, and the Psychopolitical Integrity of Frankenstein.” Levine and Knoepflmacher 172–​202. Teskey, Gordon. The Poetry of John Milton. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2015. — ​— ​—​, ed. John Milton: Paradise Lost. New York: Norton, 2005. Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi. Lucifer and Prometheus: A Study of Milton’s Satan. Introduction by C. G. Jung. Abingdon: Routledge, 1952. Woodberry, George Edward, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Vol. 3. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892.

Part V Other Poems

Milton as Phoebicola, a Follower of Phoebus: The Pauline Poet in His Latin Poetry Chika Kaneko

John Milton is an English epicist and pamphleteer who was also renowned as a Latin lyricist. He composed most of his Latin poetry on certain occasions between his mid-​teens and his twenties. In these poems, Milton projects himself as an apostolic poet. His self-​portrait wholly integrates elements from the Pauline Epistles. Milton proves his poetic a vocation by following St. Paul’s apostolic methodology, which can be recognized by focusing on Milton’s self-​assessment as Phoebicola, a follower of Phoebus. This paper aims to emphasize the gradual development of the relationship between Phoebus and Milton over time. It intends to demonstrate that the mutation of this poetic relationship is closely related to Milton’s growing vocation, evincing the metamorphosis of his self-​image from a follower of Phoebus to a Pauline poet. The mature Milton treats St. Paul as a heroic model of suffering to be emulated. Timothy J. O’Keeffe states in his book, Milton and the Pauline Tradition, “Milton stands as a man of his time facing religious questions and expressing his interpretation of the Pauline tradition -​-​explicitly in his prose and symbolically in his poetry” (16). Milton uses the apostle’s way of life as an exemplar of living for the sake of Truth. He employs St. Paul’s words to support his argument but also imbibes poetic imagery and themes from St. Paul, especially in Paradise Lost (1667). Yuko K. Noro asserts in “Milton’s Metamorphosis” (4) that the blind Milton delineates a heroic self-​image in Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (1654) based on St. Paul, who imitates Christ in suffering. Noro calls the Milton stronger in weakness in the Latin prose “a patient, Pauline prophet” (4). Following in the footsteps of Christ, St. Paul became a martyr who suffered for Truth’s sake. The young lyricist does not yet speak of St. Paul’s imitation of the suffering of Christ from direct realization as a

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self-​portrait. In only one of his extant 28 Latin poems does Milton refer 1 directly to St. Paul: Talis & horrisono laceratus membra flagello,   Paulus ab Æmathiâ pellitur urbe Cilix. Piscosæque ipsum Gergessæ civis Jesum   Finibus ingratus jussit abire suis. (“Elegia quarta” 101–​4)2 [In such wise, too, fared Paul of Cilicia, when, his limbs mangled by the whistling scourge, he was driven from Emathia’s city, and Jesus himself was bidden by the ungrateful citizenry of Gergessa, land of fishermen, to make off from their borders]. (CM 1–​I: 193)3 Milton wrote “Elegia quarta” (1627) to encourage his mentor, Thomas Young, who worked as a missionary in Hamburg in the Thirty Years’ War. St. Paul is described in this poem as persecuted in a manner identical to Jesus. The parallelism between lines 101–​2 and lines 103–​4 shows that St. Paul’s tribulations are equivalent to Christ’s. Milton then claims that Young was also sent by God’s will to a place of suffering. Like the persecution experienced by Christ and St. Paul, Young’s predicament results from divine providence. The patient figure of St. Paul in the 1654 prose is, at this point, applied to Young, not to Milton himself. In his Latin poetry, the young Milton adopts as his self-​image the image of St. Paul, whose mission is to spread the gospel and who stands by his proof, exhibiting true faith in Christ, rather than the image of St. Paul as a suffering martyr. Milton focuses on how St. Paul becomes the transcendent apostle. The essence of his Latin poetry can be viewed as a declaration of his poetic self-​portrait based on the vocation of St. Paul, the apostle. St. Paul is generally distinguished from the other 12 apostles because Christ did not directly appoint him to the apostleship. The 12 apostles were taught directly by Christ and learned from Him. After the 1 Haan, “The Poemata,” lxxxi. 2 All citations of Milton’s poetical works are from The Works of John Milton, vols. 1–​18, gen. ed. Frank A. Patterson (1931–​38). The numbers in parentheses after the citation show the line. All underlinings are mine. 3 All English translations of Milton’s Latin works are from The Works of John Milton. Henceforth, CM is used to denote this edition. The numbers in parentheses after the citation show the volume and the page. All underlinings are mine.

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ascension, people could no longer receive direct, hands-​on instruction from Him. However, after Christ’s death, Paul heard His voice, turned to Him, claimed the apostleship, and practised how to live as an apostle. Because of Paul, people can still discover how to follow Christ by themselves; they do not need a direct call from Christ to live as Christians.4 Paul’s is a paragon of apostleship for Milton’s vocation for poetry. It is reported that Milton was a full-​fledged poet by the age of ten.5 He aspired to become a great poet and devoted his life to the study of poetry from an early age. His ultimate goal was to create a national epic poem. However, he seems not to have been in a hurry to make a name for himself as a poet. His first collection, Poems of Mr. John Milton both English and Latin, compos’ d at several times (1645), was published when he was 37. Milton’s published poetry before Poems was limited to “On Shakespeare” (1630), A Mask (1634), Lycidas (1637) and Epitaphium Damonis (1639).6 These poems were published anonymously. Milton seemed hesitant to publish works under his name even “before the mellowing year” (Lycidas 5). The young poet did not need the praise of others or an appointment to establish himself as a poet; rather, he required self-​approval. Therefore, he continued poetic practice whole heartedly. The bastion of Milton’s poet-​ship is identical to the basis of Paul’s apostleship: the self-​assessment of his role as a faithful follower.

4 According to The Broadman Bible Commentary, Paul established the principles by which a Christian is to order his life (X 350–​52). Of which, the fifth states ‘[B]‌e imitators of me, as I am of Christ’ (1 Cor. 11). Moreover, Harold Bloom expresses that Milton regards Spenser as his starting point, quoting a phrase by Dryden: ‘Milton acknowledged to me, that Spenser was his original’ (John Milton 8). In Areopagitica, Milton himself calls him ‘sage and serious Poet Spencer, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher then Scotus or Aquinas’ (CM IV 311). Before the tract, Milton called him ‘the soothest shepherd that e’er piped on plains’ (A Mask 822). Therefore, Spencer is a model for Milton to follow. It is noteworthy that Milton calls him ‘shepherd’. This can be a pattern that Milton describes his model to follow as a shepherd. 5 Aubrey 1023; Lewalski 5. 6 ‘On Shakespeare’ was published anonymously in the Second Folio (1632) under the title ‘An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare’. A Mask was performed at the Earl of Bridgewater’s residence on 29 September, 1634, and published anonymously in 1637. In ‘Justa Edouardo King naufrago, ab Amicis maerentibus’ [Rites to Edward King, drowned by shipwreck, from his Grieving Friends], (1638), Lycidas was signed with the initials ‘J. M.’. An anonymous bound edition of Epitaphium Damonis in 1640s is in the collection of the British Museum.

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Noteworthily, Milton applies in his Latin poetry the religious pattern of following Christ to the poetic design of following Phoebus, the god of poetry. Milton depicts his relationship with Phoebus in stages: an awakener, follower, worshipper and palmer as he goes through his calling, conversion, worship, offering and pilgrimage. Then, the Christ-​Paul framework is applied to the Phoebus-​Milton association. In so doing, he attempts to articulate a certain poetic legitimacy and testify to his qualification to lead the people as a national poet. Milton has Phoebus appear in at least ten of his 28 surviving Latin poems: “Elegia prima,” “Elegia secunda,” “Elegia tertia,” “Elegia quinta,” “Elegia sexta,” “Elegia septima,” Naturam non pati senium, Ad Patrem, “Ad Salsillum,” and Mansus. All these Latin poems are included in Poems. Phoebus takes on the role of a poetic deity presiding over the world of poetry. Milton’s interest in Phoebus can be constantly seen throughout his approximately 15 years as a Latin lyric poet. However, he mentions Phoebus in only four of the English lyric poems in the same collection, and Phoebus does not appear to function in the four poems in the same manner as the Latin lyrics. In this sense, Milton’s interest in Phoebus can be asserted as a specific characteristic of his Latin poetry. The difference between Milton’s Latin and English lyric poetry is vested in the distinctions between the two gods, each of whom governs his specific poetic world. Phoebus is the god of the sun and the god of poetry in ancient Roman mythology. In the Christian worldview, however, the sun symbolizes Christ, the only begotten son of God. The pagan god has traditionally been absorbed in the Christian world into the shining image of Christ. Stella P. Revard highlights the close relationship between the two figures: “Early Christians recognized the resemblance of Christ to Apollo [another name for Phoebus], particularly in his role as a sun god.”7 Using this connection, Milton draws a conscious distinction between the Latin and the English poetic worldviews. The Sun of Phoebus illuminates the world in the former; the Sun of Christ shines in the latter. The radiant Phoebus is a unique character in Milton’s Latin poetry. Moreover, Jupiter, the supreme god of ancient Roman mythology, rules Latin poetry, and Phoebus is one of his sons. Here, the paradigm of Sun worship may be described as Jupiter-​Phoebus-​his follower. The ancient paradigm was replaced by the other new prototype when

7 Milton and the Tangles of Neaera’s Hair 68.

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Christ “the Prince of light” (“Ode to the Nativity” 62) dethroned Phoebus: God-​Christ-​His follower. No longer can the shining Phoebus be found: For example, The Oracles are dumm, No voice or hideous humm Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-​ey’d Priest from the prophetic cell (“Ode to the Nativity” 173–​80). Phoebus is an epithet for Apollo. The divinity of the other sun is lost with the coming of “a greater Sun [Christ]” (83), and the former god is no longer empowered to offer oracles. As “pale” is a colour that symbolises death, the gleam of life is gone from the eyes of the priest who served Phoebus. Phoebus in “The Passion” also has his power taken away through the image of sunset: “To this Horizon is my Phoebus bound” (23). Thus, Phoebus has clearly lost his lustre in Milton’s English poetry, but Milton seems to affirm his faith in Phoebus in his Latin poetry and prays to the Sun god for his poetic talent. Thus, the image of Phoebus portrayed in Milton’s Latin poems differs from his English poetry. The paper will scrutinize Milton’s Latin poems from this juncture to examine how he constructs his self-​image as a follower of Phoebus. The five Latin poems discussed in this paper can be classified into three stages according to the depth of the relationship between the poet and Phoebus. Milton’s vocation and activities as a poet are revealed as the first stage in “Carmina elegiaca” (1624–​25?), “Elegia prima” (1626) and “Elegia quinta” (1629). In the second stage, Ad Patrem (1631?) appears, showing that Phoebus chooses Milton as the rightful successor to his own poetic genius. Epitaphium Damonis (1639) is positioned in the third stage, in which Milton qualifies as a shepherd. In other words, Milton himself declares that he will play the role of a pastor and leave the scene of pastoral care to fulfil his role in the real world. Milton’s poetic relationship with Phoebus develops to the point at which an apostolic poet emerges within Milton.

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This classification is congruent with the change of mind and the environment in which Milton confronted his poetry in reality. As a student at Cambridge University from 1628 to 1629, he seems to be seeking the kind of poet he wants to become and to discover the image of his model poet. Milton’s career as a poet began with writing lyrics in Latin at St. Paul’s School and during home study. However, the phrase “Hail native Language” (“At a Vacation Exercise” 1) suggests that Milton intended to turn into an English poet in the summer of 1628 (the word “English” in this sense includes both the language and the nationality).8 In “Elegia sexta” (1629), he expresses his determination to become an epic poet on par with Homer (71). His future self-​image as an English epic poet becomes clearer around the age of 20. Milton immersed himself in writing Latin poetry twice between his student days and the time before he began his political career working as a prose pamphleteer in 1641: in and before 1629 and around 1639. These dates respectively correspond to the time when he confirmed his decision to become an English epic poet and to the time when he left the poetically secluded life to go on a grand tour on the continent. Put differently, Milton’s focus on writing Latin poetry can be established through the following timeline: the first period before winter 1629 and the second period between 1638–​39 as he travelled through the continent. “Carmina elegiaca”, an unpublished elegy, and other Latin poems in student days belong to the first period, while Mansus and other Latin poems in the Italian journey are placed in the second period. During his continental journey, Milton wrote poems in the lingua franca of the time to his Italian friends, such as his Italian patron Manso and the intellectual Salzilli. The other two poems, Ad Patrem and Epitaphium Damonis, belong to neither of the periods, so they seem to be intentionally written in Latin even though he was not a passionate Latin lyricist at that time. Milton’s self-​image vis-​à-​vis Phoebus in the first period and in the Latin poems written at irregular intervals is now investigated. “Carmina elegiaca” is positioned as the earliest of Milton’s Latin poems. While not published during Milton’s lifetime, it is an important work for the

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Kenneth Muir states that in ‘At a Vacation Exercise’, Milton ‘gave public expression to his poetic ambitions and dismissed the fashionable poetry of the day. (…) The poem is interesting as it apparently marks Milton’s determination to write poetry in his native language although nearly all his verse up till now had been written in Latin’ ( John Milton 13).

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disclosure of Milton’s image as a believer in Phoebus. The first stage of Milton’s vocation for poetry begins with the poet’s self-​awakening in response to Phoebus’ call. Surge, age surge, leves, iam convenit, excute somnos,   Lux oritur, tepidi fulcra relinque tori Iam canit excubitor gallus prænuncius ales   Solis et invigilans ad sua quemque vocat Flammiger Eois Titan caput exerit undis   Et spargit nitidum læta per arva iubar. (“Carmina elegiaca” 1–​6) [Arise, come, arise; now it is time, put an end to easy slumbers. The light is born, leave the foot of the languid couch. Now crows the sentinel bird, the cock, herald of the sun, and wakeful calls each man to his business. The flame-​bearing Titan puts forth his head from the waves of the East, and spreads his shining radiance over the happy fields]. (CM 1–​I: 327). The fifteen-​year-​old Milton finds poetry as his true calling. In the above extract, the sleeping poet hears a voice calling, “Surge.” As the Sun rises, its growing power tries to wake the poet from his slumber. The Sun is symbolically depicted by three items: “lux,” “prænuncius ales,” and “flammiger Titan”:9 or sunlight, the sound of the morning and the heat of the Sun. They appeal to the poet’s sense of sight, hearing, and touch, filling the realm of poetic imagination with sunshine. A sleepless bird heralds the arrival of the Sun and summons everyone to their duties. The original word for “duty” is the pronoun “sua [one’s own],” which Shawcross translates as “his own affairs” and Haan as “his own tasks.” It is not specifically stated what his tasks are because they are spelt out in the original poem with a pronoun. However, if the context of Paul’s conversion is contemplated, the above scene in “Carmina elegiaca” alludes to Milton’s 9 Merritt T. Hughes considers ‘Titan’ as the sun itself or the sun god that brings the energy of life into the earth (Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose 6). According to Shawcross, the term is specifically interpreted as Hyperion, who is identified with his son, Helios, since Homer. Helios is characterized as the god of the sun and the brother of Selené (the Moon goddess) and Eros (the son of Aphrodite /​Venus) in Greek mythology. He drives the sun chariot and brings sunlight to the heavens and the earth. Moreover, after Euripides, he came to be identified with Apollo, who can see everything from the sky. ‘Titan’ is not only a symbol of the sun but also a character absorbed into Phoebus owing to its literary background.

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belief in the one bright Sun (the etymological meaning of Phoebus) and articulates his vocation to live by that faith. The scene described above is reminiscent of St. Paul’s conversion as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.10 On his way to Damascus, “suddenly there shined round about him [Paul] a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him” (Acts 9: 3–​4),11 “Arise, and go into the city. Then you will be told what you must do” (9: 6). The Lord explains this calling as follows: “[Paul] is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (9:15). Paul, lying on the ground in the light from heaven, hears the voice calling “arise,” which is equivalent to “surge” in the Vulgate. For Paul, the voice from light is Christ’s. He becomes aware of his calling by this voice, turns into Christ’s disciple and begins to emulate His life. Like the Paul lying on the ground hears His call to “surge” in the light of the heavens, Milton hears a voice calling “surge” as he lies in bed in the morning Sun. Milton emphasizes the word “surge,” using it twice in one line. He then repeats the first two lines containing “surge” in the final two lines. The voice from light is Phoebus’ for Milton and Christ’s for Paul. It urges Milton to follow Phoebus’ call to accomplish his poetic task. Further, Paul must experience conversion to begin his apostleship. Unlike Peter and the other apostles, Paul did not receive direct teaching from Christ, nor did he receive testimony from others. Nonetheless, he says, “For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles” (2 Cor. 11: 5)12 because he considers the calling he received directly from Christ on the road to Damascus as equivalent to the teachings received by the 12 apostles. Paul also bases his being an apostle solely on his calling by Christ. He says, “PAUL, AN apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ. . .)” (Gal. 1: 1). Thus, Paul has no other way to prove that he is an apostle than to himself profess his credentials and evidence them through his actions. Milton evokes the theme and imagery

10 See Acts 9:1–​19; 22: 3–​21; 26: 12–​18. 11 All citations of the Bible are from The Authorized King James Version. 12 ‘[I]‌n his epistles’, as T. C. Smith states, ‘Paul considers this experience of the risen Christ as equal to the appearances to the apostles and others’ (The Broadman Bible Commentary X: 61).

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of Paul’s conversion to describe his awareness of his calling for poetry. He then positions himself in “Carmina elegiaca” as a missionary poet who responds to Phoebus’ calling. The relationship between Phoebus and Milton in “Elegia prima” is also influenced by the words of St. Paul. The self-​consciousness of vocation enables Milton to describe himself as a follower of Phoebus. In the beginning, he refers to his suspension from Cambridge. He enjoys reading or going to the theatre in London. He describes this time in the following manner: Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,   Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor. Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles,   Quàm male Phœbicolis convenit ille locus! Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri   Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. (“Elegia prima” 11–​16) [Not now am I concerned to revisit the reedy Cam, nor am I harrowed now by love of my Lares there, this long time denied me. I find no pleasure in fields that are naked and that refuse soft shade; how ill-​adapted is such a place to the worshippers of Phœbus! I am not minded to bear unceasingly the threats of an unbending teacher, and all the other trials that are not to be met by a nature such as mine] (CM 1–​I: 169). Here, Milton is no longer just a man who has found his calling as found in “Carmina elegiaca.” As the Miltonic coinage “Phœbicolis,” evidences, he is one of the followers studying in the academic enclosure.13 In line 14, he considers Cambridge to be an evil place where Phoebus’ followers congregate, tendering varied reasons for enjoying his exile. One of them is to attain freedom from the durus magister. Milton is enraged with his tutor’s lack of understanding of literature.14 Milton condemns those who do not appreciate “Phoebicolis” with the phrase “Quàm male.” However, he decides at the end of the poem to stop wandering the streets alone and to return to “arundiferum Camum [the reedy Cam].” 13 ‘Phoebicolis’ in ‘Elegia prima’ (14) is supposed to be a Miltonic coinage (Bush, A Variorum Commentary 49). The basic form of this word could be “Phoebicola”. 14 Akira Arai points out that ‘duri’ (15) has more meanings beyond its usual senses of ‘stubborn’ or ‘stern,’ additionally meaning ‘too barbarous to understand poetry’ (Milton 17).

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Milton wrote “Elegia prima” approximately a year after “Carmina elegiaca,” and it is chronologically considered to be the next extant work among Milton’s Latin poems. “Elegia prima” seems to be based on events that transpired immediately after Paul encountered the voice of Christ. The Lord said: “For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake” (Acts. 9: 16). A disciple (Anaias) takes Paul by the hand and identifies him as one of the fellowship, after which Paul is baptized. He then becomes a Christian but is condemned by his new brethren because of his past behaviours: “And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple” (9: 26). In short, after Paul becomes one of the followers of Christ, he is once almost excluded from the city of Jerusalem. Milton’s suspension is often superimposed on Ovid’s banishment to Tomis.15 However, from the perspective of the self-​portrait of a Pauline poet, it is reminiscent of Paul, who is denied entry to the enclosed city despite being a follower of Christ. Moreover, it is the only juncture in the passage at which Milton uses arundiferum (reedy) as a modifier for Cambridge. The word “reed” is also an attribute of John the Baptist. The reed-​like “Elegia prima” can be conceived as the poetic place of baptism. Moreover, it can be viewed as a symbol of Christ’s suffering and death on the cross. It is possible to infer the line as linking Cambridge with the location of Christ’s Passion. First, it is important for believers to continue “steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship” (Acts 2: 42), even when they encounter trials and difficulties. Paul also said, “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience. . .” (2 Cor. 12: 12). Thus, in “Elegia prima,” Milton decides to become a follower of Phoebus in acceptance of his vocation and of his own volition. When he returns to Cambridge, he patiently endures and even tries to befriend those who do not understand literature. His self-​portrait appears as an apostle preaching among the Gentiles. “Elegia quinta” marks the third poem expressing Milton’s faith in Phoebus. It demonstrates the religious and poetic practices Milton performs as a Phoebicola. These customs include the act of making offerings to the gods and undertaking pilgrimages. First, Milton offers his poem to Phoebus. The subtitle, “In adventum veris [On the coming of spring]” 15 Mori 171; Bush 46.

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suggests that “Elegia quinta” is a song of spring. In both hemispheres, the sun increases its power from spring to summer; thus, Phoebus increases his power. Therefore, spring denotes the season of increasing poetic power. Milton dedicates “Elegia quinta” as a hymn to the god of poetry:16 Ver mihi, quod dedit ingenium, cantabitur illo;   Profuerint isto reddita dona modo. (“Elegia quinta” 23–​24) [The spring, the spring that gave me inspiration shall be the theme of that inspiration’s songs; thus the gifts of spring will be repaid to her and will bring her profit]. (CM 1–​I: 197) Milton says he will reward the gift of spring with a song or hymn. He thus attempts the religious practice of offering. “Elegia quinta” also has a nested structure. In line 30, Milton describes that the Muses sing another song of spring: “. . . hoc subeat Musa perennis opus [let this be the task essayed by the never-​dying Muse!]” (CM 1–​I: 197). Thus, Milton contributes two offerings. In addition, Milton offers a pilgrimage to fulfil another religious practice. Castalis ante oculos, bifidumque cacumen oberrat, Et mihi Pyrenen somnia nocte ferunt. Concitaque arcano fervent mihi pectora motu, Et furor, & sonitus me sacer intùs agit. Delius ipse venit, video Penëide lauro Implicitos crines, Delius ipse venit. (“Elegia quinta” 9–​14) [Castalia’s waters dance before mine eyes, and the twice-​cleft peak, and at night dreams bring to me Pirene. My soul is deeply stirred, is all aglow with mysterious impulses, the madness of inspiration and holy sounds stir me to my deeps within. The god of Delos himself is coming–​–​I see his locks twined with Peneüs’s laurel–​–​, yes, the god of Delos is coming himself]. (CM 1-​I: 195, 197) In lines 9–​10, Milton dreams of three Greek places: “Castalis,” “bifidumque cacumen,” and “Pyrenen.” Each of these locations refers to holy 16 According to Revard, ‘Elegia quinta’ itself is a hymn to Phoebus from the conceptual and structural viewpoints: ‘Despite its elegia couplets, it is hymnic in concept and structure and is in fact organized like a hymn to Apollo on the coming of spring. . . Phoebus Apollo, rather than the poet-​narrator, is the central person’ (17).

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places dedicated to Phoebus in Mt. Parnassus. Milton considers himself a palmer and travels on a pilgrimage to the mountain. There, he hears divine sounds heralding the coming of Phoebus, the god of Delos. Milton deserves to communicate with Phoebus because of the offerings of two hymns and the pilgrimage. Here, Milton no longer delineates himself as just one of the followers of Phoebus; he is now a palmer. He is acknowledged as a more pious follower deserving of the god’s appearance, the epiphany. Further, the relationship between Phoebus and Milton climaxes as Milton calls out to Phoebus, addressing him affectionately in the second person, “Cum tu Phœbe tuo sapientius uteris igni, /​Huc ades & gremio lumina pone meo [Using, Phœbus, your fires more wisely now. . . come to me, and lay your bright rays on my bosom] (“Elegia quinta” 93–​94; CM 1-​I: 203). Thus, the religious-​poetic practices enable Milton to integrate Phoebus into himself. In this way, he is in the same condition as Paul, who says, “Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2: 20). In “Carmina elegiaca,” “Elegia prima,” and “Elegia quinta,” Milton develops his self-​portrait in relation to Phoebus. He is a convert to Phoebus’ faith, one of Phoebus’ followers: a worshipper and a palmer. He defines his poetic legitimacy by likening his attitude towards poetry to Paul’s religious pattern of following Christ. As the next step, Milton seeks the image of Paul enduring hardship as the image of his future as a poet. This self-​portrait is also briefly observed in Milton’s walk to the “Quàm male” in “Elegia prima,” but is more clearly depicted in Ad Patrem. Here, he professes that the fusion with Phoebus is not seasonal or temporary; rather, it is inherited by Milton as a factor of genetics. Ipse volens Phœbus se dispertire duobus, Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti, Dividuumque Deum genitorque puerque tenemus (Ad Patrem 64– ​66). [Phœbus, wishing to divide himself between us twain, gave one half of his gifts to me, the other half to my father, and so we, father and son, possess the god in shares] (CM 1-​I: 275). Here, Milton recounts that Phoebus chose Milton and wanted him to inherit his talent for poetry. An extract cited above also clarifies that

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Paul is chosen by Christ himself to be the vessel or instrument of his words (Act 9: 15). Milton takes Phoebus into himself and inherits his gift of poetry as his legitimate adopted son.17 Paul says, “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith” (Rom. 12. 6); congruently, Milton creates poetry according to his genetic gift. Therefore, Milton swears not to run away from “curæ [worry],” “querelæ [discontent],” “invidiæque [envy],” and “calumnia [contempt]” (Ad Patrem 105–​7). Like Paul, he hopes to be “stronger in weakness, in reproach, in need, in persecution, in affliction, for Christ’s sake” (2 Cor. 12: 10).18 Milton must depart from a pastoral enclosure in which Phoebus presides as pastor and takes care of his followers in order to actualize his image as the ideal poet; like Paul, he must set an example. It is time for Milton to walk his own path to the next phase. In Epitaphium Damonis, the last Latin poem Milton writes as a youth, he takes the shepherd Thyrsis as his persona and accords himself the role of a shepherd capable of pasturing sheep. Phoebus no longer appears in Epitaphium Damonis because Milton discharges the duties of the shepherd. Phoebus now entrusts his role to the poet, who takes on the mission to lead his sheep. However, the Latin pasture is ruled over not by Milton but Phoebus, as is seen in the other poems. Therefore, Milton decides to leave this pastoral field, seeking his own field and sheep to care for. He stands in front of the waves of the Red Sea and walks into the wilderness: “In medio rubri maris unda, & odoriferum ver /​Littora longa Arabum, & sudantes balsama silvæ” (Epitaphium Damonis 185–​86) [In the midst are the billows of the Red Sea, and the fragrance-​bearing spring, the long shores of Arabia, and forests dripping with balsam] (CM 1-​I: 313, 315).

17 This paper owes to Yuko K. Noro and David Blanken’s three essays: ‘Milton’s Ad Patrem, De Idea Platonica, and Naturam non pati senium: –​From Praise to Exhortation –​,’ ‘Milton’s Mansus: From Illegitimate to Legitimate’ and ‘Milton’s Epitaphium Damonis: Two Views of its Principles of de-​Pastoralization.’ They analyse Ad Patrem and Mansus from the viewpoint of the father–​son on relationship. Following Noro and Blanken, this paper develops the idea of the relationship between Phoebus and Milton, challenging his poetic vocation through his other Latin poems. 18 The Bible: Authorized King James Version with an Introduction and Notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett with Apocrypha. Oxford UP, 1998.

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The expression “rubri maris unda” is associated with the Exodus, 19 when Moses led the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land. Thus, Milton decides to fulfil his mission to lead people. (Unlike Moses, Milton lives in the Gospels). The apostolic poet no longer settles down in a place of peaceful pastures but makes his way forth into the wilderness. As he declares that he will face the waves of the Red Sea, Milton begins to walk his own path as an example for his people to follow Christ in the real world. In conclusion, this paper has presented a self-​portrait of Milton as a devout follower of Phoebus. It has examined five excerpts from Milton’s Latin lyrics written over 15 years in the chronological order of their creation and discovered that his self-​portrait emerged from the grounding of his poetic-​religious position. The present study thus has revealed the intended structure of Milton’s Latin poetry. The paper has analysed several key passages to elucidate that his relationship with Phoebus is based on the experiences of the Apostle Paul, who lives in imitation of Christ. Milton expresses his attitude toward poetry, projecting himself as an amalgam of St. Paul’s life. Milton follows Phoebus as Paul follows Christ. As the great pastor of Latin poetry, Phoebus identifies the poet as his chosen man for the vocation for poetry, his worshipper, palmer and adopted son. This process is essential for Milton to identify himself as a poet who live for the Truth’ sake. In his Latin poetry, Milton trains under Phoebus’ patronage to qualify to herd his sheep in the real world. In other words, 15 years of exercising self-​discipline in Latin poetry allow Milton to announce himself as Phoebus’ apostle or an apostolic poet. The essence of Milton’s Latin poetry is his declaration that he will become a national poet to lead people in future as well as Paul did.

Works Cited Arai, Akira. Milton no Sekai: Jojishisei no Kiseki (The Development of Milton’s Concept on the Heroic Poetry). Kenkyuusha, 1980.

19 Jacob Taubes, in his book The Political Theology of Paul, affirms: “[Paul] becomes the antitype of Moses, who was able to change God’s mind and who moved him to hold onto the original covenant with the people” (127).

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Aubrey, John. “Collections for the Life of Milton.” John Milton Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Merritt Y. Hughes, Macmillan, 1957, pp. 1021–​25. Bloom, Harold. “Introduction.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: John Milton. Edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, 2004, pp. 1–​21. The Broadman Bible Commentary. Vol. 10, edited by Colifton J. Allen, Broadman P, 1970. Bush, Douglas. A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton. Vol. 1, Routledge, 1970. Haan, Estelle. “Introductions: The Poemata.” The Complete Works of John Milton. Vol. 3, edited by Barbara Kiefer Lewalski and Estelle Haan, Oxford UP, 2014, pp. lxxxi–​cxxxiii. O’Keeffe, Timothy J. Milton and the Pauline Tradition: A Study of Theme and Symbolism. UP of Amenrica, 1982. K[ing] J[ames] V[ersion] Giant Print, Personal Size Reference Bible. Zondervan, 1994. Lewalski, K. Barbara. The Life of John Milton. Willy Blackwell, 2000. Milton, John. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Edited by Merritt Y. Hughes, Macmillan, 1985. —​—​—​. The Complete Poetry of John Milton. Edited by John T. Shawcross, Doubleday, 1963. —​—​—​. The Works of John Milton. Edited by Allen Frank Patterson, vol. 1–​1, 3–​1, and 4, Columbia UP, 1931–​38. Mori Michiko. “Fame and Exile –​Ovid’s Tristia in Milton’s Poems.” Bulletin of Otemae University, vol. 13, 2012, pp. 169–​78. Muir, Kenneth. John Milton. Longman, 1962. Noro, Yuko Kanakubo. “Milton’s Metamorphosis from a Ciceronian Orator to the Pauline Prophet in Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda.” Bulletin of Seigakuin University General Research Institute, vol. 7, 1995, pp. 4–​17. Noro, Yuko, and David L. Blanken. “Milton’s Ad Patrem, De Idea Platonica, and Naturam non pati senium: -​-​From Praise to Exhortation-​-​.” Bulletin of Tokyo Seitoku College, vol. 26, 1993, pp. 41–​65. — ​— ​—​. “Milton’s Epitaphium Damonius: Two Views of its Principles of de-​Pastoralization.” Bulletin of Tokyo Seitoku College, vol. 28, 1995, pp. 105–​29.

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—​— ​—​. “Milton’s Mansus: From Illegitimate to Legitimate.” Bulletin of Tokyo Seitoku College, vol. 27, 1994, pp. 41–​66. Revard, Stella P. Milton and the Tangles of Neaera’s Hair. U of Missouri P, 1997. Taubes, Jacob. The Political Theology of Paul. Translated by Dana Hollander, Stanford UP, 2004.

Virgil’s Disappearing Wives in Milton’s Sonnet 23 Ian Hynd

Grief is worse than death, declares Euripides in Alcestis. Admetus there discovers that life without his devoted wife Alcestis is not worth living, leaving him unable to appreciate the life her sacrifice bought. Deeply affected by his own wife’s death, Milton relates himself to the mourning Admetus in Sonnet 23,1 though his dream of a similar reunion is just that: only a dream. Where the “glad husband” Admetus eventually regains his wife, Milton loses his saint all over again and continues to deplore her loss. In this way, the overt allusion to Alcestis, the regained wife, shifts into a covert allusion to Eurydice, the lost one, echoing the double grief of Orpheus as his wife disappears into thin air. This reversal is moving because it is obvious and inevitable, and most readers will appreciate its emotional power without the need for critical explication: Methought I saw my late espousèd saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force though pale and faint. Mine as whom washed from spot of childbed taint Purification in the old Law did save, And such, as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight, Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight. But O as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

1

This paper uses the Trinity Manuscript numbering rather than the published numbers in Poems, &c. upon several occasions (1673), and so refers to “Methought I saw my late espoused saint.”

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Still, the poem bears revisiting for its overlooked allusions to Virgil, whose depictions of Orpheus and Eurydice in Georgics IV and Aeneid II likely had an impact on Sonnet 23. Where most critical attention has been focused on which biographical wife Milton mourns, this paper examines the mythological disappearing wives underpinning the poem who give emphasis to his grief. Despite my shift away from biography, it stands that the saint’s identity certainly meant something to Milton. Critics generally agree the poem refers to the death of Katherine Woodcock, though a few outliers still argue for Mary Powell.2 A curious strain of criticism, however, suggests the poem is a Neoplatonist allegory, effectively writing the wife out of the sonnet. Spurred by Leo Spitzer’s 1951 article “Understanding Milton,”3 these critics argue that excessive grief does not align with Milton’s faith in heaven, and so sidestep the allusion to Orpheus while retaining the hope of Admetus.4 Thomas Wheeler has concisely refuted these claims by pointing out that Milton “so carefully refer[s]‌to ‘childbed taint’ ”, and thus “obviously does refer to historical fact” (511), yet Spitzer’s argument has remained influential nonetheless. Though I disagree with Spitzer, he is correct that faith plays an important role in the sonnet. The problem is that Spitzer stresses the wrong allusions, seeing Dante where he should see Virgil, and therefore hope where he ought to see despair. What these hopeful critics have missed is the Virgilian precedent underlying the Orpheus allusion. Since the Richardsons, readers have been attuned to an echo of Sonnet 23 in Adam’s dream of Eve in Paradise Lost Book 8, “She disappeared and left me dark, I wak’d” (8.478). More recently, Theresa DiPasquale has seen similarities with Creusa’s ghost in Virgil’s Aeneid II, who fades away as Aeneas attempts to embrace her. In the death of Creusa, Virgil self-​a lludes to his treatment of Euridice 2 Since the heyday of the “which wife?” controversy started by William Riley Parker (1945), few recent critics have taken the Mary Powell argument seriously outside of B. J. Sokol (1996) and Louis Schwartz (2009). 3 I have used a more recent version of this article for my citations, though the original can be found in The Hopkins Review IV (1951, pp. 16–​27). 4 Though Spitzer’s argument was originally panned, his argument gained support in the 1970s from critics like Marilyn Williamson (1972), John C. Ulreich (1974), and John J. Colaccio (1974). Williamson and Colaccio cleave closely to Spitzer with a stronger Neoplatonic emphasis, while Ulreich raises the Orpheus allusion only to banish it from the text for its pessimism. More recently, Theresa M. DiPasquale (2001) and Hugh Dawson (2004) have taken up Spitzer’s suggestion of the wife as a donna angelicata, like Dante’s Beatrice, for similar Neoplatonic readings.

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in Georgics IV, suggesting there in an essential link between these disappearing wives. If the same essential link is made between Eve and the saint, then Milton no doubt packaged these allusions together. Considering (1) the disappearing wife in Milton’s final lines likely alludes to Creusa and Euridice, (2) Virgil self-​a lludes to Georgics IV in Aeneid II, and (3) Sonnet 23 mirrors Paradise Lost Book 8 with a similar self-​ allusion, with the same image of the disappearing wife, and the same sense of grief, it is almost certain (4) Milton was following an allusion and precedent set by Virgil. In this precedent, the epic poet (Virgil or Milton) alludes to their previous minor poem to echo and enhance the sense of loss in their major epic. Milton’s case goes a step further, however, by alluding not only to his previous work, but Virgil’s as well. This paper will argue that Milton’s Sonnet 23 and Paradise Lost Book 8 echo Virgil’s disappearing wives through the device of self-​allusion, transforming the hope of the Admetus myth into the grief of Orpheus and Aeneas. These allusions demonstrate the inadequacy of faith in the face of bereavement by casting Milton as an inconsolable mourner, much like Aeneas, Orpheus, and Adam before him. Before attending to Virgil, however, it pays to look at Euripides’s Alcestis more closely, as the grief of Orpheus is never far from Admetus. Though it ends in joy, the Alcestis tale is coloured by bleak tragedy, only abating with the timely intervention of Herakles at line 477. B. J. Sokol and Louis Schwartz have already shown that Milton’s affinity for the Euripidean version of Alcestis provides insight into the troubling character of the dreamer, making the allusion more than a hopeful vignette.5 In particular, I am grateful to Sokol for drawing attention to the marginal notation in Milton’s Greek copy of Alcestis, which includes large Xs emphasizing key passages alongside Milton’s own Latin translations (Sokol 135–​36, 147).6 Milton certainly wrote these notes prior to 1638 (Kelley and Atkins 684), and therefore long before he was married. Still, 5 Sokol’s reading has been made redundant by the excellent work of Schwartz, who incorporates the feelings of regret Sokol identified into a more convincing framework. Where Sokol argues the mea culpa of Admetus suggests the biographical wife is Mary, Schwartz shows how either wife remains suitable because of Milton’s survivor’s guilt. 6 As of now, I only know of these marginal notes through descriptions by John K. Hale (1991), Maurice Kelley and Samuel Atkins (1961), and B. J. Sokol (1996). My remarks upon them are not based on personal viewing, and so cleave to the findings of these other scholars with trust in their evaluations.

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they are indicative of what interests Milton in Alcestis and his thoughts on bereavement. Where Sokol only finds one (out of seven) of these marginal notes to be of interest, I see a common thread tying them all together: each is concerned only with the impending death of Alcestis and its future impact on the family. These passages demonstrate an interest in mourning far more than reunion, suffering far more than laughter, as a closer inspection will show. During the first 476 lines of Alcestis, the couple comes to recognize that life without the other is no life at all. This view of marriage seems to have struck a chord with Milton, as his notes only refer to passages from this early section of the play. In his copy, he emphasizes the Maid’s lines prior to the death of Alcestis, even going so far as to translate them into Latin: τοιαῦτ᾿ ἐν οἴκοις ἐστὶν Ἀδμήτου κακά. καὶ κατθανών τἂν ᾤχετ᾿, ἐκφυγὼν δ᾿ ἔχει τοσοῦτον ἄλγος, οὔποθ᾿ οὗ λελήσεται. (“Such are the troubles in Admetus’ house. And if he had died he would be gone, but since he has escaped death, he lives with such grief as he shall never forget.”) (Alcestis 196–​98) The oblivion of death is preferable, says the Maid, to a life filled with perpetual mourning. Alcestis appears to agree in another passage noted by Milton, in which she embraces her death because she “refused to live torn from [Admetus’s] side” (287). Though she is still young and “had much in which [she] took delight” (288–​89), she understands much sooner than Admetus how painful life would be without him (177–​95; 299–​325). Admetus eventually comes around to this perspective later in the play, declaring to the Chorus, “My friends, I think my wife’s lot is happier than my own, though it may not appear so” (935–​36). Light itself loses its lustre for Admetus, leaving him in a state of waking death where he takes “no joy in looking on the light or in walking about on the earth” (868–​70).7 Milton could be charged here with sentimentalizing 7 ζηλῶ φθιμένους, κείνων ἔραμαι, κεῖν᾿ ἐπιθυμῶ δώματα ναίειν. οὔτε γὰρ αὐγὰς χαίρω προσορῶν οὔτ᾿ ἐπὶ γαίας πόδα πεζεύων·

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Alcestis by ignoring its comic moments in favour of the tragic. The last of Milton’s emphasized notes occurs just prior to Herakles’s entrance at 477. With the arrival of Herakles, the play takes on a very different tone as it shifts towards comedy. Milton provides no major commentary after this point,8 so he may have found the antics of Zeus’s son disappointing compared to the preceding tragic action.9 If this is the case, Milton’s conception of the story is essentially about bereavement rather than broken vows, hospitality, and awkward reunions. It is the human suffering of losing a virtuous wife that Milton is fixated upon, not its comic reversal, and that fixation seeps its way into the sonnet. What the dreamer does not see is that he is in a different kind of Greek story, one like Alcestis in all but its ending: the Orpheus-​Euridice myth. Alcestis and Euridice were commonly associated by the Greeks for their similar situations, albeit different ends, so it is plain to see how Milton slips from one allusion into the other.10 The structural similarities may have even been suggested to Milton through his reading of Alcestis, as Euripides mentions Orpheus twice in the play. Both instances invoke Orpheus to demonstrate the impotence of mortals in the face of death (357–​64), and how fate cannot be overcome even by divine knowledge (963–​69). Where Orpheus’s charming music may provide temporary reprieve to his wife and even Tantalus, it never lasts, nor does it assuage his own pain. Admetus, by contrast, regains his wife through no direct action of his own: he stands and waits. Milton does the same up until the final moments of the sonnet, merely watching as his wife comes closer into view. The moment he states, “as to embrace me she inclined” (13), τοῖον ὅμηρόν μ᾿ ἀποσυλήσας Ἅιδῃ Θάνατος παρέδωκεν. (Alcestis 866–​71) 8 The most substantive note after line 477 appears at 488, where Milton uses commentary from Canterus without acknowledgement (Kelley and Atkins 685). Other notes include simple marks for emphasis and grammatical notes, though these are sparser than the marginalia in other plays from his copy (Sokol 146). 9 I have assumed that Milton marked his text because he wished to recall specific passages later for their affecting power. A counter argument could be made, however, that Milton was preparing the passages for his pupils during his teaching days. Most of the selected poetry is only 3–​5 lines long, making it suitable for a translation test on Greek (possibly into Latin). Even in such a case, it is still remarkable that Milton only chose passages up to the entrance of Herakles, fixating on the loss rather than the reunion. 10 The most obvious examples of their association can be seen in Alcestis and the speech of Phaedrus in Plato‘s Symposium.

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however, suggests an active attempt by Milton to touch her. Milton does not describe his own actions, of course, yet the inclining of her body indicates she will fold herself into his arms, her active stance at “embrace me” shifting to passive when “she inclined.” At that decisive moment, the happy reunion he has been experiencing, so much like Alcestis’s return, turns out to be tragic. Reaching towards her in a failed embrace, he is Orpheus clutching at his disappearing wife, having now lost her twice to the shadows. In this sense, the overt Alcestis allusion serves to mask the covert allusions at play, which only become apparent in the final moments. Though his wife was “like Alcestis” in terms of conjugal devotion and virtue, she was never “like Alcestis from the grave”; she was always Euridice, fated to disappear before they could resume their life together. The allusion to Euridice needs no specific source text to be understood, just as the Alcestis reference needs not refer to Euripides to show grief and hope competing. Still, there is ample evidence to suggest Milton was thinking of Virgil’s Georgics IV when he wrote Sonnet 23. The most obvious similarities are in the language itself, as Milton replicates the circumstances and words of Virgil in English, albeit with more economy: iamque vale: feror ingenti circumdata nocte invalidasque tibi tendens, heu non tua, palmas! dixit et ex oculis subito, ceu fumus in auras commixtus tenues, fugit diversa, neque illum, prensantem nequiquam umbras et multa volentem dicere praterea vidit (“…And now farewell! I am borne away, covered in night’s vast pall, and stretching towards you strengthless hands, regained, alas! no more!” She spoke, and straightway from his sight, like smoke mingling with thin air, vanished afar and saw him not again, as he vainly clutched at the shadows with so much left unsaid) (Georgics IV.497–​502). In their final moments, Orpheus and Euridice stretch towards each other (“tibi tendens”), like the saint inclining to embrace Milton (13), only to disappear with suddenness (“ex oculis subito”). Orpheus finds himself in darkness soon after, vainly clutching the shadows where she stood (“presantem nequiquam umbras”), an act suggested by Milton’s waking with

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outstretched arms in unsatisfied anticipation (14). Where Virgil has the wife covered in night (“ingenti circumdata nocte”), it is Milton himself who remains in darkness at the end of the sonnet, presumably pining for her loss like Orpheus with so much left unsaid (“dicere praterea vidit”). Milton never tells us the hardest part of her disappearance, though the association with Virgil may shed some light: it is not just about losing her, but losing her twice (“quo se rapta bis coniuge ferret?”) (504). Yet these verbal echoes alone are not enough to establish a definite allusion to Virgil, as many of these words and actions appear in Ovid’s Metamorphoses X as well. While Georgics likely influenced Milton’s ideas on grief, something more is needed to demonstrate Virgil’s influence on the poem. For that, we will need to look at the better-​k nown disappearing wives of Virgil and Milton: Creusa from Aeneid II and Eve in Paradise Lost Book 8. As earlier stated, the Richardsons have already shown parallels between Sonnet 23 and Adam’s dream of the creation of Eve, in which Adam laments to Raphael, “She disappear’d and left me dark, I wak’d /​ To find her” (8.478–​79). Adam’s dream uses much of the same language as the sonnet, beginning with “methought I saw” (8.462) and continuing with a description of Eve that sees all that is fair in the world “in her summed up, in her contained” (8.473), much like the “Love, sweetness, goodness” (11) that shines in the face of the saint and her whiteness “pure as her mind.”11 These similarities are notable because Virgil does something similar when describing the loss of Creusa in Aeneid II, reusing his earlier material from Georgics IV in his major epic. It is generally accepted that Virgil intended the appearance of Creusa’s ghost to reflect his earlier shade of Euridice, as the scenes share striking resemblances in structure and content. Early versions of the myth even refer to Creusa as Eurydica (Briggs 43), making her association with Euridice more than a passing structural similarity. The name “Eurydica” likely informed Virgil of the opportunities mirroring the episodes provided for discussing hope and loss, so he deliberately wrote them as parallel figures who haunt their husbands with their double deaths. Many more echoes exist

11 The “delight” of both the dreamer and Adam may have an additional resonance if we assume Katherine Woodcock is the wife. In this case, it is the first time either husband has seen their wife. Schwartz has provided a far more systematic and comprehensive catalogue of these similarities in Milton and Maternal Mortality, pp. 199–​202.

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throughout the rest of these episodes, but for our purposes we shall only need to examine the moment the wives disappear: Georgics IV “…iamque vale: feror ingenti circumdata nocte invalidasque tibi tendens, heu! non tua, palmas.” dixit et ex oculis subito, ceu fumus in auras commixtus tenuis, fugit diversa, neque illum prensantem nequiquam umbras et multa volentem dicere praeterea vidit. (497–​502) Aeneid II “…iamque vale et nati serva communis amorem.” haec ubi dicta dedit, lacrimantem et multa volentem dicere deseruit, tenuisque recessit in auras. ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum; ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago. (789–​93, emphasis mine) Though Virgil varies the words, the vocabulary and imagery undoubtedly recall each other. Upon saying “farewell” (“iamque vale”) Creusa and Euridice float into thin (“tenuis”) air (“auras”) as their distraught husbands can do naught but weep. Both Orpheus and Aeneas are inconsolable despite the words of their wives, as each is eager once more to speak with them (“et multa volentem dicere”), to feel them (“collo dare bracchia circum”) (“prensantem nequiquam umbras”), only to be left consumed by shadows (“umbras”) and calling into the night (“nocte”) for their loves (“amorem”). The words are echoed, even when the order is out of step, to the point that either could be substituted and the sense would remain the same. The sole differences are the fatal looks, “respexit” (Aen. ii.741; Geo. iv.491), in which Orpheus looks back while Aeneas fails to do so, though in the latter’s case it was fate that wrought her death, not willfulness. This fate is important because, unlike Orpheus, Aeneas has something else to live for besides his wife; the problem is he doesn’t recognize it yet on account of his sorrow. While Theresa DiPasquale (2001) has noted the allusion to Creusa in her treatment of Sonnet 23, and Rachel Falconer (1996) has seen both allusions in relation to Adam’s dream, no one to my knowledge has brought all four disappearing wives together. In each of these mirrored episodes, the husband finds himself inconsolable and unable to move past his wife’s death. Much like Orpheus, Adam resolves “forever

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to deplore /​Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure” (479–​80) upon waking to discover Eve missing, a response that sees him alienated from the world around him. Eve reappears moments later, of course, but the memory of her loss assuredly influenced his later decision to fall with her in Book 9. Both the initial and later loss of Euridice wrought a similar attitude towards the world in Orpheus, in which he devoted all his days to her memory: ipse cava solans aegrum testudine amorem te, dulcis coniunx, te solo in litore secum, te veniente die, te decedente canebat. (But he, solacing an aching heart with music from his hollow shell, sang of you, dear wife, sang of you to himself on the lonely shore, of you as day drew nigh, of you as day departed.) (Georgics IV.464– ​6) Aeneas is the most striking, however, because in his loss we see the inadequacy of faith when confronted with fresh grief. After his initial loss, Aeneas throws caution to the wind to find Creusa, uncaring whether he perished in the attempt or not, “ipse urbem repeto… rursus caput obiectare periclis” (ii.749, 751). To calm him, Creusa appears as a “nota maior imago” (“form greater than herself”) (Aen.ii.773, translation mine),12 similar to the saint who comes as an idealized version of herself, appearing in white “pure as her mind” (9) and radiating “delight” (12). Unlike Euridice, who spends her last moments with Orpheus in lamentation, Creusa attempts to ease Aeneas’s suffering through words consoling and prophetic: Of what avail is it to yield thus to frantic grief, my sweet husband? Not without the will of heaven does this befall; that you should take Creüsa from here in your company cannot be, nor does the mighty lord of high Olympus allow it … There in store for you are happy days, kingship, and a royal wife. Banish tears for your beloved Creüsa (Aeneid II.776–​79, 784–​85).

Aeneas reacts as Adam, Orpheus, Admetus, and the dreamer all would: he simply grieves. Knowing what is in store for him, that he 12 The Loeb Classical Library indicates Creusa appears as an enormous version of herself. This translation of “maior” as “larger” is highly debatable, however, so I have chosen the vaguer translation of “greater,” which allows for the wider range of possibilities offered by the word.

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will found a mightier nation by far, that happy days are ahead, that the king of heaven is watching over him: none of these matter. Desiring her touch, Aeneas seeks to embrace her three times, each to no avail. She was already gone, like a winged dream (“par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno”) (794). Returning to Sonnet 23, the allusion to Aeneas demonstrates the inadequacy of divine promises when faced with bereavement. Theresa DiPasquale declares that the Aeneid II allusion suggests Sonnet 23 is about these future rewards, forgetful that Aeneas does not internalize the things Creusa tells him about his destiny. Moreover, DiPasquale ignores how the Orpheus and Adam allusions work in conjunction with Aeneas to show the oblivion of grief. As Rachel Falconer asserts, “[Creusa’s] speech simply refuses to connect with Aeneas, at the moment of his experience of choice. From her perspective, the scene has already taken place; in effect, he already is Lavinia’s husband” (97).13 Creusa sees for Aeneas a bright future and joys in it, but it does nothing for his sorrow in the here and now. What Creusa wants is for him to stay his tears; what he desires is to be with her. She wishes for him to do his duty and forget her; he only wants to speak with her once more. Aeneas rejects all consolation because it is not the thing he wants. Aeneas just wants her. In this way, Virgil shows how insufficient faith is when confronted with the spectre of Thanatos, how it fails in those times it is needed most. If even the hero of pietas, of devotion to the gods, fails in this moment to see what lies ahead, even uttering blasphemies (“quem non incusavi amens hominumque deorumque?”) (ii.745), what hope is there for the rest of us? By showing consolation, only to render it inert, Virgil and Milton show the frailty of humanity when it comes to our better halves, how faith simply isn’t enough to carry us through longing. Before concluding, it pays to look at the structure of the sonnet more closely to see what purchase, if any, faith has on the poem. A common refrain in criticism since Spitzer argues the ending lines are less important than the central ones (Ulreich 1974, Dipasquale 2001, Dawson 2006), a bold claim that is hard to defend. The most recent version of this argument comes from Hugh Dawson, who suggests a straight reading of the sonnet “surrenders to maudlin despondency” and that Milton

13 Though Falconer is astute here, she goes on to suggest a symbolic reading of Aeneas’s reaction that confusingly psychologizes the “desire for empire” (97).

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would have sought out “divine purpose” instead of memorializing his loss in “emotional love-​death threnodies” (29). Like John Ulreich before him, Dawson confidently declares that readers will be naturally dissatisfied with leaving Milton in darkness, and in their dissatisfaction they will reread the poem until the end of line 8 (Dawson 30, Ulreich 10), capping off with the “trust to have /​Full sight of her in heav’n without restraint” (7–​8). In Dawson’s view, the end of the poem acts like a musical “Da capo el segno,” with the reader repeating their read-​through until an emphasized spot. Since line 8 is the most comforting sentiment, and the only declaration of faith, it must be the key to the poem. This is, frankly, a strange reading practice, yet one that has appeared more than once in publication.14 Not only does it depart from the way Milton wrote the poem, in which the ending lines are the ending lines, but it places undue emphasis on verses that are fleetingly delivered, especially when spoken aloud. The “trust” to which Dawson refers is in a subordinate clause, awkwardly placed at the centre of the poem and heavily enjambed, spilling into what really matters to the dreamer: the approach of his wife. Heaven is only briefly considered, and only to the extent that it holds her, becoming irrelevant the moment she is within reaching distance. There is no volta to suggest any additional weight to line 8, nor any caesura to slow the rhythm for emphasis, so these lines are no more notable than the surrounding ones. Moreover, the actual volta is in line 13, and is accompanied by end-​stopped lines and multiple caesurae, all of which slow the rhythm with dramatic accents to bring the sonnet to a close. The emphasis, then, is where we would expect: at the reversal. If a reader wishes to reread the poem as Ulreich and Dawson suggest, then, they are doing so for the comfort they hope Milton received from his faith, not because the sonnet conditions them to do so. The fact remains that the poem ends where it ends: in darkness. I will conclude by looking at another “Virgilian” disappearance briefly, as it is indicative of how Milton and Virgil consider loss. Spitzer makes an association between the saint and Beatrice, the donna angelicata

14 Ulreich, Dawson, and DiPasquale all make this claim, and provide some good close readings to back it up. Still, their assumption that grief is uncharacteristic of Milton remains their strongest evidence, and assumptions are always shaky a basis for arguments. Adam’s lament after his second dream at 8.478–​80 and his resolution to die at 9.907–​13 show Milton was very much aware of grief ’s affecting power, so it is strange to assume he would write otherwise here.

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of Dante’s Commedia, in his article which kicked off the anti-​biography arguments on Sonnet 23. For Spitzer, the true message Milton conveys is not “the death of his wife” but “the generally human problem of the Ideal in our world” (127). An allusion to Beatrice descending in radiance towards Dante in Purgatorio 30 thus affords Spitzer proof that Milton’s concerns are divine rather than “sublunary” (126). But does the descent of Beatrice provide the triumph of faith over grief that Spitzer assumes? Turning to Dante, it seems somewhat careless to have missed the snap disappearance that undercuts the joyous reunion with Beatrice: “volsimi a la sinistra col respitto … Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi /​di sé” (“I turned round to the left with blind trust … But Virgil had left us bereft /​ of himself”) (XXX.43, 49). It is not Creusa nor Euridice who disappears here, but Virgil himself, a profound loss couched in allusions to Dante’s beloved guide. The whole sequence is indebted to the language of sexual desire and loss in the Georgics and Aeneid, borrowing from the disappearance of Euridice and Creusa, with “respitto” substituting for the Latin “respexit,”15 before ending with a translation of Dido’s renewed onset of love.16 In spite of his faith, in spite of the heaven above him, Dante still feels sorrow over the loss of his friend. Beatrice will take on the role of Creusa’s ghost in the following cantos, reprimanding Dante for these sublunary affections. Yet for the moment, Dante’s heart was with his “dolcissimo patre” (“most sweet father”) (50), a superlative he never attaches to Beatrice. Where Spitzer keeps his eyes focused on Beatrice and heaven, Dante and Milton focus on the disappearance instead, a telling difference of priorities between scholarly critics and their bereaved poets.17 My point is not that Milton also used Dante, in addition to Virgil, in the final lines of Sonnet 23. Milton tends to be accommodating with allusions, so I wouldn’t put it past him, but my own point is much simpler than that. Despite their profound faith, Dante and Milton saw the same thing in Virgil’s disappearing wives: the temporary inadequacy of faith to compensate for a lost love. In the case of Milton, such grief was

15 Unlike Virgil, who uses the word to signal a “looking back,” Dante uses its secondary meaning of “regard” or “respect.” 16 Cf. Purg. XXX.48 “conosco i segni de l’antica fiamma” and Aen. IV.23 “agnosco veteris vestigia flammae” (“I recognize the signs of the old flame”). 17 Dante is ashamed of his sudden outburst after Beatrice’s rebuke, and does not mention Virgil again, so we can assume such grief in the Commedia need not be arresting to spiritual development.

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certainly caused by a real loss, and so likely included real longing that belief in God couldn’t assuage. Privileging any line in Sonnet 23 above the last seems to miss the point of the poem, focused as it is in the physical rather than the spiritual. This is not to say that Milton ignores faith, as it is only through the dreamer’s “trust” in line 8 that we believe the poignant urgency of his sorrow. Like any great poet, Milton was not immune to feelings of love and loss, and even centred the “evil hour” of his epic on the inability of Adam and Eve to imagine a paradise without the other. As Adam says moments before his fall, “How can I live without thee? how forgo /​Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined” (9.908–​9). Adam knows the answer, faith, but it doesn’t satisfy him. Following in the footsteps of Virgil, Sonnet 23 provides a rare Miltonic moment where faith alone isn’t enough, even when he knows it should be. Knowing what he ought to believe, the dreamer finds himself like Aeneas and Orpheus, mourning a new day bereft of his beloved wife. The most he can hope for is what Admetus requests of Alcestis before her death, And perhaps you will cheer me by visiting me in dreams. For even in sleep it is pleasant to see loved ones for however long we are permitted. (355–​56)

Until he meets his Maker, it will have to be enough.

Works Cited Briggs, Ward W. Jr., “Eurydice, Venus, and Creusa: A Note on Structure in Virgil,” Vergilius (1959-​), no. 25, 1979, pp. 43–​5. Colaccio, John J. “ ‘A Death like Sleep’: The Christology of Milton’s Twenty-​ Third Sonnet.” Milton Studies 6, 1974, pp. 181–​98. Dante. Divine Comedy. Translated by James Finn Cotter. Stony Brook U, 2006, http://​w ww.ita​lian​stud​ies.org/​com​edy/​index.htm. Accessed 21 Sept. 2019. Dawson, Hugh. “The Afterlife of the Widower’s Dream: Rereading Milton’s Final Sonnet.” Milton Studies, vol. 25, 2006, pp. 21–​37. DiPasquale, Theresa M. “Milton’s purgatorio.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 2, 2001, pp. 169–​88. Falconer, Rachel. Orpheus Dis(re)membered: Milton and the Myth of the Poet-​ Hero. Sheffield Academic Press, 1996.

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Hale, John K. “Milton’s Euripides Annotations: Their Significance For Milton Studies.” Milton Studies 27, 1991, pp. 23–​5. Kelley, Maurice and Samuel D. Atkins. “Milton’s Annotations on Euripides.” The Journal of English and German Philology, vol. 60, no. 4, 1961, pp. 680–​87. Milton, John. The Collected Poems. Edited by John Leonard, Penguin, 1998. Richardson, John (father and son). Explanatory notes and remarks on Milton’s Paradise lost: By J. Richardson, father and son. With the life of the author, and a discourse on the poem. 1734. Schwartz, Louis. “The wide wound and the veil: Sonnet 23 and the ‘birth’ of Eve in Paradise Lost” in Milton and Maternal Mortality. Cambridge UP, 2009, pp. 155–​210. Sokol, B. J. “Euripides’ Alcestis and the ‘Saint’ of Milton’s Reparative Twenty-​Third Sonnet.” Studies in English Literature 1500–​1900, vol. 33, no. 1, 1993, pp. 131–​47. Spitzer, Leo. “Understanding Milton.” Essays on English and American Literature. Princeton UP, 1962, pp. 116–​31. Ulreich, John C. “Typological Symbolism in Milton’s Sonnet XXIII.” Milton Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 1, 1974, pp. 7–​10. Wheeler, Thomas. “Milton’s Twenty-​Third Sonnet.” Studies in Philology, vol. 58, no. 3. 1961, pp. 510–​15. Williamson, Marilyn. “A Reading of Milton’s Twenty-​Third Sonnet.” Milton Studies, vol. 4, 1972, pp. 141–​50. Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid: Books 1–​6 . Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 63. Harvard UP, 1916.

“My Heart Hath Been a Storehouse of Things”: The Passionless Son in Paradise Regained William Yang

The critical reception of Paradise Regained since the early twentieth century has been sharply divided regarding the Son. Despite the publication of several ground-​breaking book-​length studies delineating the origin and structural significance of Milton’s brief epic, Milton’s Son is found inferior to his human predecessor due to his mysterious absence of human emotions.1 John Carey made no reservation in expressing his disappointment in his assessment of the aesthetic achievement of Paradise Regained, in which he faulted Milton for adopting a “bleak style” in presenting the Son as a flawless mortal whose “brusque” speech and aggressive use of intelligence complements perfectly the desert as the setting of “Reason’s stony land.”2 Carey’s unfavourable reading in fact highlights the intellectual capacity of Milton’s Son, a characteristic curiously lacking in other characters by Milton. On the surface, the trait seems to render the Son less appealing to his human counterparts in Paradise Lost, as Carey claims, yet the rationality the Son exhibits can be his most effective weapon against the Devil. Knoppers in her analysis of Milton’s appropriation of the discourse of martyrdom in Paradise Regained noted that the Son’s utter rejection of the passion narratives reflects Milton’s denigration of the emotionally charged discourse of martyrdom established around Charles I’s execution.3 Carey’s emphasis of the Son’s almost inhuman rationality and Knoppers’ discovery of 1 For essential book-​length studies on the poem, see Elizabeth M. Pope, Paradise Regained: The Tradition and the Poem (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1947); Barbara Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained (Brown University Press, 1966); and Burton Jasper Weber, Wedges and Wings (South Illinois University Press, 1975). 2 John Carey, Milton (Arco, 1970) 122, 131. 3 For a summary of scholarly discussion of the Son as a character deficient in emotions, see Laura Lunger Knoppers, “Paradise Regained and the Politics of Martyrdom,” 200–​19.

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Milton’s negative treatment of affective rhetoric in fact point the readers to a core concept in the brief epic not yet fully discussed, the question of emotion. John Rogers in introducing a special issue devoted to Paradise Regained made another significant assumption in response to the perplexing nature of Milton’s Christ; he proposes that a reading based on the understanding of the interrelations between the Son and Satan is crucial to readers’ appreciation of the brief epic.4 Indeed, Milton presents numerous interdependent pairs of concepts in nature, including truth versus falsification, salvation versus damnation, and action and inaction. Among them is a pair, ­affection versus passion, touched upon by critics yet not fully explored. In fact, emotive ownership, among the other significant traits, dictates the relations between the protagonist and the antagonist of the poem. The article proposes that Milton’s Son, who owns perfected affective capability, synonymous with affection, stands in dynamic and dialogical relations to Satan, who perverts his affective nature and embraces passion. Milton of course does not characterize the dyad in a vacuum, and he is likely to be aware of an intellectual tradition that can be traced back to ancient Greek and Hellenistic thinkers. The article also posits that an understanding of emotive culture and its intellectual development shared by Milton’s contemporaries aids modern readers in appraising Milton’s poetic rendering of the affection and passion. Emotion, or passion, occupies a central place in exposition of ethics, rhetoric, and even medicine in ancient Greece.5 While Stoics following Zeno of Citium seek to eradicate passions completely to reach apatheia, absence of passion, disciples of Plato and Aristotle, inspired by Aristotle’s notion of the mean, strive to moderate one’s passion in hope of achieving metriopatheia. Identifying pleasure and pain as the two types of emotion fundamental in one’s ethical choices, Aristotle goes on to advise the principle of the mean, temperance, in one’s ownership of emotions.6 Compared with Stoics’ unpractical attempt to extirpate emotion, reaching mastery of emotions through the use of reason is a goal more easily attained. The Aristotelian model of conceptualizing emotion exerts immense influence 4 5 6

John Rogers, “Introduction: Relation Regained,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 76. 1 (Spring 2013) 1–​9. Passion is translated as pathē and pathos in Greek, and in Latin, it is named affectus or passio. See Chapters 3, 6, and 7, Book II in Aristotle, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. A New Translation by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

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on the Hellenistic view, as evidenced in Galen’s treatise on affections, in which he recommends practical ways to attain “total subjection” of one’s emotion by restoring temperance in one’s affective system.7 The model later continues to hold sway in the formation of emotive culture in medieval theology and Early Modern discourse. Passion in Christian tradition is conventionally considered a side effect of the Fall. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempts Eve with the desire to obtain knowledge of good and evil and presents the tree as a plant “pleasant to the eyes” and “to be desired” (Gen. 3.6). Milton’s Eve, then out of fear of being deprived of Adam’s company, persuades her better half to taste the forbidden fruit.8 Emotional appeal clearly contributes to the Fall. The first murder documented in the Bible is also caused by emotions. Cain, carrying the blood of Adam and Eve, slays his brother in rage and envy. Paul reiterates the connection between sin and passion by chiding heathens for being blinded by “lusts of their hearts” and abandoned to “vile affections” (Rom. 1.25, 26). The apostle then admonishes other Christians to beware of the motions of sins, interpreted as passions, and concupiscence aroused by the external world since they induce the flesh to work against the mind and bring about “fruit unto death” (Rom. 7.5, 7). Drawing inspiration from Greek philosophers, Augustine stresses the corrupt nature of passions and establishes the conflicting relations between reason and perturbations, known as passions.9 Augustine’s legacy inspires medieval theologians to embark upon systematic analysis of emotion, exemplified by Aquinas. Aquinas makes a giant leap in the Christian theorization of emotion with his ingenious distinction between affection and passion. Borrowing the paired notions of passivity and activity employed by Aristotle to explicate the interrelations between the body and the soul, Aquinas conceives of affection as movement of the will in contrast to passion as agitations of the orectic part of the soul, the sense. Since God and angels possess absolute activity, they do not own emotions even though they display emotion-​like pseudo-​a ffections. Upholding the Peripatetic doctrine of the golden mean, Aquinas asserts 7 See Book I, 37 DB in Galen, Galen: Psychological Writings, ed. P. N. Singer (Cambridge University Press, 2013) 282. 8 See Book IX in John Milton, Paradise Lost, edited by Alastair Fowler (Longman, 1971). The following quotations in the article are from this edition. 9 See Bk. IX, ch. 4, 5 in Saint Augustine, City of God. Great Books of the Western World (1952), ed. Mortimer J. Adler, vol. 16, Robert P. Gwinn, 1990.

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that emotion in temperance, under guidance of rationality, and with an 10 eye on moral good can be benign. The Thomist distinction between affection and passion will shed new light on the two main characters in Paradise Regained as readers reconsider their emotive states. Passion drew widespread intellectual attention in Early Modern England, where dozens of treatises devoted to scrutiny of the causes, impacts, and treatments of passion are published and widely circulated.11 Among the numerous publications on emotion, works by Thomas Wright, Edward Reynolds, Jean François Senault, and William Fenner are the most widely read, so one can reasonably infer they represent and simultaneously contribute to the formulation of Early Modern emotionology, a unique culture of emotion.12 It is noteworthy these authors tend to use rather flexible terminology when referring to emotion; a mainstream practice is to use passion and affection interchangeably.13 Wright at the beginning of his Passions of the Minde conflates the philosophical and theological traditions in defining emotion in a tripartite model, in which emotion functions as passion, perturbations, and affection. Passion and perturbation highlight the sensual aspect of emotion, and perturbation is presented as the malign impact emotion exerts on the soul. Among the three, affection manifests itself as being benign in nature and possesses potential for positive outcome as it “either affecteth some good […] or […] detesteth some ill.”14 Nevertheless, Wright does not pursue the distinction between affection and passion further, nor does he explicate the nature and workings of affection. A major part of his treatise is dedicated to the various methods of disciplining one’s passion with reason, a popular approach shared by other writers on passion. William Fenner, a devout Protestant, adopts affection as a general category which includes passions in his A Treatise of the Affections. Diverting from the 10 See Ia.2æ. 24, 3, 4 in St. Thomas. Summa Theologiae, ed, by Thomas Gilby, trans. by Eric D’arcy, vol. 19 (McGraw-​Hill, 1967). 11 For the list of the treatises in English and Latin, see Susan James, Passion and Action, Oxford University Press, 1997, 295–​98. 12 The term “emotionology” is proposed by Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns in “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards,” The American Historical Review 90. 4 (Oct. 1995) 813–​36. 13 The word “emotion”, an imported term from French, was in fact defined as physical disturbance or political unrest in the early 17th century. For elaboration on the history of the word, see Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 62–3 and “’Emotion’: The History of a Keyword in Crisis,” Emotion Review, 340. 14 Thomas Wright, Passions of the Minde (London, 1604) 8.

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convention of concentrating on passion, Fenner aims to educate his readers about the nature and ethical pursuit of affections. Drawing a clear-​ cut distinction between affection and passion, Fenner views affection in a highly positive light, for affections are “only the motions of the will, by which it goes forth to the embracing of its object which is Good, which considered in the general nature is loved.”15 His discussion of Christ’s affection is enlightening since he treats Christ as the perfect example of attaining affection even though Christ experiences sorrow or becomes disturbed, for Christ applies judgement and reason to affect properly.16 On the other hand, the First Parents in their prelapsarian state exemplify corruptible affection since they are inclined to sense fear and hatred and neglect their affection for God when offered the forbidden fruit.17 Yet like most of the authors in his time, Fenner frequently uses affection and passion interchangeably when delineating perfect and corrupt emotions. In the other two widely circulated treatises, Edward Reynolds and Jean F. Senault also promote the taming of passion. Edward Reynolds adopts the Platonist-​ A ristotelian view on emotion, arguing passion, being neutral in nature, can be advantageous to humans if duly tempered though he concedes the negative influence of the flesh on the soul.18 Reynolds in fact coins the term, “middle passions,” for the passion well-​ governed by will and understanding, the rational aspect of the soul.19 He created a classic image when depicting the emotional landscape of a sinful man as a raging sea, whose “mire and durt” from the bottom are all stirred up. In contrast, Christ’s emotive ecology feature a clean vessel containing pure water.20 Once again, Christ is celebrated as the exemplar of perfect passion. Reynolds, however, fails to distinguish between the terms of passion and affection when referring to fundamentally different emotion, which may puzzle his readers. Senault follows the discursive tradition in examining the nature of passion and associating passion with natural elements such as wind and water.21 More significantly, Senault

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

William Fenner, A Treatise of the Affections, or the Soul’s Pulse, “To the Reader.” A Treatise of the Affections, or the Soul’s Pulse, 25–​6. A Treatise of the Affections, or the Soul’s Pulse, 54–​5. Edward Reynolds, A Treatise of the Passions (London, 1640) 32. A Treatise of the Passions, 38 A Treatise of the Passions, 49. Jean F. Senault, The Use of Passions (London: 1649) 17–​8.

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stresses the value of mastery over one’s passion by likening the body to a 22 miniature empire to be ruled. Milton’s distinction between affection and passion is not unique to Paradise Regained, though. In Paradise Lost the poet also constructs an encyclopaedic systematic of emotion, composed of Satanic passions, human emotion, and divine affection. The fallen archangel loses his heavenly abode and splendour since he encages himself in pride and “envy against the Son of God” (Bk. 5, 662), and pride, according to Milton, is a perversion of holy grace and stands in stark contrast to humility (Bk. 2, Ch. 4; 553).23 Later in the poem, the dominant passions of Satan are nothing but rage, a “violent feeling, passion, or appetite” so defined by Early Moderns, and various types of “perturbations,” exemplified by “ire, envy, and despair” (Bk. 4, 120, 115).24 Milton however deviates from the Thomist tradition by depicting God and angels as capable of anger when confronting the rebellious crew and as standing “mute and sad /​ For man” when informed of Man’s fall by God (Bk. 10, 18–​9). Endowed with Edenic emotions, abundant but pure affection for their Creator and each other, the First Parents attain an emotional state closer to divine affection than their descendants. The sole piece of advice Raphael offers on Adam’s emotional well-​being is the Aristotelean lesson, temperance. Heeding Adam’s admiration for Eve, Raphael warns Adam to rein his emotion with reason “lest passion sway /​Thy judgement to do aught, which else free will /​Would not admit” (Bk. 8, 635–​37). Milton’s differentiation between affection and passion can be instrumental in appreciating the Son and his tempter’s affective patterns in Paradise Regained. The Son in Milton’s brief epic is passionless, yet it does not imply he is without emotions. Common human passions such as wrath, vanity, and lust are absent in him whereas he exhibits divinely approved emotions, calm and joy. Calm is the predominant emotional state the Son displays in his contest against Satan, and it is an affective condition shared by the Son in Paradise Lost. Responding to God’s taunting remark about the superficial advantage gained by rebellious angels in warfare, the Son vows to vanquish the rebels with “calm aspect and /​[. . .] serene” (PL, 22 The Use of Passions, 91–​2. 23 John Milton, translated by Charles Sumner, Christian Doctrine. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1825) 217. The edition is hereafter abbreviated as CD. 24 “Rage, n,” OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 26 December 2018.

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Bk. 5, 733, 734). Similarly, the firmament created and the abyss subdued are described as “calm” as they reflect the disposition of the Creator (PL, Bk. 3, 574; Bk. 7, 234). The Son in the brief epic remains “calm, contemplative” in his private preparation as Mary recalls (PR, Bk. 2, 81)25. This calm continues to be when the temptations begin, as the Son “calmly thus replied” to the allurement of fame (PR, Bk. 3, 43). The Son displays the same calm when faced with the temptation of kingly office and imperial power, for he either “answered thus unmoved” or “unmoved replied” (PR, Bk. 3, 386; Bk. 4, 109). When left in “louring night” after the trials, the Son encounters the absence of light “meek and with untroubled mind” (PR, Bk. 4, 401). The Son’s calm is a trait partaken by Mary, whose troubled thoughts do not cloud her calm temperament (PR, Bk. 2, 63). The state of calm as an affective purity is best captured in the stylistic choices Milton makes. The Son’s reply to Satan in disguise in the very first encounter is phrased in a reduced sentence: “To whom the Son of God” (PR, Bk. 1, 335), and the syntactical pattern repeats itself in the following confrontations: “To whom our Saviour sternly thus replied”; “To whom thus Jesus temperately replied”; “To whom our Saviour answered thus unmoved”; “To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied” (PR, Bk. 1, 406; Bk, 2, 378; Bk. 3, 386; Bk. 4, 285). Similar syntax shared by these lines is employed in describing Satan’s response, albeit with a crucial distinction — the inclusion of the elements of passions: “To whom thus answered Satan malcontent”; “To whom the tempter inly racked replied”; “To whom the tempter impudent replied” (PR, Bk. 2, 392; Bk. 3, 203; Bk. 4, 154). The overflowing unruly passions expressed by Satan stand in opposition to the absence of wild passions in the Son. The repetitive syntax highlights the fact that the Son’s calm is immune to temptations. It is noteworthy that calm is appropriated by Satan when reporting his scheme to try the Son of God to the infernal crew. Even though the Father of Lies begins the speech with “looks aghast and sad,” he predicts the “calmer” mission awaits (PR, Bk. 1, 43). Certainly “calmer” literally signifies smoother voyage with the connotation of a positive outcome, but it also anticipates the Son’s calm demeanor in antithetical fashion. Satan’s pretended calm stands as the counterfeit of the authentic calm embodied by the Son. 25 See John Milton, John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey (1968). The following quotations are from this edition.

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The Son’s calm is met by Satan’s insubordinate passions. The affirmation of the Son by the Jordan, reminiscent of the Son’s divine appointment in Paradise Lost, evokes identical sensations in Satan, “envy” and “rage” (Bk. 1, 38). Similar to Satan in Paradise Lost, rage is a passion uniquely owned by Satan in the brief epic. Rage is a passion to be avoided or suppressed in the treatises on passion by Milton’s contemporaries. As Fenner advises, anger is only justifiable when it is set upon God’s grace rather than personal purposes.26 The Son in Paradise Lost displays rage in the just service of God while Satan rages for selfish cause and loses himself in his fit of passion, “overcome with rage” (Bk. 4, 857). Paradise Regained introduces a Satan engulfed in rage, whom the readers of Paradise will easily recognize for his affective characteristic (PR, Bk. 1, 38). The Son refers to rage only once when commenting on the quest for fame, and his use of rage, “freed from Punic rage,” connotes tyranny and suppression (Bk. 3, 102). As Satan fails repeatedly in his attempts to seduce, his emotional state is constricted to despair and rage. With all devices spent, he is desperate to “vent his rage” on the Son (Bk. 4, 445). In less than fifty lines downwards, Satan, discovering all his “toil’st in vain,” loses control “now swoll’n with rage” (Bk. 4, 499). His rage compels him to resort to violence rather than intellectual means and brings about his final defeat. The imagery Milton adopts in depicting Satan corresponds to his raging state. Satan’s repeated attempts to tempt are compared to “surging waves” dashing against “a solid rock” (Bk. 4, 18). Christian faith is conventionally visualized as a rock for its hardness, as exemplified in emblems, and sea is an image commonly used for describing passions, as evidenced by Reynolds and Senault.27 Later in the same book, confessing his failure to try the Son, Satan reiterates the imagery, calling the Son “[p]‌roof against all temptation as a rock /​Of adamant” (Bk. 4, 533–​34). The storm Satan works up to disturb the Son is another indicator of his passionate state. Although Lewalski correctly identified the storm as persecution by Satan the church falls prey to, one should note that the Early Modern literature on passions draws upon meteorological phenomena when depicting the workings of emotion, and gales or storms are 26 A Treatise of the Affections, or the Soul’s Pulse, 15–​6. 27 George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes (Scolar Press, 1989). No. 81. Christian confidence is visualized as a Virgin-​like figure stepping firmly on a square and solid rock symbolizing faith.

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commonly associated with uncontrolled passions. As Paster noted in her article on the ecology of Early Modern emotion, it is an Early Modern commonplace that emotion in the individual corresponds to the meteorological variations in the natural world.28 Satan’s mixture of elements, “fierce rain,” “water with fire,” and “winds,” also reflects his affective imbalance (Bk. 4, 412–​13).29 Contrary to the unifying simplicity of the Son’s calm and meek certainty in his success, the diabolical crew reacts to the affirmation with amazement, meaning bewilderment and mental confusion, echoing the amazement which struck Satan as he fell from the pinnacle (Bk. 1, 107; Bk. 4, 562).30 Although the disciples do find themselves in “perplexity and new amaze” due to the Son’s unexpected absence, they exhibit human vulnerability in the moment of spiritual crisis, and their confusion is soon dissipated as they resume their faith in the prophecy with the self-​reminder: “But let us wait” (Bk. 2, 49). The “amaze” experienced by the apostles is temporary and not detrimental to their spiritual well-​ being whereas it becomes a permanent state for the diabolical crew and is the affective consequence of the Fall. Satan succeeds with his lure of passion when tempting Eve, so now he tempts the second Adam with an alluring emotion, zeal. Zeal is one of the few affections highly prized by Protestants since it presents itself as an “ardour, vehemence, hunger” for communion with God.31 Fenner devotes a third of his treatise on affection to the extrapolation of the nature of and ways of stimulating zeal.32 Nevertheless, Satan misinterprets zeal in tempting the Son to act sooner in fulfilment of his assigned duty: “let move thee zeal, /​And duty; zeal and duty are not slow; [. . .] Zeal of thy father’s house, duty to free /​Thy country” (Bk. 3, 171–​72, 175–​76). For a Christian reader, this is likely to be the most formidable temptation to resist by far. Satan treacherously connects duty and zeal to 28

For more details, see Gail Kern Paster, “Becoming the Landscape: The Ecology of the Passions in the Legend of Temperance,” Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern England, ed. Mary Floyd-​Wilson (Palgrave, 2007) 138–​40. 29 Barbara K. Lewalski, 314. 30 “Amaze” n. 2, OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 4 March 2019. 31 For more details, see Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation England (Oxford University Press, 2013) 71. 32 A Treatise of the Passions, 118–​95.

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tempt the Son with an urgency to serve God, a prevalent emotion shared by Milton’s contemporary Protestants. Once again, the Son discerns the perjured zeal and labels it as the Satanic lust for power, “such was thy zeal /​To Israel then” (Bk. 3, 413–​14). Failing to tempt the Son of God, Satan exits in “dread,” “anguish,” “desperation,” and “dismay,” which are the exact passions he intends to produce on the Son (Bk. 4, 576, 579). Refreshed by the heavenly feast, an antithesis of the forbidden fruit tasted before the Fall, the Son’s seeming emotive vacuum is now replaced with “joy,” a feeling fully tried and in direct link with the Creator. The Son achieves what the Chorus in Samson Agonistes expects of the blinded hero, “calm of mind all passion spent” (1758). The absence of emotion in the Son is not absolute but relative in comparison with the overabundance of passion of Satan. Such relational reading enables one to view the Son and Satan as an emotive dyad; Satan embodies the corrupt emotive state undisciplined by reason while the Son represents a cleansed emotive vessel in total subjection to its Creator. Such emotive choice and experience begin at the individual level, and, as Fish argues in an article, the Son demonstrates that one does not need to act but only to stay himself, in this case, feeling in the proper way.33 At the close of the poem, readers are expected to peel off and abandon the layers of passions and reveal the core of affection, following the Son “unobserved /​Home to his mother’s house private returned” (Bk. 4, 638–​39).

Works Cited Primary Works “Amaze.” Def. n., 2, “Rage.” Def. n. OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2014. www-​oed-​com.auto​rpa.lib.nccu.edu.tw. Accessed 26 December 2018 and 4 March 2019. Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Theologiae, edited by Thomas Gilby, translated by Eric D’arcy, vol. 19, McGraw-​Hill, 1967.

33 Stanley Fish, How Milton Works (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) 353.

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Aristotle. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins, University of Chicago Press, 2011. Augustine, Saint. Great Books of the Western World, edited by Mortimer J. Adler, vol. 16, Robert P. Gwinn, 1990. Fenner, William. A Treatise of the Affections. London: 1650. Milton, John. Christian Doctrine, translated by Charles Sumner, Cambridge: 1825. —​—​—​. John Milton: Paradise Lost, edited by Alastair Fowler, Longman, 1971. —​—​—​. John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, edited by John Carey, Longman, 2nd. ed. 1997. Reynolds, Edward. A Treatise of the Passions. London: 1640. Senault, Jean F. The Use of Passions. London: 1649. Wither, George. A Collection of Emblemes. Scolar Press, 1989. Wright, Thomas. The Passions of the Minde in Generall. Corrected, Enlarged, and with Sundry New Discourses Augmented. London: 1604. The Holy Bible: 1611 Edition. Authorized King James Version. Thomas ­Nelson. Secondary Works Carey, John. Milton. Arco, 1970. Dixon, Thomas. From Passions to Emotions. Cambridge UP, 2003. —​— ​—​. “`Emotion’: The History of a Keyword in Crisis.” Emotion Review, vol. 4, no. 4, Oct. 2010, pp. 338–344. Fish, Stanley. How Milton Works. Harvard University Press, 2001. James, Susan. Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-​Century Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 1997. Knoppers, Laura Lunger. “Paradise Regained and the Politics of Martyrdom,” Modern Philology, vol. 90, no. 2 (1992), pp. 200–​19. Lewalski, Barbara K. Milton’s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained. Brown University Press, 1966. Paster, Gail Kern. “Becoming the Landscape: The Ecology of the Passions in the Legend of Temperance,” Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern England, edited by Mary Floyd-​Wilson. Palgrave, 2007, 135–​52.

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Rogers, John. “Introduction: Relation Regained.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 76, no. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 1–​9. Ryrie, Alec. Being Protestant in Reformation England. Oxford University Press, 2013. Stearns, Peter N. and Carol z. Stearns. “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards.” The American Historical Review, vol. 90, no. 4 (Oct. 1985), pp. 813–​36.

Part VI De Doctrina Christiana

Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana, the Anonymous Treatise Currently Attributed to Milton Hugh Wilson and James Clawson

This essay is a contribution to the persisting debate over the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana. We acknowledge that there are distinguished scholars on both sides of this debate, and we offer no disrespect to those who defend the now customary attribution to Milton. Nevertheless, we number ourselves among those scholars who have been willing to entertain serious doubts about the accuracy of the attribution: Thomas Burgess, William B. Hunter, Paul Sellin, Michael Lieb, Ernest W. Sullivan II, John Mulryan, James Ogden, David Urban, Grant Horner and Filippo Falcone. On another occasion, a much longer list of dissenters, past and contemporary, might be provided. First, we have assembled philological and stylometric evidence that challenges incumbent assumptions and we suggest that John Milton is unlikely to have composed De Doctrina. Second, we have discovered a far more plausible candidate for the authorship of the treatise.1 Neglected evidence and statistical analysis have convinced us that there is ample reason to doubt the accepted attribution. There are more than enough anomalies to justify a paradigm shift. Previous scholars using stylometric analysis made the mistake of looking for the author of an unorthodox treatise among the orthodox. Using a combination of traditional

1 Some of these arguments have been presented in scattered conference papers in Pittsburgh, Murfreesboro, Birmingham, Chicago, Vancouver and Strasbourg. Our exploration of the authorship question also appears in Digital Approaches to John Milton, a special issue of Renaissance and Reformation /​Renaissance et Réforme, vol. 44, no. 3, summer 2021, pp. 151–​98. We would like to thank those who helped us to refine our argument: this volume’s open-​minded editors, who were patient and supportive; the scholarly reviewers, who were encouraging and challenging; and Professor John Conlon of the University of Mississippi, whose discerning commentary was very helpful. For any remaining imperfections, the fault is our own.

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scholarship and innovative statistical analysis, we have taken a different approach.

1. Preamble For more than a century and a half before the discovery of De Doctrina Christiana in 1823, most readers of Paradise Lost regarded Milton as an orthodox Christian but after 1825, his reputation suffered a surprising reversal and many readers began to regard him as a pitiable ­heretic. By the time the treatise was translated and published, it had received the royal imprimatur. Robert Lemon, the Deputy Keeper of His Majesty’s State Papers at Whitehall, claimed to have discovered a 735-​page manuscript of a long-​lost theological treatise by Milton. In 1824, Sir Robert Peel, his Majesty’s Prime Minister, announced the discovery in Parliament and explained that His Majesty, King George IV, had authorized the publication of the manuscript. One royal chaplain, Rev. Charles Richard Sumner, soon to be Bishop Sumner, was responsible for editing the text while another royal chaplain, Rev. Henry John Todd, vouched for its “undoubted” authenticity. In 1825, the Latin treatise and a separate English translation were issued in folio. As we fast forward toward 2007 and 2012, Oxford University Press issued an analysis of the provenance of the manuscript and then published the beautifully translated new edition of De Doctrina Christiana that has facilitated our research.2 Still, in contrast to Milton’s uncontested canonical works, De Doctrina Christiana, posthumously attributed to the poet, is an antitrinitarian, Arminian and arguably Arian work. The treatise deviated from contemporary Christian tradition in ways that seemed shocking. Many of those who thought Milton was an orthodox Christian, a libertarian and an abolitionist, were disappointed by the tedious unorthodox treatise; they were discomfited or appalled.3 Milton’s

2 Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John Hale and Fiona Tweedie, Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana (Oxford: OUP, 2007). John Milton, The Complete Works of John Milton. Vol. VIII. De Doctrina Christiana. 2 vols. Edited by John K. Hale and J. Donald Cullington (Oxford: OUP, 2012). 3 According to J. Evans, The Congregational Review dismissed De Doctrina Christiana as the “offspring of the author’s dotage.” The Evangelical Review simultaneously

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reputation as the great Protestant poet was tarnished and eclipsed. There were those who doubted the attribution, but dissenters were suppressed, dismissed, cowed into silence or simply ignored.4 Their record was partially erased, but a dissident tradition continued just out of sight in England and America.5 The latest phase of the controversy over the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana began in 1991, more than a century and a half after its publication, when Professor William B. Hunter rediscovered the objections of Bishop Thomas Burgess, reconsidered his own views and challenged the attribution of the treatise to John Milton; the controversy Hunter initiated has persisted for over a quarter century.6 To mention only one recent contribution, in 2018, Filippo Falcone published an article pointing out what he argued were irreconcilable discrepancies between Milton’s canonical works and the treatise.7

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celebrated Milton and forewarned its readers. Two Baptist reviews dismissed De Doctrina Christiana as unsound and wished it hadn’t been published (725). See The Monthly Repository 21 (1826): 724–​31. Nonetheless, as Michael Lieb explains, “The debate over the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana is deeply implicated in the theological views that Milton’s own readers hold. As much as some readers might desire, the debate over the authorship of the tract will not go away; nor will the debate over the heterodox Milton and the orthodox Milton. The two debates are inextricably linked.” Michael Lieb, “Milton and the Socinian Heresy,” Milton and the Grounds of Contention, ed. Mark R. Kelley, Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 2003), 234–​83. See page 283. This claim can be documented using overlooked sources in subsequent papers. Before he broached his apparently unforgivable heresy, Hunter was the distinguished editor of the nine-​volume Milton Encyclopedia and a well published, highly respected scholar. Afterward, his motives were impugned, and he became the butt of denigration. Even before Hunter’s dissent, Gordon Campbell had noted important contradictions between the treatise and the epic. “The Son of God in De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost,” Modern Language Review 75.3 (July 1980): 507–​14. Filippo Falcone, “Irreconcilable (Dis)continuity: De Doctrina Christiana and Milton.” Connotations 27 (2018): 78–​105. The debate continues: Jason Kerr has responded to Falcone in “Shifting Perspectives on Law in De Doctrina Christiana: A Response to Filippo Falcone.” Connotations 28 (2019): 129–​41. Also see David V. Urban’s response, “Revisiting the History of the De Doctrine Christiana Authorship Debate and Its Ramifications for Milton Scholarship: A Response to Falcone and Kerr.” Connotations 29 (2020): 156–88.

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2. Authorizing Myths After the King of England, the Prime Minister, a respected archivist and a prominent historian asserted that the attribution was “undoubted,” the royal endorsement of the attribution of the treatise to Milton was widely disseminated by both establishment and dissident periodicals; it was sold and bolstered by means of a series of myths. These myths, in turn, have spawned other myths. The first myth was that the “Mr. Skinner” in possession of the treatise had been Milton’s very close friend, Cyriak Skinner, a student to whom Milton had dedicated two sonnets, not the little known, apparently unrelated and unreliable Daniel Skinner. Sumner’s introduction to his translation of De Doctrina as The Treatise on Christian Doctrine mentions Cyriak Skinner more than eighteen times in thirteen pages. The second myth alleged that Milton’s nephew Edward Phillips and Milton’s two daughters, Mary and Deborah, were the main amanuenses for the treatise. (No one maintains that now.) Bishop Burgess destroyed this legend early on, but others were given credit (Burgess, Milton Not the Author 47–​48). The third myth was that Milton’s name was part of the original manuscript. Joseph Ivimey, one of Milton’s biographers, was extremely suspicious of the manuscript, –​“The opinions of MILTON in regard to the capital doctrine of the TRINITY, as contained in this manuscript, are so utterly at variance with those on the same subject in the works published by himself, that it is difficult to conceive how both could have proceeded from the same pen” –​but he felt obligated to accept the manuscript “bearing Milton’s name and various internal marks of genuineness”.8 Now, even proponents of the attribution concede that Milton’s name was added posthumously.9 Not one of these legends supporting the attribution was true, but rumours flew. 8 Joseph Ivimey, John Milton, His Life and Times, Religious and Political Opinions, with an Appendix Containing Animadversions upon Dr. Johnson’s Life of Milton (New York: Appleton & Co., 1833) 257. See pages 257–​65. The supposed “signature” mattered: Ivimey was perplexed by the contradictions between the treatise and the canonical works, but he assumed the treatise had Milton’s “superscription” (265). 9 See Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana, edited by Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale and Fiona J. Tweedie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). “There is compelling evidence that Milton’s name and (possibly) the initials may have been added in the nineteenth century” (1–​2).

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A fourth myth was that those really in the know, knew that Milton’s theology was suspect. Charles Sumner, John Shawcross, Michael Bauman, Barbara Lewalski, and John Rumrich offer lists of readers who knew there were suspicions of Milton’s orthodoxy long before 1823: John Toland, Charles Leslie, John Dennis, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Richardson and son, Joseph Trapp, Thomas Newton, Rev. Calton, Samuel Johnson, Joseph Warton, William Warburton, and Charles Symmons.10 Many of the remarks on Milton’s orthodoxy were arguably frivolous or inconsequential comments made en passant. Other expert readers, like Jonathan Richardson, Joseph Trapp, Bishop Thomas Newton, Samuel Johnson, William Warburton, and Charles Symmons, dismissed these suspicions.11 When John Toland made remarks that were ambiguous or coy, Warburton attacked him for making malignant insinuations about Milton’s theology.12 Calton’s oft-​repeated remarks about Socinian sentiments in God’s speech to Gabriel in Paradise Regained 1:130–​67 have been taken out of context: Calton remarks, “Not a word is said here of the Son of God, but what a Socinian would allow. . .” In the notes of Henry John Todd’s 1809 edition of Paradise Regained, Joseph Warton seems to insinuate that there is nothing but what “a Socinian, or at least an Arian, would allow.”13 In context, Rev. Calton’s 10 Charles Summer, John T. Shawcross, John Milton, 1628–​1731; John Milton, 1732–​ 1801 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) 93–​98; Michael Bauman, “Heresy in Paradise and the Ghost of Readers Past.” College Language Association Journal 30 (1986): 59–​68. Barbara K. Lewalski, “Forum: Milton’s Christian Doctrine,” Studies in English Literature 32 (1992): 143–​66. William B. Hunter, “The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine.” Studies in English Literature 32:1 (Winter 1992): 129–​42. John Peter Rumrich, “Milton’s Arianism: Why It Matters,” Milton and Heresy, edited by Stephen B. Dobranski and John P. Rumich (Cambridge: CUP, 1998) 75–​92, 76. 11 Jonathan Richardson (and son), Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton’s Paradise Lost (London: Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton, 1734) xlix; Joseph Trapp, “Prefatio,” 2 [no pagination] before Trapp’s Latin translation, Paradissus Amissus. Thomas Newton, “The Life of Milton,” Paradise Lost, 2 vols., 2nd ed (London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson et alia, 1750) 1:lxxiv; Samuel Johnson, “John Milton,” 1:155; Charles Symmons, The Life of Milton, 443, n.70. 12 Toland, The Life of John Milton (London, 1699) 128. Warburton excoriated Milton’s (and Toland’s) character, but he thought that Milton had perfected the religious epic. See Shawcross’ John Milton, 1628–​1731, 120 and John Milton, 1732–​1801, 89–​92, 99. 13 Our italics. In Todd’s 1809 edition of Paradise Regained, Calton’s note, given at length in vol. 3:20–​21 of Hawkins’ 1824 edition, is abbreviated, and Joseph Warton gives Calton’s remarks an ominous spin. Todd’s 1809 edition inserts Warton’s note, “On a frequent perusal and thorough consideration of this page, I cannot forbear

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long footnote was actually praising Milton’s ambiguous, semi-​Socinian statement as an expedient way to deceive the devil until Christ’s divinity is fully revealed.14 Before 1823, once we subtract those who defend Milton’s orthodoxy, we are left with a few inconclusive remarks, made by a few anonymous figures cited by John Shawcross, and a few brief comments by Charles Leslie, John Dennis, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Daniel Defoe and Joseph Warton.15 Of all the works alleged to have scented heresy in Milton’s theology, the anonymously published The Political History of the Devil offers the most detailed discussion: the explanatory notes in the Rothman and Bowerman’s exemplary edition of Defoe’s narrative cite Paradise Lost or Milton more than eighty times. The legend that Defoe thought Milton was a heretic was directly challenged at IMS12 [2019] in Strasbourg; nonetheless, inertia provides a powerful impetus, and this plausible myth still circulates.16 being of Mr. Calton’s opinion, that there is not a word here said of the Son of God, but what a Socinian, or at least an Arian, would allow. The same observation may be made on some other remarkable passages of this poem” (our italics). The Poetical Works of John Milton, 6 vols. 1st ed., edited by Henry John Todd (London: Printed for R. Johnson, W.J. and J. Richardson et alia, 1801) 4:28; 2nd ed., 7 vols. 1809, 5:27. In another footnote published after the discovery of De Doctrina, Edward Hawkins disputes Bishop Thomas Newton’s defense of Milton’s orthodoxy. Hawkins anticipates Dayton Haskin by suggesting that Milton was heterodox, that Paradise Lost even suggests tritheism. The Poetical Works of John Milton, 4 vols., edited by Edward Hawkins (Oxford: Printed by W. Baxter, 1824) 1:xcix-​cii. Others echo Calton’s comment, apparently without being aware of his intent. 14 Todd’s 1809 edition abbreviates the note. A fuller version can be found in The Poetical Works of John Milton, 4 vols. edited by Edward Hawkins, (Oxford: Printed by W. Baxter, 1824) 3:20–​21. 15 Charles Leslie, “The Preface,” The History of Sin and Heresy (1698) no pagination; Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism (1704) 36; Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, “Treatise II: Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author,” Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1710), 2 vols., edited by John M. Robertson (London: Grant Richards, 1900) 1:101–​284, 230. (Excerpted first by Michael Bauman); Defoe, The Political History of the Devil (1726), passim; Joseph Warton, The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by Todd (1809), 5:27n. 16 Daniel Defoe, The Political History of the Devil. Stoke Newington Daniel Defoe. Edited by Irving N. Rothman and R. Michael Bowerman (New York: AMS Press, 2003). Walther Fischer, “Defoe und Milton.” Englische Studien 58 (1924): 213–​ 27; Eugene B. McCarthy, “Defoe, Milton and Heresy.” Milton Newsletter 3:4 (1969): 71–​73. Some comments from Defoe’s work are excerpted from Defoe’s work by John T. Shawcross in Milton 1628–​1731: The Critical Heritage. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. A number of distinguished scholars

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A fifth, and still durable myth, reasserted in Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana [2007], and the Oxford edition of 2012, was that only one pitiable personage, Thomas Burgess, the allegedly misguided and supposedly befuddled Bishop of Salisbury, ever objected.17 The “good bishop” was patronized by Thomas Tuit in the DNB and mocked by Christopher Hill, but these slights were partisan squibs, not fair appraisals.18 The retrospective illusion of virtual unanimity marginalizes dissenters, and helps to explain why the myth of the Milton’s “undoubted,” “indisputable” authorship was accepted and still persists. This myth of a single isolated objection is easily exploded. Partisans of Milton’s authorship have done some outstanding research, but more work remains to be done. Many people doubted the attribution besides the learned Bishop of Salisbury who founded Lampeter College in Wales have mistakenly assumed that Defoe was expressing his own views directly in The Political History of the Devil. At Twelfth Internation Milton Symposium held in Strasbourg, Wilson challenged the belief that Daniel Defoe regarded Milton as a heretic: “ ‘The Devil in Masquerade’: The Criticism of the Theology of Paradise Lost in The Political History of the Devil: Defoe’s Hoax.” 17 The authors of Milton and the Manuscript include some of Paul Sellin’s articles in their bibliography, but omit him from their text and index; they only cite one work by Burgess, but two works seem especially pertinent: Thomas Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, President Royal Society for Literature, ed. Protestant Union: A Treatise of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration and What Best Means May Be Used Against the Growth of Popery by John Milton. To Which is Pre-​fi xed, A Preface on Milton’s Religious Principles and Unimpeachable Sincerity. London: F. and C. Rivington, 1826 and Milton Not the Author of the Lately-​Discovered Arian Work, De Doctrina Christiana. Three Discourses, Delivered at the Anniversary Meetings of the Royal Society Literature, In the Years 1826, 1827, and 1828. To Which Contrasted with Milton, and with the Scriptures. London: Thomas Brettell, 1829. Bishop Burgess only receives cursory mention by Campbell et alia; his arguments are dismissed without a hearing and ignored. 18 Christopher Hill was perhaps the most prolific and awe-​inspiring twentieth century historian of the seventeenth century, but his inflated laudation of Thomas Tuit and his sneers at the man he patronizes as “the good bishop” are not his finest moments (166). Thomas Burgess, bishop of Salisbury, author of a hundred articles, student and teacher of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other Semitic languages, founder of the University of Wales at Lampeter, founder and first President of the Royal Society for Literature, was one of the first Anglican Bishops to oppose the British practice of slavery; he was no small figure, but one suspects that the King was not amused by the Bishop’s objections to the royal attribution. The Bishop was replaced by a more compliant President, and the record of his objections mysteriously disappeared from the proceedings of the Royal Society and from major British libraries. Most bibliographies of Milton scholarship don’t even index the Bishop’s name.

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and served as the first President of the Royal Society for Literature.19 Here, we will invoke just two especially prominent sceptics of the attribution who have been utterly overlooked: William Howell and William Wyndham Grenville. Like Thomas Burgess before 1992, neither figure appears in any of the standard annotated bibliographies of Milton scholarship. The first man named was the Bishop of London who eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. The second man’s name may be a little more familiar: he was a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Although the Archbishop might have been overlooked because his doubts were expressed in a private letter encouraging Bishop Burgess, the former Prime Minister’s doubts were aired both in private letters and in The Gentleman’s Magazine. Pertinent correspondence from both men can be found in John Scandrett Harford’s biography of Bishop Burgess. In a letter dated 26 March 1826, the Bishop of London and future Archbishop of Canterbury wrote that I have been too long without thanking you for your kindness in sending me your very interesting remarks on the late publication of what is called a posthumous work of Milton. Your arguments have great weight, and the long array of citations from works written at different periods of his life, which contain opinions altogether inconsistent with the heretical doctrines maintained by the author of the posthumous treatise, throw great doubts upon its authenticity.20

On the 12th and 25th of May 1826, William Wyndham Grenville, the former Prime Minister, wrote two letters in support of the Bishop’s dissent.21 Lord Grenville’s remarks prompted respectful quotation (and a response) in The Gentleman’s Magazine.22 Once DDC was 19 This mistaken claim was reanimated when Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana [2007] was referenced as the historical introduction to the beautiful two volume Oxford edition of De Doctrina Christiana [2012]. The editors mistakenly announced that Bishop Thomas Burgess was “the only dissenter” (1). After page one, Burgess is dismissed until the incomplete bibliography and the index. His articles and his arguments were never considered. William Hunter, and Paul Sellin, among others, were also slighted. In fact, the editors overlooked a number of dissidents. 20 John Scandrett Harford, The Life of Thomas Burgess, D.D. . . ., Late Lord Bishop of Salisbury (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1840): 348–​49. 21 Harford, The Life of Thomas Burgess, 350–​54. 22 Anon. “Review of The Life of Thomas Burgess, D. D. Late Lord Bishop of Salisbury by John S. Harford,” The Gentleman’s Magazine, New Series 14 (July to December

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assumed to be Milton’s text, several other myths, like Milton’s name squeezed into a space on the manuscript, were wedged deep into the scholarship. The suspect attribution of De Doctrina Christiana to Milton nourished several questionable legends: that Milton was a secret anti-​Trinitarian,23 that he was a closet Arminian,24 an Arian,25 a

1840): 339–​56. See pages 352–​53. In The Gentleman’s Magazine of November of 1640, Lord Grenville’s letters on De Doctrina Christiana were discussed. See pages 470–​71. 23 One of Milton’s earliest tutors, Alexander Gill, wrote an essay in defense of the trinity: A Treatise Concerning the Trinitie of Persons in Unitie of the Deitie (London: Simon Stafford, 1601). In his uncontested canonical works, from the “Nativity Ode” of 1629, to the rhapsodic passage in Of Reformation [1641], to the first publication of his minor poems in 1645, to the republication of his shorter poems in 1673, Milton celebrates the trinity. In 1674, his last year, Milton published a partial translation of a work celebrating the election of a Polish King, A Declaration of Letters Patent of the Election of this Present King of Poland [1674], Milton chose to include an otherwise inessential passage exalting the trinity: “In the name of the most holy and Individual Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (3). 24 Invoking De Doctrina Christiana, Maurice Kelley, Dennis Danielson and Steve Fallon champion the fashionable Arminian reading of Paradise Lost, but there are many reasons to doubt this reading. In Areopagitica [1644], Milton criticizes Arminians and speaks of the “acute Arminius” having been perverted. Milton routinely criticized Arminius and Arminians; he criticized Arminians in 1642, 1644, both in Areopagitica and in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. His earliest teachers and allies were Calvinist, as were many of his latest friends. In seventeenth-​century theological controversies, Arminians and Pelagians were often equated. Many Puritans regarded Arminianism was a revived form of the Pelagian heresy. In the view of Lutheran or Calvinist theologians, both groups engaged in sophistry in order to resist divine sovereignty and defend “free will” against “free grace.” Milton criticized Pelagians in 1641, 1650 and 1670. (Of Reformation [1641] 1:533; Animadversions Upon the Remonstrants Defence Against Smectymnus [1641] 1:685; Eikonoklastes [1650] 3:507; The History of Britain [1670] 5:122; 5:135; 5:137; 5:140). In 1795, William Warburton [1795] called Milton a “moderate Calvinist.” In 1872, in his commentary on the third book of Paradise Lost, Rev. John Hunter inferred that Milton was a “moderate Calvinist” (17n). Joseph Moody McDill, in Milton and the Pattern of Calvinism [1971], and more recently, Professor Grant Horner have credibly argued that Milton was Calvinist. In the chapter, “The Religious Precept,” from John Milton: The Self and the World [1993], John Shawcross describes Milton as Calvinist: “Quite simply, Milton was Calvinist” (255). A few pages later, Shawcross assumes that Milton morphed into an Arminian but he never explains how or why; exponents of Milton’s authorship of DDC often admit that they don’t know when or why he changed his position. 25 In Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio [1651], and revised in 1658, Milton contrasts the Christian emperor Constantine with Constantius, the Arian emperor that the people of Constantinople rightfully resisted. Although Milton is alleged to have worked

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mortalist,26 a monist, a semi-​Spinozan pantheist, an exponent of polyg27 28 amy, and allegedly, a supporter of slavery. One of the most novel on the putatively “Arian treatise,” DDC from 1658 to 1662, or alternately, until his death in 1674, in his History of Britain [1670], Milton criticizes Arian doctrine as a divisive novelty. This cannot be blown off as a work of the sixteen-​forties because there is evidence that The History of Britain was revised after the Restoration. Also, see Edward Hawkins, ed. The Poetical Works of John Milton. . . To which is prefixed, Newton’s Life of Milton, 4 vols. (Oxford: W. Baxter, J. Parker and G.B. Whittaker, London, 1824) xcvii. In the opinion of Newton, “Some are inclined to believe, that he was an Arian; but there are more express passages in his works to overthrow this opinion, than any there are to confirm it” (xcvii). James Ogden notes the overlooked objections of Joseph William Morris, John Milton: A Vindication, Especially from the Charge of Arianism [1862]. 26 Forty years ago, Gordon Campbell pointed out an awkward theological contradiction between Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana. He shows that the epic discredits mortalism in the cases of both Adam and Christ, but the anonymous treatise defends the doctrine. See “The Mortalist Heresy in Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 13:2 (May 1979): 33–​36. Campbell’s article appears in John Milton: Twentieth-​ Century Perspectives, 4 volumes. Edited by J. Martin Evans (New York and London: Routledge, 2003) 4:161–​64. In “The Son of God in De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost,” The Modern Language Review 75.3 (July 1980): 507–​14, Campbell points out three more contradictions between the treatise and the epic. 27 Although there are stray mentions of polygamy elsewhere in the canon, De Doctrina Christiana is the primary support for this theory. The learned Leo Miller summarizes the case in John Milton Among the Polygamophiles (New York: Loewenthal Press, 1974). Without DDC, this theory is a stretch. 28 Some scholars have accused Milton of supporting slavery, but this accusation is implausible. In “Ham’s Vicious Race,” Steven Jablonski argues the pro-​slavery case. For an opposing view, see Hugh F. Wilson, “John Milton and the Struggle for Human Rights,” Milton, Rights and Liberties, ed. Christophe Tournu and Neil Forsyth (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007) 21–​30. Wilson also challenged Jablonski’s reasoning in “John Milton and the Struggle against Slavery,” presented at the 2005 Biennial Conference on John Milton in Murfreesboro, TN, and in “The Spear of Ithuriel: Milton Touching Slavery” presented at the 2009 Conference on Milton in Murfreesboro. Milton was the outspoken Christian who wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Areopagitica and The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, who defended the right of divorce for both sexes, freedom of the press, and the right of revolution enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the poet who celebrated the three bywords of the French Revolution–​liberty, equality and fraternity–​in his prose, and who fought for human liberty against “all earthly tyrannies.” The content of his writing and the tenor of Milton’s life refute the charges of pro-​slavery sentiments; the alleged evidence is inadequate to sustain the charge. In 1824, Edward Hawkins reprinted Thomas Newton’s biography of Milton which paraphrases John Toland’s observation that Milton “frequently expressed to his friends his entire satisfaction of mind, that he had constantly employed his strength and faculties in the defence of liberty, and in opposition to slavery” (xcvii).

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legends was that Milton wasn’t really religious, with one scholar going 29 so far as to claim that Milton was a virtual atheist. Several of these implausible inferences would collapse of their own weight if they weren’t shored up by the improbable attribution of De Doctrina Christiana to Milton.

3. Stylometric Myths Since 2007, another enduring myth is that stylometry has proved Milton’s authorship of the text beyond doubt. Stylometry is a method of measuring and comparing style in writing, often counting word frequencies to reveal hidden patterns of usage that tend to be similar among works by one author. Notably, the technique has revealed the authorship of disputed parts of The Federalist Papers in 1963 (Mosteller and Wallace), Joe Klein’s authorship of the anonymously published Primary Colors in 1996 (revealed by Don Foster and others), and J.K. Rowling’s authorship of the pseudonymously published The Cuckoo’s Calling in 2013 (by Peter Millican and Patrick Juola; see Mostrous). This same technique of comparing frequencies of common words was also used by Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, and Fiona J. Tweedie in 2007 to argue for Milton’s authorship of De Doctrina Christiana: although they withhold certainty, they nevertheless declare that stylometric analysis “confirmed” Milton’s connection.30 For a number of reasons, this position is unproven by data, undemonstrated in analysis, and limited by scope and methodology. To start, the evidence presented in these previous studies finds consistent differences between De Doctrina Christiana and Milton’s known works. Even where those analyses are limited, it is difficult to infer that Milton is the likeliest of authors. The chart on page 77 of Milton and the Manuscript, for instance, sets samples of Milton’s Defenses against limited selections from the first 27 chapters of De Doctrina. Because of

29 Michael Bryson, The Atheist Milton (Farnham, Surrey, UK: Taylor & Frances, 2010). 30 Before they claim the attribution confirmed, Campbell et alii first hedge by writing that analysis “does suggest that the notion of ‘authorship’ needs some reconsideration” (159).

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differences in text preparation and other parameters, we cannot fully 31 replicate here the charts in earlier studies, but an attempt is made in our Fig. 1.

31 Some of the methodology of previous studies is not entirely clear. The book chapter, for instance, is vague about sample size in its analyses, but the 1998 article explains that the Defenses are broken into 5,000-​word samples (Tweedie, Holmes, and Corns 78). Likewise, previous analyses considered only a subset of chapters, and they combined some of the smaller chapters to create larger selections. We have tried to recreate these same selections here, though the smaller chapters have been dropped, rather than combined. For this analysis and all our analyses, unlike those in previous studies, Latin quotations were kept in all texts, including De Doctrina Christiana, but Greek quotations were dropped. The decision to keep quotations was based on two factors. First, in their introduction to Milton and Heresy, Stephen P. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich argue that the quotations are too important to remove without significantly altering the text’s style (10–​11); whether one should remove quotations during text pre-​processing is a legitimate debate. Second, as the process of preparing the documents for analysis is time consuming, it is difficult to justify further duplicating the efforts of past researchers by tagging quotations for removal; if possible, we would prefer to work from earlier-​prepared texts, building from their analysis in order to compare results both with and without quotations. As it is, our Fig. 1 differs from those charts in previous studies only inconsequentially, with chapters occasionally swapping positions but showing little additional movement toward or away from the cluster of Milton’s texts, which occupy a similar shape in all versions of the chart. If anything, the relative stability of charts with and without quotations suggests that these additional quotations may not be significant to an analysis of the text’s authorship –​but that conclusion is not proven here.

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Fig. 1:  An attempt at recreating the chart on page 77 of Milton and the Manuscript. Each selection from Milton’s Defenses is shown as a gray “M,” and De Doctrina Christiana is black with numbers indicating its chapters and “E” representing its epistle. In this chart, as in the one from that earlier study, Milton’s Defenses cluster consistently in one part of the chart, while ­chapters 1–​11 and 22–​27 of De Doctrina Christiana lie elsewhere.

Visualizations such as this one hide a lot of complexity. After measuring the frequencies of 50 common words in selected chapters of the treatise and in different samples from Milton’s Defenses,32 we plot the documents so that texts with comparable distributions of these words are placed near each other –​effectively creating constellations of stylistic similarity. And as a star chart flattens three dimensions of space into recognizable constellations, these figures using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) collapse fifty dimensions of word frequencies into two dimensions, demonstrating relationships among the items charted. In 32 Milton and the Manuscript is unclear about which 50 words were chosen in its comparison of word frequencies, but the working group’s 1998 article offers the following list: et, esse, atque, per, ipse, non, in, de, si, se, enim, dei, ab, haec, ne, est, ut, ad, vel, ex, aut, te, id, hoc, quo, sunt, tamen, sic, tu, nisi, cum, qui, quam, etiam, neque, quid, ac, sit, nunc, tam, quod, sed, a, quae, autem, quidem, nec, deo, sibi, omnes (Tweedie, Holmes, and Corns 84).

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finding something like weighted averages, the process groups together word frequencies that represent the greatest variance, depicting in two dimensions as much as possible of the original fifty-​dimensional table: on the horizontal axis, the first principal component (PC1) explains 21.2 % of the total variance; on the vertical axis, the second principal component (PC2) accounts for 9.2 % of the total.33 Like those charts from earlier studies, our Fig. 1 shows clear distinctions between Milton’s Defenses and the text of De Doctrina Christiana. And like those charts from earlier studies, Fig. 1 presents only a subset of the treatise, marking the epistle as “E” and ­chapters 1–​11 and 22–​27 as numbers.34 In both their chart and ours, Milton’s undisputed texts occupy a cluster with negative values in the first principal component, shown by falling to the left on the horizontal axis, and with low mostly-​positive values in the second principal component, shown by falling above centre on the vertical. Chapters from De Doctrina Christiana meanwhile tend to occupy the right-​hand side of the chart, with positive values for the first principal component, and a range of positive and negative values for the second principal component.

33 Our word measurements are taken first using Eder, Rybicki, and Kestemont’s “Stylo” package for R, which provides a table of frequencies for each text; further analyses and visualizations use R and a selection of packages, including “ggplot2” by Hadley Wickham and “dendextend” by Tal Galili. Functions used to display and annotate “stylo” objects with “ggplot2” for this essay have been collected as an R package available on GitHub: github.com/​jmclawson/​stylo2gg. 34 In its entirety, the treatise is divided into an opening epistle and 50 chapters, which are further grouped into two books: the first book contains the epistle and ­chapters 1–​33, and the second book contains seventeen chapters, which we number here as 34–​50. Tweedie’s 1997 dissertation explains that it covers only the first book of the treatise (138–​39), but it seems further limited to the epistle, ­chapters 1–​11, and ­chapters 22–​33; it does not explain the omission of c­ hapters 12–​21. Similarly, the 1998 article by Tweedie, Holmes, and Corns and the 2007 book by Campbell and colleagues do not explain their omissions of c­ hapters 12–​21 and ­chapters 28–​33.

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Fig. 2:  Adding the missing chapters shifts the principal components. As before, samples from Milton’s Defenses are shown as a gray “M” and De Doctrina Christiana is black, with numbers indicating chapters and “E” the epistle—which is now more clearly placed among Milton’s works.

On its own, Fig. 1 emphasizes important differences between Milton’s style and that of the disputed work. But when adding chapters missing from Milton and the Manuscript’s charts in our Fig. 2, even just those nine in the first 27 that were initially omitted by our predecessors, it becomes obvious that considering the full text dramatically changes the analysis. Starting from more data than was used to create the previous chart, Fig. 2 has different parameters and weights for the first two principal components, which result in the epistle being placed more squarely among Milton’s texts. At the same time, this figure shows that the previously omitted chapters are among those with the greatest stylistic distinctiveness in the set –​they seem the least Miltonic. The understandable decision to combine shorter chapters as in the earlier studies or to drop them as in our Fig. 1 understandably obscured the outlying status of ­chapter 24, now apparent in Fig. 2. But earlier studies’ unfortunate decision to overlook ­chapters 12–​22 also kept hidden the outlying nature of other chapters within the treatise’s first book, including ­chapters 19 and 21. Figure 2 shows that these chapters and many in the overlooked second book of

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the treatise place far from Milton’s texts in the first principal component. While a more inclusive analysis goes beyond earlier work to show that the opening epistle is stylistically similar to Milton’s writing, it also does so by emphasizing the epistle’s great dissimilarity from other sections. Moreover, setting the samples against a wider consideration of benchmark texts emphasizes how unlike Milton’s works De Doctrina Christiana actually is. Previous studies test their distributions using a benchmark neo-​Latin corpus that includes Milton’s three Defenses, ten samples of texts by Francis Bacon, and nine other texts to show stylometry’s capacity to differentiate signals of authorship and genre. Using those same texts by Bacon along with a group of fourteen other classical Latin and neo-​Latin texts by Saint Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Alexander More, Thomas More, Prudentius, Spinoza, and Milton, listed in Tab.1, we show here another perspective on the ways De Doctrina Christiana differs from the style of the texts by Milton. Tab. 1:  Our benchmark corpus includes text from 26 documents by 8 authors, plus De Doctrina Christiana. The label column serves as a legend for fi ­ gures 3–​5. Title De Doctrina Christiana Augustine Civitate Dei Confessionum De Trinitate Bacon (extracts from Oxford Text Archive) De Principus atque Originibus -​1 De Principus atque Originibus -​2 Cogitationes de Natura Rerum Redargutio Philosophiarum Cogitata et Visa de Interpretatione Naturae Descriptio Globi Intellectualis -​1 Descriptio Globi Intellectualis -​2 Descriptio Globi Intellectualis -​3 Dilatationes sive Distractiones a Violentia Externa Bernard Liber ad Milites Milton Defensio Prima

Label DC

Length 162,798

A.CD A.C A.DT

275,911 79,307 116,658

B.1 B.2 B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6 B.9 B.10 B.11

4,606 4,988 4,987 4,533 4,597 4,702 4,273 4,454 3,999

Bd

8,412

M.1

52,473

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Tab. 1:  Continued Title Defensio Secunda Epistolarum Logic Poemata Latina Pro Se Defensio More, Alexander Fides Publica Contra Calumnias More, Thomas Utopia Prudentius Psychomachia Spinoza Epistolae Ethice Tractatus Intellectus Emendatione Tractatus Politicus

Label M.2 M.E M.Logic M.Poems M.S

Length 22,955 10,516 41,662 11,615 26,209

MA

10,055

MT

33,073

P

6,011

S.Ep S.Eth S.TIE S.TP

13,536 67,115 11,425 27,490

Using this corpus of texts, we followed the methodology explained in Milton and the Manuscript as closely as possible: we took 5,000-​word samples from each of Milton’s three Defenses, ten equally sized divisions of the full text of De Doctrina Christiana, and full-​text samples from the remaining texts. Then, measuring the frequency of the 50 words listed on page 82 of the 1998 article by Tweedie, Holmes, and Corns, we measured texts’ distances from each other to prepare a tree chart or “dendrogram” in Fig. 3, challenging the earlier claim that “De Doctrina Christiana is more similar to the Milton texts than to the control texts” (Tweedie, Holmes, and Corns 83).35 Whereas a chart showing principal components reduces dimensions in ways that result in some visible loss of variance –​showing, for instance, just over 30 % of the data behind each 35 Following the methodology of Campbell et al., we measure similarity in terms of Euclidean distances between texts for these 50 word frequencies. For stylometry, using the simple Euclidean distance can be problematic unless first applying some kind of normalization, since Zipf ’s law dictates an inverse proportionality of word frequency to rank (see the explanation of “vocabulary balance” in Zipf 19–​26). To cluster texts, we again followed Campbell et al., using the “complete linkage” method, conjoining branches by comparing the maximum distance between each branch’s leaves, rather than the average or minimum distances.

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of the first two figures here –​a dendrogram such as Fig. 3 considers all of this data to calculate texts’ distances from each other. Starting first from the texts as leaves on a tree, the process groups them into branches by their proximity to each other, finding ever-​larger combinations to grow backward toward an imagined trunk.

Fig. 3:  A dendrogram of De Doctrina Christiana set against sample texts by Milton and control texts by other authors places stylistically similar texts on the same branches. Clusters including the samples of the disputed text are highlighted in the dashed boxes. See table 1 for an explanation of labels.

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In this dendrogram, texts that are stylistically proximate cluster on conjoined branches. This tree shows most of Milton’s texts clustering in the top branch, with his poems alongside the poems of Prudentius. Only his Logic, which liberally borrows from a text by George Downame, clusters elsewhere. The ten samples of De Doctrina Christiana, in contrast, highlighted here with the dashed boxes, cluster near the middle with Augustine’s Civitate Dei, below that with Bernard’s Liber ad Milites, and at the bottom with Augustine’s Confessionum. Of course, our analysis does not conclude that Augustine or Bernard is responsible for De Doctrina Christiana; rather, it suggests that, as the text in question more closely matches these benchmark authors’ styles than Milton’s, his authorship is in doubt. That Milton’s works cluster wholly in different branches from that of the disputed work goes especially far in challenging the claim that his involvement is confirmed by stylometric evidence. Milton looks even less likely when applying newer methods of analysis. Beginning their work in the 1990s, Tweedie, Holmes, Corns, and their collaborators followed the best methodology available at the time. They incorporated John Burrows’s practice of using principal components analysis to make sense of larger sets of most frequent words, and they relied on Euclidean distance to measure distances among texts. Moreover, in these earlier studies, the authors emphasize the relative paucity of previous work done on Latin in the area of authorship attribution,36 which has often centred on texts written in uninflected languages like English. The work of this early research group was cutting edge, but the methods of stylometry have changed in some key ways since the 1990s. First, while these earlier studies rely on Euclidean distance, John Burrows’s Delta measurement, introduced in 2002, shows greater accuracy for measuring stylistic distances among texts.37 Second, although

36 In the abstract for a 1996 conference paper, Tweedie, Corns, Hale, Campbell, and Holmes write that “Latin has remained relatively untouched by stylometric hand” (95). In their 1998 essay, Tweedie, Holmes, and Corns point out that the techniques they use have never previously been applied in Latin (78). And in the 2007 book, Campbell, Corns, Hale, and Tweedie acknowledge that “texts in neo-​L atin have received little interrogation from stylometry” (68). 37 Without first scaling for frequency of larger word sets, a simple Euclidean distance loses some accuracy. On the other hand, Delta, the method recommended by Burrows, includes first scaling frequencies by expressing each in “z-​scores” –​units of standard deviations from the average of the whole –​and then finding the Manhattan distances, or the simple sum of absolute differences between texts. Using

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analysis using most frequent words is typical practice for texts written in uninflected languages, which depend upon repeatedly used function words (Kestemont 60–​61), research now confirms that measuring the frequencies of groups of letters –​character n-​grams –​often performs better than measuring frequencies of words (Juola, Sofko, and Brennan 172). These performance gains are felt most acutely when studying texts written in inflected languages like Latin, a language which often affixes function to words of content (Rybicki and Eder 320; Kestemont 64–​65). A study applying today’s best practices may look cursorily similar to one using the best methods of twenty years ago, but the difference in results is noticeable. The improvements of these newer methodologies –​first measuring frequencies of 4-​letter groupings (character quadrigrams) and second using Burrows’s Delta as a measure of distance –​are evident in results that cluster texts in branches much more cohesively, as shown by Fig. 4. In this dendrogram, Milton’s prose texts, except for his Logic, cluster uniformly near the bottom; Milton’s poetry clusters beside that of Prudentius in the top branch, along with texts by Bacon; all of De Doctrina Christiana clusters in the middle branch with Augustine and Bernard, highlighted here with a dashed box.38

Delta, overall stylistic distance between any two texts is measured by comparing their total deviation from the overall group of texts. A number of early studies confirm Delta’s effectiveness, especially the original paper by Burrows, testing poetry; work by David Hoover, testing prose; and work by Shlomo Argamon, explaining the underlying math. For a high-​level overview, Evert et al. explain Delta very well, and they show that it offers greater accuracy than unscaled Euclidean distance (ii5–​ii6, ii9). 38 For this test, 291 character quadrigrams were chosen, considering only those that were apparent in every text sample. As before, this dendrogram uses “complete” linkage.

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Fig. 4:  Newer methodologies –​including using Burrows’s Delta for distance and choosing features from character quadrigrams instead of words –​show more coherent clustering. See table 1 for an explanation of labels.

Finally, while earlier studies rely on a single test measuring frequency of common words, Patrick Juola more recently advocates for multiple elimination tests using unrelated measurements, finding the nearest two candidates for each test and discarding the rest. As tests for authorship are akin to choosing likeliest candidates from among those presented in a police lineup, considering multiple elements of an author’s style is equivalent to looking for different recognizable traits of an alleged

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perpetrator: matching an author’s “prepositions but not her verbs,” then, is tantamount to an individual sharing “a suspect’s eye color but not his height” (Juola 107). After dividing De Doctrina Christiana into ten equal-​sized parts, we ran three such tests on our corpus. First, following prior studies, we found distances among texts by comparing frequencies of most frequent words, shown in Tab. 2; second, following what might be better practice for Latin, we found distances by comparing frequencies of character quadrigrams, shown in Tab. 3; finally, we used an automated tagger to compare frequencies of part-​of-​speech bigrams, with distances shown in Tab. 4.39 Following Juola’s suggestion to pay credence only to the best two results in any test, each of these tables highlights the top-​t wo texts that were nearest in similarity to each partition of the disputed treatise. Moreover, since these tests each rely on unrelated measurements, they satisfy Juola’s requirement for independence. Depicting something like multiple tabular representations of the dendrograms in previous figures, Tabs. 2, 3, and 4 should be read in columns, which indicate the stylistic “distance” between each of ten partitions of the treatise and the texts on the left. Underlined measures indicate which two texts show the least differences in style for each section of the ­manuscript.

39 For the first test, instead of using the 50 words employed by Tweedie, Holmes, and Corns, we measured the frequency of 305 words, choosing them from tokens that were in at least 80 % of our texts. For the test with character quadrigrams, we limited features to those appearing in 100 % of texts, resulting in 648 character quadrigrams. Finally, for part-​of-​speech tagging, we used Helmut Schmid’s TreeTagger. Of the resulting tags, we selected for measurement only those bigrams appearing in 100 % of the texts, resulting in 104 part-​of-​speech bigrams.

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Tab. 2:  Most frequent word distances in the benchmark corpus. Numbers signify stylistic distance between texts on the left and columns of each 10 % segment of De Doctrina Christiana, with lower numbers indicating greater similarity. For each partition, the two nearest candidates are emphasized, following Juola’s protocol. Milton’s canonical texts are stylistically similar to the manuscript when considering most frequent words. DC 1 DC 2 DC 3 DC 4 DC 5 DC 6 DC 7 DC 8 DC 9 DC 10 Augustine Civitate Dei Confessionum De Trinitate Bacon De Principus … -​1 De Principus … -​2 Cogitationes de … Redargutio Phil. Cogitata et Visa de … Descriptio Globi … -​1 Descriptio Globi … -​2 Descriptio Globi … -​3 Dilatationes sive … Bernard Liber ad Milites Milton Defensio Prima Defensio Secunda Epistolarum Logic Poemata Latina Pro Se Defensio More, Alexander Fides Publica … More, Thomas Utopia Prudentius Psychomachia Spinoza Epistolae Ethice Tractatus Intellectus … Tractatus Politicus

0.76 0.97 0.85 0.78 0.82 0.79 0.76 0.81 0.77 0.87 0.89 1.04 0.91 0.90 0.88 0.82 0.84 0.80 0.83 0.89 0.89 0.99 0.90 0.93 0.88 0.84 0.92 0.93 0.93 0.99 1.22 1.24 1.19 1.14 1.20

1.36 1.31 1.29 1.23 1.34

1.26 1.25 1.24 1.21 1.24

1.22 1.23 1.17 1.13 1.23

1.22 1.25 1.22 1.15 1.26

1.18 1.24 1.21 1.17 1.28

1.12 1.16 1.10 1.04 1.13

1.23 1.27 1.19 1.14 1.22

1.19 1.19 1.18 1.12 1.20

1.25 1.25 1.18 1.16 1.18

1.25 1.28 1.23 1.33

1.28 1.37 1.35 1.41

1.25 1.23 1.21 1.32

1.19 1.21 1.16 1.26

1.21 1.23 1.16 1.24

1.19 1.20 1.14 1.23

1.11 1.10 1.05 1.12

1.18 1.14 1.12 1.20

1.17 1.17 1.11 1.21

1.20 1.16 1.14 1.20

0.91

1.00 0.89 0.86 0.85 0.76 0.80 0.83 0.77 0.81

0.64 0.76 0.91 0.95 1.20 0.77

0.78 0.95 1.06 1.04 1.19 0.86

0.75 0.89 0.98 1.00 1.08 0.84

0.64 0.81 0.93 0.94 1.12 0.77

0.77 0.91 0.94 1.03 1.00 0.88

0.78 0.98 1.00 1.03 1.04 0.89

0.63 0.79 0.87 0.88 0.99 0.75

0.79 0.92 0.94 1.07 0.95 0.87

0.75 0.88 0.94 1.01 1.00 0.82

0.81 0.93 0.99 1.04 0.95 0.90

0.94 1.05 0.99 0.95 0.98 0.98 0.86 0.92 0.90 0.93 0.85 1.03 1.00 0.90 0.95 1.01 0.87 1.00 0.93 0.97 1.23 1.28 1.14

1.17

1.02 1.07 1.06 0.98 1.02 0.99

1.01 1.09 1.20 1.03

1.09 1.16 1.25 1.08

1.06 1.15 1.31 1.13

1.14 1.21 1.35 1.15

1.07 1.14 1.26 1.12

1.03 1.17 1.25 1.14

0.97 1.08 1.19 1.01

1.09 1.18 1.29 1.16

1.07 1.19 1.31 1.12

1.08 1.18 1.34 1.13

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Tab. 3:  Character quadrigram distances in the benchmark corpus. Numbers indicate distances between texts on the left and each 10 % segment of De Doctrina Christiana. The two nearest candidates are indicated for each partition. Milton’s texts are seldom among the nearest candidates when considering character quadrigrams.

Augustine Civitate Dei Confessionum De Trinitate Bacon De Principus … -​1 De Principus … -​2 Cogitationes de … Redargutio Phil. Cogitata et Visa de … Descriptio Globi … -​1 Descriptio Globi … -​2 Descriptio Globi … -​3 Dilatationes sive … Bernard Liber ad Milites Milton Defensio Prima Defensio Secunda Epistolarum Logic Poemata Latina Pro Se Defensio More, Alexander Fides Publica … More, Thomas Utopia Prudentius Psychomachia Spinoza Epistolae Ethice Tractatus Intellectus … Tractatus Politicus

DC DC DC DC DC 1 2 3 4 5

DC DC DC DC DC 6 7 8 9 10

0.77 0.90 0.88 0.70 0.86 0.94 1.02 0.97 0.88 0.98 0.94 0.91 0.88 0.96 1.00

0.86 0.77 0.78 0.76 0.88 0.94 0.85 0.86 0.86 0.90 1.00 1.03 1.03 1.02 1.11

1.16 1.38 1.43 1.14 1.14 1.07 1.22 1.19 1.28

1.24 1.27 1.33 1.17 1.17 1.08 1.26 1.24 1.19

1.35 1.46 1.51 1.26 1.29 1.26 1.40 1.31 1.41

1.28 1.40 1.46 1.21 1.22 1.26 1.37 1.30 1.25

1.07 1.19 1.21 1.04 1.01 1.00 1.16 1.14 1.11

1.22 1.23 1.32 1.14 1.15 1.09 1.26 1.21 1.20

0.87 1.03 0.93 0.78 0.79 0.76 0.84 0.98 0.97 1.27 0.85

0.95 1.08 1.11 1.07 1.36 0.99

0.92 1.07 1.17 1.09 1.34 1.01

0.67 0.78 0.93 0.93 1.21 0.78

0.91 1.00 1.10 1.09 1.25 0.99

1.10 1.17 1.20 1.05 1.03 0.95 1.15 1.07 1.09

1.17 1.20 1.28 1.10 1.09 0.98 1.17 1.14 1.08

1.14 1.19 1.27 1.10 1.12 1.00 1.20 1.11 1.07

1.18 1.22 1.32 1.15 1.10 1.05 1.18 1.19 1.07

0.86 0.81 0.79 0.81 0.87 0.92 1.06 1.14 1.10 1.27 1.00

0.76 0.86 1.00 0.97 1.16 0.83

0.88 0.98 1.09 1.06 1.17 0.96

0.82 0.90 1.03 1.00 1.18 0.89

0.87 0.96 1.07 1.09 1.17 0.93

0.99 1.09 1.11 0.93 1.07

1.06 0.93 1.02 0.99 1.00

0.90 1.15 1.13 0.85 1.06

1.09 0.87 0.96 0.92 0.98

1.37 1.49 1.41 1.22 1.26

1.34 1.20 1.19 1.18 1.21

1.00 1.11 1.14 1.08

1.12 1.22 1.18 1.19

1.16 1.28 1.23 1.27

1.18 1.23 1.27 1.23

1.02 1.13 1.13 1.04

1.07 1.15 1.18 1.15

1.06 1.16 1.18 1.02

1.13 1.20 1.19 1.09

1.13 1.22 1.21 1.10

1.18 1.25 1.26 1.14

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Tab. 4:  Part-​of-​speech bigram distances in the benchmark corpus. Numbers indicate distances between texts on the left and each 10 % segment of De Doctrina Christiana. The two nearest candidates are indicated for each partition. A consideration of part-​of-​speech bigrams shows Milton’s style to be similar to that of the manuscript, but only for the idiosyncratic Logic; his canonical texts are syntactically dissimilar. DC DC DC DC DC DC DC DC DC DC 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Augustine Civitate Dei Confessionum De Trinitate Bacon De Principus … -​1 De Principus … -​2 Cogitationes de … Redargutio Phil. Cogitata et Visa de … Descriptio Globi … -​1 Descriptio Globi … -​2 Descriptio Globi … -​3 Dilatationes sive … Bernard Liber ad Milites Milton Defensio Prima Defensio Secunda Epistolarum Logic Poemata Latina Pro Se Defensio More, Alexander Fides Publica … More, Thomas Utopia Prudentius Psychomachia Spinoza Epistolae Ethice Tractatus Intellectus … Tractatus Politicus

0.68 0.65 0.62 0.73 0.89 0.94 0.65 1.04 0.95 1.05 0.62 0.64 0.60 0.70 0.77 0.81 0.64 0.95 0.90 0.89 0.58 0.59 0.63 0.66 0.74 0.80 0.63 0.92 0.89 0.92 1.47 1.55 1.47 1.61 1.52 1.57 1.49 1.42 1.46

1.47 1.55 1.48 1.59 1.52 1.56 1.47 1.44 1.43

1.46 1.53 1.48 1.56 1.52 1.56 1.46 1.44 1.44

1.50 1.58 1.50 1.60 1.56 1.60 1.53 1.47 1.49

1.53 1.64 1.56 1.63 1.59 1.58 1.57 1.52 1.52

1.58 1.67 1.59 1.68 1.59 1.56 1.59 1.56 1.56

1.45 1.52 1.47 1.57 1.51 1.54 1.49 1.43 1.46

1.61 1.72 1.65 1.69 1.65 1.61 1.65 1.60 1.60

1.58 1.66 1.63 1.67 1.67 1.61 1.62 1.59 1.60

1.55 1.65 1.55 1.60 1.57 1.55 1.58 1.50 1.51

0.55 0.56 0.49 0.60 0.76 0.81 0.54 0.91 0.84 0.91 0.74 0.89 0.91 0.61 1.20 0.77

0.69 0.85 0.80 0.56 1.22 0.72

0.67 0.77 0.78 0.49 1.12 0.70

0.78 0.91 0.91 0.62 1.24 0.80

0.95 1.11 1.04 0.67 1.27 0.95

1.04 1.16 1.11 0.75 1.31 1.02

0.69 0.82 0.80 0.56 1.17 0.70

1.09 1.22 1.18 0.78 1.36 1.10

0.98 1.08 1.04 0.74 1.34 0.98

1.13 1.23 1.20 0.83 1.27 1.12

0.73 0.70 0.69 0.79 0.92 0.98 0.70 1.01 0.94 1.07 0.89 0.83 0.82 0.93 1.08 1.13 0.81 1.20 1.09 1.20 1.26 1.29 1.20 1.31 1.35 1.40 1.23 1.43 1.44 1.39 0.79 0.77 0.91 1.03

0.74 0.72 0.87 0.93

0.72 0.70 0.86 0.95

0.84 0.79 0.98 1.02

0.97 0.86 1.08 1.16

1.01 0.90 1.13 1.23

0.78 0.71 0.92 0.95

1.09 0.99 1.22 1.31

1.01 0.90 1.13 1.18

1.08 1.00 1.19 1.32

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Results for these tests challenge earlier confirmation of Milton’s involvement. Although Tab. 2, shows Milton’s Defensio Prima to be among the top two contenders for stylistic similarity in all ten sections, Tab. 3 names a work by Milton in only four out of ten sections; meanwhile, Tab. 4 shows similarity only with Milton’s Logic –​a text known to bear markers of other authors. Although the first test does seem to confirm some of the findings of earlier research, which used similar methodology, stopping there would be like stopping at a suspect’s eye colour, ignoring discrepancies in height and shoe size. No single test can, by itself, confirm that one author or another was responsible for the treatise –​and nobody is suggesting that either Augustine or Bernard was the mind behind the manuscript –​but the tests nevertheless work collectively to undermine the credibility of the attribution. Most of the earlier studies do not definitively profess to end any debate over the text’s authorship, but closer consideration of their results shows that they may have nevertheless seemed more confident than was warranted. Moreover, when we expand consideration to the epistle and all 50 chapters of the treatise, patterns of similarity favour Milton less than those that previously emerged with a limited 18-​chapter consideration. Finally, newer methods draw further distinction between the text’s style and that found in Milton’s other texts, with Milton’s Defensio Prima performing well in only one of three independent texts. At least so far, stylometry casts doubt on evidence of Milton’s hand in the bulk of De Doctrina Christiana.

4. Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana In one of her essays in defense of the attribution, Barbara Lewalski raises the question, “if not Milton, who?” and Christopher Hill echoes Lewalski, “If not Milton, who did write the DDC?”40 In the second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Milton [1999], Stephen Dobranski elaborates some doubtful desiderata for such an author:

40 Barbara Lewalski, “Milton and De Doctrina Christiana: Evidences of Authorship,” Milton Studies 36 (1998): 203–​28. See page 204. Christopher Hill, “Milton’s Christian Doctrine: Professor William B. Hunter, Bishop Burgess and John Milton.” Studies in English Literature 34 (1994): 165–​88. See page 168.

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If Milton did not author the treatise, we must seek another mid-​century Englishman, likely visually impaired–​a lso an Arminian, monist-​materialist, mortalist, divorcer, who was opposed to tithing, mandatory sabbath observance, and civil interference in religious affairs.41

Dobranski’s proviso is open to several objections. First, after the collapse of some of the most persuasive evidence for Milton’s authorship, the burden of proof should rest on the proponents of the attribution. Second, those who doubt the attribution are under no obligation to identify the author or authors of the treatise. Third, there is no compelling reason to assume the author was an Englishman; in fact, both Thomas Burgess and Christopher Hill entertain the possibility of a Dutchman or some other continental scholar. Fourth, the use of amanuensis does not require visual impairment. According to Milton and the Manuscript [2007], Samuel Pepys sometimes used amanuenses to write his letters.42 Fifth, continental Arminians are not uncommon. Sixth, the charge of being a “divorcer” was a provincial slur; continental Protestants allowed divorce more readily than the Church of England did. Seventh, theologians influenced by the pantheist monist “materialism” of Spinoza can be found among the Dutch Collegiant circles, many of whom were not Dutch at all because Holland was more or less open to refugees from repression.43 Eighth, Fiona Tweedie, David Holmes and Thomas Corns do not rule out the possibility that DDC has multiple authors.44 There is lexical evidence that suggests at least two authors; the passages on divorce and polygamy are awkwardly inserted and the vocabulary 41 Stephen Dobranski, “Milton’s Social Life,” The Cambridge Companion to Milton, 2nd edition. Edited by Dennis Danielson (Cambridge: CUP, 1999) 1–​24. See page 20. This collection of essays is extremely partisan: several articles invoke the testimony of De Doctrina Christiana, but not a single author or article–​out of eighteen–​even acknowledges Hunter’s dissent and the ensuing controversy over Milton’s authorship. Hunter’s book on the topic, Visitation Unimplor’ d [1998], is never even mentioned. 42 Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale and Fiona J. Tweedie, Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana (Oxford: OUP, 2007). See page 16. This reference to the sighted Samuel Pepys allegedly using an amanuensis is oddly omitted from the index. 43 Andrew Fix, Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton: PUP, 1991). 44 Fiona Tweedie, David Holmes and Thomas N. Corns, “The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana, attributed to John Milton: A Statistical Investigation,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 12.2 (1998): 77–​87. See pages 85–​86.

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suggests another author than the rest of the treatise.45 Ninth, finding opponents of tithing, rigorous sabbath observance and state inference in religious affairs is not especially difficult; similar views were popular among separatists. The much-​emended manuscript is heterogeneous in strange ways. As a consequence, proponents of the attribution have to avoid the horns of a dilemma: lexical evidence suggests that whoever composed the bulk of the treatise did not compose the sections on polygamy and divorce.46 If we assume that Milton composed the rest of the treatise, then someone intruded exogenous passages on divorce. (That intrusion suggests a fraud to make a suspect attribution more plausible by including some of Milton’s signature emphases.) If we assume that Milton composed the passages on divorce, then it looks like he did not compose the rest of the treatise, and the attribution is in danger. Either way, the attribution is imperiled by heterogeneity and improbability. Although Campbell, Corns, Hale and Tweedie have compared the anonymous Latin text to texts by orthodox divines, the secret of the author of De Doctrina Christiana may not lie among the orthodox. In particular, we would like to suggest that Socinianism is one of the keys to the mystery: De Doctrina Christiana is an eclectic work in the broad semi-​Socinian tradition that flourished in Poland, and within that tradition is where we should look for its author, not among arguably more “orthodox” Protestants like Johannes Wolleb, William Ames, Amandus Polanus or John Milton. The provenance of De Doctrina Christiana ends in England, but it may begin in Germany, Poland or Holland. In the course of raising his multi-​faceted objections to the attribution, Bishop Thomas Burgess mentioned a translation of the New Testament by Jeremias Felbinger as the possible source of an unusual translation in De Doctrina Christiana. In this passage, the author of De Doctrina Christiana remarks, “Syriaca versio non Dei, sed Christi ecclesiam scribit: ut Nostra recens Domini ecclesiam” [‘In the Syrian version, not [church of] God, but church of Christ is written: our recent version has church of the Lord’] (173, our translation). Some scholars think the reference to “our recent version” 45 John Shawcross, “Forum: On Christian Doctrine,” Studies in English Literature 32 (1992): 143–​16. See page 160–​61. Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John Hale and Fiona J. Tweedie, Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana (Oxford UP, 2007) 78–​79. 46 Campbell et alii, Milton and the Manuscript, 78–​79.

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refers to Brian Walton’s polyglot Bible of 1657, but Burgess gives reasons to doubt: the Syrian translation in Walton’s Bible was generations old, it was recently re-​published, but it was not recently completed.47 After searching through many translations, Burgess found a similar passage in Jeremias Felbinger’s 1660 translation of the New Testament into German. (Felbinger, in turn, was using the Greek text edited by Etienne de Courcelles, a Remonstrant scholar accused of Socinian tendencies.) Jeremias Felbinger [1613–​87] is not the only possible candidate for the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana we have identified so far, but he seems like a plausible candidate. Felbinger was a character. Earl Morse Wilbur describes him as a Lutheran of German descent who served in the Swedish army and converted to Polish Socinianism.48 The date of his conversion was considered significant enough to be noted in the Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum.49 He transcribed part of a banned book by Servetus and taught school in Poland; he eventually migrated to Holland after the expulsion of Socinians about 1660. Felbinger has been called an 47 Thomas Burgess, Milton Not the Author of the Lately-​Discovered Arian Work, De Doctrina Christiana. Three Discourses, Delivered at the Anniversary Meetings of the Royal Society Literature, In the Years 1826, 1827, and 1828. To Which Contrasted with Milton, and with the Scriptures (London: Thomas Brettell, 1829). See the discourse of 1826, pages 30–​32. 48 Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, Socinianism and Its Antecedents (Boston: Beacon, 1943). As Wilbur explains, Felbinger “became an ardent opponent of Trinitarian views, and suffered much for his boldness in attacking them. He at length came to Amsterdam, where he published several religious works, and translated into German a Socinianizing version of the New Testament by Courcelles, professor at the Remonstrant seminary. But he had become an eclectic in theology, inclined to Arianism, and therefore was denied a pension by the Socinians, and dragged out a miserable life by teaching and correcting proof ” (573). Frank Schulman offers a slightly different account in This Day in Unitarian Universalist History (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2004) 78. “Jeremias Felbinger was born in Bries, Silesia. After serving in the Swedish army, he became headmaster of a school in Coslin, Pomerania, and then a professor of music at Bernstadt, Germany. In 1642 Felbinger converted to an eclectic form of Unitarianism that combined elements of Arianism and Anabaptism. He made his Unitarian views known and fled to Danzig, Poland, before legal action could be taken. He became an assistant to the minister of a Unitarian church as Felbinger eventually settled in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he continued his Unitarian activities. The date and circumstances of his death are unknown.” 49 Christophori Sandii, Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum (Freistadii: Apud Johannem Aconium, 1684) 157–​59. Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography: or Sketches of the Lives and Writings of Distinguished Antitrintarians, 3 volumes (London: E.T. Whitfield, 1850): 3:315.

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Arian, a Socinian and an eclectic, and his theology resembles that of De 50 Doctrina Christiana. He joined the Dutch Collegiant circles where he was welcomed by Mennonites and where he may have been exposed to mortalism and the pantheism of Spinoza.51 Some biographers have even suggested that Felbinger taught Spinoza Latin.52 Milton was outspoken about his beliefs, but so was Felbinger; he ardently proselytized for his vision of the faith: in 1672 he published an appeal to all Christendom, his Epistola ad Christianos. Felbinger wrote a letter congratulating John Biddle, “the father of English Unitarians,” for joining the movement, and he solicited help from Samuel Hartlib and Oliver Cromwell.53 The author (or authors?) of De Doctrina Christiana 50 “Jeremias Felbinger ein Socinianer, oder eigentlich ein Arianer, zu Brieg in Schlesien A. 1616 geboren, bekleidete an verschiedenen Orten Schulstellen, die er aber, sobald man seine Religionsgesinnungen ken en lernte, wider verlassen musste, und ging endlich 1687 nach Amsterdam, wo er sich mit Informiren und Corrigiren kummerlich durchhalf.” [A rough translation follows: “Jeremias Felbinger a Socinian, or rather an Arian, born at Brieg in Silesia in 1616, held places of school in various places, but he had to relinquish his position as soon as his religious beliefs were learned; finally in 1687 he went to Amsterdam, where he supported himself in poverty by doing research[?]‌, teaching[?] and correcting type.”] Anon. “Jeremias Felbinger.” Neue Leipziger Literatur-​zeitung 3–​4 (1808): Column: 776. 51 Andrew C. Fix, Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton: PUP, 1991). 52 Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy. 2nd Edition. London: Duckworth, 1899. 10n. Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: CUP, 2001. See page 364. As for De Doctrina Christiana, several competent Neo-​L atinist scholars have disagreed about its Latinity. J. Donald Cullington and John K. Hale, the brilliant translators of the treatise for Oxford University Press, are convinced that De Doctrina Christiana is authentically Miltonic, but three other well-​qualified Latinists, William B. Hunter, Paul R. Sellin and John J. Mulryan, have argued that the Latin style of the treatise is below Milton’s standard. 53 For Felbinger’s letter to John Biddle, see Jeremias Felbinger, “Exemplum Literarum Jeremiae Felbingeri ad Johannem Biddlelum,” [24 August 1654], in Duas Catechesis: Quarum prioe simpliciter vocari potest Catechesis Scripturalis Posterior, Brevis Catechesis Scripturalis pro Parvulis. . . a Johanne Biddello (n.p.: n.d., 1664) 209–​14. For a brief mention of Felbinger and Samuel Hartlib, see Margarita Stocker and Timothy Raylor, “A New Marvell Manuscript: Cromwellian Patronage and Politics,” English Literary Renaissance 20:1 (Winter 1990): 106–​62. See page 118. For Felbinger’s letter to Oliver Cromwell see, “Serenissime ac Potentissime Domine Protector, Princeps ac Domine Clementissime.” The Hartlib Papers. Letter In Scribal Hand[?]‌, Jeremias Felbinger to Cromwell [29 September 1656] Ref: 54/​ 18A-​19B, Copy at 54/​20. https://​w ww.dhi.ac.uk/​hart​lib/​view?doc​set=​main&docn​a me=​54_​18

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381

mentions an unusual translation of the Bible as “our” translation; perhaps the movement’s translation is meant, but that may be a reference to Felbinger’s German translation of Etienne Courcelles’ Greek text. In the latter years of his life, Felbinger appears to have lived in poverty, and it may have been difficult to publish his works in Holland. John Biddle was busy translating Socinian works from Latin, and he may have acquired one of Felbinger’s manuscripts.54 This might explain the existence of the manuscript in England. The suggestion of Burgess led us to explore the possibility that Felbinger might be a possible author of the treatise. To our surprise, the initial results of stylometric tests were promising.

5. De Doctrina Christiana and Jeremias Felbinger: Stylometric Affinities Having established that sections of De Doctrina Christiana better match the style of Augustine and Bernard than they match that of Milton, we have also tested the treatise against a corpus of likelier texts that includes works by Felbinger. Ideally, we would have chosen to match texts in genre, but perfect texts do not exist. As such, our working corpus is chosen in hopes of approximating texts as near to this goal as possible: alongside the disputed manuscript’s 162 thousand words, omitting the Greek, we have collected a set of 23 additional texts by 11 different authors, totaling 455,208 words. These texts are listed in Tab. 5. Applying the same three independent tests on this new corpus of material characterizes the extent to which Felbinger is, stylistically, a better candidate for authorship.

54 Nigel Smith, “ ‘And if God was one of us,’: Paul Best, John Biddle and Antitrinitarian Heresy in Seventeenth-​Century England.” Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture. Edited by David Loewenstein and John Marshall. (Cambridge: CUP, 2007) 160–​84. See page 182, n. 50. Nigel Smith suggests that Biddle was translating Socinian works.

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Tab. 5:  The candidate corpus includes De Doctrina Christiana and text from 23 documents by 11 authors. The label column serves as a legend for ­figures 6–​8. Text De Doctrina Christiana Biddle Excerpt from Duas Catecheses Downame Excerpt from Praxis Logicae Felbinger Politicae Christianae Praecepta Politica Demonstrationes Christianae Letter to Biddle Letter to Cromwell Doctrina de Deo et Christo et Spiritus Sancto Epistola Freigius Petri Rami Vita Gott Novae Solymae Limborch Preface to Courcelles’ Opera Theologica Milton Poemata Latina Defensio Prima Defensio Secunda Pro Se Defensio Logic Preface to Logic Epistolarum More Fides Publica Contra Calumnias Schlichting Confessio Fide Christianae Stuckey Oratiuncula Wolleb Compendium Theologicae Christianae

Year –​

Label DC

Length 162,798

1664

Bi

2,304

1610

D

846

1648 1648 1653 1654 1656 1657 1672

F.PC F.PP F.DC F.LB F.LC F.DDCS F.E

14,168 3,930 64,848 735 654 5,482 13,962

1574

Fs

1,757

1648

G

87,918

1675

L

3,632

1645 1651 1654 1655 1672 1673 1674

M.Poems M.1 M.2 M.S M.Logic M.PL M.E

11,615 52,473 22,955 26,201 41,662 1,430 10,516

1654

MA

10,055

1642

Sg

5,326

1665

Sy

2,178

1654

W

70,561

Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of DDC

383

First, as Tab. 6 shows, Milton remains a strong contender for a test 55 comparing most frequent words. Even though this criterion for feature selection is not ideally suited for Latin texts, Milton’s texts earn a position among the nearest candidates for six out of ten partitions. But Felbinger’s texts also score well, earning a position among the nearest candidates for nine of ten partitions in that test.

55 As before, we used culling to select only those words appearing in at least 80 % of corpus texts, resulting in 177 features for the candidate corpus.

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Tab. 6:  Most frequent word distances in the candidate corpus. Numbers indicate distances between texts, shown on the left, and columns of each 10 % segment of De Doctrina Christiana. Numbers signify distance from the manuscript’s style, with lower numbers indicating greater similarity. The two nearest candidates are indicated for each partition. When considering most frequent words in the candidate corpus, the manuscript is slightly closer in style to Felbinger’s texts than to Milton’s texts. DC 1 DC 2 DC 3 DC 4 DC 5 DC 6 DC 7 DC 8 DC 9 DC 10 Biddle from Duas Catecheses Downame from Praxis Logicae Felbinger Pol. Christianae Praecepta Politica Dem. Christianae letter to Biddle letter to Cromwell Doctrina de Deo et … Epistola Freigius Petri Rami Vita Gott Novae Solymae Limborch Pref. to Courcelles’ Milton Poemata Latina Defensio Prima Defensio Secunda Pro Se Defensio Logic Preface to Logic Epistolarum More Fides Publica … Schlichting Confess. Fide Christ. Stuckey Oratiuncula Wolleb Compend. Theo. …

1.16

1.34 1.30

1.12 1.16

1.17

1.14

1.21

1.14

1.23

1.51

1.46 1.37

1.42 1.50

1.48

1.42

1.43

1.47

1.46

0.82 1.00 0.83 1.57 1.58 0.93 0.73

0.96 1.09 0.76 1.63 1.59 0.90 0.89

0.70 0.90 0.78 1.53 1.42 0.93 0.70

0.78 1.00 0.75 1.45 1.47 0.89 0.70

0.80 1.02 0.84 1.51 1.51 0.96 0.76

0.65 0.85 0.77 1.46 1.37 0.95 0.66

0.71 0.89 0.78 1.42 1.31 0.93 0.80

0.66 0.85 0.79 1.51 1.32 0.91 0.72

0.72 0.88 0.88 1.50 1.30 0.96 0.86

1.24

1.25 1.13

1.08 1.15

1.19

1.15

1.06

1.09

1.08

0.92

1.01 0.94

0.83 0.90

0.98

0.83

0.82

0.85

0.94

1.00

1.09 1.00

1.00 1.03

1.03

0.93

0.94

0.94

0.94

1.20 0.60 0.71 0.76 0.85 1.32 0.88

1.16 0.72 0.92 0.83 0.96 1.38 1.04

1.07 0.54 0.72 0.72 0.77 1.23 0.87

1.09 0.72 0.86 0.86 1.01 1.31 0.92

1.12 0.80 0.97 0.91 1.01 1.41 1.01

1.04 0.58 0.75 0.75 0.84 1.24 0.86

1.01 0.74 0.86 0.82 1.03 1.29 0.89

1.03 0.67 0.78 0.76 0.96 1.25 0.87

1.03 0.77 0.87 0.87 1.05 1.34 0.96

0.90

1.01 0.96

0.87 0.95

0.99

0.81

0.91

0.87

0.95

0.94

1.02 0.95

0.94 0.80

0.86

0.82

0.78

0.85

0.97

1.16

1.29 1.20

1.12 1.14

1.19

1.08

1.10

1.10

1.16

0.81

0.94 0.77

0.76 0.71

0.75

0.71

0.67 0.70

0.72

0.85 1.00 0.68 1.52 1.51 0.85 0.82

1.11 0.72 0.87 0.82 0.95 1.33 0.98

Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of DDC

385

Second, when considering character quadrigrams, as shown in Tab. 7, Felbinger’s texts are among the nearest two candidates in all ten partitions, while Milton’s works are closest in only four.56 In fact, even when doubling consideration to the four candidates nearest each partition, Felbinger’s texts number 26 out of 40, representing all ten partitions, while Milton’s texts contribute only 8 of the top 40, present in only six of the ten partitions. Wolleb’s Compendium Theologicae Christianae contributes all six remaining top-​four candidates, spanning the final 60 % of the treatise.

56 Again, features were selected for their appearance in 100% of the texts in the candidate corpus, this time yielding 317 character quadrigrams for measurement.

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Table 7:  Character quadrigram distances in the candidate corpus. Numbers indicate distances between texts on the left and each 10% segment of De Doctrina Christiana. The two nearest candidates are indicated for each partition. A consideration of character quadrigrams in the candidate corpus shows the manuscript to be much closer to Felbinger’s texts than to Milton’s texts. DC 1 DC 2 DC 3 DC 4 DC 5 DC 6 DC 7 DC 8 DC 9 DC 10 Biddle from Duas Catecheses Downame from Praxis Logicae Felbinger Pol. Christianae Praecepta Politica Dem. Christianae letter to Biddle letter to Cromwell Doctrina de Deo et … Epistola Freigius Petri Rami Vita Gott Novae Solymae Limborch Pref. to Courcelles … Milton Poemata Latina Defensio Prima Defensio Secunda Pro Se Defensio Logic Preface to Logic Epistolarum More Fides Publica … Schlichting Confess. Fide Christ. Stuckey Oratiuncula Wolleb Compend. Theo. …

1.05

1.29

1.32

1.08

1.15

1.22

1.12

1.13

1.14

1.23

1.47

1.54

1.43

1.36

1.43

1.52

1.4

1.38

1.37

1.36

0.89 1.22 0.80 1.39 1.46 0.84 0.73

1.02 1.31 0.75 1.35 1.51 0.82 0.87

0.94 1.22 0.68 1.35 1.45 0.80 0.80

0.80 1.07 0.74 1.38 1.31 0.81 0.65

0.86 1.23 0.73 1.37 1.38 0.79 0.71

0.91 1.26 0.90 1.48 1.50 0.93 0.82

0.70 1.05 0.83 1.34 1.33 0.86 0.70

0.66 1.03 0.86 1.36 1.34 0.82 0.76

0.75 1.05 0.90 1.30 1.38 0.87 0.74

0.74 1.01 0.89 1.36 1.31 0.90 0.84

1.31

1.47

1.46

1.20

1.32

1.41

1.26

1.25

1.26

1.31

0.91

1.06

1.00

0.76

0.91

0.98

0.86

0.83

0.83

0.86

0.97

1.22

1.14

0.95

1.05

1.06

0.97

0.98

0.97

1.03

1.30 0.71 0.86 0.83 0.93 1.13 0.92

1.34 0.83 1.01 0.90 1.00 1.34 1.01

1.31 0.79 1.03 0.94 1.01 1.35 1.06

1.23 0.61 0.77 0.73 0.85 1.19 0.85

1.32 0.88 1.03 1.00 1.01 1.31 1.10

1.36 0.93 1.13 1.04 1.08 1.39 1.18

1.21 0.77 0.91 0.88 0.91 1.24 1.01

1.26 0.83 1.01 0.93 0.99 1.27 1.09

1.22 0.80 0.94 0.88 0.96 1.24 1.03

1.23 0.81 0.97 0.92 1.07 1.35 1.05

0.96

1.01

1.04

0.89

1.11

1.12

0.97

1.05

0.99

1.01

0.94

0.99

0.87

0.86

0.83

0.98

0.95

0.88

0.94

0.96

1.13

1.23

1.21

1.05

1.22

1.29

1.11

1.18

1.04

1.16

0.88

1.03

0.91

0.79

0.77

0.86 0.73

0.71

0.75

0.82

Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of DDC

387

Finally, testing with features chosen from among part of speech bigrams shows the greatest preference for Felbinger over Milton. Table 8 shows Felbinger’s Demonstrationes Christianae among the texts nearest in style for all ten partitions of the manuscript.57 Only Milton’s idiosyncratic Logic places among the nearest candidate texts, and then only in one of ten partitions. A dendrogram of these results, Fig. 5, shows Milton’s works on the upper branch, while all ten partitions of De Doctrina Christiana cluster on the bottom branch alongside Felbinger’s Demonstrationes Christianae, his Doctrina de Deo et Christo et Spiritus Sancto, and Wolleb’s Compendium Theologicae Christianae.

57 Schmid’s TreeTagger was used once again to tag parts of speech, and bigrams were culled to include only those in 100 % of our candidate texts, yielding 125 part-​of-​ speech bigrams.

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Tab. 8:  Part-​of-​speech bigram distances in the candidate corpus. Numbers indicate distances between texts on the left and each 10 % segment of De Doctrina Christiana. The two nearest candidates are indicated for each partition. Among texts in the candidate corpus, the manuscript seems syntactically more like texts by Felbinger than texts by Milton. DC 1 DC 2 DC 3 DC 4 DC 5 DC 6 DC 7 DC 8 DC 9 DC 10 Biddle from Duas Catecheses Downame from Praxis Logicae Felbinger Pol. Christianae Praecepta Politica Dem. Christianae letter to Biddle letter to Cromwell Doctrina de Deo et Epistola Freigius Petri Rami Vita Gott Novae Solymae Limborch Pref. to Courcelles’ Milton Poemata Latina Defensio Prima Defensio Secunda Pro Se Defensio Logic Preface to Logic Epistolarum More Fides Publica Schlichting Confess. Fide Christ. Stuckey Oratiuncula Wolleb Compend. Theo. …

1.26

1.17

1.09

1.19

1.36

1.54

1.21

1.64

1.52

1.60

1.36

1.27

1.19

1.35

1.31

1.47

1.34

1.46

1.41

1.50

0.88 1.05 0.69 1.28 1.57 0.73 0.84

0.84 0.96 0.68 1.29 1.56 0.78 0.78

0.73 0.88 0.62 1.19 1.48 0.71 0.74

0.83 0.97 0.72 1.26 1.50 0.73 0.85

0.96 1.08 0.66 1.38 1.63 0.76 1.05

1.09 1.23 0.87 1.49 1.79 0.91 1.19

0.77 0.87 0.60 1.23 1.51 0.64 0.80

1.18 1.26 0.92 1.52 1.84 0.96 1.35

1.11 1.18 0.89 1.48 1.78 0.92 1.21

1.19 1.28 0.90 1.54 1.77 0.92 1.37

1.24

1.14

1.05

1.23 1.32

1.42

1.13

1.55

1.48

1.46

1.02

1.00

0.95

1.08 1.20

1.35

0.98

1.46

1.32

1.44

1.14

1.11

1.03

1.18

1.24

1.35

1.05

1.48

1.35

1.48

1.49 0.93 1.16 1.09 0.90 1.12 1.23

1.48 0.84 1.11 1.04 0.74 0.95 1.18

1.31 0.83 1.04 1.04 0.72 0.90 1.16

1.40 0.94 1.16 1.09 0.90 1.08 1.22

1.40 1.06 1.29 1.26 0.90 1.12 1.39

1.47 1.26 1.46 1.40 1.12 1.25 1.54

1.40 0.84 1.07 1.02 0.79 1.03 1.18

1.43 1.33 1.54 1.54 1.14 1.30 1.61

1.38 1.21 1.33 1.37 1.11 1.23 1.45

1.40 1.37 1.49 1.52 1.22 1.32 1.62

1.05

1.02

1.02

1.06 1.19

1.34

1.01

1.43

1.27

1.45

0.88

0.91

0.86

0.96 1.02

1.23

0.86

1.30

1.25

1.27

1.27

1.16

1.12

1.25 1.30

1.38

1.16

1.42

1.32

1.41

0.89

0.80

0.63 0.82 0.72 0.94

0.75

0.88 0.87 0.93

Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of DDC

389

Fig. 5:  A cluster analysis using part-​of-​speech bigrams groups Milton’s texts on one branch and all ten sections of De Doctrina Christiana on the other branch –​highlighted by the dashed box –​along with works by Felbinger and Wolleb. See table 5 for an explanation of labels.

Far more than with the benchmark corpus considered in the first half of this essay, these texts provide context to show that De Doctrina Christiana’s style resembles that of Milton only rarely. Although limitations of genre mean that Milton may be at a disadvantage in any comparison that also considers theological texts, the oddity of the manuscript might itself argue for the unlikelihood of Milton’s authorship. Moreover, in all three independent tests, Felbinger’s works more closely and more consistently match the style and grammar patterns of the disputed work

6. Conclusion In our dissent from orthodoxy, we offer no disrespect to the scholars inclined to disagree with us. In accord with Filippo Falcone, James Ogden, Ernest W. Sullivan, and John Mulryan, we have tried to

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assimilate the shrewd insights of Thomas Burgess, William B. Hunter, Paul Sellin, and Michael Lieb. In closing, we want to acknowledge the insightful work of Fiona Tweedie and Patrick Juola. The work of these researchers provided examples of how we might proceed. Of course, neither Juola nor Tweedie are the slightest bit responsible for our imperfect data, our misguided inferences or technical errors, but we admire their work. We have been working on this project for years: finding and formatting machine readable texts is time-​consuming and labour intensive; working through the analysis takes time and circumspection. We are aware that others will surely test, challenge or refine our efforts, but this joint essay is the current result of our on-​going exploration. Although many scholars still believe that Milton composed De Doctrina Christiana, the evidence for Miltonic authorship is circumstantial, and this treatise appears to be a manuscript composed by others. Both philological research and stylometric analysis suggest that Milton’s authorship is not probable. Although Jeremias Felbinger is a plausible candidate for primary authorship of the treatise, we are still exploring the possibility of finding other candidates: our research is on-​going. The theology and supposed chronology of De Doctrina Christiana contradict the public avowals and the typical modus operandi of John Milton. In addition, several varieties of computational analysis suggest that the style of De Doctrina Christiana does not resemble Milton’s; instead, the text could be an orphaned work by someone else.

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Felbinger, Jeremias. Ad Christianos, Unum altissimum Deum, Patrem Domini ac Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi, secundum Sacras Scripturas Veteris & Novi Testamenti recte agnoscentes, Jeremiae Felbingeri Epistola: In qua Socini & ejus discipulorum errores graviores, suis ipsorum verbis notati, succincte refutantur. Amstelodami, Apud Jocodoum Pluymer, M.D., 1672. —​—​—​. Demonstrationes Christianae, Invictissimis Testimoniis, n.p., 1653. —​— ​—​. “Exemplum Literarum Jeremiae Felbingeri ad Johannem Biddellum” [24 Aug. 1654]. Duae Catecheses: Quarum prior simpliciter vocari potest Catechesis Scripturalis Posterior, Brevis Catechesis Scripturalis pro Parvulis, published by John Biddle, 1664, pp. 209–​14. —​—​—​. Politiciae Christianae Compendium. Vratislava, Baumannianis, 1648. Fischer, Walther. “Defoe und Milton.” Englische Studien, vol. 58, 1924, pp. 213–​27. Fix, Andrew C. Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment. Princeton UP, 1991. Foster, Don. Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective. New York: Henry Holt, 2000. Galili, Tal. “Dendextend: An R package for Visualizing, Adjusting, and Comparing Trees of Hierarchical Clustering.” Bioinformatics, vol. 31, no. 22, July 2015, pp. 3718–​20, doi:10.1093/​bioinformatics/​btv428. Gill, Alexander. A Treatise Concerning the Trinitie of Persons in Unitie of the Deitie. London, Simon Stafford, 1601. Harford, John Scandrett. The Life of Thomas Burgess, D.D. . . ., Late Lord Bishop of Salisbury. London, Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1840. Haskin, Dayton, S.J. “Milton’s Strange Pantheon: The Apparent Tritheism of the De Doctrina Christiana.” Heythrop Journal, vol. 16, 1975, 129–​48. Hawkins, Edward, editor. The Poetical Works of John Milton. . . To which is prefixed, Newton’s Life of Milton. Oxford, W. Baxter, J. Parker and G.B. Whittaker, 1824, 4 vols. Hill, Christopher. “Milton’s Christian Doctrine: Professor William B. Hunter, Bishop Burgess and John Milton.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 34, 1994, pp. 165–​88. Hoover, David L. “Testing Burrows’s Delta.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, vol. 19, no. 4, Nov. 2004, pp. 453–​75.

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Horner, Grant. “The Heresy of John Milton, Calvinist: Reforming the Puritan Poet with Historical Theology.” 2017. Claremont Graduate U, PhD dissertation. Huckabay, Calvin, and David V. Urban, John Milton: An Annotated Bibliography, 1989–​1999. Duquesne UP, 2011. Hunter, William B. “Animadversions upon the Remonstrants’ Defenses against Burgess and Hunter.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–​1900, vol. 34, no. 1, Winter 1994, pp. 195–​203. —​—​—​. “De Doctrina Christiana: Nunc Quo Vadis?” Milton Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, Oct. 2000, pp. 97–​101. —​— ​—​. “Forum: Milton’s Christian Doctrine.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 32, no. 1, 1992, pp. 163–​66. —​— ​—​. “The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 32, no. 1, Winter 1992, pp. 129–​42. —​— ​—​. “The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine: Addenda from the Bishop of Salisbury.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–​1900, vol. 33, no. 1, Winter 1993, pp. 191–​207 — ​— ​—​. “Responses.” Milton Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, May 1999, pp. 31–​37. —​—​—​. Visitation Unimplor’ d: Milton and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana. Duquesne UP, 1998. J. R. “Letter of October 18, 1840 to Mr. Urban.” The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 14, Nov. 1840, pp. 469–​72. Jablonski, Steven. “Ham’s Vicious Race: Slavery and John Milton.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 37, no. 1, 1997, pp. 173–​90. “Jeremias Felbinger.” Neue Leipziger Literaturzeitung, vol. 3–​4, 1808, Column: 776. Johnson, Samuel. “Abraham Cowley.” Lives of the English Poets, edited by George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols., Georg Olms, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 1–​69. Originally published by Oxford, Clarendon, 1905. —​— ​—​. “John Milton.” Lives of the English Poets, edited by George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols., Georg Olms, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 84–​200. Originally published by Oxford, Clarendon, 1905. Juola, Patrick. “The Rowling Case: A Proposed Standard Analytic Protocol for Authorship Questions.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, vol. 30, no. 1, Oct. 2015, pp. i100–​i113.

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Juola, Patrick, John Sofko, and Patrick Brennan. “A Prototype for Authorship Attribution Studies.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, vol. 21, no. 2, Apr. 2006, pp. 169–​78. Kelley, Maurice. “The Provenance of John Milton’s Christian Doctrine: A Reply to William B. Hunter.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 34, 1994, pp. 153–​63. —​—​—​. This Great Argument: A Study of Milton’s De Doctrina Christiana as a Gloss on Paradise Lost. Princeton UP, 1941. Kerr, Jason. “Shifting Perspectives on Law in De Doctrina Christiana: A Response to Filippo Falcone.” Connotations, vol. 28, 2019, pp. 129–​41. www.conno​tati​ons.de/​lat​est-​additi​ons/​. Kestemont, Mike. “Function Words in Authorship Attribution: From Black Magic to Theory?” 27 Apr. 2014. Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Literature, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2014, pp. 59–​66. Leslie, Charles. The History of Sin and Heresie Attempted. London, Printed for H. Hindmarsh, 1698. Lewalski, Barbara K. “Forum: Milton’s Christian Doctrine.” Studies in English Literature, vol. 32, 1992, pp. 143–​54. —​— ​—​. “Milton and De Doctrina Christiana: Evidences of Authorship.” Milton Studies, vol. 36, 1998, pp. 203–​28. Lieb, Michael. “De Doctrina Christiana and the Question of Authorship.” Milton Studies, vol. 41, 2002, pp. 177–​230. —​— ​—​. “Milton and the Socinian Heresy.” Milton and the Grounds of Contention, edited by Mark R. Kelley, Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross, Duquesne UP, 2003, pp. 234–​83. Low, Anthony. The Blaze of Noon: A Reading Samson Agonistes. Columbia UP, 1974. Maltzahn, N[icholas] von. “Review of Visitation Unimplor’ d: Milton and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana By William B. Hunter.” Review of English Studies, vol. 51, no. 202, May 2000, pp. 282–​84. McCarthy, Eugene B. “Defoe, Milton and Heresy.” Milton Newsletter, vol. 3, no. 4, 1969, pp. 71–​73. McDill, Joseph Moody. Milton and the Pattern of Calvinism. Nashville, Privately Printed, 1971.

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McLachlan, H. The Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke and Newton. Manchester UP, 1941. Miller, Leo. John Milton Among the Polygamophiles. Loewenthal Press, 1974. Milton, John. Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Yale UP, 1953–​1982, 8 vols. —​—​—​. De Doctrina Christiana. The Complete Works of John Milton, vol. 8, edited by John K. Hale and J. Donald Cullington, Oxford UP, 2012, 2 vols. —​—​—​. The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Henry John Todd, London, R. Johnson et alia, 1809, 7 vols. —​—​—​. The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Edward Hawkins, Oxford, W. Baxter, 1824, 4 vols. —​—​—​. The Works of John Milton. General editor, Frank Allen Patterson, Columbia UP, 1932–​1938, 22 vols. Morris, Joseph William. John Milton: A Vindication, Especially from the Charge of Arianism. London, Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1862. Mosteller, Frederick, and David L. Wallace. “Inference in an Authorship Problem.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 58, no. 302, June 1963, pp. 275–309. Mostrous, Alexi. “JK Rowling Unmasked as Author of Bestselling Crime Novel.” The Times, 15 July 2013, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jk-rowlingunmasked-as-author-of-bestselling-crime-novel-xdmzw0c3zsw. Mulryan, John. “Review of John Milton. De Doctrina Christiana. Volume VIII of The Complete Works of John Milton.” Seventeenth-​Century News, vol. 71, no. 3, 2013, pp. 81–​84. Das Neue Testament Treulich aus dem Griechischen ins Deutsche übersetzet. Translated by Jeremias Felbinger, Amsterdam, Christoff Cunraden, 1660. Nadler, Steven. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge UP, 2001. Newton, Thomas, ed. “The Life of Milton.” Paradise Lost, A Poem in Twelve Books by John Milton, with The Life of John Milton. 2nd ed., London, J. and R. Tonson, 1750. Nyquist, Mary. “Equiano, Satanism and Slavery.” Milton Now, edited by Catherine Gray and Erin Murphy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 215–​4 6. Ogden, James. John Milton’s Literary Reputation: A Study in Editing, Criticism, and Taste, Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.

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—​ —​ —​ . “Dissident Voices: Early-​ Nineteenth-​ Century Skeptics of the Attribution of De Doctrina Christiana to John Milton.” Convention of the Modern Language Association, 12 Jan. 2014, Chicago. —​—​—​. “The History of Britain: Milton’s Casual Disparagement of ‘Arian Doctrine’ in 1670.” Biennial Conference on John Milton, 16 Oct. 2015, Murfreesboro, TN. —​— ​—​. “John Milton and the Struggle against Slavery.” Biennial 2005 Conference on John Milton, 20 Oct. 2005, Murfreesboro, TN. —​— ​—​. “John Milton and the Struggle for Human Rights.” Milton, Rights and Liberties, edited by Christophe Tournu and Neil Forsyth, Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 21–​30. —​— ​—​. “Some of the Neglected 19th Century Skeptics of Milton’s Alleged Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana.” Biennial Conference on John Milton, 14 Oct. 2011, Murfreesboro, TN. —​— ​—​. “The Spear of Ithuriel: Milton Touching Slavery.” Conference on Milton, 17 Oct. 2009, Murfreesboro, TN. —​— ​—​. “The Transmogrification of John Milton.” 2017 Conference on John Milton, 14 Oct. 2017, Birmingham, AL. Wilson, Hugh F., and James Clawson. “Another Candidate for the Primary Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana, the Treatise Currently Attributed to John Milton.” Twelfth International Milton Symposium [IMS12], 19 June 2019, Strasbourg. —​— ​—​. “Considering Other Candidates for the Primary Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana, the Treatise Currently Attributed to Milton.” 2019 Conference on John Milton, 18 Oct. 2019, Birmingham, AL. Wittreich, Joseph. “ ‘From a Small Seed of History’: Toward a Reception History of Paradise Lost.” Modern Philology, vol. 112, no. 3, Feb. 2015, pp. 569–​89. Zipf, George Kingsley. Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Addison-​Wesley, 1949.

Part VII Reception Studies

“J’ai cru servir la littérature, j’ai désiré de bien mériter de la patrie” –​A Study of Fidelity in Translation as Viewed in the Case of Abbé Leroy’s Paradis perdu (1755) Christophe Tournu

When the world-​famous romantic figure, François-​René de Chateaubriand published what is reputed to be the greatest French translation of Paradise Lost in 1836, he wrote he had undertaken “a literal translation in the full force of the term.” Thus, he could not deviate from the text, change, suppress or add anything to the original. By so doing, Chateaubriand hoped he was making another revolution, after the political Revolution of 1789 (a revolution he was not really fond of) –​that is “a revolution in the manner of translating”. What did he mean? Contrary to what his predecessors had been doing (Dupré de St Maur, 1729, du Bocage, 1748, Racine, 1755, Abbé Leroy, 1775, Beaulaton, 1778, Mosneron de Launay, 1786, Luneau de Boisjermain, 1784, 1797–​98, Delille, 1805, Salgues, 1807, Deloynes d’Autroche, 1808, Delatour de Pernes, 1813), he did not privilege the target language but instead allowed the source language to appear in the translated text. As the Romantics brought literalism back into fashion in the nineteenth-​century, under the influence of the German tradition, “seeking to transfer the creative power of great writers of other languages into their own,” Chateaubriand “used resources of the target language that were closest to those of the source language1,” thus infusing English into French. That’s why his own translation sounds unFrench, both in the vocabulary and the syntactical construction. It was revolutionary at the time, because the French language was thought to be the best in the world (due to its clarity), and, as the French Revolution was to extend to all corners of the earth and topple monarchies, the French language was expected to free the whole of mankind from its servitude. 1 Mona Baker, Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, London and New York, Routledge, 1998; see “French tradition”, p. 413.

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I  Leroy’s Approach to Translation What all French translations prior to Chateaubriand had in common was the endeavour to naturalize Milton, to strip him of his foreignness, and to assimilate him into French literature. Paradise Lost was to be made palatable to the goût de la nation [“the taste of the nation”], a phrase coined by Voltaire in his Essay on Epick Poetry (first published in English in 1727). Whatever was alien to French culture was either to be suppressed or altered. The first complete translation into verse was the work of Abbé Le Roy (1775), which is mocked by Chateaubriand in his Remarques prefacing his own translation: Everyone, I know, claims to give an exact translation: maybe I resemble that good abbot Leroy, priest of Saint-​Herbland in Rouen and the King’s Preacher: he too translated Milton and, what’s more, in verse! He says: “As for our translation, its main merit, as we have already said, is to be faithful.” And look how “faithful,” as he claims. In the notes to Bk VII, we read: “I have substituted this to the fable of Bellerophon, as I proposed to strip (i.e. purge) this work of fables … I have adapted Milton’s complaints so that they could suit a man of merit … Here I have changed or suppressed a long account of the adventures of Orpheus, put to death by the Bacchantes on the Rhodopes.” Changing or suppressing the admirable passage in which Milton compares himself to Orpheus torn apart by his enemies. The Muse could not defend her son!2 2 Chateaubriand, Œuvres complètes (dir. Béatrice Didier), John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674), Le Paradis perdu (1836). Translation by Chateaubriand. Bilingual edition, introduction and notes by Christophe Tournu. 2 vol. Paris : Honoré Champion, « Textes de littérature moderne et contemporaine », n° 219, 2021 ; 1 : 144–​45 : « Tout le monde, je le sais, a la prétention d’exactitude: je ressemble peut-​être à ce bon abbé Leroy, curé de Saint-​Herbland de Rouen et prédicateur du roi: lui aussi a traduit Milton, et en vers! Il dit : « Pour ce qui est de notre traduction, son principal mérite, comme nous l’avons dit, c’est d’ être fidèle. » » « Or voici comme il est fidèle, de son propre aveu. Dans les notes du VIIe chant, on lit : « J’ai substitué ceci à la fable de Bellérophon, m’étant proposé d’en purger cet ouvrage. … J’ai adapté, au reste, les plaintes de Milton de façon qu’elles puissent convenir encore plus à un homme de mérite … Ici j’ai changé ou retranché un long récit de l’aventure d’Orphée, mis à mort par les Bacchantes sur le mont Rhodope. » » « Changer ou retrancher l’admirable passage où Milton se compare à Orphée déchiré par ses ennemis ! « La Muse ne put défendre son fils ! » »

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In the following paper, I suggest we should study the different kind 3 of changes Abbé Le Roy made to Milton’s original text. Not only did he change or suppress passages, as Chateaubriand accuses him, but he rewrote Paradise Lost as he saw fit both for his audience, and for his own place and times. Traduire Milton en vers ! Mais n’est-​ce pas entreprise peut-​être impossible ? Notre Poésie foible, timide, circonspecte, surchargée d’entraves, peut-​ elle atteindre à l’élévation de l’Auteur Anglois, hardi, fier, dédaignant les règles, débarrassé même du joug pesant & monotone de la rime ? Comment faire passer heureusement dans notre langue ses conceptions bizarres, & ses extravagances ? Comment orner tant d’endroits secs & vides, tant de passages empreints du plus mauvais goût, puisqu’il faut trancher le mot ? Mais d’un autre côté, quelle profusion de richesses poétiques ne se trouve pas dans le Paradis perdu ? Et cette délicieuse description d’Eden & ces discours touchans d’Adam & d’Eve, & leur sublime Cantique de louanges, & ce récit de la création de l’Univers, & la tentation d’Eve, mille autres traits encore ne décelent-​ils pas l’imagination la plus féconde, la plus variée, le ton de la nature, la voix du sentiment, tous les charmes enfin qui font du ressort de la poéfie4 ?

These words were written by a commentator of the second French verse translation of Paradise Lost by Gaspard Antoine Beaulaton (1778); he especially points out the impossibility of translating Milton’s poetry into verse. For French poetry, he argues, is “feeble, timid, circumspect, and restricted with many shackles,” whereas Milton is “bold, proud, 3 Abbé Le Roy’s translation is merely touched upon in Jean Gillet, Le Paradis perdu dans la littérature française de Voltaire à Chateaubriand, Paris, Klincksieck, 1975, pp. 358–​60. 4 Affiches, Annonces, et Avis divers pour l’année M. DCC. LXXIX, p. 145. Trente-​ septième feuille hebdomadaire. Du Mercredi 16 septembre 1778. The full passage could be rendred into English as: “Translating Milton into verse! But isn’t this perhaps an impossible undertaking? Can our feeble, timid, circumspect Poetry, overloaded with shackles, reach the elevation of the English Author, bold, proud, disdainful of rules, and even free from the heavy & monotonous yoke of rhyme? To be plain, how can we happily convey in our language his bizarre conceptions, & his extravagances? How can we adorn so many dry & empty places, so many passages imbued with the worst taste? But on the other hand, what profusion of poetic riches is not to be found in Paradise Lost? And this delicious description of Eden & these touching speeches of Adam & Eve, & their sublime Song of Praise, & this account of the creation of the Universe, & the temptation of Eve, and a thousand other features, do they not reveal the most fertile imagination, the most varied, the tone of nature, the voice of feeling, all the charms that pertain to poetry…”.

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disdainful of rules, and even freed from the heavy yoke of rhyme.” It is impossible to translate Milton’s “bizarre thoughts & his extravagances” into French. “On the other hand, there are so many arid & empty verses, and passages full of bad taste” that cannot be embellished so as to pass into the French language. These criticisms had already been made by Voltaire, in his Essay upon Epick Poetry (1727, 1733); they were further expressed by Alexander Pope and Joseph Addison in The Spectator. Addison’s remarks were prefixed to the first two French translations (1729, 1755). What does Abbé Le Roy himself think about translating Milton? Let us say a few words about the translator. Henri-​Claude-​Marie Le Roy was born in Elbeuf in 1720 and he died in 1779, aged 59. Thus he published his translation of Paradise Lost a mere four years before his death, which cut short his promise to his “enlightened licensor,” Dom Blanchard, a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Fécamp, to make some changes in a revised edition.5 Abbé Le Roy was a priest (curé of the parish of St. Herbland), a member of the Académie des sciences, belles lettres et arts de Rouen, along with Anne-​Marie du Bocage, Abbé Yart (Essai sur la poésie angloise), and a few others, and of the Académie de l’Immaculée Conception in Rouen. In Michaud’s Biographie universelle (1842), he is described as a great orator, and he subsequently became the King’s (Louis XV) Official Preacher, falling into disrepute when his writings were published because the energy he displayed in his oral performance could no longer be perceived in books. In a 24-​page preface, he expounds the difficult task of translating: Traduire en effet, peut être, à certains égards, plus difficile que composer : il est plus doux, me semble-​t-​il, d’être le maître de son propre génie que de se rendre l’esclave de celui d’autrui (v-​vi). [It is, to some extent, more difficult to translate than to compose. It is better to be the master of one’s own genius than the servant of someone else’s.]

This can be understood if we remember that Le Roy was “a man full of imagination”. Translation becomes all the more difficult if we pass from English into French, or from French to English. Leroy underlines the differences between the two languages:

5 « Nous réservons pour une autre edition quelques variantes » (Le Roy, II, 317).

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But to translate from a more fertile language, &, if I dare say so, a warmer one, into another one, no doubt more delicate, but also poorer & weaker: but to translate in rhyme necessarily constrained a free & non-​rhyming poetry: but to translate, under natural images, totally alien thoughts & expressions, is to be enslaved in all directions, hampered in every way, and finally tightened in the most difficult obstacles: when it is necessary to try in turn to associate together accuracy & elegance, precision & amenity, the useful & the pleasant, the naive & the sublime, the solid & the brilliant, finally the phlegm of reason & the warmth of verve. Moreover, any connoisseur will know that the two languages, if I dare say so, are no more alike than the two peoples: the English language is nervous, tight, pompous, emphatic; the French language is numerous, diffuse, flowery, harmonious; the former expresses many things in a few words, whereas the latter, to express one thing, is often forced to pile up several words; one has very rich & very convenient compounds, the other has prolix circumlocutions: one is more of the character of Sparta, the other more of that of Athens: & the two nations, perhaps, agree no more on their way of speaking than on their way of thinking, & of feeling. (My own translation)6

French is “a more delicate, but a poorer & weaker language,” whereas English is “a richer & warmer language.” So, when we translate from English into French, we lose much of the genius of the original language. The difference is not limited to a linguistic phenomenon, though. Not only do the two languages differ, but the two peoples across the Channel also differ. “The two nations, perhaps, agree no more on their way of speaking than on their way of thinking, & of feeling”.

6 « Mais traduire d’une langue plus féconde, &, si j’ose le dire, plus chaleureuse, dans une autre plus délicate sans doute, mais aussi plus pauvre & plus foible : mais traduire en rime nécessairement contraintes une poésie libre & non rimée : mais traduire sous des images naturelles des pensées, des expressions, totalement étrangeres : c’est être asservi dans tous les sens, gêné sous tous les rapports, enfin resserré dans les plus dures entraves : quand il faut tour à tour tâcher d’associer ensemble l’exactitude & l’élégance, la précision & l’aménité, l’utile & l’agréable, le naïf & le sublime, le solide & le brillant, enfin le flegme de la raison & la chaleur de la verve. De plus, tout connoisseur saura que les deux langues, si j’ose le dire, ne se ressemblent pas plus que les deux peuples : l’Anglois est nerveux, serré, pompeux, emphatique : le François nombreux, diffus, fleuri, harmonieux ; celui-​là exprime en peu de mots bien des choses, celui-​ci pour exprimer une chose est souvent forcé d’entasser plusieurs mots ; l’un a des composés très-​riches & très-​commodes, l’autre de prolixe circonlocutions : l’un tient plus du caractère de Sparte, l’autre davantage de celui d’Athènes : & les deux Nations ne sont pas plus d’accord peut-​être sur la maniere de parler, que sur celle de penser, & de sentir. » (Leroy I, pp. vi–​vii)

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That being said, which is a general reflection, Leroy comes to his own work, and lays the stress on the obstacles he met when he translated –​“the thorns,” which Madame Du Bocage eluded in her Paradis terrestre. The task, he repeats, was labour-​intensive and time-​consuming. Leroy is anxious about the reception of his work by the public. That’s why he enumerates the guiding principles of his work.

1. The translator is not a poet. That is, he is not concerned with inventio, his job is mechanically to put into rhymed verse (alexandrines, known as French verse) what he finds in the original text. 2. The translator does not endorse the views expressed in the poem. This is especially true with Milton’s opinions, which he describes as “fairly enough deficient,” sometimes “erroneous” or “foolhardy”. Moreover, It should be known that Milton, an admirable poet, was a mediocre philosopher, a stubborn Protestant, a turbulent Republican: that he wrote in stormy times, that he lived in close contact with Puritans, fanatical sectarians, that he even sided, to the shame of his mind & heart, with the rebels: in a word, that he was no more a friend of the throne than he was a friend of the altar.7

Le Roy warns the reader: Milton was “an enemy of the altar and throne, a poor philosopher, a strong-​headed Protestant, and a fiery Republican” but he was also “an admirable poet.” The context of his writing has also got to be considered: the times in which Milton lived were stormy, and Milton himself was bound to the Puritans, whom Catholic Le Roy sees as “fanatic sectaries,” and Milton shamefully sided with the rebels. Then a translator must respect the author’s style, which can be “refined or rectified in some places, but not changed or supplemented.” It would be disguising the author (i.e., his shortcomings), not copying him: « On ne peut raisonnablement demander … plus d’élégance au traducteur, plus d’aménité, plus de vraie poésie, qu’il ne s’en trouve dans

7

My own translation. Cf. « On doit savoir que Milton, Poëte admirable, étoit philosophe médiocre, protestant entêté, républicain turbulent : qu’il a écrit en des temps orageux, qu’il a vécu intimement lié avec des Puritains, Sectaires fanatiques, qu’il s’est même rangé, à la honte de son esprit & de son cœur, du côté des rebelles : en un mot, qu’il n’étoit pas plus ami du trône que de l’autel. » (Leroy I, p. x)

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le Poëte lui-​même. »8 [One cannot reasonably ask … more elegance from the translator, more grace, more true poetry, than is found in the Poet himself.] Last but not least, the defects of the poem should not be imputed to the translator, and to Leroy in particular, because he says he has endeavoured to “preserve decency,” “respect religion,” and as he could not but “conceive high thoughts of verisimilitude,” he was led to prune Milton’s text of some fabled passages. Yet, comparing himself to a painter, he insists on “the translator’s fidelity” in reproducing the original: « … [le] traducteur ne donne qu’une foible copie d’un tableau original, où parmi les plus brillantes couleurs peuvent se trouver des ombres, & qui pis est, des chimeres. »9 [The translator gives only a feeble copy of an original painting, where among the most brilliant colours can be found shades, & what is worse, chimeras.] In some cases, Leroy felt he had the duty to warn the reader, in footnotes, against what he calls the errors of Milton: « Je serai le premier à avertir de bonne foi le lecteur en marge de ce qu’il pourroit trouver de répréhensible dans le Poëte. »10 [I will be the first to warn the reader in good faith about what he may find reprehensible in the Poet].

II Leroy’s Practice of Translation Let us consider some figures and statistics. Leroy’s verse translation is not a condensed version of Milton’s text, but an extended version. Indeed, his own text contains 2,731 more verses than the original text. It is one fourth longer (25,84 %). If we look closer, we can notice a major fact: all the books without exception have been extended in the French version. While Bk. 1 and Bk. 12 have been considerably enlarged (roughly 40 %), as well as Bk. 8 (over 32 %), the least augmented book is Bk. 3 (8.62 %), which may be no wonder as the translator is ill at ease with rendering God’s “rather inappropriate theological dissertations.”11 Consequently, he abridges them.

8 9 10 11

Leroy I, pp. xi–​xii. Leroy I, pp. xi–​xii. Leroy I, p. xxiii. « Les dissertations théologiques assez déplacées du Père éternel. » (Id)

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Number of verses in Le Roy (1775) vs. Milton (1674) Bk. N.

Le Roy

Milton

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Total

1122 1178 806 1322 1174 1084 798 866 1506 1402 1136 902 13,296

798 1055 742 1015 907 912 640 653 1189 1104 901 649 10,565

Difference (nb. of verses) 324 123 64 267 267 172 158 213 317 298 235 253 2731

Percentage (+​) 40.60 11.65 8.62 26.30 29.43 18.85 24.68 32.61 26.66 26.99 26.08 38.98 25.84

The French version is 25 % longer than the English text because French has fewer resources than English and uses circumlocutions to render images, whereas English is more direct and expressive. This is all the more striking as Leroy deletes many passages. Chateaubriand did not bother to explain why Le Roy did so. The paragraphs he suppressed were marked with four stars (asterisks) and fall into three categories: The first are fabulous passages, that is, taken from pagan mythology. For example, in Bk. 2, where the fury of some of the evil spirits is compared to the rage Hercules displayed before he died (2: 542–​46), the simile is suppressed in Leroy (I, p. 79).12 Another example is when Satan 12 This fabulous story is loosely put into verses in the notes, Leroy, I, p. 105. Long after returning victorious from Oechalia with Iole, the defeated king’s daughter, Hercules found himself suffering the pangs of agony. In fact, he was wearing the poisonous shirt which his wife, Deianira, in jealousy of his new mistress, had sent him through his servant, Lichades, and which he could not pull off without pulling off his skin. To end his suffering and gain immortality, he uprooted pines for

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embarks on his perilous voyage, he is described as more endangered than voyagers upon the ship Argo on their quest to obtain the Golden Fleece, or than Ulysses when he passed the treacherous whirlpool Charybdis (2: 592–​94). These comparisons drawn from ancient literature are cut in Leroy’s translation.13 When Satan discovers the beauties of Paradise in Bk. 4 (268–​85), Eden is compared to fabulous places: Enna, in Sicily; Orontes, in Syria; the Castalian Spring, near Delphi; the isle of Nysa, where Bacchus was brought up; and Amara, in Ethiopia. This eighteen-​line passage is translated in twenty-​four verses in the endnotes, but does not appear in the main body of the text. The translator explains he rejected the whole passage on the authority of Richard Bentley, in his 1732 edition of Paradise Lost.14 Later, Milton’s comparisons of Eve’s couch with Pan’s or Sylvan’s (705–​08) are also suppressed, through translated in the notes. Leroy wanted thereby to show his readers he had not tried to elude the difficulty of translating. The comparison of Adam and Eve to Jupiter and Juno, on the one hand (4: 399–​502), and to Deucalion and Pyrrha, on the other hand (11: 10–​14), are also suppressed because divine characters cannot be reviled and compared to fabulous characters.15 Milton’s text is also purged of the passage on the fable of Orpheus being put to death by the Bacchantes (7: 32–​38; Leroy II, p. 3, p. 34), as well as of “a rather misplaced passage” drawn from Homer and Virgil at the opening of Bk. 9, though the verses in question (14–​19) are translated in the book endnotes (Leroy II, p. 147). The comparison of the cherub’s faces with Janus and their eyes “more numerous then those /​ Of Argus” (11: 129–​33) is described as “crazy” and therefore suppressed (Leroy II, p. 229, notes, pp. 269–​70) If Eve’s comparison to Pandora (4: 714–​19; Leroy I, pp. 212–​13) is also dismissed, we learn something from the deletion of another comparison in Bk. 5 (379–​85):

his own pyre and, when he realized the gift he had received was lethal, he flung Lichades into the Euboean Sea. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Sophocles’s Trachiniae, and Seneca’s Hercules Furens. 13 The passage is nevertheless translated in the notes (Leroy I, p. 109). 14 « Cette tirade, que j’ai négligemment traduite, est, à bon droit, rejettée par Bentley. » (Leroy I, p. 209) [This tirade, which I carelessly translated, is rightly rejected by Bentley]. 15 See Leroy I, p. 178, and notes, pp. 210–​11; II, p. 224, and notes, p. 269.

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A leurs regards s’y montre un objet plus charmant, Eve dont la beauté faisoit tout l’ornement. **** Elle se tint debout, honorant sa présence De son Hôte attentif à sa seule innocence : Aucun voile étendu ne couvroit ses attraits, Mais de la vertu même elle avait tous les traits : Nulle pensée impure, & nul désir coupable N’altéroient de son teint le coloris aimable. (Leroy I, p. 237) Let us compare the original version to Leroy’s translation put into English: … but Eve

To their eyes appear a more charming object,

Undeckt, save with her self more lovely fair

Eve, whose beauty was all the ornament. ****

Then Wood-​Nymph, or the fairest Goddess feign’d

She stood, honoring the presence

Of three that in Mount Ida naked strove,

Of her Host attentive to her innocence alone:

Stood to entertain her guest from Heav’n; no vaile

No veil spread over her charms,

Shee needed, Vertue-​proof, no thought infirme

But of virtue itself she had all the features:

Alterd her cheek.

No impure thoughts, no guilty desires,

(5: 379–​85)

Altered the friendly colour of her complexion. (My own translation)

In his notes, Leroy justifies the cut: **** J’ai retranché ici une comparaison fabuleuse à l’excès exprimée dans ces quatre vers : Plus parée en effet de ses propres richesses Que les Nymphes des bois, ou les trois Déesses Qui sur le mont Ida disputerent le prix,

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Et montrerent sans fard leurs charmes à Pâris Ce n’est ni juste, ni décent, ni en tout bien admirable. (Leroy I, p. 268) [**** Here I’ve cut out an excessively fabulous comparison expressed in these four verses: More adorned indeed with her own graces Than the Wood Nymphs, or the three Goddesses Who on Mount Ida competed for the prize, And openly showed their charms to Paris. It’s neither fair nor decent, and not even remotely admirable]. The second category of deleted passages concerns geographical names and technical terms whereby Leroy thought Milton displayed his erudition. Hence the names of different lands of the Ammonite kingdom where Moloch was worshipped (1: 396–​99) are suppressed,16 as well as the names of places related to another god, Chemosh, revered in the neighbouring Kingdom of Moab (v. 407–​11).17 In Bk. 3, when Satan voyages through space to the Sun (573–​76): Milton ajoute ici, assez hors de propos, qu’il est douteux si Satan prit pour se rendre au globe du Soleil, le centre ou l’excentrique, la longitude ou la diagonale, &c. J’ai cru devoir supprimer cette érudition… (Leroy I, pp. 150–​51) [Milton adds here, rather irrelevantly, that it is doubtful whether Satan took the center or the eccentric, the longitude or the diagonal, &c. to get to the globe of the Sun. I thought I had to suppress this erudition…]

Hence he merely says: “Il fut frappé sur-​tout du Soleil radieux /​Et c’est-​ là qu’il va tendre à travers les Cieux” (Leroy I, p. 137) [He was above

16 Him the Ammonite Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. (1 : 396–​99) 17 From Aroar to Nebo, and the wild Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Horonaim, Seons Realm, beyond The flowry Dale of Sibma clad with Vines, And Eleale to th’ Asphaltick Pool. (407–​11) Leroy’s translation stops at v. 406 and skips to v. 412. (Leroy I, p. 20).

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all struck by the radiant Sun /​And thither will he shoot through the Heavens]. Leroy also suppresses the passage on the seven planets in Bk. 3 (481–​83) as “hors-​d ’oeuvres de savantisme” [“outworks of savantism”], but thought he had to translate a reputedly difficult passage on the philosopher’s stone even though, according to him, “the author makes a pompous display of rather unintelligible chemical terms & operations” (I, p. 134, p. 138, notes, p. 150). Sometimes he translates in his notes what he has omitted to translate in the text –​e. g., when Satan roams through the earthly paradise in search of an animal in which he could hide to seduce our first parents: … Sea he had searcht and Land From Eden over Pontus, and the Poole Mæotis, up beyond the River Ob; Downward as farr Antartic; and in length West from Orontes to the Ocean barr’d At Darien, thence to the Land where flowes Ganges and Indus (9: 75–​82) Leroy sums the journey in two verses: « Il avoit parcouru les terres & les mers, /​Des bords du Paradis arpentant l’Univers **** » (2, p. 91) [He had travelled across land & sea, /​From the edges of Paradise surveying the Universe], and he justifies his own cut: “Here I have cut a tasteless Geographical description, which Bentley rejects as spurious, and which was certainly inserted by a foreign hand.”18 Another example is in the suppression of “a long comparison which is out of line with the rest,” in Bk. 10 (431–​36), “& which shows the poet’s obstinacy to display his knowledge of history, geography, and learning, often wildly”

18

See Leroy 2, pp. 148–​49 : « Il vit le Pont-​Euxin, les Palus-​Mœtides, /​Et du fleuve d’Oby les rivages arides, /​Tantôt du pôle Arctique à l’Antarctique allant, /​Et tantôt transporté du Levant au Couchant : /​D’Oronte il rencontra la célèbre rivière, /​ Darienne des mers la fameuse barrière, /​Puis ces vastes climats au soleil exposés, /​Ces pays par l’Indus & le Gange arrosés. » [He saw the Pont-​Euxin, the Palus-​ Mœtides, /​And the arid shores of the river Oby, /​Sometimes going from the Arctic pole to the Antarctic, /​And sometimes transported from the East to the West: /​ Of Orontes he met the famous river, /​Of the Darien sea the famous barrier, /​Then these vast climates in the sun exposed, /​These countries by the Indus & the Ganges watered].

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(my translation). The original six verses are translated into ten verses (II, notes, 216–​17). The third category is about decency, or puerile reflections: for example, Bk. 1: v. 575–​87 are dismissed as “purely imaginary facts”; Milton, Leroy argues, “had a bit spoiled his imagination by reading fictional stories in his youth” (Leroy I, p. 51), and he consequently encapsulates his dozen verses into just two lines: « Les Héros de l’histoire ou les Dieux de la fable, /​Aux belliqueux Esprits n’ont rien de comparable. » (I, p. 29) [The heroes of history or the gods of fable, /​To the warlike spirits have nothing to compare]. The Ophion and Eurynome story in Bk. 10: 579–​ 84, being “unbearable,” is utterly removed (II, p. 186; notes, pp. 217–​ 18); in Bk. 11, when Adam sees Abel sacrificing the first-​born of his flock, “The Inwards and thir Fat” (439), being a “disgusting image,” is dropped (II, 243, notes, p. 271). Satan’s incestuous relationship with Sin (384) disappears, and the verse reads: « Mes enfants. » [My children] (II, p. 177).19 Leroy also suppresses some of Milton’s puns; for instance, Bk. 10, “by wondrous Art /​Pontifical” (312–​13) is not only about bridge-​building, but links the Pope to Sin, Death, and Hell. The papal reference is erased and the passage reads “Par un prodigieux & magique artifice” (Leroy II, p. 173; notes, p. 215) [by a prodigious & magic artifice]. In the same book, man is not tempted with “an Apple” (487), but with « un seul fruit » [one fruit], and Satan’s mockery is deleted (p. 181; notes, p. 217). In Bk. 5, Adam and Raphael eat and do not fear lest their meal should get cold (395–​96). This expression is described as “really childish” (Leroy I, 269), and therefore suppressed (Id., p. 237). Moreover, the angel’s discourse on digestion, being unintelligible, is also rejected: « Quel galimatias ! » [What a hodgepodge!], Leroy exclaims (I, p. 269). The whole paragraph is rewritten in plain form. In Bk. 11, when God asks Michael “to drive out the sinful Pair” from Paradise “Least … all my Trees [prove] thir prey” (124), Leroy says: “Milton should have spared to put such a childish thought into God’s mouth” and translates: « Il pilleroient mes fruits. » (II, p. 224) [They might plunder my fruits].20

19 « Belle généalogie ! à supprimer. » What a nice genealogy! To be suppressed. (Leroy II, p. 216) 20 « Tous mes arbres seroient leur proie, pensée puérile que le Poëte aurait dû épargner au Père éternel. » (Leroy II, p. 269).

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In Bk. 8, the incongruous passage in which man’s sexual pleasure is “too expressively & certainly too indelicately” compared to that of the angels (615–​17) is nevertheless translated “with all possible decency,” as well as the angel’s answer to Adam’s question (622–​24): Love not the heav’nly Spirits, and how thir Love Express they, by looks onely, or do they mix Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch? (8: 615–​17) Aiment-​ils comme nous les célestes Esprits ? Si quelquefois les uns des autres sont épris, Quel est de leur amour le langage sublime ? Est-​ce par des regards seulement qu’il s’exprime ? Ou peuvent-​ils confondre ensemble leurs rayons ? Ou sceller autrement leurs chastes unions ? (Leroy II, p. 73) A few verses are suppressed, while some others are added, in the angel’s answer, which is rendered more conventional (I cross out in the original text below what is suppressed in Leroy’s translation): Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy’st (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy In eminence, and obstacle find none Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs: Easier then Air with Air, if Spirits embrace, Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure Desiring; nor restrain’d conveyance need As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul. (Paradise Lost 8: 622–​29) Leroy’s is a very prolix and prudent translation. It reads as follows (I indicate in italics what he has changed in the text): Notre ame à son objet s’applique toute entière, Elle n’a point du corps à franchir la barrière : Les Esprits dans leur vol aussi prompts que l’éclair Se joignent en passant comme l’air avec l’air : Ni la chair, ni le sang ne les appesantissent, Par d’invisibles nœuds sans obstacle ils s’unissent :

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Ils goûtent à longs traits d’ineffables plaisirs : Mais tout est pur & saint dans leurs chastes désirs ; Au centre du bonheur l’ame s’attache à l’ame ; Nos rapports, nos liens, ce sont des traits de flamme…. (Leroy II, p. 74) These verses could be translated back into English as: Our soul attends to its object in its entirety, She doesn’t have to cross the border of the body: Spirits in their lightning-​fast flight Join in passing like air with air: Neither flesh nor blood weighs them down, By invisible knots without obstacle they unite: They taste long stretches of ineffable pleasure: But everything is pure & holy in their chaste desires; In the center of happiness, the soul attaches itself to the soul; Our relations, our bonds, are streaks of flame… At the end of Bk. 6, Leroy deletes Satan’s and Belial’s “cold mockery”: “we … with open brest /​Stand readie to receive them” while Satan means he has unfolded the ranks of his army so as to launch his artillery, “A triple mounted row of Pillars laid /​On wheels,” on his enemies (558–​62, 572), whom, once they are hit by canon-​fire, he taunts, saying they seem to be in the mood of dancing for they are staggering;21 finally, Belial, when he mentions “terms of weight /​Of hard contents,” does not mean terms of peace, of course, but in a pun alludes to the fireballs crushing them (620–​27).22

21 Ere while they fierce were coming, and when wee, To entertain them fair with open Front And Brest, (what could we more?) propounded terms Of composition, strait they chang’d thir minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell, As they would dance, yet for a dance they seemd Somwhat extravagant and wilde, perhaps For joy of offerd peace. (6: 610–​17) 22 Leroy says he “had to suppress some extraordinary things which could not even be borne with, e. g. the cold mockery he (Milton) puts in the mouths of Satan and Belial”.

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In Bk. 8, Leroy translates “the sound of Dance or Song” (243) as « les chants harmonieux »; in his notes, he gives a literal translation: « un bruit de danses & de chants » [A sound of dances & of songs] (Leroy II, p. 54), and he dismisses dancing as a childish thought (« Cette réflexion est puerile »): for him, dancing was only good for children. In Bk. 9, when Eve leaves Adam and « court s’enfoncer dans l’ombre des forêts **** » [runs into the shadows of the forests], she is compared to other deities: Soft she withdrew, and like a Wood-​Nymph light Oread or Dryad, or of Delia’s Traine, Betook her to the Groves, but Delia’s self In gate surpass’d and Goddess-​like deport, Though not as shee with Bow and Quiver armd, But with such Gardning Tools as Art yet rude, Guiltless of fire had formd, or Angels brought. To Pales, or Pomona, thus adornd, Likeliest she seemd, Pomona when she fled Vertumnus, or to Ceres in her Prime, Yet Virgin of Proserpina from Jove. (386–​96) « Il fallait bien élaguer tout ce fatras mythologique. » [It was really necessary to prune all this mythological junk]. Leroy goes on: & j’y ai substitué ces peintures naturelles qui se rapprochent de l’Idylle, & ne sont pas sans aménité : Dans son vol rapide la Colombe est moins belle Mais plus tendre seroit la jeune Touterelle [And I replaced the whole thing with natural paintings that are closer to romance, & not without grace:   In its rapid flight the dove is less beautiful   But the turtle-​dove would be more tender]

And he further justifies his changes: On sait qu’en style oriental la Colombe est le symbole de la beauté, & la Tourterelle est celui de la constance & de la fidélité. [We know that, in oriental style, the dove is the symbol of beauty, & the turtle-​dove, that of constancy & fidelity] (Leroy 2, p. 151).

Here, as we can see, Leroy is not content with cutting the text, he substitutes or adds something that is not in the text.

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Let’s take another example: after Adam, “fondly overcome with Femal charm” had sinned, nature felt the pangs: Earth trembl’d from her entrails, as again In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan, Skie lowr’d, and muttering Thunder, som sad drops Wept at compleating of the mortal Sin Original (9: 999–​1003). Which, in Leroy, becomes: Etouffant le remords jusqu’au fond de son ame, Il céda lâchement aux charmes d’une femme. Le Soleil en pâlit, & la Terre en trembla, Le cri de la nature à l’instant redoubla. (II, p. 136) [“Stifling remorse to the core of his soul, He yielded cowardly to the charms of a woman. The Sun faded, & the Earth trembled, Nature’s scream just now doubled.”] Leroy explains what he has been doing in notes: « Le Soleil en pâlit. Il n’est point question du soleil dans le texte : mais j’ai placé ceci pour augmenter l’effroi de la chûte d’Adam, & ne pas faire simplement une répétition monotone. » [The Sun faded. There is no mention of the sun in the text: but I put it in to increase the dread of Adam’s fall, & so as not just to make a monotonous repetition], that is, of what had happened after Eve’s sin (II, p. 155). Leroy wanted to dramatize the scene by adding the paling sun. If he added something, he also deleted the reference to original sin. After Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Adam says he wished the world had been peopled only with men (10: 888–​95), which, for Leroy, is sheer madness, and he points to Milton’s alleged misogyny –​“his flat insults against a kind & respectable sex” (II, p. 220). The description of Eve as “a Rib /​Crooked by nature” (10: 884–​85) is abandoned in Leroy’s translation (II, p. 201). In Bk. 4, he changed “Midnight Ball, /​Or Serenate, which the starved Lover sings /​To his proud fair” into a mere « bal » and « rendez-​vous », and deletes the reference to “Court Amours,” while “the bought smile /​ Of Harlots” disappears (765–​68). The last two lines are of Leroy’s own

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hand and read “(Love) laughs at false oaths, frivolous promises, and gifts 23 lavished on vile idols.” Conversely, sometimes Leroy translates Milton’s text literally –​but reluctantly, as “the grotesque image” in Bk. 6, 361 (Down clov’n to the waste), which would have been to Homer’s taste and is rendered as “Fendu du haut en bas par un coup atterrant.” [Split from top to bottom by an appalling blow.]24 * Other changes pertain to style; for example, when the rebellious angels are thrown into the darkness of Hell, « aussi éloignés de Dieu et de la lumière du Ciel », « As far remov’d from God and light of Heav’n /​As from the Center thrice to th’ utmost Pole. » (1: 73–​74), is rendered as « que du centre trois fois le Pôle extreme. » Leroy said he wanted the text to be more expressive, more precise, and clearer. Thus, he translated: « Entr’eux & Dieu s’élève un invincible mur. » (I, pp. 5–​6) [Between them & God stands an invincible wall.] In his translation of « darkness visible » (1: 63), a much discussed phrase, as « la sombre lueur » [the dark glimmer], he says: “I have tried to keep the image & clarify the idea” (Leroy I, p. 9, pp. 44–​45). Leroy says he has kept Milton’s “Lords” at the end of Bk. I (“The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim,” l. 794) because the word is « more expressive than the French Seigneurs » and “clearly” (sic) refers to the members of both Houses of Parliament (I, p. 40, p. 53). In Bk. 9, “marshal’d Feast /​Serv’d up in Hall by Sewers and Seneshals” (37–​38) is more simply rendered as « Les repas somptueux, les fêtes magnifiques » [sumptuous meals, magnificent receptions] (Leroy II, p. 89), for, Leroy explains in his notes, a literal translation is not appropriate to our style or to our times.25 In Bk. 7, “the swelling gourd” (321), being not suitable in French poetry (Literally « la courge enflée »), is replaced by “Le lierre qui rampait” [The ivy that crawled] (Leroy II, p. 16). Sometimes, on the contrary, Leroy keeps expressions because he thought Milton borrowed them from the Bible, and he regarded the Scriptures as sacred, not to be tampered with. For example, in Bk. 10: 23 « Il rit des faux serments, des promesses frivoles, /​Et des dons prodigués à de viles idoles. » (Leroy I, p. 191. See notes, p. 214. 24 Leroy I, p. 323. See notes, p. 295. 25 « Ceci n’est pas du goût de notre style ni de notre temps » (Leroy 2, p. 148). [“This is not in keeping with our style nor with our times.”]

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Son pied s’imprimera sur ta tête écrasée, Par ton dard au talon elle sera blessée [His foot shall tread your bruised head, By your sting in the heel she shall be hurt] (Leroy II, p. 167).

Is translated after the Vulgate, Et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus (* Gn 3: 15) J’ai cru devoir conserver cette expression par respect pour l’Ecriture (Leroy II, p. 181).26 [I thought I should keep this expression out of respect for Scripture].

The expressions « Les roues dans les roues » [Wheels within wheels] (6: 751) and « Le corps semé d’yeux des Chérubins » [The body sown with cherub’s eyes] (755) are also literally translated from the Bible (Leroy I, p. 312); indeed the imagery of the divine chariot is to be found in the Book of Ezekiel, respectively in Ez 1: 16 and 10: 9.27 Sometimes Leroy alters the Biblical text: for example, when Milton describes the divine Law as “the only daughter of his (God’s) voice” (9: 653), which, as Leroy observes, is a Hebraism, but which he renders paraphrastically as « La seule loi de sa bouche émanée » [The only law that came forth from his mouth] (Leroy II, p. 118). Occasionally, and subtly, Leroy adds something to Milton’s verse. For instance, to represent Satan’s heavy fall in the movement of a verse, … all unawares Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops Ten thousand fadom deep (2: 932–​34).

he translates : Ainsi que d’un vil plomb tombent les lourdes masses (Leroy I, p. 95). [As heavy weights fall like lead]

26 In the endnotes to Bk. 7, Leroy writes : « Milton se sert même souvent des phrases de l’Ecriture, comme consacrées : & je les ai conservées de même autant qu’il m’a été possible » [Milton even often uses phrases from Scripture as consecrated: & I have preserved them as much as I could] (Leroy II, p. 39). 27 In Bk. I, quoting the Vulgate, Leroy says he kept the word “abominations” in Milton’s text because of its scriptural origin (I, p. 23; notes, p. 49). See Ez 8: 8–​9.

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Or when Satan is plodding his way, Behoves him now

De voiles tour-​à-​tour, de rames il se sert

Both Oare and Saile.

[With sails or oars, in turn, he rows]

(Paradise Lost 2: 942)

(Leroy I, p. 95)

Sometimes, Leroy regrets he cannot keep a vivid expression, e.g. in the rendering of imparadis’ d (4: 506), he says the English language has got a force which the French language has not: O douloureux aspect! Ces

[O painful sight! These

Epoux, ces Amants

Spouses, these Lovers

Se font un autre Eden de

Make another Eden out of

Leurs embrassements

Their embraces].

(Leroy I, p. 178)

Owing mainly to the limitations of the French language, Leroy had to change Milton. Yet, as we shall see in the last part, the limits are not confined to language. The most striking or remarkable example of change (i. e. suppression and substitution) is to be found in Bk. 3, in the famous Paradise of Fools passage. Unlike the first two complete French translators of Paradise Lost, Dupré and Racine,28 Leroy translates the full passage in the main body of the text (he could have inserted the translation in the notes), but he makes substantial changes for which he takes full responsibility. « MM. les Anglois sont assurément trop judicieux pour ne pas me pardonner d’avoir dépaysé la scène, en supprimant un tas d’injures contre les Papistes, les Moines, & les Ritz de l’Eglise catholique Romaine. » (Leroy I, p. 149) [“English Gentlemen,” he writes in the endnotes, “are certainly too judicious not to forgive me for having changed the scene, by suppressing a heap of insults against the Papists, the Monks, & the Rites of the Roman Catholic Church.”] If we look closely at the text, we will see what he has strikingly altered. Let us quote Milton’s original text:

28 Dupré de Saint-​Maur (1729), I, pp. 162–​63. Racine (1755), I, p. 233.

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Embryo’s and Idiots, Eremits and Friers White, Black and Grey, with all thir trumperie. Here Pilgrims roam, that stray’d so farr to seek In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heav’n; And they who to be sure of Paradise Dying put on the weeds of Dominic, Or in Franciscan think to pass disguis’d; (…) and now at foot Of Heav’ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe A violent cross wind from either Coast Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry Into the devious Air; then might ye see Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads, Indulgence, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls, The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft Fly o’re the backside of the World farr off Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld The Paradise of Fools. (Paradise Lost 3: 474–​96) Leroy being an abbot, we should not be unduly surprised if he changed Milton’s text, which can be described as a staunch attack against the Roman Catholic Church. What is striking, though, is the magnitude of the changes he eventually made. Let us see Leroy’s translation: Druides, & Dervis, Bonzes, & Talapoins,

Druids, & Dervis, Bonzes, & Talapoins,

Bracmanes séducteurs, impérieux Augures,

Seductive Brahmans, imperious Augurs,

Promenent dans ces lieux leurs sombres

Walk in these places their dark impostures:

impostures :

One can see there prowling along the great roads

On y verroit rôder le long des grands chemins

Deceitful Muhammad’s Devout Pilgrims,

Du trompeur Mahomet les dévots Who, to taste profane Pélerins, voluptuousness in Heaven,

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Qui pour goûter au Ciel des voluptés profanes

Travel to his tomb in long caravans:

Vont faire à son tombeau de longues

And among the Indians, these penitent Brahms

caravanes :

Who, to please their Gods, prolong their torments.

Et chez les Indiens, ces Brames pénitent

They think Heaven is opening up for them the door;

Qui pour plaire à leurs Dieux prolongent

But a black whirlwind passing by takes them away.

leurs tourments.

Impetuous winds blowing from all sides,

Ils pensent que du Ciel pour eux s’ouvre

Flutter their scattered Talismans in the distance,

la porte ;

Amulets, Rings & Magic Symbols,

Mais un noir tourbillon en passant les emporte.

Gullibility’s frivolous instruments:

Les vents impétueux soufflant de toutes parts,

In a limbo all is precipitated:

Font voltiger au loin leurs Talismans épars,

Therefore it is called the Limbo of Vanity.

Amulettes, Anneaux & magiques Symboles,

(My own translation)

De la Crédulité les instruments frivoles : Dans un limbe tout est précipité : Aussi le nomme-​t-​on Limbe de vanité. (Leroy I, pp. 133-​34)

Not only does Leroy delete all references to the Roman Catholic Church and orders, but he invents other targets: Celtic priests (druids), Muslims (“dervishes and the devout pilgrims of the misleading Mahomet” (sic)) which, today, would certainly not be politically correct to say, Buddhist priests and monks (bonzes and talapoins), Hindu priests (Brahmans and Brahms), and occult objects are also targeted (talismans, amulets, and “Rings & magic Symbols”). Whereas Milton denounces the superstition

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of the Roman Catholic Church, Leroy denounces what the Catholic missionaries met on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In the endnotes, he writes he made the changes himself for the sake of the reputation of Milton as a great poet! Concerning religious worship, Milton, as a Puritan, laid the stress on the inner worship of God; for Leroy, « (Le culte intérieur) n’exclut point le culte extérieur, nécessaire & indispensable. » (I, p. 213) [(Inner worship) does not exclude outer worship, which is necessary & indispensable]. Thus, he translates This said unanimous, and other Rites Observing none, but adoration pure Which God likes best (Paradise Lost 4: 736–​38) As Il prierent ainsi : l’adoration pure

They prayed this way: pure adoration

N’eut d’autre rit que la simple nature :

Had no other rite than simple nature.

Ce culte intérieur, quoique moins This inner worship, though less solennel, solemn, Est le plus digne encens offert à l’Eternel.

Is the worthiest incense offered to the Lord.

(Le Roy I, p. 189)

(My own translation)

Whereas Milton saw the inner Scripture as paramount, i.e. Scriptures read under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for Leroy, such a position was impossible to hold. It is “outrageous Protestantism” (Leroy II, p. 314). The passage … the truth With superstitions and traditions taint, Left onely in those written Records pure, Though not but by the Spirit understood. (Paradise Lost 12: 511–​14) becomes « Les dogmes, consignés dans les pages sacrées, /​Ne se puiseront plus qu’aux sources altérées » (Leroy II, p. 303) [Dogmas, recorded

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in the sacred pages, /​Will only be drawn from distorted sources. My emphasis] When Milton charges the clergy with persecuting Christian believers, Leroy flies into a temper: “It is a well-​k nown fact that « the honest Poet » hated the clergy, that he was “the protégé of Cromwell, a famous enthusiast & visionary, and a disciple & zealot of the fanatic sect of the Puritans” (My own translation).29 Leroy corrects Milton when he will have Raphael eat –​« Soit que l’Ange mangeât, soit qu’ il parut manger » [Either the Angel really ate, or he only seemed to eat. My emphasis]30 (Leroy I, p. 239), he rejects Milton’s materialism, « a false & absurd system » (II, p. 271), and many times condemns Milton’s Arianism or Socinianism, which though not explicitly present in the poem must be deduced from the context: “for … if the Word was only declared Son of God a long time after the angels were created, & by a late decree, it ensues that He was not eternal and consubstantial to his Father.”31 Evidence of Milton’s Arianism or Socinianism can also be found in Bk. 8, when Adam tells God that, unlike him, he cannot stand loneliness: Thou in thy secresie although alone, Best with thy self accompanied, seek’st not Social communication, yet so pleas’d, Canst raise thy Creature to what highth thou wilt Of Union or Communion, deifi’d; I by conversing cannot these erect 29 « L’honnête Poète ! … lui le protégé de Cromvvel, fameux enthousiaste & visionnaire ; lui le disciple & le zélateur de la secte fanatique des Puritains. » (Leroy II, p. 314) 30 (…) So down they sat, And to thir viands fell, nor seemingly The Angel, nor in mist, the common gloss Of Theologians, (…) (Paradise Lost 5 : 433–​38) 31 Cf. « C’est ici que Milton insinue tacitement son Arianisme ou son Socinianisme : car si le Verbe ne fut déclaré Fils de Dieu que long-​temps après la création des Anges, &, comme il le dit, par un Décret tardif, il s’ensuit qu’il n’étoit pas Eternel, Consubstantiel à son Père » (Leroy I, pp. 273–​74) [“It is here that Milton tacitly insinuates his Arianism or Socinianism: for if the Word was not declared Son of God until long after the creation of the Angels, &, as he writes, by a late Decree, it follows that he was not Eternal, Consubstantial with his Father.”]

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From prone, nor in thir wayes complacence find. (Paradise Lost 8: 427–​33) “Thy Creature… deifi’d” is a reference to Christ: Leroy is not duped.32 If God can raise him to be his equal, it follows that he is not his equal by nature. In Leroy, “Thy Creature… deifi’d” is translated so as to apply to man: Mais tu peux jusqu’à toi par un sort glorieux Elever les Humains presque changés en Dieux (Leroy II, p. 63). But, by a glorious fate, you can up to you Raise Humans almost turned into Gods. (My own translation) In Bk. 10, whereas Milton has “a very energetic expression to indicate the equality of the Son to the Father” in “from his radiant Seat he rose /​Of high collateral glorie” (85–​86), Leroy, lamenting Milton’s words cannot be translated literally into French (II, p. 213), has instead: “Il se leve à l’instant du Trône radieux /​Qu’il occupa toujours proche du Dieu des Dieux” (II, p. 162) [He rises at once from the radiant Throne /​Which he always occupied near the God of Gods]. This way, he makes Milton a more orthodox Christian. In Bk. III, when God and the Son discuss predestination, Leroy denounces Milton’s “rigid principles that fit his own times,” and God’s logorrhea (I, p. 148). As we said earlier, he makes a long story short but did not alter Milton’s staunch Protestantism. Yet, in Bk. 12, he adds just two words that make a difference: Since thy original lapse, true libertie Is Lost (83–​85).

32 See : « Si Milton a voulu ici, comme on l’en soupçonne, désigner le Fils de Dieu, qu’au vrai il ne qualifie jamais de Dieu suprême, c’est un Arianisme ou Socinianisme monstrueux. » (Leroy II, p. 81) [“If Milton meant here, as is suspected, to designate the Son of God, whom he never actually calls the supreme God, this is a monstrous Arianism or Socinianism.”]

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Which is rendered as follows: Tu perdis à demi ta propre liberté (Leroy II, p. 280). You half lost your own freedom. (My own translation)

Here, Leroy justifies, “I have softened the text that was too hard in itself. Man’s freedom was not destroyed, but only impaired by original sin” (II, p. 312) (I translate).33 Catholics, as well as Milton himself, allowed a degree of free will to man.34 Occasionally Leroy substitutes what he finds in the Apocrypha for Milton’s text. For example, when Milton says of the Son of God: “in his face /​Divine compassion visibly appeered” (3: 140–​41), Leroy has: « dans lui se faisait voir /​Son père tout entier comme dans un miroir » [in him was seen /​His whole father as in a mirror]. It is an expression drawn from Scripture, he justifies, quoting the Latin text of the Wisdom of Solomon 7: 26: Speculum est enim sine maculâ [Dei maiestatis] & imago bonitatus illius (I, p. 146). Another example is in Bk. 11, v. 792, where Leroy 33 « Ici j’ai adouci le texte trop dur en lui-​même. La liberté de l’homme n’a pas été détruite, mais seulement affoiblie par le péché originel. » Milton’s famous verses on predestination in Bk. 3, “I made him just and right /​Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (99–​100), are translated as « Je le fis assés fort pour ne pas succomber, /​Pouvant se soutenir, pouvant aussi tomber » (Leroy I, p. 117). [I made him strong enough not to succumb, /​Able to stand, also able to fall]. This verse is described by Leroy as a “theological dissertation rather out of place in poetry” and “an all too common fault in our Poet”. “These drawn out, tedious and prosaic speeches need to be abridged, & sometimes to be omitted altogether” (Leroy I, notes, p. 146; I translate directly from the French). 34 See Council of Trent, sixth session (13 January 1547), decree concerning justification. CHAPTER I: THE IMPOTENCY OF NATURE AND OF THE LAW TO JUSTIFY MAN The holy council declares first, that for a correct and clear understanding of the doctrine of justification, it is necessary that each one recognize and confess that since all men had lost innocence in the prevarication of Adam, having become unclean, and, as the Apostle says, by nature children of wrath, as has been set forth in the decree on original sin, they were so far the servants of sin and under the power of the devil and of death, that not only the Gentiles by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated or to rise therefrom, though free will, weakened as it was in its powers and downward bent, was by no means extinguished in them.

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inserts an expression drawn from 1 Maccabees 1: 3,35 which, as he mentions in his notes, says about Alexander the Great, after he had subdued and taken the spoils of many nations, siluit terra in conspectus ejus (the earth was quiet before him). The biblical phrase is transposed by Leroy in his translation: « Après avoir courbé les peuples sous leurs fers, /​En leur présence enfin fait taire l’Univers » (II, p. 262) [After they had bound the peoples with fetters /​And in their presence at last silenced the Universe]. * The last kind of changes Leroy brought to Milton’s text are political, and these are all in Bk. 12. When Adam, in a vision, sees Nimrod, “the traitor,” he objects that God has ordered man to rule over the animals (Gn 1: 27), not over men, because they are God’s creatures: O execrable Son so to aspire Above his Brethren, to himself assuming Authoritie usurpt, from God not giv’n: He gave us onely over Beast, Fish, Fowl Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but Man over men He made not Lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free. (Paradise Lost 12: 64–​71. My emphasis) Leroy underlines fraternity, brotherly love –​not the equality of men: Peux-​tu, s’écria-​t-​il, ô Fils abominable,

“Can you,” he cried, “O abominable Son,

A ton peuple imposer ce joug insupportable !

To your people impose this unbearable yoke!

Peux-​tu bien, enivré d’un orgueil Canst thou, intoxicated with criminel, criminal pride, Briser les tendres nœuds de l’amour fraternel !

Break the tender knots of brotherly love!

35 See KJV: And went through to the ends of the earth, and tooke spoiles of many nations, insomuch, that the earth was quiet before him, whereupon he was exalted, and his heart was lifted vp.

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Ta folle ambition usurpe la puissance,

Your mad ambition usurps power,

Quel autre titre as-​tu que ta seule arrogance ?

What other title do you have besides your arrogance?

Quoi, ce fier Conquérant ne se contente pas

What, this proud Conqueror is not content

D’opprimer les Humains, d’envahir des États !

To oppress Humans, to invade states!

Il provoque Dieu même, avec sa tour énorme ;

He provokes God himself, with his huge tower;

On diroit que du Ciel c’est le siége qu’il forme….

It is as if he intended to besiege Heaven…]

(Leroy II, p. 279)

(My translation)

Later, Milton, through Michael, says that when man’s reason yields to his passions, God, to punish him, “subjects him from without to violent Lords,” that is, he allows that as man is dominated from within (religiously), he should be dominated from without (politically) and be subjected to a tyrant. Milton has probably in mind God’s punishment of the infidelity of Israel in the Old Testament: Reason in man obscur’d, or not obeyd, Immediately inordinate desires And upstart Passions catch the Government From Reason, and to servitude reduce Man till then free. Therefore since hee permits Within himself unworthie Powers to reign Over free Reason, God in Judgement just Subjects him from without to violent Lords; Who oft as undeservedly enthrall His outward freedom: Tyrannie must be, Though to the Tyrant thereby no excuse. Yet somtimes Nations will decline so low From vertue, which is reason, that no wrong, But Justice, and some fatal curse annext Deprives them of thir outward libertie, Thir inward lost. (Paradise Lost 12: 86–​101. My emphasis)

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In Leroy, the whole passage is translated in a way that does not posit man’s natural freedom (Man till then free), and that does not see man’s political slavery under a domestic monarch as God’s punishment: Lorsque l’homme emporté par des When man is carried away by désirs pressants, pressing desires, Au lieu de la raison, prend pour guide les sens :

And instead of reason, uses his senses for his guide:

Elle ne jette plus que lueurs incertaines,

It casts only uncertain lights,

Et du gouvernement laisse flotter les rênes ;

And of government lets the reins loose;

Le libre arbitre alors, de tous ses droits privés,

Free will then, deprived of all its rights,

Par de penchants honteux se trouve captivé.

By shameful inclinations is captivated.

Dieu permet, qu’au dedans les passions maîtrisent,

As God allows that passions dominate within,

Il souffre, qu’au dehors des vainqueurs tyrannisent : ****

He also suffers that victors tyrannize from without: ****

Tel est le juste sort de ces hommes pervers

Such is the fate of these perverted men

Qui semblent n’être faits que pour Who seem to be made only for traîner des fers. (Leroy II, p. 280) dragging irons.” (My translation)

God suffers, or allows (as opposed to “subjects” in Milton’s text), that conquerors, usurping tyrants, should tyrannize some peoples that are made for slavery –​as Aristotle said of the Asian people. In a long note, Leroy explains the reason why he made the changes: he has suppressed “some lines that were too audacious, & worthy only of the Republican fanaticism of our Author, who claims first that God gave man rule over the animals only, & that no man has received power over other men, & who writes a long dissertation on Tyrants and Tyranny. We know, both as citizens and as Christians, that all power comes from God, and that whosoever resists the power resists God himself, and that

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public order & individual happiness depend upon obedience to our 1 ­Masters” What an unMiltonic assertion! Thus Leroy iterates his support for the French absolute monarchy, which is not something to be wondered at for he was the King’s Official Preacher. If Adam is “Of men innumerable ordain’d /​First farther” (8: 297–​98), Louis XV is defined as the people’s father, and there is no people happier than the French under the king’s fatherly authority: d’ailleurs, jusqu’au nom de tyrannie est aboli, depuis que l’Europe est gouvernée par tous princes sages, justes & Moreover, even the name of tyranny is abolished, since Europe is governed by all wise, just & good princes, bons, qui sont encore moins les Maîtres que les Peres de leur peuple. Eh quel peuple plus fait pour sentir ce bonheur que nous autres Français ?.... Sous le règne fortuné d’un jeune Monarque, qui fixe sur lui par ses vertus royales tous les regards de la Nation, & par ses bontés paternelles s’en est déjà concilié tous les cœurs ? (Leroy I, p. 313-​14)

who remain less the Masters than the Fathers of their people. And what people more made to feel this happiness than we French?.... Under the fortunate reign of a young Monarch, who fixes upon himself, because of his royal virtues, all the eyes of the Nation, & by his paternal kindness has already reconciled all the hearts? (My translation)

III Conclusion Chateaubriand was right: Leroy’s translation was not “faithful,” contrary to what he unjustly claims, for he suppressed many passages (mythological,

1 « J’ai retranché ici … quelques lignes trop hardies, & dignes seulement du Fanatisme républicain de notre Auteur, qui prétend d’abord que Dieu n’a donné l’empire à l’homme que sur les animaux, & que nul homme n’a reçu la puissance sur un autre homme : & qui fait ensuite une dissertation à perte de vue sur les Tyrans & la Tyrannie. Nous savons, en citoyens & en chrétiens, que toute puissance vient de Dieu, que quiconque résiste à la puissance, résiste à Dieu même ; que de l’obéissance à nos Maîtres dépendent l’ordre public, & le bonheur du particulier. » (Leroy II, p. 312–​13)

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geographical or technical, unintelligible or implausible), and made several amendments and additions to Milton’s text. The changes he brought in were made for the sake of clarity, respect of religion, and support of the political order. A “faithful” translation should be exactly the opposite of what Ménage called, when considering one of Perrot d’Ablancourt’s classic translations, les belles infidels.2 Everything should be translated, and nothing should be added or altered by the translator in the receiving language. Leroy’s translation is a free translation. It can yet be regarded as faithful on two counts. First, because Leroy made changes to save the reputation of the great poet, i. e. he was conscientious, through the fulfilment of his duty, he was faithful to the idea, to what he conceived of Milton himself, and through his translation, wanted to contribute to his grandeur. « J’ai cru servir la literature » -​-​I thought I could serve literature, by promoting Milton’s original poem in France. Yet “faithful” may be taken in another meaning, which is exemplified in Leroy’s phrase, « j’ai désiré de bien mériter de la patrie » [I have desired to be worthy of [my] homeland]. The changes he made in his translation were patriotic, that is faithful, loyal, to his own society and culture, which he claimed to be enriching, not disrupting. Chateaubriand was not using “fidèle” [faithful] in the same sense: FIDÈLE signifie en outre, Exact, qui ne s’écarte point de la vérité ; et il se dit alors Des personnes et des choses. Traducteur fidèle. (…) Traduction fidèle. (CNRTL) [Faithful means, besides, Accurate, that does not deviate from the truth. It is said of people and of things. A faithful translator. (…) A faithful translation].

Shall the original text be regarded as the truth, and the translator inevitably as a forger? In other words, is the translator a traducer? That is the (old) question…

2 Les belles infidèles (literally, “the unfaithful pretty ones”) refer to elegant, but unfaithful and inaccurate translations. Gilles Ménage (1613–​92) was a French scholar.

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Title-​page to Leroy’s translation (vol. 1) Last page of Leroy’s translation (vol. 2).

Bibliography Primary Sources De Boisjermain, Luneau, trans. Cours de langue angloise, A l’aide duquel on peut apprendre cette langue chez soi, sans maître, en deux ou trois mois d’ étude, par la lecture, . . . du Paradis perdu de Milton, poëme Anglois, expliqué en François, mot-​à-​mot & interlinéairement, & traduit en François au bas de chaque page [English Language Course, with the help of which it is possible to learn this language, without any master, in two or three months of study, by the reading . . . of Paradise Lost, by Milton, an English poem explained in French, word by word and interlinearly, & translated into French at the bottom of each page], 2 vols (Paris: [by the author]) (Paris, 1797–​1798).

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Milton, John. Le Paradis perdu de Milton, poème héroïque, traduit de l’anglais . . ., avec les remarques de Mr. Addisson [Milton’s Paradise Lost, a heroic poem, translated from the English . . ., with Mr. Addison’s Remarks], trans. Nicolas Dupré de Saint-​ Maur, 3 vols (Paris: Cailleau, 1729). Note: this first edition was published anonymously. Milton, John. Le paradis terrestre, poëme imité de Milton, par madame D. B***. Ouvrage enrichi de figures en taille-​douce [The Earthly Paradise, a poem imitated after Milton, by Mrs. D. B. ***. A work enriched with intaglio engravings], trans. Anne-​Marie du Bocage. (Londres [i.e. Rouen]: [n.p.] 1748). Milton, John. Le Paradis perdu, de Milton. Traduction nouvelle, Avec des Notes, la Vie de l’Auteur, un Discours sur son Poëme, les Remarques d’Addisson; & à l’occasion de ces Remarques, un Discours sur le Poëme Epique. Par M. Racine. [Paradise Lost, by Milton. A new translation, With Notes, the Author’s Life, a Discourse on his Poem, Addison’s Remarks; and upon the occasion of these Remarks, a Discourse on Epic Poetry. By Mr. Racine], trans. Louis Racine, 3 vols (Paris: Desaint et Saillant, 1755). Milton, John. Le Paradis perdu, poème, traduit de l’anglais de Milton, en vers français . . . Par M. l’abbé Le Roy [Paradise Lost, translated from Milton’s English, in French verse . . . By Mr. Abbot Le Roy], trans. Henri-​Claude-​ Marie Le Roy, 2 vols (Rouen: impr. de E.-​V. Machuel, 1775). Milton, John. Le Paradis perdu, poème de Milton, traduit en vers français par M. Beaulaton [Paradise Lost, a poem by Milton, translated into French verse by Mr. Beaulaton], trans. M. Beaulaton, 2 vols (Montargis: impr. de C. Lequatre, 1778). Milton, John. Le Paradis perdu par John Milton, traduction nouvelle . . . par Mosneron [Paradise Lost, by John Milton, a new translation . . . by Mosneron], trans. Jean-​Baptiste Mosneron de Launay, 3 vols (Paris: Royez, 1786).Milton, John. Paradise lost . . . Le Paradis perdu [Paradise Lost… Paradise Lost], trans. Jacques Delille, 3 vols (Paris: [n.p.], An. XIII [1805]). Milton, John. Le Paradis perdu. Traduction nouvelle, par Jacques Barthélemy Salgues [Paradise Lost. A new translation, by Jacques Barthélemy Salgues], trans. Jacques Barthélemy Salgues (Paris: L. Collin, 1807). Milton, John. L’Esprit de Milton, ou Traduction en vers français du Paradis perdu, dégagée des longueurs et superfluités qui déparent ce poème, par l’auteur des traductions en vers français des Odes d’Horace et de l’Énéide de Virgile [The Spirit of Milton, or Translation in French verse of Paradise Lost, freed from the lengths and superfluities which disfigure this poem,

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by the author of the translations in French verse of Horace’s Odes and of Virgil’s Aeneid], trans. Claude de Deloynes d’Auteroche (Orléans: impr. de Jacob l’aîné, 1808). Milton, John. Le Paradis perdu [de John Milton], traduction nouvelle et complète en vers français [Paradise Lost, by John Milton, a new and complete translation in French verse], trans. J.V.A. Delatour de Pernes (Paris: impr. de A. Égron, 1813). Milton, John. Le paradis perdu de Milton: traduction nouvelle, par M. de Chateaubriand [Milton’s Paradise Lost: a new translation, by Mr. de Chateaubriand], trans. Chateaubriand. (Paris: C. Gosselin et Furne, 1836).

Secondary Sources Gillet, Jean. Le Paradis perdu dans la littérature française de Voltaire à Chateaubriand, Paris, Klincksieck, 1975, 670p. Tournu, Christophe. “Translations of Milton, from English into French”. In: The Milton Encyclopedia, edited by Thomas N. Corns, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 367–​68. —​— ​—​. “ ‘The French Connection’ among French Translations of Milton and within du Bocage’s Paradis terrestre (1748)”. In: Milton in Translation, edited by Angelica Duran, Islam Issa, and Jonathan Olson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017, paperback edition 2020, pp. 139–​63. —​—​—​. Paradise Lost de Milton (1674): « Chef-​d ’œuvre de la poésie, mais désespoir réel de la traduction. Abbé Le Roy, Le Paradis perdu, poëme traduit de l’anglois, de Milton, en vers françois (1775) », in : Jean-​Philippe Genet (dir.), Traduction et culture. France -​îles Britanniques. Paris, Classiques Garnier, coll. « POLEN », 2018, pp. 129–​69. Voltaire. An Essay on Epic Poetry (1727). In Les œuvres complètes de Voltaire 3B /​The Complete Works of Voltaire 3B, ed. Ulla Kölving (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996), pp. 301–​94.

The Lists of Paradise Regained: An Economy of the Full and the Empty Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá

Whereas literature is an ancient enterprise, through which humans seek to understand how reality is constructed by making sense of the world at large, literary criticism serves the purpose of perusing verbal works of art from a wide range of perspectives to find out the claims to truth contained in them about humanity and the world. Many have been the critical stances adopted in relation to John Milton’s Paradise Regained, from formalist to biographical and historical criticism to psychological, sociological, mythological, and reader-​response approaches that have not been loath to respond to the epic’s crucial questionings and theologico-​philosophical conundrums. What this means for literary criticism, in general, and for Miltonists of every persuasion, in particular, is that we might come to see our desire for something other than critique as just that –​desire, with all of its attendant difficulties and short-​ comings. Our desires and experiences of reading entail compromises, achievements, responses, failures, strokes of luck, propinquity. The list may go on indefinitely, but if we concentrate on the above items, we may say that the pattern of scholarly response to Paradise Regained is complex and difficult enough to understand, let alone produce a comprehensive study of the critical legacy called forth by the short epic. Curiously enough, the poem simply narrates the attempted seduction of Jesus in the Judean desert, and nothing much happens: the Son of God remains unmoved. Many Miltonists, for example, take the position that the Son is unmoved and rejects Greco-​Roman learning not for its own sake, but because Satan presents it as an end in itself and uses it as a method of confusing the Son’s higher responsibilities to God the Father. The critical arena associated with this text, however, is in constant mutation and suffers continual shifts because there seem to be questions left unanswered or whose answers are not wholly satisfactory. Laura Knoppers has listed some of the most basic unsettled questions:

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The Son refuses to act or even to show any emotion. Faced with its spare style, austere setting, and paucity of action, readers have found the poem, as well as its hero, baffling and cold. Even the most basic questions remain unsettled. Why this subject? Why not the crucifixion? Is there development? Does the Son learn anything? Is there a miracle atop the temple tower? Why does Satan fall astonished? Such cruxes are not resolved by classifying the poem as brief epic. Why no heroic action, figurative richness, poetic allusiveness, divine intervention? (213)

One point needs clarification here: the lack of figurative richness in the poem is questionable and I propose to shed light on that richness by analysing the many lists found in the text. One critical and decisive position, nonetheless, remains clear and may be said to be a consensus among Milton scholars, that in Paradise Regained, as in so many of his other works, Milton is exploring God’s ways, and the fault-​lines within the bible provide a model for this exploration. In the reading I propose here, the short epic counterbalances a conservative typological understanding of patience and fortitude with an acute sense of ironic and subversive practices of interpretation regarding the many lists found in the poem. This article works from Madeleine Jeay’s Le Commerce des Mots (2006), Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists (2009), and Bernard Sève’s Philosophie des Listes (2010)1 to understand the abundance of lists in Milton’s Paradise Regained. This project begins with the presupposition that lists matter for culture, for art, for philosophy, for literature, and for signification or “mundanization” (our need to understand reality and make sense of the world at large) in general. Lists point towards that which is not present, that which is inarticulate, and that which cannot be expressed or understood in plain descriptive or narrative terms. Lists formed and informed the hybrid Renaissance culture that Milton inherited2 and put to use in his major epic poems because they were called to act as artistic devices describing experiences that extended beyond the limits of human language, such as the Fall, the tempter, the redeemer or the regaining of paradise.

1 2

See also the comprehensive publication Liste et Effet Liste en Littérature (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013). In relation to the list and Renaissance literature, see Knight (2013), Halpern (1991), and Cave (1979).

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It is not surprising that lists are part of the blind spots in literary theory. Questions without immediate answers continue to rage. Can there be a style in the list? To what extent does the list interrupt the narrative/​ descriptive process and introduce an alternative fiction? However, there are relatively clear points regarding the use of the list and its effects on literary texts: the list is indebted to an analysis that considers its rhizomatic structure. Hence, a plethora of list types (enumerations, series, catalogues, inventories, records, litanies, recitals, accumulations, Rabelaisian accumulations, and so many others) and a myriad of possibilities of reading the list effect; for example, that the lists are a privileged space in literature for a radical questioning of encyclopaedic ambition or for an ironic challenge to what Edgar Allan Poe’s Seneca phrased as “nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness”. Whatever the case, lists break with discursiveness to reactivate the semantic virtualities and invite us to a well-​informed reading that proceeds by connections and disconnections or reconnections of every sort. In short, when they appear in poetic narratives and/​or descriptions, lists seem to challenge the syntax and give freedom to words. Some generalizations about the lists seem true: every list strives to conjure up the “volume” of the world or the list is fundamentally under tension, divided between the ordering of the now and the lack of order of the future, even the view that the list succeeds in presenting virtualities. Thus, the tendency of lists, in literature, is to trigger an almost automatically reactive response to texts in “comic” endeavours of sabotage and parody of all institutionalized knowledge or authority. In addition, the list proposes a renewed content in calling us to see anew a certain thing or a state of things, for it does not presuppose any previous synthesis but takes form in the process of constant updating. A sensitive and perceptive reader seems to grasp a reality that is not given, but whose characteristics gradually emerge in and between the lists. I should emphasize at this juncture that the relative scarcity of critical/​theoretical materials on the lists and their effects in literature is counterbalanced by the copiousness of books published on Milton and on his grand style.3 Frequently alternating from an economy of the full and the empty, such as, on the one hand, the general abundance of allusions and references, loftiness and sublimity, catalogues of proper names and

3 See, for instance, Ricks (1978).

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innumerous epic-​similes; on the other hand, Milton counts on brevity or extreme terseness and condensation to put his ideas across. Nonetheless, an inherent difficulty should not be mistaken for a major defect and, as we shall see from the copia verborum found in Paradise Regained, an abundance and intricacy of linguistic details (we could almost refer to traceries and crenellations in terms of an architextural construction) go hand in hand with miniscule, terse, empty passages that serve as intervals and that are nothing short of mesmerizing. What is perhaps noteworthy about my ensuing emphasis on the maximalism of the list effects in the short epic is that it runs side by side with the familiar premise that Paradise Regained depends on the stoking of the passions. The interest of this poem lies significantly in visualization, but its pictorial highpoints are distinctly list-​oriented: upticks in signification rather than occasions for intense emotional engagement. The first two lists of Book I concentrate on the special relation between Father and Son: the opening one is about knowledge and protection, registering verbs associated with actions contrary to them (“The Father knows the Son; therefore secure/​Ventures his filial virtue, though untried, /​Against whate’er may tempt, whate’er seduce, /​Allure, or terrify, or undermine”).4 The second occurrence is of lexical repetition and accumulation, a complex play on pronouns pointing to Father and Son being coterminous (“Straight knew me, and with loudest voice proclaimed /​ Me him [for it was shown him so from Heaven], /​Me him whose harbinger he was; and first /​Refused on me his baptism to confer …/​The Spirit descended on me like a dove, /​And last, the sum of all, my Father’s voice, /​Audibly heard from Heaven, pronounced me his, /​Me his beloved Son …” [Book I 273–​85]). In direct contrast to those initial, safeguarding lists, the following lexical accumulations in Book I are directed at Satan and his cohorts. Whereas Satan dwells copartner with humans in the world, aiding and advising them with presages, signs, answers, oracles, portents, and dreams (Book I 391–​96), his condition as a poor, miserable captive results from his being deposed, ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned, and turned into “A spectacle of ruin and of scorn” (Book I 415). To clarify Satan’s fallen status further, a list of verbs is provided as the means by

4 The references to Paradise Regained are to book and line number: Book I 176–​79.

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which he rules some regions of the world: to lie, to say and unsay, to feign, to flatter, to abjure (Book I 472–​74). On the one hand, there is the temptation of totality in the two first lists of Book I (the inventory-​list as a census of properties ending as “the sum of all”) and, on the other hand, the protest against monumentality (including an almost imperceptible homogeneity) of form and structure, for Satan is listed to be soon after defined as a spectacle of ruin and scorn; between encyclopaedic ambition and the conjuration of any system, there is also the perplexing activism represented by the lists to be soon directed at and mouthed by Satan. Here we come across a beautiful, phenomenological description of the list: this tangency (temptation of totality and protest against monumentality) indicates very well the manner of coordination proper to those lists. And yet, the list is one of the ways to revitalize language: an active principle that loosens the bonds of discourse and evokes the bondage of concatenations, always-​already calling attention to the injunction of meaning. The list may proceed with a “de-​grammaticalization” of a petrified speech in its repetitive montages or it may proceed by “decontextualization”: in this, it is close to textual collage. First and foremost, the list has an organizing function; it responds to the instinct of order inherent to the human mind. The list, sometimes chaotic and disjunctive, simulates, through its expansion and its volume of space, an encyclopaedic saturation, the writing of memories or of taxonomic inventories, and it also responds immediately to the ambition of language to structure reality. Book II of Paradise Regained presents us with a montage and a collage-​ like list of superlatives connected to Belial in comparison to Asmodai, of some female beauties of classical antiquity, and of adored names in ancient Greece and Rome.5 Carried on to the second list of Book II by the superlative “exquisitest,” we now see “A table richly spread, in regal mode” (340) with dishes, meats, pastry, fish, served by stripling youths,

5 The complete list as follows: Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell, /​The sensualest, and after Asmodai /​The fleshliest incubus, and thus advised …/​Such object hath the power to soften and tame /​Severest temper, smooth the rugged’st brow, /​ Enerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve, /​Draw out with credulous desire, and lead /​At will the manliest, resolutest breast, /​As the magnetic hardest iron draws … /​Some beauty rare, Callisto, Clymene, /​Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa, /​Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more /​Too long, then lay’st thy scapes on names adored, /​Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan, /​Satyr, or Faun, or Sylvan? (Book II 150–​91).

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by nymphs and damsels from classical antiquity or from old fables.6 The Son’s response to this temptation is concise and incisive: “Thy pompous delicacies I contemn, /​And count thy specious gifts no gifts but guiles” (Book II 390–​91). The roll call of names does not stop there, for the Son also rehearses a list of kings of Israel and of elsewhere, interspersed with the dangers of ruling without reigning within oneself, with a view to concluding that riches and realms may turn out to be “the toil of fools” (Book II 453).7 The bewildering enumeration or the chaotic accumulation in those lists, which is their driving force, is typical of the anti-​encyclopaedic stance. Those lists are not meant for us to find ourselves, but for us to get lost in them. Those lists may also be associated with structure, order, architecture, and taxonomy, and would present a reality to the measure of human reason –​a dreamwork-​like, registered vista or tableau vivant, as we see in the way the table is set with all its magnificent foods and fantastical attendants. Barbara Everett remarks on the allusive language shared by the catalogue and the similes Milton uses in Paradise Lost, “A name’s virtue is its specificity,” and that “Milton’s use of names continually converts the denotative into the connotative.”(262–​63)8 Everett refers not just to the demonic list in the long epic, but to the subsequent roll calls of great names and concludes that the lists in Paradise Lost are devalued or called into doubt by the failure to name anything precisely. Far from agreeing with Everett, I contend that the lists in the short epic are successful especially because they are not naming anything precisely 6 The complete list as follows: With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort /​And savor, beasts of chase, or fowl of game, /​In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, /​Gris-​a mber-​steamed; all fish from sea or shore, /​Freshet, or purling brook, of shell or fin, /​And exquisitest name, for which was drained /​Pontus and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast … /​Tall stripling youths rich-​clad, of fairer hue /​Than Ganymede or Hylas; distant more /​Under the trees now tripped, now solemn stood /​Nymphs of Diana’s train, and Naiades /​With fruits and flowers from Amalthea’s horn, /​And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed /​Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since /​Of fairy damsels met in forest wide /​By knights of Logres, or of Lyonnesse, /​ Lancelot or Pelleas, or Pellenore … (Book II 341–​61). 7 The complete list as follows: Gideon and Jephtha, and the shepherd lad … /​Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus? … /​Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights … /​For therein stands the office of a king, /​His honor, virtue, merit and chief praise, /​That for the public all this weight he bears. /​Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules /​Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king … (Book II 439–​67) 8 For another discussion of the use of lists in Paradise Lost, see Sá (2015).

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or adequately, thus the Son’s apparent immobility in just having to parody some of those lists and curtly shun them shortly after. The lists of confusing effects associated with Satan’s temptation, a disoriented exposition, present a reality to the extent of unreason. They are fundamentally anomie, a piece of disorder, a debacle of the intellect. The incompleteness of those lists is what prevents them from taking shape, from reaching final construction. Their cluttered accumulation or their puzzling enumeration always means a supplement and, therefore, a fault or lack, an “inadequation.” The Son is quick to dismiss them as “pompous delicacies,” “no gifts but guiles” and reproduces a similar baffling list of kings just to conclude that they, detouring from God’s ways, produce “the toil of fools”. This “confusional” effect of the lists in the short epic may explain, to some extent, why Erick Gray, in relation to Paradise Lost, argues that “If Milton’s imprecise lists make demands upon the reader, we would usually associate with simile [and] it is even more noticeable that his similes take the form of lists” (296). Gray concludes that “The effect of the conflation of the two epic devices [lists and similes] is to undermine them both” (296). Far from undermining the list as an epic(al) device, I posit that the “confusional” lists in Paradise Regained show the passage of the work towards the text, according to Roland Barthes’s terminology, that is, from an organic closed system to an infinite productivity whose closure can only be accidental, not essential. The list, as a category and according to Jack Goody (1979), can always be read as a generalized system of equivalences. The list is a privileged form of what Dennis Hollier (1993) called epistemological charity in that it indiscriminately mixes elements belonging to different orders into a fragmentary and anarchic space. This sense-​form represents not only the absence of structure or its disintegration (even when it is united with similes), but it amounts to the flattening of the referential field. To understand this intrinsic quality of the list, it is necessary to resort to the metaphor of the cyst that nestles in the fabric of the text. Madeleine Jeay (2006) takes up in her definition of the list the notion of heterogeneity (fabric and cyst simultaneously, among other possibilities), which she associates with that of recurrence. Both Philippe Hamon and Jeay elaborate on the founding work of Jack Goody: “The list implies discontinuity and not continuity. It presupposes a certain material arrangement, a certain spatial disposition; […] it has a well-​marked beginning and end, a boundary, a border, like a piece of cloth” (Goody

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150). The desire or the necessity to collect pieces of the world (in terms of discontinuity and liminality), fragments of moments, accompanied by the attempt to make an impossible narrative of events, is a mission that has been assigned to literature in general and a mission to which Milton returns with a renewed impetus in the short epic. The lists in Paradise Regained, especially the ones produced by Satan, emerge from the following conditions: the fantasy of chaos remaining an unfulfilled horizon, the complicated coherence among things escaping the worst disorder, and the tortuous cohesive power of analogy barely unifying a worldview by holding the chaos of reality at bay. “At length collecting all his serpent wiles” (Book III 5),9 Satan accosts his opponent and rightly summarizes the Son’s response to the previous temptation as “All treasures and all gain esteem as dross” (29). Satan, retorting or murmuring to the following lines of the Son with his deformed and inadequate list associated with glory,10 finds again the response of the Son to his rhetorical accumulation to be precise: Satan, “Insatiable of glory had lost all” (Book III 148). Probing all the things best fulfilled in due time, the Son resorts to the list (“Be tried in humble state, and things adverse, /​By tribulations, injuries, insults, /​Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence, /​Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting /​Without distrust or doubt, that he may know” [189–​93]) and concludes that who best can suffer, best can obey. Satan, baffled by the Son’s mimicking of his own seemingly coherent excess, can only utter, for the time being, a tautological commonplace: “My error was my error, and my crime /​My crime” (Book III 212–​13).

9 The complete list as follows: Thy actions to thy words accord, thy words /​To thy large heart give utterance due, thy heart /​Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape. /​Should kings and nations from thy mouth consult, /​Thy counsel would be as the oracle /​Urim and Thummim, those oraculous gems; … thy skill, … thy prowess, … thy few, … thy acts, thyself (Book III 9–​24). 10 The complete list as follows: “Think not so slight of glory, therein least /​Resembling thy great Father: he seeks glory, /​And for his glory all things made, all things /​Orders and governs; nor content in Heaven /​By all the angels glorified, requires /​Glory from men, from all men good or bad, /​Wise or unwise, no difference, no exemption; /​Above all sacrifice or hallowed gift /​Glory he requires, and glory he receives /​Promiscuous from all nations, Jew or Greek, /​Or barbarous, nor exception hath declared; /​From us, his foes pronounced, glory he exacts” (Book III 109–​20).

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Dilating on, multiplying, and reinventing the “exceeding high mountain” where Satan tempts the Son in the very brief accounts of Matthew and Luke, Satan recovers his breath and with a “new train of words” curates an enticing prospect:11 places, kingdoms, a multitude of personages from history and romance, in short, a strange and inquisitive parallax. The Son’s interpretation of this diabolical panorama defangs excess and accumulation, for he takes up the multiform scene, produces his own contemplative absorption by lexically lengthening on policies12 and finally concludes that, all in all, they are “luggage of war,” arguments “Of human weakness rather than of strength” (Book III 401–​02). From the statement of Sève that, paradoxically, the word on a list is cut off from the world and is one with the world (the word becomes a piece of the world), it is not difficult to see that Satan deforms the pieces of the world on his lists, in terms of the angular difference in direction, and makes those “new” strains of words surpass poetic description by undermining them, the words themselves, in their foundations. Places, kingdoms, multitudes, and later on, buildings and architectural elements are tainted by approximation or by being listed under the aegis of Satan. In Book IV, for example, Satan returns to his “persuasive rhetoric” (4) and telescopes many guiles into a list of architectural elements, imperial buildings, places, and peoples under Roman yoke.13 Exhausted from journeying from place to place and from using his airy microscope to 11 The complete list as follows: To this high mountain-​top the Tempter brought /​ Our Saviour, and new train of words began: /​“Well have we speeded, and o’er hill and dale, /​Forest and field, and flood, temples and towers, /​Cut shorter many a league … /​Assyria and her empire’s ancient bounds, /​Araxes and the Caspian lake, thence on … Against the Scythian, whose incursions wild /​Have wasted Sogdiana … /​He looked and saw what number numberless /​The city gates outpoured, light-​a rmed troops … /​From Arachosia, from Candaor east, /​And Margiana to the Hyrcanian cliffs … /​From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond /​Shalt reign, and Rome or Caesar not need fear” (Book III 265–​385). 12 The complete list as follows: Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear /​Vented much policy, and projects deep /​Of enemies, of aids, battles and leagues, Plausible to the world, to me worth nought. (Book III 390–​93). 13 The complete list as follows: With towers and temples proudly elevate /​On seven small hills, with palaces adorned, /​Porches and theaters, baths, aqueducts, /​Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs, /​Gardens and groves presented to his eyes, /​ Above the highth of mountains interposed: /​By what strange parallax or optic skill /​ Of vision multiplied through air, or glass /​Of telescope, were genius to inquire (Book IV 34–​42).

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abuse the riches in the “Houses of gods” (Book IV 56), Satan is upfront and tells the Son he has “shown thee all /​The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory” (Book IV 88–​89), so that the tempted Son may “Aim therefore at no less than all the world” (105). The Son is swift in parodying Satan’s feigned magnificence and ironically recalls the devil that to his majestic show he should add: Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous feasts On citron tables or Atlantic stone (For I have also heard, perhaps have read), Their wine of Setia, Cales, and Falerne, Chios and Crete, and how they quaff in gold, Crystal and myrrhine cups embossed with gems And studs of pearl –​to me shouldst tell who thirst And hunger still. … (Book IV 114–​21) The Son’s mimetic style does not end in the above list, for his direct message is restated in the following verbal accumulation: “That people, ­victor once, now vile and base, /​Deservedly made vassal; who once just, /​Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well, /​But govern ill the nations under yoke” (Book IV 132–​35). Under the will of the Son, the list is an insightful way of restoring the heterogeneity of reality. The world is perceived in a rather discontinuous way: the subjects perceive fragments of reality and struggle to have a global view of existence felt as plural and complex. The Son’s lists, by the juxtaposition or rapid sequence of their elements, almost enable the reality of the world and the personal view of the reality of the world to remain together, within the same impression. This use of the list seems to accentuate one of the modes of referential relation, the deixis of the text, by favouring the expression of a divine presence in the world, of a direct, sensitive, and immediate relationship of the subject with reality and, indirectly, with God. Satan’s last attempt to convince the Son he has something to offer him manifests itself in his statement that “All knowledge is not couched in Moses’ Law” (Book IV 225) and is elaborated on as a list that embarks

Turrets and terraces, and glittering spires … /​In various habits on the Appian road … /​In ample territory, wealth and power (Book IV 54–​82).

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on the “Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools /​Of Academics old and new” (Book IV 277–​78). Before spelling out the names and procedures linked to those academics, Satan invokes the name of places and kings, closely uniting knowledge and power.14 The Son’s response comes in one succinct list, stating that Satan contemns all “Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life, /​Which when he lists” (Book IV 305–​06). His next refutation or dismissal of Satan’s temptation comes in terms of collecting and gathering: “Deep versed in books and shallow in himself, /​Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys /​And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge, /​As children gathering pebbles on the shore” (Book IV 327–​30). Satan finally recognizes that the Son, after having been followed “on to this waste wild, /​Where by all best conjectures I collect /​Thou art to be my fatal enemy” (Book IV 523–​24). Seven more lists are to be found in Book IV and note that the very last one comes from the epic narrator, who seems to follow in the Son’s footsteps: 1. Since neither wealth, nor honour, arms, nor arts, /​Kingdom nor empire pleases thee (368–​69); 2. In their conjunction met, give to spell /​Sorrows, and labours, opposition, hate, /​Attends thee, scorns, reproaches and lastly cruel death (385–​88); 3. Infernal ghosts, and hellish furies, round /​Environed thee; some howled, some yelled, some shrieked, /​Some bent at thee their fiery darts (422–​24); 4. Thy infancy, thy childhood, and thy youth, /​Thy manhood last (508–​09); 5. To understand my adversary, who /​And what he is; his wisdom, power, and intent; /​By parle, or composition, truce, or league /​To win him, or win from him what I can … /​To try thee, sift thee, 14

The complete list as follows: How wilt thou reason with them, how refute /​Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes? … /​Where on the Aegean shore a city stands /​Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil, /​Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts …/​To Macedon, and Artaxerxes’ throne; /​To sage philosophy next lend thine ear … /​Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools /​Of Academics old and new, with those /​Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect /​Epicurean, and the Stoic severe … /​Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm. /​The first and wisest of them all professed /​To know this only, that he nothing knew; /​The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits; /​A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense; /​Others in virtue placed felicity (Book IV 233–​97).

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and confess have found thee /​Proof against all temptation as a rock (527–​33); 6. Not more; for honours, riches, kingdoms, glory /​Have been before contemned … (536–​37); 7. And to his crew, that sat consulting, brought /​Joyless triumphals of his hoped success, /​Ruin, and desperation, and dismay, /​Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of God (577–​80). Milton intersperses Satan’s lists, the Son’s parodic lists, and the Son’s ultimate pieces of wisdom with unprecedented regularity, and the effect is to turn every reader into a tempted subject, for we must decide how far we are willing to put our faith in any given list before breaking the poetic-​scriptural contract. The use of the list in the short epic is a fight against oblivion, against absolute chaos, it partakes in the economy of the full (excessive wordiness and guile, for instance) and the empty (lack of verbose replies, laconic15 in style and succinct in correctness, for instance), it denudes and stylizes the quest for elements whose paradoxical importance has been defined above: neither buried in Hell nor wholly retrievable in Heaven. And yet, each element listed, in itself, a fleeting resurrection, a moment otherwise lost. In sum, the lists in the short epic would mark, as a manifestation, the trace, like the shadow, of the intractable fallen world within the very act of worldliness (much like the creation of an alternative Christian ethos, referred to before as “mundanization,” and present at the end of the text as an unobserved return home to the mother’s house), always leaving a space of nothingness necessarily paradoxical and in some ways astonishingly so. The lists, thus, in their expansions and at their widest levels, always resonate with a power that accentuates the trace or the language of that which was/​is irretrievably lost, henceforth always foreign and forever undecidable, like an otherworldly song sung on a field of steles.

Bibliography Cave, Terence C. The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979. 15 Etymologically, the word started being used in the middle of the sixteenth century (in the sense “Laconian”): via Latin from Greek Lakōnikos, from Lakōn “Laconia, Sparta,” the Spartans being known for their terse speech. Ironically, the Son’s responses are informed by Greek, if not wisdom, style, after all.

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Eco, Umberto. The Infinity of Lists. London: MacLehose, 2009. Everett, Barbara. “The End of the Big Names: Milton’s Epic Catalogues,” English Renaissance Studies: Presented to Dame Helen Gardner, edited by John Carey, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, pp. 254–​70. Goody, Jack. La Raison Graphique: La Domestication de La Pensée Sauvage. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979. Gray, Erik. “Faithful Likenesses: Lists of Similes in Milton, Shelley, and Rossetti.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, v. 48, n. 4, 2006, pp. 291–​311. Halpern, Richard. The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital. London: Cornell University Press, 1991. Hamon, Philippe. Du Descriptif. Paris: Hachette, 1993. Hollier, Denis. Les Dépossédés (Bataille, Caillois, Leiris, Malraux, Sartre). Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1993. Jeay, Madeleine. Le Commerce des Mots: L’Usage des Listes dans la Littérature Médiévale (XIIe–​X Ve Siècles). Geneva: Droz, 2006. Knight, Jeffrey Todd. Bound to Read: Compilations, Collections, and the Making of Renaissance Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Knoppers, Laura Lunger. “Paradise Regained and the Politics of Martyrdom,” Modern Philology, v. 90, n. 2, 1992, pp. 200–​19. Milcent-​Lawson, Sophie; Lecolle, Michelle and Michel, Raymond. Liste et Effet Liste en Littérature. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013. Milton, John, 1608–​ 1674. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. New York: Signet Classic, 2001. Sá, L. F. F. and Olalquiaga, M. H. “Infinity and Voracity of Lists in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura, v. 25, 2015, pp. 97–​112. Sève, Bernard. De Haut en Bas: Philosophie des Listes. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2010.

The Brazilian Milton: Innovation, Recreative Spirit and Absence in Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa Miriam Piedade Mansur Andrade

In John Milton and Influence: Presence in Literature, History, and Culture (1991), John Shawcross examines the influence that John Milton had on his successors. Chapter 9 of his book, entitled “The American Milton: Imitation, Creative Spirit, and Presence,” refers directly to the influence of the English poet on North American literature, which carries a burden of dependence, where Milton’s presence becomes a source of inspiration. His theory is valid because Milton’s writings played an important role in the historical, political and social fields in the United States, especially in the nineteenth century. However, Shawcross’s attempt to deviate from the anxiety of influence, by playing with Harold Bloom’s words, did not succeed –​his studies only reinforced it, calling Milton a star that should be admired and imitated. Following another trajectory by moving to Brazil and adapting the title of the chapter by Shawcross, this essay discusses the traces of Milton’s Paradise Lost that can be found in the short story “A Igreja do Diabo” (“The Devil’s Church”) by Machado de Assis (1839–​1908) and the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) by Guimaraes Rosa (1908–​67). Assis and Guimaraes Rosa are the most widely read, studied and translated Brazilian writers, a fact that contributes to another possible means of disseminating Milton’s research in Brazilian literature. Their writings allude to religious issues while at the same time going beyond the traditional politics of religion and examining other elements explored in Milton’s works. The Brazilian authors established textual relations with the English poet not based on imitation, but through the use of key, indirect references and allusions, through which they innovate and recreate Milton’s texts in Brazilian Literature. In this sense, the English poet is part of the compositional universe of Machado de Assis and Guimaraes Rosa, but not in a straightforward manner –​rather as an absence that may be read as presence. The intertextual relations

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between the Brazilian authors and the English poet are analysed in this article based on Jacques Derrida’s thoughts on the logic of the supplement, with writing serving as a way of proliferating meaning in different spatiotemporal contexts. According to Jacques Derrida in Of Grammatology (1976), the supplement works as a type of logic that adds meaning to previous ideas and terms, not as copies, but additions that institute themselves based on the notions of difference. Following Derrida’s idea, Machado de Assis’s and Guimaraes Rosa’s texts are supplements of Milton’s Paradise Lost, adding more layers of meaning to Milton’s creation. It is important to mention that in an analysis of literary texts, in this case by Milton and the Brazilian authors, all of the texts are independent, and because the short story and the novel come after Milton’s epic poem and due to their spatiotemporal distances, they are full of variations, with supplementary signs giving new meanings to Milton’s work. For Derrida, “the supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude” (1976, 144). Thus, the supplementary discourse adds more possibilities, not erasing a pre-​existing structure, but proving itself as a new elaboration of an “origin.” Many of Milton’s legacies have been recreated and reinvented by his successors. In the analysis presented in this essay, two of his main discussions will serve as the focus of the inheritance that the Brazilian writers chose to be part of. The first is Milton’s critical stance against Catholicism, especially on the issues of freedom of belief and religious tolerance. Milton defended his position as an anti-​trinitarian and his theodicy on free will. In such ideas, Milton sees the Catholic Church as an institution full of errors and in some of his texts he problematizes his anti-​idolatrous and anti-​popish messages even further. In Paradise Lost, more specifically, one of Milton’s satires can be read in the demon’s assembly at Pandemonium, which is compared to a Catholic religious ceremony. In John King’s book, Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire and Polemic in Paradise Lost (2000), the assembly of demons at Pandemonium resembles the Vatican establishment of the Pope, and with this assertion, King reinforces Milton’s criticism of rituals and ecclesiastic pomp. King also alludes to Milton’s “ecclesiastical satire” as a way of attacking Catholicism and ridiculing “recognizable historical targets” by means of “instances of linguistic appropriation, imitation or innuendo” (13). Machado de Assis and Guimaraes Rosa read Milton’s satires and played with them, also appropriating Milton’s creations and recreating

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them in Brazilian literature. In this sense, Milton’s controversial religious position has received other meanings and elaborations in the writings of the Brazilian writers. Another heritage that can be attributed to Milton and that the Brazilian authors chose to follow is his constant debate of universal issues –​ the existence of evil, for example. Milton does not hesitate to ask the most difficult of questions: if the world was created by a good, just, and loving God, why is there little evidence of goodness and justice in the world? What does it mean for humankind to be created in the image of God, and how does humanity endure in a fallen world? This aspect, discussed and problematized in Paradise Lost, will continue to enthrall writers and readers as they continue to ask the same difficult questions and seek answers in Milton’s exploration of one of the foundational myths of Western culture. Machado de Assis and Guimaraes Rosa certainly elected to follow Milton’s tradition, and these very same questions were recreated in the composition of their works, and because they were also representatives of their time and local context, they readapted Milton’s traces and created new texts that help attribute new meanings to Paradise Lost. Machado de Assis’s short story “The Devil’s Church” was published in 1884, in a collection entitled Histórias sem data, which translates into English as Undated Histories. The title suggests that the narratives of the collection can apply at any time. With this idea in mind, the Devil’s church, written in Brazil with traces of Milton’s elements of composition, is a forever-​present story. The plot of the short story revolves around the creation of the Devil’s church, for the Devil is seen by Machado de Assis as the best way of questioning humanity. The Brazilian author uses the Devil’s church to critique the Catholic tradition. Thus, the main theme of the Machadian text is the establishment of the Devil’s church, which becomes an official institution with regular rituals and all the procedures of a legal religious organization. The plot develops with the Devil going directly to God to announce his decision to create a new institution of faith. When the Devil meets God, his intention is to challenge Him and to demonstrate the main role of his existence as God’s direct opponent. The Devil returns from Heaven and quickly creates his church, with one basic teaching: all sins and all transgressions may be freely committed. The freedom to perform all transgressions makes the Devil’s church a great triumph. But it is only a temporary success, as one of his most faithful disciples decides to revert to his previous religion and is caught

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by the Devil going back to the Christian church, being blessed by the sign of the cross, and donating money to the institution. The Devil finds himself unable to cope with his disciple’s return to the classic church model and all of its restrains and limitations. After such an astonishing experience, the Devil returns to Heaven to ask God for an answer. This is a brief summary of the story, which will be developed further in the following paragraphs. The Devil’s proposal for his church is based on a very similar doctrine as a Christian church, but with one basic difference: all transgressions are permitted. By transgressing, the Devil’s followers deny the virtues of the church of God, and in a sense, they live only by their vices. Machado de Assis also published a short story entitled “The Devil’s Sermon,” and when this sermon is read together with “The Devil’s Church,” it illustrates that the Devil’s service is a direct negation of God’s virtues. The Devil’s Sermon resembles Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, and the beginning of the short story confirms this ­resemblance: This is a part of the Devil’s gospel, a sermon on the mount just like we see in Matthew. Its intent here is not to make Catholic souls go insane. Saint Augustine used to say that the Devil’s church imitates God’s church. That’s why there is a similarity between these two gospels. […] The devil, then seeing the multitude of people, went up a hill named Corcovado, and after sitting down, started his speech (p. 151 –​my translation).

Curiously, the hill mentioned in the Devil’s sermon is one of the most famous Brazilian landmarks, “Corcovado,” where the statue of Christ the Redeemer is now situated. In Machado de Assis’s time, the statue had not yet been built, but ironically, this short story anticipates how symbolic the hill would become to Brazilian Catholicism in the distant future. In the Devil’s words, blessed are those who transgress, because by transgressing they can be the salt and the light of the money market, the elements that drive the world. The Devil’s sermon thus comments on the dynamic of Christ’s gospel, representing its opposite and working on the superficial word of the Devil and its ways of transgressing against virtues as a way to establish the power of exercising vices. “The Devil’s Church” also starts with playful words in relation to the Catholic tradition: An old Benedictine manuscript tells how, one day, the Devil had the idea of founding a church. Although he was making steady and substantial profits,

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he felt humiliated by the rather isolated role he had played along the centuries, with no organization, no rules, no canon law, and no rituals, indeed nothing much at all. He lived, so to speak, on divine leftovers, on human oversights and favors. […] A Devil’s church would be the best way to take on the other religions and destroy them once and for all (29).

Machado de Assis was a man of his time and was extremely familiar with Brazilian issues relating to religious freedom. When the short story says that the Devil’s church was the most effective means to combat other religions, as well as to destroy them once and for all, the Brazilian writer is demonstrating the risks of institutions of power that carelessly impose their rules without any control, and in this case, the state and the church work hand in hand to disseminate vices, instead of virtues. During the colonial era (1500–​1822) and the imperial era (1822–​89), Catholicism was the legally accepted religion in Brazil. In Machado de Assis’s time, there was a serious argument involving the Catholic Church and members of the Freemasonry society. Some local bishops did not want Freemasonry lodges in their jurisdiction and demanded their closure. The Church was as strong as the state and had the power to command the law based on their own dogma, with the rationale that they were trying to maintain order. The bishops considered Freemasonry a secular doctrine that was against the law in a country declared as Catholic. The bishops demanded the closure of the Freemasonry lodges based on the argument that their meetings were a form of civil disobedience not only against the Church, but also against the imperial state. Machado de Assis was an informed reader of the Brazilian cause, and this issue needed an answer from his writings. The Brazilian State faced many problematic issues after this episode and the entire affair was repeated almost 60 years later, with the Catholic Church demanding other actions in the name of law and order, which will be referred to later in the analysis of Guimaraes Rosa’s novel. “The Devil’s Church” surely looks back to this religious affair, which was a serious issue in Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century: ‘While the churches and religions quarrel and split, my church will stand united and alone […]. There are many ways to affirm a belief, but only one way to deny it’. As he said this, the Devil shook his head and stretched out his wings, […] Then he remembered that he really ought to go and see God, to tell him his plan and throw down this challenge; he raised his eyes, burning with hatred and bitter with revenge, and said to himself: “Yes, it is time”. And with a beat of his wings –​which set off a rumble that shook all

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the provinces of the abyss –​he flew swiftly up from the shadows into the infinite blue (29).

The notion of a division and quarreling among churches illustrates the Brazilian religious landscape when the short story was published. And another serious issue was raised at the same time: the necessity to fight for religious freedom. In the Catholic domain, such freedom was impaired, and it was the Devil’s church, in a satirical way, that would grant this freedom to all. Rui Barbosa, another Brazilian writer and a contemporary of Machado de Assis, denounced the restraints imposed by the Catholic tradition in relation to religious freedom. For him, “of all the social freedoms, none is so congenial to man, and so noble and so fruitful, and so civilizing, and so peaceful, and so born of the Gospel, as religious freedom” (419 –​my translation). These Brazilian authors were part of the debate in the Brazilian social, political and religious context and tried hard to take critical stances through their writings. In this atmosphere of fighting for freedom of expression, the Devil confirms his intent: “There are many ways to affirm a belief, but only one way to deny it,” this was the Devil’s thought when he resolved to found his church, and he then went to Heaven to challenge God in his enterprise. The description of his preparation to leave for God’s domain presents some traces of the passage in Paradise Lost when Satan, intent on revenge, goes to Eden. It should be noted that Machado de Assis recreates Milton’s passage in a way that offers a possible new meaning, in the fictional world, to the crises in the Brazilian political/​religious arena. The following passage in Paradise Lost, Book 2, demonstrates that traces of Milton are part of Machado de Assis’s compositional elements: Satan […] Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide […] And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent World, in bigness as a star […] Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies. (2, 1043–​55)1

1

All the references to Paradise Lost are from Milton, John. Orgel, Stephen; Goldberg, Jonathan, eds. John Milton: The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 and they will be cited parenthetically with the book number, followed by the number of the line(s).

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The lines of Machado de Assis’s short story when the Devil “stretched out his wings /​raised his eyes, burning with hatred and bitter with revenge […]” can be directly compared to Milton’s: Satan, who “Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold /​full fraught with mischievous revenge”. Machado de Assis, as a reader of Milton, was surely playing with this passage from Paradise Lost in the “official” establishment of the Devil’s Church, adding new meanings to Milton’s text and working as a supplement, using Derrida’s logic, to enhance the English poet’s literary universe. The Devil from the short story returns and prepares himself for the initiation of his church: “once on Earth, the Devil did not waste a single minute […] and began to spread a new and extraordinary doctrine […]. He promised his faithful disciples all of Earth’s delights, all its glories, and all its most intimate pleasures” (32). The Devil’s church became a great success! The church had been founded and its doctrine was being propagated; there was not one region of the globe that did not know of it, not one language into which it had not been translated, and not one race that did not love it. The Devil gave a triumphant cheer (33).

As news spread that all transgressions were permitted, the Devil’s church became a triumph. The Devil’s rhetoric was his main tool for persuading his followers and his great success guaranteed that his moments of glory would place him at a higher position in relation to God. This passage brings to mind the moment that Satan felt himself above God immediately after Adam and Eve’s fall in Paradise Lost. In Book 10, Sin elevates Satan as the antagonist of the almighty king: The race Of Satan (for I glory in the name, Antagonist of Heaven’s Almighty king) Amply have merited of me, of all, The Infernal Empire, that so near Heaven’s door Triumphal with triumphal act have met. (10, 385–​90) This passage illustrates that Satan’s triumph can only exist if he assumes his role as the antagonist of God. In other words, The Devil’s church is the creation of a narrative that only exists as a unification against the church of God.

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According to Neil Forsyth, in his book The Old Enemy (1987), “Satan is first, and in some sense always remains, a character in a narrative […] and that his essential role is opposition” (xiv-​4). Forsyth reinforces the term adversary in the definition of the devil as a fictional character, and as the adversary, he [the devil] must always exist in relation to another being, and not as an independent entity. “As Augustine and Milton show, it is precisely when Satan imagined himself independent that he is most deluded. His character is, in this sense of the word, a fiction” (4). Thus, the Devil’s church, an institution that opposes the church of God, is not an independent entity, but only acquires “life” and recognition in relation to the Christian church. Machado de Assis certainly took note of Milton’s maneuver in the description of Satan’s delusion, especially in Paradise Lost, with his moments of glory and apparent victory being so short. At the beginning of the Devil’s sermon, a passage mentions that “Saint Augustine used to say that the Devil’s church imitates God’s church”. The devil as a fictional character, imitating or opposing God’s church, is an inheritance that Machado de Assis recognizably received from Saint Augustine (as the direct allusion in the short story suggests). However, Machado de Assis indirectly chose Milton to be an oblique part of his Devil’s church and sermon, lending his pen to fictional elements that were a part of his private library, which also contained Milton’s texts. In this manner, Milton’s epic poem is given new meanings when the Devil establishes his church as a possible new reading of Milton’s institutionalized assembly of demons at Pandemonium, and the failure of the Devil’s church is another way of describing Satan’s failures in his attempts to defeat God. In the short story, when the Devil believed he had triumphed and that nothing could overcome his power, he saw one of his most corruptive disciples going to a Christian church, being blessed with the sign of the cross, and giving money to the institution. The Devil could not understand why his disciple chose to return to the Christian tradition after everything he had achieved at the Devil’s side. The Devil then turned to the Lord’s words in search of an explanation. In Heaven again, The Lord heard him with infinite satisfaction; He did not interrupt him […]. Nor did He even triumph because of that satanic agony. He looked at the Devil and said to him: “What do you expect, my poor Devil? It’s the eternal human contradiction” (34).

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With these lines, the short story ends, establishing the certainty of the Devil’s temporary moments of glory over God’s creatures. Although the Devil tried hard to allow his followers complete freedom of choice, he forgot about the exercise of free will and that his beliefs may not always be valid for his disciples. The Devil from Machado de Assis experienced some moments of glory, being the direct antagonist to God, denying Christian beliefs and virtues, and trying to institute infernal empire over religion. His attempts to grant extreme religious freedom did not prevent his disciples from choosing to return to God’s church. Just like Satan in Paradise Lost, his kingdom is doomed to failure because evil will never be so absolute as to overcome good. Machado de Assis’s portrayal of the Devil’s temporary success attempts not only to question the religious cause in the Brazilian political and social contexts, but also to highlight the presence of an entity that exists only to express his total opposition to God. In this sense, using Forsyth’s words about the old enemy and Derrida’s logic of the supplement, it is possible to include the name of Milton in the inventory of Machado de Assis’s reading universe, as the Brazilian author recreated Milton, playing with the English poet´s elements of composition in a way as to compose his own short story, independent, but also an intertextual text and, by so doing, he revived the epic poem. In the twentieth-​century Brazilian literary, political and religious context, the church question once more became a serious issue, with the state and the church fighting over the expression of power. Between Machado de Assis’s publication of “The Devil’s Church” and the first half of the twentieth century, Brazil went through changes that had different impacts around the country. Some of the most significant include the slavery abolition in 1888 and the establishment of the republican regime in 1889. The first Constitution of the Republic was declared in 1891, which separated the Church and the State, ending Catholicism’s monopoly. It also guaranteed religious freedom to all religious denominations and secularization of the State apparatus. However, with the establishment of laws that defended religious freedom, some of the Catholic Church’s privileges remained. In this way, “the Church still occupied considerable space in health, education, leisure and culture” (Mariano 146 –​my translation). The Catholic Church continued its attacks on the presence of Freemasonry, claiming that it represented an incarnation of the devil. In 1931, the statue of Christ the Redeemer was inaugurated, a symbol that gave even more power to Catholic institutions. Even with

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the State trying hard to control Catholic demands, the crisis grew even more serious, and in 1934, a Catholic bishop claimed that his voice represented a kind of authority that can guide listeners based on the power of the Word of the Lord, as a way to demonstrate the sort of command that every society needs.2 It is in this context that Guimaraes Rosa, through his novel The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, found a way of lending his pen to the Miltonic world, not directly, but through deviation, by focusing on the Brazilian sertão3 (the arid hinterlands of northern Brazil). While the Catholic Church was fighting for power and political and social control, the sertão was the best representation of abandonment and distance from any expression of light, solidarity, religious care and law. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Brazilian government was starting to compartmentalize isolated regions by building roads. Because they were so far from any major cities, landowners in some of these regions had created their own private armies to fight against government troops when they felt harassed or at risk of losing their properties. The sertão is the backdrop for this drama, a world of chaos and war, and it became a place not only affected by nature because of its arid climate, but also a place of arid suffering, where peace never resides, where darkness dwells in people’s eyes. Guimaraes Rosa’s novel was a haphazard account of the protagonist, Riobaldo, and a description of his adventures as a member of one of these private armies. He narrates the whole story to an unnamed man non-​linearly, out of sequence, just like the unpredictable courses of the winding sertão rivers. The government and the church’s failure to impose the law left these private armies able to institute their own “order and justice” in the sertão, to protect the land and the landowners. In this sense, the landowners and their armies ruled the sertão. The environment, strategy and politics of war are the main focuses of the novel. Riobaldo’s melancholic voice narrates his violent past, reflecting on the various leadership changes in the private armies. Through his adventures, Riobaldo examines certain issues related to the personal and public lives of the “soldiers” and their relationship with the notions of 2 In relation to the whole account on the politics of the Brazilian Catholic Church, see Williams (1974). 3 The word “sertão” describes the arid hinterlands of northern Brazil and is used throughout this paper without being translated due to its specific nature and landscape.

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good and evil/​peace and war. In the sertão setting, the novel explores ideas relating to the individual as a free agent of good and evil, based on human feelings and reason. This individual becomes the political body that engages Riobaldo’s metaphysical discussions on God and the devil. The narrative asks: Does the devil exist or not? Does God exist to thwart the devil’s plans? How free are we to make a choice between good and evil? What is a “just” war? What leads man to transform himself from good to evil and vice versa? This is just a brief presentation of the novel –​ specific passages will be analysed in more detail below in relation to traces of Paradise Lost in the compositional universe of Guimaraes Rosa. At the beginning of the narrative, the description of the sertão already reflects the ideas depicted in Paradise Lost, with the setting being another Dungeon horrible, on all sides round … [with] No light, but rather darkness visible [which] Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; (1, 61–​67) The novel begins with Riobaldo, the protagonist, telling an unnamed listener about his life as a local soldier, fighting to conquer new lands and to maintain the power of those who owned the land. Violence is present in the very first lines of the narrative: No/​nothing. Shots you heard weren’t a shootout, God be praised? I was training sights on trees in the backyard, at the bottom of the creek. Keeps my aim good. Do it every day, I enjoy it4 (7).

In such an environment, with the idea of violence permeating the story, the passages of Riobaldo’s life, portrayed deeply in his heart and mind, are surrounded by one major question: “Does the devil exist, or doesn’t he? […] the devil lives inside of man, in the sufferings of man, or it is the ruined man, or the upside-​down man” (10). In his doubt, Riobaldo plays with the tradition of the myth of the devil, and adapts the possible existence of this entity inhabiting the life of a man in the sertão. The 4 Although there is a translated version to English of this Brazilian novel, I use my own translations from the Portuguese edition, with the page numbers from Rosa (1986).

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references to fallen creatures in the novel, the devil as the representation of evil, and Adam as the ruined man, echo Milton’s Paradise Lost, and attentive readers may notice certain traces of the epic poem from the very beginning of the Brazilian novel. Although the allusions are indirect –​ Milton’s name is not cited in the narrative –​the elements of the Miltonic composition are common in the Brazilian work. As a first example, there is an indirect reference to the passage in Paradise Lost in which Adam meets Eve immediately after eating the fruit from the forbidden tree. Adam suffers a deep state of melancholy and utters the words: “How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, […] And me, with thee hath ruined” (9, 900–​06). The depiction of a ruined man and/​or the upside-​down man (or better, lost man) suggests a being that lives in the sertão, who carries an inner lacuna that could provide an opening for the devil to enter at any moment. This passage reinforces a new meaning for the fallen state of Milton’s Adam, who is vulnerable to evil at any time, in other words, one who may suffer if he is not guided by Providence. Riobaldo’s fascination with the characterization of the devil continues throughout his narrative. In one passage, for example, he mentions that in the sertão, “God is patience and the devil is the opposite” and that “God is definitive and the devil is the opposite of God” (17). Returning to Forsyth’s suggestion, the devil is indeed never an independent entity and his essential role is opposition. In Paradise Lost, book 2, Satan is described as “The Adversary of God and Man” (2, 629–​30). As Forsyth pointed out, Satan is the opponent of God, and in the lines of the Brazilian novel, the devil is not only God’s opponent, but also man’s, especially the man from the sertão that lives in a state of constant vulnerability to evil, far from any expression of faith. Antonio Candido, one of the first Brazilian literary critics of Guimaraes Rosa’s texts, published an article in 1957 in which he tried to present the inquietudes of the subjects that live in the Brazilian sertão and all the aspects of good and evil in their trajectories. Candido reinforces the references to the devil in the novel with a question and a possible answer to it: “But, why include the devil in everything in this narrative? Because nothing would better incarnate the tensions of the soul in this fantastic world or more logically explain the inexplicable mysteries of the Brazilian sertão” (Candido 136 –​my translation). In this critical perspective, only the figuration of the devil, with the tensions of negative, dark and miserable meanings, is able to reflect the pains of a subject from the Brazilian sertão.

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The devil is a constant reference in the novel and the narrator uses more than thirty-​five names for him. It is interesting that some of these names are the same as those that figure in Paradise Lost, while others are Brazilian Portuguese terms and names from local folklore. Curiously, the use of so many names for the devil may evoke a possible association with Paradise Lost. The image of Pandemonium may come to mind for readers of the Brazilian novel who are familiar with Paradise Lost, with the description of a meeting of all of the devils together. There is also a passage from the novel that reinforces the image of the assembly of evil, where two different private armies judge the codes of conduct of their soldiers. It is important to remember that these armies belonged to sertão landowners and they were considered outlaws for fighting against government forces. The passage was during the trial of Zé Bebelo (an army leader) by Joca Ramiro’s group (another private army). During the trial, parliamentary procedures were carefully observed, and although it related to a war waged by criminals, the trial demonstrated the ethical considerations of pursuing the rules of war. The soldiers and their leaders did not worry about who, when or how to kill in the fight for land. However, they were ethical in their attitudes towards their peers. Just like in the assembly of the devils in Paradise Lost, an agreement is reached and a type of parliamentary fair play is executed. The many names for the devil and the scene of the outlaw’s trial are references that enrich the passage of the epic poem through a totally new context. In his book Biografia do Diabo: o Diabo como sombra de Deus na História (The devil’s biography: the devil as God’s shadow in history -​my translation), published in 1996, Albert Cousté affirms that Dante Alighieri and John Milton were responsible for elevating the devil’s figuration to its highest level, providing some nobility to his characterization in history and that “the summary of Dante’s and Milton’s descriptions gives us a mixture of seduction and terror, infinite grace and infinitive sorrow, which correspond to the image of the Devil that we all carry within us” (p. 31 –​my translation). Cousté concluded the devil’s biography by highlighting that from the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries on, the devil was and still is a great literary character and that his major strategy to keep on surviving is to convert himself into a fictional element, to try to convince human beings of his non-​existence. The characterization of the devil in Rosa’s novel seems to follow exactly the ideas proposed by Cousté, especially because the devil’s figuration reaches a highest position in the narrative, being referred to by more

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than thirty-​five names and as this mixture of seduction and terror, grace and disgrace. Furthermore, according to Cousté, Riobaldo’s narrative attempts to portray a certain conversion of the devil to its fictional existence, only being referenced to when the dark side of the man from the sertão experiences its demands. In other words, in Riobaldo’s experience of traversing the sertão, the creation of a fictional devil reveals the human’s condition of existence, based on the suffering of abandonment, loneliness and internal conflict. It is during these experiences that the distance from the divine becomes evident and the creation of the devil becomes a direct negation of the presence of God. The evocation of the devil becomes a constant necessity in the life of Riobaldo, who suffers multiple forms of pain and many ups and downs while traversing the sertão,5 from an impossible feeling of love (he fell in love with another soldier in his group, who Riobaldo and the reader only realize is a woman who had disguised herself as a man at the end of the narrative); to being lost in the sertão and suffering from all types of evil, which penetrates his life to such an extent that he decides to invoke the devil in an attempt to make a pact with him (and the devil never shows up). At the end of his story, the very same passages and doubts from the beginning of the narrative are repeated: “That devil doesn’t exist, does he? No, nothing. There is no devil. What exists is the human and the passage and the crossing through this passage” (608). Riobaldo’s journey is an experience that moves from darkness to visibility, as a possible allusion to Milton’s pedagogical lesson in Paradise Lost. Milton’s pedagogy is emphasized in the last three books of the epic poem, more specifically in passages describing the centuries before Adam’s eyes when Michael retells the whole account of creation after the Fall until the historical and social context of the seventeenth century England. All the suffering and conflict experienced by men (and this includes all those involved in the accounts, with direct references to the biblical stories) were reflected in their misery because of the lack of any internal expression of Providence within them. These passages are concluded in Book 12, with Michael telling the Edenic couple of the 5 This text presents only partial results from a work that is still in progress. There are many references in Rosa’s novel that allude to possible textual dialogues with Milton’s Paradise Lost, especially in relation to the devil’s myth and its characterization as the direct adversary of God, and the devil’s portrayal and role as an entity that stimulates the distance from the divine.

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need to find a completion within themselves. Milton’s idea of a “Paradise within” (12. 587) is the way to prepare oneself to overcome the risks of transgressing while traversing life and to be strong, having “A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time,” because “The mind is its own place and in itself/​Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (1. 252–​55). Riobaldo’s narrative follows the ups and downs of a mind that changes itself and experiences hell in the sertão of Brazil, but that is also able to enjoy heaven when the conclusion comes that “there is no devil” and that “What exists is the human” who may simply experience the “crossing”. The last word of the Brazilian novel is “traverse” and in its definitions reside the notions of “something that crosses” and “adversity”. In the traversing act of the novel’s protagonist, not only is the expression of movement reinforced, suggesting the passing of time and place, but there is also an idea of adversity, indicating the instances of misfortune and different occurrences in the sertão and invoking the agency of the adversary. In the epic poem, a “Paradise of Fools” (3. 496) is mentioned, referring to the place Satan passes through when he is leaving hell, which is an area without boundaries, considered to be the abode of transgressors. The Brazilian sertão, as the setting of Rosa’s novel, can be compared to Milton’s suggestion, because it is a place with no rules that the transgressors cross. According to Regina Schwartz in Remembering and Repeating: On Milton’s Theology and Poetics (1993), this boundless area is of great significance to the theme of Paradise Lost; the violation of boundaries, as Satan attempted and as man attempted in desiring Godhead, is a great transgression against God (14). The man of the sertão while traversing becomes the expression of the drive of transgression, once he considers himself his own judge and master, free from the law of the state and the church. However, as Riobaldo completes his journey through the sertão, he is able to reinvent the need to understand the importance of one’s good state of mind, regardless of the limits of place and time, exercising the drives of the self with harmony with the possible expression of the divine, and pointing to the risks of looking for one’s completion in the external world. Milton’s themes are represented in the Brazilian novel, with their universal reflections being alluded to in the local experience of Riobaldo. In this sense, Guimaraes Rosa’s novel is clearly in a dialogue with Milton’s creation, with the story of traversing the Brazilian sertão including universal issues that intertwine with local accounts of the existence of the devil. In the characterization of the devil, especially in Milton’s epic

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poem, according to Forsyth, “we must try to see him [the Devil] as an actor, or what Aristotle called an ‘agent’, with a role to play in a plot, or mythos” (4). In other words, Milton is one of the names in literature that helped to disseminate Satan’s lineage in a tradition that mixed classical parallels and folklore, with a role or story to play. Forsyth also notes that “the traces of Satan’s lineage are clear in Paradise Lost” (xiii) and “Milton is reflecting accurately the essential ambivalence of the Judeo-​Christian tradition when his narrator piles up the classical parallels and the folklore” (xiv). Satan’s dissemination can be seen in Rosa’s novel and reinforces the reading using Derrida’s logic of the supplement as the basis, because meaning is disseminated even further and other significations can be incorporated into the legacy of the devil initiated also in Milton’s work. The Brazilian works innovated and provided a recreated spirit, suggesting new possible meanings in Paradise Lost, especially in the fictional narratives of the devil, making Milton part of the serious political and religious debate over the expression of power. The Brazilian writers present themselves as the beneficiaries of Milton’s inheritance and their writings supplement Milton’s creation, further elaborating the meanings of the English epic poem. This paper highlights the legacy of Paradise Lost in both the devil’s church and sermon and in the devil of the Brazilian sertão, especially in the fictional creation of evil, a tradition from which it is quite impossible to escape. After all, according to Forsyth when reading Percy Shelley, “the Devil…owes everything to Milton” (xiii).

Works Cited Assis, Machado de. Obra completa. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Aguilar, 1986. 3 v. Assis, Machado de. The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. Barbosa, Rui. Obras Completas, Vol. 4. Tomo 1, O Papa e o Concílio. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1877. Candido, Antonio. “O homem dos avessos.” In: _​_ ​_ ​_ ​_ ​_​. Tese e antítese. São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 2000, pp. 119–​39.

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Cousté, Alberto. Biografia do diabo: o diabo como a sombra de Deus na história. Tradução de Luca Albuquerque. Rio de Janeiro: Record; Rosa dos Tempos,1996. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976. Forsyth, Neil. The Old Enemy: Satan & the Combat Myth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. King, John. Milton and Religious Controversy: Satire and Polemic in Paradise Lost. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Mariano, Ricardo. Análise sociológica do crescimento pentecostal no Brasil. Universidade de São Paulo, 2001, PhD dissertation. Orgel, Stephen; Goldberg, Jonathan, eds. John Milton: The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Rosa, João Guimarães. Grande sertão: veredas. 20ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1986. Shawcross, John. John Milton and Influence: Presence in Literature, History and Culture. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1991. Schwartz, Regina. M. Remembering and Repeating: On Milton’s Theology and Poetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.Williams, Margaret Todaro. “The Politicization of the Brazilian Catholic Church: The Catholic Electoral League.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 16, no. 3, 1974, pp. 301–​25. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​174​888.

Part VIII Milton and his Audience: The Miltonic Reader, Listener and Viewer

Donne, Milton, and the Understanders1 Warren Chernaik

The publisher’s preface to Donne’s Poems (1633) addresses “the understanders,” differentiating them from “ordinary” or “unworthy” readers, the benighted “ignorant.” One of the “Elegies upon the Author,” included in that volume, praises Donne’s poems as being “so farre above its Reader, good, /​That we are thought wits, when ‘tis understood.”2 Praising Donne in an epigram as a poet “that so alone canst judge, so alone dost make,” Ben Jonson scornfully dismisses “those that for claps do write,” citing Donne’s poems, written for a limited audience, as illustrative of the maxim that “A man should seek great glory, and not broad.”3 Distinguishing between the “few” who “judge only out of knowledge” and the “unskilful,” Jonson announces in the preface to The Alchemist (1612), “if thou beest more, thou art an understander, and I trust thee”.4 Along with dismissing “the blockish vulgar,” the “many” blinded by “Error and Custome,” Milton argued that the enterprising author, entering the marketplace of opinion, would find an audience –​ “few perhaps, but those few, such of value and substantial worth, as truth and wisdom, not respecting numbers and bigg names, have bin ever wont in all ages to be contented with.”5 In one respect, the two authors Donne and Milton disagree, in that Milton, here and elsewhere, 1 I would like to thank Sarah Knight and Hannah Crawforth for inviting me to give an earlier version of this essay at a conference on difficulty in Early Modern literature at King’s College London in October 2018. 2 “The Printer to the Understanders” is included in The Poems of John Donne, edited by Sir Herbert Grierson, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1912), I.1–​2. For the elegy on Donne by Jasper Mayne, see Poems, ed. Grierson, I.382. Poems by Donne, except as noted, are quoted from this edition. 3 Epigram “To John Donne”, 3, 9, 12, in Ben Jonson, ed. Ian Donaldson (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 257. 4 “To the Reader in Ordinary,” Catiline his Conspiracy, and “To the Reader,” The Alchemist, in Ben Jonson, Complete Plays, edited by G. A. Wilkes, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981–​82). 5 Preface to Eikonoklastes, in Milton, Complete Prose Works, general editor Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953–​82), III. 339–​40; subsequent references to YP. In the preface to The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

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envisaged publication of his works, making both prose works and poems available for public scrutiny, where Donne deliberately restricted circulation of his poems, which during his lifetime remained in manuscript, passed about, initially at least, in a small circle of friends. But though they may define their desired audience differently, both writers see difficulty, an immediate obstacle to understanding, as a spur to potential readers, distinguishing the worthy from the unworthy. Donne was deeply suspicious of publication as in its nature demeaning. After authorizing publication of his Anniversaries in 1611–​12, he wrote to his friend George Garrard, “Of my Anniversaries, the fault that I acknowledge in my self, is to have descended to print any thing in verse…I wonder how I declined to it, and do not pardon my self.” When he sent a manuscript copy of his treatise Biathanatos on suicide, a potentially “misinterpretable subject,” to Sir Robert Ker in 1619, he cautioned, “I have always gone so near suppressing it, as that it is onely not burnt: no hand has passed upon it to copy it, nor many eyes to read it… Reserve it for me, if I live, and if I die, I only forbid it the Presse, and the Fire: publish it not, but yet burn it not; and between those, do what you will with it.”6 Donne’s normal practice was to send poems to a select group of friends, who were assumed to share in the values expressed. As he says a number of times in works of different kinds, the exchange of sentiments in a poem or a letter is an act of friendship, a way of uniting those separated by place or by contingencies. This is a variant on the hope expressed in Valediction forbidding Mourning: “Such wilt thou be to mee, who must /​Like th’other foot, obliquely runne.” Those who are “inter-​assured of the mind” can endure “absence.” The “writing of letters,” he tells Goodere in a letter in language closely reminiscent of his poem The Extasie, “when it is with any seriousness, is a kind of extasie, and a departure and …suspension of the soul, wch doth then communicate it self to two bodies.”7 An exchange of poems with his friend Henry Wotton, when Wotton was (second edition), Milton criticizes “the suttle insinuating of Error and Custome … with the numerous and vulgar train of their followers” (YP, II. 224). John Donne, Letters to Several Persons of Honour, ed. M. Thomas Hester (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles, 1977), pp. 238, 21–​22; quoted in Ted-​L arry Pebworth, “The text of Donne’s writings,” The Cambridge Companion to John Donne, ed. Achsah Guibbory (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 23–​34. 7 Valediction forbidding Mourning, 15, 19, 34; Letters, p. 11. See Ronald J. Corthell, “’Friend-​ships Sacraments’: John Donne’s Familiar Letters,” Studies in Philology, 98 (1981), 409–​25 (417); and Ted-​L arry Pebworth and Claude J. Summers, “’Thus 6

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in the Netherlands and Donne in London, similarly sees the writing and transmission of letters as a testimony of friendship, a manifestation of love, uniting those at a distance from one another: Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle Soules; For, thus friends absent speake. This ease controules The tediousnesse of my life: But for these I could ideate nothing, which would please, But I should wither in one day.8 More recently, Tony Harrison, adapting a poem by Palladas from the Greek Anthology, has expressed views similar to those by Donne about how “friends apart” can be united: Loving the rituals that keep men close, Nature created means for friends apart: Pen, paper, ink, the alphabet, Signs for the distant and disconsolate heart.9 Though Jonson, according to his Conversations with Drummond, “esteemeth John Donne the first poet in the world in some things,” he nevertheless feared “that Donne himself, for not being understood, would perish.” Jonson was particularly critical of the extravagant conceits of Donne’s Anniversaries, which he considered “profane and full of blasphemies,” and said that one of Donne’s poems deliberately sought “to match Sir Ed[ward] Herbert in obscureness.” James I is reported to have “said Dr Donne’s verses were like ye peace of God they passed all understanding.”10 A generation later, Dryden wrote condescendingly

Friends Absent Speake’: The Exchange of Verse Letters between John Donne and Henry Wotton,” Modern Philology, 81 (1984), 361–​77. 8 To Mr Henry Wotton, 1–​5. Wotton’s poem, responding to an earlier poem by Donne (“Here’s no more newes, then vertue”), is printed in Pebworth and Summers, “Thus Friends Absent Speake,” pp. 368–​69. On “the reciprocity of friendship” as a recurrent theme in Donne’s letters, see Margaret Maurer, “John Donne’s Verse Letters,” Modern Language Quarterly, 37 (1976), 234–​59. 9 Tony Harrison, “Loving the rituals,” in Poems on the Underground, edited by Judith Chernaik, Gerard Benson and Cicely Herbert (London: Penguin Books 2017). 10 “Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden,” in Ben Jonson, ed. Donaldson, pp. 596–​97, 569. For the alleged statement by James I, see John

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that Donne “affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love.”11 Yet whether the recipient is male or female, the sending of a poem or letter is a transaction which is incomplete until it is received and understood by a reader (the initial reader and others that might follow), who is assumed to be responsive, thus providing a mechanism for overcoming “defects of loneliness.”12 In the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot, praising Donne in his influential essay “The Metaphysical Poets,” saw these poems as a possible model for modernist poets: obscurity was now not a fault, but something to be sought after: We can only say that it appears likely that poems in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult … The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into meaning.

I was taught some years ago by New Critics, who liked to quote Wallace Stevens: “The poem must resist the intelligence /​A lmost successfully.”13 In a sermon, Donne commented on the potential effectiveness of “reserved and darke sayings,” a strategy of deliberate opacity as helping ensnare readers or listeners: those in Biblical times who “teach the People by …darke sayings … had a power, a dominion over the affections of their Disciples, because teaching them by an obscure way, they created an admiration, and a reverence in their hearers.”14 Milton, according to F. T. Prince, found in some Italian poets, Della Casa and Tasso, a stylistic ideal of asprezza, difficulty or roughness: “The devices of language

11 12 13 14

Donne: The Critical Heritage, edited by A. J. Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 74. John Dryden, Discourse Concerning Satire (1693), in Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, edited by George Watson, 2 vols. (London: Everyman, 1964), II.76. The Extasie, 44. T. S. Eliot, “The Metaphysical Poets,” Selected Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950), p. 248; Wallace Stevens, “Man Carrying Thing”, 1–​2, in Collected Poems (New York: Knopf, 1955). The Sermons of John Donne, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, 10 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953–​62), VII. 315: “They were Vision, they were Similitudes, not plaine and evident things, obvious to every understanding that God led his people by” (ibid.).

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and versification … are intended to produce a certain difficulty, even an 15 obscurity, in the sense, and an equivalent difficulty in the sound.” Similar arguments, as George Williamson has pointed out, have been used to describe the Latin style of Tacitus: once again, there is an assumption that an author’s choice of a particular style of discourse will separate the fit from the unfit reader: For although a bare and clear style gives pleasure, still in certain kinds of writing obscurity will win praise sometimes. By diverting discourse from common and vulgar modes of expression, it wins a dignity and majesty even out of strangeness and grips the reader’s attention. It acts as a veil, to exclude the view of the vulgar.16

And yet, as Daniel Starza Smith has argued, there is a curious paradox in Donne as a leading figure in a “culture of manuscript publications”: an intensely private writer who sought to limit the circulation of his writings, he nevertheless is, by a very large margin, the most widely circulated of all writers of the period.17 There are over 4000 entries for Donne in the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts, nearly three times as many manuscript poems extant as those of any other author of the period. According to Peter Beal in CELM: It is likely that in the first instance, copies of Donne’s poems were made by or for friends or influential people in his circle only for their personal use, that these copies were passed around and further copies made in their circles, and so the web of transmission spread outwards, eventually reaching the miscellanies compiled by people quite unknown to Donne at the universities and Inns of Court.18

15 F. T. Prince, The Italian Element in Milton’s Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 38. Prince goes on to quote Tasso: such effects are “like one who stumbles, walking through rough paths,” yet produce an effect of grandeur and gravity, through “the combination of difficult, complex diction and a slow, suspended rhythm” (p. 39). Cf. John Leonard, “The Troubled, Quiet Endings of Milton’s English Sonnets,” in The Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 136–​52. 16 George Williamson, “Strong Lines,” in Seventeenth Century Contexts (London: Faber, 1963), p. 121. The source of the quotation is Muretus, writing in 1580. 17 Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne and the Conway Papers (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 1, 296–​97. 18 Peter Beal, “The Manuscripts of Donne’s Verse,” Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts

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For Milton, understanding is at least in part ethical. Milton’s many statements, in poems and in prose, that he hopes in his writings to find “fit audience … though few,” consistently maintain that “the ignorant” outnumber those who are “govern’d by reason.” As he says, defiantly, in the Preface to The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644): I seek not to seduce the simple and illiterat; my errand is to find out the choisest and the learnedest, who have this high gift of wisdom to answer solidly, or to be convinc’t.19

This introduction to a polemical pamphlet, in which Milton is conscious of arguing a potentially unpopular position, assumes a reciprocity of the author and his ideal audience, who share a “high gift of wisdom” manifested either in advancing ideas or responding to them. Though his prose writings of the 1640s and 1650s, like his sonnets of the same period, respond to their immediate occasions, Milton is always conscious of a broader perspective, what authors “in all ages” have encountered and will continue to find (Eikonoklastes, YP, III.340). When he uses the phrase “fit audience find, though few” in Paradise Lost, the statement is embedded in a context of “darkness” and “solitude,” “evil dayes,” the “dangers” occasioned by the poet’s hostile surroundings, besieged by enemies (PL, VII.24–​31). Milton’s concern with leaving an enduring monument, writing “to aftertimes,” is memorably expressed in the autobiographical digression in The Reason of Church-​Government: I began thus farre to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not lesse to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joyn’d with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.20

(www.celm-​ms.org.uk/​introd​ucti​ons/​DonneJ​ohn.html); subsequent references to CELM. See also Alan MacColl, “The Circulation of Donne’s Poems in Manuscript,” in John Donne: Essays in Celebration, edited by A. J. Smith (London: Methuen, 1972), pp. 3–​12; and Starza Smith, John Donne and the Conway Papers, pp. 175–​214. 19 Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), VII.31; Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, YP, III. 190; Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (2nd ed.), YP, II. 233. For further discussion, see Warren Chernaik, “Milton’s ‘Fit Audience,’ ” Milton Studies, 60 (2018), 108–​33. 20 Reason of Church-​Government, YP, I. 810.

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Here as in the proem to Paradise Lost, Book VII, where the Muse, rather than the enterprising author, is given the responsibility for seeking out an audience, now or later, the author’s control over circumstances is presented as limited. Inward prompting, the propensity of nature, the urging of friends in England and Italy can do more than impel one toward an uncertain end, “the accomplishment” of which “lies not but in a power above mans to promise” (YP, I. 820). The theme of friendship, perpetuated by an exchange of letters, is as important for Milton as for Donne. In verse and prose letters to his closest friend Charles Diodati and to other recipients, a recurrent theme is the poet’s isolation, lack of companionship, partly compensated by the writing of letters. In the eloquent Epitaphium Damonis, written after Diodati’s death at the age of 28, the sense of loss, deprivation, is conveyed poignantly in the repeated “nil me”: Nil me blanditae, nil me solantia verba, Nil me, si quid adest, movet, aut spes ulla futuri. [No word of ease, no word of comfort moves me; No help in the present, nor any hope for the future].21 These poems and letters, written in Latin to a distant friend (or in this case memorializing such a friend and soul-​mate), are simultaneously private and public. In the case of the Latin elegies included (like the lament for Damon) in Milton’s Poems (1645), or the 31 letters in Latin to various addressees in England and continental Europe, published as Epistolarum Familiarum in 1674, the audience of both the individual letter and the printed collection is conceived as selective –​again assumed to be “understanders” –​by the choice of Latin as well as by the intimacy of address, suggesting shared values, the difficulty of finding a kindred soul. In Milton’s Latin elegies, as Mandy Green puts it: Even if the immediate audience was a single individual, the verse epistles would eventually reach a wider readership, when they were circulated and published. They became private conversations expected to be overheard,

21 Epitaphium Damonis, 91–​2, in John Milton, Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Stella P. Revard (Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2009); translation (modified in line 92) in Mandy Green, “Reaching a European Audience: Milton’s Neo-​L atin Poems for Charles Diodati,” The European Legacy, 17 (2012), 165–​84 (176).

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but, since these are in Latin, this more public reception would gather only 22 a select readership.

Though, as CELM shows, there are a number of presentation copies of volumes written by Milton, sent to particular friends as gifts, Milton almost never circulated manuscripts of individual poems. The sonnets addressed to Cromwell, Fairfax, Vane, and Lawes, probably also those to Skinner and Lawrence, were evidently sent to their addressees, but except for the poem to Henry Lawes, were not circulated more widely either in manuscript or in print at or near the time of composition.23 Milton’s poems, unlike those of Donne, appear rarely in manuscript miscellanies. One Milton manuscript, the Trinity MS, is “the single most important autograph poetical manuscript of the seventeenth century still to survive,” but it is the poet’s own working sketchbook, with drafts, frequently revised, of a large number of poems.24 A large proportion of Milton’s sonnets begin with direct address to a named addressee: “Lawrence, of vertuous father vertuous son;” “Harry, whose tuneful and well measur’d Song;” “Fairfax, whose name in armes through Europe rings.” In this suggestion, at the outset of the poem, of an established relationship and shared values linking the poet and the person addressed, as in other respects, Milton finds precedents in the “heroic sonnets” of the Italian poets Tasso and Della Casa and in the Odes of Horace.25 The Trinity MS frequently indicates a specific 22 Green, “Reaching a European Audience,” p. 168. See also Cedric C. Brown, “John Milton and Charles Diodati: Reading the Textual Exchanges of Friends,” Milton Quarterly, 45 (2011), 73–​94; and Cedric C. Brown, “Letters, verse letters, and gift-​texts,” in Milton in Context, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 35–​45. 23 Several sonnets written during the 1640s and 1650s, including sonnets to Skinner, Lawrence, and Lawes, were published in Milton’s Poems (1673), but the sonnets to Cromwell, Fairfax, Vane, and a second sonnet to Skinner were suppressed as politically suspect until 1694 (the sonnet to Vane was published earlier, in 1662, after Vane’s execution). The sonnet to Lawes was published in a collection of his music in 1648, and Lawes is known to have made and circulated copies of the Bridgewater Masque. 24 See CELM (www.celm-​ms.org.uk/​introd​ucti​ons/​Mil​tonJ​ohn.html). Other important MSS, in the hands of amanuenses, include the Bridgewater MS of Comus, preserving the text of the text of the masque as performed in 1634. 25 On the sonnets of Tasso and Della Casa and their influence on Milton, see The Sonnets of Milton, edited by J. S. Smart (Glasgow: Maclehose & Jackson, 1921), pp. 29–​43; and F. T. Prince, The Italian Influence in Milton’s Verse, pp.14–​43.

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date and occasion for a poem, locating the historical circumstances that prompted it, details that were generally omitted when the poem was published some years later: “To my friend Mr Hen. Lawes Feb. 9 1645;” “To the Lord Generall Cromwell May 1652. On the proposals of certaine ministers at ye Committee for Propagation of the Gospell.” One thing these poems have in common is that they are simultaneously private and public. Their stance, like that set forth in the exordium to Areopagitica, is of those citizens “who … in a private condition, write that which they foresee may advance the publick good.” Again and again Milton’s sonnets use the immediacy and implied intimacy of direct address to a friend or a public figure to raise moral issues, with what Finley characterizes as “a kind of social authority springing from his conception of the poet’s office.”26 In Sonnet VIII, the addressee is explicitly presented as unknown to the poet: “Captaine, or Collonell, or Knight in Armes,” whoever might first encounter the poem. The heading in the Trinity MS, omitted in Poems (1645), indicates a specific occasion, presenting the poet and his poem as possible victims of the chaos of wartime: “On his dore when ye Citty expected an assault,” crossed out and replaced with “When the assault was intended to ye Citty” (the date “1642” also crossed out). The octave, balancing hope and fear, contrasts mindless violence and chivalric restraint, as it celebrates the power of poetry to eternize and to “protect from harmes”: Captaine, or Collonel, or Knight in Armes   Whose chance on these defenselesse dores may sease If ever deed of honour did thee please   Guard them, and him within protect from harmes. He can requite thee, for he knows the charmes   That call Fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spread thy name o’re lands and seas, 27   What ever climes the sun’s bright circle warmes. Annabel Patterson, in “Milton’s Heroic Sonnets,” A Concise Companion to Milton, ed. Angelica Duran (Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2011), pp. 78–​94, emphasizes this element of direct address as “the most striking and original aspect” of the poems. For the Horatian elements in Milton’s sonnets, especially those “addressed by name to certain persons,” see John H. Finley, “Milton and Horace: A Study of Milton’s Sonnets,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 48 (1937), 29–​73. 26 Areopagitica, YP, II. 486; Finley, “Milton and Horace.” p. 43. 27 Lines 1–​8, quoted from Trinity MS: John Milton, Poems, Reproduced in Facsimile from the Manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge (Menston: Scolar Press, 1972).

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The poem’s central assertion, continued in the sestet by literary examples from the classical tradition (Euripides, Pindar, Alexander the Great, the Peloponnesian War), is the power of human agency in public affairs: what can endure in dark times, transcending circumstances. This concern with human agency, its powers and uncertainties, with hopes set against fears, is equally central to four sonnets from the period of the Civil War, Commonwealth, and Protectorate, all explicitly political in their subject matter, poems on affairs of state. All four were withheld from publication at the time of writing, to be published half a century later, in more propitious times. The sonnets to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Vane, three prominent figures of the Commonwealth, all reflect on the uncertain prospects of peace in a time of war: “For what can Warr, but endless warr still breed, / ​Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed.”28 The praise in the poems to Cromwell and Fairfax, attributing their success in battle to “faith & matchless Fortitude,” “firm unshak’n vertue,” is in part a strategy to predispose the poem’s recipient to accept the poet’s counsel: “O yet a nobler task awaites thy hand;” “new foes aries /​Threatning to bind our soules wth secular chaines.”29 These poems are public statements, not at all like private letters, and especially in the appeal to Cromwell, who was generally committed to a policy of religious toleration but apparently favoured the more stringent regulations Milton was opposing, the politics of Milton’s poem are tricky. “Helpe us to save free Conscience”: implicitly addressing a wider audience, they suggest that Cromwell, the speaker, and the party of the virtuous in the England of 1652, as they have made common cause so far, should continue to do so. In these poems, as throughout Milton’s writing, politics and religion, “spirituall powre & civill,” are interconnected.30 A fourth poem written during this period and remaining unpublished until Letters of State (1694) is explicitly a testament of friendship, This sonnet is discussed in Patterson, “Milton’s Heroic Sonnets,” pp. 80–​82; Janel Mueller, “On Genesis in Genre: Milton’s Politicizing of the Sonnet in ‘Captain or Colonel’ ”, Renaissance Genres, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 213–​40; and, more recently, John Leonard, The Value of Milton (Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 22–​26. 28 Sonnet 15, lines 10–​11, quoted from Trinity MS. 29 Sonnet 15, lines 5, 9; Sonnet 16, lines 3, 11–​12, quoted from Trinity MS. 30 Sonnet 16, line 13; Sonnet 17, line 10, quoted from Trinity MS. On the political context of the sonnets to Cromwell and Vane, see Blair Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England (Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 241–​54.

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directly commenting on Milton’s own experience. The first person singular, absent from the poems to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Vane (unlike ‘wee’, ‘us’, ‘our’, ‘thee’, ‘thy’, ‘thou’) is omnipresent in “To Mr. Cyriack Skinner Upon his Blindness.” Yet again the poem, beginning with direct address, this time to someone identified later in the poem as “Friend,” presents religious faith and political convictions as closely related. As in Milton’s other, more famous sonnet on his blindness, the poem in its octave sets out the bleak facts accompanying the loss of sight, and in its sestet finds a “Guide” to support the poet in tribulation, answering his own and his interlocutor’s questions: (…) What supports me, dost thou ask? The Conscience, Friend, to have lost them over ply’d In Liberties Defence, my noble task. Though both sonnets on blindness invoke the idea of providence and the temptation to challenge or “argue …Against Heaven’s Hand, or Will,” the sonnet to Skinner gives a greater scope to human actions: there is no suggestion here that “God doth not need /​Either man’s work or his own gifts.”31 Two sonnets addressed to virtuous women, one secular and political in its allusions, one full of Biblical allusions and almost exclusively devoted to “those few /​That labour up the hill of heav’nly Truth,” present the “noble vertues” of the person addressed as consciously “Chosen” by them, against the pressures of a society lacking in such virtues. The sonnet addressed in the Trinity MS “To ye Lady Margaret Ley” presents “unstain’d” virtue and the love of “liberty” as passed on from generation to generation: Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of Englands Counsel, and her Treasury, Who liv’d in both, unstain’d with gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content.32

31 Sonnet 22, lines 6–​7, 9–​11, 14; Sonnet 19, lines 9–​10, in Complete Shorter Poems. 32 Sonnet X, 1–​4, 7, 12; Sonnet IX (Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth), 3–​4, 6, in Complete Shorter Poems. The “Lady” addressed in sonnet IX, unnamed, has never been identified. A third poem with similar religious imagery, though it does

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As Finley suggests, the poem, in Horatian manner, “implies a moral judgement” along with the compliment addressed to Lady Margaret: “by you, /​Madam, I see him living yet,” as one recognized to “possess” her father’s virtues. The clear implication in the opening lines is that other statesmen in the reign of Charles I were less “good,” ruled by self-​interest, “dishonest”; in both sonnets, those who have “shunn’d the broad way” are few.33 A similar formula of address, identifying the addressee in terms of “virtuous,” principled ancestry, a kind of moral grounding, opens two poems of friendship written during the 1650s, addressed to Edward Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner. These are the poems by Milton closest to the manner of Horace’s odes of invitation to a friend. Lawrence of vertuous Father vertuous Son, Now that the Fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help wast a sullen day; what may be won From the hard Season gaining (…) Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench Of Brittish Themis, with no mean applause Pronounc’t and in his volumes taught our Lawes, Which others at their Barr so often wrench.34 In their emphasis on “the hard Season,” retreat from care in a pleasurable “feast” of food and wine, the two sonnets echo not only Horace, but the tradition of Epicurean “happy man” (beatus ille) poems, stemming from Horace and the Greek Anthology, such as Lovelace’s The Grasshopper. These two poems, with their praise of the “delights” of companionable “mirth,” eating and drinking, accompanied by the music of “the Lute

not begin with direct address, in the Trinity MS bears the title “On ye religious memorie of Mrs Catharine Thomason my Christian friend deceas’d Decem. 1646” (Sonnet XIV). 33 Sonnet X, 8–​9, 12; Sonnet IX, 2; Finley, “Milton and Horace,” pp. 53–​55. 34 Sonnet XVII, 1–​5; Sonnet XVIII, 1–​4, in Complete Shorter Poems. Lawrence’s father, not mentioned after the opening line, was President of Cromwell’s Council of State. Skinner’s grandfather, presented in these lines as far superior to other judges and lawyers (and a defender of the common law and the rights of Parliament), was Sir Edward Coke.

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well toucht,” are Milton at his least puritanical.35 As in Lovelace’s poem in praise of transient pleasure, friendship and conviviality can provide a defence against hostile circumstances: Thou best of Men and Friends! we will create A Genuine Summer in each others breast; And spite of this cold Time and frosen Fate Thaw us a warme seate to our rest.36 The pleasures Milton recommends in these two sonnets are moderate, controlled, a matter of judgement, compatible with “solid good,” liberty rather than license: “To measure life, learn thou betimes,” he counsels the young Cyriack Skinner. This is mirth that brings “no repenting,” “a cheerful hour” God allows to those who seek to serve him, moments “to interpose” among more serious concerns. There is no asceticism in these poems, which advise against piling on “superfluous burden”: testaments to friendship and shared values. In a letter to Diodati written in 1637, Milton argues that “true friendship” should not “turn on balances of letters and salutations, all of which may be false,” but that instead it should be based more firmly “on both sides in the deep roots of the mind and sustain itself.” Later in this letter, he develops the idea of the mutual attraction of friendship in terms of Platonic notions of love, as in the Phaedrus and Symposium: the love of friends, Milton argues, is at its best a longing for the ideal, the love of beauty, the love and pursuit of truth: It is impossible indeed I could not love those like you. What besides God has resolved concerning me, I know not, but this I know: He has instilled in me …a vehement love of the beautiful…Hence it is that, when any one scorns what the vulgar believe in their depraved estimation of things, and

35 Sonnet XVII, 5, 9, 1, 13: Sonnet XVIII, 6. On imitation of Horace in these two poems, see Finley, “Milton and Horace,” pp. 63–​67; and, on the relationship of these two sonnets to Cavalier poems in the Anacreontic and Horatian tradition, see Joshua Scodel, Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature (Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 236–​45. On the tradition of poems in praise of retirement, free from worldly cares, see Maren-​Sofie Rɸstvig, The Happy Man, Vol. I, 1660–​1700, 2nd ed. (Oslo: Norwegian Universities Press, 1962). 36 “The Grasse-​hopper,” 21–​24’ in The Poems of Richard Lovelace, ed. C. H. Wilkinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930).

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dares to feel and speak and be that which the highest wisdom throughout all ages has taught to be best, to that man I attach myself immediately by a kind of need, wherever I find him.37

The idea of companionship, so central to Paradise Lost, is presented here as a quest (“day and night … I follow it as it leads me on”), and, in this eloquent passage, defined as an intellectual as well as emotional bond, a recognition of what “the highest wisdom” has taught. The true friend, always to be sought and hoped for, is a true understander.38

Bibliography Beal, Peter. Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts. (www.celm-​ms.org. uk/​introd​ucti​ons/​DonneJ​ohn.html; www.celm-​ms.org.uk/​introd​ucti​ons/​ Mil​tonJ​ohn.html). Brown, Cedric C. “John Milton and Charles Diodati: Reading the Textual Exchanges of Friends,” Milton Quarterly, 45 (2011), 73–​94. —​—​—.​ “Letters, verse letters, and gift-​texts,” in Milton in Context, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski. Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 35–​45. Chaplin, Gregory. “One Flesh, One Heart, One Soul: Renaissance Friendship and Miltonic Marriage,” Modern Philology, 99 (2001), 266–​91. Chernaik, Warren. “Milton’s ‘Fit Audience,’ ” Milton Studies, 60 (2018), 108–​33. Corthell, Ronald J. “ ‘Friendship’s Sacraments’: John Donne’s Familiar Letters,” Studies in Philology, 98 (1981), 409–​25. Dryden, John. Discourse Concerning Satire, in The Essays of John Dryden, ed. George Watson, 2 vols. London: Everyman, 1974. Donne, John. The Poems of John Donne, ed. Sir Herbert Grierson, 2 vols. Oxford University Press, 2012. —​—​—.​ Letters to Several Persons of Honour, ed. M. Thomas Hester. New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles, 1977. 37 Sonnet XVIII, 9, 13–14; Sonnet XVII, 14. 38 Letter 7, to Charles Diodati, in The Works of John Milton, edited by Frank Patterson et al, 22 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–​38), XII. 256–​57 (translation by David Masson, with minor modifications). See the discussion in Brown, “John Milton and Charles Diodati,” pp. 80–​82; and Gregory Chaplin, “’One Flesh, One Heart, One Soul’: Renaissance Friendship and Miltonic M ­ arriage,” Modern Philology, 99 (2001), 266–​91.

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—​—​—.​ The Sermons of John Donne, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, 10 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1953–​62. Eliot, T. S., “The Metaphysical Poets,” Selected Essays, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950, pp. 241–​50. Finley, John H., “Milton and Horace: A Study of Milton’s Sonnets,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 48 (1937), 29–​73. Green. Mandy. “Reaching a European Audience: Milton’s Neo-​Latin Poems for Charles Diodati,” The European Legacy, 17 (2012), 165–​84. Guibbory, Achsah, ed. The Cambridge Companion to John Donne. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Harrison, Tony. “Loving the Rituals,” Palladas: Poems. London: Anvil Press, 1975. Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson, ed. Ian Donaldson. Oxford University Press, 1985. —​—​—.​ Complete Plays, ed. G. A. Wilkes, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981–​82. Leonard, John. “The Troubled, Quiet Endings of Milton’s Sonnets,” in The Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith. Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 136–​52. —​—​—.​ The Value of Milton. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Lovelace, Richard. The Poems of Richard Lovelace, ed. C. H. Wilkinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930. MacColl, Alan. “The Circulation of Donne’s Poems in Manuscript,” in John Donne: Essays in Celebration, ed. A. J. Smith. London: Methuen, 1972. Maurer, Margaret. “John Donne’s Verse Letters,” Modern Language Quarterly, 37 (1976), 234–​59. Milton, John. Complete Prose Works, general editor, Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953–​82. —​—​—.​ Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Stella P. Revard. Oxford: Wiley-​ Blackwell, 2009. Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Poems, Reproduced in Facsimile from the Manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge. Menston: Scolar Press, 1972. The Sonnets of Milton, ed. J. S. Smart. Glasgow: Maclehose & Jackson, 1921. The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank Patterson et al., 22 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–​38.

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Mueller, Janel. “On Genesis in Genre: Milton’s Politicizing of the Sonnet in ‘Captain or Colonel’ ”, Renaissance Essays, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986, pp. 213–​40. Patterson, Annabel. “Milton’s Heroic Sonnets,” in A Concise Companion to Milton, ed. Angelica Duran. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2011, pp. 78–​94. Pebworth, Ted-​Larry. “The Text of Donne’s Writings,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Donne, ed. Achsah Guibbory. Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 23–​34. Pebworth, Ted-​ Larry and Claude J. Summers, “‘Thus Friends Absent Speake’: The Exchange of Verse Letters between John Donne and Henry Wotton,” Modern Philology, 81 (1984), 361–​77. Prince, F. T. The Italian Influence in Milton’s Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953. Røstvig, Maren-​Sofie, The Happy Man, Vol. 1, 1660–​ 1700, 2nd ed. Oslo: Norwegian Universities Press, 1962, Scodel, Joshua. Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature. Princeton University Press, 2002. Smith, A. J., ed. John Donne: Essays in Celebration. London: Methuen, 1972. —​—​—.​ John Donne: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. Smith, Daniel Starza. John Donne and the Conway Papers. Oxford University Press, 2014. Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Williamson, George. “Strong Lines,” Seventeenth Century Contexts. London: Faber and Faber, 1963, pp. 120–​31. Worden, Blair. Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England. Oxford University Press, 2007.

“Now Chaos Ends and Order Fair Prevails”: A Rationalistic Interpretation of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Oratorio The Creation by van Gottfried Swieten and Joseph Haydn Beat Föllmi

Since the première in Vienna at the end of April 1798, Joseph Haydn’s Creation is one of the best-​k nown and most frequently performed oratorios. The reason for this immediate and lasting success is mainly seen in Haydn’s “popular” musical language: the vivid, tone-​painting description of the animals, their movements and sounds, the depiction of the elements and the loving, tender exchange of the first human couple. In recent decades, musicological research has also been interested in the intellectual and historical environment of the two authors, the librettist Gottfried van Swieten and the composer Joseph Haydn: the late Enlightenment and the early Romanticism.1 While van Swieten’s libretto was often reviled in older literature (Schiller called it “a characterless mishmash”2), scholars are actually interested in the dazzling figure of Baron van Swieten, his proximity to Freemasonry, Josephine Enlightenment and Deism. Van Swieten is undoubtedly the link between the Miltonic epic and the Viennese oratorio, since he had not only access to Milton’s oeuvre but he was also particularly interested in English ­literature.3 In van Swieten’s adaption, Milton’s text takes a back seat. The account of creation in the seventh book of Paradise Lost comes from such a completely different imaginary world than that of Haydn’s Creation, that it 1 See Mark Berry, “Haydn’s Creation and Enlightenment Theology,” in: Austrian History Yearbook 39 (2008), pp. 25–​4 4. 2 “...ein charakterloses Mischmasch,” Letter to Christian Gottfried Körner, 5 January 1801, published in: Victor Ravizza, Joseph Haydn: Die Schöpfung, München: Fink, 1981 (Meisterwerke der Musik, 24), p. 15. 3 See the important study by Noam Flinker, “Miltonic Voices in Haydn’s Creation”, in: Milton Studies 27 (1992), pp. 139–​64.

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seems even odd that, at the end of the eighteenth century, two artists fall back on this text, which was already more than 120 years old. Since the genesis of the libretto is very complex (and still partly obscure) but important for understanding the transformation of Miltonic topics into a Viennese oratorio, we will start with a detailed analysis of the libretto and its genesis.

The Oratorio Haydn composed his oratorio in Vienna between October 1796 and April 1798 after returning from his second journey in England. The oeuvre was first performed on 29 and 30 April 1798 in the Vienna palace of Prince Schwarzenberg for a closed society. A first public performance of the slightly revised score took place one year later, in March 1799, in the old Burgtheater. The oeuvre has three parts following Handelian oratorio tradition. Part one describes the first four days of creation: the creation of the world, the separation of chaos and order, of dry land from the primordial sea, as well as the creation of the lights (sun, moon, stars). The second part describes the fifth and sixth day of creation: the creation of the living world, on water, land and in the air, as well as the creation of the first human couple. While the first two parts are based on the Priestly source of creation according to Gen 1, 1–​2, 2, the third part describes the loving encounter of Adam and Eva in the Garden of Eden and focuses entirely on man as the perfect creature of God.

The Libretto and its Origin The genesis of the oratorio libretto is complex. We have since the first audition two different versions, one in German and another in English. Obviously the actual English version cannot be the original text, due to linguistic errors and difficulties (which have already been criticized by contemporaries).4 The librettist van Swieten describes in an article in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of 1799 –​about eight months 4 See Pierre Degott, “The Issue of the English Language in Haydn’s German Oratorios”, in: Musicorum n°7 (2009) “Haydn und Europa,” Online revue: .

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after the première –​the circumstances of the genesis of his adaptation: “... and also a few words about the poetry which you would like to call my creation. My part in the work, which was originally in English, was certainly rather more than mere translation; but it was far from being such that I could regard it as my own.”5 If we accept van Swieten’s account, there was first an English libretto written by an unknown author, which was intended for Handel, but was not set to music by him. During one of his stays in London (probably the second one) Haydn was presented with this libretto, which he showed to van Swieten after his return to Vienna. Van Swieten reworked it and set up a German translation for Haydn. The German version was translated back into English for the first performance in London in 1800. Obviously, parts of the English original libretto were used, but other parts were also newly translated. “In this way my translation came about,” van Swieten wrote. “It is true that I followed the plan of the original faithfully as a whole, but I diverged from it in details as often as musical progress and expression, of which I already had an ideal conception in my mind, seemed to demand. Guided by these sentiments, I often judged it necessary that much should be shortened or even omitted, on the one hand, and on the other that much should be made more prominent or brought into greater relief, and much placed more in the shade.”6 The identity of the English librettist is not known. Haydn attended several oratorios by Handel in London and met Thomas Linley senior (he mistakenly calls him “Lidley”), who was the director of the Handel

5

“und auch ein paar Worte von dem Gedichte, welches Sie meine Schöpfung zu nennen belieben. Der Antheil, den ich an dem ursprünglich englischen Werke habe, ist zwar etwas mehr als bloße Uebersetzung, doch bey weiten nicht so beschaffen, daß ich es als mein ansehen könnte,” Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung No 1, 3 January 1799, col. 254 f. Translation by Edward Olleson, “The Origin and Libretto of Haydn’s Creation”, in: Haydn Yearbook 4, 1968, pp. 149–​50. 6 “So entstand meine Uebersetzung, bey welcher ich der Hauptanlage des Originals zwar im Ganzen treulich gefolgt, im Einzelnen aber davon so oft abgewichen bin, als musikalischer Gang und Ausdruck, wovon das Ideal meinem Geiste schon gegenwärtig war, es zu fordern, mir geschienen hat, und durch diese Empfindung geleitet, habe ich einer Seits manches zu verkürzen, oder gar wegzulassen, anderer Seits manches zu erheben, oder in ein helleres Licht zu stellen, und manches mehr in Schatten zurück zu ziehen, für nöthig erachtet.” ibidem.

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oratorios at the time.7 It cannot be excluded that this Handel expert submitted the English libretto to Haydn, perhaps with the hint that the libretto had already been proposed to the great Handel. Linley, however, was a composer and did not write any libretti himself (and is therefore mistakenly named as the author of the English “Urlibretto” as we can read in the Eulenburg score). Scholars’ opinions differ widely on the identity of the unknown librettist. While Paula Baumgärtner in her dissertation of 1930 suspects that the unknown English librettist is only a literary fiction, invented by Baron van Swieten,8 the English singer Neil Jenkins concludes in an extensive study of 2005 that the libretto intended for Handel was written by Charles Jennens (1700–​73), the author of several libretti for Handel (among others for Saul, Messiah, Israel in Egypt). If this Urlibretto actually was written by Jennens, it would have been written in the 1740s or 1750s. But they must have been other sources. Jenkins supposes that the Urlibretto by Jennens has been influenced by the poem The Seasons (1730), written by James Thomson (1700–​48) –​a poem which was used by van Swieten as a basis for Haydn’s last oratorio The Seasons.9

7 See Nicholas Temperley, Haydn, The Creation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 (Cambridge Music Handbooks), pp. 19–​20; Olleson, Origin, pp. 154–​55. 8 Paul Baumgärtner, Gottfried van Swieten als Textdichter von Haydns Oratorien, doctoral thesis, Vienna, 1929/​1930. 9 Jenkins, Neil, “Haydn: The Libretto of The Creation, New Sources and a Possible Librettist”, in: Journal of the Haydn Society of Great Britain, No. 24/​2 (2005), also Online: .

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Milton’s Paradise Lost and van Swieten’s Libretto What did this English Urlibretto look like? I argue that it contained a much greater part of free rewriting of the Miltonic text than it is the case for van Swieten’s libretto. This is for two reasons. Firstly, an oratorio libretto of the 1740s in England, obviously intended for Handel, is not conceivable in its current form, i.e. a literal adaptation of an extended biblical passage in which some free poetic texts have been inserted. Certainly, Handel’s oratorio libretti also contain quotations from the Bible, but in no case does the action follow the Bible text almost literally, as it is the case in Haydn’s Creation. A good example is the Messiah libretto by Charles Jennens (who is said to be the author of the original libretto of Creation): the libretto is a kind of patchwork of Bible quotations from the Old and New Testament. Van Swieten’s libretto, however, looks more like a Catholic oratorio of the seventeenth century (Carrissimi, Charpentier) or a Protestant (liturgical) Passion, in which the Bible text represents the red thread, in which free poetic texts are interwoven. Secondly, literary-​critical considerations support my hypothesis: Why should the English librettist put some isolated passages from Milton’s Paradise Lost into the Bible text? It is much more likely that it happened

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the other way round: the English Urlibretto was a free rewriting of the creation story according to Milton’s book seven of Paradise Lost, and van Swieten’s work consisted of reattaching the English libretto more strongly to the Bible. Van Swieten has reformulated Milton’s text with the words of the biblical account of the creation in Genesis chap. 1. He used the English Bible text from the King James Version, which he translated into German. This is already apparent from the fact that the German Bible text of the oratorio cannot be assigned to any known German translation. So the reconnection to the Bible text, at the expense of the original Miltonic narrative, is part of a conscious reception –​since van Swieten knew Milton’s Paradise Lost very well, either in the English original text or in the then widespread German translations by Johann Jakob Bodmer (1742) or by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae (1760).10 In view of these facts, Haydn’s Creation is to a much greater extent a transformation of Milton’s Paradise Lost than it initially gives the impression. From the Miltonic poem comes the narrative role of Raphael, whereby two more characters that do not appear in the seventh book of Milton’s Paradise Lost are added, namely Gabriel and Uriel (they appear in book three, four and nine). The angelic choirs that praise God’s creation are also from Milton’s text.11 A line-​by-​line comparison between Milton and van Swieten reveals an astonishing result, especially if one takes the English version of the oratorio into account. It appears that Milton’s text has not simply been paraphrased, but that several terms from Milton’s poem have been literally taken over in the oratorio libretto, so that in some cases we can speak of a kind of “centonization,” i.e. a composition by the synthesis of pre-​existing musical units. I choose the aria of Uriel (n°2) as a representative example (underlining by myself):

10 J. J. Bodmer, Johann Miltons Episches Gedichte von dem Verlohrnen Paradiese, Zürich: Conrad Orell und Comp. and Leipzig: Joh. Friedrich Gleditsch, 1742; F. W. Zachariae, Das verlohrne Paradies, Alton: David Jversen, 1760. 11 Paradise Lost (PL), 7, 180–​93.

“Now Chaos Ends and Order Fair Prevails” van Swieten, libretto

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URIEL Nun schwanden vor dem heiligen StrahleDes schwarzen Dunkels gräuliche Schatten: Der erste Tag entstand. Verwirrung weicht, und Ordnung keimt empor. Erstarrt entflieht der Höllengeister Schar In des Abgrunds Tiefen hinab Zur ewigen Nacht. CHOR Verzweiflung, Wut und Schrecken Begleiten ihren Sturz, Und eine neue Welt Entspringt auf Gottes Wort. URIEL Now vanish before the holy beams the gloomy, dismal shades of dark; the first of days appears. Disorder yields, to order fair the place.12 Affrighted fled hell’s spirits black in throngs; down they sink in the deep abyss, to endless night. CHORUS Despairing, cursing rage attends their rapid fall. A new created world springs up at God’s command.

Hail, holy light … of the Eternal coeternal beam [PL III] From before her vanished Night, shot through with orient beams [PL VI] … with him fled the shades of Night [PL IV] Thus was the first day … [PL VII] Darkness fled, Light shone, and order from Disorder sprung [PL III] Headlong themselves they threw down… to the bottomless pit [PL VI] … and would have fled affrighted [PL VI] …into this wild abyss [PL II] … where eldest Night and Chaos hold eternal anarchy [PL II] Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage [PL VIII] … hurled headlong flaming from th’ethereal sky… down to bottomless perdition [PL I] … the new created world [PL III, IV, VII, X]

12 Often corrected into: “Now chaos ends and order fair prevails.”

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It is significant that van Swieten’s version emphasizes the metaphor of light. While Milton juxtaposes various opposites –​such as “order” and “disorder,” “order” and “chaos,” “above” and “below,” “shadow” and “light” –​van Swieten’s libretto emphasizes the light that banishes the shadows in which the demons of hell have been hidden. I will discuss this point further on. Another interesting point concerns the third part of the oratorio, which has no direct biblical background. It describes the happiness of the first human couple, enjoying at once the beauty of creation and each other. While there are no biblical allusions here (except perhaps one Psalm verse), Milton is still widely present. The text behind comes largely from the fifth book of Paradise Lost, and again the librettist used the method of “centonization.” The decisive difference, however, is the following: while Milton describes the idyll of the Paradise garden to show the threat to it by the seduction of Satan, in Haydn’s oratorio the happiness of the human couple is the goal of God’s creation; neither temptation nor expulsion occur in the third and last oratorio part. However, the absence of God in the third part of the oratorio is almost striking. This is already signalized at the end of the second part, when the first Man is created: van Swieten, libretto

Milton, Paradise Lost

Nr. 24 Aria URIEL Mit Würd’ und Hoheit angetan,Mit Schönheit, Stärk’ und Mut begabt, Gen Himmel aufgerichtet steht der Mensch,Ein Mann und König der Natur. URIEL In native worth and honour clad, With beauty, courage, strength, adorned, To heav’n erect and tall he stands A man, the lord and king of nature all.

… erect and tall, God-​like erect, with native honour clad in naked majesty, seemed lords of all, and worthy seemed; for, in their looks divine the image of their glorious Maker shone, truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure [PL IV]

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The Miltonic expression “erect and tall” is literally reproduced in the oratorio, but in contrast to Milton, where Man is “God-​like erect” (i.e. he gets his majesty in relation to God), Man in the oratorio extends to the sky, he is the “lord and king of nature all,” two attributes traditionally attributed to God.

“Let there be light!” Haydn’s and van Swieten’s Creation has been discussed by many scholars as a representation of the romantic category of “sublime,” both in terms of text and music.13 This can certainly not be denied, especially with regard to the reception of the oratorio. But in relation to the reception of Milton’s text by van Swieten and Haydn, there is another significant aspect for the genesis and the form of the oratorio, namely the historical background: the French Revolution and the subsequent realignment of Europe after Napoleon’s military campaigns. This aspect is revealed in the important role played by the light metaphor. The contemporary musician Carl Friedrich Zelter has already recognized the contrasting principles of light and shadows. In 1802 he published a comprehensive and largely positive appraisal of Haydn’s oratorio in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, and he wrote: “To create the necessary contrast, the poet has portrayed the absence of light and order as hostile powers, which are confronted to the new created light as the higher power.”14 Although the librettist van Swieten and the composer Haydn worked closely together, two different voices can be discerned within the oratorio: the voice of van Swieten, who was influenced by Enlightenment and

13 See Ludwig Finscher, Haydn und seine Zeit, Laaber, 2000 (Große Komponisten und ihre Zeit), p. 478. The first conceptual account in: Christian Friedrich Michaelis, Ueber das Erhabene in der Musik (1801), and also in: Einige Bemerkungen über das Erhabene in der Musik (1805), published in: Lothar Schmidt (ed.), Christian Friedrich Michaelis. Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst und andere Schriften (Musikästhetische Schriften nach Kant, 2), Chemnitz: Gudrun Schröder Verlag, 1997, pp. 168–​74 and pp. 242–​4 4. 14 “Zur Etablirung des nöthigen Kontrastes, hat der Dichter die Abwesenheit des Lichts und der Ordnung als feindliche Mächte vorgestellt, welchen das neue Licht als eine gegenseitig höhere Macht gegen über gestellt ist.” Zelter, “Recensio: Die Schöpfung,” in: Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, No. 24, 10 March 1802, col. 389–​90

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rationalism, and the voice of Haydn, who was more unsettled by the political and warlike events of the late eighteenth century. Baron Gottfried van Swieten (1733–​1803) was a diplomat in the service of the Austrian imperial Court and Prefect of the imperial library from 1777 on. In his Vienna salon he organized regularly musical events, where Bach and Handel as well as Mozart were performed. He founded the “Gesellschaft der Associierten” (Society of Associated Cavaliers), which financed, among other musical events, the première of the ­Creation. The Baron himself was also a composer and above all a poet. Van Swieten’s intellectual world was the late Josephin Enlightenment. He came from a Calvinist family and later converted to Roman Catholicism, but his religious conviction is close to Deism. He was also Freemason, which he carefully concealed. Van Swieten’s voice becomes audible at the beginning of the oratorio when, at the end of the second day, Gabriel announces the praise of the angels. The English text says: “The marv’lous work beholds amazed /​The glorious hierarchy of heav’n” (n°5). In the German text, however, we read: “Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk /​der Himmelsbürger frohe Schar.” (Literally: with amazement the numerous heavenly citizens admire the marvel). The “glorious hierarchy” fits very well into the language of seventeenth century England, the German expression “Himmelsbürger,” however, refers to the French Revolution –​“Bürger” is here the usual translation of the French “citoyen.” Van Swieten’s voice can also be heard in the already mentioned description of the first created Man: an enlightened man, “a lord and king of nature.” The metaphors of light that can be found everywhere in the oratorio are therefore an indication of “Enlightenment,” “les Lumières.” When God speaks at the beginning “Let there be light,” then Light is here also the light of the Enlightenment. The following aria with choir comments: Before the holy beam the shadows of darkness disappear, which means: “chaos ends and order fair prevails.” While in Milton’s text the fall of the hellish spirits precedes creation (and even represents the motive why God creates a new world), in van Swieten’s libretto the fall and expulsion of the evil spirits are the consequence of creation, more precisely, of the created light from which they flee.

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This also explains the expression “a new created world” –​which looks strange in the oratorio, since according to the biblical account of creation no old world precedes God’s creation. But here we hear the voice of a philosopher of Josephin Enlightenment: Through the light of the Enlightenment and through enlightened governance “the chaos ends and order fair prevails.” I think, we may well see here a side blow to the Austrian king, Francis II, and his autocratic and reactionary reign. At the time the oratorio was created, Francis II closed the Masonic lodges and intensified censorship. We hear a similar, though different voice in the music. When Haydn returned from his first London journey to Vienna, dramatic events were taking place on the continent. King Francis, who had just been elected German Emperor, declared war on France, which led to the first Coalition War with its disastrous consequences for Austria. In France, however, the Ancien Régime collapsed. In summer of 1792, the Tuileries was attacked, and King Louis was executed by guillotine six months later, in January 1793. Then the Reign of Terror began, culminating in the execution of Danton. Robespierre published the cult of the “Être suprême” on the 18 Floréal (7 May 1794), which was, in fact, the abolition of Christianity. In October 1797, the Treaty of Campo Formio was signed, in which Austria had to accept the Napoleonic reordering of Europe and lost, among other territories, the Austrian Netherlands. Precisely in these turbulent times Haydn decided to write his oratorio The Creation and completed the composition in spring 1798, half a year after the Treaty of Campo Formio. It is quite possible that the composer saw parallels to the political events of his time in the struggle between God and Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost when he agreed to set to music the libretto he received in London. In Haydn’s music, the shock of the political events can be felt. The famous orchestral Prelude, entitled “The Representation of Chaos,” shows that the composer did not want to portray “nonentity” before the act of creation, but chaos. He thus composes something that a musician of the late eighteenth century cannot actually do musically: express disorder through music, while music must necessarily be order. But the musical representation

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of chaos is indispensable for Haydn’s conception. Only in this way –​ after 58 bars of chaos –​he can convincingly represent the principle of order which the divine Light is bringing to mankind. Only in this way the simple C major triad gets its powerful effect after the words “Let there be light.” And in the following aria Haydn is developing the idea of the contrast between chaos and order: we hear arpeggiated triads in regular ternary rhythms for order, chromatic steps in small figures for chaos. Almost ironically, the despair of the hellish spirits is represented by a fugue, the epitome of structured music –​but a special fugue with a chromatically disjointed theme. After the fugue and the fall of the spirits, the choir announces “a new created world” with well-​structured cadenzas, interrupted by another irruption of the hellish spirits and a brief return to chaos. After the affirmative closing words “it springs up on God’s Word,” the final cadenza is confirmed twice again by the orchestra. Order is definitely established. While here, at the beginning of the oratorio the light represents the divine order whereby God’s Word stemmed the chaos, on the fourth day God creates the lights of heaven –​sun, moon and stars. This gives Haydn another opportunity to illustrate the connection between light and order (here in political terms): He depicts the sunrise with brass and timpani in a radiant D major, like the solemn entry of a sovereign.

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The prelude to the third part is a description of the Paradise Garden, the reign of divine order. Haydn uses here triple flutes –​the only moment in the whole oratorio (normally the classical orchestra has only two flutes). Thus we can hear common chords in the pure timbre of flutes, the perfect harmony. The text of Uriel’s recitative at the beginning of this part (No. 27) recalls similar passages from English libretti for

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St. Cecilia’s Day –​for example in the ode by John Dryden, Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1687): Aus Rosenwolken bricht, Geweckt durch süßen Klang, Der Morgen jung und schön. Vom himmlischen Gewölbe Strömt reine Harmonie Zur Erde hinab.

In rosy mantle appears, By tunes sweet awak’d, The morning young and fair. From the celestial vaults Pure harmony descends on ravishéd earth. John Dryden, Song for St. Cecilia’s Day From harmony, from heav’nly harmony This universal frame began: When Nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high: “Arise, ye more than dead.”

Conclusion The oratorio The Creation is thus a complex response to the Miltonic text. A (lost) English libretto from the 1740s, widely inspired by the seventh book of Miltons Paradise Lost, was transformed into a German/​English oratorio text in the 1790s, during a period of political changes: the Napoleonic Wars and the conservative reign of Francis II. We identified two different voices within the oratorio: in the text the voice of van Swieten pleading for a Josephinian, enlightened society, and in the music Haydn’s voice, who calls for order in a period of political upheaval.

Bibliography Baumgärtner, Paul, Gottfried van Swieten als Textdichter von Haydns Oratorien, doctoral thesis, Vienna, 1929/​1930. Berry, Mark, “Haydn’s Creation and Enlightenment Theology,” in: Austrian History Yearbook 39 (2008), p. 25–​44.

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Degott, Pierre, “The Issue of the English Language in Haydn’s German Oratorios”, in: Musicorum n°7 (2009) “Haydn und Europa,” . Finscher, Ludwig, Haydn und seine Zeit, Laaber, 2000 (Große Komponisten und ihre Zeit). Flinker, Noam, “Miltonic Voices in Haydn’s Creation”, in: Milton Studies 27 (1992), pp. 139–​64. Jenkins, Neil, “Haydn: The Libretto of The Creation, New Sources and a Possible Librettist”, in: Journal of the Haydn Society of Great Britain, No. 24/​ 2 (2005) . Olleson, Edward, “The Origin and Libretto of Haydn’s Creation”, in: Haydn Yearbook 4, 1968, pp. 148–​68. Ravizza, Victor, Joseph Haydn: Die Schöpfung, München: Fink, 1981 (Meisterwerke der Musik, 24). Schmidt, Lothar (ed.), Christian Friedrich Michaelis. Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst und andere Schriften (Musikästhetische Schriften nach Kant, 2), Chemnitz: Gudrun Schröder Verlag, 1997. Temperley, Nicholas, Haydn, The Creation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 (Cambridge Music Handbooks).

Milton in Stained Glass1 Beverley Sherry

Milton and the visual arts is a widely researched subject but has barely extended to stained glass. Portraits of Milton and illustrations of his works in various artistic media date from as early as the seventeenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century, with the advent of the Gothic Revival, that they began to be depicted in vitreous form. From the mid-​nineteenth century onwards, portraits of Milton in stained glass (as of Shakespeare) appeared in schools, libraries, universities, civic buildings, churches, residences. His poetic works were also depicted, or translated, into stained glass.2 As with the portraits, these illustrations carry a rich freight of meaning because of the nature of stained glass as an architectural art, existing within an architectural, historical, cultural, and social context. Portraits of Milton in stained glass exist in diverse contexts in the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia.3 Illustrations of his works are much rarer but two splendid examples by American artists date from 1931, the Paradise Lost window designed by Henry Lee Willet (1899–​1983) for Geneva College, Beaver Falls Pennsylvania and the majestic Paradise Lost window in the Chapel of Princeton University by Charles Connick (1875–​1945). These two works differ markedly from each other and are highly imaginative vitreous translations of Milton’s epic. Both reward close study, and the Princeton Paradise Lost is regarded by Peter Cormack as “perhaps the finest modern depiction of Milton’s work in any medium.”4 1 This chapter has been adapted, with kind permission, from “The Milton Window at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster,” Vidimus 125 (March 2019). It formed part of a PowerPoint presentation by Beverley Sherry, “Milton in Stained Glass,” at the 12th International Milton Symposium. 2 My research on Milton in stained glass is an extension of my work on translations of Paradise Lost in Milton in Translation, eds. Angelica Duran, Islam Issa, and Jonathan R. Olson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 33–​50. 3 Beverley Sherry, “Portraits of Milton in Stained Glass,” in Global Milton and Visual Art, eds. Angelica Duran and Mario Murgia (Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2021), pp. 311–​32. 4 Email to author 11 September 2018. For a discussion of Connick’s four Christian Epics in the Princeton Chapel (Le Morte d’Arthur, the Divine Comedy, Paradise

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Fig. 1.  Milton window at right, St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. With the exception of Fig. 8, the photographs are by Christopher Parkinson, courtesy of St Margaret’s Church, Westminster.

The present essay, however, focuses on a window of a different kind, the Milton memorial window at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, which encompasses both portraits of Milton, at different stages of his life, and scenes from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Particularly rich in meaning, the window was made by Clayton & Bell in 1888 and exemplifies Milton’s own description of stained glass, before he lost his sight, as “storied Windows richly dight”5 (Figs. 1 and 2).

Lost, and The Pilgrim’s Progress) see Peter Cormack, Arts & Crafts Stained Glass (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 228–​35 and Richard Stillwell, The Chapel of Princeton University (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 45–​91. 5 Il Penseroso 159. For a wider study, see Aaron Shapiro, “Inscriptions, Monuments, and the Milton Window at St. Margaret’s, Westminster,” in Global Milton and Visual Art, eds. Angelica Duran and Mario Murgia (Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2021), pp. 287–​310.

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Fig. 2.  Milton window.

The idea for the window came from Westminster Abbey’s Archdeacon Frederic Farrar (1831–​1903).6 He chose Milton because of the poet’s association with St. Margaret’s and because Milton was his personal 6 On Farrar, see entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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hero. According to his son, Farrar was devoted to Milton throughout his life: “the little volume of Milton which his mother gave him when he was quite a child” remained “his constant companion till the day of his death” and “he knew many passages of ‘Paradise Lost’ by heart.”7 Farrar proposed the window as part of the restoration and beautification programme that he undertook for St Margaret’s. In 1882 Americans had funded the West window, a memorial to Sir Walter Raleigh, who is buried in the Church, and in November 1886 Farrar appealed to the Americans for a Milton window.8 A philanthropist and newspaper magnate, George W. Childs of Philadelphia, known for funding memorials to poets, responded to the appeal.9 Farrar records, “When I told Mr Childs how closely Milton had been connected with St Margaret’s, Westminster, where his banns of marriage were published, and where his dearest wife (‘my late-​espoused saint’) and infant daughter lie buried, he gladly consented to give a window to Milton’s memory. When it was executed, he sent at once the sum which it cost –​which was, I believe, more than £600.”10 St. Margaret’s was the parish church for the House of Commons and Milton was a parishioner in the 1650s, when he worked for the Commonwealth and lived in Westminster. On November 12th, 1656, his marriage to Katherine Woodcock was conducted by a London Justice of the Peace, Sir John Dethicke. In accordance with the Marriage Act of 1653, it was a civil ceremony, and records have it taking place at either the Guildhall or St Margaret’s. It is possible that the civil marriage was followed by another ceremony at St Margaret’s. Katherine (Milton’s “late-​espoused saint”) and her baby girl died in 1658 and they were buried in the parish of St Margaret’s.11

7 Reginald Farrar, The Life of Frederic William Farrar: sometime dean of Canterbury (London: James Nesbitt & Co., 1904), p. 4. 8 “The Milton Window”, in The Story of the Memorial Fountain to Shakespeare at Stratford-​upon-​Avon (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1890), ed. L. Clarke Davis, pp. 187–​88. 9 Childs had funded a two-​light window to George Herbert and William Cowper in Westminster Abbey and the Shakespeare memorial fountain in Stratford-​upon-​ Avon. 10 Frederic W. Farrar, Men I Have Known (New York & Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1897), pp. 169–​70. 11 Arthur Axelrad, “Woodcock, Katherine”, A Milton Encyclopedia 8 vols, ed. William B. Hunter, Jr (Lewisburg PA: Bucknell University Press, 1978–​80) 8: 176. J. Milton French gives sources for two different places of the marriage, the Guildhall and St

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Two inscriptions at the base of the window spell out its origin and purpose. One reads: “To the glory of God and in memory of the immortal poet John Milton: whose wife and child lie buried here. This window is dedicated by George W. Childs of Philadelphia MDCCCLXXXVIII” (Fig. 3). The other inscription was specially commissioned by Archdeacon Farrar. In a letter to Childs in 1887, he writes, “I can think of no one more suitable than Mr J.G. Whittier to write four lines for the Milton window. Mr Whittier would feel the greatest sympathy for the great Puritan poet.”12 John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–​92) welcomed the request and provided the following quatrain: The New World honours him whose lofty plea For England’s freedom made her own more sure, Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be Their common freehold while both worlds endure. (Fig. 4) A Quaker poet, Whittier campaigned against slavery and his lines salute Milton, himself a friend to Quakers, as a champion of freedom and an inspiration for the New World. Thanking Whittier in a letter of January 1888, Dr Farrar writes that the four lines are “all that I can desire … I think that if Milton had now been living, you are the poet whom he would have chosen to speak of him.”13

Margaret’s, The Life Records of John Milton 5 vols (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1956) IV: 126. British History Online records that “In St. Margaret’s Church, in 1656, John Milton was married to his second wife, Katherine Woodcocke” (http://​w ww.brit​ish-​hist​ory.ac.uk/​old-​new-​lon​don/​vol3/​pp567-​76). Edward Jones advises, “Milton did not disavow all traditional practices in marriage even if he elected the secular option. This mixed position is also evident in the burials of his wife and daughter two years later. The St Margaret’s churchwarden accounts for 1658 indicate that both were buried ‘in the new Chappell’ (E 37, fol. 15v) and evidence in the parish church records indicates that the burial services for both took place in the Broadway Chapel in Tothill Fields” (Email to author 22 January 2019). 12 Samuel T. Pickard, The Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, 2 vols (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1894), vol. II, pp. 728–​29. 13 Pickard, Life and Letters of Whittier vol. II, p. 730.

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Fig. 3.  Dedicatory inscription, Milton window.

Fig. 4.  John Greenleaf Whittier’s quatrain, Milton window.

The two inscriptions thus speak strongly of cross-​Atlantic links central to the occasion and origin of the window. Its design and manufacture, however, are English, for Farrar commissioned Clayton & Bell of London, the firm that had made the Raleigh window, for this project. In his letter of 1887, Farrar assures George Childs that, “The artists are taking great pains with it. I sent you an outline of the sketch not long ago. … Messrs Clayton & Bell are putting forth their best strength and promise me that it will be finished before the end of the Jubilee year.”14 The firm of Clayton & Bell was established in 1855 by John Richard

14 Pickard, Life and Letters of Whittier vol. II, p. 728. 1887 was Queen Victoria’s ­Jubilee.

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Clayton (1827–​1913) and Alfred Bell (1832–​95), and by the 1880s they had become leaders in the revival of stained glass, with a forte in handling large series of windows such as those at Sherborne Abbey, Truro Cathedral, and St Edmundsbury Cathedral.15 An ambitious programme by Clayton & Bell, which includes a full-​length portrait of Milton, was made in 1857–​59 for the University of Sydney’s Great Hall. One of the earliest complete glazing schemes of the Victorian revival, the windows received much publicity and royal approval before being dispatched to the colony of New South Wales. They are an oeuvre entire, unfolding a vast historical narrative.16 The Milton window at St Margaret’s is likewise replete with stories, and demonstrates Clayton & Bell’s architectonic and iconographic skills in handling a range of subjects within a large window. Designed in four lights with tracery, its numerous panels depict themes from both the life and the works of the poet. The central panels show scenes from Milton’s life, and their selection was influenced by Archdeacon Farrar. He communicated with Clayton & Bell as they worked on the design, as evidenced in the sermon he gave on the day after the window was unveiled.17 On Saturday, 18th February 1888, upon returning from the unveiling, Farrar wrote to George Childs, “In the centre is Milton dictating to his daughters the ‘Paradise Lost’; below is Milton as a boy at St. Paul’s school, and Milton visiting Galileo.”18 15 On Clayton & Bell’s work in the United Kingdom, see Martin Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1980), pp. 29–​33 and Plates 10, 11, 12. Harrison considers that Clayton & Bell “produced the most satisfying integrated schemes of stained glass in the Victorian period” (p. 29). They were major exporters of stained glass to Australia in the nineteenth century –​see Beverley Sherry, Australia’s Historic Stained Glass (Sydney: Murray Child, 1991), pp. 14, 33, 53–​54, 67–​69, 92–​94. I owe a debt to Christopher Parkinson for additional, extensive information on Clayton & Bell. 16 Sherry, Australia’s Historic Stained Glass, pp. 24–​25, 67–​69, 84–​85. 17 Letter to George Childs in Pickard, Life and Letters of Whittier vol. II, p. 728. The full text of Farrar’s sermon is printed in Davis, “The Milton Window,” pp. 212–​34. 18 Davis, “The Milton Window,” p. 194. Clayton & Bell’s pen and ink design of the window is preserved in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Museum number E. 1442–​ 2001); John Richard Clayton and Alfred Bell are identified as the designers and Clayton & Bell as the manufacturers. For the central scene, the pen and ink drawing differs from the completed window. The drawing shows Milton with one woman whom the Victoria & Albert Museum curiously identify as Milton’s first wife, Mary Powell, whereas the completed window depicts Milton with two women, identified by Farrar as Milton’s daughters.

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The scene depicting Milton the school boy is unique as far as I know (Fig. 5). He is depicted in a class with four other students. Their teacher stands close to them, addressing them with a raised finger. The young Milton, with long curling locks, is seated at a desk with pen and paper and looks up earnestly at his teacher. Lois Parker correctly notes that he looks more like “an advanced adolescent, if not an adult.”19 There is wide artistic license here since we know that Milton as a schoolboy at St Paul’s had closely cropped hair, thanks to his schoolmaster Alexander Gil.20 To the right of the school-​room scene, Milton the young European traveller is shown visiting Galileo, clearly recognizable from seventeenth-​century portraits of him (Fig. 6). This meeting was of great importance to Milton. He records in Areopagitica (1644), his great defence of liberty of conscience and freedom of speech, that, during his time in Italy (1638–​39), he visited the aged Galileo, then under house arrest by the Inquisition. The artist has portrayed Milton in the St Margaret’s window with an expression of serious respect as he lifts his hat to the seated astronomer. His face resembles the features of the schoolboy in the adjacent panel. Milton’s visit to Galileo proved attractive to artists in the nineteenth century but Clayton & Bell’s design is unique.21

19 Lois W. Parker, “The Milton Window,” in Ringing the Bell Backward: the Proceedings of the First International Milton Symposium, ed. Ronald G. Shafer (Indiana, PA: Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1982), p. 72. 20 John Aubrey records that the schoolboy Milton was “ten years old as by his picture” and that “his schoolmaster was a Puritan in Essex, who cutt his hair short” –​“Mr. John Milton: Minutes by John Aubrey 1681,” in The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire (London: Constable, 1932), p. 2. The portrait referred to is dated 1618, is anonymous, and held in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. 21 Two paintings held in the Wellcome Library, London are: John Milton Visiting Galileo when a Prisoner of the Inquisition by Solomon Hart (1806–​81) and Galileo Galilei Receiving John Milton by Annibale Gatti (1827–​1909).

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Fig. 5.  Milton at St Paul’s School.

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Fig. 6.  Milton visiting Galileo.

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Fig. 7.  Blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters.

Above these panels, a larger scene in the centre of the window extends across two panels and portrays the mature Milton, now blind, dictating Paradise Lost (Fig. 7). On the left, he is seated in an armchair, eyes closed and left hand gesturing. The right panel portrays two daughters, the older at a desk with pen in hand, the younger standing and looking at her father. Both are the soul of attention. Milton’s youngest daughter, Deborah, is known to have served her father as an amanuensis but it is generally believed that he relied mainly on his nephew Edward Phillips, students, friends, and paid scribes. Nevertheless, the idea of a domestic scene with the poet dictating to his daughters attracted a number of painters in the Romantic period. The best-​k nown version is by the Hungarian artist Mihály Munkácsy, his 1877 oil painting in the New York Public Library entitled “The Blind Milton Dictating Paradise Lost to His Daughters”. The scene by Clayton & Bell bears little similarity to any of the paintings but it does resemble a window, depicting the same scene, made in 1909 for Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-​upon-​Avon. The

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design is by C. E. Kempe & Co. and the similarity is probably due to 22 the fact that Charles Earmer Kempe had trained with Clayton & Bell. The facial features of Milton in the window bear no similarity to the numerous portraits of Milton in stained glass I have found, which derive ultimately from William Faithorne’s 1670 portrait of Milton from the life (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8.  Detail, Milton. Great Hall University of Sydney. Derived from William Faithorne’s 1670 portrait from the life. One of the earliest portrayals of Milton in stained glass. By Clayton & Bell 1859. Photo by Milton Micallef.

22 On Kempe and Clayton & Bell, see Harrison, Victorian Stained Glass, pp. 32, 47. Christopher Parkinson pointed out to me the similarity of these windows, especially in the way Milton’s legs are crossed.

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Fig. 9.  Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge.

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Fig. 10.  Adam and Eve leaving paradise, the archangel Michael behind them.

Surrounding these panels devoted to Milton’s life are episodes from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, each accompanied by quotations from the text. For Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve are depicted before and after the Fall, and Satan is portrayed in both hell and paradise.

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Adam and Eve are shown at the fatal tree and the drama of the moment is heightened by the startling blue of a huge serpent wound around a golden trunk. Eve holds the fruit and Adam stretches an open hand towards her (Fig. 9). This happens in book 9, although the inscription is from the opening lines of Paradise Lost, “The Fruit of that Forbidden Tree” (PL 1.1–​2).23 On the opposite side of the window, the fallen Adam and Eve are shown leaving paradise. Behind them stands a stern but sorrowing archangel Michael, sent to expel them from the garden. The inscription is the last line of the poem, “Thru Eden took their solitary way” (Fig. 10). Below these panels, Satan is portrayed. On the left, he is a commanding presence, upright on the lake of fire, rousing the fallen angels. “He call’d so loud that all the hollow Deep /​Of hell resounded” (PL 1.314–​ 15) is adapted in the inscription as, “The hollow deep of Hell resounding” (Fig. 11). Like William Blake and Henry Fuseli, Clayton & Bell have captured the dynamism and heroism of Satan. He is lent a certain glory through the use of gold tones, especially in the snake entwining his waist, and through his voluminous multi-​coloured wings; his shield and spear were inspired by Milton’s unforgettable epic similes (PL1.284–​96). On the opposite side of the window, Satan is now in paradise, a frowning and darker figure, hidden in foliage and spying on the innocent Adam and Eve (Fig. 12). “Forth came the human pair /​And joind their vocal worship to the Quire /​Of Creatures wanting voice” (PL 9.197–​99) becomes in the inscription, “Their vocal worship to the quire.” Once Satan invades paradise, he is no longer heroic. Clayton & Bell have captured here the embodiment of evil intent in his facial expression, especially in the malevolent gaze. This portrayal of Satan darkly adumbrates the enormously powerful force that he proves to be in Paradise Lost.

23 For quotations, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are abbreviated to PL and PR. My quotations for Paradise Lost are from John Milton Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) and for Paradise Regained from John Milton Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Stella P. Revard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009).

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Fig. 11.  Satan rousing the fallen angels in hell.

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Fig. 12.  Adam & Eve in paradise, Satan spying on them.

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Fig. 13.  The Annunciation.

A striking feature of the window is the marked difference between the unfallen and fallen Adam and Eve (Figs 9 and 10). The latter are clearly not the hand of Clayton & Bell. In fact, the original 1888 panel of Adam and Eve leaving paradise was hit by a “high explosive bomb” during the Second World War and the two figures had to be replaced.24 The British artist Joan Howson (1885–​1964) undertook this task in 1948 24 Information from Matthew Payne, Archivist at Westminster Abbey.

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and reported that it was “very difficult to get the glass to match the 25 existing glass.” Painted, furthermore, in her own style, quite different from Clayton & Bell’s, the replaced figures not only differ in colour from the unfallen pair, they also have an almost Cubist quality that appears clumsy and crude compared with Clayton & Bell’s finely modelled figures of Adam and Eve. Their skin tone is darker and Eve’s flowing hair now looks like straw. Whether Joan Howson intended it or not, the effect weirdly evokes the trauma of the Fall. Clayton & Bell’s beautiful archangel Michael remains intact.

Fig. 14.  The Nativity. 25 Correspondence from Joan Howson to Westminster Abbey 12 September 1948. I am grateful to Matthew Payne for this information.

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Fig. 15.  The Baptism.

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Fig. 16.  Jesus on the temple mount, triumphant over Satan.

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Scenes from Paradise Regained, exquisitely painted and “richly dight,” form the top row of panels in the St Margaret’s window. The brief epic narrates Jesus’s 40-​day ordeal in the wilderness and his temptation by Satan. It is not highly visual but consists largely of debate between Jesus and Satan, which can hardly be translated into stained glass. However, events from Jesus’s earlier life are recalled in book 1 and Clayton & Bell have illustrated these in the first three panels. First is the Annunciation to Mary with God’s words to the archangel Gabriel, “I sent thee to the Virgin pure” (PR 1.134) (Fig. 13). Next is the Nativity, with three shepherds, an elderly Joseph, and the quotation, “in the Inn was left no better room” (PR 1.248). This panel exemplifies the masterly drawing of Clayton & Bell, especially in the facial expressions and the immediacy and quiet reverence of the scene (Fig. 14). The Baptism follows, with the quotation, “He Himself among them was baptized” (PR 1.76): Jesus is a young man, John an older man baptizing him; there is an attendant angel and the Dove descends with rays of light, as described in Scripture and in the poem (Fig. 15). The last panel dramatically picks up the main action of the poem and the climactic event narrated in book 4.538–​62. It is a translation into stained glass of Jesus’s victory over Satan and “The Tempter foil’d in all his wiles” (PR 1.5–​6) (Fig.16). Jesus is majestically robed, haloed, with golden hair and beard, and points heavenward. Satan, his hair wild, is naked but with huge red bat’s wings. Pointing downwards, he departs, with defeat and despair written on his face, while Jesus stands firm on the temple mount.

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Fig. 17.  The First Adam and Christ the Second Adam.

In addition, the figures of Adam and Jesus are portrayed within the tracery at the top of the window (Fig. 17). A young Adam stands disconsolate and ashamed at the forbidden tree, holding the fruit with a bite (just detectable) taken out. To the right, a bearded Christ holds an open book with the Greek letters A and O for Alpha and Omega. It is a master stroke by Clayton & Bell. Interpreting Paradise Regained as a sequel to Paradise Lost, they have brought together the two epics by setting the First Adam beside the Second Adam, the “one greater Man” (PL 1.4) who will redeem fallen mankind. A mysterious fragment of glass has been interpolated into the base of the window at the bottom right-​hand corner and must have been inserted after the bomb damage of the Second World War. It reads “Thy Hand.”

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The meaning is obscure. However, where we might expect an artist’s signature, it possibly addresses God, acknowledging that the work of the whole window is by his “Hand.” Before leaving the window, it is worth considering the entire work again and Clayton & Bell’s choice of centrepiece: Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters (Fig.7). The scene reminds us that the blind Milton did not write a word of Paradise Lost but spoke it, composing it orally. It is a supremely oral and aural poem, which is a reason why it is frequently read aloud in public performance. This crucial dimension of the poem cannot be translated into visual form. The same applies to Paradise Regained, which was also dictated to amanuenses. Showing us how these poems came into existence, this centrepiece, surrounded by scenes from the poems, recognizes and celebrates Milton as the inspired bard who gave us these poems through his voice. The iconography of this imaginative and intricate work cries out to be read, considered, and appreciated. Astonishingly, the window itself –​its design, subject matter, and artistic merit –​was ignored by both Matthew Arnold at the unveiling in 1888 and E. M.W. Tillyard at the unveiling of the restored window in 1949 in the addresses they each gave to mark the respective unveilings. Scarcely more knowledge was offered by two Milton scholars in the twentieth century.26 However, the views of Arnold and Tillyard –​one an eminent poet and man of letters, the other a distinguished scholar –​are worth recording. The window was formally and first unveiled on Saturday, 18th February 1888 and Matthew Arnold gave the address.27 In it he made 26 Lois Parker, “The Milton Window, the Americans, and Matthew Arnold,” Milton Quarterly 13.2 (1979): 50–​53 and “The Milton Window”, in Ringing the Bell Backward, ed. Shafer, pp. 69–​73; David Boocker, “A Fissure in the Milton Window? Arnold’s 1888 Address”, in Spokesperson Milton: Voices in Contemporary Criticism, eds. C. W. Durham and K. P. McColgan (Selinsgrove PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1994), pp. 126–​37. Parker does at least note the subjects depicted in the windows but laments that nothing was then known about the artists. She is also unaware of Tillyard’s speech, as is Boocker. On 20 September 2017 in St Margaret’s, a lecture on the window was given by Duncan Baxter, retired head master and author of Paradise Lost: A Drama of Unintended Consequences (Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicestershire: Matador, 2017). He spoke of the motive for the window’s construction and the inspiration for its design. The lecture is unpublished but there is a brief report in St Margaret’s News 6 (Autumn 2017): 1. 27 Published as “Milton” in Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism Second Series (London: Macmillan, 1903; first edition 1888). Macmillan got the date wrong, 13 February instead of 18th, a mistake repeated later.

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much of Katherine Woodcock, Milton’s “late espoused saint,” incorrectly attributing the dedication of the window specifically to her. He ignored both the subjects in the window and the work of Clayton & Bell. While acknowledging the generosity of George Childs of Philadelphia, he used the occasion mainly to inveigh against a mediocrity that he saw in England and spreading exponentially in the United States. There, “the average man is too much a religion.”28 He quotes Goethe in the course of his address, and his opening words presumably quote Goethe: “The most eloquent voice of our century uttered, shortly before leaving the world, a warning cry against ‘the Anglo-​Saxon contagion’ ”, a disease that consists of “all the prose, all the vulgarity among mankind” and “a general sterility of mind and heart.”29 Milton is then proposed as an antidote to this contagion. Above all, he is extolled for his grand style and the unflagging purity of his rhythm and diction. Arnold’s disdain for Milton’s political and religious beliefs is barely disguised. The following day, Archdeacon Farrar, famous for his sermons, took the opportunity to preach a sermon that countered Arnold’s anti-​ Americanism.30 Arnold, in attendance, would have had to listen to Farrar portraying Milton as the inspiration for ideals of liberty that the United States drew from Cromwell’s England. Quoting Whittier’s stirring lines inscribed in the window, Farrar spoke of “those bonds of common traditions and blood and language and affection which unite England to the great Republic of the West”. There was “something especially appropriate in the Milton window being the gift of an American. For the United States represent much that Milton most deeply loved; the Commonwealth which, happily failing in England, in America gloriously succeeded; the Puritanism which, crushed in England, inspired vigor and nobleness in our kin beyond the sea. ‘Paradise Lost’ was the one English poem which the sons of the Pilgrim Fathers loved.”31 Seven windows by Clayton & Bell in St Margaret’s were destroyed during World War II, but the windows to Milton and Raleigh survived, 28 Arnold, “Milton”, p. 57. 29 Arnold, “Milton”, p. 56. The quotation was identified as Goethe’s by Stewart Means: “The warning cry which Goethe uttered against ‘the Anglo-​Saxon contagion’ was at bottom a protest against rising democracy” –​“The Future of Religion”, The Harvard Theological Review 6.3 30 Davis, “The Milton Window,” pp. 212–​34. 31 Davis, “The Milton Window,” pp. 214–​15.

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with the Milton window suffering some damage, as described above. The unveiling of the restored window took place on Monday, 4th July 1949, and E. M. W. Tillyard gave the address. He would not have hidden his light under a bushel, especially after the advance publicity in The Spectator: “When the window was unveiled in 1888 … the address was given by Matthew Arnold. I shall be surprised if the address next Monday, by Dr. E. M. W. Tillyard, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, falls short of it.”32 The speech was promptly published as “Arnold on Milton” in the Church Quarterly Review.33 Tillyard’s main concern was to argue, by quoting Milton’s poetry and with astute commentary, that Arnold was quite wrong about Milton’s unflagging high style. He also observes Milton’s declining fortunes by the 1940s but predicts (accurately) that his time will come again. Apart from roundly rebuffing Arnold, he gears his speech to the church audience and concludes with a reading of Adam’s heart-​felt speech to the archangel Michael, towards the close of Paradise Lost, “How soon hath thy prediction, Seer blest . . .” (PL 12.553–​73). Like Arnold, Tillyard had nothing to say about the subjects in the window or the artists, including Joan Howson, who undertook the restoration work. Following Arnold too, he mistakenly identified the window as dedicated to Katherine Woodcock. Did Arnold and Tillyard actually look at the window? This essay redresses such ignorance and/​or indifference by two men of learning. More importantly, it introduces students and scholars of both stained glass and Milton to one example of a “storied window richly dight”. My wider aim has been to extend the large body of work already published on Milton and the visual arts into the field of stained glass, until now virtually unexplored by Milton scholars.

Works Cited Arnold, Matthew. “Milton.” Essays in Criticism Second Series. London: Macmillan, 1903; first edition 1888.

32 The Spectator 30 June 1949. The Spectator wittily remarks, “one of the anthems to be rendered will be Parry’s ‘Blest Pair of Sirens’, which, since damage to the windows was caused by an air-​raid, seems an unexceptionable choice.” 33 Church Quarterly Review, 148 (1949): 153–​60; reprinted in E. M. W. Tillyard, Studies in Milton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1951), pp. 1–​7.

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Aubrey, John. “Mr. John Milton: Minutes by John Aubrey 1681,” in The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire. London: Constable, 1932. 1–​15. Axelrad, Arthur. “Woodcock, Katherine.” A Milton Encyclopedia 8 vols, ed. William B. Hunter, Jr. Lewisburg PA: Bucknell University Press, 1978–​ 80. VIII: 176–​77. Baxter, Duncan. Paradise Lost: A Drama of Unintended Consequences. Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicestershire: Matador, 2017. Boocker, David. “A Fissure in the Milton Window? Arnold’s 1888 Address,” in Spokesperson Milton: Voices in Contemporary Criticism, eds. C. W. Durham and K. P. McColgan. Selinsgrove PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1994. 126–​37. Cormack, Peter. Arts & Crafts Stained Glass. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015. Davis, Clarke L. “The Milton Window,” in The Story of the Memorial Fountain to Shakespeare at Stratford-​upon-​Avon, ed. Clarke L. Davis. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1890. 183–​238. Farrar, Frederic W. Men I Have Known. New York & Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1897. Farrar, Reginald. The Life of Frederic William Farrar: Sometime Dean of Canterbury. London: James Nesbitt & Co., 1904. French, J. Milton. The Life Records of John Milton 5 vols. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1956. IV: 126. Harrison, Martin. Victorian Stained Glass. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1980. Howson, Joan. Letter to Westminster Abbey 12 September 1948. Westminster Abbey Archives. “John Milton: Commemorating 350 years of Paradise Lost at St Margaret’s.” St Margaret’s Church News (No. 6 Autumn 2017): 1. Jones, Edward. Email to author 22 January 2019. Means, Stewart. “The Future of Religion.” The Harvard Theological Review 6.3 (1913): 326–​41. Milton, John. Complete Shorter Poems, ed. Stella P. Revard. Oxford: Blackwell, 2009. Milton, John. Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

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Parker, Lois W. “The Milton Window,” in Ringing the Bell Backward: the Proceedings of the First International Milton Symposium, ed. Ronald G. Shafer. Indiana PA: Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1982. 69–​73. —​— ​—​. “The Milton Window, the Americans, and Matthew Arnold.” Milton Quarterly 13.2 (1979): 50–​53. Pickard, Samuel T. The Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, 2 vols (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1894). II: 728–​31. Shapiro, Aaron. “Inscriptions, Monuments, and the Milton Window at St. Margaret’s, Westminster,” in Global Milton and Visual Art, eds. Angelica Duran and Mario Murgia (Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2021). 287–​310. Sherry, Beverley. Australia’s Historic Stained Glass. Sydney: Murray Child, 1991. —​— ​—​. “Portraits of Milton in Stained Glass,” in Global Milton and Visual Art, eds. Angelica Duran and Mario Murgia (Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2021). 311–​32. Stillwell, Richard. The Chapel of Princeton University. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. The Spectator 30 June 1949 Tillyard, E. M. W. “Arnold on Milton.” Church Quarterly Review, 148 (1949): 153–​60; reprinted in E. M. W. Tillyard, Studies in Milton. London: Chatto & Windus, 1951. 1–​7.

About the Authors Ágnes Bató is a PhD Student, University of Szeged, Hungary. The working title of her thesis is: “Imitation in Paradise Lost”. She wrote two chapters in books published at Cambridge Scholars P: “Unimmortal Men and the Body of Death: The Somatic Experience of Death in Milton’s Paradise Lost,” in Literature, Performance, and Somaesthetics, edited by Anna Budziak, Katarzyna Lisowska, and Jarosław Woźniak (2017), pp. 267–​82; and “The Experience of Death -​A Cognitive Approach”, in: Essays on the Medieval Period and the Renaissance, edited by Ágnes Matuska and Larisa Kocic-​Zámbó (2019), pp. 147–​60. Daniele Borgogni is associate professor in English and Translation Studies at the University of Turin (Italy). He specializes in Early Modern and modernist English literature, European emblematics, translation theory and practice, stylistics and cognitive linguistics. He contributed to several encyclopaedic works on English literature. He is the author of a monograph on Milton’s Paradise Regained (1998); co-​editor of a collection of essays on religious and literary discourse in Early Modern France and England (2005), on short forms (2016) and on transdisciplinarity; editor of didactic manuals on translation for Italian students (2007; 2010). He also published the first Italian critical edition (introduction, translation and notes) of Milton’s Paradise Regained (2007) and is the editor (introduction, translation and notes) of 1Henry VI, 2Henry VI, 3Henry VI, and Cymbeline for the new Italian edition of Shakespeare’s complete works (2014–​19) Lana Cable is Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Albany (SUNY). She is most notably the author of Carnal Rhetoric: Milton´s Iconoclasm and the Poetics of Desire, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1995, winner of that year’s Milton Society James Holly Hanford Award for Most Distinguished Book on John Milton . She has also authored articles or chapters in Milton and Toleration, eds. Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer (Oxford University Press, 2007); Harley Granville Barker Reclaimed, ed. Jonathan Bank (Granville Press: Mint Theater Company, New York, 2007); an Introduction for Milton in the Age of

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Fish: Essays on Authorship, Text, and Terrorism, eds. Albert Labriola and Michael Lieb (Duquesne University Press: Pittsburgh, 2006); John Milton: Twentieth-Century Perspectives, Volume 3, Prose, ed. J. Martin Evans (Routledge: New York & London, 2003); Books and Readers in Early Modern England, eds. Elizabeth Sauer and Jennifer Anderson (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 2002); Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism, Vol. 23, No. 1 (April 2000); Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose, eds. James Turner and David Loewenstein (Cambridge University Press, 1990); Re-Reading, S.U.N.Y.A. Center for the Arts & Humanities, 1988; Milton Studies, Vol. 21 (1985); The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 19, Issue 2 (April, 1983); and Milton Studies, Vol. 15 (1981); in addition to a Truthout journal critique (“Why Americans Can’t Give Them Democracy”) of an opinion piece on Iraq from the May 25, 2003 issue of Los Angeles Times (“Why They Don’t Want Democracy”) by Milton Viorst. Elements of her essay in the present volume are drawn from Professor Cable´s critical study of the sonnet, currently in progress, which challenges common but misleading readerly approaches that overlook the sonnet’s intrinsic formal power. Gordon Campbell is Emeritus Professor and Fellow in Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester. As a renaissance and seventeenth century specialist, he has a particular interest in Milton and the Bible. Broader interests in cultural history on which he has published include art, architecture, classical antiquity, garden history, legal history, historical theology and the Nordic world. Among his manifold activities, he has written or edited 29 books, edited several journals, served as general editor of series, written more than 100 articles and book chapters, and contributed c. 2000 entries to reference books. On Milton he wrote A Milton Chronology (1997), and was co-​author (with Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale and Fiona Tweedie) of Milton and the manuscript of “De Doctrina Christiana” (2007), and (with Thomas N. Corns) of John Milton: Life, Work and Thought (2008). Most notably, he also edited The Holy Bible: Quatercentenary Edition (2010) and wrote The Story of the King James Version 1611–​2011 (2010). Milton is also referred to in his latest book, though bearing on an altogether different subject: Norse America: the story of a founding myth (2021). “Milton thought, for example, that the Reformation could not have been ignited by Luther, because Luther had the misfortune to be a foreigner. When God speaks, Milton explained, he speaks first to his Englishmen. On this understanding, the

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true father of the Reformation was not Luther, but Wyclif, who thereby became the first Protestant” (196–​97). Warren Chernaik is Emeritus Professor of English, University of London. He was the founding Director of the Institute of English Studies (IES), University of London, and is now a Senior Research Fellow of IES. He is the author of Milton and the Burden of Freedom (Cambridge, 2017), The Myth of Rome in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Cambridge, 2011), The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s History Plays (Cambridge, 2007), a study of The Merchant of Venice (2005), Sexual Freedom in Restoration Literature (Cambridge, 1995) and The Poet’s Time: Politics and Religion in the Work of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1983). He has also published essays on such authors as Marvell, Milton, Shakespeare, Jonson, Herbert, Traherne, Rochester, Pepys, and Behn, and has co-​edited books on topics as diverse as detective fiction, changes in copyright law, and Andrew Marvell. William Chien-​wei Yang is a Lecturer at National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan and currently a PhD candidate at the English Department, National Taiwan Normal University. In 2020, he published “From Passion to Affection: Milton’s System of Emotion in Paradise Lost,” Tamkang Review, Vol.50, No.2 (June 2020), pp.81–​104. In his dissertation, he explores Milton’s appropriation of Early Modern emotionology in his poetry. James M. Clawson is Associate Professor and Ann Petry Endowed Professor of English at Grambling State University in Louisiana. His research embraces both digital humanities and English literary history, especially twentieth-​century literature. A companion piece to the paper he coauthored with Hugh F. Wilson, entitled “De Doctrina Christiana and Milton’s Canonical Works: Revisiting the Authorship Question,” is also available in Digital Approaches to John Milton, special issue of Renaissance and Reformation /​Renaissance et Réforme, vol. 44, no. 3, summer 2021, pp. 151–​98. David Currell is Associate Professor and Chair of English at the American University of Beirut. His work on Milton and other Renaissance authors has appeared in Critical Survey, MLN, Shakespeare Survey, Translation and Literature and several edited volumes. He is coeditor of

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the collections Digital Milton (2018) and Reading Milton through Islam (2015). Dr. Matt Dolloff is Professor of Humanities and Director of the first Writing Center in Ecuador at Universidad San Francisco de Quito. He holds his Ph.D. on John Milton from the University of Texas at Austin; his dissertation, “Meditating the Muse: Milton and the Metamorphoses of Urania,” was written under the direction of John Rumrich. His most recent publication is “Gabriel’s Trumpet: Milton and Seventeenth Century Conceptualizations of Infinity.” In Locating Milton. Edited by D. Ainsworth and T. Festa. Clemson UP, 2021. Miles Drawdy is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Berkeley, where he researches and teaches courses on Early Modern drama, disability, and contemporary American theatre. His dissertation is focused on deformity as both a formal and aesthetic feature of English drama and performance throughout the long seventeenth century. Beat Föllmi is Professor of Sacred Music and Hymnology at the University of Strasbourg. Neil Forsyth is Emeritus Professor (Professeur Honoraire) of English Literature at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he taught from 1985 until his retirement in 2010. He previously taught at the universities of North Carolina, Berkeley, California, and Geneva. His first book (1987), The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth, is a history of the devil as a character in various narratives, beginning with the Humbaba of the Sumerian Gilgamesh tales and ending with the early Christians and Augustine. He is renowned as a Milton scholar thanks to his second book, also published by Princeton University Press, which is a study of Milton’s Paradise Lost, entitled The Satanic Epic (2003). It was awarded the James Holly Hanford prize of the Milton Society of America in 2004. Professor Forsyth was then commissioned by Lion Hudson, Oxford, to write a biography of Milton, which was published in the centenary year of 2008. He is also the author of Shakespeare the Illusionist: Magic, Dreams and the Supernatural on Film. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019. He presided over the two International Milton Symposiums held in France, Grenoble (2005) and Strasbourg (2019).

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Bradley Fox successfully defended his PhD entitled, “Dear Son of Memory: Milton’s Engagement with Shakespeare,” at the Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, in 2018. Currently an adjunct assistant professor at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, in Brooklyn, New York, Bradley has also taught Shakespeare at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. He has presented papers at the International Milton Symposiums in Grenoble, London, and Strasbourg. Victoria M. Griffon is an English secondary teacher and PhD Student at the University of Paris. Her thesis, entitled “Décentrement, discontinuités et ruptures dans l’oeuvre poétique de John Milton”, focuses mainly on the idea that discrepancies, heresy and discontinuities are at the heart of Milton’s poetic works (and of Paradise Lost in particular) and that Milton’s poetry is based on shifts and unexpected perspectives. John K. Hale is Honorary Fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. His books include: The Shakespeare of the Comedies (1997), Milton’s Languages (1998), Milton’s Cambridge Latin (2005), Milton as Multilingual (2005) and Milton’s Scriptural Theology (2019). His editing and translating include: John Milton: Selected Latin Writings (1998) and De Doctrina Christiana (with Donald Cullington) for the Oxford Complete Works of John Milton, vol. 8 (2012). He was the Milton Society of America’s Honored Scholar for 2020. Tianhu Hao (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a Qiushi Distinguished Professor, director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. He mainly specializes in Early Modern English literature and comparative literature. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Milton Society of America and the editorial board of Milton Quarterly and Multicultural Shakespeare. He is the editor of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He has been invited to contribute to A New Companion to Milton (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), and his latest publications on Milton include “Milton’s Satan in China,” Milton Studies 62.2 (2020): 280–​93; “Why Did Milton Land in China Earlier than Shakespeare?” Comparative Literature Studies 57.3 (2020): 497–​ 508; “The Teaching of Milton in the Republic of China (1912–​49),” Milton Quarterly 55.2 (2021): 82–91: in print; and a Chinese monograph Milton in China, Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2020. He has presented

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papers at the International Milton Symposium in Tokyo, Exeter, and Strasbourg. Ian Hynd is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario. His current research examines the classical tradition in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with specific interest in the Roman poets Virgil and Lucan. Chika Kaneko is a Lecturer at Nihon University, Japan. She defended her thesis on “Milton’s Latin Poems: From the Pastoral to the Political” at Nihon University, Tokyo, in 2018. Since 2014, she has published several papers on Milton, all in Japanese, including “A Making of Satan: Cupid in Milton’s Elegia septima”, Studies in Language and Literature, 40 (1), 179–​96, September 2020. Dr. Sarah S. Keleher (née Rice) holds her PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where her research focused on Early Modern literature and anatomical science, as well as on Early Modern law and literature. She is drawn to Milton by the delightful meticulousness with which he depicts the operations of the prelapsarian body. Milton is a central figure in Dr. Keleher’s current book project, which examines how Early Modern writers ranging from Milton to Vesalius approached the anatomized body as a historical entity whose every fiber was knit into an overarching narrative of creation, Fall, and resurrection. Dr. Keleher’s work on Early Modern law and literature is forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly. Miriam Andrade Mansur is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her latest paper on Milton is “Delírios e deleites: leitura dos diálogos de Machado de Assis com John Milton em Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas” [Deliriums and Delights: the reading of the dialogues of Machado de Assis with John Milton in Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas], O Eixo e a Roda: Revista de Literatura Brasileira, v. 30, n. 4, p. 95–​119, Jan. 2022. Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Letters at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG -​FALE), Brazil. His research interests include John Milton and Early Modern England, post-​colonialism, post-​modernism, especially Salman Rushdie, and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. His recent

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publications include: Jacques Derrida: Acts of Reading, Literature, and Democracy (co-​editor, book 2009); “Towards a spectropoetics: John Milton and Jacques Derrida” (book ­chapter 2011); “Quid Pro Quo, or Destination Unknown: Johnson, Derrida, and Lacan Reading Poe” (book chapter in Adapting Poe: Re-​Imaginings in Popular Culture, Palgrave-​ Macmillan, 2012), Jacques Derrida: intermission scenes of reading and literature (co-​editor, book 2014), Milton Lecture Series: Readings in and from Brazil (co-​editor, book 2016), and The Orpheus Myth in L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas: A Peircean Reading (2018). David Harris Sacks, PhD (Harvard), is Richard F. Scholz Professor of History and Humanities, Emeritus in Reed College, Portland, Oregon USA, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He has published on a variety of subjects in Renaissance and Early Modern History, focused especially on the development of political, religious and scientific discourses and practices in the Atlantic world. His researches began with the history of the city of Bristol, include work on More’s Utopia. on Milton’s political thought, and most recently on the careers of Richard Hakluyt and Thomas Harriot in context. Hiroko Sano is Professor Emerita at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan. She took a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. She published articles on Milton in English and Japanese as well as translations into Japanese of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1998) and Samson Agonistes (2011). She organized IMS10 in Tokyo in 2012. Beverley Sherry is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney. Her work crosses the disciplines of literature, history, and the visual arts, and her book Australia’s Historic Stained Glass (1991) is a pioneering work. Milton, however, has remained her principal interest since her study of Paradise Lost in Milton Studies VIII (1975). Recently, she has brought together her two areas of expertise, Milton and stained glass, with “Portraits of Milton in Stained Glass” in Global Milton and Visual Art (Lexington Books, 2021), “Milton in Stained Glass” in this volume, and “Paradise Lost in Stained Glass” in Milton Across Borders and Media (forthcoming from Oxford University Press). Christophe Tournu is Professor of English Studies at the University of Strasbourg. He organized the XIIth International Milton Symposium as

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well as the VIIIth IMS held in Grenoble, in 2005. He has published extensively on John Milton for twenty-​five years, including “Theology and Politics in Milton Prose Works” (published PhD, in French, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2000), a French translation of the second edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (Belin, 2005), and on book derived from his research habilitation, “Milton: from Family to Folitics. From the Right to Divorce to the Right to Self-​Government (Champion, 2011). He has contributed to several international research projects, including The Milton Encyclopedia, edited by Thomas N. Corns (Yale UP, 2012), for which he wrote 24 entries, a chapter on Milton translations around the world in Milton in Context (ed. Stephen B. Dobranski, Cambridge UP, 2010, paperback ed. 2015), as well as a chapter on French translations of Milton’s works in Milton in Translation (eds. Angelica Duran, Islam Issa, and Jonathan R. Olson, Oxford UP, 2017, paperback ed. 2021). His latest book is the two-​volume set bilingual critical edition of Chateaubriand’s translation of Paradise Lost in Oeuvres complètes de Chateaubriand (general ed. Béatrice Didier, Honoré Champion, 2021). James Grantham Turner is the James D. Hart Chair in English at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research examines eroticism in Renaissance art and aesthetic theory, and the integration of Eros, architecture, poetry and landscape in the Villa Farnesina, Rome. Previous publications explored Milton, Behn and Rochester, libertine literature in Europe, sexuality in the early novel, erotic education in the French Enlightenment, the gender politics of Adam and Eve, and the representation of rural life. Thomas M. Vozar is a scholar of Early Modern literary, cultural, and intellectual history with a particular interest in the classical tradition. He recently completed his PhD at the University of Exeter with a thesis entitled “Milton, Longinus, and the Sublime in the Seventeenth Century” (2021) and is currently an Exzellenzstrategie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Hamburg. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in Milton Quarterly, The Seventeenth Century, Modern Philology, the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and several other journals. Hugh F. Wilson is Professor of English at Grambling State University in Louisiana. He earned his B.A. at Johns Hopkins; his M.A. and PhD at the University of Chicago. He has presented conference papers in Madrid,

About the Authors

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Grenoble, Strasbourg and Vancouver. Beginning with a long article on David Masson in The Dictionary of Literary Biography [1994], some of Wilson’s essays have been published in Milton Quarterly [1998], Milton Studies [1999], Sederi: Yearbook of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies [1999], The Ben Jonson Journal [2000], Quidditas [2000 (Breck Award)]. His essays have also appeared in Milton: Rights & Liberties [2007] and Milton in France [2008]. Over the last quarter century, Wilson has presented more than thirty papers on works by Shakespeare, Milton and Donne; more than fifteen of his conference papers concern Milton and his circle. Half a dozen conference papers address the debate over De Doctrina Christiana. Another exploration of the issues of authorship can be found in the paper he co-​authored with James M. Clawson, entitled “De Doctrina Christiana and Milton’s Canonical Works: Revisiting the Authorship Question” in Digital Approaches to John Milton, special issue of Renaissance and Reformation /​Renaissance et Réforme 44.3 (Summer 2021): 151–​98.

Index Ad Patrem  38, 96–​97, 310–​12, 318–​19, 321 Ad Salsillum  310 Adam (see also Adam and Eve)  15, 37–​38, 59, 64–​66, 71–​72, 74–​83, 110–​12, 186–​87, 219, 225–​28, 236, 239, 242–​45, 248–​49, 251, 257–​60, 265, 279–​89, 295, 298–​301, 324–25, 329–​33, 335, 339, 342, 345, 360, 405, 411, 415–​16, 418–​19, 426, 428–​29, 432, 457, 462, 464, 488, ​517, 525, 528 Adam and Eve (see also Adam, Eve)  44, 64, 66, 79–​82, 110, 112, 242–​43, 249, 257–​ 60, 265, 289, 300–​01, 335, 339, 411, 457, 517, 520–21, 538 Aeneid, The  38, 61, 184, 194, 282, 324–25, 329–​32, 334, 336, 436 Allegro, L'  93–​95, 537 Animadversions  31, 101–102, 105, 107, 110, 176, 354, 359, 394 Antichrist  208–​09, 211 Antinomianism  151, 204 Apology against a Pamphlet, An  101, 106, 108, 176 Aquinas, Thomas  309, 339, 346 Areopagitica  9, 34, 50, 64–​65, 67, 103, 105, 131, 152, 192, 195, 199, 204–​05, 207, 213, 299, 309, 359–​60, 479, 510

Arian, Arians  255, 258, 352, 355–​ 57, 359–60, 379–​80, 391, 400 Arianism  256–​57, 355, 360, 379, 390, 396–​97, 426–27 Ariosto  28, 142, 189, 192 Aristotle  89–​90, 92, 127, 141, 161–​62, 179, 292, 338–​39, 347, 431, 466 Arminian, Arminians  255–​56, 352, 359, 377 Arminianism  256, 359, 392 Arminius  359 Assis, Machado de  16, 43–44, 451–​59, 466, 536 Artis Logicae (abbrev. Logic) 367, 369–70, 373–76, 382, 384, 386–88 At A Solemn Musick  91, 95 Atheist, Atheists  204, 361, 390 Aubrey, John  31, 57, 62–​63, 309, 321, 390, 510, 529 Augustine, saint  7, 339, 347, 366, 369–​70, 373–​76, 381, 454, 458, 536 Barthes, Roland  443 Blake, William  243, 247, 250, 303, 517 Bodmer, Johann Jakob  41–42, 492 Boismorand, Abbé de  42 Bonaparte, Napoléon  20

542 Index

Brief History of Moscovia, A  196–97, 212–13, 216, 218 Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon 152 Bucer, Martin  7, 23–​26, 33, 191 Burton, Robert  73–​74, 84, 337 Calvin, John  24, 178, 394 Calvinism  256, 359, 395 Calvinist, Calvinists  204, 213, 256, 359, 394, 496 Carmina elegiaca  38, 311–​13, 315–​ 16, 318 Catholicism  20, 22, 184, 205, 209, 452, 454–​55, 459 Catholics  198, 202, 205, 210, 215, 220, 428 Charles I  33, 152, 155, 196–​97, 199, 203, 208–​09, 337, 482 Charles II  155 Chateaubriand, François-​René, comte de  27, 42, 403–​05, 410, 432–​33, 436, 538 Christ (see, Jesus; Son, the)  24–​ 25, 38, 58, 61, 91, 107, 139–​41, 168–70, 180, 192, 206, 208, 212, 285–86, 302, 307–​11, 314, 316, 318–​20, 338, 341, 356, 360, 378, 427, 454, 459, 525 Church of England, the  101, 171, 173, 203, 209, 212, 216, 377 Colasterion  108 Commonplace Book  196–97, 200, 205, 208, 211 Comus (1637)  49, 52, 62–​65, 94–​ 95, 478 Concordat, the  20–​21 Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church 21

Cromwell, Oliver  22, 33, 199, 206, 215, 218, 380, 382, 384, 388, 426, 478–​82, 527 De Doctrina Christiana (DDC)  16, 40, 46, 51, 139, 208, 256, 342, 347, 349, 351–​55, 357–​70, 372–​82, 384, 386–​400, 532–33, 535, 539 Derrida, Jacques  44, 452, 457, 459, 466–​67, 536–37 Descartes, René  73–74, 84, 92–​93, 97, 279–​80 Diodati, Charles  143, 477–​78, 483–​85 Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, The  151, 186, 298, 359–​60, 471, 476, 537–38 Doré, Gustave  7, 14, 23, 27–​29, 34–​35, 229–​31, 242–​43, 245–​50 Dryden, John  31, 150, 152, 156, 158, 309, 473–​74, 484, 500 Eco, Umberto  43, 438, 449 Eikonoklastes  35, 196–​97, 199, 208, 251, 359, 471, 476 Elegia prima  38, 310–​11, 315–​ 16, 318 Elegia quarta  308 Elegia quinta  38, 310–​11, 316–​18 Elegia secunda  310 Elegia septima  310, 536 Elegia sexta  310, 312 Elegia tertia  310 England  24, 85–​86, 103, 113–14, 116, 133–​34, 143, 146, 149–​50, 154, 158, 170, 172, 177–​78, 184, 192, 196–​98, 201–​05, 209–​10, 212, 214–​15, 219–​20, 256, 277,

Index

543

279, 340, 345, 347–48, 353–​54, Georgics, The  38, 324–​25, 328–​31, 378, 381, 398, 464, 477, 480, 334, 336 486, 488, 491, 496, 507, 527, God (see Father, the)  15, 20, 531–32, 536 35–​37, 39, 60, 73, 77–​78, 80–​ Epistolarum Familiarum  367, 373– 81, 102–04, 106, 109–12, 114, 75, 382, 384, 386, 388, 477 123, 139, 145–​46, 151–​52, 168, Epitaphium Damonis  38, 309, 311–​ 170, 173–​74, 186–​87, 193, 198, 12, 319, 477 206–​08, 212–13, 225–​28, 238, Erastian, Erastians  204–​05 245–​46, 248, 251–​​61, 263–​76, Euripides  143, 185, 188, 191, 193, 284–​85, 287, 289, 293, 295–​96, 313, 323, 325, 327–​28, 336, 480 299–​302, 308, 310–11, 320, Eve (see also 335, 339, 341–​46, 353, 355–​56, Adam and Eve)  30, 38, 44, 54, 360, 378, 381, 391, 398, 409, 59–​60, 64–​66, 71–​72, 74–​84, 415, 420–​21, 425–​31, 437–​38, 110–​11, 186–​87, 225–​28, 243, 443, 446, 448, 453–​59, 461–​65, 245–​46, 248–​49, 264, 270, 473–​74, 481, 483, 488, 492–​98, 274–​75, 293–​95, 297–​98, 507, 524, 526, 532 324–25, 329, 331, 336, 339, Girard, René  36, 263–​66, 270–​72, 342, 345, 405, 411–12, 418–​19, 274, 276–​77 462, 517, 521 Handel  489–​91, 496 Fall, the  30, 71–​72, 74, 80–​83, Haydn  16, 44–​45, 487–​92, 109–​13, 225, 227–​28, 255–​56, 494–​​501 259–​60, 277, 289, 339, 345–​46, Heaven  14, 35–​36, 105–​07, 111, 438, 464, 516, 521, 536 114, 130, 234, 239, 243, Father, the (God, in relation to the 251–61, 269, 273–​74, 284, 293, Son)  37–​38, 59, 90, 106–07, 300, 333, 423–24, 430, 444, 110, 120, 253, 258, 263, 265–​73, 448, 453–54, 456–​58, 481 275–​76, 293, 303, 359, 426–​27, Hell  64, 188, 232, 237, 243, 252, 437, 440, 444 265, 269, 274, 295, 2​99, 415, Felbinger, Jeremias  40, 378–​90, 420, 448, 465, 517 393–​94, 396 History of Britain, The  200, 210, France  11, 20–​21, 34, 42, 47–​49, 215, 218, 359–​60, 400 52, 54, 214, 216, 218, 220, 229, Hobbes, Thomas  30, 92–​93, 97, 433, 436, 497, 531, 534, 539 146, 188, 193 French Revolution, the  19, 360, Holy Bible, The  14, 27, 34, 85, 229, 495–​96 347, 532

544 Index

Homer  7, 89, 145, 149, 312–​13, 411, 420 Huguenots  198, 215

Messiah, the (see also Christ) 104–05, 265, 273 Messiah (Handel’s oratorio)  44, 490–​91 Il Penseroso  46, 151, 156, 504, 539 Metamorphoses, the  329, 411 In Inventorem Bombardae  297 Monism  76, 97 More, Alexander  31, 62, 108, 113, Jeay, Madeleine  43, 438, 443, 449 366–​67, 373–​75, 382–83, 386, Jerusalem  32, 49, 125, 137, 316, 425 388 Jesus (see Christ)  24–​25, 103, 109–​ Moses  111–12, 145–​46, 242, 247, 10, 112, 180, 228, 285, 308, 314, 320, 428, 446 343, 399, 437, 523–​25, 528 Jonson, Ben  93, 113, 137, 154, 471, Naturam non pati senium  310, 473, 485, 533, 539 319, 321 Judgment of Martin Bucer New Testament, the  139, 187–88, concerning Divorce, The  24 207, 228, 378–​79, 491 Just Edouardo King Naufrago  309 Observations Upon the Articles of King James Version, The  85, 186, Peace with the Irish Rebels  33–34, 188, 190–91, 276, 282, 314, 319, 195, 197–​98, 200–​03, 205–06, 347, 492, 532 208–​11, 215, 217–​18 Odyssey, The  114, 148 Leroy, Abbé  16, 403–04, 406–34 Of Education  32, 37, 137, 142, Letters of State  480 299 Leviathan  64, 92, 97, 146, 188, 193 Of Reformation  14, 32–33, 65–66, Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings 106–08, 140, 161, 167, 171, 173, out of the Church, The 21 176–78, 180–82, 252, 359 Lilburne, John  150, 180 Of True Religion, Heresy, Longinus  32, 137–​43, 147–​50, Schism  357, 391 154, 156, 158, 538 Old Testament, the  25, 28, 35, Luther, Martin  23–24, 32, 252, 430 137, 533–34 On Shakespeare  309 Lutheran, Lutherans  25, 359, 379 On the Late Massacre in Piedmont Lycidas  151, 309, 537 (1655) (‘Avenge O Lord Thy Slaughter’d Saints’)  117, 119–20, Mansus  38, 61–​62, 68, 310, 312, 131 319, 322 On the Morning of Christ’s Marvell, Andrew  113–​14, 138, Nativity  87, 91, 95, 144, 158, 150, 156, 227, 380, 533 208, 311, 359

Index

On the New Forcers of Conscience  118–19, 133 Ovid  62, 106, 125, 142, 316, 321, 329, 411 Pandemonium  452, 458, 463 Papacy  205 Paradise Lost  7–​8, 13–16, 22, 27–​28, 30–​31, 33–​38, 41–​42, 45, 50–​51, 53, 58–​60, 64, 71–​ 72, 74–75, 77, 83, 85, 102–​03, 108, 110, 112–​14, 118, 137–39, 141–​42, 144–​46, 150, 152, 155–​58, 184, 186–​87, 191, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 242–​45, 247–​51, 252, 254–57, 259–​61, 263, 265–​66, 268, 276, 279–​83, 288–301, 303–​04, 307, 324–25, 329, 336–37, 339, 342, 3​ 44, 347, 352–​53, 355–​57, 359–​60, 391–​92, 395–​97, 399–​400, 403–​ 06, 411, 416, 422–​23, 425–​27, 429–​30, 434–​36, 442–​43, 449, 451–​53, 456–​59, 461–​67, 476–​77, 484–​85, 487, 491–​94, 497, 500, 503–​04, 506, 509, 513, 516–​17, 525–​29, 531, 533–38 Paradise Regained  15–16, 31, 39, 43, 45, 109, 112, 139, 141–42, 151, 158, 264, 266, 268, 270, 299, 337–​38, 340, 343–44, 347, 355, 437–​41, 443–​45, 447, 449, 504, 516–​17, 524–​26, 531 Paul (the apostle)  14, 183, 185–​87, 191–92, 228, 307–​10, 312–​16, 318–​20, 322, 339, 509–​11 Penn, William  49 Pepys, Samuel  377, 533

545

Plato  33, 89, 327, 338, 341 Poems (1646, 1673)  51, 61–62, 309–10, 321, 323, 477–79, 536 Presbyterian, Presbyterians  204–​ 06, 209–​10, 285 Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (Defensio Prima)  150, 359, 366, 373–76, 382, 384, 386, 388 Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (Defensio Secunda)  31, 57, 107, 151, 307, 321, 367, 373– 75, 382, 384, 386, 388 Pro Se Defensio  62, 108, 367, 373–​ 75, 382, 384, 386, 388 Prolusions  89–91, 97 Prometheus  8, 38, 291, 296–97, 299, 301–2, 304 Protestantism  22–​23, 425, 427 Protestants  177, 198, 203, 210, 220, 345–46, 377–​78 Providence  284, 289, 462, 464 Puritan, Puritans  205, 256, 359, 408, 425–​26, 507, 510 Puritanism  193, 527 Pythagoras  89–90, 92, 95 Rabelais, François  27, 230, 439 Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, The 103, 155 Reason of Church Government Urged against Prelaty, The  59–60, 64, 66, 107, 110, 142, 151, 256, 476 Reformation, the  22–​23, 25, 32, 137, 171, 177, 191–92, 345, 348, 391, 532–33 Renaissance, the  33, 67–​68, 85, 98, 105, 114, 116–​17, 133–​34,

546 Index

138–​39, 154, 158, 218, 229, 284, 290, 351, 391, 438, 448–​49, 480, 484, 486, 531–33, 535, 537–39 Republic, the  20–​21, 29, 137–​38, 459, 527, 535 Restoration, the  32, 103, 109, 146, 150, 152, 155–​56, 158, 360, 533 Revelation, the  144, 168–​69 Reynolds, Edward  39, 340–​41, 344, 347 Ricoeur, Paul  163–65, 177, 179, 182 Roman Catholicism  (see also Catholicism)  195, 207, 209, 496 Roman Catholics  (see also Catholics)  33, 195, 202, 205–07, 213 Rome  103, 118, 126, 140, 172–​73, 184, 203, 441, 445, 533, 538 Rosa, Guimaraes  16, 43–44, 451–​ 53, 455, 460–​67 Salmasius, Claudius  108, 150– 51, 206 Samson  31, 52–53, 60, 64, 109–​10, 189–91, 256, 346 Samson Agonistes  31, 53, 109–​10, 146, 189, 1​ 91, 256, 346, 395, 397, 537 Satan  30, 34, 36–37, 39, 62–​63, 65–​66, 71–​72, 74–​79, 81, 84, 104, 106, 110–​11, 139, 184, 186, 204, 225–​26, 235, 237, 239, 242–​43, 247, 251–​54, 258–​60, 263–​77, 280–81, 294–​95, 297, 301–02, 304, 338, 342–​44, 410–11, 413–​ 15, 417, 421–​22, 437–​38, 440–​41,

443–​48, 456–​59, 462, 465–​67, 494, 497, 516–​19, 523–​24, 534–​36 Savior, Saviour, the  103–​04, 168, 343, 445 Scaliger, John  116, 130 Scotland  189, 210, 214, 219 Scripture  13, 43, 66, 101–02, 138–41, 204–06, 421, 425, 428, 524 Scriptures, the  139–40, 173, 214, 357, 379, 391, 398, 420, 425 Selden, John  204–​05, 214, 216, 219–​20 Senault, Jean F.  39, 340–​41, 344, 347 Seneca  281, 290, 411, 439 Septuagint, the  144 Sève, Bernard  43, 438, 445, 449 Shakespeare, William  8, 37, 85–​86, 90, 93, 98, 114, 116, 137, 194, 213, 218, 279–​80, 284, 287, 289–​90, 309, 503, 506, 529, 531, 533–36, 539, 545 Shelley, Mary  37, 291–​92, 294, 296–​97, 299–​300, 302–​04, 449 Socinian  353, 355–​56, 378–​ 81, 395 Socinianism  378–​79, 399, 426–27 Son, the  35, 39, 106, 111–​12, 199, 226, 252, 257–​60, 264–​76, 299, 337–​38, 342–​46, 355–​56, 427–28, 437–​38, 440, 442–​ 48, 543 Sonnet 7 (‘How soon hath Time’)  63, 120 Sonnet 8 (‘Captaine, or Collonell, or Knight in Armes’)  117, 119, 134, 479–80, 486

547

Index

Sonnet 9 (‘Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth’)  120, 481 Sonnet 10 ('Daughter to that good Earl, once President')  481–82 Sonnet 11 (‘A Book was writ of late call’d Tetrachordon’)  117, 119, 482 Sonnet 14 (‘On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christian Friend, deceas’d Dec. 16, 1646’)  482 Sonnet 15 ('Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings')  478, 480 Sonnet 16 ('Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud')  480 Sonnet 17 (‘To Sir Henry Vane the Younger’)  480, 482–84 Sonnet 18 (‘Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench’)  482–84 Sonnet 19 ('When I consider how my Light is spent')  480–81 Sonnet 20 ('Lawrence of vertuous Father vertuous Son')  120, 482 Sonnet 22 ('On his Blindness')  481 Sonnet 23 ('Methought I saw my late espoused Saint')  38, 323–​25, 328–​30, 332, 334–​36, 506, 527 Spenser, Edmund  33, 86, 137, 195, 200–​01, 210–​11, 216, 218, 220, 309 Spinoza, Baruch  93, 98, 366–​67, 374–​75, 377, 380, 396–​97 Strasbourg  7–8, 19, 23–​28, 32–​33, 35, 40–​41, 46, 53–​54, 137, 184,

188, 191, 229, 250, 351, 356–​57, 399–​400, 534–​37, 539 Tacitus  211, 475 Tarde, Gabriel  263–​64, 272, 276–​ 77 Tasso  117, 138, 474–​75, 478 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, The  34–​35, 195, 197, 251, 360, 476 Tetrachordon  66–​67, 112, 117, 119, 141, 185–​86, 398 Toland, John  254, 355, 360, 398 Treatise of Civil Power, A 21, 204–08 Trinity, the  255, 257–​58, 359 Trinity MS, the  323, 478–79, 480–82, 485 Urania  33–44, 142, 145, 153, 534 van Swieten, Gottfried  16, 44–​45, 487–​96, 500 Virgil  15, 38–39, 58, 114, 145, 184, 188, 194, 323–36, 411, 436, 536 Voltaire  41–​42, 404–​06, 436 Williams, Roger  204–​05, 221 Wyclif, John  533 Yart, Abbé  406 Zell, Matthew  24–​25 Zeus  148–49, 297, 302, 327