Chapter 3 John Milton
Milton was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, and the elder son of a self-made businessman. In his life, Milton showed himself a real revolutionary, a master poet and a great prose writer. He fought for freedom in all aspects as a Christian humanist, while his achievements in literature made him tower over all the other English writers of his time and exerted a great influence over later ones. Milton’s literary achievements can be divided into three groups: the early poetic works, the middle prose pamphlets and the last great poems. He is a master of the blank verse. He first used blank verse in non-dramatic works, which has frequently been called “Miltonic style”. Here, his own genius for poetry and matchless daring in experiment introduced variety and achieved extraordinary freedom. In Paradise Lost, he acquires an absolute mastery of the blank verse. Another characteristic of his style is the use of allusions to other works, especially classic works.
Critical Perspectives
1.Thematic Study
Paul Cefalu, in “Incarnational Apophatic: Rethinking Divine Accommodation in John Milton’s Paradise Lost”, argues that John Milton’s Paradise Lost reveals both the limits and dangers of several modes of accommodating God to both angelic and human understanding. Not only does God fail successfully to accommodate himself and his internally efficient decrees during the celestial council, but the Son, who might otherwise serve as an agent of the special accommodation of redemption, also fails to accommodate the Father: the Son’s tendency to disclose several of God’s mysteries subverts the basic concealing-revealing function of accommodation, which otherwise aims to render some of God’s ways palatable to creaturely understanding even while ensuring the ontological and epistemological distance between creatures and God. Milton thus approaches accommodation skeptically, even testing its effectiveness and capaciousness as an exegetical device that might be of use in mimetic poetry.[1]
2.Canonization Study
Gary Kuchar, in “Milton, Shakespeare, and Canadian Confederation: Thomas D’Arcy McGee as Literary Critic”, argues that while John Milton’s influence on the founding of the American republic is well documented, his presence in Canadian Confederation remains virtually unknown. Yet Milton is a significant figure in the work of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the so-called “prophet of Canadian Confederation.” Revealingly, McGee’s interpretation of Milton as a moderate Christian humanist differs significantly from the more dominant American reception of him as a political and religious radical. Similarly, McGee’s defence of constitutional monarchy finds support in his reading of Shakespeare as an ideal embodiment of the supposed Elizabethan synthesis of monarchical and republican traditions. Ultimately, McGee’s conservative reading of Milton reinforced his mature political, constitutional, and social vision, whereas his reading of Shakespeare actively shaped it.[2]
3.Marxist Criticism
Jude Welburn, in “Divided Labors: Work, Nature, and the Utopian Impulse in John Milton’s Paradise Lost”, argues that utopia has often been defined as an imaginary, this-worldly, rational ideal distinct from older, mythic, prepolitical forms of social ideality such as Paradise or the Golden Age. Milton’s Paradise Lost complicates this opposition and departs from exegetical tradition, introducing temporality, materiality, and social organization into the Genesis story. The chaotic vitality of nature in Milton’s paradise makes Adam and Eve’s labor meaningful and necessary, and the preservation of the Edenic state is predicated upon the control of excess and a rational division of work and play. Milton’s paradise is not, therefore, simply a state of nature, a presocial or prepolitical condition; it is the seed-form of a larger social order that already contains within itself the problem of the metabolism of nature and society. If paradise and utopia form an opposition, this opposition is internal to Paradise Lost.[3]
4.Archetypal Criticism
David V. Urban, in “John Milton, Paradox, and the Atonement: Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Son’s Whole-Life Obedience”, demonstrates that Milton’s orthodox presentation of the Crucifixion and the substitutionary atonement is predicated on his orthodox presentation of Jesus’s whole-life obedience, a perfect obedience to God and his law that substitutes for the disobedience of those who put their faith in Jesus. This presentation, evident in Paradise Lost, Upon the Circumcision, Paradise Regained, and De Doctrina Christiana, is consistent with presentations in various orthodox sixteenth-and seventeenth-century reformed documents. Paradoxically, however, Milton’s presentational emphasis on the orthodox notion of Jesus’s whole-life obedience is likely predicated upon his heterodox views regarding the deity of the Son of God.[4]
5.New Historicism
Giuseppina Iacono Lobo, in “John Milton, Oliver Cromwell, and the Cause of Conscience”, discusses Milton’s sonnet of 1652 addressed to the then Lord General Cromwell, this article provides a more complex understanding of the much-examined relationship between the poet-polemicist and eventual Lord Protector. More specifically, Giuseppina argues that their shared dedication to liberty of conscience makes Milton’s covert or complete repudiation of Cromwell unlikely. While Cromwell’s dismissal of an elected body and his assumption of power seem to conflict with Milton’s championing of religious and civil liberty, if we consider more closely the language of and occasion for Milton’s sonnet, it is clear that Milton dismissed the Rump Parliament long before Cromwell ever did.[5]
Curry Kennedy, in “Milton’s Ethos, English Nationhood, and the Fast-Day Tradition in Areopagitica”, argues that during the English Revolution, Westminster divines Cornelius Burges and Stephen Marshall resurrected the practice of preaching in Parliament in an attempt to articulate, without repair to kingship or Catholicism, what it meant to be free, godly, and English. Though scholars have acknowledged Areopagitica’s debt to the nation-forming biblical rhetoric of these sermons, in this study curry argues that Milton commandeers that rhetoric—especially the application of the figure of Israel to the would-be commonwealth—in order to renovate his own public image, such that he and the nation cannot be thought apart. Milton projects an ethos that is at once representative and apostolic, Isocratean and Pauline. At the same time, he reworks the sermons’ figural depictions of England’s divine election, covenant, and religious conformity such that his nation could not exist without him. This imbrication of persona and patria reconciles contrasting theories about Milton’s self-understanding and extends our understanding of Milton’s nationalism in a time of revolution and religious upheaval.[6]
Christopher N.Warren, in “John Milton and the Epochs of International Law”, argues that for the historian of international law William Grewe in his controversial opus, The Epochs of International Law, it was the English writer John Milton who offered the death blow to an entire epoch, one founded on the principle that discovery brought legal title in international law. Yet John Milton’s Paradise Lost is rarely considered alongside the history of international law. In this article, Christopher contends that a robust history of international law in the 17th century would profit from engaging head on with literary texts like Paradise Lost. Milton’s understanding of the law of nations provides legal scholars with a richer intellectual history of 17th-century international law than that typically on offer—one more sensitive to humanist methods, literary texts, and embodied questions of vulnerability. Approaching the intellectual history of the law of nations dialectically, Christopher suggests that a full reckoning of Milton’s law of nations in Paradise Lost requires a careful balance of presentism and openness to alterity—presentism in the sense that we might appreciate how strongly Milton’s law of nations resonates with debates about international law in our own time, and alterity in the sense that Milton’s law of nations encompassed much that many of today’s readers would hardly recognize as “international law”. A full intellectual history of Milton’s law of nations, then, may require us partly to estrange that term—to set aside a priori definitions of the “international” and resist easy transhistorical transpositions from Milton’s late Renaissance world to our own—but it also requires a paradoxical domestication of the law of nations, a making familiar, a bringing into one’s home.[7]
Nicole A. Jacobs, in “John Milton’s Beehive, from Polemic to Epic”, argues that while the bee simile in book 1 of Paradise Lost has garnered much critical attention, the significant image of the hive in Milton’s corpus remains largely overlooked. Deriving from an ancient literary tradition, the bee metaphor was enlisted in seventeenth-century England as a divine symbol of monarchical and ecclesiastical power structures. From his polemic to his epic, Milton, by contrast, consistently uses apian imagery to register harsh critiques of earthly monarchy, feminine influence, and Catholic superstition. Beginning with an unexamined bee passage in Eikonoklastes, this article traces Milton’s revisionist reading of the apiological kingdom, which culminates in his representation of insect and related serpentine imagery in Paradise Lost. Nicole argues that the Miltonic hive serves as a symbol of a natural corruption of the divine hierarchy, an inevitable failure to replicate on earth or in hell the benevolent design of heaven.[8]
Alison A. Chapman, in “Milton and Legal Reform”, argues that the second half of the seventeenth century was the first great period of legal reform in England’s history. This article situates John Milton in relationship to this contemporary context, arguing that he comments frequently on the need to change England’s laws and displays a finely tuned awareness of some of the major legal debates of his time. This article surveys Milton’s writings about the law and legal education, and it concludes by examining his 1659-1660 political pamphlets where he calls for reform of the judicial system and the establishment of local courts.[9]
Christopher Crosbie, in “Publicizing the Science of God: Milton’s Raphael and the Boundaries of Knowledge”, discusses how poet John Milton handles his representations of science through a sustained inquiry into problematics of Raphael’s narration and the social space through which he directs his pedagogical efforts. Topics discussed include an argument that Raphael’s significance in Paradise Lost resides in his simultaneous representation of divergent, antithetical philosophies towards scientific knowledge in the public sphere and the execution of Raphael’s mission.[10]
6.Cultural Study
William Walker, in “John Milton’s Magisterial Reformation”, argues that in the English prose he published over a period of two decades, John Milton frequently uses the term “reformation” to identify the age in which he was living and the causes for which he was fighting. In so doing, he reveals his support for the magisterial Reformation and his rejection of the radical Reformation. He expresses his desire not for religious diversity but for union with the Scottish and Continental Reformed Churches. He constructs a complex discourse that is self-serving, misleading in some ways, prophetic, and calculated to win a range of polemical contests. In supporting the magisterial Reformation, he also displays his support for theologians who participate in government, and magistrates who participate in determining religious belief and conduct. Milton thus repudiates many aspects of modernity and is, as he insists, a man who lived during, and promoted what he called, “times of reformation”.[11]
John G. Peters, in “Father, King, and God: John Milton’s Prose Response to Monarchy”, presents the work of the writer John Milton. It explains that during the Renaissance era of England, Milton was a dissenter against the idea of kings being divinely appointed by God. The writing of John Stubbs and William Prynne is discussed and the social implications of Milton’s ideology are examined. The relationship between family, monarchy, and divinity is also explored.[12]
7.Feminist Criticism
Dan Vogel, in “Eve— The First Feminist: John Milton’s Midrash on Genesis 3:6”, discusses the Midrash of John Milton on the ambiguity of the word “with her”(imah) in Genesis 3:6, which he describes in Book ix of Paradise Lost. It says that Milton’s Midrash, which was composed from clues he developed from Rabbi David Kimhi, states that Adam was called by Eve from other place from the garden to eat the fruit together with her. It explores Milton’s hints for Eve as a feminist with Eve’s proposal to Adam to divide their labor and her desire for independence.[13]
Robert Crossley, in “Alone in the Center: Brynhild and Brünnhilde”, argues that heroic narratives classical Western literature have few memorable women at their center and cites reference to poet John Milton’s Eve presented like Son of the God. It mentions that sagas of medieval Iceland present a challenge to readers who bring to these narratives of family feuds the expectations either of southern European epic or of the modern psychological novel.[14]
8.Canonization Study
Patrick Madigan, in “Game Over”, offers insights on the influence of John Milton as a poet and author of the book Paradise Lost particularly on his character Lucifer or Satan. It mentions that the character that was in Satan was emulated in other literature from other countries including the “of Dante Alegheiri’s Divine Comedy”.[15]
Lisa Ampleman, in “ The Original Antihero”, offers literary criticism of the epic poem Paradise Lost, by John Milton, noting the role of Satan in the poem. Topics include comparisons of Milton’s work to films, the notion of Satan as a sympathetic antihero, and the relation of Milton’s blindness to the poem. The depiction of the marriage of the biblical figures Adam and Eve in the poem is noted.[16]
Adam Foley, in “Miltonic Sublimity and the Crisis of Wolffianism before Kant”, discusses the importance of poet John Milton on the development of British Romanticism and the crisis of Wolffianism before German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Topics include the role of Milton in minimizing rationalism for the Swiss, the two principles that formed the foundation of his poetics namely the principles of noncontradiction and of sufficient reason, and Kant’s complaint about the license of Wolff’s speculative metaphysics to claim access to the monumenal world.[17]
9.New Criticism(https://www.daowen.com)
Travis D. Williams, in “Unspeakable Creation: Writing in Paradise Lost and Early Modern Mathematics”, offers poetry criticism of the poem Paradise Lost by John Milton. It focuses on the contrast between literal eyesight and the perception of a clearer sight of the mind. It mentions the rhetorical and poetic devices employed by poets in mimicry of the deity’s accommodation. It outlines the efforts in the poem to facilitate access to the perfect and divine by limited noetic and aesthetic capacities to make a success of accommodation.[18]
David Macey, in “Who Is Pressing You Now?: A Reconsideration of Milton’s Pyrrha Ode”, discusses English poet John Milton’s translation of Roman poet Horace’s Odes or the Pyrrha Ode. Topics covered include the rendering’s metaphrastic quality in its mirroring of Latin diction and syntax, the issues of translation date, relation to Milton’s stylistic development, and poetic merits, and the view that Milton presents his version as a parallel text rather than as a substitute for the Horace original. Also noted are the Milton translation’s ingenuity and shortcomings.[19]
10.Biographical Analysis
Morris Freedman, in “John Milton and the King of Poland”, presents a biographical analysis of the work of John Milton. In 1674, the last year of his life, John Milton translated from the Latin what might be described today as a press release by a foreign power, Poland. It announced the election of John Sobieski as the country’s new king. The document did not carry Milton’s name. Why did Milton undertake what must have been, certainly at that late point in his career, such an unusual, not to say bizarre, task? He had completed and, in the preceding six years, had published the three great works which established his reputation: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. He was widely accepted as the great poet of his time. Personages in England and from the continent visited and honored him. Andrew Marvell, as a member of parliament under Charles Ⅱ, had not only helped protect him against royalist retribution after the Restoration, but had added his encomium to an edition of Paradise Lost.[20]
11.Cognitive Study
Joshua R. Held, in “Eve’s ‘paradise within’ in Paradise Lost: A Stoic Mind, a Love Sonnet, and a Good Conscience”, argues that the “paradise within, happier farr” that the angel Michael foretells in the final book of Milton’s Paradise Lost has attracted widespread and often divisive comment. The most significant interpretive context for the phrase directly follows Michael’s speech. When Adam returns to the newly wakened Eve, she greets him with a blank verse love sonnet that triangulates three sources of encouragement for the couple in their coming exile from Eden. Each source unveils a different aspect of the “paradise within”: the Stoic trope of the world as a homeland, the Renaissance love motif of the lover as a world, and the divine peace of conscience, which many contemporaries described as a “paradise within”.[21]
【注释】
[1]Cefalu P. “Incarnational Apophatic: Rethinking Divine Accommodation in John Milton’s Paradise Lost”.Studies in Philology, 2016, 113(1):198-228.
[2]Kuchar G. “Milton, Shakespeare, and Canadian Confederation: Thomas D’Arcy McGee as Literary Critic”. University of Toronto Quarterly, 2019, 88(1):1-23.
[3]Welburn J. “Divided Labors: Work, Nature, and the Utopian Impulse in John Milton’s Paradise Lost”.Studies in Philology, 2019, 116(3):506-538.
[4]Urban D V. “John Milton, Paradox, and the Atonement: Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Son’s Whole-Life Obedience”. Studies in Philology, 2015, 112(4):817-836.
[5]Lobo G I. “John Milton, Oliver Cromwell, and the Cause of Conscience”. Studies in Philology, 2015, 112(4):774-797.
[6]Kennedy C. “Milton’s Ethos, English Nationhood, and the Fast-Day Tradition in Areopagitica”. Studies in Philology, 2019, 116(2):375-400.
[7]Warren C N. “John Milton and the Epochs of International Law”. European Journal of International Law, 2013, 24(2):557-581.
[8]Jacobs N A. “John Milton’s Beehive, from Polemic to Epic”. Studies in Philology, 2015, 112(4):798-816.
[9]Chapman A A. “Milton and Legal Reform”. Renaissance Quarterly, 2016, 69(2):529-565.
[10]Crosbie C. “Publicizing the Science of God: Milton’s Raphael and the Boundries of Knowledge”. Renascence, 2015, 67(4):239-260.
[11]Walker W. “John Milton’s Magisterial Reformation”. Reformation ＆ Renaissance Review, 2016, 18(2):174-194.
[12]Peters J G. “Father, King, and God: John Milton’s Prose Response to Monarchy”. Midwest Quarterly, 2008, 49(3):228-244.
[13]Vogel D. “Eve—the First Feminist: John Milton’s Midrash on Genesis 3:6”. Jewish Bible Quarterly, 2012, 40(1):19-24.
[14]Crossley R. “Alone in the Center: Brynhild and Brünnhilde”. The Massachusetts Review, 2018, 59(3):490-504.
[15]Madigan P. “Game Over”. Heythrop Journal, 2018, 59(1):84-97.
[16]Ampleman L. “The Original Antihero”. America,2018, 219(9):18-20.
[17]Foley A. “Miltonic Sublimity and the Crisis of Wolffianism before Kant”. Journal of the History of Ideas, 2017, 78(1):51-71.
[18]Williams T D. “Unspeakable Creation: Writing in Paradise Lost and Early Modern Mathematics”. Philological Quarterly, 2019, 98(1 ＆ 2):181-200.
[19]Macey D. “Who Is Pressing You Now?: A Reconsideration of Milton’s Pyrrha Ode”. Philological Quarterly, 2016, 95(3/4):425-448.
[20]Freedman M. “John Milton and the King of Poland”. Virginia Quarterly Review, 1991, 67(4):687-688.
[21]Held J R. “Eve’s ‘paradise within’ in Paradise Lost: A Stoic Mind, a Love Sonnet, and a Good Conscience”. Studies in Philology, 2017, 114(1):171-196.