Milton and the death of man: humanism on trial in Paradise lost

Abstract

Harold Skulsky, Milton and the Death of Man: Humanism on Trial in Paradise Lost, London, Associated University Presses, Newark, University of Delaware Press, 2000, pp. 262, hb. £35, ISBN: 00874137195The dramatic gestures of the courtroom, rather than a more predictable academic mode of delivery, provides the stylistic momentum for Harold Skulsky's testing and often intriguing interrogation of the intellectual framework and achievements (both moral and aesthetic) of Milton's Paradise Lost. The central thesis of this study is that the poem's inconsistency, and ultimate failure, as an exercise in rational 'humanistic theodicy' lies at the very heart of its success as a work of art. Casting Milton as the human advocate of an omnipotent but problematically remote client, Skulsky also implicitly exploits the logical rigour and moral potency of Paradise Lost as a means of demolishing the 'body of inchoate theories and sentiments that goes by the name of humanism' (dustjacket). Seeking to blend literary criticism with philosophical analysis, he also places particular emphasis upon the power of expressive and persuasive strategies of rhetoric as a means of shaping and (no less importantly) warping the logic of ideas. Rhetoric for Milton, it is implied, was not necessarily regarded as a route towards absolute and divine truth but rather as the only means left to the isolated and faltering poet of making some sense of a fallen and fragmented world. The book is cogently divided into four large chapters. In the first, it is explained why the metaphor of pleading God's case is so apt and meaningful for a study of Paradise Lost; and why epic narrative is especially amenable to a legalistic dissection of its moral purpose. In the second (and perhaps most informative) chapter, Skulsky offers an enlightening and admirably concise survey of the evolution of concepts of freewill in Western thought, via the writings of Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Valla, Pomponazzi, Erasmus, Molina, and others. The third chapter explains how Milton utilized his account of both the Creation and the Fall as a means of interrogating the efficacy of God's ways. At the same time, it is emphasised that the Creation, although engendered by a traditionally male God, was essentially a powerfully maternal act - a perspective which ultimately allows Eve's maternity in the 'Dialogue of Reconciliation' to parallel God's original creativity. The fourth and concluding chapter explores the disturbing concept of God's hatred and reminds the reader of Milton's commitment to the idea of epic as 'tragedy writ large'. How, after all, in a court of law, does a loving God, or rather His hapless attorney, justify to the attentive jurors/readers His creation of that neatly antithetical Heaven, more commonly known as Hell? …