Moral fiction in Milton and Spenser

Abstract

In Moral Fiction in Milton John M. Steadman examines how Milton Spenser--and Renaissance poets in general--applied their art toward the depiction of moral historical truth. Steadman centers his study on the various poetic techniques of illusion that these poets employed in their effort to bridge the gap between truth imaginative fiction. In developing this theme, the author considers the poetry of Milton Spenser, touching also on works by Tasso, Boiardo, Ariosto, DuBartas, Puttenham, Sidney, others, against the background of Renaissance epic theory practice. Emphasizing the significant affinities the crucial differences between the seventeenth-century heroic poet his sixteenth-century original, Steadman analyzes the diverse ways in which Milton exploited traditional invocation formulas the commonplaces of the poet's divine imagination. Steadman suggests that these poets, along with most other Renaissance poets, did not actually regard themselves as divinely inspired but, rather, resorted to a common fiction to create the appearance of having special insight into the truth.The first section of this study traces the persona of the inspired poet in DuBartas's La Sepmaine in Faerie Queene Lost. Reevaluating the views of twentieth-century critics, it emphasizes the priority of conscious fiction over autobiographical fact in these poets' adaptations of this topos. The second section develops the contrast between the two principal heroic poems of the English Renaissance, Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, in terms of the contrasting aesthetic principles underlying the romance genre the neoclassical epic.Complementing the findings of earlier critics of Milton, Moral Fiction in Milton Spenser will be a welcome addition to the study of Renaissance literature.