THE EPIC AS PSEUDOMORPH: METHODOLOGY IN MILTON STUDIES

Abstract

ABSTRACT The range and variety of contemporary critical approaches to Milton's poetry are a healthy corrective to the simplistic readings and stereotyped interpretations that often result from a strictly unilateral approach and too narrow or too rigid a methodology. Although each of these approaches must necessarily be limited by the kind of evidence it can evaluate and organize with authority and probability, they complement one another and thus facilitate a multifaceted, comprehensive vision of Milton's major epic and its total meaning—even though the total meaning is accessible to none of these methods individually and necessarily achieves its fullest expression in and through the poem itself. Inherent in most of these approaches, moreover, is an inevitable (and ultimately unresolvable) tension between subjective and objective factors—between the demand for solid, demonstrable evidence and the pressures of the aesthetic imperative. Overemphasizing the former may desiccate aesthetic experience; overstressing the latter may do violence to the original meaning and value-content of the poem. For such substitute creations ("pseudomorphs") the historical method, in its various forms (history of genres, history of ideas, history of verbal and visual imagery, etc.), may be a useful corrective. It cannot guarantee absolute accuracy, however; and it must function as a complement, not as a substitute, for aesthetic intuition.