Three Monographs on Milton: An AssessmentWedges and Wings: The Patterning of "Paradise Regained". Burton Jasper WeberThe Politics of Milton's Prose Style. Keith W. StavelyThe Christian Revolutionary: John Milton. Hugh M. Richmond

Abstract

Judging by three monographs under consideration,' Milton industry, like Shakespeare industry, shows no sign of waning; and, if these studies are any indication of what scholarship on Milton has in store for its readers, then brief excursus will continue to dominate scholarly scene. Because of their ever-increasing number, such studies might elicit reviewer's oft-heard cry for moratorium, but I feel that this is cry with which it is perhaps too easy to sympathize. Given temptation to become exasperated at yearly proliferation of monographs on Milton, best antidote is Milton's own statement in Areopagitica: little generous prudence, little forbearance of one another, and som grain of charity might win all these diligences to joyn, and unite into one generall and brotherly search after Truth.2 With that statement in mind, I shall now attempt to determine how well monographs at hand perform noble task of searching after Truth (Miltonic or otherwise). As Burton Jasper Weber indicates in his preface to Wedges and Wings, his task is one of attempting to determine way in which Paradise Regained is organized and, as result of that determination, what concepts are implied by the arrangement of materials (p. xi). The approach is certainly valid; in fact, organization of Paradise Regained has become pretty much cause celbre among critics, as fine studies of Elizabeth M. Pope, Arnold Stein, and especially Barbara Lewalski will attest.3 Perhaps more than any of Milton's other work, Paradise Regained invites elaborate schematization. Undertaking such schematization, Professor Weber maintains that he will proceed like an empiricist, looking at poem objectively, even scientifically (he compares himself with an astronomer), and weighing every alternative (p. xii). In so doing, he will provide structural reading of Paradise Regained that will clarify a work which is not only complicated but which in its sublimity is inaccessible and abstruse (p. xiii). His study will be key. to unlock poem's mysteries. Whether such is actually case remains, of course, to be seen. A look at principles upon which Weber's structural analysis is based at least introduces an element of doubt.