Milton's Prose Research Articles

Persona and decorum in Milton's prose

This book concerns Milton's self-presentation in his prose and the kinds of self-portraiture/biblical models/decorum strategies Milton employs over his career as prose writer. Through close analysis of selected tracts, the author argues that in each prose tract Milton fashions a persona after a specific biblical model.

The Intertextual Web of Johnson's <em>Dictionary</em> and the Concept of Authorship

What is distinctively different about Johnson's Dictionary, marking it off from earlier monolingual English dictionaries, is his use of quotations to illustrate the meanings of words. But Johnson's criteria for selecting these quotations were more than just linguistic. He saw his Dictionary as an encyclopedia of knowledge, and he wished his sources not just to illuminate and exemplify linguistic usage, but to transmit learning. Johnson also imposed ideological criteria on the selection of illustrative material. He refused to quote from Thomas Hobbes because he disapproved of his moral principles, Milton's prose works because he disapproved of his politics, and Samuel Clarke because he was not orthodox on the doctrine of the Trinity. On the other hand, a vast number of sermons is included from High Church Anglican divines who collectively present the orthodox conservative Protestant viewpoint.When considered in the context of recent theoretical debate about the nature of authorship, the inclusion of these "authorities" raises some interesting questions. To what extent can the text be said to be authored by Johnson when most of the text consists of quotations from other writers? Does this "authorship" of the text conflict with the modern notion that dictionaries derive their authority from a sort of anonymity? Or do we have in Johnson's Dictionary a paradigmatic post-structuralist intertext to which the concept of authorship does not apply?

Milton's House of God: The Invisible and Visible Church

In House of Stephen R. Honeygosky examines the ecclesiastical centre of a representative sampling of John Milton's prose written throughout his life. Inter-relating this body of literature with Reformation and post-Reformation history and theology, Honeygosky argues that for Milton the two major dimensions of (the invisible and visible) have an inextricable, ongoing, intersecting-though-not-equivalent relationship. He aims to show that it is the dynamic interaction between the two from which Milton's entire ecclesiology proceeds. House of God explores in depth Milton's concept of and its relation to the True Church, which he came to believe was always invisibly and spiritually gathered because of its mystic incorporation with Christ. Honeygosky demonstrates how Milton takes such traditional ecclesiological words as Scripture, Sacrament, heresy and holiness, rejects their standard usage, then empties the terms of their expected import before renovating and reappropriating them once again. The author concludes that the fundamental Miltonic definition of church is the individual, believing reader of sacred texts who has become an interfusion of sacred place, text and action - a veritable House of God. Thus, Milton's ecclesiology results in a new mythic form derived from, and designated for, mid-17th century English culture. The believing and reading individual is the most basic House of God, the embodied consolidation of Church and Scripture and Sacrament.

Subsequent Precedence: Milton's Materialistic Reading of Ficino and Tasso

In departing from Bill Readings' view that Milton's work inaugurated modernist history as lacking an inaugurating event, this essay engages the metaleptic articulation of origin and terminus, meaning and signifier, in some of Milton's prose and explores the rhetorical performance of Plato's idea of the icastic imagination, which convinced Milton that writing poetry is socially productive labor.

Leonard, J., <italic>Naming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve</italic>; Loewenstein, D. and Turner, J. eds., <italic>Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose</italic>

Journal Article Leonard, J., Naming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve; Loewenstein, D. and Turner, J. eds., Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose Get access J. Leonard, Naming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve. Pp. viii + 304. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. £30.00. D. Loewenstein and J. Turner (eds), Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose. Pp. xiv + 282. Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1990. £30.00. Cedric C. Brown Cedric C. Brown University of Reading Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 38, Issue 4, December 1991, Pages 541–543, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/38.4.541 Published: 01 December 1991

Reviews of Books

Journal Article Reviews of Books Get access Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose. Edited by DAVID LOEWENSTEIN and JAMES GRANTHAM TURNER. (Cambridge: U.P., 1990; pp. xiv + 282. £30). CHRISTOPHER HILL CHRISTOPHER HILL Sibford FerrisBanbury Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CVI, Issue CCCCXIX, April 1991, Pages 399–401, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/CVI.CCCCXIX.399 Published: 01 April 1991

'In those days there was no king in Israel': Milton's Politics and Biblical Narrative

When Milton set out a programme to reform English culture in The Reason of Church Government, one goal was 'the procurement of wise and artfull recitations sweetned with eloquent and gracefull inticements to the love and practice ofjustice ... instructing and bettering the Nation at all opportunities' (Complete Prose, I, 819-20).1 Hence he listed in the Trinity Manuscript fifty-three Old Testament stories fit for the project. Twenty-two of the fiftythree biblical plots he listed concern the period of the first eight books of the Old Testament, when 'there was no king in Israel'. They comprise nine tales from Genesis, one from Exodus, four from Numbers, two from Joshua, six from Judges, and one from Ruth. The pastoral from Ruth concludes the premonarchic stage of scriptural history, a stage that apparently had for the young Milton the attraction of a clear alternative. In those days eitherjustice spoke to 'the bettering of the nation', or its silencing indicated kingship, whether in Israel or England. The biblical narratives in the Trinity Manuscript are part of a political programmejust as much as notebook entries of used and unused ideas.2 Pace William Riley Parker, it is not true that Milton never thought of them again after jotting them down haphazardly from an open Bible. By the time he wrote The Reason of Church Government, many had a past in Milton's political prose, all had a future. In polemic he treats Scripture as a series of practical case histories rather than the clear instructions of God and does the best he

'Exil'd From Light': The Darkened Moral Consciousness of Milton's Hero of Faith

Disagreements are still liable to arise over the heroic status of Satan in Paradise Lost, but perhaps the most serious division of opinion among readers of Milton for some time to come will be over another questionable heroic figure, his Samson. Most readers still consider that Samson is a tragic hero intended to command admiration and respect, and that Milton presents him as a model for Christian imitation. However, the questions and doubts are increasing. When Anthony Low pictured Samson as a gloriously triumphant Christian hero, 'the image and example of the champion of God' (Low, 117), he dismissed objections to Samson's violence by turning to Milton's prose where force seems to be justified if it is used by the Christian magistrate against God's enemies. Mary Ann Radzinowicz concluded that the destruction of the temple is 'a human imaging of God's might ... an exemplary act which teaches how God gives freedom' (346). Many scholars have turned to typological hermeneutics to explain Samson's behaviour. In typological exegesis, the Old Testament is seen as prefiguring the New Testament, although darkly. There is similitude in dissimilitude. Old Testament heroes such as Adam and Judas Maccabeus are types of Christ, the antitype, although the type can never be quite the same as the perfect antitype. So Samson delivering the Jews from subjection to the Philistines is for Scott-Craig a type of Christ the redeemer, while for Barbara Lewalski the terrible judgment Samson visits on the Philistines typifies Christ in final apocalyptic judgment. Yet Carey, reading the same text, finds in Samson 'no spiritual development, only ... resentment, which has been gnawing inwardly' (139). Readers who find it impossible to accept that Samson is an exemplary Christian have recently received powerful support from J. W. Wittreich, who insists that 'Milton's "martyrplay" is ... less a celebration than a censure of its hero' (326). He draws support from a vein of contemporary Renaissance allusion 'that exhibits a tarnished Samson—a Samson who, nurtured in blood, delights in vengeance and whose enterprise entails the wretched interchange of wrong for wrong' (245).

Coleridge, the French Revolution, and 'The Ancient Mariner': Collective Guilt and Individual Salvation

S. T. Coleridge's 'The Rime of Ancient Mariner' was written against the background of the collapse of the poet's hopes for the improvement of mankind by political action, the ultimate failure of the French Revolution to distinguish itself from its oppressive Bourbon predecessors. The contribution of Coleridge's political beliefs to this poem has never been fully appreciated. Certainly 'The Ancient Mariner' has none of the political allusions which stud the contemporaneous 'France: an Ode' or 'Fears in Solitude' and this has led most critics to concur with E. M. W. Tillyard that the poem exhibits 'a total lack of politics'.' Yet given the circumstances which gave rise to 'The Ancient Mariner', this very absence of political content is itself political. As Carl Woodring puts it, if Coleridge's supernatural poems are poems of escape, 'politics form a large part of what they escaped from'.2 The importance of the French Revolution to 'The Ancient Mariner' can be seen in Coleridge's obsession with that other poet and disillusioned supporter of revolution, John Milton. During 1795-96 he fills the Gutch memorandum notebook with allusions and references to Toland's edition of Milton's prose works of 1698.3 Coleridge had Milton's career very much in mind when writing 'The Ancient Mariner'. Like himself, the poet of Paradise Lost had witnessed the complete wreck of his own hopes for a regenerated nation. In March 1819 Coleridge delivered a lecture on Milton and Paradise Lost which tells us a great deal about his own state of mind. Milton was: '. as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendent ideal'.4 Although ultimately Coleridge hoped that his own vengeance would be

The Development of Milton's Prose Style

The Development of Milton's Prose Style

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access The Development of Milton's Prose Style. By THAMAS N. CORNS. Pp. xiv + 118. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. £12.50 net. ALAN WARD ALAN WARD Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XXXV, Issue 140, November 1984, Pages 539–540, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XXXV.140.539 Published: 01 November 1984

Reviews

Reviews Get access The Development of Milton's Prose Style . By THOMAS N. CORNS . Pp. xiv+118 . Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1982 . £12.50. ARCHIE BURNETT ARCHIE BURNETT Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 30, Issue 5, October 1983, Pages 470–471, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/30-5-470 Published: 01 October 1983

Review: The Development of Milton's Prose Style

Review: The Development of Milton's Prose Style

ABSTRACTS

Anne T. Barbeau. “Satan's Envy of the Son and the Third Day of the War.“Clifford Davidson. “The Young Milton, Orpheus, and Poetry.“H. Neville Davies. “Laid Artfully Together: Stanzaic Design in Milton's ‘On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.'“James Egan. “The Satiric Wit of Milton's Prose Controversies.“Albert C. Labriola. “Milton's Use of Neo‐Latin Reference Books.“Michael J. Marcuse. “The Pre‐Publication History of William Lauder's Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his Paradise Lost.“Mary Ann McGuire. “'A Most Just Vituperation': Milton's Christian Orator in Pro Se Defensio.“James M. Rosenheim. “An Early Appreciation of Paradise Lost.“Maren‐Sofie Røstvig. “Elaborate Song: Conceptual Structure in Milton's ‘On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.'“Lynn V. Sadler. “Relations Between Alchemy and Poetics in the Renaissance and Seventeenth Century, With Special Glances at Milton and Donne.“Lynn V. Sadler. “The Problem of the Ending of Samson Agonistes: Aristotle Plus Reorientation.“J. B. Savage. “Freedom and Necessity in Paradise Lost.“James H. Sims. “The Epic Narrator's Mortal Voice in CamõTes and Milton.“S. Viswanathan. ‘“In Sage and Solemn Tunes': Variants of Orphicism in Milton's Early Poetry.“

God, Satan, and King Charles: Milton's Royal Portraits

Between the interpretation in Milton's prose works of the monarchy of Charles I and the portrayal in Paradise Lost of the tyranny of Satan there exists an extensive and complex consistency based on the concept of the divine right of kings, a doctrine that informs the character and world view of Satan as well as of King Charles. In his effort to counteract the Eikon Basilike's picture of Charles as a Christlike martyr-king, Milton drew in Eikonoklastes—albeit in fragmentary form—his own essentially fictional characterization of Charles as a tyrant. This analysis, continued in the Defences, studies Charles's personal heroism, political behavior, delusions about himself, his followers, and his cause and is extensively paralleled in the depiction of Satan. These prose works thus serve as a valuable literary gloss on Paradise Lost—on certain details of imagery and characterization and on Milton's conception of true liberty and revolution.

’ That Fatal and Perfidious Bark’: A Key to the Double Design and Unity of Milton's Lycidas

John Milton's description in Lycidas of the shipwreck that caused the death of Edward King has generally been interpreted along historical and naturalistic lines. In this essay I want to show that the image of the ship as Ecclesia or the Church, coming as it does in almost the exact center of Lycidas, sheds new light on Milton's use of the Christian and humanistic traditions, its single image identifying and being used to unify his twin aims of satire and elegy.Merritt Y. Hughes, in his edition of Milton's poetry and major prose, refers to the example of ‘disastrous twilight’ in Paradise Lost (1.597) to explain the reference to ‘th’ eclipse’ (1. 101) as the time of the ship's construction.

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

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.

ABSTRACTS

Stephen C. Behrendt. “Bright Pilgrimage: William Blake's Designs For L'Allegro and IL Penseroso.” Milton StudiesLeonora Leet Brodwin. “The Dissolution of Satan In Paradise Lost: A Study of Milton's Heretical Eschatology.”Milton StudiesA. B. Chambers. “The Double Time Scheme In Paradise Regained.” Milton StudiesJames Egan. “Milton And The Marprelate Tradition.”Milton StudiesStanley E. Fish. “What It's Like To Read L Allegro and Il Penseroso.” Milton StudiesDixon Fiske. “The Theme of Purification In Milton's Sonnet XXIII.”Milton StudiesMarjorie B. Garber. “Fallen Landscape: The Art of Milton and Poussin.”English Literary RenaissanceChristopher Grose. “His Uncontrollable Intent”: Discovery As Action In Samson Agonistes. “Milton StudiesDesmond M. Hamlet. “Recalcitrance, Damnation, And The Justice Of God In Paradise Lost” Milton StudiesErnst Häublein. “Milton's Paraphrase of Genesis: A Stylistic Reading of Paradise LostJohn Spencer Hill. “Poet‐Priest: Vocational Tension In Milton's Early Development.”Milton StudiesNicholas R. Jones. “’Stand’ And ‘Fall’ As Images Of Posture in Paradise Lost.” Milton StudiesG. Stanley Koehler. “Milton And The Art Of Landscape.”Milton Studies VIII (1975), 3‐40.Albert C. Labriola. “The Aesthetics of Self‐Diminution: Christian Iconography And Paradise Lost.” Milton StudiesMichael Lieb. “Paradise Lost And The Myth of Prohibition.”Milton StudiesCharlotte F. Otten. “Milton's Haemony.”English Literary RenaissanceAnnabel Patterson. “The Civic Hero In Milton's Prose.”Milton StudiesB. Rajan. “The Cunning Resemblance.”Milton StudiesPhillip Rollinson. “Milton's Nativity Poem And The Decorum Of Genre.”Milton StudiesJason P. Rosenblatt. “The Mosaic Voice in Paradise Lost.” Milton StudiesG. B. Savage. “Comus and Its Traditions.”English Literary RenaissanceJohn T. Shawcross. “The Rhetor As Creator In Paradise Lost.” Milton StudiesJohn T. Shawcross. “Milton and Diodati: An Essay In Psychodynamic Meaning.”Milton StudiesBeverley Sherry. “Speech in Paradise Lost.” Milton StudiesJohn M. Steadman. “The Epic as Pseudomorph: Methodology in Milton Studies.”Milton Studies

The Civic Hero in Milton's Prose

ABSTRACT The heroic metaphors and allusions in Milton's prose have received little attention in their own right, having been subordinated to study of either his early epic plans or his mature rejection of classical epic. But following Milton's heroic language from pamphlet to pamphlet one finds a coherent and partly self-contained pattern. In wrestling with the problematical role of the intellectual in times of crisis, and in trying to define that role as heroic, Milton created a linguistic and metaphoric synthesis of action and contemplation which differs from the passive fortitude of the great poems. Its affinities are with Ciccro's definition of the orator, and with Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics at the point where they lead into the Politics, rather than with the Book of Job; and its emphasis is on the hero as public benefactor. Developed in part to justify his decision to enter the church reform debates, Milton's synthesis is held defensively in the divorce pamphlets, actively in the Areopagitica; set aside for political expediency in the regicide pamphlets, it is triumphantly restated in the Second Defence; and finally, in the Pro Se Defensio, Milton found it crumble in his hands. When Milton dropped out of politics, his civic heroism had become impossible to maintain, not only because of the Restoration, but because, as his language reveals, his confidence in his own impartiality and unselfishness had been destroyed.

ABSTRACTS

Patrick Grant. “Time and Temptation in PR.”William B. Hunter, Jr. “The Theological Context of Milton's CD.”Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John MiltonJohn Huntley. “The Images of Poet and Poetry in Milton's The Reason of Church‐Government.”Edward Le Comte. “Areopagitica as Scenario for PL.”Michael Lieb. “Milton's Of Reformation and the Dynamics of Controversy.”Mother M. Christopher Pecheux. “Milton's PL.”Walter J. Ong. “Logic and the Epic Muse: Reflections on Noetic Structures in Milton's Milieu.”Lynn Veach Sadler. “Coping with Hebraic Legalism: the Chorus in SA.”Florence Sandier. “Icon and Iconoclast.”John T. Shawcross. “The Higher Wisdom of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.”John T. Shawcross. “A Survey of Milton's Prose Works.”Harry Smallenburg. “Government of the Spirit: Style, Structure, and Theme in Treatise of Civil Power.”John J. Teunissen. “The Book of Job and Stuart Politics.”Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr. “'The Crown of Eloquence': The Figure of the Orator in Milton's Prose Works.”Austin Woolrych. “Milton and Cromwell: ‘A Short but Scandalous Night of Interruption’?”Achievements of the Left Hand, 185–218.