Milton's Use Research Articles

The Devil's First Advocate

In this work, I analyze John Milton's Paradise Lost through Milton's use of allegory, allusion, and religious archetypes alike and hypothesize the implications of said techniques of writing as a more synchronistic view held by Milton in this particular work, as Milton never abides by one singular religious context or reference to coinciding cultures of the time, but appears to borrow all at will indiscriminately, as if to hint at a greater connection between each.

Misery, Love, and Company: Paradise Lost and the Origins of Consolation

Abstract This essay examines three moments of consolation in Paradise Lost: Satan’s speeches to the demons, Michael’s teaching of Adam, and Adam and Eve’s “commiseration” after the Fall. Milton use...

Not Sparing the Child: Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World and Beyond. Studies in Honor of Professor Paul G. Mosca

Not Sparing the Child: Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World and Beyond. Studies in Honor of Professor Paul G. Mosca

Reading and Writing Romance in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

AbstractThis essay argues that Milton's strategic handling of romance in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained can be read as a conscious attempt to reconstitute the genre according to his own Christian focus. Challenging the view that Milton rejected romance outright in his late poems, it points towards some of the ways in which Milton may have thought about romance after the execution of Charles I in 1649 and suggests how the genre could be accommodated to his theopolitical vision. The essay also underscores the necessity for a critical approach that will situate Milton's use of romance in its historical and cultural contexts in the years before and after the Restoration.

Points of Departure: Studies in Milton's Use of Wollebius

Milton’s reliance in De Doctrina Christiana on the systematic theology of Wollebius warrants renewed examination, by close reading of the two writers’ original Latin. This essay selects illustrative passages for comparison from three of Milton’s later chapters; those on the sacraments, on prudence, and on usury. On the first, Milton agrees with the dogmatic Swiss Protestant except in a small discrepancy, and again when Wollebius becomes extreme on Confirmation. On the second, Milton rephrases his model’s orthodoxy in such a way as to emphasize preoccupations of his own, linking usury to divorce. On the third, although he stays even closer to Wollebius in exegesis, he adds a corollary which may be disguised autobiography. It is concluded that a flexible, pluralist source-criticism is required for further passages of De Doctrina, since not only the point of departure but the trajectory varies every time.

Christophe Tournu, Milton, Rights and LibertiesMilton, Rights and Liberties. Edited by ChristopheTournu and NeilForsyth. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007. Pp. viii+522.

<i>Christophe Tournu,</i> Milton, Rights and Liberties<i>Milton, Rights and Liberties</i>. Edited by ChristopheTournu and NeilForsyth. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007. Pp. viii+522.

"Exactest Proportion": The Iconoclastic and Constitutive Powers of Metaphor in Milton's Prose Tracts

In a pitched battle over the state's basic terminology, thousands of pamphlets poured from the English press after censorship ended in 1640-41—the meanings of the words "king," "people," and "tyrant" were just a few thrown into question. John Milton quickly entered the fray, and his works have recently been read for their destabilizing tendencies in that struggle, the way their iconoclastic metaphors challenge the language of reified power. This paper examines tells another side of the story, exploring Milton's use of mathematical language to correct metaphor and bring law into harmony with both man's reason and God's will.

What's in a clause?

In this article, I aim to identify and explicate stylistic distinctiveness in the use of - ed clauses in parts of Milton's Paradise Lost, in the process testing findings outlined in a 1968 article by Seymour Chatman. I compare the frequency of occurrence of the clause type in the Milton texts with that in a constructed corpus of Early Modern English poetry, and with that in the Helsinki corpus. I measure differences in usage of the clause type by focusing on the use of -ed clauses in stretched chains of control, and on the way adverbially functioning -ed clauses map onto conceptual semantic space. I demonstrate how literary effects are conditioned and enabled by the clause type's properties as outlined in cross-linguistic studies. I prove that in the data analysed Milton's use of -ed clauses is a distinctive feature of his style.

Pedagogy or Gerontagogy: The Education of the Miltonic Deity

When Gonerill and Regan in King Lear squabble with their father concerning the number of his retinue, reducing it by stages from one hundred to five, Shakespeare is parodying the scriptural topos of the divine whereby the irascible Old Testament Deity is challenged by a presumptuous human intercessor. In one of these encounters in the book of Genesis, Yahweh and Abraham wrestle over the ever-declining number of righteous inhabitants needed to save the city of Sodom an exercise comparable to that by which the enraged English monarch is coerced by his superior interlocutors into accepting the smallest retinue possible to uphold his honor. Shakespeare's is illusory, for Lear is controlled by his daughters, but the question of whether Yahweh is manipulated by his chosen son Abraham, or vice versa, is problematical for biblical exegetes. Milton reencodes this confrontation in his justice debate between father and child in Paradise Lost, book III; Milton's Son of God repeats verbatim Abraham's challenge to Yahweh in Genesis 18.25: be from thee far, / That far be from thee, Father, who art judge / Of all things made, and judgest only right (III, 1 53-55). l The Miltonic source of this intercessory debate from Genesis, as well as the unmistakable verbal and thematic echoes from two Mosaic encounters with God in Exodus, chapter 32, and Numbers, chapter 14, has been recognized since Thomas Newton's 1749 edition of Paradise Lost, and more recently critics have offered several interpretations to account for Milton's use of these biblical passages.2 However, I will contend that these critics and Milton's Son of God coalesce in misunderstanding Milton's God, as well as Milton's appropriation of the scriptural topos, which results in their mutual misreading of the scene in Paradise Lost. Modern criticism of Milton's council in heaven starts with Irene Samuel's Reconsideration, in which she correctly argued that the first four hundred lines of book III comprised a divine debate between distinct characters rather than an inartistic presentation of crucial theological material.3 Merritt Y. Hughes responded with a scholarly article which argues two important premises that remain accepted by most critics to this day.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: The View from the Interior: The New Body Scholarship in Renaissance/Early Modern Studies

Teaching & Learning Guide for: The View from the Interior: The New Body Scholarship in Renaissance/Early Modern Studies

The Failed Jeremiad in Samson Agonistes

Milton's play Samson Agonistes critiques the optimism that informs the relation between individual citizen and national community in Areopagitica. Both the play and the pamphlet invoke the rhetoric of the jeremiad, but Samson's interaction with the Chorus of Danites and his father Manoa indicates that the optimism present in Milton's use of the jeremiad in Areopagitica is no longer possible for him in the post-Restoration era.

The Fairy-tale Elements of Milton'sComus

Many critics have commented on how Milton's masque differs from the general themes and plottings of the masques of his time. The present essay suggests that this was in part due to his players and audience (members of the Earl of Bridgewater's young family) and to Milton's use of fairy-tale morality and motivation to spin a tale appropriate both to beginners (the Earl's actor-children) and new beginnings (the commencement of the Earl's residence at Ludlow Castle).

Milton's Use of 'unking'd': An Allusion to Richard II

Milton's Use of 'unking'd': An Allusion to Richard II

High-Born Stealth and Other Readerly and Writerly Manners

H. J. Jackson. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Their Books (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). Pp. viii + 324. $27.00 cloth. $18.95 paper. Paulina Kewes, ed. Plagiarism in Early Modern England (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Pp. xvi + 276. $69.95. Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote, eds. Under the Hammer: Book Auctions Since the Seventeenth Century . (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2001). Pp. xiv + 242. $39.95. Lighter's Historical Dictionary of American Slang records the word "chooser" to mean a plagiarist. If that bespeaks a terribly value-free informality, as though a plagiarist were merely a variety of anthologist, it should remind us that plagiarism is not, nor ever has been, uniformly scorned or reviled in any predictable way. Just as the definition of originality has changed over the centuries (Edward Dahlberg called it "high-born stealth" in his 1941 book Can These Bones Live), so too has the way in which plagiarism has been viewed. "Plagiarius" is first attested in Martial's epigrams in its literary sense of a deliberate thievery of text, as opposed to its more literal meaning of kidnapper or abductor. Martial's disgust at the practice is peculiarly modern; but between the first century C.E. and today, when plagiarism has metamorphosed into a constitutive element of student dishonesty (among other manifestations), a number of factors have influenced the acceptability of plagiarism: the reputation of imitation in literary theory, the advent of copyright law, etc. A key period in the history of plagiarism is that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it is on those crucial two hundred years that Paulina Kewes's collection is focused. Although some of the essayists in Plagiarism in Early Modern England stray briefly into adjacent territory—piracy, for example, or forgery, or the sort of lapidary citation dependence represented by Robert Burton or even Ezra Pound—mostly they explore the increasing criminalization of unacknowledged borrowing in the period from Jonson and Dryden (both of whom were accused of it), through the copyright act and its professionalization of authorship and its concretization of personal literary property, to the other Johnson (Samuel), whose opinion of plagiarism was more than a little colored by his having been taken in by a notorious accusation of it. (He contributed a preface and a postscript to William Lauder's cantankerous and ill-conceived attack on Milton's use of Latin "sources," sources which were soon shown to be taken from nothing more than a Latin translation of Paradise Lost.) Paul Baines contributes an enlightening paper on this mid-eighteenth-century part of plagiarism history, and Richard Terry helpfully extends the story through to Young, Stockdale, and John Pinkerton, who as early as 1785 was attempting to give the coup de grâce to literary imitation by dismissing it as "only a decent and allowed plagiarism." (Terry does not mention the fact that Pinkerton was himself guilty of literary forgery.) Harold Love contributes a paper on the Puritan sermon, and Lisa Richardson on Renaissance historicism. (Her essay contains a rather amusing typographical error in a sentence in which she calls John Hayward's Life and Raigne of King Henrie III"not a certo of undigested fragments." Certo is, of course, used in making homemade [End Page 333] jams, cento being the intended noun.) Christopher Ricks's British Academy paper on plagiarism provides an exploration of the word that is partly historical, partly philosophical, and partly moral; and other contributors react to and reflect on his contentions. Only Richard Steadman-Jones's paper, on two late eighteenth-century grammarians of Urdu, seems out of place here, or at least somewhat marginal. The phrase "self-assertive appropriation" may sound like a characterization of plagiarism, but in fact it is Heather Jackson's neat shorthand description of the act of writing in books, and is meant to include the whole range of such acts, from a...

Samson Agonistes and the Politics of Restoration Sport

The raising of Maypoles throughout England in the spring of 1660 signified more than the return of monarchy; the Maypoles also symbolized the rejection of Interregnum ordinances that had rendered unlawful the traditional pastimes of the people. The ascension of Charles II and the subsequent proliferation of activities that were officially condemned by Interregnum leadersas well as the king's patronage of and participation in such activities-assured the representational volatility of in polemics and literature. In Samnson Agonistes, Milton's use of the term sport to signify activities involving sword-players, and every sort / Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, [and] runners deviates from the biblical account of Samson's trials: such sports are neither mentioned nor implied in Judges, which offers sport as a term betokening jest.' Milton's decision to widen the biblical definition of should be understood as a key component of his allegorical critique of Restoration monarchy and culture. According to Christopher Durston, one of the prime targets of the puritan reformers during the Interregnum was the traditional festive calendar, along with the sports, games, and pastimes of the English people.2 The battles waged between royalists and parliamentarians in the 1630s-over the legality and morality of the Sabbath day sports endorsed by Charles I in the 1633 reissuance of his father's Book of Sports-ended abruptly with the victory of the New Model Army in the Civil War. The official burnings of the Book of Sports in 1643 were followed by legisla-

The Promethean Politics of Milton, Blake, and Shelley

For more than two millennia, the myth of has fascinated writers and artists. Examining the political core of this myth as presented in the poetic tradition, this book traces Promethean figures and imagery in the major poetry of Milton, Blake and Shelley. Although the significance of the myth in Western literature has often been noted, this study recognizes an ambiguity in Promethean depictions that persists from Greek drama through the English Romantics. While is a benefactor, he also takes the role of sophist and trickster. Drawing primarily on Paradise Lost, this book shows how Milton's use of is significant not only because of his undisputed influence on the Romantics, but also because his Promethean figure reflects the myth in all of its facets, from the traitorous Satan and disobediant Adam to the Son in his salvational role. Blake's responses to Milton and to Dante are closely related to his recasting of the myth in his prophetic works while the book focuses on Shelley's work Prometheus Unbound to examine Shelley's Promethean politics.

Milton's Use of Musae Mansuetiores in His First Prolusion

Milton's Use of <i>Musae Mansuetiores</i> in His First Prolusion

ABSTRACTS

Steven Blakemore. “Milton's Samson Agonistes, lines 80‐82.”Explicator 42.3 (1984): 17‐18.Margaret M. Byard. “Milton's ‘On Time’ and ‘At a Solemn Musick.'”Explicator 41.4 (1983): 13‐14.Robert E. Jungman. “Milton's Lycidas, line 114.”Explicator 41.1 (1983): 11‐12.The phrase “for their bellies’ sake” most likely comes from Philippians 3:18‐19. Milton, as did Jerome and Tertullian, used the phrase to condemn Christ's enemies.Bei‐Yei Loh. “A Note on Milton's On Shakespeare.”N6Q 228 (1983): 431.Leo Miller. “The Date of Christoph Arnold's Letter.”N&amp;Q 229 (1984): 323‐24.F. Peczenik. “Fit Help: The Egalitarian Marriage in Paradise Lost.“Mosaic 17.1 (1984): 29‐48.Mary Ann Radzinowicz. “Paradise Regained as Her‐meneutic Combat.”University of Hartford Studies in Literature 15.3 (1983)‐16.1 (1984): 99‐107.Malabika Sarkar. “The Quest for Paradise:Kay Stanton. “From Jove’ To Task‐Master': The Transformation From Pagan to Christian Deity in Milton's Sonnets 1‐7.”University of Hartford Studies in Literature 15.3 (1983)‐16.1 (1984): 67‐77.Milton's first seven sonnets are interconnnected thematically by the pagan and Christian deities mentioned at each end of the group. The appearance of these two deities also explains Milton's use of two different languages in these poems. In effect, the first seven sonnets form a unified group that all attempt to gain divine approval through poetry.Kay Gilliland Stevenson. ‘“No More… No End': Paradise Lost IX.”Renaissance Papers 1983 (1984): 103‐109.The first words of Book IX are “No more,” and the last words are “no end.” Within this frame, the book is highly unified, a tragedy in five acts, but one looks in vain for the kind of epic heroism defined in the book's prologue. The framing words reappear in Eve's soliloquy after she eats the fruit, a soliloquy important for defining what has been tragically changed. The words “no end” in the final lines of the book are dreary or ironic in their meaning “to no purpose,” but as “no finis” they become optimistic, opening the way for “the better fortitude/ Of patience and heroic martyrdom” in Books X‐XII.William L. Stull. “Sonnets Courtly and Christian.”University of Hartford Studies in Literature 15.3 (1983)‐16.1 (1984): 1‐15.Herbert, Donne and Milton found a sanctification of poetic form that gave religious literature an advantage over the secular, courtly sonnet. Milton states his faith in the power of religious poetry in The Reason of Church Government and in PR IV. 334‐38 and 343‐47.Alinda Sumers‐Ingraham. “Milton's Umpire Conscience,’ the Two‐Handed Engine,’ and the English Protestant Tradition of the Divine Similitude.” Paper Presented at the Le Moyne Forum (1983).

Milton's Use of Classical Meters in the "Sylvarum Liber"

Previous articleNext article No AccessMilton's Use of Classical Meters in the "Sylvarum Liber"Steven M. Oberhelman, and John MulryanSteven M. Oberhelman Search for more articles by this author , and John Mulryan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 81, Number 2Nov., 1983 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/391288 Views: 4Total views on this site Copyright 1983 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

ABSTRACTS

David J. Aitken. “Milton's Use of ‘Stand’ and the Doctrine of Perseverance.”David S. Berkeley. “On a Common Error Respecting Samson's Size and Musculature.”Charles A. Huttar. “The Passion of Christ in Paradise Regained.“Edward Le Comte, “Dubious Battle: Saving The Appearances.”C. A. Patrides. “‘Something Like Prophetic Strain’: Apocalyptic Configurations in Milton.”Mary D. Ravenhall. “Sources and Meanings in Dr. Aldrich's 1688 Illustrations of Paradise Lost.”John Peter Rumrich. “Milton's Concept of Substance.”William Shullenberger. “Linguistic and Poetic Theory in Milton's De Doctrina Christiana.”