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Reassembling Truth: Twenty-first Century Milton
By Charles W. Durham and Kristin A. Pruitt
Susquehanna University Press, 2003. 249 pp. $47.50, ISBN: 1-57591-062-4
A selection of twelve essays from the 1999 Conference on John Milton sponsored by Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, "Reassembling Truth, like the four earlier volumes from this biennial convocation, manifests a range of coverage and quality of interpretation that elicit admiration. While the compilation is a miscellany, cross-referencing attests to careful editing and keen awareness that the essays achieve greater resonance together than if they were published separately. To my mind, the essays may be divided into clusters: two of them treating Milton's adaptation of myth or of earlier works of literature, two centering upon Milton's paraphrases of the Psalms and their political implications, five engaging Paradise Lost, and three dealing with the topics of public discourse and presentation.
Stella Revard and Lewis Walker, respectively in " Milton and Myth" and" 'I1 Penseroso' and The Squire's Tale: Milton and the Attractions of Incompleteness," reach similar conclusions concerning Milton's use of classical mythology, on the one hand, and of literary antecedents, on the other. Revard cites several myths in Milton's writings, including Herakles, Mulciber, Medusa, Minerva, Pandora, and others. Her emphasis, however, is not to adduce a particular source for the appearance of a myth in Milton's writings. Rather, by highlighting the numerous classical authors and their works in which a particular myth is recounted; Revard dwells on disparate accounts and their inconsistencies. By her appraisal, Milton's use of myth is problematic because it calls to mind diverse accounts not merely in the primary sources but also in the plethora of commentaries that contribute to a syncretistic tradition lending significance to a myth and accommodating it to Christian interpretation. The challenge to a reader is to be sensitive to interpretive possibilities, to become attuned to Milton's multivalent treatment of myth, to broaden one's outlook beyond the particular passage(s) in which a myth appears in order to discern its ongoing thematic importance in a work, and to acknowledge Milton's inventiveness in adapting a myth and in renovating its significance.
Walker dwells on the passage in "I1 Penseroso" (lines 85-120) in which the narrator meditates on The Squire's Tale. Classified as a romance, this tale by Chaucer is left unfinished. Walker insightfully contends that the incompleteness may have appealed to the young Milton, who uses the meditation on The Squire's Tale to contemplate the various endings toward which the work might have evolved. Such incompleteness and indeterminacy would urge the young Milton into an imagi native perspective on a range of possibilities involving romance. Walker's argument has psycho biographical implications; for Milton, presumably aware of Spenser's engagement of The Squire's' Tale in the allegorical romance of The Faerie Queene, may be more deliberately speculative in his early career as a writer. He ponders the diverse potential of romance; but in his maturity, he incorporates that genre in Paradise Lost in a varied and subtle manner, which also affords a critique of its use by literary forebears.
Of the two essays on Milton's adaptation of the Psalms, Matthew Perinea's "The Passionate Plain Style of Milton's Psalm Paraphrases" focuses on Psalms 1 through 8 (1653). Challenging traditional views of Milton's paraphrases-that they are influenced by the Hebrew originals and by the standard English renditions , Prineas situates Milton's prosody in the tradition of the classical plain style reflected in the epigrams of Ben Jonson and others. In doing so, he contends that the classical humanist tradition, which promotes a middle way in poetic decorum, informs Milton's paraphrases. Analyzing the moderate and restrained use of amplification and imagery, Prineas deftly argues that Milton's paraphrases without imitating the verse structure of their Hebrew originals still generate affective import comparable to them. After comparatively analyzing Sidney's and Milton's paraphrases of the same Psalms, Prineas aligns Milton with the Reformists who stress the plain sense of Scripture, which is conveyed by the humble metrical Psalters.
Complementing the essay by Prineas is Michael J. Schwartz's "The Political inaccuracy of Milton's Psalms 1-8 and 80-88," which examines these paraphrases from a twofold perspective: stylistic and political. Schwartz conducts his study against the framework of Milton's views on language and translation expressed in Eikonoklastes and of Education. Employing Eikonoklastes, in part, to criticize Charles I's adaptation of the Psalms in Eikon Basilike, Milton argues that while the king imitates the language of Scripture, his sentiments are not heartfelt. Moreover, by projecting the persona of a martyr, Charles I exhibits self-aggrandizing theatrics. Against the king's periodic imitations of David and Jesus, Milton fashions his own paraphrases of the Psalms that accord with the philosophy concerning the use of languages in Of Education. To Milton, the languages worthy of study typify the cultures that have actively pursued wisdom and useful knowledge, both leading, in turn, to action. When, therefore, he renders the Psalms into English, Milton creates a persona as speaker who strives to understand Scripture, harmonize it with earnest emotions, render it in his own language, and induce readers to adopt a similar frame of mind. Whereas Charles I, who mouthed David's words as if they were his own, exemplifies the hypocrite, Milton never claims that the words of the Psalm paraphrases are his own. Instead, the persona of the speaker created by Milton exemplifies an honest seeker after truth, a role model tore readers struggling to accommodate the words of Scripture to their own sensibility and experience.
The first of five essays on Paradise Lost, Peter E. Medine's "Adam's 'Sum of Wisdom': Paradise Lost 12.553-87," focuses on the last book of the epic. Challenging the traditional notion that Michael's instruction of Adam results in a "sum Of wisdom" (12.575-76), Medina examines the educational and moral ideal extolled by Milton in the Trinity Manuscript, Of Education, and Areoopagitica, as well as in renowned works by two of Milton's predecessors: Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Book 1 of Spenser's The Faeric Queen. By carefully analyzing the stages in Adam's dialogue with Michael, Medine highlights deficiencies in the archangel's teaching and consequent shortcomings in Adam's learning. Adam's affirmation of hope and confidence after his exchanges with Michael may be ill founded. Though Adam has increased his knowledge, he has little or no guidance in using his learning as the basis for choosing a course of action. When the reader achieves this realization, the ending of Paradise Lost is darker than previously supposed.
Likewise emphasizing the later books of Milton's epic, Seth Lobis's "Place and End of Paradise Lost" recounts changes in the concept of "place" from classical antiquity to the early modern era. Whereas Aristotle's Physics stresses that place is a physical location, Kepler and the new science countered this inveterate tradition by asserting that place is a function of the mind, a relationship between subject and object. At the outset of Milton's epic, the Aristotelian concept of place prevails; but as the work unfolds, place becomes a state of mind. In line with this view, Adam and Eve when expelled from the garden are promised a "far happier place" indeed, a "paradise within thee." This dictum by the angel Michael for malizes the thrust of the epic, which expounds, in effect, the concept of relativity of place.
John C. Ulreich in "Making the Word Flesh: Incarnation as Accommodation" establishes a dialectic between the Word and the flesh, or between the verbum Dei and its expression in the human condition, whether as speech or written language. The challenge to humankind is to conceive of God, a being who is ineffable and inexpressible. But God has accommodated himself to our processes of thought and means of expression, already projecting thereby an image of himself understandable to humankind. The purest example of the verbum Dei in the human condition is Jesus, especially as the Prologue of John's Gospel portrays him and as he encounters the tempter in Paradise Regained. Whereas the first depiction of Jesus is scriptural, the second is literary, for Milton uses poetic language to express and elucidate the verbum Dei, something that he also does in many passages in Paradise Lost. Samson Agonists, on the other hand, dramatizes a struggle in the protagonist during self-mortification, as he becomes a fit vessel for the expression of the verbum Dei.
The fourth essay to focus on Paradise Lost is Susannah B. Mintz's " Milton's Food Imagery and Disordered Eating." Systematically analyzing food imagery in several of Milton's prose writings and poems, Mintz concentrates her attention on the epic. In doing so, however, she broadens consideration of food imagery in ways heretofore unexamined. By studying the interplay of physiology and psychology in the early modern era, Mintz dwells on the intake of food in Paradise Lost not merely as 3 visceral process but also as a figuration of mental digestion, so that the body and mind are functioning simultaneously. Identity and otherness, receptivity and rejection, and subjectivity and objectivity all come into play in Mintz's studies of Raphael, Adam, and Eve as eaters and thinkers. She explains these oppositions, moreover, by reference to the ongoing dialectics that inform eating and thinking in the epic: desire and restraint, appetite and indulgence, destruction and creation. Against such contexts, she provides innovative understanding, among other things, of accepting false ideas as a means of se1f .... defilement, an activity not unlike the ingestion of contaminated food, and of incorporating the outside into oneself as a gesture of transgressing boundaries.
Like Mintz's essay, Susan Speer Porter's "Dual Citizenship: Autonomy, Affect, and Authority in Milton's Brotherhood of Fathers" surveys selected prose but emphasizes Paradise Lost to clarity several of Milton's recurrent ideas: patriarchal authority (both fatherhood and political sovereignty) and personal freedom, individuality and integration into a hierarchical structure (whether political spousal, social, and the like), the autonomous male and the social female. Across his career, Milton engaged these interrelated ideas in various contexts: contrasts between a citizen in the Commonwealth and a subject under the Stuart monarchy, Cromwell's self-discipline as a leader, the effete and effeminate tone of Charles I's rulership, Adam's patriarchal authority in a domestic community of two, Eve's aspiration toward independence as a countermovement to interdependence with Adam, and necessary limitations on individual autonomy.
The last cluster of three essays on public speech and presentation begins with Lynne A. Greenberg's" 'A Peal of Words:' Criminal Speech in Samson Agonistes." Central in the dramatic poem-its so-called "middle"-is Dalila's visit to Samson, and her speeches echo the transgressive public discourse or conversa tions of outspoken women. Marriage manuals, guidebooks, conduct literature, sermons, and the like inveighed against the public voice of women, which \vas classified as "criminal speech" when it exceeded certain norms of restraint. Greenberg cites how the biblical Dalila in the early modern era became an egregious example of volubility that resulted in disastrous consequences for Samson . Allied to volubility is wifely recalcitrance against her husband, an act of defiance mani fested by the woman's unruly and aggressive speech that violated the ideal of wifely silence.
Approaching Milton's involvement in the public sphere from another per spective, Jay Stubblefield in "The 'Vulgar' Milton: All Old Looking Class and Public Print Discourse in Colonial New England" examines the publication of Milton's writings in late eighteenth-century America. Colonial publications of his works include Ail Old Looking-Glass, which compiles Milton's writings on the topics of remuneration for ministers, their authority, and theological orthodoxy. By includ ing in a single volume Likeliest Means To Remove Hirelings (1641), Of Reformation (1641), All Apology for Smectymmuus (1642), and Animadversions (1641) and by intro ducing these works into the public discuurse of eighteenth-century America, publishers fostered discussion of controversies that had already been engaged by Milton. Milton's arguments against an exalted clergy, socially and financially, were echoed by colonial readers of the lower class.
Finally, Wendy Furman-Adams and Virginia James Tufte in "The Choreogra phy of Passion: Henry Fuseli's Milton Gallery, 1799/1998" continue their long standing emphasis on illustration-as-interpretation by focusing on Fuseli's oil paintings of Paradise Lost. Exhibited in London in 1799 and again in 1800 , these paintings elicited negative reaction. Rut in 1997-1998, Fuseli's Milton Gallery exhibited in Stuttgart, Germany to thousands of viewers elicited very positive reac tion. Among the revisionist perspectives that Fuseli portrays is a countermovement to the text of Milton's epic. When, for example, Paradise Lost recounts the expulsion of Satan from Heaven, rather than being "hurl'd headlong," Satan is less van quished angel than a resourceful survivor is. Furthermore, Satan in Fuseli's illustration executes a tour de force by appropriating destructive energy from the avenging Son and converting it into self-serving dynamism, whereby the archfiend remains upright and assertive in a dance-like motion. By disengaging illustration from the narrative and theological framework of Milton's epic, Fuseli liberates the imagination of the artist to perform aesthetic activity as an outlet for personal expression.
Both Durham and Pruitt merit high commendation for this volume of essays, each of which is cogently argued, significantly insightful, and richly influential. Susquehanna University Press likewise merits approval for its long-standing commitment to Milton studies.
Stella Revard and Lewis Walker, respectively in " Milton and Myth" and" 'I1 Penseroso' and The Squire's Tale: Milton and the Attractions of Incompleteness," reach similar conclusions concerning Milton's use of classical mythology, on the one hand, and of literary antecedents, on the other. Revard cites several myths in Milton's writings, including Herakles, Mulciber, Medusa, Minerva, Pandora, and others. Her emphasis, however, is not to adduce a particular source for the appearance of a myth in Milton's writings. Rather, by highlighting the numerous classical authors and their works in which a particular myth is recounted; Revard dwells on disparate accounts and their inconsistencies. By her appraisal, Milton's use of myth is problematic because it calls to mind diverse accounts not merely in the primary sources but also in the plethora of commentaries that contribute to a syncretistic tradition lending significance to a myth and accommodating it to Christian interpretation. The challenge to a reader is to be sensitive to interpretive possibilities, to become attuned to Milton's multivalent treatment of myth, to broaden one's outlook beyond the particular passage(s) in which a myth appears in order to discern its ongoing thematic importance in a work, and to acknowledge Milton's inventiveness in adapting a myth and in renovating its significance.
Walker dwells on the passage in "I1 Penseroso" (lines 85-120) in which the narrator meditates on The Squire's Tale. Classified as a romance, this tale by Chaucer is left unfinished. Walker insightfully contends that the incompleteness may have appealed to the young Milton, who uses the meditation on The Squire's Tale to contemplate the various endings toward which the work might have evolved. Such incompleteness and indeterminacy would urge the young Milton into an imagi native perspective on a range of possibilities involving romance. Walker's argument has psycho biographical implications; for Milton, presumably aware of Spenser's engagement of The Squire's' Tale in the allegorical romance of The Faerie Queene, may be more deliberately speculative in his early career as a writer. He ponders the diverse potential of romance; but in his maturity, he incorporates that genre in Paradise Lost in a varied and subtle manner, which also affords a critique of its use by literary forebears.
Of the two essays on Milton's adaptation of the Psalms, Matthew Perinea's "The Passionate Plain Style of Milton's Psalm Paraphrases" focuses on Psalms 1 through 8 (1653). Challenging traditional views of Milton's paraphrases-that they are influenced by the Hebrew originals and by the standard English renditions , Prineas situates Milton's prosody in the tradition of the classical plain style reflected in the epigrams of Ben Jonson and others. In doing so, he contends that the classical humanist tradition, which promotes a middle way in poetic decorum, informs Milton's paraphrases. Analyzing the moderate and restrained use of amplification and imagery, Prineas deftly argues that Milton's paraphrases without imitating the verse structure of their Hebrew originals still generate affective import comparable to them. After comparatively analyzing Sidney's and Milton's paraphrases of the same Psalms, Prineas aligns Milton with the Reformists who stress the plain sense of Scripture, which is conveyed by the humble metrical Psalters.
Complementing the essay by Prineas is Michael J. Schwartz's "The Political inaccuracy of Milton's Psalms 1-8 and 80-88," which examines these paraphrases from a twofold perspective: stylistic and political. Schwartz conducts his study against the framework of Milton's views on language and translation expressed in Eikonoklastes and of Education. Employing Eikonoklastes, in part, to criticize Charles I's adaptation of the Psalms in Eikon Basilike, Milton argues that while the king imitates the language of Scripture, his sentiments are not heartfelt. Moreover, by projecting the persona of a martyr, Charles I exhibits self-aggrandizing theatrics. Against the king's periodic imitations of David and Jesus, Milton fashions his own paraphrases of the Psalms that accord with the philosophy concerning the use of languages in Of Education. To Milton, the languages worthy of study typify the cultures that have actively pursued wisdom and useful knowledge, both leading, in turn, to action. When, therefore, he renders the Psalms into English, Milton creates a persona as speaker who strives to understand Scripture, harmonize it with earnest emotions, render it in his own language, and induce readers to adopt a similar frame of mind. Whereas Charles I, who mouthed David's words as if they were his own, exemplifies the hypocrite, Milton never claims that the words of the Psalm paraphrases are his own. Instead, the persona of the speaker created by Milton exemplifies an honest seeker after truth, a role model tore readers struggling to accommodate the words of Scripture to their own sensibility and experience.
The first of five essays on Paradise Lost, Peter E. Medine's "Adam's 'Sum of Wisdom': Paradise Lost 12.553-87," focuses on the last book of the epic. Challenging the traditional notion that Michael's instruction of Adam results in a "sum Of wisdom" (12.575-76), Medina examines the educational and moral ideal extolled by Milton in the Trinity Manuscript, Of Education, and Areoopagitica, as well as in renowned works by two of Milton's predecessors: Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Book 1 of Spenser's The Faeric Queen. By carefully analyzing the stages in Adam's dialogue with Michael, Medine highlights deficiencies in the archangel's teaching and consequent shortcomings in Adam's learning. Adam's affirmation of hope and confidence after his exchanges with Michael may be ill founded. Though Adam has increased his knowledge, he has little or no guidance in using his learning as the basis for choosing a course of action. When the reader achieves this realization, the ending of Paradise Lost is darker than previously supposed.
Likewise emphasizing the later books of Milton's epic, Seth Lobis's "Place and End of Paradise Lost" recounts changes in the concept of "place" from classical antiquity to the early modern era. Whereas Aristotle's Physics stresses that place is a physical location, Kepler and the new science countered this inveterate tradition by asserting that place is a function of the mind, a relationship between subject and object. At the outset of Milton's epic, the Aristotelian concept of place prevails; but as the work unfolds, place becomes a state of mind. In line with this view, Adam and Eve when expelled from the garden are promised a "far happier place" indeed, a "paradise within thee." This dictum by the angel Michael for malizes the thrust of the epic, which expounds, in effect, the concept of relativity of place.
John C. Ulreich in "Making the Word Flesh: Incarnation as Accommodation" establishes a dialectic between the Word and the flesh, or between the verbum Dei and its expression in the human condition, whether as speech or written language. The challenge to humankind is to conceive of God, a being who is ineffable and inexpressible. But God has accommodated himself to our processes of thought and means of expression, already projecting thereby an image of himself understandable to humankind. The purest example of the verbum Dei in the human condition is Jesus, especially as the Prologue of John's Gospel portrays him and as he encounters the tempter in Paradise Regained. Whereas the first depiction of Jesus is scriptural, the second is literary, for Milton uses poetic language to express and elucidate the verbum Dei, something that he also does in many passages in Paradise Lost. Samson Agonists, on the other hand, dramatizes a struggle in the protagonist during self-mortification, as he becomes a fit vessel for the expression of the verbum Dei.
The fourth essay to focus on Paradise Lost is Susannah B. Mintz's " Milton's Food Imagery and Disordered Eating." Systematically analyzing food imagery in several of Milton's prose writings and poems, Mintz concentrates her attention on the epic. In doing so, however, she broadens consideration of food imagery in ways heretofore unexamined. By studying the interplay of physiology and psychology in the early modern era, Mintz dwells on the intake of food in Paradise Lost not merely as 3 visceral process but also as a figuration of mental digestion, so that the body and mind are functioning simultaneously. Identity and otherness, receptivity and rejection, and subjectivity and objectivity all come into play in Mintz's studies of Raphael, Adam, and Eve as eaters and thinkers. She explains these oppositions, moreover, by reference to the ongoing dialectics that inform eating and thinking in the epic: desire and restraint, appetite and indulgence, destruction and creation. Against such contexts, she provides innovative understanding, among other things, of accepting false ideas as a means of se1f .... defilement, an activity not unlike the ingestion of contaminated food, and of incorporating the outside into oneself as a gesture of transgressing boundaries.
Like Mintz's essay, Susan Speer Porter's "Dual Citizenship: Autonomy, Affect, and Authority in Milton's Brotherhood of Fathers" surveys selected prose but emphasizes Paradise Lost to clarity several of Milton's recurrent ideas: patriarchal authority (both fatherhood and political sovereignty) and personal freedom, individuality and integration into a hierarchical structure (whether political spousal, social, and the like), the autonomous male and the social female. Across his career, Milton engaged these interrelated ideas in various contexts: contrasts between a citizen in the Commonwealth and a subject under the Stuart monarchy, Cromwell's self-discipline as a leader, the effete and effeminate tone of Charles I's rulership, Adam's patriarchal authority in a domestic community of two, Eve's aspiration toward independence as a countermovement to interdependence with Adam, and necessary limitations on individual autonomy.
The last cluster of three essays on public speech and presentation begins with Lynne A. Greenberg's" 'A Peal of Words:' Criminal Speech in Samson Agonistes." Central in the dramatic poem-its so-called "middle"-is Dalila's visit to Samson, and her speeches echo the transgressive public discourse or conversa tions of outspoken women. Marriage manuals, guidebooks, conduct literature, sermons, and the like inveighed against the public voice of women, which \vas classified as "criminal speech" when it exceeded certain norms of restraint. Greenberg cites how the biblical Dalila in the early modern era became an egregious example of volubility that resulted in disastrous consequences for Samson . Allied to volubility is wifely recalcitrance against her husband, an act of defiance mani fested by the woman's unruly and aggressive speech that violated the ideal of wifely silence.
Approaching Milton's involvement in the public sphere from another per spective, Jay Stubblefield in "The 'Vulgar' Milton: All Old Looking Class and Public Print Discourse in Colonial New England" examines the publication of Milton's writings in late eighteenth-century America. Colonial publications of his works include Ail Old Looking-Glass, which compiles Milton's writings on the topics of remuneration for ministers, their authority, and theological orthodoxy. By includ ing in a single volume Likeliest Means To Remove Hirelings (1641), Of Reformation (1641), All Apology for Smectymmuus (1642), and Animadversions (1641) and by intro ducing these works into the public discuurse of eighteenth-century America, publishers fostered discussion of controversies that had already been engaged by Milton. Milton's arguments against an exalted clergy, socially and financially, were echoed by colonial readers of the lower class.
Finally, Wendy Furman-Adams and Virginia James Tufte in "The Choreogra phy of Passion: Henry Fuseli's Milton Gallery, 1799/1998" continue their long standing emphasis on illustration-as-interpretation by focusing on Fuseli's oil paintings of Paradise Lost. Exhibited in London in 1799 and again in 1800 , these paintings elicited negative reaction. Rut in 1997-1998, Fuseli's Milton Gallery exhibited in Stuttgart, Germany to thousands of viewers elicited very positive reac tion. Among the revisionist perspectives that Fuseli portrays is a countermovement to the text of Milton's epic. When, for example, Paradise Lost recounts the expulsion of Satan from Heaven, rather than being "hurl'd headlong," Satan is less van quished angel than a resourceful survivor is. Furthermore, Satan in Fuseli's illustration executes a tour de force by appropriating destructive energy from the avenging Son and converting it into self-serving dynamism, whereby the archfiend remains upright and assertive in a dance-like motion. By disengaging illustration from the narrative and theological framework of Milton's epic, Fuseli liberates the imagination of the artist to perform aesthetic activity as an outlet for personal expression.
Both Durham and Pruitt merit high commendation for this volume of essays, each of which is cogently argued, significantly insightful, and richly influential. Susquehanna University Press likewise merits approval for its long-standing commitment to Milton studies.
Albert C. Labriola , Duquesne University <Top>
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