摘要:

When we hear someone say that Satan is the true hero ofParadise Lostor that God's ways are manifestly unjust, most of us are disturbed. We are disturbed not because such an interpretation violates our traditional feelings about God and Satan, but because it violates our sense of literary propriety. We might easily accept Satan as the hero of a novel or poem, regardless of our own feelings. What we cannot accept, or at least what most of us have been educated not to accept, is that a great writer, who is obviously in full command of his powers, could have set out to justify God's ways to men and succeed in doing the opposite. IfParadise Lostis really a great literary work, how can it fail so completely in carrying out the intention of its author? Or, if it is indeed a work which fails in doing what it has set out to do, if the narrator tells us that we should see and feel God's justice and mercy and the average reader admires Satan and feels that Adam and Eve are justified in their disobedience, how can we say that it is a great poem?

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00075.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Sometime around 1650, the astrologer John Gad‐bury cast a horoscope for John Milton, but we now have only the chart without any interpretation that Gadbury might have rendered.1With the help of the same kind of astrological texts available to Gadbury, I propose to interpret Milton's natal chart in the way that a Renaissance astrologer might.2Fortunately, I have the great advantage of hindsight, which shall play no small part in my “prediction” of what the future holds for John M

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00076.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

In Book IV ofParadise LostSatan undergoes a metamorphosis in three stages: between his entry into the garden and his discovery by Ithuriel and Zephon he appears as a cormorant (l.196), as a variety of “those four‐footed kinds” (l.397), and finally as a toad (l.800). Ann Grossman has recently claimed that such animal imagery implies “a medieval treatment of evil as grotesque,“ and Irby Cauthen has shown—most notably from Topsell'sHistorie of Serpents—how appropriate it was for a seventeenth‐century poet to portray Satan as a toad. What I would like to do here, far from contradicting either of these helpful essays, is to consider what may have been the theological basis for Milton's presenting Satan's decline in Book IV as he does; and this, I believe, will allow a clearer understanding of how Satan's metamorphosis—particularly as a toad—not only enhances the account of what Gossman aptly terms his “progressively degenerating hell of self,“ but also in so doing reinforces the poem's pervasive theme of the just

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00077.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Despite Kester Svendsen's otherwise authoritative study of Milton and science, his statement that Milton's “curiosity in science never advanced to the experiments of a Royal Society nor the speculations of a Descartes or a Hoboes”1may now require some emendation. The evidence for this assertion appears in Book IV ofParadise Lostin the scene in which Gabriel and Satan stand ready to engage in what promises to be the world's first super‐heavyweight contest:Th’ Eternal to prevent such horrid fray Hung forth in Heav'n his golden Scales, yet seen BetwixtAstreaand theScorpionsign, Wherein all things created first he weigh'd, The pendulous round Earth with balanc't Air in counterp

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00078.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

More than a quarter of a century ago I published an article with the not very imaginative title “Milton's Two‐Handed Engine.“1I began with the now standard statement of the importance of the image and a list of several earlier interpretations, and set down nine conditions which it seemed to me the “engine” must meet in order to satisfy the demands of the poem itself as to meaning and propriety. I ended with my own suggestion that the engine was the lock on the door to Heaven, to which St. Peter carries the keys. Professor Merritt Hughes gave me credit for having turned attention from earthly instruments (such as the two houses of Parliament, etc.) “to the now prevailing tendency to interpret it theologically.” But (unintentionally I am sure) he misrepresented my interpretation by saying that the lock represented “the two sanctions of death and damnation.“2Of course it should have been “salva

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00079.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Cheryl H. Fresch's informative survey of how various authorities interpreted Eve's modification of the divine prohibition against eating the forbidden fruit (MQ, October, 1978) reveals both that there were several explanations, from which Milton was at liberty to choose one that best suited his purposes, and that what began as a problem–reconciling an apparent conflict in the by‐definition infallible text of Genesis–ended as an opportunity–for moral instruction and literary invention. Another instance of this transformation from exegesis to fabulation, at the hands of a major writer, is to be found in John Donne's sermon “Preached to the Lords upon Easter‐day, at the Communion, The King being then dangerously sick at New‐Market,” on the text “What man is he that liveth, and sha

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00080.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

John Milton: PoetryStill More on the Opera

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00081.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00082.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

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'sEssay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in hisParadise Lost.“Mary Ann McGuire. “'A Most Just Vituperation': Milton's Christian Orator inPro Se Defensio.“James M. Rosenheim. “An Early Appreciation ofParadise 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 ofSamson Agonistes: Aristotle Plus Reorientation.“J. B. Savage. “Freedom and Necessity inParadise Lost.“James H. Sims. “The Epic Narrator's Mortal Voice in CamõTes and Milton.“S. Viswanathan. ‘“In Sage

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00083.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

bbbb

ISSN:0026-4326    

DOI:10.1111/j.1094-348X.1979.tb00084.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1979

数据来源: WILEY