HOW I WROTE AN ESSAY ON MILTON
Step
1: Get an Idea: Look for things that don’t seem to fit! In 1992 I was
researching Milton and revenge tragedy. The research didn’t produce anything
publishable. But I did find something very interesting: Raphael, in his
dialogue with Adam about love, is often seen as “messing up.” This is more or
less in line with many assessments of Milton’s representations of deity in Paradise
Lost. What’s wrong with these assessments? Milton’s representation of deity
has astonished the vast majority readers, from Puritans (and readers such as
Dryden and Voltaire) to the Victorians, who have found them “sublime.” Also,
Milton was genius: if Milton represents deity---he does it well. If there seems
to be a problem, the problem is with the reader, not with Milton. My guess is
that Raphael was not at fault. So I’ll look closer!
Step 2.
I Look Closer! Where? The MLA Bibliography. Entering
the key word (title) “Raphael” produces 89 citations, some about Milton’s
Raphael. Two essays summarize the debate over Raphael: Philip Gallagher’s
"The Role of Raphael in Samson Agonistes" (Milton Studies
18 (1983): 255-94), and Janna Farris’ "Angelic Visitations: Raphael's Roles
in the Book of Tobit and Paradise Lost," in Arenas of Conflict:
Milton and the Unfettered Mind, ed. Kristin McColgan and Charles Durham
(Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1995), 189-90). This leads me to
several other works: John Halkett, for example, comments how "the
discussion of love in Book VIII complicates the fall" because not lust but
Eve's "feminine qualities overpower Adam's reason. For Adam loves in Eve
precisely what the angel tells him to" (Milton and the Idea of
Matrimony: A Study of the Divorce Tracts and "Paradise Lost" (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 121-22). Mark Wollaeger argues that
"Milton implicitly defines Raphael's poetry as an imaginative fiction
residing uneasily within the discourse of inspiration" of the epic
narrator ("Apocryphal Narration: Milton, Raphael, and the Book of
Tobit," Milton Studies 21 (1985), 151). Within this context,
Raphael is "victimized by Milton's irony" (148). For this latter
view, he cites Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in "Paradise
Lost" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), 179. I also look at B.
Rajan’s "Paradise Lost" and the Seventeenth Century Reader
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1947; Dennis Burden’s The Logical Epic: A Study of the
Argument of "Paradise Lost" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1967) and Hideyuki Shitaka "`Them thus employed beheld / With pity
heaven's high king': God's Dispatch of Raphael in Paradise Lost
5.219-47," Milton Quarterly 24 (1990): 128-136. Raphael as a weak
or even sinister character is part of a larger debate over “Milton’s God,” so I
also have to glance at three notable works on this subject, William Empson’s Milton's
God, rev. ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 147; John
Peter, A Critique of "Paradise lost" (London: Longman's,
1960), 105-09; and A.J.A. Waldock, "Paradise Lost" and Its Critics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947). Empson writes, for example, that "the voice of the mysterious dream
(Eve’s Dream) and the spokesman of God are not merely saying the same thing
(that God expects them to manage to get to Heaven, and what they eat has
something to do with it) but even using the same tricks of speech" (150).
Step 3: I
Look Closer Somewhere Else! For what? A clue! Nearly all of the
scholars---for and against---accept that Raphael and Adam (PL 8.523-51)
engage in "a dialogue of love whose generic models are Plato's Symposium
and several Neoplatonic versions and imitations of it---by Ficino, Leone Ebreo,
and especially Castiglione": "Raphael is the strict Neoplatonist
(like Bembo in The Courtier)" (Barbara Lewalski, "Paradise
Lost" and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1985), 214-15). The annotations in major editions of Paradise Lost confirm
this view: John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y.
Hughes (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 376n; The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 579n.; Paradise
Lost, ed. Alistair Fowler (London: Longman, 1978), 428n; and Paradise
Lost, ed. Scott Elledge, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1993).
Other Works Consulted
Irene Samuel, Plato and Milton (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1947), 163-65.
Arnold Stein, Answerable Style: Essays on "Paradise Lost'
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1953), 104-108.
Step 4: So I Have a Clue But What’s the Mystery?
Milton wasn’t a neoplatonist! This is confirmed by a glance at an extended
entry, "Neoplatonism in Milton," in a standard reference work on
Milton, in A Milton Encyclopedia, gen. ed. William B. Hunter, 9 vols.
(Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1978-83), 5:194-99, 197). I also look at
other works on Milton and neoplatonism.
Other Works Consulted
Walter Clyde Curry, Milton's Ontology Cosmogony and Physics
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957)
A.J. Smith, The Metaphysics of Love: Studies in Renaissance Love
Poetry from Dante to Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985),
94-102, 114-45
William Madsen, From
Shadowy Types to Truth: Studies in Milton's Symbolism (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1968)
Step
5: This Leads to Another Major Area of Milton Studies: Milton often
changes his mind! Did he change his mind about neoplatonism? Perhaps. For
example one of the most well known analyes of Milton’s Mask argues that
it is a neoplatonic work. Others disagree. And few scholars argue that Milton
was a neoplatonist when he wrote Paradise Lost. In any case, I have to
look at the arguments concerning Milton’s Maske.
Cedric Brown, John Milton's Aristocratic Entertainments (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution
(New York: Viking, 1978)
Sears Jayne,
"The Subject of Milton's Ludlow Mask," in A Maske at
Ludlow: Essays on Milton's "Comus," ed. John Diekhoff (Cleveland:
Case Western, 1968): 165-187
Stephen Kogan, The Hieroglyphic King: Wisdom and
Idolatry in the Seventeenth-Century Masque (Toronto: Farleigh Dickinson,
1986)
A.S.P. Woodhouse, The
Heavenly Muse: A Preface to Milton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1972)
Step
6: This Leads to Yet Another Major Area of Milton/Renaissance Studies:
Neoplatonism was foregrounded in Caroline court masks. What more precisely was
this foregrounding? How would it have impacted Milton? This link is further
complicated because one of the primary sources for Renaissance
neoplatonism---Castiglione’s Courtier---vitally shaped Milton and the
court! And Castiglione is a subject in himself!
Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The
European Reception of Castiglione's Cortegiano (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995)
Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier,
trans. Charles S. Singleton (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1959)
Graham Parry, The Golden Age Restor'd: The Culture of
the Stuart Court, 1603-1642 (Manchester: University of Manchester Press,
1981)
Stephen
Orgel, The Illusion of Power; Political Theater in the English Renaissance
(Berkeley: U of California Press, 1975)
Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, The Theatre of the Stuart Court (London: Sotheby, Parke, Burnet, 1973)
Michael Schoenfeldt, “ ‘Among Unequals What Society?':
Strategic Courtesy and Christian Humility in Paradise Lost," Milton Studies 28 (1992): 69-90, 80).
Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Complement: The Politics
of Literature in the England of Charles I (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1987).
J.R. Woodhouse, Baldesar Castiglione: A Reassessment
of "The Courtier (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978)
Step
7: The Problem! And the Specific Subject for Research! If Milton was not
a neoplatonist, why does his angel appear to be a neoplatonist?
Step
8: Begin Specific Research : A good place to begin would be to answer
this question: what precisely was Renaissance neoplatonism?
Works
Consulted
The Cambridge History
of Renaissance Philosophy, gen ed.
Charles Schmitt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Sears Jayne, Introduction to the Commentary on
Plato's "Symposium" on Love, Marsilio Ficino, (Dallas: Spring,
1985)
Paul Kristeller, The
Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York: Columbia UP, 1943)
---. Renaissance
Thought and its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney (NY: Columbia, 1979)
A.O.
Lovejoy, (The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936)
Joseph Mazzeo, Structure and Thought in the
"Paridiso" (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958)
Nesca Robb, Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance
(New York: Octagon, 1968)
Step
9: Another Major Area of Renaissance/Milton Studies! Neoplatonism is a
primary area in the study of the poet whom Milton claimed was his “original”:
Edmund Spenser. How did Spenser interpret neoplatonism? How did Spenser’s
interpretation of neoplatonism impact Milton’s interpretation of Spenser?
Works
Consulted:
Douglas Brooks-Davies, Introduction to The Fairy
Queen, The Everyman Library (London: J.M. Dent, 1996)
Robert Ellrodt, Neoplatonism
in the Poetry of Spenser (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1960)
Linda Gregerson,
The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser , Milton, and the Protestant
Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995)
Enid Welsford, Four
Hymnes Epithalamion: A Study of Edmund Spenser's Doctrine of Love (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1967)
Step
10: And Another Major Area of Renaissance/Milton Studies! Another major
element of Renaissance neoplatonism is Petrachism! In fact, it is a larger area
than neoplatonism! Petrachism in turn belongs to a vaster subject: Women in the
Renaissance!
Works
Consulted
Stevie Davies, Renaissance
Views of Man, Literature in Context (Manchester: University of Manchester
Press, 1978)
Ruth Kelso, Doctrine
for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois
Press, 1956)
John Nelson, Renaissance
Theory of Love: The Context of Giordano Bruno's "Eroica furori"
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1958)
Katherine Rogers, The
Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1966)
Linda Woodbridge, Women
and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540-1620
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984)
Step
11: And Yet Another New Area of Milton Studies Emerges! Petrarchism
relates directly to Adam’s love for Eve---another immense topic!
List
of Works Consulted
Ilona Bell, "Milton's Dialogue with Petrarch,"
Milton Studies, 28 (1992): 91-120
Northrop Frye, The Return of Eden: Five Essays on
Milton's Epic Subjects (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965)
William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden, The Idea of the
Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989)
Anthony Low, The Reinvention of Love: Poetry,
Politics, and Culture from Sidney to Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
Michael Schoenfeldt "Gender and Conduct in Paradise
Lost," in Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe:
Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. James G. Turner (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1993)
James Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and
Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)
Step
12: What Have I Learned? A Conclusion: With this information, my guess has been confirmed. I look closely
at the passage. What I found I’ll report in class, if you ask me.
IMPORTANT EXPLANATIONS:
1)
Did I have to read all those books? Answer: No. Indexes and citations/summaries
of these works (found in other works) told me on which pages to find the
material that I needed to examine.
2)
Was it difficult? Answer: No. It’s like a scavenger hunt or some type
of “branching” game, where one thing leads to another until the “trail” is
exhausted.
3)
Are you sure it wasn’t difficult? Well, I do have to relocate
to Austin for the summer. If you find a citation of a book you need to look at,
it helps immensely not to have to get it from Interlibrary Loan. Austin has
most of the books in one place. Also, with many authors the books are in the
same location of the library (for example with Milton, PR 3500’s). But studies
of Milton often appear in interdisciplinary works or in works on “the
Renaissance” in general, in different parts of the library (e.g. PR 500’s or
the PN’s). Also, all of the material that
I examined is not listed here. These were only the sources from the notes of a
final version.
4)
When does it end? After a while the same citations/works keep
reappearing. Then you know you’ve researched enough. And then, finally, I look
at the most recent publications (within the last year or two) to see if they
discuss the subject. Also, the topics tend to ovelap:
Milton/Women/Love/Petrarch Neoplatonism etc.
5)
Any last comments? Yes. In analyzing one short passage from Paradise
Lost (8.522-617) I’ve had to research the following topics:
1)Raphael’s Dialogue with Adam:
A)
Angelic Fallibility
B)
Book 5: The angel’s neoplatonic ladder
C)
Book 8: The angel’s neoplatonic rebuke
D)
Milton’s representation of God
2)Neoplatonism and Milton
B)
Milton’s Mask
C)
Court Masks
D)
Spenser’s neoplatonism
F)
Milton’s Paradise Lost
3)Renaissance neoplatonism
4)Milton and Petrarchism
5)Milton and Renaissance theories of love
6)Milton and
Renaissance theories of gender
7) Adam and Eve’s love