Sudisha Limbu

Roll No.- 31

The word ‘cosmos’ means the universe and it encompasses a sense of awe towards the complex and orderly system that is the universe. The word itself is derived from the Greek word ‘kosmos’, meaning an ordered, ornamental thing. The philosopher Pythagoras was the first to use this term to refer to the order of the universe. However, it was geographer-polymath Alexander von Humboldt who made the term a part of the modern language in 19^th century by assigning it to his five-volume treatise, Kosmos, which was monumental in influencing the modern perception of the universe as one interacting entity. Cosmology as a branch of study that focuses on the cosmos combines a variety of different approaches, all of which attempt to understand the implicit order within the cosmos. Therefore, besides physical cosmology, most religions and philosophical systems have a cosmology too.

This essay concerns the universe in Paradise Lost. I will attempt to explain the individual components that are a part of this universe that Milton has created and why the geocentric model was preferred over the heliocentric one while plotting the design of the universe.

At the time that Milton was writing, the geocentric model of the solar system was widely accepted. Simultaneously, the Copernican model was also gaining its followers and the heated debate between the heliocentric view of the universe and the geocentric view of the universe was well under way in 17^th century England. However, the cosmos that Milton presents in Paradise Lost is of a grand scale and the geocentric/heliocentric aspect forms only a small portion of it. Milton’s universe is three-tiered, with Heaven on top, Hell at the bottom and Chaos in the middle. Dangling from a golden chain dropped from Heaven is Earth which, by the end of the epic, is connected to Hell by a bridge. H

HEAVEN

But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven

Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night

A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins

(Paradise Lost, 2.1034-1037)

Milton refers to Heaven as Empyrean in the poem. Empyrean, for the classical authors, was the highest part of heaven, a realm of light and fire. Light is the primary quality of Heaven and God is pure light; even the angels have to observe him through a cloud. The angels themselves are also a type of pure light, although their light is incomparable to God’s because they give off colors. Within heaven, God sits on his throne at the top of a mountain with the Son beside him. God as the Father is pure and perfect, unemotional justice, while the Son is more merciful, demonstrating sacrifice and hope. (The Holy Spirit, the third of the tripartite whole, is mentioned only in the prologues as Urania, Milton’s muse.) In Unitarian theology, God in Christianity is one person, as opposed to the Trinity which many other branches of Christianity define God as. Unitarian Christians believe that Jesus was inspired by God and is a savior, but they do not believe him to be a deity. In Paradise Lost, Milton presents the Son as separate from God. The Son is close to God, who created him, and any distinction between them is imperceptible. Yet, they are not the same. One may then surmise that Milton was working with a Unitarian viewpoint, at least in terms of theology.

God and the Son are followed by the angels, grouped into nine categories: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Each of these three classifications, such as Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, was called choir and each group of three choirs had specific functions in relation to God. The traditional Christian categories are hierarchical but Milton does not follow the hierarchies strictly. He has also introduced archangels- Michael, Raphael, Gabriel- as in the ancient Hebrew tradition that classified angels as either angels or archangels, with the latter being more important and also closer to God.

Heaven, being the top-most part of the world in Paradise Lost, has no sky and the entire cosmos lies below it. This is the reason why rebel angels ‘fall’ from heaven. It is described as being ‘extended wide/ In Circuit’ (2.1047-1048) and its shape is an ‘undetermined square or round,/ With opal tow’rs and battlements adorned’. It is a spacious region that is filled with an abundance of light. Heaven combines the attributes of the city and the pastoral landscape, the man-made and the natural, although it lacks harsh geological features. The mountain atop which God sits on his throne is situated at the center and the mountain is connected by a road to a ‘kingly palace gate’ (3.505).

HELL

Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wild,

The seat of desolation, void of light,

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames

Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend

From off the tossing of these fiery waves

(Paradise Lost, 1.180-184)

If Heaven is the zenith of the universe, then Hell is the very bottom of it. It is the antithesis of Heaven: “As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames/ No light, but rather, darkness visible’ (1.62-63). We tend to associate light with that which is good. Saying that heaven is filled with light suggests that it is filled with goodness and purity. On the other hand, even the flames in hell cannot impart light but rather make ‘darkness visible’. This is because Hell, being the opposite of Heaven, is filled with evil. While the phrase ‘darkness visible’ is an oxymoron, it can also mean that Hell is filled with an evil to such an extent that it is palpable, serving as a stark contrast to the light in Heaven.

There are other instances too when Hell contrasts Heaven. At first, the description given of Hell is almost Dantesque as the fallen angels wake on a lake of fire, surrounded by sulfurous fumes. This image, however, is soon replaced by a second as the demons build Pandemonium, the capital, with a palace and a throne for Satan, much like God’s throne in Heaven. The demons also follow a hierarchy where some are more important than the others despite the lack of a concrete classification. The demons who speak at the council are clearly more important and are an ironic match to the archangels of God. Beelzebub, Belial, Moloch, and Mammon are the chief demons under Satan. Milton has also named numerous pagan Gods (who were worshiped by tribes that opposed the Israelite) and made them into fallen angels now turned demons. The demons also sing, have contests, and debate. Milton’s hell begins to seem more like Dante’s Limbo as he embraces both the aspects of Hell: while it is a place of punishment, it is also a place where demons live in a manner that ironically imitates Heaven. The only difference is that while there is absolute truth and beauty in Heaven, the demons’ games, songs and debates are all corrupt with no true end. Milton also introduces the idea of Hell as a spiritual and psychological state in the beginning of Book IV.

‘Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell’

(4.73-75)

These are the words with which Satan concludes his soliloquy. The inner Hell described in these lines is as much a part of Milton’s universe as the physical Hell. Highlighting the inner turmoil that turns anywhere Satan is into Hell also implies that Hell is a spiritual state that cannot be avoided; it exists within Satan himself, making the Hell he carries within worse than any physical place.

Hell is situated at the bottom of the Miltonic universe, both morally and spatially. If light is the primary quality of Heaven, then Hell is characterized by fire and darkness. Its ‘thrice threefold […] Gates’ (2.645) also contrast the gate in Heaven. Heaven is a city or a landscape, and Pandemonium is a city with a palace. Heaven has no sky while Hell is sheltered by a ‘horrid roof’ (2.644). Hell is vast like Heaven, but by pointing out that, unlike Heaven, it is domed over, Milton gives way to a sense of being enclosed, or even being trapped. This is further illuminated by the fact that the banishment of the angels was a punishment for their rebellion. Therefore, although the place they now occupy is vast, they will still suffocate as they are enclosed on all sides. Hell then becomes an ironic mimicry, even a parody, of what Heaven is.

CHAOS

Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roared,

And felt tenfold confusion in their fall

Through his wide anarchy, so huge a rout

Encumbered him with ruin: Hell at last

(Paradise Lost, 6.871-874)

Heaven and Hell being independent cosmological regions, the space between them is occupied by Chaos with his consort Night. There was a formless void before creation and for Milton Chaos signified that void, the darkness out of which God created Heaven and Earth. It also demonstrates the vastness of the distance between Heaven and Hell. Hell is not only at the bottom of the universe but it is at the bottom of an almost limitless space. In book II, Satan sets out intent on finding God’s new creation. Satan’s journey across Chaos in order to reach Earth is long and difficult and one of the accomplishments that make him seem almost heroic.

Night is the consort of Chaos. Fittingly, Chaos is dark and deep. It is also noisy. Although it is repeatedly referred to as an abyss and a gulf, we do not know exactly how deep Chaos is. Satan also calls it ‘this darksome Desart’ (2.973). However, the sea may also be an apt metaphor for Chaos, as Satan, due to his rather arduous journey across Chaos, is ‘glad that now his Sea should find a shore’ (2.1011). The images of the sea and the desert give the sense of a hopeless vastness which ties in with the image of an abyss or a gulf. The direction in which Satan moves in order to cross Chaos is upwards, but the movement required in order to cross it is undetermined, much like its other characteristics such as its dimensions, solidity, and material consistency. Hence, as the name of the region indicates, confusion and anarchy are indeed its distinguishing features.

EARTH

And fast by hanging in a golden chain

This pendant world, in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

(Paradise Lost, 2.1051-1053)

God created Earth through the Son after the rebellion that ended in the banishment of Satan and his followers. On the brink of Chaos, all the other realms can be reached with relative ease from here, proving the interconnected nature of the cosmological regions in Paradise Lost. Earth and Man were created so that Man, by trial, could reach the status of the angels and Earth could eventually become a part of Heaven, thus keeping Satan from believing that he had ‘dispeopled Heav’n’ (7.151). The Son created not only the Earth but also all that lives on Earth, serving as a celestial architect who designed the universe in which Earth exists. His creation is linked to Heaven by a golden chain and another mysterious structure that leads up to the gate of heaven, something like a retractable staircase connecting the empyrean and the new world.

Earth, like Heaven and Hell, has a hierarchical order that is inconspicuous and vague. Here Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, is the supreme and perfect place. There is no flaw in it. Thus, when Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden, they enter a world that is not only unknown to them, but is also flawed. Adam is the superior being as he was created first. Eve was created later from his rib. Of the two, Eve is more beautiful, but Adam possesses the superior intellect and ability. Together, they are superior to all other living beings on Earth.

Initially, that Earth is connected by a chain to Heaven indicates that had Satan not intervened, the chain would have (at least metaphorically) pulled the Earth up to Heaven. However, after the Fall this is not possible, and although the chain remains a wide bridge also appears at the end of Paradise Lost. Unlike the golden chain or Heaven’s stairs that can be drawn up, this causeway, lined by Sin and Death and tracing Satan’s trail through Chaos, links Hell and Earth. The chain remains, but Man must choose between one and the other; either one chooses the difficult way up the chain or the easy one across the causeway to Hell.

The final aspect of interest concerning the Earth in Paradise Lost is its location in relation to modern scientific knowledge. The heliocentric model, however, does not prove Milton’s personal preference of it over the geocentric model. When Adam questions Raphael about the chain that connects Earth to Heaven, and asks if it connects Earth with the sun and stars rotating around it or if it works in some other way so that the Earth rotates around the sun, Raphael answers that some questions are better left unanswered and that God laughs at Man’s attempts to understand how he made the universe.

CONCLUSION

The universe of Paradise Lost is a vast expanse that has been intricately and painstakingly mapped with great detail. The model that Milton employed in order to design this world is the Ptolemaic one and not the Copernican one. This is not because he was unfamiliar with the Copernican model, and it also does not explicitly prove that he favoured one over the other. However, keeping the theological importance of the geocentric model in mind, the Ptolemaic model would serve the purpose of the narrative better than a geocentric one. It made it easier to show the hierarchy of the different beings and to place God at the very top, not only physically but spatially too. The model also made the placement of Earth more convenient, so that Man could enter Heaven or Hell by either moving upwards or downwards.

Although the number of people who believed in the Copernican model was beginning to grow, a vast number of people believed the geocentric model to be a more accurate depiction of the cosmos. Therefore, the matter was being hotly debated in Milton’s time. Given the circumstances, if Milton had at any point explained exactly what God had done and then the explanation proved to be false, the narrative would have become flawed. God cannot be the almighty if He is incorrect. However, Raphael only suggests that God knows how he created, and the workings of, the universe, but he does not share the information with Man. With this ambiguous answer, Milton allows God to remain eternally correct.

Works Cited:

• “Paradise Lost.” Milton’s Universe, www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/paradise-lost/critical-essays/miltons-universe.
• Filmer, Joshua. “From Geocentrism to Heliocentrism.” Futurism, 30 Nov. 2016, futurism.com/from-geocentrism-to-heliocentrism.
• “Cosmology in Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Topics, Sample Papers & Articles Online for Free, 9 Sep 2016, https://studymoose.com/cosmology-in-miltons-paradise-lost-essay
• “John Milton.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton#Paradise_Lost.
• “Paradise Lost.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost#Composition.
• Courtney Adams, “The Cosmos and Creation in Paradise Lost”, plato.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/rcunningham/2283-06/Paper2Web/Adams/paper_template.htm.
• “Unitarianism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism.
• http://real.mtak.hu/34479/1/Ittzes_Structure_of_Miltons_Universe_MTC__2012_u.pdf
• Photo from: https://rampages.us/cowanbn/2016/02/27/miltons-universe/

NAME- Mousumi Hansda

CLASS- PG1

ROLL NO.- 32

SUB- John Milton Prose and Poetry

John Milton the English poet known for his great work of epic poetry Paradise Lost which he published in the year of 1667 is an epic sprouting its branches from the events in the Holy Bible. Milton’s work revolves around a lot of plots. The most significant ones are the dwindling status of the Archangel Lucifer (Satan) and the Fall of man. The plot of Satan deals with his pride and greed for power which made him revolt against God. Lucifer believed in the principle that “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” and fought the Angelic war along with other fallen angels like Michael which they obviously lost and were condemned to Hell. This is the moment when Satan starts off in the search for some other way to corrupt the creation of God and bring chaos to his creation; the story of the Fall of man starts with Adam and Eve where Eve wanders off and is tempted by Satan who is disguised as a serpent, persuades her to consume the fruit from the forbidden tree. Being fully aware of the disobedience she committed, Adam willfully joins her as he considered Eve to be a part of him and that they were bound together and if she is dragged to hell (for her disobedience) he will dive in too. This deliberate act of disobedience brings doom on them and both are banished from the Garden of Eden thus creating the Fall of Man. This disobedience carried out by mankind also brought death into this world.  Therefore it can be said that Satan is the one who brought death and it can be sensed that death is the penalty against the inevitable. In  the beginning of Paradise Lost we see Milton describing death as something that has fallen upon mankind due to their disobedience and God himself says that the once man becomes corrupted in their nature, must serve the penalty of death, thus telling us that death is not what God had in his mind as a part of the man journey of life. God planned on creating man without any faults and imbibing in them sanctity and gifting them with the power of immortality and thus wanted angels to respect them as his creation. ‘Death’ is the complete opposite of what God thought and is something that is brought down to mankind by Satan. This phenomenon of dying has later become our reality. But this idea of death is contradicted by the author himself in the latter half of the book where he shows that Death is a gift given to mankind by God and not by the devil. It is the Almighty that has stored the gift of death as a “final remedy” for mankind after they have served Life. Death is depicted as a token of acceptance that is to be received with open arms. His remark on death can be interpreted as the rejection of Satan and acceptance of the sin caused by man. The idea and understanding of death is very different in the earlier and later poetries of Milton.

The theme of death lingers in many other Milton’s poetry. This concept of death varies in a lot different way in his pastoral elegy Lycidas and the Latin elegy Epitaphium Damonis which were written atthe beginning of the poet’s poetic career and were published in the year 1938 and 1939 respectively. Lycidas is a piece of work dedicated to Edward King, Milton’s friend at Cambridge who drowned and died after his ship sank in the Irish Sea in 1937. The pastoral mode of writing is a very natural mode of literary expression and by opting an elegy to draw his feeling he is reviving the Greek and Latin tradition of mourning for the dead. Milton opens the poem Lycidas in the mixed emotion of anger and lament and addresses to the nature comparing his friend Lycidas to the evergreen tree of laurel and myrtles. He equalizes the death of Edward with the pain and loss of nature if the poet plucks the leaves from the tree or plucks the fruits which are not yet ready to be plucked just like the untimely death of his friend, whose life was snatched from him before he could bloom. Milton employs pastoral landscape where he pictures himself and Lycidas (Edward King) as shepherds who enjoyed the simple pastoral life before the death. It is not that either of them was shepherds at any point of their life but Milton tries to draw a parallel between the two lives. The poet is seen to lament the death of his dear friend Lycidas who has died a premature death, without having the opportunity to flourish himself. The poet portrays him as an honest man with great quality who could have established himself if he had got the time to do so. The nature, the muses, nymphs are being addressed and  held responsible for this sudden and untimely accident and Milton questions where were they all when this disaster was taking place. Along with great talent, the poet has lost a close friend, and now the poet feels empty and has sunken in the depth of sorrow and mourns. The poet summons the gods and questions them until Apollo comes and assures him that the life in heaven is more fruitful and the fame that his friend could not do get on earth, he can achieve that in Heaven. He ends his poem in a similar setting where he began his poem and asks the valley to send flower to the grave of Lycidas. Through the elegy, the poet is trying to bring back the dead through his memories. He is aware of the fact that the dead cannot be resurrected but through this he tries to retain the memories and the qualities of his friend and trap it in his work of art to avoid oblivion. The Canadian literary critic Northrp Fryre in his essay “Literature as Context: Milton’s Lycidas” introduces two concepts: “personal sincerity” and “literary sincerity”. And point out that Milton was not that close to King which makes the poem an “artificial” poem and according to the parameters set by him regarding the personal and literary sincerity; he believes that the poem lacks “personal sincerity” but as a ‘literary sincerity” it does a good job due to its proper use of literary symbolism and structuralisation. Another poem that carries the same tone of lament is the Latin elegy Epitaphium Damonis where the poet laments the death of his close friend Charles Diodati who was pure and holy and had a “spotless virtue”. Unlike Lycidas which was written on the same year after the death of Edward King, making it conventional, Epitaphium Damonis was published almost after a year of Diodati’s death as a belated tribute to the soul for whom he mourns till now. This particular elegy seems to have resemblance with Virgil (Eclogues) and Ovid (Ovid’s lament for Tibullus) and other Neo-Latin poets, but a  closer study would reveal that it resembles more  to Renaissances contemporary writers and less to the Greeks and Latin scholars from where this art form has originated. This poem again deals with Milton’s depiction of himself (Thyrsis) and his lost friend Damon (Charles Diodati) as shepherds who were very close friends.  Just like in Lycidas, he is lamenting the untimely death of his childhood friend and trying to fill the gap where death has cut him off. The flock of sheep that both the shepherd brother took grazing is being neglected as Thyrsis is drowned in the sorrow. The flock must be sad because of the unavailability of food but they too are equally sad about the death of Damon and must be lamenting too.

Both the poem Lycidas and Epitaphium Damonis can be seen as a mirror image of one another and can be read together. They can be very well compared with each other as the former is the last English piece whereas the later one in the last piece in Latin. Both the poetry deal with the poet lamenting the death of his close friend and bidding farewell to them along with his farewell to the Latin poetry in general. The death that has occurred has created a vacuum in the life of Milton, also a blank space in his pastoral imagination which he has been living with all this time. And now with their sudden and untimely death, the pastoral picture seems incomplete. The poet is using elegies as a therapy or a cure to the turmoil caused in the landscape of his imagination by the untimely deaths of his two friends. As Jacques Derrida says that death causes one person to part from its pair and thus causing the survivor to part ways from himself thus leaving him nowhere but in a lack. He further says that death is the equivalent to the end of the world, not only for the one who is dead but also for the one who is left out (the other one in the pair who has survived). The survivor is now deprived of all the happiness that prevailed before his loss. Therefore the poet as shepherd in these elegies is trying to re-establish his sense of place and sense of being in his self drawn pastoral scenery; as being the survivor he has to go on living in this place. But as we go on reading the elegies we find out that the poet is gradually transcending to frustration for his inability to bring the two figures back to their individual presence. His effort of bringing back their memories into presence suffice Jacques Lacan’s theory of how the Signifiers work in the human mind. Lacan mentions that wherever there is a cut or a hole in the Real, the Signifiers would rush towards to constitute it. Here the hole is the death of his two friends the mourning and writing elegies about it is the Signifier. Both the elegies end with a similar note where the poet believes that his friend is in a better place after death. They have passed from this material world to the other and are “there” that is the Heaven

Along with the sorrow of the deceased, the poet is also worried about his own untimely death. He is worried about the uncertain future as he doesn’t know what it holds for him. He is questioning the days yet to come. Through the elegies it can be taken that the poet is constantly in fear of dying; what if just like his friends he too is wrapped in the veil of death prior to his fame and popularity; what if just like his companions he doesn’t get enough time to establish himself as a great poet. Along with this fear an additional worry bothers him, about the loyalty and the choice of friends he is left with. In Epitaphium Damonis we witness that Thyrsis is posing the question to his already obliviated friend Damon asking him whom should he entrust his heart and who will prove to be as faithful as him; who will stand by his side through thick and thin, through the frost and the apricity; who will comfort him with talks and songs to ease his tiredness. He might also be worried that the entire thing that he is doing for his friends will not be reciprocated. He doesn’t expect anything from the one that are already gone but he maybe doubting that in case he ends up just like them, there might not be anyone who will assure his existence on this vast universe in the similar grave manner that he is doing for his friends. He craves for at least one true friend who will remember him and pay remembrance that he thinks he deserves. Through his complaints of his friends being faded into the forgetfulness and his grave effort to avoid it, he too is afraid of being sucked into the gyre of oblivion.

WORKS CITED

Epitaphium Damonis, www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/damon/text.shtml.

Full Text of “The Lycidas and Epitaphium Damonis of Milton”, <https://archive.org/stream/cu31924013190065/cu31924013190065_djvu.txt>

Hanford, James Holly. “The Pastoral Elegy and Milton’s Lycidas.” PMLA, vol. 25, no. 3, 1910, pp. 403–447. JSTOR,

<www.jstor.org/stable/456731.>

Labriola, Albert C. “John Milton.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 5 Apr. 2019

< www.britannica.com/biography/John-Milton#ref362212>

“Lycidas – Summary” Critical Survey of Literature for Students Ed. Laurence W. Mazzeno. eNotes.com, Inc. 2010eNotes.com 5 May, 2019 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/lycidas#summary-summary-summary-the-work>

“Milton’s Epitaphium Damonis: The Debt to Neo-Latin Poets.” Taylor & Francis, <www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10848770.2012.672183>

< http://www.connotations.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/jockims01303.pdf>

By Ritabrita Sarkar
PG I     Roll. no. 36
Course: John Milton: Prose and Poetry
Department of English.
Jadavpur University.

The story of Man’s Fall is one that never fails to hold interest in our minds and in those before us. Century after century, we have witnessed various interpretations and narratives of this story. If we were to serially compile them together, it would make for an interesting read, tracing through diverse perceptions of the same story at various points of time. What is wonderful about these opposing narratives is how each kind brings a more and more nuanced understanding of humanity. Along with the varied interpretations, come different treatments of themes like temptation, free will and chastity. Although John Milton’s “Comus” and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” do not explicitly talk about Adam and Eve being tempted by Satan, both have the story of the Fall as an underlying theme.  Our motive then becomes to trace the differing treatments of concepts of temptation, chastity and free will through these two texts. But before we do that, we must look at the background of these two works briefly.

John Milton’s “Comus” was written in the masque form and first presented at Ludlow Castle in 1634, in honour of John Egerton becoming the Lord President of Wales. It was later printed in 1637, anonymously. “Comus” is about two brothers and their sister and their journey through the woods. The sister, who has not been given a name, is addressed as “the Lady”. She gets separated from her brothers and finds herself in the company of the cunning Comus, a Greek God known for his malicious activities. How she fights his temptations and preserves her chastity is the main plot of “Comus”. Milton intended to use the masque genre which was associated with the debauchery of the Royal court at that time to accomplish the opposite, to paint the people of the court as virtuous. On the other hand, we have Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”, being written in 1859 and published in 1862.  It is about two sisters, Laura and Lizzie being tempted by goblins with fruits. The poem although is overtly sexual, was claimed to be written for children. Milton’s work had been a great influence over Christina Rossetti. The themes of temptation and the Fall being a major part of Milton’s work, interested her. It comes as no surprise to find her exploring the same in her poetry and prose. Stories of man’s Fall from grace usually feature the 3 figures: the fallen, the tempter, and the savior. Let us analyse the texts from the aspect of these three figures one after the other.

On surface level, both the texts seem to be about good against evil. However, Milton’s presentation good and evil in “Comus” and Rossetti’s presentation of the same differ. The figure of the fallen in “Comus” is ‘The Lady’. The Lady is not represented as an independent, strong woman. Her only real strength is her conviction to remain chaste. She invokes virtues of chastity and employs reason to combat Comus’s attempts to tempt her. Even that is not enough to save her. It is Sabrina, the water nymph who aids her in escaping while her brothers fight Comus. Milton is considered to be puritanical by most. He perceived preserving strict morality and chastity as the only way women could live a respectable life but in reality perpetrators do not care for one’s virtue or chastity. Milton does not explore on the possibility of that or of what happens when one does give in to temptations and baser desires. He simply avoids it whereas Rossetti doesn’t. “Goblin Market” has Laura as the fallen. She gives in to the temptations of the goblin merchants, chanting about tantalizing fruits which she consumes while her sister Lizzie runs back home and resists the temptation. Milton’s Lady and Rossetti’s Lizzie and Laura, face temptation but while Milton’s Lady is only held captive by ‘gums of glutinous heat’ and is not physically assaulted, Rossetti provides a more realistic narrative of temptation and the tempter. Laura pays a physical price for consuming the fruits with her lock of hair and is told to be aging fast when she comes back home. Her appetites also increase after consuming the exotic fruit. It symbolizes the loss of youth due to corruption and in turn, making one unable to stop them self from indulging. Milton only hints that there are consequences for those who give into temptation and Rossetti explores those explicitly.

Milton provides a gendered rhetoric of chastity. It is very easy to confuse Milton’s endorsing of chastity as virginity but perhaps, that was not the case. Kathleen Vejvoda in her article “The Fruit of Charity:  “Comus” and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market””, points out that “In De Doctrina Christiana, Milton identifies a sequence of virtues underneath the general virtue of “charity”: first comes self-love (“chastity”), and then comes love for others, or “charity.””. She also remarks “The relation between chastity and charity is critical to Rossetti, whose distinctive religious sensibilities – what her brother William referred to as her Anglo-Catholic “puritan[ism]” – reflect her own painful personal struggle to reconcile her chastity, which others often perceived as coldness, with her deep commitment to the ideal of charity.” Rossetti reconciles the two through Lizzie.

She uses the sisterly charity shown by Sabrina to the Lady in her poem through Lizzie. Charity as a form of self love saves the Lady from Comus but Lizzie’s charity is for other, her sister rather and her charity does not really keep her safe from being harmed. This brings us to the treatment of assault. The lady is simply confined and chained and made to hear Comus’s arguments for appetites and desires as natural and thus, licit. Lizzie, who had previously escaped the temptations of the goblin merchants, goes back to them to save her sister. Her charity or love for her sister makes her take the risk to confront the goblins and ask for an antidote for Laura’s rapid aging. Though she manages to not consume the exotic fruits, she is assaulted by the goblins verbally and physically –  “Though the goblins cuff’d and caught her,
Coax’d and fought her,
Bullied and besought her,
Scratch’d her, pinch’d her black as ink,
Kick’d and knock’d her,
Maul’d and mock’d her,”

The consequences that the brothers worry their sister would face in the woods, happens to Lizzie in “Goblin Market”.

Lizzie’s charity results in her being harmed. It also shows her resistance because she “… utter’d not a word; would not open lip from lip lest they should cram a mouthful in”. It is through this violence Lizzie is able to save Laura and learn the true side of tempters. Laura does not pay the price of her redemption, Lizzie does.  Similarly, the Lady only sees Comus’s true form after he has successfully charmed her with his shepherd’s disguise. While the Lady is at first deceived by Comus’s disguise as a harmless shepherd, Rossetti provides Laura with more agency as Laura knows what she is getting into when she takes the fruits from the goblins.

The chastity of the Lady which attracted Comus is the same chastity that fails Comus in corrupting her. This is how Milton represents free will, that which is not only a means to be corrupted but also a way to prevent oneself from being corrupted. Milton was of the opinion that free will is given to us all by God and it is how we exercise it, decides our fate. Milton does not ponder on the fact that as much as one has the free will to avoid temptation from the tempter, the tempter too has the free will to inflict harm on us regardless. Rossetti’s Laura, who is the fallen woman in her poem, explores her free will by taking the temptation and the tempters assault Lizzie even though she does not consume the exotic fruits. Vejvoda writes in her article, “Although her faith certainly led her to see the fallen women of her time as sinners, for Rossetti that was not the end of their story. Not only could each fallen woman become a saint, but each individual should also aspire to be like the penitent and loving Mary Magdalene”. Lizzie is the exposition of this thought. We learn from her how to remain pure and persevere through everything or rather the importance of not giving into desires and the price of it. When Lizzie lets Laura taste the juice of the fruits on her face to save her, the fruits did not taste the same. They tasted like wormwood to her. It physically hurts her after tasting them but she survives and recovers. She even gets married later on, after growing up. This happy ending would probably have not been given to Milton’s Lady.

Rossetti, through her poem gives this underlying story of the Fall a feminist perspective.  Adam and Eve serve the purpose of being the sinners while Christ is the savior. Rossetti makes the two sisters fill the position of the sinner and the savior, taking the male savior out of her narrative. Milton’s Sabrina is also a female savior but the brothers are also partly responsible for saving their sister. Rossetti’s females do not wait for a male to save them while the Lady is dependent on the male figures of her life.  The world of Laura and Lizzie is unconventional. They are said to be orphans, living on their own and the men seem to have been replaced by Goblins in this world.

Christina Rossetti uses the pastoral setting of “Comus” and it’s themes but makes several modifications. Vejvoda rightly points out that “Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market undermines this prevailing notion of Milton’s influence and reveals a nineteenth-century female poet drawing heavily on Milton to present a feminist vision of spiritual redemption and triumph. In Goblin Market, Rossetti writes about forbidden fruit as temptation, a Miltonic motif central not only to Paradise Lost but also to Comus. All of these works are about a pastoral world in which temptation lurks and threatens innocence and virtue, and even more specifically, in which an evil masculine creature or creatures try to coerce a maiden into consuming a succulent fruit or liquor. This comment brings us to tempters and the temptations offered by them. Firstly, Milton’s tempter, Comus is a Greek god, who is known to tempt people and turn them into pigs. It symbolizes of one giving into their baser desires like an animal and thus, turned into a beast. Comus, born of Bacchus and Circe, was a sorcerer and a necromancer. He tempted people to drink from his chalice. He relies on magic and tricks and can turn himself into any disguise he likes. Rossetti, as mentioned earlier, replaces men with Goblins. In comparison, Milton’s tempter is more powerful and looks any way he wants. The goblins cannot change their ugly appearances and their tempting relies on their chanting about the luscious, exotic fruits. What is common is what they tempt innocent people with. Comus’s chalice and the fruits offered by the goblins stand for sexual pleasures.

Milton’s Lady has no sexual agency. Rather, it is what she has to avoid to save herself. “Goblin Market” has many sexual connotations.  First, in the description of Laura’s consumption of the fruits offered by the goblins and second, when she kisses Lizzie’s face and sucks her body to taste the juices of the fruits. They are explicitly sexual and it is said that Lizzie and Laura’s intimacy in the second instance implies homosexuality, a kind of sexuality that “Comus” does not have.

We finally arrive at the third aspect, the savior. Vejvoda tells us that “…both Goblin Market and Comus posit and celebrate a female savior”. Since both the texts are about the Fall of humanity, Sabrina and Lizzie, being both female saviors subvert figure of Jesus as the male savior. They become the Christ figure for the fallen women in their respective stories. Both Sabrina and Lizzie achieve that position or the power to save the Fallen by the loss of their own innocence and chastity. Sabrina, the water nymph is given the power to save other fallen women because she herself had met a tragic fate but also remained chaste. She helps other women to remain chaste and pure. She casts spells on the lady to allow her to flee from Comus. Rossetti’s savior, Lizzie does not have such powers. Nor is she a nymph who can help other women remain chaste. She does pay a price to attain the power to save her sister. She has to give up her own innocence and understand the power of temptation and sexual pleasure to be able to give Laura a chance for redemption. She suffers the assaults of the goblins to have the antidote to save her sister. Milton’s Lady retains both her charity and chastity through it all but Lizzie had to choose between her charity and chastity for Laura.
To conclude, Rossetti draws from Milton’s use of the story of man’s Fall from grace and subverts in many ways, providing us with feminist perspective and a more realistic approach to the functioning of temptation, chastity and free will through the same template of the Fall and redemption. As Vejvoda aptly summarizes“…Milton’s masque has a direct bearing on the meaning and structure of Rossetti’s poem, especially on its feminist implications, and that Rossetti’s most original and creative appropriation of Milton is to be found in Goblin Market. These texts share a similar climactic event: a restorative, redemptive ritual that one woman performs for another. Both works are concerned with the virtues of chastity and charity, and both explore these virtues by using a female Christ figure whose divine power derives from her experience of a violent assault.”

Works Cited :

1. Milton,John. “Comus”. The Complete Poetry Of John Milton. Anchor. Edited by John T. Shawcross. 1971.
2. Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market”. Goblin Market And Other Poem. Edited by Candace Ward. Dover Publications. 1994.
3. Vejvoda, Kathleen.”The Fruit of Charity: “Comus” and Christina Rossetti’s ” Goblin Market”.”. Victorian Poetry. Vol.38. West Virginia University Press. 2000.

[ Name: Shreya Chowdhury Class: PG 1 Roll: 33 ]

John Milton is seen as one of the most polemic writers in the history of English language. Born on 9^th December 1608, Milton was a poet, a man of letters, and civil servant under the commonwealth of England and later under the Oliver Cromwell’s rule. The epic Milton is most known for is “Paradise Lost”. It was written in the decades of 1640s and 1650s; during the strife between the Church of England and various reformist groups and between the monarch and the Parliament. He mostly used his poetry to address issues of politics and religion.

“Paradise Lost” is recognised as Milton’s major work that changed his status amongst his fellow authors. This epic piece of literature has managed to influence other authors and artists for centuries, even until now. It was was first published in the year 1667; then reorganised and republished again in 1674. This epic solidified Milton’s position as one of the greatest English poets of his time. The main characters in the poem are God, Adam, Eve and Lucifer(Satan).

The book 1 of this epic was Milton’s attempt to retell the story of Genesis while showing his readers that the intent of God was the right one. So Milton had in no way intended to portray Satan as a heroic character. Milton may not have intended to showcase Satan as a tragic hero but he gave the character certain qualities that make him stand out to readers. Milton was a puritan poet and many scholars hold the belief that he inspired the people of his time to rebel against the Catholic church and the King by portraying Satan’s rebellion against God. This argument is valid till today. After Milton came the Romantic Age which brought with it ideas of rebellion against established forms of authority and independent thought. Milton basically put forward the idea of ‘Free will’ in “Paradise Lost”.

Now lets come to how Milton represents the characters. God, in Paradise Lost, is less a developed character than a personification of abstract ideas. He seems to be a foreign entity to humankind and to some extent lacks emotion and depth. He has no weaknesses, embodies pure reason, and is always, and almost robotically just. He explains why certain events happen, like Satan’s decision to corrupt Adam and Eve, tells his angels what will happen next, and gives his reasoning behind his actions in theological terms. God allows evil to occur, but he will make good out of evil, manipulating the situation to his advantage. His plan to save humankind by offering his Son shows his unwavering control over Satan. All these notions of absolute emotional control is alien to human beings.

Milton’s ‘God’ is by far the least charming and least interesting character in all of Paradise Lost. Milton’s own reputation since the publication of the poem has not been good either. In fact, one critic (William Empson) once compared Milton’s ‘God’ to Joseph Stalin. This ‘God’ is not a sympathetic character. He does not have the qualities of the usual father figure. We should also take into account that God being an absolutely different entity in comparison to humans and angels, which leaves room to consider the possibility of him acting differently. He’s an eternal, spiritual deity who can accomplish anything and know anything. His Love is different from the humane love that we are accustomed to. Raphael in book 8 suggests that loving God involves obeying him, i.e., you can only stay in his good books if you follow certain rules. That is why pitying Adam and Eve for the punishment they received can also be refuted if one thinks about how pity and sympathy are very humane emotions that may or may not be present in God. He had made His rules and the consequences of disobedience clear to everyone including Adam, Eve and Lucifer. Although Satan’s sin is a bit more complicated, Adam and Eve were commanded to follow only one rule. He is very generous in that respect as He wants Adam and Eve to choose to not eat from the tree of Knowledge and the angels to respect His Son.

For Milton, the Son is the manifestation of God in action. While God the Father stays in the realm of Heaven, the Son performs the difficult tasks of banishing Satan and his rebel Angels and punishing Satan, Adam and Eve with justice. The Son physically connects God the Father with his creation. Together they form a complete and perfect God. The Son personifies love and compassion. During the final battle from the Angelic War over Heaven, the Son single-handedly defeats the entire legion of Angelic rebels and banishes them to heaven.

Satan in “Paradise Lost” is attributed with certain specific qualities which are worthy of Epic Heroes not villains. This makes us, the readers sympathize with his character. Satan’s physical characteristics also make him stand out. He is said to be of stature so mighty that when he rises flames that are on both the sides of him fall back. He is even bigger than Leviathan, carrying a shield as big as the moon when seen on a telescope. His spear is so huge that the largest pine tree on earth looks like a mere wand in comparison. The strength of Satan’s body had no match and neither did the strength of his mind. Satan was one of the first beings created by God when he made the universe. He was known as the left hand of God and one of the most beautiful angels before he fell. His aim was to conquer the throne of heaven, nothing beneath that. With ambition so great his punishment was also the greatest; he got banished to hell. But Satan announces in Book 1 of “Paradise Lost” that being in hell as a king is better than being in heaven as a servant of God. He had a strong sense of independence and he knew about the extent of his own capabilities. Milton may have been trying to portray Satan as the personification of evil but on the way he gave him qualities that stand out to us and make us feel for him. Satan was love of pride, power and self-will personified. The desire to wield power over others and wanting to exert one’s own free will are the basic desires of human beings. Pride is also one of the seven sinful qualities that we humans possess.

Satan and God are on opposite the spectrum of the human moral ground. While God is morally superior, Satan is morally inferior. But that also makes Satan emotionally closer to human beings. Satan was good once when he was in heaven but as he fell he lost his grace. It is partly questionable why Milton gifted his Satan so many humane qualities when it was his aim to show Satan as evil; making this decision ripe for debate even now.

In “Paradise Lost”, Satan commits the sin of pride. He starts believing that he is of the same status as that of God and that he is powerful enough to replace him. But the main reason of his rebellion comes from him refusing to bow down to mankind; he disagreed with God by refusing to believe that mankind was a good creation. Another reason was that God had said that all angels must bow down to His Son or Jesus Christ, the messiah. And Satan who had his own free will and pride did not like the idea of bowing down to anyone. This caused the war in heaven between angels led by archangel Michael and the Son of God against those led by Satan, who are defeated and thrown down to hell. This pride also drives him to seek the fall of Man. Again, this is not by fault of Satan himself which makes his character more tragic in nature. As an eternal being who was created by an all-knowing perfect entity, the presence of free will in Satan does not explain the manifestation of such a severe character flaw. God as someone who can see the future created Satan for his self-destruction. A basic characteristic of a tragic hero is that he has fatal flaw in character that is inherent to their being and cannot be easily overcome which is true for Satan in this case. This in turn makes him a very good tragic hero character.

Satan gains a small sense of victory by corrupting Mankind to eat from the Tree of knowledge but he is again condemned for it; even though he proved God wrong by showing the flaws in the creation of Man. But the motive for Satan is doing so was revenge against God for throwing him out of heaven. His motive differentiates him from a tragic hero character and puts him closer to being a villain.

All the characters who commit sin are only following their own desires and executing their free will which was given to them by God himself. God knowingly created sinful creatures. Here God allows sin to happen. Furthermore, God created Man in His own likeness and also gave him the knowledge of the disobedience of Satan and the consequences of it. But God also gave Man free will and the ability to reason just like Satan; which raises the question that if he wanted Man to be obedient then why make him so similar to Satan. Milton also compares the beauty of Eve to the personification of sin. The goal of “Paradise Lost” is to show the world that there were legitimate reasons for God making the decisions He made; why he allowed Adam and Eve to be tempted and did nothing to stop it whilst knowing about the whole ordeal. He uses the idea of ‘Free will’ and how at the end of the day Man has to reason and make his own decisions. Milton thought of God as the supreme source and symbol of love, justice, mercy, reason and order. In the book, there aren’t many lines that are dedicated to God. He does not speak directly to Adam and Eve but sends his Angels or messengers instead. Speech is the best indicator of personal opinions and characteristics. It is unfortunate that Milton could not make his ‘God’ speak more for fear of objections. Satan in one instance says, “Nor what the potent victor in his rage; can else inflict, do i repent or change”. This statement itself is a blasphemous description of God and tells us that nothing that God can inflict on Satan will change him or make him repent. This shows his blatant disregard for God and all Christian teaching. However with the change of times our views and doctrines of religious, social, ethical and political order have changed. With gaining popularity of romantic naturalism and sentimentalism, readers relate more with characters who have flaws in them, suffer and sin in the process of escaping their suffering. It is a tendency of human nature to romanticize the rebel who fights against all odds. However, Milton’s original intention was not that. If we examine the character of Satan closely we get to see that all his high-sounding speeches are actually empty boasts and his motive to doom mankind was merely petty revenge. Nonetheless, his character still remains more compelling in bringing out any emotion from a reader than the character of God.

The figure of Satan in “Paradise Lost” has always been fascinating and Milton made sure that as an adversary of God, Satan was of massive dramatic stature. In the words of William Blake, God represented old, life-denying passivity and reason while Satan represented desire, energy and the vital force which enabled man to live fully. The conventional, rational and all-knowing logical figure of God stands quite fickle and unconvincing next to the tremendous courage and energy of Satan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Nafi Jamaal. Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost and the notion of heroism. International Journal of Literature and Arts. Vol. 3, No. 3, 2015, pp. 22-28. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20150303.11

Epic Heroes and Tragic Heroes. Web. 5^th May. 2019. <https://sites.google.com/site/epicheroestragicheroes/satan>

Darkness Visible. Web.5^th May.2019.<https://darknessvisible.christs.cam.ac.uk/characters/god.html>

Wikipedia. Web. 5^th May. 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost>

Tanvi Joshi, Roll number: 1, PG II

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are…”
– John Milton, Areopagitica

In the course of our classes on Milton at Jadavpur University, and, I’m sure, in several other universities where Milton is taught, a common sight is to see the professor teaching a text by Milton which the students concurrently read on their phones, tablets or laptops. Usually they open The John Milton Reading Room, a web resource for studying Milton, and while reading the text, pepper their reading with the annotations available via hyperlinks on this site. The Reading Room and other sites are also the primary study and research tools for most students preparing for tests or writing papers/essays on Milton. Usage of digital media and other technological tools in academia by professors as well as students is, thus, so ubiquitous and commonplace now as to not even warrant a special mention in most cases. Digital archives, libraries and projects on Shakespeare (Internet Shakespeare Editions), Virginia Woolf (Woolf Online: An Electronic Edition), and so on make it evident that literary study is now deeply tied in with digitisation. However, we do not often think of what such an engagement with texts means for us as readers and students, and how it changes our reading experience. Digital media has completely changed not just how we read in an academic setting, but also how we read and engage with texts in general. As a result, it becomes pertinent to explore the question of how our scholarly as well as general reading of literary texts is transformed and altered by the digital formats in which we now generally access them.

It is particularly relevant to discuss this in connection to studying Milton. An orientation towards the past is often seen as inherent and necessary in the study of Milton (as it is with Shakespeare or any other canonical writer from the historical past). However, reading Milton online through digital editions of his works, allows us to engage with his texts with a view to the future. Furthermore, such a view need not mean that we move away from certain traditional and established approaches and methods of teaching and learning Milton; rather it could be a move towards enhancing our understanding of Milton by using tools that allow for this in new and radical ways. It is precisely at such an “interpenetration” or “progressive confluence” (Apollon et. al, 3) between digital architecture and traditional scholarly approaches as practised by established institutions and universities that I would like to locate the digitisation of Milton. I will focus primarily on The John Milton Reading Room started by Thomas H. Luxon, Professor of English at Dartmouth College as this is one of the most widely used online resources on Milton. I will attempt to chalk out the philosophy behind the site, its creation and how it is has changed our reading of Milton. I will also briefly look at other digital projects on Milton: Darkness Visible and the Edifice Project. My aim is to look at what the usage of these sites means for the nature of the reading experience in an increasingly technological and digital world, to examine the pedagogical value of such sites, while also understanding the broader implications of such projects for a general readerships’ accessibility to literary texts.

The John Milton Reading Room

Milton declares in Book 7 of Paradise Lost that he seeks to find a “fit audience…though few” (31) for his epic project. The readership for his work is, thus, posited to be a select few people who are fit to appreciate it. It would be difficult to dismiss the truth of this statement as Milton’s poetry proves to be quite challenging to new readers and students. There are several reasons for this. Not only is the style of writing of his prose and poetry complex, his work is also made dense by its intensely allusive nature. To read Milton is to be drawn into a web of his vast learning. The allusions Milton makes in his work require broad knowledge of the Bible and Classical texts. Another difficulty arises owing to the changes in the English language since Milton’s time. Early modern spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and use of italics makes it even more daunting for a new reader to approach Milton. It was precisely these difficulties in teaching Milton to undergraduate students that led to Thomas H. Luxon’s initial project of designing an online edition of Paradise Lost in 1996, long before the advent of the field of digital humanities or the large scale digitisation of literary texts. This edition would contain annotations and hyperlinks in order to aid his students in negotiating with the complexity of the epic. It was this project that developed later into The John Milton Reading Room as we know it today. Luxon says on the site, “Milton, I believe, should be read and studied from inside a library and the web makes this possible on a scale only recently imagined.” Luxon developed the site with Sarah Horton, an instructional designer at Dartmouth Department of Academic Computing, and was assisted by his students in creating its content.  Used by 254 institutions worldwide, and receiving around 6000 requests from 75 different countries on an average day (Zukerman 38), the popularity of this site demands serious attention as a critical edition of Milton. It now contains all of his poetry and select prose works along with introductions, research guides and hyperlinked annotations. The site, Luxon insists, is not to be seen as complete, but an ever developing project. Luxon does most of the coding for the site, but takes feedback via email and a Facebook page in order to incorporate the necessary changes, and to keep the process of editing transparent (Zukerman 32).

There are many ways in which The Reading Room impacts our reading of Milton’s text. Cordelia Zukerman, in her essay titled ‘The John Milton Reading Room and the Future of Digital Pedagogy,’ explicates the various implications reading Milton from this site has for one’s reading experience, for student research and learning as well for its usage as a pedagogical tool. The ideas I discuss below are largely drawn from Zukerman’s analysis.

The first important idea when it comes to an online edition is the use of hypertext and how it allows us to read in a non-linear way. It is not just scholarly and critical editions, but also our general reading on the internet that is characterised by a kind of non-linearity. A usual reading experience on the internet sees us jumping around, following links, keeping multiple tabs/windows open, and thus creating our own reading path. The question is whether this is radically different from reading in print. According to Luxon, “To claim that the web and hypertext liberate authors and readers from the linearity of print culture is a mistake; rather the web and hypertext offer technological improvements on print’s originally intended ability to enable nonlinear access to information and reported experience.” (228). Thus, in his opinion, online editions enable a dramatic expansion of our ability to read in a nonlinear manner rather than a radical innovation.

Such a non-linear reading experience is particularly relevant when it comes to reading Milton. As mentioned earlier, the allusive and erudite nature of Milton’s poems find an apt representation in a digital format with annotations and hyperlinks. Ernest Gilman, in his essay, “Milton and the Mac: ‘Inwrought with Figures Dim’ ”, insists that poems like Lycidas and Paradise Lost require readers to think in distinctly non-linear ways (Luxon 234). Luxon, too, points out how “Paradise Lost is, among many things, a representation of reading (and of ways of reading) the Bible.” (228), and argues that reading the Bible itself is a nonlinear experience. Gilman further suggests that Milton’s works require a, “representation more adequate to the poem than the technology of writing made possible in Milton’s time.” (qtd. in Luxon 234). Though Gilman’s ideas were not the motivating factor in Luxon’s creation of The Reading Room, it clearly indicates the need for digitisation in the study of Milton–a need Luxon was able to meet successfully.

Going back to the point made earlier about readers choosing their own paths while reading texts online, it must be noted that reading online represents a shift in power from the producer to the reader/user. This shift has several implications. As they become active agents in their reading, it enables students to pursue their own lines of enquiry and thus enables them to contribute to research. The treatment of students as scholars in training is central to Luxon’s philosophy behind The Reading Room. As Zukerman concludes from her discussions with Luxon: “Luxon, who has been teaching from the Milton Reading Room since 2002, has used the site to develop what he calls apprenticeship pedagogy: he invites students (even first-year undergraduates) to consider themselves scholars, and helps them develop some skills and practices necessary to produce original scholarship.” (35). The scholarly community in general, too, benefits from a platform that enables this kind of reading. Darnton says of the pyramid-like structure of reading online editions of texts, “Far from being utopian, the electronic monograph could meet the needs of the scholarly community at the points where its problems converge. It could provide a tool for prying problems apart and opening up a new space for the extension of learning.” (qtd. in Apollon, et. al, 5)

In keeping with this, it must be noted that Luxon says about The Reading Room that in opposition to Milton’s web of learning, which, “was radically internalised; ours is radically dispersed.” (235). This point mentioned in passing by Luxon is taken up by Zukerman who says, “Luxon’s goal…is to encourage readers to have multiple navigation windows open, each leading to potential paths of inquiry, so that their reading and research can “radiat[e] in different directions.” (34). Thus, the site allows readers quite a bit of agency in their engagement with Milton. It points outwards, by directing readers towards further reading and resources beyond the site (many of which are sites that provide open and free access to all users), rather than simply providing explanations. This also means more accessibility for the general reader reading Milton, as the site performs the role of the instructor in a sense while allowing the general reader an easier access to the text and the ability to navigate it independently.

Additionally, this means that diverse reading audiences can approach the text and have multiple reading options available to them. To put it simply, a reader can choose either to read the text from start to end, or to follow a particular word or idea and go down a rabbit hole of information in order to pursue a line of inquiry–an activity that facilitates critical thought. Alternatively, she can use the annotation simply to aid her understanding of the poem. The original spellings and punctuations can be accessed by clicking on the appropriate words for those who would take an interest, and ignored by those who do not. Thus, professors and scholars, students at all levels, as well as general readers of Milton can all use the site in the way that best suits their purposes. This provides a solution to a major problem with editing critical editions of Milton: addressing the needs of different types of readers reading the text. As Zukerman insightfully points out, “Digital editions allow for ambiguity to a far greater extent than printed texts: with a digital edition, an ambiguous word or moment can be both/and, rather than either/or.” (31). Thus, there is a multifarious and dynamic interaction between the reader and the text.

Darkness Visible and The Edifice Project

The Milton Reading Room is not the only site that enables an engagement with Milton online. Several other sites have also attempted to use digital tools to increase accessibility in the study of Milton, and to enable students to conduct research on Milton in a productive way.

Darkness Visible (a name taken from the famous verse in Paradise Lost) is a resource for studying Milton’s Paradise Lost which is the collaborative effort of the students of Christ’s College Cambridge, where Milton himself studied from 1625 to 1632. The aim of the site is primarily to make reading and studying Milton accessible to students and new readers daunted by the otherwise very academic resources available on Milton. The ‘About’ section on the site tells us that it, “was put together specifically for those attempting their first or second reading of Paradise Lost, whether at sixth form, at university or in private study. Our aim has been to discuss this challenging epic with an accessibility that will enable those new to Milton to familiarize themselves with the poet, his work and his themes, but without patronizing the reader or shying away from more difficult ideas.” The site includes a section on “Milton and the Arts” and notes from the contributors about their favourite passages of Milton. In keeping with its student friendly philosophy, it also contains a guide to research and quotation using online materials.

As a pedagogical tool, David Ainsworth’s Edifice Project, attempts to use online tools to create a dialogue between undergraduate students from various batches he has taught and to give proper importance to undergraduate research in creating an academic community and enhancing students’ understanding of Milton. The name is taken from Milton’s On Education: “After this pattern, as many Edifices may be converted to this use, as shall be needful in every City throughout this Land, which would tend much to the increase of Learning and Civility.” The Edifice Project creates a course research library consisting of the best papers from previous students in the class. Ainsworth selects the best papers to be published, and asks other students to do research for their own papers by consulting them. He also invites ex-students to interact with his current students to foster a sense of community among the student-researchers. Currell and Issa note, “Ainsworth’s discovery of a productive dialectic between presence and virtuality—the fact that a website and invitation to engage in digital scholarship, far from substituting for bricks-and-mortar classroom learning, deeply enhance it—undoes any simplistic traditional/digital division in the field of pedagogy.” (14). This project, not unlike the blog we will be posting our essays on, shows new ways in which the teaching of Milton can benefit from the usage of digital platforms and tools.

Thus, we find that Milton lives on digitally in our times. The way Milton is taught, read and researched has been transformed and enhanced owing to the use of digital tools. However, in celebrating the avenues opened up by the digitisation of literary texts, we must be careful not to valorise without criticism. As much as digital editions improve accessibility and make the readers’ experience of reading a text more dynamic and interactive, it is not a utopian space with no problems. As Currell and Issa importantly note, “Power hierarchies and differential access transect this field in ways that threaten to reproduce and accelerate global and institutional forms of political, economic and cultural oppression or inequity.” (5). Which texts are digitised, who gets access to them, and in what ways are they still inaccessible to many people are questions that cannot be dismissed and deserve serious and critical attention.

However, looking at Milton through this lens makes it evident that Milton remains an indispensable and living part of our culture today. Milton himself preserved and appropriated what came before him; and in turn, continues to be adapted and transformed by popular culture today. How Milton shapes the present and how the present transforms Milton continues to be an exciting and rich question. Knoppers and Colón Semenza put it best when they say, “As readers, scholars and teachers, we best capture the spirit of Milton’s own artistic enterprise by embracing the power of popular appropriations–things unattempted yet in prose and rhyme, digital or film. That’s Milton, we think.” (16).

Works Cited

Apollon, Daniel, Claire Bélisle and Philippe Régnier. “Introduction”. Digital Critical Editions, edited by Daniel Apollon,, Claire Bélisle and Philippe Régnier, University of Illinois Press, 2014, 1-32.

Currell, David and Islam Issa. “Milton! Thou Shouldst Be Living in These Media.” Digital Milton, edited by David Curell and Islam Issa, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 1-23.

Darkness Visible Homepage – A Resource for Studying Milton’s Paradise Lost, darknessvisible.christs.cam.ac.uk/index.html, May, 2019.

Knoppers, Laura Lunger and Gregory M. Colón Semenza. “Introduction.” Milton in Popular Culture, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers and Gregory M. Colón Semenza, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 1-19.

Luxon, Thomas H. “Milton and the Web.” Milton in Popular Culture, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers and Gregory M. Colón Semenza, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 225-236.

Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” The Milton Reading Room, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton, May, 2019.

Milton, John. “On Education.” The Milton Reading Room, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton, May, 2019.

Zukerman, Cordelia. “The John Milton Reading Room and the Future of Digital Pedagogy.” Digital Milton, edited by David Curell and Islam Issa, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 27-45.

Roopkatha Banerjee
PG II
Roll Number 75.

“All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,

All intellect, all sense, and as they please

They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size,

Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare. “

-Milton, Paradise Lost.

When we talk of Milton, it is of significance to note that there is a good reason why he was hailed as one of the most highly regarded intellectuals of his time. His grip and dexterity over multiple languages and the polished way in which he used them was perhaps, what earned him the title “man of letters”. The language that he used was quite vivid in nature and had a kind of visual dexterity usually seen in paintings- this paper aims to look at some of the perspectives through which this “art” can be observed in Milton’s works, with a special emphasis on Paradise Lost.

With regards to this, the approach that will be taken in this paper is one within the scope of the language itself, analysing metaphysical and intertextual elements that transcend the confines of literature and tread more into artwork territory. In doing so one could observe the direct influence of art and the literature around Milton that transcended into his work, and could be said to have references as well. Art in its literary form, and the kind of assimilation that took place when it came to Milton.

When we do some research with respect to history, it can be observed that the traditional ‘Renaissance Rhetoric’, so to speak,  had strong associations with painting. In that aspect it could ideally be regarded as a kind of ‘speaking picture’ presented, alongside other things, with these very rhetorical colours. It was meant to be looked at, and so executed that it should seem as if the writer had painted rather than told, and as if the reader had seen rather than read. When such descriptions had no strictly functional purpose, it was expected that the artist would make the most of his chance to “luxuriate in a display of his craft”. A fitting example of this would be to look at stylistic choices made by Homer and Virgil.
A common stereotype would be to consider the picture dramatically, in terms of the impact upon the audience when it comes to the details. In reality, however,  what this audience has seen so far is only the background of the picture. Once the details have made their impact, and have emerged through the metaphorical gloom, they move no longer. They are the static background, and quite properly in the past tense. For this new picture, we are now able to observe, is a verbal one; and we must not expect to see the details in quite the same order that we should expect if this were an actual painting before our eyes.

According to T.S Eliot in The Sewanee Review (Vol. 56), the device of the historical present is familiar enough in Milton, and in other writers. The shift back to the past tense immediately after the present tense has been used to bring a part of the picture forward. But even this is a piece of relatively simple technique compared with the complicated effects of the earlier passages, he states.
 The description is therefore, regarded as a painting, and plainly not a photographic one in its characteristics. It is revealed to be one that skilfully arranges depths and chiaroscuro; it is vague and sharp, suggestive and defined, real and unreal. It secures all these effects while it is obeying literary laws, and this though the final effects may approximate those of painting.

He then goes on to say:

“I repeat that the remoteness of Milton’s verse from ordinary speech, his invention of his own poetic language, seems to me one of the marks of his greatness. Other marks are his sense of structure, both in the general design of Paradise Lost and Samson, and in his syntax; and finally, and not least, his inerrancy, conscious or unconscious, in writing so as to make the best display of his talents, and the best concealment of his weaknesses. The appropriateness of the material of Paradise Lost to the genius and the limitations of Milton, is still more evident when we consider the visual imagery. I have already remarked, in a paper written some years ago, on Milton’s weakness of visual observation, a weakness which I think was always present- the effect of his blindness may have been rather to strengthen the compensatory qualities than to increase a fault which was already present. Mr. Wilson Knight, who has devoted close study to recurrent imagery in poetry, has called attention to Milton’s propensity towards images of engineering and mechanics; to me it seems that Milton is at his best in imagery suggestive of vast size, limitless space, abysmal depth, and light and darkness. No theme and no setting, other than that which he chose in Paradise Lost, could have given him such scope for the kind of imagery in which he excelled, or made less demand upon those powers of visual imagination which were in him defective.”

An example of this would be the phrase “Of depth immeasurable” in line 549 of Paradise Lost (Book I) reaffirms the effect of the verb tenses, and gives the impression of depth so frequent in the backgrounds of Renaissance paintings. The following phrase, “ in guise/Of Warriers old ” (Paradise Lost, Line 564, Book I) -especially the ‘in guise’ part, brings in the note of strangeness, the imaginative unreality through which art achieves the real. For this poet, a picture, however rich in details, need not be confined to one frame. The picture may move imperceptibly into a second picture and then into a third, the foreground of one overlapping into the background of the next, and so on. And yet the effect may remain closer to the effect of painting than of cinema.

Milton’s predisposition to envision form as that which transcends the visible world and, on the other, as that which constitutes it is a dichotomy that is oft seen in his work. To be slightly more specific, we see a metaphysic that maintains the integrity of the phenomenal world from the vantage point of a supraphenomenal perspective. The repercussions of this posture have an immense bearing upon Milton’s conduct in both the prose and poetry, a conduct that can be understood upon closely analysing and juxtaposing Miltonian, Aristotelian and Platonic discourse.

Further reading on the ultimate movement of thought in the seventeenth century showed a shift or movement away from allegorical and symbolic modes of interpretation and toward more idiosyncratic formulas of interpretation. It was seen that a new school of rationalism looked at classical myth with unblurred eyes, and the paradigmatic frame of explanation began to be discarded as men came to view ‘in the diffusion of myth an aspect of man’s intellectual and cultural progress.’
In this sense, one could say that the seventeenth century was strongly Augustinian: man’s reason was insufficient to ensure salvation (Augustine would argue that reason in fallen man was the seat of his corruption). God’s grace alone was the reconciler of opposites. Hence, unlike modern realism which may be described as “poetry of opposition,” emphasizing the disparateness of experience in order to convey the poet’s perception of the true nature of that experience, seventeenth-century poetry described as ” ‘poetry of reconciliation’ came nearer than ‘poetry of opposites’ to the emphasis intended by seventeenth-century poets. Stemming from this, we see that in Paradise Lost, Milton was drawing upon many ancient traditions to create a sweeping epic-view of man’s nature and destiny in a universe initiated and providentially preserved by God.

Milton’s shift from outward to inward seeing, from external to internal sight, recalls Dante’s shift from reliance on his physical sight to the divine power of “phantasy” which makes the carvings he sees speak as living forms. In both cases the pilgrims gain knowledge beyond their own experience, and for both the verbal or oral aspect of the instruction humanizes its visually overwhelming component. While Adam’s visions lie outside his lived experience, their source in the Hebrew scriptures is of course readily available to Milton. Even so, the verbal texture of the episode becomes Milton’s own. Here and throughout, Paradise Lost presents a thoroughly vocalized set of visions, accessible through God’s external word in scripture, the internal Word of the spirit, and the articulate words of Virgil, Dante, and other poets.

This limitation of visual power, like Milton’s limited interest in human beings, turns out to be a defining characteristic and not merely a negligible defect, and also a positive virtue. An example of this is when Adam and Eve in Eden are observed. Just as a higher degree of characterization of Adam and Eve would have been unsuitable, so a more vivid picture of the earthly Paradise would have been less paradisiacal. In order to achieve a greater definiteness, a more detailed account of flora and fauna, would have alienated the reader instead. One could only have assimilated Eden to the landscapes of earth with which we are familiar with the extra cohesion, if it was provided. The limo that we are given with regards to the imagery is what draws the line between description and imagination and ends up being the best version of itself . As it turns out ultimately, the impression of Eden which we retain, is the most suitable, and is that which Milton was most qualified to give: the impression of light- a daylight and a starlight, a light of dawn and of dusk, the light which, remembered by a man in his blindness, has a supernatural glory unexperienced by men of normal vision.

When we read lines 549 to 562 in Book I of Paradise Lost, we see that in its entirety, it has an important purpose to fulfil.

“Anon they move
In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of Flutes and soft Recorders; such as rais’d
To highth of noblest temper Hero’s old
Arming to Battel, and instead of rage
 Deliberate valour breath’d, firm and unmov’d
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat,
Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage
With solemn touches, troubl’d thoughts, and chase
 Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they
Breathing united force with fixed thought
Mov’d on in silence to soft pipes that charm’d
Thir painful steps o’re the burnt soyle.”

The fallen angels that are described and their leader, are full of doubts and fears, but they still desperately wish to be defiant. The only certainty they are capable of feeling is that of marching men. Yet this feeling is for fallen angels more a refuge than a strength. The artist is great enough in his sympathy, and in his art, to feel his way into the villains of his piece. Suddenly they are angels, though fallen; and like the reader, or the ordinary man, underneath their various exteriors, they are dependent upon comforts that are outside themselves. Satan and his legions of devils, the fallen angels, all humanity-for a moment they fuse and become one in their strength and weakness. It is only for a moment, but it is a bold moment. This segment can be compared with line 558, “Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain,” another distinguished series of nouns- an effect that can also be seen as being utilized in Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach.

Making a comparison with Dante’s failure of vision and Paradise Lost, we observe that even though the former coincides with the latter, especially at the end of his poem, Milton’s reliance on the power of the spoken word to engender visionary enlightenment carries his pilgrim’s education further through Dante’s art of visual speech. The final conclusion of Milton’s epic takes fallen humanity from the ‘merely spontaneous free will of Eden’ to what can be salvaged in a malignant world, which ends up being hard-won liberty for God’s faithful.
This sequence of divine visions, human responses, and angelic corrections leads Adam to see the true nature of his own sin and to attain self-governance in order to minimize this very sin through future choices. As if recalling the beginning of Dante’s journey, Milton abandons his pilgrims enlightened yet humbled for their solitary journey as they depart from Eden to their dark wood of choice.

Therefore, we see that an aesthetic that emphasizes on small ironies or themes developing an image may not follow the separate ironies far below the surface, that ends up forming two distinct, but eventually related images. All of the possible variations would thus proceed from the one theme, which itself remains static, though the details may or may not. But the implications of these details do not really trouble and work the theme to make it a rich imaginative thing, greater and more significant by the suggestive evolvement of its implications. This is a technique that is very effectively observed in Milton’s work, especially Paradise Lost. The difference that ultimately is revealed is that the divide between illustrating an idea and developing it with artistic imagination is a significant one and hinges on the difference between using the aesthetic of tension as a formula and using it as a standard.

Nadia Imam
PG – II
Roll No. 37

John Milton is undoubtedly considered one of the most powerful writers in the English canon. Several critics believe that from a young age, Milton too possessed “an intense awareness of his own talents”.[1] However, he was also aware of the vast tradition of the English canon that his various predecessors had composed and left behind. This awareness most notably manifests itself in Milton’s poem “On Shakespeare” (1630).

The poem was written for the Second Folio of Shakespeare’s works, which was published in 1632 and is actually Milton’s first published poem. It may be argued therefore, that his very career begins with a homage to one of England’s most celebrated writers – “the son of memory”[2] – and thus indirectly, to the English literary tradition as a whole.

Milton does not appear to pay tribute to any other canonical writer in his repository of notable works, although his poem “Lycidas”, written after Edward King’s untimely death in 1637, invokes the figure of a “poet-priest cut off in his youth”[3]. Shakespeare thus remains the only named figure, who is directly praised in Milton’s verse. Although a cursory reading of Milton would indicate that any mention of the bard is limited to “On Shakespeare”, it is possible to find the latter’s influence throughout a larger section of Milton’s works.

This is most evidently so in the poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso”. According to Laurence Lerner in his notes to The English Poems of John Milton, the rather extravagant central conceit of “On Shakespeare” – that the bard does not need a marble tomb because his readers turn to marble through admiration when reading him – may be compared to the following lines in “Il Penseroso”: “Come, but keep thy wonted state,/With even step, and musing gait,/And looks commercing with the skies,/Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:/There, held in holy passion still,/Forget thyself to marble, till/With a sad leaden downward cast/Thou fix them on the earth as fast.”[4]

Laurence proposes that the pair of poems do not show much influence of Greek and Latin poetry, and the most prominent English model behind them is Shakespeare. He further argues that “Jonson’s learned sock” as referred to in “L’Allegro”[5] was an attempt to contrast Ben Jonson’s learning with Shakespeare’s spontaneity in terms of language.

Although the above examples all adequately prove the extent of Shakespeare’s influence on the poetry of Milton, the latter’s most rich and complex tribute to the former may be argued as the masque Comus, written for a performance at Ludlow Castle in 1634. In the allegorical tradition of masques, Milton’s work shows the reader a series of tribulations faced by the protagonist, referred to simply as the Lady, whose virtuousness allow the ultimate triumph of virtue over vice. The masque is narrated to a certain degree by an Attendant Spirit from Heaven, who tells the reader of a sorcerer, the titular Comus, who intends upon tempting the lost Lady and leading her astray from her path of virtue.

Lerner states that the language of the Attendant Spirit is extremely pagan in that it is “suffused with a sense of the magical powers of the earth, a feeling that we walk surrounded by presences that should be propitiated…”[6]. He quotes a section from the text: “Some say no evil thing that walks by night/In fog or fire, by lakes or moorish fen…/No goblin or swart faery of the mine, /Hath hurtful power o’er true virginity…”[7] and claims that this poetry is Milton’s learning of Shakespeare’s verses with “its feeling for country superstitions, the fascination of the half-seen and almost believed-in.”[8] He goes on to refer to Comus as the most deeply pagan figure in the masque, ascribing to him the language and ethos of the characters in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Lerner’s comparisons between Comus and Shakespeare’s use of language are furthered by John Rogers in his lecture “Poetry and Virginity” at Yale University. Rather than limiting the scope of his comparison to the pagan sensibilities of language found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rogers focuses on much wider significances as he elaborates on his hypothesis on the masque being about “the act of hearing song and the ethics of proper listening”.[9]

Indeed, the very first lines spoken by the Lady in the text are a response to the music that Comus produces. She seems to want to achieve a manner of listening to Comus’ music without being overwhelmed by it or having it affect her in any negative manner. This is due in no uncertain terms to the fact that Comus’ speech is the richest out of the characters in the masque, owing to their debt to Shakespeare. Comus constantly echoes and alludes to the language of the bard, thus presenting Shakespeare himself as a temptation as powerful as the sorcerer. According to Rogers, “it’s as if Milton places the beautiful poetry of Shakespeare into the mouth of this evil magician…” in order to represent “a temptation greater even than promiscuous sex…”, as indirectly offered by Comus to the Lady.

Rogers further argues that after establishing his name to certain extent in the literary world, Milton painstakingly underwent a process by which he endeavored to remove all traces of the secular from his poetry. He attempts to explain vilification of Shakespeare, by identifying him with Comus as part of “Milton’s long-standing project to purge his lips of secular interests and to cleanse his literary consciousness of the tempting influence of secular literary voices”. However, much like the standoff between Comus and the Lady, the standoff between Shakespeare and Milton is not easily resolved. Although the Lady’s rhetoric is beautiful and holds its own ground, it is unable to overpower the logic and beauty of Comus’ verse. This struggle between the two ironically manifests itself in the change in the masque’s title. While the text was originally titled A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, &C, by the end of the eighteenth century it came to be referred to simply as Comus. It may be argued therefore that Comus edges the Lady out and establishes himself as the centre of the work. Rogers elaborates that in the fiction of the mask itself, the overpowering nature of Comus’ argument leaves the Lady more often than not in silence. Furthermore, although she remains partially capable of speech, she is rendered physically incapable of movement. She is very remarkably stuck to a “marble venomed seat smeared with gums of glutinous heat.”

This is followed by Comus’ comment “Nay, Lady, sit. If I but wave this wand,/Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,/And you a statue, or as Daphne was/Root-bound, that fled Apollo.” This reference to the process of marmorialization or the turning of one into marble reminds one of the earlier poems referred to, including “On Shakespeare” and “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso”. The image of a figure turned to stone or at the very least immobilised or paralysed recurs throughout Milton’s early poetry. It is of note how much like Comus’ rhetoric renders the Lady immobile, in his tribute “On Shakespeare” Milton claims that the essence of Shakespeare affects his readers in a similar manner – “Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving”. Thus, the effect of Shakespeare’s rhetoric on his reader is akin to Comus’ (who is representative of Shakespearean rhetoric) on the Lady.

Lerner and Roger’s argument is undoubtedly compelling, and contributes towards the myriad interesting interpretations of Milton’s work in general and Comus in particular. However, its drawback occurs when we find that despite being marmorialized and unable to speak except for a brief doctrine on the virtues of virginity, the Lady is finally able to regain her mobility. She is released from the paralysis caused by Comus’ words and is able to re-join her brothers and proceed to their father in Wales. This is significant if we believe that Milton was conscious of Shakespeare’s influence on his masque and deliberately chose to exert such through Comus’ rhetoric. It may be argued that this is perhaps indicative of the fact that although an intrinsic part of Milton appreciated the richness and vividness of Shakespeare’s language and imagery, he deliberately rejected “secular literary influences”. Despite Comus’ seductive rhetorical power, it is the virginal and plain-spoken Lady who triumphs in the end – perhaps a metaphor for Milton’s desire to overcome the temptations of the decadent English literary tradition for a complete espousal of the kind of literature that wholly reflected his conservative religious ideals.

Works Cited

Lerner, Laurence. 1994. “Comus Introduction.” In The English Poems of John Milton, 50. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Lerner, Laurence. 1994. “General Introduction.” In The English Poems of John Milton, ix. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

—. 1994. The English Poems of John Milton. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Milton, John. 1994. “Comus.” In The English Poems of John Milton, by Laurence Lerner, 53-85. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Milton, John. 1994. “Il Pensoroso.” In The English Poems of John Milton, by Laurence Lerner, 29. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Milton, John. 1994. “L’Allegro.” In The English Poems of John Milton, by Laurence Lerner, 27. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Milton, John. 1994. “On Shakespeare.” In The English Poems of John Milton, by Laurence Lerner, 21. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Rogers, John. 2007. Poetry and Virginity. New Haven, September 17.

[1] (Lerner 1994)

[2] (Milton, On Shakespeare 1994)

[3] (Lerner, The English Poems of John Milton 1994)

[4] (Milton 1994)

[5] (Milton, L’Allegro 1994)

[6] (Lerner, Comus Introduction 1994)

[7] (Milton, Comus 1994)

[8] (Lerner, Comus Introduction 1994)

[9] (Rogers 2007)