The Ruins of Allegory: Paradise Lost and the Metamorphosis of Epic ConventionIn this reexamination of the allegorical dimensions of Paradise Lost, Catherine Martin presents Milton's poem as a prophecy foretelling the end of one culture and its replacement by another. She argues that rather than merely extending the allegorical tradition as defined by Augustine, Dante, and Spenser, Milton has written a meta-allegory that stages a confrontation with an allegorical formalism that is either dead or no longer philosophically viable. By both critiquing and recasting the traditional form, Milton describes the transition to a new epoch that promises the possibility of human redemption in history. Martin shows how Paradise Lost, written at the threshold of the enormous imaginative shift that accompanied the Protestant, scientific, and political revolutions of the seventeenth century, conforms to a prophetic baroque model of allegory similar to that outlined by Walter Benjamin. As she demonstrates, Milton's experimentation with baroque forms radically reformulates classical epic, medieval romance, and Spenserian allegory to allow for both a naturalistic, empirically responsible understanding of the universe and for an infinite and incomprehensible God. In this way, the resulting poetic world of Paradise Lost is like Milton's God, an allegorical "ruin" in which the divine is preserved but at the price of a loss of certainty. Also, as Martin suggests, the poem affirmatively anticipates modernity by placing the chief hope of human progress in the fully self-authored subject. Maintaining a dialogue with a critical tradition that extends from Johnson and Coleridge to the best contemporary Milton scholarship, Martin sets Paradise Lost in both the early modern and the postmodern worlds. Ruins of Allegory will greatly interest all Milton scholars, as well as students of literary criticism and early modern studies. |
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Page 110
... becomes the new center not only of the number system but also of the universe , the metasign uniquely capable of signifying the ... become its inner - worldly " presence " -which , by definition , is there only by human definition , by a ...
... becomes the new center not only of the number system but also of the universe , the metasign uniquely capable of signifying the ... become its inner - worldly " presence " -which , by definition , is there only by human definition , by a ...
Page 295
... becomes more pronounced as he retreats into abstractions ever more remote from the more transpar- ent signs of Eden ... become " like " God only by learning what the deity would rather they not have known : with- out the " remedy ” of ...
... becomes more pronounced as he retreats into abstractions ever more remote from the more transpar- ent signs of Eden ... become " like " God only by learning what the deity would rather they not have known : with- out the " remedy ” of ...
Page 332
... become infinitely incommensurable , the task of the subject is similarly " Other " : at once to calculate the precise figurative and literal boundaries of representation and to transcend them by approximating the incalculable ...
... become infinitely incommensurable , the task of the subject is similarly " Other " : at once to calculate the precise figurative and literal boundaries of representation and to transcend them by approximating the incalculable ...
Contents
Miltons Metamorphosis of Allegory | 31 |
Between the Visible and the Invisible | 81 |
From the Allegorical Kosmos to Miltonic Space | 121 |
Copyright | |
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Abdiel abstract Adam and Eve Adam's allegory allegory's ambiguous angels Areopagitica baroque allegory become Cartesian causal causes Chaos Christian cosmic cosmos creation dark Death deity demons dialectic divine earth emblematic emblems entropy epic similes eternal Eve's evil faith final freedom fruits God's grace heaven hell hermeneutical hierarchy human immanent infinite inherent interpretation ironically John Milton language light literal logic magical material matter meaning merely meta-allegorical metaphor metaphysical metonymy Michael Milton's epic mimetic mode monistic moral mysterious mystical myth narrative natural naturalistic negentropic Neoplatonic normative allegory once oral Pandaemonium Paradise Lost paradoxical Pascal's personification perspective physical poem poem's poet poetic poetry potential psychomachia Raphael rational reader revealed rhetoric ritual ruin sacramental Satan schema seems sense signs simile space Spenser spirit suggests symbolic synecdoche temporal theodicy things thir thou tion traditional transcendent truth ultimately University Press vanishing point virtue vitalistic words