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 229
... faith , of seeing . The hypermystical intrusion of this chariot at the climax of what had appeared to be a relatively mimetic psychomachia thus mark it as a baroque vanishing point , after which the traditional heroics of epic- allegory ...
... faith , of seeing . The hypermystical intrusion of this chariot at the climax of what had appeared to be a relatively mimetic psychomachia thus mark it as a baroque vanishing point , after which the traditional heroics of epic- allegory ...
Page 314
... Faith to stand " ( 12.527 ) . The task of historical reading thus supplements and directs faith and implicitly redemption itself , which will not be wholly fulfilled until the final “ renovation of the just . " Traditionally Stoic but ...
... Faith to stand " ( 12.527 ) . The task of historical reading thus supplements and directs faith and implicitly redemption itself , which will not be wholly fulfilled until the final “ renovation of the just . " Traditionally Stoic but ...
Page 321
... Faith to stand , Thir own Faith not another's : for on Earth Who against Faith and Conscience can be heard . Infallible ? yet many ( PL , 12.524-30 ) will presume . . . . In contrast to these “ presumers , ” the " living Temples " of ...
... Faith to stand , Thir own Faith not another's : for on Earth Who against Faith and Conscience can be heard . Infallible ? yet many ( PL , 12.524-30 ) will presume . . . . In contrast to these “ presumers , ” the " living Temples " of ...
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