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 142
... reader that an intrinsically mutable divinity directs both the Sun and its variable temporality- from its daily rising and setting to the larger rising and falling cycles of pre- and postlapsarian history . Not only the baroque ...
... reader that an intrinsically mutable divinity directs both the Sun and its variable temporality- from its daily rising and setting to the larger rising and falling cycles of pre- and postlapsarian history . Not only the baroque ...
Page 311
... readers too easily forget that , as a litterateur , Rousseau was far more a moral idealist and an a priori thinker than ... reader , the other natural " enemy " of the patriarchal theory of kingship . " 18 Although Milton's libertarian ...
... readers too easily forget that , as a litterateur , Rousseau was far more a moral idealist and an a priori thinker than ... reader , the other natural " enemy " of the patriarchal theory of kingship . " 18 Although Milton's libertarian ...
Page 321
... reader or believer in the literate life world : Henceforth I learn , that to obey is best , And love with fear the only God , to walk As in his presence , ever to observe His providence , and on him sole depend , Merciful over all his ...
... reader or believer in the literate life world : Henceforth I learn , that to obey is best , And love with fear the only God , to walk As in his presence , ever to observe His providence , and on him sole depend , Merciful over all his ...
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