Through a Glass Darkly: Milton's Reinvention of the Mythological TraditionIn this wide-ranging and ambitious study, John Mulryan contributes significantly to our knowledge of the mythological underpinnings of John Milton's works. Perhaps our most Christian poet, Milton chose to communicate his vision of reality in the language of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. As Mulryan points out, Milton as no other poet before him mastered the texts of classical mythology in their original languages and seldom wrote a line that did not betray their influence. Here, we are reintroduced to the Renaissance millieu that was not only intimately familiar to Milton but that helped to shape his thinking about fundamental matters that he addresses in his poetry, particularly Paradise Lost. Mulryan's study first establishes the incredible richness of the mythological tradition that was available to Milton, including many sources that have either been ignored or depreciated in current scholarship. Milton's own view of classical myth is then explored, and Mulryan provides insight into how this view had to deal with the problem of reconciling pagan learning and Christian thought. Finally, this study demonstrates how Milton drew upon and assimilated the mythological traditions in his poetry as a reflection of the receptiveness to such acts of "creative mythologizing" during his own time. "Through a Glass Darkly" is primarily historical in its methodological approach, but it is relevant also for scholars using structuralist, deconstructionist, feminist, new historicist, psychoanalytic, or postmodernist approaches to Literary Studies. Myth is itself a kind of language that Milton, in a sense, "deconstructs." As this study shows, Milton decodes the mythological tradition, only to encode it in another way. |
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Page 12
... according to Harold Bloom , Milton adds his own deconstructive twist to the classical canon through his " allusive triumph over tradi- tion , " a contextualizing of Homer , Vergil , and Ovid that makes them seem as if they were Milton's ...
... according to Harold Bloom , Milton adds his own deconstructive twist to the classical canon through his " allusive triumph over tradi- tion , " a contextualizing of Homer , Vergil , and Ovid that makes them seem as if they were Milton's ...
Page 256
... According to ancient testimony this notion evolved from the practice of arranging some round mirrors to make the Moon look as if it were being pulled right down from the heavens . In fact Pythagoras had a little Moon game he liked to ...
... According to ancient testimony this notion evolved from the practice of arranging some round mirrors to make the Moon look as if it were being pulled right down from the heavens . In fact Pythagoras had a little Moon game he liked to ...
Page 268
... according to Conti's quotation from Vergil , " calls pale ghosts from Orcus and sends others down to gloomy Tartarus , gives or takes away sleep and unseals eyes in death " ( Conti 442 ; Aen . 4 , 242-44 ) . His caduceus , the shield ...
... according to Conti's quotation from Vergil , " calls pale ghosts from Orcus and sends others down to gloomy Tartarus , gives or takes away sleep and unseals eyes in death " ( Conti 442 ; Aen . 4 , 242-44 ) . His caduceus , the shield ...
Contents
ONE Milton and the Classics | 14 |
Two Milton and the Church Fathers | 54 |
THREE Milton Martianus Capella Bernard | 67 |
Copyright | |
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