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 4
... ancient classical ) source in prefer- ence to one written in his own native tongue . However , while the twentieth century speaker of English can expect most scholarship to be available in English or to be eventu- ally translated into ...
... ancient classical ) source in prefer- ence to one written in his own native tongue . However , while the twentieth century speaker of English can expect most scholarship to be available in English or to be eventu- ally translated into ...
Page 8
... ( Ancient Readings ) of Ludovicus Rhodiginus Caelius , a huge encyclopedia of commen- tary on selected passages from ancient Greek and Roman authors . Chapter eight , " Milton and the Mythographers , " traces the broad tradition of ...
... ( Ancient Readings ) of Ludovicus Rhodiginus Caelius , a huge encyclopedia of commen- tary on selected passages from ancient Greek and Roman authors . Chapter eight , " Milton and the Mythographers , " traces the broad tradition of ...
Page 306
... ancient times and almost from the beginning of the world : for the Egyptians ( which thinke themselues to be the first people of the world ) before the vse of letters , wrote by figures & images , as well of men , beasts , fowles , and ...
... ancient times and almost from the beginning of the world : for the Egyptians ( which thinke themselues to be the first people of the world ) before the vse of letters , wrote by figures & images , as well of men , beasts , fowles , and ...
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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