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 40
... shapes when they came to earth to corrupt humankind : Godlike shapes and forms Excelling human , Princely Dignities , And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones ; Though of thir Names in heav'nly Records now Be no memorial blotted ...
... shapes when they came to earth to corrupt humankind : Godlike shapes and forms Excelling human , Princely Dignities , And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones ; Though of thir Names in heav'nly Records now Be no memorial blotted ...
Page 231
... shapes . Juno changed herself into a cow , as Ovid says in the fifth book of his Metamorphoses : How even there Typhoeus , son of Earth , pursued them , and the gods hid themselves in lying shapes : " Jove thus became a ram , " said she ...
... shapes . Juno changed herself into a cow , as Ovid says in the fifth book of his Metamorphoses : How even there Typhoeus , son of Earth , pursued them , and the gods hid themselves in lying shapes : " Jove thus became a ram , " said she ...
Page 235
... shapes of metals , .... Treacherous skill , hateful to good men , how pleasantly you destroy men captivated by your charm ! Wicked siren of maddened men ! Do you think that you can conquer na- ture with fire ? Oh fool , why do you rave ...
... shapes of metals , .... Treacherous skill , hateful to good men , how pleasantly you destroy men captivated by your charm ! Wicked siren of maddened men ! Do you think that you can conquer na- ture with fire ? Oh fool , why do you rave ...
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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