Milton Among the Romans: The Pedagogy and Influence of Milton's Latin CurriculumIn the 1640s, John Milton led a group of students through an extensive curriculum of ancient Latin authors. Together, they read works by ten Roman authors, including the four major agricultural writers (Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius), the naturalist Pliny, the architect Vitruvius, and the epic poets Lucretius and Manilius. While scholars have long known about Milton's academy, no one, until now, has undertaken to thoroughly examine the implications of its curriculum for our understanding of Milton's poetry. Here, Richard J. DuRocher provides the first such scholarly study of Milton's Latin tutorial. DuRocher's analysis works on at least two levels. First, this study establishes the pedagogical innovation of the curriculum itself. DuRocher argues that Milton's choice of the Roman texts indicated his emphasis on teaching practical skills, such as how to raise crops or build dwellings. However, at the same time, Milton followed the Romans in subordinating technical training to an encompassing moral vision, most notably of respect for the living Earth. Moreover, Milton's curriculum supported his twin educational aims as set forth in Of Education: to prepare students for lives of public service, and to lead them to knowledge of the divine by "orderly conning over" discreet elements of Creation. Second, Milton Among the Romans uncovers fresh sources and contexts for passages--many of them crucial ones--in Milton's own writings. For example, Roman agricultural manuals illuminate Milton's baffling depiction of the undying heavenly flora, "immortal Amaranth," in Paradise Lost. Reading Vitruvius may account for the surprisingly positive architectural features of the demonic temple, Pandemonium. Astrological metaphors drawn from Manilius's neglected epic, the Astronomica, provide heavenly precedents for both divorce in Milton's divorce tracts and for the mysterious spiritual marriage of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost. Drawing upon this previously unexamined evidence from Milton's classical curriculum, Milton Among the Romans takes a genuinely new approach to Milton as a teacher, scholar, and poet. |
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Page 58
... agriculture itself - on tilling and seed- ing as well as on agricultural theory and practice generally — is also remarkable . The inclusion of agriculture is remarkable if only because Milton could have entirely avoided it . There are ...
... agriculture itself - on tilling and seed- ing as well as on agricultural theory and practice generally — is also remarkable . The inclusion of agriculture is remarkable if only because Milton could have entirely avoided it . There are ...
Page 59
... agricultural images , the figure of the " careful Plowman , " which has been read allegorically mis- takenly , I believe - as either Satan or God . I choose the plow- man image partly because its dependence on Roman literature is so ...
... agricultural images , the figure of the " careful Plowman , " which has been read allegorically mis- takenly , I believe - as either Satan or God . I choose the plow- man image partly because its dependence on Roman literature is so ...
Page 60
... agricultural texts enables us to grasp their relevance to Paradise Lost , their power to cultivate readers no less than crops . 8 Commelinus's edition of the Roman authors De Re Rustica has one immediately intriguing feature . On its ...
... agricultural texts enables us to grasp their relevance to Paradise Lost , their power to cultivate readers no less than crops . 8 Commelinus's edition of the Roman authors De Re Rustica has one immediately intriguing feature . On its ...
Contents
Reading the Romans | 1 |
ONE Conning the Creature | 35 |
Two Careful Plowing | 54 |
Copyright | |
2 other sections not shown
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