Postscript

2020 ◽  
pp. 192-196
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Critical Science

…the vilest here excel me, They creep, yet see, I dark in light exposed…. John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671)1 1John Milton, ‘Samson Agonistes’, Paradise Regained, to which is added Samson Agonistes (London, 1671), ll. 74–5. Regarding the turn in critical science studies to include alongside a Baconian narrative of objective knowledge collection ‘stories that focus on social and political relationships and on ideological desires more than on the progress of reason and the discovery of truth’, Eve Keller has commented that ‘critical valuation of the stories the [Baconian] “fathers” wanted to tell about themselves—valuation, that is, of the stories ...

John Milton: Paradise Lost (1935); Paradise Regained, Minor Poems and Samson Agonistes (1937)

1938 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 432
Author(s):  
B. A. Wright ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Merritt Y. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained

John Milton

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Gimelli Martin
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Civil Contract

Milton’s religious outlook blends Christian humanism, including its dedication to close textual analysis, with idealistic, even futuristic or Baconian longings for a new, thoroughly reformed church and state. His most radical and unpuritanical ideas include ending state censorship, state support of the clergy, and clerical control of divorce, since he views marriage as a civil contract cancellable on grounds of incompatibility. Milton’s early prose and poetry express these ideas, but his most successful early poems blend Neoplatonic motifs of ascent with a strong moral emphasis on free choice. Paradise Lost continues that emphasis, but tempered by a vivid portrait of Satan and a deferred, if still sublime vision of heavenly reward. Its expanded epic cosmos reappears in Paradise Regained, but without the extraterrestrial landscapes or dynamic conflicts of the original. This chapter concludes that Samson Agonistes is truly ‘Greek’ in its tragic, meditative focus on self-betrayal, self-knowledge, and social renewal.

The Chronology of Milton's Major Poems

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 345-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Shawcross
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
Important Study

The conclusion of Ants Oras as to the chronology of Milton's major poems, based on his important study of the blank vejse, is, I believe, in serious error. Examining strong pauses, both terminal and medial, the distribution of medial pauses over the pentameter line, run-on lines, feminine and masculine pauses, the distribution of polysyllables over the verse line, feminine endings, rhythmical expressions creating shifted stresses, syllabized “-ed” endings, and pyrrhic verse endings, Oras concludes that the traditional chronology for Paradise Lost (from Book I through Book XII), Paradise Regained (from Book I through Book IV), and Samson Agonistes is correct. As a prosodical study, the statistical data presented lead us to a greater understanding of the aforementioned verse techniques as used by Milton than we have heretofore known. Professor Oras' inferences of dated practice are, however, another matter.

John Milton and Musical Abjection

2019 ◽  
pp. 149-202
Author(s):  
Scott A. Trudell
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
The State ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Media Adaptation ◽  
Music Publishers ◽  
Authorial Voice

In John Milton’s works, music is a powerful instigator of unsettling modes of poetry. From A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle to Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost, Milton remains fascinated by the transformative potential of song, though he comes increasingly to eschew its uncontrollable qualities. In his later career, Milton found it increasingly pressing to subordinate music to his authorial voice. Yet his fantasies of bibliographic control did not prevent him from influencing the songbook movement of the 1650s or from becoming a source for Dryden’s unperformed opera The State of Innocence. Tracing Milton’s connections to his erstwhile collaborator Alice Egerton, to Cavalier songwriters including William Cartwright, and to music publishers including John Playford, Chapter 4 reveals that poetry retained its tendencies toward media adaptation notwithstanding the conflicted desires of poets.

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