Christ on the Tower in Paradise Regained

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.

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The “Urbs Æterna” in Paradise Regained

PMLA ◽

10.1632/459360 ◽

1946 ◽

Vol 61 (2) ◽

pp. 474-491

Author(s):

Samuel Kliger

Keyword(s):

Paradise Regained ◽

Long Line ◽

Classical Conception

The classical conception of the “urbs æterna,” voiced by a long line of Rome's poets and orators, is an element in Milton's Paradise Regained which deserves recognition particularly since it serves to bring to light the strong possibility that in composing Paradise Regained Milton may have levied on the poetry of the Roman panegyrist Claudianus (fl. 400 a.d.).

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'The Excursion' and Wordsworth's Iconography

10.3828/liverpool/9781786941336.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Brandon C. Yen

Keyword(s):

Paradise Lost ◽

The Other ◽

Long Poem ◽

Paradise Regained ◽

The One

This book considers William Wordsworth’s use of iconography in his long poem The Excursion (1814). Through this iconographical approach, it steers a middle course between The Excursion’s two very different interpretative traditions, the one focusing upon the poem’s abstraction, the other upon its touristic realism. The author explores Wordsworth’s iconography in The Excursion by tracing cultural and political allusions and correspondences in an abundance of post-1789 and earlier verbal and pictorial sources, as well as in Wordsworth’s own prose and poetry, especially The Prelude. Particular attention is paid to the complex ways in which The Excursion’s iconographical images contribute to – and also impose limitations upon – the overarching preoccupations of Wordsworth’s writings: the themes of paradise lost and paradise regained in the post-revolutionary context. This study thus revises New Historicist accounts of Wordsworth’s evasion of history by investigating the capacity of apparently ‘collateral’ images to respond to weighty arguments. In elucidating this vital aspect of Wordsworth’s poetic method, it reveals the visual etymologies – together with the nuances and rhetorical capacities – of five categories of images: envisioning, rooting, dwelling, flowing, and reflecting.

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