Ambiguity and Audience Response

By the time John Milton published Of Education in 1644, many educational theorists had already suggested varying goals for education,1 but few had suggested such an explicitly theological purpose. Early in the tract, Milton states “The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection” (2: 366-67). Education's central purpose is the reapprehension of the knowledge of God, which was lost through the Fall. However, after discussing second-language acquisition, Milton announces another, quite different, purpose: “I call therefore a compleate and generous Education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publike of peace and war” (2: 377-79). Milton's two stated purposes have generated a wide variety of explanations over the years. Some readers have argued his theological purpose is ancillary to his civil purpose, while others view the two purpose statements as fundamentally incompatible. As early as 1922, Murray Bundy described Milton's spiritual purpose as postlapsarian and his civic purpose as prelapsarian, thus making the two goals impossible to achieve at the same time (128-29). In 1944 Tyrus Hillway argued Milton's spiritual purpose was the means by which to achieve his civic purpose (377). A decade later, M. G. Mason contended that “ ‘to know God aright' is the spiritual call, which, in an interesting passage reminiscent of Plato, [Milton] then translated into more concrete terms. One way to Godliness was, he stated, through an education ‘which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publike of peace and war’” (214; emphasis added). Mason believed, as would others later, that Of Education sees spiritual development as a result of intellectual development. In contrast, John F. Huntley argued in 1964 that Milton's spiritual purpose, unlike his civic goal, is not achievable through education (45). More recently, Martin Dzelzainis's brief discussion of Milton's theory of education does not even mention the first statement of purpose, but skips directly to the second, claiming that Of Education“begins with a grandiloquent statement of his ideal,” one that appears almost a third of the way through the text. In another recent assessment, Gauri Viswanathan asserts a fundamental conflict between the two and privileges the civic over the spiritual purpose: “Having decided that the object of education was to make good citizens of the state, Milton put his intellectual weight behind national consolidation rather than individual salvation” (348, 351). Still other critics have seen Milton's two purpose statements as complementary. In 1928 Oliver M. Ainsworth pointed out that “some persons have been confused by Milton's twofold definition of education, supposing its two parts to be unrelated or even inconsistent” (15). But, these aims, combining as they do the classical spirit with the Christian, are of the essence of humanistic educational doctrine. They look, indeed, respectively to the inner and the outer aspects of the same individual, normally developed. Milton, like other genuine humanists, cared little for virtue apart from practice, or for talent without principle. (15)2 Likewise, in 1951 George Sabine maintained that the two purposes are complementary: The end of education is defined as equally “to know God aright” and to fit men “to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously” all the duties of public and private life; the essence of Milton's thought lay in the presumptions that these purposes are identical. Hence education must be comprehensive, addressed to the physical, intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and religious faculties. (vii) While Sabine did not elaborate on the relationship between the two statements, Michael Lieb, in a 1985 essay, developed a detailed argument in which he showed that bodily fitness and the practice of virtue—the moral “fitness” necessary to lead a household or a nation—are inextricably linked to repairing the ruins of the Fall: “Implicit in this postlapsarian view is a process of transformation by which ruins are repaired and knowledge regained as the soul, possessed of true virtue and heavenly grace, achieves a fully spiritualized form” (247). For Lieb, as for Ainsworth and Sabine, Milton's two statements of purpose are complementary. Most recently, Margaret Olofson Thickstun has argued that Milton's educational philosophy, as articulated in Paradise Lost, has what she calls “moral adulthood” as its aim, although she does rely on the implicit assumption that Milton's ultimate pedagogical purpose is “ ‘to repair the ruins of our first parents' ” (2). While some critics see Milton's two purpose statements as unrelated or even antithetical, I follow Ainsworth, Sabine, Lieb, and Thickstun in arguing that Milton's first, theological statement of purpose is indeed his ultimate purpose of education, and I argue further that his second, civic statement of purpose is an observable consequence of the fulfillment of that initial spiritual goal. Because many critics have misunderstood this sequential relationship, they have tended to misapply the principles and curriculum in Of Education to Paradise Lost. Actually, the two works help to elucidate each other, Of Education setting out the goals that drive the teaching scenes in Paradise Lost, and Paradise Lost providing working examples of Milton's educational plan as outlined in the brief prose tract. Milton's statements of purpose are very similar to a standard lesson plan format used by many professional teachers today. A typical lesson plan uses two purpose statements, one concerned with a general goal, the other with a concrete objective. The goal states what the student is to know or understand when the lesson is finished, and aims for a change in the student's thinking, feeling, or knowledge. The objective, on the other hand, states what observable action the student will perform in order to demonstrate that the goal has been met. Robert F. Mager, an educational theorist who popularized the use of objectives in curriculum development, defines an objective as “a description of a pattern of behavior (performance) we want the learner to be able to demonstrate” (3).3 The objective provides criteria with which the teacher can evaluate student behavior in order to determine whether goals have been met. Therefore, a good lesson plan states both what students should know and what they should be able to do after the lesson. Two purpose statements, a goal and an objective, must be listed because the fulfillment of a goal, unlike the fulfillment of an objective, is not directly observable or measurable.4 This is something like what Milton is doing when he proposes two distinct purposes for education. Milton states a goal, knowing God; he also states an objective, producing competent leaders for the home and the state. The objective of becoming a competent leader is observable evidence that a student has met the goal of knowing God. In fact, the language in which Milton originally casts each purpose statement suggests such a relationship between the two. In the spiritual goal, Milton explicitly uses the language of ultimate purpose when he refers to “The end then of learning” (2: 366). Then, when he states his practical objective, he uses not the language of ultimate purpose but of consequence and effect: “I call therefore a compleate and generous Education that which . . . , suggesting that the fitting of men for public office has resulted from meeting the spiritual goal (377-78; emphasis added). Thus, Milton believes education facilitates the accomplishment of both spirituals goals and practical objectives. Today's teachers are often encouraged to combine their goal and objective in a single sentence, and a similar single-sentence purpose statement for Milton's Of Education can easily be constructed: students will regain correct knowledge of God, so that they will perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the private and public offices of peace and war. Thus, I will refer to Milton's first stated purpose, “to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright,” as his spiritual goal, and I will refer to the second stated purpose, “that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publike of peace and war,” as his practical objective. While it would certainly be anachronistic to project contemporary educational practice on Milton's work, the comparison is useful because it provides a familiar, modern example of an educational procedure that uses two connected purpose statements.5 If a modern lesson plan can use two distinct but interrelated purpose statements, the fact that Milton's work also has two purpose statements should not automatically lead to the assumption that the two statements are incompatible or antithetical. The difference between a goal and an objective is complicated by the fact that while the goal is the primary purpose of any educational program, the objective is achieved after the goal has been obtained so there is always the possibility that the objective will be taken to be more important than the goal. This is the mistake that Tyrus Hillway makes when he constructs this single-sentence purpose statement for Milton's work: “In order to fit a man for the performance justly, skilfully, and magnanimously of all the offices both private and public of peace and war, education must help him to repair the ruins of our first parents by teaching him to know God aright . . .” (377; emphasis added). Hillway makes Milton's spiritual goal a means to achieve his practical objective, suggesting that educators must repair the ruins of the Fall for the purpose of fitting a person for public service. Hillway makes the same mistake that many teachers today make of “teaching to the test,” thinking that fulfilling the behavioral objective is the one true aim of the educational process and forgetting that the real educational goal is knowledge, understanding, and character formation, not specific behavioral outcomes. Part of this confusion comes from thinking that reaching an educational goal insures the achievement of an educational objective, a sequence Milton does not have in mind. For him, obtaining an objective is tangible evidence that the more important goal has been met. To put it another way: the fact that a student becomes fit for public office is evidence that the student is learning to know God rightly, but the knowledge of God is not a mere means to being fit for public service. It may strike a reader as odd that, while Milton's stated goal is spiritual formation, the program outlined in Of Education does not seem to emphasize spiritual studies. Indeed, G. F. Sensabaugh observes that the tract “dismisses religious studies chiefly to times after the evening repast and to Sundays, when the mind is ripe for moral instruction, and is devoted almost entirely to describing the materials and methods by which gentlemen's sons might secure a ‘compleat and generous Education’ ” (263). Indeed, a cursory survey of Milton's curriculum reveals less study of Scriptures and theology than his spiritual goal might suggest it should. Early on in the curriculum, students study subjects such as arithmetic and geometry during the day, but “After evening repast, till bed time their thoughts will be best taken up in the easie grounds of Religion, and the story of Scripture,” specifically studying the ethical principles to be found in “David, or Salomon, or the Evangels and Apostolic scriptures” (2: 387, 397). Religious studies, at least at first, are relegated to collateral reading; the study of classical literature and natural sciences apparently receives the students' freshest attention in the morning. When Milton next mentions religious studies, the students have progressed from hard sciences to ethics and political science, and at this point, he recommends that they study “law, and legal justice; delivered first, and with best warrant by Moses; and as farre as humane prudence can be trusted, in those extoll'd remains of Grecian Law-givers . . .” (398). Students should study the Torah as a divinely-inspired legal code and compare it to the less-perfect classical legal writers. For the most part, the study of Scriptures and theology occurs on weekends and evenings: “Sundayes also and every evening may be now understandingly spent in the highest matters of Theology, and Church History, ancient and modern” (399-400). These passages are essentially the only explicit mention of strictly religious studies in a curriculum supposedly driven by the goal of knowing God. It seems strange that such a spiritually minded goal would produce a curriculum that appears to push explicitly religious studies to the margins of the program. Sensabaugh concludes that “Milton apparently had not, in 1644, thought through the implications of repairing the ruins of our first parents” (262) and proceeds to argue that Milton must have undergone a radical change of mind between the 1640s and the 1670s, since Of Education, published in 1644, proposes a liberal arts education grounded in the classics, while Milton's later poetry, especially Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, includes stern warnings against the dangers of speculative science and classical learning. By overlooking the fact that Milton republished Of Education in 1673, Sensabaugh leaves himself vulnerable to Irene Samuel's thorough refutation of his argument. Samuel analyzes the rhetorical context of each passage from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained that he cites, showing that in each instance, Milton is merely warning against pursuing knowledge as its own end (722). Milton had always valued education, but only insofar as it produced virtuous people who behaved ethically (713-15). Thickstun has recently confirmed Samuel's position: For Milton, the purpose of language study—of all education—is a knowledge that embraces and fosters greater appreciation of God and the Creation. Although the tone of the pronouncements may modulate in light of the audience and context of their utterances, his position doesn't change much from his exhortation in the seventh Prolusion to Raphael's advice in Paradise Lost. . . . (110) Education for Milton was always a purely instrumental good, never something to be sought for its own sake, but only for the sake of becoming a virtuous and knowledgeable Christian. Milton's spiritual goal does suggest that religious studies should be a priority in his academy, and if Of Education appears to marginalize religious subjects, in reality the curriculum prioritizes them. First, if students spend most nights and weekends studying the Bible and theology, they will spend almost as much time studying specifically religious matters as they will spend studying all other subjects combined. Furthermore, it is anachronistic to presume a clear distinction between religious and secular course materials in Milton's proposed school. If Milton believes that his entire curriculum is designed to ultimately fulfill a spiritual goal, he probably assumes that studying things other than Scriptures and theology will help students attain that goal. Viswanathan claims that in connecting the study of the natural world with spiritual formation, “[Milton] makes the inexplicable leap of arguing that mastering these subjects better equips one to contemplate moral good and evil” (2: 358). But Milton's connection is neither a leap nor inexplicable. For Milton, not only the Bible, but natural science, mathematics, classical literature, political philosophy, and rhetoric can lead to “possessing our souls of true vertue” by teaching truth. Just after he states his spiritual goal for education, Milton says that “because our understanding cannot in this body found it selfe but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessary to be follow'd in all discreet teaching” (367-69). Thus, a student learns to know God not just from studying Scriptures and theology, but from studying the physical world of sensate objects.6 There is no strict division between “secular” and “sacred” knowledge; in education the most important difference is between what is true and what is false. Milton relies implicitly on St. Augustine's maxim that “every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord's” (2.28). If all truth belongs to God, then increasing one's knowledge of any truth, whether of concrete objects or of ethical principles, will increase one's knowledge of God.7 However well this process works in theory, putting it into practice involves certain logistical difficulties. Students might very well increase personal knowledge of God and thus begin to repair the ruins of the Fall, but it is difficult to demonstrate that this goal is being achieved in every person in a student body of 130 young men.8 The problem inherent in any educational goal, and in Milton's spiritual goal especially, is the difficulty of empirically verifying its fulfillment. An algebra teacher can devise a test to measure how much algebra students have learned, but it is much harder to measure the extent to which students are “[repairing] the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright.” The fulfillment of such a goal can be measured only indirectly by observing how the students eventually perform at a concrete task, in this case the effective execution of public offices or estate management. Thus, if Milton's graduates fulfill the duties of certain offices justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, that is evidence, though not entirely conclusive evidence, that they have also progressed in their knowledge of God, just as students' passing of an algebra is evidence, though not conclusive evidence, that they have met the course goal of learning from students' behavior in the physical there is no way for to what those students know or have As Ainsworth Milton's spiritual goal and practical objective indeed, respectively to the inner and the outer aspects of the same individual, normally (15). Milton must rely on the observable the practical objective of good public to demonstrate that his students are meeting his spiritual goal. As Milton himself understanding cannot in this body found it selfe but on sensible (2: This is true for both the student and the the student learns only through and the teacher also only through that the student has of confusion in Milton's spiritual goal to his practical objective is the sequence of in the of an individual student and the of the state. As the individual achieves Milton's spiritual goal, he also to the practical objective as a and while the spiritual its primary only the practical is However, the by a Milton's students have met their practical objective and leaders in a just state, the process would almost met the practical objective should a political that is to other people the spiritual goal because Milton's will be of and intellectual This is articulated in in which Milton the for providing greater intellectual than have other he to it is the and which own and have which is the of all this is that which and our like the of this is that which and up our he the to to and to argue to all For Milton, of the purpose of the is to a for intellectual the of which may a person greater knowledge of God, out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection” Education Thus, the fulfillment of Milton's practical objective in individual students to a political that the fulfillment of his spiritual goal in other The process is A student learns to know God, which fits him for public service. As a public he intellectual which other people to to know God these people also fit for public and the But as the it can difficult to which of the is the real goal for education. is Milton early in Of Education that the true end of education is learning to know God The project of Milton's spiritual goal to his practical objective might be if we neither the goal nor the objective as Milton's in Of Education, but rather for his in his first “I since that to or and no purpose or should then the love of God, and of (2: The some to a modern in which an in the its purpose for Milton's statement his goal and objective in a that at the of To know God is to to love God, which the and to as a public or a leader is to love one's which the second These two first of God and of one's in a way Milton's spiritual goal and practical objective. God is the most important a person can and that love of God love of a love that remains inferior to the love of God, although it is often the more visible of the two. most important goal is to to know God, and while that knowledge effective the political remains inferior to the spiritual purpose of know God, to repair the ruins of the Fall, and to the student in the becomes only when we between sequence and Two important implications follow from the relationship between Milton's two statements of purpose. The first is that both the goal and the objective refer to the Christian of the process by which the Christian learns to Milton's of the by the Fall, it is to view his educational goal as describing the Christian of the of and with God that result from a of grace by It would then be to that Milton education to be a necessary to a has to suggest that not to be to men without or to of any for Milton's academy, in this is a . . .” If Milton's educational goal then would have to whether Milton believes is for the But his to that Milton's general goal and practical objective aspects of and he priority to Milton's the over such as to know God our souls of true and suggest that Milton is describing the process of rather than the of While Milton's does emphasize the the if from its context in the of the sentence, its relationship to is Actually, the the has little to do with for the of in the Fall is not by Paradise Lost, for educational in which are in virtuous and as has such how can be regained through the process of For and are by their and faith at the end of when they and so that Michael can at the end of that he can A . . .” a process by the ruins of the Fall been repaired by Michael would of the of a as a not as a This regaining of is the result of over in Milton's brief if the spiritual that in Paradise Regained is to the of the then the that is by in the brief is the practice of rather than the of Paradise Regained is an example of a of the through as Of Education In the tract, Milton assumes that his students are who have already been but as for all Milton's students to a process of as they to a of faith and to a passage of the is by grace through faith and cannot be by Thus, education cannot produce though a good education will to the process of Milton's educational goal and objective also a the educational scenes in Paradise Lost. There are such first, and then the just after is and Michael after the Fall. principles from Of Education to these scenes in Paradise Lost, Murray Bundy and Michael on the between and and postlapsarian education but in and purpose. Because Milton's of education with education and after the Fall is not between and regaining knowledge of God, between and regaining that students have the to and The in all of and is the knowledge of God, which in a postlapsarian world will begin to the of the Fall. But even in they must to know God and to understand such knowledge is not or but God is learning to know him becomes an In and postlapsarian students with of and while pedagogical methods the Education after the Fall is more difficult because students are to though of education the Fall is because the students true knowledge, although they are of In all educational in the the goal and objective stated in Of Education In each and the knowledge of God and their own on In each instance, the or Michael in the process of by character and to This process is at work when comes to and the he as in his works and that follow from those when for more how the was . . . such from I have to Of knowledge To nor own not which in To in or is to and that God is and that he has to certain to and because of this not to into the

John Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are among the most profound epic poems in the English literary canon. Paradise Lost recounts the dramatic and compelling story of humanity's fall from grace a narrative filled with rebellion, betrayal, and the battle between innocence and corruption. This epic depicts an intense struggle between God and Satan for control over humanity’s fate, spanning the realms of Heaven, Hell, and Earth. Central to this conflict are Adam and Eve, whose susceptibility to temptation lies at the heart of mankind's downfall, orchestrated by Satan and his band of rebel angels. Published in 1667, Paradise Lost vividly portrays Satan’s defiance, his expulsion from Heaven, and his cunning role in leading Adam and Eve into sin, thereby causing their exile from Eden. Its sequel, Paradise Regained (1671), shifts focus to Christ’s unwavering resolve during Satan’s efforts to tempt Him in the wilderness. Where the former epic depicts humanity's fall through disobedience, the latter celebrates redemption by highlighting Christ’s triumphant resistance. Together, the two works present a striking contrast while Paradise Lost illustrates the origin of sin; Paradise Regained reveals the victory over it through steadfast faith and moral fortitude in the face of temptations like lust, pride, and power. These epics aim to assert “Eternal Providence” and illuminate the divine purpose by justifying “the ways of God to men.” In Paradise Lost, Milton narrates the descent of Satan and his followers into Hell’s inferno, Satan’s subsequent escape to Eden’s untainted beauty, and his insidious manipulation of Eve, which ultimately leads to Adam’s choice to share in her fate. Yet even amid humanity’s tragic fall, there remains a promise of redemption. In Paradise Regained, Milton explores Satan’s attempts to undermine Jesus’ mission by tempting Him with worldly power, culminating in a greater triumph as Christ emerges victorious. Together, these epics celebrate the Son as a resplendent hero the ultimate conqueror over sin and death, who reconciles mankind with God. Read as a cohesive narrative, these masterpieces not only exalt the Son’s glory but also provide profound reflections on faith, temptation, and salvation.

Matthew Allen. “‘Entertaining the Irksome Hours’: Paradise Lost 2.521–76 as the Fallen Counterpart of Milton's Curriculum in Of Education.”Peter Auksi. “‘Considerate Building’: The Scriptural Roots of Areopagitica.”Andrew T. Barnaby. “‘Reason is but choosing’: Moral Agency and the Call to Discipleship in Milton's Readie and Easie Way.”Nancy K. Barnard. “‘In Mind Prepared’: Proclaiming the Kingdom of God in Paradise Lost.”R. D. Bedford. “Irony in L ‘Allegro and Il Penseroso.”Tony Bellette. “Milton and the Baroque: A Reassessment.”Joan Heiges Blythe. “Sex‐Marked Direct Objects of Desire in Paradise Lost.”David Boocker. “Milton at Vallombrosa.”James B. Brophy. “Blake's Reinterpretation of Comus: Charity Regained.”Lana Cable. “The Politics of Decorum in Protestant Satire and Milton's Polemics.”Douglas Chambers. “Improved by Tract of Time: Art's Synopticon in Paradise Lost 12.”Alexander Chameyev and Nina Diakonova. “Byron's Manfred and Romantic Milton Worship.”Annemarie Christy. “Satan, Sin, and Death: A Paradigm of the Incestuous Family.”Thomas N. Corns, Lou Burnard, and Roy Flannagan. “Electronic Miltons, Past, Present, and To Come.”Denise Cuthbert. “Milton, Marvell and Queen Christina.”R. W. Desai. “The Human Norm in Paradise Lost: Thus measuring things in Heav‘n by things on Earth.’”Jackie Di Salvo. “Manly Reformation in Samson Agonistes.”Martin K. Doudna. “‘In Our Image’: Father and Son in Paradise Lost.”Charles W. Durham. “Satan and the Hierarchy of Hell in Paradise Lost.”Angela Esterhammer. “Words, Worlds, and Speech Acts: A Miltonic Poetics of Creation.”J. Martin Evans. “Milton's Imperial Epic.”Robert T. Fallon. “The ‘Mole’ and the ‘Lanthorn’: Milton's State Letter to Tuscany.”Ida Fasel. “The Dialectic of the Oxymoron in Paradise Lost.”Noam Flinker. “Pagan Holiday and National Conflict: A Philistine Reading of Samson Agonistes.”Claire Fowler. “The Commonwealth ‘miscalled’: Iconoclasm and Mythography in Eikonoklastes.”Coburn Freer. “A Victorian Poetic Critique of Milton.”Donald M. Friedman. “‘Sex’ in Paradise Lost.”Bryan N. S. Gooch. “Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato: A Reassessment.”Achsah Guibbory. “Idolatrous Images, Imitation, and True Creation in Milton's Eikonoklastes.”John K. Hale. “The Pre‐Criticism of Milton's Latin Verse, Illustrated from the Ode Ad Joannem Rousium.”R. F. Hall. “Pronouns, Tenses, and Fluidity in the Nativity Ode.”Gary D. Hamilton. “Paradise Regained and the Private Houses.”Philip Hardie. “Milton's Reading of Lucretius and the Reader in Lucretius.”J. P. Hardy. “The Tempter Foiled.”Dayton Haskin. “Choosing the Better Part with Mary and with Ruth.”Burton Hatlen. “When God Smiles: Paradise Lost 8.311–559.”Wyman H. Herendeen. “Milton's Accedence Commenc't Grammar and the Deconstruction of Grammatical Tyranny.”T. H. Howard‐Hill. “Milton and Contemporary Theatre: An Investigation of Experience and Influence.”Keith N. Hull. “Rhyme and Disorder in Samson Agonistes.”Lee M. Johnson. “Language and the Illusion of Innocence in Paradise Lost.”Motohiro Kisaichi. “Comus and the Proserpina Myth.”Thomas A. Langford. “‘That one talent which is death to hide’: The Poet as Teacher.”John Leonard. “Milton's Vow of Celibacy: A Reconsideration of the Evidence.”Walter S. H. Lim. “What Happens When God Doesn't Speak in Samson Agonistes?”Peter Lindenbaum. “The Poet in the Marketplace: Milton and Samuel Simmons.”David Loewenstein. “Paradise Lost and the Politics of Rebellion.”Bei‐Yei Loh. “Lycidas as the Manifesto of a Divinely Dedicated Scholar‐Poet and ‘Church‐outed’ Reformer.”Kristin Pruitt McColgan. “Abundant Gifts: Hierarchy and Reciprocity in Paradise Lost.”Donald Peter McDonough. “The Iconography of Milton's expulsion Scene.”Polly Mander. “The Charms of Milton's Ludlow Masque.”Catherine Gimelli Martin. “The ‘Artifice of Eternity’: The Return(s) of a Miltonic Metaphor.”Christopher Martin. “Contending with the Cyclops: Nobodies and Somebodies in the Defensio Secunda.”Michael A. Mikolajczak. “Milton's ‘Reformed’ Heaven.”Janel Mueller. “Dateline: London, May 1641. Byline: John Milton, English Republican.”Brian J. Opie. “Urania Revisited.”Ted‐Larry Pebworth. “‘Conversation with His Like’: Masculine Friendship in Paradise Lost.”G. Nageswara Rao. “Christ as ‘Poornapragna.’”David Reid. “Free Obedience and Freedom from Constraint in Paradise Lost.”Stella P. Revard. “Alpheus, Arethusa, and the Pindaric Pursuit in Lycidas.”Lawrence F. Rhu. “Milton's Change of Note: Italian Precedents for Tragedy in Eden.”David Robertson. “Soliloquy and Self‐Creation in Paradise Lost.”John P. Rumrich. “Milton Criticism and the Matter of Chaos.”Peggy Samuels. “Samson Agonistes and English Renaissance Closet Drama.”Malabika Sarkar. “Milton's Satan and the Renaissance Magus‐Astronomer.”Michael C. Schoenfeldt. “‘So Absolute She Seems’: Authority and Desire in Paradise Lost.”Paul R. Sellin. “Alexander Morus in Court: Some Insight into Milton's Polemics in Pro Se Defensio.”Hideyuki Shitaka. “The Aeneid and the Bible in Paradise Lost.”Louise Simons. “The Prairie as Eden: The Miltonic Cooper.”Ken Simpson. “The Discipline of the Word in Milton's Anti‐Episcopal Tracts.”Michael R. G. Spiller. “Directing the Audience in Samson Agonistes.”Claude J. Summers. “The (Homo)Sexual Temptation of Paradise Regained.”Margo Swiss. “Satan's Obduracy in Paradise Lost.”John S. Tanner. “Adam's Doom: Knowing Good by Evil in Milton's Eden.”Roberta White. “Milton's Presence in the Poetry of Nemerov and Berryman.”Michael Wilding. “‘Their Sex Not Equal Seem'd’: Equality in Paradise Lost.”Susanne Woods. “Milton's Poetic Authority and Early Protestant Women Poets.”

<p>The paper points out the intention of ‘Satire’ and inquires into the biographical, historical, sociological, religious, economic, political and literary contexts of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667)<strong> </strong>and Paradise Regained (1671). It underscores the poignant example of John Dryden’s verse satire, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), which is modelled on John Milton’s political epics. It also traces the biographical, historical, sociological, religious, economic, political and literary reasons for the outbreak of the English civil war.<strong> </strong>Thus, it points out the mutual bond that exists between society and literature, and renders a historical reading of the literary works taken for analysis by exploring the possible purposes with which these texts have been written and the ways in which the meanings of these texts have changed over time owing to multiple interpretations.</p>

When processing spoken language sentences, listeners continuously make and revise predictions about the upcoming linguistic signal. In contrast, during comprehension of American Sign Language (ASL), signers must simultaneously attend to the unfolding linguistic signal and the surrounding scene via the visual modality. This may affect how signers activate potential lexical candidates and allocate visual attention as a sentence unfolds. To determine how signers resolve referential ambiguity during real-time comprehension of ASL adjectives and nouns, we presented deaf adults (n = 18, 19-61 years) and deaf children (n = 20, 4-8 years) with videos of ASL sentences in a visual world paradigm. Sentences had either an adjective-noun ("SEE YELLOW WHAT? FLOWER") or a noun-adjective ("SEE FLOWER WHICH? YELLOW") structure. The degree of ambiguity in the visual scene was manipulated at the adjective and noun levels (i.e., including one or more yellow items and one or more flowers in the visual array). We investigated effects of ambiguity and word order on target looking at early and late points in the sentence. Analysis revealed that adults and children made anticipatory looks to a target when it could be identified early in the sentence. Further, signers looked more to potential lexical candidates than to unrelated competitors in the early window, and more to matched than unrelated competitors in the late window. Children's gaze patterns largely aligned with those of adults with some divergence. Together, these findings suggest that signers allocate referential attention strategically based on the amount and type of ambiguity at different points in the sentence when processing adjectives and nouns in ASL.

Lines Per Page, Engravings, and Catchwords in Milton’s 1720 Poetical Works Hao Tianhu* (bio) John Milton’s Poetical Works published by Jacob Tonson II in 1720 is an important edition, not the least because Richard Bentley, “the greatest ever English classical scholar,”1 adopted it as the working copy for his “notorious”2 1732 edition of Paradise Lost. This lavish pair of large quarto volumes (with main sections of 590 and 527 pages respectively) included many engraved tailpieces, which placed special demands on the compositors. By analyzing material traces seldom examined—such as lines of text per page—we can infer with reasonable certainty how they operated. Along the way we may provide a rationale for some of the catchword errors3 by connecting these inconsistencies with the printing and publishing of the book, especially illustration. The Tonsons were well known for publishing deluxe books. William Thomas Lowndes, an eminent bibliographer of the early nineteenth century, defined Caesar’s Commentaries brought out by Jacob Tonson I in 1712 as “the most sumptuous classical work which England has produced.”4 The 1720 Milton is typically adorned with rich illustrations. Engraved vignettes open and conclude each of the books of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes, finely framing the grand poems in pictorial art. Additionally, the first item in Poems, Lycidas, has a special headpiece. These thirty-five vignettes, plus eighteen historiated initials, help produce what Marcia R. Pointon calls “a splendid and expensive edition rather in the manner of the Venetian illustrated book of the [End Page 191] period.”5 R. G. Moyles, another modern scholar, confirms it as “impressively beautiful … a much-coveted book.”6 Pointon compares Louis Chéron, the illustrator responsible for most of the decorations in the edition, unfavorably with John Baptist Medina, another early illustrator of Milton, but still admits that “Chéron’s illustrations are nearly always more skillfully composed than Medina’s and [that] the tailpieces and historiated initials make for a much richer general effect.”7 The list of 334 subscribers in volume 1 indicates that the costly book was eagerly sought after by aristocratic and elite readers (dukes, duchesses, earls, lords, sirs, esquires, doctors, ladies, and the like).8 Clearly Tonson strived to meet the aesthetic demands of his prominent customers. The paper used (printing medium, 585 x 455 mm) makes a large and handsome object, and the 22-line page adds much elegance. Our count of lines of poetic text on a typical full page excludes the headline and the direction-line. The standard number of lines is 22, with occasional variations of 21 or 23. When a 23rd line occurs it crowds the page and sometimes includes both part of the text and a catchword. But this additional line occurs only in less important works—in Addison’s Notes in volume 1, and in Poems in volume 2, beginning toward the end of A Mask.9 All the major poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and Lycidas, which are pictorially ornamented, contain no crowded pages. The different typographical treatment of the minor works and the major poems is dictated by, and also registers, the hierarchical status of the two categories of text. The publisher’s typographical intervention participates imperceptibly yet actively in the reception of the author and the construction of textual meaning. The 21-line pages occur in the major works, as table 1 shows. These typographical irregularities can be explained by aesthetic necessities. The plate mark of the vignette at the end of a book usually occupies a space of ten lines or more. Thus we find some pages toward the end of a book or poem composed in 21 lines, to avoid the awkward situation either of a section closing on a page with insufficient space left for the tailpiece or of the tailpiece being printed alone (with no text) on a separate page. In all the above sections, the normal 22-line pages would lead to such an awkward situation, and the spatial demand of the tailpiece required the reduction of some pages to 21 lines (Lycidas is an exception; see below). At the same time, the compositors also...

Akira Arai. “Milton and Thomas Young.”(Rev.) C. M. George. “The Wolf Image in Milton.”David B. Morris. “Drama and stasis in Milton's ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity.”Michael West. “The Consolatio in Milton's Funeral Elegies.”Christopher Grose. “Lucky Words: Process of Speech in Lycidas.”Catherine M. Shaw. “The Unity of Comus.” Xavier University StudiesPurvis E. Boyette. “Milton's Abstracted Sublimities: The Structure of Meaning in A Mask.”Robert A. Stein. “The Sources and Implications of the Jobean Analogies in Paradise Regained.”Donald L. Guss. “A Rrief Epic: Paradise Regained.”Albert C. Labriola. “Divine Urgency as a Motive for Conduct in Samson Agonistes.”Anthony Low. “No Power but of God:” Vengeance and Justice in Samson Agonistes.”Anthony Low. “The Astronomy of Paradise Lost.”Y. Z. Chang. “Why did Milton Err on Two Chinas?”Marilyn Gaddis Rose. “Milton, Chateaubriand, and Villiers de L'Isle‐Adam. Paradise Lost and Axel.”

Surely the defeat of evil can be nothing but good? The almost universal praise in the Anglophone press for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2006 film, Das Leben der Anderen, translated into English as The Lives of Others, suggests as much. The film has been widely read as a response to the evil of Communism and its peculiar manifestation in the East German state. Historically, however, artistic and particularly poetic responses to evil have been ambivalent, and have even tended to the dark side. Dante’s Inferno is a better poem than his Paradiso. Milton’s Paradise Lost is more accomplished than Paradise Regained. Most would put William Blake’s ‘Songs of Experience’ above his ‘Songs of Innocence’. Blake himself explained that the ‘reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it’.1 In poetry at least, an ambivalent stance towards evil has also been associated with the experience of defeat. Dante wrote La Divina Commedia after being forced into exile from Florence. Paradise Lost is a meditation on the failure of the short-lived English Commonwealth. Blake’s poetry was written in the shadow of the English counter-revolution.KeywordsPrussian BlueGerman Democratic RepublicGood PersonPear TreeParadise LostThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Reviewed by: Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare by Ronald Huebert Frank Swannack Huebert, Ronald, Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016; cloth; pp. 352; 11 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. CA $65.00; ISBN 9781442647916. Ronald Huebert begins the introduction with Sir John Harington's The Prayse of Private Life. He argues Harington's prose treatise reveals that privacy has renewed importance in 'the age of Shakespeare', which he defines as the period 1516–1667 (p. 4). This range refers to Sir Thomas More's challenge to privacy in Utopia, and John Milton's spiritual privacy in Paradise Lost. In Chapter 1, Huebert investigates what privacy means to Shakespeare. In Hamlet, Huebert finds a dichotomy between private and public spaces. He examines the invasion of private thoughts through overhearing Hamlet's soliloquies, and of space such as Ophelia's closet. In Twelfth Night, Huebert analyses the anxiety of misinterpreting the inner self, in particular, Olivia's veil and Malvolio's attempt to protect his privacy from Feste, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Chapter 2 charts a spiritual interiority for both Protestants and Catholics. Huebert examines the prayer closet to argue that the dichotomies of 'Protestant and Catholic, male and female, body and soul' are dissolved(p. 61). He shows this through a close analysis of Christ's agony in the garden, and the spiritual allegory positing Christian souls as Christ's bride. The chapter ends with an investigation of John Saltmarsh's private devotions. Saltmarsh privileges the soul to the point where his flesh is superfluous to private spiritual needs. Chapter 3 focuses on voyeurism. Through the story of Diana and Actaeon in Ovid's Metamorphoses and the History of Susanna in the Apocrypha, Huebert demonstrates how the male voyeur's intrusion of female privacy ends in his death. After examining poetic striptease, Huebert delivers an inspired reading of Much Ado About Nothing. He argues persuasively that Claudio is a voyeur through the way he observes and discusses Hero. Huebert reads Beatrice's passionate command to Benedick to kill Claudio as following the same pattern. Chapter 4 has an experimental, even voyeuristic, tone as Huebert analyses commonplace books. His fascinating rationale is that texts in manuscript form reveal more of the private self than their published counterparts. These less well known works capture a sense of undisturbed private thoughts, as they are not shaped by a history of critical reading in the public domain. With Chapter 5, Huebert investigates whether early modern men and women share a similar understanding of privacy. Lady Anne Clifford's diary reveals a woman who endured a privacy of isolation. Her husband is frequently absent and, when at home, he often retreats into his private study. In contrast to her husband, Clifford's reading of literature and needlework are constantly monitored and interrupted. In a diary by John Ramsey, he is always on the [End Page 217] move and rarely with his family. He only mentions one of his eight children. Huebert concludes that early modern women occupy a shadowy exposed privacy, while men enjoy travelling and private meditative retreats. Chapter 6 examines utopic privacy. In More's Utopia, Huebert discovers an exposed society where privacy is seen as encouraging abusive practices. He then examines Adam and Eve's bower in Milton's Paradise Lost. The Garden of Eden allows intimate privacy for a sexual relationship free from the sin of voyeurism. Chapter 7 investigates if privacy protected early modern heterodoxy. Christopher Marlowe's Edward II reveals the king's desire for privacy to spend time alone with Piers Gaveston. Huebert then examines how Galileo's discovery of a heliocentric universe led to enforced privacy. John Donne's Roman Catholic background and public position as Anglican priest are scrutinized. His poetry published posthumously reveals he considered God's love universal, not subject to affiliation. Huebert establishes that early modern privacy meant cooperating superficially with authority through textual ambiguity. Chapter 8 examines privacy in Andrew Marvell's poetry and prose. Huebert argues that Marvell needed privacy for his dubious erotic tastes, though he finds complexity in Marvell's poetry he terms 'the grammar of supposition and surmise...

Seven Types of Ambiguity is a method of close reading of literary text. In other words, it shows the effects of poetry and enhances the reader's curiosity and understanding of a piece of poetry by segregating the linguistic properties of the text. William Empson explored that words or references in poetry are mostly ambiguous and, if showcased coherently, convey multiple meanings that may enrich the reader’s admiration of the work. In this article, Urdu poetry has been compared with English poetry to understand the criteria of ambiguity. In the Urdu world, every poem and verse are misconceived as ambiguous, which is difficult to understand. Urdu critics consider ambiguous poems to be meaningless. This work seeks to analyze Urdu poetry in light of William Empsons views.

Reviewed by: Shakespeare Re-Dressed: Cross-Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance Deirdre O’Rourke Shakespeare Re-Dressed: Cross-Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance. Edited by James C. Bulman. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008; pp. 255. $52.50 cloth. Inspired scholarship, the unearthed remains of Elizabethan playhouses, and Gwyneth Paltrow in breeches, have not quenched the desire to recreate the experience of Shakespeare’s theatre. In Shakespeare Re-Dressed, James Bulman offers a collection of essays that take a fresh look at one aspect of the Elizabethan theatre experience: cross-dressing. While the authors discuss early modern conventions, their primary emphasis is on the implications of cross-dressing in contemporary Shakespearean productions. The eleven essays, which explore contemporary cross-gender casting, cover both male and female cross-dressing, US and British productions, unisex and mixed-sex casts, actors’ processes, and audience reception. The greatest strength of Shakespeare Re-Dressed lies in the points of intersection between the pieces that reveal conflicting and complementary perspectives on its subject. In the volume’s first essay, Jennifer Drouin uses contemporary understandings of cross-dressing to complicate the convention in Shakespeare’s plays. She attempts to distinguish between “cross-dressing, drag, and passing” and the slippages between them, both within the fictive worlds of Shakespeare’s dramas and their reception in production. Although the lines between the three remain blurred despite Drouin’s attempts to clarify them, the discoveries she makes in the process are revelatory and useful. Roberta Barker’s essay “Acting Against the Rules” engages existing scholarship on the eroticism of the “boy actress.” She contends that “only in a situation in which both actors and audiences risk losing detachment by participating in a theatrical cross-dressing that they recognize as an active part of their own world could we truly remember the erotic significance of the Shakespearean boy actress” (70). For Barker, this situation is created not by the reconstructed Globe’s all-male performances or Cheek by Jowl’s As You Like It, but rather by an all-male school production of As You Like It that she attended. Bulman follows Barker’s essay with the first of two contributions to the volume, this one focusing on Cheek by Jowl’s production in 1991 of As You Like It in which he outs the production’s queer agenda. Bulman’s analysis of the production’s victimization of the flamboyant Jaques reveals that the interpretation was intended as commentary on the violent homophobia prevalent during Thatcherism. Orlando’s simultaneous embrace of his feelings for both Rosalind and Ganymede, coupled with Jaques’s queering, illuminated the production’s queer agenda, which, Bulman argues, led to the “queering of the audience as well” (88). Although audiences were probably unaware of their queering, Bulman’s insightful application of queer theory to contemporary all-male productions is intriguing. In his analysis of the same production of As You Like It, Cary Mazer argues for cross-dressing as a means of inviting audiences into the theatricality of gender. Like Drouin, Mazer distinguishes among types of cross-dressing by putting the camp of Charles Busch’s Psycho Beach Party in conversation with Cheek by Jowl’s cross-dressed performances. Drawing on Rhonda Blair’s work on cross-dressing, Mazer argues that actors who embrace the “not me” and the “not-not-me” of their characters allow audiences a double vision that is not only pleasurable, but also questions gender essentialism. [End Page 139] P. A. Skantze’s and Andrew James Hartley’s pieces both analyze selectively cross-gendered productions. Skantze examines Mabou Mines’s Lear, which boasted a mixed-gender cast, cross-gender roles—including a female Lear—and cross-dressed characters. Skantze’s project is to tease out the implications of this gender play, its interaction with race, and its impact on the universality of Shakespeare’s plays. Skantze argues that Mabou Mines’s production choices disrupt the supposed universals of Shakespeare’s King Lear by focusing the narrative on a particular woman. Skantze’s response to Mabou Mines’s work reveals the possibilities opened up by subverting the universal Shakespeare. Hartley’s work as dramaturg for the Georgia Shakespeare Festival’s The Tempest informs...

Ambiguity and Audience Response

The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects to the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface. … People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be “consistent.” But a great many things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply because they are partial views of a truth, and many often look unlike at first, as a front view of a face and its profile often do.—Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast-TableThe rose-diamond cut of Milton's thought often disconcerts his reader, but perhaps nowhere so completely as in his views on learning. After the high enthusiasm for unrestricted inquiry, after all the “intent study” which he took as his own “portion in life”, in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, the ripe products of his learning, he gives to Raphael, Michael, and Jesus speeches that seem a wholesale repudiation of studies of all sorts. The three passages are too well known to quote. In the first (P.L., viii, 66–178)1 Raphael disparages Adam's inquiries about astronomy, but answers them, and then comments, “Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid.” In the second (P.L., XII, 575–587) Michael commends Adam for the inference he has drawn from his preview of universal history (that “to obey is best, / And love with fear the only God”), and admonishes him, “This having learnt, thou hast attain'd the sum / Of wisdom; hope no higher.” In the third (P.R., iv, 286–364) Jesus spurns Satan's offer of Greek learning, with an analysis of the defects of Greek philosophy and literature and a thrust at learning in general: “Many books / Wise men have said are wearisome.”

In Reason of Church Government, a thirty-three-year-old John Milton writes of his hope by labour and intent study...joyn'd with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should willingly let it Even the young Milton, committed as he was to achieving a place in the annals of poetic history, might have been surprised by the strenuous efforts in aftertimes to keep his legacy alive. fifteen essays that comprise this collection focus, from varied perspectives, on Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and A Mask, poems that have attracted sustained critical attention. Several consider shorter poems, such as the Nativity Ode, The Passion, Upon the Circumcision, and Sonnet 14. Some pursue issues of sources, authorship, and audience, while still others probe extant biographical records or reflect on the author as biographical subject. Diverse though they are in subject matter, approaches, and emphases, all demonstrate how Milton scholarship in the twenty-first century continues to be committed to not willingly let[ting] Milton's literary legacy die. Kristin A. Pruitt is Professor of English and dean of the School of Arts at Christian Brothers University. Charles W. Durham is professor emeritus of English at Middle Tennessee State University, and is president of the Milton Society of America.

Tony Davies. “Milton's Blind Fury.”Anthony Easthope. “Towards the Autonomous Subject in Poetry: Milton on his Blindness.”Albert C. Labriola. “Self‐Perception and Self‐image in Milton's Epitaphium Damonis.”Sister M. Christopher Pecheux. “The Council Scenes in Paradise Lost. “Stella P. Revard. “The Gospel of John and Paradise Regained.“John T. Shawcross. “Milton and Covenant: The Christian View of Old Testament Theology.”