![]() He exemplifies all that is dangerous about personal charisma, and his rhetorical dominance is bound up with that charisma. So Milton shows a Satan deeply isolated by his desires, because he cannot bear to put the common good before those desires. From this, and his personal experience, he has concluded that the heart of tyranny is individualism. He has read his Tacitus, his Plutarch and his Suetonius. Republics, with their checks and balances, are a much better option but Milton is perfectly alive to the ways in which naked ambition can pervert republics, too. ![]() The only flawless king is God, therefore no human being should usurp God's empty throne. His opposition to kings is based upon a conviction that monarchies, being fatally vulnerable to the power held in the hands of one flawed individual, cannot benefit nations. Milton thinks the common good is of surpassing importance. What the simile points up is an ironic difference Satan is not a man transported by zeal for the common good, but a self-seeking immortal animated by a grudge to prey on innocence. It's a piece of acting: "The Tempter … new part puts on" ( IX.665, 667) and actually there is a perfectly good preamble coming (addressed to the fruit) before he ever gets round to addressing Eve directly. The epic simile seems barely a simile at all at this point we see Satan as such an orator, so moved by the rightness of his cause that he cuts straight to the chase without any warmup (or "preface"). So standing, moving, or to highth upgrown Of Preface brooking through his Zeal of Right. Motion, each act won audience ere the tongue Stood in himself collected, while each part, As Satan squares up to tackle Eve, Cicero, among others, is at his back:įlourishd, since mute, to some great cause addrest, He brings his contemporary experience to bear on his portrait of Satan but he is at least as informed by the politics of ancient Rome. As Cromwell's Latin secretary he was at the diplomatic centre of the Commonwealth's power base – the modern equivalent might be a senior foreign office post. Milton knew about political power and the place in it for skilful speech. Evidently Satan (for whom violence has failed) has taken the advice to heart. The period's endless guides to the art of rhetoric are fond of pointing out that if you know how to say something well enough you can defeat an army without shedding a drop of blood. As for Shakespeare's poisonous rhetorician Iago, so here: verbal mastery is the whole route to ruin. At each one of these points Satan has to talk someone into something, and at each one of these points he succeeds. It gets him the fealty of his own defeated army (a difficult achievement smoothly managed) it gets him out of hell it gets him past the throne of Chaos it gets him entry to Earth it gets him Eve's attention it gets him the Fall. ![]() It works so well that we scarcely notice, then or later, that the gift of the gab is virtually Satan's only resource.īut the gift of the gab is a lot. It combines persuasion with virtuoso emotional manipulation – and it works, shifting seamlessly from lamentation and condolence to a restatement of united defiance to which Beelzebub instinctively responds. His address (to his second-in-command Beelzebub) is the kind of thing a politician has to say to his party after a defeat. Eliot’s belief that “of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions…making unlawful entry.” Milton’s radical, republican politics and heretical religious views, coupled with the perceived artificiality of his complicated Latinate verse, alienated Eliot and other readers yet by dint of the overriding influence of his poetry and personality on subsequent generations-particularly the Romantic movement-the man whom Samuel Johnson disparaged as “an acrimonious and surly republican” must be counted one of the most significant writers and thinkers of all time.S atan is the first figure to speak in Paradise Lost. Very soon after his death – and continuing to the present day – Milton became the subject of partisan biographies, confirming T.S. Leavis in the mid 20th century but with multiple societies and scholarly journals devoted to his study, Milton’s reputation remains as strong as ever in the 21st century. Long considered the supreme English poet, Milton experienced a dip in popularity after attacks by T.S. Most famed for his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton is celebrated as well for his eloquent treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica. “John Milton (Decem– November 8, 1674) was an English poet, prose polemicist, and civil servant for the English Commonwealth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |