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“TheyAlso Perform the Duties of a Servant
Who Only Remain Erect on Their Feet in a Specified Place
in Readiness to Receive Orders”:
The Dynamics of Stasis in Sonnet XIX
(“When I Consider How My Light is Spent.”)
Carol Barton
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Written at some point subsequent to Milton’s Davidic conquest of the Goliath Salmasius (and after the
full personal price of that public victory had been exacted), Sonnet XIX is a curious poem, full of an irony,
doubt, and yearning that are only intensified in their
reception by the reader’s presumptive anticipation of
lament. The opening lines “When I consider how my
light is spent, / Ere half my days, in this dark world
and wide” after all reflect the tragic recognition of an
accomplishedvisionary that the eyesight on which his
service to man and God has depended throughout his
lifetime is now no longer his to enjoy, leaving “that
one Talent, which is death to hide, / Lodg’d with
[him] useless” before his mission on earth has been
achieved. No matter how much his Soul may be
nonetheless ”more bent / To serve therewith [his]
Maker, and present / [His] true account,” it is virtually impossible within the context of the poem for
the reader not to join with the poet in mourning a
loss that makes him unable to engage in “daylabor” of
the kind he has habitually performed for God and
England during the preceding forty-four years; and
we wonder, as he does, what it is that a blind author
can be expected to accomplish in a world without
typewriters or Braille. The reader reacts to his dilemma as Milton himself must have done (at least at the
onset of his blindness), with bewildered disappointment that God could so ill serve someone who had
served his Lord so well, and bereave him of the enjoyment of that glory he had worked with such diligence
to achieve, just at the moment that the laurel wreath
for his prose conquest of Salmasius was in his grasp.
Certainly, we expect the answer to the question
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”to be “Of
course not!”, and are as perplexed as Milton is by the
thought that God would bless him with a talent of
such magnitude at one cosmic moment, then deprive
him entirely of the ability to make use of it in the
next. Twenty-twenty hindsight aside, one cannot
choose but see Milton at this juncture as with the
poet’s help the reader envisions the mill-slave Samson
at Gaza, that is, defeated, diminished, helpless, and
blind among his enemies,’ resigned by force to the
end of his productive life, and abandoned by all of
those who should succor him-“from what highth
fall’n’’to what depth of despair fate has plunged him,
and after all, hasn’t he given enough? Juxtaposed to
the bustling activity of the “thousands [who] at
[God’s] bidding speed / And post o’er Land and
Ocean without rest,” and amplified by the reproof articulated by Milton’s “patience”that “God doth not
need / Either man’s work or [God‘s] own gifts” in
recompense for His benevolence to humankind, the
problem of how the blinded wordsmith can still
“serve . . . [his] Maker, and present / [His] true account” despite this “calamitousvisitation’I2thus finds
its resolution (according to the received approach) in
the seeming inertia of the sonnet’s final self-consoling
acknowledgmentthat “they also serve who only stand
and wait’’-submissive, inactive, obedient, J o b
like-for Messianic release from their earthbound
afflictions.
As a result of this persistent and enduring misperception, Milton scholarship has traditionally considered the poet’s initial meditation on his blindness
to be an anthem to passive resignation, an explication
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MILTON QUARTERLY
of the poem which has ironically been abetted and
promulgated by the oxford English Dictionary itself.’
In point of fact, the first part of the title of this section is but a slightly abridged pastiche of those definitions of the words s m e , stand, and wait in which
the OED specificallyinvokes, not only Milton’s Sonnet XIX in genera, but the final line of the poem in
particular, to illustrate the historically standard usage
of the terms. The full text of “When I Consider. . . ”
is reproduced below for ease of reference:
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide
And that one Talent, which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more
bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide:
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied,”
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
To stand B.I.5.q 3013
To assume or maintain an
erect attitude on one’s
feet; With predicative
extension: To remain
erect on one’s feet in a
specified place, occupation,
condition,
etc. . . . The accompanying action is often expressed by a verb in coordination, to stand and (do
something) . . . C. 1655
MILTON, Jonn. XVI [sic],
They also serve who only
stand and waite.
To wait 9, 3669
To be in readiness to receive orders; hence, to be
in attendance as a servant;
to attend as a servant does
to the requirements of a
superior. Chiefly const.
on: see wait o n . . . c. 1655
MILTON, Sonn. ‘When I
Consder’ 14 They also
serve who only stand and
waite.
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That the traditional interpretation of this poem
relies on the meaning invested in its fourteenth line
by long-standing custom and the OED editorial staff
becomes self-evident by means of a simple compilation. If one strings together the definitions given by
the OED for the versions of the infinitives to serve, to
stand, and to wait in which Milton’s Sonnet XIX is
directly invoked as an etymological example, the result (emphasized below in bold letters for ease of identification) is as follows:
Verb
To serve
Citation
1.1,2740
According to one of the most authoritative lexicons
of the English language, then, the concluding line of
“When I Consider How My Light is Spent.. . has,
over the course of its more than three and a quarter
century history, typically been read “they also perform the duties of a servant who only remain erect on
their feet in a specified place in readiness to receive
orders”-hence, the encomium to inertia that the
poem traditionally represents.
Though this is of course both the “received and the
“recommended” reading, alternative interpretations
are not prohibited by the OED’s normative analysis,
and it is from the perspective of the rest of the Miltonic canon that I would like to reconsider “When I
Consider,”examining Line 14 in particular, not in the
context of reader sympathy for the speaker’s tragic
privation, but in terms of the lack of consistency
between the standard explication of the words “They
”
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Definition
To be a servant; to perform the duties of a servant.. . C. 1655, MILTON,
Sonn., ‘When I Consider’,
They also serve who only
stand and waite.
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also serve who only stand and wait” and the author’s
characteristic responses to frustration, disappointment, bereavement, and failure, both personally and
in the vicarious personae of his major literary progeny. Based on such considerations, I contend that it
would have been unbearable, if not impossible, for
someone of Milton’s talents, ego, and aggressive temperament to subscribe even momentarily to the kind
of namby-pamby “pity poor me” resignation implicit
in the historical reading of this line, and that traditional rhetorical emphasis on the word “also” has
likewise put the pivotal accent squarely on the wrong
syllable in terms of the speaker’s meaning. Rather
than a sigh (“they also serve, who only stand and
wait”), I contend that the final line of the poem is an
emphatic declaration (“they also serve, who only
stand, and wait”), a subtle modification that makes a
monumental difference in the perspective of the
speaker, and relies on definitions of the key words
serve, stand, and wait quite different from those given
in this context by the OED.Tillyard’s discomfort
with the historically received image of Milton crouching “in humble expectation, like a beaten dog ready to
wag its tail at the smallest token of its master’s attention” at the end of the poem is thus understandable.
“Consideredin relation to the rest of Milton’s works,”
he writes, Sonnet 19
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his despair,”but the resolution thus achieved is in no
way a “bargain with fate,” and the speaker’s inclination at the end of the poem is toward anything but
“repose.”As Stanley Fish has compellingly demonstrated in works like Surprised by Sin and Is There a
Text in This Class?, Milton was profoundly fascinated
with the elasticity of English grammar and syntax,
and was particularly engaged by the proclivity of his
native tongue for simultaneouslysaying and unsaying
the same thing at a single cognitive moment. By conscious design, such polyvocalities abound in Parrm’ise
Lost, Paradise Regained, L y c h , Comus, and Samson
Agonistes, and, as Sharon Achinstein has suggested in
a different context, are part of the poet’s epistemological strategy, intended to annoy the complacent
(those who are smugly self-confident in the accuracy
of their own perceptions) with a vague and nagging
unease not unlike that experienced by Tillyard in
relation to Sonnet XIX-that all that “seems”is “not”
what and as it appears to be. Particularly in Milton,
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is an extremely difficult and strange poem. There is
in it a tone of self-abasementfound but once again
in Milton [presumably, he means in Samson Agonistes] . . . a passive yielding to God’s command. In
view of Milton’s normal self-confidence,of his belief in the value of his own undertakings, I cannot
but see in the sonnet signs of his having suffered an
extraordinary exhaustion of vitality. Yet for all this
weakness the sonnet shows the nature of Milton’s
greatness. . . [which] lies in [his] having (at least in
this sonnet) overcome his despair. He has compounded with his afflictions, and, exacting less
from life than at any other time, has made his bargain with fate. In an unusual lowliness, he has
found repose. . . . (161-62)
Tillyard is of course right (for the wrong reasons) that
by the final line of the sonnet, Milton has “overcome
our initial speculations[concerning the meaning of
the text] generate a frame of reference within
which to interpret what comes next, but what
comes next may retroactively transform our original understanding. . . . As we read on, we shed assumptions, revise beliefs [and] . . . each sentence
opens up a horizon which is confirmed, challenged,
or undermined by the next . . . . We read backwards and forwards simultaneously,predicting and
recollecting, perhaps aware of other possible realizations of the text which our [chosen] reading has
negated Fagleton 77).
In Pardise Lost, for example, the reader’s awareness
of being deftly and deliberately manipulated by Milton’s protean vocabulary and intense sentence structure grows more and more acute as his or her involvement in the poem proceeds. Participation in this
mind-expandingprocess may initially be unnerving to
some people, but that is as it is intended to be: before
too long, that segment of Milton’s readership that is
discerning enough to merit induction into his “fit
audience though few” will come to recognize that all
of us are destined by the Miltonic method of instruction to be at some moment in narrative time “of the
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MILTON QUARTERLY
Devil’s party without knowing it,” because the
wrongheaded acts of embracing that which right
reason should compel us to reject, and of accepting
what seems at face value to be without trying to see
beyond the surface, are prerequisites to this intellectual rite of passage. It is critical to the reader’s accurate comprehension of the work (and indeed, to his or
her ability to withstand the sophisticatedbut specious
propaganda that much of it contains) that we learn
both to recognize the logical fallacies that underlie the
persuasive image or idea with which Milton’s program is baiting us, and to rethink, reform, and restructure our perceptual horizons on a continual basis
to accommodate each new discovery before the lessons learned are lost: otherwise, we come away from
the text intoxicated by “what [the] poem pretends to
mean for the purposes of its performance . , . that
duplicity beyond all paraphrase that is the mark of all
good poetry” (Ciardi and Williams, xxi), remaining
smugly confident, for example, that Satan is its hero,
that Adam did the right and chivalrous thing by yielding himself to damnation out of loyalty to Eve, and
that at the end of Sonnet XIX, Milton “has made his
bargain with fate” and “in an unusual lowliness
. . . found repose.” Fish describes the mechanics of
this phenomenon as follows:
4.’ The find line of Sonnet XIX has been misinterpreted in the same fashion (and for precisely the same
reasons) that Milton’s portrayals of the fallen Lucifer
and the blind but victorious Nazarite have been misread, because in our pity for the once glorious and
classically heroic archangel, the Biblical champion
“dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon” and “blind
among [his] enemies,” and the benighted poet and
polemicist abandoned by his Maker l‘in this dark
world and wide” (which is the object of “what [each]
poem pretends to mean for the purposes of its performance”), we as readers lose sight of the singular
devotion to and unflagging faith in God that blazes in
the heart of their creator, and we underestimate the
obduracy of Milton’s stubborn refusal either to submit or yield his ego or his talent to the vicissitudes of
earthly fortune. Throughout his life, the poet believed
emphatically that
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Milton consciously wants to worry his reader, to
force him to doubt the correctness of his responses,
and bring him to the realization that his inability to
read the poem with any confidence in his own
perception is its focus . . . . The value of the
experience depends on the reader’s willingness to
participate in it fully while at the same time standing apart from it. He must pass judgment on it, at
least on that portion of it which is a reflection of
his weakness. So . . . a description of the total response would be, Adam is wrong, no, he’s right,
but then of course, he is wrong, and so am I (Fish
43):
Such premeditated philological legerdemain on the
part of the poet has of c ome resulted in monumental
misreading of Milton’s words, his poems, his characters, and the didactic purpose that is at the core of this
neo-Socratic “programmeof reader harassment” (Fish
the end. . . 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 nearest by possessing
our souls of true virtue, which being united by the
heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection (CPW 2.366-67),
and he had at this point devoted an entire lifetime
to the study of “true virtue” in an effort to “know
God aright”;he was not about to give that up for a reversal of his fortunes now. The “unprofitableservant”
who declared that “that one Talent which is death to
hide” was now “Lodg’d with [him] useless” and the
blind man who some eight years later allegedly justified his resignation to inertia in the line “they also
serve, who only stand and wait” was the same person
who had as a younger man defended his “tardie
moving” and “too much love of Learning” in “the
arms of studious retirement” with another direct and
telling analogy between his literary talents and the
coins distributed by their departing master among his
three servants in Matthew 25:13-30, citing “the solid
good flowing from due & tymely obedience to that
command in the gospel1 set out by the sesing of him
that hid the talent,”the “veryconsideration [of which]
great comandment, does not presse forward, as soone
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MILTON QUARTERLY
as may be, to undergo, but keeps off, w”’ a sacred
reverence & religious advisement, how best to
undergoe, not taking thought of beeing late, so it give
advantage to be more fit; for those that were latest
lost nothing, when the maister of the vinyard came to
give each one his hire . . . ” (CPW I: 320, emphasis
added). In 1642, when it is likely that the sight in his
left eye was already waning, Milton would draw on
Matthew again, to declare in the second book of The
Reason of Church Government that
He who hath obtained in more than the scantiest
measure to know anything distinctly of God, and
of his true worship, and what is infallibly good and
happy in the state of mans life, what in it selfe evil
and miserable, though vulgarly not so esteem’d; he
that hath obtain’d to know this, the only high valuable wisdom indeed, rememhng also that God, even
to a strictnesse, requires the improvement of these his
trusted g$s, cannot but sustain a sorer burden of
mind, and more pressing than any supportable toil,
or waight, which the body can labour under, how
and in what manner he shall dispose and employ
those summes of knowledge and illumination,
which God hath sent him into this world to trade
with (CPW1: 801, emphasis added).
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made thee (CPW 1: 801).
It is here too that the poet exhorts his readers to
respond stoically to adversity-though it is to ecclesiastical rather than ocular affairs that he refersdeclaring “if God come to trie our constancy, we
ought not to shrink or stand the lesse firmly for that,
but passe on with more stedfast resolution to establish
the truth, though it were through a lane of sects and
heresies on each side” (CPW 1: 794-95). “It is not so
wretched to be blind as it is not to be capable of
enduring blindness” (CPW 4: 584)6 he says in the
Second Defense; averring that his “resolutions are too
firm to be shaken . . . that I have been enabled to do
the will of God; that I may oftener think on what he
has bestowed rather than what he has beheld; that, in
short, I am, unwilling to exchange my consciousness
of rectitude with that of any other person,”preferring
physical blindness to the intellectual benightedness of
the hapless “Morus,”
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Later in the same work, a still-sighted Milton
predicts the self-castigationhe would endure were he
to refuse to descend into the “cool element of prose”
in defense of church and nation, a full ten years before the complete loss of his vision:
as long as in that obscurity, in which I am enveloped, the light of the divine presence more
clearly shines; then, in proportion as I am weak, I
shall be invincibly strong, and in proportion as I
am blind, I shall more clearly see. O! that I may be
thus perfected by feebleness, and irradiated by
obscurity! (CPW4: 584).
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What matters it for thee, or thy bewailing?When time
was thou couldst not find a syllable of all thou hadst
read or studied, to utter in her behalfe. Yet ease and
leasure was given thee for thy retired thoughts, out of
the sweat of other men. Thou hadst the diligence, the
parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to
be adorn’d or beaudi’d, but when the cause of God
and his Church was to be pleaded, for which purpose
that tongue was given thee which thou hast, God
listen’d if he could hear thy voice among his zealous
servants, but thou wert domb as a beast; from hence
forward be that which thine own brutish silence hath
These do not strike me as the declarations of someone
who could wallow in the kind of indolent self-pity
that the last line of Sonnet XIX is historically assumed to portray.
In the decade following the publication of Sonnet
XIX, the same emotionally and artistically bankrupt
individual who in that short poem showed “signs of
his having suffered an extraordinary exhaustion of
vitality” composed and published in rapid succession
his translations of Psalms 1 through 8(1653), The
Second Defme of the English People (1654), Defmio pro
se and Sonnets 18 and 20 through 22 (1655), Sonnet 23
(1658), A Treatise of Civil Power and Considerations
Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings Out
of the Church (1659), and The Ready and Easie Way to
Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660); began his work
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MILTON QUARTERLY
on De Doctrina Christians and The History of Britain;
and, according to his nephew, Edward Phillips,
drafted much of the ten-book version of Paradise Lost
(c.1663), all of this in total blindness, in the midst of
political upheaval (the abortive reign of the Cromwell
Protectorate and the restoration of Stuart monarchy);
personal troubles (the deaths both of his first wife,
Mary Powell Milton, in 1652, and of his second wife,
Katherine Woodcock Milton, in 1658; of his only son,
John, at fifteen months of age, in 1652; and of his
youngest daughter, Katherine, in infancy, in 1658);
and his personal experience of the paranoia that
gripped all unexcluded Commonwealth men in response to the restored king’s gruesome reprisals
against his and his father’s enemies, living and dead,
exacerbated by the public burning of Eikonoklastes
and Dt$msio prima by order of the House of Commons in June of 1660. He had also more than likely
by this time written the famous invocation to Light
that, like Sonnet 19, begins in the style and manner of
a jeremiad, with the same sad tones of bereavement as
those heavy notes that weight the poet’s words at the
beginning of the shorter poem:
Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heav’n first born . . .
Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou
Revisit’st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched thir Orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil’d.
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers, as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note.
(3.27-37)
Again the tone changes, as it does in the sonnet
(“‘Doth God exact day-labor,light deni’d?’/ I fondly
ask); resolve reverts to misery as the poet realizes
that no matter how much he wills it otherwise, no
amount of resolution on his part can change his situation:
Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn,
O r sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature’s words to me expung’d and razed,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
(3.40-50)
The fallacy of this wrenchingly poignant but nonetheless self-pitying argument-that true wisdom,
which is the product of the internal promptings of the
Paraclete, needs no “entrance”but an open mind, and
has therefore never been “quite” (or even partially)
“shut out” of Milton’s existence-is exposed as swiftly
by the poet’s own patience in the invocation as the
fallacy of his complaint in “When I Consider” is
exposed by its personification. Like “blind Thamyris
and blind Maeonides, / And Tiresias and Phineas
prophets old,”Milton has lost “out-sight”only to gain
insight, a greater boon than his blindness is a bane:
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Yet that way, the speaker knows, lies madness.
Poised on the brink of despair, the monody here retracts itself (as it does in Sonnet 19) in the face of the
poet’s determination to press onward undaunted, and
to make his way as best he can toward the fulfillment
of his duty and his destiny despite the vicissitudes of
fortune:
Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt. . .
Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget
Those other two equaled with me in fate,
So were I equaled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,
And Tiresk and Phineas prophets old:
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
(3.51-55)
Clearly, as the preceding selection demonstrates,
the epic poet had by this point learned what the
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young sonneteer had yet to discover, that is, to embrace that “patience” that is the corollary-not the
antithesis-of the “invincible might” of the heroic
Deliverers who “with winged expedition / Swift as
the lightning glance” (SA 1283-84) execute God’s
errands, the patience that is “more oft the exercise /
Of saints” than of warriors, “the trial of thir
fortitude, / Making them each his own Deliverer /
And victor over all / That tyrannie or fortune can
inflict” (SA 1287-91); though indeed, “thousands at
his bidding speed / And post o’er Land and Ocean
without rest: / They also serve who only stand and
wait.” This insight was for Milton the critical lookedfor “source of consolation from above,” the “secret
refreshings, that repair his strength, / And fainting
spirits uphold (SA 663-66) that have not yet come to
his Samson at the conclusion of Manoa’s visit-without the assurance of such inner prompting of the
spirit, the poet, too, would doubtless pray the “one
prayer” that yet remains to the Nazarite at the nadir
of his despair-“speedy death / The close of all my
miseries, and the balm” (SA 649-51).
Rather than the whimpering lament of a defeated
has-been, then, I envision Sonnet 19 as the first major
milestone in the poet’s progress toward reformation
of the heroic ethos of classical antiquity, that is, as the
first in a series of penetrating inquiries that lead from
the personal (“What can I do now?”) to the universal
(“What can any Christian man do now?”)in the face
of the shifting horizons of epistemological expectation confronted by the poet in little in his personal
affairs, by the English nation in its political affairs,
and by western civilization at large in the kaleidoscopic reality of the seventeenth century. Even as a
young man, Milton was possessed of a clear sense of
mission (“to defend the dearest interests, not merely
of one people, but of the whole human race, against
the enemies of liberty” (CPW4: 557-58) and to “leave
something so written to aftertimes, as they should not
willingly let it die“ (CPW 4: SIO), and his successes
only reinforced what he later characterized as his “full
experience of the divine favor and protection,” a
“consciousness of rectitude” (CPW 4: 557-58), and
“singular marks of the divine regard” (CPW 4:
558)-outrageous boasts for a hellfire-fearing Independent to make unless he indeed felt the rousing
motions of the Holy Spirit stirring within him. He
was aware, even while composing The Reason of
Church Government,that his greatest work was yet to
come (one “not to be raised from the heat of youth, or
the vapors of wine, . . . but by devout prayer to that
eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and
knowledge, and . . . touch and purify the lips of
whom he pleases,” CPW4: 821), and that his prose
diatribes on politics and popery were digressions
merely, an “interruption”of his true calling permitted
with “smallwillingness”on his part, which had forced
him to leave “a calm and pleasing solitariness,fed with
cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a
troubled sea of noises and disputes,” and, distracted
“from beholding the bright countenance of truth in
the quiet and still air of delightful studies,” induced
him to “meddlein these matters” (CPW4: 821) of civil
and ecclesiastical controversy, having the “use . . . but
of [his] left hand (CPW 4: 808). Clearly, Milton’s
agenda at the prime of his life did not anticipate the
advent of an affliction so inimical to his objectives as
the loss of his eyesight, nor did it accommodate such
a calamity even when he was forewarned of its imminent approach by his physicians. Literally given a
choice between “the loss of [his remaining] sight or
the desertion of [his] duty” late in the autumn of 1649
(when, already blind in one eye, he was asked to write
a response to Salmasius’ Defensio Regla pro Carolo
Primo),Milton declared that he “would not have
listened to the voice of [Alesculapius himself‘ delivering the same prognosis at that time, but preferred
instead to heed “the suggestions of the heavenly
monitor within [his] breast” that prompted him to
“makethe short interval of sight which was left [him]
to enjoy as beneficial as possible to the public
interest” (CPW4 588). He composed his Defario Pro
Populo Angficuno (published in March, 1651) in
fulfillment of that commitment, thereby “procu~fing]
great good by little suffering” (CPW4:588), but also
consciously sacrificing what was left of his precious
vision in the bargain.
The descent of total darkness on eyes that were
even in blindness “as unclouded and bright as the eyes
of those who most distinctly see” (CPW 4: 583)
meant, in a world of quill pens and parchment paper,
the end of the poet’s literary career (that “one talent . . . now lodg’d with [him] useless” because, by
1652, he could neither see to write, nor read what he
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MILTON QUARTERLY
had written). Blindness bereaved him not only of the
chief of hs five senses, but also of the primary means
whereby he was destined from birth to fulfill his
covenant with God: so that what some unsympathetic souls took to be the Almighty’s public
humiliation of a once-favored son (in retribution, his
enemies said, “for the transgressions of [his] pen,”
(CPW 4: 587) actually served as a catalyst to force
Milton Samson-like to re-evaluate his youthful
convictions, not only of the “inward prompting”
(CPW 4: 810) both of sacred mission and manifest
destiny, but also of the “divinefavor and protection”
that seemed somehow to have deserted him in his
hour of greatest need. Shaken out of his complacent
and almost smug self-assurance by the harsh realization that heavenly approbation could (seemingly) be
withdrawn as mysteriously as it had been bestowed
(the noble experiment of the Good Old Cause
inexplicably having failed), the poet must have
wondered as his Samson does what was to become of
one who “blind among his enemies” could no longer
draw upon the only strength on which he had ever
relied: for perhaps the first time in his life, Milton’s
ability to perform those tasks necessary to fulfill the
heroic destiny he had always believed he was born to
consummate was cast seriously into doubt, and since
it did not now seem that he could make a fair return
on his Master’s investment in him by means of his
pen (in keeping with the “profitable servant” analogy
of Matthew 25.13-30 and Luke 19.12-26), his soul
was likewise in jeopardy. Cut off from all access to
that “onetalent” which was his only opportunity for
to balance the ledger sheet and present thereby his
“true account,” Milton remained nonetheless “more
bent / To serve therewith [his] Maker” in much the
same way as he had always done, and (perhaps more
significantly) had always been confident he would be
able to do. The question now was how such service
was supposed to be accomplished (“Doth God exact
day labor, light deni’d?”),and for the trustee of an
extraordinary “all-of-God’s-eggs-in-one-basket”capability thus totally, inexplicably-and, one would
almost say, cruelly-incapacitated, the challenge could
not have been an easy one to answer.
Milton’s carefully considered and deeply personal
response to this paradox was, it seems to me, the
catalyst that initiated the poet’s quest for a definition
of Christian heroism answerable to his own predicament and objectives, a realignment and redirection
of his energies that would permit him even despite the
seemingly insurmountable obstacle of his blindness to
“get even” with Heaven (in the sense that George
Herbert expresses a determination to settle the score
with his Savior and “revenge [himself] on [God’s]
love”8 in poems like “The Thanksgiving”). Like
Herbert, Milton was doomed to failure even before he
began, since, as both poets came to recognize, there is
nothing mortal beings can do to requite the Redeemer
quid pro quo for His sacrifice, no matter how earnestly they might attempt to replicate the “labors
huge and hard, too hard for human wight” accomplished once and forever by the “most perfect Hero”
of past, present, and future history (“The Passion”
2.13-14); or how zealously they might strive to make
their individual offerings count: the balance sheet
simply will not balance, because the weight of the
world is too great a burden for earthbound shoulders
to bear.
Paradise Regained is, I think, Milton’s variation on
this theme, an exploration not of the impossible-toemulate archetype of Christian heroism reified in the
self-immolation of Messiah-in-man at Golgotha
(“Thenfor thy passion-I will do for that- / Alas, my
God, I know not what,” says Herbert), but of the less
numinously charged but more identifiably human
aspects of the man (Christ) Jesus’ victory over the
temptations of the world, the flesh, and the Devil in
the wilderness, no doubt in conscious recognition of
the fact that the latter, at least, supplies a paradigm of
“standing and waiting“ more susceptible of accommodation to the limitations of purely mortal capability. From the Lady of Comtrs and the narrators of
Lycidas and “When I Consider,” to Samson, Adam,
Eve and even Jesus himself, Milton has been exploring
the potential for human heroism in New Testament
terms, and each of his human protagonists thus represents a discernibly more mature approximation of the
imitatio Christi against a backdrop of increasing challenge in adversity. Their trials begin with the atypically Christian responses of the Lady and the speaker
of the elegy to classical literary situations (i.e., the
attempted rape of a human female by a god or demigod, and the premature death of a hero), and culminate on one hand in the willing sacrifice of egocen-
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tricity to the greater glory of God that enables Samson actively and heroically to finish a life heroic
(1710-11), and on the other in the more subdued,
serene, and seemingly passive form of valor that the
man(God) Jesus himself exhibits at the climax of
Parudise Regained (a resignation of the self which is
for him but a foreshadowing of the supreme act of
heroism in which he alone will and can ultimately
engage). Inherent in each confrontation with sin is the
opportunity to fall, to give in to the weakness of the
body or the soul (self-temptedor beguiled), to despair
rather than to hold fast to one’s convictions and stand
firm against a compelling seduction. The point is that,
as the Adversary tells his adversary on the temple
spire, “to stand upright will ask thee skill” (4.551-52):
in any struggle, it takes the steady exertion of a force
equal and opposite to that of one’s assailant simply to
maintain apparent stasis, but the seeming motionlessness of such sustained resistance is-as the Lady in
Comus and Christ on the pinnacle aptly demonstrate-by no means the same as actual inertia (“that
property of matter by which it retains its state of rest
or of uniform rectilinear motion so long as it is not
acted upon by an external force”).” As Samson,
Adam, and Eve must learn in the process of atoning
for their respective sins, to withstand the temptation
to act wrongly and thereby stand one’s ground requires an expenditure of energy equal to or greater
than the force of the impulse to transgress: if an individual standing still is pushed backward by an
opposing force with fifty pounds of pressure, he or
she must push back with at least the same power and
intensity in the opposite direction simply to remain
erect, even though to the casual observer neither the
push-er nor push-ee will appear to be in motion: like
the phoenix in Samson Agonistes, the Christian hero
is “then vigorous most / When most inactive deem’d
(1704-05). This is the import of Raphael’s warnings to
Adam and Eve at 6.520 and again at 8.633 that the
bliss they enjoy is contingent:
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep
His great command; take heed lest Passion sway
Thy Judgment to do aught, which else free Will
Would not admit; thine and of all thy Sons
The weal or woe in thee is plac’t; beware.
I in thy persevering shall rejoice,
And all the Blest: stand fast; to stand or fall
Free in thine own Arbitrement it lies.
Perfet within, no outward aid require;
And all temptation to transgress repel.
(8.633-43)
Notice that all of the verbs of Raphael’s injunction
require Adam either to continue doing that which he
is already engaged in doing (“be strong, live happy,
and love, but first of all / Him whom to love is to
obey, and keep / His great command; [persevere];
“stand”;“stand fast”),to be watchful (“beware”;“take
heed), or not to do that from which he has heretofore refrained (“[do not let] Passion sway / Thy
Judgment to do aught, which else free Will / Would
not admit”; “all temptation to transgress repel”):
Adam does not have to do anything new to preserve
his sinless state (that is, it will be enough for him to
“continue steadfastly,” or persevere” in his thus far
intact obedience), but he must actively resist the impulse to take new (wrong) action in the form of
succumbing to temptation-that is to say, of engaging
in disobedience, which is the negation of the positive
action of obeying God, and not doing what the
Creator has prohibited.12 Theologically, the word
“persevere”takes on an even keener significance in
this context: Raphael is not only reminding Adam to
refrain from doing what God has commanded him
not to do, he is also exhorting him “to continue in a
state of grace to the end, leading to eternal salvation,”” to stand in his righteousness rather than fall
into sin. The real transgression committed by our
First Parents is not the literal act of tasting of the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge, but a failure in both cases
to rely on God’s loving grace (ugupe) already granted
to satisfy all of their needs: Eve’s attempt to accelerate
the workings of b i r o s by trying to ascend the next
rung of the Great Chain of Being before God has
decreed that she should do so fails dismally, as does
Adam’s preemptive and impulsive decision to seek
damnation with Eve rather than attempt to intercede
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That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continu’st such, owe to thyself,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.
(6.520-23)
Be strong, live happy, and love, but first of all
118
MILTON QUARTERLY
on her behalf (trustingin the benevolence of whatever
alternatives the Creator may ~ffer).‘~
Salvation is
granted them because, having considered other
courses of action (counter-incrimination, literal annihilation, suicide, abstinence, etc.), they decide to stand
and wait patiently for God‘s judgment, acknowledging the willfulness of their transgressions with no
attempt at self-exculpation, and trusting guilelessly
and completely in God’s mercy and love, as they
should have done from the start.15 Like Adam and
Eve and Samson, too, the narrator of Lycidas who
demands to know “What boots it with incessant
care / To tend the homely slighted shepherd’s trade?”
at the beginning of the poem must learn that it is
God’s will and God’s timetable that will determine
his “fair Guerdon,” and not his own impatient desires:
those who remain steadfast in their faith in God’s
beneficence and do God’s service in whatever manner
and in accordance with whatever schedule the Lord
directs them to follow (and not when and as they
please) will find the “fresh woods and pastures new”
that in this case equate to earthly salvation, when the
providential time is right. Like Samson and the speaker of Sonnet 7 (“How Soon Hath Time”),the narrator
of Lyctdar must learn to stand fast in virtue and wait
in circumspection when everything in him wants
impulsively to run, “to burst out into sudden blaze”:
it is the “perfect witness of all-judgingJove / As he
pronounces lastly on each deed that will bring him
the everlasting laurel he craves, rather than the approbation of men.
Samson’s appetite for the worldly glory that is the
“fairGuerdon” of classical epic heroism must likewise
be curbed and redirected before he can merit
redemption and the restoration of grace: it is his
resistance against the tandem impulses to yield to his
overwhelming despair and his classical berserker’s
egocentricity at the end of his days (along with his
rejection of the invitations he receives from his wellmeaning father and his treacherous wife to escape
God’s punishment and live a life of ease) that allow
him ultimately to rise above his own misery and
indignation and say, Christ-like, “thy will [rather than
my will] be done,” convinced by “some rousing
motions within [himy that God intends to let Samson
quit himself like Samson: (“This day will be remarkable in my life / By some great act, or of my
days the last” 1387-88). Though he bears the affronts
he suffers at the hands of the Philistines in general and
Dalila and Harapha in particular without complaint
(“All these indignities . . . these evils I deserve and
more, / Acknowledge them from God inflicted on
me /Justly. . . . ” 1168-71), and can say with “confidence”that he ”yet despai~fs]not of his final pardon
/ Whose ear is ever open; and his eye/ Gracious to
readmit the suppliant” (1171-73), it is only when he
is able to put aside the warrior’s pride and yearning
for recovery of his lost glory that is inherent in his
initial refusal to attend the Dagonalia (“Can [the
Philistines] think me so broken, so debas’d / With
corporal servitude, that my mind ever / Will condescend to such commands? . . . I will not come”
1335-42), that he is truly able to take right action and
willingly go where he is bidden, to the greater glory
both of his God and of himself. But if Samson reflects
the via activa of Christian heroism, then it is Satan
(and not the speaker of Sonnet 19) who is his
antithesis, that is, the distinction is between wrong
action for personal glory, and right action for the
glory of God, not motion versus stasis per se.
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The God of Paradise Lost offers the therapeutic gift
of prophecy to Adam and Eve only if they accept
His judgment ‘patiently.’ . . . ‘They also serve who
only stand and wait’-so Milton stood ready for his
future. Seen with the eye of God or the eye of a
prophet, waiting was indivisibly part of acting. His
restraint was a deed of faith: he must wait with the
belief that his future, complete in the mind of God,
would come round before he died. Impatient restlessness, the most dangerous kind of inaction, was
the abiding temptation to violate the divine schedule. Forcing time, relinquishing himself to the
motions of a guilty disease, would have constituted
a faithless indictment of God-and therefore an
indictment of the life God held in trust.-Waiting
for God was waiting for himself. (Kerrigan 264)
zy
Because we, too, are fallen, and too frequently guilty of a dangerous impatience, we are supposed to read
the final line of Sonnet 19 as a sigh of resignation, just
as we are supposed to see the Lady of Comus as frigid
and puritanical in contrast to her pleasure-obsessed
antagonist, as indeed we are supposed to see Aeneas
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MILTON QUARTERLY
(and even Milton himself) in the fallen archangel and
the derelict Old Testament warrior. We are meant to
applaud the unfallen Adam, too, in the uxoriously
“heroic” gesture of courtly love implicit in his
declaration to the fallen Eve that “with thee,”
Certain my resolution is to Die;
How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly join’d,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
(9.906-09)
because in our similarly fallen state, we fail to comprehend the spiritually damnable nature of such a
seemingly chivalrous and praiseworthy action, and
are touched by its selflessness rather than appalled (as
we ought to be) by its atheism. But we are also in the
contexts of Lyculus, Sonnet 19, Paradise Lost, and
Samson Agonistes supposed to become sensitized to
this kind of psychological entrapment, and to learn to
see the initially seductive images of carpe diem hedonism, irredeemable despair, cockalorum vainglory,
wounded pride, self-exalting egocentricity, and devoted uxoriousness for the sins they really are. We are
supposed to reject them, just as the Lady, Adam, Eve,
and Samson ultimately do, in imitation of Christ’s
matter-of-fact rejections of the temptations of the
flesh, the world, and the devil in Paradise Regained,
but-let them who have ears to hear it hear-the fact
that we are supposed to do something doesn’t always
mean that we accomplish it. Perhaps ironically in
terms of what we have been considering here, it is the
man (God) Jesus himself who in the brief epic
demonstrates most aptly the point of the final line of
Sonnet 19, which is, that by not falling when they
might, and not acting when they shouldn’t act, they
also serve (“render habitual obedience to, do the will
of”) his Father16who only stand (“remain steadfast,
firm, secure, and the like”) l7 and wait (“in Bible
phrase, to place one’s hope in God).18
Averett College
119
opposition in Pro Se Defensio makes it very clear that
he regarded Salmasius, Du Modin, and More as such.
In a letter to Henry Oldenburg written the same
year, and cited in John S . Diekhoff‘s Milton on
Himself(136), Milton calls the loss of sight “a sorer
affliction than old age,” but nowhere except in the
traditional explication of Sonnet XM is there any
suggestion that he let it overwhelm him.
All citations from the Oxford English Dictionary
refer to the Compact Edition (New York: Oxford UP,
1985). As evidenced by the excerpts contained in Edward Jones’s excellent compilation, although a handful of scholars (Mitsuo Miyanishi, Edward Tayler,
James Jackson, Paul Baumgartner, and Akira Arai,
among them) have interpreted the terminal line of the
sonnet much as I do here, the overwhelming majority
have concurred with Tillyard that, as Joseph Pequigney writes, “the speaker must not only be able to
attend God’s will, but he must also be willing to accept an inactive life as legitimate service to God. . .
Oones 100).
“
‘See the discussion on 38-43. Put another way, this
‘konvenient modern theory suggests that we are
meant to admire Satan’s dynamism and then, thanks
to the author’s many promptings, realize we have
pledged allegiance to an unworthy hero” (Danielson
60), a “convenient modern theory” with which I
wholeheartedly concur, and like Fish, would extend
(mutatis mutandis) to all of the characters of Paradise
Lost.
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NOTES
Though Milton had no political enemies capable
of doing him more than verbal damage until the
restoration of Charles 11, his perception of the
Even today, there are critics of Paradise Lost who
insist with Blake (Songs of Innocence, 1789) that
“Miltonwas of the Devil’s party without knowing it,”
and astute readers of Samson Agonistes who continue
Johnson’s search for the “missingmiddle” of Milton’s
“dramatic poem,” entrapped by Milton’s epistemological strategy into seeing only half-truths and
shadows.
All Miltonic quotations and translations are from
Hughes, Complete Poems, unless otherwise specified.
’In Ad Putrem (Hughes 84) Milton declared him-
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MILTON QUARTERLY
120
self to have been “born a poet,” and repeated his
statements of mission again and again in such works
as The Reason of Church Government and the Second
Defense; there is no evidence that he ever dcviated
from his youthful intuition that fame would come to
him through a certain poetic “style [that] by certain
vital signs it had,” was “by sundry masters and
teachers both at home and at the schools”found to be
“likely to live” (Reason of Church Government, in
CPW 1: 809).
the loss or lack of the power to act . . . . What
happens when Adam eats the forbidden fruit then
is not an act, but the surrendering of the power to
act. Man is free to lose his freedom, and there,
obviously, his freedom stops. His position is like
that of a man on the edge of a precipice: if he
jumps, it appears to be an act, but it is really the
giving up of the possibility for action, the
surrendering of himself to the law of gravitation
which will take charge of him for the brief
remainder of his life. In this surrendering of the
power to act lies the key to Milton’s conception of
the behaviour of Adam. A typically fallen human
act is something where the word “act”has to be in
quotation marks. It is a pseudo-act, the pseudo-act
of disobedience, and it is really a refusal to act at all
(416).
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George Herbert, “The Thanksgiving.” Unless
otherwise identified, all Herbert citations will reference the C.A. Patrides edition of The English Poems
OfGeorgeHerbert pondon: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1988).
“The Passion,’’Easter 1630,11.13-14 (Hughes 62).
It is interesting, in view of the fact that this is the only
direct attempt Milton ever made to deal with the
Passion, that the poem bears the postscript “This
Subject the Authorfinding to be above the years he had,
when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was
begun, left it unfinisht.”
lo
Like Samson, Adam is thus given an opportunity
to engage in a true imitatio Christi, but his “chivalrous” love for Eve (amor)supersedes his spiritual love
for God (caritar),and overwhelms the right reason
that should lift his eyes toward heaven. Adam’s
heroism, as well as Eve’s, lies in rectifying this disobedience of the “first and great commandment,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind (Matthew
22:37) implicit in the injunction against the “apple”;
John Steadman’s argument in Milton and the Paradoxes
of Renaissance Heroism that, unlike Achilles,
Odysseus, Aeneas, Orlando, Ruggiero, and Redcrosse,
“Adam and Eve are corrupted, not purified, by trial,”
so that “in their case the test of virtue results in the
contamination of original purity rather than in purification of a native impurity” (183) therefore misses
the point. Like the Chosen People of the Old Testament, Adam and Eve (with a purity unique in human
history to themselves and Christ) find their initial
covenant with the Lord too hard to perform; but unlike Satan, once fallen, they merit and rely in full faith
upon an Intercessor, and are re-purifiedby his mercy.
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The American College Dictionary (New York:
Random House, 1968): 621.
The American College Dictionary, “persevere”
(903).
l 3 American College Dictionary, “perseverance,”
Definition 2 (903). The OED (1.e) simply says “to
continue in a state of grace” (2140).
l2 In The Christian Doctrine I, xi, Milton explains
that “actual sin” is so called
not that sin is properly an action, on the contrary
it is a deficiency, but because it usually exists in
some action. For every action is intrinsically good;
it is only its misdirection or deviation from the set
course of law which can properly be called evil
(CPW6: 391).
The quotation is glossed by Northrop Frye in “The
Story of All Things” (FiveEssays 20-21) as follows:
An act is the expression of the energy of a free and
conscious being. Consequently, all acts are good.
There is no such thing, strictly speaking, as an evil
act; evil or sin implies deficiency, and implies also
l5
Georgia Christopher points out in her discussion
MILTON QUARTERLY
121
on the “conspicuousvirtue” of Milton’s devils (199)
that the “elision of degree in Hell” so that there are
only two hierarchical categories, “Satan” and “lesser
devils,”despite the honorifics suggesting otherwise,
Though some thus fell away, others stood fast,
Remaining glorious martyrs to the last. 1667
MILTON P.L. 111, 99, I made him just and right
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall (3013).
reflects the Protestant abolition of [Roman
The Oxford English Dictionary, (v.) “wait,”
definition II.14.h:
Catholic private] confession and of precisely
calibrated penances [corresponding to ‘a precisely
calibrated hierarchy of venial and mortal sins’]. To
be sure, Protestants developed their casuists, but
their piety purported to erase gradations of sin and
concentrate upon the heart’s primary orientation.
Moral calculus began with faith. The biblical
underpinning for this point, cited by Milton as by
Luther before him, was Romans 13:23:
‘Whatsoever is not of faith is sin’ (YP 6:639,
Luther’s Works, 26250). This view no longer
Localized sin in carejiul categories, but spread it into all
areas of existence, including those normaLLy reserved
for virtue. The most irirtuous’ action without faith
was sinful; conversely, ?loth’ (or mereLy standing and
waiting) might be a most heroic act offaith. [Italics
added.]
z
‘’
In Bible phrase, to place one’s hope in (God). Very
common in the Bible of 1611; rendering several
Hebrew verbs of identical meaning.
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Obviously, I do not concur with her implication
that either the “standing”or the “waiting”in Milton’s
poem equates to “sloth,” though I would agree (as
argued earlier in this paper) that it equates to apparent
inaction (deliberate failure to act impulsively, based
on faith), which is not the same thing.
1535, Coverdale, Ps.LXI.1 My soule wayteth only
vpon God, for from him commeth my
helpe . . . (3669).
WORKS CITED
The American College Dictionary. New York: Random
House, 1968.
Christopher, Georgia. ”Milton and the reforming
spirit.” Danielson 197-205.
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l6 The Oxford English Dictionary, (v.) “serve,”
definition I.7.b, which (ironically) refers to Line 11
but not Line 14 of “when I Consider,” though the
distinction is virtually indiscernible:
To render habitual obedience to, to do the will of
(God, a heathen deity, Satan) . . . c. 1655,
MILTON, Sonnet, ‘When I Consider’, 11 Who
best Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best
(2740).
?%e oxford English Dictionary, (v.) “stand,”
definition B.I.9.b:
”
Ciardi, John, and Miller Williams. How Does a Poem
MeanZ2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1975.
CPW. See Milton.
Danielson, Dennis, ed. The Cambridge Companion to
Milton. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994.
Diekhoff, John S. Milton’s Paradise Lost: A Commentary on the Argument. New York: Humanities P,
1958.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983.
Fish, Stanley Eugene. Surprised By Sin: ?%eReader in
Paradise Lost. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
Freeman, James A. Danielson 51-64.
fig. To remain stedfast, firm, secure, or the
like . . . 1657 BILLINGSLY Bruchy-Martyrot. xi.35
Frye, Northrop. “The Story of All Things.” The
122
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MILTON QUARTERLY
Return of Eden: Five Essays on Milton’s Epics.
London: Routledge, 1966.3-31.
Hughes, Merritt Y. John Milton: Complete Poems and
Major Prose. New York: Odyssey, 1957.
Bees in My Bonnet:
Milton’s Epic Simile and
Intertextuality
Jones, Edward. Milton’s Sonnets: An Annotuted
Bibliography, 1980-1992. Binghamton: Medieval &
Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1994.
William Moeck
Kerrigan, William. The Prophetic Milton. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1974.
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Miller, David. john Milton: Poetry. Boston: Twayne,
1978.
Milton, John. Complete Prose Works ofjohn Milton. 8
vols. in 10. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1953-82.
The o x f r d English Dictionary, Compact Edition. New
York: Oxford UP, 1985.
Patrides, C. A. The English Poems of George Herbert.
London: Dent, 1988.
Steadman, John. Milton and the Paradoxes of Renaissance Heroism.Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP,
1987.
Tillyard, E.M.W. Milton. New York: Collier, 1966.
The obvious debts to Homer and Virgil in Milton’s
Bee Simile were initially recorded in Patrick Hume’s
“Notes on Paradise Lost” (1695), though the extended
comparison was argued nearly a generation ago as
referring us obliquely to Shakespeare and Spenser. In
the following essay, I shall briefly review arguments
made by Harold Bloom and taken up most
conspicuously by John Hollander and John Guillory,
for two reasons. First I would like first to demonstrate that, as the Bee simile metamorphoses over
nearly thirty lines, it also alludes to Renaissance and
classical precedents hitherto unsounded. Secondly, I
would like to breathe new life into the question: what
is the difference between a source and an intertext? I
have reservations about the validity of the latter as a
concept supplanting the former term for literary
critics, though my qualms are voiced from the inside,
for in my analysis of Milton’s passage I, too, hear
echoes, but of Tasso. In conclusion, I argue that the
strategies of the source-huntersand intertextualists on
Milton are worth revisiting, not in order to reiterate
that the difference hangs on a changed understanding
of how language functions, but to suggest that our
ability to recognize an intertext, as an extension of
our ability to recognize a source, is a working out of
an aesthetic response to literature.
Bloom dubbed the bravura gesture of Paradise Lost
towards its literary past as transumptive, and,
followed by Hollander and Guillory, he uses the rhetorical trope of transumption or metalepsis to discuss
a Miltonic style. Although a study of trope as defined
by the rhetorical treatises would not lead the aspiring
orator to suspect it was more than a curiosity, the
trope is far more important for literary critics.’
Because it involves a doubling of figures, or denotes a
way of referring to something by the omission of an
z